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Sunday Update
Monday, May 30, 2005 I'm writing from Concordville, PA following the second of my two Memorial Day weekend weddings (they were both quite nice, thank you). I should get back to playing a little poker this week, but honestly I won't really get in gear until I leave for the World Series of Poker next Tuesday (6/7). Until then, I still have a writing project to work on, a Book Expo to attend, and another wedding to travel to. Such is life. This week I was mostly writing before I started travelling, so as predicted I've fallen way behind on the Chris bet--$8,183 behind to be exact. For those who don't read Chris's blog, that means I won $672 in the Party $30-$60 games this last week. While I'm getting crushed in the bet, I'm still happy I made it. The fact is, I played about 1,800 hands in those games last week, and that's probably 1,000 more hands than I would've played without the bet. As far as I'm concerned, the bet has paid for itself already. Off to sleep--another drive ahead of me tomorrow. Gavin Friday, May 27, 2005 I'm in Hagerstown, MD for a wedding and I only have a quick second to blog, but I wanted to give a shout out to my friend Gavin Smith, who just won the first event of WPT Season Four at the Mirage. Gooooooooo Gavin!!!!!!!!!!! The Bet Monday, May 23, 2005 I played only the PokerStars $100 rebuy tournament and the Ultimate Bet tournament yesterday. I missed the usual afternoon trio of Stars, Party, and Dise because I was attending a miserable Mets-Yankees game. I went 0-for-2 in the events I did play. The news is that Chris and I have made our bet--the first guy to take $100,000 out of the $30-$60 games on Party wins a cool hundred bucks. I have no illusions about winning this bet. Chris plays more tables at a time than I do, and will have more opportunity to log hours than I will (I have three weddings to attend and about 10,000 words still to write for the Lindgren book over the next two weeks). I made the bet anyway to motivate myself to play more of those Party games. You'd think the $100,000 would be motivation enough, but strangely that's not how it works. The bet already appears to have been effective. I played at least an hour longer last night than I normally would have, and I'm thinking more about choosing the right game and maximizing my dollars per hour by multitabling. In short, I'm doing the things that professional (online) poker players should be doing all the time. For some reason, I need a wager to make this happen. I'm still trailing by about $3,000 in the early-going, but as I said this was never about winning the bet. It's about trying to win, which (I hope) will pay for the bet many times over. I got some interesting comments on the two $30-$60 hands I posted. In fact, I got eight responses analyzing the plays. In hand one, five of the eight respondents disliked at least part of the small blind's play, and four of the eight respondents disliked at least part of the big blind's play. In my view, the only play I really don't like here is the small blind's open-limp with T5o. That's not a hand you want to play out-of-position, and if you do play it you definitely want to raise. His failure to raise-or-fold preflop ended up costing him a lot of bets on this hand. Here are some of the other criticisms, and why I disagree with them: "The small blind shouldn't have check-raised the turn." The small blind could have a lot of outs in this pot, and he could get a better hand to fold. Betting out or check-raising this turn card are both fine choices. Doing anything else is almost certainly a mistake. "These guys were just too reckless. They didn't have anything!" Welcome to poker. It's not about having a big hand, it's about having a better hand than the other guy, or getting the other guy to fold. That often means putting a bunch of money in without much of a hand. "The big blind shouldn't call on the flop." The small blind, as many guessed, had over-aggressive tendencies. The big blind, therefore, does not put him on an ace. So, getting 3-1 on his money with the possible best hand and with position, he decides to call. I think folding here is reasonable, but I think calling was better against this particular opponent. "The big blind should raise the river rather than call." I don't see the small blind folding any pair to the big blind's raise. So the question is, are there any better hands the small blind will fold to the big blind's raise? Most kings the small blind would've raised preflop. Maybe he limps with like K5, K4, K2. Similarly, about the only better queen he could have is Q7. These are the only better hands he could have that he might fold, and who knows, he might not even fold them. On the other hand, if the small blind has a big hand he's going to three bet, and now the big blind has lost two bets instead of one. Worse, the three-bet might even be a bluff-reraise that costs the big blind the whole pot. I think calling the river is much better than raising. "The big blind should fold the river rather than call." The small blind's play is very consistent with exactly one medium-sized heart. Getting 7-1 on his money, I think calling is clearly better than folding here for the big blind. In hand two, seven of the eight respondents disliked UTG's play, while two of the eight respondents disliked UTG+1's play. I