Working Out is Working Out!

I've lost over 15 lbs in a little over a month!!!

For those who aren't familiar, I mentioned some weight loss bets I made a little over a month ago in my previous entry.

Basically, before Christmas, I had a $50 weight loss bet with a friend to lose 15 lbs over 2 or 3 months. I was doing all right, I think I lost 10 lbs or something but then eventually gave up and gained weight back. As a sort of New Year's resolution, I decided to try to redeem myself and asked the friend if we could do a double or nothing weight loss bet (I pay $100 total if I lose, or break even over both bets if I win). We came to an agreement of 15 lbs (I started at 215!) over a 3 month period.

I also made a second weight loss bet with a friend at school. This was also a 3 month $50 bet but involves losing more weight than the other. We decided to put a cap on weight-loss such that if both of us lost the cap amount or more, then we'd tie. This cap started off as 35 lbs (~3 lbs/week) but we lowered it to 25 lbs (~2 lbs/week) since 35 is a ridiculous amount to lose over 12 weeks (and probably unhealthy). I describe the changes I've made below along with progress updates.


Weight Loss Bet Update:

Well, so far so good. Everything is working out much better than I expected. I had two weight loss bets and I've already won the first one (assuming I can at least maintain my weight for another two months).

I've essentially changed my whole lifestyle in a month. Here are some of the changes I've made:

• I now eat breakfast (before I never had the appetite)
• Instead of two square meals a day, I now eat ~6: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, supper, snack
• I've reduced my caloric intake
• I've replaced bad/junky foods with good ones (generally)
• I get more protein, fruits, and veggies now
  
• I haven't had any alcohol yet (I likely will but not like I used to)
• I drink 8+ glasses of water a day (and don't drink pop or juice anymore)
• I've switched from 2% milk to skim milk (something I thought I'd never do)
• I'm now waking up between 6:30 and 7:30 AM every weekday (where it used to be anything up to 10 or 11 AM)
• I've switched from large lunches to smaller ones (I usually have a Subway 6" Ham with no cheese and mustard)
• I started taking multi-vitamins and minerals daily
• I'm walking to campus and back every weekday (~15 min. each way) instead of taking the transit system
• I'm doing weight training with a friend at 7 AM on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and having a having a protein shake afterwards (skim milk, banana, and chocolate whey protein powder; 37g protein for 45g whey)
• I'm doing one day of cardio (exercise bike, elliptical, etc.) on the weekend and taking one day off (I didn't take a day off for the first two weeks or so). I'm still playing about 1.5 hours of squash every Tuesday and Thursday
• I've been recording pretty much everything I eat, all my workouts, my weight, and sleep in a spreadsheet
• I've also been recording a bunch of things in the above bullet at fitday.com which is a pretty sweet site. It will calculate approximately how many Calories you take in, how many you burn, how much fat, protein, and carbs you take in (and a ton of other stuff).
• I signed up for a nutrition program where a nutrition student outlined about how many Calories I should take in per day as well as what types of foods and how much protein and carbs.
  

Some results I've seen so far:

• I've already lost over 15 lbs!!
  
• I don't get really hungry anymore
• I don't get heartburn anymore
• I have lots more energy
• I can think much clearer
• I am more confident

One thing I still really need to work on is getting better and more consistent sleep. However, I have improved so that's good.

Our workout thus far has been a beginner workout found here. Here's a list of our exercises (3 sets of 12-15 reps):

• 5 min. elliptical warm-up (sometimes we miss this)
• Bench press (with free weights)
• Bent-over barbell rows (with free weights)
• Seated shoulder press (with free weights)
• Lunges (with free weights)
• Barbell curls (with free weights)
• Overhead tricep extensions (sometimes with free weights, others with the machine)
• Crunches
• Back hyperextensions (sometimes replaced with another exercise)
• Core exercise (I think sometimes called bridges or something)
  

We're going to start a new workout intending to work different muscle groups (with pushing and pulling exercises).

I mentioned FitDay earlier, here is a link to my FitDay public profile. I haven't updated the food log in a few days but you can go through an archive of approximately what I've eaten every day since the competition started. It gives nutritional information and shows the weight fluctuations for that week.

Here's a graph of my weight change so far (all graphs/tables from FitDay; click on pics to see larger versions):

The short-term fluctuations were mostly from me weighing myself during different times of day. Your weight can easily fluctuate 2 lbs (I've even seen 3-4) over a day. Here's the same graph but with my weight loss goal (25 lbs):


It's always nice to see that my weight loss graph has stayed below my goal for the duration of the bet!

Here's a table showing the Nutrition Facts for the foods I've eaten since we started the competition (showing the average daily intake compared to recommended daily intake):


along with a corresponding graph (recommended daily value being 100%):

and finally a graph of my average Calorie intake since we started:

Some of the high numbers after starting are from not recording and thus averaging over a smaller week sample (like when I caught the flu). Anyway, in terms of my Calorie breakdown (in percentages) in Carbs/Fat/Protein, I've averaged 55/23/22. I've heard of two different goals to aim for: 40/30/30 from a friend and 60/20/20 from a Smoothies recipe book. I'm not too disappointed with my numbers as it's somewhere in between.

If anyone has any comments, questions, or especially suggestions about nutrition/working out/lifestyle, please leave some comments for me at the end of the blog.


RL (non-poker):

Melissa and I recently got digital cable and one of the channels we ordered as the Game Show Network (GSN). I'm pretty pumped about this because it hosts "High Stakes Poker" and the season 5 premiere starts this Sunday. On another note, my birthday is in a week (March 3) and I have a midterm exam that day :(

When browsing Google Reader the other day --this site has literally saved me hours of internet browsing a week by combining everything into one handy page with updates/RSS feeds-- I discovered a website called www.obamicon.me which gives you the opportunity to create the Barack Obama campaign type pictures. This can be done easily by either uploading a photo or taken directly using your webcam. Then, you can subtitle it with whatever you want (up to a certain number of characters, of course). Here are a couple I took while fooling around:

and nothing rounds out a blog like a NSFW pic, obv:


Now on to my poker blog, you can stop reading now if you came to read about the weight loss bet.


Cash Games:

Here's a screen shot of my overall stats for January:


I had a pretty good January, especially considering how few hands I put in. I obviously ran really well (especially at heads-up). However, I think my game has really improved a lot over the last little while (thanks a ton to my coach BigBadBabar from 2p2/DeucesCracked). The main strategy help I got from involved 3betting the SB from the BB and capping HU in position. Most of the improvements, however, have simply been psychological as I have a much better approach to the game now. I generally play fewer tables than I used to, don't check my results during a session (generally), and am trying to implement a daily stop-loss.

Here is a screen shot of my Session Stats:

I played for about 25 hrs and made $74/hr + rakeback (over $10/hr) which is pretty sweet.

Here are my positional stats filtered for 6max (5-6 handed) LHE:


Note that I am becoming even LAGgier. I played 35/27/1.9 but believe I had a significant edge on most of my opponents. I try to table- and seat-select a bit when I play so that always helps. It looks like I'm becoming even more stubborn and showdown-bound. I won when I saw the flop 47% of the time and went to showdown 47%! Thus, my W$SD is obviously < 50%.

Here's a graph of January in terms of big bets (BBs):


and here is the same graph except represented in dollars along with the rakeback made:



Tournaments:

I didn't really play tournaments at all. I played a few on a whim but didn't get into them.


