Grinding it out, one day at a time

New Year, New Site and New Blog!

yorkshirepuddings — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:02:41 +0000

Play poker Texas Holdem online at Bodog!

Hello boys and girls and anything else in between

I hope you had a great Christmas and are now refreshed and ready to take on 2007! I have withdrawn my roll from Full Tilt and used some of it to cover my living expenses for the remainder of the month and stuck the rest into PokerStars to take advantage of their re-sizeable tables and also their reload bonus.

Since I am a stickler for all things new I have also started a new blog on Blogger. Please change all your links to the following address:

http://www.yorkshirepuddingpoker.blogspot.com

I’ve added most of your links to my new blog, hopefully you’ll drop by and say hello at some point!

Good luck at the tables

Is chasing rakeback hindering me?

yorkshirepuddings — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 13:29:11 +0000

You’re probably wondering WTF that title is all about so I shall explain! As you’ve probbaly read in previous posts my laptop is about 4 years old and wasn’t the greatest thing in the world when it was new! Because of the resolution etc I can only run 1 table without having horrendous overlap which is definitely -EV! At my current site, Full Tilt, I get 27% of my rakeback but can only realistically play 1 table comfortably and keep my eye on the action but at somewhere like Poker Stars I can play 4 on one screen and keep up with things due to there resizeable tables. I believe that by playing at Stars I can build my bankroll quicker than staying at a site where I get rakeback. Here’s some maths for you!

I believe I can hit 10PTBB/100 at 6-max NL10 on Full Tilt. This equates to $0.02 per hand. Say 80 hands an hour, this means I should be earning around $1.60 per hour played. 27% rakeback adds around 1PTBB/hour to your win rate (saw this posted on 2+2 somewhere) so this should take my potential earn rate to $1.80/hour.

Now say I play at Stars where I can play 4 tables and therefore hit around 300 hands an hour. My earn rate may drop to say 6PTBB/100 which is $0.012 per hand but because of the increase of hands my win rate should be around $3.60 per hour, twice what it would be at Full Tilt! Add to this that Stars currently has a 25% reload bonus which at 6-max NL10 clears at around $0.40/hour, this adds $1.60 per hour so potentially I could be hitting $5.20/hour compared to the $1.80 at Full Tilt!

With this in mind I have withdrawn from Full Tilt and put my bankroll into Poker Stars. My total online roll is now $497.14 but I may have to dip into this in the New Year as my spending has gone a little crazy once more! I plan to play 4 tables of 6-max NL10 until I hit $625 where I will make the jump to NL25. Once I earn enough cash to treat myself to a new setup I’ll probably return to Full Tilt or a similar site and multitable and get rakeback!

Good luck at those tables!

Small session, small profit.

yorkshirepuddings — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 13:12:16 +0000

I played 135 hands of 6-max NL25 last night on Full Tilt and walked away with $3.75 which works out at 5.56PTBB/100. I’m not going to be able to retire anytime soon but it’s better than a kick in the teeth! I would have turned an extra $12 if it hadn’t have been for the following hand.

Villain in this hand was running at 13/3/2 over 60 hands and hadn’t really stepped out of line at any point, just seemed a bit of a nit. Anyway I raise to $1.50 to loose the guy who had just posted and Villain flat calls. Flop isn’t too bad but I have to bet out here and he flat calls which gets me thinking. The turn brings another 5 which doesn’t really bother me as it’shighly unlikely to have helped him unless he’s called my raise PF with 33 or KK both so unlikely I dismissed them. I am very worried about AK here though as he’s that tight he’s only re-popping preflop with KK+. When he flat calls my turn bet I know I am beaten and I think this is confirmed when he pushes on the river. I don’t think he’s capable of floating me here and I think it’s a good fold, how about you guys?

Well that is the last of the poker I’ll be playing this year. I have work behind the bar tonight which will be pretty busy and then tomorrow is New Year’s Eve which is madness for the pub trade as you can imagine and I plan on being a lot pissed so that is me done! I do have the first week in January off where I plan to get my challange off to a flying start and hopefully log around 10k hands.

Thanks to the readers and visitors of this blog and I sincerely wish you all the best for the coming year. I hope it is everything you want it to be and more besides.

