Bloated Pot, Scary Flop

An interesting spot came up twice in a short session last night - after 4-betting a single-suited AAxx PF, the flop comes monotone and my opponent ships into me. So gross, given the pot odds and the potential to be drawing close to dead.

In the first spot, the pot was actually 3-way:

Full Tilt Pot-Limit Omaha, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
Button ($8.87)
SB ($21.94)
BB ($11.43)
UTG ($25.81)
MP ($7.40)
Hero (CO) ($45.11)
Preflop: Hero is CO with A, 4, A, K
UTG calls $0.25, MP calls $0.25, Hero bets $1.25, 2 folds, BB raises to $4.35, UTG calls $4.10, 1 fold, Hero raises to $17.75, BB calls $7.08 (All-In), UTG calls $13.40

Dead money from UTG makes this a must-4-bet. UTG bizarrely decides to call, leaving $8 behind.

Flop: ($47.28) 10, 9, J (3 players, 1 all-in)
UTG bets $8.06 (All-In), Hero folds

Wow, not sure how to script a worse flop. I'm getting almost 7-to-1 and I'm still not sure I can call. It's a 3 way pot and I can count 1,000 ways that I'm totally crushed here. I guess it's a fold.

Turn: ($47.28) 9 (2 players, 2 all-in)
River: ($47.28) 7 (2 players, 2 all-in)
Total pot: $47.28 Rake: $2.36
Results:
BB had A, A, K, K (two pair, Aces and nines).
UTG had 6, 6, 8, Q (straight, Queen high).
Outcome: UTG won $44.92

The 668Q PF call off 70% of my stack to see a flop maneuver. Justly rewarded. I guess it was a good fold, but I still feel dirty.

This one was a much tougher call:

Full Tilt Pot-Limit Omaha, $0.50 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
MP ($13.55)
CO ($66.20)
Button ($27.45)
SB ($47.55)
BB ($68.85)
Hero (UTG) ($69.25)
Preflop: Hero is UTG with A, J, 6, A
Hero bets $1.50, MP calls $1.50, CO calls $1.50, 2 folds, BB raises to $7.75, Hero raises to $26.50, 2 folds, BB calls $18.75

We start 140 BBs deep, so calling PF in position isn't a bad option either. But I still think 4-betting is better - I'll be shipping it or calling off on a vast majority of flops, and I'll be ahead a vast majority of the time.

Flop: ($56.25) 2, Q, 3 (2 players)
BB bets $42.35 (All-In),

An otherwise dry monotone flop, and my opponent shoves. Pretty nasty because the shove here is far bigger and the pot odds far worse than in the first hand. I'm holding the dry Ace, but it doesn't matter much b/c I expect villian to check far more often when he flops the nuts here. In fact, he should be checking almost all of the time when he flops a flush, since is almost surely calling off, and by checking, he gives me a chance to shove a ton of worse hands.

If he's somehow worried about me flopping a set or 2-pair and filling up, then he shouldn't, b/c I'm shipping those hands if checked to anyways.

There's 2 ways/reasons he is shoving here:
1) As a bluff/semi-bluff (hit the Q for one pair) on a scary board
2) He hit a flush or set on the flop and didn't give much thought to the fact that he might scare me off with a shove
3) He hit a flush or set and is trying to level me (i.e., shoving in a place where a flush shouldn't be shoving).

I think I want this one back. I give more creedence to 2) than 3), but I think it may be 1) enough of the time to call.
...
...
Hero folds
Total pot: $56.25 Rake: $2.80
Results:
BB didn't show
Outcome: BB won $53.45

Anybody hate this? Who calls off here?

I 4-bet planning to get it in on most flops, but I think I happened to run into a few worst-case scenarios here.

January

January was marked by a crushing downswing where I lost some $500+ (30 or so buy-ins across both $25 and $50 PLO) over less than 3K hands. But I fought all the way back to beign $10 away from breakeven by the close of the month. That upswing corresponded directly with the introduction of the Rush table at FTP. Not fully sure what that means...I'm sure that the bad players trying out the Rush tables helped some. But I'm scared to think that I play in some predictable manner that makes the relative anonymity of Rush a real boost to my game. I guess time will tell.

For the record, this month counts as a win in my goal to have 10 out of 12 profitable months. Sometimes rakeback feels like a bonus, but really, it's money that I won. It just so happens that I only get 27% of it back.

PLO Online: -$10.22

Rakeback: $125.29

NLHE Live: -$140

2 Rush Hands

Ah yes, the most fun part of playing Rush poker is that you get to use "no stats, no reads" as an excuse for making bad plays. Well, that's not exactly true anymore, now that HEM is writing stats into the FTP player notes. But for these hands, I had nothing, so I was left considering what should be my "standard" play in these tough spots.

Full Tilt Pot-Limit Omaha, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
BB ($32.12)
UTG ($16.28)
MP ($25)
Hero (CO) ($26.12)
Button ($25)
SB ($40.80)
Preflop: Hero is CO with Q, 10, 2, 8
1 fold, MP calls $0.25, Hero bets $1, 2 folds, BB calls $0.75, MP calls $0.75

Flop: ($3.10) 4, 10, 10 (3 players)
BB checks, MP checks, Hero bets $2, BB raises to $5.55, 1 fold, Hero calls $3.55

I'm never folding here with trips in position, but at the same time, I'm very weary of naked trips, especially without top kicker.