Bankroll:

FTPoints: 199,328 (2/3 of my goal for this year)
Iron Man Medals: 1422

	Bankroll
Party	$119.70
Stars	$51.32
FTP	$13,059.88
Staking1	$1,545.90
Staking2	$40.00
Staking3	$640.00
Rakeback	$29.95
Total	$15,486.75

I was talking to a friend recently (actually, the one I'm competing against in the weight loss bet) and he got me thinking. I should withdraw a bunch of my roll and deposit it into a high-interest savings account. I could always redeposit onto the poker site if I had a downswing. Withdrawing some now might be a good time as the exchange rate is something like $1 US = $1.25 CAD. That means withdrawing 5k US would be equivalent to over 6k CAD. Also, I need to pay off my student credit card, I didn't know that your credit card rating is affected negatively just for having an outstanding balance, I thought you only get dinged when you are late on payments. I should have done this a while ago anyway because of the ridiculous interest rates the credit card companies charge.


Miscellaneous (poker):

Research has been going much better as of late. I'm working on multiplayer (specifically, 3-player) texas hold'em games. However, there are lots of complications with creating a 3-player equilibrium (and even if said equilibrium could be created, we're unsure of its effectiveness). Anyway, one thing we decided to do is to look at situations where you initially start with 3 players but then move down to 2 players when someone folds. We can easily solve such 2-player games so I've created some small blind-vs.-big blind bots in a 5-bucket abstraction. Something interesting that I've discovered is that the SB raises about two-thirds of his hands (mostly folds the rest with little limping) and the BB defends pretty much any two cards. Of these BB defends, the BB 3bets about 29% of the top bucket and about 14% of the middle bucket, IIRC. I actually lost a $5 bet to Bryce where we guessed how often the SB and BB would fold. I guessed something like SB folds 18% and BB folds 8% and Bryce guessed SB folds 25.5% and BB folds 0%. He said he was going to guess a larger number for SB but didn't want to come off as a nit, haha!

Also, I recently got access to a 32GB RAM machine to run a long memory-intensive 3-player hold'em game on. However, after seeing how quickly (slowly is actually a more fitting word) it was running, I discovered that the estimated time of completion of the program was about 15-25 years! Yikes!


Goals/Resolutions:

Here's a recap of this year's goals/resolutions from my previous blog entry. I sucessfully cleared the TFPT bonuses last month, I'm not sure if I'll be able to this month (it will involve a lot of Friday/Saturday play, if so).

• [x] Lose 15 lbs by April 15 (midnight)
• Lose more weight than Johnny (competitor) by April 16 or at least 25 lbs
  
• Have a win rate of over 1 BB/100 at 6max LHE cash
  
• Play and win at 10/20+ stakes by the end of the year
• Clear TrulyFreePokerTraining (free CR/Stoxpoker) memberships every month (7000 FTPoints)
• Get 300k+ FTPoints
• Make $30k+ profit
• Finish Thesis
  

A Glance at 2008

I've included stats and graphs for the poker I've played over the last year. I also discuss my [again] late New Year's resolutions (along with a look at last year's).


Cash Games:

Here is my 2008 graph for all cash games (LHE/NL/PL) at Full Tilt. The green represents just table profit while blue represents profit including rakeback.

and here are the corresponding stats:

A few things are depressing about the above. Firstly, I played less than 10k hands/month on average. If I was playing full-time (8 hrs/day), I'd be able to play the same amount of hands that I played all of last year in just one month. Secondly, I am still playing the same stakes that I was playing last year (whereas I moved up from $0.25/$0.50 to 3/6 and 5/10 in a few months).

The upside to the above stats is that I could easily do this as a full-time job if I so choose after my Master's. I'd be able to clear $4k-$5k/month if I played 100k hands and another $3k+ profit. That's also assuming that I don't improve at all (same winrate and not moving up in stakes at all). There's a regular at my stakes (over 3/4 of his hands are at stakes that I play) whose played ~660k hands in the last 9 months (according to tableratings). He's made ~$82k profit + ~$42k rakeback at a similar winrate to mine.

Here are my 2008 stats for just LHE:

My average win rate was ~$24/hr (including rakeback) last year. For the last 6 months, it has been ~$30/hr.

Here are my 2008 stats for 5- to 6-handed LHE:

and my last 6 months of 5- to 6-handed LHE:

Notice that (even though it's over a smallish sample size) I have a higher win rate by about 1/4BB and my average stats have changed from 27/19 -> 33/23.

Here is my small sample of NL/PL:

The 5c/10c was me shoving most hands at a $3 CAP game. If it wasn't for me seeking out tougher regulars at deep stack $50 HU NL, the win rate would have been much better. Of course, none of that really matters since the sample size is so small.

I recently hired a coach, BigBadBabar from 2p2/DeucesCracked, to look over hands I've played and give me feedback (through documents/Skype). I've payed him for 6 hours of work so far. The biggest changes to my game haven't really been strategy-related but more of the psychological aspect. Here are some of the changes I've made:

• I cover my stack sizes so that I don't know how I'm doing
  
• I don't look at my results (through Cashier/HUD/HEM) until I've finished a session
• I play shorter sessions
• I play less tables
• I pay more attention (not chatting/browsing internet)

I recently sent my coach a link to a video of myself 4-tabling 3/6 6max LHE on FTP (with a sweet DeucesCracked table mod). If you're interested, click here for the link (I can also email his comments on the video, if interested).

Since the coaching session, I've been running super hot:
Over this small sample size, it looks like I've become LAGgier preflop, I 3bet more, steal more. Something that I've really been trying to work on is bet/folding more on the turn and river. I'm also valuebetting thinner and not check/calling so much (along with check/folding more). This has done two things, I have a higher river AF and I have a higher W$SD (it's 51.6% whereas it's normally 49-50%).


Tournaments:

Here are my OPR stats for the last year (~$14k profit, 29% ROI, 16% ITM, $32 ABI, ~1500 MTTs):


It's pretty sweet that my rating is in the 99th percentile (and top 2000 players) for 2007 and 2008 even though I only played part-time during part of the year. I haven't really played MTTs for a while because I needed a break after the brutal $5k or $6k+ downswing. Luckily it followed my biggest month. Also, I want to get back into LHE cash games.


Bankroll:

FTPoints: 186,762
Iron Man Medals: 1422

	Bankroll
Party	$119.70
Stars	$179.97
FTP	$10,250.81
Staking1	$1,545.90
Staking2	$50.00
Staking3	$500.00
Rakeback	$52.09
Total	$12,698.47

The reason why this month's BR is lower than last months is because I've withdrawn $3k ($1k for Xmas and $2k for tuition since I used tuition money to buy plane tickets home to PEI). I really hate withdrawing from my roll all the time. This brings the total to ~$15k+ withdrawn. I'd almost be rolled for 15/30 had I never withdrawn. Oh well, I'll just have to start logging more hands.

Combining the cash game hands, rakeback, and MTTs, I made about $22k last year. I'm pretty happy with this considering I didn't get to play too much (an average of 1 hr of cash games and 4 MTTs per day) while going to school (at least compared to a full-time grinder).

Here is a graph of my BR plotted monthly (based on numbers from blog entries):

and here's a chart of the rakeback earned for each month of 2008:

Notice how it decreased almost linearly every month for the first half of the year. This is because I kept logging less and less hands (due to school, research, laziness, playing MTTs instead of cash). The most rakeback was ~$1500 a year ago (Jan 2008).