Happy New Year all

A little bit of pokery!

yorkshirepuddings — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 11:43:54 +0000

I’ve not really played much poker since my last update mainly due to eating and drinking my own body weight in alcohol and fatty foods! Well it is Christmas afterall! In between the festivities I’ve managed to fit in around 500 hands and turned a nice little $55 profit, including a cash in a 90 man deep stack SnG.

I entered the SnG on a whim on Saturday night when I’d finished my bar shift mainly because I had never entered a deep stack game before. It was only a $5.50 buy in so I went for it and within 10-15 minutes 89 others joined me. I tried to see a few cheap flops but never really hit anything but the players seemed tighter than usual so I started to loosen up. I rode my luck a little during the 3rd level when I raised to 4xBB in EP with my 88 and only the Rock on the button called. My 88 was an overpair on a rainbow board of 537 and I bet the pot and was minraised by the Rock, something told me to push here (think it was the numerous beers and brandy’s I’d consumed earlier) so push I did and was insta-called by the Rock who flipped QQ Turn brought another 7 and the river a beautiful 8 to fill my boat and I was one of the chip leaders. I stole a lot of pots preflop by 3-betting and was sat in the top 6 in chips for most of the game.

By the time I hit the 3rd break I was stuggling to keep awake but I could smell the final table and was uber-confident of finishing in one of the top 3 places where the actual money was. The bubble burst soon after the break and we were down to 16 players when my final hand occured. It was folded to the SB, who had been on one of my previous tables for over an hour and he’d commented on how he knew I was stealing and raising light and he seemed pretty solid and capable of making moves, and he limped. I made it 4xBB from the BB with AJs and he raised to 10xBB. I knew this was going to be a critical hand as if we end up all-in once is going to be the chip leader. From our previous play and comments he could have anything at all here and decide he’s doing this with 22+, A9+, 76s+, KTs+ and I’m here to win the whole thing so I push into him. He calls right away and shows AKo. FFS! Neither of us improved and I go out in 16th. I think I made the right move to win. I could have folded here and limped a few spots higher (I was 7th in chips at the time) but I read him for making a play based on my image and made a move based on these factors. Meh. $8.10 won which equates to $2.60 for 3.5 hours work,

I’ve played around 280 hands of 6-max NL10 and shipped around $1.20 which isn’t the best result in the world but by no way disasterous, nothing really of note to be honest. I’m around $50 up from 6-max NL25 which is nice! I’ve only played around 200 hands and have been paid off with my big hands which helps things. Here’s an example. I’d only played 20 hands here but was at something stupid like 75/60/8 due to picking up KQs, AQ, KK, 88, JT, 98s and obviously AA! I guess he thought he could bluff me off the pot! LMAO!

I probably won’t get to play now until the New Year mainly because tonight I am going to kick Mrs Pudding’s arse at 10-pin bowling, Friday I have Pudding Jr and Saturday and Sunday are going to be crazy in the pub with it being New Year’s weekend so I’ll probably be in no fit state! I do have the following week off though and plan to log a whole bunch of hands during my time off. I originally booked it off as I thought Mrs Pudding was having that time off too but she’s had to take this week instead so why not utilise my spare time by logging a few hands and making some cash?! Even if I don’t play I’ll still be checking out your blogs so please upate them!

Best of luck at the tables and if I don’t update before the New Year, I wish you and your family all the best for 2007! :)

NL Hold’em Auto Rules

yorkshirepuddings — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:00:07 +0000

I mentioned auto rules I use in my last post and have since been asked where I got them. Here are the links for:

Full Ring

6-max

Thanks for reading, now get back to those tables

I’m a SLAG!!!

yorkshirepuddings — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 15:24:30 +0000

I’ve really slacked on logging any hours this week and have only managed a couple of hundred hands although I have managed to turn over a $50 profit. I had my bar shift last night and by the time I finished I couldn’t be bothered and was ready for bed. However, I couldn’t get to sleep due to a combination of eating late and having to do a load of rearranging in the beer cellar when we’d finished. With my second wind I decided to fire up Full Tilt and have an hours worth of play.

