More of Winter 08, Remembrance Day

Flatland Grinder: We're a Movin' On Up
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Friday, November 23, 2007 at 8:05pm | Delete
The day has finally come. I've moved up limits and have been playing $50 no limit and pot limit poker for the past few days. I've logged 5 sessions, and all of them have been winning sessions, with a bb/100 rate of 11 or so after about 2000 hands. Far too early to tell, but these initial results have been pretty encouraging. It's ironic that as I write this post on my impressive win rate I'm playing a session and losing quite badly. I've been getting a lot of small and middle pairs, and as it goes with set farming aggressive tables, it's pretty costly to see a flop. Different people play these kinds of pairs under different circumstances. Some people use a maximum raise amount that they'll call, such as 6 bb or 8bb. I use an approach based a little more on game theory. Provided that my call has implied odds of about 7.5-1 if I hit my set I'll call. Long term it's a profitable play, but it can get expensive when the stacks are deep. And right now the stacks are deep and I haven't been catching the sets. I'm also playing at the only 3 tables going with any real action. This is less than half of my usual 7 tables, and consequently the 'long run' is going to take a little longer tonight.
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Flatland Grinder: 99; Red Balloons
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Wednesday, November 21, 2007 at 11:35am | Delete
I love poker. Part of the reason is hands like the following. I spent a lot of time micro-anaylzing a losing hand not so long ago. Here's a winning hand with a lot more to it than there would seem to be at first. Here's the hand history. Texas Hold'em $0.25-$0.50 PL (real money), hand #P4-54309598-113
Table Moroni, 20 Nov 2007 11:02 PM ET Seat 1: herberthump ($9.45 in chips)
Seat 2: AncusMarcius ($36.50 in chips)
Seat 3: YellowManJJ ($24.75 in chips)
Seat 4: Maria 26 ($23.80 in chips)
Seat 5: Arale. ($24.25 in chips)
Seat 6: MrTon57 ($20.80 in chips)
Seat 7: L3st3rMurphy [ 9D,9C ] ($23.00 in chips)
Seat 8: jonna92 ($10.10 in chips)
Seat 10: tranquillozh ($28.65 in chips)
ANTES/BLINDS
L3st3rMurphy posts blind ($0.25), jonna92 posts blind ($0.25). PRE-FLOP
tranquillozh calls $0.25, herberthump bets $1.25, AncusMarcius folds, YellowManJJ calls $1.25, Maria 26 calls $1.25, Arale. calls $1.25, MrTon57 folds, L3st3rMurphy calls $1, jonna92 calls $1, tranquillozh folds. FLOP [board cards 10C,8C,JH ]
L3st3rMurphy checks, jonna92 bets $3, herberthump bets $8.20 and is all-in, YellowManJJ folds, Maria 26 folds, Arale. folds, L3st3rMurphy calls $8.20, jonna92 calls $5.20. TURN [board cards 10C,8C,JH,3H ]
L3st3rMurphy bets $1, jonna92 calls $0.65 and is all-in. RIVER [board cards 10C,8C,JH,3H,9S ] SHOWDOWN
herberthump shows [ AC,AS ]
L3st3rMurphy shows [ 9D,9C ]
jonna92 shows [ JS,10D ]
L3st3rMurphy wins $32.50. SUMMARY
Dealer: MrTon57
Pot: $34, (including rake: $1.50)
herberthump loses $9.45
AncusMarcius loses $0
YellowManJJ loses $1.25
Maria 26 loses $1.25
Arale. loses $1.25
MrTon57 loses $0
L3st3rMurphy bets $10.45, collects $32.50, net $22.05 After winning this hand I typed in the chat window "Know your outs :)" Here's why. This is one of those poker hands where the margin of error could be huge. With all of the action against my lowly 99 here my little voice was sending up red warning balloons like crazy. (Yet another brilliantly creative title!) First of all, on the flop I put Jonna92 on at least a premium pocket pair. I didn't have very many hands on him, and in the absence of information to the contrary I always give my opponents credit for a strong hand. I had him holding anything from aa-jj or ak. His bet was for half the pot, essentially offering 2-1 odds for a call, and I was intending to call his bet. The next player, herberthump (nice name bub) was a little looser, and I put him on any pair and hands down to aj. When he moved all in for his 8.20 I put him on top 1 or 2 pair or a flush draw. With a straight I felt it was more likely that he would have flat called hoping to suck me in too. That he bet so big said to me that he was afraid of the draws hitting, or was trying to build a pot in anticipation of the flush. When it came back to me the pot was 18.95 and I had to call 8.20. My outs were anywhere from 6 (the 7s and the Qs, without the clubs to complete a flush draw if there was one and my 2 remaining 9s being counterfeited by a higher set), or 10 outs if there were no flush draw and no higher set. I was confident that there were no higher straights out there. So averaging my outs to 8 I decided I only needed 2.2-1 on the call, and with only $5 more for Jonna92 to call into a $27 pot I was sure that he'd call too. The pot odds alone made it a worthwhile call, and the implied odds with Jonna's predicted call made