MATH Recap, and Back to Poker Tracker

Another fun time was had by most at Monday night's Mondays at the Hoy tournament on full tilt, with 47 bloggers and non-bloggers alike coming out for their shot at a spot on the 2007 MATH moneyboard, some additional BBT points, and maybe a chance as well to take down the $26 bounty I laid on myself for anyone who sucks out on me with a dominatable bullshit hand that people love to eliminate me from poker tournaments with, especially these blonkaments. And as far as taking me out of this thing, although I did not pay the bounty, the redickulous bad beat sprite once again did not have to worry about going home disappointed about my exit.

How exactly did I go out, you ask? Well, I am dealt QQ (how many of my phucking elimination stories seem to begin that same way?) in middle position, where I open-raise the standard 3x to 180 chips. GCox calls my preflop raise from two seats to my left. The flop comes AQ4. Bingo! With 450 chips in the pot, I'm not a donkey so I'm going to lead out with a bet, into the player who likely has a strong Ace, and who will surely indicate to me from his actions on that bet whether he really likes his hand or not. This is Gary Cox after all, so I don't really have to worry much about him putting a move on me and reraising me with nothing in this spot. So I bet 360 into the 450-chip pot, and Gary minraises:



Now, if you know Gary, this can basically only mean one thing: AK. Literally of all the people I know, even Blinders isn't going to minraise here without a very strong hand, and I don't even think Gary would minraise with a flopped set, which I would think he would be a bit too weary of telegraphing his hand with a minraise. To me, the minraise just screamed out "AK! AK!" and that's what I figured I was up against at this point. So, figuring Gary is trying to figure out where he's at, I didn't want to move in here because I thought Gary might fold just the one pair on the flop (I could have AQ even and have him reverse dominated at this point). Instead I figured I'll just use his own move against him, and I min-reraised him right back:



When Gary smooth called instead of re-re-reraising me, that iced it. He had AK, and he still figured he was best here. When the turn came an offsuit Jack, I moved in the rest of my chips, only equalling half the pot at this point, knowing therefore Gary was likely to call given his large stack:



Gary insta-called:



Booooooom! Then, just as quickly, buuuuuuuust:



Just sick. And the worst part is, I didn't even get to pay out my donkey bounty for the night, as Gary knocked me out with AK and not some donkey-dominated hand like somebody else surely would have taken a run at me with sooner or later in this thing. And for those of you expecting a profanity-laden rant for Gary's play, sorry to disappoint you. He got abused, don't get me wrong, but he played his TPTK like many people would have played it, and I'm not going to kill him just because he fell victim to the kind of trickery that I busted out with early on in the MATH on Monday night. My play would have worked on just about anyone in that spot in this tournament. Once again my ire is directed at the frucking full tilt server that just continually seems to have it in for me in these blonkaments. I know that may sound lame coming from the guy who just won the Riverchasers tournament last Thursday, but the bottom line fact is that last Thursday was the exception and not the rule. I have about two or three too many now of these reconchulous river cards spiking to take my 85 or 90%+ favorite down and knock me out of a good spot in these events. The play is dubious enough in these tournaments already, but for me to be continually losing to 2- and 3- and 4-outers, in particular when I'm purposefully showing the restraint to wait until after the flop is already out before getting it all in, that is just too much to face. Dam you blonkament gods, why have you forsaken me?

Speaking of the blonkaments, I have noticed a very interesting phenomenon over the past few BBT tournaments: the players generally speaking are clearly playing tighter these days. I think over half of the BBT has gone by and has given people a chance to develop their own strategies for success, and frankly the points structure we're using to score the BBT tournaments has incentivized many players to play tighter than they normally would. Thus, lately it has definitely become harder for the fold-till-the-points-guys to just keep sticking around and survive. The full weight of the bbt is beginning to be borne.

I've also been thinking lately, maybe a year or two ago some of us gave DuggleBogey a little bit too much shite when he voiced his concerns over the WPBT tournament scoring system being formulated. Back then, Duggles made the point that scoring these tournaments on a week-to-week basis kinda ruins what many of us are generally trying to do in these blonkaments, which is to have fun, not "make the points". In particular when using a scoring system that does not even award points only to the final table or only to the cashers, but rather to every finisher in just the top half of the total number of entrants, there is a clear incentive to not be aggressive, not push some draws or some hands you might be able to win with, to not make that call preflop with the pocket 7s, to not push that suited AK on the flop with 2 to your suit and 3 raggy undercards, etc. It clearly has changed the play in these events, and while I definitely enjoy a little competition from tournament to tournament among our group, there is something fun about thinking about the WWdN tonight (8:30pm ET on pokerstars, password as always is "monkey"), and being able to "just play" without having to think about making the points, and is my opponent just trying to make the points, etc. On some level I think Duggles might really have been on to something when he voiced this feeling early in 2006 I believe, and maybe some of us were a bit too quick to judge his comments harshly. I certainly don't think the point of the blogger tournaments should be to see who can play supertight until half the field is out and they then feel free to open up their games.

