Mind Games

Originally posted by RasTweet
Warning I'm a fish when it comes down to 5CD!!!!!!!!!!!

Hand 2: Why do you donk? Is he ever calling here once you 'stand'? Or is it called patting? Meh whatever.
I just think you're line looks so strong and he's not calling very light (I don't think). Since he draws 1 he either has a Draw, 2 pair or a set. You're not going to get value from draws and the 2 pair might fold but will bet if you check to him. I'm just thinking a x/r might get you a bit more value?

Ras

In hand 2, since I'm the pre-draw raiser, it is more of a CBet than a donk.
But regardless, you MUST lead once you pat. If you're in BTN, and you pat pre, it is going to get check around to you regardless.

If in early position, and you pat pre and check, not even trips are going to bet -- they'll all check behind.

If anyone hits a flush or a boat they may well 3Bet post draw, and somewhere in JBs book you'll find what to do w/ what hands.

If you have a legit pat hand, you're right, you're not going to get called.
If you DON'T have one, then a fold is v nice indeed.

I do see people calling the pat hand with trips, because players frequently will snow with 2 pair.

I snow in the following circumstances:
♦  I have a certain set of combos that I snow with -- I use them only in the right circumstances though -- if I get my snow combo, I don't always snow it.
♦  I misclicked and raised something dreadful -- it is really, really amusing when they all fold post-draw.

I've read that you should snow fairly early on, so that if you get a legit pat hand shortly thereafter, someone will call bullshit and test you with trip Aces or whatever.

You ARE going to get value from draw if they hit and they're worse than your pat hand -- In hand 1 my pat hand got called by two players who improved their pair. By leading out, I get their $ -- If I let one bet, and the guy with trip Qs 3Bets post-draw, should I call w/ my crappy T-Straight?

I think it best to be aggressive and let them make the mistakes.
Note: Unless being aggressive is a mistake, which it is sometimes.

If you snow, and get caught, it isn't the end of the world, since now the whole table sees that you can do it.

Cheers,
--VS

Originally posted by TheMarxBros3
I'm thinking the same as Ras except;
I think an x/r spews money in the long run and a better play is to
x/c.
If you x/r you are opening yourself up to a 3-bet when he has better and should not pay you off with worse
When you donk bet you are opening yourself up to a raise when he has better and he shouldn't pay you off with worse
When you x/c you are catching all of his bluffs.
My 2 cents

Hmmmm....

My impression is that calling with worse is far more frequent that having better.

I have never caught anyone bluffing when they raised post draw vs a pat hand.
But it hasn't happened often.

On the other hand, I get called frequently by Aces up and trips.

I would not x/r with anything less than a decent flush, and would not cap post-draw w/ anything less than a full house.

I haven't checked in a while, but at one point I was 15:1 loser in boat-vs-boat hands, so I've learned to be cagey post draw. Perhaps too much so.

If you hold a broadway or better, you beat half of all hands > trip Aces
There are 54912 combos of trips, and only 19716 straight-or-better hands.

Those bingo players who hit trips and are "feeling lucky" are far more common than hands that beat you.

Even so, I'll bet/call with decent flushes, and bet/fold w/ the bottom part of my range and bet/raise/call with nut flushes and weaker full houses and cap w/ only the top of the line.

And it is player dependant, too -- I've capped (and won) post-draw w/ trip Aces, but it's rare.

Cheers,
--VS

Originally posted by TheMarxBros3
I'm thinking the same as Ras except;
I think an x/r spews money in the long run and a better play is to
x/c.
If you x/r you are opening yourself up to a 3-bet when he has better and should not pay you off with worse
When you donk bet you are opening yourself up to a raise when he has better and he shouldn't pay you off with worse
When you x/c you are catching all of his bluffs.
My 2 cents

Yeah like I said I'm a fish and don't really know what people are calling down with… But I see what you mean.

Originally posted by VorpalF2F

Originally posted by RasTweet
Warning I'm a fish when it comes down to 5CD!!!!!!!!!!!

Hand 2: Why do you donk? Is he ever calling here once you 'stand'? Or is it called patting? Meh whatever.
I just think you're line looks so strong and he's not calling very light (I don't think). Since he draws 1 he either has a Draw, 2 pair or a set. You're not going to get value from draws and the 2 pair might fold but will bet if you check to him. I'm just thinking a x/r might get you a bit more value?

