Do you buy in short or deep in cash games?

This is one of the questions I got after the Swarthmore math talk. It came from the student who found this blog before the talk and commented that he had read Chen and Ankenman's The Mathematics of Poker. This is a question I've addressed previously on this blog.

The answer is that I usually buy in relatively short but will sometimes buy in for more if the situation is right. One reason I mentioned is that, by buying in short, you leave the option of buying in for more later. By buying in deep immediately, you pigeon-hole yourself, because you are not allowed to take chips back off the table. I also explained some factors that make me think buying in short can be advantageous. The question was a little outside the scope of the talk, so I first explained the question to the audience; hopefully my readers here will know what buying in short and deep means.

In no-limit holdem, there is a small mathematical advantage to having a shorter stack. This is for two reasons:

Reason 1. Most players with big stacks will not even bother trying to play well against players with short stacks. They maximize their EV by focusing their strategy on playing well against other players with big stacks. This means they will be exposing themselves to being exploited by you if you have a short stack.

Reason 2. If you are all-in against two or more deeper-stacked opponents, one of your opponents might fold a hand that would have won, allowing you to take the pot. Or, you might get to keep a hand that you would have folded if you were not all-in.

This second point was made by Sklansky in his tournament strategy book. Although I originally thought it was a very significant factor, I have come to think it's less important than the first reason I list here. Situations relevant to Reason 1 are fairly common. An example would be if you buy in for $500 and everyone else is playing behind $2k-$5k. They will simply not mind paying you off for $500 if they think they have a chance to win $2k+ from another player. Situations relevant to Reason 2 are comparatively rare. A lot of uncommon factors all have to fall into place. You would need to get all-in with a hand that would have come in second place. The first place player would then need to fold after you are all-in. Even when this does happen, it might actually have hurt you to be all-in, because it's possible you would have won a bigger pot if you had been able to wager more. Because of this it's not entirely clear that being all-in is really mathematically advantageous at all.

During the talk I also mentioned that in my experience, players got used to me playing a short stack, and so when I did have a big stack, they tended to underestimate me. I was able to take advantage of that. (In truth, this probably argues for buying in deep more often, but I didn't bring that up during the talk.)

Against very good opponents I believe it is actually best to buy in short, mostly for Reason 1. Against very weak opponents, it is probably better to have a deep stack, because this allows you to take full advantage of your skill differential. This is especially true if your weaker opponents happen to have deeper stacks than your stronger opponents at a certain table; this is likely to be a temporary situation, but it is usually worth taking advantage of.

Against normal opponents, it's tough to say which is better, but I prefer to buy in short because it allows me the option of staying short stacked if the table becomes tougher.

Frankly, this last consideration is much more important if you are in a situation like I was in as a prop, where you do not always have the option to leave a table if the game is very tough. As a prop, I valued having the option to have a short stack against tough opponents; for most people, the better option is to just leave the game. I didn't think to mention this during the talk, but I think it's an important point.

There is actually a third reason to buy in short that I didn't mention during the talk.

Reason 3. Having a deep stack is stressful and draining. As a prop player, I valued my ability to keep the game as low-stress as possible, because I did not have the option to just leave. It is very difficult to focus intently on poker for eight straight hours; by buying in short, I allowed myself some mental breaks during the day. Most players who are not in the abnormal prop situation should probably buy-in deeper against moderately weak opponents. However, there is something to be said for pacing yourself at the poker table by keeping the stress level low.

How often do you raise?

This was the simplest question I got after my talk. However, I didn't know the answer; I simply don't keep track of my play that closely. I probably should have been more prepared for this question, because the last third of my talk was about how we can use Bayesian statistics to model our opponents' strategies, and I used raising rates as an example. In truth, a player's raising rate is (for most players) highly dependent on the situation. The same exact situation never really presents itself twice (at least if we take into account stack sizes and meta-game issues), so it is difficult to gather relevant data. We need to look at similar situations and hope that they are relevant to each other. Poker players do this intuitively: if player A raises way too often in one situation, we guess that he will raise too often generally. I think a very interesting research topic would be to develop a better model of how to generalize from one situation to another, and how to quantify the "similarity" between two different situations. The best analysis I've seen in this regard simply looks at how often players raise given a particular seat position (eg "on the button"), without regard to other relevant factors such as opponents and stack sizes.

An interesting anecdote is that there were a few players at the Bike's 20-40 limit game who thought that I intentionally raised whenever it was their turn to put in the blind bet, and they would call and reraise me more than they would against other players; in turn, I actually did start raising their blinds slightly more often (that is, with slightly weaker hands than I would normally) in order to maximize my EV against their relatively weak calling and raising ranges.

