Sit 'n' go ...

Greetings from France!

I have decided that the "significant accident" in my previous entry was perhaps not quite so significant after all. I could have bet less than going all in, something like $50 or so to deny the opponent the right odds to continue with, for instance, a straight draw, then going all in on the turn anyway ... but mostly I think this was just a "bad beat" and one should not dwell on them, irritating though they are.

I have been playing more $200NL at 6-max tables with small profits but nothing much else to report. I am wondering whether it's a good idea to change tables after every half-hour or so, unless I particuarly like the opponents, in an attempt to make it harder for them to "work out my style". There's certainly no shortage of 6-max tables. I've also been re-raising pre-flop a little bit more, in late position (on the button) with mostly good effects.

Late last night I played in two $16 sit 'n' go's, and won both of them ...

I've also played in a couple of those bigger 180-player (20-table) events, but I think single-table sit 'n' go's are much more suitable for my purposes. The variance is obviously going to be far lower. Those bigger events take about 3 - 4 hours and only 10% of the players are in the prize money (and the prize-money for 10th to 18th places is only twice the entry-fee anyway, so only 5% of the players actually win anything worth having). An ordinary sit 'n' go takes 30 to 70 minutes and 33% of the players are in the prize-money, so one's pattern of results will obviously be far more consistent for the hours put in. I said originally that I would play 100 of the $10 sit 'n' go's and then review the results, but I've been making steady profits from them and have moved up to the $16 games now, which are a little faster-moving as well (they are what's called "turbo tables" at PokerStars, so you get in a bit more play for your money, overall.)

In Paris now for the weekend, and will be home (and back at work!) early on Monday morning ...

Significant Accident (1)

I had my first really expensive accident in a game late last night, I was perhaps too tired to be playing anyway and don't really know whether I did anything too blonde. I have asked the "2 Plus 2" guys in this thread. Some of them clearly know what they're talking about although, as in other forums, the confident- and fluent-sounding ones by no means always agree! Still, it will be interesting to see whether they all tell me more or less the same thing. In that forum, they don't like you to give the result of the hand when requesting advice, so nobody can subconsciously be influenced by the outcome, so I didn't, but I can give it here: I went all in for the remainder of my $200 table-capital and was called by someone who had flopped a higher set than mine. He had pocket 9's, in other words, which I did not expect at all (though obviously I did ask myself, because that's the only possible hand that can beat mine at that point). I thought/hoped he had either AK or an overpair - maybe 10's or J's with which he had not himself originally raised, but had called a pre-flop raise, or even Aces which he had been slowplaying, as some people will). A setback indeed, though I am still a fraction ahead there overall ...

Another 800 hands

Greetings from Hydra!

Well, since my last update, thanks partly to the availability of the Hydranet, a WiFi network covering the residential area of the island, I have played between 6 and 7 hours at PokerStars 6-max tables, in the NLHE games with $1/$2 blinds (these are known as "$200NL" because the buy-in to sit at the table is $200). This represented 800 hands, give or take, and my bankroll is unchanged, more or less: I have paid in $1,820 ($340 to start and $1,480 later to bring it up to $2,000) and remain on just a fraction over $2,000.

I hope I am playing in the right games to get useful experience without paying a fortune for it. The standard of play is variable, but overall quite a lot better than I expected. I am told that some serious players sometimes play $200NL by way of "light relief" and that the standard is considerably higher than in an equivalently-staked live game; so I can't complain. I am playing at only one table, to try to watch the game fairly closely.

A slight change of plan ...

Greetings from Greece!

A valued and respected online friend of mine who plays this game professionally and very successfully has very kindly been giving me a lot of advice over the last couple of days.

My original $340 deposit has gradually crept up to just over $500 now, from bits of profit in low-stake NL games (I am fairly regularly turning a $10 table-stake into $15 against weak opponents but not really learning anything much from it) and quite a few low-stake sit 'n' go wins and second places (I do enjoy those). But sometimes friends tell you what you need to hear, which in this instance was that I should be learning the game by playing in $1/$2 ($200 buy-in) 6-max NL games (6 players at the table instead of 9/10 - slightly more aggressive games, and more educational). My own limited experience of watching had suggested that this is the way to learn the game, anyway. So, for the moment, my sit 'n' go plans may go on the back burner, much though I enjoy them, because you should not do too many different things at once. I will deposit another $1,500 to have ten buy-ins available for the $1/$2 NL games (yes, I know you should really have more like 20-30 buy-ins in your account, but I can attend to that later if needed, and to be honest I don't mind paying to learn anyway, and can afford to).

