Mind Games

If you think you made good plays, that's a huge step up. A final table would be nice next, yes!
You must be able to dodge bullets like Neo.

I played a 5-Card Draw NL tournament today to get my ticket for the next flipament.

No final table, but I did come 20/387 (54 pd) which gets me a ticket and $2.51 Woot!

Today's hands are from that tournament, and are from the Department of Desperation

10 bb left. In poker, as in comedy, timing is everything.

Just off the money, just about 8 bb left, and looking for a little desperation equity.

From there I actually built back up to just under average stack until I took Kings up into trip 5s.

Best of luck to all...
--VS

NL 5-Card Draw

So, we induced a bluff, did we?

I cashed in two out of 4 freerolls today, the tournament above not among them.
I was in the top 5% in one, and about 12% in the other.

Why is it that after being card dead for so long, I have to get TT at the same time the big stack gets AA?

One day I'll win one.

--VS

NLHE

One thing I've been doing is to raise opponents CBets when I have position, or check/raise them if I'm OOP.

I do this on v dry boards when it appears that villain is CBetting out of habit, or "because you always CBet Dry boards".

Until now, I've been playing raise/fold, but I suppose the time will come when I'm going to have to consider raising yet again as a bluff.

Here we have limp/call pre, and x/r/f on the flop.

I figure him for Ax, broadways, maybe smallish pocket pairs.
I hoped the shove would look bluffy enough to get a call from AK, AQ, AJ or some PP less than QQ.

In retrospect, just "clicking it back" might have been a much better play.

Best of luck to all...
--VS

NLHE

From the Department of Wasted Aces comes this little number:

So what's the verdict?
Missed out on value and gave away free cards?
At the time I was looking at it thinking, "What worse hands will call?"

Cheers,
--VS

b/f turn xbh river, as played river is bad but i don't think he has better than 1p very often when he checks. so bet small as well

NLHE
I said a few posts back that I tend to play good poker when I'm set a BI or so.

I read this guy right -- Until now, when he has had the nuts, he has played check/call.
On each street he is giving me odds to hit my straight.
So I hit it. I think his shove is a bluff -- one he thinks that nobody can call.

If he *really* had the nut flush, he would give something I could call. So at this point, I conclude he has no flush at all.

I was right, but ohhh, that river!

Did I say I play good poker when I'm down?
I took 800 hands, but I made it all the way back.
Along the way I took a couple more on the chin, going down to -4 BI.

For my next trick, I'm going to win the 4 BI without going in the hole first!

Oh, and one other curious thing.
When I was sitting there with 350 BB stack, it was amazing how often I got the blinds -- either by open-raising or 3Betting.

One of the things about being so deep is that you can play much wider, and bet/fold freely, since each bet is such a small portion of your stack.

There is the concept of stack-to-pot ratio that I think is coming in to play here, but I don't really understand it.

Oh, and my favourite hand of the night, from the Department of Disbelief...

May peace and contentment be upon you all...
--VS

I see that slowplay stuff all day, it's funny trying to watch and put the villains on something. I think they're on something anyway but that's just my view! ♦

As for being in the hole for a couple, I know it's not so easy for you since your playing time is limited, but maybe try watching even a part of a strategy vid, or review a few hands before playing, just to get the grey matter moving in the right direction. Just a thought.

Originally posted by gadget51
As for being in the hole for a couple, I know it's not so easy for you since your playing time is limited, but maybe try watching even a part of a strategy vid, or review a few hands before playing, just to get the grey matter moving in the right direction. Just a thought.

Not a bad idea.

The other problem is that when I CAN play, there is little traffic -- which means that the opponents I'm facing are usually fairly skilled. Also, at the end of the day, I'm often a bit tired.

To avoid spew, I play a set number of hands with I time limit -- say 200 hands or an hour (whichever comes first).

I try to save my wide-awake prime time play for 5-Card Draw -- but lately the traffic has been dying off before I get home.

I tried playing some PL 5-Card Draw last night. The competition was totally bad, and kept reloading -- who am I to argue? I'm not sure I learned anything about PL 5-Card Draw though.

Cheers,
--VS

Sounds like you may want to though! ♦

NLHE
What a nasty day.

I set a goal to play 500 hands.