Miscellaneous (poker):

I haven't worked on the Preflop program I was describing in the previous blog entry. Instead, I started writing a new program. I originally started writing it in Java but it took a ridiculous amount of time to run. I then tried to figure out how to set up the Pokersource project but ended up giving up on that (their nice Java code was old, unused, and nonfunctional and I didn't really wanna use their C stuff). Instead, I found the C# project that's used by the Pokerazor guys. Of course, I didn't know any C# but I decided to learn a bit of a new language, and hopefully come up with a faster way to computer what I wanted. I ended up with a primitive program that is much faster (but I still wish it was faster). I really like how easy it is to create a GUI.

What it does: Given a board, it ranks every possible holding (hot-cold equity and current hand strength). These can then be sorted from highest to lowest or vice versa. There's a huge list of things to add/change but I haven't worked on it since before Xmas. For instance, I need to group equivalent/canonical hands together and be able to output ranges/subranges (e.g. top 50%) or compare equity of hands vs. another range or distribution.

Here is a screenshot of the preliminary program:



RL (non-poker):

Okay, so I obviously lost the weight loss bet I had with my buddy for before Xmas. I kinda just gave up (although I was moving at a good rate for a while). However, he's giving me a chance to redeem myself. Another 15 lbs /3 month weight-loss bet. If I win this one, I'm even, otherwise I owe him $100. I also have another $50 weight loss bet with a different friend; this one is for whoever can lose more weight than the other guy.

That said, I've been making pretty major changes already. I'm drinking 8+ glasses of water a day, exercising every day (fitness room and squash), eating less, eating breakfast every day, eating healthier. Melissa and I also ordered a blender and a slow cooker today with our grocery store points. Today, I got a decent 1L water bottle and "My Weight Loss Coach" for the DS today. To top it all off, I've been reading a bit about exercise/nutrition (book, magazine, online) and asking others. I might even look into getting a personal trainer or someone to teach me proper gym techniques for a bit. Finally, I have something where I can implement my competitive drive (aside from poker). I'm going to crush you ______! (you know who you are).

On a somewhat related note, I've also worked out a deal with Melissa. It's a pretty win-win deal for both of us IMO. She wanted to go on a trip/vacation with some friends in a few months (with a budget of ~$800-$1k). I proposed that she cook a healthy meal for me every night (that she doesn't work) and I'll give her $800 (since I'll have extra time to play poker) and we settled at $825. Both of us are pretty pumped about the deal.


Goals/Resolutions:

Below are last year's goals/resolutions (from my old Cardrunners blog). I'll use the standard 2p2 [x] vs. [ ] check boxes to denote whether I succeeded or not.

[ ] Reduce my procrastination significantly (I am a very bad-- or good, depending on how you look at it-- procrastinator). Although I've done well (school-wise) in the past, I can't really do that for my Master's.

[x] As mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I want to have a $10k bankroll online by April 4 (3 months from when we got back from our Xmas trip).

[ ] Get into the top 100 on the tournament leader board (TLB on Full Tilt) for at least one month.

[x] Have a tourney score of over $5k

[ ] Be a winning player at $10/20 or higher at 6max LHE

[ ] Start playing and winning at NL 6max cash and SNGs as well as some more HU LHE and possible HU NL.

[ ] Get into better shape

[x (if you count withdrawn amount)] Have a BR of > $25k by the end of the year

[ ] Spend more time studying/calculating/reviewing hands and situations

[x] Always use proper BR-management

[x] Take a break/quit when I'm (a) tilting or (b) not playing well

Well... 5 out of 11 obviously isn't that great. Here are my new goals/resolutions for 2009:

• Lose 15 lbs by April 15 (midnight)
• Lose more weight than ______ by April 16
• Have a win rate of over 1 BB/100 at 6max LHE cash
  
• Play and win at 10/20+ stakes by the end of the year
• Clear TrulyFreePokerTraining (free CR/Stoxpoker) memberships every month (7000 FTPoints)
• Get 300k+ FTPoints
• Make $30k+ profit
• Finish Thesis
  

New Tools, Old Methods

It's the start of December meaning it's time for a monthly blog update! I apologize for the length. As a token of my appreciation, I've included more pics than usual.


Cash Games:

I played a little less than 10k hands this month (mostly trying to clear a bonus I describe later in the blog). I'm really starting to love LHE again so I'm pretty excited about that. I've recently begun participating a bit more in the 2p2 forums and have been watching more LHE vids on CardRunners/StoxPoker/DeucesCracked. Here is a [swingy] graph of the month:

and here are my stats:


I ran pretty hot in the 5/10 hands I played but pretty poorly in the 2/4 and 3/6 hands. That's the ideal situation if I have to run bad somewhere though :P I played a pretty LAGgy style, 34/24, which seems to be becoming my norm. I'm okay with this (and I actually like it more as I get to play more hands). However, playing this style requires more focus and that's one of the leaks I need to work on. I've spotted some other leaks in my game (looking over my stats recently) and I'm going to try to fix them soon. I'm pretty excited about this because I think I'll have a really good winrate if I fix the known leaks (and then rinse and repeat, finding more)!


Tournaments:

I didn't play too many tournaments in November (60-some). There was mostly one day which I dedicated to tournaments (maybe part of the long Thanksgiving weekend). It started off horribly where I couldn't win at all then went on a sick rush after a streak of 17 no-cashes where I final tabled 5 of them (only 45- and 90-mans) and won 3 of them (two 90's and a 45). I ended up about +$1k on the day but didn't run so hot in any other tourneys I played. Below are the graph and stats from Poker Academy Prospector 2 although I think it's missing a few tourneys for some reason (OPR has a few more recorded and as a break-even month overall).

and here are the MTT stats for the month:



Bankroll:

FTPoints: 181,574.50 (probably saving up for 300k 30" monitor)
Iron Man Medals: 1422

	Bankroll
Party	$119.70
Stars	$73.67
FTP	$12,632.21
Staking1	$1,545.90
Staking2	$50.00
Staking3	$100.00
Rakeback	$988.73
Total	$15,510.21

I transferred $100 of rakeback money onto my old Party Poker account to try out the new software. I actually like the software a decent amount although the HUD doesn't seem to work properly for preferred seating yet. I might consider transferring more money there at some point (so I can actually play more sizeable stakes). After LHE cash, MTTs, and rakeback, I ended up profiting ~$1250 with ~40 hours of play.


Miscellaneous (poker):

Wired Magazine was originally going to write an article about the Second Man vs. Machine Competition we ran in Vegas this summer but instead decided to do a 6-page comic book spread describing a tiny bit of our technology and an epic J5o vs. 22 hand. Click here to check it out (and each of the 6 pages can be accessed at the top of the link). A hard-copy can also be found in the new December issue of Wired.

I think one of the main reasons I haven't been playing as much poker as I used to is because I get bored of it and don't have many exciting poker goals to motivate me. One promotion which excited me a little and gave me an incentive to put in more cash game hands is Truly Free Poker Training. Basically, if you accumulate enough points in a month, you can get subscriptions to CardRunners and StoxPoker for free. The awesome thing is that there isn't a catch at all, it doesn't take away from rakeback! I need 7.5k FTPoints to get a free month at both StoxPoker and CardRunners. I ended up clearing this bonus last month and would like to do it every month if possible. I think it's crazy that a $20 or $30 membership can give me an incentive to play (especially when daily swings are sometimes $500+).