got adjectives like "fishy," "horrible," and "card chaser" to describe UTG. Someone said UTG probably gave back the money he won fairly quickly. In fact he didn't, and ended up winning 55 big bets on that table. I don't really dislike any of the plays in this hand. The only one that I even consider questionable is UTG's open-raise. And since that's the play most people objected to, I'll address it first. There is $135 in the pot. It costs UTG $60 to raise. There are lots of good things that can happen after he raises. Someone with two big cards can isolate and UTG can end up getting 2.5-1 on his money as a 3-2 dog. He could end-up heads-up with one of the posters, getting almost 3-1 on his money against an only-slightly-better-than-random hand. And then there are a lot of things that can happen that are pretty close to EV neutral (e.g., two or three posters call). And of course, bad things could happen. He could run into an overpair, or it could come back to him four bets. Overall, I think UTG's raise is close to zero EV. But if he gets to showdown the hand and the other players think he's a "horrible" "fish," it's got to be a plus-EV play in the long run. I personally have a rule (somewhat borrowed from my friend Jerrod). Anytime a play is close to zero EV, I choose the more aggressive route to build my image. Also, I would rather make every tiny plus-EV play in the book and risk throwing in some minus-EV plays, than avoid every minus-EV play at the expense of some plus-EV plays. I think the plus-EV plays become even more plus-EV when people have seen you make minus-EV plays. Other criticisms: "UTG shouldn't check-call the flop." He's getting 13.5-1, he has a three-straight and possibly two live cards, and he's closing the action. Easy call. "UTG shouldn't check-raise the turn." UTG has to take the aggressive action now that he's picked up an actual semibluff. Many players would lay down AQ, KQ, AK, or even a small pair to that check-raise. Add that equity to the open-ender equity, and it's an easy check-raise. "UTG should've folded to the preflop reraise." Anyone who would fold to the preflop reraise needs immediate lessons in Limit Hold 'Em. You just don't fold getting 11.5-1 preflop when you can close the action, with any hand you've voluntarily put money in with. If you fold here, your raises will get zero respect the rest of the session. "UTG+1 shouldn't have reraised preflop." Again, you need Limit Hold 'em lessons if you think this. UTG+1 knows UTG doesn't need much of a hand to raise three posters. Pocket eights is plenty to isolate with here, creating a bunch of dead money with the probable best hand. Doing anything other than reraising preflop in his spot would've been a big mistake. So that's my analysis. In case anyone hasn't guessed, I won both those hands. :) Party 30-60 Friday, May 20, 2005 Well, it looks as though Chris and I are going to make our bet after all, but it's going to start at some later, as yet unspecified date. Chris just moved into his new apartment and doesn't have internet yet, so we're starting from the time he gets hooked up. Meanwhile, I've almost caught up to his fast start (woo hoo!). Here are two hands from the Party 30-60 games. Please evaluate the play of both players by sending email to jacksup@mattmatros.com. Hand 1: Four players fold, leaving only the two blinds. The small blind calls, the big blind checks. The flop comes Ac 9h 3h. SB bets, BB calls. Turn is 8h. SB checks. BB bets. SB raises. BB calls. River is 6d. SB bets. BB calls. SB shows Th5s. BB wins...with Qh4d. Hand 2: Nine-handed table. The cutoff, the cutoff + 1, and the cutoff + 2 ALL post their $30 big blinds. UTG raises. UTG+1 reraises. Next player folds. First poster calls. Other two posters muck, as do the button and the blinds. UTG calls. Flop comes Js Jc 7h. UTG checks. UTG+1 bets. Poster folds. UTG calls. Turn is 5s. UTG checks. UTG+1 bets. UTG raises. UTG+1 calls. River is 9h. UTG bets, UTG+1 calls. UTG shows 8c6h for a straight. UTG+1 loses with 88. Again, tell me what you think of these plays, and I'll post my thoughts on them soon after. The State of Poker Monday, May 16, 2005 Played the Stars, Party, and Dise tournaments yesterday, and never had above my starting stack in any of them. Can anybody guess the odds of that? I'll ask some people who know these things and then report back. So the big news in online poker is that Party recently opened up their 30-60 games. Whereas before there were only a handful of 30-60 games going at any given time, now there are as many as is needed to accomodate their player base. This is huge! The games are almost as good as the 15-30 games, meaning the profit almost doubles. To motivate myself to play the appropriate number of hours in these games, I wanted to bet Chris 100 bucks on who would win $100,000 in that game first. He wouldn't do it, claiming the $100,000 should be motivation enough (I guess that makes sense). It turns out I'm glad we didn't bet, because he's off to a huge start and I've only logged a few hours. Bet or no bet, I'm looking forward to a profitable few months of online poker, if not more. The question is, will these games dry up as the 15-30 players move up in limits and possibly go broke faster? Time will tell. A Ridiculous Day of Poker Wednesday, May 11, 2005 They say you can't complain about a freeroll, and I agree. But here's a brief