Third time's a charm

[Kramer545]

[Kramer545]

It's been about a week since I posted so I thought I'd do so before I slipped to the dreaded page 2.

Right now I feel like I'm stuck in sort of a limbo. I'd played about 4 days at limit holdem with really no success. It didn't take me long to figure out how little I knew about the game. I've only had a small monetary loss (less than 5 bucks), but I feel a little lost while playing it. I did get my limit books, however, and I've started studying the Miller/Sklansky one about small stakes, so I don't feel quite as lost as I did, though I still have a long way to go before I'm ready to start making money at the game, should I decide to keep giving it a go at limit.

In the meantime, I've decided to try and iron out my NL game a bit. I mentioned before how I'd become hesitant to make preflop raises and be aggressive at no limit (or even enter the pot) because my whole stack was at stake. To combat this feeling I've jumped headfirst into a game that requires that I be aggressive (pre- and post-flop), play more hands to be competitive, and (more importantly) to get used to swings that will happen to my bankroll since they'll occur more frequently (or so I've read). Of course I'm talking about NL 6-max games. I've only started playing them today. Though since it was my first foray into 6-max I decided a good place to start was with my "fun account" at Stars, playing the $10 tables.

What I found out was that I really enjoyed playing 6-max much more than FR. It seems more of a feel and read game than FR. I didn't feel I had to play quite so mechanical. I had no problem being aggressive preflop (PFR of 9.62% despite my best hand being KJs, though in all honesty this was a very, very passive table) or getting in there and mixing it up a little bit, because I felt I could outplay most of them postflop (that's not a brag, but only a jab at how bad these players were; they seem much, much worse than many of the FR players). Of course I ended up in a losing session by making a PFR with A6s on the button behind a limper, flopping two more sixes and getting my bets called down to the end by someone chasing a gutshot draw...and hitting on the river (he called my PFR with 87o). But I have a feeling these plays will happen more often on 6-max than FR, so I just shook it off and won back half of what I lost (most from the same player who took my money in that hand) before closing the table. I'll probably play a little bit more 6-max from now on, with my actual bankroll at my normal limits ($25) and see how it goes for awhile.

Oh and PS, I finally got around to ordering NLHETAP. Should be here on Wednesday, so I'm looking forward to getting that.

[Kramer545]

I played a couple of sessions 1-tabling $25 6-max today. So I went up to my normal limits, but I was still too much of a pussy to use my actual bankroll. I stayed at Stars. My very limited experience with the game made me a bit nervous to use my actual bankroll just yet. The good news is that I won in both sessions. $21 in the first one and $4 in the last one.

My big win in the first game is a reminder of how dangerous slowplaying can be sometimes. I had 99 in a loose game in the SB. I maybe made a mistake originally by not raising it after everyone at the table limped, but I'd played there long enough to know that I'd have to make a huge raise to get faced up against 1 or 2 players (it was one of those tables that is passive as a rule, but if the first person calls a raise, so do the rest, if they already have money in the pot), so I decided to just lay back with the hand and see what happened. Flop was 772. I had an overpair so I bet around the pot. 2 people call. I had to put at least one of them on a seven or an overpair at that point because there was no straight or flush draw, so barring a miracle I was probably done with the hand. On the turn my 9 gets there. The guy with the A7 picks now to start showing strength, and with my flop bet (and the fact I was in the SB) he probably put me on a smaller 7. Had this guy raised my bet on the flop (and he acted after someone had already called my bet) I was most likely gone, because unless he was reraising with an 88, there wasn't much that he could be reraising with that I would be beating at that point. Needless to say I was fortunate enough to stack him and for him to have a stack over $20. Though that was a tough situation for him to be in and I'd be lying if I said I probably wouldn't've played it just like he did. There were absolutely no draws on the flop, so why wouldn't he slowplay a big hand, at least on the flop? It was just my good luck and his bad, though if I hadn't caught that nine I would've been gone with just a very small loss. So fortunately I was on the good side of a big win-small loss situation.

