After two and a half years of blogging for CardsChat.com, it is time for me to move on. There was no drama involved, no disagreement between me and site owner Nick about quality or quantity or artistic freedom or, honestly, anything at all. It was a disagreement between myself and making a blogging commitment. At this point in time, having what essentially comes down to a writing job just isn’t working out for me. It’s not that I don’t have the time, necessarily, it’s that I don’t want to have to have the time, if you know what I mean. When writing for CardsChat, I felt guilty if I didn’t post an update at least once a week, and as things in my life get more and more hectic, that feeling of guilt and “I have to” kept coming on more and more often.
I only mentioned in passing how poker has been going in the last post, so this time I figured I’d give you one of them graphs you’re all so fond of. June first through present. Enjoy!
I’m just now getting ready and packed up to go visit my parents. From there, we will (on Monday) take the train to Stockholm to go on a two-day cruise to Tallinn (Estonia), then back to my parents, celebrate midsummer with them, and then back home. So I’ll be out of town for a week, but hopefully connected through parts of it. Any suggestions on what one can do in Tallinn?
Bringing four books, a laptop and my golf clubs. What could go wrong?
Just a brief update on my current situation in poker and life:
I’m still playing poker, and I’m still winning (knock on wood). I’ve averaged another 4ptBB/100 in June, over about 5k hands, and I feel like I’m playing better than in May. A lot better. I suppose that means that I’m not running as hot.
Socially and work… eh… workly? Bah.
Socially and professionally, I’m busy busy busy. My vacation - starting Friday - is coinciding with a deadline at work, so there’s a bunch of stuff that needs to get done before that. Also, it seems there’s a wedding or stag party or just random party every other night in these past few weeks. It’s hard to keep up with. I’m not complaining, though, merely explaining why I may have seemed to dropped off the face of the earth.
The lesson about sizing bluffs learned from No-limit Hold’em - Theory and Practise is that we should bet enough to “get the job done” but not much more. In theory, I could end this post on sizing bluffs on that note, because there really isn’t that much more to say. If you decide to bluff, make a bet that’s big enough, but not too big. For instance, if I want to bet into an opponent who will fold everything but the nuts to a bet that’s at least half the pot, then clearly betting more than just a little over half the pot is just wasting money. Every dollar that goes in over that ideal amount is a loss, of varying degrees.
Party Poker’s latest promotion strikes me as geared to players who apparently don’t do anything but play poker:
http://www.partypoker.com/news/items/free_ride.html
Take a Free Ride with our amazing commission–free offer
Commission–free play is the dream destination for poker players – and now we’re giving you the chance to get there.
Once you’ve played for 160 hours, you’ll play with no table charges or fees. And we don’t mean for just a few hands; we’re offering up to 80 hours of commission–free play.
To qualify for your Free Ride you must play a minimum of 160 hours within a 30-day period.
So one month and 15k hands at 50NL :
If I look at how I’ve changed my game this month, it’s primarily become more aggressive and I’ve loosened up quite a lot in position. The last week of May, I played a 22/18/2 style, and the first week of May it was 18/13/2.7. That’s actually a fairly significant difference. And almost that entire difference comes from this stat: Attempt to steal blinds on button = 70%.
I’ve also started 3-betting light a little bit here and there. And just to top the month off, I’ve now occasionally started four-betting light. It’s fun.
Finally, the third and final post on sizing your bets to avoid getting yourself in a sticky situation with your next decision. This time, we look at river play - an area where most people seem to struggle badly. The balance between value bets and avoiding checkraises is not as delicate as it may seem, if you make sure your bet is a good size for what you’re trying to achieve. Most people’s problem seem to come from not really thinking through what they want with their bet before they make it.
Somewhat belatedly, I give you the second of three examples on sizing bets or raises in a way to make the potential decision on whether or not to fold to a re-raise easy. The belatedness of this post has to do with planning and executing a close friend’s bachelor party (or stag party, if you prefer) which took place last night. Great fun, but this post isn’t about men drinking beer and bonding in a sauna.
The main consideration when deciding on the size of a bet is the effective stack. With very deep stacks, the preflop raise decides how big the pot will (or can) eventually become. With very small stacks, you must instead focus on avoiding the trap of being committed with a hand that you don’t want to continue with. Today’s example illustrates the importance of planning the future betting already preflop:
I ended the first post with the teaser of this post being about “sizing your bets and raises in a way that makes folding to a re-raise much easier.” This is only half the truth, really. I should have said, “sizing your bets and raises in a way that makes the decision of whether or not to fold to a re-raise much easier.”
No-limit, by and large, is centered around the big bluff. “Moving In.” “Pushing.” “Shoving.” “Going all-in.” It’s centered around it in the sense that the threat of the all-in bluff looms as a possibility at all times when you play no-limit. That threat, for instance, is what causes people to check behind on the river with decent hands because they fear their opponent might check/raise all-in, leaving them with a horribly difficult decision. So instead, they save (or lose?) a few bucks and just check.
