RLMSNGer: Veloblank

Being Stuck

veloblank — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:09:18 +0000

What is "being stuck" to you guys? Down 3+ buyins? Down a dollar? I left an 8 hour live session yesterday down 1/2 a buyin. I hated the feeling. I had to pick up my girlfriend from work at 6:30 and I seriously sat at the table until 6:20 knowing full well it could take me 20 minutes through traffic to get to the hospital to meet her. I created some action on the last 10 hands of the day positive there was no way I was coming back to the casino later. I hate that feeling as well.

I played at the only 1/3 table at the start of the day and stayed there the whole day. The good tables are in the evening but I clawed my way back from a couple earlier coolers, so instead of thinking I was stuck a 1/2 buyin (less actually, more like $100) I like to think I just ran out of time.

Overall my play was pretty freakin' LAGgy. I pounded some guys for pots which is good as long as I keep it on a leash. I ran into trouble with TPGK full house vs. Aces and full house and missplayed a QQ hand on the turn.

Right now I'm watching Nolan's FR series and really liking it. In my next session I have a few goals:

1. Count the number of hands each hour. Make some general stats from that.
2. Keep track of my tips.
3. Tighten up in MP with loose LP players.
4. Understand my image and make some better bets.
5. Make them pay.

Some day, with enough buyins this will be mine. From the air show last weekend.

Live Play Experiences

veloblank — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:07:00 +0000

I have been playing live about 2-3x per week at my local casino. Each time I've gone I've easily had something to take away from my visit; be it money or my player interactions. I've decided to keep a written playing journal to informally track my bankroll and to capture the experiences for note taking and for the memories, because there are many. Hopefully I'll get to share some experiences from the journal in the future.

First: live bankroll. Quite frankly, I have none. The absolute first time I went there I admit I lost money, I think a buyin at 1/3. I don't recall the session at all other than I was pretty scared about sitting with so much money in front of me. I remember a 30BB ss hitting a flush and me losing the minimum, but then losing with TPGK with an OESD to a set miner.

My next visit went much better. I was in town for an interview and took $120 out of my ATM (pre-casino and pre-surcharge) and shortstacking 1/3 until I left with $750. That was the highest feeling in the world since I started playing poker. Throughout the past month or two, this has turned into what I believe is about 40 hours of poker and probably $50/hour. I should be 3 buyins higher but learned the hard way about not quitting "good" a few weeks ago.

All of this has turned into a 1.5 months of rent, some good food again, all of my utilities on, and finally a meager bankroll. I really wish I was a more serious writer because I could have documented almost 2 weeks without hot water and not knowing where rent was coming from.

Right now I feel the screws tightening again. It's the end of the month and I don't want half of my BR swallowed up by rent and monthly b.s. so I'm planning to go down on Wednesday again, hopefully for the entire day and taking 5 full buyins (or 7 65BB buyins). This past Saturday into Sunday morning I walked with $550 + a full 100BB buyin and knowing I was leaving money on the table.

Second: player interactions. Live play has been very relaxing. I've enjoyed talking to the players, interacting with the dealers and wait staff, and had some good laughs for sure. I've met a few new friends, stared down a few aggressive regs, and snap called with a good 3rd pair for a 100BB pot. But it's the bad times that stick out right? Thankfully I've only had one really horrendous experience and it was against a fraternity of 3 regs in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th seats in a 5 AM 1/3 game.

