2005 challenge - sketchy on details

[fnord_too]

Well, I haven't written one of these in a few weeks because so much has been on hold with the arival of the new baby.

I haven't updated my spreadsheets in a while (I keep records in books, which I later transfer to spread sheets.) So I am not positive where I am at for the year. I think I am up 10K or so, which is far far below where I want to be, but then again far ahead of nothing or negative numbers.

So since the baby was born almost 6 weeks ago, I have gotten next to nothing done. No exercize, no work on my neural nets, and little meaningful poker in. Part of the problem is that my office with the nice dual monitor machine is on the third floor, and I have been staying on the first floor, where all I have is a laptop with a 1024X768 screen.

So I have been playing a lot of low stakes no limit trying to improve that game and build up my UB bankroll. I've been playing between the .5/1 and 2/4 levels. Between that and reading the NL forums, I realize I really need to think about this game a lot, as it requires significantly different skills than what I currently have.

I am pretty happy with where I am at in the party 15/30 game. I think for the year I am at ~1.25BB/100, but since January, I am over 2BB/100. More importantly I feel like I am playing far better than I was at the beginning of the year, and I rarely feel at sea in that game.

Tournaments are a continual frustration. I think I am bringing my A game, but just not catching any breaks. I really am not finding myself making a whole lot of boneheaded plays, with the notable exception of the KotZ tourney last week, where I made two huge blunders. My suck out/sucked out on ratio is very low this year. Also, those double shootouts on stars are incredibly draining. I have played three so far, and have just been completely spent after each.

So, basically, every goal I have for the year is in dire jeopardy. I am not getting my limit ring game hands in (though I have gotten a ton of NL ring in lately), I am floundering in tournaments, and I am not even getting the exercize I planned to in.

On the up side, I am pretty happy with where my game is at and am still improving daily.

The next thing on my agenda is to write some code to compute pot equity in all in hands where stack sizes are different. This is necessary for some tournament analysis I am doing, and is a bit more complex (the analysis, not the code) than I had originally thought, and I don't think the equity from poker stove is a good enough approximation here. (That is, I think I absolutely need to condiser the times when side pots go to different players.)

I think I will try to put these out once a month, and I will definitely try to have numbers next time. Also, sometime this week I should here back from my accountant and I will find out if I have enough money set aside for taxes or not!

Meh, just read this in preview and saw more poor grammar than I have time to fix.

[pottie]

[ QUOTE ]
So I have been playing a lot of low stakes no limit trying to improve that game and build up my UB bankroll. I've been playing between the .5/1 and 2/4 levels. Between that and reading the NL forums, I realize I really need to think about this game a lot, as it requires significantly different skills than what I currently have.


[/ QUOTE ]


Hi fnord, know you havent got lots of time but would appreciate if you could elaborate on this.

Thanks

[fnord_too]

First, it is signficantly different than tournamnet no limit for three big reasons:

Stack sizes are usually much deeper, which affects implied odds greatly.

You can buy more chips, so you don't hurt future hands by losing chips in this hand. (That is, you don't hurt your future implied odds by losing chips since you can reload. This is the least of the three.)

Cashing Equitity in tournaments really skews decisions in the middle/late tournament.


As opposed to limit ring games, here are some of the major schisms:

Implied odds are everything in no limit pre flop. The amount of hands you can play and the way you pay them is vastly different. Also, implied odds are pretty huge post flop.

Stack sizes greatly impact implied odds (I know this is obvious, but in limit you rarely consider stack size, and 12BB is the most anyone can bet in a limit hold'em hand with a 4 bet cap, even HU. Since I play almost exclusively on line, that is almost always the situation for me).

Controlling the pot size is extremely important in NL. Pots can spiral out of control very quickly, and knowing how to manage this is a skill I am working on.
You have a lot more folding equity in NL. The pressure you can bear in NL is so much greater than it is in limit. Which means....

Hand reading and opponent reading are much more important in NL. A mistake in limit will cost you at most a few BB. In no limit it can cost you your stack. The opponent part is huge. You have to know what the chances of your opponent stacking off if you hit your hand are. Also, you have to know if you can move an opponent off his hand. My thoughts right now are that these are closely related, so pre flop you have two axes: stacking off potential and bluffing potential. These are inversely related, but probably not in a straightforward linear way.

Position is much more important in NL. Position is incredibly important in controling pot size and bluffing.


These are some thoughts off the top of my head on a (THEY STOLE A DAMN HOUR FROM ME) monday morning. There is a lot of great theory that people who actually understand the game talk about in the NL forums (though you do have to weed though a lot of drama in the high stakes forum.)