Nothing much of note to be honest and a small profit of around $1.50 from about 100 hands, which equates to around 7.5PTBB/100. I’ll take profit everyday of the week. I should have come away with more but I made a couple of loose calls to preflop raises and I actually played pretty passively post-flop, mainly due to having weak draws or underpairs and hands as such. One hand stands out from the session and unfortunately I didn’t have time to put it in Pokerhand but I will edit this post tonight if I get 5 minutes, if not I’ll post it tomorrow because I’m interested in the stance others would have taken.

So far I am running at 25/14/3 and am really enjoying getting involved in pots and using my position and absolute position to take pots without contest. I’ve been trying to dumb down the fancy play and just go for pure aggression and steals based on betting patterns amongst other reads. This has led to Poker Tracker auto-rating me as the Tazmanian Devil and categorising me as a Semi-Loose Aggressive preflop and Aggressive Post flop (SLAG). BTW, I’m using the NL full ring auto-rules from the 2+2 Forums

I’m uber-confident about my game right now and am really looking forward to my week off work starting January 1st where I will be logging a lot of hours and hopefully making the transition back to NL25 as soon as possible. It’s looking like I’ll be starting 2007 with a bankroll of around the $400 mark which is plenty. I have around $280 online at present and although I could probably stretch to adding and extra $300 to my balance I don’t want to leave myself short, like I usually do, with all the festivities etc at this time of year! If I manage to get my arse into gear and actually log some hand between now and New Year I might not have to add any cash at all! If only I could tear myself away from Mrs Pudding, take-away food and the pub!

I won’t be playing tonight because I’ll be with Mrs Pudding and doubt I’ll play any tomorrow even though I have the day off because I’ll be last minute Christmas shopping and the landlord expects the pub to be really busy on the night so I’ve been roped into hanging around to work! I have Pudding Jr on Saturday, followed by more bar work so realistically the next time I’ll be gracing the virtual felt will be Sunday morning and that’s if I can drag my carcass out of the sack! I’ve not been missing it though and it’s good to be play when I want and not feeling like I have to log X amount of hands. I mentioned to Cadmunkey a few weeks back that I was starting to become bored of poker, mainly because I was finding the micro’s a waste of time and a bit of a grind. By not trying to log loads of hands all the time I have given myself a new breathe of life and I have a renewed interest in this crazy game. The micro’s might be a grind but I won’t be here for much longer I can assure you that! I’m fully expecting to be fully rolled for NL100 with a $2.5k bankroll on or before June 1st 2007.

Good luck at those fish filled tables ladies and gents!

NL Hold’em Starting Hand Strategy

yorkshirepuddings — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 10:42:36 +0000

Hello boys and girls. Here is post number two on NLHE starting hands for full ring cash games. Each of the scenarios is split between Early Position (EP), Middle Position (MP) and Late position (LP) and they’re will be a small section on playing from the Blinds. As mentioned before this guide is intended for Full ring games of 9 or 10 players and assumes the following:

Early Position - The three seats to the left of Blinds
Middle Position - The two seats to the left of Early Position (three seats if 10 handed)
Late Position - The final two seats to the left of Middle Position

As you should always mix your play up in Hold’em I will categorise action as “Normally” meaning this is the action you should normally take, maybe on a 80/20 ratio. There will be Normally Raise (NR) and Normally Limp (NL) and Normally Call (NC), anything else is unlisted but is obviously Normally Fold! If you see AK this means both suited and offsuit where as AKs refers specifically to suited Big Slick.

Nobody has entered the pot

Early Position

NR = AA -> QQ, AK
NL = JJ -> 22, Axs, JTs -> 54s

Obviously you need to make some adjustments for the type of table you’re at as it would probably be a bad idea to limp UTG with say 54s or 33 in an aggressive game where you are likely to be met with a big raise from one of your opponents.

Middle Position

NR = AA -> JJ, AK -> AQ
NL = TT -> 22, Axs, JTs -> 54s, KJs+, J9s -> 53s

Promote JJ and AQ into the normally raise category once you’re the one opening the pot in MP. Limp with the rest of pocket pairs but you can now start to add 1 gapped suited connectors into the mix and also any 2 suited cards Jack or better.