As the nights go on, tables break down until there are usually only 1-3 tables going most of them 1/3 NLHE. This particular table had some stuck 2/5 regs and 1/3 regs who just thought they were God's gift to poker (players who were also stuck, I found out). For 5 hours I was openly called names to my face and talked about amongst the 3 of them like I wasn't even there. I could tell the first few dealers were embarrassed for them or me, I'm not sure, but they did little to keep things quiet. This went on until after I took my walk to take a break. When I came back they started calling me Donkey Dick among other things including their favorite Slap Nuts. Apparently me showing the nuts every time was too much for them to take. I jumped on them right away this time, flying off at the guy who seemed to be the instigator. I really wanted to berate him loudly but I kept it pointed and angry. It didn't last long but the dealer calmed things back down again. My pulse was racing. I was pretty jacked tbh. I folded for the next half hour just to get calmed back down. But the abuse stopped and I think I gained some respect from everyone at the table, bad guys included. My greatest joy was 2 of the 3 falling leaving after getting stacked and the 3rd leaving still stuck and being replaced with 2 morning donaters. It obviously didn't ease the memory of what happened, but I was very proud of myself for staying cool and level-headed, even getting some laughs at their expense and for sticking a dagger in once and keeping my high ground.

Lastly, before I go off to one of my last days working at the golf course, I want to thank all of DC again for more than just the RLMSNG series, but for 1. support 2. answering questions 3. coaching/vids 4. long-term friendship. I've truly met friends from around the world that I would not have had it been for one March day in 2009 http://www.deucescracked.com/forums/25-Tournament-Poker/17160-Casting-call-for-new-SNG- I've re-upped for a month and really enjoyed the threads13 vids as well the high stakes 6max ones I've never taken the time to watch.

Keep on grinding guys. I'll let you know how the hospital world is and for sure everything else. Maybe even include some pictures of my garden.

Breaking heads, and then fixing them,

velo

vandweller (6:49:24 PM): If I were to pick you...
vandweller (6:49:31 PM): could we start right away
vandweller (6:49:33 PM): like this weekened
veloblank (6:49:38 PM): yes definitely
vandweller (6:49:42 PM): ok
vandweller (6:49:44 PM): You're the guy.

Thanks van, wherever you are.

Wazzup

veloblank — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:26:56 +0000

I had been blogging elsewhere, so seeing 2010 as the last time I posted on DC's blogroll shouldn't be all that shocking to me, but it was. In six months time a lot has happened, although I feel that in 2 more months time even more will have happened.

I safely got everything off my poker sites. I was lucky to pull off everything from UB a few weeks before Black Friday (thanks to rent and some bills). I'm still working in my school's hometown but have put my notice in and am on my last month's rent. I'll be moving to Pittsburgh to work in a hospital full-time. I'm looking forward to the poker games there in the casino. I have been playing 2-4x a week lately; playing 1/3 cash game with the occasional $60 SNG thrown in. On Wednesday I put my name on an SNG waiting list as soon as I got there at noon and played 1/3 NL for 10 hours without one SNG going off.

Cash is fun though. I have re-upped my DC subscription and d/led a lot of cash series and math stuff. I want to move up quickly but feel that I am beating the games. The extra money has helped tremendously. In about 30 hours of play I have paid for rent and a few other nice things. I enjoy playing live a lot. I like talking to the players, watching the Pirates play on the TVs around me and just being around poker again. Plus 30 hours of play = $30 "rakeback," good for a lunch or 2 each week.

I'll fill in some more gaps after work.

F@#! the Redline Thursday

veloblank — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:16:13 +0000

No redline because it's, well, F the Redline today.

Played much better today than many days of yesteryore. I concentrated on making big +EV decisions and then switched it over at times to manage my micro stacks and push against the right opponents.

First 15 STT games are from UB, rest from Stars; which makes me smile and my bankroll dance.

I run so bad at Slowrolling

veloblank — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 23:08:08 +0000

Poker Stars $3.00+$0.40 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t300/t600 Blinds + t50 - 3 players - View hand 1096667
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

SB: t4645 M = 4.42
Hero (BB): t675 M = 0.64
BTN: t8180 M = 7.79

Pre Flop: (t1050) Hero is BB with 2 3
1 fold, SB calls t300, Hero checks

Villain leaves hero with 25 chips.

