Results from Last Night
I am working on a longer post, something that may or may not resemble an essay. I really have no idea when it will be ready to post. I have a busy week and then I am going for a long weekend to San Francisco and Napa Valley with a beautiful brunette honey-baby. Don't worry-my girlfriend is fine with it.
If you want to know just what kind of guy I am, get this. You're here, you're reading this blog, you probably realize by now that I'm a poker player, and that I love poker. As everyone knows, California is the poker capital of the world. Actually, I don't know it first hand, because I, your humble and oh-so-lovable Chicago Phil, have never been to California. There, I said it. I'm glad we got that out in the open. So I am traveling to the poker capital of the world for the first time in my life. And since I am vacationing with someone, I thought it would only be fair for me to limit the amount of poker I play.
So, how much time does a nice and decent fellow spend playing poker vs. spending time with his partner on such a trip? I would guess (and I'm sure you all agree) that the nicest poker-playing guy in the universe would probably play 60% poker and spend 40% of his time with his girl. That's assuming that this super-nice guy had been to Cali many many times before. Now, keeping the image of this angelic and idealistic young man's 40% sacrifice in mind, guess how much poker I agreed to limit myself to?
0% POKER TIME. You read that right. It's not a typo. I didn't forget to put a "7" in front of that zero. I am going on a pilgrimage to the holiest of holy lands, and I will not be spending a single minute in front of the altar. A dark and bitter irony.
So, like I said, I am working on a long post, but I might not have it ready this week, as I will be up to my eyeballs in sacrilege.
So, I had about 1.5 hours to play last night, and decided that I would play a little limit. Lately I have been splitting my time between NL tournaments and limit ring games. When I play limit, I shoot for multiple tables of $5-10, usually three. Last night I started with one table on Pacific, and it was so slow that I decided I could handle four tables at once. So I fired up three tables at Party and I was off to the races. Four tables might be too many. When I play four, the key is to play tight and make large multi-way pots my goal. I do not avoid heads-up situations, but I don't go out of my way to seek them out, either. One example: if I were playing in a live game, and I felt the blinds were weak-tight, I would raise with any two cards in an unopened pot from the button, and a wide range of hands from the cutoff. When playing multiple tables online, I tend toward releasing more hands in these positions. Of course, it also much harder to have an accurate read on the blinds when you have a bunch of tables open at once.
One of the main disadvantages to playing multiple tables is game selection. I use some very basic criteria to pick my tables online-average pot-size and average percentage of players who see the flop (Party does not provide the latter information). When I play live (at one table, obviously), it's pretty easy to tell whether you are sitting in a gold mine or in the middle of a desert. When you have multiple games going, your attention is more focused on the mechanics of switching between tables and the constant decision-making than the strength or weakness of the table. I find that I rarely leave a table once I sit down at a group of them simultaneously , and this can't be a good thing. Game selection is #1 on my list of skills I want to work on.
I felt like I was having a brutal night, with a lot of flopping big only to get beat by someone flopping bigger or hitting their flush/straight draws on the river. When I totaled up at the end of my highly frustrating session(s), I was stunned to realize that I had only lost $109. Somehow it seemed much, much worse. After a stellar week, losing $109 is a pretty tolerable loss.
Since I am playing limit again, I have purchased PokerTracker. I don't have enough data for it to be useful yet, though. My initial impressions of it are very positive, though. I particularly like that it auto-requests hand histories from the major sites. I can never remember to do this on my own.
If you want to know just what kind of guy I am, get this. You're here, you're reading this blog, you probably realize by now that I'm a poker player, and that I love poker. As everyone knows, California is the poker capital of the world. Actually, I don't know it first hand, because I, your humble and oh-so-lovable Chicago Phil, have never been to California. There, I said it. I'm glad we got that out in the open. So I am traveling to the poker capital of the world for the first time in my life. And since I am vacationing with someone, I thought it would only be fair for me to limit the amount of poker I play.
So, how much time does a nice and decent fellow spend playing poker vs. spending time with his partner on such a trip? I would guess (and I'm sure you all agree) that the nicest poker-playing guy in the universe would probably play 60% poker and spend 40% of his time with his girl. That's assuming that this super-nice guy had been to Cali many many times before. Now, keeping the image of this angelic and idealistic young man's 40% sacrifice in mind, guess how much poker I agreed to limit myself to?
0% POKER TIME. You read that right. It's not a typo. I didn't forget to put a "7" in front of that zero. I am going on a pilgrimage to the holiest of holy lands, and I will not be spending a single minute in front of the altar. A dark and bitter irony.
So, like I said, I am working on a long post, but I might not have it ready this week, as I will be up to my eyeballs in sacrilege.
So, I had about 1.5 hours to play last night, and decided that I would play a little limit. Lately I have been splitting my time between NL tournaments and limit ring games. When I play limit, I shoot for multiple tables of $5-10, usually three. Last night I started with one table on Pacific, and it was so slow that I decided I could handle four tables at once. So I fired up three tables at Party and I was off to the races. Four tables might be too many. When I play four, the key is to play tight and make large multi-way pots my goal. I do not avoid heads-up situations, but I don't go out of my way to seek them out, either. One example: if I were playing in a live game, and I felt the blinds were weak-tight, I would raise with any two cards in an unopened pot from the button, and a wide range of hands from the cutoff. When playing multiple tables online, I tend toward releasing more hands in these positions. Of course, it also much harder to have an accurate read on the blinds when you have a bunch of tables open at once.
One of the main disadvantages to playing multiple tables is game selection. I use some very basic criteria to pick my tables online-average pot-size and average percentage of players who see the flop (Party does not provide the latter information). When I play live (at one table, obviously), it's pretty easy to tell whether you are sitting in a gold mine or in the middle of a desert. When you have multiple games going, your attention is more focused on the mechanics of switching between tables and the constant decision-making than the strength or weakness of the table. I find that I rarely leave a table once I sit down at a group of them simultaneously , and this can't be a good thing. Game selection is #1 on my list of skills I want to work on.
I felt like I was having a brutal night, with a lot of flopping big only to get beat by someone flopping bigger or hitting their flush/straight draws on the river. When I totaled up at the end of my highly frustrating session(s), I was stunned to realize that I had only lost $109. Somehow it seemed much, much worse. After a stellar week, losing $109 is a pretty tolerable loss.
Since I am playing limit again, I have purchased PokerTracker. I don't have enough data for it to be useful yet, though. My initial impressions of it are very positive, though. I particularly like that it auto-requests hand histories from the major sites. I can never remember to do this on my own.