Running bad at Full Tilt Omaha 8

It's been a while since I last posted, I'm really busy doing...not much really.

Anyway, so far I'm losing at PL and NLO8. Played about 1500 hands so far and I'm down like 4 buyins. I'm by no means an expert yet, but I think it's safe to say that I've been running terribly so far. Bottom of y-axis is -$100 sigh




Here's the biggest hands in my stretch so far.

http://handposter.com/hand/6359 This one I wasnt sure about until I put it in a calculator. I have 60% equity vs the villian, and theres a bunch of dead money in the pot from the short stack. Easy push, bad luck.

http://handposter.com/hand/6360 Not gonna make an excuse about this one, 100% bad play. I should have correctly check/folded the turn. Playing perfectly I should have raised preflop but I'm out of position and in this instance I'm playing for set/straight value, not pocket aces value. Pretty surprising how weak the villains' holdings were though right? Lost to bottom straight and a gutshot/flush draw. Similar to one of the other hands posted here somewhere.


http://handposter.com/hand/6358 Here I was pretty confident about my hand. I figured I was most likely up against aces, maybe Q2 or a set. He had a broadway wrap which I had 55% equity. Not a huge edge by any meansl, but annoying nonetheless.

http://handposter.com/hand/6357 Biggest loser. I guess I could have checked the turn, but after seeing the villian's hole cards I think I made the perfect or near perfect play by betting. I was expecting to be way behind here, AT LEAST aces up. Turns out I was up against a worse 2 pair and a gutshot/flush draw. On the turn I have 40% equity in a 3 way pot. Couldnt I have atleast split the pot?

http://handposter.com/hand/6361 Don't believe I'm running bad yet? Here you go.


I did win a few hands, but not worth mentioning as this is a running bad post.

Let's see.... in other news, I'm playing lots of brawl. I play league matches at wifiwars and I'm rank 16 on the ladder. It changes all the time, but I think in time I'll be in the top 5. Went to 2 tournaments so far, one was on Long Island I got 2nd place, but the structure was retarded and only first got paid so I bubbled : \

Other one a web2zone weekly, which was pretty cool. There were a bunch of big names there and we got there late so we didn't bother registering. Just hung out with great players and played friendlies. New picture of me on the left is at web2zone.

I'm still planning on getting my table selector to work for omaha, don't worry. It'll be up eventually (atleast for me : ( you'd be surprised at how much more work it takes to get it to work outside of my machine as a standalone program). Maybe in a month or 2?

Done with Carbon Poker...good riddance

Basically, Carbon Poker sucks. Nobody plays, cant make good reads, cant analyze play (no pokertracker). There is just no money going around on that site. Ridiculous rake, 10% ON HEADS UP TABLES WTF? After a few weeks I wind up +$15.9. I decided I'm finished with this stupid site so I go to cash out. I don't have any e-wallets so I go for check or wire transfer. Guess what? They don't do wire transfers, AND THEY CHARGE $15 FOR CHECKS AND THEY DONT CASH OUT CENTS. So I'm breakeven.

So yeah. Hopefully my money comes soon but it's not important, I'm still well rolled for the games I'm going to play. I will be going back to Full Tilt Poker, mostly playing omaha8 SNG's, mixing in some cash games and some large low stakes hold'em MTT's (early double mainly).

Got a message telling me about this omaha book by Moshman, so I will someday (hopefully soon), get it and write a review.

Things are going pretty slow otherwise. Lazy as hell for school, going to fail english if I don't hand in a 5 page paper within the next few days. And sadly, I've been slacking in the data structures class I'm taking at Stony Brook University. Missed 1 homework for 5% of my grade, and I got an 82 on the first midterm. I feel pretty bad about myself for that, especially since the professor is really cool and would probably help me with some projects that I'm working on and maybe write me a letter of recommendation. Also the class is filled with fucking stupid kids...I don't think the honors program people take this class, so I should be dominating.

1 other thing I want to do is finish my table selection program. Don't know if I mentioned it here but it speaks for itself doesn't it? I have a working piece of software that I've been using for hold'em games, and it's pretty good. When I was focusing on hold'em, I had a separate machine that solely datamined 16 tables of games played during the hours I play. I want to do more tables but the problem is 16 is the max for Full Tilt so you have to do it on a new user account, and I haven't found a way to make sure the 2 accounts arent observing the same tables.

My next step will be changing the program so it works with omaha, and if I ever make it nice enough to run outside of my machine, I will certainly post it and it will be free, open source, etc. None of that selling out bullshit *cough* Full Tilt Table Opener *cough* will happen to me.

