As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with with such abominable results. They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.

Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.

And so on.

Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.

If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

It's hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.

-Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions is not a great book. It's not even a good book all the way through--Vonnegut himself bashes it several times within the text of the story--but it has its spots. It definitely has its spots; enough so that I reread it every decade or so.

If you're looking for a primer on existential dread, Breakfast of Champions is one of the best jumping off points that you can find.

Apparently, someone adapted the book into a movie, one that received execrable reviews and corresponding box office receipts. I've never seen the movie, but I might catch some of it, just to see what the hell some people were thinking, trying to screen adapt a philosophical anti-novel filled with the meta therapy-session ravings of a middle-aged man undergoing a massive existential crisis.

Harrah's (and Harrah's "Freeroll" (-$10)): 8 hours:
(-$220)

SJ your existential dread might be lightened by the knowledge that these blogs are widely read and enjoyed by a small army of people grappling with similar challenges. Rooting for you to hit a stride leading up into the upcoming poker festival which may just provide the material for a real life poker epic tale.

Mr Morph I think its extremely unlikely that you would be capable of putting in 60 hours a week, even on a fortnightly basis. Whats the standard working week in Germany its around 36-37 hours or so. 60 Hours is like another 2 and a half days.

Thanks HankTheBank! I'm going to need all the help I can get, given my lazy mindset lately. Speaking of which, I should probably add some Jared Tendler and Eliot Roe podcasts into my study hours to help me get my mind back on the grind.

I tried to play poker in Hannover, Germany once. I showed up at 11AM and they told me the poker room didn't open until 3PM. I've since talked to a few Hannoverians about it and they said that you have to sign up a week in advance for the single table that runs, or you'll be stuck on the waiting list for hours.

All right, so I've been idle for the past few days, drinking and playing a Final Fantasy XII remaster on my PS4. XXII is the FF where they let you set up 'gambits' for your characters: basically they're little programming algorithms like 'if hit points <20% then spam heal spell,' or 'if foe is flying, then spam telekinesis spell.' You use gambits to wind your characters up and set them on their way, like little NPCs. It's fantastic, especially when you screw up the gambits and all hell breaks loose.

Anyways, this calls for a new hours challenge.

30 hours of live poker play along with 10 hours of study per week, Wed-Sun, for the next two weeks, or I give up 24 hours for volunteer work.

Volunteer work shouldn't be a punishment, but for someone as lazy and as averse to new things as me, it should be a proper disincentive for slacking off.

Let's go!

How was your bar fight?

No fight: just a drunk rant that involved politarding, so I don't want to get into it here.

It was nice to get back to slinging cards and chips across the felt. Yesterday, I had to give myself a statement of purpose along the lines of, "Look: you're not here to grind away hours at the lowest level; you're here to learn something today and to use that information to level up."

Here's a hand that I played much differently than I would have in a vacuum, as I'm almost never in the business of turning a low equity marginal made hand in a 3-bet pot after a dry flop into a bluff.

I pick up TT UTG and open for $10. BTN raises to $35. I call. BTN has around $250 left behind and I cover.

(Pot $72) - Two Players

Flop K96

I check, BTN bets $40. I raise to $130.

So, what sort of reads would you need on BTN to pull a play like this? Or is this a routine play for you?

Bally's: 6 hours:
($-101)

Reads needed.

- You've seen him isolate in position before
- He c-bets a lot
- He knows how to fold
- He thinks you're a nit

Or at least 3 of those 4.

I would just need to hate his guts.

First, I don't have much experience playing live low stakes, but I'd assume villain is very tight in this spot. I'd imagine he's something like QQ+, AK and given that range, you'll find it very difficult to achieve folds here. Expoitatively I'd prob only raise 66 and 99 here (I'm assuming we're folding all hands that can make 2p here pre and 4betting KK.) However, if you think either that his range is wider than that or that he is capable of monster hero folds, you're gonna need to balance. You have to be super careful with your balancing in these tight range spots because you are repping a very thin range. If you go about it willy nilly you'll be either overbluffing or underbluffing wildly.

