JeffreyLipsey.com

I dont know where the time has gone. I didn’t play any tournaments this last Sunday as I went to my friend’s place and spent Saturday night. Marlyn was in Philadelphia for her work so the timing was perfect.


I did receive a rather scary phone call Sunday around noon from Poker Stars. Adil and I were headed to lunch and I saw an international number on my phone and when I answered the guy said it was an urgent matter. Heh, he got my attention pretty quick.


Actually what happened was that they were short one player from Virginia to play for Team USA in the World Cup of Poker. Apparently I was high on the TLB leader board for 2007 and, since I live in Virginia I qualified. Granted, I’m sure I was a last resort that came up on some filter somewhere (especially since in 2007 I lived in Illinois) but it was still pretty exciting to have Stars actively come search for me.


So I did play a tournament that day, it was a 17 man tournament with one player from each of the 17 east coast states. There were 4 different tournaments with 4 different players from each state (1 in each tournament) and the group of 4 that collectively did the best moves on to play another tournament. Well, I didn’t help my team at all as I busted 14th; however I got coolered AK into AA real early and I did survive a good 30 minutes on a shortstack.


Otherwise I had a fun weekend and the time has flown by. Thanksgiving is coming!

I started the afternoon playing and running pretty well. I got in 2 hours before dinner and ended up making about 3 buyins spread between 200 NL and 100 NL across Stars and Tilt, with the majority of the winnings at 200 NL in 500 hands.


Consequently, when I came back after dinner to get another 2 hour session in, I gave back nearly all of my gains. I feel like I played pretty well but the results were just catching up with my running well the rest of the month.


So when I came back I managed to drop over 3 buy ins, but I was lucky that I was losing the majority of buy ins at 100 NL and not 200 NL. I dropped 1 at 200 but lost 2 at 100 NL so I still managed to make a little bit of profit even though I finished down -24 BB. If I look at it in terms of buy ins it wasn’t a big deal, if I look at it moneywise it was very frustrating.


I feel good though, because I ran 165 BB below my expectation. Another good sign is that I made more money today without showdown than I did at showdown, which absolutely makes no sense.


In all my 4 hours of play today at 1500 hands I feel good and plan to continue to the schedule that I’ve made for the rest of the month. My goal is for 40 hours for the last 2 weeks of the month, and I’ve got 33 to go. I’ll have to keep my focus though if I really want to do it.

I got in around 12 hours of cash game play this week, well below the 20 hours that I would like to accomplish. I would have had a better shot had I not taken the whole day Wednesday off (explanation coming) and Thursday too, although I did play some at Cake.


I played a bit of poker on Friday, about 4 hours or so in and around the FTOPS Event. I had a pretty good week with no negative sessions and I feel like I’m playing pretty well.


The FTOPS so far has provided no results of any kind. I got fairly deep in the latest tournament on Friday but I couldn’t get that last double up to get me in the money. I went completely card dead and blinded down getting absolutely zero chances to steal the blinds.


Otherwise I have Sunday Tournaments going today which I’ll make an update on at the end of the day.

An article about congress and online gaming.

By Corey Boles, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES


WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The Treasury Department has finalized regulations that would effectively ban online gambling in the U.S. and is trying to have them implemented in the waning days of the Bush administration.


The controversial rules would make it illegal for banks to process credit card transactions from most Internet gambling sites.


Their implementation has been opposed by groups advocating individuals’ right to gamble, the banking industry, Democratic lawmakers in Congress and even officials at the Federal Reserve.


The rules stem from a last-minute addition to a law passed in the final hours of the Republican controlled Congress in 2006. The provisions related to online gambling were included in an unrelated port security bill.


The Treausury Department forwarded the final regulations to the Office of Management and Budget on Oct. 21, a necessary step towards their implementation.


It’s standard practice for outgoing administrations to finalize controversial regulations before leaving office, a practice known as a midnight drop.


The law as drafted by Congress includes some exemptionsfor horse race betting, interstate online lotteries and betting on fantasy sports.


But draft rules published by the Treasury in October 2007 don’t define what would be considered an illegal transaction, and there has been much confusion as to what types of online gambling would be rendered illegal.


Banks have warned they may block all online gambling transactions rather than try to determine which ones are illegal. An official from the Federal Reserve testified before Congress in April that the draft regulations created considerable uncertainty.


Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, attempted to drum up support from fellow lawmakers for legislation that would amend the law to allow online gambling transactions to continue.


He was unsuccessful but pledged to return to the issue next year.


The Poker Players Alliance, a group formed to combat the law, has fought against its implementation. It argues that Internet poker should be exempted from the law.


“It’s really remarkable that this administration would try to push this out given the burden it would place on financial institutions at this time of financial crisis,” said John Pappas, the executive director of the group.


Pappas is meeting Friday with officials from the OMB, whose job it is to formally implement the regulations, in a last ditch effort to prevent them from being put on the books.


He wants officials to wait until President-elect Barack Obama’s administration takes office in January to allow for a thorough review of the potential impact of the rules.


A Treasury spokeswoman did not return phone calls seeking comment for this report.

Please go to http://tinyurl.com/uigea to make an official comment to the Federal Reserve!


Tell them:


* The federal agencies responsible for our nation’s economy should not be focused on Internet poker regulations.
* Finalization of the UIGEA rules will add additional burdens on our already crippled financial systems.
* Internet poker is a game of skill and form of recreation for millions of Americans; it should be exempted from the UIGEA.
* Please do not finalize the UIGEA regulations until their impact on our banking systems and average Americans has been fully studied.

I got in a good 5 hours of cash game play today and I feel like I played pretty well. Got in just under 2k hands with 400 of those coming at 200 NL. I am starting to feel somewhat motivated to improve my play and move up stakes aggressively over the following year.


I had one lulz hand today, found here:


http://www.flopturnriver.com/Poker-Hand-History-Converter-Output-583997.html


In all, I feel good heading into tonight’s Turbo FTOPS event. It’ll be a long night hopefully but it should be a lot of gambool fun.

Today was annoyingly disappointing, although I think I played pretty good the cards didn’t line up.


My best chance for cashing came in the FTOPS #9 $322 Buy in. I had 25k with blinds 300/600/75 in chips about an hour from the bubble (3.5 hours into the tournament) and I am remaining aggressive. I lose 9To to Q9s for 3k chips, I then lose KK to KQs AI preflop for 4k chips, lost A5s to K9o AI preflop for another 4k chips (this time blinds were at 400/800/100) and then I’m at 10,000 chips, roughly 12.5 BB. I get dealt Q9o in the CO and it folded around to me; I thought it was fairly standard shove. The table was playing pretty tight and I didn’t want to make an incorrect fold so I figured it couldn’t be that horrible. I checked my short stacking spreadsheet after the fact and it said fold :(. With QTo and Q8s I should shove but fold Q9o and K9o. I ran into TT and, although I flopped an OESD I couldn’t get there and busted..


My next chance for cashing again came about an hour out from the bubble in the Sunday Warmup, where I restole with A2o and ran into AJo. It definitely was a marginal resteal but my opponent was 24/15 with 4/6 attempt to steal, so I was just unlucky to run into a better hand.


Everything else it wasn’t even all that close, frankly I don’t remember much what happened but I couldn’t get much going.

Reads: Opponent is 24/15 through 70 hands.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?3426414


I knew it was going to be a tough spot as the action started to fold around to me. My stack is awkward and I raise and have no idea what to do against his shove. I asked Adil and he said maybe call; I asked Chris and he said easy fold, as we’re dominated too easily by overpairs. Something about this didn’t seem right and I went to the math.


I put his restealing range here on any pair, A5+ and any broadway card. I used this range as this is probably what I’m shoving here with and I’m sure his range is even wider than my own given my read. So, using that range I checked out what my equity was in Poker Stove.


equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 47.016% 46.46% 00.55% 1494129588 17755890.00 { 44 }
Hand 1: 52.984% 52.43% 00.55% 1686065544 17755890.00 { 22+, A5s+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, A5o+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo }


Given that I was getting 3:2 on my money this is actually a fairly easy call. I was very close to calling myself but I had the same fears that Chris did, its just that he has way more combinations of over cards as he does pairs.


In conclusion: we should not raise/fold a pair here no matter how low. Adil mentioned that if we wanted to avoid a tough spot like this an open shove is +EV, which is true if you’re using ICM even this deep. I think raise/calling is more +EV though with a pair. What else can we call here?


We should be calling anything that has over 40% equity vs his range: A8o+ (although A6-A7 is fairly breakeven), KJ+ (KTo is breakeven), KTs+ (K9s is breakeven), QJs (QJo and QTs is breakeven). This is all against someone with a 25 % resteal range.

