Original von Kraterspalter
Keep up the nice triprepots. It's a pleasure to read them
#2
edit: I just watched your mtsng-video "Beating 179 Men". Absolutely great! Everything explained short and clearly - I know coaches, who need to split it in three parts.
Original von Kraterspalter
Keep up the nice triprepots. It's a pleasure to read them
♠_evil:
Thanks Kraterspalter, Broenes, ZitT and Falco -- appreciate that!
Today's Entry: How I spent $5k Getting Into the Bellagio Buffet
Saturday was the last tourney of our package, the $5180 WPT at Bellagio. I got up from $20k starting to about $37k in a hand during the 2nd level.
Blinds: $100-$200
Pre-flop: LAG UTG min-raises, UTG+1 calls, button calls, I call Jc4c in BB.
Flop: 4h 4d Th
Checked to UTG+1 who bets $1k, button flats, I c/r to $3k, UTG+1 shoves ~ $14k, button folds, I call and hold against Ah3h.
I lost KK to AQ (but later had KQ > AQ in a resteal spot so can’t complain), then made a bit back after I opened A9 in the hijack, got 3 callers, and shoved on a 78T flop after the BB donked ¾ pot -- everyone folded. Todd Terry on my right was opening a ton of hands (and playing very well) so I had some good resteal opportunities and shoved Q9o, AKs and a couple more hands over him leading up to a cold 4bet with 99. Blinds were 400-800-100, ADZ opened to $2400 UTG, Terry 3-bet to $6100 UTG+1, and I shoved about $22k in the CO with 99. Everyone folds to Terry, who tanks then flashes Ac4c and folds.
After folding he said that I was on a range of 99/AQ and he had 31% equity against that range (which the guy on his right confirmed was accurate on his phone) and therefore he was just missing the right price. It was a straight-up old school equity vs range clinic.
I also played two interesting hands in the BB against Cary Katz, who had recently busted from the $100k high roller. He was quite LAG, minraising a ton from all positions. In the first hand, I called his river bet with ace-high expecting to be good and feel like a pimp, except for the small fact that I was totally wrong.
Blinds: $300-600-$75
Pre-flop: Katz min-raises UTG, button calls, I call in BB with As6s.
Flop: Jc 9d 3s
Checked around.
Turn: Jh
I bet $2400, Catz calls, button folds.
River: 9h
I check, Catz bets $6k, I call.
I thought he was representing very few hands after not c-betting that flop, to me it looked a lot more like he was bluffing a counterfeited 66 or something. Unfortunately as soon as I called he flipped QsJs.
I did get the best of him though in my next big blind defense, albeit through very unusual circumstances. He again min-raised in early position last hand before dinner break and I called with A2o getting almost 4:1. Flop comes K Q J 2. Personally I thought a flop with 4 cards was a pretty cool way to shake things up a little at the table, but the dealer called the floor who ruled that the cards be put back in deck, shuffled, and new flop to be dealt. The new flop was a slight improvement over bottom pair and a gutshot as it came A A A. I played it cool and checked my quads, but he didn't bite and checked it back. I bet the turn and he called, but folded to my river bet.
Then it was dinner break and we were all led to the buffet for a comped dinner. Ship it!
Based on the title of the blog, you can probably guess how the rest of the tournament ended up.
Blinds: $5k-$1k-$100
UTG raises to $2400, UTG+1 calls, CO makes it $6700, I shove $32k on button with QQ, UTG calls (AA radar immediately went up when he called instead of shoving), everyone else folds. He in fact has KK and I’m out.
No more live tournies for a while, will be good to get back to normal work and recharge some.
All Live Tournies are Officially Re-Entry
Or so it seems
I was surprised to read this article in Cardplayer on re-entry tournaments. It’s well-written and presents multiple viewpoints on them, so the article itself is solid. Several of the players’ views are misguided though.
First let’s define terms.
Rebuy: Tournament where you can purchase another stack if you bust or your chips fall below a certain threshhold, usually the starting stack. You stay at your same seat and table.
Re-entry: Tournament where, if you bust, you can enter again – paying the rake a second time, getting a new table/seat draw, etc.
Most of the live tournies Katie and I played over the past couple of months were re-entries. A big theme among several of the players quoted in the Cardplayer article was that single-bullet players were at a disadvantage compared to those willing to shell out for multiple bullets, had lower equity, etc. This is false.