Flop: (t1350) 2 K 3(2 players)
SB checks,
veloblank said, "don't be a **** douche"
veloblank requests time
Hero bets t25 all in, SB calls t25

Turn: (t1400) 5(2 players - 1 is all in)

River: (t1400) 4(2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: t1400
SB shows 8 A (a straight, Ace to Five)
Hero shows 2 3 (two pair, Threes and Deuces)
SB wins t1400

So much for my Big Break...

veloblank — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 23:28:26 +0000

Time for Change

veloblank — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:42:33 +0000

I'm done with chat at the tables. Sorry in advance for everyone that is in one of my games and says hi and I don't respond back. I have been called so many things in chat the past weeks, both in-game and from the rail after I bust someone, and today on UB was the last time. If this were live I'd have cut these fools outside or maybe beaten them with their own chips they just shipped. So good luck getting through. Tired of being mired in this shitty grind AND baby sitting the game. I hope my suckout ratio sores. I'll continue with my +EV shoving thanks. You worry about your call. And gtfo out of my way.

And so it begins...

veloblank — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 11:32:09 +0000

Listening to: Pearl Jam- Just Breathe

So I withdrew almost everything, again, to pay off a few things. I was convinced I wouldn't ever regrind microes again, yet here I am again.

I'm starting with $100 of my own money and going through the $3.40s again to grind a roll for $6.50. By the end of the first week of January I hope to have $1000+ in my account for probably the first time ever. This break will help me tremendously to focus on just grinding, and not to worry about anything but what the SB's shove range is.

So far, so good. I thought I might have to do $1.75 18 mans for awhile but I quickly saw that was not a good plan. The rake was terrible there, and while I backed into a bunch of 3rds and 4ths and even won one, I might go crazy playing with those people.

Playing underrolled doesn't really bother me as much as it used to. I know there will be stretches where I'll be losing and cutting it pretty close, hopefully through no fault of my own, but I'm hoping most of that is behind me. I have worked hard on my game, and I plan and working harder. Knowing the regs at my table inside and out and feeling comfortable with my table load is probably my next step. Hopefully all this goes as planned and I'll have a successful and quick climb up to and through the $6.50s and then I can decide what to do from there.

We are getting about 3 inches of snow right now. It's 6 AM and it's so quiet outside my window. They rarely cancel university classes so I'm sure they won't postpone any exams this morning. Hopefully everyone drives safe.

Stay On the Grind (SOTG)

Welp

veloblank — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 23:48:34 +0000

This is how passive I am sometimes: rather than getting my host to put up my Word Press blog again, I'm just go to start blogging again on DC until I grind enough (ok, $12) to buy a domain on GoDaddy and blog there. The design here isn't as cool as WP, but it works, and there's readership.

I have been playing a lot. I play $6.50s on Stars. Have had ups and downs with them, slowly securing more and more information about 9 mans, my opponents, and SNGs in general. A few days ago I decided to play the 18 mans. That decision resulted in this in one night:

And then this right after:

I loved how I played my first 18 mans. I played tight early, played aggressive later, and then took it down in many of those times I went into the money with a healthy chipstack.

I don't call that running good. I don't call it "new depositors luck" (since I may have played 5 18 mans in my life) I just call it playing in a good frame of mind.

The crash afterwards I blame on being tired, and moving away from my tight style early on. There are so many more bad players in these games that it's easy to get caught in postflop shenanigans and cripple your stack. I even was "limped" into some busto hands by just being the BB in the hand, flopping some kind of draw, and then pursuing it like a maniac. I also struggle with players who have caught a piece of the flop and not letting my hand go on multiple streets.

So I'm pretty sure that was just an experiment for me. I'll continue to play them because I think they are pretty profitable. I don't know if it has exactly helped my 9 man game, although JtX tells me the play pretty much the same around the bubble.

My 9 man game has struggled though. I went on a disgusting streak of non-cashes; not really getting it in good and mixing it up with regs who I knew had better hands than me and I just wasn't paying close enough attention to the table.

