Trend Equity

[2022 update: For the record, everything in this blog post I was wrong about, and I find reasons to do all of these "trends" now. Yikes...]

I'm not one to blindly follow a trend in poker. If anything, I look for ways to capitalize on current trends. The preflop min-raise is one of them.

I understand some of the logic behind it, but it doesn't all add up IMO. I think you give your opponents way too good of pot odds to try to outflop ya. You have to be a master post-flop player in order to get away w/ it profitably, and I just don't see that many great post-flop players who are the ones using it.

Another trend that just kills me every time I see it is the alllllllmost all in preflop raise. Someone will have 15bb and ship like 14.5bb in. The only explanation I can see for that is to leave themselves some chat equity. But no one ever chats after doing it! I'm just dying for the day I see someone do that and get disconnected. That would just make my day!

Another trend that came and feels like it's almost gone now is the squeeze play. Someone raises, another player calls, and the "squeezer" 3bets, making a very difficult decision for the first 2 players. The original raiser is now "squeezed" between the cold-caller and the 3-bettor, and the cold-caller may not be that strong to only cold-call in the first place and has to worry about the 3-bettor. Of course now everyone is cold-calling w/ monster hands so the squeeze play is finally starting to die off.

I very rarely use the squeeze play unless I have a pretty good hand. But today in the Warm-Up the stars kinda aligned perfectly and an opportunity presented itself for the squeeze play that I felt was pretty optimal.

I'm in the big blind w/ 18bb and JTo. The hijack, w/ 53bb, raised it 2.4x. The button, w/ 65bb calls, the SB, w/ 50bb, thinks for a bit and calls. I ship it in pretty quickly. The first 2 players snap fold and the SB calls fairly quickly.

Now I almost never squeeze without a pretty big hand but I felt this was a decent spot to squeeze for a few reasons:

*Everyone had about 50bb+, which means they have to have a really good hand to continue with it against the other 2 big stacked players in the pot, besides me.

*We were near the money and most players w/ my size stack just fold, fold, fold. So my hand looked really strong.

*I didn't look like I had a lot of fold equity in that spot against 3 players, which made my hand look even stronger.

*The original raiser could've been playing the bubble and raising w/ many marginal hands.

I was a lil concerned when the SB called so quickly, but it turned out I was in a pretty good spot. He had 88, which made me almost an exact coinflip. Unfortunately the stars didn't align for me quite as well as they did for him and he won the flip and went on to win the tournament for $120,195. But had I won it, I would've gone from 18bb to 43bb, which would've allowed me to play "my game" again.


Peace sign,

-fingaz

(Original share price: $40; Final share price: $23.88)

Planet Google

It all started with Planet Poker--

Actually, let me rephrase that. It all started with IRC Poker back in the 90's. IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. That was the very first incarnation of anything poker on the internet. And it wasn't much. You had to type "p fold," "p raise," etc. for any actions you wanted to make. And the graphics were none. Literally, none. The flop looked something like this:

The board is: Ac 4d 9s
It's your turn:
fingaz>p get me the hell outta here

There were only a handful of us diehard and patient enough to deal with that back then. Chris Ferguson, myself and a few others were among them. Who knew back then what a phenomenon online poker would become today?

I actually found this post of mine from 1996 asking, practically begging, for something better. And look at the responses. That's how "big" poker was back in those days.

Of course a couple years later finally came Planet Poker. Actual graphics! I was a beta tester and one of the first real money players back then. [sick brag what a dinosaur I am] Boy, did playing $3/6 for real money get your blood pumping! But unfortunately their lobby left a lot to be desired.

Then came Paradise Poker and things finally started to take off. Everyone wanted to start a poker site then and the competition truly made things exciting.

What is the point of all of this, you ask? "I can read Wikipedia too," you say? Well, I just read an article today that makes me think we may be in for another fun competition spurt.

Apparently Google has invested in a couple interesting companies. On August 6 they invested $150 million in Zynga, a social network game developer that created Facebook's Texas Hold'em. Then a few weeks later they spent $228 million to purchase Slide, a software company that makes apps for Facebook that involve the exchange of virtual money.

Could it be? Could the behemoth company responsible for all good things on the interwebs be creating a poker site? Have I died and gone to online poker heaven? Oh, how I dream.

And let's not dismiss the notion that this may be a very good sign towards the legalization and regulation of online poker in this country.

I've often said that I would be willing to pack up and move to Planet Google if there were such a thing. And this very well could be that first big step for mankind and poker degens like me toward that dream.


Peace sign,

-fingaz

(Original share price: $40; Current share price: $34.05)

Fru-strate-ing

Man, they don't lie when they say poker is a tough way to make an easy living. When it's good, you're living the life. When it's bad, you question all that you are and all that you're becoming.

I consider myself a pretty happy go lucky kinda guy. Not much bothers me in life. I have great friends, great family, an amazing and beautiful 2 year old daughter, and a pimped out apartment over my head. Got a few toys, yanno. Life is good. I run like God in life. But when it comes to poker, I can make the walls shake. (Hmm, maybe that's why 3 nearby tenants moved out in the past few weeks.)

It's not like I ran particularly bad today either. It's more of the conglomeration of 3 1/2 months of mediocrity... at best.