Late Position

There is no set way to play late position in an unopened pot. If the blinds are weak and are folding to aggression you could raise with a whole bunch of hands. I’ve seen Green Plastic raise hands such as Q5o in certain games because of his image and his opponents. Even my own range for raising 1st in when in LP is huge!

There is one limper in the pot before you

Early Position

Normally raise and call with the hands you would raise and limp with if there were no limpers before you.

Middle Position

Normally raise and call with the hands you would raise and limp with if there were no limpers before you

Late Position

You can really start to loosen up now, maybe limp with such hands as T7s or start raising it up with hands like 88.

There are at least 2 limpers in front of you

In all positions play the same hands as you would if there were no limpers in front of you but instead of normally raising, limping, calling, change this to Always. Also, if you raise make sure you add 1xBB per limper to your raise.

Someone’s opened with a raise, no callers yet

NR = AA -> KK
NC = QQ -> 99, AK, AQ

Occasionally you can call with other A-listed hands and you should in fact reraise from time to time with hands such as 66, JTs etc. Of course it’s also often correct to reraise with AK etc depending on your opponent and I’ll often reraise with QQ too.

There is a raise in front of you and also 1 caller

Play the same hands as above but this time instead of calling with AK, put in a big reraise.

There is a raise and a reraise in front of you

Move all-in with AA and KK and fold everything else

Obviously these starting requirements are not gospel as every table and opponent is different but according to Sklansky and co these starting hands should stand you in good stead for preflop play. Now all you have to do is figure out the post flop and you’ll have cracked it!

Thanks for reading ladies and gents and best of luck at the tables

No Limit Hold’em Starting Hands

yorkshirepuddings — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 13:59:28 +0000

One of the first questions people ask when they start playing Texas Hold’em is usually what starting hands to play before the flop. Fixed Limit (FL) Hold’em is relatively easy to plot a table for due to the betting structure etc and if anybody wants an Excel spreadsheet with the recommended starting hands for Early position, Middle Position, Late position and from the Blinds (taken from a best selling Poker Strategy book) post a comment (I’ll respond via email to you and delete your comment).

Anyway, back to No Limit (NL)! NLHE is a totally different beast from FLHE for reasons that are so obvious they don’t need explaining here and if you need them explaining then I think you need to find yourself a new game Hands that are basically unplayable in certain positions in FLHE become profitable in NLHE as you have the potential to win your opponents entire stack, which could be 100xBB or more, where as in FLHE the most you can expect to win from your opponent is 16xBB (assuming a cap of 4 bets on each street). So hands like T9s can become very profitable in the right situations, as can small pocket pairs. In FLHE in Middle Position (MP) I’d want at least 2 maybe 3 limpers in front of me before I called preflop with say 55 but in NLHE I’d be quite happy to limp with these even first to act, Under The Gun (UTG) if the table wasn’t being overly aggressive as if I flop a set I have the potential to win a huge pot. I’d much rather have QJs than A8o even though A8o could win the pot without having to improve along the way. To get things under way I’ll list hands into 4 (A to D) categories and then in a separate post I’ll list which hands are profitable in certain situations and in each of the positions of the table. These are entirely meant for NLHE cash games and not tournament play as such.

A-listed hands

These are hands that you should be happy to see dealt to you preflop and as a general rule play well in any position when playing deep stack (100xBB) NLHE. They include:

Any Pocket Pair
Any Suited Ace
Suited connectors from KQs down to 54s

B-listed hands

These hands are weaker than the hands listed but they are still very often playable in deep stack NLHE games. These category includes:

Any two suited cards Jack or higher
1 gapped suited connectors from QTs down to 53s

C-listed hands

As expected, these hands are weaker still but are still playable in the right situations, usually with weak opponents and being in position. This category includes:

Suited Kings
2 unsuited cards Ten or higher
2 gapped suited connectors from Q9s down to 52s
Unsuited connectors from T9o down to 54o

D-listed hands

Judging by the poor hands in list C you’d be surprised to find another category of hands. This category contains any hand not mentioned in the above lists. That is not to say never play these hands but it’s very likely you’ll be just throwing your cash away if you do. If you’re wanting to play these hands use them for stone cold bluffs, I mean what would you expect a hand like 84o beat, seriously?

