C-Betting Follow-Up

Thanks for the comments on the c-betting post I did last week.  The comments represented the pros and cons of making that c-bet pretty well, I thought.  There was a time in the past when I would have made this c-bet because I would c-bet anything at all, HU in position.  The advantage to that approach is you don't waste precious mental cycles thinking about what to do :).

I think I've swung too far the other way, not c-betting enough, for whatever reasons.  I think that the right play here is to bet.  We've got a draw-heavy board against a decent player, but we also have position and no reason when he checks to believe our hand is not good.   Whether or not betting here is correct (and I would consider it a c-bet regardless of whether it's for value), I did have one pretty big theoretical flaw in my thinking about a similar hand when I discussed it with my coach.  I said that one argument against betting is that we are in a reverse implied odds situation, but this is not really a RIO situation, as he pointed out.  If we get checkraised, THEN it's a RIO situation.  In the hand I played, it was against a loose player who was not particularly aggressive, so the bet was a bit more clear (and I made it), but my thinking about the hand was not quite there.

Poker has been pretty slow, but life outside of poker has been pretty good.  We're coming off a holiday weekend in the U.S. (for working stiffs....poker pros probably wanted to be working overtime :)).  There were no kids' games because of the holiday weekend, but I did play golf twice, went to a party down the street with a fun group of people, took my daughter to see Prince Caspian (movie was OK, but fun night with her, and we had just finished reading the book together, so she doubly enjoyed it, I think), and did some fun stuff with the kids.

The bad part is that I've packed on a ton of extra pounds over the last few years, and hit a new high after all the eating and drinking we did.  I'm like 35 pounds over the upper end of what I would consider acceptable for me, and 50 pounds over my weight when I was at 9% body fat.  My biggest problem is that my discipline completely sucks when it comes to diet, and there are just too many opportunities for crappy food and drink in my life right now.  I get a fair amount of exercise, and although I could work things to get a bit more, what I really need to focus on is diet, both in the foods I eat and the portion sizes.  I know it, but am not acting on it, and it's really bad.  In addition to my own health and well-being, I need to be setting a better example for my kids.  They're fine now, but they don't need to see their dad with a gut and not doing anything about it.  Well, you guys don't give a crap or need to know about that, but it's been on my mind today, so there you have it.  Sorry about that.

C-Bets on Draw-Heavy Flops

Let's say you open AT from CO and get a call from the BB.  BB is decent and effective stacks are around 100BB.  Flop comes T98 two-tone.  BB checks.

Hero....

Results of a hand from a couple posts ago

Brian wanted the results of the hand where I 4-bet AJs a little deep and got flatted.  Villain had AA there and held.  I wasn't surprised by his holding, and I still had enough pot equity to make the play, so that was fine.  Thought it was an interesting hand....thanks for the comments on it.

Letdowns

Before I get into this one, let me just say that in general, life is good!  A little busy, but good.  But a few things over the last few days have bugged me, so consider this my Monday Morning Rant.  (Don't know why I capitalized that, not like it's a tradition or anything...but Monday morning does seem like a good time to rant about stuff.)  None of these things are a big deal...more like minor annoyances.  Only one thing is poker related, so I'll get it out of the way first.

1.  Poker Tracker 3 commercial release.  From a customer point of view, they should not have released this without another beta (at least) to work out some serious bugs.  Josh (the developer/main PT guy now) alluded to some business pressures to hold to the 5/15 release date, and being in the software business, I know about release pressure.  But if a release isn't ready, very little can come out of releasing it to a mature market, IMO.  If he just couldn't have worked around getting it released, he should have released a trial version that was not severely crippled, or he should have extended the beta for a bit.  Instead, if you were (like me) using beta software and trying to help out PT by reporting bugs and giving feedback, you had to take a step backwards both in functionality and stability going from the last beta to the first commercial release...or you had to pay for a product that was honestly not ready for prime time.   They've established a great reputation for getting things fixed, and I don't think that this time will be any different, but the way they went about their commercial release will leave a sour taste in people's mouths.  I can tell you from personal experience that a software vendor's reputation (like real life) takes a lot shorter time to tear down than to build up, so you have to be good way more than you are allowed to screw up just to stay neutral.  And they screwed up with this one.

