nixie's blog

Having looked at a number of poker clients, whilst learning to play, I happen to have a number of accounts dotted around. The other day RedKings sent me a ticket to a Freeroll, probably because I’ve deposited there but not played in a while. You can’t fault the networks for their psychology: a ticket specifically targeting people who have deposited with them (they wouldn’t want to give away money to just anyone) and who haven’t played for a while. What better way to get them to start playing again than by competing for real money with no stake in a closed tournament?

It was at the right time of the day and so how could I refuse?

I’d not entered a scheduled tournament before and I was impressed by how the client handled the ticketing aspect (I’d had visions of arriving early to get my place and then having to leave the client running all day, but you can load/close the client and your seat persists.) It was around 10 hours before the tournament when I signed-up and there were already a few hundred people registered as being more eager than me - the attraction of free money is so obviously a winner.

I turned-up pretty much on-the-dot to find there were over 1200 people who had crawled out of the woodwork for this one. My table opened, along with over 120 others, and the game began.

I really should have done some research before entering. First off, half the people on my table were “away” when it started and by the 5th hand there were still two missing. The blinds were set to rise every 12 minutes and there was an atmosphere of lethargy about the play; no big moves, limping-in, checking all the way to the river. For someone who likes Turbo games the first 30 minutes was torturous.

In the complete boredom of the game, my mind wandered onto just how long this game was going to take. All ten people on my table remained and there weren’t any obvious short stacks. I started to make some rough calculations and was horrified to learn that I might be here for 5 hours. I decided to push from a useful pocket on the bb and was caught with a weaker kicker – I was the first one gone from the table after 40 minutes of play.

It was a bitter-sweet moment; I was kind-of glad to be out of it so I could do something more constructive but I kicked myself for not being able to fold top-pair given all the signs that I was beaten. I checked the results and was amazed to find that I had finished ahead of 470 other players. Clearly I’d been unlucky and drawn a table of grinders!

When I was telling my Freeroll experience to another (much more experienced) player they replied “what, you turned-up at the start?” Well, how very naïve of me to turn-up to the start of a tournament!? Apparently people have actually cashed by not turning-up at all!!!

If nothing else it was an experience…which I won’t be repeating in a hurry.

After two more cashes on the trot I feel my tournament Poker has really turned a corner; that initial downward line on my graph, from my five losses in a row, is now eclipsed by my current rating of "hot" on SharkScope. My heads-up play still needs some work, and I’d been meaning to play some specific HU games, but I find the whole 2-player thing a bit tedious; I was after something a bit different. After spending a bit of time reading-up on some of the game variants I settled on a straight 18 player MTT. It’s hardly multi-table, 18 players, but I didn’t really want to play for hours and I was intrigued by how the software handles the two tables.

I chose a $2 turbo which was new territory for me as I’ve never spent more than $1 on a stake before. Although, actually, $2+0.25 is much better value than $1+0.25 in rake-to-stake terms and of course, with 18 players, cashing would represent a great ROI.

On registering everything was pretty much the same as a normal STT except the wait time! How long!? I assumed that it would take roughly the same amount of time as two 9 player tournaments, plus a bit extra because slightly less people are going to part with $2.25 rather than $1.25…How wrong I was. I chose the most populated game from the lobby but it took an age to fill. I guess they are just less popular than their ST counterparts probably because of the amount of time they can take.

Finally we’re off and my main strategy was just to stay in the game long enough to see what happens when the two tables merge. Well I assumed they would be merged as this wasn’t a Shootout. Although I was quite happy to sit quietly I found myself in the thick of things almost immediately. I’ve already found that sometimes you really have to push the betting on and other times you seem to hit the flops and find that people are pushing the betting around you. Well, anyway it was the latter and all the bold moves seemed to be coming from others whilst I seemed to have the better cards.

With four gone I’m the chip-leader and already I’m starting to loosen the hole-cards I’m playing. With all this chip-collecting I’m doing I’ve completely forgotten there’s another table! Before you know it the table stops and the backdrop to the table changes; our table watches a couple of hands go through (I guess because they had played less than us) and then we get integrated. (It occurred to me afterwards that I could have probably had this other table on-screen from the tournament lobby, which might have been handy.)

Well that’s caught me a bit off balance. I now have to go back to playing 9-handed and there’s a load of new players, just when I was getting used to the ones I was playing! As luck would have it I’m still the chip-leader, but not by much as the other table had a front-runner too. My luck continues and I decide to play it cool round the bubble, which of course was at five as the top four cash. I lose a few chips but I’m ok; another one goes and we go into a grinding 3-player stand-off until an ill-timed all-in between the other two makes it a heads-up.

