Through the past week or so I went on a 200-game downswing, which is nothing out of the ordinary for these games. In that downswing, I dropped about $152, which is about 70 buy-is. Pretty standard variance for the 180-mans, but good god was I frustrated, just ask anyone that talked to me on Thursday or Friday. Also during that downswing was a period of 100 games where I had a total of 1 final table. Min-cashes absolutely kill you in these games, and going that long with only 1 final table completely destroys you.
Thursday I dropped about $14 in 50 games, which for all intents and purposes I consider breaking even. Yesterday (Friday) I started out with a +$8 50 game set. Took a few hours off, came back later, and managed to ship one and ended the day with 75 total games and profit of $71.52 to put somewhat of an end to the downswing (though that only got me back up to about even with where I was a few hundred games earlier).
Today started out weird. I was having problems with
TableNinja, and I ended up having to manually register for tournaments instead of having it do it for me automatically. So I ended up having a few more tables than I was comfortable with part of the time, and my attention was diverted to figuring out what was going on while I was trying to play. While all that was happening, I managed to go deep in a lot of the games I had up. At one point, I was in the money in 6 out of my 12 running tables, which is an absolutely ridiculous amount of running hot. I'm used to only having 1 or 2 ITM tables to really focus on at a time, so having 6 of them I think I definitely didn't play some spots as well as I should have. I did manage to take 1st on one of those tables though, so that was a good way to start out for the day.
As the day went on I kept running good and kept going deep in a lot of games. Most of those unfortunately ended with mincashes though, but I did manage to get heads-up in 2 more games later on (sadly took 2nd in both of those..one I think was completely because I played it poorly, the other I ran a little bit bad). Because so many of my games went deep, I didn't get in the amount of games I wanted, but I'm more than happy taking the profit instead. All totaled up, my stats for the day were 35 games, +$235.48, 305.8% ROI, and an unheard of 37.1% ITM. For reference, statistically your ITM for these games should be exactly 10% (180 players and 18 get paid). Having almost quadruple that is pretty ridiculous, and I don't know when the next time will be that I have a day like this.
Overall in the $2/180s, that puts me at +$648.16 and 56.9% ROI over 518 games. It also puts me over $1k total profit now on Stars, so that's kinda cool too.
You can see in the graph above from game 250 to 450 is the downswing I was talking about, and from about 375 to 450 is where I only got 1 final table. I knew going into these games that there would be huge swings, but you never quite fully grasp that concept until you go through it.
I realized today how bad I am HU though, and I'm even worse when stacks are more than 10 effective BBs. That's definitely something I'm going to need to start concentrating on, because there's such a huge difference between a 1st and a 2nd. So let's take a look at the 8 HU hands from the game I shipped today:
Hand 1:
Poker Stars No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t3500.00/t7000.00 Blinds - 2 players
Hero (BTN/SB): t121135.00 17.30 BBs
FormulaL (BB): t148865.00 21.27 BBs
Pre Flop: (t10500) Hero is BTN/SB with 5
2
1 fold
Final Pot: t10500
FormulaL wins t3500.00
FormulaL wins t8400.00
Pretty standard fold by me. 52o doesn't really become playable HU unless you're either retardedly short or much deeper than we are here. Since we're only 17 effective BBs deep, there's not really much room for postflop play, so there's really no option besides folding.
Hand 2:
Poker Stars No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t3500.00/t7000.00 Blinds - 2 players
Hero (BB): t116935.00 16.70 BBs
FormulaL (BTN/SB): t153065.00 21.87 BBs
Pre Flop: (t10500) Hero is BB with K
2
FormulaL calls t3500, Hero raises to t116235, 1 fold
Final Pot: t14000
Hero wins t15400.00
This is a pretty bad shove by me. We're still about 17 BBs deep, and I have a hand that is so easily dominated by a lot of his calling range, and not much of a favorite against the rest. I really should have just checked here, but luckily he folded, otherwise I probably would have had $30 less profit for the day.
Hand 3:
Poker Stars No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t3500.00/t7000.00 Blinds - 2 players
Hero (BTN/SB): t124635.00 17.80 BBs
FormulaL (BB): t145365.00 20.77 BBs
Pre Flop: (t10500) Hero is BTN/SB with 6
4
1 fold
Final Pot: t10500
FormulaL wins t3500.00
FormulaL wins t8400.00
Another standard fold, especially having shoved the hand before since he's liable to snap me off lighter here. 64o is just not a pretty hand to look at 18 BBs deep HU. Fold it and move on.
Hand 4:
Poker Stars No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t3500.00/t7000.00 Blinds - 2 players
Hero (BB): t120435.00 17.20 BBs
FormulaL (BTN/SB): t149565.00 21.37 BBs
Pre Flop: (t10500) Hero is BB with 8
8
FormulaL raises to t21000, Hero raises to t119735, FormulaL calls t98735
Flop: (t239470) T
8
J
(2 players)
Turn: (t239470) 3
(2 players)
River: (t239470) 6
(2 players)
Final Pot: t239470
Hero shows 8
8
FormulaL shows 6
7
Hero wins t240870.00
Pocket pairs are always golden HU, and 88 is really strong here. His raise here is probably more of a blocking raise: he doesn't want to limp in again and have me shove over him, so he figures he'll make a raise that I'll either a.) fold to, or b.) call and play postflop. This is an incredibly easy and standard shove for me, and his call is god-awful. Calling off almost your entire 20 BB stack with a low suited connector is just horrible, but he was probably just getting frustrated with me shoving and figured he's got live cards, so why not gamble it up a little. Unlucky for him that I had a pocket pair and not just two overcards, but that doesn't mean his call was good.