Given your specific hand, I would never x/r bluff. Better choices would be hands with better equity when called and/or better blocker effects. Something like AQx, QJ or a nut flush draw.

Spot on! And much more concise than I could ever do it. 20 points for Straya.

You have me wondering if "FU I raise" might be better than "FU I call." On the surface, you would think that (mistake * raise) is more expensive than (mistake * call), but the FU raise would likely come earlier in the hand where it's less expensive, whereas the FU call is usually a big one on the river, or all-in on the turn, and the FU raise has some potential fold equity accompanying it.

Everything here is good GTO thinking, well thought out, and correct vs another reg, a nit, or even a rec player.

But in this spot, given the reads listed above by fidstar, the exploit varies so widely from GTO that I can throw range comparisons, flop analysis and balance out the window.

I'd been at the table for almost two hours, almost completely card dead, and my image was lockdown tight. The kid on the BTN was testing every tight opener at least once with a 3-bet in position, so his range was super-wide. Some LAGs do this to try to find out as quickly as possible just who's weak-tight and who's tight aggressive. This was his second 3-bet on me. I had folded to the first 3-bet 90 minutes beforehand, not having had any reads at that point.

So I knew that I was calling the 3-bet at least, with a plan for getting sticky on most flops, given that I had a range advantage--even though mine was capped--his was so wide pre, along with the 100% c-bet on the flop, that it didn't matter that he was uncapped.

So anyways, knowing all that, why not plan for getting sticky and building a check/call check/call check/call line for the big money, rather than going for the checkraise on the flop? Because the spot was unusual, and it carried a lot of reverse-implied odds: I was going to hate a lot of turns if I'd just check/called. And he certainly would have fired most turns when checked to. Normally I'm never going to blast an aggro player when he's doing his thing and I have a hand that might be worth calling down, but I normally wouldn't find myself in this spot to begin with: I'm folding the TT a lot in the live game to a 3-bet, simply because live $1/$2 players don't 3-bet enough.

Finally there's the meta-game aspect. If we're going to be at the table for a while, I want to be labelled by him as a potential problem when 3-betting. Having a frequent 3-bettor on your left is an EV swamp that needs to be addressed quickly.

The kid folded to my checkraise and didn't 3-bet me again for the rest of the session.

Did he fold?

What do you do if he jams?

If he calls, it's hard not to jam the turn after check raising the flop.

I've been bluffing a fair amount lately, which is unusual for me. I haven't changed any aspect of my game; the spots have just been coming up. Here's one vs a tourist, because I always have AK in this spot

I open AQ for $10 from MP and get one call from our tourist in the BB. He has $200 behind and I cover. My image, once again, is tight.

(Pot $21) Two Players

Flop: T86

BB donks $15 and I call.

(Pot $51) Two Players.

Turn: K

BB bets $30. I raise to $100. BB folds.

Bally's: 6 hours:
+$294

He folded. There are a few drawing hands that he can jam with. I would expect suited connectors in his 3-bet range. And I'm probably priced in--I should do the math at some point.

I think I could get away from the turn if he calls and one of many bad cards hits. It's a bad spot, but I had judged his fold equity to be very high on the flop, and I got the fold, fortunately.

i think the odds are good you are bluffing w the best in this spot. perhaps villain is as strong as AJ w As...

Remember that the typical tourist is going to defend their BB very wide heads up. It bothers them that someone might be trying to mack on their blinds. Knowing that, I think that there's a lot of suited junk in his range, but the part I'm interested in is the unsuited Ax and the mid connectors: A8o, A6o, QTo, JTo, T9o, 98o, 87o. These add up to a lot of combos. It's going to be hard for him to play for stacks with a lot of that. Maybe he'll call with QJo and ATo if he's feeling frisky, but I don't think he's donking with those two hands. I think he's check/calling.

Of course, that means that 97o and KTo are in there as well, but I think he's checkraising the flop and the turn, respectively, on these a fair amount of the time.

The second thing to consider is that tourists are pretty reliable about donking marginal made hands, vs donking sets, straights and draws. So that's the range that I'm attacking with the bluff.

Once again, not all of this went through my head in real time at the table. The thought process was something like -- He's donking a weak made hand here a lot, lol I'll rep like I has AK. I raise.

