I’ve been playing this player Fisfarfar recently who has been totally destroying me. He actually plays pretty well, despite the fact he has a short history of success at SNGs.

Here’s the relevant reads on this hand. He has been 3betting me about 26% at this blind level. He doesn’t tend to 3bet twice in a row as a bluff, and he has not 3bet me too recently (aka no reason to think he is not 3betting light). His flop cbetting range is pretty polarized, he doesn’t tend to bet bad midpairs or bottom pairs. He also tends to balance his nut hands well, in other words I would not be too surprised to see the nuts here.

PokerStars Game #52118157944: Tournament #327809516, $550+$20 USD Hold’em No Limit – Match Round I, Level I (10/20) – 2010/11/03 12:21:22 PT [2010/11/03 15:21:22 ET]
Table ’327809516 1′ 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: FisFarfar (1400 in chips)
Seat 2: heybude (1600 in chips)
heybude: posts small blind 10
FisFarfar: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to heybude [As 9h]
heybude: raises 20 to 40
FisFarfar: raises 80 to 120
heybude: calls 80
*** FLOP *** [2c 8c Jh]

FisFarfar: bets 120

heybude: raises 180 to 300 (I am really only folding out things I am beating but I feel like since I have not raised the flop once in a 3bet pot he’s going to give me a lot of credit and never rebluff. On the other hand, he could bluff a balanced amount of air on the turn).

FisFarfar: calls 180
*** TURN *** [2c 8c Jh] [9d]
FisFarfar: checks
heybude: checks
*** RIVER *** [2c 8c Jh 9d] [4d]
FisFarfar: checks
heybude: ?

I think I should bet, but is this worth an all in? 1/3rd pot? 1/7th pot?

Max and I both went to Chicago for the WSOP circuit event there. It got hyped up like it was going to get 400-500 people but it only got 220, which was pretty disappointing. To be honest I probably would not have went if I knew there would be so little people.

Max busted out Day 1 while I busted out Day 2. Max found himself at a tough table with Faraz Jaka and Vanessa Selbst. He told me about an insane fold he made against Jaka. The hand went something like this: 30k stacks and 100/200 blinds. Max raised 600 from MP with AKo. Jaka called from the SB, BB called as well. Flop came AKT two hearts, Max flopped top two. Both guys check, Max cbets 1200, Jaka calls, other guy folds. Turn comes a 7. Jaka checks, Max bets 3200, Jaka calls. River is a 9, no flush has completed. Jaka checks, Max bets 7200, Jaka thinks for a bit and shoves. Max folded. We discussed the hand afterwords and decided that even though Jaka was repping basically nothing besides 86hh and J8hh, it would be an insanely bad spot to bluff. Max has every nut hand in his range and there’s no reason for Jaka to think he has anything else than the nuts. So I agree with his fold.

I felt like I played kind of poorly day 1 but greatly improved my play day 2. I realized with these tournaments that you very rarely see hero calls, which means basically whenever someone has a weak hand, no matter what you are repping, they will fold. Clearly after a point of betting and raising a shitload people are going to start hero calling a lot. But until I sense that point has come I’m going to start pounding away at good spots to bluff in terms of what my opponent has, not what I have necessarily.

Unfortunately, after chipping up on day 2 from a short stack to a 28bb one, I busted out. The hand was a pretty standard good bluff hand. I raised to 2.5x BB from HJ with A6o. Guy who had a lot of chips and hadn’t 3bet me yet today, but was young and clearly the type to do so, 3bet me pretty standard, about 8bbs in the CO. My rudimentary math found that he’d have to fold something like 40% of the time for a shove to be good. I think it was pretty obvious that was the case. Despite the fact  I couldn’t pick up any tells from his body language, I went for it anyways and he called with QQ. I didn’t bink an Ace.

Next tournament is the NAPT in LA. I’m pretty pumped about this one because it has a HU event which is my speciality.

Until then.

