Running Bad = Playing Not

After getting my soul crushed two days in a row last week, I haven't even wanted to open up PStars lately.

I have no stats and no poker tracker, as I really have no desire to keep such information on hand.  I started this thing just wanting to play some cards, and thought I was off to a good start.  Unfortunately, the tides have turned, and they've turned hard.

The plays I loved to see in the beginning weeks started winning against me, and I suddenly hate every move of every penny player with a fire defeated not even by our sun.

Downtick, downturn, turn off.

The one thing I do feel right now is the urge to gamble.  After seeing my odds turned upside down time and time again over a two-day span, the only thing I want to do is flip.  I definitely veered off of my plan when the cards starting acting against my favor, and I played a few bigger games and tournaments out of steam that I shouldn't have - my petty penny bankroll has paid.

If I want to play real cards and try to keep on track to build my bankroll, I need to rest again and realize my rules once more before I jump back into the games

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OPERATION: ROBUSTO - Session(s) Whatever

Gain/Loss: -$22.18
Tournament Gain/Loss: -$11
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Total Bankroll Increase/Decrease: -$16.93
Total Bankroll: $23.07

The Glorious Nosedive: An Illustration

Wha...but...ah...WHY??

My FIRST hand at the table (and yes, I do post my blinds no matter what seat I come in to first hand at a table)...I had to stare at this hand for a while in the hand replayer...

Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - View hand 747499
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (UTG): $1.00
UTG+1: $0.76
UTG+2: $0.95
MP1: $7.04
MP2: $7.16
CO: $2.00
BTN: $6.55
SB: $0.84
BB: $2.08

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is UTG with A J
Hero raises to $0.08, 6 folds, SB calls $0.07, 1 fold

Flop: ($0.18) 8 9 J (2 players)
SB bets $0.06, Hero raises to $0.20, SB calls $0.14

Turn: ($0.58) K (2 players)
SB bets $0.06, Hero raises to $0.30, SB calls $0.24

River: ($1.18) 3 (2 players)
SB bets $0.26 all in, Hero calls $0.26

Final Pot: $1.70
Hero shows A J (a pair of Jacks)
SB shows A Q (high card Ace)

Hero wins $1.62
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I just don't ever remember a time where that was a play in my bag of tricks...

Anyways, hacked out a small win after being up a bit.  I finally got caught in multiple hands going on at the same time.  I usually can handle it 12 tabling, but last night was the first time I got too confused, and it ended up costing me some bucks.  Probably should've been up another $6 on the night, but a win's a win.  I'll take it for now.

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OPERATION: ROBUSTO - Session 14

Gain/Loss: +$1.79
Tournament Gain/Loss: $0
-------------------
Total Bankroll Increase/Decrease: +$16.25
Total Bankroll: $56.25

Session 13

Fear not my frantic followers (or at least friends, of which I know there's at least 2,) for your boneheaded blogger is back at the keyboard.

Session 13, as unlucky as it should have been in statute alone, was another slow grind.  I profited just over one buy (shortstack, ldo), and still am finding myself in tough situations.

Restarting a bankroll at penny stakes is a difficult task once one has had the taste of having thousands of dollars in front of him in a real live game.  Not only am I having to relearn the game from a new player's standpoint, but I have to be able to apply my knowledge of hand strength, which is proving to be quite difficult.  Without reads, calling all in with a marginal hands, or oppositely trying to put an opponent all in holding a marginal hands, is extremely difficult.  It's even more difficult when your opponent doesn't even understand the strength of his own hand.

At penny stakes, all of a sudden Jacks are Aces, and an inside straight draw is worth a whole stack with only a few blinds in the pot.  In one shot you could be in with middle pair and have your opponent drawing almost dead, and in another be drawing dead with TPTK.  There is, of course, the ability to take online notes, but with so many players at this low of stakes, how useful can those notes really be?

I followed a note I had on one opponent, and lost the hand.  Bad note taking?  Probably not.  Hard to take notes on a guy who doesn't know what he's going to do from situation to situation?  Probably.

