JeffreyLipsey.com

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.

So far, I found one line that I liked and its for this Thursday’s game between Denver and the Browns. I was able to get Denver +3 vs the struggling browns at a breakeven price. This is a bit surprising to me and I expect the line to move as more digest the news that Brady Quinn is starting at quarterback.


I don’t think the line moved at all since the news came out last night that the starting quarterback got canned, although I disagree with that move. Right now they have Cleveland as the favorite by 3 points, but because they’re playing at home its practically break even as 3 points usually goes to the home team regardless.


Other bets I might place this week will include teasers against the Raiders, Rams and Lions and for the Jets, Giants and maybe colts/pats/bills but I haven’t decided yet. I probably wont place any bets until after Thursday, I want to keep some money on Player’s Only so that I can play some poker there this week.

So this post is going to make me sound like a degenerate gambler, so. . . yay!


A couple years ago I had a lot of success betting football and I stopped after legislation curbed how to get money on and off the sports betting sites. But I was able to get money on Player’s Only so I’m using their sports book and poker room for the rest of the season and we’ll see how it goes after that.


My bets this last Sunday were all teasers and although I had some good lines it didn’t work out. The one that I won was I had the Giants -2 AND the Over 34 vs the Cowboys, which was just destroyed. But I lost two others. The first being the Bears -5.5 AND the over 36.5 vs the Lions. The original line had the bears -12.5 but I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell they’d cover that spread, even though I figured they would win the game. I was right, but they only won by 3 points and not 5.5 so I lost that bet, even though the over was covered. My final bet was on the Sunday night game with the Colts +1 AND Over 37 vs the Patriots. I again guess it right that the Colts were going to win but they only scored 34 points combined. I was close. . . again.


Sunday didn’t turn out too well, my teaser on Monday Night’s game was just as much a loser. I had the Redskins +5 AND Over 29.5 vs the Steelers. For some reason the Redskins were the favorite by 2 points, I figured they would score more but I didn’t expect the ass whooping. Luckily for me I received a free $50 bet on my deposit so I put that on the Steelers Moneyline for +120, which was by far an excellent price, so that hedged my loss from the teaser. I actually had a chance to win both bets: if the Steelers won by 4 or less and they scored 30 points or more, but that didn’t happen.


Overall I finished down 1.5 bets, but I could have saved 4/5 of a bet had I chosen better lines. My teasers were the 7 point variety, which cost a full $20 more/$100 bet than the 6 point variety. The % chance of success doesn’t change that much off that one point to account for an additional 20% risk per bet, and that was a mistake I wont be making again.

Reviewing a day later, I’d say I had a pretty decent Sunday. A day that I should be proud of but yet, in the end, still comes up short.


I came the closest to a Final Table as I’ve had since my Sunday Million final table, when I busted 11th in $109 50k on Poker Stars. The prize pool was a cool $130k and its the deepest I’ve gone in that tournament, but at the end I couldn’t win the key all-ins.


It feels like I’m not making enough ‘plays’ when late like that, in that I mean I don’t 3bet bluff enough. I see people 3 bet around me a lot and I just don’t have a feel for it as a bluff in the tournament scenario. It is either that or I just run real bad with horrible timing; either way though I need to work on this as it again hurt me. However, it still wouldn’t have mattered as I lost an AI with KJo vs A8 5 handed when I had 14 BB and open shoved. I thought his call was a little too ‘fast’ although it was correct in the end. I felt like I lost a lot of all ins in this tournament where I had good equity but I really don’t know. I worked my way up though from 600 chips at 50/100 to get that far so I do feel good about my play.


I also busted around 230ish in the Sunday Warmup. I short-stacked my way up from 1st level cash to double that after I suffered a bad beat, although I don’t remember what it was. It was still a decent cash and combined with the $109 cash I knocked a good chunk of make-up off the stake.


Finally, I cashed in the top 40 of the Cake $162 with my friend Adil. We played pretty well but I lost 33 to 53 AI preflop to knock me down low when it really mattered. Adil lost a big hand for the chip lead well out of the money when he lost 99 to 55 AI preflop and that was a pretty gross hand but he played it well, as usual.


That was my day and I’m fairly happy, although I would have preferred a Final Table finish or more. There’s always next week.

The backer for my tournaments has had to tone down my stakings this month, but it isn’t to any fault of my own. In fact, I believe it was quite the contrary. Either way, I’m not able to play the $150k Guaranteed on Absolute this month.