I did well. I held 88 I flopped 8:h7:h7:c. I bet -- I get a call.
Turn is 9:h a to complete the flush.
Villain bets pot. I shove. Villain shows 99

On and on it went.
I lost with a flopped set 4 times -- straights, flushes, higher sets.

My KK and QQ never got past the turn -- but at least I didn't lose.
AA twice -- the blinds once, and this:

Mostly these were people playing 40 BB stacks, so no huge hits, but they all added up to 4 BI

Which means I can no longer play NL €5 Zoom -- since I'm down to 26 BI.

So I'll switch to NL €4 standard, but iPoker's waiting list system, and their lobby system is so terribly annoying. I'll give it a go, but I'll likely end up moving my roll to another room

[Edit: I played a short session after supper of NL 2 standard on iPoker. Up 1 BI w/o busting a sweat in 100 hands. Pretty much card dead too -- just raised my normal range, and CBet my normal amount. <sigh> Maybe it's not me]

So it goes...
--VS

It's annoying sometimes how quickly those short stack losses add up - and then my KK runs into AA bvb and...I make a stupid river call or two...and...and suddenly I'm down 5/6BI.
Dropped to nl2 zoom 4 tabs, won 6BI in about 20 minutes.

Cliff:
Welcome to gadgetworld. ♦ ♦

Standart boy its variace go go g

Originally posted by gadget51
It's annoying sometimes how quickly those short stack losses add up - and then my KK runs into AA bvb and...I make a stupid river call or two...and...and suddenly I'm down 5/6BI.
Dropped to nl2 zoom 4 tabs, won 6BI in about 20 minutes.

Cliff:
Welcome to gadgetworld. ♦ ♦

I gotta see this some day.
I have trouble with two zoom. Even with one zoom I often don't have time to check stats properly, take notes and so on.

On the other hand, it does give me time to overthink that hand

Thanks for the encouragement, guys...
--VS

NLHE

Today we have two hands from the "How Vorpal gets in Trouble" series.
Hand #1
The first is very standard until the turn -- at which point I start to 2nd guess my gameplan.

Hand #2
In this one, I perhaps over-valued that fact that this player was not playing with a full stack.

As you can see, I climbed back on the horse, and play NL €5 speed again.
Yes, I did drop 4 BI yesterday, but at one point I was down 7 -- yes, I CAN do this.

I decided today that I would start 7BI down at the opening hand. Mentally, that is.

It is surprising how easily I can fool myself.

Peace,
--VS

hey vorpal, decided to check out your blog, cba reading the whole thing but will follow the updates ♦

um I don't understand what do you mean you have trouble with taking notes on zoom tables? For me it is much easier, as you can just hit the sit out button, load the hand in your tracker and make the note then continue playing (same goes for toilet breaks, making tea and other RL nonsense such your loved ones). Checking stats can be a bit tricky, but I think you can mostly try to solve that by putting work into your HUD. I was overwhelmed my first week in, but then I started using coloring ranges (like setting autoprofit spots to green and so on), bold fonts (for example 3bet preflop is bold then next to it fold to 3bet in regular font), prefixes and suffixes. But mostly I found that it was just a matter of getting used to a certain HUD (2 weeks in I can now discern the stats important for my decision in a few seconds). That being said, I still only play 2 zoom tables at the same time and don't intend on switching to more soon.

About the hands, #1 I'd probably c/c turn then valuebet river if he shuts down, mostly I'd try to keep pot at a double barrel. I'm definity calling/betting river if the turn is check/check though.

Hand #2 I shove here every time, the amount of time he has Jx compared to everything else is just too damn high. I also feel shortys will shove most higher pairs preflop, so I'm mostly worried about the 3 sets and JT, but I'll take my chaces. Why are you not 3betting preflop though, it makes your decision postflop so much easier because of pot to stack ratio. I am also super comfortable calling his shove preflop with QQ, as the amount of time we're flipping is irrelevant to the amount of time we're ahead.

Just my 5cents though, GL with getting your BIs back and keep on crushing ♠_grin:

Hand 1 i like to checkback on the turn aswell. I don't see him calling KJ pre 100%, and that's basicly the best hand you're hoping to get a call from OTT. And on the turn I don't really see him calling KJ either. So i'd prefer Bet/ch/bet on this specific turn, because he does have all KQ combo's imo.

Hand 2 either call or raise/broke. Raise/folding just makes 0 sense with this hand.

