Reflections on 1 year / 100K hands of online poker (LC)

[sweetjazz]

Hope it's okay for me to clutter the forums a bit with some refelctions on my first year of playing online poker. I am not a pooh-bah and I don't post much in SS anymore, but this forum has been very useful to me in my development. Along with Home Poker (where I posted my first hand on 2+2), HUSH, Microlimits and Mid-High, SS has given me so much to think about and lots of interesting ideas and analysis. Not to much quite a few good laughs.

I hope my story is one that is encouraging to new players and also underscores the importance of studying the game in order to succeed. I have progressed from playing $0.10/$0.20 home games a year ago to playing $10/$20 and $15/$30 games now that I am (justifiably -- I hope!) confident I can beat (though for how much, I don't know).

It was October 25, 2004 that I played my first hand of poker online. I had deposited $100 on Party Poker, with the intention of seeing whether I could beat the 0.5/1 game there. To this point, I had been playing limit HE for about half a year, playing in a $0.10/$0.20 home game that took place weekly or every other week. While the stakes were low and the game was friendly, we all learned a lot from each other. I was fortunate to be playing against friends who were more skilled than the vast majority of players who play on Party Poker.

My requirements before moving up were set at playing 10K hands of the given limit and having 300 BB for the next limit. For the most part, I have strictly enforced these requirements. (I actually played 1/2 when I had > 250 but < 300 BBs.) And now at the higher limits, I generally want significantly more BBs, though I will sometimes take a shot with around 300 BB if the conditions are right and I feel my game is good enough at that point to take a shot.

I played the 0.5/1 game for over two months before I could log 10K hands. Despite still having some significant flaws in my game, my basic understanding of tight aggressive play allowed me to a big winner in the game. I paid off a bit too much when obviously beat and sometimes put in one raise too many with marginal hands, but relentless value betting and basic understanding of concepts like pots odd and pot equity allowed me to beat the game. It's possibly significant that I ran a bit better than to be expected over those 10K hands (in particular, getting dealt KK about 20% more often than I should have, while getting AA and QQ about as often as can be expected). It gave me confidence that I was a winning player and even though I knew my true winrate might not be as high as what I was experiencing, I was certain that the TAG playing style I was developing was a winning one.

In January, I moved to 1/2. I split my 10K requirement into 5K hands of full ring and 5K of 6 max. At full ring, I ran wicked good. In fact, I played 5,011 hands and stopped there so I could keep my absurd 8.15 BB/100 winrate for all eternity. Most of that came during March where I ran at 9.82 BB/100 for the month, playing 5460 hands. Suffice to say, I am nowhere near that good, but it was again helpful to run well as it built my bankroll and increased my confidence. I wonder if I would have maintained my confidence in a TAG style had a run bad and had a winrate that was barely positive or even slightly negative. At the same time, 6 max gave me more problems. This was likely due to just not running as well, but it was fortuituos, because it forced to work hard on developing my SH game. I read and posted on HUSH a lot more, and my postflop took significant strides during this period of study.

By March, I was playing 2/4 and was fortunate enough to keep running well. At the same time, I was a better player than several months ago, even if there was no way to quantify it do the variance associated with winrates.

My shot at 3/6 came in May. At this point in time, there was no 3/6 6max so I was playing full ring. For the first time, I ran bad. I played 6K hands at 3/6 in May and was barely breakeven. It was the first time I had tasted failure over a prolonged stretch. Part of the results were my inability to adjust to the slightly tighter play and the fact that I still had significant leaks in my game, especially postflop. (Another leak was continuing to limp with PPs in early position even when table conditions didn't warrant it. No longer could I expect to collect tons of bets if I did hit my set, and much more often the pot was raised PF.) And I probably just ran a bit bad too, as there were still plenty of bad players so that I can see (now, in hindsight) that even with my leaks I was still a winner in the game.