What’s true is that single-bullet players have a lower chance of winning compared to a similarly-skilled player prepared to re-enter anytime he busts during the re-entry period. If you have a goal of maximizing your win probability rather than making the most money possible – because you’re a rich amateur, have a prop bet, hunting for endorsements, etc. – then you can gain an advantage in re-entries.
As with conventional rebuys though, for most players the focus should remain on making solid investments with a good expectation. Any players willing to make a chip-losing play because it’s a re-entry/rebuy is either misguided or has a different goal than maximizing return on investment. The initial rebuy in a standard rebuy, despite exchanging the same amount of money for less valuable chips, can be a good investment if (as in most fields) many players who have rebought are routinely putting their double-stacks at risk in “marginal” situations. Making such bad plays yourself in a rebuy or re-entry, however, while increasing your chance of winning if you’re rebuying often to get a huge stack, will lower your return on investment – possibly to negative.
Personally, I like re-entries. Generally I’m not going to re-enter, as the blinds will tend to be higher at the point of re-entry so it’s like paying the same rake as you did initially for a worse structure. But if it’s a softer-than-normal field I can re-enter if I bust early, and as Kathy Liebert alludes to in the article, there are plenty of players who will splash around a lot more "because" they can re-enter.
As a final point, some claim that pros are more likely to re-enter than amateurs. While I can’t say whether that’s true, from the smallish sample I saw it wasn’t. Continuing on the anecdotal front, I heard that the $100k WPT high roller became a re-entry at the last minute as the only two people interested in re-entering were rich businessmen.
In summary: (a) Know your goals for playing and be explicit if they’re not to make the most money possible. (b) Focus on making the best possible investments. (c) It’d be awesome to casually re-enter a $100k buyin.
Free Live Coaching with Me and Katie -- Thursday December 29 at 1:30pm PT (4:30pm ET, 9:30pm GMT) accessible to everyone http://www.pokerstrategy.com/coaching/162749/
The first time Katie and I did strategy commentary together was a Stoxpoker video. She was fairly new to poker then, I got slightly condescending in my explanations, and she straight-up called me out on it in the video -- it was one of the awesome moments in training video history. We made two more videos over time that also got great feedback, but after that she went to Drag the Bar and our dual commentaries ended. Until now...
So I can’t wait for our dual coachings to come out of retirement as we go through MTT/SNG HHs, get asked the tough questions, and no doubt have some line disagreement throwdowns.
Definitely tune in!
Welcome Katie! Unfortunately i cant watch/hear the coaching. (cinema with my GF)
But im looking forward to your next videos Collin. 
I am looking forward for your next coaches. Unfortunately i couldn't join the last one on 29th December. Maybe next time.
Have a nice 2012.
I think you should answer more questions in your Coachings. Especially the orange ones (coaches question). But okay, there were over 200 users online ysterday.
Thanks Justgamblin, Falco35, and WimpdaPimp -- appreciate that and same to you guys!
Falco35, sorry if I was missing too many questions, I'll definitely watch out for that. If you had any I didn't get to you're welcome to ask here and I'll definitely reply.
Why I'll Only Stake Online
The first time I staked for live cash was in the very early days of Team Moshman.
Katie and I met Simon for the first time at our house in Maryland, and we drove up to Atlantic City to meet up with Kidkash and Grind4moniez at Borgata. I staked everyone at 60-40 (my favor) with no make-up, and everyone was up. By the end of the weekend, Kidkash somehow convinced me to let Grind sit the 40-80 LHE game, which he proceeded to crush for a couple hours before heading off to his room to get stoned.
That was my high point in live staking. I’ve subsequently staked players for NL cash from ½ to 5/10, limit games, and low-stakes live MTT. Most have lost, particularly in cash – in fact, all the longer-term live cash stakes have ended with me eating quite a bit of makeup.
The question is – has it just been running bad, or is there something else going on?
I was talking with a casual player about it, and he said he’d never stake live because a player could simply have a good session and report lower wins. It doesn’t take any premeditation and is pretty much impossible to catch. Or possibly a player makes tracking mistakes that tend to be in his favor. Either way, unlike online, there aren’t clear records outside of selected MTTs.
If I’ve backed you before live and you’re reading this, definitely don’t take that to mean that I think you’ve done anything wrong. I’d bet strongly that most I’ve backed haven’t. Ultimately though, I need to fully back players I stake – if something’s preventing me from having full confidence in a stake and what’s going on, I don’t think it’s a good spot for either me or the horse.
