It’s been an exciting and eye-opening experience. We’ve visited a lot of cool places including about a dozen national parks, visited some old friends in new places and met two new babies- guess I’m at that age where my peers are starting to pop them out, and gotten a better feel for parts of the country that we barely knew before. I’d never been to the American South or the Pacific Northwest, and I ended up liking the former a lot better than I expected and the latter somewhat less (though I’m just getting to know it).

There are a lot of things that I miss. Living out of a car gets old, and I miss having a reliable bed, a comfortable desk and chair with two big monitors (multi-tabling on a laptop sucks), and having friends around and being involved in a local community. Oh and a reliable internet connection, of course! I’ve been able to keep up pretty well with coaching, though not quite as well as I like, despite the fact that I rarely know more than a week in advance where I’ll be and when.

More reflections and links to come, but we’re actually about to pick up two of my best friends from college at the airport, as they’ve flown out to visit us in Washington. This is a long-delayed wedding present to them, so don’t want to keep them waiting! In the meantime, here are a few random facts and blog links:

States Visited (in order, including those we passed through without stopping): Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida (just me, visiting my grandmother on the way back from the PCA), Nevada (flew out for Valentine’s Day/NAPT Venetian), California, Vermont, Maine, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington

Dispatches From the Road

A collection of my blog posts about places we’ve visited, things we’ve done, and people we’ve met.

Relative Happiness, Part 1

Relative Happiness, Part 2

Bathroom Ethics Fail

Brown v Board Monument

The Horse Story

LuJean Dunlap

Didn’t Know Google Knew Roads Like This

Book Ideas

The Wisconsin Supreme Court Votes With Poker Chips

It’s Quickly Becoming Non-Ironic

A Bluff I Don’t Want to Call

Lower 48… Done

I came into Day 4 with a monster stack relative to the field. I had over 500,000 chips, when the average was about 180,000, ranking me 27th among the more than 1,200 players who remained. Day 4 was a particularly good day for this, as it was also the day that would separate the players who would win nothing from those who would take home at least $19,000. With 747 players to be paid, no one wanted to be eliminated in 748th place (or 762nd, for that matter), which meant that most people were playing more conservatively than usual.

I had the biggest stack at my table, and the only person who even came close was a guy two seats to my right whom I’d never heard of. He was sitting on about 400,000 chips. It looked like all the stars were aligned for me to steamroll the table and steal steal steal, but it didn’t go quite as flawlessly as I’d imagined it.

Please let me know what you think!

I believe that a bet or raise should always have an objective (or objectives), and that you should know your objective(s) before betting. This is crucial both to decide whether to bet at all and to size your bets appropriately. In theory, one ought to be able to write an equation for the value of a bet as a function of some combination of factors on this list.

For example, if I make a pot-sized shove with As Qd on an Qh Ts 5s flop in a heads up pot, I believe the value of that bet would be equal to

Value + Protection + Deception

Some of these can be calculated more precisely than others. For Value, I can make an educated guess about how often he will call with worse hands and what my equity is against that calling range. Likewise I can determine how much equity his folding range has. Deception is much less precise, since we are talking about the extent to which shoving AQ here increases the profitablity of a shove with a hand like AJ in some similar future situation.

Does that make sense? What do you think of the current list? The two new additions are at the end, though I’ve revised some of the definitions as well.

1. Value- To get called or raised by worse hands (I believe this would include betting to induce a raise)

2. Bluff- To fold out better hands

3. Protection- To fold out worse hands that have some equity in the pot

4. Information- To make decisions easier on future streets

5. Deception- To increase the profitability of future bets in similar situations

6. Barreling- To set up a bluff at a later opportunity

7. Isolation- To get the pot heads up with a particular player

8. Position- To drive out players who will have position on you later in the hand

9. Blocking- To prevent an opponent from betting or raising now or on a future street (I believe this would include enabling yourself to take a free card or showdown)

10. Image- To encourage opponents to misunderestimate your skill or playing style in later hands

11. Pot Sweetening- To build the pot and increase the stakes in situations where you anticipate making better decisions than your opponents on future streets

12. Secrecy- To avoid having to show your hand at showdown

I’m not 100% sure about Secrecy. I feel like it’s getting at something similar to Image and may not warrant its own category.

Likewise I’m starting to wonder if Isolation isn’t too similar to position. In both cases you are trying to increase your implied odds on future streets by preventing other players from getting in your way. Does anyone else see what I’m getting at there?

Your comments were great last time, please keep them coming!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 530 Tournament, 250/500 Blinds 25 Ante (8 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP2 (t38150)
CO (t19145)
Button (t46070)
Hero (SB) (t15484)
BB (t40291)
UTG (t10654)
UTG+1 (t16138)
MP1 (t29062)

Hero’s M: 16.30

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, K
1 fold, UTG+1 bets t1250, 4 folds, Hero calls t1000, 1 fold

Flop: (t3200) 4, 8, 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 checks

Turn: (t3200) J (2 players)
Hero bets t2468, UTG+1 calls t2468

River: (t8136) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets t6666, 1 fold

Total pot: t8136

Results:
Hero didn’t show A, K (nothing).
Outcome: Hero won t8136

My guess is that he had a medium pocket pair, maybe as strong as T’s, or possibly paired an 8. My call out of the SB correctly slowed him down on the flop. I expected him to call any pair on the turn but fold hands worse than like JT on the river. It increases the profitability of this bluff considerably that he probably shoves a lot of JT-type hands and slowplayed overpairs when I bet the turn.

Oh and for those who question whether I’d actually play a big pair or similar hand this way and with this bet sizing, here’s an earlier hand from the same tournament (Villain was not at the table to witness this):

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 530 Tournament, 50/100 Blinds (8 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP1 (t9200)
MP2 (t10400)
CO (t12173)
Button (t12800)
Hero (SB) (t9417)
BB (t10750)
UTG (t18310)
UTG+1 (t7275)

Hero’s M: 62.78

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, A
3 folds, MP2 bets t300, 2 folds, Hero calls t250, 1 fold

Flop: (t700) J, 8, 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP2 checks

Turn: (t700) J (2 players)
Hero bets t567, MP2 calls t567

River: (t1834) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets t1550, MP2 calls t1550

Total pot: t4934

Results:
Hero had A, A (two pair, Aces and Jacks).
MP2 mucked 7, 7 (two pair, Jacks and sevens).
Outcome: Hero won t4934

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 109 Tournament, 200/400 Blinds 50 Ante (4 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (UTG) (t8288)
Button (t219)
SB (t4401)
BB (t17092)

Hero’s M: 10.36

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 8, 8
Hero calls t400, Button calls t169 (All-In), SB calls t200, BB bets t17042 (All-In), 2 folds

Flop: (t1569) Q, 10, K (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: (t1569) J (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t1569) 4 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t1569

Results:
Button had 8, 10 (one pair, tens).
BB had A, A (straight, Ace high).
Outcome: BB won t1569

Anything other than checking it down all the way here is just preposterously bad and demonstrates a really fundamental lack of understanding of satellite strategy. This was surprising because Villain is a Team PokerStars Online Pro who plays a ton of these things and had otherwise played quite well as we approached the bubble.

None of us here has an interest in anything other than maximizing the odds of busting the short stack on this hand.