Mind Games

I hadn't noticed it -- but if it fits my schedule I sure will
Edit -- the only one I can find starts Saturday Oct 05 at 11:30 Local (18:30 UTC)
But I will be playing it -- I might even play the $1.10

I would love to play too there were also PLO-events, but LATE! ♠_cry:

They start at 8:30 p.m. CET and that´s pretty late for me, for the case I get ITM or so, this will take all night.

But still not sure about PLO8. I would love to..... tomorrow is Sunday and I can sleep as long as I want, but gonna be very tired..... let´s see.....with a lot of coffee? Could work out! ♠_biggrin:

Decided to play the PLO8-events: Ready to kick bum bums in PLO8?

I´m Primrose888 on Partypoker (same name as on 888).

I was up at 04:30 to play the MicroMillions Razz event.
I had very few hands that I could play, and got terrible runouts for most of 'em.
Even so, I held on to just about the end of late registration.

I then went back to sleep, and got up in time to play the MM PLO8 event, and cashed in the 4th or 5th tier for $10.88 -- this means I've now cashed in 4 of 7 MM events -- yay! And I'm even $1 in profit.

But the real fun came with the daily $3.30 NL 2-7 Single Draw PKO
I love this tournament, it is maddeningly high variance, but today I binked it -- It took over 4 hours, but in the end I had almost $100 bucks.

WooHoo!
VS

Amazing job in the 2-7! I believe you have around $100 profit in this tournament by now this year? So much for breaking even, seems like a decent overall profit for only 85 games.

Be sure to keep track of which strategies work and which don't in this game. To a large degree, we gotta come up with our own plans in mixed games.

A formula 1 commentator named Murray Walker once said, "to finish first, you must first finish".
In this particular game, I folded a few times where I had decent draws, but losing would mean busting out.

Also, I had more than my fair share of premium hands after the bubble burst, and that helped.

In this game, you must know the odds well, or have horseshoes up the wazoo.
Vorpal Swordsman

This day, I had both.

On stream today, I went to show my 5-Card Draw giraffe, and realized it had not been updated for almost two years.
So after the stream, I updated it to the present date.

In Dec 2017 I was at the 390,000 hand mark, so in those two years, I have played only 47,000 hands or so.
But did fairly well.
The steep increase is mostly due to playing higher limits -- as high as FL $5/$10

Bear in mind that this graph only shows fixed-limit 5-Card Draw
My NL 5-Card Draw graph would look much, much worse.

If I get motivated, I might just create that graph, but looking at it might demoralize me, and after all, this is the Mind Games blog...

OK the giraffe:

Well done Mate,

what a well written blog ..

Keep it alive

good luck on the tables.

In "Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut, the protagonist Kilgore Trout says "so it goes" quite a lot.

After reading the book, several years ago I picked up that expression and used it (over-used it some would say) myself.

The modern equivalent is "it is what it is" -- or perhaps "shit happens"

or biblically:

from Ecclesiastes 9:11
11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.

All of them express the inevitability of reality.

Having a good grasp of the fact that shit does indeed happen is the key to maintaining an even disposition while playing poker.

Take this hand from today's PokerStars Weekly Stars Rewards Freeroll.
I wonder if either villain just said "so it goes" OTR
PokerStars - 75/150 Ante 20 NL - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 703
SB: 9,170
BB: 5,680
UTG: 20,158
Hero (UTG+1): 2,081
MP: 12,560
MP+1: 884
MP+2: 2,726
CO: 1,790

9 players post ante of 20, SB posts SB 75, BB posts BB 150

Pre Flop: (pot: 405) Hero has K♥:Q♣:

fold, Hero raises to 450, fold, fold, MP+2 raises to 2,706 and is all-in, CO calls 1,770 and is all-in, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 1,611 and is all-in

Flop: (6,297, 3 players) 6♣:K♣:A♣:

Turn: (6,297, 3 players) 5♠:

River: (6,297, 3 players) T♣:
Drag over the following lines to reveal the outcome

Hero shows K♥:Q♣: (Flush, Ace High)

Hero wins 6,297

The Boom Version

In other news, I passed the $250 mark in my 888 bankroll challenge.
Best wishes for a peaceful, prosperous 2020,
VS

Vorpal, with your stack and those blinds/antes, you can jam KQ directly pre. You have a little bit more than 10 BB. Just get it in right away pre. ♠_thumbsup:

Thanks Prim,
I wondered about that -- since I was fairly early, and this is a freeroll, I figured it didn't matter, so I thought I would give them the opportunity to call with worse (or fold better?)
ICM doesn't play here, since only bounties matter.

Just going by pre-flop equity, KQo has a surprising amount of equity vs 2 random hands -- and in this situation where there is a big stack bounty hunting and a short stack hoping for some desperation equity, the ranges could be very wide.

       Equity     Win     Tie
UTG+2  44.37%  43.33%   1.04% { KQo }
MP3    27.82%  26.78%   1.04% { random }
CO     27.81%  26.77%   1.04% { random }

Now if you assume that the other players will only get it in with the top 50% of hands...

