"The Pen:" Live NLHE Chat Thread
It's been about 9.5 years and 350K posts of epicness, but "It Lives, It Lives" can live no more. The OG LLSNL Chat Thre
How are your 3 jobs going for you? Have you saved enough for your prolapsed rectum surgery or is that still on hold?
Isn't it a conflict of interest to work for McDonald's, Burger King, AND Wendy's concurrently?
Yes. Happy Birthday to "BigSkip". I am sure you will find your gift of a six week vacation funded the US taxpayers more than satisfactory.
This does not include "feel wrath", who pays his taxes to the Queen... or someone.
happy birthday Skip.
time to head out into the belly of the ATL to find a BBBW to make you happy
Yes. Happy Birthday to "BigSkip". I am sure you will find your gift of a six week vacation funded the US taxpayers more than satisfactory.
This does not include "feel wrath", who pays his taxes to the Queen... or someone.
I actually don’t think he got paid.
I’m certainly glad I’m not paying him to shuffle paper though
Happy B'day, you sick animal. Glad you got a reopening (with back pay) as your birthday present.
We military folks are going to line the halls to welcome our civilian counterparts back this morning.
Lol! 😀
I pretty much always find myself in the poker room on Remembrance Day, and I did again this week. One of the long time dealers has his birthday on this holiday so I always remember to wish him a happy day, but he just didn't seem to be getting around to dealing our table. I joked with the table whether I should sneak up behind him at his table and whisper "happy birthday big boy" in some sexy Marilyn Monroe voice, and the table (and especially the big fun action player) prodded me to do so. But I lost my nerve in the moment. A couple of hours later the table had changed over, but the action player was still there although he was in a very sour mood by this point. I wanted to lighten up his mood by agreeing to go thru with the plan, but I just sensed he wasn't up for any shenanigans. So finally I just quietly went over and did it for myself. I got a couple of odd looks from the players at the table, but a smile and fistbump from the birthday boy.
GdearSkippy:(insexyMarilynMonroecoo)happybirthdaybigboyG
I actually don’t think he got paid.
I’m certainly glad I’m not paying him to shuffle paper though
Much to ARB's chagrin, we are getting back pay next week. And FWIW I do not shuffle paper FFS. TPS reports are all electronic now.
Lol! 😀I pretty much always find myself in the poker room on Remembrance Day, and I did again this week. One of the long time dealers has his birthday on this holiday so I always remember to wish him a happy day, but he just didn't seem to be getting around to dealing our table. I joked with the table whether I should sneak up behind him at his table and whisper "happy birth
Not interested if you aren't popping out of a cake.
I am not a big birthday guy. I did consent to going out to dinner with some friends. Got a fine Italian meal and it was a nice night out.
The doughnuts were a nice hit in the office today.
unlike skip who was born with a silver uncle sam spoon up his butt, some of us need to work for a living
long story short, i've been trying hard to transition out of into real world work and that means i can't be doing the tribal casino grind every day anymore as that entails 2-3 hours of commuting so it becomes a full day and prevents me from sending out a resume and cover letter which gets ignored
meanwhile there's a poker room 20 min away so i've been hitting that a bit more
and things are going well
my old tracking data gone - the excel file got corrupted somehow and was unrecoverable
so i'm starting over with tracking - this time using google sheets figuring it'll hold up better and can access via both phone and cpu with ease
i feel like i'm finally getting back to my old heyday and finally made the correct adjustments to playing vs whitey and immigrant asians rather than native asians
over last 46 hours of 1/3 I'm at 11.5bb/hour with poker and 15.3bb/hour if you include high hand promos after tipping dealer 10% (any flush qualifies, usually only 2-3 tables running, last night took $100 (90 after tip) on an ace high flush) - yes the sample size is small but this win rate is fairly typical over last 2-300 hours (but the few hundred hours before that were slightly losing as i failed to properly adjust to USA#1)
i never play during non high hand promo hours because paying a $3 a hand promo rake each hand when there's nothing coming back your way is bonkers to me
biggest adjustments
Spoiler
* americans just spazz out way too much post flop - putting in a random unpredictable factor in hand reading - so i go into my thought processes with more flexibility - yes it doesn't make sense to value bet two pair on a KJQT4 board with 4 to a flush - but they'll still sometimes do it - not thinking of their hand as a bluff
* they are also far less likely to bluff - if they are betting hard they usually got it - they underbluff
* they are way more likely to call with weaker holdings and not turn those hands into bluffs nearly enough so you can go for very thin value - if they check call flop and turn and the river doesn't change the nuts then you can very profitably turn that $80 pot win into a $140 pot win putting in a $30 bet on the river with your top pair - the few times they xr you and you lose showdown value by folding is heavily offset by all the times they call with worse - yesterday i watched a guy call a $100 bet into a $30 pot for all their chips with just QT on a J43 flop
