Ramble on

Standard greeting.

My computer broke the fuck down early on the weekend so I was much handicapped as far as anything computery goes. I was simply playing a game of MVP Baseball 2005 when it just shut off completely. The power wasn’t out and everything else was still powered up. Being the lazy fuck I am I didn’t bother even trying to decipher what the problem was, and just continue my daily interneting on my girlfriend’s computer. A few days later I finally took it apart and fiddled around with it, eventually realizing that the power supply was busted up. So now I’m up and running again. I couldn’t help but laugh at the Future Shop employee who sold me the power supply pushing for their computer support people to install it for me, as installing a power supply is about as easy as taking a shit. But I understand why they offer, as most dumbass noobs don’t have a clue how to install a power supply. And this always makes me wonder how much I’m getting ripped off any time I take a car into get repaired. I mean, its all mechanical parts, just like a computer, how hard could putting in a new radiator or something actually be. Really? $500? For real?

Anyways, wtf was all that? This is a poker blog damn it.

Other than the forced weekend hiatus, I’ve actually put a decent amount of hours in at the tables this week. Sure it’s only Tuesday night right now, but I’m averaging 25games/day which is pretty amazing for me. My hot streak continues to burn, and I am again starting to wonder if I am actually good and not just lucky riding the high tubular waves of variance. I havn’t pulled in any dominant four-figure+ type days like I pulled back in March, but I’ve definitely had a nice steady grind, with an extremely strong and extremely unsustainable 43% ROI over 112 games this month. I’ve passed the 3k mark for this month already and as long as I continue to play my expected 10% ROI game I should easily pass 5k for the month and be playing the 109s at the end.

I have been playing at all hours of the day and night, trying to be aware of the changing styles of my opponents and adjusting efficiently. Although it is just anecdotal evidence, it seems that players who play from the hours of noon-6pm are relatively passive. Not to say that they are tight, as you’ll still get some strange calls. But they generally won’t be reraising your preflop raises, or check raising you with air. I find that it is easier to exploit these players when the blinds get significant as they generally tend to wait for premium hands and for other players to bust out. While they are waiting I end up taking my percentages of EV here and there, and chip up to a reasonable stack.

Players who play from 6pm-midnight are a real different breed. They are much more aggressive and tricky. They have no problem calling off all their chips with garbage hands in hopes to double up. They also are quite aggressive when it comes to blind stealing as well, and have no problem pushing any 2 cards when the blinds get big enough. Again, this is all just anecdotal, and I would love it if there could be some kind of data collected to prove this.

Obviously adjustments need to be made against both types of player sets. I’m actually having more difficulty adjusting to the more aggressive players as I can’t get away with some of the pushes I am used to being +EV. Things like pushing K8s from the button on the bubble with 8bb against a super lag in the BB are just not profitable if they have the ability to call you with JTo. So I’m learning. I think I’ve made some solid adjustments sofar and continue to do so.

As far as other multitabling players go, I actually find that I play against them more often in the evening. I think a lot of multitablers have this notion that the juiciest, most +EV time to play is at night between 8pm and midnight. And intuitively that makes sense if you assume that those are the hours in which most “recreational” players are playing. So what happens is you get about 5-6 “recreational” players and 3-4 multitablers at each table, so your overall EV isn’t all that great.

Any good poker player is basically just good at adjusting to the skill and aggression level of their opponents. So hopefully by being consciously aware of the changing dynamics of players during different hours of the day, I can more readily define the edges of EV that I’m pushing against, and adjust according.

I’m not sure if that will make sense to anyone but me.

I’ll leave you with a great hand I played today against a great player.

Seat 1: TallPaul22 (1170 in chips)
Seat 2: Salisbury (2515 in chips)
Seat 3: Clockwork (1365 in chips) is sitting out
Seat 4: LUCKY_TIGER (1290 in chips)
Seat 5: gfchad (1255 in chips)
Seat 6: fizzedout (1465 in chips)
Seat 7: MehnDaMassah (1400 in chips)
Seat 8: MegaFossil (1585 in chips)
Seat 9: RikkiDee (1455 in chips)
MegaFossil: posts small blind 25
RikkiDee: posts big blind 50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to RikkiDee [9h Jc]
TallPaul22: calls 50
Salisbury: folds
Clockwork: folds
LUCKY_TIGER: folds
gfchad: folds
fizzedout: folds
MehnDaMassah: folds
MegaFossil: folds
RikkiDee: checks
*** FLOP *** [9s Qh Qd]
RikkiDee: checks
TallPaul22: bets 100
RikkiDee: raises 200 to 300
TallPaul22: calls 200
*** TURN *** [9s Qh Qd] [7s]
RikkiDee: bets 1105 and is all-in
TallPaul22: calls 820 and is all-in
*** RIVER *** [9s Qh Qd 7s] [Jh]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
RikkiDee: shows [9h Jc] (two pair, Queens and Jacks)
TallPaul22: shows [As Js] (two pair, Queens and Jacks - Ace kicker)

Great call sir.