The Lost Room

A little non poker stuff here. I recently rented the Lost Room which was a 6 part mini series starring Peter Krause. Very good stuff. I highly recommend it. The basic gist is that there these objects from some event in the sixties that does different things such as "the key" which will teleport you through any door with a lock to any other door that you can picture in your mind via a motel room. Another object (the comb) as they are called freeze the world around you. Anyway, Peter Krause's daughter gets lost in this motel room (which resets itself after every time you close the door to the way it was) so he goes on a quest to find his daughter. The ending wasn't perfect was still good enough for me to give it two thumbs up.

Poker... ah yes...

Well, like some others, I decided to play regular SNGs as opposed to Turbos to see if it truly makes a difference. After my first set of four, it was a definite yes with a one 1st and 2nds. I'm wondering if that is a pretty good sample size to judge how things will go. Hmmmm... Probably not.

I played my second set last night. 7th, 7th, 7th and 9th. Oops. Let's see. AA lost to J5s who thouth it would be great to call a 500 dollar raise from the big blind. Of course I flop a set and he flops a flush. He pushed... I called. IGHN in 7th. Now keep in mind, almost all of these happened within one minute or two. JJ lost to AA which lost most of my chips as I didn't call his re-reraise all in and then I just lost a race with my AJ to his 33. IGHN in 9th. Nothing too bad about that one. Just poker. Next one... AA vs QQ... All in on Q high flop. DOH!!!!! 7th... Lastly, AK lost to AQ when he hit runner runner 4 card straight. Not to mention that I got stacked twice playing NL when I got outkicked twice when we both had trips.

The only good news of the night was that my 3/6 limit game did well enough to basically break even for the night.

BTW, some people don't like posting bad beats. I say post them. It's your blog.

What's it all mean

So the other day, I spoke about a horrible run I had been having. Of course, I would now like to tell that things have switched around I made up my losses and more; but that will not be the case today. To tell you the truth, I took a 4 day sabbatical and returned to the scene tonight. Things started out well as I jumped out of the gate going +100 in my first few dozen of hands playing 2 tables of 2/4 and one table of 3/6. Then what happened... somebody rivered a gut shot and two successful people hit flushes when I flopped top pair.

Anyway, that is not the point of this post.

The other day, I mention a lousy 9%WSD after about 100 hands. To tell you the truth, after 243 hands, that number was up 41%; but I still lost $192 on the session. So I looked a few things. Actually, out of the 234 hands, I only went to showdown 29 times and actually was positive over the 29 hands albeit barely... but positive is positive. Considering where I was at, I can live with that.

Something else had to cause the problem. How about going to showdown and losing 17 for $275 and going to showdown 12 times and winning $283.. OK, that is the same thing as above with just a little more detail.

I folded before showdown 44 for a loss of $246. Take a way the blinds and I folded 13 times for a loss of $69. Again doesn't seem terrible. You are obviously going to see flops and fold before showdown so that doesn't seem to terrible. Conversely, I lost $177 in the blinds in 31 hands. That's not good. I had a 34.78 VPIP from BB and a 56.25% from SB. Off hand, the SB number looks high. It's hard to say if I was just calling or raising; but I can say I raised from the SB the 2nd most from any position (button was first). About half of those were one that it was folded to me. So big question marks on my blind play. Need to look at that.

This night the only position that I was positive was on the button and the cutoff which hopefully is always the case. Position, Position, Position.

The obvious problem that night was short term variance for the most part, I believe. When you have draws that don't hit and you have draws that hit against you, that can cause variance. Perhaps, check calling might be a better strategy to use when that scare cards comes on the river; but I certainly don't like it. It shows weakness... or does it. If they were on a draw, the most likely aren't going to call your river value bet (again assuming 6 handed limit holdem); but if you check planning on calling no matter what (within reason); but maybe you are actually saving yourself a bet. I think that is where pokertracker might have to come in to decide if this a guy that would go all the way to the end on a draw

Overall, my VPIP for that night was 31.62 with a preflop raise of 11.11 (which is low but understandable giving cards). Won win seeing the flop was 25.61% which is low but in line with the W$SD number. Went to Showdown was 35% which is OK. Total aggression was 1.74 which is just OK with AF on river being the least. Am I giving up on post that I could take down with a river bet? Who knows?

So, what does it all mean? That is the question? First and foremost, I will be looking more closely my blind play and also at my drawing hands. Am I truly getting the price to get to that flush or open ended straight.

