Ace On The River Blog - I couldn't stay away...

I allready like this blog.

I will be reading and I am allready voting it up.

One of the best intros I ever read. I like the Ace on the river concept. Our rivers are frozen for most of the year
so It would have to be puck on the river or something in Canada.

I enjoyed your intro so much I have to be regular reader of your blog. I completely agree with your SNG vs SSS opinions and wish you good luck in grinding SNGs

Cheers for reading the blog guys ♦
Proky11, you seem to be playing similar limits to me, and you've posted a few hands in the hand evaluation forums, so you obviously want to study your game more; maybe we should do sweat session some time? skype me if ur keen: ged.forrest

I'm down in Melbourne now, and my "heat" (flight, qualifier, round, whatever) of the WTPC main event starts tomorrow.
Sooooo nervous

Nice blog! Looking forward to your updates. You should have a look at Aussie Hold'em. Justkyle88 works there are there are various tournaments around Australia. http://www.aussieholdempoker.com.au/

i must agree .. best intro ever !
also that pic is so awesome ! soooo nice !

i hope you win a lot of money but be carefull because the variance is going to be pretty harsh...

<3 sng though .. so goodluck and gogo quick post updates about the live poker!♦

Aaaargh. Variance is a bitch.
Ok so I basically started tonight at the WTPC with 10k stack like everyone else. I wasn't getting many cards except the odd AQo, AJo, so my chip stack hovered around the starting stack. Then blinds went up and antes started. And I stopped getting cards. For about 3 hours I got nothing but rags. I started playing a bit too loose, coz i'd been seeing such shit that things like 77 started looking like QQ. Really gay. I ended up running into AA and busting out for nothing.

But yeah. I <3 internet poker. Because volume > variance every day.

Ok… so the wireless on the ferry has crapped out on me today, but I figured I’d just write this post in word and then chuck it onto my blog later.
Today’s topic:

Goals and Goal Setting:

In my experience, if you want to achieve your goals, they need to satisfy a number of requirements.
1. Realistic: Is this goal something you could feasibly achieve? For instance, it would be futile me aiming to become president of the united states, because it simply isn’t possible due to the fact that I was not born in America.

2. Progressive: High-flying goals are OK, but you need to have some “checkpoints” along the way to that goal, to ensure that you’re actually making progress towards your goal. Not only that, but making these checkpoints is an important factor in keeping yourself motivated towards your goal.

3. Time frame: You need to set a reasonable time frame within which to achieve your goals. When setting a time frame, it is important to remember how much time per week you are going to allocate to your task.

I’ve been thinking a fair bit about how much time I am going to allocate poker in my week, and I’ve concluded that I’m happy allocating a fairly decent amount of time to it. So with that in mind, here are my goals for my online poker “career” for the next year.

:heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

♠ Silver Status on PS.com (<2 weeks)

♠ Gold Status on PS.com (before August)

♠ Get a BR of $150 (end of April)

♠ Get comfortable with playing high-volume

♠ Continue to study and improve my game

♠ Purchase SnG wizard, consider HEM (I have PT3 at the moment...)

:heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

Explanations:
Status: First one is manageable, obviously. Second one will be dependent on how much volume I can get in... I don't know if I will be able to put in enough volume to get Gold on the $3's. But we will see.

BR: My current BR stands at $55 (horrible BRM playing the $3's but hey. $1's are a waste of time), so I should be able to crack $150 within the given time frame.

Volume: I haven't really tried much multi-tabling yet.. I tried a set of 4 SnG's this afternoon, and felt like I wasn't playing as good as I could.. I was still making mostly good decisions, but I didn't feel 100% comfortable with that many tables. I only cashed in one of the SnG's, too (fortunately it was a 1st, so the set was break-even :P). I dropped it down to 2 at a time after that and felt much more comfortable.

Study: As soon as I unlock Silver status i'm gonna be cramming articles and videos like a motherf*cker. I've got through most of the bronze SnG videos, i'm a big fan of Chenny8888's vids, as well as Steinek's. They're both awesome. I REALLY want the article about the ICM and SAGE, because i've heard all about these concepts (and I know pretty decent ICM now), but I want to learn the mathematical theory behind them! Its a science student thing I think.. I'm always insatiably curious for knowledge. I'm gonna try and put up a few more hands in the hand evaluation forum; i haven't had any really tough spots lately, and I tend to just fold in tricky spots instead of playing them with a small edge. I think my edge at this limit is already SO massive (the other players ARE SO SHIT HOLY CRAP :O :O) that I'm happy to sacrifice a little bit of equity in favor of less variance.