2.  The end of my daughter's softball season.   Her softball coach has been bugging us for a while, actually.  This is her 4th year, actually all with the same coach.  I have always thought he was a mediocre, at best, teacher, but up until this year, he made things fun, and the girls loved him, so when we kept getting him as a coach, on balance it was OK.  Well, something happened with him this year where he was in a sour mood a lot of the time, and lost a lot of the encouraging attitude that made it so fun for the girls.  I don't know him well enough to know whether something in his life changed, or he might be too stressed out coaching.  He coaches his other daughter, too.  I have a buddy whose daughter is on this coach's other team, and he actually asked me if something was different with Coach this season, so it's not just me, and it's not just my daughter's team.  A number of things frustrated us this year, but the biggest one was that he never gave our daughter a chance to be a regular pitcher.  From what my wife said, she did OK in practice, but the coach had a rotation of three that he set at the beginning of the season and pretty much stuck with it, other than when he let his daughter pitch once in a while.  One of those girls was great.  One was OK.  One was unhittable when she threw over the plate, but other than one inning never could strike out more than one girl per inning...in other words she was either great or terrible.  Thankfully, the coach missed the last two games of the season and the assistant worked in my daughter plus a couple others who wanted to pitch.  My daughter got one inning of work the last game of the season.  The results:  2 strikeouts and a scoreless inning (most innings at her level end because the team at bat scores 3 runs...they play 3 runs or 3 outs, whichever comes first).  I know...small sample size.

3.  My son's little league game.  Baseball starts with tee-ball (where the kids hit off a tee, rather than face pitching).  The next step is Single-A, where the season starts with the coach pitching to the kids and ends with a mixture of coach-pitch and kid-pitch.  My son plays this level now.  There's no balls and strikes...the kid pitches 5 times and if the batter puts the ball in play, great.  If 5 pitches go by and the batter does not put the ball in play, then the coach comes out for 2 pitches, and if the kid can't put the ball in play, he's out.  The kid-pitch can present some problems when you have a hard throwing kid because they pitch from pretty close and are not all that accurate.  My son and 3 others have been hit...one poor guy in the cheek, and he's basically a wreck at the plate now.  We are the 2nd-youngest team in the league...in  a league where the kids range from 6-8, that's a big difference.  We also have the fewest kids that played Single-A last year...only 2 of them, where most teams have 5 or 6.  So, the point is that we are small and not really experienced.  We played against the biggest team in the league on Saturday, and as expected, the game was really lopsided.  In itself, that's not too bad.  Evidently, the league doesn't make a particular effort to balance the teams, and so every year, there are one or two teams that pretty much beat up on the other teams, and next year we may be in that position if the kids stick with it.  But it's not particularly fun to have them bat through their lineup every inning, while we only send 4 or 5 kids to the plate.  Again, though, it happens.  The thing that pissed me off was that the opposing coach decided to let his best pitcher throw.  He should have recognized that we were the wrong team to do that against...there are a couple other teams that are just about the same size and experience as these guys.  I watched the kid warm up, and then asked the other coach if he really wanted him to pitch against us.  I knew we would not even get a swing off.  The other coach told me that this kid hadn't pitched for a couple games, and it wasn't fair to him just because he was so good.  I see the point, but what I tried to explain to the coach in the few minutes we had was that he should look at the schedule and pick the better teams to have this guy pitch.  In our league, a coach stands behind the catcher to gather up the passed balls, and to help the kid at the plate (and to help the catcher too, if he's too close or his gear comes loose).  I'm that guy when our team bats.  This was the first kid like I felt I didn't want to be back there...only one deflection off the catcher's glove away from something bad happening.  Can only imagine how our little guys felt at bat against him.  Thankfully, he didn't hit anyone, but as I knew, our guys were so intimidated that they never made a swing.  Instead, they just bailed out from every pitch.  I'm not one for trying to build every kid's self esteem by making sure they all succeed at everything...I think it's better for them to have some failures and some successes, even at a young age.  But no one learned a thing here or got better, so what's the point.  Meh, this is losing something for not being there...really hard to explain just how dumb it was for this kid to be pitching.

