Too many grinders in HU

I kind of sucked at poker last night. I've come to the realisation 2 tabling HU while first learning probably isn't smart, so I'm bringing my expectation right down and playing 1 $55 turbo table at a time. It started off fairly smoothly, getting about 4 wins in a row, but soon fell apart and saw me a little above break even. I quit while ahead and had a couple of drinks :)

After feeling a little less sober I jumped onto OnGame to play some softer NL50 HU, but it was full of grinders. I felt like I ran terrible, getting a set and overpair cracked in not too many hands, but I still managed a profit somehow. I guess it was the deliberate short stacker who lost two stacks to me, and the flopped trips against a grinder that saved me.

Not to be out done or out sobered, I went back to Full Tilt to try out their NL50 HU tables for the first time. Grinder, grinder, grinder, grinder, fuck it!!! Just one fish would be nice. I didn't win nor lose, and jumped back to the $50 SNG's. I must say it is so much fishier at the HU SNG's, it's almost like printing money for good players. Still my less than sober state only managed to find two huge suckout situations (easier to get sucked out on after drinking???), and I brought my account back to barely above even so far.

Another 290 FTP points, so I'm cruising for a free CR month, and hopefully can log some decent profit numbers between now and the end of the month to go along with it.

Day 2 of FTP HU SNG's

I had a more sobering night last night. I dropped my aggression a bit, probably too much, as everyone else was playing fairly tight weak. But this doesn't mean I should be, that's the time to strike. Still, I feel like I need to be careful not to just blow off chips too often due to bluffs, so I have to find a balance, which of course involves a lot of hand reading. For a couple of them I did find a pretty decent balance.

Overall, I'm still feeling pretty good about things. I played 18 $50-$55 SNG's, and won a little. I've noticed most of the players are still pretty weak, but some are definitely worth avoiding. It's not been too hard firing up 2 SNG's at once, as long as not both of them are against aggro players, who are generally harder to handle.

Also got over 300 FTP points yesterday, so should be easily enough to get gold or even iron man status if I stick to it next month, plus should be aiming at getting enough FTP points together for a free CR month soon, which is very nice. I'll set a tentative goal of getting 6 months free CR membership from my FTP points by the end of this venture, which would need a mix of iron man medals and FTP points, so I figure I'll need to play at least 2-3 months to achieve that.

HU at Full Tilt

I did deposit on Full Tilt last night, and play some $30-$50 HU SNG's. I didn't play a huge amount, but was 2 tabling for a small part of it without too much effort. I take pride in the fact very few people accepted a rematch, and I offerred on all but one. That was the indication to me that I had the edge, because I didn't feel unhappy playing anyone again, they mostly seemed to be +ev for me, whether I won or not. It's not like everyone had monster problems pre flop or whatever, it's more like they'd just eventually do something really stupid which didn't make sense, and made calling with 2nd pair or top pair really easy. The biggest leak most weak players have is to play back at you in big pots. I guess I'm generally getting a big pot going with a big hand regardless of how aggro I may seem, so to take me on in those pots with air (which they often had) is indeed dangerous. Nothing funnier than seeing someone reraise 700 chips to be down to their last 350 and fold to a shove. But I'm definitely picking up plenty of chips pushing people around, so as long as I play sensibly in big pots, I should have a big ROI at the levels I'm playing.

I have feelings about FTP being a bit rigged, so my first HU was no doubt funny. I worked hard to accumulate a big lead, and had him down to 2200 to 800 before he had a brain fade and 3 bet shoved with Q2 vs my AQ, which was the easiest call ever, even though he hadn't done that before. He hit a 2 and took the lead. I then got in a couple of spots, and was down to something like 1700 to 1300 when I managed to get him litterally donating a victory to me when I flopped a straight with 56 on a 789 board, he held 75 for bottom pair. Of course a 6 comes on the river for a push. I then get caught up in a pre flop war and lose AJ to AQ. The odds of me losing the SNG would have been like 20 to 1 when we got the money in AQ vs Q2, but I did lose.

