A Slave to Variance

I discovered this the other day, and I’ve been making use of it during my longer planned sessions. If you are sitting at three tables and register for a multi-table tournament, Paradise will allow you to play four tables total. Since I’ve *ahem* chosen to suspend my play at PokerStars for a while due to constantly losing my ass there, it’s nice to have the option to play more tables.

It’s also nice to see what the big deal about multi-table ternys is. Personally I find them to be massivly boring and only marginally profitable. They are much higher variance that ring games. That means to have an equivalent expectation I’d have to endure even larger swings than I do now. I really don’t need that kind of abuse on a regular basis, but from time to time they can be fun.

So there was this fish last night, and like any high limit fish he was very good at some things and not so good at others.

This guy played nearly every hand, but was able to extract massive value through bluffs and super thin value raises. So if you wanted to play with him you had to be certain that you had a hand. This of course meant that if you raised him, he had a pretty good idea where he stood. On the other hand it was very difficult to discern his bluffs from thin value bets from regular value bets. To combat that sort of style, you have to occasionally put in extra bets when you aren’t sure where you stand.

holdem       $ 40/80 Hichinbrook                        Sun Nov 14
     ante: 0.00 blinds: 20.00 40.00 rake: 2.00  pot:  738 [Qh Kd Jc 4c 9s]
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 -
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E-Dropper      5242 Sf                          20  -20.0
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jakeman718     1074 Bc   b    b    bc          360 -360.0 [5h As]
Andrew         2998 r    c    c    r           360  378.0 [Qs 9d]
M Lisa         2244 f                            0    0.0

In this hand, I’ve clearly got a hand to play, but I don’t want to push him off the pot. I’m in that nether world where I’m either well ahead or well behind, and I really can’t be sure. I think I’m ahead.

When I hit two pair on a scary board, I go ahead and raise. This is a real tough spot because if he three bets me here, it’s almost impossible to fold, but now my hand is so good compared to his potential holdings that I WANT that extra value. Luckily he called me down with just ace high.

Most data is in, and I’ve come to a conclusion. I need to stop going on ping pong ball tilt, and take the game a bit more seriously.

tilt game (40/80): .87 BB/(table hour)
joke game (20/40): .46 BB/(table hour)

I know that these metrics aren’t the ones that everyone uses nowadays. All the PokerTracker types have been using this BB/100 number. And if I had that number available I might use it. But alas I don’t. I would guess that I average about 80 hands per table hour, so that would make it about 1.09 for the 80 game.

It’s pretty clear that I’m not taking my time in the 20/40 game very seriously. I suppose it has a lot to do with playing the 40/80 game. Since I started playing 40/80, my 20/40 record is at a dismal .03 BB/table hour.