Monday, October 26, 2009

A few more software battles

Played about an hour in total since my last post, with a bit friday night and monday night. After the wedding I went to on Saturday I was just too knackered to play on Sunday at all.

I went to try to play pacific, and then found i'd accidently deleted it in my rush to get my PC working when my database had completely filled my hard drive causing it to grind to a halt. Simple enough, you'd think, just download and install again. Apparently not. First time I downloaded it, I got a slightly different version which installed itself to a slightly different directory. This version was particularly annoying as it had a different log in screen which required me to select cash or play money, as well as having a number of options blanked out.

Went to click uninstall, which then came up with an error, and so just deleted it manually, then deleted a couple remaining files from my previous email. Downloaded the software again, and installed from scratch. This time it has installed the correct version, with all options available. Go figure. But finally back in business.

In my couple sessions I struggled a bit to find decent tables whilst messing around with software. Started really well ... down about 40BBs before recovering them all from a couple fish at $3/6 and $4/8. Pretty non descript sessions though as I lost a couple big hands when my full house was beaten by a bigger full house, and another ran into quads. However, I also then won a few big one's when a couple aggro muppets decided it was a good idea to bluff and raise into three other players on every street where they were drawing basically dead to my top set.

Current bankroll: $20,700
October time played: 13h
October profit / (loss): $800

Thursday, October 22, 2009

HUD stats - and how to use them

After a bit of thinking I believe i'll set up my HUD with two rows of stats. The first row will be VPIP, PFR, AFq, WTSD with the second row 3B, ATS, FBBTS, FTCbet.

I'll quickly describe the first four now and what i'm looking for and the next four in my next post. Mostly because I am too lazy to type it all out now. Please bear in mind they are all for 6max fixed limit holdem.

VPIP - volutary put in pot. This is probably one of the key stats to determine if you're up against a total fish. Anything much above 40% is pretty loose, and means they're playing a wide variety of hands. There are exceptions, say if they have a 25% PFR to go with their 40% vpip, then they might not be too bad. I like to have someone with a 50%+ vpip on my immediate right with a low PFR, and even another to their right if possible. Anyone with a 90% vpip is a dream come true. That being said I don't mind having fairly tight guys on my left that I can steal blinds from.

PFR - Preflop raise %. A decent player is normally around 20%, and I really like to have passive players on my right - less than 5% is perfect. If someone is say 2% it means they are basically only raising AA and KK, and I know to get out of their way.

AFq - Aggression frequency - How often they bet compared with check/calling. I understand that a decent player is around 40% - 60%. Anyone under that is passive, which is what i'm looking for. Anyone over that is very aggressive and is often betting fairly poor hands - I will tend to call these guys down more often with weak but winnable hands. Sure they have the good sometimes, but often they don't.

WTSD - Went to showdown - How often a player does go to showdown. A high percentage here often means they're prepared to call down with fairly weak holdings. A decent player is around 35%-40%. If someone has a high vpip and a high wtsd i'll try to get in as many pots against them as possible as I know they are likely showing down trash fairly often.

Generally I use a combination of the above statistics to work out their range of possible hands. As you can narrow their range of hands you can work out how likely your own hand is to hold up, and whether you should bet, raise or fold. That really is the key of the statistics and the HUD - using the information to better predict your opponent's range of hands.

For example if i'm on the button preflop and someone with a PFR of 40% raises before me and I have AJ, i'm going to 3 bet here every time and try to get it heads up. If i'm in the same situation and the guy doing the raise has a PFR of 3% i'm throwing my AJ in the muck as his range has my hand completely crushed.

Post flop I look to AFq to give me further information on the type of hand they might be holding compared to what is out on the board. If someone bets into me and has an AFq of say 20%, then I know unless I have a very strong hand i'm going to have to fold because he more than likely has the goods. If on the other hand he has an AFq of 65% and i'm holding second or third pair i'm calling down. If my hand is stronger i'm probably even reraising this player.

Okay that's enough theory for now. Pokertracker annoyed me again last night, and decided to creat 200Gb of log files which brought my PC to a grinding halt. I ended up having to delete files just to get my PC running properly again. I then just extracted my hand histories in smaller chunks and now have an up to date database ... I think.

I also found one of those dream players a 95%/0% (vpip/pfr) sitting on a $3/6 table with no one on his left. I sat down, and then got creamed, whilst he was then kind enough to give my money to the other players. My AA got busted by his 62o when he hit quad 2s on the river, and he also just called instead of raising my river bet. A few hands later his 75o was too good for my J9s after a flop of 789 ... obviously the river was a 6. Had a worse result on the $1/2 tables where I dropped about 25BBs in pretty quick time. The river was not my friend.

Current bankroll: $20,700
October time played: 12h
October profit / (loss): $800

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Pokertracker3 installed

Downloaded Pokertracker3 last night and installed without any hassles and now have it running as a trial. Converting my existing databases wasn't quite as user friendly as i'd like though.

