Cash Money Millionaire

I mentioned in my last post that I wanted to pursue a future in cash games. Well, since then I haven't exactly blown the roof off the cash game scene, I have made a concentrated effort to play.

I decided to start off my adventure at the $200 buy-in NL games. My goals at the moment are to learn the intricacies of cash play, while at the same time make a comparable income to my beloved SNG's. From my limited experience, and from talking to friends, it seems that anything from $100 NL and above is a generally solid game, with a strong player pool. Anything below and you are just nutpeddling, and pushing against fish who can't fold 2nd pair.

It would seem that most of your money in cash games is made off of terrible players (obv), some is made off of the semi-solid multitablers with leaks, and basically staying afloat and even vs the strong regulars. I think I can handle this.

I know right now I have many a leak. One obvious one is tilt. For some reason, despite being bent-over thousands of times in my SNG career, losses in cash games devastate me mentally. It doesn't take much to send me off the deep end. And in cash games, you have to be much more alert, so even a minor change in my demeanor can mean a serious loss in EV. So, at the moment, I'm trying my best to keep calm, and try to maintain a steady thought process.

Sounds so simple, yet it's almost impossible for me right now.

I also am occasionally plagued by havetowineverypot-itis, especially vs regulars. I get sucked into one on one battles too easily, and try way too hard to outplay my opponents. It usually starts when I have a fairly good idea of how a certain player plays (usually a regular with a similar style to myself) and I just basically refuse to fold.

What is interesting about this disease is that there are two opposite trains of thought at work. The first being that if I play "tough" vs regulars by calling them down light and reraising with air occasionally, they will be less apt to get involved with me in the future, obviously helping my winrate in the long run. All of that assumes that I can outplay said opponents, and at this point in my cash game career, I'm pretty sure I can't, but its something I'm working on.

The second train of thought at play here is that trying to outplay people who are either just as good as you or better is a -EV proposition. Just take your +EV situations when they come against worse players, and break even vs players who are better than you and you should come up on top. I'll give two examples of this dilemma, one that worked, and one that didn't.

First, the one that worked:

Seat 1: RikkiDee ($314.85 in chips)
Seat 2: Poka_Champ87 ($95.35 in chips)
Seat 3: jwkj ($173.05 in chips)
Seat 4: menexus ($113.40 in chips)
Seat 5: londonace ($162.75 in chips)
Seat 6: yadio ($315.95 in chips)
menexus: posts small blind $1
londonace: posts big blind $2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to RikkiDee [4d 4s]
yadio: raises $6 to $8
RikkiDee: calls $8
Poka_Champ87: folds
jwkj: folds
menexus: folds
londonace: folds
*** FLOP *** [2h Kh 8c]
yadio: bets $14
RikkiDee: calls $14
*** TURN *** [2h Kh 8c] [Kd]
yadio: checks
RikkiDee: bets $30
yadio: calls $30
*** RIVER *** [2h Kh 8c Kd] [8s]
yadio: bets $28
RikkiDee: raises $118 to $146
yadio: folds
RikkiDee collected $160 from pot

So in this instance, my opponent is a fairly solid multitabling player. Most decent players at 6max will basically raise everytime they want to play a pot, so in reality, his opening range here is fairly large. We are semi-deep here so I'll call with position. He then makes his continuation bet, which as everyone knows, could mean anything, so I'll be a fish and "float" him with my low pair. It could be the best hand and the flop is pretty tame. The turn card is pretty good for me by pairing the king as it improves my hand, but as with all cases like this, cards don't matter as much. He checks to me, and at this point, no matter what he has I'm probably going to bet since I called the flop with the intention of betting the turn. I go ahead and bet and he calls quickly. I'm pretty confident he doesn't have a king here, but he definitely wants to get to showdown, which means he has a pair of some sort. The river brings another 8 and he this time he leads out for like 1/3 of the pot. A pretty classic "blocking bet" designed to get him to showdown cheaply, especially if he suspects he may have the best hand. Since his actions up to this point make it pretty obvious he doesn't have a king, and since my hand has absolutely zero showdown value now (my 5 card hand is KK884) the only chance I have is to bluff if I must win this pot. I'm in a fairly good spot here as he has to be concerned that I have a king. How I have a king is probably the only problem with my bluff here as I am *most likely* reraising with AK and folding KQ or worse to an UTG raise. Nonetheless, since I "know" he doesn't have a king, I'll try to represent one with a reraise, making it very tough for him to call with his pair of whatevers, especially given the size of my reraise. Here it works and I'm a genius.