Things turned around in June, where I ran really good again. I soon moved up to 5/10, playing both full ring and 6max. I ended up playing over 10K hands at full ring and another 10K hands at 6 max. At this point, the competition was getting better. There were more TAGs at my tables, and leaks in overplaying hands against strong players were hurting me more. I learned a lot playing the 20K+ hands that I ended up playing at this level. I also had a lot of huge swings, so I got used to the effects of variance.

I got a job in New Orleans and moved there in mid-August. I ran bad, so to speak, in real life, as I had to evacuate the city when Katrina hit. But in many ways I was very fortunate, as I had friends and family who helped me along, and I have a job and an apartment to go back to. In the interim, I worked on my poker game. I came up with the noble idea that I would donate a portion of what I won to help the relief efforts. As of the end of August, I had $8.5K earned in my Party account. It was also the time where I felt I was ready to take a shot at 10/20.

Things didn't go well at all. I ran bad, probably the worst I have run during these 100K hands. And it turned out I was completely ready for 10/20. Despite great game selection (so that I was probably still a winner at the 10/20 games I was playing in, despite not being ready for them), I couldn't win in the beginning of September to save my life. Soon I was down to $5K in my account and back to playing 5/10. Then came September 22. I won over $2K just in that day, running incredibly good; I started the day at 5/10 and ended it playing in some incredibly juicy 10/20 games. From there, I didn't look back. I have played 10K hands of 10/20 full and 17K hands of 10/20 6max. I now have the confidence that I am a winner in this game. I have learned a lot, but I still have more to learn. I have improved a lot, but still need much more improvement.

Lately, I have felt that it is time to take a shot at 15/30. So far I have had some success. But more importantly, I feel that I am playing my A game and still learning more.

So 367 days and 98,147 hands later, here I am. My $100 deposit has generated nearly $20K in profits for me, playing mostly as a part-time hobby. But more importantly, I am still having fun learning how to play limit HE better. I don't know how seriously I want to play poker, but I definitely want to keep learning.

Anyway, thanks if you have read this far and I hope you found the story entertaining, albeit not very rich in content. I'll try to add just a little bit of content here at the end.

I have played up to 4 tables at a time, but I often play one or two tables at a time. I have learned A LOT more when I am playing a single table or two tables at a time. I think most of my learning now comes when I decide to play one table for a long strech (usually about 4 hours), concentrating on reading the other opponents and thinking very hard what the right lines to take are against this specific collection of opponents. I actually had one of my best sessions last night. I happened to run incredibly well, but I made a lot of decisions that I felt were optimal given my reads. While I still made a few mistakes, I felt like I played some of the best poker of my life. The area of my game that I am currently looking to improve is to make good decisions as consistently even when I am not running good. Some of my bad runs have been compounded to a degree by my feeling of "I'm getting run over so I must call down even though I am being told I am beat". I guess I still have a long way to go, but I have enjoyed the baby steps I have taken so far.

[thesharpie]

Congrats and interesting story.

[sweetjazz]

Over nearly 100K hands, the hand I have been dealt most is KQo (only one I have been dealt over 1K times). The PP I have been dealt most is KK. The suited hand I have been dealt most is 63s. (But AQs and AJs are 5th and 6th most frequent, respectively, among the suited hands I have been dealt.) In all, I have run pretty well in terms of starting cards. I have been dealt AA 11 times less often than I would expect.

My most infrequent hand is J3s, which I have been dealt 251 times. My most frequent hand, KQo, has been dealt to me 1009 times while my most infrequent offsuit hand, K2o, has been dealt to me 805 times. It would be interesting to see what would be the predicted number of times my most frequent hand would occur over a sample of 98,470 hands.

At this point TT is still a bigger winner for me than JJ (in terms of BB/100). And KJs has done better than AKs. My best hand is AA (not surprising) and my worst hand is 73s, where I lose 0.18 BB/hand. Not surprisingly, I have been dealt 73s in one of the blinds quite often.

