Poker – The run was great while it lasted…MMMPPHHHH!!!!

I knew the poker karma was flowing and it seems like you never just coast back into your normal winning patterns after a nice hot streak. I think almost every time I basically get slammed against a wall at full speed and I can usually see the wall coming from a mile away and can’t do anything about it. I pretty much got bubbled and sucked out and lost every coin flip over the last week. I won’t bore you with a bunch of beat stories, but I thought the start to this weak would be pretty good. On Sunday I played 3 satelites to the Pokerstars $3 million and won 2 of them, basically getting a free entry. The tourney had over 7000 players and after 3 hours was on the leader board which is tough vs thousands of players left, and unfortunately had JJ run into KK and then bad beat a few hands later somewhere around 2000/7000+. After Sunday, which ended as an overall loss, I proceeded to post a loss 4 more days in a row, for around -$1700 🙁 Fortunately, I’ve been able to tread water the last few days and I feel very good about my play and chalk it up to bad luck and knowing I’ve been running hot for a while. I was also able to squeeze in 9 mutli’s this week and cashed 2 including 1 final table in which I was booted 1st hand in on a missed coin flip. I also finished deep in a few of the others. Today I also just missed a final table on a Full tilt $20 rebuy and got KO’d 13th/215 which didn’t een show a profit. So my play has felt good, but my luck had fleeted me for a few days. I’m on vacation from my real job next week and should get some extra playing time in, so I still expect to at least finish the month in the positive unless I get involved in alot of multi’s that don’t hit big. That’s definately one topic I’d like to cover that most players probably blow there bankroll on while a few cash big. And the one’s who cash big typically want to try and play all sorts of new games and give it all back before they know it. Believe me I know. Even though I’ve always ended up at the end of the year in poker, there have been plenty of stretches were I cash a big multi and spend the next few months dumping it all back because of bad luck or loose play thinking I was so good I didn’t really need to think out my plays and went on auto-pilot. I’ve also fell into the pit of playing a bunch of satelites which I did very well, only to play in the big tournament and constantly bust out, and in the end showing a loss for my efforts, when the whole time I coulda been grinding out SNG’s or cash games and made a big profit. If I was training another player, I would tell them to use maybe 25% or less of their profits per month to play in multi’s so that the profit part is constant and if you are on a good run you can take a couple shots at a multi and treat it like a lotto ticket with better odds. Variance is hard enough on cash games and sng’s, you start smashing things and cursing the world after playing any lengthy amounts of multis (Ask my metal trash can:) ). Early this week I did get a request to show the difference in playing the same hand in a SNG vs Cash game. I would like to get a few good hands to show but have been pretty busy. Basically, in a cash game you will play most any hand in any position or circumstance which in the long run shows a profit. That seems obvious, but the real question is how do you know and that’s were all the boring research comes into play and all the experience pays off. Most people don’t want to do the research and over time some might get a decent feel for what to do, but if you do the research your learning speed is multiplied. The other part of this is SNG strategy is usually much tighter early on. There are many times I lay down hands which would show a positive return, but it isn’t worth the risk of being knocked out of a tourney early in return for a 50% chance of a double up. You have to remember that just because you double up in a tourney doesn’t guarantee that you even cash. An example might be if early in a tourney you have AK OR JJ and are pretty sure the other guy is committed and you will win the hand in general 50% or more of the time, but it is only the first few minutes of the tourney. I would pretty much pass up any major risky hand unless I was almost sure I had the odds in my favor. Another similar example of this might be playing suited connectors. In a cash game with the right odds would be a great investment, but in a tourney you will probably find yourself losing half your stack after missing your draw 2/3 of the time and forced to shove too early when there are more players at the table who can call you down. For now that’s it I guess. I’m heads up in a $100 9 player and don’t wanna donk off my chips not paying attention as usual. Any other questions or comments I’ll be happy to answer next time. GL, Donkeyherder.May 08 – 118/283= 41.7%June 08 – 58/138= 42.0%July 08 – 86/183= 47.0%Aug 08 – 60/118 = 50.8%Sept 08 – 32/74 = 43.2% (So far)

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