Well, I managed to pull through in the Denver game for a nice 1 unit profit. I was in serious doubts there at half time that Denver was going to lose, as their defense is so bad it was annoying. Somehow they pulled through though…


I’ve got two teasers going tomorrow, they’re only 6 point this week and not 7 points so I should save 20 % of my bet. I’m going with Jacksonville -.5 vs Detroit AND Carolina -3.5 vs Oakland. I don’t see how Detroit or Oakland has a chance of winning this week so that is why I picked these teams.


My 2nd teaser is with Giants +9 vs Philadelphia AND the Jets -3 vs St. Louis. I’m fairly confident that the Giants/Eagles game will be a close one, let alone I think the Giants will win. The fact that I can get 9 points is even better.


I didn’t think any of the other bets looked all that great to me so I decided to not make anymore for this week.

I don’t know what was with me today, but I found myself making moves on Stars against regs when I should maybe avoid doing so at 100 NL. You don’t have to make aggressive moves there to be able to beat the games for a decent rate (as long as you use table selection), so frankly I don’t have an excuse. Maybe I’m trying to develop my reads? Go on what I think will work? For so long I avoided making spewy plays just to make the easy profit. But maybe making spewy plays improves me as a player and will make me a lot more money in the long run. There, that’s why I made the play today.


Okay, so lets get to the hand. My reads on my opponent was that he was fairly aggressive. This is the 2nd time he’s 3bet me but I’ve yet to see him show anything down. I was unaware of the fact that this table was pot limit; I might have changed the way I played it had I realized that. The raw hand history is here:


PokerStars Game #21787346347: Hold’em Pot Limit ($0.50/$1.00) - 2008/11/05 16:37:06 ET
Table ‘Moguntia’ 9-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 2: Ferch18 ($60.50 in chips)
Seat 3: beginnerluck ($97.40 in chips)
Seat 4: sm0kelm ($97.50 in chips)
Seat 5: CodeRedRulez ($102 in chips)
Seat 6: PeterQuint ($66.45 in chips)
Seat 7: my zak44 ($131 in chips)
Seat 8: TBCrepNY ($104.10 in chips)
Seat 9: MikeMcD ($101.45 in chips)
PeterQuint: posts small blind $0.50
my zak44: posts big blind $1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to CodeRedRulez [6d 7d]
TBCrepNY: folds
MikeMcD: folds
Ferch18: folds
beginnerluck: folds
sm0kelm: folds
CodeRedRulez: raises $2 to $3
PeterQuint: folds
my zak44: raises $6.50 to $9.50
CodeRedRulez: calls $6.50
*** FLOP *** [4h 8h 8d]
my zak44: bets $14
CodeRedRulez: raises $46.55 to $60.55


This is about as close to an ‘all in’ as I could have made it given it was a pot limit game. So for sake of calculation I’ll go ahead and treat my raise like it was all in, because I’d have to call it off anyway. We’ve got our EV calculation formula if you remember here:


EV = %Fold * Amount we Win + % Call * (Amount we lose)


We’ll make %Fold = X, %Call = (1-X), Amount we win when he folds= (9.5+9.5+.5+14 = $33.5).


That make’s the last one, Amount we lose, the hardest to figure out. The formula for that is:


(%Win*Amount we win + %Lose*Amount we lose)


So lets do some calculating:


The Amount we win in this case would be the amount in the pot plus the remaining money in our stack: $102+9.5+.5+14 = $126 (I find the easiest way to do this is put your effective stack first then add in the amount of money your opponent has already put in the pot).


The Amount we lose is our remaining stack, so in this case it would be $102-9.5, or $92.50.