Also to be attended to: re-read one of Sklansky's books and (at least) the first volume of "Harrington on Cash Games".

I have read the SAGE system mentioned down below, and will write about it shortly, but probably postpone the rest of my study of Collin Moshman's sit 'n' go book for the moment. I need to learn this game properly. But not necessarily this week, because I'm on holiday anyway. Further updates follow ...

Poker Tip of the Day ...

In the early, low-blind stages of a sit 'n' go (typically the first three levels), to fold some hands you should play is, overall, a very small mistake; but to play some hands you should fold is, overall, a huge mistake and certainly the difference between being an overall winner and an overall loser. I have learned this from some websites, from the "2 + 2 Forum" and from Collin Moshman's book.

Play continues. I am still in profit (slightly) ...

At PokerStars, they also have 180-player (20 tables) multi-table sit 'n' go's, available at 4$ (+$0.40) and $10 (+$1) entry-fees, with prizes down to 18th place (last two tables), and with over 100,000 players online there, they fill up pretty quickly, too. Whether or not they're worth playing in I have no idea, but they look like great fun. To be investigated!

PokerStars again ...

I really like this site very much indeed, so far. My only two reservations about it are ...

(i) The sit 'n' go's have only 9 players rather than the more usual 10, which makes the prizes slightly less (though arguably it should also be slightly easier to win one?)

(ii) From my limited experiences there, I do think the standard of play is possibly rather higher than elsewhere (which, as observed below, has both advantages and disadvantages)

I have played in 3 sit 'n' go's there today, coming 6th, 4th and 1st, so I'm a fraction ahead at the moment ...

A huge site: late last night there were over 100,000 players online there ...

PokerStars

So ... I have become a member of PokerStars and am so far pretty impressed with it. The software is really the best poker-room interface I've ever seen, and well worth playing around with (options/customisation), all very nice. I'm going to play $10 sit 'n' go's there (some seem to cost $11 and others $12, have not yet worked out why and/or what the difference is). The prize-money is about 10% smaller than at other sites, because they have 9 players rather than the usual 10.

In accordance with "received wisdom" I have paid in about $340 (30 entry-fees), and I will play through that once (i.e. play in 30 of them) and see how I do. This will take me longer than it normally would, because I'm going to London today to see my father, and then on Monday to Greece. Normally, when I'm working, I will be able to have one event running almost all the time, I think (but certainly not two or more at the same time as many people do), so from September onwards will get a lot more play in. But in Greece it will perhaps be too hot and sunny for Baltic blondes to be out much during the day anyway, so I will get some play in anyway ...

No blood spilled yet: so far, I have played limit (1$/2$) and no-limit (50c/1$ blinds) just for about half an hour each, to get a feel for the virtual tables, and am level.

Selections ...

It's all about selectivity, one way and another, isn't it? Selecting the hands with which you'll call before the flop; selecting what sort of game you want to play; selecting your table; and, for me at the moment, selecting at which online poker room(s) to play. I think there are people who lose consistently who might win equally consistently in different games, and I certainly want to avoid becoming one of them.

From the general consensus of opinion among reviewers and players, it seems that Bodog Poker and Pacific Poker both have plenty of fairly loose games of a not-particularly-high standard in which it's not too difficult to win some money. As against that, at least two people who have withdrawn money from Bodog recently by cheque (why would you want to withdraw by cheque?) have apparently reported that the cheques didn't clear, which is about as potentially alarming a thing as you can hear, to me. And I've also read a couple of pretty hair-raising stories casting some real aspersions about the integrity of the support staff and/or management of Pacific Poker. Pacific is owned by a casino company, and I think these poker rooms, perhaps partly because of the way they promote themselves online, probably attract more than their share of gamblers, which might make them easier places for a patient, disciplined player to win some money?

I have been offered an almost unbelievably complicated rakeback/incentive deal at Betfred Poker by one of its affiliates (rakeback deals come through affiliates, not through the sites themselves). I'm really struggling to predict its longer-term significance, but my guess is that for a very serious player it might work out at about 45% rakeback and in my case it might work out at about 25% - 30%. But I think it will still be available next month or the month after anyway, so I'm not feeling like jumping at it.