* they are really stupid preflop - just astounds me how many people will limp utg for $3 and then fold when btn makes it $15 - it's just inconceivable to me that anyone could have a limp/fold range to a standard opening size yet it happens - likewise you get a lot of people who will call that $20 raise with J9o and then when it gets 3! to $85 feel priced in to then keep going so step on the gas preflop - they are pretty inelastic up until you start overbetting bigly preflop when you have good hands - yes, good players will pick up that the time you opened to $10 you had JTs and the time you opened to $30 you had KK but you're not there to battle with the one or two decent players at the table
* americans love chasing draws and always assume if they don't have the flush you do - so when the flush comes you can just bet tiny and they'll fold any non flushes or raise their flushes so it's very cheap to steal and you can get out easily - they also hit a lot more flushes than one would expect because you'll regularly see someone play T6s etc in 3bet pots so whenever some pounds the bet button and there's a flush on the board, just assume they got it
* americans are obsessed with high hand and monte carlo farming - flopped sets on non paired boards that don't have obvious flush or straight draws will nearly always be slow played hoping to draw to a boat or quads for the high hand - doesn't matter if we're both 1k deep and the high hand is $100 - unless they see their hand as vulnerable, their priority will be keeping the cards coming so they will only check or call until the river - which makes for a bunch of very spazzy looking play where you don't see why on earth they'd just decide to just blast off on a blank river when they checked back flop and turn with position so it looks like it's got to be a bluff but in reality it's just that now that the river is dealt, they are comfortable betting because now it's ok if you fold as there's no more cards to draw to get on the board
- you can also exploit this, if the high hand board is very weak with less than 15 minutes left, you can bet very large for value preflop and get called by very weak holdings - likewise, those are great squeeze opportunities if you go really, really big in spots where someone opens to $20 and gets 5 callers so you make it $250 because none of those guys have good hands, they just want to chase a weak promo
* due to americans fearing the flush, that gives you incredibly good info that narrows hand ranges dramatically - nobody is just calling with a really good made hand when there are flush draws out there - this is also true to much lesser extent with connected cards for straights
ie last night i have 67hh on the btn, there's a bunch of limpers and i make it $15 and get 2 callers pot = 50ish pre rake
K75r flop - checks to me, i bet 20 and get 1 caller - pot = 90ish pre rake
6 of spades for a turn, bringing a flush and straight draw to the board - i go to bet 75 but accidentally put out 150 and decide to just play it cool like that was intentional - villain thinks for a few seconds and puts in the call = pot = 390ish pre rake
turn comes 9x and he snap shoves for $300
i go into the tank, my first thoughts are he's really strong - he called a big overbet on the turn and now shoves the river
but then i thought about it more - this is a guy who's pretty active preflop so he would have raised or 3! KK pre so we can discount him having that, but more importantly, K567 with 2 spades is such a wet board and i bet out so much that it wouldn't make any sense for him to have just called on the turn - 55 shoves there to deny equity for draws, i don't think a naked 8 calls there with such a big bet, nor do i think 89 or 84 just flat with 2 to a flush out there - same with Kx for a larger two pair, that shoves the turn as well
so really, the only hands he could have that beat me are K8 spades, K9 spades, K5 spades, 89 spades, i beat everything else, because everything else he could have loses to my two pair - so i flick in the call and sure enough he has KQ spades and loses his goddamn mind calling me such a lucky fish sucking out with rags etc - not realizing that he turned his hand into a bluff and one that didn't make any sense simply because americans play so transparently when a flush draw is on the board
Over the last 39.33 hours in my 1/3 NL game, I've run at 23.26 bb/hr (26.93 bb/hr if you include a $433 high hand bonus, only the second one I've hit in the ~2.5 years worth of promotion).
The previous 57.75 hours in that same 1/3 NL game, I ran at -6.64 bb/hr (i.e. note the negative sign, I lost during that stretch).
Short-term sample sizes are *beyond* meaningless.
But you know that.
Gnothatin',justsayin'G
I know "feel wrath". It is hard to believe that in America someone like "BigSkip" gets paid to do nothing.
I agree with "rickroll". "BigSkip" has been sun running for a long, long time.
finally, someone in here Gets It!
I tried my best to get out starting in 96 when my kid was born. I could not make it happen. I hope you can
It was only a matter of time until my grift was exposed. :(
I tried my best to get out starting in 96 when my kid was born. I could not make it happen. I hope you can
thanks, as i'm sure was the case for you - those who were happy to take on someone with a decade long sabbatical were not offering the kind of job that made re-entering the work force an attractive option
gotta hand it to big skip who keyser soze'd the economic system 😀
Nice, RR. Glad to hear poker things are turning around for you, as I thought I read you had been going through a tough stretch.
