New blog at CR

I've started a Cardrunners blog: My CR Blog. Since I'm only really using this for poker, I figure I'll stick my blog with a bunch of other poker blogs.

So far, though, I like Blogger better:

• RSS feeds. Zimba has said this is coming at CR.
• Comments emailed to me (don't know what happens on CR, since no one has commented ;).
• Can upload images directly to the post. At CR, I think you need to use an image hosting service like image shack.

One thing I really don't like about Blogger, which I don't know if CR will have, is the ability to get comments at the same time you get a post in an RSS feed. I know Wordpress has that, and since I use a feed aggregator, I would really like it.

For all of you in the study crew, do you care which software we use?

Student application

I've been toying with the idea of hiring a coach for a while. The main reasons I have not yet done so stem from my stakes and my schedule. Well, the stakes are hopefully about to be at the level I had thought to be reasonable. Borrowing heavily from a post by Verneer on Cardrunners, here is my background, what I'll bring to the table, and my hopes/expectations of the coach and the coaching process. If anyone who is being coached or any coach has some feedback on how reasonable any of this is, please let me know.

Background
If you really want details, the first couple posts in this blog have more than you want -- maybe this post alone will have more than you want! Bottom line is that I started to take poker seriously in early 2005 as a recreational player, grinding up 6 max limit from .50/1 to $5/$10 until UIGEA. I was a consistent, if unspectacular winner over that time....just over 3 BB/100. (I think that would be decent now for LHE, but back then the games were great, and that winrate included all stakes I played.)

After the US legislation fallout, I cashed out almost all my roll and played only live for a few months. Sometime this year, I decided to take the couple hundred I still had on Full Tilt to learn NL and donkaments from the ground up. Quickly decided that I much preferred cash games, and here we are. My game has subtly changed over the last few months, as I've digested more NL content and started up a blog/study crew. So, here are results since 9/1.

Disclaimer: the results for August were the sux. You can see those from a previous entry. You can also see that my game has changed since then as well, though. The sample I've shown I've run hotter than heck. For the year, I am 3.6 PTBB/100 over 70k hands across 10NL, 25NL, and 50NL, most at 25NL. Not shabby, but certainly room for improvement.

[Update Nov. 1: Crossed my bankroll threshold last night, so even though the stats shown are for NL 25 and NL 50, I am now moving up to 100 NL with 19 BI, prepared to move back down to 50 NL at 15 BI.]





What I Bring

I take poker study seriously, and have for about 3 years. So, I am going to treat any coaching with a high amount of dedication. I have a very (too much at times) competitive nature, to the point that I actually enjoy being told what I am doing wrong, especially when I can get an explanation of why it's wrong and what I can do differently so that I don't make the same mistake in the future. No one has to worry about hurting my feelings.

On the other hand, I don't need or want to have every last detail spelled out for me. I won't be afraid to push back on a coach's suggestion if I feel that I can support a counterpoint, but mostly, I'm looking for someone to just point out where I need to think about differently, rather than spoon feeding everything. I think this works well in poker conversations because a lot of actions depend on your assumptions. So, as long as you are thinking about the correct set of pros and cons for a situation, you are going to be in good shape. If a coach wants to teach someone to fish rather than just giving someone a fish, I'll work well with them.

I mentioned earlier that one thing holding me back from getting a coach is my schedule. I've got a busy job and a relatively hectic life besides poker. I've been logging 2000-2500 hands per week, four tabling, which I know is not much. I do use downtime at work for surfing poker sites, watching videos, and chatting with my review crew, which gives me some decent amount of study time, but time is definitely a precious commodity. I've blogged about some monthly goals the last couple months, so you can get in idea of what I try to do.

Hopes and expectations

The biggest goal I have now is recognizing when and how to change gears. My game doesn't really change that much. It's a decent game to beat the lower levels, but a decent player who adjusts to TAGs well could feast on me. Also, some specific situations I'd like help with are 3-bet pots, playing against floaters, and playing top pair/overpair hands. On the last, I've got value betting down (good), but feel like I probably pound too indiscriminately and probably don't get away from quite enough hands (bad).

Having coached and been coached in other areas, I assume that the main benefit will be uncovering problems that I'm not aware of, or not fully aware anyway. In general, you get knowledge through reviewing yourself, from posting on forums, and from working with friends on your game, but I don't think there is a substitute for individualized attention an expert gives you.