Freeroll later today at Bally's. I played one interesting hand last night where the math was yelling for one thing but some obvious tells were yelling for the opposite. I'll try to write it up when I get back from my day at the tables.

Bally's: 6 hours:
(-$62)

Yesterday, I was the first runner knocked out of the freeroll, 5 minutes into it, with a set of 2s < flush draw.

Here is the math vs tells hand from two days ago.

CU opens for $17. He starts the hand with $250 and I cover with $275. I'm on the BTN with AK. Normally this is a 3-bet, but there's a loose and stationey fish with a $125 stack in the BB. I call and fishy BB calls.

(Pot: $50) Three Players

Flop: A5T

BB checks, CU bets $25. I call. BB mumbles something along the lines of "Ah, I'm priced in. I gotta call." A weak hand statement from a casual player made while making a passive play like checking or calling often indicates a weak or a marginal hand.

(Pot $125) Three Players

Turn: T

BB bets $83 all in. CU tanks forever and folds.

(Pot $208) Two Players - one is all in.

This should be a trivial call. I'm sitting on the top of a range that I've underrepped for the entire hand. I need only 29% equity. I'm almost positive that I have that against even a somewhat nutted range.



I look over at BB and he's relaxed and staring at me steadily. Then I glance down and I see his dress shirt billowing and rippling a little down by his hip. This is caused by his leg bouncing up and down. All of these are indicators of a very strong hand here on the turn.

JFC, he has the Ten. Fold it!



****, no! This was the plan all along. Keep the fish in the hand until he makes a mistake. This is what we wanted.



He has the damn Ten. Look at him!

You don't put someone on a hand, you put them on a RANGE.

Bouncey bouncey bouncey bouncey...

Tells are for tiebreakers. This ain't a tiebreaker. Make the call.

I call.

Flamingo and Bally's "Freeroll" (-$10): 6 hours:
(-$30)

Tough spot.

Hard not to call.

In real time, I thought my equity was a lot higher: like low to mid 40s. I also failed to take something else important into account. What was it?

A station fish doesn't bet that often into two players?

Dunno, but the player type you describe would often rather play trappy when he hit his gin card, esp with 3 players in the hand and no draws out there. Also you gotta account for some spazz. No bluffs make sense here but in LLSNL there will be some in his range (wise words I got from someone, dont remember, in LLSNL forum)

Oops, make it two things: the second thing was that I didn't put 55 in his range. I might argue that he would have checkraised it on the flop, but really he wouldn't. He would have slow played it and waited to pounce on the turn or river.

The important thing that I didn't account for was that CU tanked forever before folding. Unless he was Hollywooding for metagame reasons, he's almost always throwing an ace into the muck in that spot.

That's definitely a big thing to consider. When a station pushes all in with two players left to act, he's rarely going to have a marginal hand. It comes down to whether or not he thinks AJ-AK are marginal in this spot, or if he lumps them in with the goods.

True, these guys do like to slowplay. But here he has only 3/4 pot left in his stack and two other guys who have shown interest in throwing money into the pot.

Also true that a bad station can spazz just from being bad and not knowing what to do in a spot. I originally put A5 in his range to try to account for this, that hand having made two pair on the flop only to be counterfeited on the turn, but I'm having second thoughts about that.

Really I see almost no bluffs here, but we can probably put 43s in his range as a gutshot semibluff. A lot of these fish like to think that they're Gus Hanson, before he lost his millions. Here's the modified range, with A5 out, 55 in for the set on the flop and boat on the turn, and 43s in for the bluff, and assuming that CU did not fold an ace.



We're getting closer to the 29% breakeven equity.

But now look at what happens when we remove an ace of diamonds from the range, assuming that CU folded it.



It's a fold. It's a clear fold. I never took CUs folded hand into account.

my lengthening beard has changed my silhouette. Seen from the front, the shadow of my head looks positively phallic. I couldn't nail down a good picture of that, but I did get a very different look from the side, where I look much like Mac Tonight®, a terrifying marketing creation from the 1980s.





Flamingo: 6 hours:
+$43