new post! new blog!

Hello world! I've started a new blog here:

(tada!)

http://headsupblog.com

yes, I will keep on posting, but not here. go to my brand new blog! see you there

april results

donkaments:

+$2167. almost exclusively $50husngs. wasnt getting much action so.. [ ] sample size. also could have done much better - the amount of money i lost to fishbowls is ridiculous.

cash:

-$82

almost all hands are 50NLHE (crushed everyone) and 2 consecutive sessions of 50PLO (guess where..), all headsup

bottom line: +$2085

i'm only satisfied with my nlhe cash games this month, i could have done much better in other games.

but i shouldnt complain i guess -that's my biggest month so far

finally owned someone's soul

lately i'm not getting much action in husngs so i play more and more cash. today luckily i played for 3hrs at 3 tables with some reg..

apparently in the end he said that i "hit n run"..

march results

ok here are my graphs for March. my internet connection at home has been screwed since last week so i haven't really played last week and couldn't post my results earlier.

anyway,

husngs $20-$30:

+$1551

some nice profit here ($41.1/hr). "but how much did you lose?", ok $50 husngs:

-$446

no money hu, everyone's solid? not really. there are 2 big downswings, vs 2 different (bad, overall losing according to sharkscope) players. stories were similar: i sat down and waited for an opponet for ~40 minutes, lost my match, clicked rematch b/c i didn't want to wait that long again, but then lost again. they were bad, i knew it. i never quit when a bad player agrees to play again, sometimes they suck out and i go on tilt and may spew a few buy-ins but this tactic has made me much more money in the long run. they were standard lagtards, the opponents i like the least since i play very loose myself so this type of opponents contribute most variance to my overall results. i definetly didn't play my A-game and lost more than i should have, but then i tightened up and it was pretty much one-way. in both cases they lost 2 husngs in a row and run away. meh.

note to self: never quit fish unless I'm playing poorly. stop loss? nope, still think that's a bad idea.

the problem is sometimes it's hard to tell if i'm making dumb plays during the game..

the good thing is that i beat all "leaderboard" regs who played with me at this level :D that's variance i guess...oh and there's still alot of fish at this level (though it's "highstakes" according to ftp lobby) - ont guy nicely shipped me 5BI(almost $250!) in about half an hour..sick life :)

finaly, cash games:

+$156

every month i play 10nl 6max and run baaaad. i should stop doinh it probably, but still i have to work on my ring games as well. last month i discovered superfun game - hu plo, that made me some $$, but rake was terrible. some guy sat down to play with me at a deepstack table. he had ~62$ but won a couple of BIs in the very beginning. he was terrible so i kept playing with him and eventually got his entire stack. i was sitting on a huge pile of cash(~$270) so swings were also huge, but then i realised i won only ~$29 off him. that was $33 of rake over 220 hands.

bottom line: +$1261

i dont want to set any goals yet b/c i 'm still not confident with my internet connection (as a failed to achieve my 2nd, "volume" goal).

p.s. tiny micro brag: while my cable connection was down, i played some 1cent-2cents plo mastering a special move that i like to call "ace on the river". it proved to be very effective against the infamous luckbox :D

fulltilt support is the best

today I was playing $50 husng, I was leading, got disconnected, when i finaly logged back in i had 140chips (blinds: 25/50). needless to say i lost this one. i emailed fulltilt ("omg wtf rigged!!" etc) and got their response within 20 minutes:

We've reviewed tournament ######### and found you experienced Internet connection issues while playing. As a courtesy, we've credited your account with the buy-in for this tournament in Tournament Dollars (T$), 52.50T$.

half month update

1st half of the month has passed and i've met half of my monthly goals (i.e. 1 goal): make $1k (brag, kinda). mostly 30$, some 20s and one 55$ hu miniftops event (epic fail vs superfish, game #133 followed by lifetilt till game #139). i'm not even close to 250 games (1/2 of 500games, goal#2) and i don't think i'll have that much time this month to achieve it. so maybe i'll change my plan. after all i've made 1k, time to press F2("save game"). i should probably stick to 30s..or move upto 50s..or try cash and spew it all :)

btw, i applied for the mount robusto project and got an email few days ago from my "sergeant". we're a group of 10, looks like most of us play 50nl to 100nk cash and we're having some sort of assignments soon. i still don't know what it all means and i can't even watch the mount robusto video update..but we'll see

february

donkaments +$713:

cash -$259:

bottom line: +$454 (sigh!)

