March 2006 Archives

I started playing online poker about four months ago, and have logged around 300 tournaments since then. I'm net profitable (11% ROI, 30% ITM), but the nagging question remains: am I a donk? Mary asked me this question the other day -- phrased more positively and tactfully -- and here was my answer.

I'm not yet a good player, but I'm not a donkey, either. I often feel that I'm acting as a hit man for the stronger players at the table; I take tremendous risks (e.g., calling a short-stack's all-in with AJo) to knock out short stacks or at least keep them weak by stealing their blinds, while the big stacks wait for premium hands to further strengthen themselves. Of course they'll kill me, too, if they have the opportunity; there's no allegiance at the table. But eventually, if all goes well, we all cross the bubble, at which point I generally get immediately knocked out, winning second or third place for my trouble.

There are many exceptions, of course; sometimes my risks pay off big and I'm the big stack when we reach the money, and sometimes my heads-up play works well against a specific chipleader and I knock him off after a vicious uphill battle. And, of course, most of the time (70%) I just lose.

So it was with this mildly positive self-appraisal that I went to Las Vegas for one night this week. I entered two tournaments (Caesar's noon $80, and Monte Carlo's 9:00 a.m. $40). I got knocked out nearing the second break in the $80, and made it to the final two tables in the $40. I made it a point to take notes afterward and analyze my play while relaxing in the hotel room. I was disappointed to discover that in almost every key hand, I made serious mistakes, even obvious ones. Sometimes, of course, I drew out on the other player and was rewarded for my errors, but overall, my inexperience caught up with me quickly.

Examples:

• Early in $80, blinds 25/50, I have about $3,000 in chips. I'm on the button and raise my ATs to 3x BB. Blinds fold, MP limper (a solid player who hasn't yet shown down a hand) calls. Flop comes A4A rainbow. MP checks, I bet $1,000. MP thinks for about 5 seconds and moves all-in. I ask for a count, find out he has me covered, and I fold. At the time I figured he had ace with a better kicker. I now think this was a mistake and that he had a high pocket pair. At the time I didn't want to go out of the tournament out-kicked on an ace, which to me felt like a rookie mistake. But (a) it was unlikely that he had an ace given that there were three exposed to me, (b) he probably would have reraised me preflop with AK or AQ, so it's more likely he had high pockets, (c) even if my read was correct, there's still a chance that we'd chop if a high nonpairing card came on the turn or river, and finally (d) even if he did have me outkicked, I had a 6% chance of making a full house on the river. My $1,000 bet probably looked like a bluff -- wouldn't I try to slowplay trips? If that's how he perceived it, then I trapped him without even realizing it, and let him walk away with half my stack.
• A few minutes before the first break in the $80, blinds $50/100, I have $2,700. Dealt AKs on the button, folded to me, I raise to $300. SB calls, BB folds. Flop QT9. SB bets $600. I think for a bit and call. Turn Ace. I figure he has KQ, AQ, KT or AT, which should indicate that I need to be very, very careful about this hand, but for some unknown reason I go all-in. He thinks for a while out loud: "well, you don't have a straight, because if you did, you'd have put me all-in on the flop. You called my earlier bet, and the ace helped you, so you must have AQ. I can beat two pair. I call." (Excellent analysis, by the way; I felt terribly, terribly outclassed at this point, and I knew I was dead because he was afraid of a straight but not afraid of two pair, so he must have flopped a set). Sure enough, he turns up pocket 9s and is ecstatic to see my crappy Big Slick. His joy turns to vicious frothing rage when the river brings a Jack, completing my gutshot straight (one of only six outs). I double up and he's screaming at anyone who would listen until the end of the 15-minute break.
• My death hand in the $80: Blinds are $200/$400, and I'm down to about $1,800 and waiting for any hand to make a move. Late position, K9s, I push. Big blind calls, MP moves all-in, BB thinks and calls. MP has AJs, BB has KQo. Flop brings a 9, which has me excited, and it holds up... until I realize that BB caught a runner-runner-runner-runner heart flush with her Queen, and I'm out.
• In the $40, I made exactly one voluntary move during the game. Blinds were $100/$200. With about $4,000 in chips, I preflop raise pocket 7s in middle position, button calls. Flop KQ4 rainbow. Check, check. Turn T. I check. Button bets $600. I check-raise, moving all-in. She thinks a good 20 seconds and folds, then says to her tablemates that "they wouldn't hold up with those overcards." I did think she had either an ace or low pockets (if I had to guess, 8s, and her post-hand comments confirms this was probably right).
• My death hand in the $40: after being nearly blinded away, I push AKo with about $1,800 in chips. Two callers: pocket jacks and AQ. Flop brings a jack and I'm out.

There were other hands, most of which were preflop raises followed by credible flops followed by big bets that took down the pot. But the more I analyze the key hands, the more errors I find in them. (I'm excluding the death hands; I think they were reasonable choices given that my M was so low.) Granted, this is an extremely small sample size compared to the nearly 15,000 online hands I've played, so it's tempting to chalk the poor results up to bad luck. But on the other hand, I haven't thought as much about any of my online hands; for all I know, I'm making gross errors like these all the time, but not enough to cost me more than my buyins.

