Shabbir's Diary

Bad play makes money, worsens bad habits

I was talking to Katie last night when she convinced me to join the Party Poker 10:20pm no limit hold'em tourney.  "It's only $22 and it's $40,000 guaranteed!"

"I don't think I have any money in Party", I said.

"I'll transfer it to you, no sweat," she promised.

So I got logged on, got the transfer, and got seated in my tourney, and promptly donked off all my chips playing my worst game ever.  The minimum transfer was $50 though, so as I sat rooting her on, I decided to play a little 7 card stud at Party with the $28 I had left.  (I usually practice at Full Tilt)

The lowest game they had was a $.50/$1, which is a level above where I'm currently working.  In addition the ante on the game is high, $.25 for every hand, even if you fold it.  This was going to be a challenge; I've never played a high ante stud game before, how should I adjust when there's 2 big bets in the pots before the cards even come out?

It turns out I should play my normal game at this level.  The poor quality of my opponents means that although playing tight lost me some antes, I often got paid of handsomely with the best hand, even if most of it was showing.  As I ran the $28 up to $52, I decided to call it a night. 

I went to the Cashier and tried to transfer $50 back to Katie.  No go!  You have to have a minimum balance of $100 to do a transfer.  I returned to the tables since she was still in her tourney and I was committed to watching her finish.  Katie made it into the top 500 of a 2,500 person field and went to bed.  Shortly after that my stack hit $102 and I also went to bed, after sending her back the $50 she lent me.

Though the players are awful, I have to be careful playing there.  Folding was definately a mistake against most players, which is not going to be the case at higher levels.  I have to be cautious not to conclude that this style of play is going to work as I move up.

However I think I'm ready to play 7 cad stud in a casino, which is fortunate, since I'll be in a casino in just a few days...

New blog

So I'm in the process of segregating my personal life and my professional life (or at least the online versions).  I'm starting a CTO blog which is the more appropriate forum for my opinions on technology, technology management, and innovation.  I'll still maintain a personal blog which will be full of baby photos and poker.

It's a long process, as I've been blogging quite a while and will need some time to move some of the content over and find my voice.  I'll also cross post links for a while between the two, or when I think I've got something really useful to say.  But if you have a chance, I hope you'll add my new CTO blog to your bookmarks and RSS feed list: http://www.safdar.net/cto/

Thanks.

7 card stud analysis, 1,000 hands

So, 14 hours into this experiment, what have I learned?

1. I lose money with one pair, and I seem to show it down more often than I probably should.  I appear to pay a river bet almost half the time, which is absurd once you see my stats.
2. I have previously played high pairs against someone with a pair on the board, hoping to catch a second pair and beat their two pair.  This appears to be losing me money either when I don't catch a second pair, or when they have trips or better.  So I won't pay to draw to that anymore.
3. I start winning money with two pair, winning money 36% of the time I show this hand down.  I don't need stats to know that I've got a leak in playing 2 pair down to the end when I can see a higher potential pair on an opponent's board.  (For example I have QQ99, and my opponent is showing AK82 on his board and betting hard.)  In this case, if I have him read for two pair, I'm drawing dead and paying for it.
4. My big jump is when I hit trips.  I win with 2 pair 36% of the time, but I win with trips 84% of the time.  While that is exaggerated by the poor opponents I have, that's a meaningful jump even if it's half right.
5. When I have a wired or a split pair and I raise/complete on 3rd street, I make three times more money than I do if I don't raise.
6. I appear to have a decent overall sense of when to bail on the hand.  I attribute this to the fact that at this level, I may be the only one reading the board cards of my opponents.  Here's a little Pokertracker chart that shows that I am more likely to win money if I proceed in a hand.

• % chance to win money if I see 4th street: 31.45%
• % chance to win money if I see 5th street: 35.71%
• % chance to win money if I see 6th street: 42.99%
• % chance to win money if I see 7th street: 42.72%
• % chance to win money if I see showdown: 43.88%

Clearly I'm not just calling anything and everything down.  But I do intend to start folding a little more, which ought to drop the % chance I'll see later streets, while upping my % chance of winning money.

It's a learning process.

That's a lot of learning for now.  I need time to adjust my game to these empirical facts.

Weird.

After spending the whole weekend with Moishe, I went to work on Monday and caught myself missing him all day.  Didn't see that coming. 

I've uploaded a video of him playing in the sink, but I haven't been able to get it to play.  Let me know if you can.

7 card stud tricks and new game in Baltimore

I've gotten an unsolicted e-mail about a new 1/2 and 2/5 No limit hold'em game in Baltimore, run professionally with dealers and referral bonuses.  If you're going to be in Baltimore and would like to check it out for me, let me know and I'll send you the details.

I've got about 1,300 hands worth of data in Poker Tracker Stud now, and I've got a pretty good idea where I stand.  My stud card sense is getting more and more honed every time I play, and I'm starting to pick up on differences between various stages of play.  I've moved up and down from the $.25/$.50 and $.50/$1 limit stud games at Full Tilt and it's amazing how different they are.  Neither one is easy; you have to adjust.  But the differences are striking enough that I'm having to explore different strategies at each one.