It's hard to say if I'll make 18 mans a priority. They last slightly longer than 9 mans, but they play so close to 9 that my table count doesn't really take a hit, so my tables/hour is pretty much the same and my ROI is higher. But I don't just want to run from STT without fully grasping my potential at them. I think what I'm in need most of all is some coaching, probably from Skitz0frenik because of the familiarity I think he has with the Stars structure, and then I will enjoy the grind again. I feel I'm missing just a few more keys things in the SNG realm and then I will move up the stakes quickly. I understand a lot a lot a lot about hand ranges and equity, how to calculate etc. on the fly, but I fail to implement it sometimes. Would be great to have Vandweller back to put the cap on the micro grind for me since I've pretty much learned his STT ways.

Money is tight right now living off of my roll and the small stake I had. I'm looking forward to 2011 being on my own completely with poker and doing some great things with it.

Last but not least, good to see the series with Rigged! is going down. Time to move from the micro grind for a lot of us.

Starting New, Starting Better

veloblank — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:54:10 +0000

I'm moving my blog here http://veloblank.sngrinder.com/Â

Thanks to Clickys for hosting.

I'm going to start completly new.Â Purge most of my DC blog posts and just blog from my new site.Â Going through a phase right now of deactivating Facebook, etc. and just streamlining my life--online and IRL, mainly for privacy reasons and to some degree security.

Thanks to everyone for checking this out since last year.Â

velo

EDIT:Â Woke up this morning to camera flash in BR window and people running from my porch and into a car.Â On porch this morning "Bikes are Gay" on the steps, along with some other crude stuff on the cement. Just a little wake up call to how we throw our security/privacy around.Â We are being lulled in by media that is creating a melting pot of individuals, granting accessibility to our thoughts, likes and dislikes, photos, day-to-day living, at the expense of our safety.Â Bring back individuality please.

FYP

Strikes and Gutters. Ups and Downs.

veloblank — Fri, 14 May 2010 00:21:23 +0000

Listening to: Tears of Time by Crematory. Beware: Of Metal Music
Watching: The Big Lebowski

Iâ€™ve been watching The Big Lebowski a couple of times this week, even when Iâ€™m playing poker. I find music gets old after awhile. I either need more talking or some slower action like a soccer match, baseball game, or some sport that I enjoy, but donâ€™t really watch enough of, or wonâ€™t take my whole attention away from the games.

I have not watched this movie enough, Iâ€™ve found, and it actually describes a great relaxed mindset. Granted, the Dude is 100% into this laid-back lifestyle. Itâ€™s not like he puts in a dayâ€™s work curing cancer and then fucks off the rest of the day like a 9-to-5er (although maybe he combines the best of both by doing some ganja hits).

The polar opposite is of course some other personality like Lance Armstrong who has his hands in so many political and social causes, while holding down a professional cycling career, and finds 35 times a day to fire off on his Twitter account. This suits his personality, much like the Dude found things that fit his. If I could somehow find a way to hybridize the two, Iâ€™d be the most productive poker player on the face of the earth.

What I take away from the movie, though, is a roll with the punches attitude to life. Iâ€™ve often been accused of this, so maybe I share more with the Dude than I thought. And maybe I should be less ashamed of it than Iâ€™ve been. He finds joy in small things: White Russians, bowling, comfortable clothes, good friends, smoking. Even when a huge curveball comes his way, he and Walter find a way to deal with it, with ensuing hijinx.

My favorite quote is at the end of the movie:

The Dude Abides

Shakespeare: The First Sit 'n' Goer

veloblank — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:44:39 +0000

Listening to: King of Kings by Motorhead (King Leonidas Edition)
Watching: At Home with the Poker Superstars

Iâ€™m one to give credit where credit is due. Hollywoodâ€™s 1996 modern-day version of Romeo and Juliet has the line, â€œRomeo, thou art a villain,â€ in which John Leguizamoâ€™s character Tybalt then spits on the ground. Seeing as I have been doing that since 2008 everytime I bubble in an SNG, I guess Iâ€™ll give credit where credit is due.

