2007 Summary of Sorts

Warning...tl;dr

I may take off from work a couple hours early and may be able to log a few more hands this year, but probably not, so this is as good a time to wrap up 2007 as any (although I'll wait to do a December wrap-up just in case I do play a little bit more before starting the NYE celebrating). It's all one long session, but it seems like month ends and year ends are decent intervals to do some analysis. I certainly grew more as a player this year than last, mostly as a function of learning a new game, but also because I'm more serious about study and play now than prior.

I started off in 2005, and as usual when I decided that I was going to pursue this for more than a little bit, I dove in the best I knew how at the time. That was probably like April, and at that time I was reading the different limit hold'em strategy forums on 2p2 most every day, and going through a lot of LHE books. I think I read a dozen different books, most good...and read Small Stakes Hold'em and Theory of Poker each 3 times. So, just because I was starting from zero and was absorbing everything, I improved more in 2005 than I guess that I ever will.

2006 was a fairly stagnant year from a development standpoint. I was diligent, but just going through the same old motions. I did improve as a player, but not at the same rate, or at least it didn't feel like it. I did go from $1/$2 to $5/$10 that year on a 300BB per level bankroll. Not bad, considering I played very infrequently and also only on one table at a time. I don't have that DB, but my win rate was pretty sick, although probably not enough volume to be certain. But your win rate can definitely be higher if you are a disciplined one-table player (disciplined means not replacing other tables with distractions, and remaining focused on the table action).
But by the end of 2006, LHE was getting a little boring, the games were toughening up, and I didn't know what to expect as the UIGEA passed.

From latter 2006 through the first few months of 2007, I mainly just played live (a little) and started reading about other poker formats. People suggested Omaha-8 for low variance and NL because that's where all the new players were going. A number of successful LHE players I'd followed had already converted to NL, and very rarely were people converting *to* LHE or coming back. I learned the basics of O8 and just kind of kept thinking about NL, but didn't do anything about it.

O8 was OK, but I just didn't feel the spark that told me I would want to play it for a huge amount of time. In part because the only live games (which I considered more important then, and it still does matter to me some) were $4/$8, and usually only a single table at the card rooms. I didn't want to spend effort to master a game that I could only ever play online. At the time, I was a member of Stoxpoker. I finally decided to watch the couple NL videos he did. Made sense to me, and I started reading some of the NL forums on 2p2 even more.

So, somewhere around April, I decided to play on the .10/.25 tables at Stars where I still had like $600 that I didn't cash out. Still one table at a time. Did good, moved up to 50NL when I hit $1000. Moved through that pretty quickly (too quickly), and moved up to 100NL with $2000. At that point, I hit a wall, and lost like 5BI in 500 hands. I figured it was bound to happen because I knew I was running hot before, but I also felt a bit overmatched. This is now like June, probably.

Around this time, I also played spread limit for the first time live (the nearest card rooms to me are in a city that does not allow bets more than $200, so the rooms run a $5-$200 spread game that plays like a mix of LHE and NL, depending on how deep the stacks get, but since the max buy-in is also $200, stacks take a while to get deep...it sucks, but it's what's available). The players are pretty bad. The money is pretty easy. I stack a guy for his half stack with AA preflop. Next hand, I stack off 40BB with a weak overpair on a monotone board to a tricky player who is nonetheless pretty tight. She check/called me on the flop, checkraised me on the blank turn, and put me in on the blank river. I re-buy. A little later, I get AA again. The tightest guy on the table limps in EP and calls my raise. Flop is something like T44. He check/pushes the flop, I call, he shows 44. Yeah, the players are pretty bad. The money is pretty easy.

I was debating whether or how much I hated big bet games and what to do with poker in general...live only, back to LHE online, back to O8, keep up with NL...etc. I decided that a) I had gotten a somewhat expensive lesson at the card room; b) I thought I knew what my mistakes were, and they wouldn't happen as much again in the future; c) big bet games were still interesting after I'd finished fuming about my stupidity.

