Staying away from playing, as I promised. The next few weeks at least are really busy, and I wouldn't be playing my best. I have been spending some time studying the game though. I decided to learn some basic limit holdem, so I read Lee Jones' Low Limit Holdem book, and watched a bunch of the limit holdem videos. Stellarwind's second video was very informative. Next I plan to read Holdem for Advanced Players by Sklansky and Malmuth, which I hope will be as good as the Theory of Poker. I've also been catching up on watching the NL heads up videos which have come out recently. I streamed the Taylor Caby/ Annette_15 match last night before I went to bed. They both play very aggressive, but Taylor just plays so well it's unreal, he has such an incredible intuitive understanding of what each of her plays implies, and almost always acts correctly. I think the last hand was very interesting - I wonder which player was thinking a level above the other. The fact that Taylor had sat out on the right table announced this hand would be the last, which led Taylor to think that Annette was more likely to bluff. Further, people like to bluff at ace-high flops. Of course Annette had the goods, and was probably also aware that it would seem like a good place to bluff, since she's a very good player. She knows that to Taylor, her hand range seems polarized between the nuts and a bluff. Annette is thus free to extract maximum value, on the grounds that Taylor is probably willing to call down very light. On the other hand, maybe Taylor wants to have a continued positive relationship with Annette, felt like giving her a few of her dollars back out of appreciation for making the video, and decided to discard his read.

I withdrew my funds from PokerStars, and I've decided to take a break from playing poker for a while. There are a few reasons for this.

The most important is, the time I'm spending accumulating hands would be better spent doing other things, e.g. schoolwork. I decided at the beginning of the year to try a grinding challenge, mostly to prove to myself that I can be a good poker player. What I've discovered is that in fact I do have solid fundamentals, and I can beat the microstakes up to NL 50, for a pretty solid winrate after about one hundred thousand hands.

Right now, I'm at the start of my Ph. D., and I need to be focusing almost exclusively on research. I'm also continuing my exercise regiment; in fact, this week is the first in a 13-week training program I'm undertaking, which will end in me doing my first sprint triathlon in early July. It's a first step in my long-term goal of doing the Iron Man, and it's something I have a lot of positive energy about.

In comparison, grinding microstakes is pretty boring. I've decided I'm not going to play online poker for an extended period of time. I'll be spending the month of May at UBC in Vancouver, attending a workshop on mathematical biology. This is followed by a month-long stay at the University of Toronto until early July, where I'll be working with the leading Canadian expert on fire ecology. These are both opportunities for me to make great connections for the future, and I need to devote all my energy to both of these visits.

I'm not giving up on poker though. I'm going to continue to subscribe to CR, watch the videos, and maybe even read a couple of poker books I'm interested in. I'm thinking I might watch all the limit holdem videos, so that I can jump into fishy live games and feel confident I have an edge.

When I come back to poker, I think I'll start with a short roll for NL 50, maybe about 1000 dollars, and establish some sort of challenge for myself. My 2008 poker goal is to become a winning player at 1/2 NL over a significant sample, and to accomplish this while maintaining good bankroll management. Right now, I don't have time to work on this goal, but I feel that by mid-July I should be ready to come back, with a fresh and improved mindset.

Managed to fit in quite a bit of poker this weekend, despite being a little behind in my project proposal. Keep in mind, I've been sticking to just one table at a time.

A lot of these hands were versus two extremely bad players. The first I played for close to two hours. This player managed to get very lucky against me in the beginning of our match, doubling through several times, starting from about 40 BB's. I stuck it out though, knowing I had a huge edge - he would regularly bet up to 4x the pot, strictly minraise from the button or raise to 10x the BB preflop, never three bet me preflop out of position, etc. There had also been a period, about fifteen minutes prior, when he open shoved like 10 hands in a row, showing me his hand ever time. Anyways, the match had a lot of big swings, but he was slowly being beat down. Immediately prior to this hand, he told me it would be his last, and wanted me to go all in with him. Hilarity ensues:

POKERSTARS GAME #15849674145: HOLD'EM NO LIMIT ($0.25/$0.50) - 2008/03/09 - 06:29:06 (ET)
Table 'Indus' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: Hero ($76.75 in chips)
Seat 2: villain ($62.85 in chips)
villain: posts small blind $0.25
Hero: posts big blind $0.50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [3s 4s]
villain: raises $4 to $4.50
Hero: calls $4
*** FLOP *** [9s Ac 5c]
Hero: checks
villain: checks
*** TURN *** [9s Ac 5c] [2c]
Hero: checks
villain: checks
*** RIVER *** [9s Ac 5c 2c] [6d]
Hero: bets $72.25 and is all-in
villain said, "do you have it"
villain said, "flush"
villain said, "i have ase king"
villain said, "yes do you have it"
villain said, "come on tell me"
Hero said, "You don't have AK"
Hero said, "you'd have called"
villain: calls $58.35 and is all-in
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Hero: shows [3s 4s] (a straight, Deuce to Six)
villain: mucks hand
Hero collected $125.20 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $125.70 | Rake $0.50
Board [9s Ac 5c 2c 6d]
Seat 1: Hero (big blind) showed [3s 4s] and won ($125.20) with a straight, Deuce to Six
Seat 2: villain (button) (small blind) mucked [Kh As]

Against any other player, there's absolutely no way I'd play the hand the same.. as it turned out, it was pure genius.