Assuming I start with a coach about the same time I start 100NL, I would want to work with someone to figure out how much and what type of coaching is best for me. Going into it, I think it would be to either sweat me or review PT with me, in order to identify some systemic deficiency, and then of course talk about correcting it. But really, I'm not sure at all the best way to approach, and would be open to hearing a coach's ideas. There's also the matter of quantity. For the amount of hands and level I play, is it better to have 2 sessions a month with a very high quality coach providing extremely tailored coaching, or 4 sessions a month with someone not quite as proficient and who has a more cookie cutter approach (but who is still a good player and has a strong approach)?

Something Verneer mentioned is that his students could/would sweat other lessons he gives, or at least that others would be sweating your sessions. I think that's a great idea, and although I hadn't thought of it before, the ability to form a serious crew is great. I kickstarted one made up of other low limit CR members, and those sessions have been fantastic, regardless of whether I'm the one being reviewed or I'm part of the review crew. I would look for a coach's own student crew to be an extension of that, with one more expert leader (the coach). In general, I would hope that a coach would be somewhat available beyond just the lesson times (email, AIM, forum, review my blog periodically, whatever) for quick questions, as long as it wasn't overwhelming.

Speaking of overwhelming, I am going to end this post now. It started -- several hours and interruptions earlier -- as a quick post with a tiny bit of background and a few other thoughts. It's certainly grown beyond that, but at least for any coach who I send this post to, if you can get through it, then you certainly have some review stamina ;).

I don't suspect anyone will come across this without me initiating the contact, but if you have and you'd like to speak with me about your coaching or if you're looking for a coach yourself and want to discuss it, feel free to leave a reply here or PM me on either Cardrunners or 2+2. My name on both boards is Disconnected.

Back from a little break

I just got back in town and trying to get unburied at work, plus I caught a little sore throat, unfortunately. With no computer, it was a total break from both work and poker, which was nice and relaxing. I didn't take along a poker book, so it really was a break, for a little over a week. I wish the timing had been a little different, as there have been much better times for me to take a break. The last few weeks, I've been running pretty well, and I liked the group sessions we started.

I'll probably use today to get caught up on work, then try to catch up on the blogs and maybe watch a video or review some old hands to get ready for playing, but I might not play until Wednesday or Thursday....I'm pretty tired, and also distracted by all the things that can pile up in a week.

Plus, I'm running out of space on my DVR and need to watch/clear some shows out! One thing I'm much better about these days is not playing with the TV on something I care much about. I don't mind it if the wife has something on while I play, but if it's something I want to watch, I stop my session. I used to drop a table or two, but I think it's better to just stop altogether.

All the goals I set for myself seem pretty out of reach with half the month over, but maybe I'll make up some ground as I clear the other stuff off my plate and focus again on poker the last part of the month.

What other blogs do you read?

Outside my CR crew, I don't read poker blogs any longer. A few that I used to read regularly have diminished. Ed Miller has a good one: http://www.notedpokerauthority.com

There are some good ones on Cardrunners, but I'm so used to getting RSS feeds that I doubt I'll really follow the CR ones until they enable RSS feeds.

Speaking of blogs, my number one complaint about Blogger is that you can't download comments for each post, but rather have to subscribe to each post's comments individually. That seems just ridiculous. If anyone knows how to get at comments without subscribing to them specifically, I would love to know.

Goals for the month

I failed most of my September goals, although it wasn't utter failure. I think that the work I did towards my goals helped quite a bit, so I'll keep the goals pretty much the same for October, although I'll maybe change the targets.

First, a target to actual comparison in September:

1. 10,000 hands. This one I met, pretty much right on the nose (10,403). Didn't think I was going to make it, but I had an unexpected chunk of time the last week of the month to push me over the hump.
2. 100 posts across forums, blogs, chats. I tried to keep a tally on a spreadsheet, just to see how much I was really participating in various communities, and only counted posts and chats with some content to them (so, like all the posts saying nothing more than good luck, nice job, I agree, etc. don't count). With that in mind, I counted 28 posts. So, well short, even if I missed a few.
3. Review 75% of the hands I play. I used a comment in PT sessions to indicate whether I reviewed them, and I counted 5,562 reviewed hands, so a little under 50%. I got some good insights from these self reviews, and I won't do a review unless I'm concentrating on it pretty hard, so I'd rather review 50% of the hands this way as opposed to rushing through 75% or more. I just need to make the time to review more.
4. Actively study 10 CR videos. I watched quite a few, but I'll judge this one based on how many videos I took more than a couple notes on (where they differ from what I would do, or a key concept one of the pros discussed. Based on that higher threshold, I only actively studied 6 videos. 3 full pages of typed notes, though, so I did study those 6 well.
5. Tighten up in early position. My UTG VPIP was 9.78 and my button VPIP was 24.16, or 147% higher. Note that I was not exactly super loose on the button, but I was way tighter UTG, so I'll consider it a success.
6. Practice hand-reading. Absolute failure from a PT review standpoint, but I did have some success while actually playing....there were a couple big hands where I paused before acting to review my opponents' ranges, and a couple times changed my action for the better as it turned out. Nevertheless, I still think I should go through some PT hands, not at game speed, and try to put people on ranges. Thinking about it during the hand is good, but not enough. With the replayer available, and the ability to filter only for hands that go to showdown, this is too easy to avoid, unless I think I'm already an expert hand reader (I don't).