So, I was going to stick with NL. The first thing is that I wanted a site with more videos than what Stox had at the time, and Cardrunners was the hands-down choice for NL cash. Signed up there and started going through the Taylor archives. I'd been watching videos in general for a bit, and was getting used to following 4 tables of action. I also wanted to start playing on Full Tilt, since I had a rakeback account there. But, I only had like $200 on the site. I never set up another funding mechanism besides Neteller, and didn't feel like doing so (I still don't), for a few reasons, probably all stupid. I kind of figured, "Let's start NL from scratch. Let's learn how to multitable, since Full Tilt has resizeable tables now. Let's build up the roll organically, and save the rest of the roll for live play. Let's play on an account that gives rakeback, like I used to."

Ran hot at 10NL for a few thousand hands (yay for heaters at microstakes). Got comfortable on 4 tables. Started playing 25NL, graph looks like a yo-yo. Some guy on the CR forums says let's start a bunch of guys who blog and we can comment on each others', maybe do some sweat sessions and what not. That guy actually disappears, but there is a decent little community forming into at least a couple different crews.

After playing close to 50k hands of 25NL (!!!!), I finally stop being too lame or running too bad, and have enough to move up to 50NL. I have yet to go back to Stars, and we're now like in October. October I run like a god, and move up to 100NL on Full Tilt in November. My roll there is now larger than my roll on Stars. I'm running too hot to sustain, but I'm also playing pretty decent. However, I still don't have the volume of hands to be confident I'm a winner statistically, and besides, I pretty much have one gear. Off and on, I'd thought about getting some coaching. From what I had read about poker coaching, and what I had experienced in sports, at some point I figured I would get coaching, and it was just a matter of finding the right entry point or cost point, or whatever.

The timing is good. Soon I would be at 100NL, so it's not like I would spend 8 buy-ins per session or something redic like that. I had a good enough grasp of the fundamentals that videos, strategy posts, and books were not contributing hugely to my development....all still important, but the point was I was now beyond the basics. In spite of having the basics down, I still knew (know) I made bad plays, and would be good to have a better player focus on me and let me know what blind spots I have. To me, this is ultimately the best benefit of coaching, whether poker or something else.

I find some coaching recommendations and some coaching sites. Rates are still pretty steep for a guy who only plays 10k hands/month at 100NL, but everything I've seen points to still proceeding. One of the guys who has been recommended on the Cardrunners forums as a great coach if you can get him is Verneer, and coincidentally, he soon thereafter is taking on additional students.

Rather than starting new 1 on 1 sessions with some new students, he wanted to run a workshop. The workshop format is not particularly what I was looking for, but since I try to be open minded in general, and because I am also looking for someone that knows what I need even before I know I need it, I go along with it. Plus, he's not doing any 1 on 1's until after the workshop is over. The workshop is pretty cool, especially at first. Some guest appearances by other guys like Hookem and Dice. And another crew that develops within the workshop with the some other participants. So, although no traditional coaching comes out of it, there are still some great benefits.

November is another yo-yo month, this time at 100NL. I finish the month up about a BI, making way more from rakeback than profit. December started off on the same downward momentum that November ended, and I'm another 4 BI down after a pretty small number of hands. My mental game is in a weird state. I know a bunch of stuff, I know there's way more I don't know yet. I feel better than most of the players I play against, yet the score doesn't reflect that. For a change of pace, I decide to go back to Stars, and also drop back to 50NL to get my Stars roll back up to 100NL-ready. It goes pretty well after a shaky first couple sessions. Then get slammed at 100NL again. Then build up again. Then finally a couple winning sessions in a row at 100NL.

In the meantime, I received a couple books, and have started one of them. I got them both for primarily the emotional side of poker, hoping to improve confidence as well as reduce any tilt-inspired poor play. Of course, those are related. The book I'm reading now is Elements of Poker by Tommy Angelo. Very similar to (in fact part of it lifted from) his articles. If you've never heard of or read anything by Tommy, I would definitely check out his website: tommyangelo.com. I'll try to remember to write about it when I finish. I'm about half way through now, and I'll just say that it's a deceptively easy read.