Right now, I’m in the midst of one of the most epic downswings I’ve ever had in my career. I’ve been focusing on mainly super turbos recently and at first it was going well. I anticipated intially, given the winrate ceiling seems to be about 3% for even the best players, that super turbos would give way to some ridiculous swings. When it was going well, it seemed like maybe that wasn’t the case, but wow was I wrong!

It’s been pretty brutal the last couple of weeks. As any of you know who have been through a really terrible run, when you are running really bad, you start second guessing the crap out of yourself and your confidence is shot. I started experimenting with tons of different strategies because I felt like I had to be doing something wrong. In hindsight, I definitely had some leaks but the downswing made them seem bigger than they were. I felt like I had to do something drastic when I really didn’t. I started doubting what I knew someones preflop range was because it just seemed like I had to be wrong.

However, when I thought about it more, I realized that when I was upswinging initially, I had the exact opposite effect happen. I thought I had mastered super turbos, that I was better than everyone else and there was no need to work on my game. I didn’t really assume ranges, I did basically what I felt like because it worked. In both cases, I was swayed by my emotions of good variance and bad when I was trying to determine the correct play.

And this is where I came to this realization. I can’t just play and play and play and tweak my strategy from that, because what I assume my opponent is doing is almost always swayed by variance. What I need to do is take time while I’m not playing and talk to friends, do some math, work with some of the amazing programs available to poker players, and watch videos, and from that think about different spots and strategies. From that, I can figure out whats best and improve in spots I’m struggling with. I estimate that the time I spend doing this is about 5% my total poker work, when in reality I should strive for it to be more like 20-25%. Especially when learning a new game like this.

I despise the hell out of this downswing. But without it I would have never came to this realization, and for that I’m thankful.

So I finished in 6th place at the WSOPE ME. First final table ever of a live tournament and it was a lot of fun. I’m not going to share every detail of the tournament, but I will share the most interesting bits.

I felt like I played great throughout the tournament, but there were certain hands that really stood out to me as fantastic.

1. The first was against Ludovic Lacay, a great tournament player who was crazy aggressive. He 3bets insane amounts preflop. We each had about 100,000 chips and the blinds were 600-1200. I raise to 3000 preflop with KT0. Lacay who takes less than 10 seconds on every decision 3bets to 7200. I fail to pick up anything from his mannerisms. I decide to flat call. Flop comes K74 rainbow. I check and he bets 10,000, which is a standard size for him but a more optimal bet size here would be something like 6-7k. I c/r to 27,000 trying to induce a spazz. He takes 10 seconds and shoves all in. I think just to make sure I don’t change my logic. I call and he shows Q4, I hold up.

2. and 3. The Blom hands. After sitting at the same table with Viktor Blom on Day 4 I came away incredibly impressed by his game. However, two hands likely to be shown on ESPN I will be seen having the best of him. The first hand comes right after I 3bet him and he folds and I show 64o. The very next hand he opens again, and I 3bet with A2o in the SB. I expect that his thought process would be to fold a lot because it would be an incredibly odd thought process for me to decide to 3bet him light after 3betting and showing such a bad hand. Unfortunately, he calls. The flop comes AK9 rainbow. This is a tough decision. If my preflop assesment is correct, check folding could be good. This is a terrible board for him to triple barrel, if I were to check, as a bluff, so I wouldn’t expect him to do so. At the same time, I felt like he would not think my bet flop, check turn range was weak so he wouldn’t try to bluff me there either,  not to mention there are so little draws he could call a flop cbet with. I expect I would get value from one pair hands as well that were worse than mine. I decide to cbet and he calls. Turn is a 6. I check, he bets, and I fold after little deliberation. Later he told me he had top two pair.