Like I said, I think that for the most part, these are the right sorts of measurable goals. There are some you can't objectively measure like don't tilt, play your "A" game all the time, and others. But for October, I am going to keep them measurable, and let the rest take care of itself. Same 6 goals but with different targets outlined below, as well as a new one.

1. Play 7,000 hands. I'm reducing this over a normal month for 2 reasons. I'll be on vacation (without computer) for 8-10 days. I'm starting play at a new level, and rather than 4 tables will play 2 or 3 as I ease into the games, and build up my database.
2. 50 community contributions. Again, this is content-filled posts, blogs, chats, etc. Fluff does not count. I'm lowering this from last month both because I'm away as well as that I fell so short last month, maybe I was too unrealistic.
3. Review 75% of the hands I play. I fell short of this, but ideally I'd like to review all sessions, and I think this is a crucial part of study.
4. Review 8 CR videos. Again, this goes beyond just watching a video. It extends to taking copious notes and paying full attention to the video. I thought this would be easy since I watch a lot of them, but it's actually pretty difficult to give 100% attention and note down everything important in them. At least it's difficult for me (I get too easily distracted).
5. Maintain tight UTG stats. Same as last month: UTG VPIP should be half that of button.
6. Practice hand reading. Let's make it easier than last month. How about just all the showdown hands in a 1,000 chunk of hands.
7. Participate in group session reviews. I'm excited about this one. A bunch of us had our first review today, and I think it went really well. My goal for this one is to participate in at least one per week that I am in town.
   

A better month

Just a quick post for September results. I don't have a lot of time right now, so how I did vs. my goals will have to wait (I didn't do so well meeting them, though). However, my results were a lot better than last month, although certainly not crushing the games by any stretch.


I wanted to be tighter in general, especially from early position, and I succeeded (see next picture for position stats). One area to focus on in putting money in from the SB, I'm pretty happy with my blind play in general. The results have been good.

My steal attempts are low by a couple percentage points compared to how I usually run. Partly, that is just generally tightening up in borderline situations, but I'm not really trying to tighten up from CO and BTN. I have stopped stealing so much with ace-rag, especially from the SB and CO spots. I keep a wide range when my image is tight, but if I feel at all like I have been active, I'm passing on ace-rag for now.

My showdown percentage seems a little on the low side, but not horrible, but on the other hand, I'm not winning enough showdowns that I see. So, probably, I need to be looking at spots where I'm either too aggressive with good hands and push people off their second-best hands, or I am calling down inappropriately.


I like my position numbers in general, especially the differential between UTG and BTN. The sample sizes here get pretty small with just 10k hands, though. Not sure about the couple apparent open-limps....could be misclicks I guess, as it's not part of my game. Anyway, I'm raising just about all the pots I enter from UTG and MP, so I don't think I've got a problem there.

As I said above, my VPIP from SB looks a little suspicious, especially since I'm not coming in with a raise a lot. However, my results from the blinds have been phenomenal, especially defending. Again sample sizes are pretty small, and in all likelihood, I probably hit a couple big hands when defending, or I 3-bet a premium pair and got played back at, or something. 20% from the SB seems high, though, so I'll look in more on that.


Well, this is a pleasant graph. Looks like I ran a bit better than expected when the money went in. I do remember one hand where I got in with 2nd set vs. top set and then hit my one-outer for quads. Perhaps that's where the blue line shot up over the red line? Anyway, if I'm reading this graph correctly, I ran quite well for a bit, and then continued to run about as expected for the rest of the month.


September seemed to start about where August left off, but I had a couple nice runs during the month. Here's hoping it continues in October!