I started with Bodog where I have about 50,000 hands in my database and hit the convert option from within PT3. The first few hands flew through before hitting the wall at about 1,000 hands where it started to process about 10 hands per minute. Obviously that is never going to finish, so time to implement plan b.

So I fire up PT2 and export my bodog database to text files. This takes all of 20 minutes and then about another 5 minutes to import into PT3. Problem solved. Cake then imports fairly quickly although since I only have a few months of raw hand data, and for those months I haven't been playing much Cake there weren't that many hands to import. Pity really, as I'd like to know how i've been going overall on Cake as it seems to have been a site i've regularly withdrawn from. I do the export / import with Pacific as well withouth incident.

Next up though is the challenge - Fulltilt - about 300,000 hands. I waited until this morning to start this one and figured i'd just leave it running if it took too long. Started my text export and it flies through the first 230,000 hands in about 25 minutes, before suddenly hitting the wall and slowing down to about one hand per second or two. At that rate it's going to take another day or two, but I figure if I just leave it running maybe it will pick up pace again .... I'll check when I get home from work tonight.

Setting up PT3 seems to be very simple with most sites being automatically detected. I ran a couple tables in between exporting and importing, and the HUD came up very quickly on each table. I still need to set up the HUD with the stats I like though. I'm currently thinking VPIP, PFR, AFq, WTSD, FBBTS, ATS. I then may add 3B, FSBTS, FTCbet. I don't really use those three stats, but I really should be I think.

Might post next time about each of those stats and how I use them. I have been using AF in the past, but have to get myself up to speed on AFq asap.

Current bankroll: $20,800
October time played: 11h30m
October profit / (loss): $900

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

PT3 may be sooner than I thought

My new version of gametime+ occasionally freezes up, which also freezes up my bodog client - a big problem when you're in the middle of a hand.

With this added issue, I think it's time to download the PT3 trial, and make sure that it works perfectly with my PC. Knowing my luck it probably won't, but i'll give it a go in the very near future. Apparently you get 60 days free, so that is plenty of time to check it out and get it up and running correctly before I have to fork out any cash.

When I do eventually need to buy it, i'll probably go through Pokersource as their store seems to be a relatively cheap way to obtain it.

Had an interesting little session last night, where in the first 15 minutes I only won one hand whilst playing on four concurrent tables. It wasn't looking real good, and I was prepared for a very painful session. Being midweek there weren't many tables running so 3 of them were only $1/2 and the other a $3/6 table. At least my single winning hand was on the $3/6 table....

For the next 15 minutes though, I just could not lose a hand - the absolute opposite of my initial run where I was down the best part of 50BBs. All of a sudden, most starting hands seemed to be premium pairs or AK. Even my T2o in the big blind hit quads on the turn. By the time the fish were cleaned out (which didn't take long) I was back to a few BBs up. I then had to quit as my fish had been replaced by TAGs.

I found one really nice looking $3/6 table, but ended up just sitting on the waiting list for the entire half hour, and the seat opened up just as I was quitting. Oh well.

All in all, pretty happy with the session, even though I didn't really make much. It's funny how psychologically you feel pretty good with not much more than a break even session, but it always seems the case when I start off with a horrific run.

Current bankroll: $20,750
October time played: 11h
October profit / (loss): $850

Monday, October 19, 2009

Forgot to reload

Sometimes I'm more scatterbrained than I ever thought possible. Logged into Bodog the other day to check whether my monthly reload had been paid with the plan to reload again if that was the case. Promptly then forgot to reaload and only realised I hadn't done it today. Only missed a couple days, but still, not a good sign that i'm forgetting that kinda stuff. Maybe I need to exercise my brain more.

Can't say I really have played much poker since the weekend. Maybe 60 hands where it was a struggle to find, and stay at tables that were fishy enough to be worthwhile playing at. In fact of the few tables that were running several were in the low 20%s of players seeing the flop. Ugly.

Ended up dropping more than a few BBs on the $1/2 tables, but made a couple at $4/8 to come out only slightly down. Had one interesting opponent that I had to take a note on who was fairly aggro, and more than willing to three bet the flop with top pair and no kicker against my early position open raise. I ended up capping the flop with my top two pair, and he called me down. In hindsight he was probably aggressive enough that I could have check/raised the turn instead .. but as per usual, I generally don't play made hands slowly.

Current bankroll: $20,750
October time played: 10h30m
October profit / (loss): $850

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Sometimes the fish amaze me

Played a home game with the boys Friday night, and after that didn't get in a lot of online poker over the weekend. Probably a little under an hour online all up, but in that time ran super hot against some super fish.

Won about 10 BBs on a couple $4/8 tables, and well over 50 BBs on the $1/2 tables in a very short space of time where the fish kept on paying me off.

Add a $100 bonus credit and my weekend was pretty good, even without putting in any volume.

Thought i'd share a couple hands where in the first I was just scratchin my head when I saw what the guys had at showdown, and the second happened where I was allowed to check my big blind with trash ....