Software: I'll think about getting SnG wiz when I get a bit more cash to throw around, potentially I'll get HEM eventually. I'm kinda pissed that I bought PT3 now, because everyone says HEM is better for SnG players. Oh well, maybe I'll move back to cash games in the distant future.

Oh, and my very long term goal:

:heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:
Play $11 SnG's with good BRM
:heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

hi there ged!

as a fellow sng grinder and a fellow aussie im definitely going to be watching this blog with a keen eye!!

looks like you've started out your sng journey with a good mindset and clear achievable goals. which room are you playing on? FT?

ive added you on skype, feel free to ask me any questions. im always happy to help out.

i know its extremely tempting to jump straight into the 3s with your $50. but even a seasoned pro would consider that just pure gambling. 10BI swings are a frequent occurrence for 12% lifetime reg's and just one of those bad luck runs will decimate your BR.

as weak as the $1 games sound i would strongly suggest you wait until you have at least 50BIs for the 3s to reduce your chance of going broke through no fault of your own to an acceptable level.

<3

Cheers Lessthanthree, i've followed your blog for a while and its a bit of an inspiration for me
I'm currently playing on PartyPoker, not sure if I want to stay there much longer but yeah. I'm tempted to remove my $56 (6 dollars profit!!! OMG!! ♦) and put it on FT, but I dunno. Someone told me the FT sngs aren't that fishy?? Partypoker has a bigger rake but the micro sngs are SO fishy.

As for the BR thing, I'm playing the $3's because there is only turbo sngs at $1. And for some reason I just don't feel comfortable playing turbo. I only play Speed sngs on the $3's and I find that the fish knock each other out quick enough so that by push/fold stage there are less players... with turbo tables you end up in push/fold waaaaayyy too early for my liking. I dunno. Maybe I'll give the turbos another go. I've been running really hot on the $3's too, so that could be why i'm getting a bit cocky about BRM ♦

if you dont already have a tracked account at FT i definitely suggest you should move over purely for rakeback reasons. the sngs on FT are very soft until the 24s so you wont have a problem.

running hot is a nice feeling but over confidence will definitely kill your BR if you dont have a good solid BRM plan set up.

glad to hear you like my blog. keep up the good work and drop in and chat on skype if you want.

If I may make a suggestion to avoid driving yourself crazy...

Get used to no signifigant profit for the short term. If you enjoy non Turbos, Pokerstars has $1.20 9 man
non turbo SNGs. They are very soft, and a great place to learn what not to do by watching the donkeys and
getting paid by them.

Lessthanthree is very correct in saying you can easily lose a $50 roll playing $3's with it. You will never lose
a $50 roll playing the $1s though I promise.

I wouldn't worry too much about rakeback if you are only playing 2 tables at a time or so, you can just take
your time and learn to add tables and get solid at ICM.

It is going to take you alot of SNGs before you see any real profit from them unless you go on some heater.
If you focus on guessing what cards the opponents have, and focusing on applying what you read in
the articles and get from the videos and at the same time slowly add tables, you can fill your hunger for
success by getting better and better. Watching your BR at the beginning will only dissapoint and frustrate
you. I speak from experience.

Good luck.

Thanks for all the feedback guys, I'll take it in mind. I'll probably switch to FT and play the $1's there, I think, and just see how that goes for me. I might just use my partypoints to enter a bunch of freerolls and see if I can cash ♦

Ok, now for something I want to make a regular feature of my blog... The all-new, all-awesome, Friday Morning Strategy Discussion! This is basically a way for me to get some interesting ideas out there, to discuss tough spots I've encountered during the week, or just discuss broader strategic concepts in SnG's as I come across them. It's mostly a learning experience for me, but if anyone learns anything from it then, well, awesome ♦

Todays topic is one I've found is seldom discussed by online players, and often regarded with utter contempt. It is:

The Slowplay

Every online player loves nothing more than flopping the nuts in a multi-way pot, right? Everyone seems to immediately jump for the Bet/Raise button, thinking "VALUEBET VALUEBET VALUEBET!!". But what if Villain has other ideas? Some boards are just so bad for everyone else that, although we have a monster, we'll get no value from our hand. In these spots, I think if our hand is well and truly strong enough, we can give our opponent one or even two free cards. My personal preferences for slowplays are: Sets on a dry board, Nut flushes on an unpaired board, Full Houses on any board.