I really like only having to watch 5 other players rather than 9. I get to know their patterns in a way that I never could've at FR. It allowed me, after raising with AK and making a CB that got called on the flop, to make yet another big bet on the turn even after I didn't improve. I was pretty sure I'd take it down with that last bet because this guy had a habit of calling most flop bets in a raised pot and then checking the turn. It's a play I rarely ever use (probably a weakness on my part; "firing that 2nd barrel" and all...), but getting the reads I'm getting on these tables has given me more confidence to be more aggressive when I think I should be.

So in conclusion, so far I'm loving 6-max. I'm curious how I'll play at a table full of crazy aggressive players (the tables I've played so far have been almost the exact opposite) and whether I'll crawl into my shell again, but with each session I'm gaining just a little bit more confidence in my play, and relearning how to be aggressive myself, so hopefully I'll be ready when the time comes.

[Kramer545]

A small loss today of less than $1. I think I played pretty well though. I was up around $6 at one point and then in the space of probably 10 minutes I got three good drawing hands (2 flushes and an OESD), and in every one of them I was up against the same opponent (a serious calling-station type player). It's the reason I wasn't more aggressive with them; he had no problem calling just about any bet if he had anything at all. The good news is that he priced me in well to go after all three. The bad news is that I didn't hit a single one and ended up giving him quite a bit of money. He left shortly afterwards, probably thinking what a good player he was (and what a bad one I was for "chasing"), but that's alright because I know I played them correctly.

For some reason I thought 6-max would be more aggressive and crazy than FR. So far I've seen just about the opposite. I finally faced a few people today that raised just about every other pot, but so far they are the exception rather than the rule. Maybe it gets more aggressive up in the higher limits? There just seems to be an awful lot of two or three limpers seeing the flop, one making a small bet and the other two folding. I'm doing what I can about winning more than my share of these small pots, but I'm starting to wonder exactly what the value of a hand like 55 is in these games, other than the obvious value of having a pair. Even with the table all having near the max buy-in, it feels like it's probably one in a hundred chance that even if you do get lucky and hit a set that you'll get paid off nicely for it. And I have been seeking out tables with most players having near the max-buyin (and that's not easy; most people seem to buy-in for $10 at these $25 tables), but I'm starting to wonder if that's a good idea. The smaller stacks are the only ones that seem willing to give any action at all (unless, of course, a large stack has the nuts or close to it). The implied odds go down, but the normal pots seem to be larger than a table with all big stacks. I'll play around with this idea over the next day or two to see how it pans out.

[Kramer545]

Well so far my 6-max experiment has been pretty blah. The most I was ever up this week was $30 and I lost the majority of that back in one hand when I got stacked for $25 with AA. It all went in preflop (normally I don't push that hard with aces preflop because I want some action, but there was a big raise behind my raise and a call of that raise, so I figured I'd get one of them to commit) and a 99 called and caught a straight (the other guy told me after that he laid down QQ, which I would've beaten). I know, no big deal, just bad luck getting beaten like that, but I haven't been winning enough other big hands to compensate for a big loss like that. Well I take that back. I'm winning decent sized pots, but when I'm not losing it back in huge pots like this I'm losing it back a little bit at a time.

Reading NLHETAP hasn't helped my mindset at all. I'm always feeling like I need to continually mix things so noone can get a "read" on me. Of course, Sklansky doesn't even recommend mixing it up all that often so it's really not the fault of the book, but he has so many caveats about "a perceptive player will pick up on this if you do it too often and nail you" that I've been completely paranoid about being read so I'm going a bit crazy mixing things up so that it's simply not possible. The problem, of course, is that this isn't $5000NL. This is $25NL. I've most likely been mixing up my play completely unneccesarily. I've gotten really far away from playing ABC poker. A lot of it has to do with playing 6-max. With so few players to focus on I feel a little like I'm much more exposed to the other players. As a result I'm telling myself to never play a big hand (or small one) the same way even twice in a row because I'll be read like a book. Of course in retrospect this is a stupid way to think at this level (or probably any level, since there's no reason to mix things up THAT much). I'm making money with my good hands, but I'm also pissing away just about as much money little chunks at a time just so I'm not "predictable". I'm bluffing way too often. I'm calling hands down way too often. I'm slowplaying way too often. All in the name of being unpredictable. I'm doing things that probably only 1 player in 20 will even notice at this level. And after a week I've finally realized that it's costing me money to do this.