The Hand that Didn't:

POKERSTARS GAME #7833052100: HOLD'EM NO LIMIT ($1/$2) - 2007/01/08 - 15:51:02 (ET)
Table 'Agena II' 6-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: ilzst ($162.70 in chips)
Seat 2: gumby3663 ($62.70 in chips)
Seat 3: loddi ($95.85 in chips)
Seat 4: RikkiDee ($269.25 in chips)
Seat 5: Skoly ($322 in chips)
Seat 6: schickli ($197 in chips)
Skoly: posts small blind $1
schickli: posts big blind $2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to RikkiDee [Kc Jd]
ilzst: folds
gumby3663: calls $2
loddi: folds
RikkiDee: raises $6 to $8
Skoly: calls $7
schickli: folds
gumby3663: folds
*** FLOP *** [6h Qd As]
Skoly: bets $10
RikkiDee: calls $10
*** TURN *** [6h Qd As] [3d]
Skoly: checks
RikkiDee: bets $30
Skoly: calls $30
*** RIVER *** [6h Qd As 3d] [3c]
Skoly: checks
RikkiDee: bets $56
Skoly: calls $56
*** SHOW DOWN ***
RikkiDee: shows [Kc Jd] (a pair of Threes)
Skoly: shows [Jh Ac] (two pair, Aces and Threes)

Ugly, I know. Thats why I'm posting it. I need improvement. The first error of this hand starts with my preflop raise. Its not a huge error but I probably need to raise a bit more preflop to isolate the limper. I usually pop it up to $9 or $10, but for some reason I just went to $8 this time. This may or may not have invited action from the blinds, I'm not sure. In this case, the my opponent, who was a multitabler with standard TAG stats flat called from the blinds. I generally put this player on a pair of some sort. Now, once he bets out at me on this flop, I have to change my read a bit I think. What I'm trying to do put him on a hand, while simultaneously trying to get him to put me on a hand. When he bets out at me, I can't put him on a low pair, since he would very rarely bet a AQ6 flop with a pair of sevens. In this case I'm still not sure what he has, but I'm pretty sure he paired the ace or the queen. Now, my next step is to try some third level thinking and get him to misread my hand. In this case, if I had an ace, or even a queen, I'm probably not going to reraise him on this flop. I know the standard play when someone bets into the preflop raiser is to reraise the fuck out of them, but in this case I just couldn't see what I hand I would be representing to him other than AA, QQ, 66, AQ, and MAYBE AK (although I doubt I would play AK that way). So I just called (I do have a gutshot!). I didn't have a plan of what hand I was representing, but I did know that he must be either fairly weak or very strong (ie a set of sixes) and that this pot was one that I could possibly win. The turn brings a fairly weak card, but since he checked to me, I figure, why not try to take this now. Like the first hand, this opponent called quickly. The difference between the first hand and the second hand is that I was representing a specific hand to my opponent in hand one, and in hand two I wasn't representing anything in particular. I mean, if I had AK here, would I bet now? Probably. If I had a weaker ace or a queen I probably would check. So unless I was slowplaying the flop, or have a decent ace, I'm probably bluffing here. But, again, his quick call tells me he is fairly weak but wants a showdown. I still can't put him on a specific hand since his call from the blind is kind of throwing me off (usually he would reraise me). The river pairs the three, which is a pretty bad bluffing card for me, since he called me on the turn, that three didn't help me and he is probably convinced his hand is good. I still feel that there was a decent chance he would lay his hand down to a bet here, but again, I make another retarded move by betting about 1/2 the pot here on the river. I tried to do something that barely ever works, trying to represent a monster by betting small on the river, inviting a call. It's a stupid play that I've tried a few times and it has basically never worked. In the future, I think its important, that if I'm trying to take a pot away, make it a big ass scary bet.

Ok so what did we learn? I learned that if you MUST outplay a multitabling regular, you MUST have a SPECIFIC hand in mind to represent to them. Don't just start auto-betting when checked to. Always think, "with their actions up to this point, what hands are they folding to me and why?" And NEVER EVER EVER FUCKING EVER underbet the river as a bluff.

But I'm still not sure if trying to outplay the multitablers is a +EV move. Given my limited experience, I think I can survive off the bad players for now.