My last few games have been going pretty well. I no longer am throwing away the occasional buyin chasing down hands in the early/middle game of an SNG where I can just as easily fold and make my way to the push/fold game, where I increasingly am seeing an advantage for myself.

I played a few $5.50 regular speeds, got my money in good, but hated the fact that it took so long to get to push/fold. The little hole I dug playing those kept me busy at the $3.40 turboes for the rest of my poker playing today.

Finishing the $3.40s on a very positive note makes me feel very confident going into this week where I will be playing the $6.50 turboes again. My push/fold is constantly improving. I find more and more spots while Iâ€™m playing to push where I usually would have folded and missed a chance to pick up easy chips.

On a related note, Iâ€™m excited to be getting staked. I was able to find this post by Bones in which he describes moving up in stakes as 50% fear and 50% technical. I think getting staked will take care of almost all of this for me and get me confident in my game:

Bones:
I understand that they appear tougher. The point of my post is the play is still weak. Yeah, you might get called a bit wider and shoved into a bit more. We certainly want to help you guys grow and improve as players, but the adjustment to that is simply to put in more time with wiz and more focus on the changes in ranges. People are still making huge mistakes left and right. Look back at the 6 max vid I posted in the hitchhikerâ€™s series. I believe itâ€™s a 36 and people were chucking off ev left and right.

Moving up is probably 50% psychological and 50% technical. To those of you playing the 12s, think about the first time you lost 15 buyins at the 6s. Didnâ€™t it make you sick? Didnâ€™t it make you question whether you could beat these stakes? Didnâ€™t the amount seem huge and the players soooo much better? After some grinding, after a few downswings, things didnâ€™t seem so tough. Itâ€™s not like variance stopped hitting you or that players became terrible. You just got used to it and started noticing the mistakes of others.

I bet there are a bunch of you out there who feel like theyâ€™ve been beaten down by a particular level. Iâ€™m here to tell you that you can get through it. There is no level (below the 100s probably) that you canâ€™t beat by just working hard with wiz and watching the vids we have up now. We canâ€™t teach you to ignore the doubts that creep in on your first downswing at a level, or to approach your new buyin with the same critical eye as your previous one. Maybe Tommy Angelo can. Itâ€™s something that comes with experience and talking to people who are going through the same thing as you are.

All of that said, we will have more midstakes content in the near future. If you guys have questions on this stuff or on the psychology of moving up, I think weâ€™re gonna do an â€œask usâ€ type thing for the final hitchhikers guide ep.

SNG Regrind

veloblank — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:42:13 +0000

Listening to: Silver Future by Monster Magnet
Watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKAW173cSjY

â€œO God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a
king of infinite spaceâ€”were it not that I have bad dreams.â€ -Hamlet

When I first played SNGs I played them one table at a time, and played that table very badly. I had no concept of strategy to survive the games, no real goal in mind other than to mix it up with the other players, splash around in a few pots and end it up allin at some point. I loved the low blinds so I could duck and dodge my way into situations and hopefully end up with some chips at the end of the hand.

As the blinds got higher and higher I began to shut down. I realized the power of someoneâ€™s raise and I wasnâ€™t going to get into a pot with suited crap that stood no chance against someoneâ€™s huge hand. Simply, I played SNGs backwards. Instead of clamping down in the early game where the chips have very little value, I was throwing them around because I knew I could get them back in a few hands or run good and catch a bigger hand later or suckout on someone. This strategy led to frequent and ugly bustouts from around 5th place on up. I no longer have my old hand history data but I can guess it looked brutal on paper.

Today I play a different game. Iâ€™m only in a hand early when I have a big value hand in early to mid position and only in a hand with big value hands and hands with great implied odds in late position. In either case, if unopened, Iâ€™m raising to get in.

Iâ€™ve learned to look at board textures and the number of opponents in the hand to gauge my cbet size or if I should even cbet. Iâ€™ve learned how to identify and deal with different player types and to construct hand ranges post-flop to guide my play.