So I'm going to try to get back to my TAG way of playing, and more importantly, focus more on ABC poker than mixing things up. I've still usually been pretty tight preflop this week, but I've noticed a trend in the past couple days where my VP$IP is steadily rising. I need to squelch that before it gets out of hand. I'll still continue to mix things up from time to time so I don't get TOO predictable on the off-chance someone is paying attention. But I'll make those plays very occasionally, and only if I feel, after playing a session awhile, that I actually am being read a bit by the players and not getting paid off enough on my good hands; I may try a wild play there to get them back to guessing, but then immediately go back to ABC.

I'm going to make my new home PokerStars. I'm doing this for two reasons. First, because my handle on that site is different than the one I use to post here (I'm Kramer545 on several other sites including UB and Party). This probably won't matter much, but just a peace of mind thing. The second is because unless I'm mistaken, you can't datamine PS (if I'm wrong about this I may have to change my mind about PS). I feel this will give me an advantage over most of the other players who multi-table (4 or more) and rely on PT only for reads; this way they can't just come in and grab the last 200 hands I'd been playing. I'm finding at 6-max that I'm relying less and less on PT stats and more on my own reads (especially the intangibles that the PT stats don't do justice; though I don't discount PT's stats, especially the VP$IP and PFR, as they are always good to have), so I'm not as concerned with not being able to datamine myself. I've heard that PS can be a tougher place to play than many sites, but in my experience the last week I'm convinced that whoever said that wasn't playing micro NL 6-max. The players are routinely loose and most of the tables I've played the play has been very passive. Plus they always seem to have a nice selection of 6-max tables at my limit.

Right now my bankroll is kind of all over the place (some at Stars, UB, Party, Pacific and Neteller). I've made the withdraw from everywhere except Stars, so once I don't have to look at 5 different places to see what my exact bankroll is I'll start posting it here again (right now I really have no clue exactly what I have in my BR). I don't like not knowing exactly where my bankroll is at because I'm a "structure" sort of guy and right now, without any structure, I kind of feel like I'm just drifting along without any specific reason for playing. That should change once I get everything back into Neteller and can start posting my exact bankroll here again.

[Kramer545]

Well all of my BR is back in Neteller except for what I have at Pokerstars (I was very surprised at how quick Pacific made the transfer this time). Looking back at my original post of this journal I saw that I had $500 in my actual bankroll and $50 in "fun" money at the start of the month. Since I've sort of put any fun playing on haitus at the moment I've added that money into my actual bankroll. So at the moment I have $496.46 in Neteller and $128.58 at Stars for a total of $625.04. So it's good that I'm at least winning about $75 for the month, but it's far, far behind what I'd like to be winning. I haven't been playing as much as I should've. I've gotten lots and lots of poker books this month (and still waiting for two more) and I've typically taken time reading those that I'd normally be playing.

