Sensei’s Poker Dojo

I tried to get the image of my pokertracker screen, but for some reason printscrn and paint were being fussy. So you’ll just have to take my word for it.

10,067 hands of 5/10nl HU
+$19,590.90
(9.73 ptbb/100)
Avg # of tables: 1.95
Hourly rate: $722.91

I left out the strategy-based statistics of course, since it would be pretty stupid to put those up where my opponents could read them (unless I lied about them of course, but thats not really my style) I’m still learning the ropes of HU play, but I think I’ve got it pretty well figured out for the most part. I’ll probably take some 10/20 hu shots soon and see if I do as well there. If so I’ll probably stick with it. 25/50 hu still seems like a long ways off, but who knows?

So far in February I’m up $28,204 in about 10k hands (most of those were 5/10 hu but theres a decent amount of 25/50 fullring or 6max too). That’ll probably be just about it for the month since i’m flying to Argentina tomorrow for 2.5 weeks. Wooo vacation! I’ll try and post some while i’m there, but if not there will be a full report and pictures when I get back.

I generally hate advertising as a rule. It wastes my time, it is usually pretty annoying, and it is almost always aimed at people with a more primitive sense of humor than me. Now thats not to say I don’t love a good football-in-the-crotch scene now and again, but most ads come up woefully short when trying to woo my business with a joke. Also, the only redeeming purpose of advertising, that of spreading useful information about products or services to consumers, is so rarely effective for actually informing me about anything that is relevant to me that it just pisses me off more. And perhaps most offensively, the massive amounts of advertising we’re inundated with every day are an alarming manifestation of the corporate takeover of American culture. But thats enough frustrated ranting for now, lets talk about how to get those paper stacks!

Advertising’s effectiveness as a weapon against the unshielded mind is unquestionable, and poker is a particularly relevant example. When I start a new heads-up match (the ultimate game of psychological warfare!), I sometimes like to throw a few chips in the advertising budget early in a session. Usually my “ad budget” takes the form of a large multi-street bluff, where I show my cards if they fold and if they happen to call, well, they get to see them anyhow. I usually don’t just start spewing chips at the pot and hoping they eventually give up, but if I see a good situation for a big move that I think will work most of the time, I’ll be more likely to take that shot early in a session. When this one big bluff is mixed in with an arsenal of smaller stabs at the pot and other silly things like showing 62o when your opponent openfolds the SB, it can pretty quickly lead to a massive psychological advantage. Also, most weaker opponents will play their hands incredibly transparently when they think you’re a spewing maniac, so thinking carefully about the situation can lead to a lot of profitable situations.

Take, for example, a session I played earlier tonight. My opponent sat with $1000, and right from the get-go I began to openraise to a variety of strange sizes, between $20 and $50. It was not long before I found a spot for a multi-street bluff and followed through on the river. When he picked it off with a decent but not great hand, my ad budget had been deployed:

Seat 1: DJ Sensei ($1,015)
Seat 2: LASVEGASFUND ($975)
LASVEGASFUND posts the small blind of $5
DJ Sensei posts the big blind of $10
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to DJ Sensei [9d 7s]
LASVEGASFUND raises to $34
DJ Sensei calls $24
*** FLOP *** [As 4h 4d]
DJ Sensei bets $45
LASVEGASFUND has 15 seconds left to act
LASVEGASFUND raises to $100
DJ Sensei calls $55
*** TURN *** [As 4h 4d] [Kd]
DJ Sensei has 15 seconds left to act
DJ Sensei bets $175
LASVEGASFUND has 15 seconds left to act
LASVEGASFUND has requested TIME
LASVEGASFUND calls $175
*** RIVER *** [As 4h 4d Kd] [8c]
DJ Sensei has 15 seconds left to act
DJ Sensei bets $375
LASVEGASFUND calls $375
*** SHOW DOWN ***
DJ Sensei shows [9d 7s] a pair of Fours
LASVEGASFUND shows [5h Ac] two pair, Aces and Fours
LASVEGASFUND wins the pot ($1,367.50) with two pair, Aces and Fours

