For All Those Considering ADHOC -- ADHOC Day!

[mmbt0ne]

I finished at 5, stayed online talking to people til about 5:40, then went to bed. Unforunately there was a huge storm going on, so the satellite had just gone out, and I had exhausted my DVD-watching ability, so I just crashed.

One more fun fact:
06/04/2005 - 2049 hands, <font color="green">$146.71</font>
06/05/2005 - 3996 hands, <font color="red">($5.65)</font>

Now, for a proper ADHOC write-up...

I have never been one to put in long sessions. Ever. Honestly, before this, my longest session had been a little under 4 hours on Christmas Eve, which is also the only other time I cleared a bonus in one sitting. Other than that, I probably have played for over 3 hours maybe a handful of times. One and a half hours is usually my standard unless there is a really good table.

Let me explain how little I usually play some more. I played more hands in that session than in the entire months of February and April (5916 and 4534 respectively). Granted, in February there are only 28 days [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] and in April I actually had a job and started playing SnGs a lot, I rarely play more than 10k hands in a month. However, February was my most profitable month as far as winnings. Very odd (I haven't looked at May's total yet though). So far in June now, I already have 6500 hands, and a couple dozen SnGs to my name.

So, I only say this because some other people might be intimidated to try it. There are probably not too many active contributors here who play as short as I do (cough cough TSC), so no non-equipment related excuses for quitting. I did disconnect twice during ADHOC because Earthlink blows, but that only cost me about 10 hands each time. The scariest part was about an hour in, I had just moved my sister's mini-fridge from the garage (she had also just gotten home from college) down to the basement, and, without thinking, plugged it into the same surge protector as my computer. The first time the compressor kicked on everything flashed, and I had a heart attack thinking my computer had just turned off. I quickly unplugged the minifridge, and decided it'd be better to walk across the room whenever I wanted something to drink.

As for the results, it sucks to run bad on your longest session ever, but for a while there I was cruising at 16BB/100 which was outrageous. I guess I was due for a kick in the face, and being tired for the bad run certainly didn't help the results any. Now that I'm finished with it, I'm actually kinda happy that I ended down after 4k hands of .50/1. I know that I'm a winning .50/1 player, call it a hunch, or 30k hands of a 5BB/100 winrate, but I'm pretty confident in that statement. Knowing that I could have a downswing for that many hands, even if some of it was because of mental state, makes me feel a lot more confident when I'm trying to move up limits and getting beat. Of course I might be a losing player there, but now I have a pretty clearcut example of what can happen to a winning player, and not just a spreadsheet from Homer about streaks.

About my play over the 24 hours, I obviously haven't had time to go over all of the hands, and I never will, but I'm planning on looking at a few sessions from random points throughout ADHOC. I didn't notice many horribly -EV moves, even in the latter stages, but I was certainly making small mistakes here and there. The main thing I noticed is that I tightened up a lot during the final stages. You're making so many decisions already, that you start wanting to make them less and less. Hands like K7s and J8s that I was playing well early in ADHOC, were usually getting folded later on. Similarly, A4s UTG, usually a winning hand, but I really didn't have the energy to be thinking about whether or not I was going to valuebet a pair of Aces with my kicker not playing into 3 LP-P opponents on the river. -EV? Sure. But in all honesty, it was still probably a better play for me than trying to ride the hand out. Basically, it would be safe to say that around hour 19 or 20, my play went from SSHE to WLLH with a little SSHE thrown in here and there.

Overall, it was a great experience, and I couldn't have made it threw with Clayton and SippinSoma on AIM for the last few hours. Now I understand how greatful they were when I was there just starting the ADHOC as they were finishing. I think it would be a rare event that someone could pull this off without other poker players. I obviously have a small sample size, but the last couple hours, you really need someone to yell at about bad beats, gloat to about hitting your outs, and just generally put up with the craziness you start talking.

As my final ADHOC gift, here is a graph of the money I made, over the hands I played. Each data point indicated a different table, and they are sorted by when I closed each table.