At the talk, I interpreted this question as referring to raising before the flop in no-limit holdem. Even given this rather narrow interpretation of the question, I considered it too broad to give an accurate answer (I didn't venture a guess at the time, but if I had to now, I would say 15%). Instead, I explained two of the most important factors that go into my raising rate. First, the number of players and my position at the table. If I have only one or two players I need to beat, I will raise with way more hands than if I have seven or eight players I need to beat. In the latter scenario, the chances are just too good that someone else has a hand stronger than mine. This position-based thinking is a basic poker concept that should be familiar to any self-respecting poker player. The other factor I mentioned during the talk is the skill level of my opponents. If my opponents are very weak, I will play a lot more hands. Against stronger opponents, many of those hands would probably yield negative EV if I tried raising with them. One thing I forgot to consider in my answer is the possibility of just calling before the flop. I do this so rarely that in my mind I equated "raising" with "not folding," but I do limp sometimes, especially if there are limpers in front of me and my opponents are weak and are unlikely to raise behind me.

In closing, I admitted that I should probably keep better track of how I play. If I played online I would be more likely to keep track, but in live poker it would be very distracting to record all the relevant data.

Why didn't you play online instead of live?

A commenter suggested I answer this question, which is similar to one I was asked after the talk.

It's true that playing online makes a lot of sense for a professional poker player. You can play from home, you can play way more games per hour, and you can keep track of very useful data on yourself and your opponents much more easily than in the casino. Although the competition is tougher (or so I have heard and believe), if you can beat the games online, it makes way more financial sense to play online than in a casino. If you get good enough at multitabling shorthanded games to win even 25 cents per hand, you can earn more per hour than someone playing live and winning $4 per hand. In addition, it's likely that the ratio of your win rate to your volatility will be relatively low because every $X that you win will come over many more hands, evening out the wins and losses. So, why didn't I play online?

There are three main reasons. All of them have to do with focusing on abstract issues related to my quality of life as opposed to my finances.

First of all, I simply don't enjoy playing online and playing in a casino remains fun. I just prefer being around people to sitting in my house at my computer. I like the structure of going out and avoiding the distractions of being at home. I like the culture of live poker, playing with real cards and real chips. I also like the aspects of pure poker that get obscured by online play, which is actually my next point.

The second reason is that online poker isn't real poker, but merely a good substitute. I want to be able to look at and talk to my opponents. I actually think this is a minor aspect of real poker, but it still matters and it still makes the game more fun and interesting. Perhaps most importantly, I think live poker is more "pure" because there is probably less cheating. It's way too easy to collude in online poker ("hey, I've got pocket aces, can you raise for me now?"). Being able to see your opponents not only makes it harder for them to cheat but also makes them less likely to want to cheat. Several people have admitted to me that they have colluded online. I doubt most of these people would be willing to cheat people in live poker because it just feels so much meaner to cheat a real person than an avatar. All of this is ignoring the "superuser" problem of poker site employees helping their friends cheat by revealing opponents' hands. (Online poker scandals listed here.)  We also have the issue of poker bots, which are probably beatable but certainly diminish the "purity" of the game.

Third, it simply didn't seem worth getting back into online poker after the UIGEA was passed, which was a year after I moved to Vegas. I actually did try to deposit money once or twice since then, but when I realized it would be a complicated process I gave up and never looked back. I also try to be lawful whenever possible (I'm one of the few pro poker players who makes an effort to report his earnings to the IRS accurately and I don't attend obviously illegal home games), so avoiding online poker lets me sidestep the ambiguous legal standing of online poker in America nowadays.

So, basically I had a strong personal preference for live poker, cheating seems more rampant online, and the laws make things complicated.

Would you recommend professional poker or grad school to people graduating with a math major?

I got a question similar to this one at my mathematical poker talk last week: Would you recommend professional poker or grad school to people graduating with a math major?

The answer certainly depends on the individual. Five or ten years ago, poker was much easier and if you liked the game and studied it for a few weeks you could probably beat the players in the casino. The games in the casinos (as well as online) have gotten much tougher since then, and it really takes a lot of work to develop the skill to make over $5/hour now.

Having never been to grad school, it would be difficult for me to say whether it's a good decision. Obviously, I'm planning to quit poker in order to begin grad school, so in my case I decided that grad school is probably the best option for me. However, this doesn't mean that I think I should have gone straight to grad school out of college. If I had done that, I don't think I would have known why I wanted to go to grad school, which might have made it difficult to motivate myself into being a good student.

For me, the desire to go to grad school developed over a number of years of feeling more and more socially irrelevant. Swarthmore encourages social consciousness, and I guess this might have rubbed off on me a bit. Over the years, the feeling that I could be doing something more worthwhile with my analytical abilities has been gnawing at me. As I've become more politically conscious, my desire to try to make a difference has really increased. I'm not sure that grad school is necessarily the ideal way for me to make myself more relevant to society, but I think it is a reasonable enough way to get started on that path.