The %Win and %Lose are off the same equity analysis, for which we will use Poker Stove with. The thing is, we have to find out what our opponent is going to stack off with on this flop after the action given. QQ-AA are the best things that come to mind, as well as any flush draw. The most obvious flush draws are AhKh, AhQh. Given that he was 20/15 through my very small sample I’ll throw in 1 suited connector there (even though it could be much more), say JhTh. Against that range my equity is 20.87%, not exactly something to brag about. Even if you throw in JJ our equity stays above 20% and for every flush draw you add in it increase our equity by about .5%. So, I think 20.87% equity is a good amount. Thus, we will win 20.87% and conversely we will lose 79.13% of the time. Now we have all the components of our formula:


EV = %Fold * Amount we Win + % Call * (Amount we lose)


EV = X * 33.5 + (1-X) *(.2087*$126 + .7913* (-92.50))
EV = 33.5x + (1-X)*(26.30 - 73.20)
EV = 33.5x + 46.9X - 46.9
EV = 80.4X - 46.9


Alright, so using this equation lets find out our break even fold equity. To find this out we must set our EV to 0:


0 = 80.4x - 46.9
46.9 = 80.4x
X = 46.9/80.4
X = 58.6 %


So, that means our opponent must fold nearly 59% of the time in order for our shove to be profitable. If he folds more than that then it is a +EV play, less than that and its spewy. How do we know how much fold equity we actually have? Well, lets put our opponent on a range, then find out his stacking off combinations.


Given our read, our opponent is always reraising AK here, as well as AQ. He’ll probably reraise QQ+ for value (while only cold call pairs less than that). He’s probably also got a couple suited connectors in his bluff range, but we dont really know which ones or how many, so lets just use our previous example of JTs. The number of combinations for each of these hands:


AK: 16
AQ: 16
QQ-AA = 18 (6 each)
JTs = 4


Total = 16+16+18+4 = 54 total reraising combinations


And the hands he’s going all in with: AhKh, AhQh, JhTh, QQ-AA, or 18 + 3 = 21 stacking off combinations. Thus, the number of folding combinations is 33 (54-21). Our folding equity then is 33/54 = 61.11%!!!!!


Wait, what? That means my play wasn’t spewy at all! In fact, its slightly +EV. We can find this out by putting our actual fold equity in place of X:


EV = 80.4X - 46.9
X = 61.11%
EV = 80.4*.6111 - 46.99
EV = $2.14


It isn’t exactly the most +EV of plays, but it isn’t -EV either. We get most of our equity when he folds his overcard-type hands, plus if we had a flush draw/open ended straight draw it would be a lot more profitable. I prefer to not risk a stack to win 2BB in EV, as that is something that will increase your variance. Granted, if he ever reraises me with more than he does then its even more profitable.


What happens when he never has JTs here and only does it for value? Then his total reraising combinations is 50 (AQ, Ak, QQ+), and calling reraise range with 20 (QQ+, AhKh, AhQh). And (50-20)/50 = 60% Fold Equity, or exactly 0 EV, which puts it at the same level as folding (ignoring metagame effects).


Wow, this was fun. It wasn’t as spewy as I thought. Yay!

I know… right? Me? Playing poker? WTF? Did I finally get my act together or what the heck is going on?


I dunno, lately I’ve just been a little motivated to get some hours in and make some money. Although I’m not 12 tabling like I was and I’m barely even 9 tabling. My play is still split between 100-200 NL although I’m diversified across many sites in an attempt to find the best games.


Where I’m playing at these days:


Player’s Only: I’ve had my worst luck/play here the past couple days. I’m just not ‘in the zone’ when I’m playing here without the stats just yet. I’m doing my best in table selection and I am able to get some reads but it is pretty difficult at times. It is challenging and I’m still playing here for two reasons: 1) deposit bonus and 2) the average player there is still not as good as everywhere else. I’m down about a buy in at 200 NL but up 1 at 100 NL so technically breakeven, but down some because of the buy in difference.


Doyle’s Room: I liked what I saw here, even though they had VERY little action here at the full ring games. The play was pretty bad, I’m down about 1/2 a buy in here.


Absolute: This has been what is keeping me treading water the past couple days. I’m up 2 buy ins at 100 and 1/2 a buy in at 200 NL, even though they only have 1-2 full ring tables going at a time. I don’t have rakeback/bonus to clear here but the tables are good enough I don’t need them.


Full Tilt: I’ve done a little datamining here for 200 NL but I have a hard time justifying sitting down when I have no rakeback here. Especially when Stars is just a click away.


Stars: I’ve been playing some 100 NL here but not any 200 NL, although I didn’t look over my play last month. I use Stars to fill up any table slots I have open, although other than Player’s Only its my best site where the FPP gives me good rakeback.


So, that’s that. I’ve been doing OK at Stars, although I’m having a hard time finding tables with decent donks on them. I’m going to post a spewy hand here and see if I can work the math out and see how spewy it really was.