I think im going to join the uni-bet bandwagon once i get back from my trip it actually looks so juicy/+EV.

Not a fan of the interface tho why can't they just have normal looking avatars like pokerstars :l

It's a deliberate attempt to attract and keep casual players.

I enjoyed the first half, as that didn't contain any difficult maths and it was almost like a series of pop-science blogs about funny/random occurrences. I liked the information about how some gamblers (or casinos) can get an edge, but it wasn't anything earth-shatteringly new to me. The stuff about normal distributions/bell curves was illuminating, but the more detailed discussion about p-factors and the like when looking at academic research results went a little above my head, as I've never studied probability academically. (The book has lots of footnotes, btw.) Whether you'd like it would depend on how much you know about the subject already.

I think I've shed my nitty reputation once and for all. I didn't play this hand in my normal way. I was trying too hard to get a screengrab for this thread, but couldn't get into a pot with Sam unless I limped the SB. It probably looks horrendous on the video replay. (I check-raised the flop without even a backdoor FD).



FWIW, Snowie thinks the only blunder in the hand is Sam's river call (it thinks my overbet shove only costs me 0.14bb in EV, but the call loses 6bb), but I don't think Snowie is very accurate in this sort of situation.

His call looks very much like the kinda thing noobs do when they don't realise their 2 pair is counterfeited.

Indeed. I used to say "three pairs is the worst hand in holdem", but the weird thing is that counterfeited hands often make for good bluffs or bluff-catchers, because they block so many value hands.

I uploaded the screengrab to my twitter, and Sam retweeted it to thousands of followers, so I might be unable to successfully bluff with that screenname ever again. Next week, 100% of my overbets will be with the nuts!

lol, well done!

Week 19 summary.

Rusty penguin (mostly just 2-tabling cash, with some tourneys on the side) + sunshine chess + losing every flip = very low volume.
I didn't really enjoy poker much this week (which sounds churlish, as I still won at a decent clip), but a few hands were kind of fun.

I put him on AK or something like 99/TT, although I didn't entirely rule out the nuts. This is basically spew though:

I did not suck out.

Let's try and restore my nitty reputation with the rarely used check-overbet-overbet line:


I don't always get 4 callers pre-flop at 50NL, but when I do, I flop a set and stack top pair.


I was probably overbetting the river on any card that didn't pair the board.


Graph to follow in next post.

I play such low volume that I never expected to get anything from an affiliate site's monthly rake race, but I got a little bit of free money in both of the past two months. (For me, it works out at about an additional 20% rakeback on top of what Uni gives in tickets and bonuses). It tickles me that the Unibet site cashier describes 20 quid as a "premium win".


The graph basically tells the story of the week.


I'd like to put more volume in this week, and make more of it at 50NL, but the bad beats are affecting me mentally and my old risk-aversion has returned somewhat. We'll see how it goes, I guess. #PingItUp

a lot of these overbets are really weird mate

I can't deny that. Sometimes I get 'creative' for the sheer hell of it (I am soooo bored of playing ABC poker), but when I look at the hands later I kind of think "WTF am I doing?"

This very short penguin-tastic videogif seems analogous to most of my overbets:
When I try and impress the ladies at the pool with a triple back somersault with pike.
(Thanks to Saturnation for sending it to me!)

I have a fear that my eventual 100NL shots will look like that too.

I'll PM you later in the week, Joe, as I think I might cut down on my forum posting and get back on Skype.

Sucks to hear about the downswing man but I know u can bounce back

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

Nice thread Arty, u got a follower. Good luck at the tables.

Damn sorry about the downswing...

Still a sick graph nonetheless.

You should post some chess strat stuff that would be quite interesting btw :3, or like some matches. (Im just to lazy to do research on it lol i keep trying to get back into chess but i don't have motivation anymore...)

But I'm even worse at chess than poker. I once lost with a pair of a queens. #BadBeat
I'm gonna go and play some chess today, so I'd better make trips.

FWIW, I usually play E4 NF3 as white, and some kind of Sicilian as black against E4, but I really don't take chess very seriously. I like getting into weird situations by making odd/sub-optimal moves just to avoid boredom. See also: my flop check-raises with no pair or draw in poker.

