In the Berkshires

So I came up to the Berkshires to help my girlfriend move apartments. I don't really like playing in different places, cuz I'm out of my correct poker mindset. Instead I think I'm going to play some tournaments today, since that's different anyway it'll hopefully interfere less with my current play.

I ended up spending yesterday in Barnes and Noble for almost 9 hours. I got a lot of reading in, which was cool, but they somehow don't have and cannot order the Military Flight Aptitude Guide I need, so I guess I have to go with Amazon. Just ordered that now, should be here soonish, but I need it ASAP.

So, I read a lot of books yesterday. I started with poker, checking out Daniel Negraneu's new Power Hold'em or something like that. It seemed all right, but a lot of extra unnecessary things. Really, the only section I cared about was the final one written by Daniel on smallball. He seemed quite thorough in his explanation, and I would suspect one could go from never playing that style to having a pretty good feel for it quickly after reading this book.

Then I checked out Killer Poker Online (weak) and I love those KP books, so that's saying a lot. I did get some laughs though, and now wish I had chosen a different screen name. Don't get me wrong, IBK_Suckout is sweet and all, but what about something like DonkeyFlopper, or HandiCAPEable, or TruffleShuffle124, something like that. I did kind of give away the fact I consider myself a good player through straight reverse psychology implying I suckout, which I feel I hardly ever do, due to the fact that I'm good. So there was some fun to be had.

On to Killer Poker Online 2 hoping for salvation, but it's basically dedicated to tournament play (I'll stick to HoH v 1-3 thanks).

Read em and Reap, a book I'd heard contained some nuggets, was by an FBI agent and is supposed to be his attempt at being Crazy Mike Caro, and writing a new "Book of Tells". Well let me tell you something, this isn't new, and it's not that great. If you don't know anything about tells or haven't played a lot of live poker, well then okay this might actually be something you consider useful, perhaps even amazing. But to me, it's old news and someone just wants to bet paid for printing it again.

According to Doyle, another book by the great one himself, somehow left me not really feeling it. I'm starting to think I've read too much about poker, when these guys can't hold my interest. Believe me, anything Doyle says, it's something to listen to, because he's one of the greats all time. But like the previous book, it's all been said before, or most of it anyway. And actually it was said by the author himself in various works over the years, which I have copies of already.

I started glimpsing at Play Poker Like the Pros by Phil Hellmuth Jr. then realized what I was doing, and put the thing down. Don't get me wrong, Phil's a great tournament hold'em player, but that's not me. I'm a cash games guy, and Phil, for all those bracelets, just isn't very good at cash. I'm sure he's still a winner, but not like some of the guys with books available like Doyle, or Barry Greenstein. I will still read this book sometime, because I'm always eager to understand a new perspective on the game, but something else caught my eye.

Every Hand Revealed, by Gus Hansen. Gus has long been a favorite of mine on the tournament scene, and I "watched" him go deep in this year's main event courtesy of http://www.pokerpages.com/ Sad I was when he didn't make the final table. Anyway, I sat down, and read this thing from cover to cover. I thought this was one of the best things I've read in a long time for poker. His mindset and mine are actually very similar, although he definitely at some very critical points made plays I would be unable to, which must occur otherwise I would be as well known as he. This book laid out every hand Gus played, how the hand played out, and his thoughts about why he acted the way he did, including those hands I'm saying I couldn't work my way through to the proper call with ace high facing a 387,000 All in at a 120,000 pot when calling is going to take about 75% of your stack. Well Gus did it, and he'll tell you why. I would recommend this one to anyone looking to improve his or her tournament game, or anyone who is looking for something new to pique their poker related interest. This made up for those other books I'd checked out.

Took a few hours to read, as there were I think, 385 hands Gus participated in, and I'm also deciding on my actions prior to reading what he himself played, then comparing notes. This I feel is the only way to read such a book, ie any Dan Harrington Book. By the time I finished I was dying to play a tournament, and still had a lot of time to kill. I couldn't read any more poker for the moment, but I found Backgammon for Winners by lo and behold, Bill Robertie, coauthor of the Harrington poker books. I knew Bill played backgammon, what I failed to realize was that at least at the time his book was written, he was considered the greatest backgammon player in existence, and was also the only person to win the Mone Carlo World Championship more than once. Not a bad resume for a professional games player.