That's more or less how I answered the question during the talk. Let me now expand on my answer a bit. The lifestyle of a poker player has many benefits that I could document, but the bottom line is that it can be very stressful if you don't have BOTH the right mindset and the ability to win comfortably. It also helps to be financially stable from the outset. I had the good fortune to have no debt and in fact quite a bit of savings when I started. I also happen to have an ideal temperament for poker: I don't get at all upset or angry about bad luck. This is part of what I mean by having the "right mindset." The right mindset also includes focusing on making good decisions as opposed to focusing on your financial results. Basically, having the right mindset involves adjusting your perception of money in order to subordinate its importance to the importance of good strategic play. Even if you have the ability to have right mindset, though, it's not going to work unless you are also a substantial long-run winning player. If you're just barely a +EV player, I think it's going to wear on you. A $1000 loss is going to take an average of 200 hours to make up if you only win $5 an hour. That is likely to be stressful even if you are predisposed to having the mindset to focus on strategy instead of results.

For me, poker was an ideal way to take a step back after college and a short stint at a sort of dreary job and decide how I wanted to proceed with my life. Some people may be able to do this while working for a year or two, and some people may already have it figured out by the time they graduate from college. One big change for me (and it may have something to do with getting married and having a kid) was that I decided it was worth the extra work and stress in order to have a greater impact on society. Different people may come to different conclusions on this point in different points in their lives, but now when I look at people who dedicate their lives to poker, part of me is surprised that they aren't plagued by the same sense of irrelevance that haunted me the past few years.

Question: Is it really optimal to play pure strategies in the [0,1] no-fold one-raise game?

I got this question, or something like it, while presenting the example game theory solution in my mathematical poker talk. The solution to that game is that player X will check-call with hands worse than 4/9, check-raise with hands better than 8/9, and bet the hands in between. If X bets, Y will raise with 2/3 or better and call otherwise. If X checks, Y will bet with 1/3 or better and check otherwise.

This is one of the games in The Mathematics of Poker, except, as with all the [0,1] games in that book, Chen and Ankenman define lower hands to be better, so 0 is the best hand and 1 is the worst. Also, there is a typo in one of the indifference charts for this game, but it does not affect the resultant indifference equation.

The answer I gave during the talk was correct: yes, they do really play pure strategies here. I hadn't reached the point in the talk where I explain pure and mixed strategies, so I used this opportunity to introduce those concepts. A pure strategy would be if the players always play the same way given any particular hand. This is true everywhere except for the indifference points. As an example, I pointed out that in this game, if X held the hand 1/3, he always checks and then calls. An example of a mixed strategy would be if X sometimes check-called when holding 1/3 but sometimes chose another play (such as betting) when holding this hand.

That's what I said during the talk. Let me expand on it a bit.

In Texas Holdem and other common poker games, there are only a few "indifference point" hands where mixed strategies make sense (like X with 4/9 or 8/9). The rest of the possible hands require pure strategies. This is complicated a bit by the fact that real poker games are dynamic, with hands changing value as new cards are dealt, but I think the principle still holds that most hands have one play that has greater EV associated with it than the other available plays. This is why I so often argue against randomizing your play and instead advocate just choosing which hands are your indifference points. This wouldn't have been appropriate to address during the talk, since I didn't want to discuss any real poker games such as Texas Holdem; many people in the audience weren't familiar with the rules of those games.

One thing I wish I did add during the talk was an explanation of why, for this particular [0,1] game, mixed strategies were not appropriate. It would have been very difficult to succinctly prove the point without preparation, but I could have at least elucidated the general principle that was at play: players in a Nash equilibrium will never make a play that has less EV than another available play in any situation, nor will they make a play that has the same EV if that play can then be exploited by an opponent.

With the hand of 7/9, for example, player X has the same EV whether he check-raises or bets. However, this is not his "indifference point" because if he check-raises here instead of betting like he "should" in the Nash equilibrium, he allows player Y to change his strategy and improve his (Y's) EV. This violates the definition of Nash equilibrium (in which no player can change his strategy to improve his EV). I think the more fundamental point that the professor was getting at with this question may have been this: isn't it worth mixing up your strategy with every hand in order to avoid becoming predictable to your opponent? The answer to this is no. I'm not sure why this answer meets with such resistance among poker players (necessitating my repeated refutations), but it really does seem to offend most players' basic idea of what good poker looks like. I guess they think that their opponents will be able to figure out what they are holding if they play their hand the "right" way every time. However, this problem of predictability is completely solved by simply playing other hands the same way. Player Y cannot know which of the hands in the range [0,4/9] and [8/9,1] X has checked with. [Edit.] No need to sacrifice any EV trying to throw your opponent off any further. Sacrificing EV is, by definition, always the wrong play unless you gain it back somehow. In this case you gain nothing back.

