Still money left yet in SNGs?

It’s early, there’s not many games going and I’m just sitting here with some free time so thought what else better to do than to blog update. I thought I’d try to mix it up a bit in this post, so let me start by talking a bit about the state of the games. I’ll post a couple of random thoughts at the end.

As I said in my first post, there’s not one ounce of denying that even just a few years back you’d really be able to take the games for a lot more money than now. And that’s not just the case with specifically 6max SNGs, every form of poker – every game/every format has toughened and it’s rare to find an exploitable niche that’s not saturated with regs these days. The golden age of poker was considered to be early to mid-2000s. However, a couple of hands I played within the last 2 days which I’ll post in a moment came as a reminder that there may still be some money left yet to make in poker. The bottom line is, yes it may be the case of working harder for a lower hourly rate now, but it doesn’t change the fact it’s a game where those who work harder on and off the tables and do it right will gain a skill edge and be able to make more money (even if that edge is small) than those who aren’t.

The so-called “poker boom” was almost 10 years ago and the games have been growing and competition has been getting fiercer ever since – people are learning/improving like nothing else and there’s so many ways of going about this from reading books to watching videos or getting professional coaching online. But who says we won’t see a second poker boom? Black Friday was the day that the authorities seized control over three of the major online sites and consequently led to US players being banned – one of the darkest days in poker. The likelihood is it’s not a matter of if but a matter of when the Americans will be allowed to join us again. Having been starved from online poker for a year and a half now and counting, I’m pretty sure there will be a fair share of hungry gamblers looking to splash some money around when regulation passes, whilst the publicity of it all certainly can’t do any harm either.

Obviously ways to combat the competitiveness of the games is to table select and fit your schedule around to play in the most profitable games. This is fine if you’re just playing poker on the side to make an extra buck or two. If you’re playing professionally though you’ll be playing with regs day in day out and will have to accept that your skill edge may be very negligible in some games which will in turn increase variance/the amount of money you’re swinging. This can obviously be made easier by having a good mentality and being realistic and disciplined – but I’ll leave discussions for the mental aspect in poker for a future post!

Anyway, let the following two hands act as a swift reminder that there is still money left yet to be made in poker J. I will refer to the villain in each hand as “champion” because well, it’s what they are. Each "champion" is a different player from a different game.

Hand one

Hand played on Pokerstars

Seat 1: Player 2 ( $1500.00 USD )

Seat 2: Player 3( $1500.00 USD )

Seat 3: MikeyMcD45 ( $1500.00 USD )

Seat 4: Champion ( $1500.00 USD )

Seat 5: Player 4 ( $1500.00 USD )

Seat 6: Player 5 ( $1500.00 USD )

Player 3 posts small blind [$10.00 USD].

MikeyMcD45 posts big blind [$20.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to MikeyMcD45 [  9s Qh ]

Champion calls [$20.00 USD]

Player 4 calls [$20.00 USD]

Player 5 folds

Player 2 folds

Player 3 calls [$10.00 USD]

MikeyMcD45 checks

** Dealing Flop ** [ Jh, Qc, 2h ]

Player 3 checks

MikeyMcD45 bets [$67.00 USD]

Champion calls [$67.00 USD]

Player 4 calls [$67.00 USD]

Player 3 calls [$67.00 USD]

** Dealing Turn ** [ Td ]

Player 3 checks

MikeyMcD45 checks

Champion bets [$20.00 USD]

Player 4 calls [$20.00 USD]

Player 3 calls [$20.00 USD]

MikeyMcD45 calls [$20.00 USD]

** Dealing River ** [ 8d ]

Player 3 checks

MikeyMcD45 bets [$282.00 USD]

Champion calls [$282.00 USD]

Player 4 folds

Player 3 folds

MikeyMcD45 shows [9s, Qh ]

MikeyMcD45 wins $992.00 USD from main pot

Champion shows [3d, 6d ] 

Hand two

Hand played on Pokerstars

Seat 1: Player 2 ( $1650.00 USD )

Seat 2: Player 3 ( $1490.00 USD )

Seat 3: Villain 1 ( $1360.00 USD )

Seat 4: Player 4 ( $1500.00 USD )

Seat 5: MikeyMcD45 ( $1500.00 USD )

Seat 6: Champion ( $1500.00 USD )

Villain 1 posts small blind [$10.00 USD].