I have coldcalled PF 202 times, the most frequent being with AJs (22 times). I am still winning more 4 seats OTB than 3 seats and more 5 seats OTB than 1 OTB, so that gives an idea of how slowly positional winrates converge.

Great story. I enjoyed reading this. Thanks and good luck in the future.

[private joker]

Good thread. Thanks for the numbers.

I stalled at 5/10 in terms of my moving up. I've played 25k hands, but something tells me that still isn't enough. I have well over 400BBs for 10/20, but although I've played a couple sessions here and there, my gut tells me to stay at 5/10 for a total of at least 50k hands. Also, there's always 4 good games going and I like to 4-table.

[sweetjazz]

Definitely do what you are comfortable with. Being comfortable with where you are is important, because you have to be confident in most of your decisions when you play the game. Otherwise, you just become overwhelmed with self-doubt.

I found 5/10 to be difficult and it took me a while to learn to beat it. If I had two suggestions for you, they would be:

(1) Make sure you play some full ring. The reason I say that is that full ring requires you to really become expert in certain routine situations (e.g. playing AK heads up after 3-betting an EP PFR), whereas shorthanded requires you to be good in a wide range of marginal situations. Playing marginal situations is trickier, but there's more room for leaks in your game to go unnoticed, especially because the 6max players on Party are, in general, worse than their full ring counterparts.

(2) Devote some time to playing a single table (and work hard to not be bored by the slowness of the action). There's so much more you can observe just focusing on one table and, in my experience, these observations are key to beating higher limit games. (Over time, these observations may become routine allowing you to multitable again, but I have found that from 3/6 on I could not beat the games without single tabling them for a substantial amount of time.) My rough estimation is that one learns the same amount playing x hands at a single table as one does playing about 5x hands four-tabling. There's nothing wrong with four tabling as a rule, and it's probably the best thing for building your bankroll. But a certain amount of single tabling is best for your long term development.

Congrats on where you have gotten so far and good luck in your continuing development.

[private joker]

[ QUOTE ]


I found 5/10 to be difficult and it took me a while to learn to beat it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? Maybe I've been luckboxing, but I've found the players at 5/10 to be rather awful post-flop and very easy to run over. After 26k hands (now, after today's session), I'm running at a blistering 2.52bb/100, so no complaints at all. I have a hunch that by 50k hands, it will converge down to 1.75-2, but still -- 5/10 full has been great for me.

As for the 6-max, I just don't like it. I know everyone says it's a softer game, and I do believe that it is. But I just don't have fun playing it. I don't like 6-max so I won't play it often. I have played a few thousand hands here and there to get my feet wet, and it's helped me in blind-steal situations at full ring (as well as in B&M play or when full tables get short-handed), but overall I just have a lot more fun at full ring and find that my style gels with that much better.

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
As for the 6-max, I just don't like it. I know everyone says it's a softer game, and I do believe that it is. But I just don't have fun playing it. I don't like 6-max so I won't play it often. I have played a few thousand hands here and there to get my feet wet, and it's helped me in blind-steal situations at full ring (as well as in B&M play or when full tables get short-handed), but overall I just have a lot more fun at full ring and find that my style gels with that much better.

[/ QUOTE ]

And here I thought I was alone in the world.

And congrats, sweetjazz.

[sweetjazz]

I eventually started winning at a solid rate at 5/10, but I found it difficult because there are more TAGs there and I wasn't always adjusting my play to their styles. I tried to push calling station TAGs off AK and sometimes would make value bets against weak-tight TAGs that would only call with better hands than me.

I agree that the play is pretty bad, and since most tables still have one or two players who see about 40% or more flops, I think the game is definitely beatable for a nice amount.

Even at 10/20, while the proportion of competent postflop players is higher, there are still a lot of LAGs and TAGs for whom Hooked on Phonics has not helped their hand reading one bit.