Now it was just a matter of keeping him at the table, and winning it all back, along with his starting buyin. After that hand I didn’t plan to run any more big bluffs on him, as they would have a pretty low chance of success, but I continued with a barrage of little stabs and showed him tons of weak hands, so as to maintain my bluffy maniac image until I was able to pick up a real hand and go for the jugular. I struck the first blow with a well-disguised hand and a nicely timed river checkraise:

Seat 1: DJ Sensei ($1,080)
Seat 2: LASVEGASFUND ($1,730.50)
LASVEGASFUND posts the small blind of $5
DJ Sensei posts the big blind of $10
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to DJ Sensei [5h 7h]
LASVEGASFUND raises to $30
DJ Sensei calls $20
*** FLOP *** [6s Ts 8d]
DJ Sensei checks
LASVEGASFUND checks
*** TURN *** [6s Ts 8d] [5c]
DJ Sensei checks
LASVEGASFUND bets $40
DJ Sensei calls $40
*** RIVER *** [6s Ts 8d 5c] [5d]
DJ Sensei checks
LASVEGASFUND bets $100
DJ Sensei has 15 seconds left to act
DJ Sensei raises to $444
LASVEGASFUND calls $344
*** SHOW DOWN ***
DJ Sensei shows [5h 7h] three of a kind, Fives
LASVEGASFUND mucks [Kd Td]
DJ Sensei wins the pot ($1,027.50) with three of a kind, Fives

And after that it wasn’t long before I dropped the hammer on him (note the particularly small openraise!):

FullTiltPoker Game #5288218879: Table Anchor (heads up) – $5/$10 – No Limit Hold’em – 4:06:13 ET – 2008/02/17
Seat 1: DJ Sensei ($1,539.50)
Seat 2: LASVEGASFUND ($1,263.50)
DJ Sensei posts the small blind of $5
LASVEGASFUND posts the big blind of $10
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to DJ Sensei [Qc Qd]
DJ Sensei raises to $26
LASVEGASFUND calls $16
*** FLOP *** [7c 2c 5d]
LASVEGASFUND checks
DJ Sensei bets $44
LASVEGASFUND calls $44
*** TURN *** [7c 2c 5d] [2d]
LASVEGASFUND checks
DJ Sensei bets $121
LASVEGASFUND has 15 seconds left to act
LASVEGASFUND has requested TIME
LASVEGASFUND calls $121
*** RIVER *** [7c 2c 5d 2d] [Js]
LASVEGASFUND checks
DJ Sensei has 15 seconds left to act
DJ Sensei bets $355
LASVEGASFUND has 15 seconds left to act
LASVEGASFUND raises to $788
DJ Sensei has 15 seconds left to act
DJ Sensei has requested TIME
DJ Sensei raises to $1,221
LASVEGASFUND calls $284.50, and is all in
Uncalled bet of $148.50 returned to DJ Sensei
*** SHOW DOWN ***
DJ Sensei shows [Qc Qd] two pair, Queens and Twos
LASVEGASFUND mucks [Ad 3d]
DJ Sensei wins the pot ($2,526.50) with two pair, Queens and Twos

Looks like my little advertising budget paid off! Of course it was contingent on him staying around after he won the first big pot, and me actually getting a hand to bust him with. It helps that usually if they win that first pot by picking off a big bluff of yours, they’re more likely to stick around since they think they can win more from a tilty spewer. If the first pot was a cooler or a suckout, they’re much more likely to hit and run, thus rendering your ad budget useless.

Imagine yourself taking a little constitutional into the woods near your home, headed for a particularly enjoyable overlook of the neighboring valley (which has been reputed to shelter a sizeable treasure!) You’ve been through these woods many times, searching for various bounties, and you reckon that you know your way around pretty well. You leave the maps at home, of course. Well it doesn’t take too long for this pleasant afternoon to turn dark and stormy, and the next thing you know you’re in a place you’ve never seen. As the rain comes down harder and harder, you lose track of the trail and begin to stumble into the thick brush.