Another hand later on I had stopped 3betting him but we were both 100bbs deep. I get AJ in the BB and he opens the CO. I figure Blom’s 3bet calling range is wide enough where AJ is an easy 3bet. He calls again, but very quickly. Flop comes K64 two diamonds. I cbet and Blom visably looks frustrated. Not sure what I thought about that, on one hand I knew he wasn’t acting, but at the same time it seemed kind of strong. A decision with KJ is more frustrating than one with A6. Turn was a 7 of diamonds. It’s a great card for me because I expect Blom to raise the flop with flush draws but my line is still congruent with a flush. Also, very little 7′s in his range besides 77, K7s or 76, which would hit the turn. I bet out 2/3rds pot, about half my stack. He thinks for awhile and folds. I tell him later I had AJ no diamond, he says he’s embarassed to say what he folded. I’m excited to see this one on ESPN if it makes it there.

4. This hand was at the final table. 6 or 7 people left, I have about 2.3 million and Ronald Lee has me covered. 20k/40k blinds. I raise T6o to 100k  in what is essentially the CO because James Bord looks at his hand before the action comes to him and it’s clear he’s folding. Lee OTB, who had been very loose preflop all day, flat calls. Everyone else folds. Flop comes QsTs6x. I cbet to 125k. Lee looks straight at me, which I was inclined to think this is weak. When Lee had a nut hand he tended to stay within himself. He calls. Turn was a 9x. Terrible card. I look at Lee and something has changed: He seems no longer interested in what I am going to do. I’m not sure of it but I was inclined to think he hit the turn. I considered c/fing, but I figured I didn’t want to give too much weight to the live tell. I bet 250k into a 500k. Lee doesn’t think for long and raises…. to 420k.

I laugh because he raised less than 2 times my bet, which is not allowed, and I thought it would be ruled a call and I’d have a chance at boating up. Instead, they make him change the raise to 500k. It doesn’t take me that long before saying “This sucks but it’s an easy fold” and I muck T6o face up. Lee puts his hand on his head, almost saying with his mannerisms “Why can’t I get the best of this guy?” Later I found out not surprisingly he had KJo, turned straight.

…………………………………

Lee got his revenge though. I had about 1.3 million at this point and Lee had me covered. Lee opened preflop in MP, and I had a tell on him that helped me realize he was weak here. Given he was opening 50-60% of hands when folded to, my decision to 3bet AJs from the BB when it was folded to me was an easy one. He had raises my 50kbb to 110k, and I 3bet to 285k. Lee shoves it all in after a short time of deliberation. It was a pretty trivial call at this point but I took my time just to make sure I didn’t pick up anything. I finally decided to call. Lee showed 44. It held up on all streets.

After I lost, the experience was a little surreal. I felt like I had played really well so whether I won or lost the all in became totally irrelevant to me. Everyday I use the logic that I can’t control the results so I should just be happy when I play well, but it rarely manifests itself completely. It didn’t in the KK hand. But when I got it all in with AJs, it did, and I think everyone saw that in me. I was happy because I played exceptionally, the result truly didn’t matter. Nicolas Levi, a very good french pro to my right, told me the nicest thing I think anyone has ever said to me. “I told Roland that I knew it would be the best for us if you lost the all in, but I didn’t want you to.” I turned to James Bord, the coolest guy I’ve ever met at a poker table, and shook his hand. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that expression he had on his face on anyone ever before. His smile and head nod seemed to say he was honored that he got to play with me at the poker table. After I exited the table the ESPN reporter, who was about to interview me, started tearing. I asked her with a big smile “Why are you crying? Don’t be sad there is no reason to be sad .” She replied. “I don’t know… I mean some people come over here all upset but you seem genuinely happy.” I know this whole paragraph may come off as incredibly self centered but I don’t mean it to be, it’s just honestly what happened.

Anyways, I had a great time and felt like I learned a ton from my experience. I have the EPT London ME left to play, and then I go back home. And you never know. Luck is independent, maybe the result can be even better there.