Player 4 posts big blind [$20.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to MikeyMcD45 [  Ks Kh ]

MikeyMcD45 raises [$60.00 USD]

Champion calls [$60.00 USD]

Player 2 folds

Player 3 folds

Villain 1 raises [$90.00 USD]

Player 4 folds

MikeyMcD45 raises [$340.00 USD]

Champion calls [$340.00 USD]

Villain 1 raises [$1260.00 USD]

MikeyMcD45 raises [$1100.00 USD]

Champion calls [$1100.00 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ Kd, Ad, 2d ]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 5d ]

** Dealing River ** [ 6c ]

MikeyMcD45 shows [Ks, Kh ]

Champion shows [4c, 5c ]

MikeyMcD45 wins $280.00 USD from main pot

Villain 1 shows [As, Kc ]

MikeyMcD45 wins $4100.00 USD from main pot

So I know what you’re thinking…Did I read that right? And the answer is yes…yes you did. In the first hand champion called us down with 6 high when we’ve represented such strength and he can’t beat anything. Infact, that’s wrong, he can beat precisely 3-4, 3-5 and 4-5 high – maybe he had a read and went for the hero call even though we’d show up with these hands 0% of the time? Not this time son, but good luck in future!

In the second hand, we have our champion flatting our 3x UTG raise in the H-J. We then get 3bet and against an unknown have a pretty easy 4bet, but champion wants to stick around so elects to flat-call. Villain 1 then sticks it in, and I’m not going anywhere with KK against an unknown, and champion decides he wants to play too. Motherfucker!!!! champion has to have AA – no way he’d call his stack off early on with 2 players all-in before him, bastard, I’m so unlucky!!!! No. Champion has 4-5 suited – you did read that right. I suppose it was suited after all, should we let him off the hook?

I thought I’d finish this update by posting a couple of links I recently came across.

Game Theory 

I stumbled across this on Daleroxxu’s blog. I think it’s pretty cringe and the dialogue/acting sucks and they’re trying to be overly clever by using terms like “triple barrel bluff jam” when they could have just said “triple barrelled” whilst the ending is somewhat bizarre and dramatic. The guy’s reasoning in the hand they show besides being shit is full of flaws and contradictions, although it seems to be generating a good like to dislike ratio on the Tube. What do you think?

Finally, here's an interesting article I recently stumbled across:

New study suggests poker is a game of skill

Wow, what's that, another study suggesting poker is a game of skill?

"Players who are characterized by a tight and aggressive playing style generally perform better than their loose and passive opponents. Performance is also related to the number of hands that subjects have played over the previous period: more frequent or experienced players achieve better results."

Nothing we didn't know already, but it's always nice to see new evidence racking up to satisfy the sceptics.

That's pretty much it for now. Time to hunt down some tables!

MikeyMcD45

Pokes updates, Full Tilt reborn, and volume challenge!

Thought I’d drop in with an update since it’s been a while…

Well, around 1 and a half months in and it’s already been interesting. Things were off to an amusing start on the first day when I accidentally registered in a $500 buy-in game misjudging it for a $100 game from my lobby display messing up. Unfortunately I bubbled in a coin flip scenario! Mehhhhhhhh….At least it wasn’t any higher! A $1k or $2k game would have been devastating.

First month review

All in all though, in spite of my volume sucking I managed decent profits relative to the hours/games I put in. I only managed slightly less than half of the hours and games I had set boasting an ROI of 10.9% at an average stake of around $60 and managing a profit of around $3200 before bonus/rakeback. With such a short sample, these numbers are pretty meaningless in a game with so much short term variance. I did put in way more time than anticipated working on my game off the tables (hard to say how much, maybe somewhere between 10 and 20 hours each week), and whilst it won’t help achieve short term volume goals it should help boost my ROI and expectation in the long run. I did at least meet my exercise goals and put in around 194 miles on the bike for the month so at least that was something.

