Posts Tagged ‘5-bet’

Tournament Statistics

Certainly an above average year in tournaments, with an FTOPS win, a WCOOP final table, a SCOOP final table bubble, and a top 100 finish in the WSOP Main Event. No room to complain about anything here. My true ROI is probably in the neighborhood of 100%, so I ran well above expectation. The high average buy-in and field size indicate that I focused my play on big buy-in events and special huge-field events like the WCOOP, FTOPS, and Sunday tournaments, which was the goal.

ROI: 395.8%

ITM: 17.5%

Average Buy-In: $546

Average Field Size: 2,204

Average Finish: 38.7%

Win Rate: .73 Buy-Ins/Hour

Biggest Win: $2000 FTOPS 2-Day NLHE

Cash Game Statistics

These numbers aren’t as bad as they look. Basically I got creamed in some high stakes heads up games, and those dragged down my overall win rates. Excluding heads up games, I’m up across the board, even in high-stakes games (2.5 BB/100 win rate). Basically I just need to either get better at heads up, stop playing it, or at least practice better game selection.

I’m also a little unhappy with the number of hands played. Because of my nomadic lifestyle, I was on my laptop for most of the year, with just one monitor. Thus I often played just 4 tables at once. It’s been nice getting back on two monitors, and I’m looking forward to getting a lot more hands in for 2011.  Read the complete post...

I had some tough tables in the USA COOP main event, full of aggressive tournament regulars. There was a ton of raising 3-betting, and when one player got disconnected and was not around to defend his blind, sparks really flew. I happened to have the button when the disconnected player was in the big blind, so it fell to me to defend it from everyone who was widening their ranges to attack it.

Here’s a cold 4-bet with air:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 530 Tournament, 500/1000 Blinds (9 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (Button) (t66911)
SB (t62981)
BB (t122036)
UTG (t88774)
UTG+1 (t108993)
MP1 (t104138)
MP2 (t54086)
MP3 (t76446)
CO (t165289)

Hero’s M: 44.61

Preflop: Hero is Button with Q, 7
3 folds, MP2 bets t2599, MP3 raises to t7000, 1 fold, Hero raises to t16666, 4 folds

Total pot: t18099

Results:
Hero didn’t show Q, 7.
Outcome: t18099 returned to Hero

And here’s a real rarity in tournament poker, a 5-bet bluff!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 530 Tournament, 600/1200 Blinds (9 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (Button) (t84958)
SB (t60482)
BB (t113461)
UTG (t108372)
UTG+1 (t112855)
MP1 (t50777)
MP2 (t81694)
MP3 (t70046)
CO (t167009)

Hero’s M: 47.20  Read the complete post...

My latest poker strategy article, Joseph Cheong WSOP Final Table “Blow Up“, has just been published in the December 2010 issue of 2+2 Magazine. It’s an in-depth analysis of the complex factors at play in the infamous A7 vs. QQ hand, many of which have been overlooked by commentary thus far:

Though some have questioned it, Duhamel’s decision to risk his tournament life with QQ seems intuitive enough when we see that Cheong is indeed capable of making a move like this. It was Cheong’s play with Ace-rag that really raised eyebrows. The conventional wisdom has been that this was a “blow up”, a spiraling out of control of the disciplined aggression that had kept Cheong in control of the final table for most of the day.

I am not so quick to agree. I can’t say for certain whether his play was correct, but I can imagine circumstances that would justify it. Whether those circumstances existed I don’t know, because I was not at the table that night, but neither were those rushing to condemn his play. The critiques that I’ve read have generally failed to address the possible justifications for this aggressive move. In short, I’ve concluded that while Cheong’s play certainly looks reckless, we don’t have the information we’d need to judge him definitively.  Read the complete post...

Before I became a serious poker player, I loved to watch poker on TV. Now, I can hardly stand it. I did watch a few episodes of this year’s WSOP broadcast, mostly from the days I expected to be on there and for the final table coverage. It’s clearly increased in sophistication over the years, jettisoning the “rules of NLHE” segment and adding features like VP$IP statistics. I’m assuming this reflects an audience that understands the game a lot better than it did several years ago.

Nevertheless, I feel like they still cater too much to the lowest common denominator. I realize there are (hopefully) tons of people watching who aren’t going to care one lick about table dynamics or anything like that, but I don’t see how it hurts them to include some information that is slightly beyond their understanding. I feel like that’s generally how sports are covered. Presumably football commentators sometimes talk about plays or factors that are beyond the understanding of some appreciable chunk of their audience, but they get away with it.

