2008 Resolution One: Focus on Short-Handed NLHE Cash Games

At the beginning of last year, I set some poker resolutions and goals for myself. It’s time now to see how I’ve fared during the course of 2008.

Resolution 1: Focus on Short-Handed NLHE Cash Games

I pretty well kicked the tournament habit, but my focus wasn’t exclusively on short-handed play. I played a fair bit of full ring NLHE as well when the games were good, and I don’t regret it. Over about 170K hands played at 6-max tables at Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker (Poker Tracker 3 doesn’t collect UB stats), I ran at about 2 BB/100. This covers stakes from $.5/$1 (for a Poker Savvy video I was recording) to $50/$100, which is the biggest I’ve played.

Over 27K hands of heads up NLHE, I ran at nearly 4 BB/100. Sadly, a few ill-fated forays into 25/50 heads up nevertheless left me down about $35,000.

I say that I don’t regret expanding into full ring because over 60K hands I ran at about 4 BB/100.

As most of you know, tournaments did still prove profitable for me thanks to a very deep run in the main event of the WSOP. For the year, I had an ROI of just over 100%, which is in line with what I hear the best tournament players tend to expect. Of course, with a sample size of 261 mostly huge-field tournaments, that’s not a very meaningful number. It’s scary to think how much a single card could have changed the course of my year. Change a few rivered Aces to deuces and I leave Las Vegas penniless. Then again, gimme an Ace on the river against Scott Montgomery and maybe I leave Las Vegas a millionaire. That’s tournament poker.

The real issue with tournaments is that they are mostly a lot less interesting than cash and it’s much harder to put an equivalent amount of money in play. Basically I could either chase the circuit around the gruddiest parts of the US (Reno! Atlantic City! Tunica!) or spend less time playing more money 8-tabling 5/10 NL Deep in the comfort of my own apartment (and underwear, if I damn well please).

Goal 1: Play no more than 400 tournaments (Achieved)

This one wasn’t even close. I played just 261 tournaments, almost exclusively big buy-in, large-field events. In fact, the average prize pool in the tournaments I played was over $900,000. I still enjoy playing the biggest events like the Sunday majors, the FTOPS, and the WCOOP. However, I no longer feel any urge to play something like the 100K Guarantee on a random Thursday night.

The one good thing about tournaments is that they force me to put in hours. If I’m playing one or two tournaments, I’ll generally have 6-8 cash games going on the side for 4-5 hours whereas playing exclusively cash I’d probably play 8-10 tables for just 2-3 hours before getting bored.

Goal 2: The average buy-in of the tournaments I play will be at least $500. (Failed)

I missed this one, coming in at an average buy-in of $427. If you disregard four freerolls that I played, I can get this number up to about $460, but I still played too many small buy-in events. I was also thinking I would play at least one other big B&M event besides the WSOP, which I didn’t end up doing.

Goal 3: Play at least 250,000 hands of NLHE cash. (Achieved)

This was a very modest goal, and I would have been pretty ashamed if I couldn’t hit it. There are people who play this much in a month. In fact, a guy from 2+2 recently won a prop bet that required him to play 600,000 hands in November! Granted I have no desire to 24-table 50NL for 13 hours a day every day, but still I really ought to play more.

Not even counting UB or the occasional live game, I played 256, 587 hands. Over that sample, I came out at 2.54 BB/100, which is good but far from spectacular. Even in the biggest games the best players are making twice that.

Of the limits where I spent most of my time, here’s how it shook out:

30K hands at 10/20 NL 6-max at 3.9 BB/100

50K hands at 5/10 NL FR at 3.9 BB/100

66K hands at 5/10 6-max 0.4 BB/100

31K hands at 3/6 6-max, 1.1 BB/100

13K hands 2/4 6-max 4.9 BB/100

And for those who are curious about my play style, here are a few of my numbers with exactly 6 players at the table:

VP$IP 21 PFR 16 W$WSF 45% WTSD 24% W$SD 53%

For those who don’t speak Poker Trackerese, I played 21% of my hands, open raising or 3-betting a raiser 16% of the time. This is just slightly on the tight passive side. I think a style like 22/18 would be a little better, and in general I probably call too many raises.

When I saw the flop, I won 45% of the time, which is on the low end of acceptable. Again, this could be a result of calling raises with too many speculative hands, of giving up too easily, or of not playing aggressively enough.

I went to showdown in 24% of the hands that I played and had the best hand at showdown 53% of the time. The latter figure is good, but the former is a little high and suggests that I am not bluffing or value betting quite as much as I should.

My ten most profitable hands, in order: AA, KK, AKs, TT, AKo, 33, QQ, JJ, AJs, 99. This is pretty much what I’d expect, though obviously TT belongs behind JJ and I’ve probably just been running good with it. And of course AQs probably belongs up there ahead of 33, again just a result of variance I suspect. Actually I do tend to use AQ as a pre-flop semi-bluff quite a bit to 4- or 5-bet all in, and when called I’m usually dominated, so that could also be what’s holding AQ down.

I think the more interesting thing to see is my ten least profitable hands: 86s, A3s, 98s, AQs, 42s, 97s, 43s, 65s, JTs, 54s. I was surprised to see that they are all suited. Probably this is because I generally don’t play the off-suit versions, but apparently I am not playing my suited connectors so well either. Again, this corroborates the theory that I may be calling too many raises. I’ll have to work on that.

The other confounding factor here is that, as with AQ above, I tend to use suited connectors as range-balancing hands. This can be tough to conceptualize, but the fact that I am 5-betting all-in with AQ may make my entire 5-betting range more profitable because it generates additional action for my AA and KK even though it costs me money in isolation. The same could be said for the suited connectors. This is what makes it so difficult to analyze poker hands discretely.

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss my progress towards my second resolution for 2008: Keep Getting Better at Other Games.