Harrier's Blog - Mixed Games & Mixed Drinks

Troll Calendar - Day 5: Sunday Edition!

It is the second Sunday of Advent, so it's time to get out one of the "Maxi Eggs" from our calendar. Like with the regular ones, I drew one of them by random. It was the blue one with the penguin this time.

I'm curious about those, I don't think I ever had them before. As expected, they seem to be the same as the normal eggs, only bigger. Here's the one we drew, next to a regular egg for comparison.

Obviously, the capsule inside will be bigger as well. Here is another comparison to a regular one.

The egg itself features about 100g of edible chocolate... wow. I saved half of it for later, I had a good lunch before it anyway. But what's inside?

Looks like some sort of fox. And it looks like he has some friends too.

That's the whole gang on the sheet. They're all engaged in lovely winter fun, except for one, who is chilling on the sidelines. Maybe it's fitting that that's the one I drew?

This is the finished fox, chilling with a mug of hot cocoa or coffee. I'm going to say that it's coffee - he's a grinding fox, he is slouching in his seat while grinding 10 MTTs, and sipping coffee to stay awake during his deep runs well into the night.

As the instructions say, you can give him a little nod to rock him back and forth a bit. But it also suggests another functionality. If I understand it correctly, the fox gets a bit of a tan if you leave him out in the sun for a while?

Well, that's tough to test right at the brink of winter, but for what it's worth, I left our foxy friend out on the balcony. Maybe we can see some sort of change by tomorrow or so.

There you go, we had our first Maxi Egg. Doesn't really beat our cute fairy princess from Day 1, but it's probably my second favorite so far.

That´s a cute little guy.

Missed flush draws may still have some showdown value if you pair up, at least if your pair is good enough. With my not so good pair in this hand, however, I figured that the only way to win was to get my opponent to fold:

PokerStars, $1.32 + $0.18 - 5 Card Draw Pot Limit - 50/100 (10 ante) - 5 players
Hand delivered by CardsChat

UTG (Hero): 1,580 (16 bb)
CO: 1,190 (12 bb)
BU: 2,142 (21 bb)
SB: 1,072 (11 bb)
BB: 3,016 (30 bb)

Deal: (200) Hero is UTG with 9♦ T♦ 3♦ 7♥ 7♦
Hero raises to 200, 3 players fold, BB calls 100

Draw One: (500) 9♦ T♦ 3♦ 7♦ 9♠ (2 players)
BB draws 3, UTG (Hero) draws 7h
BB checks, Hero bets 350, BB calls 350

Total pot: 1,200

Showdown:
UTG (Hero) shows 9♦ T♦ 3♦ 7♦ 9♠ (a pair of Nines)
BB mucks 5♠ 5♥ A♣ 2♣ 3♥ (a pair of Fives)
UTG (Hero) wins 1,200

So I bluffed, got caught, and still won... that's how it goes sometimes.

Decent results in the SNGs yet again. Two 1st places, two 2nd places and two losses. Cash was a bit ruined by one terrible table at the end, but still finished with a profit. Badugi saw me taking an early 2nd bullet after an unlucky hand near the beginning, but final tabled in the end for a 6th place finish, sadly without any bounties. $14.14 were the returns in that game for the 6th place finish alone.

Things are going pretty well overall, and we are approaching major milestones both in Five Card Draw, where we are $10 away from $100 in profit, as well as for our total bankroll, where we are $10 shy of the $2,300 mark. I hope we can reach both of those goals in the next few days, or at least by the end of next week.

Sports practice continues to be tough, but I heard that there are only three sessions for me left this year, so I intend to make it through them. This will give me a bit less time for poker, but that's okay.

How's the tanning treatment going for our new foxy friend?

I think I see some very slight tanning, but it may just be the light. I didn't remember to take him in until the sun was almost about to set, though, so maybe it was more pronounced a while ago.

Troll Calendar - Day 6

Is this a girly egg? I'm not sure, the flower pattern and the pink color kinda look like it, but I think the real girly eggs all use the same pattern without the message on top, which should be exclusive to the regular eggs (this one says "Love You"). The regular eggs come in a bunch of different colors, so I suppose pink is just one of them. Maybe the contents will shed some light on this.

Hmmm... no, I'm actually pretty confused yet again.

The finished figurine looks like this, but I'm still not sure what kind of creature this is supposed to be.

You can spin it around on that little stand, so it appears to be a sporty little creature, whatever it is.