cash: continuation of 50nl shot-taking from last month..didn't end well. i didn't play badly though, mostly coolers. i suspect i might have been owned near the end (red line drops). the rest is 10nl and some 25nl when i was bored with husngs.

donkaments: unfortunately my graph doesn't look like a boner, like last month. after about 100 games i've printed enough $$s to take another shot at 50nlhu, this did not end well, probably i was tilted and i def didn't play my a-game. also, i started 2-tabling husng so it might as well be learning curve. i was struggling with 2 tables in the beginning for sure! then i was running bad. oh and i didn't play much last week (too tilted/tired after the olympic games - can't believe one night i slept less than 2 hrs to see that misery), so i may say i had a break from poker and now i'm ready to conquer new heights.

goals for the march:

-play at least 500 husngs

-make at least $1000 (10%roi@20s)

(?)try more 30s and maybe 50s

(?)work on 6max/hu cash

i may be overrolled for 100nl soon so playing 20s will be huge -EV for my bankroll. i have to move up somewhere ldo..maybe hu cash+coah, i don't know yet. there were 2 propbets on BBV: 15k/month@100nl and 30k/month@200plo. both guys achieved their goals. i wanna move uuupppp toooo...

jan updates

i haven't been posting here for quite some time because i haven't had any profound thoughts (i posted my quick tiltnotes on twitter though..mostly for fun and further review by myself) and of course i didn't feel like writing (read: i was lazy)

ok here are my results. it's been a solid month (notice: brag!), i played mostly HUSNGs: $10s and then $20s:

yesterday i took a shot@50nl and it wasn't all that good:

pretty disgusting. biggest pots were all preflop all-ins. lost with QQ vs KK(100bbs deep), QQvs AA(~200bbs deep), won KK vs QQ (100bbs deep) and lost KK vs AA(~200bbs deep). ok, probably i play premium pocketpairs like a noob but i don't know if i'll ever fold KK on a dry 7-high flop 200bbs deep in 4/5bet pot..

last ~$20 i won off CR headsup instructor "markuis"(brag!).. i wish i could have played longer but my connection was shitty last night and i was disconnected 3 times during that 60-hand session.

also, maybe it's good that i donated ~$100 to some fish from Tajikistan (internet?! poker?! does not compute)

ok so now i don't what shall i do:

1)keep grinding husngs.

but sometimes i have to wait quite some time to play $20s and there are MUCH fewer $50s (they're full of regs also so i doubt i'll sustain my 25+% roi). but i really enjoy low variance and high $/hr (~$39@$20 level, [ ]sustainable, lol sample size, etc)

2)work on my HU cash game.variance is much higher but my biggest winning day was at 50nl HU (~$280) as opposed to husngs ($167). alot more games, way to move up in stakes

3) ???

for now i'll stick to husngs, then maybe get a coach(to make sure i'm not spewing much) and take another shot at cash games.. i don't know

handhistories

There's been a lot of buzz recently about handhistories (isildur,BT,BH etc) so I've decided I should try something similar. after all it sounds like a good business plan:

1. collect handhistories

2. ?

3. profit

after browsing the web for some time I found an archive of 5million hands played on ipoker@50nl 6max this autumn (sept-oct '2009 probably). I dont play on ipoker and I know nothing about players there but I assume there's no much difference between ipoker and FT or PS (and also I comply with their TOS..). I've created a separate database and now I'm importing these hands. It seems that it may take forever - it's been exporting for almost 24hrs so far yet it's imported about 2.7 mil hands. import speed dropped down dramaticaly from 70-80hands/s in the beginning to 33hands/now so I may stop import some time tomorrow.

there's an interesting too that comes with holdem manager which is called 'holdem vision'. basicaly it profiles players at given limit(lag, tag, nits etc) and shows how different stats(VPIP, PFR, AF etc) correlate with their winrates. It also shows ranges in different flop and preflop spots, depending on actions(limpers/raiser/facing 3bet etc), board textures and number of players. I may play with this database on weekends and may write some sort of report here so if anyone has any specific questions post them in comments.

what's the use? well, for example there's an interesting post on 2p2 (link) on facong flop raise. cliffnotes from article that goes with holdem manager:

Post Summary

• take notes: Always important, but top pair would be easy to get away from if villain only min-raises with sets and you have no other draws. (Now I just got to find the time to enter all this data into my player notes).
• Not best hand: It's probably safe to say that when min-raised, your top pair hand is behind 75% of the time, or will be by the river without any draws. Maybe a little less than that for your overpair.
• No Fold Equity: 99% of the time the min-raiser will go on to see a showdown, so don't try to bluff him/her out unless you have a good read/notes.
• Great Implied Odds: This does give you GREAT implied odds if you have a good draw.