We have roughly even chips and there’s quite a bit of see-sawing as we’re both playing quite aggressively. I get a bit unlucky losing a big pot and then a failed all-in a few hands later finishes me off into 2nd place.

I’m happy with my $10 prize and I’m now one game away from a SharkScope “Super Hot” rating. I must work on my HU play though…

Hot on the heels of my momentous 3rd place cash, I played again to try and develop the card-classification/positional strategy. In the meantime I'd read-up from several different sites on "card-classification" and read those instructional pages on the poker network's own sites, some of which had some good tips and are well written. This time I was going to play the classifications properly particularly at the start, 9-handed...Unfortunately, I was not in the game long and I was all-in!...and was beaten. I had AQ from under the gun and so I raised it up 2x the BB. A raise came from the puck of 4x the BB. I called and the flop was Q, 10, 8. I bet half the pot and they went all-in. I'm still surprised I went all-in at that point, I'm not sure what I was thinking, but when I saw the hole cards I was pleased: They had QJ suited without a flush draw. That positive feeling left swiftly with a 9 on the river that I didn't see coming. I turned away in disgust that my cashing-streak, of 1, had ended.

When I turned back I was surprised to see I was still in the game; of course I was now big blind but I only had 40 chips and the BB was 50! I think I was a bit embarrassed to still be in the game with such a small stack and that was compounded when I'm given my own pot on the table! Still disillusioned from my beat, it barely registered that I won the side-pot. Although my stack had tripled, I was still down on most by an order of magnitude. Now small blind I didn't even look at my cards I just went all-in - yet another side-pot won. Without a glimmer of a hope, and a willingness to leave this game, I go all-in on the terrible 64 I've been dealt. But fortune favours the brave and I have three 6s after the flop and my stack in now over 800.

Still the short-stack, I pull myself up in my chair and start to really concentrate on the game. I play tight, start to get some good cards and start to win a few hands. Using the card-classifications as strictly as I can remember them I start to claw chips back and eventually came second. I have double euphoria; my first 2nd and a great come-back when all was lost.

After it all subsides it strikes me what a poor heads-up game I played. Maybe I could have won it...nah, I'm happy to have cashed from there...

I’ve cashed! I came third but I cashed! It probably won’t come as news to people who have been playing a while but “card classification” really seems to work. To be honest I didn’t even really adhere to the actual classifications either (as that seemed like a load of effort) I just used the basic concept.

The classifications are really just common-sense, although there are a few pocket combinations which you would expect to be ranked higher than they are, A9 for instance. I think, when you distil the strategy down, the real difference is not playing mediocre hands in early/mid position. As a beginner I don’t think you can really understand how that helps unless you actually try it, but the most important side-effect is that it stops you playing too many hands. The second, and more subtle effect, is to reduce the possibility of you calling a blind and having someone put in a big raise after you, that you ultimately fold to because your hand isn’t that good. By reducing the occurrence of this you lose a lot less pre-flop chips.

The problem is that the game will never be the same again. You actually become more of a spectator than a player because you’re playing so few hands. It’s funny though because I could see the effect straight away. I didn’t play a hand in the first ten hands and yet I had the 3rd biggest stack! After three people had gone out two chip-leaders emerged and yet I’m still in 3rd place with roughly the same amount of chips I started with. As crazy as it sounds I was already in with a shot at the cash just by folding nearly every hand!

I got caught-out at the end though. I know where I went wrong; I didn’t change my tactics as the number of players reduced. It was stupid really but I just kept playing the same game at the end that I’d been playing all along. The blinds were going up and up, and of course the blinds come round more often as players go out, and I’m still there folding average cards until it was too late.

I realize now that you need to adjust how to classify the cards based on the number of players and, although I don’t know how to do that yet, I’m happy that I’ve finally got some cash back. Even more importantly I’ve now got a strategy to develop…

It seemed quite trivial, after my first game, to just go one better…but I now know it's not quite that easy. Just getting to the "bubble" is becoming an ordeal. After five games it now seems that my 4th place was beginners luck as I've not managed to beat or even equal it. SharkScope classes my form as TILT

The first thing I've noticed is that I'm getting dragged into all-ins that I think I can win, only to find-out that luck is either not on my side or that my pocket was simply not as good as I thought. Did I really need to get into that position? It certainly seems that instead of playing for peanuts, a few well-timed all-ins would allow me to play less hands. The problem is that when I put the scenario into an odds calculator afterwards, I realize that most of the time I was the wrong side of a coin-flip. It seems clear that to be able to win consistently you have to avoid this.

