Mind Games

I had a lovely 2 day break from poker.

We had all of my family at our house for Christmas -- all those that live within 150km, anyway.

The grandsons weren't fighting, and my granddaughter had only the one tantrum, so it was a fantastic day.

After 30 years, you think I would be used to the commotion by now, but maybe one day.

I sat down to my computer today, and noticed that there were Microsoft updates to install. I installed them, and spent the next two hours fixing MS Office.

All better now.

As for poker, I played two sessions of 5-Card Draw.
Both were camel sessions. The first was one-humped, the second two-humped, but I finished marginally up in both, which is always nice.

I am now 2/15 in the boat vs boat race. I held 7s full of As pat, and outdrawn by Ks full of 4s.

This didn't bother me, but I still wonder how it would have affected me if it was the end of a losing session, rather than a reality check at the end of a rather good one.

In the next few days I'll have to return to MGP and review my profile and evaluate my overall progress toward my goals.

In other news, I've signed up for a 10K run in late April, and I'll be following the training regimen for that.

I walked the whole thing last year, but this year I want to run the 10K w/o stopping.

Well, isn't that interesting?

I :diamond:think I may have just cashed my first non-freeroll MTT.

Got bored after supper and late regged into today's Daily Dollar.
Despite a v cold deck -- my stats for this tourney were 14/10/5 v/p/3
I managed to finish 309 out of 2214 registered.

I can't see myself doing this every night though.
These things take sofa king long to play.

I have a few questions for the MTT hand gurus, but other than that, not a lot to be quizzical about.

Playing one of these is pretty wild and wolly.
Lots of pre-flop raising & calling going on.
Most of the hands I played involved shoving from the button with something decent and having all the dead money land in my stack.

In any case, my FTP bankroll will last at least 1 day longer...

Today I had my first real losing session in a long time.

It included yet another loss where a pat FH gets beaten.
This time by a player drawing 3 and hitting quads.

Remember my post from a few days ago where I hit quads drawing 3?

Well, the universe is now in balance.

I had a look at ALL my full house hands, and realized that:
♦  Some are going to get beaten.
♦  Only higher FHs, quads and straight flushes can beat them
♦  There are relatively few straight flush and quad combinations
♦  Therefore, it makes sense that when I'm holding a Full House, it will be beaten by a higher Full House.

Over all, I've played 229 hands where I had a full house dealt or drawn.
I have won 210 of them, and lost 18.
Amazingly, I appear to have folded a boat pre-draw.
I don't remember this, which isn't too surprising, since if I had noticed I had one, I would not have folded it.

I'm still a bit weirded out by the fact that my record against other FHs is 2 / 15.

So.
MGP instructs us to "inject logic" when necessary to control an emotional reaction to a situation.

The logic statement I will use is:
"It makes sense that I will lose some of the full house hands I play. 85% of the hand higher than a flush are Full Houses, therefore it makes sense that when a full house gets beaten, it will be by another full house.

For those very reasons, it makes no sense at all to play Full House hands defensively.

Therefore, I will deliberately, and with full awareness of the consequences, continue to play my Full House hands aggressively, come what may."

It still pisses me off when it happens.

I'm probably still going to notice these things, because boats are so rare, it would be rather hard NOT to notice.

On the plus side, this investigation caused me to learn a lot about how the pokerhands database, and postgres sql databases in general work.

So time well wasted.

Loving the epic thought process involved in that post!

I completed my 40,000th 5-Card Draw hand today.

I had a bit of trouble with a guy playing 95/35/11 v/p/3

I stayed out of his way a bunch, but every time I took a hand up against him he bested me.

2pr < trips
trips < higher set
etc.

Finally on my very last hand I had (yet again) a pat full house, and he capped pre w/ one other caller.

He showed down KK88x
No idea what the other guy had, but that hand made my day.

On the mental side of things....

Today I came to a realization:
I think I am better than I actually am.

MGP doesn't have much to say about this, other than a bit on "Overconfidence".

I'm not confident, really. However, I think I understand the game better than I play it. I intellectualize odds and ratios and shit like that, and still call when I should have known I was beaten.

I need to quench my desire to see what villain has.
I don't need the information -- I really don't.

I also need to be more patient.

Overall, since starting this blog, I am up in all games, and all levels.
Not humungously, but enough to feel good about it.

Tomorrow, I'm going to have a stab at NL 25 again for the first time since November.
I am technically rolled for it on Party, with about 40 BI

One hand at a time.
All decisions based only on the hand on the table, and the players at the table.

PHASER SHOT

No calling bluffs, unless I deliberately set up to bluff catch.

There, that should do it.

Go crush NL25 and you should really, really give yourself a HUGE pat on the back for your efforts as of late

As tough as it can be to implement in the heat of battle, I like the rationalized approach.
I also like that you're blogging about something different in a different way.