The $.25/$.50 game is basically a drawing game.  Lots of people stay in, and to be successful, you need to be:

1. aggressive with your best hands, but not with your draws,
2. good at reading other player's up cards, so you can see if you're drawing to crap, and
3. able to know when you've got the best hand early, and be willing to punish the other player's with it.

The most important skill at this level is reading the up cards.  I don't know how many times I've picked up an extra bet because I knew that both I and my opponent had two pair, but I knew mine was better because I was able to deduce what his pairs were based upon his shown cards.  The players at this level generally don't seem to have that kind of analysis, as they're not really even looking at your upcards if you don't have a straight or a flush on the board.

As you move up to $.50/$1, the other players start to read your upcards.  This is both good and bad.  It's bad because it's harder to get paid off with your good hands if most of it is showing on your upcards.  On the other hand, if you've got someone else read for a pair of queens, and you can sometimes steal the pot if you're dealt an Ace and you bet it hard and fast.

I'm going to work my way up through the levels two at a time, logging a solid number of hands at each level in a profitable manner before moving up too fast.  I'll always be losing a little money, since I'm going to play the next level a bit while I'm mastering the one I'm on, but I'm a pretty conservative player and I'm playing limit, so I'm unlikely to lose much. 

I've seen people who try experiments where they try and move up levels as fast as possible.  I think such experiments are egotistical, and done mostly to just show off.  Showing off == losing money, and is indicative of an ego problem that will eventually ruin your poker success.

In other news, I bought an Xbox 360, but not the zombie game Sarah has been forbidding me from getting.  My analysis of the rumors about the Playstation 3's release date revealed that there will be shortages this holiday season when they're released, and therefore I wouldn't get one until early 2007.  Since I can't wait that long, I'm hopping platforms for a while.

Life as a single father (for a week)

So my hardest challenge as a parent has started.  Sarah is off to Burning Man, leaving me with Moishe and the life of a single parent for a week.  She lobbied hard to get me to go to, but I really couldn't leave for a lot of reasons, including:

1. I just got back from a week off work when I was in Vegas for the World Series Of Poker, and I'm taking another week off in September.  That's already pretty egregious to begin with, so another week for Burning Man is a lot of time off work.
2. I've got a lot of complicated projects going at work, and I can't really afford to leave them unattended for too long.
3. I'm not that enamored with Burning Man, it would only be me going out to see our friends, and I just saw many of them on our last trip to San Francisco.
4. I'm weirded out by the concept of leaving Moishe with someone else (besides Sarah) for a week while we both are off having fun.  Given the choice of Burning Man or leaving him with a relative, I  prefer to keep him myself.  I feel like I'm a better parent when he and I get to go do things by ourselves, like go to the steakhouse for boy's night out, or go to the zoo, or to Best Buy together.

So that's what I'm doing for a week.  Ironically 7 card stud (online) is the perfect game to play with a toddler around.  Unlike Texas Hold'em, there is no benefit of position before the hand starts.  You can sit out a hand and come back in next time and it's fine.  The same is not true for Hold'em.  You play for an entire round, often waiting for the late position hands to make your move.  Once you start playing an orbit, you're in for 10 minutes of play.

Stud's not like that.  You play a hand, you sit out, play a hand, sit out.  If you sit out for a couple of hands unexpectedly, it's cool.  When you've got a baby that needs your attention at unpredictable intervals, it's the perfect game. 

My crash 7 card stud self-tutorial is going well.  I'm pretty close to racking up 1,000 hands in Poker Tracker Stud, which should give me a start at making some generalizations about my play.  I've also been seeing many of the same players on Full Tilt, which means that I'll have histories of their play.  I'll be able to analyze some of their strategies as well as my own.

I've got a real technology dilemna.  My Playstation 2 is broken.  I can replace it, but the Playstation 3 is about to be released.  In addition there's the Xbox 360.  I want one, but Sarah's forbidden me to buy it because she wants to save it as a present for a future date.  It's really just the zombie game I think she wants to give me, so I do have the unit itself as an option.  I could play other games until she buys me that.  I don't really want to do without both for several months, though.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Gambling books and 7 card stud.

Just in time for this year's World Series Of Poker, James Swain has a couple of new gambling pulp books out. deadman's poker and deadman's bluff are another pair of books about casino cheating consultant Tony Valentine's attempts to catch criminals cheating the World Poker Showdown, a thinly veiled reference to the World Series of Poker.

The books are full of casino culture, grifters and their tricks, and a little light on poker.  If you enjoyed the Grifters or Ocean's Eleven, you'll love these two books.  Although they are continuations of other books in the series, they stand pretty well on their own.

7 card stud

I've been playing 7 card stud for a while now, but decided to really focus on it this last week.  My online poker diet is now NL Hold'em tournaments and 7 card stud cash games.  Of course you have to study when you play a game, so I dragged out my copy of Super System and reviewed the chapter written by Chip Reese, a guy who today is still a champion poker player.  [By the way, in the introduction Reese tells a story about being an 11 to 10 favorite over a drunken player and losing all his money.  In case you're one of those idiots that thinks that high variance is a good style...]