So, that's where I stand right now. I am really looking forward to 2008. I wish that Verneer and I were able to start some 1 on 1 coaching...that lack is I think my biggest disappointment. In spite of that, I have a much bigger poker support system than ever before, and I am really grateful. I hope that I am helping you as much as you are helping me (well, for a couple of you, you'll have to give me some time to catch up, but I will certainly give that a go!).

A lot of you should already be in the midst of a celebration or even sleeping one off by now :). To all of you guys, Happy New Year, and here's to a fantastic 2008!

A little live poker

Haven't played live in a while, but snuck out for a couple long lunches this week (work's been pretty slow). The closest places to the office run 5-200 spread limit with a $5 rake if the pot has been raised, even if there is no flop (this means that stealing the blinds without a good hand, and maybe even with a good hand) is totally not worth it. The $5 rake sucks, but there are enough decent sized pots that it's not too painful. The players were pretty bad, but the action was totally slow. I have hardly played any live poker this year...back when I used to play live more, I also only single-tabled online, so it wasn't like there was a massive difference. Not that I play huge volumes online now, but 4 tables online means I'm probably seeing 8x more hands an hour at least (not really sure).

In addition to the whole rake implications, the play is a lot more passive and loose/speculative, so that takes some adjusting as well. No draw that gets there is too inconceivable. I only played about 3 hours total over the 2 days, but had a decent profit. I got AK two hands in a row, once from the BB and next time from the SB. In the BB hand, a guy UTG+1 on a full ring table limp/called with an $80 stack with QJo, and hit trips on the flop to double up (actually more because another guy limp/called me). Lucky for me, I bought right back in (although I only bought in to about $175 because I didn't have change). The second AK hand in a row I also squeezed from the blinds (SB this time) and again got 2 callers. I was suited, and the flop came 3 of my suit. Yahtzee. I ended up all in on the flop against 2 guys! One of them flopped a baby flush, and the other guy was on a one-card draw to the queen-high flush with either 2nd or 3rd pair. My hand held up, thankfully.

Online, I haven't played that much over the holidays. I've been running well at 50nl on Stars, but had yet to book a winning 100NL session the whole month until last night. I've been playing pretty well, but certainly not perfect. And the thing that I really need to work on is to not let my mistakes compound themselves (well, and not make them in the first place, of course).

I've been reading quite a bit more blogs and some other stuff, and thinking a bit deeper and better (IMO) about the game and what I need to do. I would capture it here, but I need to go pretty soon. Gotta get home to the family, and that's one of the other things I'm doing well.

For a while, especially after starting up with the study group and then with Pawel's group, I was really moaning to myself about how I didn't have enough time for it all. But, I think that there is a huge positive to not having a lot of time, too. There are other meaningful things in my life outside of poker, so I'm not totally dependent on how things are going poker-wise...a lot easier to ride out difficult patches with other stuff to turn to. Also, it's rare that I am playing hands without enthusiasm for the game, whether my session is long or short.

True, from a poker development point of view, the fact that I am not 100% dedicated to it hurts, but I think not so much as I used to believe. I mean, from a learning standpoint, there is only so much you can learn effectively anyway in a short amount of time. And I'm getting enough experience to reinforce some ideas and to try out new ones. Is it optimal considering only poker and nothing else? No. But is it way short of optimal? Not at all, I'm beginning to think. And the more that I think that I'm not completely sacrificing my poker development, the less stressed I am about it. And the less stressed you are about something, the better you perform.

Happy Holidays

Got up early this AM to knock out work related stuff, enough to call it a good half day at least. Now enjoying a quick cup of coffee and will write until the rest of the family is ready to head off to the in-laws for Christmas Eve. This is the big celebration for us...tomorrow will just be our family.