Turn: ($14.20) J (2 players)
BB bets $8, Hero calls $8

The J is bad...if my opponent was check-raising a naked T, there is now a good chance that he has filled up, since J and T go together like gin & juice. I though hard about pitching it here, since I could be drawing really slim. But, the smallish bet gave me pause...if my opponent is full, he should be inclined to bet big, knowing that I'll have a hard time folding a naked T and wanting to charge me for the chance to fill up myself. If it had been a PSB, I think I would have folded. Instead, I made the nervous call.

River: ($30.20) K (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River is another bad card, but I get to exhale when my opponent checks to me. I basically only beat a bluff or semi-bluff so I snap check it back.

Total pot: $30.20 Rake: $1.51

Results:
BB had 7, K, A, A (two pair, Aces and tens).
Hero had Q, 10, 2, 8 (three of a kind, tens).
Outcome: Hero won $28.69

Interesting that my opponent didn't 3-bet PF with a strong suited AAxx, and also that he check-raised with a FD on a paired board. These are all the sorts of actions that I might have had good insight into with any extent of notes or hands against this opponent. So the combo of naked trips + facing heat + Rush poker = tough spot. I'm just lucky I got spared on the river from making another tough decision.

In this next one, I created a giant mess...I think.

Full Tilt Pot-Limit Omaha, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
CO ($25)
Hero (Button) ($53.48)
SB ($48.73)
BB ($28.25)
UTG ($20.15)
MP ($35.85)
Preflop: Hero is Button with A, A, K, 10
3 folds, Hero bets $0.75, SB raises to $2.50, 1 fold, Hero raises to $7.75, SB calls $5.25

So I 4-bet here without giving much thought to our stack depth. With most hands, I think that would be a mistake, since I have position and we are 200BBs deep. But my hand is so strong that I think I'm happy to build up a pot.

Flop: ($15.75) 4, 4, 3 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $15.75, SB raises to $40.98 (All-In), Hero calls $25.23

Not the worst flop...I'm happy to see low cards, but not to see the 2 hearts. Is this an automatic bet and call off spot?

Turn: ($97.71) J (2 players, 1 all-in)
River: ($97.71) 5 (2 players, 1 all-in)
Total pot: $97.71 Rake: $3
Results:
Hero had A, A, K, 10 (two pair, Aces and fours).
SB had 6, 8, 4, 7 (straight, seven high).
Outcome: SB won $94.71

Turns out I was in rotten shape. Here again 3-bet stats would have told me a lot - is this guy's 3-bet range wide enough to include a lot of 4s? But still, given this flop, I'm not sure I can fold, since my opponent should be shipping it in with any piece of this flop, including something like 567x or any 2 high hearts. So if you agree with that, I'm still left wondering, what was the mistake? Your options:
1) 4-betting PF. You should have called and played with a strong, underrepped hand in position.
2) Betting full pot on the flop. Bet smaller, since you will learn either way whether my opponent has anything, and with a smaller bet you may be able to get away.
3) Nothing wrong, just gross luck.
4) Being born. You suck at this game and deserve every bad thing that happens to you in life.

Go easy on a battered poker player, friends.

Superfluous Rush Poker Commentary

A ton has already been said on the topic of the new Rush Poker format on Full Tilt, but it's still in it's early infancy, so it's hard to imagine that a whole lot has really been figured out. So far I can say that there is a lot that I really like about it.

There is, foremost, the sheer innovation of it. I mean, the format of poker has never been tinkered with so dramatically in my time playing the game. Whatever game you happened to be playing online, you could always imagine playing the same game live. But with Rush Poker, they've invented a variation of the game that couldn't be feasibly reproduced in a live setting. They've created their own truly original form of poker.

As far as play is concerned, they have basically reproduced everything that makes multi-tabling so attractive - high volume of hands and short downtime between hands - and added a few little benefits that are specific to the format - instant table selection at a guaranteed-to-be-full table.

So now the benefits of multi-tabling are available to all players, which leaves a critical question floating in the air - whither the single-tabling donks and their 80/10/1.0 stat lines? These are the guys that we multi-tablers have been feasting on for years - the ones who sit down and open up one table and, either out of boredom or cluelessness, play way too many bad hands and spew money as a result. It seems like it will be obvious enough, even to these guys, that it doesn't make sense for them to play all of those garbage hands anymore. Could they possibly still be producing 50+ VPIP numbers at the Rush tables? Of course there's a lot more to a donk than just poor PF hand selection...but it's certainly a big part of what makes them so exploitable. Will the end result be that the Rush games are tighter and tougher than the standard tables? Seems reasonable to think that they will be tighter, but whether they are tougher remains to be seen.

I started an analysis of my HEM statistics last week and then starting playing winning PLO again. I was inspired to do that analysis when I was slumping, and now all I want to do is play play play. But it would be foolish to ignore the value of such an analysis, so I am committing here to an ongoing look at my numbers and what they might mean. Sorry if it's a boring slog, but I plan to dump it out here for my own benefit as soon as I can gather it all together.