Now this sounds extremely important as I probably lose alot of money in situations like this. I'd also like to check balugawhale's "theorem" (fold when someone raises your turn bet) and examine winning players' tendencies.

ok, so for now some diagrams (based on 2.67mil hands and filtered only players that have min 1000 hands tracked)

breakeven range is +/- 5 bb/100

VPIP

15-20% vpip - 25% of players are winners

20-25% vpip - 33% of players are winners

25-30% vpip - 31% of players are winners

30-35% vpip - 31% of players are winners

35-40% vpip - 27% of players are winners

PFR

10-15% pfr - 25% of players are winners

15-20% pfr - 31% of players are winners

20-25% pfr - 36% of players are winners

25-30% pfr - 32% of players are winners

Post Flop Aggression

AF :: % of winners

1 :: 22

2 :: 27

3 :: 30

4 :: 31

5 :: 24

>15 :: 27

3-bet

2-4% 3bet - 21% of players are winners

4-6% 3bet - 27% of players are winners

6-8% 3bet - 34% of players are winners

8-10% 3bet - 37% of players are winners

10-12% 3bet - 21% of players are winners

12-14% 3bet - 32% of players are winners

WTSD%

15-20% wtsd - 29% of players are winners

20-25% wtsd - 31% of players are winners

25-30% wtsd - 26% of players are winners

30-35% wtsd - 29% of players are winners

35-40% wtsd - 16% of players are winners

40-45% wtsd - 24% of players are winners

so stats for most winning players:

vpip - 20-25%

pfr - 15-20%

af - 2

3bet - 4-6%

wtsd - 25-30%

and now for something completely different..

I was reading some articles about poker bots the other day and it made me want to play some limit hold'em (as it's the easiest form of poker for botting). my first book on poker that I read was on limit poker and the first poker game I played was limit poker (well actually it was 5 card draw poker but I was like 7yrs old so probably it doesn't count)..but I haven't played it since then, so I started playing the lowest limit possible. anyway, here's the graph of me 14-tabling on pokerstars:

[x] 31bb/100

makes me wanna learn limit hold'em...

poker economy

i think this picture needs more love:

ship it!!

while i was surfing and banging hot chics on Bali, my friend(i wrote about him a couple of times here) won a ticket to European Masters of Poker in Slovenia in a freeroll and took it down for 58190 euro: http://www.pokerrf.ru/texts/2009/11/29/183146.htm

sick life!

he still owes me $5 that he lost to me in our last home game...hehe..

it's cyberpoker! now on twitter

i've just set up my 1st twitter account: http://twitter.com/its_cyberpoker
i don't know what is it or how to use it, apparently it doesn't work with russian cell phones but since it's a cool thing to have, now i have one

windows 7

yesterday i installed windows 7 so i'm not using XP any more(and i hate vista). all software works fine, fulltilt crashed once though but i can't say it never happened before. i don't have my PT old database, i have hand histories though..maybe i'll export them some time. i guess it'll take forever :)
i won a couple buy-ins at 25nl moved to 50nl HU, lost 5bi there(which included few sick soulreads and running ~2.5 bis below EV)..but i don't have that nasty graph :) instead i have sweet little saturday boomswitch. i think i should slowly grind 25nl to build big enough rolls that can handle HU swings.
also i played 2 sats to minifrops event #1. the first one was for 500ftps. after villain cracked my queens with AQ i had about 1 small blind left but eventually i made final table with 3rd stack!..only to finish 7th(5 prizes). should have shipped it..that'd be epic! :) the next one was $6 sat... to $22 event..yes, i'm a nit! got my ticket..but then i realized it starts on Thu at 5am Moscow time..hm?
*update*
sunday graph:

weekend update

I took shot at 50nl HU again(as I'm still underrolled)..it didn't work very well but then i recovered some of my losses and moved back to 25nl. 6max is definetly easier than 9max. not sure if i can mass-table 6max, maybe i'll try later. volume still sucks, need to play more hands.