Anyways, back to the MATH, here are this week's cashers, out of 47 entrants with 24 runners winning BBT points and the top 6 cashing as has been usual for the MATH since the BBT rolled into town:

6. Our 6th place casher this week, winning $67.68 for his efforts and a very nice run, is lightning36, who is scoring his second MATH payout of 2007 after a strong performance to make the cash payouts for the week.

5. In 5th place this week, winning $90.24, is Blogger Big Game host MiamiDon, who pads his top-10 BBT tally with yet another BBT final table and cash.

4. RecessRampage also added to his top-10 BBT point standings this week with another 4th place finish in this week's MATH tournament, plus $124.08 cash awarded for yet aonother MATH cash.

3. 3rd place this week and $169.20 goes to Tripjax, folowing in his brother's footsteps and now making it at least three straight weeks that someone in the Trip family line makes a big cash in the MATH.

2. In second place this week is another big score for current BBT moneyleader Mike Maloney, winning another 248.16 to add to his already over $1000 won over 7 weeks of BBT events.

1. And this week's winner, making not only his first MATH win but his first cash in the MATH in all of 2007 in a tournament that he rarely plays, is Pokerstars blogger and all-around fabulous writer Otis, winning 428.64 for his efforts in winning his first ever MATH weekly title.

And now here are the updated 2007 MATH moneyboard standings as of this week's tournament:

1. Iggy $641
2. Astin $616
3. Columbo $606
4. Hoyazo $580
5. Bayne_s $579
6. Julius Goat $507
7. mtnrider81 $492
8. scots_chris $474
9. Fuel55 $458
10. Otis $429
11. Miami Don $402
12. Chad $379
13. Pirate Wes $372
14. IslandBum1 $357
15. ChapelncHill $353
16. Tripjax $345 (how cute the brothers are right next to each other!)
17. Zeem $330
18. Mike_Maloney $326
19. cmitch $312
19 oossuuu754 $312
21. VinNay $310
22. Waffles $294
23. Wigginx $288
24. ScottMc $282
25. Blinders $275
26. Manik79 $252
27. Wippy1313 $248
28. Byron $234
29. RecessRampage $224
30. Omega_man_99 $210
31. lightning36 $205
32. NewinNov $190
33. bartonfa $180
34. 23Skidoo $176
35. Santa Clauss $170
36. Iakaris $162
36. Smokkee $162
38. lester000 $147
39. DDionysus $137
40. Pushmonkey72 $129
40. InstantTragedy $129
42. Buddydank $124
43. Ganton516 $114
44. Gracie $94
44. Scurvydog $94
46. Shag0103 $84
47. PhinCity $80
47. jeciimd $80
49. Alceste $71
49. dbirider $71
51. Easycure $67

So, another strong week for the MATH moneyboard, as this week's winner Otis makes his first appearance on the board, while all five of our other cashers are repeat offenders in cashing in the Hoy during 2007. Congratulations again to all of our cashers and especially to Otis for taking the whole thing down for the first time.

OK before I go today I thought we could take another look at my Poker Tracker stats as I continue to build a database through several hours of playing and observing at the 1-2 and 2-4 6-max nlh tables on full tilt. To be honest I still have a very, very small number of hands to evaluate from (under 900), but it's about 9 times more than I had when I first posted these figures last week, and I'm still trying to figure out how to interpret all these statistics and really in some cases what these numbers even mean in practical terms. Plus, PT is good in that it allows me to compare my results and my statistics to the other profitable players I've seen online, and look at how I fare against those players in a number of key statistical areas.

For starters, here are my General poker stars via Poker Tracker:



Interesting items to focus on from this view include that I am up about 3.5 buyins at 2-4 over 887 hands. It may not sound so impressive to some of you (and to some of you that track record probably would not be that impressive), but #1 I'm not losing, as I used to consistently at the cash tables, and #2 these figures do not even include my first 4 or 5 buyins won when I first started with $400 nl 6-max cash about three weeks ago. I figure I am probably up more like 10 buyins over 1500 hands or so, which is much prettier than 3.5 buyins over 900 hands. So playing 400nl has been very profitable for me this month, and I feel like I am getting increasingly adept at knowing when I am likely ahead or behind, and acting appropriately based on that information. Also, I point out that you can see on that screenshot that I have won exactly 1 out of 8 times I've been dealt AK, either soooted or unsoooted. That is redonkulous and will not persist over time, especially since I am just about the last person online who you will ever see push unimproved AK into a raggy flop against anyone who's shown any semblance of strength so far in a hand. Otherwise, looking at the above numbers, the stats themselves do not seem to have changed too much since I first showed them at right around 100 hands played. Pre-flop raise is still at just under 20%, which is fine I think, and my VP$IP is up to 29, still a bit higher than where I think I want this to be over the long run. That said, I tend to use stealing blinds as an integral part of my strategy at 6-max, and that may explain why this number feels a bit on the high side for what I was expecting to see. The one number I still think really needs to get higher is my Won $ at Showdown percentage, which still sits right at 50%. 50% isn't terrible, but for a winning player who expects to keep winning more and more at this game, I think WSD needs to be closer to 60% or higher to really maximize the efficiency of my profits.