But all hope is not lost! You break through into a clearing occupied by a wizened old sage. He stands in the center of the clearing and greets you, “Hello, traveler! There are three ways out of this clearing, but none without risk! The first trail leads straight back to your home, but to take it you must pay me the toll. The second may lead to your desired overlook, but there is a larger toll to pay and you must journey to the next clearing, where my brother awaits with another challenge. The final path is the most costly, but it may lead you directly to your goal and the treasure that awaits!” You face a difficult decision for sure, as you can barely see beyond the first bend in each trail. “Oh yes, and you’ve only got 20 seconds to make your decision” the sage adds.

Now you may be asking, “Wait a second, Sensei, is this another one of your convoluted poker analogies?” Well, yes, of course. You probably didn’t come here hoping to read some hippie ramblings about the woods. Our rhetorical forest here represents a session of poker, and the journey you’ve taken is a particularly tough hand. The three paths you currently face represent the actions fold, call, and raise, respectively. And the point I’m trying to make is that, while I love to wander in the woods and in life, its the last thing you should be doing when playing poker.

So many people send me hand histories and say “Sensei, look at this gross spot I had during a hand, what should I do now?!?” And 75% of the time, the tough spot they’ve found themself in is in large part the natural result of some earlier action that the player took without considering the consequences. Just as you shouldn’t enter the woods without a map and compass, you shouldn’t enter a poker hand without a plan and some foresight. Any time you’re faced with an action, don’t just think “OK, what is my best action right now?” without analyzing the future actions of the hand based on the cards that can come and the likely actions that will transpire given those cards, your opponents likely range of hands, and the current metagame situation of the table. This analysis is especially important in no-limit games where the bet sizing can rise nearly exponentially throughout the course of the hand.

Now at this point you may be saying “Well, that seems like a tough proposition, how can I teach my brain to think like that? It comes with practice and effort, for sure, but here are some things that will get you thinking on the right path right away:

1. Always consider stack sizes! Many times the correct play in a situation will vary widely if you have 20 or 100 or 300 BB’s left to play for. And in general, the deeper your stack is, the stronger hand you’ll need to get all the money in. Lets say you’ve got a nut flush draw (with an overcard Ace) in position on the flop, and the preflop raiser leads into you. Well if a pot-sized raise would be just about all-in, shoving is probably the best choice. You’re never in terrible shape equity-wise, he’ll fold a decent amount, and if you call the flop bet and whiff the turn, you may well have to call off the rest because your draw is strong enough. But what if you’re deeper? Lets say that if you raise a reasonable amount, your opponent can reraise pot back at you to get all-in. Getting 2-1 you probably are committed to the pot, but now you’ve committed a big chunk of chips and are probably an underdog to win the pot. Raising might not have been wrong in this spot, but perhaps calling is better. You can fold the turn unimproved, call again if the price is right, or maybe even take it away from him if he checks to you. You generally risk less, and can get the big money in with much better equity. The last situation of course is that you are very deep. If you raise and he reraises, you can call and have enough stacks behind to justify the call with implied odds. Because the pot will be bigger you have a significantly better shot at getting his whole stack, which may not be the case if you just call the flop. With a semibluff raise you also can balance the range of sets and other huge hands that you’d probably play the same way here. So in this situation, raising is probably best. As you can see, the best course of action can change a lot along the spectrum of stack depth.
2. Will my play lead my opponent to play his hand close to optimally, or will it induce him to make significant mistakes? You probably have more control over this than you think, and it has to do with everything from table image to stack and pot sizes and position. You may have heard the advice “put your opponent to a decision for his whole stack while risking a small portion of yours”; that idea is an offshoot of this concept (and generally a good one). Also, tangentially, minraising isn’t necessarily bad or wrong. Sometimes your opponent will make a much bigger mistake after you minraise than he would have facing a regular size raise or a float.
3. If you’ve found yourself in a situation where your next action is clear and obvious, don’t just quickly make your play and see what happens.* Stop and think about what could happen on the next street, maybe making a plan for at least a portion of the possibilities. Not only will you be better prepared for the potential situations of the rest of the hand, you’ll avoid giving off timing tells and you’ll be better prepared for similar hands later in this session or even further down the road. This also still applies sometimes even if your action is clearly to fold, especially in a multiway pot where your opponents might continue the hand (at which point you can have a little hand-reading practice and hope they show down).
4. After a session, go back to some of the interesting hands that you played and change some cards or actions around and decide if/how you’d play it differently. While this can be tough since you won’t always know what your opponents will have or do, it can often lead you to interesting discoveries or conclusions that you may otherwise have never thought about until they arose with the money on the line and the clock ticking!