So if you’ve been watching the Stars lobby recently you may have seen me playing some 5k sngs. Recently, a new player name NU Gatsby came onto the sng scene out of seemingly nowhere, and started sitting at the 5k non-turbos playing basically anybody. I decided to take a shot at him with Danny taking half my action.

It turned out that even though his play was unorthodox and he seemed like a big fish initially, after about 5 or so games I started to realize he wasn’t really all that bad. He was weak late-game but because of the structure of the non turbo a lot of times we never got there I actually learned a lot from playing him and have incorporated a little of what he does into my own game. I ended up getting rocked for 8 buyins in the first 15 games or so, and although he was an ok player I still felt like i was getting the best of him.

By the tenth game I had a great feel for him, and at this point I think we’ve played 20 games and I’m down 4 buyins. Hopefully he’ll sit more because if he does I think I have a really great edge.

Another player sitting at the 5k’s recently was Joe Cada. I played him for about 15 sngs and was up a buyin. He actually played much better than I expected, and honestly he got the best of me in those 15 games. I was in an impatient mood which plays into his strengths and he actually made a couple good big calls. Besides that he just ran hot, and when someone runs hot against you what ends up happening is 1) you never seen what they have 2) they have a sense of what you had because you folded and because of this 3) they have a huge advantage. I’m sure he’ll sit again and hopefully I can take what I learned against him the other night and beat him down.

Now let’s talk about SNE, when I first started this blog, I wanted Danny and I to be the first twins ever to be SNE. However, since I’ve been behind one SNE ever since I started in April, I would have to play exclusively on Pokerstars to achieve it. The fact of the matter is getting SNE as opposed to playing normally, I would only get the equivalent of about a 1% roi increase in sngs. But playing on ftp and being able to game select better, would give me a 3-5% increase in roi. And furthermore, the new superturbos on ftp are so fishy that it would be dumb to pass up playing them.

But I haven’t exactly given up on SNE. There are a couple of factors that may inspire me to make a run at SNE. Pokerstars will have dealt it’s 50 billionth hand in a few weeks and it’s possible that they have a double vpp week during this time. If this happens I could knock down 200k vpp or even more in that week, putting me close to pace. Or, if Joe Cada, NU Gatsby, or another player I think I have an edge on decides to sit at 5k’s for a while, I may be able to make a big vpp run. If both these happen, then it’s probable that I get SNE.

For now, I’m grinding pretty hard on both Stars and FTP, and I’ll continue to do so.

I declared this month SNG month. I certainly took the most risk I have ever taken playing SNGs, but it didn’t bode particularly well for me. I played in a lot of $5600 games where I played either new players who played odd but were actually pretty good at poker. I still felt like I had an edge in those games but the results didn’t show.

My first few years of poker I focused purely on 6 max texas hold’em and heads up cash. These past two year I branched out in to CAP games (for those not familiar with Full Tilt these games are where no matter your stacksize, 30bbs is all in) and heads up SNG’s. With both, I am decent winner. I just started playing some of the 20-50bb games and seeing if they may be worth looking into. I realize that most of the top players seem to prefer 100bb poker, not many innovative thinkers left for the short buy in games.

That theory certainly held true. I have lost a small amount playing the 5/10 game the past week but overall I see a weak overall strategy from many of the regs and a lot of fish too. I’m going to try to put in a 100k hands over the next 30 days at the games and seeing what kind of winnings I can put up. Hopefully they’ll be pretty good of the get go, and I’ll have a new good game to choose from.

I suppose that catching bluffs is the sexiest move in poker. It can also be the stupidest when you are wrong, which I am a lot. The problem is that being good at catching bluffs isn’t about making the biggest calls, it is about folding when you have the worst hand and calling when you have the best hand. If your a total station your bound to catch a bluff, but your not going to make a lot of money.

When deciding to make a hero call or not, I use three factors: Possibilities, Logic, and Emotions.