Here are my PT stats sorted by position:



What I love about the top of this screen is that you can see that I am basically playing profitable poker from every position at the table. Yes in the BB I am down $148.25, but if you add back in the price of the big blind I am up a good 5 hundy from there, and the only position where I'm not showing a healthy profit is 2 from the button, which I imagine is just random and over time will even itself out. I also note that at 2 spots away from the button, that is my only slightly negative position at the table, and it is also -- perhaps not coincidentally -- the only spot other than acting last on the button where my preflop cold-call % is over 1. Those of you who know my game know that I am definitely not much of a cold caller -- cold calling preflop is most definitely a recipe for poker losses and not poker profits -- but here you can see even in those few instances where I cold call preflop, it appears to be costing me over time in terms of overall profitability. Another interesting stat that goes along this one is that you can see I am going to the showdown more frequently from 2 spots away from the button -- my only money-losing position -- and I am winning at showdown less frequently with the higher percentage of the time that I see the river and show down the cards. So I can see already that I have some work to do there, as far as ensuring that from all positions at the table I am not staying in too long, in particular to see a showdown, without a hand of sufficient quality to warrant staying in.

Here at my stats sorted per winning hand:



As you can see and as is probably not surprising, with "high card" hands I am strongly negative, as these hands of course tend not to win nlh pots. That said, you can see that I am solidly in the green for every other type of winning hand better than high card. And I once again call your attention to the one-pair category, where I am now up more than a buyin for what is easily my second most profitable hand other than straights, which for some reason have been gold for me thus far, winning me 6 out of 6 showdowns with my straight hands. But my point is, I continue to show evidence that playing with just one pair at 6-max nlh can be a winning strategy, if played correctly, cautiously and if your reads are right-on. Of course it helps that I am not one to call big bets with top pair most of the time, but rather I focus more on overpairs, pocket Aces, etc. for situations to consider calling significant bets with just one pair hands.

Lastly, and this is one of my favorite screens on Poker Tracker, here are my general stats as compared to the list of the other most profitable players I have run into and recorded stats for over the past week I have been running PT during my nightly play:



I like this view because it can really show my generalized statistics against other good (or bad) players, stat-by-stat in the columns. So, out of 1177 total players I have recorded, my profitability has been 7th best among all of those players during the times I have been recording plays online. That is quality right there. I also note in the totals at the bottom that there are a total of 58% losers and only 41% winners during all the time I have recorded. That means there's a whole lot of fish out there to be draining money from, something which I have definitely found myself over recent experience. Anyways, this screen can help put some of my overall stats into good perspective -- for example, my BB/100 rate of 19.95 is actually fairly low, among the good players. That is interesting to me given my success, and the only thing I can think is that maybe I am playing a bit tighter than some of those other players are, or maybe I'm failing to maximize the profit I'm making from my best hands, I don't know. I tend to avoid sitting at tables with more than one large, winning stack, so that may also factor in to lowering somewhat my overall win rate. My VP$IP and my PFR also seems to be just slightly on the high side, as compared to the other profitable players who have recorded more than 3 or 4 sessions to give a good indicator of their general play with both good and bad starting cards, which is something which I have already identified as a potential area for improvement as far as tightening up just a little bit preflop where appropriate. And of course, of the top 19 most profitable players I have recorded at 400nl 6-max, my 50% win rate at showdown is in 15th place of those 19 most profitable players. Again, clearly something I need to improve at if I expect to keep winning, and to keep increasing my win rate, over the long run at this game.

OK so hopefully all those cash play stats are useful or at least interesting to you all out there. I would love any thoughts that any of you Poker Tracker guys have on my play generally or on the very quick analysis I give above on some of the things that jump out at me from these four pages of PT statistics. I look forward tonight to jumping back on to the cash tables for some more action winning with one pair and raising it up preflop a bit too often, in addition to possibly playing the Wheatie at 8:30pm ET on pokerstars, and maybe looking into that WSOP Main Event Tuesday night qualifier as well on full tilt.