When jumping into multitable sessions, a poker player, and especially a penny poker player, starts to adhere a certain formula to the hands that he's willing to see.  When he's in seat 8 with one limper and pick up AJ offsuit, and he has six other tables blinking at him with his action clocks counting down, he needs to have a solution ready before he even sees the table pop up in front of the other 20 tables.

I've started to do this, and not at all intentionally.  I do this because I need to in order to keep up, and I do this because I already have a base knowledge of the plays I have "available" to me, and because the more hands I see at this low of stakes, the more I learn about what works.  Here.  At these stakes.

Of course these sames moves would me crushed if I were to jump into a 10/20 game again, but at the penny stakes, the moves work.

Then there are hands that I have no idea what's going on.  Like this:

Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - View hand 743596
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP1: $2.99
MP2: $1.91
CO: $1.35
BTN: $1.85
SB: $1.36
BB: $2.24
UTG: $3.00
Hero (UTG+1): $2.26

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is UTG+1 with Q A
1 fold, Hero raises to $0.08, MP1 calls $0.08, MP2 calls $0.08, 1 fold, BTN calls $0.08, 2 folds

Flop: ($0.35) A 3 9 (4 players)
Hero bets $0.24, MP1 folds, MP2 folds, BTN calls $0.24

Turn: ($0.83) 7 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.66, BTN raises to $1.32, Hero raises to $1.94 all in, BTN calls $0.21 all in

BTN shows 2 2 (a pair of Twos)
Hero shows Q A (a pair of Aces)

River: ($3.89) J (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $3.89
Hero wins $3.74
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All of a sudden, deuces are aces...

So when I see hands like that, I have a hard time folding hands like this:

Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - View hand 743605
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $0.82
UTG+1: $2.41
MP1: $2.11
MP2: $0.77
CO: $3.00
Hero (BTN): $0.84
SB: $3.34
BB: $0.71

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is BTN with J J
UTG calls $0.02, UTG+1 raises to $0.10, 3 folds, Hero calls $0.10, 1 fold, BB calls $0.08, UTG calls $0.08

Flop: ($0.41) 7 3 Q (4 players)
BB checks, UTG checks, UTG+1 bets $0.20, Hero calls $0.20, BB folds, UTG calls $0.20

Turn: ($1.01) Q (3 players)
UTG checks, UTG+1 bets $0.54, Hero calls $0.54 all in, UTG folds

UTG+1 shows Q A
Hero shows J J

River: ($2.09) 5 (2 players - 1 is all in)


Final Pot: $2.09
UTG+1 wins $1.99
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Of course being short stacked doesn't help me get away from hands like the Jacks.  In so many cases, I find myself painfully calling, just to see that I'm way ahead, and then there are cases where I feel at ease (not good, but only at ease) putting my chips in when I THINK that someone might be overplaying or overbluffing their hands.

This is where player data trackers come in handy.  In that case you automatically get a read of every opponents playing style even if you don't even remember their user ID.  I don't want to do this, though.  I don't want to download tracking software.

We learned the hard way.  We learned with our money, our losses and pain, and sometimes we even learned when it wasn't our money on the table.  When we were at Chumash grinding short stacked no limit games with a bunch of Goleta-tards, we didn't have a numeric readout above every players' head showing us how often he raised preflop or how many times he's been to the flop tonight.

We learned through feel and painful calls and positive reinforcement when we knew we made a good play.

And for that reason I won't be downloading tracking software anytime soon, or in the later future.

I'm learning again, and I'm learning more about my own discipline that, at many times, I never thought I had.

We learned through hands like this, which I like to call "Oops, Nice Hand, Sir":

Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players - View hand 743669
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $1.65
BB: $1.25
Hero (UTG): $3.16
CO: $2.08
BTN: $2.99

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is UTG with 9 9
Hero calls $0.02, CO raises to $0.10, 3 folds, Hero calls $0.08

Flop: ($0.23) 3 8 K (2 players)
Hero bets $0.18, CO calls $0.18

Turn: ($0.59) 2 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.46, CO calls $0.46

River: ($1.51) 9 (2 players)
Hero bets $1.48, CO calls $1.34 all in

Hero shows 9 9 (three of a kind, Nines)
CO mucks J K

Final Pot: $4.19
Hero wins $3.99
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So here's to looking forward, building bankrolls at penny stakes, and (hopefully soon) meeting up in Vegas to play some real cards - cards where I don't see Seat 2's VPIP or showdown win percentage.