1. Possibilities: Is there actually a hand he could have gotten to this point, where he is betting or raising, that is not a nut hand? For example, you are OOP in a 3bet pot (heads up) and cbet a K72 rainbow board. Your opponent calls. Turn comes a 3. You check and he bets. In this situation, the only way your opponent is bluffing is if he decided to call the flop with a total air hand with the intention to take the pot down on the turn or river,  or if he decided to turn his hand into a bluff. Both are unlikely scenarios. On the other hand, change the board to T95 two spades and you have a much different story. Now there are many hands he could call the flop with, KQ KJ QJ 87 to name a few, that would call on the flop.

2. Logic: Is there logic present that he could use that would make him decide to bluff? And is that logic more compelling or evident than the logic not to bluff? Another example, say you have called a open OOP, again heads up. The flop comes J86. You check, he cbets, and you call. The turn comes a King. You check and he bets. Because there are very few hands in your range that improve with the turn king, and some hands in his that a king improves, this card makes logical sense for him to bluff on (among many, many other reasons). On the other hand, in the same situation if the flop comes AT8 rainbow and the turn comes a T, the only logic I could see for him to use to make him decide to bluff is that he has a good draw, something that isn’t plentiful in his wide range, or that he feels I would lead the turn if I spiked trip tens, or maybe that I would fold an Ace, weak draw, or an 8 to a turn bet. Even though the logic is present, I would tend to not make a hero call in this spot because this logic is not as compelling as the logic that the turn card is good for my range and nearly irrelevant to his.

3. Emotions: Would his likely emotions sway him to bluff? This may seem hard to figure out, but it is something that can be grasped. Winning, for example, could make someone feel confident, disregard money more, and cause them to decide to bluff. Emotions can often be outweighed by strong logic. I may feel like total shit after I lose 4 buy ins in 5 minutes but that probably won’t cause me to bet that Ten turn on the AT8 board if I’m in position. It may however cause me to bluff when my logic is foggy. Fourbetting preflop is a great example. Most people do not have set rules on what hands they will 4bet as a bluff. You could 4bet bluff with J4s and it could very well be a good bluff. The logic is unclear. 4betting as a bluff at any given time vs most players could be good. So if you are feeling like someone is 3betting you constantly, you have lost a lot of money, and you haven’t fourbet in awhile, 93s looks as good of a candidate as any.

Sometimes, using these factors I can be absolutely sure with what seems like near 100% certainty that my opponent is bluffing. The funny thing in poker that much of the time you only have to be 30% sure to make a call correctly. And we are faced with this problem constantly in poker, because 99% of the time we don’t have the type of hand we are willing to get all in. Hopefully, this post will help turn this problem into a good situation.

Over my trip to Washington I managed to have a day where I play 60 SNGs. Because this was basically all high stakes action, I made around 15,000 VPPs. With some rudimentry math, I calculated that these amount of VPPs equated to about $1500 in rakeback. Playing 364 days a year, thats over $500,000 in rakeback alone. Not too shabby considering I only played about 4 hours.

Max has been playing exclusively SNGs recently so we’ve been bouncing a lot of idea off each other. It’s been surprising how much I have learned that past 2 months regarding optimal play in them. There are a lot of major changes I made in my game that I think are going to pay big dividends. I don’t want to say what they are, but I will say the changes regard how playing with different stack sizes causes optimal play to vary radically.

I got back from DC today after packing up everything I left at my old house into my car and driving 16 hours over the past 2 days. For once in the past 3 months, I will be in the same city for more than a month at a time.

Time to put in a lot of volume.

Sorry I haven’t updated in a while, I’ve been playing a lot with little success in the WSOP. My saddest moment was building a decent stack in the 10k plh last sunday, then getting it in pre at 2:30 am with KK against AA from the loosest, worst player i’ve seen in a while. That being said, I still almost folded because of how he was after he shoved. Oh well, I can’t complain I’ve still done very well overall.