Don’t get me wrong, I love that tournament. But I just can’t defend playing it when it will equate to roughly 1/2 of my risk this month. I’m only able to risk less than 1/2 the same amount per week as I was last month (although it still is a lot) and thus I really have to make sure the tournaments I’m playing I have the highest edge in.


So this month, I’m playing in the following tournaments:

I might throw in the $109 on Bodog when I feel like depositing there, but like I posted last week I’m still pretty pissed with them right now (they did reject our application but I don’t want to talk about it). Otherwise that’s my Sunday, hopefully I’ll be able to get some cash games in on Player’s Only/Cake.

Well, the week has gone by so fast I don’t even know where it went. Today is Friday and I haven’t played poker since Sunday. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been working though…


As I mentioned in a previous post, I spent most of Monday dealing with the video intros and outros with my brother, but since then my PC has been going non stop for 60 hours… converting ONLY 13 videos from wmv to flash. Given that Grinderschool has over 200 videos and if I split the work evenly with JGB, then I’m still looking at running that PC for a month straight to finish all the conversions. This is rather disappointing news.


From Tuesday through Thursday I’ve been dealing with Poker Affiliates for the upcoming Grinderschool redesign. Apparently when you sign up for an affiliate they don’t give you the ‘best’ deal, for us or our subscribers. I had to email all 25 of the separate poker accounts that we will have affiliate relationships with in order to confirm that they did, in fact, give us the rakeback account. It is true, of the majority of the sites that offer rakeback, they did not give us the rakeback affiliate account (I’d say 90% were like this).


I wont say any names, but even when confronted and asked directly: does my affiliate account offer rakeback they either tried to walk around the question or just said no. My point to this that of the 10 or so sites that offer rakeback, only one came out and said we had the best deal and another 1 came out and offered us the best deal when asked.


That leaves a remarkable 8/10 (I’m exaggerating a little because I don’t have the exact number, but its around there) that, even when asked, still didn’t offer us the best deal. Here’s the typical email chain for each site:


Me: Hey, does my affiliate account allow rakeback? (obviously more polite and formal)
Them: No
Me: Is that because your site does not allow it or because you haven’t authorized our account?
Them: Because you haven’t been authorized.
Me: Could you please authorize our account?
Them: Ok, we’ll have to negotiate rates. Please sign up again.


Each of the above conversations were separate emails back and forth, and although my replies were instantaneous it wasn’t always the case with them. A lot of the times they would take 30 minutes or more to respond, which wasn’t exactly all that bad given the fact I had to do this OVER AND OVER for all the poker sites. There were about 20 separate email chains to different affiliates going over such simple and mundane questions; it was quite frustrating.


That was pretty much my schedule from Tuesday-Thursday, but I’m happy to say I’ve finally gotten that taken care of. We’re still in talks with Bodog, which happens to be the only poker site who seemingly HATES traffic because they are such a b**ch to deal with. They are vetting our site and intentions more than McCain did Palin (too easy of a zing, that I won’t mention it); at some point you have to hold your ground and say:


Fuck you! How about YOU give me your best rates and we can talk about a deal?


I knew they are hard to deal with because I’ve tried to work with them in the past with no success. It seems like they don’t like free advertising; what morons. Also, they’re support team is so informal it feels like I’m talking to a group of Frat jag-offs. I’ve had affiliates literally call me from AUSTRALIA so they can give us the best deal; and they’re part of networks much more trustworthy and larger than that of Bodog. I’ve also talked with a couple reps via instant messenger (apparently MSN is the medium of choice in the poker industry) and these people have given me their real names and personal email address. Those are people that care.


Not Bodog. My response email from them came from “Bodog Affiliate Team.” Not an individual person. No Mark, Steve, Neri, Bob, or Dorothy (actual affiliate support names). Its like I’m emailing the entire department, not an individual person. Fuck that, I’ve got 25 other sites I can send players and frankly, we don’t need Bodog that bad anyway.


That was yesterday; I’ve yet to receive a response after I sent them an email back (obv I was a little more courteous and cordial). I have no idea if they’re actually going to approve us but after a while I just don’t care.


And now we’re on Friday, Halloween. What am I going to do? I have no idea.

I figured I should probably finish this recap before it gets too late. Cliff Notes: I finished the Sunday going 0-fer on cashes.