Here's a few more hands to precede Session 13's results:

Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - View hand 743672
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP2: $2.28
CO: $1.13
Hero (BTN): $1.13
SB: $0.88
BB: $1.81
UTG: $1.52
UTG+1: $2.93
UTG+2: $0.78
MP1: $3.70

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is BTN with K K
3 folds, MP1 raises to $0.04, 1 fold, CO calls $0.04, Hero raises to $0.16, 2 folds, MP1 calls $0.12, CO calls $0.12

Flop: ($0.51) 2 5 8 (3 players)
MP1 checks, CO checks, Hero bets $0.36, MP1 calls $0.36, CO calls $0.36

Turn: ($1.59) 5 (3 players)
MP1 checks, CO checks, Hero bets $0.61 all in, MP1 calls $0.61, CO folds

Hero shows K K (two pair, Kings and Fives)
MP1 shows J K (a pair of Fives)

River: ($2.81) Q (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $2.81
Hero wins $2.71


Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - View hand 743673
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $2.22
BB: $1.48
UTG: $1.69
UTG+1: $1.69
UTG+2: $1.61
MP1: $0.65
MP2: $5.07
CO: $0.81
Hero (BTN): $0.92

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is BTN with 3 3
UTG calls $0.02, 5 folds, Hero calls $0.02, SB calls $0.01, BB checks

Flop: ($0.08) 5 3 A (4 players)
SB checks, BB bets $0.10, UTG raises to $0.20, Hero raises to $0.44, SB folds, BB calls $0.34, UTG raises to $1.67 all in, Hero calls $0.46 all in, BB folds

UTG shows 5 5
Hero shows 3 3

Turn: ($2.32) A (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($2.32) 2 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $2.32
UTG wins $2.22


Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - View hand 743674
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP2: $1.00
CO: $5.73
BTN: $5.20
SB: $2.00
Hero (BB): $0.96
UTG: $2.91
UTG+1: $3.39
MP1: $2.15

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is BB with A J
3 folds, MP2 calls $0.02, 3 folds, Hero raises to $0.10, MP2 calls $0.08

Flop: ($0.21) 7 9 T (2 players)
Hero bets $0.16, MP2 calls $0.16

Turn: ($0.53) 4 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP2 bets $0.74 all in, Hero calls $0.70 all in

MP2 mucks T J
Hero shows A J

River: ($1.93) 8 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $1.93
Hero wins $1.88


Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - View hand 743678
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG+1: $0.88
UTG+2: $2.34
MP1: $0.79
MP2: $1.07
CO: $2.78
BTN: $4.34
SB: $3.14
BB: $3.04
Hero (UTG): $1.18

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is UTG with A J
Hero raises to $0.08, 1 fold, UTG+2 raises to $0.24, 6 folds, Hero calls $0.16

Flop: ($0.51) 9 8 Q (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG+2 checks

Turn: ($0.51) 4 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.32, UTG+2 calls $0.32

River: ($1.15) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.62 all in, UTG+2 folds


Final Pot: $1.15
Hero wins $1.10


Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 7 players - View hand 743680
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $3.88
SB: $2.26
BB: $1.45
UTG: $2.07
UTG+1: $2.44
MP: $3.00
Hero (CO): $0.85

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is CO with T T
UTG calls $0.02, UTG+1 calls $0.02, 1 fold, Hero raises to $0.12, BTN calls $0.12, 2 folds, UTG calls $0.10, UTG+1 calls $0.10

Flop: ($0.51) K 3 5 (4 players)
UTG bets $0.14, UTG+1 folds, Hero raises to $0.28, BTN folds, UTG calls $0.14

Turn: ($1.07) 8 (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $0.45 all in, UTG calls $0.45

UTG shows 5 6
Hero shows T T

River: ($1.97) 4 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $1.97
Hero wins $1.92
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OPERATION: ROBUSTO - Session 13

Gain/Loss: +$2.28
Tournament Gain/Loss: -$1.10
-------------------
Total Bankroll Increase/Decrease: +$14.46
Total Bankroll: $54.46