4.  Speaking of lopsided competition, the final rant is more just disappointment in what I thought was going to be much cooler.  My niece plays college softball and is also playing on a summer team which is mostly made up of the same group of girls that she has been playing with on a competitive traveling team.  Basically, a regional all-star team.  The U.S. Olympic team has been fundraising by playing college teams as well as these traveling teams.  Last Saturday, they played against my niece's team, so we went to see the game.  I thought it was going to be so cool to see her in action against Team USA.  And it was kind of cool...but more to see how excited she was than any action in the game.  If I knew more about the Olympic team, it would have been neat to see them live, but I don't follow softball whatsoever.  The game itself was so lopsided, it was pretty boring, which was the letdown.  I never thought my niece's team could beat Team USA, but I didn't realize just how lopsided the whole tour has been.  My brother-in-law said that Team USA was like 35-1 on their tour (their only loss evidently came against a pitcher who they cut from the team), and they didn't worry about running up the score.  I figured that they wouldn't show up the hometown teams like this, seeing as a lot of the fans (i.e., ticket and merchandise sales) were friends and family of their opposition.  Not that they would toss a game, just that they wouldn't run up the score.  In getting beat 18-0, though, I think my niece's team had one of the better results from this tour.  Most boring was that Team USA threw (yet another) perfect game, which if you don't know is when not a single batter reaches base.  In fact, of the 18 batters Team USA faced (they only played 6 innings), 15 struck out.  The pitching is that good.  My niece was one of the 3 batters to make contact.  Her hit, as well as the two other batters, didn't make it out of the infield and were really easy plays by Team USA.  All that being said, it was still impressive to see just how good Team USA played, at least when they were on offense...they were so much faster than my niece's team.  As a fundraiser, too, I guess it was a success, but as a vehicle to tune up for the Olympic games, it failed...their fielders spent 2 hours doing nothing more than running in and out of the dugout, and exercising their arms a bit throwing in warm-ups.  They've got a really busy tour, so I wonder when they do get time to actually work hard on their games now...who knows, though, maybe they don't need to...I'm not really sure just how good they are relative to the other teams.  And for all of that, my niece was just as excited at the end of the game taking pictures with and getting autographs from Team USA as she was at the beginning.  Her team knew what they were getting into, and it was a thrill just to be playing with the Olympic squad.  So from that view, everything was cool.

A 4-bet pot out of position

Villain is 18/16/3.5, 3-bets 7% of the time and cold calls 0.9%. Had notes on him from a prior session that he 3-bet me relentlessly in position, and this session, he's already done it a couple times and I'd folded (and he'd also folded to my raises a few times).

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $104.00
BB: $103.00
UTG: $136.00
MP: $139.70
Hero (CO): $192.90
BTN: $127.05

Pre Flop: Hero is CO with Jc Ac
2 folds, Hero raises to $3.50, BTN raises to $12, 2 folds, Hero raises to $32, BTN calls $20

Flop: ($65.50) 2c Tc 9s (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $35, Hero raises to $160.90 all in

Preflop, my plan was to fold to a shove. His 3-betting range is really wide, but I'm assuming I'm pretty far behind his shoving range. I've been trying to incorporate some bluff 4-bets, and so my 4-bet size has gotten smaller if I don't shove, but I don't vary my bet sizes between bluffs and value against regs.
I was a little surprised by his call (thought he would either fold or shove). I guess he should have a big hand here, although he's a loser over 8000 hands, so it is possible he's not that good and may be calling with worse hands. Or, being so aggressive, is just looking to take it away from me on the flop. But let's give him TT+ as a range and assume we're playing for stacks. If that's the case, I've got enough pot equity (I need about 35% and I've got about 43%). So, I shouldn't mind playing for stacks if it comes to that.
There are a couple lines to take here: bet/call or CRAI. His flop aggression factor is like 6. Let's look at some of his possible hands:

• Set, 2-pair, or premium pair that smooth called preflop: either line stacks are going in, as I assume he bets these. I guess he might check back a set (I might do that in his shoes), but then I get a free card to hit my draw. And also, he strikes me as overaggro, so I think he's probably betting. C-bet or CRAI doesn't make much difference.
• QQ, JJ, Tx, 9x: I think I actually have more fold equity (not that there's a ton) taking the CRAI line. Yeah, he's going to be tied to the pot, but the CRAI looks so strongly like he's crushed, that he might fold to it, plus I get an extra bet. On the other hand, he might have called QQ, maybe JJ, looking to shove if I bet a non-ace, non-king flop. I don't think it makes a ton of difference, but in general putting in the shove gives more FE than putting in a bet, so I think CRAI is the play here. Again, he's really aggressive on the flop, so I don't think he'll check behind, but again, if he does, it gives me a chance to outdraw him.
• Lower pocket pairs: I think betting is a little better here. If he made the call with a low pocket pair, he's probably looking to hit his set or fold...it will be pretty tough for him to call a c-bet. Given this is a 4-bet pot, this is a small part of his range.
• Draws: Again, he shouldn't be showing up with draws here in a 4-bet pot, but people are surprising. I like CRAI for draws, as he gets tied to the pot, but I'm actually ahead if he's on a draw.
• Air: Not a huge part of his range, but there is a nonzero chance he's making a play, given I've let him push me around by folding to his 3-bets so far over a couple sessions. If he has air, he's most likely bet/folding if I check, so I like CRAI.

So, overall, I'm OK with the CRAI line I took, mostly because he is really aggressive and will bet for me, so overall I get more FE taking my strong line, and I've got pot equity to back me up in case he calls. But I think it's kind of close. I'm really more concerned about the analysis. To be honest, at game time I was giving more weight to draws and air than I do now looking back on it. I believe in game time, I was approaching this more as a 3-bet pot than a 4-bet pot, so the scales tipped a little more to CRAI than they do now.

Poker? What's that?

Have been even busier than usual the last couple weeks, it's all good, just very little time left for poker.  No change this week, but then it should lighten up.  I did try to sneak out to a card room for a few hours, but was still waiting for a seat 50 minutes later, so I bailed.  For you guys that play live much, is it pretty much expected to tip the floor when there's a long wait, in order to expedite things?  Or is it pretty much just the regulars in the room who are able to buy themselves a quicker seat?  Or maybe it doesn't happen?

I had a lesson with jk3a over at Deuces Cracked.  I'm looking forward to some more when I actually get some time to play.  For me personally, I like when the dialog is more two-way, and where I am initiating a lot of the conversation...I'm a big believer in that it matters less whether you got a decision right and more why you were right (or not).  In some ways, I think that's why the video format of coaching works pretty well.  It forces the student to think, and prevents the coach from interrupting.  But where it falls apart is that you can't make any real time adjustments at all.

For instance, one hand I told Jared I was planning to check/call on the turn and he stopped me to recommend that I try a blocker bet and see how that played out, and then we talked about why it was better to go that route.  But for the most part, he stayed out of the way, and rather focused on why and what-if type questions.  Perfect for a guy like me who wants to deconstruct and rebuild my thought process.

Jared confirmed I still outthink myself and give villains too much credit (for reasonable play, not necessarily for having a hand) -- no surprise to some of you.  More importantly overall, I need to value bet more and bluff less.  That last is probably good perpetual advice for anyone at small stakes, actually.  By the time all of us small stakes grinders really internalize value betting more and bluffing less to the point where we actually have it right, we'll probably make enough to move up to MSNL.  Anyway, it's not like I regularly run any super wacky bluffs, but I do think that I need to work specifically on good spots to double barrel (and the fact that villain just called the flop does not qualify as "good spot.").

Outside of poker, it's been all sports, all the time, plus some two new projects kicking off at work.  On the sports side, both kids have make-up games from earlier in the season when it rained or some other scheduling mishap caused a postponement.  My daughter's season ends on Saturday, freeing up some time.  My son's goes a few weeks later, though.  Actually, that's great, because some stuff is obviously starting to click for him...he hit the cover off the ball last Saturday, 4-for-4...huge relief to me because for the first part of the season, he was hitting really poorly, making lots of outs, and getting kind of frustrated.  Secondly, his glove work is getting tons better. 