it a no brainer. I flat called not wanting to scare jonna out and we had a 3 way pot, which I rivered out on. I showed this hand to a friend of mine and his initial reaction was that it seemed like a loose play. So we crunched the numbers with pokertracker and with pokerstove. Here is a rough idea of what we got: My probability of completing my hand by the river was 31.45%. This translated to needing pot odds of 2.18-1, so my guesstimate of 2.2-1 was almost bang on. To call a bet of $8.20 I needed to have a pot of at least of $17.87. I was being offered a pot of $18.95 or odds of 2.32-1, better than I needed. If the implied odds of Jonna92's remaining $5.85 are added to the pot, we then have a pot of $24.80, or implied pot odds of 3.02-1. As it turned out I did have 10 live outs which gave me terrific expectation. In fact, even if I'd had only 7 outs in this hand, it would have been a profitable call. It's only in the event that I had 6 outs or less that this call would show a loss. What I love about this hand is that it shows the importance of a) playing by the math, and 2) not always being afraid of the worst case scenario. At best one can only put their opponents on a range of hands. You can never know for certain what an opponent is holding. And when you're counting outs in a hand like this, you need to apply that same technique of ascribing a range of possibilities to your opponents. While it may be possible that you're drawing dead, it's equally possible that all of your outs are live, even remotely possible that both your opponents are drawing. With that in mind, the best method for calculating pot odds in a situation like this is to take the average of your range of outs and go with that. I love this hand. I was bouncing around my house for a while after this one, not because of the amount of money won, but because of the complexity of the call and the fact that I played it well. Incidentally, had I lost this hand, I think it still would have been the subject of a post. This kind of thing intrigues me to no end!
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Flatland Grinder: Paid to play.
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Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 9:28pm | Delete
There are a lot of skeptics in this world. You tell them that the poker site you play at gives you money to play there and they are disbelieving. For example, this month I stand to get about 400 or 500 in bonuses from my poker site. The skeptics say things like 'that doesn't make sense, why would they pay you to play?" Here is how an online poker room makes money. Just like in a brick and mortar poker room, the site takes a small percentage of every pot, called 'the rake". The rake varies from site to site. The rake can be a contentious issue depending on who you talk to. Some players view it as though the rake comes out of the loser's share of a pot. Others view it as a piece of their winnings being taken. The site I play at has a rake of about 5% of every pot. I share the view that the loser is paying the rake, and I'm being compensated for my share by the pot I win. Whether it's right or wrong I don't care, it helps me ignore the fact that the site is taking a small share. So back to the question, how can a site afford to pay players to play. Consider this. Most players are long term losers. Most bonuses involve a 'raked hand requirement' or collected points system of sorts. You have to play x amount of hands in x amount of time to collect the bonus. A lot of players never actually clear the bonus. The site has drawn their business, collected a good amount of rake off of them, and not had to pay out a penny. Then there are players like my friends and I, bonus whores as we tend to be known as. We're winning players that carefully calculate which bonuses are best and we adhere to strict playing schedules so that we are guaranteed to clear the bonuses. Often times this works out to an extra $3-$5 per hour. Does the site still make money off of us? Yes, just not as much. I just cleared a $200 bonus today, that required me to clear about 10k hands or so. Looking at my stats I can see that in that time frame I paid approx. $300 in rake. So the site made $100 off of my play instead of $300. But there are other benefits for the site. Brick and mortar rooms will often hire 'prop players' to fill their tables, thus insuring that new players always have a poker table to sit at and play. Online sites are no different. Without traffic a site is dead. The network that I play on has always offered some of the best bonuses, and has consistently held a strong market share because of it, which has kept them alive and growing while other sites faltered. Anyway, that's how a poker site can pay players to play. It's more like returning a portion of rake than an actual bonus. In fact 'rakeback' programs are another way that players are paid to play.
