Damn you, Sid Meier

I made the unfortunate mistake of purchasing Civilization IV on Saturday. Since then, it has consumed every moment of free time that I have. Hopefully I'll be able to play a bunch of poker this weekend and get back on pace.

Quick update

After a great start to the month I've cooled off. Last few thousand hands have been basically break-even poker. I've played a few hands pretty poorly, but for the most part it has just been boring bad cards or small pots with good cards.

For the month I'm 5.23PTBB/100 at 6039 hands. So far so good on the 4-5PTBB/100 at 20k hand monthly goal.

Also won $26 in a VIP freeroll on Stars that got me back to about even on MTTs for the month.

It snowed/sleeted some here on Saturday which is a pretty big rarity in southeast Texas at any time of the year. Doing that in April is unheard of.

More on HB 3186

I watched the initial hearing last night on HB 3186 and it seemed to go pretty well. Unfortunately, it still seems like this bill is going to bill hell. I admit to not knowing too much about legislative processes in this state, so I defer to the opinion of 2+2 poster brimelian in this post. According to him, the bill isn't completely dead, but we shouldn't expect much to happen in the remainder of this legislative session.

With the bad news out of the way, let's discuss some of the particulars of the bill.

First, it sounds like the rumors of it being amended to only include electronic tables are false. Rep. Menendez specifically stated in the hearing that tables could have live dealers or be electronic. Great news if this bill finds some way to pass.

Second, games could only take place in establishments that already have liquor licenses and/or para-mutual betting centers. Sexually oriented businesses are out, and free alcohol cannot be offered to players. I was hoping for the ultimate trifecta of legal poker, naked women, and free booze, but one out of three ain't bad.

The original bill stated that bars could have a maximum of four tables, while a state commission will determine the maximum number of tables at horse/dog tracks. However, it sounded like the substitute bill that was presented last night may have taken out the 4-table max for bars. I'd have to see the text to be sure.

A 4-table max would be very unfortunate. First, game selection would be fairly limited for any particular establishment. Second, local tournaments would be restricted to 40 people each. Also, speaking of tournaments, the original bill states that the maximum buy-in would be $100 with a maximum house fee of $30. Lyle Berman of the World Poker Tour was one of those who was invited by Rep. Menendez to testify last night, so hopefully some emphasis is being placed now on the potential of large buy-in special events.

Rake would be set by the establishment with the restrictions of 10% max and $4 max per pot. The state would get 18% of the total rake.

Overall the reception seemed pretty positive by the committee, and I think some guarded optimism is warranted. While it may not have much of a chance of passing this year, the movement will not stop. I encourage any Texans to call or write their congressman to stress the benefits of legalized Texas Hold 'Em for Texans.

Edit: There is a nice video clip on the front page of CNN.com of their story on the situation. Check it out.

Legal poker rooms coming to Texas?

Big story today. I hope to come back and add some more details and some of my own thoughts later on, but here is a quick rundown of what is going down.

Bill HB 3186 introduced by Rep. Jose Menendez would allow legal poker games to be hosted by certain venues. Stories can be found at the Houston Chronicle and www.pokerpages.com.

The full text of HB 3186 is available here.

I'm not overly optimistic that this will be passed. However, I can't help but get my hopes up for it. The measures in the bill are still baby steps in some ways, as there are strict limits as for the number of tables that will be allowed at any given place and it may be limited to electronic tables only. I've seen conflicting reports on the latter, so I'll have to look into it a little more when I have the time, but don't be expecting to get something of the quality of the Bike or Bay 101 in Dallas anytime soon.

Good start to the month

Running at 23.95 PTBB/100 so far in April over 966 hands of $.50 NL, which is nearly 5 buy-ins profit. Everything so far has been pretty standard with some good cards, although I found that I've inadvertently been playing a lot tighter preflop. I'm averaging 17.39%VPIP so far compared to my normal 22-23ish. On the flip side, my PFR is lower than normal at 12%. I imagine I'm probably calling too many 3-bets, because I'm putting in the first raise on a good chunk of what I'm playing.

I played 5 tournaments late Saturday night/Sunday morning and only cashed in one for a small amount. I might play another couple over the remainder of this week, but I'll probably stick primarily to cash games since I'm running really hot there.

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This hand is nothing too exciting and I'm still not positive I played it completely correctly. These kinds of hands have given me problems in the past. Villain seemed to be pretty loose/passive preflop and overall a rather poor player calling down with too much stuff.