Hand 5:
Poker Stars No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t3500.00/t7000.00 Blinds - 2 players
Hero (BTN/SB): t240870.00 34.41 BBs
FormulaL (BB): t29130.00 4.16 BBs
Pre Flop: (t10500) Hero is BTN/SB with K
8
Hero raises to t35000, FormulaL calls t22130 all in
Flop: (t58260) 6
2
5
(2 players - 1 is all in)
Turn: (t58260) A
(2 players - 1 is all in)
River: (t58260) 9
(2 players - 1 is all in)
Final Pot: t58260
Hero shows K
8
FormulaL shows 6
K
FormulaL wins t58260.00
So with him now crippled, I'm prepared to get it in pretty wide here. K8o is way more than enough to shove here, and the K6s call by him is fine: he'll be down to 3 BBs if he folds; I'm raising incredibly wide here, so K6s is probably actually a slight favorite against my range; he's already got 25% of his stack in the pot, so he doesn't even need to be a favorite to justify calling. Eyeballing this real quick, he only needs about 35% equity in this hand to justify a call, so he's fine calling here. He flops a 6, good for him, let's keep going.
Hand 6:
Poker Stars No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t3500.00/t7000.00 Blinds - 2 players
Hero (BB): t211740.00 30.25 BBs
FormulaL (BTN/SB): t58260.00 8.32 BBs
Pre Flop: (t10500) Hero is BB with T
7
FormulaL raises to t57560, 1 fold
Final Pot: t14000
FormulaL wins t15400.00
I don't really have any idea what his shoving range looks like here. He raise/called earlier with 76s, so I guess it's possible he's really wide here, but even then it would be a pretty marginal call at best. So basically, it's marginal if he's wide, and it's really bad if he's not wide. I was much more content with folding and moving on than taking an at-best marginal spot here. For the record, if he's shoving Nash equilibrium (22+, A2+, K2+, Q2+, J2s+, J6o+, T3s+, T7o+, 95s+, 97o+, 84s+, 87o+, 74s+, 76o, 64s+, 53s+, 43s), then this is the marginalest of marginal calls we could make (Nash has us calling 22+, A2+, K2+, Q2s+, Q5o+, J5s+, J8o+, T7s+, T8o+, 97s+). So you can see, T7s is one of the bottom bounds of our range here, and that's IF he's shoving Nash which I highly doubt he is. Better to just fold and move on than make a marginal call and risk evening the stacks back up.
Hand 7:
Poker Stars No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t3500.00/t7000.00 Blinds - 2 players
Hero (BTN/SB): t204040.00 29.15 BBs
FormulaL (BB): t65960.00 9.42 BBs
Pre Flop: (t10500) Hero is BTN/SB with 2
J
Hero raises to t203340, FormulaL calls t58960 all in
Flop: (t131920) T
5
3
(2 players - 1 is all in)
Turn: (t131920) 8
(2 players - 1 is all in)
River: (t131920) 8
(2 players - 1 is all in)
Final Pot: t131920
Hero shows 2
J
FormulaL shows J
Q
FormulaL wins t131920.00
In hindsight, I think this was a pretty bad shove from me, not because he had me dominated though. I've already seen him call me a little wide, so shoving J2o here doesn't really accomplish much. He folds everything worse probably, so that's nice, we pick up the pot that way a lot of the time. But I think there is still a significant amount of hands in his calling range that he shouldn't be calling with, and J2o just doesn't have very good showdown value. If he was shorter, this could be a fine shove depending on how short. But for 9.5 BBs, I'd be better off just moving on to the next hand probably.
Hand 8:
Poker Stars No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t3500.00/t7000.00 Blinds - 2 players
Hero (BB): t138080.00 19.73 BBs
FormulaL (BTN/SB): t131920.00 18.85 BBs
Pre Flop: (t10500) Hero is BB with J
A
FormulaL calls t3500, Hero raises to t137380, FormulaL calls t124920 all in
Flop: (t263840) Q
2
5
(2 players - 1 is all in)
Turn: (t263840) A
(2 players - 1 is all in)
River: (t263840) 8
(2 players - 1 is all in)
Final Pot: t263840
Hero shows J
A
FormulaL shows 4
K
Hero wins t263840.00
So now we're basically even again, and he feels like it's time to start playing "real poker" again (or at least I assume that's what was going through his mind). Last time he limped, I shoved over and he folded, so I was a little worried that he would fold again. But he also showed me that he's willing to make a pretty bad call for most of the chips on the table (hand 4), so I was a little bit torn on what to do here. In the end, I remembered that I suck playing postflop, especially under 20 BBs deep, so I elected to just shove and hope he would call me light again (and hope he wasn't trapping with a monster this time, which also briefly crossed my mind). To my delight, he makes another bad call (for the record, Nash says K8s would be borderline, so K4s is definitely a fold, especially since I'm probably shoving tighter than Nash here), my AJ holds, and I collect the monies.
Played 160 games so far this weekend, so I'm right on pace for the 50 a day I wanted. Hopefully I can keep riding this heater tomorrow and close out the weekend with another winning day.
