Friday, December 21, 2007

Peer review on a bad session

After having the $100 border well within sight I had a big setback. In one session I came down almost 10%. Dropping 10% is one of my cutoff points in my bankroll management rules. It requires a 10 hour cooling off period to insure that I don't tilt off any more money or do something stupid. However, I would also like to get some second opinions on the hands. I don't *think* I would do anything differently in the same situations but wanted to hear from others before heading back to the felt.

Here is the link to the original post.

If someone could give me a sanity check, that'd be great. Thanks.

11 comments:

jsola said...

Yup, you're still sane. Your opponents, however... wow.

This is why I hate full ring. With that many horrible players in every pot your variance shoots through the roof. With 5 people calling down big bets, you'll win a huge pot some of the time, but lose that same pot MOST of the time.

You're playing good, though, dude! Hang in there and you'll come out ahead in the long run.

Ryan said...

"I hate full ring, there are too many donks."

I understand that you are talking about being frustrated by the variance, but to hate a format due to the high donk density seems terribly wrong to me.

Use bankroll-management rules properly and you mitigate your variance, leaving you, in the long run, playing poker against a bunch of donks. This is a good thing.

And no, Martin, that's not a bad run, that's a bad session. Talk to me when it's a week later and you're down 12 full buyins...

Marshall said...

Looks pretty standard to me.

Just take your break and get back in there. I think you have been running pretty well lately, these sessions are normal. Shake it off and battle back sir.

jason said...

Will, you are obviously a good player as you seem to be consistently winning most all of your sessions. However, I think there is room for improvement.

Let's start with the basic premise that in a full ring game you will never throw away AA or KK preflop, every other hand is a judgement call.

Let's look at the QQ hand. UTG min raises. This means nothing yet. You reraise with what looks like a pot size bet, no problem there. Everyone folds to the original min raiser. He has you covered and is playing deep stacked. You are not short stacked either with about 60 BB. He then puts you to the test of an all in or fold. What should you do, after all you have QQ the 3rd best hand in poker.

Correct move here is fold. This is one of the rare times where folding QQ is appropriate. In a full ring game with a big stack JJ or lower is not going to make this play, AK may and KK or AA certainly will. Go through your hand histories and prove me wrong, I just doubt anyone has enough balls to make this play without these 3 hands and a deep stack. Maybe add QQ too which you are tying. As Marsh has said when you make this move of limp/reraise or min raise reraise it is like playing with your hand face up. You almost certainly have one of 3 hands at this level in a full ring game. Since this guy is playing with his hand face up make him pay by folding and then really piss him off if you want by flashing QQ. He will say how did he know?

Same scenario on the AK hand vs AA. In my opinion, this is an easier laydown than QQ. With AK you are tying one of the possible 3 hands, losing to the other 2. A fold is appropriate.

All the other hands there was nothing you could do.

If these guys were short stacked I would think differently but I would suggest adding the big preflop laydown to your bag of tricks if you want to play full ring games.

Will said...

Yeah, I felt comfortable with the decisions pretty much. But as part of bankroll management I wanted to go through the process of verifying that I'm not tilting off chips.

Jason, I don't have a way to quickly filter for all-in hands but I assure you that QQ is way EV+ against the hands that will get money in pre flop. Did you not notice that in QQ vs AA that T3 suited (deeper stacked than I) shoved his money in too? And the AK vs AA hand that the same guy came in with 46os? I've seen Ax suited, any pair, AA, and everywhere in between get all in pre-flop. Yes, that pattern could be consistent with AA, KK, AK but at these tables I am not able to give that much credit to someone just because of that pattern.

jason said...

Totally agree that QQ is way EV+ against a random preflop shove. Just not convinced it is EV+ against a UTG min raise, reraise.

If anyone is making a UTG, min raise reraise move with 46os I stand corrected. Just have not seen it yet.

Ryan said...

"I just doubt anyone has enough balls to make this play without [AA, KK, or AK] and a deep stack."

Taking the small stakes seriously has been a key component to the overall success TNPers have experienced on the Cake challenge. That doesn't mean, though, that you can forget how little these stakes mean to a large portion of your .02/.04 opponents.

I'm not going to go digging through hand histories looking for proof that calling a preflop limp/shove or min/shove shove with QQ is +EV at .02/.04, but I will certainly start capturing hands I run into the future that do.

I won't be selective, either, I'll make a note of every hand that qualifies, and we'll see if we can eventually develop a realistic range for that move: limp/raising or three-betting all-in from early position with, say, at least $3.

My initial feeling is that the shove range at .02/.04 is pretty big, and that you are +EV to call such raises with QQ, AK, and potentially even JJ. We'll see if that is borne out...

jsola said...

"I understand that you are talking about being frustrated by the variance, but to hate a format due to the high donk density seems terribly wrong to me."

I agree, it is wrong, but playing with that many bad players takes me off my game. I get frustrated by the bad beats and end up making bad plays as a result.

Were I able to play perfectly throughout I'm sure I would love it, but I have to work on my tilt management before I can do that.

Unknown said...

Ryan:

I would love to see the statistics but if anyone should keep them it should be Will. I think there is a material difference in the level of aggression from a limp/reraiser in a 6 handed game vs. a full ring game. I know you and I prefer the 6 handed games.

If you want to keep the stats I would love to hear them but Will's stats should be different than your stats.

Ryan said...

Maddie,

I play almost exclusively 10-handed, where have you been?

jason said...

My bad, I thought you were a 6 hander.