My seat-of-the-pants stud game has all the classic weaknesses.  I play too many hands, and then I don't bet enough when I have the best hand.  Reese identifies a small set of hands that make up a great starting set: trips, 3 flush cards, 3 straight cards, and pairs.  I found that if you play only those hands you really find yourself with quite a few hands to play with and you save yourself a lot of money.  The other advice he gives (that I've been able to digest) has to do with why you're betting on fourth street and later: to get people out of the pot.  Given the number of cards out there, it's very dangerous to let anyone draw for free in limit stud.  If you have the best hand, you must always bet it to put people out of the pot.

The real fun discovery I'm having though, with stud, is that it's an excellent petri dish for practicing your hand reading.  With so many cards in your opponents hand visible, you can really put them on a narrow range of hands.  Then it's up to you to remember what kind of player they are and act accordingly.  Hand reading skills are like a muscle, you have to constantly exercise them, and stud is an excellent workout.

Various replies to blog comments people have made.

Katie is a really excellent poker colleague of mine.  She profitably plays 10/20 Limit hold'em online, and she and I have developed a good rapport that allows us to discuss hands without one of us having to be right.  I've known poker players that would have made excellent poker colleagues except for their ego problems.  Always having to be right and all that.

Anyway, she makes some excellent points about my idiotic poker axiom.  She likes the axiom, but plainly says if you're the favorite in the game, you ought to stay.  I think that's right.  If I'm the favorite I should put as many hours into the game as possible.  They may not all be in the same night, because after all, I shouldn't keep playing if I'm tired, but it's foolish to ever walk away from a soft game if I'm capable of playing my best game.

Chad complimented me on my 'drunken master' maniac style.  It's indeed a single gear that has to be part of a larger strategy.  I actually haven't figured out how to play it in any other game.  In stud and omaha, where you absolutely can't try and 'catch up', it's just a sure-fire way to lose money.  And online you can't have the same impact on your opponents.  They just either ignore you and watch television, or close the window and change tables.  I truly think it works best live.  Or at least, I can only play it live.

[Chad the Big Game has shut down for a while.  If you're coming to town talk to me about other options.]

Thanks to everyone that comments on my blog.  I'm continually flattered that anyone reads it all.  Mostly I write it to organize my own strategic thoughts.  I suspect that's why some people write poker books.

Holding your users captive is not a business model

I live and breathe innovation.  Now that the company's grown and better technical folks than me make the trains run on time, I mostly focus on looking for the next thing our clients need.  Just as often I'm spending my time chasing down the subtle reason why a particular company's offering isn't going to take off.  People will say, "That's so cool!"   And I have to explain why it will never get past the concept stage.

Often my analytical skills overlap with my personal life as a consumer, as it did this week after my return from Cape Cod.  We shared a house with dear friends who took lots of photos with their digital camera and then uploaded them to Snapfish.com.  As I perused a photo of Moishe and I at the Wellfleet, MA fire station, I got excited and went to download it.

No go, Snapfish.com wants to charge me $.50 to download a photo of myself taken with a friend's camera.  A photo of me.  And I have to pay for it.

I asked my friend for a copy of the photos, but all she could send me was the 180x180 pixel versions.  This isn't her fault, she's not a computer nerd.  But really, does Snapfish.com think that tricking their customers into becoming the 'roach motel' of their photos is a good business model?  I'm not saying their business will fail, but it will certainly be vulnerable if groups of people complain to each other about having to pay for photos of themselves.  "Hey, great time at the beach.  Here's our photos.  Now go pay some jerk $8 to get a copy."

I ended up paying $8 and change to get the photos I want, but something more important happened: I swore I would never, ever use Snapfish.com.  In addition I wrote this scathing blog post which all but says, "Snapfish sucks". Frankly, if I were snapfish.com, I would easily pay $8 to avoid alienating a customer and creating a critic.

But hey, that's just me.  What do I know?  I'm only a customer who spends thousands of dollars on photo-related products every year, between printers, paper, photobooks, custom prints, and frames.  I'm frankly a dream photo customer, with a new child, too many cameras, and scads of relatives.

Nice work Snapfish.com, you've certainly made an important impression on me.

World Series Of Poker Champion doesn't want the attention

"I just thought about what would happen if I won,'' Gold said. "Out of the goodness of their heart, a lot of people would feel like they needed to talk to me, they'd want to know what I was doing, cameras would follow me around. I don't want my life on display. I don't have anything to hide. I'm just not that person. I've always been behind other people. I like making other people famous. I'm not comfortable being in the spotlight. I like my private life.

 

"I also don't want to be responsible for being the ambassador of poker or anything like that. What Greg Raymer does is amazing. Good for him. I'm not looking to quit my job. I like the job I do. I don't need the money. I'm not doing this for the money. I love the competition.''

This interview was done before the start of Day 6, before Gold had won the championship.