Alright, thats enough for now. Get out there, out-think some fools, and get that sweet, sweet treasure! (And if you actually live near some cool woods or mountains or something, you probably should go for an actual wander now and again too. It’ll help keep you sane.)
* Unless you’re also using your quick action as a reverse timing tell, but thats a discussion for another time!

GO TO HELL CAROLINA GO TO HELL!

Wow what a sick game, start to finish. Duke pulled this one out with huge defense and deadly 3-point shooting, and managed to shut down everybody on the Heels aside from that damn Tyler Hansbrough. But one man does not a basketball team make! I think we’ve got a real shot at the championship this year if we can keep up this pace. Also, Gerald Henderson is the truth. Mmmmm it feels good to beat UNC, especially on their home court.

I’ve been in Kansas City for a few days now with my family, and got the chance to play a little live poker tonight at Harrah’s. There are a few things of note about this casino and its patrons:

1. There are some ridiculous rules regarding entry and buying chips, primarily as a result of ridiculous Missouri gambling legislation. When you enter the gambling area, they have to check your ID as well as your Harrah’s card. In other words, nobody gambles without a card. Its pretty much just a hassle, but I hate hassles. Also, there is a rule that you can only purchase $500 in chips every two hours. I guess this is supposed to keep people from losing too much, but again, is mostly just an inconvenience for people like me who don’t have gambling problems and do understand reasonable variance in a no limit poker game. Obviously there’s an easy way around it if you’re a local, you just keep your live roll in $100 chips so you always have enough and don’t have to deal with buying more $500 at a time, but if you’re from out of town you basically have to not lose much within the first few hours. I think there are also some rules about gambling having to take place in a boat or something, so the casinos just build next to the water and keep all the gambling parts over it in some sort of half-building, half-boat that obviously never goes anywhere.
2. While the poker room is smoke-free, the rest of the casino is incredibly smoky, and I hate it. I guess i’m spoiled in California where you aren’t allowed to smoke indoors anywhere, but cigarettes are gross and I don’t want them around me. Vegas is also pretty bad in this regard, but the casinos there tend to be bigger and/or better circulated so I guess the smoke dissipates a little more.
3. The biggest game regularly running is 2/5NL, with buyin from $200-$500. There used to be some rule about being able to buyin up to some % of the big stack at the table, but they abolished that since the last time I was here. Not that it would matter since it took me several hours to have more than $500 chips to work with anyhow. There is also a 1/2NL game, and a 3/6 limit game. All of these games are very soft. There are obviously a lot of regulars who are decent, but seeing as how the stakes aren’t high enough to attract any really strong players, they aren’t great. Put them in a big NL game in California or Vegas and they’d get to’ up. I heard rumors of a 5/10 game that runs a day or two every week, with buyin up to $5000, but didn’t hear anything more about it. Wilt, who lives in KC, said that there are is a core group of regulars who allegedly collude in it, which is lame, but chances are I won’t have a chance to confirm or disconfirm that anytime soon.

Anyhow, when I first arrived there was a long list for 2/5 but I got right onto a 1/2 table. The first hand I was UTG, got a hand without having to post (niiice) and picked up a nice little wired pair of jacks. I raised to $15, not having any idea what the standard was in this game but figuring I may as well build a pot. UTG+1 reraised to $30. Sigh. It folded back around to me and I called. Flop came out AJJ, giving me quadzilla. I check-called a bet of $15 (lol) and led out $40 on the blank turn, at which point he folded QQ faceup. Obviously I showed my quads, and everybody oohed and aahed a little as they tend to do. (Side note: over the course of about 6 hours of play, I saw people show down quads 7 times, 6 of which were flopped. Most ridiculous session in that regard i’ve ever played. It got to the point where we joked anytime the flop was paired, “who has quads this time”, and like 1/4 of the time, somebody actually did have them.) Not too much else interesting happened at 1/2, aside from me getting aces and stacking a shortstack.