Ras

In hand 2, since I'm the pre-draw raiser, it is more of a CBet than a donk.
But regardless, you MUST lead once you pat. If you're in BTN, and you pat pre, it is going to get check around to you regardless.

If in early position, and you pat pre and check, not even trips are going to bet -- they'll all check behind.

If anyone hits a flush or a boat they may well 3Bet post draw, and somewhere in JBs book you'll find what to do w/ what hands.

If you have a legit pat hand, you're right, you're not going to get called.
If you DON'T have one, then a fold is v nice indeed.

I do see people calling the pat hand with trips, because players frequently will snow with 2 pair.

I snow in the following circumstances:
♦  I have a certain set of combos that I snow with -- I use them only in the right circumstances though -- if I get my snow combo, I don't always snow it.
♦  I misclicked and raised something dreadful -- it is really, really amusing when they all fold post-draw.

I've read that you should snow fairly early on, so that if you get a legit pat hand shortly thereafter, someone will call bullshit and test you with trip Aces or whatever.

You ARE going to get value from draw if they hit and they're worse than your pat hand -- In hand 1 my pat hand got called by two players who improved their pair. By leading out, I get their $ -- If I let one bet, and the guy with trip Qs 3Bets post-draw, should I call w/ my crappy T-Straight?

I think it best to be aggressive and let them make the mistakes.
Note: Unless being aggressive is a mistake, which it is sometimes.

If you snow, and get caught, it isn't the end of the world, since now the whole table sees that you can do it.

Cheers,
--VS

I see I see. I do understand why you should always bet. The chances of him betting trips or 2 pair is rather small once you pat.

Sorry for being a fish asking fishy questions

5-Card Draw

Oh dear.
I had another two of those brutal sessions where the big hands get walloped by bigger ones.

5 times in 800 hands I had trips outdrawn by full houses.

I think I may have lost less since I decided to see how x/c works when I have medium strength. Surprisingly well. Besides not losing as much when villain raises and I feel I must call, I think I may have actually won more since villains seemed eager to take stabs with crap.

Case in point:

In spite of being brutalized over two sessions, I managed to finish the 800 hands marginally up.

The first session (564 hands) I was mostly card dead -- as witnessed by a meagre 18% VPIP -- that's a whole lot o' nuttin.

2nd session was only 236 hands, but with a winrate of nearly 9 BB/100. VPIP was 22% -- which tells me I was getting some decent playable cards.

Some highlight hands:
Hand 1 -- the hand that nobody wanted

Hand 2 -- calling for pot odds pays off, with a x/r for the fun of it.

Hand 3 vs 54/29/16 (v/p/3) whose post-draw AF is 14 and Afq 60

Have a good weekend all!
--VS

General
My niece's graduating class is holding a poker tournament tonight to raise money for a party. Now where was this sort of thing when I was in school?

We had to collect empty pop bottles <sigh>.

BI is $50, but it goes to a good cause -- there is a rebuy too.

Wish me luck -- I'll need it!

I'll be silver again for February -- I need like < 20 VPP in the next 5 days, so no sweat.

Following TheMarxBros3's comment a few posts back about bluffcatching, I played a bit more passively today. The problem is that with medium strength hands you often miss value when they check behind.

I'm not doing so well on the Daily Challenges -- It has been several days since I won my $0.30 -- and I need the money! The pools are so big now it takes at least two wins to get ITM. Oh well...

Speaking of Daily Challenges, today's was to play 1 VPP worth of Zoom.

NLHE
So I played some NL 10. Within a few hands of 1 VPP, I thought I caught a guy bluffing -- oops! One stack gone.

Nothing left to do but get it back, right?
So I ground on for another 300 hands or so and eventually got this:

I *thought* my river bet was 10¢ less than his stack, which usually pi$$es them off so they call -- or shove for the massive fold equity. But my internal calculator malfunctioned, so I left 3 bucks and change on the table. He might have folded anyway though, due to the 3rd heart showing up.

5-Card Draw

Played a disciplined game today, only a couple of hundred hands due to taking all my poker time on NL 10 zoom.

Still made a decent win rate -- no special hands.

