Digital Thinkbox

I don’t feel so bad after seeing this hand in a SnG I played today. Keep in mind it is the FIRST hand of the SnG.

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Tournament
Blinds: t20/t40
10 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
Hero: t2000
UTG+1: t2000
UTG+2: t2000
MP1: t2000
MP2: t2000
MP3: t2000
CO: t2000
Button: t2000
SB: t2000
BB: t2000

Pre-flop: (10 players) Hero is UTG with 3♥ T♥
Hero folds, 3 folds, MP2 raises to t80, MP3 folds, CO calls t80 (pot was t140), Button folds, SB raises to t220, 2 folds, CO calls t140 (pot was t400).

Flop: 6♣ 9♥ 6♠ (t560, 2 players)
SB checks, CO bets t426, SB raises all-in t1780, CO calls all-in t1354.

Turn: 4♦ (t4120, 0 player + 2 all-in – Main pot: t4120)

River: 2♥ (t4120, 0 player + 2 all-in – Main pot: t4120)

Results:
Final pot: t4120
CO shows 2♠ 2♦
SB shows A♠ A♦

Ouch! AA busted by 22 on the river. Sucks to be the SB. Glad I wasn’t in this hand, and it makes me feel better about some of my bad beats. Thanks buddy. The CO in this case ended up busting out on the 9th hand of this SnG, small consolation to the SB player.

Working towards my goal of 10 $11 SnGs per day. Well today I got in four. Whee! First one was good, I won it and I think I played well. Especially since I made it ITM with the smallest stack and managed to work my way to first. The next three games were not so great however. 8th, 5th, 8th. In all three cases I had hands busted by AQ. First one, AK vs AQ, queen drops. Second one AK vs AQ, queen drops, third one, KK vs AQ, ace drops.

However ranting about bad beats really isn’t the point of this post. Super passive players is. All three of these tables had VERY passive players. In fact the whole table was super passive. To illustrate the level of passivity I give you the following hand:

Yes, that’s right. Quads. Apparently four of a kind is only worth 85 chips. I can see his limp from the SB, it isn’t a really hot hand, but it isn’t bad. Worth completing, although against these suckers, probably worth a raise.

He flops a set, and checks. OK so I suppose that is better than folding a set :O, but alright he is slow-playing his set, or something.

Turn comes, and he bets 65. Whee! A whopping 5 chips over the minimum bet. You go girl! Of course he gets called. He probably could have bet the pot and gotten called. River is his nuts, and he bets like..err I have no idea what he bets like. YOU HAVE FOUR OF A KIND!!!11! Great he extracts 85 more chips from MP1, goodie.

That’s how passive these tables have been. It is very hard for me to get a read on what their hands are when they are playing like this. About the only thing I can do is continue to play tight and hope they bust each other. Which in this last table, didn’t happen. All they did was trade chips back and forth the whole time, never betting strong, never pushing, just sitting there. Of course the one time I act aggressive and push, I get called with AQ and bust. Granted, KK vs AQ I was the favorite, and the villain calling me with AQ was maybe reasonable, it’s still frustrating.

In the long run these guys will be +EV for me, I know that. I just need to figure out how to play against them better.

So I’ve been working on my single table tournament skills recently. In fact, I’m focusing almost all my efforts on improving my SnG skill to the exclusion of my limit and multi-table tournament game. I’ve even gone so far as to retain the services of a coach to help me not suck at SnGs (Sit and Gos). After eliminating (reducing at least) my most glaring n00bified errors, I’m trying to improve my bubble play.

The biggest obstacle I have to overcome is a mental one, in my opinion. Bubble play appears to be mostly push/fold, and in some cases pushing all-in with any two cards (ATC). Using a tool called Sit and Go Power Tools, I attempt to identify positive expected value situations where going all-in may be the right move. Frequently SNGPT shows that a push with total crap for cards is +EV. For example the following hand from a SnG I played recently:

Yeah, K4o from the small blind. Madness, but the math reveals it is a +EV push in some cases. This is perhaps the biggest concept that I’m trying to get my head around: Pushing with crap in certain positions, with certain stack sizes is +EV.

Take this hand, from the same SnG for another example:

This is even more of a +EV situation than the last one. +0.9%EV for me, and +2.1%EV for the Button, who folded with me giving the BB a walk. Although I should mention that ALWAYS following SNGPT is probably the wrong thing to do. SNGPT can only tell you that the situation is potentially +EV, not that you will win, or that pushing is the right move.

In this situation it could be argued that holding back and waiting for the Button to bust out would be a decent call. Indeed, the button only has 880 chips and the blinds will chew up 800 of that unless he does something. Waiting for him to get blinded out means I’m in second place, gaining $10 in prize money by just folding. However, I’m not all that healthy stack wise either. With less than 7 big bets remaining in my stack so I can’t just sit around.

I have to be aggressive if I want a shot a 1st place, but pushing with less than optimal hands is a difficult concept. It runs counter to everything you learn when playing limit ring games. SnGs are a different breed of poker, and I’m going to have to overcome this fear of pushing junk in the right places if I want to get better.

I’m updating Wordpress to the new version and installing a new theme so expect general weirdness over the next few days.

Update 8/24/2006
Upgrade is complete. I’ve upgrade to the latest Wordpress and installed a new theme. The theme still needs some customization since it is stock, but hopefully I’ll get around to that soon.

New stuff included in this upgrade:

• AJAX support in some place.
• Little archive navigation tool just below the header.
• “Live search”. Type a search in the search box and it should update the page automatically without clicking
• Widgets/Modules – Little widgets and modules seen mostly on the side bar. Reorganizing the sidebar is a matter of dragging modules arounds. No more editing the template code.

I am going to try and start posting more.

I’ve recently embarked on a journey into Texas Hold’Em Poker and am doing reasonably well. I’m profitable, who would have thought! I have discovered that I enjoy poker much more than blackjack, and the variance is much lower. Additionally I get to take other people’s money! Well usually.

Typically I play limit games, although those have been getting boring of late. Playing for a couple of hours with not playable hands and watching the blinds slowly eat away at your bank roll isn’t my idea of fun. I started playing in more multi-table tournaments and single table tournaments, called Sit and Goes (SnGs). These are quite a bit of fun, although the larger tournaments can be a bit dull since they tend to run 3-6 hours in length.