I'm also overvaluing a pocket-pair. Having an actual hand in the pocket is giving me great confidence with pre-flop betting, except that more often than not after the flop I seem to be in no-man's land. I also think I'd prefer to be all-in with suited connectors than a pair too; when seeing five cards there just seems to be more possibilities.

One of my other numerous deficiencies in the game still seems to be evaluating my stack against the rapidly increasing blinds of a turbo game. So I tried a non-turbo game...Wow, was that boring!? Not only did the game seem to take forever, but there seemed to be very little urgency to win a pot; consequently the whole game seemed a bit subdued for my liking. It’s amazing to think I found that first game too fast, as I now think the game-play could be a bit faster! What really annoys me are those people, generally on large stacks, that have clearly buggered-off for a while, so when the betting gets round to them they take their entire countdown to just fold. You just need a few people in a hand doing this and the game-play really suffers.

In order to turn my form around I’ve consulted with an “expert” on poker. I’ve been given a couple of URLs regarding “card classification” and its association with your position in the hand. It looks intriguing, but actually at this point I’m willing to try anything!

I’ve never used a poker client before and the first thing that bothered me was those stupid avatars, two of which were the same as me. I mean, how crap is that? I didn’t have time to dwell on it though as it was coming round to my go. I’m surprised that I have options even when it’s not my go but I ignore them because I’m not sure I fully understand them. A few quick folds from the others and it’s my go. The first thing that struck me is that as big blind I have no option to fold when there’s been no raise. Cool! That stops me looking like a total amateur. The “Check” button seems to be under the mouse so it seems simple just to click it. I see what they mean by a “bet slider” but I’m not ready to use it yet. I see my first flop which I total miss and now I see why there’s a way to fold in-advance!

For a while I just use the “idiot buttons”: check, call, and raise; the slider still scared me. I notice I’m playing a lot of hands; it’s partially the excitement of it and partially the fact with 1500 chips that it seems quite a cheap to just have a fling at the flop. However it’s surprising how fast your pot goes down when you try to see the flop and fail because of big following raises. Another weakness I’m noticing is that after missing the flop I’m checking and the rest of players are walking all over me with big bets – I need to stop doing that!

I’m in a turbo game and now I know what that means. I’ve been so caught-up in the action I really haven’t been concentrating on what I’ve been putting-out for blinds. I’ve now only got 3 big blinds left. I’ve got some crap pocket but I’m going to try and bluff-it because I’ve already left it too late to go all-in…how do I go all-in!? The stupid timer’s counting down and I can’t see any way to go all-in! I’ve only got a few seconds left and so I just drag the slider up high and press the button. The bluff works and the panic subsides for a while. This time I’m going to fold but use the time to play with the controls a bit – Hey, the mouse-wheel moves the slider, great!

My game finally fizzles-out with a pathetic all-in which the big-stacks took in their stride. I was definitely caught out by the speed of the blind increases and came-in at the worst position, 4th. On the plus-side I only need to go one-better next time and I’ll be in the money…

My exposure to Poker is a fortnightly game with friends which normally involves more beer than poker chips. I religiously watch WSOP on the telly though, but recently the energy required to put a game together between six busy people has been lacking, so I’ve started looking at online poker as a way to play more often.

I’d heard of PokerStars and so that was the first client I downloaded. Wow, I was simply not ready for the complexity of online poker! The amount of vocabulary required just to understand the incredible hectic scheduling was overwhelming. There seemed to a bewildering array of options to set the client up as well, again requiring terms I just didn’t understand. I went through a number of other poker clients, dismissing the downright tacky and clunky, and finally settling on FullTilt for no other reason than it was the one I had loaded when I finally decided to play.

It was clear that I wanted to play sit&go; cash games looked as though they would cost me money if I didn’t know what I was doing! My first attempt at an s&g failed because the game started before I had confirmed I wanted to play! This turned-out to be good thing because, now being a spectator, I realised I wouldn’t have been ready for the speed the game is played at. Poker, for me, is a plodding game where I have lots of time to take the piss out of my opponents, and make a decision; this was something else entirely. It’s alright making a choice in a hurry but would I know how to control the thing? There’s $1.25 at stake here, I don’t want to blow it on the first hand! Watching a game’s fine but you’re not watching how the players interact with the client; how they actually make the bets. The options were no help: “bet slider mode exponential” – what the hell is a “bet slider”?

I finally just decided to go for it: chose a game with very few registered players and pressed the button without delay. The game filled up and we’re all sitting there - I’ve actually got butterflys in my stomach - I’m looking around at the usernames, chuckling at the silly ones, then suddenly realise that everyone is waiting for me to press the “I’m ready” button…