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Flatland Grinder: 10k hand checkup
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Saturday, November 17, 2007 at 8:40pm | Delete
What can I say, my play is awesome. First off, the stats; Vpip 16.28, pfr 8.12, AF 3.42 bb/100 9.04 I'm really happy with these results. Things I'm doing well. I'm playing a little looser than the 14/4 rocks that seem to make up more than half of the players these days, and I think that's making me a little harder to read. I'm bumping up my pfr with a lot more position raising than I used to do. For example, if I have a small pair, or a couple of Broadway cards I'm making a small raise. I'm pretty sure that most of the opponents that I need to worry about are using PAHUD. They're not actually watching the size of my raises, just looking at the pfr stat on their PAHUD. That extra 4% of what I used to consider junk raises increases the range of possible hands that my opponents have to consider me capable of playing immensely. In the event that 1 or 2 are watching my raises, about 10% of the time I'm making the small raises (or no raise at all) with the monsters too. Another thing that I'm doing is making a lot more position raises than I used to. If I don't take the pot preflop, I take it often enough with a sensible continuation bet that it's profitable. This is one of the areas that I'm really leaning on PAHUD for. I'm really watching the stats of 'fold to continuation bet" and 'raise continuation bet'. I also discovered a little trick with PAHUD that I never realized I could do before. There's a window that allows you to 'configure pop-up stats" in the edit menu of the layout manager screen. It allows you to customize the info in the pop up stats window. I've added a lot of info to the flop stats section of my pop up that I'm finding to be quite profitable. I've mentioned a few of them here, but the info that I have my pop up window displaying for the flop is Aggression Frequency Flop Flop Aggression Check Raise Flop Fold to Flop Bet Fold to Flop Raise Continuation Bet Raise Continuation Bet Folds Continuation Bet I'm not going to go on at length defining these terms, instead I'll direct you here; http://pokeracesoftware.com/hud/tutorial.php?page=stats Ironically the other thing that I'm doing well is ignoring PAHUD and going with my gut on later streets. Things that I'm doing poorly, or have been doing poorly and recently stopped. I still sometimes overvalue tptk. I was playing under less than ideal conditions. For example, I was taking my laptop to a couple of coffee shops that had shitty internet connections. I did this twice, and rather than stop playing when I saw the connection was likely to give me trouble, I played through. I grew increasing frustrated and in both sessions began to play too aggressively out of fear that I would lose my connection and be folded out of the hand. Subsequently both sessions were losing sessions. This could also have been due to the level of distractions in the coffee shops. or even to some additional edginess and irritability brought on by the caffeine. At home I still sometimes fail to wait until there are no distractions. I want to play more tables so that I can earn more per hour, and I'm pushing the envelope a little too hard at times. I need to pace myself better. I'm not putting in the hours as well as I should. This week I'm currently 8 hours behind my goal. This means that tomorrow I'll be playing for about 8 hours to catch up. And that's not much fun. Believe it or not poker is work. I still pursue vendettas against maniacs at times. Poker shouldn't be personal, but when some 80/40/12 assholed sucks out on me for a backdoor flush I get pissed. I need to work on a more zen outlook. And that's my 10k checkup. :)
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Flatland Grinder: Mental Masturbation with One Hand
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Saturday, November 17, 2007 at 8:10pm | Delete