Oh yeah, brawl. Trying to play as much as possible. There's some tournaments coming up which I want to play in. No recognized names live on Long Island, especially out east like I do so it should be easy. Don't want to get too cocky though, I'll just have to wait and see.

Despite my love for brawl though, I'm going to start playing more poker again, so you'll see more frequent posting here. I've got a computer next to my T.V. which I need for finding online matches, so I might as well have a couple tables open at the same time, right?

Keep checking mooplet.com if you like brawl. We are slowly amassing an article and video collection which should be pretty respected as time goes on and we get a regular viewer base.

Thanks for reading.

March Update

Haven't been playing much poker : ( just so many other things going on.

I've got about $300 in my Carbon roll now, and ive collected about 50 in bonus so I'm playing breakeven. It's not really break even though because they charge 10% rake and I've played a lot of heads up. It turns out you only get FPP's for raked hands, not just hands dealt. I found that out after I had a few thousand hands of heads up played already lol.
So basically, Carbon Poker is stupid. I'm just going to play out the rest of my freeroll entries and try to get some of the March bonuses. I might not even finish the whole bonus. If I really want to take poker seriously there is just not enough volume at that site that I won't win fast enough even if I crush the game every time. And I don't crush the games either, as there's a lot more good players than I thought. Most of the time there's atleast 1 good player at a 6-max table that I sit at, which is annoying.

And by the other things going on that distract me from poker, I am mainly referring to Super Smash Bros. Brawl (SSBB).
Not only am I spending almost all of my time playing it, I've also started a website with my friends Mooplet and Steel Kangaroo. We'll be posting strats, vids, and a bit of personal info to keep interesting. It's named after Mooplet cause he bought the domain for himself ages ago, but he also owns brawlguide.com, which we might use somehow. Right now the current post (March 11, 2008) is about first impressions. My feelings are the same as Mooplet's so if you're interested go check it out. I wouldn't start checking daily just yet as we haven't set it up completely, but after a few weeks it'll be good to go.

Let's see.... other stuff that takes up my time.....
Well, I'm doing more research on voice separation lately. A bit before I started this blog I was given an award by Intel for a project I did with a math professor at Stony Brook. You'll hear more about that after I get somewhere in part 2, which is where the application / patenting (aka $$$) comes in : )

Also taking CSE214 (data structures) at Stony Brook, and I'm trying to get in a bit of cello and guitar practice in too, but it's hardly any now : (

So yeah, I won't be posting much unless I play some big sessions or final table a freeroll. Check out mooplet.com if you like Smash Brawl.

March Goals

So I decided to try my hand at some bonus hunting. I withdrew $600 of my Full Tilt bankroll, which I plan on redepositing to get the 100% bonus (I've been playing on transfered money so I'm still eligible for the bonus).

The first bonus venture was probably a mistake, but it's alright. I put in $250 at Carbon Poker. I didn't read the fine print so I'm stuck with no rakeback, grinding out an insanely huge amount of FPP's to clear this bonus. I'm playing 25NL headsup mostly, because the points are paid by hand so I want to get lots of hands. At this level I get 3 points per hand, and i need to clear about 60k for the bonus. Thats 20k hands. It's not impossibly insane, but it'll take a while, and with no rakeback it wont be as worth it. Also, no pokertracker! That's a serious bummer.

However there's 3 good things.
1. Almost no 2p2ers on this site. There are lots of posts on 2p2 discouraging anyone playing at Carbon Poker.
2. Lots of fish. Carbon Poker attracts just as many fish as other sites, but no good players. I don't need pokertracker to beat people, I just like it to see stats and correct some minor leaks and see graphs, etc. And especially since nobody else uses pokertracker i'm not behind anyone. They have a pretty good note system so I get my stats that way.
3. Pretty decent freerolls. $1000, 500 every day, $2000 every week, etc. Not a lot of players to split the pool with so thats good.


Unless I do spectacularly, I expect to withdraw here immediately after I clear my bonus. Then I plan to go back to PLO8.


I'll also spend a lot more time on two of my most favorite hobbies. First is writing software. I have a few ideas for tools that I'll write over the next months. As you all know there's not a lot of software out there for omaha players. I'm not sure if I'll release them, but most probably I will. I'll have more details about what they are when I actually get around to starting.

The other one is Super Smash Bros. Yep, my friends and I were avid Melee players. We were all pretty active in the New York tournament scene, but we quit because we got discouraged by the huge gap appearing between pros and amateurs. Video games aren't like poker. You have to be the best to win, and table selection is pretty much impossible : ) I think we'll have a good shot at being known figures in the Brawl scene. Hopefully there will be some money in it too, as there was no sponsorship at all in Melee games (other than MLG but that's lame).