Four more points about randomizing your play...

First, I'm not saying that X should always play the hand "1/3" the same way against all opponents, only that he should play it the same way against player Y, who plays optimally. Against other players, X might maximize his EV by betting with the hand 1/3. In any given situation, X should not be randomizing his play between two or more actions; he should be choosing the single action that seems to maximize his EV based on all the information that is available to him.

Second, the very fact that X sometimes plays this hand differently based on his opponents and other situational factors serves as a sort of pseudo-randomizing of X's play. That is to say, to other players, X's strategy will look random even though it's not. X knows the reason he is playing differently, so he is not "randomizing" his play; he is always maximizing his EV for a given situation. X's opponents, unable to completely discern all the factors X has taken into account before making his play, will view his play as being random. Even if you believe you need to make your play look random to your opponents (which I think is wrong), this should already be accomplished because the situational factors are just to complex for all players to evaluate in the same way.

Third, your play will be randomized because you will make mistakes. No need to add extra "intentional mistakes" when you are playing a game that is hard enough already!

Fourth, your opponents are not likely to be paying close enough attention to take advantage of your predictability anyway, and if they try they will likely do it wrong.

*****

I'm writing this from a hotel in Baltimore; tomorrow begins the recruitment weekend for the Johns Hopkins Biostatistics department.

*****

Edit (3/1/12). This originally said "[0, 1/3] and [2/3, 1]". I fixed it to reflect X's actually check-calling and check-raising ranges of [0, 4/9] and [8/9, 1].

Questions from the Swarthmore Math Talk

I've been thinking about some of the questions I got during and after the talk on Tuesday. I'm pleased with the way I responded for the most part - despite nervousness, I was able to think clearly and give what I think were thoughtful answers to each question. I'm going to use some of those questions as fodder for future posts here on the blog. I know that at least one person other than myself thought each of these questions was worth having answered, which is one more than usual for this blog! I'll share what I can remember from what I said during the talk and add anything else I think is interesting.

Some sample questions I remember:

Is it really optimal to play pure strategies in the [0,1] no-fold one raise game?
Would I recommend professional poker or grad school to undergrad math majors?
How often do I raise?
Do I buy in short or deep in cash games?
Why don't I play tournaments?
Do players at casinos usually know who the props are?

I'll also try to answer other questions if anyone asks in the comments section on this post, especially if you were at the talk (but even if you weren't).

Poker Presentation Slides

I just finished the Mathematical Poker presentation for Swarthmore College Mathematics and Statistics department. There were at least sixty people (I'm guessing), it went well, and there were some good questions afterward. Anyway, for those who are interested, here are the slides I used for the talk.

Poker Talk at Swarthmore

I've been invited by the Swarthmore College math department (from which I graduated) to give a talk about how mathematics is used in poker. The talk will be February 14th and should be added to this page in a few weeks. This colloquium series is open to the public, so feel free to show up if you like. Of course, this is my first attempt at giving such a talk, and in fact it is the first talk of any sort I've given since college, so it might not be very polished. That said, I'm working hard to make it interesting and engaging. I will be drawing inspriation mostly from The Mathematics of Poker by Chen and Ankenman and also Introduction to Probability with Texas Hold'em Examples by Frederic Paik Schoenberg.


*EDIT 5/3/12* Here is the ad for the talk.

I'm planning to argue for focusing on EV for strategic purposes and then do some analysis of abstract simple forms of poker like the [0,1] and AKQ games analyzed in The Mathematics of Poker. The audience will be mathematicians who are not necessarily familiar with poker, so I will discuss pot odds and equity using a [0,1] game example. I will introduce game theory and solve a simple no-fold [0,1] game and a full-street AKQ game that will yield the optimal bluffing to value betting ratio. I will then shift away from game theory and look at an example of using Bayes' rule to model an opponent's strategy. At the end I plan to list several other aspects of poker that can be interesting to analyze mathematically, but I won't do any of this analysis for the talk (unless I am underestimating my timing, which is unlikely... more likely, I'll have to cut out something like the no-fold [0,1] analysis). These other topics include bankroll strategy, game selection, tournament theory, online data mining, and the metagame. Also, I will allude to the sort of structured hand analysis and concept analysis that I have done here on the blog in past years. All this is supposed to fit into 45 minutes, so I will be doing a lot of rehearsing and tweaking in the next few weeks.



*****

I am quoted in the Intro to Probability book by Schoenberg (a friend and commenter on this blog) criticizing Sklanksy's "Fundamental Theorem of Poker." Beyond that, the book's examples are much more interesting to me as a mathematically-inclined serious poker player than I expected. I would recommend the book to anyone who fits that description and also to statistics departments looking to attract more students to their introductory classes. (I can't imagine going through life without a basic understanding of statistical concepts - not the doing of statistics so much as the interpreting of statistics. "Statisteracy" is a term I recently learned and I think for the health of our society it needs to be an educational focus on par with numeracy... although a catchier word than "statisteracy" would be preferable.)