Seat 1: SB ($39.40 in chips)
Seat 2: BB ($49.05 in chips)
Seat 3: Hero ($49.75 in chips)
Seat 6: Villain ($61.70 in chips)
bodman1: posts small blind $0.25
bassjada23: posts big blind $0.50
Appetjoek: sits out
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to corndog04 [7c 7d]
Hero: raises $1.50 to $2
Villain: calls $2
SB: folds
BB: folds

This is a pretty standard bet in this situation. Villain will call with probably the top 50% of his hands here, so I don't quite know what to expect.

*** FLOP *** [5d 3d 2d]
Hero: bets $3
Villain: calls $3

I probably should have bet more here, maybe $4 or $5. Not much information gained really, as this could be anything from a high diamond, straight draw, or even a pair of fives or something. With the heavy draws out there I don't think he has a made hand yet b/c he would need to raise to protect anything but a nut flush.

*** TURN *** [5d 3d 2d] [Qc]
Hero: bets $4
Villain: calls $4

This bet size was even worse than the flop bet. I guess it is some sort of probe bet, but it surely won't scare this guy off any draws from what I've seen. I think with him calling behind I can probably eliminate any chance that he hit the flop hard, as he would almost certainly raise by now. I don't think the queen could have hit him unless by dumb luck.

At this point I have to plan for the river. I'm reasonably sure that I am ahead. However, I'm not confident enough to value bet. I decide to check a non-scary river and give him a chance to bluff a worse hand. I will bet a scary river and fold to any raise. Reasonable? I don't know.

*** RIVER *** [5d 3d 2d Qc] [2h]
Hero: checks
Villain: bets $20

He made a better stab at this pot than I expected. Although I had planned to call if he bet, I wasn't expecting it to be a full pot-sized bet. I had to tank here and really try to determine his ranges. I decided he is betting this amount on a monster or a pure bluff. As far as monster hands, this could be 55, 33, A4, a good flush, or 2-x. Of those, I can only see 2-x or diamond A-x playing it this way. His bluffing hands are any missed high diamond, or any missed straight draw where he held an A, a 4, or a 6 in his hand, K5, A5, K3, and A3.

This was a very close situation for me. I felt I had an edge against his range but I have been historically bad at making high dollar and somewhat thin +EV calls like this.

Hero: calls $20
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Villain: shows [4s Ks] (a pair of Deuces)
Hero: shows [7c 7d] (two pair, Sevens and Deuces)
corndog04 collected $56.75 from pot

There we have it. I feel like I made the correct call, but I've found myself in a similar situation before where I've lost some decent money calling a river bet like this. I think the key difference this time was that I did a better job of processing his ranges here and determining what kinds of hands he is moving like this with, and realized it was dominated by hands that I'm beating.

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I submitted some resumes today for a couple of positions in semiconductor-based companies. Both of them call for a MS degree or a BS with experience, so I have that covered at least. I'm starting to think that nothing is going to come from the interviews I had a couple of weeks ago with one of the big semi companies but I'm going to try to give them a call to follow up within the next day or two.

March results and April goals

Current bankroll: $1118.33 cash and $56.00 in $W's. The $W's can be substituted for cash on PokerStars, but only for buy-ins to certain tournaments.

March was a pretty interesting month. In the past I always had problems adjusting to cash games or tournaments after playing one of them exclusively, and this was no exception. I built my current bankroll up exclusively through tournaments in February and early March before I started playing tons of cash game hands in the later part of the month. I had severe struggles and crazy swings in the cash games early on before fixing up my game some later in the month.

Breaking down the March results:

Tournaments:
Winnings: $1025
Investment: $580
Net: $445 (77% ROI)

I played 60 tournaments, cashing in 15 of them. Looking at this in a vacuum, I would be thrilled with a 25% money. However, I think this is higher than it should be because some of the tournaments were micro-limit $2 and $3 buy-ins that paid 20% of the field instead of the usual 10%. I'm also disappointed that I didn't go deep more, and in 6 final tables I didn't win a single one. The ratio of 0 wins to 1 2nd and 3 3rds is pretty poor considering that I feel I play my best short-handed. 77% ROI is solid, but again, I failed on too many opportunities for very high finishes.

Cash:
Winnings: $48.75
# Hands: $22,563 at $.25/$.50
Win rate: .22PTBB per 100 hands

A "PTBB" is twice the big blind, so in this case $1. Normally I would blast myself for having such a low win-rate, but fact of the matter is that I was so low at one point that just pulling a profit was a monumental achievement. I also should have moved down to a lower level for better bankroll management, but wasn't able to admit defeat. Definitely something I need to work on.