I recently got a headset so that I can record poker sessions (as I'd like to eventually get some coaching). I also downloaded the 30-day trial of Camtasia Studio 6 (new!) which is pretty awesome. If I do decide to get coaching, I'll probably buy the software. There is a free program called CamStudio but it has less functionality, isn't as user-friendly, and seems to crash more.

My Master's is going much better now. I've finished most of my boring changes to the code-base and we finally have direction for the project. I'll be working on multiplayer situations which turn into heads-up situations. For instance, imagine a 3-handed game where the BTN folds leaving two players left. However, we can't just model it as a 2-player game with random hands, we have to take into account card removal effects. That's a little glimpse into what I'm working on now, anyway.

I kind of rekindled the "Robustness" program/tool I was writing a while ago. I decided to model the new program after some spreadsheets that Eric "Sheets" Haber created for subscribers of PokerXFactor.

Here is a screenshot of the spreadsheet I based the program on:

and here is my program:

Notice that we obtain the same EVs as Sheets' spreadsheet (within rounding error) under the same conditions:

• holding JTs
• position is CO (cutoff is with 3 left to act: BTN, SB, BB)
• assume average reshoving range of remaining opponents is ~top 20%
• assume average calling [shove] range of remaining opponents is ~top 15%
• blinds are 50/100
• there are 100 chips in antes
• if we decide to raise, we raise to 3x
• we have a stack of 1500 (15bb or M of 6)
  

Some things not included in his spreadsheet which I've added are:

• I can specify "Top X%" range instead of needing to use Poker Stove (needed for his spreadsheet)
• I display the pot size
• I display your M (defined in Harrington on Holdem) and colour-code it based on its "M Zone"
• I highlight the most profitable line in yellow (when considering: Fold, Raise/Fold, Raise/Call, Open Shove)
  
• I highlight +EV plays in green and -EV plays in red
• Beside the EVs is a percentage of all hands where that line is most profitable. For instance, in the screen shot above it is most profitable to open shove 13.1% of hands (shown in the tooltip when you hover over the label: {22, K9s-K5s, Q6s+, J7s+, T7s+, 96s+, 86s+, 75s+, 65s, 54s, A3o-A2o, QTo, JTo}). Under these conditions, we should raise/call with our stronger hands (since opponent is reshoving wider than he's calling an open shove) and we should fold all other hands (most of our hands, so it's highlighted in yellow). We should not raise/fold to 3x with any of our hands.
• I have provided graphing capabilities (some graphs from the above scenario are shown below)

From the graph above (EV on the y-axis, Players Left on the x-axis) we can see that:

• Folding is neutral-EV, obviously
• Raise/Folding is profitable with two players left to act but not with 3. Note that "Raise/Fold" doesn't depend on your hand as it never gets to showdown so we can profitably raise/fold with any two cards with 2 or less players!
• Raise/Calling with JTs is profitable with 3 or less players to act behind (under the above conditions). Note that it is also strictly better than Raise/Folding from all positions (i.e. the green line is always higher than the blue line).
• Open Shoving with JTs is profitable here with 4 or less players to act behind. Again, note that the yellow line is always higher than the green line so it is strictly better to shove JTs from all positions than to raise/call a reshove.
  

From the graph above (EV on the y-axis, Villain "Top X%" reshove range on the x-axis) we see that:

• Raise/Folding to 3x becomes unprofitable if our opponent reshoves more than the top 18%
• Open Shoving is profitable yet constant (since it depends on our opponent's calling range which is independent of their reshoving range)
• Raise/Calling with JTs here is pretty much always profitable (no matter how tight or loose our opponents' reshoving range). Open shoving JTs is least profitable (about neutral-EV) if our opponent shoves ~top 22.5% to 37.5% of hands.
  
• Notice that as our opponent's range gets looser and looser, we gain more value from calling a reshove as our hand has higher equity.
• Raise/Calling is almost strictly better than raise/folding (excluding vs. the top 10%).
  

There is a huge list of things I wanted to add or change with the program (both on the inner- and outer-surface). Some of these include:

• instead of being restricted to "Top X%", use a PreflopRangeChooser which gives you a 13x13 matrix of all 169 preflop starting hands with buttons like "Any Broadway" and "Any Pair" (like in Poker Stove). I've already coded up most of this.
• ability to graph over all (or a subset of) starting hands in the x-axis.
• ability to choose units for some graph axes (e.g. if you wanted to graph your stack size or EV in units of bb or M).
• complete the "Reshove" tab where it does similar calculations but in the situation where someone else has raised in front of us and we are considering reshoving on them
• ability to see graphical tables representing the profitability of different hands
  

RL (non-poker):

Melissa and I are going to be on PEI from Dec. 16 to Jan 4. I can't wait! I still need to get most of my Xmas shopping done (but that's usually the case every year at this time). We'll be doing a ton of relaxing and visiting. I also hope to get a picture with Santa (along with my brother and old roommate Nick). This has become a Christmas tradition for us (not because we really want to see Santa but because it's funny and likely uncomfortable for the guy working in the mall).


Goals:

• Lose another 7ish lbs. for the weight loss bet (by Dec. 20)
• Play enough hands to unlock free month of CardRunners and StoxPoker
• review some hands and write up solutions

Last month, I set a goal to play 25k hands and only played about half that many (3.5k of which was MTT hands). I also set a goal to analyze all of my marked HoldemManager hands but didn't get any of them analyzed. This is something I really need to start working on and I think would be much more useful than experience gained by playing (assuming a decent grasp on ranges already).

Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables!
- Nick

Barack and Roll!

Again, click here for a link to my old poker blog posts (hosted by Cardrunners).

Edit: I've discovered some leaks in my blog-writing:

• overuse of bullets
• overuse of parentheses (I attribute this to my non-diagnosed ADD and constant asides/side-notes)
  

Cash Games:

I didn't play too much poker this month. I've been just taking it easy. I played 8k hands of LHE cash (6max and HU). It started horribly with a $900 downswing but I ended up just about breaking even for the month (making a profit in cash games if you count rakeback). Below is a graph of the month (green is the bankroll line, blue is bankroll + rakeback):


Even though the month was breakeven dollar-wise, I made 0.7 BB/100. So, as state above, I started playing some HU LHE last month and I really like it. Some things that I really love about it are:

• you get to play almost every hand (something like top 85-90%).
• playing so many hands forces me to pay attention
• the game is very game-theoretical in nature and requires a lot of balanced play

Any time I'm on FTP and I see Matt "Hoss_TBF" Hawrilenko, KPR16, Quiet Lion, and most other high stakes HU LHE games, I datamine/watch them. I'm trying to model my preflop strategy from Hoss' (seeing as he's the winningest online HU LHE player in the world and often regarded as the best).

I've been thinking about EV/utility/balance and have messaged and emailed KPR16 and TheBryce about some concepts. Specifically, how to play bottom pair type hands OOP on the flop after defending in the BB.

I've also played a few hundred hands against Polaris (our UofA CPRG bot that we played in the 2008 Man vs. Machine competition in Vegas this summer) on Poker Academy Online. Obviously, I'm getting crushed (although, I'm admittedly running bad).

