From Lead to Gold

Well I do seem to have made some cash but not much. I still seem to be running incredibly badly and I am beginning to hate PokerStars. I am really glad that they are probably taking over FTP as it is great news for the USA players but I was looking forward to playing on the new FTP, a site with a random number generator that doesn't hate me the one at PStars seems to really have it in for me. I didn't really think I would get such a long bad run. I am interested in statistics and so I know that there is really no limit on how long these last - it could be that I stay unlucky for the next few years but wow I could do with a break. For quite a long stretch I used to be able to beat reasonable levels - I had quite a decent roi at $22 STTs but these days I am struggling to stay above break even at the micros. I have had a look back at some of the games I played a few months ago and to be honest I seem to play them pretty well they just didn't pay out. I am quite honest and there don't seem to be any glaring leaks as far as I can see so I guess I'll just plough on for a bit and see what happens.

Over the last 2 months I have moved out into the larger field tournies and I am now play in the $2.50 180s - these do seem to be paying off a bit and do seem much more profitable than the $7 STTs. I think I am beginning to get the hang of these 180s, I've played about 1000 with ~40% roi in them. 

I am still tracking my jokey allin flip statistic, each day I should be either on the good or bad side of the allins. Well I now have scored 39 good and 76 bad and this is really close to off the scale. It is very nearly 3.5 stdev's from the mean, a quite interesting result in that it is in the 99.97% bad quartile or happens this bad once in 2800 times - phew. Well I'm not superstitious and I don't think anybody has rigged PStars to keep me in the micros but I am an optimist and I guess if I can survive this patch it should get better - ok theoretically it could get worse but the chances are I should get an even throw and in the long run I should begin to merge into the central section and then hopefully stop moaning.

I have taken a week or so break as my graphics card had also decided to take a break. I managed to screw up and order the wrong type replacement, I didn't realise my PC was quite so old - still using AGP type cards.

Warning - a moan is coming.

I am still running really badly and I am finding poker quite difficult to put up with lately. It seems like every time I drop below 12bbs and push I just about always run into a really bad hand in the BB. If I have JQs the BB wakes up with AQ or better.

I have been moaning a lot in these blogs but it does give some escape, it has been about 9 or 10 months of pretty solid pain and it is the length of this run that seems to be getting to me most. I do feel I am still playing fine and I am happy in that I have not blown my stack but I am tilted in that I can't find the motivation to play much anymore. At some point I should start a decent normal run and things will look up but this has been a long time coming. My allin ev is still bad - the viewing each day as a coin flip had got to 55 bad - 25 good yesterday, this is roughly a I in 2000 bad run, quite brutal. I have decided to drop the 45s and go back to STTs for a while to avoid the heavier variance. I did manage to get some luck and picked up a few buyins so this does seems like a glimmer of hope, spring is coming.

Credit goes to Mitch for the title.

I've had a bad couple of days, I've dropped 28 BIs in 82 45s tournies. It's not tilt it's just run bad honest.

I didn't tilt honest - well I did on one hand things had gone really quite bad and I raised preflop (50 level) with QQ, the SB called, a K hit on the flop, I c-bet and got c/raised but refused to drop it. This is not really like me I usually lose because of crap play not tilt but for once after about eight straight losses holding dominating hands I couldn't stop myself. The V. had something like K2s, oh well this serves me right, I knew I was very likely beaten.

Well, I am now beginning to think that I don't have too much of an edge at these things, I'll have to knuckle down and try to get that mojo working.

Luck wise I think I had a reasonable week, the 'all-in turn or earlier ev'  was fairly even - well actually I was 1% ahead. This bring my weird running daily flip score view to 41 bad, 21 good, this is a 1 in 132 chance but going in the right direction. I only managed to play 205 games, I seem to be slowing up again, but I did manage to end up 62 BIs. There does seem to be quite a strong correlation between the all-in adjusted and winnings on SnGs and it is probably a bit more important than for cash. In cash this is a straight chip to money score but in SnGs it probably gets compounded as you cannot reload and are often left with a ham-strung stack, and in tournies stacks are power. Also in tournies you are mostly playing less than 30bbs deep so not enough space to expect river play.

It looks like I should get myself out of the last 90BI swing very shortly, it has been a very swingy time over the last 4000 tournies. BI wise I am a little up approx. +86 but cash wise I am still down as the earliest downswing was at a much higher stake. Oh well, onward and upward. I will soon have built up enough in the PStars BR to justify another level jump.

I am disappointed with the amount of volume I have achieved and must try to increase this. I typically start up 9 tables at the 45 seaters, this seems to be fine with a +ev roi (16%). I have played up to 12 simult. but have done pretty badly (-11%) - I don't think this is really a good indication as I haven't played all that many sessions like this and have not had the luck but it is something to watch out for. I have reviewed quite a few of these games and I did seem to be playing quite reasonably in them. I do feel comfortable at 9 games as I can get all tables overlapped but mostly visible on screen at once and this allows me to tick the early fold button which stops some distraction when concentrating on other tables.