It's funny taking for granted how to hold a glove when you catch a ball when you see how all the kids -- even the good ones -- wanted to hold it last year, and even the beginning of this year.  Over the course of the year, more and more of them have started to get it right (some with the aid of a baseball glancing off the heel of their open glove and tagging them on the chin)...and finally my son's got it.   So, I'm glad that the season is going to continue for a while because it will give him a chance to solidify his new skills.  Although he may be a bit burnt this week...3 games throughout the rest of the week, and the ones after a day at school are tougher for all the kids.

As for me, I actually snuck out of the office last Friday morning for a round of golf...first time in a long time, but going to try to do that a little bit this summer, especially since weekends are getting booked solid with family activities.  Golf is as swingy as poker for me, but for the second round in a row I had multiple birdies, so I was happy how that went.  I also had the most consistently solid round of putting in a long while.  I had a few drop, and the ones that didn't were uniformly good misses.

Half Full or Half Empty?

Was thinking about making this post BBV style, but there's really no brags...only beats and variance.  But given that we're likely to do a certain amount of utterly stupid stuff in our lifetimes, maybe it's not so bad.

Came to work, got a cup of coffee and settled in...then re-learned a basic lesson that I've learned in about 18 different sports...concentrate on your target.  Instead, I reached for the coffee while reading an email.  I drink 2-3 cups of coffee each day.  Sometimes I'm a spazz.  That combination means I'm probably going to spill a couple cups of coffee a year.  (Side note:  my usual way to spill a cup of coffee is walking down the hill in front of the 10th tee at the golf course, where I can hit the trifecta:  stain a shirt and my glove; burn my hand; not have the coffee.)

Today, at least there was a bright side...again it assumes I'm going to spill a certain amount of coffee in my life...there's probably no way to fix that. 

It went over my computer, but I use a docking station, so it just went on the cover, not on the more sensitive components.  It went on me, but I'm wearing brown slacks today, and I can't even really see the stain now.  It went on the carpet, but I'm at the office, so I don't have to worry about cleaning the carpets.  I completely emptied the cup, but I'm at the office, so I just got another one.

All in all, I guess it could be worse!

Brokedown Palace

Wow, it's been 20 years.  I'll never forget, dude.  Thanks Kristin.

--------------------------------------

Fare you well, my honey, fare you well, my only true one.
All the birds that were singing are flown except you alone.

Goin' to leave this brokedown palace,
On my hands and my knees, I will roll, roll, roll.
Make myself a bed by the waterside,
In my time, in my time, I will roll, roll, roll.

In a bed, in a bed, by the waterside, I will lay my head.
Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul.

River going to take me, sing me sweet and sleepy,
Sing me sweet and sleepy all the way back home.
It's a far gone lullaby sung many years ago.
Mama, Mama, many worlds I've come since I first left home.

Goin' home, goin' home, by the waterside I will rest my bones,
Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul.

Going to plant a weeping willow,
By the bank's green edge it will grow, grow, grow.
Sing a lullaby beside the water,
Lovers come and go, the rivers roll, roll, roll.

Fare you well, fare you well, I love you more than words can tell.
Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul.

Ran like a god at 5/10

Well, OK, it was 5 cent / 10 cent, but it was still nice to run awesome for a change :).  I was fooling around with some HUD layout stuff on Stars where you have to be dealt in for the HUD to show, so I fired up a couple .05/.10 tables.  Haven't re-imported stuff back into my new PT3 database, but I think it was something like 63 BB/100! 

Life at 100NL was not so good, unfortunately, including a 90BB stack-off in a pot unraised preflop.  My read was right (I was up against a big draw), and it was nice pretty much knowing what my opponent had.  A bit later, same table (which was a great table), I steal with AKs, very aggro BB 3-bets, and I 4-bet.   Flop comes Axx and he checks.  Normally, I would check this back, but I had a read he would stack off light, so I bet small, planning to get the rest in on the turn.  He obliges by calling and then calling on the turn when the board paired the bottom card.  He's got AJ :).  He rivers a jack :(.

I'm making a concerted effort to judge the success of a session solely on how well I played, especially postflop, and especially paying attention to opponents and getting off auto pilot.  These couple hands were a good test because although they were nothing really special, my reads were on, and on the second one I played it a different way than usual.  Although the money was probably going in on the second hand regardless, still I used some reads and changed things up without sacrificing anything.  Plus, I lost both hands, and I still was OK with it.  From that view, the session was a success.