I'm going to try Poker Stars, I've decided. It's the biggest poker site in the world, clearly one of the best, the availability of games is second to none, and the software is really very nice. The only negatives about it that I've managed to discover (and I've done a lot of research) are (i) that they don't give rakeback and their sign-up bonus is pretty small (in the long run, the size of the sign-up bonus is irrelevant, though rakeback certainly isn't) and (ii) that it's not the easiest place to win money, because the standard's a little bit higher than most (but in a way, that might not be such a bad thing, really, because I need decent experience too, and at the stakes I'll be playing I hope that won't really be too significant anyway). So I'm going to pay my few hundred Lati in there, and we'll see what happens over the next month or two.

I'm also reading the SAGE system, by Lee H. Jones and Collin Moshman's sit 'n' go book (more about these soon), both of which I think will save me a lot of money in the long run ...

Poker tip of the day ...

I had one of my luckiest hands ever today, and in a no-limit money game (25c/50c blinds, buy-in 50 Euros), not "wasted" in a sit 'n' go. I had 64o in the big blind, and as nobody raised pre-flop I got to see the flop with it, which was 5 3 2 rainbow. Not a bad situation. Being out of position, I put in a 1 Euro bet after the flop anyway (that's quite a big bet, in that game!). The player on my left, who later turned out to have called pre-flop with 5 5, raised all-in, and to my amazement someone to my right, who turned out to have been slow-playing Aces, called. Still nothing guaranteed, of course, but in the event the turn and river were innocent and I scooped a huge pot, won just under 100 Euros in one hand, my biggest pot ever by a long way - feeling pretty sorry for the player with the pocket 5's. (I don't think I would have gone all in with them, to be honest, not with someone else betting in front of me, might pay to take it more slowly?). But as you might guess, it was the guy with the Aces - the worst of the three hands - whose crisp German comments in the chat window looked salt and vinegar flavoured. Poker tip for the day (like all of them, meant as a note to myself): don't slow-play Aces! ...

(If anyone wondered, the horse I mentioned last night was a non-runner.)

Further preliminary thoughts ...

Looking at it superficially, for the reasons mentioned in this post, I hope that online poker ought to be a potential source of income for me. These are very preliminary observations, but at the moment it seems that the main problems/issues are ...

(i) Clearly I need (at least) a few hundred hours' more experience.

(ii) The standard deviations (or "variance" as poker players seem to call it) are very high, which is clearly very many people's undoing: I have been reading about it in this excellent book by Mason Malmuth. Specifically, the variance is certainly considerably higher, and much more complicated to analyse statistically, than has been so for other things I have done.

(iii) I suspect that low-stakes playing experience is of only limited value to the higher stake games to which I would obviously need to graduate to make this enterprise worthwhile. In particular, there seems to be a correlation between winning potential and high variance. No-limit games clearly offer greater potential than limit ones. Possibly my original idea of playing sit 'n' go's will be the working compromise solution to this issue ...

I played tonight in a 60-player multi-table tournament, with rebuys (available until the first break - but I did not rebuy) and an optional add-on (which I took) at the first break. There were prizes for nine places, and the prize-fund grew massively, presumably from all the rebuys and double-rebuys made during the first session. It was going well until the last table, where I moved all-in with pocket 9's against one raiser who called, for reasons best known to himself, with 84 offsuit (84o), which I doubt very much whether they do in the higher-stake games, and then promptly knocked me out with two pairs on the turn and river. So I managed only 7th place, admittedly for a decent prize in relation to my 9 Euro outlay including the add-on. Still, I also had my share of good luck earlier on, to have got that far, I suppose. It's not my intention to play many of these, though: too time-consuming ...

Meanwhile, if the going gets any worse at Salisbury, I might just have a decent, each-way, long-shot bet on Raffish in the 5.20 later today, at a hoped-for big price: superficially a stinker, but a handicap topweight who has once won over a similar distance on heavy going under the same jockey, a 5-lb claimer. I'd like to see "soft-to-heavy" at least, for this bet; so we'll see ...

Learning a bit ...