So anyway, I'm going to try and play some tournys. I say try because I currently have my girlfriend's African Grey parrot out, and he loves to find things baby parrots shouldn't have, like cell phones, remotes, knives. Yeah he'll find anything and destroy it, or destroy things with it. He's jabbering away, but the little guy is only one and a half, so he doesn't say too many things that make sense yet. He'll always say, "Come on" or "Come Here" but he doesn't really mean it. He says "Hello" and means that, so that's pretty cool, and earlier today he told me he loves me then threw up a peanut for me, so he might mean that too, lol. Oh man, he's getting into trouble, I'm gonna watch sportscenter for a bit, then try the poker after he's back in his cage.

I forgot, I love online poker

Wow, I haven't played online in so long, and I don't know why. I was back to my 12 tabling ways, figured I'd stay cheap at the $.01/.02 for now, since the bankroll's pretty hurt still. Here's what I'm looking at for a few thousand hands a day.

Hopefully I can start getting more hours in, but here's what I've got for now.

Not too awful, I'll definitely take the bb/100, but I just have to get more hands in. I played for something like 3 hours. As long as I keep up this rate, I'll be moving up again to either .05/.10 or .02/.05. Again, I'll likely first go to .02/.05, since I experienced great success there previously, and going from buying in for 300 bb to just 100 could be a tough transition. The plan for online is when I have enough for 20 buyins at .02/.05, I'm going to start going at it there. Once I get my bankroll high enough for 30 buyins at the .10/.25, then that's where I'm heading. I'm convinced I can sustain a solid winrate at .10/.25. If I can 12 table those limits with an 8bb/100 winrate, just one half of what I'm currently playing at, the numbers are pretty staggering.

I'm 12 tabling, and generally a table gets 55-60 hands per hour. That's 660-720 hands per hour. At 8bb/100, that's 53bb-58bb per hour winrate, which ends up being $26.50-$29 per hour, not too bad. Especially since that's only 2 levels away.

Okay, so enough of that stuff, it's always fun to analyze numbers when winning's going on, so I'm gonna throw up a graph of my EV. Turns out Sklansky owes me some bucks, which is cool, since I'm always game for a higher winrate. Here it is:

So I'm actually 150bb cold right now, not a bad deal. Can't write anymore now, hurts to lean on elbow/shoulder.

Pokahhhhhhh

Well well well....it's been awhile eh? Quite awhile at that. The online poker's been slow, and honestly, it's just cuz grinding out 9-12 tables to make between $6-$10 an hour kind of sucks. I found a nice solution to that, although it makes the blogging more difficult.

I've been logging live hours at Foxwoods. Been doing pretty sick too, so far I'm averaging 4.5 big bets per hour at $2/$4, so making decent loot. Just need to get more hours racked up. Mohegan Sun's poker room opens soon, less than a month, and I'm excited about that. First of all, they're sticking to more traditional limits, and $3/$6 will be their lowest limit. That instantly translates to an extra $9 an hour, not a bad raise, for just a slight increase in blinds.

In semi-unrelated to poker things, my computer's been through hell, and that doesn't help. Some of my awesome programs, like adobe photoshop, corel draw, and pokertracker are toast and that sucks. I have tracker back, but my entire database is gone, and without that what good's the program? Guess I just have to start rebuilding.

Of note, I have been playing a little bit online lately. And I must say I've been experiencing consistent success, basically playing straight out of Supersystem. My roll was vaporized, only $37 in it, so I took to the $.01/.02 NL tables. Basically playing very LAGy, if the pot's unopened to me, opening with basically any suited connectors, big broadways, or pairs. Then firing a pot-sized bet on the flop, and adjusting my decision to double barrel or back off on the turn based on various factors, generally how draw heavy the board was and if that draw hit. If no, fire another pot sized bet on fourth street. I'd say probably cbetting right now around 90-95% of the time. It may honestly be 100%. I've been going in overdrive, but it really seems to work. I start with a big raise preflop, no 3x bb BS from me, I make it 5x bb minimum, more for limpers, probably 7.5-8bb for one limper and 10-18bb with 2 limpers.

And here's the thing, I'm managing to play like this on 9 tables at once. It's honestly hard to play that aggressive at that many tables. But it's fun. It's more active than set mining, and I'm doing well, bringing up the online roll anyway. $52 right now.

I think it's time to try and build it more since I'm not at Foxwoods. Come to think of it, why am I not at Foxwoods? I may be heading there now. Later