I'm Jewish, my wife is not. I'm still getting used to the big celebration my wife's family does...not sure if it's typical or not. The minimum is 8 in the youngest generation (my kids), 6 from the middle (me), and 3 from the oldest generation (Jennifer's parents). In past years, there have been some more thrown into the mix, but I think that's it this year. Doesn't seem like that many people, but the presents can't all fit around the tree, and pretty much take up half the living room. After dinner, it takes probably 10 minutes -- with all the kids doing it -- to get all the presents passed out, and then it's just a flurry of paper flying.

My family growing up made a very small deal of birthday and Chanukah presents, but it seemed fine to me. The over-the-top celebration seems a bit much to me, to be honest, but I try to embrace it, and of course the kids love it. Actually, all the guys would probably rather tone it down a bit, but all the wives love it, and we're not (brave? dumb? ballsy?) enough to change :P. I can't really complain, other than the bills...Jennifer does almost all the work.

I was able to play a little bit, I think pretty well. The month started on FT, then I moved to Stars for a change of pace. Been going pretty well on Stars, with one unfortunate blip. Made my target to jump to 100NL at Stars, and then had the one bad session so far, dropping 2.5 BI. My play was OK -- I made one pretty questionable call where all my instincts were telling me to fold, but my head talked me into making the hero call. I made one big triple-barrel bluff that was pretty spewy looking back on it, and I lost all 3 flips, but they were all good plays by my part (and my opponents). It was just unfortunate that it happened at 100NL. Dropped back down to 50 for the second session of the day, and ran it back up over my 100NL threshold, so I'll try again. Played pretty well at 50NL, but definitely ran well too. I got KK all in for 120BB versus a spaz, hit a K on the flop, and ended up cracking his aces. That accounted for all my profit at the second session. So, it does go well once in a while, after all.

After looking through my hands, I read through some blogs. A couple of them triggered some thoughts. Graham talked about the different way guys like Verneer approach the game, where they tailor who they play big pots with...same hand, same board, different commitment according to players. I think in my game, I am a little too much one-size-fits-all. I will make some opponent-specific adjustments for things like who to 3-bet light (or whose 3-bets to call), whether or not to c-bet, whether to bet for value or induce a bluff, etc. That's a good start, but I don't think enough in general terms about an overall plan/philosophy for a given opponent. The lack of a big picture, while potentially not hurting me that much at the lower levels, is definitely something that I need to shore up because it's a gap in how to approach the game.

Speaking of Verneer, in one of his blog entries, he interviewed Dice. One of the things Dice mentioned is being at the appropriate mental level for your game. It does you no good to think at Level 2 if your opponents are thinking on Level 0. In other words, you need to give your opponents the right level of credit in order to play optimally. I definitely don't do that. I either give them full credit or no credit. Also, related, Dice advised to not overthink. I played a couple hands where these got me recently.

One of them, I was in a 3-way pot with an overpair to a 55x flop against 2 medium stacks. I'd isolated one of them, and the 2nd one was in the BB. The BB played very much like he had a 5. I was thinking that a 5 is such a small part of his range that I really discounted it, in spite of what his postflop action was saying. At the time, it really bugged me that he showed down that 5 and I lost a half stack. What I did is gave him too much credit preflop, and didn't believe postflop, when in reality I had no reason to believe he was that good, or tricky. I forget exactly how big his stack was by the time the final bet went in, and it may have still been OK to go with the hand, but I suspect not, or it wouldn't have bugged me so much.

Another hand, I had KK and 3-bet a LAG opener. Again the BB (a different one) called with a medium stack (40-60 BB), this time for a pretty large 3-bet. The flop was undercards, and he min-checkraised me on the flop. I put him in, after thinking about folding. Again, it may have been the right play, but his actual holding totally surprised me. Again, I was giving him a bit too much credit, assuming he was trapping with AA, in spite of the stats I had on him, which didn't suggest a tricky player. I talked myself out of folding because again, I didn't want to put him on that one hand, and thought if he doesn't have that one hand, I'm in good shape. Well, he had 77 and had made a set. Again, I think that more often than not, going with an overpair on the flop in a 3-bet pot is going to be OK, that's not the point. The point is that I gave him enough credit to not make that call getting such poor odds since with my 3-bet I either have him crushed or I'm flipping with him.