I can't wait to get much better at 6max LHE so that I can move up and not pay so much of my winrate to rake. At the lower stakes (up to $5/10 or so), FTP rakes about 2.3 to 3.2 BB/100!!! My winrate for the last month is 0.7 BB/100 and it's 0.78 BB/100 for the year. Note that I get 27% rakeback, so it's really like a winrate of ~1.5 BB/100. However, without rake this would correspond to a WR of ~3 to 4 BB/100. I've been recently playing LAGgier than 30/20 (often 35/25) and while I think this is near optimal in a game without rake, I think playing a more straight-forward TAG style is likely more profitable at the lower limits due to rake. One thing I can't understand is how I kill $2/4. This year, I'm running at over 3 BB/100 (not even counting rake) and higher if you count HU. One reason may be the sample size (20k hands) but I think it's just that the players are very exploitable and fold too often. I think a lot of the grinding regulars play $3/6 and $5/10.

Here is a graph on my stats for last month:

My 6max stats (in the form VPIP/PFR/AF/WTSD/W$SD) are:

• $5/$10: 32/21/1.5/43/47
  
• $3/$6: 34/24/1.6/47/47
  
• $2/$4: 38/26/1.9/40/58

Some things to note about these stats (even though a very small sample size):

• I ran poorly at 5/10 and 3/6 at showdown (W$SD is usually >= 50%) although I was a complete showdown monkey at 3/6.
• I ran super hot at 2/4 and showed down much less than I normally do (40%).
• the lower the stakes, the LAGgier I played (both preflop and postflop).
  

Tournaments:

I didn't really play tournaments this month. I entered 10 MTTs total and didn't cash in any of them. I like not having the binding schedule of MTTs every night that I choose to play. With cash games, I can come and go as I please.

When I go back to playing more tournaments, I think I want to play a bunch of 45- and 90-man SNGs (and maybe 180-mans on Stars). However, I might try to satellite into some of the upcoming FTOPS events. There is always a ton of dead money in satellite tourneys.


Bankroll:

FTPoints: 170,938 (almost enough for two 24" monitors)
Iron Man Medals: 1422

	Bankroll
Stars	$42.67
FTP	$11,940.31
Staking1	$1,545.90
Staking2	$50.00
Rakeback	$685.59
Total	$14,264.47

So, October has basically been a break-even month (down ~$60) which isn't too bad considering I didn't play too much and my 6max game is a little rusty and I haven't played much HU before.


Miscellaneous (poker):
So, I finally got around to unsubscribing to RealPokerTraining.com. This is most likely the worst poker training site on the internet! I originally signed up only because Chad "lilholdem" Batista had a few videos. As it turned out, he isn't a very good instructor (although a very very sick MTTer) and the overall quality/environment of the site didn't suit my liking. Obviously I had to add a new site though. I'm now signed up with a DeucesCracked subscription and I love what I've watched so far. The site has a very good reputation and contains coaches/instructors almost exclusively from twoplustwo.

I'm currently beta-testing an offline poker tracking program called Poker Academy Prospector 2 (the company is based here in Edmonton). By offline, I mean it doesn't have a HUD and is meant for post-analysis. I absolutely love this programs filtering. It is so quick and easy to add a filter for pretty much anything you can think of. Another beautiful thing the program has is "Action Sequence" filtering -- this lets you look at actions that you make on different streets and see how profitable they are. For instance, one line I've been wondering about lately is when I defend my BB (playing HU LHE), flop bottom pair, and check the flop to the raiser. I would like to know how profitable (if at all) it is to check/call or to check/raise. My standard line in this situation is to check/call. Here is a screenshot showing some of its filtering capabilities:

Notice several Filters on the left. It shows that before filtering I have 133k hands of cash games (NL/PL/LHE). Then I created a filtering funnel that narrows the number of hands down further and further as I seek more specific hands. I applied the following filters:

- #Players = 2 (HU)
- Sessions = Not Table Play Chip 623 (don't include play money games)
- Game Type = Fixed-Limit (LHE)
- Position = Big Blind
- Action Sequence = Preflop: only c (i.e. defend against a raise)
- Hand Type @ Flop = 3rd pair (bottom pair)

In the end, it narrowed down from 133k to 123 hands. This obviously isn't a big enough sample size (because I haven't played enough HU) but it can give you some insight as to how [un/]profitable lines are in certain situations.

So, our new apartment building has $20 freeze-out tournaments once a month. Some friends and I decided to try it out (they gave us free pizza and pop!) and I was completely dumbfounded by the level of play. Some of these people are literally at the level I was the week I was introduced to the game. We witnessed one amazing hand where a bunch of people limped, the small blind completed and the big blind checked. The flop came AKTr, the SB checks, the BB bets a fairly large amount (close to pot-sized I believe), the woman right behind him (UTG) calls, everyone else folds around to the SB who thinks for a bit and calls. The turn is a complete blank (say a three), now the SB donks out really quickly, the big blind calls and both the BB and UTG call fairly quickly. The river is a Q putting a four-straight on the AKT3Q board. Again, the SB bets out fairly quickly and AGAIN both the BB and UTG call. Can you guess their hands? Just take a second and make some reasonable guesses about their ranges.... Now STOP! It isn't worth it. The hands were:

SB: J2
BB: K4
UTG: 55

Anyway, I ended up busting by shoving a hand like 76o on the button right after the break as a short stack and the BB woke up with AA. I at least made him sweat a bit on the turn as I picked up something like an open-ended straight draw + flush draw. Although it's fun to play against such exploitable players, it's also somewhat frustrating as it means I can't LAG it up as much as the players are fairly call-stationy. Also, Johnny was on my left and could abuse me if I opened up too much.

Another cool thing that is only related to poker because of the person is: Bryce "TheBryce" Paradis (an instructor at Stoxpoker and one of the best HU LHE players in the world, winning about $3M last year) came to my apartment on a Friday night and drank beer and played video games with us. We didn't up the ante on our standard $5 video game prop bets though. Dave ended up ~$50 as he does on every such night (by pwning us all at Bomberman '93, Mario Kart Wii, and anything else we decide to play).

I don't think I've acquired any new poker books but I did get an introductory book on stocks and another book called "Fooled by Randomness". I've only flipped through these books at the bookstore (that Melissa works at, she got a discount obviously) and haven't started reading them yet. However, I would like to start learning about the stock market (and eventually invest).


RL (non-poker):

In my previous blog post, I mentioned a weight loss goal. A friend from PEI actually took me up on a $50 weight loss bet. I have to lose 15 lbs. from the start of last month's weight by December 20th. I'm currently almost halfway there (I've lost about 7 lbs and have 8 more to go). Actually, I have a second weight loss bet: if I lose those 15 lbs by Dec. 20, Melissa will get me a nice shaver (I only shave like every two weeks because it's such a pain and I don't have a good shaver). The things I'm doing to try to lose a little weight are:

• continuing to play squash two times a week (Tues/Thurs)
• walking to the University and back every weekday (it's a 15 min. walk and I used to take the bus)
• trying not to snack late at night as often
• taking multivitamins and drinking lots of water
• occasionally playing DDR on the Wii

However, I think I still need to be doing more. I would like to start using the exercise room (mini-gym) in my apartment complex fairly regularly. Anyway, wish me luck!

I've rekindled my love for boardgames recently and Melissa and I have decided to alternate purchasing a boardgame every month. This seems like a fairly good rate to acquire new games and be able to play them a bit.

I'm uber-happy Barack Obama has been elected President of the USA. I've never really been interested in politics but for some reason I became very interested in the recent US Presidential election and have watched most of the "Most Watched - Daily" youtube clips involving the election. I've never really had a hero before but I discovered a couple weeks ago that Obama is that hero! I love his speech-delivery, his demeanour, his eloquence, his calmness, his care for the every man, and especially his confidence. However, his confidence isn't cocky, snobby, arrogant or condescending -- it is humble, modest, and selfless. I'm sure he's going to be great and can't wait to see what the USA/World will be like in 4-8 years.