I had a boss back in the day who was all action and no bullshit. He hated people that used a ten dollar word where a one dollar word would do. He also loathed indecision, he believed it was a sign of weakness. And he also hated micro-analysis of anything, particularly micro-analysis that had no immediately apparent point. People that engaged in any such verbosity, indecision and analysis he referred to as mental masturbators. So he would be absolutely disgusted with me right now. Because I'm still going on about the same hand I've been talking about for several posts now. I'm talking about the jqo that I flopped 2 pair with and then found myself facing 2 reraises. The first point, that I've hammered to death, is that I really should have gone with my gut on that hand. I've since come across a lot of other information in the form of vital concepts of no limit play from Sklansky's NLHETAP. I'm going to list the concepts that I feel had the most bearing on this hand in particular, because listening to my gut and adhering to these simple concepts has really helped my play a lot. DON'T PLAY BIG POTS AGAINST TIGHT OR TRAPPING PLAYERS If the player is an absolute rock, don't play a big pot without the nuts or VERY close to it, for example a set or better. Your opponent won't be in with anything less. In the hand that I keep referring to a 6.4% vpip reraised a reraiser all in. I should have folded holding only 2 pair. A BIG BET IS THE MOST RELEVANT INFORMATION AVAILABLE. When reasonable players make extremely large bets, all information from past action takes a backseat to the big bet. Sklansky notes that if the only possible way he could have you beat is if he held 7 4 offsuit and it's not in his range, disregard the range. The big bet says he's got 7 4 if he's a reasonable player. I chose to use the (false) information from the past action in the hand when I called the all in with my 2 pair, and failed to assign the big post flop bet enough importance. BE WARY OF OVERCALLERS When there has been a lot of action and there's a call and an overcall, the overcaller almost always has to have an extremely powerful hand. In my case, the action demonstrated power even more clearly than an overcall. This hand has fascinated me because it's absolutely riddled with mistakes on my part. Those mistakes are a tremendous learning opportunity. A lot of poker players refer to their losses as their tuition, the dues they pay in order to better their play. I paid a lot of tuition on this hand, and I'm not going to let it go until I've taken my money's worth of education about it. In somewhat related news I recently took an IQ test on Facebook and I did a little better on it than I have traditionally done on these types of exams. After the test it gave me some analysis, my results and some tips on how to improve my IQ score. One tip in particular might explain why my results were a little better than usual on this test. The tip was "Play games (chess, cards, etc.) which require you to work out your opponent's strategy". Well I've put in more than my share of time doing that!
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Recollections of Abrahim Upon Interviewing for a Job.
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Friday, November 16, 2007 at 2:47pm | Edit Note | Delete
I've been told they're going to ask me, "Tell us about a time you dealt with a difficult customer."
And instantly I was thinking of Abe. Let me tell you about Abe. Abe was a portly old gangster in his mid 40s. Actually gangster is too strong a word. Abe was more of a petty hoodlum with some big connections. He used to come into a restaurant and bar I managed in Edmonton, and he would come in and drink one of our finest whiskeys. He let everbody know that he was drinking the finest whiskey too. That we had the cheapest price on that particular whiskey of any lounge in the area was a detail that he kept to himself however. Abe was from somewhere in the Middle East, he made frequent references to Khazakstan, Lebanon, Jordan. He could have been from any one of those nations, and he brought with him a lot of the cultural nuances of the Middle East.
He felt it was rude to deprive you of the odor of his breath, and it was not a pleasant odor.
He liked to hold your hand when he was speaking to you, and it was a clammy hand and a strong hand, and it was difficult to escape it.