*****

I said earlier that I planned to apply to some statistics Master's programs. Instead, I applied to the following PhD programs:

Johns Hopkins Biostatistics
UPenn Wharton Statistics
George Washington Statistics
UMBC Statistics
U Maryland-College Park Applied Math & Statistics and Scientific Computation
U Maryland-College Park Economics

*****

I have been playing much less poker than I expected. This is largely due to my applications taking longer than expected, but also, the games are tougher than I expected and I've mostly been losing. Last year was my first losing year, but I played less all year than I used to in a normal month. I haven't played at all this year, although I have been invited to a low-stakes home game next month.

Hollywood Casino at Charles Town

I've completed the move to Mt Airy, Maryland, and Calvin is in a daycare center that he seems to like, so I have a bit of time to give my adoring fans an update.

I'm going to apply to Master's programs in statistics, applied math, or biostatistics, planning to start in Fall 2012. I'm not sure what to do in the meantime, but I do have one better-than-expected option. Hollywood Casino in West Virginia, less than an hour away, is much nicer than I expected. I was imagining something akin to Hollywood Park Casino, due to the fact that it's on a racetrack and in West Virginia (which I unfairly imagined as being rather run-down). Also, it's similar name encouraged the comparison. The fact that their HR department was unfamiliar with the term "poker prop" did not seem to bode well, either. 

In actuality, the casino seems new and the casino floor has the feel of an upscale Vegas casino, a la the Wynn. One drawback is that it feels even more packed with loud slot machines, but it's not too hard to get past those and to the poker room as long as I use the East entrance in the future. (Unaware of this, I used the West entrance on my visit.) When I finally made it to the poker room, it was packed. This was an overcast Saturday afternoon, so that was to be expected. I chatted with a floorman, who told me they have thirty tables, and there were usually wait lists on the weekends. They had discussed expanding downstairs, but that would have displaced some valuable slot machines. That's probably okay, though, because I am more likely to go during the week, when he said they usually only have about 20 tables running. The poker room shares an entrance with the stands for the racetrack, which could cause some unexpected disturbances. Their biggest game is a 5-10 NLH $300 minimum buy-in game, which is very similar to the game I got very used to at the Bike last year. Occasionally they have a 10-20 NLH game, too. They also had some PLO games running, which is also supposedly becoming more popular in Los Angeles. 

I asked the floor man about props, and I was surprised to find that he had never heard of them. When I explained them, he assured me that they have none of them and that employees are not even allowed to play at the casino. Oh well. 

In other news, friend and occasional commenter Rick Schoenberg has an awesome-looking textbook coming out in December called Introduction to Probability with Texas Holdem Examples. Reading the blurb makes me want to go back and review some of those concept analyses I wrote two years ago. That will have to wait until several other projects are finished, I'm afraid. 

Moving to Maryland

The Los Angeles era is almost over (for me, anyway). Brigid got a good job out in Mt. Airy, MD, so we'll be moving there this summer. The closest poker room, I think, will be "Hollywood Casino" in Charles Town, West Virginia. It's actually not very far from Mt Airy, but this still probably means my poker career is over or at least on hiatus. Although poker has treated me pretty well financially the past few years, I haven't really felt passionate about it. Even moving up in stakes after I got laid off didn't help. I've already stopped playing poker except on rare occasions, instead watching little Calvin and investigating my other options.

I've mentioned my interest in trying something else several times on this blog (I did well on the LSAT in February), so this is could work out well. I'll likely go back to school, but not until fall 2012, so I'll pursue some other projects in the meantime. I'll use this blog as well as my twitter feed to give any substantial updates, but don't expect regular posts (or tweets) for a while.

Online Poker Indictments

I haven't been playing or thinking much about poker recently, but there is some big news in the poker world today.

If this were just a cultural decision made for the societal good, I would be upset but ultimately okay with it from a political standpoint. It will be interesting to see what we learn in the coming weeks about the sort of political maneuverings that might have been going on behind the scenes. Brick and mortar casinos in particular might have some incentive to try to take down the online poker sites (now that those sites have done their job in creating so many new poker players fifteen years).

Live at the Bike

My poker/wordswithfriends buddy Aaron (@ALLINAK) tells me that there was a pretty good 5-10NL game at the good 'ol Bicycle Casino yesterday. I had heard the game was dead; I wonder how they got that game going again, but it may be in part due to the Live at the Bike production. I just watched the first half of a $25-$50 NL session that made me really sad that they let me go. That was a juicy, juicy game, but it was much bigger than I'm used to playing. I also think playing on Live at the Bike could actually be help my game a bit, because the commentary is like free coaching. I think Nichoel is a good player, and I would certainly be interested to hear what she had to say about my game. Of course, the fact that anyone else can also watch me play would be a big downside.