Brawl is coming out on the 9th, and we'll all be at GameStop for the midnight release. We all started a website called www.mooplet.com. There's also brawl.magnify.net. Use these sites for videos, strats, news, etc.

February Results

All together February was a pretty good month. The last 2 days were brutal though. Disgusting is a better word. My morale is completely dead, so bad that I wasn't even confident I'd win when I sat down at a PL10 O8 game, which I lost 2 buyins at (thats terrible, for those that don't know) so at the end of last night's session I withdrew $600 from Full Tilt, which I will deposit into my account (this will be my first deposot) so I can get some bonus money. After that I'll go around bonus hunting for a while.

Here's the results for the last bit of rakeback cramming, and below is February totals.




Theres the SharkScope graph. As you can see it's been quite swingy recently. I was having a blast climbing up to that first peak...it felt great. Now I feel like shit but I'm not going to quit!!!

9 bubbles out of 21 4 handed scenarios. Thats ridiculous. Here's what I mean

http://handposter.com/hand/6153

That was surprisingly the only really bad beat. The rest was just a boat load of coolers and flips that I lost.

http://handposter.com/hand/6154
http://handposter.com/hand/6155
http://handposter.com/hand/6156
http://handposter.com/hand/6157
http://handposter.com/hand/6158
http://handposter.com/hand/6159

Plenty of losing in the middle-late stages too

http://handposter.com/hand/6160 no way im folding, oh well
http://handposter.com/hand/6161 losing to high only hands is a common trend for me


bah thats enough, I don't feel like doing more. There's quite a few mistakes actually, which I'm a bit embarrased about so I won't post those. Mostly overvaluing 4-low hands, getting committed in early stages, etc.


There's the February totals. Up $225, expecting ~$110 in rakeback. Not bad, but I definately need to step it up. As of now grinding out a real job is a way better decision. I won't give up though.




I'll post some March goals and resolutions in a bit.

Last day of February 2008

I've been cramming in as many games as possible for the last few days. Today is the last day before rake is finished accumulating for the month, so even if i lose i'll get it all back soon. I won't be reckless, of course, but I will be taking several shots over my roll. I've stopped playing $6 turbos for the moment, replacing them with mostly $11's and a few $22's thrown in. Unless I do horribly, I am expecting to hit the $1,000 mark when the rakeback arrives, posssibly before if I do well.

I've got a bunch of interesting hands to discuss, but I'll have to wait for tommarow to get to posting them.

Breakeven day, plus an interesting question

Played 20 games, ended down $3. There were surprisingly many bubbles in this session: 38% that seems pretty high as my normal average is like 15ish. I examined each hand and determined if it was variance or bad play on my part.

check this one http://handposter.com/hand/6135
Against the hand that showed down with me, my hand is 57% equity.
Against the hands that i'm afraid of like A2 + high pair or Kx with double suited, i'm not worse than
a 45% dog. Against a random hand i'm 60%.
I think its a push. Conclusion: VARIANCE

here's another http://handposter.com/hand/6136
I'm 51% against a random hand. total bummer that i ran into AA2, which is a 68% favorite.
Conclusion: VARIANCE

another http://handposter.com/hand/6137
here i'm 55% against a random hand, 55% against the caller's hand
Conclusion: VARIANCE

After that it was just a bunch of postflop suckouts which are the most painful because I started with a decent sized stack.

One mistake I made though was pushing 2345 preflop. Its less than 50% vs a random hand. Too bad its pot limit. All of those hands are easy pushes in no limit right? Hardly any hand is worse than a flip when you factor in some fold equity. In pot limit you really have to have the best hand cause you'll get called down so light.

Obviously one fix to this bubble problem is to get my chips earlier and bust out then. I'm thinking thats actually a better strat. I'm used to no limit hold'em strategy, where the bubble is the best part for a good player.

If I see more flops early I can take advantage of the terrible players that join but have almost no chance of cashing. Maybe for this reason I should switch to non-turbo sngs. I probably won't though, because I think I can beat the turbos if I work at them.

Here's my graph for today



Now for the question:
Was talking to a friend and he mentioned a huge pot he won in a cash game. He had bottom straight on the flop and got it all in vs top set and nut flush draw. He won, but he only had 33% equity, making it a 3 way coin flip.

So, does a 3 sided object exist? Coin has 2 sides, pyramid has 4, cube has 6. What has 3 sides?

