[mdlm]

When I started this poker project one of my initial goals was to beat the best lineup in Turbo Texas Hold’Em (TTH). I had to abandon this goal because I could not get TTH to run correctly on my two-monitor system.

I finally dug out an old 100mhz machine and got TTH to work. It is far, far better than Acespade, its main competitor. In fact, with one exception, I cannot find a single feature in Acespade that is superior to the corresponding feature in TTH. (The one thing I can’t find in TTH is the ability to set up a specific hand and ask one of TTH’s personalities what it would do in that situation. It’s possible that this feature exists and I just haven’t found it).

I set up an all-Conan table and played against it for 100 hands in a 20/40 game with rake and toke. My understanding is that Conan is one of the two best TTH personalities. I was able to beat it for about $750 in these 100 hands. I paid about $50 in rake and toke.

Like Acespade, the main weakness that TTH’s personalities seem to have is that they regularly fold better hands in the face of strong betting. In the 100 hands I played I won 13.5 pots and three of those pots were won on the river when TTH folded a superior hand.

In addition to these defects, the Conan personality appears to grossly overvalue certain hands. If I recall correctly in one hand it went 6 or 7 bets with AK against my 44. It lost that hand when the highest card that appeared was a Q.

Compared to Jones, Conan open-raises far more often. For example, Conan open-raises with A7s in MP while Jones calls. I do not know which is better but it is interesting to note the differences. I should do a thorough analysis of this and maybe program a Jones personality into TTH.

After I played 100 hands against Conan I looked at TTH’s analysis of my play. Preflop I scored 89 on the hands I played and 80 on the way I played them. Overall TTH said that I was a little bit too loose and much too aggressive.

One of the best features of TTH is Sidewinder Sid, a cartoon character who walks through your play and tells you where your play differs from the play of the advisor personality. What I like about this analysis is that it makes it very easy to identify large leaks.

What I am hoping to do is to create a TTH personality that is superior to all of the built-in personalities and then use it to drill. I don’t know if I can create something that plays mid-limit poker, but creating a Jones personality is certainly possible.

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Goal Update

Last week I spent 23 hours on poker: 10 hours in PokerPages tournaments, 4 hours on 2+2, and 9 hours playing with Turbo Texas Hold ‘Em.

I did not spend any additional money last week. I have spent a total of $476.43 out of my $1000 budget.

An update on each of the four goals (which are to be accomplished by 3/30/03):

1. Read and study Jones’ “Winning Low Limit Hold ’Em”
I have confirmed 2 1/3 out of the three points I need to achieve this goal. A point (flush draw value bet) is pending an analysis of 10,000 hands.

2. Beat Acespade
Goal Completed on 11/5/02.
Over a period of 100 hours (3600 hands) I beat Acespade’s best lineup at the rate of over 4 BB/hr.

3. Beat Masque World Series of Poker
Goal Completed on 11/17/02

4. PokerPages 85% rating in one calendar month playing 20 tournaments
My current PokerPages rating is 78.45%. I played four tournaments in the past week and finished #20 out of 125, #38 out of 121, #6 out of 97, #22 out of 131.