Given that they are making some effort to speculate as to why players are playing hands the way they are, I believe that they ought to try to get it right. On the 2+2 Pokercast recently, Lon Mceachern said something to the effect of, “There are 100 different ways to play a hand, so no matter what explanation you’re going to give, you’re not going to please everyone.”  Read the complete post...

About 3 hours into today’s $300 6-max, I got moved to a table with two Pocket Fives superstars. One was to my immediate right, and one two seats to my left. We tangled in a few interesting spots, and while I definitely got the best of the one on my right, the results were more mixed vs. the one on my left:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em Tournament, 170/340 Blinds 25 Ante (6 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB (t38915)
UTG (t29428)
MP (t12937)
CO (t32263)
Hero (Button) (t19680)
SB (t11504)

Hero’s M: 29.82

Preflop: Hero is Button with K, Q
2 folds, CO bets t680, Hero raises to t1555, 2 folds, CO calls t875

Flop: (t3770) 3, Q, 8 (2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets t1666, CO raises to t5433, Hero raises to t9200, 1 fold

Total pot: t14636

Results:
Hero didn’t show K, Q.
Outcome: Hero won t14636

Against better players I would flat the check-raise and get it in on the turn, but I think this guy is giving up his bluffs like 95% of the time, so it’s better to get the money in on the flop.

So then he tries to steal my blind with the old raise-bet-and-give-up technique:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em Tournament, 200/400 Blinds 50 Ante (6 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com  Read the complete post...

I’ve just finished reading and reviewing Harrington on Online Cash Games, certainly one of the most anticipated poker books of the year. Here’s the two-minute version:

HOCG is the single best resource I’ve seen for anyone just starting out online or still learning to beat the microstakes games (i.e. stakes smaller than $.25/$.50). Though still good, the section on moving up to small stakes games ($.25/$.50 through $1/$2 blinds) is a lot less thorough and somewhat more hit-or-miss than the majority of the book, which is aimed at microstakes players. I’d recommend the book without qualification for anyone still aspiring to beat the microstakes. Others will need to approach the small stakes advice more critically, but there’s still a lot of good material to be found there.

Check out the full review!

We played four rounds today. The first one started at 13:00 and I finished a little before 20:00, though many tables were still playing for some time thereafter.

My first opponent was by far the toughest. He’s a regular with a in biggest NLHE games on Poker Stars, not as well known as most of the guys who play in the game but with a respectable win rate. I don’t think we’d ever played cash together, so it’s possible he knew nothing about me. He certainly seemed to underestimate me, anyway. He was 3-betting a lot, and the first time I 4-bet him, he shoved 87o and lost to my AA. That got me a 3-1 lead, but then I got it in with K7 vs. AA (he flat called pre-flop) on a KQ6 flop and doubled him up. The second time I 4-bet him, he shoved and I folded. The third time, he shoved and his Q2s lost to my KK.

My second opponent was the weakest of the four, though he got an early lead when he one-outed me in a 3-bet pot. I’d called his 3-bet with Q8, and he’d check-called two bets on a Q-high board. The river was an 8 and put four to a straight on the board. He checked and called a big bet with 88. I got back to even with AA vs. his KK, then ground him down and polished him with AK vs. his KQ.  Read the complete post...

My Two Minute Recommendation: Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time scores a 9/10. Three top players discuss nearly 200 real hands and address dozens of common mistakes that even experienced no-limit hold ‘em tournament players make. Read Harrington on Hold ‘Em first for a theoretical foundation, but read this book next to see the ideas in action.

I am one of those cash game players who likes to deride tournament specialists as uncreative “tourney donks” whose poker skill is limited to an encyclopedic knowledge of pre-flop shoving ranges. I half-expected that that would be my reaction to Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time by Jon “Pearljammer” Turner, Eric “Rizen” Lynch, and Jon “Apestyles” Van Fleet.

I must say that I was pleasantly surprised.

These guys are among the best in the world at beating online tournaments full of weak players. There’s a temptation to look down my nose and say they don’t understand concepts like 3rd-level thinking or balancing, but honestly those just aren’t particularly important skills in these events. I wouldn’t stake these guys in a high rollers’ event or hire them to teach me cash game poker, but they beat the snot out of large-field poker tournaments, and in this book they teach you how to do the same in remarkably clear fashion.  Read the complete post...