I haven't been back to the Bike since being laid off. Considering how tough the Commerce's 10-20 game has been my past few sessions, I might find my way back to the Bike at some point. It just seems kind of wrong to be playing there without getting paid.

The (Poker) World in Turmoil

After playing very little this year due to LSAT studying and visitors, I went to the Commerce yesterday and was filled in on some gossip. Haig Kalegian, the Bike's managing general partner, has supposedly been bought out by a group including Hashem Minaiy, the Bike's CEO. I know both of them a little bit, Haig better than Hashem.  Meanwhile, several people tell me the Bike no longer runs the $500 NL game that I used to prop. This is particularly interesting to me because when I was laid off my supervisor told me they had a plan to keep the game going without me. I wonder if it was their plan all along to kill the game or if they just couldn't keep it going.

My winning streak ended in January... but it doesn't mean much since I only played seven hours.

Did you know there's a whole community living under Las Vegas?

Brigid should be finishing up her PhD soon (probably by the end of the year), so we may be on the move again as soon as September. Fortunately for me, poker rooms seem to be cropping up in the east as legislators look for new ways to bring in tax revenue. For example, there are big plans in Cleveland.

LAPC

I knew it was starting soon, but I didn't realize the first event is today. The action at Commerce during this event is legendary, and I've been looking forward to getting in on it now that I'm not working.

I made the mistake of signing up to take the LSAT in a few weeks. I haven't taken any standardized tests in years, so I need to do some studying. I'll probably only play about once a week until after the test. At least the LAPC will still be going on a few weeks after the that. Maybe I'll even play a few tournaments.

I've Been Laid Off

December 10 was my last day at the Bike. They offered me a position as a prop for the 8-16 limit and $80 NL games, which paid much less. I decided to strike out on my own, hopefully finding another similar propping job elsewhere. I really liked it at the Bike - good atmosphere, decent food, good relationships with most of the people there - and I had a pretty sweet deal, so I'm quite disappointed to be let go (despite having recently considered leaving).

In the past few weeks I've made my first trip to the Commerce in three years and my first ever trip to Hawaiian Gardens. My tentative plan is to play mostly 10-20 NL at the Commerce, probably three days a week, unless I can find another propping job. I played there on Monday, and the game seems just as beatable as the Bike's 5-10 NL, so I think it should be good as long as I can take the swings. Compared to most poker players, I'm quite good at dealing emotionally with swings, but I think it will be a lot harder if I'm playing less often, especially considering the higher stakes.

Hawaiian Gardens seems like the most likely casino to be hiring these days, but they don't pay as much and I would probably have to work overnight. On December 4, three days after I was told I was being laid off, I went to Hawaiian Gardens for the first time to check it out. There were a ton of games going, mostly low limit, but they also had two 5-10 NL games, which is more than the Bike usually has. The games were pretty good, and the food excellent, but the atmosphere is rather chaotic. I think it might be draining to work there forty hours a week.

With my free time I might try to do some poker studying, in which case I'll have some fodder for some analysis on the blog.

Winning Streak Stays Alive

I haven't had a losing month since September 2009 (-$415), and in fact have won at least $1500 each month. When I posted last time, I was up about $2200 with only four days to go in October. I lost almost all of that in the first three days of that week, and was up $84 going into Friday. I try to make a point of not worrying about streaks or short term wins or losses because they can only interfere with the ultimate goal of making optimal decisions on each hand, but the streak was on my mind since I had written about it the previous week. Anyway, I had a big day on Friday, and won just over $3000 for the month. Streak stays alive! I will probably not update on this regularly because I don't want it to interfere with my play.

Rumor has it that the Live at the Bike game is set to resume next week. A section of the Plaza (the poker section where I play) has been cordoned off with a table that will be fitted with hole cams. I don't know why the Live at the Bike was shut down a few years ago, but it really seems like a great idea: people will find the live feed on the internet and learn about the Bike, and lots of people will probably show up just for the novelty of playing in a "televised" game. I'm not thrilled with the idea of being filmed and my cards being broadcast, but if that's what brings in the customers, I'm all for it.

Supposedly on Thursdays we'll also have a "2-11" game in the Plaza, played $100-$300 buyin NL for high only. I'll need to do some strategy analysis if I play. 2-11 is basically a variant of Omaha, and I don't even really know Omaha strategy very well. I guess nobody really knows 2-11 strategy yet, but good Omaha players might have a head start.