In both cases, instead of going with the straightforward story both villains were telling me, I gave them more credit than warranted, and also kept thinking myself into a different conclusion than they were saying. Against a tricky player, that's fine and even needed. Against the guys that I'm trying to table select for, that's counter-productive.

A post or two ago, I discussed being theoretically sound, but making poor assumptions, leading to poor conclusions. I think the problem is not believing the obvious story from the straightforward players. Without a read, I probably need to do a better job of determining when someone is likely to be making a play. Against the straightforward player, I need to do a better job of just believing what they say, and if they tricked me, then good for them.

I actually got a little more time than I thought for this entry :). Have a merry Christmas!

Black muddy river, roll on forever

Continuing to play an OK game, but unable to garner much momentum. Played 976 hands last night, running at (6.96) ptbb/100 :(. This was punctuated by a 68/15 monkey who stayed with me as a table broke up, and then continually pwned me HU for a couple buy-ins over like 40 hands.

I don't really play much HU and so I probably spewed a bit even before he got well into his hot streak. When he called my PFR with 93o, and took me for half a stack when the flop came A33 early in our HU match, I should have known I was in for it! The only thing was he actually folded a couple times after that. I mean, if you're going to call 93o, there are not that many hands left to fold!

I got coolered for 30BB when my AQ flopped top two, but lost to a set of 5's. I had another big loss (below) for just over a stack. Without these big setbacks, I would have won quite handily. But, you are going to get in games with huge edges and lose, you are going to get coolered sometimes, and there are also the various mistakes that we recognize only after the fact, and hope that by diligent review and study, we make less in the future.

The other big hand, I got stacked for 106BB with QQ against a 36/3/4.8 villain who limp/called OTB. He calls my c-bet on a T83 rainbow flop, then min-raises on a turned 7 that puts a flush draw out there. He's been limping then pushing hard postflop, but no one has stood up to him. I thought slowplayed set or possibly J9s, but then again he's been so aggro that he's (semi) bluffing a lot and probably pushes his TP hands too hard as well. So, I put him in, figuring if he is on a draw, he's priced in, and won't pay off on the river if he misses. He had J9 (offsuit....nice limp/call there, buddy). Before I could congratulate him on his play, he left the table :).

That hand (and session) illustrates a number of things about how things are going right now:

1. Monkeys get there against me....a lot. I pay them off. I'm not sure whether I pay them off too much.
2. Related....at 50NL, I play overpairs somewhat like the nuts against bad LAG opponents. I'm not sure if I am making the classic low level donkey mistake of overvaluing them. It's easy to think so when you lose and easy to think you play them correctly when you win with them (and I've won a number of big pots in similar situations).
3. I am not playing on autopilot. This is good. I'm trying to justify my actions and my plans to myself (sometimes out loud if no one is around). This is also good.
4. I believe that I am considering the correct factors, or at least the ones I'm considering are good ones to consider. This is good. I am not as sure whether I am making the correct assumptions, however. This is not so good. First, I might really be wrong, and so no matter how good my subsequent thinking is, I'm doomed. Garbage in, garbage out. Also, this is probably one of the big things undermining my confidence.

That last point...knowing what to do based on your assumptions, but your assumptions being incorrect, is a little like being totally book smart, but unable to function in the real world. Everyone knows those really intelligent-but-clueless people. And if you don't, you can see them on sitcoms. That's kind of me in poker -- a little more intelligent in general, and I could probably pull it off in the rest of my life, too, LOL. Anyway, I can jump into any theory type discussion with a lot of confidence. I've read, and I think understood, a ton of different poker books. I can give you a pretty good explanation of reverse implied odds and pot equity vs. pot odds, but I don't know when the heck I'm ahead or behind in a hand, or I'll start to be a level 2 thinker playing against a level 0 opponent.