Abe was a portly man, and as he told me once, "In my country a large belly is a sign of prosperity." and he led himself around the room by his oversized belly. If he was arguing or being forceful he would belly bump the person he was speaking with. He would lean back in his chair smoking a cigar and rubbing his belly, gold covered fingers and a heavy gold watch glinting like Chivas on the rocks.
The owner valued Abe's business. Abe was very vocal about his status as a regular customer. But outside of Abe's own claims, the owner didn't know him.
Abe didn't spend that much. He'd mooch drinks off of the bartenders, the managers, other customers.
On one occassion Abe sat with a table of young ladies and ran his hand up under the skirt of one of them to cop a feel. We banned him then, but he spoke to the owner and was let back in.
Abe was the quintessential alcoholic. He came down with a bad case of gout, and he told me that his doctor had advised him to quit drinking, which he refused to do. And Abe drank a lot. In fact he drank himself into oblivion on a regular basis, sometimes passing out at his table.
On one such night a customer asked me if I was going to let Abe drive home. A number of other customers overheard this exchange and added their two cents that this guy should not drive home.
When closing time came I told Abe I wasn't letting him drive home. He argued. I told him it was against the law for me to let him drive home. He screamed at the top of his lungs "YOU TELL ME WHERE IN THE LAW IT SAYS THAT I CANNOT DRINK AND THEN DRIVE HOME!!!" Well that shout attracted the attention of far too many witnesses and made me 100% liable for anything that might happen.
He refused to take the cab that I offered to pay for and made a break for his car, at which time my bartender called the police. We have to cover our own asses after all.
The next night Abe came back as if nothing had happened. I told him I wasn't serving him unless he agreed up front that he would take the ride I offered.
He agreed, but at closing time disappeared. So I barred him from coming in for a week. Throughout this process I discussed it with the owner (who had a colorful impaired driving record himself), and he didn't really want to take any action.
A week later Abe came back, with a couple of young friends. He introduced them to me as Tony and Vince or something like that, and told me with a smile that they were his "Italian leverage". Then he asked if I had a few minutes to hear a story and I did, so he told me the Italian Leverage story. "I have many friends you see, and one day a friend of mine who owned a restaurant much like this one approached me for help. He was having some difficulty paying his bills and was in a lot of trouble financially and wanted the restaurant gone in such a way that he could collect the insurance. I as you know am an adjuster, and I helped arrange things for him. So it came to pass that this restaurant of his burned to the ground in a great fire one night, and I took care of his claim with him. This friend told me "I had $2000 worth of CDs" and I told him NO! you had $10,000 worth of CDs. By the time we had taken care of everything I'd made him an extra $30 or $40,0000. So a few weeks later I went to see him, and I asked if I could please have $5000 for a commission. He refused, and we argued but he still would not agree. So I returned late that night with my Italian leverage, and we got my money." The Italian leverage sat there giving me smiles and laughing and telling Abe to shut up, but the message was pretty clear. The Italian leverage however were also blowing Abe off as a bit of a loser, and I concluded I really didn't have much to worry about, it was just a scare tactic. They left, and Abe ordered a drink and called me to his table and told me that he didn't want any bullshit and he'd be driving home. I took the drink away from him, and he got irate, said he'd never drink in my bar again, and when he left he wouldn't be coming back. Then he sat down at a VLT, as was his habit. Beside him there was a bucket of scrap paper, etc. I just happened to be watching when Abe took a match to this bucket and set it on fire. He sat there doing nothing as it quickly turned into a blaze. I was there in a shot with a pint of water and had the fire out in a jiffy. It was a pleasure asking him at that moment to never ever return to my bar.
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Candy is for Pee-ers.
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 2:31pm | Edit Note | Delete
My son is regressing to being a non-potty user. It was going well but now he doesn't even want to try. I was desperate for some kind of motivational speech to give him. Then I remembered the 'Coffee is for closers" speech from Glengarry Glenross. So I've made the same speech, to the boy, but I've substituted 'candy is for pee-ers."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TROhlThs9qY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TROhlThs9qY
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A Shout Out to All da Ladeeez in da Hizzy!