Best of luck in the coming week,
--VS

5-Card Draw

I had yet another of those horrible sessions where not only am I card dead, but I keep getting outdrawn.

Relevant stats:
vpip 18.7% win % 17.7%
My normal vpip is around 21% so over a thousand hands I'm playing nearly 200 fewer.

3Bet was barely 3% -- this tells me I'm not getting good hands in position, where they make the money for you.

W$WSD (won $ when saw draw) was abysmally low at 46% -- 52 - 60 is more normal.

I think though that I lost far less money today that I did in similar outings.

On the plus side, I made silver star again -- thanks in large measure the January Jumpstart promo from Stars.

Here are a couple of hands typical of my day.
Hand 1
I actually got off very lightly on this one -- losing the minimum possible.

Hand 2

I'm going to take a few days off to work on a project I've had in mind for a while.

The database I use -- PokerHands -- does a reasonably good job of recording the hands, and the common stats.

What I have in mind is a tool to create reports showing how often I convert pairs, flush and straight draw, and how often (and how much) I win/lose playing these hands in the various positions.

The outcome of these data may affect my ranges -- esp early position.
It will also tell me definitively when I am calling too much post draw -- a problem that still haunts me.

I say haunts, because it is a problem I THINK I have, but cannot really prove that I have it.

Peace and tranquillity,
--VS

Oh -- I bust out of the charity tournament. I rebought after I had my AA cracked in a huge multiway pot. There was about 2500 in chips in the middle -- about the size of my stack.

I held AA on a 9 T K board. Villain raises about half the pot and I shove the rest (I had him covered). He calls w/ KJ and the runout is Q A.

After the rebuy I played two more hands -- got 1 nice pot, then busted out by the chip leader who had me beat from the outset.

Fun times, but we got 10 hands an hour if that. You get a lot more poker in playing a 7$ 9-man on stars -- it's over faster, and the payout structure is way better.

OTOH, my niece's class got a whack of a great pile of money for whatever party they're going to throw for graduation.

A bit of a different note today.

The youtube clip is Johnny Cash reciting "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert Service.

There is a family connection here. Robert Service is known as "The Bard of the Yukon". Both of my Grandmothers had met him.

The poem tells of the plight of Sam McGee from Plum Tree in Tennessee -- which is where Johnny Cash comes in, I suppose.

My maternal great-grandfather went overland to the gold fields from Wisconsin, outfitting in Edmonton, and continuing overland to the Yukon.

Part of their trip involved rafting across (or rather, along) Lake Laberge -- the one mentioned in the poem. They either left too late, or winter came early, as they were frozen in on the lake, and had to winter on there raft jammed in the ice.

My grandmother with her mother and brother took the train from Wisconsin to San Francisco, where they caught a steamer to Alaska.

From Alaska, they boarded the new White Pass and Yukon railroad to Carcross, YT

My Grandmother was ten years old when they arrived in Carcross.
She told me of a large grey parrot she saw in a shop there.

I was there in 1974, and saw a large parrot in a store there, and told the shopkeeper my story. He said, "Same bird"

That is in contradiction to the article cited above however. I rather suspect that they told that to all the 20-something gullible looking kds.

From Carcross, they took a steamboat to Whitehorse, and from there pack train to Dawson City, where they met her father who had by now set up a cabin on his claim at "10 Below" on Hunker Creek. !0 Below refers not to any temperature, but to how many claims downstream from the initial discover the claim was.

Can you imagine such a trip for a 10 year old girl?

My Grandmother and her brother had cameras, and took copious quantities of pictures, and developed and printed them in their cabin. I still have the cameras -- one made of wood, leather and brass, the other all metal.

If you ever get around to visiting the museum in Dawson City, YT you can see a lot of the photographs, as my Mum donated the lot to them.

Poker?
Played some, won some.

My project?
Nah maybe tomorrow.

Peace,
--VS

Well that was a superb story -well, more of a heroic journey - to get up to in the early morning, thank you very much. ♠_cool:

How the hell can one be frozen in for the winter on a raft in that country and live? Unreal.

Awesome yarn!

Originally posted by gadget51
Well that was a superb story -well, more of a heroic journey - to get up to in the early morning, thank you very much. ♠_cool:

How the hell can one be frozen in for the winter on a raft in that country and live? Unreal.