With my bankroll at $625, it's conveniently just about exactly 25x the buy-in for the $25 tables. I've been toying with the idea of gambling more with my small bankroll, maybe using a 10x buy-in plan, so that I can move up in limits quicker (I feel like I've been toiling in the $25 tables forever; with this plan I'd start at the $50 tables immediately). But the problems with that is that even as small as my bankroll is, I would not be able to replace it all if I happen to bust out. I'd have to probably deposit a couple hundred dollars and start out at the $10 tables from scratch. Also with 6-max and its higher variance I worry that I'd start playing weak/tight and wouldn't feel comfortable making high variance plays without the BR to back it up. I think instead of that I should keep a conventional BR (25x sounds like a good number) and quit making withdrawals from it. If I hadn't made a single withdrawal since I started playing at the beginning of the year I figure I'd be on the $50 level by now and 1/2 or 3/4 the way to the $100 tables. So it's really my own fault I haven't moved up like I want to, although knowing I'm playing with only my winnings has given a certain psychological advantage to me as well (knowing that should I go broke-pokerwise- I'd be no worse off than what I'd be if I never started playing; and I've probably withdrawn several hundred dollars more than what I actually deposited, so I'd actually still even be ahead if I go "broke"). I'm not sure what the magical level I'll hit before I start withdrawing again, but at least through the $100 level I'll keep all winnings in my bankroll in an effort to rise up in levels a little quicker than I have been. Of course this is discounting an emergency. If I need my entire bankroll for an emergency I won't hesitate to pull it all out and start over from scratch. But it'll have to be a huge emergency (and not just vacation or something) before I'll even consider it.

I'm nearly through with NLHETAP and despite the mind games that I've let happen since reading it, I'm really glad I bought it. Hopefully I can start using the knowledge I've learned from it in a positive rather than a negative way.

Total Bankroll: $625.04
Left to $50s: $624.96

[Kramer545]

[Kramer545]

[Runner_Runner]

I understand where you're coming from. I too struggle with trying to get serious about poker and grind out hands per hr/day/week whatever, and am trying a new run at it, but it's tough, especially with a full time day job and a life outside of poker. No knock on the college kids here (I'm assuming you aren't one since you mention work, etc.), but if I had that extra time and relative lack of responsibilties to put into my game not to mention the energy, I'd be right there with them in terms of results. I didn't have that option while in college - there was no Chris Moneymaker, WPT, or online poker. I'm sure you would too. Others that are older and extra successful have been playing the game for YEARS.

I too get frustrated when I hear about people moving up like 3 limits in two months or whatever - why aren't I doing that? I ask myself, and you probably do as well. See above for the answers. Of course, then there's instances where people tilt away 14 buy-ins because they aren't ready, and sometimes I think people just take shots. And finally this is the internet - I don't have any specific examples and am not accusing anyone in particular, but I think sometimes people that post bloated winrates and such are either lying or it's a statistically unfit sample of hands.

Moral of the story is - work hard and do the very best that YOU can be in YOUR situation. There's plenty of money to be made despite the number of kids grinding it out instead of getting summer jobs.

[Kramer545]

Thanks RR. Yeah, I'm 35 years old and, of course, do have a full time job. I certainly hold no ill will against those younger kids that fly through the limits and make thousands a month. Like you mentioned, if I was in that same situation I'd probably be right beside them trying to do the same thing (whether I would've succeeded or not is another story ). Of course some people in my situation also put in a great number of hands as well, so I'm certainly not saying it can't be done even now. At times I wish I had that desire to play a LOT of poker and make as much as I possibly could each month, but I just don't, and although at times I can even convince myself that I have that desire, it usually doesn't last long when the reality of the first 4 or 5 table session comes crashing in. Of course it doesn't help that I'm still not completely convinced that I'd personally make more money 4 (or more) tabling over 2 tabling. For some I'm sure it does make more money, but I'm not a good quick decision maker and if I'm playing too many tables and have too many decisions at once, I just know that at least one of those decisions is costing me money (whether it's by losing too much or not winning enough on the hand). Who knows, maybe after playing two tables for a loooooong time and gaining more experience (so that some of the decisions I have to make become "routine") I may feel comfortable adding a third one. But at the moment I'm going to accept my limitations as an online poker player, and put myself in a situation where I've proven I CAN win enough to my satisfaction and still enjoy playing poker at the same time. If everyone else in the world is 4-12 tabling that's okay; I'll just do my best to take advantage of their rockiness as much as I possibly can.

[Kramer545]

[Kramer545]

[Dumb Snowman]

Don't do it.

[emmasdad]

[Kramer545]