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 11:19am | Edit Note | Delete
Let's not kid ourselves ladies. Some of us are getting old. You're gettin' up there, and often few of your good parts are following. But that's not the issue.
Yes, there's an issue.
One day, and one day soon you're going to be classified as an old lady. There is such a thing as a nice little old lady, but nice little old ladies are the exception. Somewhere along the line it seems that women lose their common sense. And I'm preparing you for this, because I want you all to fight it. Yes soon you're going to feel an overwhelming compulsion to stop paying for things with debit or credit or cash, and you're going to be the little blue hair standing at the express checkout writing out a check for your milk and cat food while 9000 people are waiting behind you. You'll also come to the realization that most people can see you when you're driving in the middle of the road and avoid hitting you, thus leading you to falsely believe that this is the safest route for travel. Try to ignore the madness. Don't turn into a little old lady.
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Flatland Grinder: Freudian Poker
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Monday, November 12, 2007 at 9:47am | Delete
As you know I've been reading a book on rapid cognition (intuiion) in the hope of improving my decisions at the poker table. Most recently I've had some bad results using PAHUD's stats even when they conflicted with my gut instinct, and a lot of the time this has cost me money. There are times when I can really rely on pahud, for instance when I'm deciding whether or not to make a continuation bet, or deciding whether or not to go for a check raise. For those small and frequent decisions, pahud gives me pretty close to the exact odds of my chances of success, and it pays for itself quickly. However I've been using it to justify calling some pretty big raises on the river. I've decided that from now on those river calls are going to be the result of my first gut instinct. It's generally correct, and I've found that the research in Blink backs this up. First, a brief summary of the findings in Blink. The researchers found that in small and unimportant decisions, rational analysis using a traditional pros vs cons method had a higher success rate than 'going with your gut." However, they also discovered that as more and more information became available, and the decisions became a little more complex, with few exceptions, subjects had better results when they made their decisions intuitively. This isn't to say that data shouldn't be considered. It's just to say that when there is a wealth of information to analyze the subconscious seems to do a better job of parsing through to the best conclusion than the rational but drawn out processes of the conscious mind. Freud realized this when he was studying the subconscious, and here's a quote from him. "When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep needs of our inner nature." That being said, my inner nature is currently feeling a deep need to go fishing for donkeys online :)
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Remembrance Day
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Sunday, November 11, 2007 at 1:33pm | Edit Note | Delete
First off, I'm all about peace. I'm practically a freaking hippy. I don't want Canada to be in a war. I've marched against some of our more recent wars. That being said I really appreciate that I have the right to march against the actions of my government. And I owe that right to soldiers that were willing to risk sacrificing everything including their lives so that I could. Even if I disagree with the motivations of my government sending our forces to war in a foreign land, I appreciate and respect the soldiers that are doing the fighting. They're making that same sacrifice that my grandfather's made for their children. The only difference is that they are making that sacrifice, not for their children, but for complete strangers on a completely foreign soil. It may or may not be our government's objective, but Canadian soldiers have a long history of bringing humanity, dignity, honor and integrity to their missions, and I will always stand up for them with pride. So today, on Remembrance Day I think of my Father's war experience, of my Grandfather's experience and of my friends. I'm proud of you guys. I salute you.
My Dad is heavily involved with the Royal Canadian Legion and he came to speak at my daughters' school on Thursday. He has never really talked about his experience during the Korean war, and I thought that perhaps at this event he might. He didn't. But he did mention something that I maybe hammer to death. Remembrance Day isn't just about the soldiers that have fallen. It's also about those of you that have come back home, and seen things no one should have to see. The way he puts it is, "There are men that saw things, and they survived. Now they're old men, but they still have dreams that wake them up at night, and they are not the nice kind of dreams."