Not all of them did. My Great Grandfather and at least one other did, though. Other than that, I know very little detail. They had all their provisions with them, so they had food. How they kept warm, I don't know, but I'm guessing they hiked to shore and built some sort of makeshift cabin.

--VS

My grandparents weren't the only ones to work in the North.

I spent the 5 summers 72 - 77 working all over northern BC and southern Yukon.

This was taken on a ridge about 300 km N of Watson Lake YT.
We were so near the border of the Northwest Territories that I'm not exactly sure exactly which of the two this was taken in.

The terrain is very typical of high alpine tundra. I'm standing at only about 1500m elevation, but as you can see we are just about at tree line.

No pack trains or steam boats, though -- we got in and out by helicopter.

Poker was a mixed bag today.
I misread today's January challenge, so I registered for a $1.50 PL 5-Card Draw SnG only to find out after I had won it that I was supposed to play a scheduled tournament. I played another timed tournament. Played 2 hands -- both flips, lost both. <sigh>

I played only 120 hands of 5-Card Draw.
I was very careful about my post-draw calls -- and won 2/3.

This hand, though was the most fun.

Originally posted by VorpalF2F

This was taken on a ridge about 300 km N of Watson Lake YT.
We were so near the border of the Northwest Territories that I'm not exactly sure exactly which of the two this was taken in.

The terrain is very typical of high alpine tundra. I'm standing at only about 1500m elevation, but as you can see we are just about at tree line.

OMG I wanna die of exposure out in that scenery, just over the brow of the hill you're in front of, truly awesome.

This hand, though was the most fun.

Spoiler

Moooooooooooraaawwwr.
PokerStars Limit 5 Card Draw $0.10/$0.20 - 6 players

UTG: $1.38
UTG+1: $1.75
CO: $1.57
Button: $5.27
SB: $4.50 (Hero)
BB: $1.21

Dealing Hands: ($0.15) 6♣ 7♦ K♣ 7♥ 7♠ (6 players)
UTG raises to $0.20, UTG+1 folds, CO raises to $0.30, Button folds, Hero calls $0.25, BB folds, UTG calls $0.10

First Draw: ($1.00) (3 players)
Hero discards 1, UTG discards 1, CO discards 1,
7♦ K♣ 7♥ 7♠ || 7♣
Hero checks, UTG bets $0.20, CO calls $0.20, Hero raises to $0.40, UTG raises to $0.60, CO folds, Hero raises to $0.80, UTG calls $0.20

UTG mucked Q:c Q:d 8:s Q:h 8:d
Hero showed 7♣ 7♦ K♣ 7♥ 7♠, four of a kind, Sevens
Hero won $2.70
(Rake: $0.10)

NH Sir!

Originally posted by Borisian

OMG I wanna die of exposure out in that scenery, just over the brow of the hill you're in front of, truly awesome.

On days like this, I used to walk along whistling and thinking, "wow, I'm getting $1100 a month plus room and board just to go hiking. Other people pay DOUBLE that for the privilege"

When it was pissing down rain, and I was carrying 20 kg of wet dirt on my back, crawling through some soaking wet devil's club the thoughts were somewhat different.

It was a fabulous job for a guy in his 20's. The one downside is that if you spend the summer away from your girl, when you get back, she's somebody else's girl. The absence is hard on a relationship. Or maybe it was just my breath.

Canada is the 2nd largest country in the world, but we have a population that is barely 10% that of the US. 90% of that population lives within 150km of the US border. The rest is just "miles and miles of nothing but more miles and miles"

Cheers,
--VS

5-Card Draw

OK, where these these goombahs in December?

Cows play poker with cow chips
PokerStars Limit 5 Card Draw $0.25/$0.50 - 6 players

CO: $4.13
Button: $10.26 (Hero)
SB: $0.90
BB: $8.13
UTG: $6.86
UTG+1: $9.16

Dealing Hands: ($0.35) 4♠ A♥ 5♥ A♠ T♠ (6 players)
UTG calls $0.25, UTG+1 calls $0.25, CO folds, Hero raises to $0.50, SB raises to $0.75, BB folds, UTG calls $0.50, UTG+1 calls $0.50, Hero calls $0.25

The power of position!
The only reason I called the 3Bet(s) is that I'm getting truckload:1 pot odds (12:1 to be more precise)
I don't know either of these players, and it is early in the session, so I've observed few hands.

