Last blog I talked about my epiphany that sets and flushes make you lots of money. I've been developing my own little system for playing Bovada Zone poker (their version of anonymous zoom) since I get a thrill out of all the hands I can play. I did well, grinded my $100 deposit up to about $700 playing NL25 and NL50 with a few donk shots at NL200 thrown in to round out at $1000. Part of my "system" (lol) involved only buying in for 50BB's to limit my exposure to variance. I know I know shorter stacks are supposed to increase variance, but I dont adapt my hand range to my stack size at 50BB's. I play it like 100BB's, so I dont really find myself in any variance heavy spots as a result of my stack size itself.
Anyway after examining my HEM stats I noticed I was missing tons of value with all those big drawing hands I cant play effectively for 50BB's.... OR WAS I?
Turns out I sorted my results wrong. I was only looking at "hands at showdown". Well no shit if 3 streets of betting take place flushes and sets are going to dominate the rankings. But not every hand you win goes to showdown. In fact I have one of those silly reverse profit graphs with positive redline and negative blue line. Most of my actual money is being derived from cbets, and lots of which end with me having some kind of pair.
So whats my point? These fish at bovada microstakes are so unconscionably bad that I feel I am forced to introduce this "variance limiter" by buying in shorter. They've already put the variance through the roof playing 40% vpip minimum, so if you buy in fullstacked well you might as well be buying in short because you're going to be getting a lot of money in the pot every time you have a hand. They make the most absurd nonsense plays that I just have no choice but to stack off repeatedly with a wide range of hands. "Whats that? You limp called utg and the flop is J95? You should totally check call there and then open ship the turn when an offsuit 3 hits. Good thing I'm playing 50BB's and can call with QJ now. Ah there it is, you have pocket 8's. Good shove" What happens here is I can make these calls much easier with a shorter stack, and the suckout odds are reduced for those times when they catch their miracles. I really dont find myself in a lot of draw heavy scenarios where I want a big stack. No, instead I am constantly battling it out for pairs, and I need to be able to see these hands to showdown since the fish dont adjust to your stacksize at all. They float without intent to bet, they chase draws on action killing boards, or against cards that hurt them if they hit, they turn every hand with showdown value into a bluff by raising where nothing worse could ever call. The whole thing is just pure chaos.
Now here comes the fun part; a big part of my strategy involves preying upon their emotions. What do I mean by that? Well fish are very emotional creatures at the table. A big part of what they do all involves their gut feeling. "I felt that ace coming on the river.... i was due for a flush... 7's have been hitting all night so I had to call". Every single thought process of theirs begins with some sort of emotional response to whats happening at that precise moment. So what I try to do is wrangle them together to get the desired result. A fish will never look at your cbet size and make some sort of decision upon the odds of whether or not it's worth it to call. They simply see a bet and if it scares them they fold, if it doesnt they call. For instance; most of my cbets are FULL POT. Thats right, I cbet basically 100% with any two cards for full pot, even on the most hideous of boards with no equity at all. Why? Because if they DONT have anything it will generally freeze them to the point that they go away entirely. I lose far too many pots "pricing fish in" with 3/4 pot bet to call down with K8s holding no draw or anything at all only to win with an 8 on the turn. I sometimes think fish are practically offended when you bet anything less than pot. It's like they call out of spite. Thats great and all for when you have a hand, ergo I value bet half pot every time. In these circumstances I find myself getting called on the flop and turn quite often only for the fish to finally give up on the river. Another advantage to bluffing full pot is you basically put someone in a push/fold position against your stack size. If I bet pot and someone jams, I can safely fold pretty much anything that doesnt smash. There's just no room left for them to bluff back at me. I still see tons of dumb bullshit where they had like pocket 6's so their shove was ridiculous, but technically they did have the best hand and I avoid getting felted. (Remember I can see all of this since Bovada lets you downloads everyone's holecards)
Anyway to wrap all this up, since the day I started playing full stacked again I've been on an instant downswing. I finally decided to go back to "what works" and immediately I am back up again. Fuck these stupid fucking donkeys and their call station strategies. You will NOT be winning 100BB a pop from me with your constant suckouts anymore. You want to play some dumb bullshit with a rigged RNG? 50BB's is all you get slut.
notes: No I dont believe in a rigged RNG. Yes I know everyone says play fullstacked. No I am not really whining about bad beats. All I know right now is when I buy in for 50BB's things get a lot easier, and I'm actually making money playing this way.