Remember remember 6^th of November  

The start of last month also brought great news that Pokerstars had purchased Full tilt’s assets with intentions of making full pay-outs to ex-players. It has now been confirmed non-US players will be paid out in full on November 6^th. As a former full tilt player, I had my most profitable month in poker at the time right before it shut down last June and had around a $4k bankroll on there. I had more or less accepted I wouldn’t be seeing this money again when a deal broke through around four or five months ago. However, rumours then surfaced that Pokerstars were in the hunt to buy over and since they seemed like the last hope, it was good news they were able to strike a deal. Whilst this is great for my money and will be an excellent boost to my current bankroll, it’s hard to say how good it will be for online poker in the long run. Pokerstars running the two biggest sites in the industry means a complete monopoly giving them the ability to increase rake/worsen bonuses if they so choose so only time will tell what happens. Hopefully it’s not long before the Americans are allowed back on which would likely create a second poker boom and increase the number of profitable games running.

Volume challenge

Off the table work is essential and there’s always stuff you can do to improve, but the idea is your time becomes focused more towards playing once you have a lot of experience under your belt and have spent plenty of time off the tables. With that in mind, I’ve decided to challenge myself to reach 200k VPPs before the year is up, which means at my current pace (around 76k) I’ll have to grind my ass off and average around 9k per week. For some, this would be a walk in the park but it will be a challenge for me, especially since I’ve only managed 76k for the entire year to this point which really does suck although not really a surprise given I’ve only grinded part-time until now. The reward for reaching 200k pays $2.6k alone along with multiple FPP bonus prizes along the way, so should be a profitable proposition unless I lose everything at the tables which is unlikely but on a horrid run could happen. The other potential downside is I’ll likely have to play in some games that are –EV before rakeback or a breakeven proposition which will reduce my ROI and increase variance/stress levels. If I start losing a lot I’ll just need to make sure I’m exercising good bankroll management and playing within my limits so I’m not affected as much, with perhaps adding in extra lower stakes tables to account for that and make up VPPs. My plan will be to hit supernova before or on October 1^st and unless I do so I’ll be making life difficult for myself in the remaining months and the challenge may not have much merit.

That more or less wraps up everything for now, I’ll be updating in the next day or two with another hand analysis, so until then …Peace out

An Ill advised WTF ICM hand

Hand played on Pokerstars

Seat 3 is the button

Seat 3:Villain ( $3302.00 USD )

Seat 4: Hero ( $5283.00 USD )

Seat 5: Player 3 ( $415.00 USD ) (Sitting out)

Hero posts small blind [$75.00 USD].

Player 3 posts big blind [$150.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to Hero [  As 8h ]

Villain raises [$300.00 USD]

Hero ACTION????

Alright, it wasn’t long since my last post but I hope to post a few strategic hands each month to keep things interesting so here we go. 

So the BB/player 3 has been sitting out the tournament for a solid while now.  He is about to bust and the hero and villain are about to coast into the money once the BB goes through him another round – 5 more hands precisely until it’s guaranteed money for both of us, not bad eh?!

Well, whilst that’s what should be the case, it looks like the villain has other plans. Maybe he had a meeting and was running late?

So, once the villain opens to 400, against anyone not only with good knowledge on ICM but also observing the fact player 3 is sitting out, hero should be able to profitably push back 100% of cards since villains calling range should be non-existent or close to it. The presence of a cripple stack means it would be a disaster for villain to be in an all-in confrontation with hero because of ICM considerations – that’s to say that villain cannot make money as winning an all-in doesn’t burst the bubble and allow him to reach HU play, he can only lose money. Not only this, he is guaranteed a minimum of 2^nd place in a few hands time, which in this $100 turbo is $195.82. Sure winning would see his equity increase in the tournament but does the equity gain justify being all-in with a blinding out cripple and therefore guaranteed equity in a few hands time? Fuck no…

Hero is dealt A-8o, and elects to shove back because of ICM considerations and the fact he is ahead of villain’s button opening range. Like a true champion, villain finds it in himself to “trap” the hero and raise-call his 22bb stack off with J-9s, WTF?!?

