Off to Vegas - Jason Update

Marsh, myself, MB and Martin will be in Vegas next week, so no Cake for us. Since my last post, I have been basically treading water except for another heater on Sunday. I continue to move up, but no dramatic change.

Some general observations. As you move up in stakes, in my opinion, the players are not better overall at the .25/,50 stakes vs. the .10/.20 stakes. Of course, you will occassionally run into tables with all good players but there are still plenty of opportunities to find calling stations and donks. Even when you hit the .50/$1 tables, at least in Omaha, there are donks, just much fewer of them. My message is fear not, if you can beat the low stakes, the higher stakes are beatable too.

Here are my hand highlights:

Omaha Bluff by me

I am up here against a novice player who keeps typing in the chat, I can't beat you guys. I do have KQxx, no spades, but I do not believe it is good. His betting patterns look like he is protecting his hand against the spade draw. When the spade hits, I take a shot at bluffing the flush. He took all of his time then folded.


Boat over Boat

I check raise on the flop as I am expecting a Cbet from the original raiser. When I get a call from another player, I am hoping to boat up as I figure villain has at least a K or pocket 6's. I boat up on the river, but I have a smaller boat.

Best draw I could hope for

I am playing suited connectors from the button and flop a monster, the open ended straight flush draw with a pair. I can laugh at his meager overpair as I know I am ahead. Lucky river hits for me.


Shocking Jack High Omaha Win

An amazingly donkish call from my opponent. My river bet is designed to have whatever his high hand is fold so I don't have to share the pot as I have the nut low. He has the second nut low with holding of 2,4,7,9, a truly awful Omaha high low hand that he should not be playing anyways. I am the beneficiary of his second nut low and my jack high holds up for the high hand.

Very cool bluff by villain

I had the nut straight on the turn and I make a scared blocking bet on the river. My astute opponent with the busted flush draw, raises me with his big stack. I don't think a call here is long run EV+ and I fold. Villain gets a note that he is very capable of making big river bluffs. I like playing against these kind of players as they make the game quite challenging. Hats off to him for stealing this pot.

Flopped nut boat does not hold up

One of the few times I will slow play in Omaha is if I flop the nut boat. Here I bet the turn and the river, but villain catches up with the AQ bigger boat.

2 pair slow play by villain\

Here is what I mean that the play does not get much better at .25/.50. My opponent had A,5os for 2 pair on the turn. Sure he could have been scared of the flush but at least a probe bet would be appropriate. I trip up with the lucky river and value bet with a call.

Calling station in action

This is one of the lamest ways to play Jacks. He was a total calling station so I even thought I was ahead with my Ace high flop bet. Lucky for me I caught up and sure enough he pays me off on the river bet. See what I mean, competition is not tough here at these levels on cake if you can find the right table.

Calling station number 2 in action\

We go from donk 1 to bigger donk 2. This lame guy calls me down on the river with A,4 os. I am glad he pays me off.

Calling station in Omaha

Calling stations are out there in Omaha too. This donk calls me down with his straight he hit on the river.


Capping a great run with quads

An aggressive player was just spewing chips and the table drained him of about $170.00. I was a big beneficiary. Here is a new player with an unknown hand. Typically I am much more aggressive but I was just too excited to get quads.

More quads

Quads are not that unusual. Another lame guy chasing a straight that hits.

Biggest Pot Win to Date

I am glad this guy makes a move on me with bottom 2 pair and a 9 high flush draw. With top set, I am not going anywhere. I am lucky to avoid spades on the turn and the river.

Ryan - Cake Update

I was in quite a downward spiral on Cake, but backed off a bit (still played, but not as often or for as long), and I'm pulling out of it. A big session on Christmas eve didn't hurt, and after sliding as far back as $155, I'm back up to $187.

Details here.

Vegas baby

Hey WNP Warlords,
It's mb here. I can't post as myself so I'm using Jason's... hope this isn't a breach of security or etiquette.

I'm looking for recommendations for tournaments/cash tables in Vegas. We're going on Jan. 1st and I would love to hear from you experienced Vegas-ites what was fun, what was profitable and any tips for favorites that you may have.

Thanks and Happy New Year!
mb aka "embeeseattle"

Micro-stakes and a half

Just finished a session and it looks like Cake may have brough an extra server online. Looks like there are three more .02/.04 tables but now a couple .03/.06 tables to ease the transition to nickel/dime games. According to the Google translation, the tables are named "London" but they are in a Cyrillic typeface(???).

Anyway, hopefully this is Cake's Xmas gift to us so they don't have to painful server slowdowns.

Digesting Your Cake

Have you ever wanted to review a grueling Cake poker session, only to be stymied by its lack of PokerTracker support? Ever wanted to see a beautiful skyward reaching graph of your winrate? Well today is your lucky day!