also, cleared super-bonus and got rakeback for 2 weeks(due to delays on fulltilt). ship it!

lol bloggaments

Blogger home game: $5.5 tournament on stars. probably on wednesday. everyone's invited.

link

$5->bank wire->ATM->titties

ship ship

midweek update

quick update: i'm running good, playing not-so-good but at least green line is going into the right direction. mostly 6max 25nl and some 50nl heads-up. i'm still underrolled for 50nl but i'm taking stabs at fish occasionaly.
i've found one tendency...thats why i'm writing this post basicaly. many players limp from the SB, almost always call a raise, call almost all cbets and then do something ridiculous like minbet-minbet-huge overbet. or lead flops with minbets. here's a good example:

at first i've decided to double-barrel him as his flop calling range is full of crap. not a good idea. however it must depend on bet sizing..then i've decided to tighten up and became a total nit and folded almost all of SBs and played only limped pots without position. he started to fold to my c-bets on A- or K-high boards so i added a fair amount of bluffs for balancing(don't bluff calling stations etc) because i always failed to build a big pot with strong hands. it was very boring and i little annoying. his style was very exploitable but i couldn't exploit it well...but still he was losing money. then he found his "raise" button and became kinda spewy. interestingly, when he was betting big it was almost always bluff, so i've just waited for good hands and stacked him.

his "style" (i do think he has some method to his madness) is not uncommon so i have to figure out how to beat it effectively. must be easy money..

lazy week

so i played less hands this week than i used to play in a day but thats because i've had a b-day(i've got 2 almost identical poker chip sets - someone heard i play poker..and a backgammon set - nice level for those who gave me poker sets) and haven't played drunk, and i think it's very important :)

i've had my very first sweat session with Meteoric. hope it'll take my game to the next level :)

some funny hands:

$0.1/$0.25 No Limit Holdem
6 players
Stacks:

UTG	Hero	($48.41)
UTG+1	djabbel	($25.10)
CO	CLX088	($26.35)
BTN	TENOFSPADES5	($29.27)
SB	AMP87	($46.74)
BB	mazerpelt	($63.59)

Pre-flop: ($0.35, 6 players) Hero is UTG

Hero folds, 2 folds, TENOFSPADES5 raises to $0.75, AMP87 raises to $2.50, mazerpelt calls $2.25, TENOFSPADES5 calls $1.75

Flop: ($7.50, 3 players)
AMP87 bets $3.75, mazerpelt raises to $13.75, TENOFSPADES5 goes all-in $26.77, AMP87 goes all-in $44.24, mazerpelt calls $30.49

Turn: ($122.75, 3 players)

River: ($122.75, 3 players)

Final Pot: $122.75
TENOFSPADES5 shows:
AMP87 shows:
mazerpelt shows:

TENOFSPADES5 wins $84.81 ( won +$55.54 )
AMP87 wins $34.94 ( lost -$11.80 )
mazerpelt lost -$46.74

shortly after this all-in fest i got aces:

$0.1/$0.25 No Limit Holdem

5 players
Stacks:

UTG	TENOFSPADES5	($85.37)
CO	AMP87	($34.94)
BTN	Hero	($63.48)
SB	djabbel	($25.00)
BB	CLX088	($26.35)

Pre-flop: ($0.35, 5 players) Hero is BTN

TENOFSPADES5 calls $0.25, 1 fold, Hero raises to $1.10, 2 folds, TENOFSPADES5 raises to $4, Hero raises to $12.35, TENOFSPADES5 calls $8.35

Flop: ($25.05, 2 players)
TENOFSPADES5 checks, Hero bets $25.05, TENOFSPADES5 raises to $50.10, Hero goes all-in $51.13, TENOFSPADES5 calls $1.03

Turn: ($127.31, 2 players)

River: ($127.31, 2 players)

Final Pot: $127.31
TENOFSPADES5 shows:
Hero shows:

Hero wins $124.31 ( won +$60.83 )
TENOFSPADES5 lost -$63.48

thats how one hand changes everything :)