       Equity     Win     Tie
UTG+2  38.06%  36.67%   1.39% { KQo }
MP3    30.97%  29.57%   1.41% { 33+, A2s+, K2s+, Q2s+, J4s+, T6s+, 96s+, 86s+, 76s, 65s, A2o+, K5o+, Q7o+, J7o+, T7o+, 98o }
CO     30.97%  29.56%   1.41% { 33+, A2s+, K2s+, Q2s+, J4s+, T6s+, 96s+, 86s+, 76s, 65s, A2o+, K5o+, Q7o+, J7o+, T7o+, 98o }

KQ is still ahead

It has been a while since I won a NL 2-7 Single draw tournament -- or even cashed other than the odd bounty or two

I busted out again today -- I called an open-shove with a 1-card draw to the nuts and missed.
To be fair, it was a flip.
Yesterday, I was the one shoving, and lost the exchange -- only I was about 80% ahead that time.

I played 2 PokerStars tournaments today, for a total BI of $5.50
After the stream ended, I kept playing the NL 25 5-Card draw just to settle down, and won a couple of bucks.
I then saw a $1/$2 FL 5-Card Draw table with an open seat, so I sat down and won $20

So today's question:
Am I really that terrible at NL 2-7 SD, just unlucky, or do certain games just fit my playing style?

Or is it just Luck?

Best wishes for a peaceful, prosperous 2020,
VS

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
So today's question:
Am I really that terrible at NL 2-7 SD, just unlucky, or do certain games just fit my playing style?

I saw you getting quite unlucky a few times on the stream, and according to my infos, you still have $80 of profit and an ROI of 23.85% in those games this year, so it doesn't seem like you're that terrible at them.

That said, it's quite possible that certain other games fit your playing style more. I noticed for myself that I'm not very good at FL Badugi, for example, and that many of my strategies from the PL version don't work all that well in there. Maybe it is the opposite in your case, and the FL version suits you more.

But it should also be considered that the variance in NL 2-7 SD is simply huge. You know the odds much better than me, so if you noticed that you put your chips in as a favorite before your opponent busted you out, you must be doing something right.

Originally posted by Harrier88
But it should also be considered that the variance in NL 2-7 SD is simply huge. You know the odds much better than me, so if you noticed that you put your chips in as a favorite before your opponent busted you out, you must be doing something right.

Yeah, I do try to make plays where the odds are in my favour. and I recognize the "time and chance happens to them all"
I was just venting a bit.

It has been several days since I've won a ticket in 888s freerolls, too.
I'm getting a little tired of being way ahead on the flop, and getting beat by runner-runner flushes and straights (3 of 4 today -- the 4th I was ahead pre and got out-flopped)

But no poker now for two days.
Maybe in that time I'll calm down...

Best wishes for a peaceful, prosperous 2020,
VS

Originally posted by Harrier88
I saw you getting quite unlucky a few times on the stream, and according to my infos, you still have $80 of profit and an ROI of 23.85% in those games this year, so it doesn't seem like you're that terrible at them

Including MM, WCOOP and a bunch of home games, I have spent $521.60 dollars registering to 2-7 NL Single Draw tournaments. Add to that $166.65 in re-entries, and you get 688.25 total cost.

On the plus side, I've won 372.85 in cash, and 331.08 in KO bounties for a total of 703.93
for a profit of 15.68 WooHOO I can retire! oh, wait...

If I'm doing this right, my ROI is therefore
15.68 divided by 688.25 or 2.3%

If I remove the satellites and home games it improves slightly to:
Reg + re-entries: 674.05
KO + cash: 698.13
Profit: 24.08
ROI: 3.5%

The data goes back to early 2018

Just looking at this year, the numbers are about the same -- but I also looked at ITM, which is a surprising 22% just looking at cashes.
45 times in the 153 tournament I played in 2019 I got at least one bounty without cashing, so if you count the KOs as "ITM" then I was ITM 52%

We're hoping for better
VS

so you didn't even make a hundred dollars?

seeing you play the niche variants, would you say the hours spent on poker were worth it?
probably yes, those poker moments had to be worthy mostly because of the brown bear videos on stream!

best wishes VorpalF2F.

Originally posted by anotheraaccount
so you didn't even make a hundred dollars?

From that one tournament, no I apparently did not.
However, all my poker playing, of all types earned well over $100 for the year.

Originally posted by anotheraaccount
seeing you play the niche variants, would you say the hours spent on poker were worth it?
probably yes, those poker moments had to be worthy mostly because of the brown bear videos on stream!

"Worth it" is an interesting term.
Bear in mind that I play because I enjoy playing poker, and challenging my mind figuring out strategies, playing odds and so on. The money is secondary, but that is OK too. Bear in mind that some people pay hundreds of dollars a year to play video games on line - others spend huge amounts playing golf, or going to movies.

At least I get to make a few dollars back from my entertainment.

Originally posted by anotheraaccount
best wishes VorpalF2F.

And to you as well.

Best wishes for a peaceful, prosperous 2020,
VS

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