Other observations:

• When recalling a hand, I don't easily remember my position. I need to deduce it from the order of the bets and the assumption (for example) that I'd never play ATs early in a tournament except on the button. This proves that position isn't important enough in my mind. I need to pay more attention to position, so that when I recount the story to myself in my mind, it starts out "I'm in the cutoff...." rather than "I look down at my cards and see KQ of diamonds..."
• I make an effort to watch other players, but at this point it means almost nothing to me. I did see one shaky-hands tell from a guy who turned over queens, and an excited grab at chips by the button, which I judged a genuine gesture that caused me to fold my AJo preflop (and he did indeed go all-in). But most of the time, I just see people looking at their cards and thinking about what to do. Maybe that's all there is to it.
• Calculating pot odds is not very hard, but you have to pay attention to every round of betting, because unlike online play, there isn't a figure hovering magically above the pot at all times.
• I'm amazed how often people talk about their hands afterward. The more interesting the hand appeared to be, the more they talk about it. This is great!

All in all, it was a learning experience. I feel more like a donkey than I did a few days ago. But I care enough about my play to do post-game analysis, I'm finding all sorts of leaks, and I'm willing to change my strategy based on what I've learned. If I keep this up, I know I'll improve enough to someday be a threat.

Updated 05/12/2006: I was misusing the term "3-bet," which means raising someone who raised someone else, not betting 3x the big blind.

How many people must be in a room with you before there's a better-than-50% chance that at least one of them shares your birthday? (Same month and day, not necessarily same year.) Most people would answer "uh... I guess 183 because that's more than half the number of days in a year." It turns out that, according to the so-called "birthday paradox," the answer is actually only 23. The reason is that people forget to include the chance that all of you share the same birthday, or that all but one of you were born on the same day, and so on. Although all those chances seem small, they add up to a lot, and that's why you need so few people in the room before it's likely you'll find at least one.

A fun application of this principle tells us how many online poker tables you must play at the same time to have a greater-than-50% chance of always playing at least one pocket-aces starting hand at any given moment. The chance of being dealt pocket aces is 1:220, or one out of every 221 hands. So you can think of this as each hand being a birthday in a year of 221 days. The math works out to be this:

• 2 tables: 0.45%
• 3 tables: 1.35%
• 4 tables: 2.69%
• 5 tables: 4.45%
• 6 tables: 6.62%
• 7 tables: 9.15%
• 8 tables: 12.03%
• 9 tables: 15.21%
• 10 tables: 18.67%
• 11 tables: 22.35%
• 12 tables: 26.21%
• 13 tables: 30.22%
• 14 tables: 34.32%
• 15 tables: 38.48%
• 16 tables: 42.66%
• 17 tables: 46.81%
• 18 tables: 50.90%
• 19 tables: 54.90%
• 20 tables: 58.78%
• 21 tables: 62.51%
• 22 tables: 66.07%
• 23 tables: 69.45%
• 24 tables: 72.63%
• 25 tables: 75.60%
• 26 tables: 78.36%
• 27 tables: 80.91%
• 28 tables: 83.24%
• 29 tables: 85.36%
• 30 tables: 87.28%

So there you have it: play 18 tables simultaneously, and there will be a 50% chance that you'll be playing pocket aces at any given time. Play 30 tables if you want to be guaranteed* to be doing so.

*"Guaranteed" defined as "better than the chances of aces over the hammer," because we know AA always beats 72o.

Video.

According to Wikipedia, extended sensory deprivation "can result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and antisocial behavior." These are the same words I use to describe my hold 'em tournament play. I start out resolving to play solidly, which usually means folding almost every hand. Forty-five minutes later, I'm quietly going nuts. To punctuate the boredom, my mind begins spinning yarns about the other players, desperately searching for a reason why my 5-6 suited in the big blind is worth playing against that guy who raised UTG. Like Professor Eddie Jessup in Altered States (well, except for the drugs), the lack of stimulus makes me... different.

Enter multitabling. Multitabling is unique to the online variant of poker. It's exactly what it sounds like: you sit down simultaneously at multiple tables (in different games, of course) and play them in turn. It helps to have a big monitor so you can tile all the tables rather than cascading them (amazing example here).

Besides amplifying your earnings (or losses) per hour, multitabling changes your play in several ways. First and most obvious, you can't easily profile your table mates when you are flipping among four different games at once. So your decisions are more objective; for all you know, the guy to your right might be stealing your blinds for the sixth time in a row, but you'll accept it like a gentleman because you're completely unaware that it's happening. Along the same lines, you'll miss the fact that the rock sitting across from you just led out big with his first hand in over an hour, and maybe your pocket jacks aren't the best all-in reraise at this particular point in time.