April goals:

General bankroll management goals: If I get as low as 15 buy-ins to a cash game ($750 for $.25/$.50 NL), I will move down a level. If I make it to 20 buy-ins for a higher level (unlikely), I will move up. For MTTs, I will not buy into any tournament that will require more than 1/80th of my bankroll. Based on the amounts that stars offers, that means $10+1 tournaments or less for now.

Tournament goals:
I'll probably play less than half as many tournaments this month as I did last. My current goals are: 20 tournaments, make the money on 20% of them, and profit at least $200 with an ROI of 80%+.

Cash game goals:
20,000 hands at the appropriate limit. I may have to scale back on this a little since April will have less free time than March (primarily due to spring break). I will need probably 10-15 hours a week to finish this many hands. I would like to average at least 4PTBB/100 hands. Assuming I don't have to move down from $.25/$.50, this gives me a profit goal of $800. Based on the state of my game and the time it would require, I think that this goal will be much tougher to achieve than my tournament goal.

There we have it. I won't be withdrawing or depositing at all this month regardless of the outcome, so I hope to be somewhere in the vicinity of $1800-$2000 online when it is all said and done.

An introduction

Another poker blog... just what the world needs, right? Despite the major saturation of poker blogs out there, it was the only logical choice for me. Poker is probably my favorite hobby and a game I enjoy talking about and improving at. My goal for this blog is to discuss particular hands or situations I find myself in, create and keep tabs on particular poker goals, and throw in a few random comments about life, news, and stuff related to my school/research work.

I'm not sure I like my blog title, but I couldn't come up with anything too creative at the moment. If you don't play much poker, you may be wondering what this "robusto" is. Robusto is simply the antithesis of busto. Busto is the poker player's worst nightmare, the state in which some combination of tilt, unluckiness, or poor play mixes in with poor bankroll management to such a severe degree that you are wiped out. Depending on the level you are playing at and the risk factors you take, poker busto can even lead to life busto. For a hobbyist such as myself that usually isn't the case, but it is always a slight risk there. Smart players can push this risk down to near zero by keeping their head straight, separating life bankroll from poker bankroll, and being willing to move down in stakes as needed.

Enough about busto and back to robusto. I've reached a point in my life now where I'm starting to get a little itchy. I don't regret my decision to go to grad school, but I don't like the fact that I'm 25, don't have a career, don't have any savings, and in general still feel lost on where my life is going to lead. In the next couple of months I have a big decision to make on whether I want to get a PhD or stop at my MS and start making some money. I've interviewed with one major company so far, and will probably try to feel out the opportunities with a few other companies as well before committing myself to this big decision. Shameless plug: MSEE focused on semiconductor materials and device engineering and characterization. Interested in any kind of R&D, processing, or yield testing type jobs. I would also consider circuit design or software/hardware design for EDA or ATE products.

On to poker.. I voluntarily went poker busto at the end of 2006 as I needed my ~$1k bankroll to keep from going life busto. Took a break for a few months and decided to start working for small money amounts online again. Some friends were having an $11 private tournament on PokerStars. Problem was that I only had $7 left online. I got a $4 transfer from a friend, won the tournament, and paid him back an appropriate portion of the profits. I built my bankroll further from $4 180-person sit-n-goes (SNGs) and other small multi-table tournaments (MTTs) over the next few weeks and reached an apex of about $1200. At this point, I had enough to start grinding cash games. I had a very rough run readjusting to 6-max no-limit cash games, and lost several buy-ins at $.25/$.50NL. I dropped as low as around $350, got my game in order, and finished up March with a $50 profit in cash games and a $1150 total bankroll (lost a little for the month on tournaments).

At one point in my life I would have considered playing poker professionally as a serious option. Since then I've learned that a) I'm at high risk for gambling degeneracy (I'll post the story some other time, but the short version is that I learned the hard way on when to recognize a problem) b) I don't think I could deal with the stresses of the swings that will no doubt happen, and c) I'm just not very good at it. However, I consider myself a smart enough guy and good enough student of the game that at some point I might be able to make a small amount of side income on my hobby. Over the next few months I'll see if I can grow a self-sustaining (no redeposits) up to a point where I can start periodically cashing out some regular profits without impacting the level of stakes I'm playing at. If so, great. Ultimately I'd love to be able to pay for a nice vacation or something based on poker profits. If not, I'll allow myself to continue to fart around at microlimits as long as I'm not playing on money that I can't afford to play with.

That's about it for now. Kudos to anyone who made it through this entire post. I look forward to having an avenue to talk to about poker and life and can hopefully pick up a few readers and generate some discussion along the way.