The other 2-hour session was against a different sort of fish. The following is the last hand before he quit. This guy was also wildly aggressive, and I was almost sure this was a bluff..phew.

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 1: Hero ($72.55) - -
Seat 2: Villain 1 ($65.35) -


PRE-FLOP:

Hero posts small blind $0.25
Villain 1 posts BIG blind $0.50
Dealt To: Hero


RAISE Hero ($1.50)
RAISE Villain 1 ($4.50)
CALL Hero ($3)


FLOP:

Pot: $9.75


BET Villain 1 ($7)


TURN:

Pot: $16.75


BET Villain 1 ($7.50)
CALL Hero ($7.50)


RIVER:

Pot: $31.75


BET Villain 1 ($46.35)
CALL Hero ($46.35)


SHOWDOWN:
Villain 1:

Hero:


Hero collected $130.2 from main pot

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $130 Rake: $0.50

Final Board:


Seat 1: Hero button small blind showed [Qd Kd] and won 130.20 with two pair, Queens and Deuces - Net Gain/Loss: ($125.7)
Seat 2: Villain 1 big blind showed [9c 9d] and lost with two pair, Nines and Deuces - Net Gain/Loss: ($-64.35)



Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners]

Anyways, I think I'm going to lay off the HU for a while, and get back to my six max challenge. I'd like to grind out about 10k more hands of NL 10, before I move up to NL 25.

I've played a decent amount of heads up the past couple of days. Here are my results:

I only play one table at a time, and I usually only buy in for 60 BB's since I'm pretty underrolled. The rake is so vicious it makes me wonder if could be +EV at these stakes to be playing heads up with such a short stack, but I think I have a big edge over most of the opponents I play so it seems to work out. Game selection is very important. There are actually quite a few solid regulars who play NL 50 HU, and I'm not good enough yet/deep enough rolled to play them; luckily there are tons of fish who will toss you their accounts' last few dollars. I hope it works this way all the way up.

I won't have much time to play during the next few days, as I have an important project proposal to submit this coming Tuesday. I've continued the workout regiment, and have added running to my repertoire. I figured my legs would be much stronger, given I walk everywhere, and have been swimming almost every day, but I'm finding it hard to get back into it. Maybe my legs are just overworn, I dunno. Anyways, soon enough the snow will be gone here and I'll be able to get out biking again, which will take some of the load off.

Anyways, I'm off to teach a calculus tutorial, peace.

Today was my first day back to school officially since reading break. I actually only have one class this semester, which is a seminar in mathematical biology, and it's been fascinating so far. My girlfriend has been very busy finishing her M.Sc. thesis, so I haven't done too much exciting in the past week, just taken it easy and lost some money playing poker.

Yeah, lately my drive hasn't been there to just grind out hands. I've had a bunch of swings, mostly playing NL 50, which is absurd given the bankroll I have. Frankly, I'm lucky to still have 150 bucks online.

Anyways, I think maybe my poker discipline has suffered since I've been concentrating way more on my other goals. I've got a bunch of research done, and I've been continuing to swim regularly. I'm up to doing 20 laps per session, tho I still find it hard to do more than 4 laps continuously, since my breathing is still not the best. Some progress anyways.

I would like to get back into playing poker, but I need to rethink my bankroll management strategy. I'm now fairly certain that a 20 buyin bankroll is perfectly suitable for NL 2, 5, 10, and 25 at least, given the number of hands I've played. The main reason is that you can achieve a very solid winrate, in terms of BB/100, playing a very low-variance style.

Here's my new, more aggressive bankroll strategy. I'm going to move up whenever I have 20 buyins for the next level. If my bankroll drops below 15 buyins for a level, I'll move down and rebuild. I'm not sure at which level my rocklike TAG strategy will become unprofitable, resulting in a switch to a higher variance style, but at that point I'll have to rethink my bankroll management. Pretty standard stuff, I'll try it out until May 11th when I leave for a month in Vancouver, during which time playing poker will be at a minimum. A quick estimate of the best possible result which isn't extremely unlikely, is I could build my bankroll to be suitable for NL 100 in this period of time, so let's hope for the best lol.

So I made it through my research presentation, and managed to produce some results in the past week which are finally starting to look like progress. I now have over a week off, and I have time to play some poker.

I've played about 1k hands today 4-tabling 6-max NL 10. I ran pretty good, finishing up about 4 buyins. At these stakes, you do run into a few people who play pretty tight preflop, but most are fish and if you table select a little it can do a lot for your winrate.

I plan to get back into the habit of playing 1k hands/day, hopefully I can get to 25k hands total by the end of February. I've been keeping up with exercise, I managed to swim five times this week. I'm not a trained swimmer yet, but I'm starting to get a little better each time I go. My 3-month goal is to be able to do 20 laps continuously, which is half what's required in a triathlon. Since I have lots of time this week, I think I'll start introducing cycling as well.