That should do it for now. Like many people, I have given in and will be trying to actually start exercising and losing some weight that I have added over the last 10 years. I joined Gold's Gym tonight and hope to get into a routine. I will be trying to know off something in the range of 30 pounds. The price was pretty good as compared to the YMCA that my wife was going to. She was paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $45 for a single membership and it is only $30 at Gold's. Perhaps, the only bad thing is the Gold's is not a kid friendly place. They do have a kids area for when you are working out; but no kids are allowed anywhere else. We'll see how it goes.
Also Fuel55 is running a new Heads Up Challenge. As a former champion, I most likely will be playing. I was hesitant at first because I thought he was requiring everybody play HU matches without blind increases; but that doesn't seem to be the case. It was just a suggestion. That would just take too long for since I don't get to the computer until late due to kids. Head over to his site for details.

Have a nice day..

Be careful what you wish for

We all look for tables that are full of people that see tons of flops and call down to the river looking for whatever they can find... Be careful for what you wish for as they will hit their hands occasionally or in my case most of the time.

There is a key stat for me when it comes to Poker Tracker at least playing Limit poker. That is W$SD which translates to Won $ at Showdown. In other words, if means what percent of the time that you go all the way to showdown are you winning. I think a rule of thumb is to see this number greater than 50% but more ideally above 55%. My W$SD after a little over 100 hands last night was 9.25%. Just think, I was complaining when this number was in 30% range over the past week. 9.25% is just insane.

I won't go into details on the beats; but one really stood out to me as typical of the way things have been going. I get KK in the BB. It is raised and reraised before me. Let me backup and say that the table was a good table on average seeing 40% of the flops with only 8% raises. Anyway, I of course pop it three times and the original raiser caps it. Flop comes all low cards and all hearts. I bet out (I don't have a heart). Original raiser raises and next guy pops it again. I just shake my head and fold my Kings. Nothing too exciting on turn and river. Any ideas what original raiser and capper had? Yep, Q6 of hearts. Be careful what you wish for.

Another hand AK.. I continue to raise and bet out. T on the river and Mr QT decides to call down all of my betting. Be Careful what you wish for.

Inside Straights. Oh yeah, more of those... to the tune of 3 of them hit on the river. Be Careful what you wish for.

Flushes. Wouldn't want to miss those. They don't bother me too much as there are too many people that will call down with flush draws and open enders. That is just the nature of the beast in limit poker. But dang, it would be nice to hit flush draws with the frequency of the people that draw out their flush draws.

2nd Nuts. Yep, 3 times the 2nd nut straights not good enough.

2outers, 3 outers... etc... etc... I'm sure that you get the point.

Oh yeah, I did suck out once last night. I had that terrible hand of AA but unbeknownst to me, I was behind his 95o who called all of my raises and turned 2 pair; but I four flushed him on the river.

This post was obviously just to blow some steam and hope that by posting it things will turn around as they do when you post good results which ultimately causes a downswing.

So, be careful what you wish for in your opponents as they will hit.

Are you ready for some FOOTBALL!!!!

So, who is ready for football.. I know I am. I didn't watch too much of the game last night with the Steelers and the Saints; but you can bet I will be watching the Cowboys/Colts game on Thursday.

But wait, this is a poker blog.

Poker continues to go blah!!!!!!! If I see somebody else hit an inside straight on the river against me.... OK, who knows what I will do. I continue to win at showdown at or below 42% which is practically inconceivable.

I finally decided to set up an ePassporte acct. Boy, do I miss Neteller. With ePassporte, I am presently limited to only load $300 per day and then once I make the load, I don't see it my acct for almost 2 weeks, even though it has been taken from my bank acct. Very frustrating. Speaking of Neteller, I did get my money back from them so I have that going for me.

Now, back to something a little more exciting.

As a given, I am huge Dallas Cowboys football fan so I obviously was interested in the Hall of Fame inductions there year. Say what you will about Michael Irvin, but I thought his speech was awesome. He was very open and candid of the good times and the bad. Others have also thought that it was pretty good so maybe it just wasn't my biased perspective.

Without seeing much or hearing much about training camp this year, I truly expect the Cowboys to be one of the top teams in the NFC. I fully expect Tony Romo to be the man and lead the Boys back to the promised land.

That's about it as I just wanted to put a few words out there since I hadn't posted in a while.