My 2nd Biggest Losing Hand

Student · #1 07-22-2005, 01:38 PM

Posting my worst hand was so educational that I decided to post my second worse hand too. Thank You!

On 7-16 (Saturday) I had a breakthru in understanding. I played 398 hands Sat., Mon., and Tues., doing 214 hands on Tues. alone! Even though I lost a small amount on Tues., overall winnings were $5.65 in my 1/2 cents NL HE games, which averages 71 BBs/100.

Here's my second worse hand, whereby my JJ lost $1.02:

____________________________________
PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.02 BB (8 handed) converter

saw flop|saw showdown

Hero ($1.02)
BB :#A500AF(Villain)/ ($1.84)
UTG ($1.66)
UTG+1 ($4.01)
MP1 ($1.70)
MP2 ($2.26)
CO ($1)
Button ($5.34)

Preflop: Hero is SB with J[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img].
2 folds, MP1 calls $0.02, 1 fold, CO calls $0.02, 1 fold, Hero completes, BB :#A500AF(Villain)/ checks.

Flop: ($0.08) 6[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], 6[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], Q[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] (4 players)
Hero bets $0.1, Villain raises to $0.48, MP1 folds, CO folds, Hero calls $0.38.

Turn: ($1.04) K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] (2 players)
Hero checks, Villain bets $0.52, Hero calls $0.52 (All-In).

River: ($2.08) T[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $2.08

Results in white below: 
Hero has Js Jh (two pair, jacks and sixes).
Villain has 6d 9s (three of a kind, sixes).
Outcome: Villain wins $2.08. 
____________________________________

Student · #2 07-22-2005, 01:59 PM

I screwed up by hitting the submit button inadvertently. Sorry! Here's where I think I went wrong.

I was so overjoyed to have JJ in the hole (the 4th strongest opening hand in NL HE), that I simply refused to even consider what the pair of 6s on the board meant, in terms of the nuts hand!

If I'd have raised preflop, even to 4 cents, probably Villain would have folded with his 96u, and I would have made a little with my nice opening cards instead of losing alot (or maybe the guy who folded after my 10 cents flop bet would have stayed in; who knows?).

OK, so I'd bet 10 cents after the flop! I'd slow-played my JJ preflop. When Villain raised to 48 cents, he was saying he felt he had a superior hand. Both 66 on the flop,and Q on the flop, had me beat big-time, and Villain was kind enough to tell me about it! But did I have ears to hear or eyes to see? Of course not. Not this pig-headed old coot! So I ended up going all-in, losing my second biggest hand...

Dave

PS: By the way, this was the 55th hand of 83 played on Monday, the second day of my breakout period. This was the day of my most success, as I took $37.10 to $40.43. That's $3.33 net, and 201 BBs/100. I'd say I was too enthusiastic for my own good, a thing that happens with me occasionally (I wouldn't change a thing)!

Tilt · #3 07-22-2005, 10:50 PM

You need to absorb your opponent's reaction to each action you take and interpret it, in the context of your reads on the opponent.

Preflop: You did not raise. Why not? So you learned nothing about what your oponent holds from the action. He could haveany two. WHy not a 6 at this point?

Flop: He raises you on a paired board with an overcard. It is not a small raise, but is small enough that it seems to be asking for a call. What would a player like this do this with? Probably a hand that beats you.

The only hand that you beat is a pure bluff. Was he weak/passive before and is only now raising you on a flop? Does he routinely raise flops? These would be clues as to whether this was a bluff.

In any case, you have to decide on the flop whether you are ahead or behind here. You cannot proceed to call half your stack in without deciding this. And then I think its time to either fold to the raise, or go all-in. Calling is a ply I would rarely make.

Turn play: I would only check/call in this situation if I wanted to induce a bluff, i.e. I was very sure I was ahead and that the opponent would continue to spew chips with something like A high.

Student · #4 07-22-2005, 11:28 PM

[ QUOTE ]
"You need to absorb your opponent's reaction to each action you take and interpret it, in the context of your reads on the opponent."

[/ QUOTE ]
This is very good, and it's probably where I'm starting to get. I'm starting to realize that one can sit at a table and kind of secure an intuition about the different players at the table. Of course, the overriding consideration at the 1/2 cents NL HE tables I'm playing at is loose/passive behavior. Yet, even over the internet, one realizes that different players express this table behavior in an individual independent fashion.

Thank you very much for your inputs!

Dave

PS: I get lazy, sloppy, out-of-focus etc on occasion. An experienced player would know when he was starting to get like that, and would stand up, run to the other end of the house and back, whatever... Then they'd come back to the table with some freshness and enthusiasm. This hand suffered much, because of the above.

Then too, I suppose I've played less than 3,000 hands of poker in my life, so I haven't learned patterns that would protect me, even concerning elementary mistakes. Today I played 152 hands, and at an overall rate of 113 BBs/100. Even at that, I started the day with a big loss, but I played last on the 19th so I was a bit out of practice. Then too, on the 19th I played 214 hands, which is the most I've ever played. I've had days when I've won more money, but all those occasions were before my "Metamorphosis," hence they were flucks.

Tilt · #5 07-23-2005, 09:30 AM

I actually don't advocate playing these stakes for very long. You can't learn very much from them. They are only slightly removed from play money, and you won't learn much from them. Opponents will almost always call, which leads to a very different strategy than in a real game. Get into a 25NL game to improve your play.