The instructions hint at some app functions yet again, which include a computer animated picture of our creature - you can clearly see that it's supposed to be a rabbit in there. And apparently, those indentations on the stand, which depict a walrus and what I believe is a narwhal, can be used as a scribbling template again.

Still not entirely sure if this was a girly egg or not...

My favorite is the beautyful fairy princess so far.

But this one is also cute

Troll Calendar - Day 7

Another yellow "Thank You" egg. I don't think they are more common than the other colors and messages, we just happened to draw a bunch of them right away.

Not sure what this is, once again. And oddly enough, it's plastic-wrapped and seems to be fully assembled already.

In fact, it appears like the instructions tell us how to take it apart, not how to put it together...

The plastic wrap was surprisingly hard to open, had to get some scissors for it. Here's our mushroom dude or whatever it is, no assembly required.

And here's this guy's secret, you take his "hat" off, and find a little pen inside. A pretty unwieldy one, you can't really see where you're going with it, so it isn't all that useful for drawing, but at least you can write some secret messages with it or whatever you like.

Looks like we're getting a lot of oddly shaped creatures with marginally useful side functions this year.

Hey, this is a cute one!

One of my favorites so far.

If it made sound, would it be:

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
If it made sound, would it be:

All trolls stand up for our national anthem!

Seriously, Prim and I will probably do a Troll Challenge involving baseball some time next year, I plan to play this song before our game.

Originally posted by Harrier88
Seriously, Prim and I will probably do a Troll Challenge involving baseball some time next year, I plan to play this song before our game.

All 10 hours?

Originally posted by VorpalF2F

Originally posted by Harrier88
Seriously, Prim and I will probably do a Troll Challenge involving baseball some time next year, I plan to play this song before our game.

All 10 hours?

Now that would be a troll...

Another final table in the Badugi, finishing in 6th place again, but this time with some decent bounties, for returns of $22.28. There may have been potential for more, but it was really tough to stay focused after the first break on the FT. It was going okay before that, but after the break, I not only hit a super long card dead streak, but most other players seemed to have been affected too. There weren't many hands being played at all, except for the big stacks shoving some chips around between each other. They didn't even have to do a lot of "bullying", it looked like most players in front of them, myself included, simply had nothing to show.

I got out, in the end, by running a 42A into one of those bigger stacks, who had a K-Badugi and I didn't improve (close to a coinflip over all three draws). Maybe I could have found a better spot in another game, but not during this hour-long card dead snoozefest late at night.

Five Card Draw went okay, cash games broke even after a few hands and I cashed two out of four SNGs, luckily shipping both of them. In light of that, I'm happy to report that I have now reached both milestones I mentioned the other day: Both the $2.3K in the total bankroll, and the $100 in combined 5CD profit, cash and SNGs - just barely, in fact. SNGs accounted for a little under two thirds of that profit, and we played for 35 days in total to reach that milestone.

If we keep up the pace, we might have some real fireworks just in time for the new year.

Troll Calendar - Day 8

Be very excited, we drew another girly egg!

That's odd, the contents don't really look all that girly, do they? Or is this just some Disney/Pixar stuff I'm not aware of again?

That back of the instructions show a boy playing with the item too. Was there a mistake?

Anyway, we got another readily assembled figurine with a few extra accessories, namely that big water thrower and the splash of water that comes with it. It's pretty stiff, but the arms of the figurine can be moved with some effort. I certainly wouldn't have tried if the instructions hadn't said so, because it would have felt as if I was breaking it.

As the instructions show, you can fling out that splash of water by somehow squeezing it through with your fingers. There is some kind of release mechanism, which is once again very stiff, especially the first few times. It does give that water projectile some decent speed, though.

A paper target is included. It all works reasonably well after the first couple of times, but was this really supposed to be a girly egg? I don't know, maybe that's something little girls like to do nowadays, but I still suspect that I got a wrong one by mistake, especially because of that picture with the boy on the back of the instructions. The instructions on girly eggs usually also have girls on them.

Originally posted by Harrier88
The instructions on girly eggs usually also have girls on them.

Since the toy involved water, which is a fluid, perhaps this was Kinder Surprise getting on board with gender fluidity

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Since the toy involved water, which is a fluid, perhaps this was Kinder Surprise getting on board with gender fluidity

I'm afraid there aren't enough Kinder Surprise eggs in my calendar to cover one tenth of the genders that some people say exist...