Hand 1

$1/$2 Limit Holdem • 6 Players
UTG 105.85
UTG+1 37.26 (very loose fish)
CO 46.07 (tightish but passive)
BTN 31.60 (passive fish)
SB 163.23 (huge fish 80+ vpip)
Hero (BB) 100.00

Pre-Flop (1.5 SB, 6 players) Hero is BB with AsKs (not a bad first hand at the table!)

1 fold, UTG+1 calls (could have any 2) , CO calls (tightish overcall .. mid strength hand?), BTN calls, SB calls, Hero raises (well this is going to be a big pot!), UTG+1 calls, CO 3-bets (interesting overcall then raise ...), BTN calls, SB calls, Hero 4-bets (no turnin back now - if this hits it will be a monster), UTG+1 calls, CO calls, BTN calls, SB calls

Flop (20.0 SB, 5 players) 7s4s2d (happy with a flopped flush draw here)

SB checks, Hero bets, UTG+1 raises, CO 3-bets (hmm .. a big pair .. surely not 77 with the 3bet preflop?), 1 fold, SB calls, Hero 4-bets (debated for a second here whether to just check or raise further - i figure these guys probably can't fold though in a pot this big), UTG+1 calls, CO calls, SB calls

Turn (18.0 BB, 4 players) 3s (the virtual nuts .. sweet)

SB checks, Hero bets, UTG+1 calls, CO calls, SB calls

River (22.0 BB, 4 players) 3h (you gotta be kiddin me! I'm still bettin out though)

SB checks, Hero bets, UTG+1 calls, CO calls, SB calls

Final Pot: 25.2 BB Hero shows
Hero wins 25.2 BB (net +19.2 BB)
UTG+1 lost 6.0 BB 8s6h (seriously wtf was that flop reraise and the river call with 8 high??)
CO lost 6.0 BB 8c8h (can't blame him too much for callin down in the huge pot)
BTN lost 2.0 BB
SB lost 6.0 BB 4h5h (called 3 cold on the flop with a pair and not much ...)

Hand 2

$1/$2 Limit Holdem • 5 Players
UTG 40.50
CO 28.50
BTN 113.25 (passive fish)
SB 70.06 (loose but somewhat aggro)
Hero (BB) 96.50

Pre-Flop (1.5 SB, 5 players) Hero is BB with 6s2s

UTG calls, 1 fold, BTN calls, SB calls, Hero checks (thanks for lettin me check that)

Flop (4.0 SB, 4 players) 2c6c6h (hehe)

SB checks, Hero bets, UTG calls, BTN raises, SB folds, Hero 3-bets (i figure a club will kill any action so may as well bet here. might be a mistake, although I suspect that every time you bet a huge hand it's a small mistake at worst, whereas slowplaying can be a bigger mistake), UTG calls, BTN calls (happy that both called!)

Turn (6.5 BB, 3 players) 3d
Hero bets, UTG calls, BTN calls (both called again .. bonus!)

River (9.5 BB, 3 players) Ac (awesome flush has hit - please let one of them have it)
Hero bets, UTG folds, BTN calls

Final Pot: 22.5 BB Hero shows
Hero wins 11.0 BB (net +7.0 BB)
SB lost 0.5 BB
UTG lost 3.0 BB
BTN lost 4.0 BB Kd6d (all he needed to do was bet preflop and the pot was his ... I would have raised the turn in his position too)

Had a few of those hands where I was able to check my BB and on two occasions hit my trips on the flop and quads on the turn. From memory in one hand I had T4o and hit quad Ts, and the other I had 83o and hit quad 3s. All I can say is thankyou for the fish. It was also kinda nice to have a session that wasn't full of suckouts.

Current bankroll: $20,750
October time played: 10h
October profit / (loss): $850

Thursday, October 15, 2009

HUD back in business .. for now

After downloading what I thought was a fix for my gametime+ HUD issue with my converted database, I quickly found that it didn't work at all.

Didn't take long though to just download an older version of Gametime+ which seems to work, although it automatically pops up tables which is a bit annoying when i'm not even sitting at the table that I have open.

It was the normal midweek struggle to find decent tables, although somehow I spotted a couple $4/8 tables which had a couple tags and three fish that I could get position on. Started off up a few BBs, but quickly gave that back and dropped about 10BBs to a big fish opposite me on the table. AK can't seem to hold up for me this month - and got done twice in the space of one orbit against A5 and A7 respectively.

However, my fishy friends decided to keep calling me down trying to hit their three outers, and after missing several in a row I was back up for the session. After that a player or two quit each table, and one of the fish actually stood up and moved from being on my right to sitting on my left, which was extremely annoying. I decided to just quit though, as the table was getting shorter than i'd like. I'm still not overly strong on the seriously short handed tables, and prefer at least five players, but even more so six.

Back to a new peak of the bankroll now, and due a decent rakeback credit as well. Hopefully I get in a bit of play over the weekend, as I have a wedding next weekend so the poker tables will be pretty quiet.

Current bankroll: $20,450
October time played: 9h
October profit / (loss): $550