Goals:

It's probably not a bad idea to put goals at the end of each blog post (to quickly remind me later):

• Obviously lose those 15 lbs by December 20
• play over 25k hands this month
• review all 400ish "marked hands" in HEM (YIKES!)

Take care, thanks for reading, and good luck at the tables!
- Nick

Biggest [Losing] Month of Poker

Again, click here for a link to my old poker blog posts (hosted by Cardrunners). This month (September) ended up being by far my worst month of poker ever. It's a little discouraging especially after having such a great August and naturally having high hopes for September.


Cash games:

Again, I didn't really play much cash this month. I played a very short 2/4 HU LHE session and a small amount of 5/10 6max LHE. I ended up running really hot and making over $400 in 2.5 hours. Trust me, if I could make over $170/hr (plus rakeback) every day, I'd definitely be playing more cash. Here's a PT3 pic of the month:

Nothing too special about the stats, I don't think. I played 33/23.5/1.8 which seems around standard for me. I think 47% WTSD seems pretty high even for me (of course I'm a showdown monkey). My "Attempt to Steal" was ~50% which seems on the high side but fine as long as the blinds aren't super tough. My "Fold BB to steal" was 24% so I defended by BB over 3/4 of the time (I think that's about standard for me).


Tournaments:

After playing close to 200 MTTs over September, I made only two final tables (not counting SNG MTTs). Here are the PXF replays of them:

$749.70 for $75 Big Double A; 6 out of 238; PUFF = 68
$482.76 for $26 $28k gtd.; 9 out of 1341; PUFF = 81

It was definitely a very tough month to swallow MTT-wise. I started the month with lots of confidence from last month's results. I think playing MTTs successfully depends a ton on high confidence. However, nothing ever seemed to really work out late in tourneys. I got to at least the final two tables of the Big Double A four times (6th, 10th, 14th, 18th) and got pretty unlucky in them all (wouldn't have changed anything). The 6th was a fun tournament because I got to play the final two tables with NEONPILS99, an 18 year old superstar from BC (He's currently ranked 1st in Canada and 12th in the world on Pocketfives). He pretty much pwned and I was amazed at his aggressive finesse (along with running very well). I ended up busting when I shoved 7.5x UTG with AQo and he woke up with AKo on the button. I also had two deep runs in the Midnight Madness (26th and 44th) along with two deep runs in the in the $75 $23k KO gtd (11th with AA and 17th). I busted on the second hand of my other FT:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3263131

Aside from it being a somewhat loose, but definitely not horrible, raise from EP, I don't regret my play at all. On the turn, he can so often have {a weaker Q, a smaller PP, a combo draw (like pair + gutshot), a FD, or simply air} that I think it's definitely a value shove.

Anyway, having one more key hand go my way late in a tourney could make the difference between my worst losing month ever and a profitable month. That said, I don't regret my overall play too much except for two key spots. One was in the 11r, I was one of the big stacks and the CL raised in EP (to a standard raise size), I decided to shove 88 from the BTN or so for 10x his raise. Against someone who can raise light (i.e. raise/fold more often than normal), I'm pretty sure this is a standard shove but considering the circumstances, I think I should have just called and played safely postflop. The reason is because if he calls and I lose, I'm out of the tournament (this was with 19 players left). Normally, I'm the last person to consider "tournament life" and think it's generally over-rated (by live players at least) but in this spot, I was able to accumulate chips with little risk due to table conditions. The other play I'm unsure of is in the Turbo Fiddy, we were down to the last 30 or so, and again I was one of the big stacks and again the CL raises from EP and again I have ~10x his raise. This time I ended up having AQo and decided to shove on the CL because he'd been quite active for the few hands I saw. I plan on analyzing the hand using StoxEV to find out what I should have done based on my assumption about his ranges for possible actions.

Here's the [very very ugly] graph of the month:

And here's a graph of my MTTs since May or so (it doesn't look AS bad in comparison...):

Here are some links to sites that keep track of MTT stats (with rankings in brackets):

OPR (Last 120 days: rank 1404 of 289,203, 99.51th percentile)
thepokerdb ($50+: rank 4828th; $11-$49: rank 9451)
Pocketfives (1292.02 PLB points, 92.62th percentile; 4th in Edmonton)

FTP Leaderboard points:
MTT: 1969
SNG high: 63
SNG low: 119

Bankroll:

FTPoints: 161,832.25
Iron Man Medals: 1342 (I'm considering using 750 of them to create my own table, always containing a reserved seat).

	Bankroll
Stars	$97.67
FTP	$12,371.81
Staking1	$1,545.90
Staking2	$50.00
Rakeback	$258.91
Total	$14,324.29

So I made a withdrawal of a little over $2100 (which brings my total withdrawals to over 10k). That said, assuming you know how to do simple arithmetic, you can determine how bad my worst month was using these numbers and last month's bankroll. Ugghhhh!


Miscellaneous (poker):

I haven't worked on that preflop holdem program any more but I plan to get around to that soon. I really want to start analyzing 3betting/reshoving for MTT scenarios (I could use StoxEV to analyze it, but it wouldn't be as convenient).

I picked up two poker books this month:

• Winning Poker Tournaments: One Hand at a Time
• Killer Poker Hold'em Handbook: A workbook for Winners

The first book seems really good (I believe I mentioned it in a previous post). It's written by 3 online pros and consists entirely of them reviewing hands they played. You get to see why they made the decisions they made at the time (along with the factors that go into their decision-making) along with regrets they had and how they might have played it differently after the fact. Melissa got me the second book from her work.

Some of the books I'd like to get are:

• Kill Everyone
• Colin Moshman's new HU SNG book
  

I decided it was probably a good idea to post leaks that I discover or changes that I plan to make to improve my game:

• I want to stop taking several -EV "shots". For instance, I directly bought into several $109, $163, and even $216 tournaments last month (this definitely made the downswing worse than it would have been otherwise).
• I want to start playing less tables at a time (in MTTs) and pay more attention to them
• I want to try to focus on tells (bet-sizes, timing, betting patterns) of players and exploit them as much as possible
• I want to start actually putting time into post-analysis of hands that I play
• I want to avoid playing poker when I don't feel like it. This seems perfectly logical but often as a grinder, you'll play anyway
• stop wasting so much time reading about poker news/forums (non-strategy at least)
  
• I want to start using HUD stats more often in tough decisions. Here is a picture of my current Holdem Manager HUD:

The stats I currently have on the HUD are:

VPIP/PFR/AF
cbet %/fold to cbet %

screen name/hands

3bet %/fold to 3bet %
steal %/BB VPIP
squeeze %/ call open %

I've decided that I want to cut back on the amount of MTTs that I play. The reason for this is that when you grind tournaments, you are pretty much bound by them, you have to keep playing until they finish and never really get a break (sure, you get 4 min. breaks every once in a while, but if you are playing several tables, you never really get a break). Also, if you start some of the late night tourneys and actually go deep in them, you are often up until 2 or 3. This just doesn't work (esp. when I have to be at the university every weekday). I think grinding out MTTs is generally just unhealthy for you (physically and mentally) esp. if you have a job/school. So... the plan is currently to primarily play cash games (probably 6max LHE) on weeknights and to play MTTs on the weekends. Playing SNGs (such as 45-, 90-, and 180-mans on weeknights would be fine). The beautiful thing about cash games is that you can come and go as you please and can choose your opposition (at least moreso than in MTTs).