Remaining part of hand history:

Hero raises [$5208.00 USD]

Player 3folds

Villain calls [$3002.00 USD]

Hero wins $1981.00 USD

** Dealing Flop ** [ 2d, 5d, 8d ]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 8c ]

** Dealing River ** [ 2s ]

Hero shows [As, 8h ]

Villain shows [Js, 9s ]

Hero wins $6754.00 USD from main pot

Okay, so first off, doing this with AK would just be so terrible, so it’s going to be very costly with J-9s. The questions it raises, is how do we adapt in future, and what can we shove back against various opponents in future? Against a good player who knew ICM very well, you could shove back almost any two if they were raising wide although it’s a spot most good players will fold or ship anticipating being exploited unless you’ve no history, so this spot would be fairly rare. However, it wouldn’t necessarily be rare against a fish who can’t help himself from playing hands even when he shouldn’t be. Although some people will be sceptical about shoving back wide in this case if he’s not only raising wide but calling wide, this situation is an exception. The fact is, even if we lose we are going to have guaranteed equity in a few hands time because we are the big stack so the fact he is calling very wide is irrelevant – as long as we know he is opening wide enough - that's all that matters, whilst A-8o isn’t exactly wide and stands to be well ahead of villain’s range. It however would be a terrible proposition if we were the mid-stack since we’re risking our tournament life with soon guaranteed equity and we aren’t a big enough favourite to justify taking this risk, so folding to a raise in that case if the positions were the same would be the most +EV approach. Where you might shove 2-7o against a good player in these similar situations that arise on the bubble so long as you know it isn’t an induce, you certainly wouldn’t want to shove it back against a fish calling as wide as J-9s in this instance. When you observe such a hideous play, take a note on the opponent, colour code him, and adjust in the future and don’t abuse him on the bubble when you have the big stack and tighten up your shoving ranges against him.

Incidentally, assigning a hand range to a fish is a difficult thing to do since their ranges may be fluid, based on ego or what kind of mood they are in that particular day. It’s possible I won the previous couple of hands and this guy’s ego couldn’t cope with having to fold again and respect the situation even though that is the most +EV approach, and so he’s made his stand. He certainly isn’t thinking about his equity in the tournament anyway, that’s for sure.

In a couple of years of playing SNGs, this is one of the worst errors I’ve ever witnessed. His call is definitely a –EV proposition and a significant amount of equity gain goes to the cripple stack here since he has the chance at making money, but he isn’t even here. He literally could be having a nap yet the mid-stacks call is giving him a chance to make money which is exactly what happened – nice life. The question remains: how bad is it?

So, I thought I would plug the hand into an ICM calculator – SNG wizard, to really find out how costly this error was.

The wizard is unable to interpret situations from the original raiser’s perspective where there have been two actions pre-flop such as this one, so I’ve switched the positions of villain and player 3 around in this hand and given player 3 a fold on the button, so we can take a look at the hand from villains POV with hero shoving all-in blind versus blind against him. And as it is….Even if hero is shoving 100% of cards, calling with J-9s costs him 10.75% of the prize pool! That’s the equivalent to just over $60. Shoving 50% costs him 17.40% of the pool, whilst shoving 25% costs him 19.23% - need I go on? Mistakes that cost you anywhere from 0.5% to 1% of the pool are regarded pretty significant so you can grasp just how costly these numbers are. Of course this is from a blind on blind shoving perspective whereas in the initial hand he opened for a raise, so the fact is these figures might not quite be as costly with extra chips/equity in there, although given it was a min-raise and given what he has behind, the overall impact on these figures should be very negligible.  

There is an element of flaw however with these figures. The wizard isn’t able to account for the fact that the cripple stack in this situation is actually “sitting out”. This means as we’ve said already, he is guaranteed equity in a few hands time just by folding. In a standard 6max pay-out structure, 2^nd place pays 35% of the total prize pool. Essentially, this means his mistake wasn’t actually any of those figures we arrived at earlier even though hero wouldn’t be shoving that wide anyway because villain opened the hand and villain is a fish, but more or less equivalent to him pissing away 35% of the pool which in this $100 buy-in is $195.83, and that’s not counting potential future money in the heads up. Even ignoring the fact the player is sitting out and the chance of free equity, calling with J-9s in the example assuming the player is sitting in against an 100% range will cost him 10.75% of the pool as we found out earlier, and only a calling range of Js through to As is recommended. 

It’s amazing. If you were walking down the street and seen an envelope with 195 bucks lying in it, would you pick it up? It doesn't seem this guy would…As PezRez once said, "In SNGs, ICM is king"

Live long and prosper

Going pro: YIIIIIKESSS!!!!!