I'll write something after I play a more significant number of hands at NL 10.

I've had no time to play poker so far during February. The little I have played has been some HU NL 50, and I've run well below expectation there. Essentially, the only times I have played I've been more or less on tilt. My BR has been reduced to about 150 bucks.

There's a definite lesson to be learned from this. Every time I've played, I haven't had the long run in mind. I've sat down with the intention of only playing for a short period of time, without a proper bankroll, mostly for entertainment. Frankly, my number one priority is school, and for the past couple of weeks it's been taking up all my time.

You see, I'm a Ph. D. student in math, and about every three months I have to give some sort of presentation summarizing my results to date. One such date occurs this Friday, so I've been working super hard trying to do some research. I also have teaching duties, as well as other things which take up quite a bit of time. At the end of the day, I'm pretty mentally exhausted, so it's tough to play poker properly..and I usually end up with bad results.

I do have a week off next week though, and I plan to get a ton of hands in then. I will play around 10k hands of NL 5, then 10k hands of NL 10 by the end of February. I'm also going to get back into the habit of studying the game, which out of necessity I've been forced to abandon lately.

I've also been doing well lately on living more healthy. I've been eating very well, and getting lots of exercise. One thing I've slowly been working in has been swimming, and ideally I'd like to swim pretty well every day. I've actually made plans to start swimming at least three days per week with my girlfriend/ another friend from school. My girlfriend taught swimming lessons when we were in undergrad, so I'm getting her to help me work on my techniques. My longterm goal is to be sick at the triathlon, so at least for the next couple of months I'm going to work really hard on swimming, since it's by far my weakest skill.

Anyways, I guess sometime early next week I'll have time to play some hands, and I'll post some results/commentary if any is warranted. FWIW, here's a shot from my first few hands I've played at NL 10, the only serious results for the past two weeks.

Played my first 1k hands today at NL 10. I ended up winning about 2 buyins. I played 6 tables at a time, which was kindof boring for the most part. The thing is, for the most part playing very TAG/ABC poker seems to be the correct way to play, and playing like 12/10/4 is a very easy style to play. I think next session I'll try 12 tables and see how things go.

I'm going to commit some time this week to watching videos/playing a few hands, maybe a couple of hours per day. I have to give a talk to our newly formed research group in school in two weeks time, so I'll be devoting most of my work effort towards that. I also want to make more time for serious exercise; I went swimming today, and it felt good to get in a decent workout.

I decided after my last post to take some time off. There are a couple of reasons, the most important being that I have a lot of school work which I'd like to be doing, and the second being the purpose of this blog entry.

I think after you accomplish something, you should take some time off. Even if what you accomplish might seem insignificant to others, if it's important to you I think it's best to take some time to enjoy that. Particularily if the next step in your journey seems a little more difficult than where you are right now. A couple of examples arose recently where this principle was made evident.

I had the most difficult semester of my academic career last Fall, which was followed by a month-long vacation to Newfoundland/Cuba. It was very nice to take time to be interested in other things after my hard work the previous few months. Of course, everyone can't take a month off, but even a week of complete detachment from your everyday work seems to be very effective.

Another example has been my break from grinding over the past week. I played about 50000 hands in effectively one month, and I achieved my "results-oriented monthly goal" of building my bankroll to be enough to play NL 10. I ran on average at 12 PT BB/100 over these 50k hands, though this is skewed since I ran at 14.5 BB/100 over 31k hands at NL 2, and 7.7 over 17k hands at NL 5. Of course, at NL 2 I played deepstacked, while I only buyin for 120 BB at NL 5.

The most I've played previously was maybe 3k hands/month, so taking a break from playing lots of poker has been good. I've had time to put in lots of quality time at work, trying to set myself up to have a good semester. I've also been thinking about trying some different stuff out, like playing some NL 5 where I buyin for 200 BB's, or FR NL 10. Ideally in February I'll be able to build my bankroll to 750 dollars, enough to start playing NL 25 in March.

I know that if I hadn't taken this break, I'd probably have tilted away a bunch of my money. I'm not in the right mindset to be playing, partly since I'm usually so tired at the end of the day, but also because the grind gets monotonous and seemingly neverending when you're playing lots and lots of hands. Taking a break resets your internal poker cycle, so that when you come back your mind is fresh and you have a renewed desire to succeed.

I won't have a chance to play any hands until Saturday, since Friday is my birthday and I have tons of stuff over the next two days to do. I plan to boil lobster, and have a bunch of people over to the house. Should be fun. Anyways, I ramble, and should instead go to bed.

I'm going to move up to NL 10. I decided I've played enough NL 5 to know that I'm a winner at these stakes, and my bankroll is sufficient, so it's stupid for me not to move up. Anyways, here are my final stats at NL 5:

I think for February I'm going to try to play less tables, and get back into the habit of thinking about the game more. I haven't watched any videos or read anything about poker much during January, since my goal was really just to get in a bunch of hands. I think playing 9 tables will also allow me to open my game up a little, which will be more fun. I hope to log 30k hands at least during February.

In order to move up to NL 25 I'm going to need to win 45 buyins at NL 10. If all goes well I should be able to accomplish this by the end of February.