First Draw: ($3.25) (4 players)
SB discards 3, UTG discards 3, UTG+1 discards 2, Hero discards 3,
A♥ A♠ || 4♣ 3♠ 6♦
SB bets $0.15 and is all-in, UTG calls $0.15, UTG+1 folds, Hero calls $0.15

When I see them each draw 3, neither the bet nor the call necessarily means strength -- in fact, UTG would likely check w/ a decent hand, and UTG+1 raises trips. The fact that UTG is all-in also is an indicator of possible spew.

Besides that, I need to risk 0.15 -- not even 1/3 BB -- to try my unimproved AA on for size.
That's almost 23:1.
1 player with a pair will improve 29% of the time, so the chance than neither improves is .71 x .71 = .50% or 1:1 I need to be right one in 23 times.

Hero showed 4♣ A♥ 3♠ A♠ 6♦, a pair of Aces
SB showed K♥ K♦ Q♣ 3♦ 7♦, a pair of Kings
UTG mucked 3:h T:d K:c T:c J:h
Hero won $3.54
(Rake: $0.16)

I noticed today at 11:58 that I had a ticket to the Daily Challenge flip-fest.
I just managed to register while they were still seating.

Peace,
--VS

NLHE

Well I am now 2 for 2 in iPoker's new Twister tournaments.

They are a 3-way winner-take-all tournament with a random prize pool.

In the first one, I won two dollars, in the second one 10.

The second tournament lasted 10 hands total.

Good for when you're bored.

Might play some real poker tomorrow, but first I have to go computer shopping.

I need something with enough oomph to digitize 30 years of home video. Preferably overnight while I sleep.

Peace,
--VS

Time to retire the old XP machine eh Vorpal. lol

Me too!

P.S. Don't forget to get something that can handle HM2.

P.S.(2) Since ipoker added those twister tournies my computer almost goes into meltdown whenever I open the ipoker client.

P.S.(3) Yeah I know , you don't have to tell me, I'm a sad bugga.

what sort of buget are you looking to spend on your new machine?

ideally you should go for i7, 16-32 Gb RAM, SSD drive, + massive drive and if you can afford it a few of them set up as raid 5 for redundancy; and for video editing a mother of a graphics card.

Originally posted by thazar
what sort of buget are you looking to spend on your new machine?

ideally you should go for i7, 16-32 Gb RAM, SSD drive, + massive drive and if you can afford it a few of them set up as raid 5 for redundancy; and for video editing a mother of a graphics card.

Def quad-core CPU
I'm off to consult a local guy who custom builds stuff about AMD processors -- I really liked the Athlon and Opterons in their day, but I know little about the new ones. This guy claims that he can put together what I want cheaper assembled that I can source the parts -- from what I've seen, he could be right.

16 GB is baseline -- 32 if I can afford it.
Budget will be determined as I go.

I was thinking two smallis SSD drives -- one for OS, the other for postgresql database(s).

Again, I'm 8 years out of the loop when it comes to graphics cards.
Since I'll be importing video only for the first several months of this machine's life, I may get a simpler video card, and a second video input card, then sell the VI card when I'm done. If it is better to get the kick-ass video card, I may do some video conversion on the side for $$, but I think that the market for that has pretty much dried up.

OTOH, it may end up being cheaper to get a lower-end computer and pay someone to do the digitizing -- I don't know yet.

As for a massive internal HD, 2G is plenty -- I have a 3TB RAID 5 NAS box on my network, and I may add another.

I also have a couple of 2 TB externals that I got to test, and the mfr let me keep 'em when the testing was done. Now if only I could find CPU, motherboard etc mfrs willing to do the same deal ♦

I intend to run <gulp> Window 8 -- but the professional edition (or whatever they call it these days). I usually reserve a portion of the system drive for linux as well. This time around, though I may either run linux in a VM, or once the video editing is all done, I might try to run the Win 8 in a VM, but only if I can get the performance I need.

I have a license for an older version of VMWare Workstation, but there are several freeware options that will need testing.

cheers,
--VS

Geez, with 32GB of RAM you could 24-table on several different sites all at the same time.

I doubt I could 24 table period.