So I guess now’s the time I’ve chosen to label myself a professional poker player. It’s taken a while to get here, but I’m pleased I’m finally in the situation where I can dedicate my time to playing full time hours from here on.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m “MikeyMcD45” on Pokerstars. I’m 23 years old and from Glasgow. Having played part-time for a couple of years, the idea of making the jump to full time was something always on my mind. Aside from having no appealing options elsewhere and a degree that looked good if you spat on it (no offence to those who have the same degree/classification as me), I kept replaying the same questions over and over: Can I be a professional poker player?, is it realistic?, what are other pro’s out there doing I’m not?, and probably most importantly, it this the best career choice for me? It all seemed a little bit silly, unrealistic and fantasy like. But then again, the romantic tag “professional poker player” is one that is definitely misleading.

Playing long hours it can be a grind, and being able to deal with swings and maintain your A game through them can be very tough. A lot of people also need to know when their next paycheck is coming and that’s just not something you can count on as a poker pro. Coping with variance and maintaining motivation, especially through long losing/break-even periods definitely don’t come easy, but as a pro it’s your job to remain unfazed and keep confidence during these periods. Being your own boss it’s also incredibly easy to slack from work and not put the right hours in. I also think that with the current state of the games and industry after "Black Friday", playing poker is now definitely a case of working harder for lesser rewards. I’ll try and keep this post fairly positive though and not dwell on the downsides, but it’s important to recognise they are there. I’ll revisit concepts such as swings, variance, state of the games and the mental aspect in greater depths in future posts.

Incidentally, the above is one of the reasons I am creating a blog. During tough spells, I hope to reflect back on blog posts and be able to view the whole picture than get too down and caught up on short term loss. 

So, my reasons for creating the blog:

• To document progress/track goals
• Assure I'm putting the necessary work in upon monthly reviews
• Keeping a straight head during the tough times/negative variance
• Share interesting hands I've analysed

So, what are my goals?

It’s a fairly strange time to announce pro, but I needed my circumstances to be right. My goals for the remaining parts of the year are:

• Focus on 6max SNGs on Stars (primarily turbo's)
• Focus on buy-ins ranging from $30 to $100
• Play at least 30 hours of poker a week
• Log in at least 1000 games per month
• Spend a couple of hours a week working on my game
• Steadily increase the number of tables I'm able to play at once
• Run at least 15 miles a week

Evaluation of goals

6max SNGs are what I have always played, and it’s the niche I aim to specialise in. I have played other formats but none anywhere near as extensive as 6max and it’s where my experience lies. Table selecting above the $100 level is something I aim to do in future whilst remaining risk-averse, but only when the right bankroll is there. There will be times I may not manage 30 hours a week, but there will also be times I hopefully manage to play a lot more than this, so this is certainly the average I’m aiming for to begin with, and the bare minimum at that. With the number of tables I usually average in an hour and the number of hours I’m aiming for, this should see me be able to play a fair bit more than 1k, but this is definitely the minimum to aim for and any less really isn’t acceptable. Creating the blog will allow me to see how I’m meeting these targets, how I manage/improve over time and what areas I’m falling short in, so this can only be a good thing for me in the long run. Exercising good is important too, especially when so much of your time is spent just sitting on a chair so a proper and consistent routine should allow me to exercise well and meet my volume requirements too. Like most sane players IMO, I hope to achieve a healthy balance of work and play – I think I would be pretty miserable just playing 24/7 and not enjoying life outside of poker. A lot of sick dedicated players are able to really annihilate volume and full respect to them, but I feel like many aren’t getting the most of some of the advantages being a poker pro offers. There’s more to life than clicking a mouse and pressing buttons on a keyboard all day long.

What can you expect out of my blog?

As I’ve said above, this should allow me to document my own progress and keep a track of goals, as well as give me time to reflect off the tables. I’ll use it as a part-strategy blog as well and post the occasional hand analysis – alike to md261/pezrez’ and bigstealer’s blogs. I may even make some live sweat videos and upload them in future too, so stay tuned for that!

I will have running monthly updates of hours, no of games and profits.

For now, I think I’ve said all I wanted to. Wrapping up some off the table work in the meantime so first session will be logged in on the 1^st of August. Wish me luck!

Mikey