So I just finished a proud blog last week about how I'm playing zone poker and taking advantage of all the dead money I see going around, with the biggest element that I buy in for 50BB's to limit my losses when I get coolered. I figured if everyone is anonymous then there's no incentive to play big deep pots because you dont know if your opponent is the type to pay off with a 3rd nut flush draw. So I post all these stats and stuff as evidence of my playstyle when I realized I missed the most important stat of all, showdown value hands. A quick glimpse at what REALLY makes me money, and surprise surprise, flushes and sets top the list. Well obviously these are the kinds of hands you want to be playing big pots for, ergo implied odds really do exist even in a completely anonymous structure.
While the button still proves to be the most profitable position for me, I need to start buying back in full and playing all those drawing hands, BUT ONLY those drawing hands. I knew there was a reason I stopped buying in full, and it wasnt because my draws never get there. It's because I keep hemorrhaging money with 2nd pair or worse. This sounds pretty asinine but I dont see how I didnt notice this on my own. I do relatively well with top pair, but apparently I'm down like $500 at NL25 and NL50 playing less than top pair, with no draw! Upon looking over the hands I can tell what I was doing, and that was just lots of bluffcatching in retarded spots where villain 3 barrel donkbets Q8o on a QJ57T board. I mean my "read" is often right in these situations, villain was turning his hand into a bluff, the problem is *he didnt know that*. I've also lost quite a bit on bluff attempts that probably arent necessary. I dont know how to quantify it but I'd be surprised if I'm even breakeven on my bluffs, so I'm just gonna stop. By bluff, I mean like a 3 street allin type bluff.
Anyway the kinds of hands paying off my flushes have actually been surprisingly bad, so I've decided that any 2 suited will do, so I'm either raising or calling any standard open with literally any 2 suited. People still fold to cbets a lot in zone poker.
It's Bovada "zone poker" which is their version of "zoom poker". This is all NL50 and it only runs maybe three times per week so I cant get much volume in. I deposited $100 to get my feet wet with the intention of depositing more to play higher stakes, but said fuck it I might as well see if I can run up my $100 a little. My bankroll is actually $646 but some hands havent been importing. Bovada lets you download everyones holecards 24 hours later so there was lots of valuable information to gather about how your average fish plays. In a nutshell, it's just very very weak. I dont really know how to describe it, just stupid random play. They'll minraise UTG with like A3s, or min3bet you with 22 from the BB, limp QQ and check/call 3 streets, overjam 88 after limping from EP, open ship a AJ5 flop with KJo, etc. I'm sorta able to piece together their likely thought process after analyzing the hand, but they're all just so very very bad there's almost no point.
I sorta developed my own "system" that basically involved playing the button as much as humanly possible and then using standard telltale signs of weakness to take the pot. If they dont cbet, I'll steal. If they bet something retarded, I'll raise. I probably cost myself a good 100 pots or so trying to pick off bluffs because I feel compelled to call river shoves when the hands play out completely randomly. I'd say 10% of the time I was right, 50% of the time I was "sorta right" because they were turning their hands into bluffs but probably didnt look at it that way, and the other % I was just owned by the nuts. Many of these spots were easily foldable but I'd call anyway just to prove how bad I run.
Anyway NL50 has been dead for almost 2 weeks now so I think I'm just gonna have to bite the bullet and do what I originally intended to which was move up limits where they respect my raises. I'm gonna give NL100 a shot and maybe mix in some shortstack NL200 to see if I'm comfortable there or not.