I've mentioned before that it might become awkward if people at the casino found my blog. This has happened, but not in quite the why I envisioned. I thought the awkwardness would be among the players, who I occasionally write about. Instead, one of my supervisors found the blog! She called me into her office to let me know it's being monitored, but it seems like they are pretty much okay with it.

Still Slow at the Bike, But Plenty Is Going On

After having my most profitable month ever in September (ignoring jackpot winnings), I'm at some risk of having my first losing month in over a year. I'm up so far this month, but only a little and I could easily lose it if my last week of October goes poorly. Not bad considering I had five losing months in 2009. My win rate this year (playing mostly NL) is three times that of last year (playing mostly limit), and despite an initial jump in volatility, overall my hourly standard deviation this year has been only 10% higher than last year. Of course, avoiding having any losing months is not the object of poker, but it's nice to see all the black in my spreadsheet.

I went to Vegas two weeks ago to visit the In-Laws. It turned out to be a good venue for a mini reunion. I stopped by several poker rooms, and it was all very, very slow. The Mirage was almost completely dead around noon on a Sunday.

Things have gotten pretty slow at the Bike recently, particularly for my regular $500 NL game, which I played for only eleven hours in four days this week. However, they have had two or three 20-40 limit games going most days (thanks mostly to a new crop of flexible, low wage, silent props and a promotion giving players $5-$10 per hour, depending on the time of day), and often a 50-100 mix game, which includes Badeuci and Badacey, mixes of Badugi with 2-7 lowball or A-5 lowball, respectively.

I met Pinkerton, one of this blog's occasional commenters. He introduced himself after we'd been chatting for quite a while without my realizing who he was. This was the second time a reader has introduced himself at the casino, and in both cases they were reasonably discreet about it. As I told Pinkerton, it might become awkward for me if the existence of this blog became common knowledge at the Bike.

The day I met Pinkerton I also met Charles Lei, an online pro and poker teacher at dragthebar.com. He made the mistake of saying "nice hand" to a player after this player beat the volatile Vinny Vinh in a pot. Vinny took offense and harrassed Charles a bit. I stood up for Charles, telling Vinny I didn't think Charles had done anything wrong. Hours later, Vinny retaliated by calling the floorman immediately after I got up for a bathroom break, telling him I had been away for hours and that the f-ing props think they can do whatever they want and still get a paycheck (another player told me about this later). The other players stood up for me, but the dealer agreed with Vinny (!), so I returned to find my chips picked up and my seat taken by a new player. Oh well. Good one, Vinny! You got me. Anyway, Charles has been discussing hands and players with me every day since then, which is nice for me because he has refined his game pretty well and has some useful observations.

211 poker is returning at 2:11PM on Monday, only this time it will be played only for high, both limit and no-limit. The game failed to catch on back in February 2009, when it was played as a high-low split pot game. I hope it catches on and brings some more people to the casino, but I just don't know if there's much of a market for a new game nowadays. Maybe they should wait until 2:11 on 2/11/2011.

Also rumored to be returning is Live at the Bike, which is an online video feed of actual cash game action at the Bike. Nichoel Peppe, whose position at the Bike I took after she left for Arizona, is likely returning to be a regular commentator on the program. Supposedly the high-stakes game that her husband was playing in Arizona broke after three of the regulars died of old age, so he and Nichoel recently moved back to Los Angeles. I think the Live at the Bike game will be at least 10-25 blinds. I'd like to try it, but it will be very awkward having cameras on both my cards and me.

My Blocking Bet is Disrespected

Generally, I'm not a big proponent of the idea that you should try to think one "level" higher than your opponent, as is advocated in a lot of NLHE poker books, including a chapter called "Multiple Level Thinking" in No Limit Hold 'em: Theory and Practice by David Sklansky and Ed Miller. Game theory takes care of this because it solves for the infinite-level. It cannot be out-thought; there is no higher level. Anyway, I had an interesting hand this week in which I ended up needing to think one level higher than my opponent. This is unusual. It only came up because my opponent and I have a rich history of hands against each other and because I made a weak play at one point in the hand that my opponent attempted to exploit. In fact, this opponent is the same player I named "X" in an earlier post, "Raising as a Bluff." Player X is a very good player. I know he has been paying special attention to my game for the past year, and he seems to pride himself on acting on his reads. I play a relatively predictable style; he knows this, and I know he knows this.

The reason my strategy is relatively predictable is that I usually try to play close to "optimally" in a game-theoretical sense. I don't go as far out of my way as most players do to mix up my play. If I truly played optimally, my strategy would not be exploitable (by definition), but, in practice, my play has many deviations from optimal, but intentional and (mostly) unintentional. One play I like to make that's probably not optimal is to make a small blocking bet when I'm out of position on the river and my opponent is likely to successfully bluff me out of the pot if I check. Once in a while I will make this same play with the near nuts. This makes it very expensive for my opponent to raise me as a bluff, and most people will just call me unless they have the nuts. I don't think player X has ever seen me make this type of blocking bet with the nuts, though. I know he has seen me do it a few times with medium-strong hands that cannot stand a raise.

