A Slave to Variance

hold'em[L] $ 40/80 Paradise Poker - Shoal Bay      Wed Apr 26  ante:0.00 blinds: 20.00 40.00  rake:3.00 pot: 1037 [9h 5c Qc 6d 9s]   Dcifrths      1784  1 Scc  kf                     80   -80   Brentie       1017  0 Br   brc  b    b           400   637 [Qh Ac]   SueHFA        1140  5 cc   cR   c    c           400  -400 [Qd Kd]   mrstyle       5532  4 f                            0     0  *Andrew        3557  3 cc   rf                    160  -160 [Ad 9d]   Dopey         2493  2 f                            0     0

It’s not often you get a chance to raise/fold in a multiway pot on the flop. Usually, this play is reserved for pocket pairs, which are brittle in the sense that once you have a certain amount of information they become almost worthless. Here it’s a bit different, as I’ve got middle pair, top kicker. The problem is that due to the nature of the action, my ace outs are very tainted, so while my effective outs may not be as low as two, they are certainly less than three.

Of course, my two outer would have come in on the river, but I’ll take solace in the fact that when I got out I was crushed.

Here’s another cute hand:

hold'em[L] $ 40/80 Paradise Poker - Onslow         Wed Apr 26  ante:0.00 blinds: 20.00 40.00  rake:3.00 pot:  697 [2c Jd 9c 5c Ad]   mrstyle       2287  1 Sf                          20   -20  *Andrew        1637  0 Bc   kr   b    b           320   377 [3d 4d]   mixfreeze     1197  9 f                            0     0   orkids        1578  8 f                            0     0   Rusty-Nail    3108  7 f                            0     0   jfthomas2     3472  6 f                            0     0   Dcifrths      5235  5 f                            0     0   Mr.Lee        1600  4 Pkf                         40   -40   panman36      1719  3 f                            0     0   SueHFA        2772  2 r    bc   c    c           320  -320 [Qd Qh]

I defend with 43s, and flop nut low. What does one do with nut low? Why raise, and bet, and bet, of course. The river suckout is an added bonus, but by no means necessary.

I originally wrote PokerTrace as a first cut at a hand reviewing tool. I put in a lot of time and energy to make it pretty and to provide the ability to click on any action. The idea was that when you clicked on an action you’d launch a tool which brought up a complete snapshot of all the relevant information you might need to make that specific decision. I never did that. In practice, I’ve found that the lack of navigational tools hampered the utility of the application. The original idea was that you’d be able to use PokerTrace to get a line on how your opponents play. As such, all the filters were geared toward
displaying hands which a specific opponent had shown down. The problem here is that to be effective, you need a lot of hands to get that line.

Ideally, I’d have wired PokerTrace to my database, and used them together to provide a large pool of hands so that you could simply and easily filter through all the hands that you have. Unfortunatly, my database is not in any kind of publicly consumable form, and won’t be ready for quite a while. Without access to a complete history of all hands, any reviewing tool is better suited to session level review. As a session review tool PokerTrace is ok, but with only a crude filter for selecting interesting hands, and no actualy hand/session summary data, it’s doesn’t really do the task justice.

So I’m starting on the slow path to creating a solid session reviewing tool. The first step in the process is to revamp and retool PokerTrace, and make it actually mildly useful for reviewing your own session. If you have any requests or ideas about features you’d like to see in such a tool please post them here.

Thanks,

- Andrew

Sorry I haven’t been posting lately. I’ve been doing a lot of work on code, developing new tools to help me analyze various game situations. It’s still in the very early stages of development, but I expect it’ll end up being along the lines of a highly configurable limit hold’em simulator. I realize that LHE is quite passe in today’s world of non-stop no limit tournaments. Oh well.

One cute little result I’ve come up with is that when you’re holding 33 in the big blind you can raise in a pretty strange situation. When it’s been raised and there are one or two cold callers, you can three bet with your very small pocket pair. It doesn’t work when four people have entered the pot, and it doesn’t work when the pots been three bet. But if there are three or fewer opponents in a raised pot, and you find yourself in the BB with 33, go ahead and raise. You’ll be surprised by the results.

I got into a little debate the other day with a friend of mine. We were discussing the money potential of various games. I pointed out that I believed that if you are a very very good player, specializing in heads-up hold’em could yeild you as much as $1000/hour in todays internet poker world. He asked me why I wasn’t playing, and I asked him why he still had a day job. :)

Now, I don’t know how realistic that is, as I don’t play heads-up hold’em very much. But I know a few heads-up players, and given the limits that they run nowadays, I think it really is quite possible. So that does lead to the legitimate question, why don’t I play, or even try to prepare myself for playing that game?

The answer comes down to several issues which essentially define me as a poker player. First of all, I don’t know the game that well, so I’d have to learn it. That’s probably doable. I wouldn’t be able to become the worlds best, but with hard work I think I might crack the top 5% of the current player pool. Since it’s not about playing the best players, but the worst, that’s not a huge problem. Another real issue for me is tilt. I just can’t help myself sometimes. Frustration mounts, and I start to make bad decisions. Sometimes it’s for a single hand, but sometimes it can last as long as 15 minutes. That’s a LONG time in heads up hold’em.

I’m not even going to get into bankroll. Sufice it to say, I just don’t have the cash on hand to play $500/$1000 heads-up hold’em with a small risk of ruin.

But the critical issue for me is that of game selection. I have a lot of friends who spend their evenings and weekends playing poker. That’s when the fish are disposing of the disposable income which they make during the work week. I on the other hand play during the work week. I made a choice long ago to only play during regular work hours for quality of life reasons. The world of heads-up games is a world of counless hours siting around not playing, and waiting for the fish to show up. And if you aren’t at the table during prime time, your fish pool is going to be small. Personally, I play games that run nearly 24/7, and there are a sufficient number of fish even during the day to keep them profitable.

So it all comes down to making playings choices which are compatible with the lifestyle I want to lead. I want freedom with my time, and regularity with my play. Some might say that I’m not maximizing my EV by making those sacrafices, but I have yet to find someone who has not sacraficed EV for rather trivial reasons. Consider this trade-off, playing poker or excercising and eating right. One will make you money, but the other will allow you to live longer and extend your overall earning potential.

A couple of days ago, someone offered to buy www.pokerstove.com, lock stock and barrel. They asked me to name a price. I don’t really think I have any plans on selling it, but it is an interesting question. Right now, revenues are marginal at best, but I do have mid to long range plans on comercializing my software. So what do you think the site is worth? I have my own estimate, but it might be fun to see what others think.