This bad run has been going on for about 9 or 10 months now and shows no sign of stopping. Lately I have been tracking whether I am on the +ev side of all-in ev or the neg. and using these results just about sums up the state of play. Although it is possible to bias this I have not been trying to do this (daily they should be perfect flips) - I just play blocks of 45man SnGs usually 12 to 15 per session. Since I started tracking these I have had 37 unlucky days and 15 lucky ones. The chances of this score happening is 1 in 628, doh! quite painful. In general when I go all in pre-river I seem on average to hand over 130 chips of extra equity. 

Here is the binomial distribution of 52 flips.

I keep moaning but I am still running really badly. I wish PStars would turn that bloody doomswitch off.

In the last post I mentioned that you could say that in each day you should be able to expect to either be above or below chip ev at a rate of 50 50 (it is possible to bias the result if you always stoped whenever you nudge over the line one direction but I have not been doing this at all). Anyway, 1 week ago over the previous 40 days I had tracked I had about a chance of 1 in 100 of getting the same result by tossing a fair coin, since then I had played another 7 and have been lucky on 2 days and unlucky on 5 so that now, for a fair coin, gives a chance of 1 in 302! Hey is Pokerstars fixed? Just joking.

I am still waiting for the long run to occur! I seem to have had it pretty bad since May last year and even though I am playing reasonably well and consistant I can't seem to win! Here is the overall graph. The last 1/4 or so are micro 45's, the earlier part are mostly mid STTs. HEM doesn't chart all-in ev for 45s but I think if it did my red line would be cruising away.

More is going wrong than just not getting my share of allin equity but I would like to sometime get a fair crack of any allins. Since May over 9637 qualifying hands my 'allin turn or earlier' equity is only 63% of expected. Even the section where I was winning I was only running at 68% of expected over a total of 12810 hands. It is not really possible to infer much from non icm'd all-ins. In one way you could say that on average you should be on the winning side after each day of playing on average exactly 50% of the time but strangely I did go back through the last 40 days and it works out that I have played on 37 days, was lucky on 11 and unlucky on 26, to get this score or worse from tossing a fair coin is 1.003%.

Oh well, here goes I'm about to put in another session of 45s.

Inspired by Krantz I've decided to write a story, here is an first draft

part 1

The Fellowship of the Ring Game

After leading a carefree existence Bones stumbles across the secret of PokerStars power The Ring of RNG but doesn’t know what it is. Some say on his 111th birthday he passed the ring to the young ringbearer BaseMetal.

BaseMetal after many years struggling to control the power of his precious in limit ring games, snigger (and also using its invisibility power to sneak into the girls changing rooms) calls in the help of the SnGWizard and starts to build a roll on FTP. Over the years the Dark Lord’s power begins to grow and Gollum  passes the UIGEA bill  The Black Friday Riders on their Ponzi steeds are sent in to destroy the bankroll.

Base travels to The Land Of Deuces Cracked, and in the House of Entity is challenged to regain the roll by taking what’s left deep into the enemy territory of PokerStars and to destroy the Rng. The only way is to climb Mount Doom Switch and throw the Rng into the mountain of fire.

Part 2 The Two Deuces, to follow

Part3 The Return of the Cowboys

Here is one of my favorite versions of the story:

Well it is now at the end of the year so good luck to all for the next.

I seem to be sounding like a broken record but I have just finished my final session of 2011 and yet again I ran like *£$%!. Oh well at least I managed to make a profit of $0.20, heehee - that was a close call. I did manage to clock up a $50 bonus  and so with this I have now managed to drag the original $250 up to $670 but it has been an incredible struggle mostly due to the consistancy of the run bad. Since I started to try to put in some volume, for this so called Leatherass challenge, I have been running at about 2/3rds of expected chip ev but have still managed to build up 84 BIs or approx 12% roi over 843 games. I do feel that if a few things do start going my way I will be back extracting money from a poker account soon. I am happy overall with the amount of games I have put in, it is about double the previous 3 weeks and I intend to keep increasing the volume in small steps.

Many thanks to the DC community for all the help and support over the year.

Same old story I'm still running like %!"ite. At some point luck should start going my way but I appear to be the person usually on the sticky end of it Yesterday was incredibly bad but I somehow managed to stay ahead and picked up 5BIs. Since I started trying to increase my volume I've gained 40BIs but this is in the face of bad luck so I hope to do much better in the coming weeks - since I started this Leartherass bit my chip all-in winnings is 44000 but with luck removed I should have had 91000, ah well never mind I should eventually get to the long run. Everything else also seems to have gone to the dogs - the only reason I have managed to stay afloat is I am now playing in micro territory. In a way I am glad I decided to try to take build on the paltry $250 that I had left in PStars as if I had just reloaded and played mid stakes I would have lost quite a bit. I am lucky that I have hit bad luck at a cheap time!

As far as volume goes I've done pretty well, not as good a Mr Schmidt, I've played 557 45s in the last 2 weeks and this is much more than I used to achieve. I am hoping to keep up the pressure over the next few weeks. It is often wrong to try to change something too drastically in a short space of time so I will keep trying to slowly ramp up the volume. I am hoping to be able to get in at least an average of 500 a week whenever I can get some time together. I'll see if I can get near this figure over the holiday period.