Always interesting, nice one. ♠_cool:

Originally posted by gadget51
As tough as it can be to implement in the heat of battle, I like the rationalized approach.

I intend to only start w/ 2 tables, then 3, then go up to my max of 4

I used to stack 8 at NL 2
Maybe one day...

Whoever would have thought of grilled cucumbers ?

Mrs Vorpal and I went to a restaurant we'd never been to before, and one of the appetizers was served on a sizzling hot metal dish, which had a few cucumbers on it -- besides the appetizer of course.

The cucumbers, thus grilled, were quite surprisingly tasty.

I only played 300 hands of NL 25 today, and came out at the end 5.25 big blinds in the red AKA -$1.32

I made 3 colossal blunders. Two of which involved betting when I should have folded, that the third involved betting too much and inducing a fold.

Why does the game need betting anyway?

Why can't I just put in the chat box how much money I want, and have one of the fish give it to me? Instead we do this ritual dance with cards and cursing and then somebody gives money to somebody else.

Weird.

So I am relatively pleased.

I played one table with an insane fish two places to my left, and an insane nit who only entered pots to 3Bet my steal attempts.

Both were up whack's o' dough.

I probably should have left the table, because the two players on my left both required a totally different strategy.

As it turned out, I managed to collect goodly sums from both. I got AA on the BTN on one hand raised 3BettingNit 3Bet ( ofc ) then, 4Bet, call and fold to CBet later I was up from the Nit (the maniac folded) Woo Hoo

This hand, though I think had I played it better, I could have got more from the maniac.

Party, $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players

BTN: $36.89 (147.6 bb)
Hero (BB): $27.73 (110.9 bb) 74/13/5/2.8 v/p/3/af 123H
CO: $26.18 (104.7 bb)
MP: $55.46 (221.8 bb)
SB: $37.90 (151.6 bb)
UTG: $12.73 (50.9 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with T:c 6:h
UTG calls $0.25, MP calls $0.25, CO calls $0.25, 2 folds, Hero checks

Flop: ($1.10) 9:h 7:d 8:c (4 players)
Hero checks, UTG checks, MP bets $1, CO calls $1, Hero raises to $5, UTG folds, MP calls $4, CO folds

Turn: ($12.10) K:c (2 players)
Hero bets $8.75, MP folds

I think a smaller bet and he may have called again. Then again, he either goes to SD or folds on flop (82% Fold to CBet) or turn (100% -- but only one instance).

I did feel somewhat anxious as I started to play.

I'll have to re-read the section in MGP on Fear.

So why, with only 2 tables of NL 25 did I feel anxiety, but had no problem at all laying out $50 for dinner?

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Why can't I just put in the chat box how much money I want, and have one of the fish give it to me? Instead we do this ritual dance with cards and cursing and then somebody gives money to somebody else.

If only! I'm not much of a dancer!

I played 500 hands of NL 2 zoom last night, without access to my fold button.
I looked under the desk, down the crack of the couch, and I even looked in my sock drawer, but I just couldn't find the fracking thing.

I played some NL 25 today -- not zoom -- and fortunately, my fold button was back where it belonged.

Why is it I find NL 25 more than 12.5 times as stressful as NL 2?

I have a new "Injecting Logic" phrase to use, too:
"You worked hard for those big blinds -- spend them wisely"

This hand took a lot of mnemonics:
Party, $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 5 Players

BB: $35.18 (140.7 bb)
SB: $25 (100 bb)
Hero (MP): $25.98 (103.9 bb)
CO: $25.49 (102 bb)
BTN: $21.40 (85.6 bb) 62/10/0/16 v/p/3/AF 22H

Preflop: Hero is MP with 9:s 9:d
Hero raises to $0.75, CO folds, BTN calls $0.75, 2 folds

Flop: ($1.85) 3:s 3:h 4:h (2 players)
Hero bets $1, BTN raises to $3.57, Hero raises to $8, BTN folds

You will remember my post-flop mnemonic:
S = Stack / Stats / Size of Bet
H = Hand / Hole cards -- Mine as well as villains
O = Odds include implied odds
T = Texture of the board

Then there is the "do I bluff" mnemonic -- thanks Raknyo
In = Inflating the pot, don't do it! Hmmm...
The = Texture, is the board wet, would many hands be willing to call? v Few hands would call
Netherlands = Number of opponents, more than 2 then say no! Just we two
People = Player types, don't bluff fish but be more willing to bluff tight players Certainly no nit, but vv aggro, so no respect for his raise
Drink = Draws, be more willing to bluff when your hand can improve Fail -- no draws for Vorpal
Rum = Represent, can you actually represent a strong hand with a bet? Rep overpairs, primarily