Now, concerning the title of my post. I played in the 10k Headsup holdem about a week and a half ago, a tournament I was very excited for because the structure is advantageous for someone who knows how to play hu cash and hu sngs. So I’m waiting at my table a few minutes before the tournament starts when, lo and behold, Tom Dwan sits down at the seat across from me. With the exception of Phil Ivey, this may have been the worst possible draw I could have had. But I was excited at the opportunity to play and all-in-all I felt that I held my own pretty well. I had one big bluff that I was proud of:

Durrr was actually playing pretty nitty, I had been winning many pots and I had got him down to 20k when we started at 30k. He had checked behind 6/7 flops that he raised pre, so I felt I needed to incorporate some sort of leading range. A few hands before, I lead KJ after calling pre on a 28T flop and he called, I shut down and we checked it down. I showed my KJ. Now he raises pre about 22k deep with 300/600 blinds and I call with a6o. Flop comes 953 two tone. Given that I had just showed air when leading, I felt he wouldn’t think I’d lead air again. I decided right then to just triple barrel lead. I lead flop, he called. Turn was a J, I lead again, he calls. River is a J and fds miss. This I thought was a great card for me, because although I didn’t think he’d out me on a bluff, he did see me have overs when I lead before so it could be in the back of his mind. I shoved for about 18k in a 12k pot and he folded relatively fast. He told me later he had 9x, which is definitely a big fold.

Then came one of the most interesting hands I have ever been involved in. Several hands later he has about 18k or so, same blind level. He raises and I call with JT. Flop comes Aj7 two tone. Now he had been cbetting with a higher frequency then usual lately so I suspected he would actually triple barrel a lot. He cbets and I call. Turn is a 6 blank. I check and he checks to my surprise. The river is an 8 of hearts completing the flush. Now I check thinking he’ll probably just cback with a hand similar to mine. There’s about 7k-8k in the pot and he shoves for about 15-16k! My first thoughts are this.

1) I was pretty sure he’d triple barrel a flush draw
2) He doesn’t know this, he could think that he can rep a flush.
3) It looks like I have exactly what I have and its hard to believe he thinks ill call with it.
4) I have the Th which blocks some of his nut hands.

Now against calling:
1) He had been playing nitty the whole time and this is probably because of his image from TV.
2) He has overbet a lot on TV, he probably assumes i’m a person who has seen this and will want to call.
3) I thought he’d triple barrel bluff his air so how does he have air.

But I felt the former arguments were stronger. I said “call.” If I lost, I expected to see T9 or 88, maybe a flush. Durrr says “I have an Ace” and flips over A2.

On the rail Danny, who’s watching the match, says, “Oh. My. God.”

I’ll admit it, I basically got owned. I eventually lost to Durrr, but even disregarding that hand, I have to say I was really impressed. His demeanor at the poker table is almost perfect. All he did was sit up straight and stare at me as I made every decision, even when he was thinking of what he was about to bet he looked at me, only pausing briefly to smoothly toss a carefully constructed bet into the pot. He has just become a very good live poker player. Gl to you Durrr, I’m cheering for you to win a bracelet.

Max and I are in the HU WSOP tournament today. $10,000 buy in. My guess is if the tournament is a full 256 players, first prize is going to be around 550k…. I’ll settle for that . Max and I are hoping to be heads up at the final table, although it would take an absurd stroke of luck both bracket wise and winning wise.

The structure is very favorable to us because of our experience with both HU cash and HU SNGs. In our matches, we start with 120bbs and the blind levels go up every 20 minutes. I feel like at basically any blind level I am going to have a significant edge on whoever I’m playing. Versus a guy with HU SNG experience, I will be very good against him deep. SNG players do not tend to polarize enough and make big enough folds when they are deep. On the flip side, if I play someone who is better than me deep, I still feel like I’ll have a big edge late game. In late game the math is not intuitive at all. Good cash game players will have no idea what they should be reraising and what they should be calling reraises with 25bbs or less.

The tournament starts at 5 PT so feel free to rail! Updates to come tomorrow.