My only chance of cashing came in the Bodog Tourney where I got close to the bubble but never really got anything going. I went from 20 BB to 10 rather quickly and before I knew it I had to shove A6o UTG with 7 BB with the blinds going up.


I mentioned in my previous post that I doubled up early in the Cake 250k with AA vs my buddy’s KK, well I gave all that back with AA all in preflop vs 55 that didn’t hold. I then ran AK into AA on that tourney and it was pretty much the end of my night; I unregistered from the Absolute Tournament again for the second week in a row.


Overall, it was a frustrating day and month tournament wise. I have one bright spot though for the day: I made $320+ in the $200 NL cash game on Cake waiting on more tournaments to start.

Well, I’m half way through my day and I haven’t had much of anything go my way. The first two tournaments, the $109 on Stars and 250k “Brawl” on Tilt I lost to coinflips with JJ and QQ all in preflop to AQ and AK respectively deep in the 2nd hour.


I busted the Cake $50k when I runner-runner boated a hand in the blinds with only 13 BB which I was drawing dead to on the flop. I only lost 1/2 my stack there but then 2 hands later I shoved J8o into AK with 6 BB on the button and lost that.


The deepest so far was the Sunday Warmup, where I busted less than 100 players from ITM when I shoved KJs 8 bb deep into JJ, me hitting two pair doesn’t do much good when one of them gives him trips. But that really wasn’t the hand in question that defined the fate of the tournament.


Right after doubling up to 30k chips by winning a coinflip, I’m at 28 BB and I’ve been reraising some players fairly aggro, but I’ve had hands each time. I get dealt KQs in the SB and CO opens 2.5x the bb; I have not a good read on him through 18 hands but I think he was fairly aggressive. I knew I couldn’t fold and when I took the slider over from his 3k raise to 9k I didn’t like the fact I only had 19k behind, and I’d be setting myself up to be 4bet bluffed. I guess I could reraise/call the all in with KQs 28 bb deep but that feels dirty to me without at least a decent read. And if I had THAT solid of a read then I would just shove all in, which is another option.


What happened was I took the cash game route with KQs there and flat OOP, although in a cash game 28 BB deep I’d probably have just shoved. The flop came J82r and I was just going to check/fold, but he checked back himself and the turn came an innocuous 6. I bet fairly large of 3/4 pot as that was my chance to steal if it I had any. He tanked for a while and then called and I gave up the river. He showed 8c3c and played middle pair well and I would have won preflop with a ship. Would that have affected the tournament? Maybe, maybe not, as my my shove with 8 BB would have been just as standard with 14 BB so its likely it wouldn’t have changed anything.


While writing this I busted the $50k on FTP in the second hour running AK into AA and doubled up in the $250k on Cake with AA vs my friend’s KK AI preflop. I’ll be making a second update at the end of my day but I still have 5-6 tournaments to go through.

Well, I’m not getting much cash game play in this month but I’m happy I’m keeping up with my tournaments. Tonight I busted 20th in the $150k guaranteed, although one of these times I’m going to final table.


To tell the truth, I made a bad play and it possibly cost me the chance to make the final table. There were 28 left and we were already in the money when I get dealt this hand:


http://www.pokerhand.org/?3367515


This is a fairly standard call no matter what the stats were on my opponent, and I’m not being results oriented. I even told Adil, who was ghosting me, that this is a standard call before I had to do it….I just didn’t do it. I was too worried about moving up a pay level to 27th than busting 28th, and the sad thing was it was only like 1/2 the buy in difference. If it was a $10 tourney or if we were 27th I wouldn’t even hesitate to make this call. With that I’m very disappointed. Sure, I made a “soul read” that the guy behind me woke up with KK and I would have won the 3 way all in, but it doesn’t make my play correct. Even if the guy behind me didn’t have KK and I get in the coinflip against the opponent, when I win that flip I’m well on the way to the final table. The fact that I would have tripled up here is just salt in the wounds.


I did make a sick move on the money bubble that made up for my poor play, even though it happened before the above hand. The situation: there were 37 left with top 36 paid. I’ve been fairly tight and the open raiser is a regular and decent player. I had just doubled up with AK so I have a solid image.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?3367565


That said, this bubble move is sick because 37th place gets $0 and 36th gets $750. If I lose I still have enough big blinds that I can fold to cash fairly easily and they have to fold all but they’re most strongest of hands because of the bubble effect.


So I guess it was an up and down tournament. I made one great play and I made one bad fold, but hopefully I don’t make that mistake next time.