Harrington is Here!

I was surprised to see a parcel waiting for me when I got home on Friday.  It was Harrington’s Cash Books, which I wasn’t expecting for some weeks yet, given that Amazon had indicated they had a big backload to fill and I had a mail from them saying expect it sometime in May.  Have only had a brief skim at this stage, but it seems like they are written in the classic Harrington easy to read style.  Having read some of the early reviews, I’m a bit divided on how useful they are going to be.  On the one hand its Dan Harrington, and noone conveys poker information and concepts like Dan.  On the other hand they seem to be focusing on deepstack full ring cash – something I never play anymore, focusing on six-max like the majority of the online community.  Still, I think there will be plenty in there, plus its a must read for another reason – every semi decent opponent I’ll play will have read them!

Despite the fact that results wise its been a so-so year, I’ve also decided to start dabbling back at 100nl.  My first experience (about 7.5k hands) at this level was quite painful … a mixture of bad beats and bad play.  But I’ve got my roll back to a point that would indicate that I should be looking to move up again.  I’ve been a bit gunshy of doing so, esepcially when I’m doing things like running KK into AA all the time – but thats just a mental hurdle that needs to be overcome.  So I’ve had a couple of sessions and nothing to significant so far – slightly down, but nothing more than the usual rhythm of the game.  At this point I’m feeling comfortable playing one table at 50nl and one at 100nl, we’ll see how that travels for a while.

 

I Seen it But I Don’t Believe It …

…well anyone that is even semi-regularly reading my blog will realise by now I’m trying hard to avoid the bad beat stories.  It has to be the most tempting thing in poker, to cry to the world how if only you just ran normal, then your winrate would be awesome … and yet noone wants to hear it, becuase everyone struggles with variance to some extent.

So with that out of the way … I’m not really going to tell a bad beat story – more of a cooler story.   Becuase in the last 72 hours, I have run KK into AA no less than SIX TIMES.  Yep 6 … in what could not be more than 1000 hands of poker.  5 online and one live.  What are the odds of that ???  I’m getting to the point where I flinch when I see the first K dealt!  Fortunately the last one I sucked out and hit a K on the river, or otherwise I think my mouse might have been in danger …

Despite what it fairly obviously just a horrendous short term run of variance, it is more interesting becuase I have been playing more and more on UB where the average VPIP of games is usually over 50.  This means the games are ultra juicy but the swings are obviously going to be way bigger.  I have trouble giving 55+ VPIP players for a hand, I get three or four bet and assume that because they are mega loose their range must be wide.  I think I need to start realising that this isnt necessarily the case in raised or re-raised pots.