But most important for me, multitabling replaces utter boredom with constant activity, and I've found that this environment improves my play. Rather than looking for a reason to play a hand, I'll find any excuse to get out of one so that I don't have to return to that table for another 45 seconds. I'll fold AJo on the button when MP raises 6x BB preflop; at a single table, depending on my state of mind, I might have pushed that hand. For strong hands, I tend to be more aggressive in order to end the hand quickly, which increases my fold equity. Overall, I suspect I'm getting less value out of my hands -- for example, PokerStove says AJo's a 51-48 favorite against a player with a starting range of any Broadway/any pair, and my strong hands lose value-betting equity if I take down the pot early -- but my variance drops, which in a $6 SNG often gives me just enough fuel to make it across the bubble and into the money.

Multitabling does have a significant downside: it completely occupies your mind, body, and soul for a full hour at a time. I am unable to look away from the screen for more than about five seconds, and I can't carry on anything resembling a coherent conversation with anyone in chat or in person. It's mentally exhausting, and you can't go to the bathroom in the middle unless you want to pay the price of folding at least four hands. But poker's all about the money, and MTing means more dollars per hour. Until I find something better, it's the only way to play.

It seems like every other day another article appears about building a silent PC. Someone needs to complete this line of research once and for all, and invent the noise-consuming PC. It would be a combination of an already-quiet PC and a powerful noise-canceling circuit. Then your room would be quieter with the PC on than with it off.

Tonight I was at a 6-handed no-limit hold 'em table (ring, not tournament). We were all having a nice time when a guy sits down with the max buy-in and starts going all-in on every hand. I mean every hand. A couple people lost their entire stack to him. The chat area started spewing messages with people screaming at him, calling him names, and so on. Eventually everyone left but me and him.

By this point in the story, you of course know what I did. I sat with him for 43 hands, folding all but five monsters: 77, K4o, K8o, JJ, AKs, and QTo. (OK, Kxo is trash, but in heads-up against a random hand it's still a slight (52-48) favorite.)

I busted him out, taking his money and that of the players he busted. He left after that. If only poker against sane players were this easy.

Tonight I'm going to live blog my entry into a satellite tournament for the World Series of Poker main event. This is actually the second level of this satellite. I entered a freeroll tournament on PokerStars last week for 100 FPP (think frequent-flier miles; same idea) and won entry into the second-level satellite, worth 1,000 FPP. I wasn't going to enter this tournament, but after some back-and-forth with PokerStars Support I learned that these are special FPPs, not good for anything but tournament buy-ins, so I'm taking the plunge.

At the moment (58 minutes before the tourney starts), there are 179 entrants and one winner, so assuming the number of entrants triples by the time it starts and that I'm of average skill and luck, I have only a 0.18% chance of winning. But that's the last of the loser talk. I have Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive queued up in Winamp and am ready to rip up the field.

The event starts at 8:00 tonight Pacific time; it's tournament #21469777 and I'm Sowbug. Stay tuned for further updates....

4 min before start, and 396 players. My chances are all the way up to 0.25%!

Knocked out on the bubble on my warmup 1-table SNG. Hope that's not an omen.

Here we go! Table 11.

First hand, 3 people all-in on flop, they chop to a board straight. One trips, one TPTK, one AK. Mostly OK to bet those, but all-in?

Wow, two of those guys all-in again, AA vs. two pair. One's nearly gone.

Here I go, T9s calling his all-in.

.... and I'm down to t52. Two pair against his flopped straight and he moved all-in on me. I figured TPTK or high pockets. OK, fine, but did I have to call him?

Not dead yet, but down to t208. This situation obviously sucks, but my M is still almost 7, so I can wait a couple more rounds and double up.

I know I can work my way back to health. I've folded K9s and A7o in late position. Waiting for a monster starting hand. It will come in time.

First I was afraid, I was petrified...

AQs, let's try to see a flop.

Nope, was raised & I folded. Now t138. Flop was A47... Would have tripled up against AJ & AT.

Folded AQo UTG. Amazing, I'd have QUINTUPLED up.

Folded A6s in BB after big early-position raises. t108.

SB brings 48o. t93. Blinds up, M now 2.

320 players left. Must outlast only 319 of them.

The guy who cripped me is up to t6813 after his two pair knocks someone out. :)

BB, J3o, lots of limpers...... flopped middle pair. Nope, didn't happen. t63.

SB, 96s. limpers, right odds.... called. Aw, horrible flop. Great, my M is sub-1. t33. I get to see at most 12 more cards before I'm blinded out.

8 more cards.

This is it. Pocket 9s. Three callers. I'm very dead.

Sowbug finished the tournament in 217th place.

One of the callers made trip aces. The other guy had me beat, too, with two pair.

END TRANSMISSION

Update: I felt so dissatisfied with my early flameout in this tourney that I entered a $4.40 180-player SNG and busted out 10th -- in the money, though just before the big money. My 2nd-best MTT finish to date! (best was 39th out of 1386 in a $3 tourney.)