Shortly thereafter I was moved to a new 2/5 table, where not much happened of note aside from one pot where I ran top pair into (you guessed it) quads. Actually was a pretty funny hand; I raised JTo from late position to 25, a woman in the blinds called, the rest folded. Flop was T54 with a FD, she check-called like $35 or something. Turn was a 4 (check check) and river was some other low card that put out the flush. She bet $40 and I called, not really expecting to win but curious to see what she had. 44 quadzirra obviously, valuetown to the extreme! I was moved to a different table pretty quickly.

My stack at the new table dwindled a bit, I don’t recall any particular big pots but I lost a series of small ones and kept reloading with the extra black chips I had bought after the next 2-hour time period arrived (so I was in for $1k total). At one point I tried to go get more chips (after the next 2 hour block, of course) but the computers or something went down right about then, and because they couldn’t swipe my Harrah’s card effectively, they couldn’t turn my cash into chips. Harrah’s clearly has this business all figured out… Anyhow, I still had about $400 in chips when this next hand happened: A late-position guy raised to $25, and because he was bad and I hate folding “decent” hands in live games when I figure to have a big edge, I called with A2dd out of the SB. Everybody else folded, and the flop came down AKT rainbow. I led out $35 to find out where I was at. (note: this doesn’t really work against “good” players who have any idea what kind of hand ranges you’re likely to do that with, but this guy was pretty bad so it worked like a charm). He called. Turn was a 4d, putting out my backdoor diamond flush draw. I checked, he bet $35. I did a little dance on the inside when he made that bet. One of the greatest joys of live poker is playing against guys who have absolutely no concept of fundamental no-limit concepts, and thus offer up such golden opportunities to you. I called, of course, and the river was the 9d, giving me the stone cold niggity-nuts. I thoughtfully checked, he bet $100, and I shoved in the rest, another few hundred. He made a comment to the effect of “well if you’ve got it, you’ve got it” and called, flipping over KK. Booya. He spent the next few minutes mumbling something, but I wasn’t paying much attention or offering much sympathy. Chances are if that guy adjusts his game as a result of that play, it’ll be to vastly over-adjust and overshove the turn “just to keep people from sucking out”. I love fish.

A few hands later, I pick up the ol’ pocket rockets in late position and raise over a couple of limpers to $30. The SB, a nitty old guy with about as many chips as me ($850 or so) reraises to $100. Now when a nitty old guy reraises there, it means business! I thanked the poker gods that I didn’t have QQ instead, and called his reraise. Flop was a nice little 554r, he bet $200 pretty confidently, I put on a little “sigh what a lame spot i’m in” act and called. Turn was an 8, he bet out $300, again confidently, and I went ahead and raised in the last $250 or so. He reluctantly called, and when I showed down the aces he slammed a fist full of chips on the table. Ship it. He continued to slam his fist on the table intermittently for a few minutes, at least until he got moved to a different game. He also shoved his new $200 stack preflop a few times over $5 limps, but never was called. One time he actually showed QQ, which I found to be quite amusing.

After those few big pots, I sorta coasted into the end of the night, winning a medium pot now and again with the ol’ valuetown maneuver. Nothing too terribly interesting, i’m afraid. I didn’t really bluff any, but I didn’t have to. The players, by and large, were very weak and bad. Anytime you raised the turn, they’d probably muck anything but the nuts. So I did that a few times with semibluffs and always got away with it. I also was rarely c-betting the flop multiway when I missed (and most pots were multiway), though the few spots I did pick to fire one light, I got a line of snapfolds all the way around, which I appreciated.

In the end, I booked a $1300 win, nommed down a breakfast burrito (recommended by the other guys at the table as the best option from the little cafe downstairs) and some mozzarella sticks and some chocolate milk, and somehow was able to cash it out without any stupid hassles (thanks, Harrah’s!). Not a bad night, though I’ll be glad to fly back to San Francisco tomorrow since its awfully cold here.