Now, to be honest, this still puts me pretty far ahead of the typical 50NL monkey and probably the typical 100NL monkey. At least I think it does, and so I remain confident overall. Not that I think I'm a poker expert or anything, but I'm pretty sure I'm past the beginner's stage there.

The good thing is that your assumptions that go into a decision can get better solely with experience, if you're paying attention. The process of figuring out what to do with that information...to make better plans and decisions...doesn't just come with experience...you really need to work on thinking a lot of that through, and not everyone who plays a lot of hands and gets their assumptions correct will put in the additional time that they need in order to get better at the decision making process. It's hard, and it's not necessarily rewarded in the short term, either.

Playing Scared?

I'm still not playing much, but have been spending a bunch of time in PT going through hands. I'm playing OK, but not great. Since I went over to the Stars 50NL game, I find that I am making too many hero calls, even when obvious draws are getting there. It is significantly less aggro than the FT 100NL game, but I haven't really adjusted well.

One of the things that has jumped out at me is that even in winning sessions, I have some strange stats.



Sample size is pretty small, but this has been typical of my *winning* sessions the last couple weeks. The losing sessions have shown better stats. ("There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.") Playing just for certain stats is a recipe for disaster, IMO...you need to understand why you are making each play. But the point of stats in general is to give you a clue about where to look in your game to improve, at least in terms of self-evaluation.

I'm looking at these, and the thing that jumps out at me is that I'm playing scared. Specifically, I'm looking at my turn and river aggression, as well as my preflop raise to a lesser extent. Partly, I'm running pretty bad, winning at showdown very infrequently. I asked Verneer about what sorts of adjustments to make, but I wonder if it really is just a reflection of how you're running rather than how you're playing, at least over such a small sample. More telling is that combined with my turn and river AF, my won at showdown is low and I'm making some bad calls. If I were getting looked up a lot and losing, my turn and river AF would be higher (and to be fair, I would also be losing rather than winning). But the fact that they are so low when my VPIP is also low shows that I'm having a hard time getting away from hands when shown aggression.

Some of that is OK, but it goes back to the game adjustment. In an extremely aggressive game, I can afford to make some more marginal/heroic calls with marginal hands. Up against more bluffers and people who are looking for extremely thin value when shown weakness, you can call more. But I don't think to such an extent as I am, when it's two streets of calling.

Now, I don't feel as if I am actually playing scared...in fact the last few times I've felt pretty confident in my play overall, with only some isolated questions at game time, and the occasional poor decision. But the stats seem to tell a different story.

Supdate

Not much poker doings lately....played about 1k hands over Friday and the weekend in between holiday parties and golf. Played all at Stars for a change of pace (feel of the game, plus software), and because I can now be superstitious again with sites :P. I'm playing NL50 while my Stars roll catches up to my FT roll, and I don't know if it's the site or the level, but there are a lot more loose players. One strange thing I've noticed though is that I've come across a number of really loose, pretty passive players (like 40/10/1.5) that are winning over >1k hands. Just variance, but at FT I hardly ever see someone with those stats over a decent sample who has a positive win rate. Rigged, obviously.

The single biggest thing I hate at Stars, or like at FT I guess, is the way the check button and the fold buttons work. FT does it so much easier....if there has been no bet yet, you have no fold button...the first button becomes check. If there has been action, then there is no check button...the first button becomes fold. At Stars, the first button is always fold and the second button is either check or call, depending on the action. Since I use a script that maps the buttons to keys -- so I don't have to use a mouse -- FT works much better for me. I guess it doesn't matter much if you use a mouse for everything. So, I keep getting a message from Stars that checking is free, am I sure that I want to fold. I suppose that the play you can make at Stars not available at FT is to open-fold. But that's only good for metagame, which everyone says doesn't matter at the low stakes.