Student · #6 07-23-2005, 12:12 PM

When I switched from freeplay to money poker, my goal was to take my $50 bankroll to $70 on 1/2 cents NL HE PokerStars. Then I would switch to 5/10 cents (nickel and dime). At first this seemed possible, as big fluctuations in my bankroll were happening. Then again, thru June I did no reading of books at all, instead focusing on reading 2+2 posts to the Beginner's Forum and poker magazines. My goals were to gather in some depth of understanding of poker at large, since I'd spent the first 67 years of my life without poker.

I came to the conclusion, in time, that I'd overstayed playing freeplay, and that I had picked up some back playing habits from the experienced, entrenched players I was playing against. Though I'd bought 30 poker books, the first 2 I picked up to read were not useful. Stuff went in one ear, and out the other. Then I focused on Ed Miller's "Getting Started in Hold'em (GSiH), really taking my time reading it. In fact, I'm still reading it!

The moment of my enlightenment is documented in my post to 2+2 (search for Metamorphosis), and makes interesting reading. I'd discussed "gaining escape velocity" and "finding the missing piece to the puzzle," and in fact it was all of this, and more, for me.

So my goals concerning reaching $70 bankroll in 1/2 cents is now replaced by $50 (my starting point, eh?). After all, I'd dropped all the way to $34.12 6-27-05, so the recovery to $50 is meaningful to me. I'll go into 5/10 cents games a bit undercapitalized, with 500 BBs (but I could add money, if pressed). I started gathering stats and thinking casually about 5/10 cents poker, perhaps a week ago. I know 5/10 cents poker will be much less loose than 1/2 cents is.

In fact, this transition will be the only large one, all the way up the limits to my own personal brickwall limit. Where this will happen I don't know, but I hope to go to 10/25 cents, 25/50 cents, 50/100 cents, $1/2, $2/4, $3/6 and $5/10 along the way (provided I learn enough by then!).

Presently I still face building my hand strength tables for head-to-head, 2 opponents, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 opponents. Then I intend to do spreadsheets to display cummulative statistics for each of these situations (example: which hands do I open with so overall I enter 20% of hands, 25% etc).

Why am I talking like this? Because I could be at $50 with my bankroll early next week, given the blistering pace I set winning this last week! So I'm in a replanning mode today...

Dave

PS: What is a 25NL game?

AKQJ10 · #7 07-23-2005, 12:38 PM

Good dialogue -- as usual, I'm just chiming in on one small point I want to ask about in a bit of detail.

[ QUOTE ]
The only hand that you beat [after the flop raise] is a pure bluff.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you sure of this? Seems to me erratic micro-stakes players could play some other hands like this, like pocket 8s or 9s -- they might even think that having "two pair" has somehow improved their holding (GSIH has a bizarre example of this misunderstanding) -- so you can't really say for sure that you're beat. But it's likely enough, and the odds are steep enough, that you're better off folding to fight another day.

In general this is a great example of why you want to raise big pairs. With JJ, QQ, and arguably KK and AA you probably want to have one or at the most two opponents, so raise whatever you think will get it heads up. Of course that's an inexact science, but such is poker.

AKQJ10 · #8 07-23-2005, 12:41 PM

[ QUOTE ]

PS: What is a 25NL game?

[/ QUOTE ]

Max. buyin. Depending on the site, the blinds would probably be something like 10c/25c or so. Of course to implement Ed's SSS you want to buy in for much less.

I think you can learn from nano-stakes -- in this case you'd learn to fold JJ when a typical opponent makes a 5x raise -- but I agree that you should only seek to work out the kinks, then move up and do the same.

Student · #9 07-23-2005, 04:27 PM

A good thing about moving up the levels, from the very bottom, and moving up only when one feels comfortable with the last level, is that you have to play many hands. Not just many hands, but many quality hands, before we move on.

I think the folks who move into multitabling are cheating themselves in the long run. Because they've settled for playing pretty good, good enough for the tables they're multitabling at, they'll never get very, very good at poker at any tables. Presently I can aspire to playing in a really big poker tournament, the kind you see on TV. Why not? Why not think big? So I have to master 1/2 cents NL HE ring games first. So what's new? Life is a series of challenges. If I learn to beat 1/2 cents, I suspect it'll take less time to figure out how to beat 5/10 cents, etc etc.

Once I posted that I felt one would learn 35% of everything possible by playing and mastering freeplay, then another 35% playing and mastering 1/2 cents NL HE, and the last 30% would be spread over all the other limits. I stated this not as a person informed and expert about poker, but as one who had seen the same things in other endeavors of mine, over the years. It's just the way life seems to be!

Now I'm getting into poker more deeply, and I haven't even escaped from 1/2 cents NL HE yet, but I might have to improve on my estimates about the quantity of knowledge available to a person attempting to learn poker. It might be true that 30% of all we will learn about poker will be at levels above 1/2 cents, but that also accepts that the brickwall we'll all eventually hit is closer for some than for others. Then too, we might spend a year understanding a single factor, yet someone else figures it out in 5 minutes, simply because they are predisposed by their disposition, experiences, education, etc to jump this hurdle quickly. Interesting!!! Comments?

Dave

Student · #10 07-23-2005, 04:31 PM

I just misplayed a hand, where I should have gone all-in with my pocket KK, after the flop. My opponent had gone in with Q5u, and managed a pair of 5s on the flop. If I'd have gone all in he wouldn't have completed his set of 555, and I wouldn't have lost the hand big!

Dave