I find that I often perform much better when I have a goal to aim for. So, I've decided to set a few goals for myself (to attain by Christmas):

• get my BR to $25k
• get at least 1500 PLB points at Pocketfives and be ranked at least 3rd in Edmonton
• become a winning player at 5/10 6max LHE

RL (non-poker):

Well, I finally got around to getting a TV that was larger than 13". With some of the money I withdrew this month, I purchased an LG 37" LCD HDTV and an HD DVD player. It's kind of funny because I don't really watch TV at all. However, I figured it was worth it because Melissa watches a bunch of TV, we could watch our movies on it, my friends could play video games on it when they come over (instead of bringing out my 22" monitor to play on, LOL).

Aside from that, I have a few goals for RL as well:

• get into a better sleep routine (get to bed earlier and wake up earlier)
• eat healthier
• lose weight (want to go from ~200lbs to 185 or less by Christmas)

Like I said earlier, MTTs aren't very healthy for you and I'd like to get into better shape. I've already lost a little weight over the past few months (or so the Wii Fit tells me). This is probably because of softball, squash, and walking to school. However, walking to school and back on weekdays and playing squash twice a week isn't enough. I plan to start using the fitness room in our new apartment building and/or start playing more DDR/Wii Fit. I also think having a better sleep schedule and actually eating breakfast and healthier dinners will help a lot. Wish me luck!

- Nick

Biggest Day/Month of Poker

Again, here's a link to my old poker blog posts. This seems like a decent location for it now, let me know (in the comments) which hosting site you prefer.


Cash games:

I didn't really play cash games this month, when I played, it was mostly tournaments. I did play an hour session of 100NL with McAlduff and Fallsy just for fun. I ended up making about a buy-in ($96.85) but was ~$30 over all-in EV. Yes, I sucked out on the short stacks AA with my almighty K3s. That'll teach him to steal my BB!


Tournaments:

Here are the final tables I made for August (all 6 within 12 days). I also had deepish runs in the last two FTOPS events cashing for $2k in the Main Event (145 of 4880). I decided to include the Preflop Unadjusted Fortune Factor (PUFF) from PokerXFactor's replayer to show how I ran preflop. The way it works is, if you get the proper distribution of cards preflop (e.g. premium hands 3.3% of the time), then your PUFF will be 50 (i.e. average). This only indicates how you ran preflop and does not take into consideration things like postflop play, coolers, losing coinflips, just getting the blinds with monsters, etc.

(I think you can view these if you sign up for a free PXF account)

$8085: $26 24k gtd., 1 of 1567; PUFF = 96
$3655.60: $20R 11k gtd., 1 of 235; PUFF = 80
$2040: $75 Big Double A, 3 of 272; PUFF = 57
$493.50: $26 11.5k gtd., 6max KO, 6 of 705; PUFF = 41
$436.80: $75 Big Double A, 7 of 208; PUFF = 89
$428.25: $20R 11k gtd., 7 of 194; PUFF = 48

I ended up playing ~1/2 of the days this month (15). Here's Poker Tracker 3's summary of those days:
Sunday, August 17 was my biggest MTT day by far. I won ~10k on the day (the $535 buy-in was payed through a satellite entry from the night before so I consider that buy-in as profit on the day). Also, below is a graph of the month. I think MTT graphs really show how much variance there is in tournament poker. I didn't really win anything at all for the first 70ish tournaments and then BAM, I can't lose a coinflip! I ended up making about 11.5k profit on the month (most definitely my biggest month).
FTP TLB Points: 1726 (I don't believe I was ranked in the TLB, 250th had ~2500 points).

Speaking of the Tournament Leader Board (TLB), The Yid is pretty much always on top of the Full Tilt TLB. I have played over 1k hands of MTTs with him (pretty much seated at a table with him any night I play MTTs. He ended up taking down (chopping) the first Big Double A that I FTed this month (I came in 3rd). He's a sicko. Not a sicko like lilholdem or BeLoWaBoVe, but a sicko in terms of consistency/grinding. He actually plays very TAG and rarely busts early in tournaments. He must be a master of the preflop game, if that's the case. Anyway, I decided to send him a PM at PocketFives to see if he discusses poker strategy/hand analysis with others. It turns out that he teaches people to play tournaments. He trains out of Las Vegas, South Carolina, and Costa Rica (I believe). He charges $2500 for 4 days of intense training and you have to give him 10% of every tourney profit over $200 for the year after training. This seems like a TON of money/equity to give up for training but I think it would be worth it. Just this year, he's up 150k+ on FTP, 32k on Bodog and like 200k live. That's over a third of a million! I also PM'ed some of his previous students and checked their databases. They all said that the training was definitely worth it and some of them are even ranked (top 100) on PocketFives.

Just for fun, I asked Maven (The Yid) what kind of setup he has: two 30" monitors to play on and a 24" placed vertically between them for databases. Man, would I love that setup!

MTT databases/rankings:
OPR
thepokerdb
PocketFives (currently ranked 4th in Edmonton)

Bankroll:

FTPoints: 152,340

Iron Man Medals: 1253

	Bankroll
Stars	$115.07
FTP	$20,034.38
Staking1	$1,545.90
Staking2	$50.00
Rakeback	$95.45
Total	$21,840.80

Miscellaneous (Poker):

So, there's always been a sort of void in poker software in my mind. I have a ton of analysis programs but I've always wanted a sort of combination of them all with customizability. StoxEV is definitely the best all-around analysis program out there and does a great job. However, I sort of want something that is more convenient for strictly preflop play (like the push/fold calculators: SNGPT, SNGWizard, SNGEGT). One of the things that I dislike the most about these programs is that you cannot customize the rankings used. They will either use the Sklansky-Chubukov numbers to rank the 169 preflop hands or something like each hand's equity vs. a random hand. Then, when you choose "Top X%", it will use those rankings. Wouldn't it be nice to have the option to create a custom ranking? For instance, what if I wanted to create a ranking such that each hand is ranked (based on equity) vs. the opponent's range (e.g. {any broadway}). Some of the programs will also only let you choose the "Top X%" range as well. What if you wanted to take out certain hands from the top of a range because you know the opponent would play those differently?

Another problem with some of these preflop SNG programs is the graphing. SNGPT has no graphing option at all, SNGEGT has a pretty crappy graph that it associates with a push/fold or call/fold decision. SNG Wizard, in its defense, actually has a pretty nice graphing feature. I would like a program that has a very good graphing feature and is more customizable than the existing ones. For instance, what if I wanted to compare the cEV (chip EV) and the $EV of a play for a hand vs. the Top X% of hands. This would be especially useful for someone who plays both SNGs (or MTT final tables) and MTTs or short stacked cash games. One move that has become quite prevalent in MTTs nowadays is 3betting (restealing and reshoving). It's become so well known, actually, that many players are overdoing it and in many of the wrong situations. However, 3betting is still a crucial part of winning MTT play. Have you ever wondered, "If I'm going to 3bet all-in (reshove) and I know approximately which range of hands my opponent will call me with, what range of hands should I be reshoving with? Which is better, JTs or A2o? 22 or A3o?" Well, I know that I've definitely wondered about such things. I was even at the point last week where I was going to use Poker Stove for all 169 preflop hands, calculate their equity vs. the top {5, 10, 20, 30, ..., 100}% of hands and then plot the results in Excel to see which hands might be better for different reshoving situations based on the opponent's calling range.

