A Slave to Variance

It’s been over a year since I entered my records into my sreadsheet. Part of this is because it hasn’t been a stellar year at the tables. Part of this is laziness, and part of it is a certain comfort that, gosh darn it, I’m good enough.

But the day has finally come, I’ve begun the massive task of entering all the sessions into my spreadsheet. Luckily the data entry is a nearlly 100% automagic task. But I still have to validate and tease out the typos form the original data entry as I played. All those sessions where I played negative minutes just have got to go. Hopefully, it’ll take less than three hours to do all the validation.

For whatever reason, this super-minimal traffic blog is being spammed by a bot. How do I know it’s a bot? I guess because it keeps sending obviously generated emails like bob@y2724o.com, posting comments on long past entries, and trys to install links to websites with obviously broken content like: “This account is no longer available”.

So if your comment takes a while to show up, it’s because I’ve turned moderation on for the time being. At least until the machine running the spam bot dies.

It’s almost never the right time to attempt a bluff-reraise. It’s usually really expensive, especially in a heads up pot. And you have to be against someone who you know is capable of bluff raising the river. These people do exist. The problem is that they usually aren’t bluffing when they raise you on the river.

holdem       $ 40/80 Garove                             Sun Oct 24
     ante: 0.00 blinds: 20.00 40.00 rake: 1.00  pot: 1039 [Tc 4c Ts Kd 2s]
 -
 -
Duchess888     1721 r    k    rc   rf          480 -480.0
 -
 -
 -
Andrew         4620 SC   k    br   br          560  559.0 [5c 8c]
 -
 -
MICK-MOUSE     6740 Bc   k    f                 80  -80.0

In this hand, I’m against a constant semi-bluffer. He’s always pushing back, so sometimes I have to push too. That’s why I three bet him on the turn with my 8-high flush draw on a paired board. Of course, when the flush misses, the only way my 8-high will be good is if I don’t have to show it. Time to bluff.

Unfortunatly, the best laid plans and all that. When he raises my bluff I quickly relocate the logic I used to raise the turn to the river and decide that three betting here with the obvious worst hand is probably a good idea.

Luckily for me he folded.

So, yet again, I’ve had a 300 big bet downswing. I’m sure this is in part because I played poorly.

And it’s in part due to the qualitiy of my opponents. And it might have something to do with the fact that I play three tables at a time, unable to give any table my full concentration. But a good portion of it is due to luck.

It was 25 days from peak to trough (Sept 15-Oct 10), but the number of hours was sparse. Finally today I clawed back to even, as measured from the beginning of September. That doesn’t match my peak, but it sure is nice to know that I’m starting to “make a living” again.

Gotta love pocker!

:)

When you are bluffing, it is usually best to bluff with hands which are worth almost nothing. Part of the reason is that you’ll often have the best hand and would have won a free showdown anyways. However, this only holds when you are bluffing with position. When you are first to act, bluffing with the best hand has value in the sense that you are less likely to be (re)bluffed off of the best hand.

Case in point. You make it to the river against a nutball with 86-high. You’ve been semi-bluffing all the way. So you certainly should bluff with what is the worst hand right? Heck, even if it isn’t the worst hand you want to keep the idiot from bluffing you out. But who’d expect a hand like 84-high to call a full bet into a smallish pot on the river.

I never really thought of 86-high as having any value betting potential. I only thought I’d get the worse hands to fold, and get a few of the better hands to fold as well.

holdem       $ 20/40 Exuma                              Sat Sep 25
     ante: 0.00 blinds: 10.00 20.00 rake: 3.00  pot:  277 [7d 3h 5h 7s As]
J.Vegas         781 f                            0    0.0
LagunaSlick    1061 f                            0    0.0
xyz482          472 f                            0    0.0
leewar          765 f                            0    0.0
Thumper27       852 f                            0    0.0
WAIDJR         1055 f                            0    0.0
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Andrew         1723 Sr   b    b    b           140  137.0 [8d 6s]
G&N works       696 Bc   c    c    c           140 -140.0 [8c 4c]
jc060896        402 f                            0    0.0