I have an Oculus Rift with Razer Hydra game controllers. Anyone in to this sorta thing needs no description. I've had it for a couple of months now, had my fun with it and am ready to pass it on to the next soul. Everything in mint condition, no problems whatsoever. I'll even include a thumb drive with what I feel are the best demos (about 20) to save you some time hunting it all down. Figured I'd go ahead and let you guys get first stab at it before I throw it up on ebay.
$500 SHIPPED OBO
Pretty sure this is a good deal. Current and completed ebay listings seem to go for about 375-500 without the controllers or shipping.
Been playing on Bovada's "Zone Poker" tables, which is their equivalent to rush/zoom poker. Of course being bovada means all the players are anonymous too, so there's zero reads/tells other than stack size and preflop activity. Not even a HUD can be used for tracking. That being said, I've had some success half-stacking these games. 50BB is the minbuy, and it seems to me like there's not much point playing fullstacked or deepstacked because you have no idea who your opponents are and what they payoff with. By avoiding fullstack play you deny them the odds/opportunity to effectively draw against you, and can more comfortably stack off with top pair since you have no idea who you're up against and how they play postflop. Any time I double up I just reload the table to buy back in for 50BB's.
My understanding of deepstack poker and even draws for that matter is entirely predicated on if your opponent pays off when you hit. With no reads I just dont see how you can draw effectively because you never know if you're getting paid off anyway. But the risk of getting oversetted or AA/KK and stuff seems much worse 300BB's deep against random players who cover.
If every hand is essentially in a vacuum, does it make sense to buy in for less to limit your exposure to big losses?
Ok I am scurred. I'm still writhing over a bad fold I made last night in a huge pot at a live NL200 game. I've been struggling to come to grips with what happened other than me making a somewhat questionable soul read.
Then it dawned on me moments ago what happened. While I had fully intended to shove any non-heart turn card (even as deep as we were), I froze when I got raised. I mean that just changed everything for me and suddenly there was a possibility I might actually lose this massive hand. Aside from the obvious complications of being 7 buyins deep which is certainly foreign territory to me, the simple fact of the matter is that I was playing SCARED MONEY.
My quandary is that the lowest live limit available is NL200, which is right on the cusp of affordability for me. My job pays me more than the average NL200 winrate, but not so much more that I can risk thousands of dollars on a bankroll. Plus I have bills, duh. Since my bankroll is theoretically infinite due to having this thing called a job, I go ahead and take 3 buyin shots and stuff because hey, I might flop a set in a $1700 pot. The only problem is that because these are home games I'm obligated to stay a certain amount of time. I cant hit n run, which is what I really should be doing to build my bankroll. I would never sit with $1000 live or online, not at least if nobody else covered. But this is a rather frequent occurrence in the home game arena. I've run my stack up to 1k on dozens of occasions, only to piss it away and maybe cash out $200 profit at the end of the night.
I fucked up that hand so bad because I was too scared to see it through. Had this been for $400 or so, ez peasy. Had I been able to change tables once I won around $600, ez peasy. So where does that leave me? I cant hit n run or else I'll never be invited back. There are no casinos nearby, and I'm not such a donkey that I should quit. Well for the time being I think that means I have absolutely no choice but to go back to playing online again. I dont really require a full bankroll since as mentioned, I can just reload. I think I'll just deposit what would ordinarily be my stop-loss to avoid tilt, which is around 3 buyins. Having $0 in my account should really help prevent spewing. It's also a bit of a chore for me to deposit online, as I have to execute a bank wire which takes a few days to complete, a perfect opportunity to cool down and retrospect.
My other option is to just take trips to the nearest casino which is 4 hours away like once per month or something. This will probably be pretty bad for my growth as a player by having such huge breaks between sessions. Not to mention the resources exhausted just in getting there. At least I can always hop tables though. I apologize to the poker community at large for hit n' running, but the simple fact is I neither know how to play deepstacked, nor have the bankroll to risk multiple buyins on a single hand.
Contact Users: 1172 Active, 0 Logged in - Time: 15:59
,
,
,
,