Back in the day (3 months ago) when I was in the top 5 or so in chips w/ <100 players left, I can almost guarantee a top 3 finish. It's those top 3 spots that pay your bills. Well, after charging to the front of the pack in the $40k today with <100 left, I managed to find the exit in 54th place. Sure, I lost AKs < AKo AIPF, but I certainly can't blame it all on bad luck. I actually sealed my fate with a horrific call.

I raised UTG w/ AQh and UTG+1 flat called me. His flat call rate was extremely low, and especially from early position. The flop comes Ad89d. I bet and he insta shoves me all in for about 27bb. There's absolutely nothing I'm beating here except a possible flush draw semi-bluff. But out of frustration from the AK hand and a few other questionable hands, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I call simply from tilt. Obviously he has me crushed w/ AK, no suckout, GG me.

I did manage to cash in one of my staking package tourneys though, the $75k GTD at, of all places, Full Tilt! The site where I haven't had a profitable month since March of last year! Finished 36th/705, which is another close-but-no-cigar as first paid approximately $25k. I'm sooooooo due there, it's sick.

Thankfully I get my daughter for the next 2 days while I cool off. Looking forward to that and it cannot come at a better time.


Peace sign,

-fingaz

(Original share price: $40; Current share price: $36)

A Night of Disconnects

After taking the necessary my-2-year-old-wears-me-the-f-out nap, I came in today nice and refreshed and full of spunk. My belief is that if you can't start off the day positive and expecting good things, you shouldn't even be logging on. And after a 3 1/2 month run of zip/zilch/nada, I'm proud to say I can still do that! ...most days.

Today was the first day of my OPOY backing package. My goal was to sell 60% of myself for all of the big buy-in weekly tournaments so that I can start my climb to the top of the OPOY leaderboard. I'm currently ranked 2915th and it should be no sweat to win it all as long as I win the Sunday Million twice and the Warm-up at least once and a few other big tourneys in between. Cake, I say. But unfortunately I couldn't find many believers in the forums and only managed to sell a paltry 12.5%.

I started off with the $100k GTD at Stars. Sadly all of my C-bets were picked off as I couldn't manage to connect on a single one. Down to about 17bbs, I decide to take the stand. A guy limps who's a 34% VPIP / 12% PFR, which usually implies he has a hand in between those two numbers. I estimate somewhere between ATo to 87o. I figured I have some nice fold equity and decide to ship it in w/ A7o from the SB fully expecting the fold. To my surprise he thinks a bit and calls 1/2 his stack w/ KJo! Damn, that puts him at about a 80% favorite against my luck and the gods don't disappoint. GG me.

I had a couple other tables open and disaster happened. My internet connection went haywire. I haven't had a connection this bad in probably a year or more. Fortunately I wasn't in anything big or it would've been more than a minor annoyance. I normally have my cell phone as a backup connection but I had just got a new phone (a G2, baby!!) and hadn't had the connection set up yet. Well, I do now.

Anyways, WSOP is on tonight! Please hold all calls.


Peace sign,

-fingaz

(Original share price: $115; Current share price: $113.05)

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Ah yeah, that was the other reason for starting a poker blog! I've been wanting to use that title since PokerStars started with all these silly big Sunday tourneys. Was just hoping I wouldn't be able to use it quite so soon. But to be honest, do I really think I'm the first one to come up with that title in a poker blog? Mmm yup, matter of fact I do.

Thanks to a semi-deep run in the Mil tho, it really wasn't as bloody as it could've been. Just frustrating. I seem to be on the wrong end of coolers pretty consistently. Then when I'm finally on the good side, KK v QQ bvb, they spike a Q. Whatev...

/end whiny bitch mode

But I do run good on other people's dimes! That's one reason I've decided to open up my daily grind to backers. Well, not ALL of my daily grind. I've got to keep some of that shitty luck to myself. But I've decided to throw in a lot of the OPOY tourneys that are a bit too rich for my nitty blood. I'll probably vary the % I sell depending on the current state of my roll.

I also thought it'd be cool to have a running share value posted on my blog. For example, I sell a 25 tourney package at 1% for $125. If, say, I'm on tourney #12 and I'm up a couple bucks, the current share value would be at $147 or whatever. Maybe doesn't make much sense in words, but it makes sense in my head. =P

Of course this is a poker blog, so it goes without saying that I'll show a few hands too. Mostly my bustout hands but probably a few interesting spots too. We'll see. I'm winging it here, folks. I'm open to ideas!


Peace sign,

-fingaz

And We're Off!

Ok, I've finally broken down and started a blog. I've never been one to jump on bandwagons - if anything, I avoid them like A9o - but I figured this would be beneficial for a few reasons. First, this is the perfect outlet to discuss all of my religious and political views, since I don't have any! Second, this is a great place for all of my "finganatics" to follow me and copy what I say and do, since there are none! Third, this is a perfect way to fill in all the spare time I have, since I have none! And last and certainly least, I can finally exercise my passion for writing, since I enjoy it about as much as having my finganails peeled out one by one.

*Sigh*

Ok ok, there actually are a couple legit reasons for having a poker blog. I'm starting to dabble a bit in finding sponsorship and/or backers for bigger buyin tourneys outside of my seriously nitty bankroll rules. I figure this might be a good place to post any updates rather than in the congested poker forums. But the main, big daddy reason of all for a poker blog? I get to finally play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championships!

Oh, and also my mom likes to follow me and a guy named tetris311.


Peace sign,

-fingaz