All of this has moved my early bustouts to about 25% above 5th place. There are of course some ugly hands Iâ€™ve clung to versus obvious monsters, but by in large Iâ€™ve eliminated this from my game. By folding hands with kicker problems and overall showdown value. Iâ€™ve saved my SNG play.

NEXT STEP

The next step then is to take 5th to as close to 1st as I can get. This has been problematic in a number of ways. For the longest time I only donked around SNG Wiz, looking for the red â€œXâ€™sâ€ in the hands where I made a mistake. Taking the quiz for a few hands and then returning to play.

This has helped my game no doubt. There are some sessions where I feel like an SNG killer. Taking down games left and right for an unreal ROI/hourly and feeling like I can take on anyone. And then there are the games with players clearly better than I am; players that frustrate me with bet sizing and steals that take me off of my game. Just when I feel I can claw back Iâ€™ll play a mediocre hand and get wrecked by clearly superior ICM.

Iâ€™ve also been trying to steal more, and mix in some resteals, which it has become brutally apparent I cannot do very well. Some of my games in my last sessions have ended very violently, where I am exploited by a bet size. I nick top pair on the flop and go over the top OOP into villain with clearly a monster.

The stealing inefficacy boils down to doing it to the wrong stack sizes and with the wrong hands. I cling to my K10 and call a resteal from a player who clearly has a tighter hand range preflop and have to pray I hit.

This concept of stealing more often has thrown my game for a loop, -EV-ly. Instead of putting people on a range and playing hands into them, I assign them a hand that they can only call with plow my hand right into them, telling myself they can only call if they have this hand or this small %.

This thinking is part of ICM, but only a small part. Not only do we need to put people on a hand they can only call with based on their equity, but we need to put them on a range and assess if our hand plays well against their hand and if it is worth risking our equity. We shouldnâ€™t be blowing K10o into someone who makes a huge call for all of his chips with AQ and takes all of our chips just because â€œhe can never call here.â€

The truth is, they can and do call here. They can and do call with worse here. We need to look at what we are risking by doing this, the reward we are gaining, the chance villain is folding or calling, our fold equity (how much power our stack size has in influencing villain to fold) AND our hand equity. In so many of my past allins Iâ€™ve only assessed part of the villain calling % a part of my hand equity and overvalued my fold equity; again citing that the villain cannot possibly call.

This is disastrous thinking. It is thinking, no doubt, but will yield some very mixed results and some very poor ICM decisions. Instead of beating stakes, you will be barely breaking even. Grinding and grinding just to catch that upswing that type of suckout driven shove game rides on, instead of proactively making much better decisions and crushing the stakes for a good clip.

Before you go allin next time:
1. Opponent will Fold or Call based on calling range
2. Hand has equity? Yes or No
3. Hero has Fold Equity? Yes or No
4. You will gain from shove/or risk little? Yes or No

If you get around 2.5 out of 4 points (the bold) and you take a look around the rest of the table to check stack sizes and tournament position, squeeze that allin trigger. You will be shocked by your results.

*These points are all the work of Vandweller and is profiled in his series Real-Life Micro SNG Grinder.

I just need to be reminded sometimes about the push/fold game. Mass-tabling has kicked this out of me yet again and replaced it with â€œFuck it. Iâ€™m mass-tabling. Iâ€™ll do it next time.â€ Really? Will you?

This week I will be focusing on:
1. dropping more tables again and getting my push fold game back.
2. Nitting it back up again on steal situations when they are so transparent.
3. Bet sizing

Links that have helped my game:
http://www.pocketfives.com/jennifear/recommended-reading-and-tools-3839035
http://www.sngwiz.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=43&topic=3.0
http://www.chillin411.com/node/7
http://www.sitandgoplanet.com/index.html

And biggest of all:
http://www.sickread.com/blog/article/how-to-learn-good-them-sngs/