It would be very easy to say “Always raise with JJ” etc but there are so many variables in NLHE it is untrue. Over the next post or two I’ll list what hands are recommended from Early position (EP), Middle Position (MP), Late Position (LP) and the dreaded blinds! They will be broken down into the following common situations:

You are the first to enter the pot
There is one limper in the pot in front of you
There are at least 2 limpers in the pot in front of you
There has been a raise in front of you but no callers
There has been a raise in front of you and there is at least 1 caller
There has been a raise met by a re-raise in front of you

That should cover everything I believe. Just so I don’t get told off the information will be based on information publish in No Limit Hold’em: Theory and Practice by David Sklansky and Ed Miller, which I strongly recommend to anyone wanting to play NLHE cash games.

Hope this will become helpful for you!

Full Ring Experiment

yorkshirepuddings — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 10:41:08 +0000

Play Online Poker

I received an email yesterday from Cadmunkey telling me he was going to hit some cash games and that he’d also listened to an article by Daniel Negreanu with regards to beating the micro stakes NL cash games. I have utmost respect for Negreanu as I think he’s a tremendous player who seems to have an insane ability to read hands. One hand that stands out is in Harrington On Hold’em Volume 3 where he lays down a flopped straight after reading Sammy Farha, correctly, for a flush after Farha called a raise and reraise preflop with 9s2s! Anyway, Negreanu stated that if he were to play micro stakes poker he’d avoid 6-max and play Full Ring (9 or 10 man) as it’s the only way to beat the rake and make a consistent profit at these stakes! So as I am not on any sort of challenge at the minute and am just donking around I think I’ll give the full ring games a go on Full Tilt Poker and I think Mr Munkey is going to do the same also.

I always used to play full ring (FR) when I played FLHE and then when I made the switch to NLHE I stuck with ful ring. I found it easier and is where I made a nice little bit of cash, especially over at Sun Poker before the traffic dried up worse than Gandhi’s sandals! But all the blogs I was reading seemed to be playing 6-max and were, seemingly, tearing it up. Cadmunkey started playing it too and was enjoying some success so I gave it a go and got stung and couldn’t get my head around it. I did some research into it and started to play 6-max once more and really enjoyed the action and the donkeys it attracted and eventually started to turn a profit.

I’ll give FR games until the end of the year to see how I shape up then I will decide what I’m going to play on January 1st. The one thing that will hit me is the change of pace. I expect only 50-65 hands an hour and the tables to be more TAG than the 6-max games although all games at FR NL10 are more than likely going to be Weak-Tight. When playing FR I try to run around 20/10/2 which is a happy medium and comfortable to play and means I can throw some speculative hands into the mix, especially if we’re all sat with 100xBB stacks. I’m going to try to stick to ABC poker at these stakes and not get too fancy because the retards just do not understand but I’m also going to put more emphasis on positional poker and try out a few things based purely on position and players.

I’ve dug out my No Limit Hold’em: Theory And Practice by David Sklansky and Ed Miller to flick through on the commute to work. An awful lot of the book is for playing at much higher stakes but the majority of the concepts can be utilised at what ever stakes you play as it’s all about making +EV moves at the right times. My preflop game is pretty good, if I may say so myself, but I know some new players struggle with hand selection when they first start playing NL so I’ll share some basic preflop starting hands over the next couple of posts, mostly taken from the aforementioned book.

No pokery played last night as I went to Mrs Puddings house for Pizza (Turtle Food) and to help decorate her Christmas tree and we watched the corny, but very entertaining Starship Troopers! Sad I know but I really want to see number two now! Should get some play in tonight so will be able to report back in the morning with some hands of interest and hopefully stories of huge profits! I also bought my first packet of fags for 2.5 years yesterday as I’ve really been fancying a smoke recently, going to be a good lad though and knock it on the head because I don’t want to get back into the habit of smoking!

As always, thanks for checking in!

As Samuel Jackson would say…..

yorkshirepuddings — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:22:58 +0000

….I’m sick of this mother fucking spam on this mother fucking blog! Seems to have gone crazy in the past week!

Thank God for Akismet!