Life update:  going to a funeral a bit later today.  One of the guys I play golf with is an amazing guy.  He's in his 80's and still out there hacking around with us, and pretty much seems to enjoy every single day.  His wife recently passed (her funeral), but it was probably a blessing.  Her health had been just terrible for years, and for the last year or so was pretty much bedridden.  He had a ton to do taking care of her, but he still managed to enjoy life as well.  I never really knew her, but for his sake, I'm going to go to the funeral.

In happier news, our little league baseball team just graduated from coaches pitching to the kids.  What happens now is that the kids actually pitch 5 balls, and if the batter can't hit, then the coaches get to pitch 2.  My son pitched in the first game, and it was awesome...he was the total crowd pleaser.  Not because he pitched the most strikes (he didn't), but for his pre-pitch routine.  Definitely the best out there.  Plus, it's awesome to see him throwing so well.  I remember last year about this time, he could not make the throw from the mound to first base.  Now, pitching, when he misses, he's sailing the ball over everyone's heads and back to the fence.  At least he's throwing straight....just about every pitch went over the plate...just some of them were like 10 feet over the plate ;).  Next up for him is batting...gotta get him to pull the ball more...he's going right back up the middle, but with not enough power to make it by the pitcher.  So, until he strengthens up a bit, he's got to hit to the left side of the field.  He's a fast kid..no way they throw him out from 3rd.

Haven't played golf for a while, but it's my turn to get a tee time for my group on Sunday morning, so I'll be playing then, I think.  Got a birthday party on Sunday, but it's not until later....so I think I'll have some time.

April Wrap-up

April was fun. At least it's ending with some positive momentum.

Still playing too tight overall. I think I know where I can loosen up preflop, but I'm not confident enough in my postflop game to want to venture there. One of the things I want to confirm with a coach is the state of my postflop game, given how TAGnit I'm playing. There's a little gap between VPIP and PFR, but I'll talk more about that in the positional analysis. I'm sure I could steal more, but I'm OK with anything over 30%. One of the things I'd like to do is pick some more defending spots, but I don't want to go crazy. I should note that one of my seat selection criteria is that the person 2 to my right does not have a high attempt to steal...if they do, I'm looking to leave unless there's another compelling factor to stay...so it does stand to reason that I would fold a little more than normal. The other thing that jumps out at me is that my fold to c-bet is really low. That may be getting me in a bit of trouble as I'm probably making too many spewy plays, or in general just not believing the flop bets enough.

Given my overall VPIP and PFR, the distribution of the non-blind positions is OK. The CO could be higher for sure. The UTG spot is a couple percentage points higher (big relative increase) after consciously opening up a little bit, just to protect my big hands...so, some occasional opens with suited connectors, and also adding AJo and ATs into my likely opening range. Too many decent players are aware of how positionally aware the other players are, so I think that it just can't be premium hands in UTG. I'm also cold calling a bit more on the button (as opposed to taking a reraise or fold approach). Sometimes I'm doing this planning to try taking away a lot of flops in position, and sometimes I'm doing this by cold-calling speculative hands I'd previously dumped. And of course, those two factors interrelate.

The biggest question mark is my SB VPIP and PFR. I'm doing a lot of completing, relatively speaking. It's something that a few people have recommended me to avoid, and I have tried to be deliberate about it. I've reviewed some hands, though, and it looks like a lot of them are completing after 2 limpers with decent speculative hands, and then playing pretty cautiously postflop. I'm pretty sure I'm not going overboard with them, but that VPIP is kind of high and the gap between VPIP and PFR from that spot is wide. So, I'll have to keep monitoring it.

In addition to the play, I watched more videos in April than I have in a long time. A lot of that was due to really loving the Deuces Cracked vids, but I'm also trying to focus on vids in general, and in fact have been rotating between DC, CR, and Stox. The videos have come at the expense of strat forum participation, but I was getting kind of burnt with that anyway....I'm not sure how much I was really getting from posting. Not that posting is a waste of time...quite the contrary...but I hit a plateau in terms of how much I personally took away from that study vehicle. I think for May, I'll try to get back to more of a balance between videos and the forums, though.