Well, I decided to start writing a program to do such things. Thankfully, the author of Poker Stove created a text file containing all of the preflop hand matchups (taking the average of the equity over all combinations of matchups). I read this text file in and use it for calculations. So far, I can create hands, ranges, hand rankings, do hand vs. range and range vs. range matchups (with equities matching those using Poker Stove), and graphing. Thankfully, I found a free graphing/charting library for Java called JFreeChart which seems to do a decent job. Here are some preliminary graphs for looking at the "robustness" of a few hands. In "No Limit Hold'em: Theory and Practice" by David Sklansky and Ed Miller, they first introduce the Sklansky-Chubukov numbers in a book. They discuss how 22 is a prototypical robust hand. When the SB shoves with 22, assuming they flip over their hand, the BB will have the odds to call with over half of the hands, but 22 will still win close to half of the time. On the other hand, A3o (which happens to have the same S-C number as 22), is only called by the BB about 18% yet when called only has ~35% equity. Here is a graph of 22 vs. A3o:


As can be seen, you can't really say that 22 or A3o is better than the other. What you can say though, is that against the top X% of a given ranking (here, we're using "vs. random"), one is better than the other. For instance, 22 does better, equity-wise, than A3o against approximately the top 5-40% of hands. Conversely, A3o does better against the bottom 60% (top 40-100%) and the top 5%. This is somewhat useful information, for instance, if we are in the BB and we know (through experience) that the SB will shove any two cards for less than 10 blinds, we would rather call with A3o than 22 because it has about 5-6% higher equity. Another example is if we are in the SB and we raise, if we know that the BB will reshove with the top 25-30% of hands, we'd rather call a shove with 22 than A3o (because it has higher equity).

Here is JTs vs. A2o:

This graph is kind of weird. A2o does better than JTs against the top 3% and between the top 20-70% of hands. The equity graphs actually cross 3 times here. Once I get more experience with JFreeChart and the capabilities, I might try to graph this as a difference graph which would make the differences much clearer/pronounced.

Anyway, I will likely keep working on the program with free time here and there (esp. when I need a break from poker) until I have it doing most of what I want it to do. I'd like to make it easy to do 3betting/4betting calculations and some leveling games (find ranges based on initial assumptions, then find opponent's range based on our range, then find our range based on our opponents new range, etc.). If I keep at it after that stuff, I'll likely add ICM and maybe some Nash stuff. When I'm done, I'll likely just give it out for free (most of the SNG programs cost $50-$100). The good thing about that would be that people who don't have extra money but really want to work on their games could use it. Also, if it impacted the sales for the other programs (I own the three others I've mentioned), then maybe it'd force them to release better products or reduce their prices (which would never be a bad thing).


RL (non-poker):

Aside from poker, things are going fairly well. Melissa and I are now fully moved into our new apartment. It is sooooo much better than our old one. I didn't even recognize how much of a shit-hole our old place was until we moved into the new one. We went to the old place for the last time last night to clean/vacuum the place. I was so relieved to finish that and get out of there. It had a very sketchy and unsafe feeling to it. We're on the 16th floor now and get very nice breezes through the windows. There's much more sunlight as well so it doesn't feel so dark and gloomy. We're both much happier here. The only thing the apartment is missing is a nice big HDTV, currently we're using a 13" CRT!

I finished up the slo-pitch season with a bang! Aside from hitting an in-park-homerun, I messed my leg up royally by sliding into third base (it was a really close play and the girl on third was sort of blocking the base with her body). Little did I know that it was the absolute worst possible field in the history of the world to slide on. The field was full of pebbles/rock/gravel and of course lots of dirt. When I slid, my leg was sliced about 30 times and I bloodied up the field. At the time, it stung a little bit, but was tolerable:

However, as the days passed, and I did little to help the situation aside from spraying some saline solution on it (my philosophy on pain/injuries in life has mostly been to let time be the main remedy; this is mostly because I've never broken a bone or been really really injured before). Anyway, as time passed, my leg started hurting more, looking worse, and sometimes turning yellow/greenish. This is all normal right?

(Apologies if you've just vomited!). Anyway, I went to the Medical Centre on campus, and after a long wait, ended up getting a prescription for some preventative antibiotics and some special ointment (which is supposedly better than Polysporin). As of yesterday, the scabs started drying up and falling off and my leg is looking much sexier now (yet still pretty ugly). I really really hope that it doesn't scar and that the hair all grows back.

A few months ago, I decided to go to a psychologist for testing because I thought that I might have a learning disability or Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or something like that. The reason is because I'm a pretty slow thinker/speaker/reader and thought that this might be due to some disorder/disability. I've always done really well in school, but I figured that I just learned to cope and went into the right fields (math-based) where my processing is much better/faster. Well, normally to get such testing, you have to pay like ~$1000 or more, but I went through some roundabout way and ended up getting tested for free. The test started on a Saturday morning and lasted about 5 1/2 hours without a break. It involved lots of different testing (shape/pattern matching, math, pronunciation, memory exercises, personality self-analysis tests, etc.). I got the results back recently and discovered that I don't have a learning disability or ADD (which I don't believe 100% but anyway) but that I have Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD). It is characterized by perfectionism amongst other things and is not the same as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I also got some of the test results back. I scored in the top 99.5th percentile for Math, 99th percentile for Working Memory, 95th percentile for Memory and Learning. I scored ridiculously low (something like 18th percentile, LOL) for the test where you have to rhyme off as many words or things of a specific group (e.g. animals) that start with some given letter of the alphabet. I think my overall score was in the 86th percentile. I think that some of the tests are pretty stupid overall and some are time-based. If something happens that affects the time, they don't do anything to correct it (for instance, I was doing a connect-the-letters-and-numbers excercise where you alternate between numbers and letters connecting them; e.g. A1B2C3D4... On the last number, I couldn't find it for quite a while because it was in the corner of the page and my thumb was covering it). There's also some trivia-like questions regarding geography/history and spelling of words like "bouillon" where I heard it as "Boolean". You also have to define a bunch of words (a bunch of which I'd never heard of). I'm actually considering getting a second testing (if possible) for ADD because none of the stuff I've read about OCPD explains how I'm forgetful/daydreamy/spaced-out/absent-minded/etc.

Well, the Olympics just concluded and I've been watching Canada's Jared Connaughton in the 200m and the 4x100m. I was really interested in the results because Jared's from PEI and we went to the same schools together from grades 1-12. I also ran on his 4x100m team in Junior High and High School (we actually still hold the Men's 4x100m PEI record for Junior High). Anyway, Jared made the semi-finals of the 200m but not the finals. In the 4x100m, Canada made the finals but unfortunately Usain Bolt had to compete. Congratulations though to Jared and his team! Next Olympics, fo sho! Speaking of Usain Bolt (pretty effing sick how impressive his Olympics was with 3 Golds and WRs), there is a flash game online where you can race him, here. I have no idea how people have attained numbers that quick in the top 100. I wrote a bot to play the game for me, and I just got 9.44s (enough to make top 100, but no #1: -21474836.48s).

Anyway, I might play some tourneys tomorrow (possibly try to satellite into the FTP 750k gtd.) if I'm feeling up to it.

Good luck and take care,
Nick