Monday, February 15, 2010

Live vs Online

On Saturday, I decided to add in some live play as a change of pace. It gets monotonous playing online day after day. Ventured to the Venetian and entered the $560 Deep Stack NL Tournament. If you've never been to Vegas, or haven't frequented all the poker rooms around town, this is a poker room you should def. check out. It's very spacious, and has lots of elbow room for players. The game selection is pretty good, although the highest nl game they get running is 5-10 w/ no cap to buyin. Also, what other place brings you Fiji water when you ask for bottled water.

The tournament was uneventful for the most part. It's nice to mingle w/ players in a live atmosphere though. You hear the damnest things sometimes, things that make you ease your fears of the games getting tougher. E.g. I opr utg, butt flats, sb flats, bb shoves, I reshove, fold, fold, bb shows 99, I show KK, bb comments seriously "Ok, good..I almost rather see you have that than AK cuz I feel like I lose to AK more often". Ummm, ok...gg sir.

2 quick hands that are somewhat instructional. Hand 1, I have 12k, bb is 800. Ep opl, I limp in mp w 6c4c, both blinds chk, flop Kh6h3c. Chk, chk, chk, I bet 2k, fold, fold, limper chkr to 5500, I ponder for a bit then shove for about 4k more and he snap folds. Seriously, what hand is he repping here? All kings, pps, and flush draws bet there. Only one that makes a little sense are sets, but we can eliminate KK and to some degree 66 (card removal), so it's mostly 33 or air here. Obv. it's not easy getting it in w/ mp w/ no kicker for your tournament life, but I thought from a logical pt of view it was the right play, and it was (also having the backdoor draws make it a little easier to shove in case my read was wrong).

2nd hand is somewhat similar in the logic. BB is 1k, I opr to 3k from sb w QTo, bb flats w/ 12k left. I should note that villian shoved on epr w Q7o earlier for 15bbs and doubled. Flop Ah3s4h, I cbet 4k, he shoves, I have to call 8k more. For most this is a snap fold, but that's why you should always take your time to analyze everything. BB started hand w/ 15 bbs, so he would shove prefl w all Ax hands, apparently all Kx hands (from prev history), QJ, all pps (exception could be KK and AA, to slowply in pos), so knowing that I took my time and went thru what can beat me here. KK, AA and maybe a suited connecter like 54s were the only combos I could see that he had that were beating me (although combo draws are theoretically ahead as well) and I beat all his air hands that he was "stop and going" w/. Finally I called, and he showed... AA. Obv. I got a whole bunch of wtf looks. I told the table "let that be a lesson learned guys, I will not be bluffed today!" I busted shortly thereafter, so gg me. I dissected the hand afterwards, and I still felt like my call was ok based on my logic, so I didn't feel bad about it.

Afterwards I jumped into the 5-10 nl game, bought in for 2k. Played a couple of hrs and managed a $300 win. The game was your typical live game. Lots of limping, underbetting, not much understanding of hand ranges and other technical aspects of the game..pretty much the opposite of most online nl games. It's been said before, but I'll say it again... live games today are much softer than online nl games. I'd say most decent online 1-2 regs can beat live 5-10, even possibly 10-20 nl games if the amount of money wagered doesn't scare them. The reason I don't play much live cash games is that it's hard to match my online hrly rate in most live games around town. I'm not sure what exact #s are, but I read that the best live 10-20 regs can make $100/hr, and I think that's on the optimistic side. So being able to make 3-5x that online, w/ less variance, it doesn't make too much sense for me to put in too many hrs playing live.

W/ Valentine's Day yesterday, and playing live on Saturday, I didn't get to play much online over the weekend, which continues my trend of not finding enough time to grind. Went out for lunch w/ my wife and had to pass on all the Sunday online mtts that I was accustomed to playing. Spent the next few hrs w/ wife and kid, while getting in the NBA All-Star game (gg, good halftime show). I did managed to find an hr to grind 2-4 and 3-6 online while wife was prepping ;) <--wink btw, and won $1700. I guess I'll start adding in some 3-6 games as well since I'm adequately rolled for that now. Let's hope I run good, but more importantly, just play my A game all the time.

2 comments:

  1. 64cc shove was a sick move. I'm going to have to implement this kind of logic in my tournament games.

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  2. At the lower limits, where I am at, 77 is a loser, dunno about the 64 cc, heehee (sometimes, you gotta go with your gut).

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