On to the hand in question: Player X had about $1700 and I had him covered. I raised in early position with AsQh to $30 and got two callers, including player X.

Flop($100 pot): QcJh6c. I bet $65, X called.
Turn($230 pot): 4c. I checked, X bet $120, I called.
River($470 pot): 6h. I bet $160. My intention here is to force a cheap showdown. In my mind, X cannot be sure I didn't flop a set or two pair and then make a full house on the river. This should make it very dangerous for X to raise me here if he just has a flush. In truth, I probably would have bet a set on the turn even though the flush came in, but how could Player X be sure of this?

After I bet, player X says, "Really, Keith?" He thinks for 30 seconds and then raises to $660. My plan was to fold to a raise, but I stop to consider the circumstances. I have to call $500 more to win a pot that will be almost $1800 all told. If there's a 28% chance that X is bluffing, a call is profitable. I thought back over my play and realized that it was highly unlikely I would have a full house on the river here. Player X knows I couldn't have a hand like Q6 because I don't raise with that preflop, and he knows that if I had a set, I would have bet out on the turn. This means that my blocking bet was very transparently weak. My range here doesn't really include anything to scare my opponent. The truth is that he realized this before I did, and he had the guts to capitalize on it. However, I still had a chance to rectify the situation. I just had to think one level beyond X. When he raised me to $500, he could not have expected me to call. If he had a flush, he would have raised less or just called. I've seen him bluff with small pocket pairs before, and that is what I kind of expected him to have. I called and he showed me Td9d, a broken straight draw.

It occurs to me that most of my posts about hands involve my explaining how clever I was. Let me just acknowledge at this point that this is a result of severe selection bias. It's more fun for me to write about such hands, and I imagine it's more fun for you to read about them.

Slow Days at the Bike

I changed my schedule; I still work four days, but now I work Mondays instead of Tuesdays in order to accommodate Calvin's daycare schedule. Yesterday, the $500 NL game never got started. This was the first time I've worked on a Monday since February, but this has never happened that I can remember on any day other than maybe once on Friday, which is always slow. Also, on Friday, the game didn't start until 6:45pm, 15 minutes before I go home. I've been playing Hi-Lo Stud (down about $500) and some $300-$500 buyin no-limit (up about $600). They did have a list for the $500NL game yesterday, and there were two $300-500 games going. Supposedly a lot of the regular players are at the Commerce for a holdem tournament series. I do hope the game kicks back up again soon, since I think it's the most profitable for me. Also, they might lay me off otherwise!

Meanwhile, people have been talking about the murder of a $20K jackpot winner on his way home from Hawaiian Gardens late Thursday or Friday night. The story is that the victim fought back against the thief and was hit by a car driven by the thief's accomplice. His girlfriend apparently escaped unharmed. There was some speculation at the casino that the girlfriend may have set him up.

This sort of thing is, of course, unfortunate, and for me it's also rather scary. I personally leave all but a few hundred of my cash at the casino each day, but I'm not sure a thief would realize I did this. It's not hard to recognize me as one of the regular players in the $500 NL game, and it might seem reasonable to assume I carry my entire bankroll with me. Indeed, I think there are a few people who do this. Unfortunately, this must make us all very tempting targets.

Preparing to Return

After four weeks without poker, it can be a little hard to get back in the swing of things. You might think taking a month off would refresh my poker juices and have me chomping at the bit to get back to the tables, but the truth is I don't think about the game at all when I take time off. I'm going back to work in two days, though, so I figure I should get my mind back to thinking about poker a little. I'm reading a surprisingly good book called The Full Tilt Tournament Poker Strategy Guide, in which different authors each write one or more chapters. Authors include Chris Ferguson (which is why I got the book), Ted Forrest, Gavin Smith, and Howard Lederer. Although it is billed as a tournament guide, many of the chapters can be applied almost directly to cash games. I just finished a really useful chapter by Andy Bloch that includes lots of nifty charts. One of them completely trumps the interesting but completely impractical "Sklansky-Chubokov" numbers found in No Limit Hold 'em: Theory and Practice by David Sklansky and Ed Miller. Bloch's numbers are similarly interesting and impractical, but slightly more practical and thus slightly more interesting. Basically, both try to give you an idea of when it's better to go all-in rather than fold if you are heads-up and your decision is binary (push or fold). Bloch's other charts include the win percentages of every hand when up against a random hand or a top 10% hand, as well as some other hand ranges.

Anyway, I'm hoping this book will pique my interest in returning to work on Wednesday.