I myself am embarking on a recent poker odyssey. Black Hawk Coloardo is pretty alright so far. I've been here since Tuesday; haven't been able to put in any God sessions of poker due to sleep adjustments.
I was going to stay at Ameristar but they ****ed me over so good the other day. I heard from other players there was a weekend hotel rate, I asked the poker supervisor and he said Yea play 5 hours and get a cheap room for Friday. So I slogged around all day trying to get myself up to shape to play, forced myself through a brutal session playing my "F" game, and found out after a snafu involving 6 casino workers that there was in fact no weekend promo to be had.
The likelihood of me giving them any more rake is not very good.
tuma, i lived in ameristar for about a month last year
200 tier points on a weeknight = free hotel room
i could also book free rooms on some weekends on the penn app
didn't pay for a single room and used points to cover the "resort fee" of $20 which is $10 in promo dollars which you'd easily earn via poker alone (but i was getting most of my points through sports bets and ap slot play)
all that was just 1 level above the basic status, super annoyed as i didn't unlock the next tier, which would have granted me access to the vip room which had free dining until the morning i was leaving anyway
iirc about half the weekends i wasn't given a room and used those days as forced vacation days away where i'd head out and do some hiking/camping out in the wilderness
penn has by far the best promos - my cost of living at their places was zero because rooms/food etc was all covered by food
i also have crazy work ethic though - i'd basically grind ap slots, sportsbook kiosks 12+ hours a day and i'd play poker after doing those rounds and when it was time to take a breather i'd rack up, do my rounds again - head up to the gym/pool/jacuzzis or get a very mediocre meal (ballys gives out $7 prime rib vouchers like candy - the ameristar restaurants were pretty meh - so was the prime rib but hey it's $7) and then rinse and repeat
was definitely planning on moving to blackhawk permanently once i finished the cross country road trip but found an amazing woman in seattle so here i am to stay
and yes, when i first got back to usa#1 i was doing very well in poker but in hindsight i think i was sun running where majority of my wins were from massive coolers - any idiot can win money when two deep stacks get sets on dry boards etc
i then had about a 500 hour stretch where i was down about -2 or 3bb/hour, which was very alarming for me, i'd never previously won less that 7bb/hour over any significant sample size and during my prime in macau i was a 17bb winner - playing much higher stakes against much, much, much more competent players
i figured i needed to look back and see what i was doing wrong, where i needed to make various adjustments - i credit a lot of to watching and reading some basic free teaser stuff out there by various sources - a lot of it i already knew, but reading/hearing it reaffirmed it and brought it out of my subconscious
while the official record is only that laughable timeline that gg rightfully ridiculed, i've been doing around that clip for last 400+ hours so i think i've finally righted the ship - i'm nowhere near satisfied with 11bb sans promo and plan to keep refining my game, i am considering getting coaching/bootcamp etc in the future but in the meantime i feel like time with a coach would be better utilized if i come in without any low hanging fruit remaining
by far my biggest leaks were realizing i was no longer playing against extremely intelligent people who sought out a game that wasn't part of their cultural upbringing because they were seeking new thrills and challenges rather than simply choosing player or banker in bacc - they were the wealthy businessmen who had strong understandings of the game and got off on trying to outwit the foreign pro along with randomly shoving 84 preflop for 500 bb because it's their daughter's birthday for the lols
in the us, they don't recognize me as a skilled person, i'm just another douchebag at the table they are trying to take money from, they think i'm an idiot, call me lucky when i win, they don't shove 84 preflop for 500bb because it's a birthdate of a loved one, but they will be the 4th caller all in preflop with a hand as bad a JJ just because "it's a really good hand you can't fold it" - which is an exponentially dumber action than shoving 84
so i've adjusted accordingly, if we got to the river, they think i'm the sucker, they see i do crazy things like raise preflop etc so they're calling light and betting value - so i check back marginal value far less frequently and instead put in value bets for 3 streets with marginal holdings like top pair and and i stop finding creative bluffs because they aren't smart enough to see how vulnerable their two pair is - and importantly, i now overfold to strong aggression - cbet with QQ on a J95r flop and get check raised, just fold and be done with it because they are doing that with hands that are worse than mine at such a low frequency that i can just lay it down and move on
I see where some TSA workers are getting a bonus if they worked the entire time during the shutdown .
It wouldn’t surprise if “BigGrift” asked his boss for this bonus as well.