In for this! GL Arty.

Do you have an account at chess.com? We should play a game sometime

Hi Highfish and Zombie. I don't play chess online, Krusty. Sorry.

I'm having some mental game issues this week. After running so well for 3 months, this week's runbad has blindsided me. It kind of feels so much worse than if I'd had the bad beats spread out instead of getting them all at once, and I've definitely been tilted into making some bad plays. I think I've been all in pre 8 times and lost 6 of the races (inc. AQs < K5o) but mostly I've just been running into the top of people's ranges and getting coolered.

You know that feeling when you think you're probably about to triple up?
Brag: Made the 4th nuts in a squeezed pot.
Beat: Had the 3rd best hand.

I have a challenge to complete for rakeback points that involves winning a ton of 3-way pots, so I thought I'd move down to 10NL for a bit, as there are more multiway pots at the lower levels, and my tilt-spews don't cost so much. It was pretty much the same coolerthon down there.



And now the runbad is even extending to my 7-minute warm-up sessions against Snowie (I just lost 2 stacks in 47 hands while playing at extra-terrestrial level).
I seem to have developed an amazing ability to jam the nut low into the (very unexpected) nuts.


I guess I have to go and embrace the variance of the Friday Night Fishfest now, but I've pretty much got a 'Double Trouble' ticket locked up this week, so I'll probably just donk around a bit and then take the weekend off. #Ihatepoker

P.S. Jonny sent me this image. Seems appropriate.

#PenguinCooler

Lol. I too just like to play chess so i can sac random pieces at random times (ik i make no sense)... hopefully trying to mate villain. My fav opening for white is danish gambit or queens gambit.

Yeah "sub-optimal moves" if you run it thru some chess GTO program solver it'll be like well in 10,500 games white villain won doing x and is the most popular move in this spot and your move is so -EV etc...

Thinking ahead in chess is transferable to poker is it not? As well as exploitative play vs. standard lines?

This is gibberish banter btw. Lol.

how on earth do you get to the river with only 4bb in the pot with 99?

I have fancy play syndrome.
That hand was at 10NL, so it's actually 10bb. My line was bet flop, check turn, planning to check-raise, but villain didn't bite, so I checked the river as well, thinking he would bet a weak ace or some random nonsense. I'm evidently pretty good at letting draws get there for free. (And I complacently didn't even realise there was an OESD on the flop).

Here's a more extreme version of winning the minimum. (This time at 25NL).


[x] Girly avatars confirmed too passive for their own good.

Variance in small sample sizes is ridiculous, but you know how I love my #LolbadSampleSize brags.

Yesterday in my 7-minute warm-up session against Snowie (6-max 100NL simulation, 50bb deep), I made two tiny errors and l lost at 230bb/100.


Today, after about 2 years of training, I finally played a 'perfect' session and won at 106bb/100.


This "perfect" session included a failed hero-call with ace high on an 8-high board. :/

Since Snowie thinks I'm quite good at poker, I'm probably all set to go and lose 10 buy-ins at 4NL.

Right, so week 20 was evidently the International Week of Coolers. I hated almost every minute.



Weekly graph:


Since the penguin is getting coolered constantly, and my winrate is regressing to a mean of <10bb/100, I might have to change species and resurrect one of my old screennames. The graph for the year so far still looks OK.

Week 21

No epic giraffes this week. I barely played, as I've lost motivation and focus, due to runbad and worsening health problems. I feel kind of burned out tbh. In the few short sessions I played, I was only on my B- or C-game. Just 980 hands (mostly at 10NL). Won 2 euros. Whoop!

I'm not sure what the plan is for next week. It will probably be another low volume week though, as I've just got so little desire to grind. How is everyone else doing?

Hey Arty, everyone goes through bad stretches. The only way you can get back to winning is to grind through those bad stretches (but you already know that). So just keep at it! And focus on not unnecessarily spewing, as all of us might be more prone to do when things aren't going well. If you're feeling burned out, take a few days off and come back when you're feeling more refreshed.

Good luck, and keep plugging away!