With the set, we can still draw to the full house, which removes some of the villains outs.
With the nut flush, we don't really want to see the board paired, and will often get not much value out of the fish anyway; If a fish ever puts you on a monster correctly, it'll be the flush. They're always so much easier for rookies to spot. I haven't had much experience slowplaying these, so I dunno.
My personal favorite, for obvious reasons, is the Full House. I'll show a hand later as an example.

However, it is worth noting that just because you flop an absolute monster does not mean you should slowplay it. POSITION IS CRITICAL. SLOWPLAYING OUT OF POSITION IS A GOOD WAY TO MISS OUT ON LOTS OF VALUE, AND IS GENERALLY TOO RISKY IMO. You are better off just betting small on the flop, or check-calling the flop then betting the turn. Never leave it to the river to get value when you're OOP though.
So position is important. What else is important? Potential opponent hands, of course. Here is my hand from a day or two ago, as an example:

(Just so you know, in hindsight I don't really like my raise on the flop with 77, even in late position. Its hard to break SSS habits )

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, 3 Tournament, 20/40 Blinds (10 handed) - Party-Poker Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG (t2000)
SB (t1960)
MP2 (t2160)
MP1 (t2000)
MP3 (t1960)
Hero (CO) (t2000)
Button (t1960)
UTG+2 (t2000)
BB (t2000)
UTG+1 (t1960)

Hero's M: 33.33

Preflop: Hero is CO with 7, 7
5 folds, MP3 calls t40, Hero bets t160, 2 folds, BB calls t120, MP3 calls t120

Flop: (t500) 2, 2, 7 (3 players)
BB checks, MP3 checks, Hero checks

Why do I check behind here? Its quite simple. Only one hand has me beat, and we can pretty much rule out either villain having 22. The only hands that could realistically out-draw me are overpairs, and will almost ALWAYS bet this flop. Any TAG would; it is a very nice flop for anything from 88 to AA. Even if they hold an overpair and don't bet here, they are drawing to 2 outs. I'm quite happy to gamble that they DONT have an overpair, and even if they did, i'm happy to bet they WONT hit it. Any other hands would need to first hit a 3-outer, then a 2-outer, in order to outdraw us. Which pretty much isn't going to happen. What we want is for the villain to catch one card; make top pair, with the pair of twos for two-pair. As we will see, the implied odds of checking this spot are huge. Very frequently, the opponent will bluff the turn if he suspects his ace-high is good. Which is exactly what happened....

Turn: (t500) 4 (3 players)
BB checks, MP3 bets t200, Hero calls t200, 1 fold

Why only call behind here? Why not re-raise? Again, simple. the 4 is a brick. No hands beat us yet, and 90% of the time villain hasn't hit the 4. For the villain, its an easy spot to bluff in the face of so much "weakness" on my part, even without a scare card. So I call. I would probably check behind if he checked the turn to me, purely because I still don't think I get value out of a big enough hand range. And then, the money card:

River: (t900) A (2 players)
MP3 raises to t1600 (All-In), Hero calls t1600

This is what we want to see. Now, the range of hands which will pay us off has MASSIVELY increased. In fact, any overcard will generally do it for us, especially against fish. Fish are happy to go broke if the river is a T and they have KT, AT, QT. They will sometimes go broke with T8 if the river is an 8. Most of the time, they genuinely think we have complete air by this point.

Total pot: t4100

Results below:
MP3 had A, 8 (two pair, Aces and twos).
Hero had 7, 7 (full house, sevens over twos).
Outcome: Hero won t4100
EDIT: Outcome: Ged punches the air and yells "HAHAHA EAT SLOWPLAY BIATCH!!!!! ♦ ♦ ♦", thoroughly pleased with himself and his sneaky trickery.

This is why the slowplay is such +EV. Only hands like overpairs, AK, AQ, maybe AJ, call us if we bet the flop. But if we take it slow and let them catch a card, the hand range which will pay us off, and the hand range which we can stack them with, widens dramatically. A8o folds to a bet on the flop very very often, but we can stack him if we let him catch his ace. This above example is basically the PERFECT exemplar of a slowplay (because of the way the villain played and the way the cards fell); the opponent attempts to bluff the turn, which they will do very frequently, and catches his card on the river so that he thinks he's best. And we stack him.

The things to remember when slowplaying are: Position and Protection. If you are OOP, slowplay is MUCH harder to do well. If your hand is vulnerable, slowplay is VERY RISKY, and often -EV.

Good luck at the tables, and may you stack a fish with every monster.
- Ged

Thorough analogy of the slowplay but I must add that it would be heavily read
dependant for me to pull this off especially playing micro or low limit tournaments.