recap of my Mirage PPT experience today. The tournament started an hour late. I had my stack up to 14,000 after 90 minutes when they announced we would be going on dinner break. It was 2:30 in the afternoon. OK, whatever. I went back to my room for an hour. When we started playing again, I ran AK into KK and was down to 7,000. I got no hands and no opportunities for three hours when I finally found AK...and ran into AA. End of tournament. On the bright side I made it to level five, the highest level I'd ever seen in a PPT event! Not sure what my next major tournament will be. I still may play the New Orleans WSOP Circuit event, but failing that, it looks like the real WSOP is on deck. Wow! I hope it's fun and not too much of a logistical nightmare. If you've sent me an email recently, I'll respond soon. I promise. I've been swamped with email lately, but I'm going to try my best to clean out my Inbox in the next two days. Charity Monday, May 09, 2005 On Saturday I played a charity tournament. I'd never played a charity tournament before, but I want to play as many as possible in the future. It's basically a win-win, because even if I lose I know the money went to a good cause. Playing poker feels so much more justifiable in this context. I finished ninth (out of 100) or so in the event, which won me free lunch with Daniel Negreanu. I redonated that prize, as I figured if I want to have lunch with Daniel at some point I can probably arrange it. My friend Ken won the tournament, and a seat in next year's PokerStars Carribbean Adventure. It was funny the way it went down. With four players left, the small-blind opened all-in for 48k. Ken had posted 10k in the big blind and looked down at A7o. He mucked. Then he asked me if I would've called and I said, "instantly." He said, "what hand am I favorite over?" and I said, "queen-four." When it got down to heads-up, Ken's opponent moved all-in for 85k. Ken had posted the 20k big blind and looked down at A7s. Ken called. The other guy had Q6o. Ken's hand held. Congrats Ken! I was at my parents' house for Mother's Day yesterday, so I didn't play the Sunday tournaments. Next week I'll be back. But today I'm flying to Vegas to play the Mirage PPT that starts tomorrow. I'm hoping to make the second day in one of these PPTs at some point. Higher Friday, May 06, 2005 I've been back to playing online this week, and I've found myself unable to open up four windows of the 15-30 game on Party and sit there grinding it out in those phenomeally good games. I'm sure I'll be back there, and probably even sooner rather than later. But for now, I've been trying out some of the higher limit games--specifically the 100-200 game on Stars and, on the advice of Chris, the 50-100 and 80-160 games on UltimateBet. Wow, definitely a different feel from the Party 15-fest. In these bigger games, the idea is to target one or two fish and contend with the good players (because there actually are good players in these games!) as that becomes necessary. It's poker that requires thought! Who knew! It's also a lot more fun. Lose eight thousand here, win eight thousand there--now I'm gambling! Again, I don't see myself moving to these games full-time, as I can probably make just as much money, if not more, with less risk in the Party games. But I find it enjoyable to switch things up every now and then. The best hand so far: $80-$160 game on UB, pretty full table. Decent player opens in early position. The biggest fish in the game three-bets him from middle position. Phil Hellmuth caps it from the small blind. I'm in the big blind and happily call with my AA. The other two players call as well. Flop comes 963 rainbow. Phil bets, I raise. Initial raiser folds. Fish calls. Phil three-bets, I cap, fish calls, Phil calls. Turn is a four. Phil bets. I raise. Fish three-bets. Phil calls. I call. River is some blank. Check, check, fish bets. Phil calls, I call. Fish has 5h2h to scoop it (Phil has TT). Yup, $80-$160. Best to keep at it for a little while. Another Sunday Monday, May 02, 2005 Sorry for the infrequent updates. I haven't played much poker lately, as I spent most of the week working on a writing project (I'm co-writing/ghostwriting Erick Lindgren's soon-to-be-released No Limit Hold 'Em strategy book), and I was in Washington D.C. this weekend visiting friends and watching the Mets (mostly) lose to the Nationals. But yesterday was Sunday and that means online poker! Except I didn't play online this weekend. Instead I played in a 25-person home game satellite to the WSOP, featuring a bunch of the same guys I played with back when I lived in the D.C. area. I came in second, which netted me about six hundred bucks. I had a 2-1 chip lead heads-up, but my opponent--Real Estate Larry--is very loose and very aggressive and that's always going to pose a problem. Oh well, I got very lucky just to finish second, and the winner of this satellite had to give ten percent of his WSOP main event action to everyone else from the satellite, so from my standpoint first place money in this event was significantly reduced. So I didn't win, but I still have 100 percent of myself in the WSOP. That can't be such a bad thing. Finally, I'd like to welcome any new readers who found this site through Jackpot Jay's article on espn.com. Hope you're enjoying mattmatros.com!  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