Fortunately things smoothed out from there, and I found myself winning 8 of the last 12 for a small profit. My last one was a 4 man, so I won the first against the most passive player, which took forever, then got crushed on the final table in a matter of moments when an aggro player showed up with the goods each time I looked him up. He was the best player of the night by far, as aggression was his name, although I did feel a little unlucky running AQ into AK for the final hand, which would have easily thrown me into the lead had I won that pot.

Anyway, up a few dollars, 190 FTP points, which is a little short of points needed for potential iron man status, but I probably won't reach for that this month anyway, considering I'm starting half way through the month. I'm looking to pay for next months CR membership in FTP points though, so at this rate need to play close to 9 nights to clear enough points by the end of the month. I'll probably give that a shot, and then finish off my OnGame deposit bonuses. I'm also not completely convinced I shouldn't be playing pokerstars where there are more games running, but I did find enough players to keep a fairly steady flow at the $30 to $50 level.

HU ROI against different players

I know I just posted about HU SNG's, but I just wanted to add something else. I realise my run was pretty good the last couple of days, but I'm not being results oriented when I talk up HU SNG's. I'm also not thinking I've just woken up the worlds best HU SNG player, or that I can easily sustain a big winrate. What I'm more excited about with HU SNG's, is I think it's pretty obvious to spot a good player. I can lose to a bad player, but I know I have a +ve ROI against them, no matter how small my own bad play makes that. A good player has a +ve ROI on me, and I know I'll run into a lot of these players. I just haven't seen many yet. I also think Full Tilt will be littered with these guys, so that's why I want to try it out there, just to see how well I do against solid HU SNG players, at a decent level. If it's far too difficult, I'll get a feel for that pretty quickly I think. Then I can always drop back to OnGame, assess whether it's still the case there, and work out what I want to do from that. If Full Tilt is actually quite soft I'll probably stay there for a bit and climb up their Iron Man promotion and get some free Cardrunners months etc.

I'd expect Full Tilt to be pretty tight, and for there to still be a very large learning curve for me between where I am now, and where I'd need to be to be a HU SNG shark at say $100-$200 levels.

More HU SNG's

I have so many things on my mind to do with HU. Firstly, I've started the HU SNG's. I was mucking about on pokerstars and ran up my micro account, which was $3 after cashing out my account the other day, to $96 with HU SNG's. I have very little HU experience, but the money seemed easy, and I even played a $30 HU SNG, which seemed quite easy to win. So I went back to my regular OnGame site to try to grind the $20+ HU SNG's with similar success. I ended up playing a mix of $20/$30/$50, and only once thought someone was playing well PF (which didn't last long, as he tilted off his stack), and in the $50 games I played someone 4 times who was playing fairly solid post flop, with exception of a few glitches, before going crazy (tilt) in the last one. Overall, I ended up a solid $200+ there too, which including the PS fun meant around a $260 profit without thinking about bonuses coming from OnGame for that.

First and foremost, the reason I have very quickly fallen for this game is that opponents are playing a lot of hands with you, so you pick up on their habits very quickly, as opposed to grinding 6 max for a night and still not knowing too much about 2 of the tighter opponents play. Secondly, their habits are crap. Calling a lot OOP and limping a lot IP is so easy to play against. I get small pots OOP, big pots IP, or the occasional big pot OOP when I have an excellent starting hand. Easy money. Third, tilt. They get it, I haven't been...yet. I can lose a big pot as favourite, and still win the SNG, whereas a lot of people lose one big pot and just give up, shipping it with 42o the next hand. And compared with HU cash games, there is an end point pretty quickly, so you are never grinding it out for too long, or donating stack after stack to a better player. So you grind out what edges you have, then you are done with it, next game, rather than 2 hours against one good player just to be down rake, or up half a buyin at the end.

So I've done some ROI calculations, and it's pretty attractive proposition to grind these out for a bit. I'll probably play some on Full Tilt, just to see how good those games are, and if things go well there, I may stay for a bit. What's attractive about these games is you can be grinding out your 10% ROI on the $50 level with as little as $1.5K bankroll. That's around $30 per hour single tabling, maybe $45 two tabling, with a pretty small bankroll requirement. I'll grind out the $20-$30 games for a bit on Full Tilt and see if they are as soft as OnGame in general, and then maybe in the next week or two assess how well it's gone overall, before decided what to do.

