April 2006 Archives

I'm trying a Google Calendar feature: tracking online poker tournaments that people like me might be interested in joining. You can subscribe to it, too, either through the XML feed, through the iCal feed, or by searching for it in Google Calendar search.

All times are Eastern, which matches the timezone that PokerStars uses. Unfortunately Google Calendar doesn't seem to do the right thing for people (like me) in other timezones. I'll look into whether that's user error or a to-be-implemented feature.

Took 4th place in a $4.40 180-player SNG last night, raking in about $57. Yay, woo hoo, good result, right?

Maybe yes, maybe no. In every tournament where you aren't the last one standing, afterward you naturally focus overly on that last hand. You know, the one where you hesitated a few tense moments before swinging the bet slider all the way to the right, clicked "Raise $(everything I've got left)" and winced, hoping not to hear the clink of the other player calling you. Then you instantly regret to see that yes, he did have you outkicked, and the board brings no miracles. IGHN.

In this case, four of us remained at the final table. Our chip leader (t120,000) had properly taken a LAGgy strategy as we got shorthanded. Thus, it was not unexpected to see him min-raise under the gun to $3,200, which was the going rate for buying the blinds. Button folds to me in the small, where I find A9o. Now, ace-nine is usually crap, but at this table it's a premium hand, and my t15,000 isn't earning any interest on its own (especially since the middle stacks are in the t40K range, far outside my reach unless I double up a couple times). I swing the bar and take a deep breath as I click. T120K shows me his AK, which holds up.

The simplistic, chump way of summarizing this hand is that I got donked out again with ace-trash against ace-better. Ace-better stencils another fish onto his fuselage, and I feel bad. But that view's way too narrow. This was a final-table situation with a big stack who could afford to raise/call with a wide starting range against the shortest stack. Earlier in the tourney I'd properly folded even AJ, 99 and 55 to early-position shows of strength, I stole blinds from average stacks with trash, and successfully goaded short-stacks to push into my KK and TT. And the luckbox was AWOL: I was never involved in a suckout. Each time, the best hand going into an all-in was the best hand coming out. I lasted longer than 176 other players; that has to mean something. Yeah, it was a good tournament and a good result.

What's my point? I think it's simply that 179 of 180 players in this tournament have a story about their last hand and how things might have turned out differently if they'd pushed earlier in the hand or else folded it entirely. One hundred and seventy-nine regrets. But the final hand is not the metric of your performance; it's really just the epilogue of a long story. The trick in advancing from a beginner poker player (where I am today) to an intermediate poker player is to study the whole story, even the parts that didn't have exciting, unexpected, or drastic endings, and learn from all of it.

I've been playing $4.40 180-person Sit-N-Go tournaments lately, after a cold streak in the smaller Turbo SNGs. The slower structure is refreshing; when antes begin hours rather than minutes into a tournament, it's far more likely you'll be outplayed by an opponent than blinded to death. Or, just as likely, you'll outplay yourself.

This brings me to The Mistake. Originally brought to my attention by jjok who was citing Poker Nerd, The Mistake is that move you make after hours of careful, quality play that cripples you or knocks you out, turning a potentially decent hourly profit into a stinging loss. It's the first thing you think of when you wake up the next morning. It's the hand your brain chooses to store it in ultra-high-res long-term memory so you can conveniently recite it down to the suit of each card six months later.

My two most recent Mistakes:

• Survived the bubble. My M is 8 and I have a good shot to make it to the final table. My A5o in the small blind was good enough for a steal attempt, but the big blind was sick of funding my comeback in the past few rounds and decided to call my raise. I flopped a four-flush with my ace of diamonds, and made a pair on the board with my five. I min-bet. Big blind, who has me covered, goes all-in. At a minimum I should read him for ace with a higher pairing kicker, or possibly medium pockets. But I called, feeling sure I'd see another diamond. Nope, he'd tilted briefly when he called me with 74o, he flopped a 45678 straight, and my low pair didn't improve on the turn or river. Note that the straight was irrelevant; the Mistake I made was risking all my chips on a draw when I believed my opponent held a better hand than I did. Finished 15th out of 180, and my memory of an otherwise well-played tourney is sour.
• This was the hand in mind when my alarm clock rang this morning. I'm seventh place in chips out of 19 players (i.e., next player out pops the bubble). Under the gun, I raise AQs to 3x BB. There's nothing wrong with this play; we're shorthanded and it's more likely than not to succeed as a steal. But the steal fails; the player to my left (who is sixth in chips) re-raises me with half his stack. At this point in the tourney this would be standard play for someone with medium pockets; you hope your opponent backs down, but if not you might flop a set or outplay him if the flop is scary and you have position. So that was my read -- 99, TT, or JJ. The conservative play would be to fold; why risk over half my stack to see a flop when I'm one position away from the money? But I had a more aggressive plan: call, and if I pair up (or even if a king comes), push all-in and see what happens. So I call, and the flop is T33. My post-flop plan has failed; in fact, I see a card that could have given him trips. I push anyway, he calls, and shows us all his pocket jacks. Only two minutes earlier I was in good position to cruise to the final table, but instead I finish in 19th place out of 180, which pays zero. I can't recall a time in my life when I wanted more desperately to rewind time 10 minutes than in this $4 online poker tournament.

Neither of these plays started out as The Mistake, but as I received more information later in the hand, I failed to adjust to accommodate it, and that's when the Mistake occurred. To be specific: I had a plan to steal the blinds or see the flop cheaply. When that plan failed, rather than abandoning it, I turned it, on the fly, into the "Risk My Entire Tournament On An Unpaired Ace" plan. Adrenaline sent me on tilt, and rather than asking the usual boring, disciplined question "Is my hand the best at the table?" my fishy side screamed "What exciting thing might happen to crush my opponent's made, monster hand?!!"

So that's my contribution to Poker Nerd's list of leaks to plug to avoid making The Mistake: much as you have a plan for the tournament and need to stick to it, you need to have a plan for each hand, including an exit strategy, and follow through when the exit conditions become true.

P.S. I am Poker Champ.

Jeremy asks why banks won't help you figure out specifically when to transfer money so that it's sure to arrive on such-and-such a date. He compares FedEx and notes that they do a better job at solving this problem even though they're not in the business of moving money around. I don't know the answer for sure why this is, but I suspect it's for the same reason my online bill pay service makes me count backwards from the due dates on my bills in order to figure out the right date to send payment, rather than just letting me say "make sure my credit card gets paid $123.45 on April 16."

The reason is that banks don't want to be in this particular kind of insurance business. If you read the fine print of online banking agreements (likewise with wire transfer arrangements), you'll probably see lots of terms like "best efforts," "no warranty," and so on. They'll do their best to send the money on a certain date, but it's your problem if they don't, and it's especially your problem if it arrives later than you expected.

But FedEx is in exactly this kind of insurance business. For $13 or whatever it is they charge, they promise delivery on or before a certain date. If they fail, you get paid. If you want to get paid more when they fail (i.e., you're mailing a valuable item, or you just want to get paid more), then you can pay a higher delivery fee.

I don't know whether this answers Jeremy's question. In fact, my answer begs the question why banks aren't in this potentially lucrative business. I certainly don't know the answer to that, other than to cynically suggest that banks aren't willing to bet on their own reliability.