Hand #1

Hand #

Thanks for your thoughts.
In Hand #1 (A:sK:h) I bet the turn and got a fold.
I think that you're right in checking back the turn. This allows villain to take a stab with AQ, KJ and so on.

As you can see, in the Q:cQ:s hand I did raise/call and ended up having to suck out.

5-Card Draw
This hand was fun.
A bunch of things all came together:
Miracle draw, and SB's Straight gets there too.
Still no big deal, but SB vastly overplayed his straight. In his defence, the odds of me drawing 3 and hitting the boat are 97:1 against.
Thank you sir.

I watched Mal play today -- NL 5 zoom on Stars.
You can read about it on his blog, I'm sure.
I have never seen so many AA and KK and QQ hands in all my life.
Followed by the crappiest flops imaginable time and time again.

So after supper, I decided to play a few hundred hands of 5-Card Draw as I was less than 2 bucks below my all time high bankroll.

I had Mal's luck -- really nice hands in large quantity beaten again and again by really nicer ones.

Down 17 bucks -- a fair achievement when you're playing FL $0.25/$0.50
<sigh>

Best of luck all!
--VS

While watching Mal the other day, at one point he made a river bet I would never make.

I can't remember the hand, however I do remember what he said:

"I can never win a showdown, my only chance is to try to take it away with a bet".

So bet he did, and fold they did, and I thought, "Crap -- is it that easy?"

So today's fun hand:

Please save your "Fold pre" comments -- I figured that out on review

I posted this one in the Han devaluation forum if you're interested in what the judge thinks...
Nl 4€ -- how to play the turn

Here's another in the same vein...

A bit more sane, though. Also, I probably had the best hand.

Later,
--VS

5-Card Draw
Over the last two days, I've been devastated playing FL $0.25/$0.50 5-Card Draw

I have experienced the deepest downswing playing this game since starting almost 4 years ago. I am currently down 70 big bets in just over 1000 hands. So much for low variance!

I went over a lot of hands, and almost all of the losses are Draw 3 vs Draw 3 -- as one would expect I suppose, since those pairs are the most common hands.

I lost overall in all post-draw modes:
Unimproved:
♦  Bet for value (KKxxx AAxxx)
♦  Bluffcatch (x/c or call a bet)
♦  fold unimproved to post-draw bet. < the biggest category.

Hit Two Pair
♦  Bet for Value (queens up +)
♦  Bluffcatch (jacks up, sometimes tens up)
♦  fold to post-draw raise (b/f)

Hit trips
♦  I lost 6 of the nine times I hit trips vs another draw 3.

The real danger here is that when this happens I get gun shy, and start playing x/c when I should be playing bet/call -- eg with trips. The trips I DID win were almost all cases where I checked, villain checked behind and showed a hand that could conceivably have called.

So today will be a review day -- I will review the odds charts to ensure I am actually making odds-on plays pre-draw.

In some cases, it is necessary to call even w/o proper pot odds to avoid being exploited:

Example:
beware the feral cow packs. they hunger.
PokerStars Limit 5 Card Draw $0.25/$0.50 - 6 players

UTG: $4.48
UTG+1: $6.49
CO: $9.12 (Hero)
Button: $17.88
SB: $4.32
BB: $9.52

Dealing Hands: ($0.35) 4♣ A♠ A♦ K♦ 3♠ (6 players)
2 folds, Hero raises to $0.50, Button raises to $0.75, SB folds, BB calls $0.50, Hero calls $0.25
Villain can raise here w/ 2pr, trips or FD. He generally is not trappy
I have 2.65:1 odds to make at least trips, of which 5.26:1 to make 2pr, and 7.75:1 to make trips. Generally, 2 pair should be enough.
When I'm raised, I am required to invest 0.25 into a pot of 0.35 + 0.50 + 0.75 + 0.50 = 2.05, so I'm getting 8.2:1, so I call.

First Draw: ($2.35) (3 players)
BB discards 1, Hero discards 3, Button discards 1,
A♠ A♦ || A♥ Q♥ K♠
BB checks, Hero bets $0.50, Button raises to $1, BB folds,
I expect this from JJJ+, perhaps even worse trips.
Hero calls $0.50

Hero mucked
Button showed 4♦ 3♦ 2♦ 6♦ 5♥, a straight, Deuce to Six
Button won $4.19
(Rake: $0.16)

So it goes,
--VS