I would always bet for value if I am up against a fish or a maniac. Especially in your case you raised with 77
and there was no overcard on the board. Your set/fh is super disguised and a maniac with Ax is going to reraise
your flop raise if he doesnt see over cards. The station will just call you down no matter what. Against a rock
you can slow play but you would rarely get anything regardless of if they hit or not unless they hit the nuts
and you cant beat the nuts.

IDK how it is at higher limits, but for sure in the games I have been playing, I just bet for value when I have
the hand because I am almost always paid off even if I have the nut flush on the flop. Just my 2 cents.

Ohhh man.... I've made my account on FT and downloaded the software... The cash tables are a SSSers dream!!! Covered in big stacks!! Coming from PartyPoker where there's always at least 3 shortstacks, this is AMAZING. I'm so tempted to play some SSS again... nooo.. must stick to SnG....

Just in reply to 8979687...
In my limited experience, fish are dumb but not that dumb. They get attached to BIG overcards (AK, AQ, AJ, AT, mebbe A9) and to things like mid-pair, bottom pair good kicker, etc. etc. and you're right, I think we can get value from some villains who are holding overcards on the flop.
But even still, I think that we have villain's hand-range so thoroughly crushed in this spot that it is ok to give a free card. If the free card hits villain, it massively opens up the hand ranges that will pay us off.

Originally posted by 8979687
Thorough analogy of the slowplay but I must add that it would be heavily read
dependant for me to pull this off especially playing micro or low limit tournaments.

I would always bet for value if I am up against a fish or a maniac. Especially in your case you raised with 77
and there was no overcard on the board. Your set/fh is super disguised and a maniac with Ax is going to reraise
your flop raise if he doesnt see over cards.

I think that this is actually more read-dependant than the slowplay. I would value bet the 227 flop if I knew villain was a complete LAGtard; check-raising every flop, raising preflop frequently etc. Normally lagtards open raise the flop, and never coldcall preflop; neither of the lines taken by the villain(s) in my example indicate LAGtard, and i'm very confident that villain folds his A8o to a bet on the flop fairly often. If he doesn't, then thats fine, but we still get value on later streets anyway. I don't think most fish would be dumb enough to get all-in on that flop with A8o.

Again I am stressing Micro limits here....

For example, and its just a quick search of my small Database, I am trying to get all my hands and summaries
which will give me even better examples. In this hand, the flop is nowhere near safe, and here is your typical
Ax loving opponent on a micro buy in SNG. Stats were 20/12/2.0 Vpip Pfr AF.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 3.4 Tournament, 25/50 Blinds (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (UTG+1) (t1280)
MP1 (t1950)
MP2 (t1040)
MP3 (t2990)
CO (t1075)
Button (t2340)
SB (t1445)
BB (t1485)
UTG (t1395)

Hero's M: 17.07

Preflop: Hero is UTG+1 with K♥, K♣
1 fold, Hero bets t150, 4 folds, Button calls t150, 2 folds

Flop: (t375) 6♠, K♠, Q♠ (2 players)
Hero bets t225, Button raises to t650, Hero raises to t1130 (All-In), Button calls t480

Turn: (t2635) 7♥ (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t2635) 4♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t2635

Results:
Button had 10:club:, A♣ (high card, Ace).
Hero had K♥, K♣ (three of a kind, Kings).
Outcome: Hero won t2635

And here is the other one that came up.. I just simply searched my database which is only $3.40 SNGs from
Jan 2010 to now and I just searched for having a set on the flop and all in = true. Only two hands
came up and they both seem to corrolate to this discussion.

This villain is 26/21/4.0

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 3.4 Tournament, 10/20 Blinds (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP2 (t3370)
Hero (MP3) (t1470)
CO (t1390)
Button (t1470)
SB (t1770)
BB (t1240)
UTG (t1750)
UTG+1 (t1440)
MP1 (t1100)

Hero's M: 49.00

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with J♠, J♥
1 fold, UTG+1 bets t80, 2 folds, Hero raises to t240, 4 folds, UTG+1 calls t160

Flop: (t510) 3♦, J♣, 6♥ (2 players)
UTG+1 bets t300, Hero raises to t1188, UTG+1 raises to t1200 (All-In), Hero calls t12

Turn: (t2910) 8♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t2910) 6♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t2910

Results:
UTG+1 had 10:heart:, A♥ (one pair, sixes).
Hero had J♠, J♥ (full house, Jacks over sixes).
Outcome: Hero won t2910

In this hand Villain did the rasing first, but if I was out of position I can put money down., that he would have
reraised any raise I put in on this flop just the same as the villain in the last hand.

