Playing Cash!

Oddly, I now find myself playing cash.

I've been 3-tabling (more recently 4-tabling) full-ring $25NL tables, and doing OK. I'm up about 8 buyins, having become more aggressive than I was.

I became aware that I was playing drawing hands passively and if I ever hit I wasn't getting paid off - so I realised that if I was playing aggresively I could make money just playing small-ball poker. So I did.

At least that was for the last couple of nights. Last night thought I signed on during FTP's happy hour (double FTP points) and the tables were both much fuller, and much tougher. Not really tough or anything, but I needed to be more patient rather than just try and run over the tables. That took me a while to adjust to. I played OK though although I was down - until the last hand where I misplayed a draw.

I called a min-raise with T9o from the BB and 3 players saw the flop. The flop was 87x rainbow. I checked, the original raiser bet about 1.25, the second player called and I raised to $7.5. Call/fold. The turn was a T, which gives me a few more outs if villain has an over-pair, and I push the last of my chips in (about a pot-sized bet) and am called by QQ. I river the straight of course which meant I had made a small profit from the session, but not by playing well.

I'm still struggling to figure out how to play draws (its always been a weakness of mine). Variables include:

My number of outs
Number of villains
Villain's tendencies
Position
Stack sizes

I think in the case of the hand above I need to play it more passively on the assumption I'm better off taking villain to value-town if I hit, and I'm unlikely to have any fold equity with my aggresion.

Good fun at the moment though. I'm winning at ~10BB/100 over about 4k hands. No sample size of course - I really need to get to 10k before the numbers mean anything, and then much higher before they mean a lot.

Other things I'll need to consider if I continue playing cash is:
1) Move up in limits (I'm pretty sure I can beat $25NL, so having a crack at $50NL seems an obvious target)
2) Play more tables - currently I'm playing 4. I'll do this for a bit and consider adding more.
3) Move to 6max. I've always preferred FR though, but there must be many reasons why people play 6max. The win-rate is higher I hear, which is compensated slightly by people playing more tables at FR - but I've never been a great multi-tabler.

I'm also now using PokerTracker properly, and starting to explore some of the more advanced features which is proving interesting too.

Maybe a change is proving as good as a rest (and the potential for reduced variance can only be a good thing as I try and build my roll for LV).

Splutter splutter ...

Picture a drowning man at sea who swims to land and with his last ounce of strength hauls himself out of the sea and walks onto the sandy shore.

Thats me, and my downswing. I'm basically hoping that I'm now at the end of it, because I've finally managed a "substantial" cash again. Its only $170, for winning one of the $11/45s but it makes a reasonable difference to my bankroll.

I had about $1880 last night, but I'm not prepared to dip under $1500 as that is going to Vegas with me, so realistically my bankroll was under $400. Briefly.

I played reasonably and then had the kind of luck you need to win one of these things, in fairly quick order had AKs>TT to double up when 3-handed, KQ>A8 to knock shorty out and then AKs>KQo heads up. Its precisely this kind of luck - especially when you need it - that has been deserting me.

I know I'm not going to win a lot of flips late - but recently I couldn't win ANY after it got down to 2 or (especially) 1 table. Anyway I must try and continue to rebuild now.

Moving back down - and an interesting live game

My now really quite large downswing continues. My BR is around $1950 now, and I'm playing the 11/45s - still no luck though. Sigh.

Anyway I went to Luton last week to play in the usual £75+11 tourny. The feel of the tournament was very different this time - there were no good players there. Woo-hoo! It seems that the blind structure was changed to make the tournament a bit faster and all the good players left as their edge was too small. Now they've reverted the structure back but they haven't returned yet. Lovely.

Anyway my first table was very weak with loads of pre-flop limping and family pots. It took me a while to realise that nobody was going to attack, so I did a bit, although belatedly.

I misplayed one hand hilariously when I had Q9 from the SB and saw a 5-way hand. The flop came 9-high so I bet out fully expecting to take the pot down. 3 callers. OK. The turn was a blank, putting 2 diamonds on the board. Checked round. The river was another non-descript card - but was a diamond. I think somebody has the flush. I check, 2 more checks and the last player to act (who was actually capable of playing well) put a big bet in. I ummed-and-ahhed for a while before pretty much deciding to fold my top pair (a call would have been terrible) and looked at my cards (which I only ever do when preparing to fold) to see both my cards were diamonds and I had made the flush! I then had to decide whether to raise or not, but having thought for so long over a dodgy call I felt I had to move quickly so just called. The table were staggered when I turned my cards over (as was villain who had a straight and would have certainly called a raise).

Other than that brain-fart I played pretty well - one flip helped -until with about 24 left I was probably in the top 2/3 chip stacks. I had about 28k chips with blinds at 400/800/75a. Then there was a strange moment where a fairly aggressive player raises to 3.2k UTG, I'm on the button with AKs and wondering how I'm going to play this and the chap to my right pushes his short-ish stack of 11k. UTG has about 19k and after a lot of though I iso-shove, but UTG has QQ and CO has AKs, so I'm drawing very thin indeed.

UTG felt I could have got away from this hand as its a lot of my stack to commit on at best a flip - and I could be a long way behind. Plus I have a large stack and a weak table. I'm still not sure what was right.

The trip to Luton was very encouraging though - there was a terribly weak cash game going too (1/1 - low buy-ins) that I was rolled to play - but I didn't bust out of the tourny till about 2 and was pretty shattered.

The late running of the tourny is a problem actually. Firstly if I run deep I doubt I will be playing my A-game as its so late - and the drive back may be a bit hairy. I took the wrong route twice!

Nevertheless the astonishing quality of the players makes me itch for a repeat journey.