Some enterprising Caker over on 2+2 has been working on a Cake hand converter to allow you to do all of this and more. Here's how you do it:

1. Go here and download CakeConverter.exe
2. Open your Cake hand history folder (should be something like C:\Program Files\Cake Poker\Hand Histories\YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS HERE\) and do some manual spring cleaning. It only supports Hold'Em cash games, so you'll want to move or delete any Omaha, Stud, or Tournament/Sit'n'Go histories.
3. Run CakeConverter, point it to your hand history folder and give it a different folder to spit the results out to. Hit the convert button.
4. Open up PokerTracker. If you don't own PokerTracker, you oughta. It's worth it.
5. Hit the 'Auto-import hand histories' button. Point it to the converted cake history folder. Click OK, and in a few minutes PokerTracker will parse all of your histories and know more about your game than you could ever imagine.

From there, your options are wide open. If you're not familiar with PokerTracker, it can tell you anything you ever wanted to know about how you play poker. What hands you win with, what hands you lose with, how often you raise preflop, how well you play when you get checkraised... If you're a stats and data geek like me, it's pretty amazing.

If you want to see a graph of your progress, first run your hand histories into PokerTracker, and then grab PokerGrapher.

The converter software has a few issues, mainly due to the (broken) way in which Cake formats its hand histories. It doesn't always know what cards your opponent showed down, so it just assumes they had AKo. Sometimes you can figure out what they actually had, as the hand history will show the winning hand ranking, like this:

Board [As Ks Qh 6c Qs]
Seat 3: BogeyMan showed [Ah Kd] and won ($100.50) with Full House, Queens full of Kings

Supposedly there are additional issues with positional stats, EV calculation, and a few other problems. But even with all of these caveats, it is totally worth your time to set all of this up.

And that's about it!

Gold Chips on Cake

Hey Cakers. I'm at a gold coin and a half right now for the month. Has anyone ever done anything with them? Are they worth going after if you are close to getting another one around the end of the month? Has anyone ever redeemed them? That George Foreman grill sure looks might tempting. Or that big screen if I just play enough to collect 11,999 more. Are they transferrable? And does anyone have a fix on how it is calculated? I assume it is all related to stakes you play at but is it by hands seen? Time? Rake paid? Total amount of money churned through the system?

Why we play

We've all probably seen the Full Tilt Poker commercial "Why We Play" and that brings up the subject as it applies to our group and everyone we play against both live and online.

I am sure that there are plenty of different reasons why everyone plays poker; the challenge to outplay someone, the drive to amass the largest stack possible, the social interaction with other players, and many more. Furthermore we are all a mixture of the different aspects to varying degrees. For instance, I'm sure nobody wants to leave stuck for the session but I'm also positive that some people care a lot more about their wins or losses than others. Some players don't sweat losing at small stakes and other will find it as distressing to lose a buy in at microstakes as they do at larger stakes. Some poker players treat a buy in as a night's entertainment and figure if they leave empty handed after playing all night then they got their money's worth while still having a chance to come out ahead which you couldn't expect from going to see a show. Then there are some players who would rather chase the dramatic suckout against all odds because they will get more gratification out of catching runner runner than they would folding because it is mathematically correct to do so.

I don't fault anyone's motivations and I'm certainly not going to try to change them. As long as they are getting what they want out of poker and only tapping appropriate funds then more power to them. But whatever the reasons for playing, they are going to be reflected in the decisions at the table and why they play is something to consider when optimizing play against another player.

On a sick heater - Jason Update

It is somewhat ironic that when I started this challenge, I built up a good size bankroll on NL Hold'm, then donked it almost all off on Omaha. The last 2 weeks my latest run has been almost exclusively on Omaha 8, some on Omaha High, and the least on Hold'm. My current strategy is to multitable with one Omaha 8 game or one Omaha High game and then a lower stakes NL Hold'm. I play pretty tight on both, and have no boredom factor with this much action.

Here are some hand highlights, a major reversal from the worst rivers ever.

STANDARD CATCH OF A 1,000:1 SHOT BY ME


This suckout is not quite as bad as it looks. I knew I was likely behind an overpair, but he was shortstacked and offering me better than 2:1 to call with 2 cards to come. When I add up the runner runner low, the runner for trip queens, the runner for 2 pair, the runner runner for the flush and the runner runner 2 specific cards for the royal flush,I figured a call was in order. Catching the royal flush was sure sweet!

BIG POT WIN

Got to love this turn and the guy way overvaluing his straight draw. I am a huge beneficiary of a table with soft play.



A brief venture to higher stakes

This guy kept raising everyone from position so I did not think he had AQ. He did. The lucky river for me comes through and he pays me off.

I am probably being a bit superstitious here and maybe a bit overly cautious but I will not be publishing (unless the number gets low again) my overall bankroll. Just don't think it is a good idea on line. At the lower stakes I don't think anyone would care but as the stakes increase it is probably best for me anyway to keep it offline. If anyone cares, I am happy to let them know verbally at WNP. Suffice it to say that I am currently above Marsh's highest reported total but not by much. My volatility is pretty wide so it could change at any moment.

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.