I know that villain has ATs and not A8os, but when I get my hands, I am sure I will find many with them
doing this with even A6os.

Clearly the villain was quite dumb on that first hand... dumber than our theoretical one I would say.

Ok I got my hand histories and I looked up the same thing.

This time there are a ton of situations and I lost only 1 of them and that was set over set.

But here are only 3 I will post. In the third one ignore the QQ, its the other villain we are looking at.
I would have been paid wether the QQ hand was in it or not.

And in this one it is also not even A high!!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 1.75 Tournament, 10/20 Blinds (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button (t1500)
SB (t1500)
BB (t1500)
UTG (t1500)
UTG+1 (t1500)
MP1 (t1500)
MP2 (t1500)
MP3 (t1500)
Hero (CO) (t1500)

Hero's M: 50.00

Preflop: Hero is CO with A♠, A♥
UTG calls t20, 1 fold, MP1 calls t20, 2 folds, Hero bets t140, 2 folds, BB calls t120, 2 folds

Flop: (t330) 3♦, 2♣, A♣ (2 players)
BB bets t20, Hero raises to t264, BB raises to t508, Hero raises to t1360 (All-In), BB calls t852 (All-In)

Turn: (t3050) 4♣ (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t3050) 5♣ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t3050

Results:
BB had K♦, 8♦ (straight, five high).
Hero had A♠, A♥ (straight, five high).
Outcome: BB won t1525, Hero won t1525

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 3.4 Tournament, 100/200 Blinds (7 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP2 (t2570)
CO (t1350)
Hero (Button) (t3125)
SB (t820)
BB (t3255)
UTG (t2913)
MP1 (t967)

Hero's M: 10.42

Preflop: Hero is Button with 10:spade:, 10:club:
1 fold, MP1 calls t200, 2 folds, Hero bets t700, 2 folds, MP1 calls t500

Flop: (t1700) 10:diamond:, K♠, 9♠ (2 players)
MP1 bets t267 (All-In), Hero calls t267

Turn: (t2234) 7♥ (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t2234) 3♠ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t2234

Results:
Hero had 10:spade:, 10:club: (three of a kind, tens).
MP1 had 7♣, 9♣ (two pair, nines and sevens).
Outcome: Hero won t2234

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 3.4 Tournament, 15/30 Blinds (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG+1 (t1500)
MP1 (t1760)
MP2 (t1430)
Hero (MP3) (t1470)
CO (t1480)
Button (t2590)
SB (t1280)
BB (t510)
UTG (t1480)

Hero's M: 32.67

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with 7♦, 7♥
UTG bets t60, 1 fold, MP1 calls t60, 1 fold, Hero calls t60, 3 folds, BB calls t30

Flop: (t255) 7♠, 3♥, 8♥ (4 players)
BB bets t120, UTG raises to t300, MP1 raises to t480, Hero raises to t1410 (All-In), 1 fold, UTG calls t1110, MP1 calls t930

Turn: (t4605) J♦ (3 players, 1 all-in)
UTG bets t10 (All-In), MP1 calls t10

River: (t4625) 4♣ (3 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t4625

Results:
UTG had 10:diamond:, J♥ (one pair, Jacks).
MP1 had Q♠, Q♣ (one pair, Queens).
Hero had 7♦, 7♥ (three of a kind, sevens).
Outcome: MP1 won t20, Hero won t4605

I just think its better to play your hands for value as you will get paid sooo often by much worse rather
than hoping villain cathes a piece as well, or decides to bluff etc. So not trying to argue with you here,
just discussing it, and I think you lose value in the long run slow playing. And I stress at low limits and
micros. I have never played a SNG with a higher buy in than $10. So I am sure at the $33s etc it could
be a different ball game in this regard, I wouldnt know.

Thanks for the hand histories and input 8979687 (do you have a name?? :P)
Hmmm ok, well I'll see if I have any similar situations in the next set I play, whenever that is... I'm currently in the process of getting my FT account set up (need to make sure I've got rakeback). That is some really insane play by the villain... Like.. wow... I know they like draws and stuff but shoving a gutshot is like WTF?!? Anyway. A little more experience and I may agree with you or have more evidence with which to disagree with you
Again, thanks for the input, its this sort of discussion that I want to see ♦

Cheers,
Ged

p.s. In other news, I've been using ICM trainer for about 2 hours now and I'm going pretty well.. about 94%... Lets see if I can keep it up ♦