Brief Interlude...

...to reflect on the cruelty inherent in this game:

Full Tilt Pot-Limit Omaha, $0.50 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
Hero (CO) ($80.25)
Button ($74.75)
SB ($49.40)
BB ($118.80)
UTG ($111)
MP ($53.65)

Preflop: Hero is CO with 5, 8, A, 8
1 fold, MP bets $1.40, Hero calls $1.40, Button calls $1.40, 1 fold, BB calls $0.90

Flop: ($6.45) 3, 8, 7 (4 players)
BB bets $6.45, MP calls $6.45, Hero raises to $32.25, Button raises to $73.25 (All-In), BB raises to $117.30 (All-In), 1 fold, Hero calls $46.50 (All-In)

Turn: ($243.65) 8 (3 players, 3 all-in) <--- DQB!

River: ($243.65) 10 (3 players, 3 all-in) <--- It always takes a second to set in...

Total pot: $243.65 Rake: $3
Results:
Button had 5, 9, 7, 6 (straight flush, ten high).
BB had 7, 9, J, A (straight, Jack high).
Hero had 5, 8, A, 8 (four of a kind, eights).
Outcome: Button won $229.65, Hero won $11 <--- booby prize (side pot)

C-betting in PLO

Ok, so I started creating some filters to look at how my current PLO C-bet rate is working out for me. I decided to use just the last 3 months of play as my sample space. I've played ~15K hands over that period, which is a decent enough sample size to extract some useful info.

My first simple filter looks at all hands where I am the PFR (single-raise only) and the C-bettor (first to bet the flop). The results here were a little vexing - in hands where I C-bet, I am overall a big winner:


Perhaps I'm a bit biased by my recent struggles, but I expected this to be worse. It makes some intuitive sense to see profits here - C-betting does result in winning a lot of uncontested pots, and of course, when you raise and flop a big hand, this filter should capture all of the occasions where you extract value and win big pots. But the amount of winnings is so high that I started to wonder what scenarios account for the money that I'm losing...

So now, although I still plan to do some detailed filtering on C-bet situations, I also plan to look at other scenarios (limping, playing from blinds, cold-calling raises, playing 3-bet pots) and see if I can identify spots where I might be leaking pretty badly. Basically, there have to be some situations where I am a big loser which counteract how much I am winning in C-bet spots.

But we'll get there in a later post. In this post, I'll lay out some results based on what kind of hand I hold on the flop. We'll start with the dregs - flopping no hand, no draw. The results of C-betting these spots:


I've always held the belief that this spot requires betting since my pot equity is so poor - basically, betting is the only way to win. The results here indicate that it might not be worth it. Missing so badly may increase the odds that my opponent(s) did hit a piece. But it's a mistake to draw blanket conclusions. I am almost inevitably losing money in pots that I give up on, so C-betting could still be better than forgoing when I have very little equity. Perhaps the key here is to take one stab and then surrender, and to resist the inclination to barrel off.

This next image shows my results for flopping just a single pair (including overpairs) with no draw:


The results here are better, probably aided by the times that I hold strong overpairs. These flops are also good candidates for checking back. I have decent equity but can also improve, and having just a single pair doesn't necessarily merit the protection of a C-bet.

And now we get to the spots where I flop well - the first one is 2-pair (plus any draw), and the second is trips or better:



Clearly, these are the money-making spots, but it's dangerous to conclude that these are the only flops you should be betting. I'm sure there's money to be made without flopping big hands. It's just a matter off improving my ability to assess what the good spots are.

So next, I'll filter for flop texture and see if there's anything interesting there.

Too Much C-betting?

So I'm mired in a downswing right now. It's looking like December redux - start out with a boom and give it all back really quickly. I've had 5 straight losing sessions, all for at least 2 buy-ins.

Seems like a good time to take a look at a problem area. The one I want to focus on is C-betting. I haven't figured out C-betting in PLO yet. I think I'm still holding on to some NLHE habits that are -EV in PLO, namely C-betting too much and too indiscriminately.

I'm going to save a more complete discussion on this issue for after I have fitered through some data in my HEM database. I plan to analyze whether I'm making money on my C-bets or bleeding it away. I also plan to talk about what kind of flops to C-bet and how my opponent's stats/tendencies should affect my C-bet frequency.

My specific plan is to apply a filter - what is the outcome for hands when I raise PF and then lead out on the flop? Am I losing overall when I do this?

After that, we can add more variables to the filter: How profitable is C-betting when I completely whiff the flop? When I catch a big draw? When I catch a small draw? When I flop 2-pair? When I flop just 1-pair?

And then maybe I'll look at the tone and texture of the flop - What kinds of flops elicit the most folds to C-bets? What kind elicit the most check-raises? Some of this may be intuitive (A-high raggy flops elicit folds, middle-connected cards elicit check-raises), but I want to see if mapped out for my actual experience.

So, I'll probably take a few posts to go through some of this data. Hopefully it doesn't get too terribly boring. And just maybe, we'll uncover some unconventional wisdom.