Some HU Play

Last couple of nights I've ventured into the dark world of heads up play. I've been mostly worried about playing before, because the logical starting point is NL50 HU (or SNG's), and my bankroll hasn't been able to stand the swings I might see, especially when learning.

So I started at the SNG's. These weren't too bad, but it was certainly interesting the difference hand to hand. One hand you have the nut straight and lose a pot, the next you have King high and win the hand. It makes you trully appreciate hand reading and recognizing common lines. It also makes you appreciate the power of betting, as passive players call almost every cbet, but calling one or two more bets scares a lot of players. It's certainly a very obvious first leak to look for.

I probably evened out, but was hooked, so started up on the cash the next night after some earlier 6 max success. I had some early success, but then a more solid player took me to value town with a big hand, and we finally stacked off my AQ vs his AK... dominated.

The next night I played some more SNG's, and ran horrible. I actually dominated more than a few, but lost big pots at crucial points, and was left coin flipping, which seemed to be a one sided coin last night. I lost about $70 worth of SNG's, before going over to cash again. I basically ran pretty well at NL30 cash, playing two short stack donks and one reasonable, but overly aggressive player. I found myself 3 betting half his raises, because he raised every hand, but didn't have much answer to my 3 bets, either folding weaker hands, or folding the flop/turn to pressure. I did a little better than even there, and ended up enough money to have a crack at NL50 HU. It's not like I'm not bankrolled for NL50, it's just I feel I need confidence to play HU that high.

Well, I ran good there. First big pot was all in PF AJs vs QQ, and I hit. He insta reloads, and we start to play. He again is very aggro, but I run over him, either bluffing in perfect spots (variance) or having the goods when he didn't. I took 3 stacks off him before he quit. Another donk then donated a SS, before another aggro player donated two stacks. I was up to about $250 on this table, when the first guy came back. He won a couple of pots, including a AJ vs QQ again, but then got slaughtered. Mainly the same, me bluffing him at perfect times, him getting it in with worse hands. I think the last one was AA vs A7s for a full BI. By the time he left again, I was up to $400. I then got another donk to donate two short stacks, but he stuck around and hit numerous times against me, over a couple of hourse, to bring me down to $290.

I felt like I played pretty well considering how little practice I have. I was able to conceal my hand strength pretty well, and mostly knew their strength fairly well too. I will write another blog about some of the things I picked up on in my first night.

Repping a hand

I've heard the more thinking type players mentioning spots where they think betting is over-repping their hand, so I gave the idea a bit of thought. Basically, no matter what type of player we are, or how unlikely our opponents are to understand, our actions on a certain board rep a hand. You bet a AKT board, you are repping something like AA/KK/TT/AK/QJ. Now because of table image, opponents, action so far etc, we may have this, we may not. But overall, we are trying to confuse our opponents more often than not, so we under-rep or over-rep quite a bit.

The over-rep is the most common play in poker, more commonly known as the bluff or sometimes semi-bluff. Since we rarely flop a monster hand, you have people betting an AKT board with 66 because they think they'll get folds from a lot of hands. We have a horrible hand on that board, but if a bet will win the pot a lot, go for it. So generally, an over-rep is to fold other hands. Under-repping is more likely when we have AA there or QJ. Why bet a guy with A5 off that board, when we might get two streets off him later? When under-repping, we are mainly trying to not lose our opponents so we can make more money on them later.

The difficulty comes when your hand can't easily be represented. You have QQ on a board of K94r. Now it still looks pretty good, but it's really 2rd pair. So you are first to act after the flop, and bet. If he calls or raises, he is repping a much stronger hand than you hold, so you have gotten yourself into trouble. You have over-repped your hand, and are certainly getting folds now by weaker hands only, and very few calls by anything you beat. If you check, you have slightly under-repped your hand, and if he bets, you don't know whether he's doing it with top pair or better, or as a pure bluff with 76s. In position, it especially becomes better play to under-rep a hand, because we can extract more value easily, and still get an idea if he is very strong by the river, like if we check behind on that flop and he bets 2 streets strong.

The main idea behind thinking about representation, is to look at the game from another view, and think about what everyone is repping when they bet, check or fold and then think about whether you believe them or not based on history, your image, etc.