Horrendous day! Only one out of five SNGs was cashed, and I only finished 2nd in that one. I also got fleeced on one cash table for $2.50 (over 12 big bets). I kept getting outdrawn left and right, and not coincidentally, I didn't play on my A-game either. It was my second worst day when it comes to 5CD profit ever since I started this October, with $8.61 in losses. Badugi cashed, at least, but nothing big.

5CD traffic in the afternoon is pitiful at the moment, almost non-existent. Only NL cash games seem to have at least a few tables running with some consistency, but I don't feel confident in that format at all - and today's performance certainly doesn't help. I would take some chances if the lowest limit wasn't NL25 already.

I would really like to keep playing those afternoon sessions, but there just aren't any games! The MTT selection isn't as great as I would like either.

I was playing some FL $0.10/$0.20 today as well, and it went horribly to start — but I came back about half way.
I did way better at the NL tables. My tactic of only entering pots with a raise seems to be working well. It keeps me out of pots where my only chance of winning is to draw well. By entering with a raise, it is also possible to win it with a CBet

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I was playing some FL $0.10/$0.20 today as well, and it went horribly to start — but I came back about half way.
I did way better at the NL tables. My tactic of only entering pots with a raise seems to be working well. It keeps me out of pots where my only chance of winning is to draw well. By entering with a raise, it is also possible to win it with a CBet

I definitely plan to enter NL 5CD cash at some point, but I don't think I'd be comfortable only entering with a raise, considering that most match-ups tend to be "way ahead/way behind" situations to some degree in 5CD. Either way, I would need some time to develop my strategy in there, I feel like those games are completely unlike FL cash or PL/NL tournaments. It's good that you have some experience with those games yourself, maybe we can help each other to develop a winning strategy in this largely uncharted format.

My next plan when it comes to 5CD will probably be to get back into those PL MTTs, mostly the $7.50s that I used to play last year. I possibly would have started today already if it hadn't been for those discouraging results in the SNGs. Once the MTTs are going well, I can then slowly start to get into NL cash, assuming everything else is still going smoothly.

Originally posted by Harrier88
I definitely plan to enter NL 5CD cash at some point, but I don't think I'd be comfortable only entering with a raise, considering that most match-ups tend to be "way ahead/way behind" situations to some degree in 5CD. Either way, I would need some time to develop my strategy in there, I feel like those games are completely unlike FL cash or PL/NL tournaments. It's good that you have some experience with those games yourself, maybe we can help each other to develop a winning strategy in this largely uncharted format.

I get that — but suppose you're on the button with 9966x — you hand is half-way up the full range of 2-pair hands.
If no one opens ahead of you — or only a limper or two, you can get in with a raise.
If someone raises ahead, I'll fold (unless it is a generally loose player)
If you don't raise — but just flat the open raiser, you will frequently get squeezed, and then 9966x doesn't look so good

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
If no one opens ahead of you — or only a limper or two, you can get in with a raise.
If someone raises ahead, I'll fold (unless it is a generally loose player)

Open limping is not something I would do either, though it may have a place in certain tournament situations. In cash possibly sometimes too, if there are certain players behind you who raise super loosely. This is also the situation in which I have tried it in tournaments so far, with decent success. If I get tired of raise-folding against players to my left who viciously defend their blinds with 3-bets, I would limp my usual raising range and call their raises, allowing me to play my hand normally, in which case I would dominate their range more often than not. I only do it rarely and only against those particular players. Probably best not to do this in cash games, but who knows, maybe it has its place there too.

I think overlimping is also something to be avoided, at least with "normal" hands. With straight and flush draws, maybe it could be appropriate sometimes due to implied odds in NL - the actual pot odds will rarely be good enough, I imagine. This is another thing I might sometimes do in the early phases of tournaments with deep stacks and low blinds. Once the blinds reach a certain level, which happens fairly soon, I would play draws as a steal only, with a possible c-bet bluff, of course.

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
If you don't raise — but just flat the open raiser, you will frequently get squeezed, and then 9966x doesn't look so good

Yeah, that's a good point. It's also something I've been struggling to adapt to, which is why I tend to do poorly in cash games no matter what format. The decent FL 5CD results are more of an exception. In tournaments, I believe I usually do a better job adapting to aggression, because my opponent's stacks, and therefore their options, are limited, which enables me to make better reads.

Aren't there any players who like to squeeze anyway after your raise, or who 4-bet with a good frequency? I don't know, I think I'm just a bit too timid in those situations. I guess the key is to raise a tight range.