I did a quick google search and I didn't find any famous theorems/proofs. I'll ask my dad who's a mathematician. Send me an email if you know

Found a donk on IRC

Funny encounter with a donk/troll on my IRC channel... we played 2 $10 heads up matches, and I won both.
He was saying stupid stuff all day, commenting on various plays, theories, etc... he had no idea what he was talking about. I remember one thought he had was that "full ring is more profitable than 6-max becuase you only win 6-max when the other players are on tilt". wtf?

then this conversation came about (I'm stevedog)

meak> any of you run winholdem?
stevedog> :LOLOOOLOLOL
stevedog> GIVING UP SO SOON MEAK HAHAHAHAH
bsr> man
meak> stevedog, would you like to play heads up for 50 dollars?
bsr> do it!
bsr> omg do it
stevedog> oh man, i dont think i can afford it
bsr> lol
stevedog> how about 10
meak> stevedog okay, are you on ftp
bsr> gotta see this man
stevedog> full tilt or stars, w/e
meak> okay
meak> how do we set it up
bsr> pick a tourney number
bsr> there is a shitload of hu sng open

meak> ok i am headsup with stevedog
meak> with my last 10 dollars
meak> stevedog
meak> i feel bad that i am going to take your money
intx> haha now I have to see this
intx> you guys playing on ftp?
meak> stevedog, after i beat you , i might give you back 5 dollars
meak> cause i feel sorry for you
meak> okay
meak> ?

heres 1 hand that they liked http://handposter.com/hand/6130

hosstito> lol 20 into 200. meak is strong
meak> what is 20 into 200
meak> what does that mean

heres the final hand, i guess i was lucky to have coolered him but whatever, its not like he stood much chance anyway http://handposter.com/hand/6131

bsr> well
hosstito> nice pwnage stevedog
stevedog> good game meak
stevedog> thx hossle
hosstito> meak: still gonna give him half his buyin back? :P
meak> i was going to
meak> if i won
stevedog> o well : )
hosstito> lolz
meak> i should have known you had the 10
stevedog> that was probably my 2nd ever heads up game ((not true lol))
meak> do you want to play again for 10
meak> double or nothing
meak> i am ging to play someone else headasup anyway
stevedog> oh
stevedog> uhh,,,, sure
meak> 41019067

i beat him that time also hehe, not a very interesting match, mostly played small pots. This was the biggest pot http://handposter.com/hand/6132 . Probably could have ended it if i raised all in on the river, not sure why i didnt.

last hand i had A8, he had A4 with like 300 chips, got it in preflop, both hit our undercards, mine held up : )

So, I walked away with $19 from that venture.

Finally back up from a brutal downswing

First content post begins at the end of a huge downswing that I hit a couple days ago. It was right after I took a shot at the $11 games, which I got destroyed at , although I didn't see much increase in skill level. Just a mix of bad luck and there were also quite a lot of deadly bubble mistakes that I made. I reviewed a bit and then I came back pretty quickly, as you can see on the graph.

Heres a few hands that you can all learn from

http://handposter.com/hand/6126

2345ds is a fine hand, and with 2 limpers its a pretty easy limp. On the flop, I'm not sure what the best move was. I've got good runner runner flushes, A and 2 give nuts. I get 4 to 1 on the flop call, turns out to be 5 to 1 after the call behind. I dunno. I'm still not even sure that the turn call was a mistake. But after there's a push and a call it's definately time to get out. I don't like having 1k chips in the first level but that's just my problem and I fixed that after I reviewed my leaks. I'm not really committed at all after I gave it some thought. It was just some tilt that got into my system and told me I'd be better off starting a new one than dying away in this one.


http://handposter.com/hand/6128

This one is also a tricky. We're on the bubble and the blinds are pretty small still. A26Q is good, but I definately overplayed it. 6high flush is not so strong, AK, any high pairs are worrysome for me preflop. I think I should have still been in the early-mid game mindset and limped, even though theres only 4 people left. As played though, I dont know what to do about that raise. I certainly cant call, and if i fold i'll have a pretty small stack. I remember thinking I'd push it all in and hope to split so I can get my money back. I found out that was a very big misconception, and I probably should have folded. Calculator says I have 35% equity. Thats pretty embarrasing for an omaha matchup, and I have A2 which feels really weird. I have to start thinking about numbers more now. I looked at all the hands I bubbled with and saw that I overplay some hands a lot.


So I thought about my game, and today was a huge winner. I played 37 sngs: 29 $6's, 8 $11's. Up $107 today.