Well, I have been reading this very interesting thread and am fascinated by - among other things - the author's comments about limit and no-limit games. I had also not quite realised the significance of rakeback, and how much money it can add up to over the year, which I have been working out since reading the thread. Fortunately I have not started opening additional accounts and have probably learned this one in time. He says that to play in limit games, you need only about 200 big bets in your account, which means, in theory, that with only $800 or so start-up, I could certainly play some $2/$4 games, but it's been a while since I played limit HE (and then only in $1/$2 games), and I used to find it pretty irritating the way premium hands like AA and KK would usually be outdrawn by the river, and frustrating not to be able to reduce the number of opponents with a big raise: Aces play pretty well against one or two opponents, but pretty badly against a full, undisciplined table of the type I have so often seen in these limit games ...

For NLHE games, on the other hand, he says you need 20 buy-ins in your account (I have seen many others say 30, and would want to err on that side, in which case the same $800 would cover $25NL tables (blinds are typically $0.10/$0.25 for a $25 buy-in). So, I don't know. All of which is interesting, but has nothing to do with sit 'n' go's, of course ... nor indeed with the tricast/forecast perm possibilities in the 3.15 and 5.20 races at Beverley this afternoon (that's 5.15 and 7.20 over here), which are also rather more important. I am not laying at all in August - going away too many times to make it worthwhile - and my father is covering tricasts for me anyway, this month, but these are too interesting to miss. I was going to go to Jurmala this afternoon, but might not bother if it doesn't stop raining (and I think they may possibly have the same problem in Beverley, in which case we won't be betting at all!)

Poker tip of the day ...

You need a stronger hand to call than you do either to bet or to raise: when you bet/raise, there's always the chance that this action will end the hand, winning the pot immediately, whereas if you merely call, you'll necessarily have to play on and do more to win it ...

"Poker's a day to learn and a lifetime to master" (Robert Williamson)

I'm intending to specialise in "sit 'n' go" events. These used to be called "STT" or Single Table Tournaments. There are usually ten (occasionally nine) players, who pay a fixed entry-fee to compete normally for three prizes for first, second and third places. In the typical low-stake event, ten players each pay $11 or E11 or £11 to enter, competing for a first prize of 50, second prize of 30 and third prize of 20 (the remaining 1 unit per player is the "table-money" which goes to the house for providing the facility). Nearly all the online sites have these events and they are available 24 hours per day ...

"Mine" are no-limit hold'em (NLHE) events, though there are other kinds too (Omaha, limit games, and so on). I strongly prefer no-limit to limit games. All comments in this blog, unless otherwise specified, refer to NLHE. I have been playing only in these low-stake events, but have been getting into the prizes about 55% of the time. What I'm really bad at is coming first instead of second/third, but I'm planning to learn something called the "S.A.G.E. system" and get some heads-up practice to improve on that (more about that later).

I've been playing mostly at a site called TrueMoneyGames.com simply because I happened to have an account there (I play backgammon there, for much higher stakes) but it's clearly not the place of choice for poker. I also play at Ladbroke's Poker (dreadful software: my computers really don't like running it at all). But next on my list of "poker things to do" is researching many different online poker emporiums, reading independent reviews of them (not as easy as it sounds: the "independent" reviewers usually have financial incentives and affiliate links involved, and one must clearly be careful), and deciding where I'm really going to play. So far, for educational and review purposes, I have discovered Poker Listings, The Hendon Mob (hmmm ... I see Giles Coren's sister hangs out there) and a forum at 2 + 2 Poker which is so huge it could take a lifetime to read (but it has a special section relating to sit 'n' go events) ...

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started" (Mark Twain)

Oooh, well, here we go, then: I have never done a blog before ... though one of my forum threads did get to nearly 200 pages ...

So ... why a poker blog, anyway? My reasons will perhaps sound pretty arrogant (but we can always blame my poor translation skills for that), so here they are, as they stand at the moment: I can play a bit to start with, I like the game and think I ought to be able to become good at it (I can play bridge and backgammon both to not-far-short of international standard - for Baltic blondes, anyway - and I have great patience and discipline); I have quite a lot of books about it and have even been reading one or two of them (I will probably review some of them on the way through this blog); I spend a lot of time online anyway for both parts of my work and there's no harm in a bit of interactive online recreation; and I fancied trying a blog anyway (they are easy to delete if you change your mind!) and did not want to do one on horse-race betting or prime number theory, and especially not one on the works of Peteris Vasks, greatest living composer though he may be, because I could never do him justice ...

There'll be more (probably) ...