Without turning this blog into some kind of infomerical, I'm definitely excited about our current online staking program with the stake mentor system, more organized shot-taking, and an active community focused around Skype chats. If the price is never being a Sheets/Bax style baller with 100 horses in the WSOP main event, then I'm good with that.
Five days late with this one, but better late than never!
Despite 2011 being the year of Black Friday, I’m still pretty happy with the year. If not I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog, come to think of it. Anyway without further ado, poker-related stuff I did in 2011:
Released Math of Holdem with Dimat
Began making videos for Pokerstrategy, and continued making videos for Cardrunners
Released two ebooks co-authored with Katie: The Superuser and Pro Poker Strategy
Made Day 5 of WSOP main event with above average stack (prior to the infamous KK < AA hand)
Won a (smallish) Venetian Deep Stack tournament and chopped HU a Bellagio $550
Rebounded after Black Friday to expand Team Moshman coaching/staking with my partners
Maintained a 36% ROI online with a $56 ABI (playing a mix of primarily MTT and HU)
And my #1 accomplishment of 2011, coincidentally also my #1 accomplishment of 2010:
Chilling with the Iceman baby!
It was also a very fun year outside of poker, with an awesome trip to Paris in February with Katie and our move to Vegas. Most of my goals in 2012 are poker-related, but one outside of poker is getting an article accepted into at least one major non-poker publication. I just sent out a query letter to Men’s Health and I’m writing one now for Cigar Aficionado, which has a smaller circulation but I've always thought of as a really cool magazine.
Next week Katie and I are going to Norcal (Napa) so should be a great start to 2012.
Original von CollinMoshman
Most of my goals in 2012 are poker-related, but one outside of poker is getting an article accepted into at least one major non-poker publication. I just sent out a query letter to Men’s Health and I’m writing one now for Cigar Aficionado, which has a smaller circulation but I've always thought of as a really cool magazine.
thats a great goal! best wishes for the next year! (:
Original von CollinMoshman
ZitT, there's a link in my signature for Team Moshman, my staking/coaching site.
there no signature of yours
Thanks GustgAMblin, and sorry zitT -- maybe it only shows up when I post in the English-speaking forums?
Today's Blog: Three Stories from Wine Country Trip
Katie and I just got back from a 4-day trip to Napa. Three stories from a very fun trip.
The Poker Metaphor Horseback Guide
We went horseback riding through Kunde winery in Sonoma. The guide asked what we did. My response to that question 99% of the time is “writer and investor,” but Katie gave an answer involving poker. For the rest of the tour, anything he wanted to communicate became a poker metaphor.
“You see,” he’d say on the topic of horseback riding knowledge, “before we can go over things like pair beats high card, higher pair beats pair, the first step is learning to keep your cards on the table.”
I didn’t understand most of the metaphors but he was a very nice guy and the scenery was beautiful.
FWIW if you’re ever in that area, I’d highly highly recommend doing the mountain tasting at Kunde. By far the best tasting we did in every way:
Everyone Drunk at 2pm
At Domaine Carneros, we went on a tour + tasting. There’s nowhere like wine country for a place where it’s socially acceptable to get drunk at noon (for the cultured sake of tasting fine wine). Unlike most of the tours/tastings, the Domaine guide drank with us and tended to pour herself about double what she was pouring us. By the end she was pouring everyone random sparkling wines – I’ve now had it hammered into me about 40 times that unless it’s made in the Champagne region of France it’s “sparkling wine” and not “champagne” – and people were in different states of intoxication. I asked the well-dressed middle-aged woman next to me how she’d learned so much about wine, and she slurred “Honey I don’t know shit about wine...” Then she leaned in conspiratorally and told me that she was annoyed at our guide because she (the guide) hadn’t poured enough wine. As we left the guide was drunkenly trying to convince her and her husband to buy bottles right then so she would get the commission for them.
The Googling Waiter and $20.12 Special
We ate at Farm, a great restaurant attached to a super-expensive hotel. Most main courses were $40+ but Katie had found an insane special for a 3-course tasting for $20.12. The waiter told us we had come during amazing weather and then said “Well played” twice. Katie said he must’ve Googled us but I wasn’t sure since I'd thought WP had made its way at least somewhat into mainstream culture. But by the time he started referring to “Hoyle’s rules” I had to admit she might have a point.
I sometimes start rambling on goofy ideas that amuse me for whatever reason, and that night it was the idea of ordering 3 of the special menus per person. Just being like, “Damn that was so good, let’s do it again.” Seeing how many of these super-well-priced 3 course dinners they’d bring out for us consecutively before basically telling us to leave the restaurant.