I'm up about half a buy-in over those thousand hands, but within that there have been lots of big pots. I suck at flips, or I would be doing really well. One time, I lost 2.5 buy-ins in two orbits, on three different hands on a pretty wild table. All of them were 3-bet pots. The first one I stole from CO with 99, and a very aggressive solid TAG who looks like he may over-defend 3-bet me from SB. We ended up getting it in on the flop, which was low but had two diamonds. He had the NFD, and it came in. The very next hand, CO opens and I 3-bet on the button with a high suited connector (read on CO, or I might have just called). I pick up an OESFD, he checkraises me all in, and his KK holds up. Next orbit, I pick up QQ and get it in preflop for 60BB, and his AK hits.

In general, I'm playing about the same VPIP as before (19+), but not opening as much. I am instead 3-betting more light and playing pretty aggressively on the flop, just to see what comes out. That's one of the nice things about dropping a level, I don't feel nearly as apprehensive about some experimentation. And for the most part, that part is going well, as I'm finding myself in spots where I'm getting the money in really good...at worst I've been getting it in as a slight underdog but with a big pot overlay. The final results haven't been there, but the sample size is small. There was a stretch when it seemed like I kept losing to 5 outs or less, and that was pretty tough. Losing flips is no fun, but it's not as infuriating as the longshot draws that come in.

Unfortunately, I couldn't connect with Pawel for a sweat session, and he's out of commission (coaching wise) until after Christmas, so it will be some time next week, I guess. In the meantime, I've been chatting with Noel here and there, and he's offered to sweat me for a bit if I can actually find an evening to play. Plus I'd like to rail someone myself during the day, if it works out.

Busy, busy, busy

With other stuff, not poker so much. I think I've only played about 500 hands this week in two (really) short sessions. From today (Friday) through Sunday, I've got 5 different holiday functions, so that's a big part of it. One today for work, and then 4 different ones on the weekend! Being social is one thing -- and Jennifer makes sure we keep our friends :) -- but I'm honestly not looking forward to so many different parties. At least I'm still able to get a round of golf in tomorrow....the weather is holding out other than being cold enough for a frost delay.

I'm trying to arrange my first one on one session with Pawel, and excited about that...although I've only got like a 3 hour window on the weekend that I can fit it in. But if not this weekend, then hopefully next week some time...work should slow down a bit as people start taking vacations. It's a good time for me to start with some coaching. I'm essentially playing break-even over my first 15k hands at 100NL (will have to pay Pawel w/my rakeback ;)).

My confidence, while still positive, could use a boost, too. I still feel at the table like I am better than most (not all) of the players, and when I review sessions later, I don't change my mind. I see some clear mistakes I made...some due to poor play, and some due to not thinking through ranges and tendencies all the way at game time. Some of that particular gap I think just closes with experience, and there's a multi-table effect as well. I only play 4 tables and I don't feel taxed by it for the most part, but there are a couple situations every session where if I were on less tables, I might have played differently...but overall, I remain pretty comfortable with 4 tables. So, that's where my confidence is good...I feel like I have a decent handle on the games that I play, including where I make mistakes.

The negative confidence is the fact that I'm not positive I've spotted enough mistakes, or really more importantly, enough flaws in my thought processes. I am pretty sure that I don't have the experience to ask myself all the correct questions. This is where I'm hoping that Pawel can help the most. Not so much pointing out leaks (that would of course be great), but more like noticing that I've got a tendency to play a certain way that may or may not make sense, and do I have a good reason for it. There's not a single absolutely correct way to play -- even at low stakes, IMO -- but for everything you do, you should have a justification, and your game should be integrated so that your actions in a hand are consistent with prior actions...that you've got a plan.

My game appears to me to be in decent shape that way...I can see the plans I'm trying to execute, and for the most part, the plans seem reasonable to me. But perhaps I'm operating with an incomplete or incorrect set of assumptions. Perhaps what I see to be a logical implementation of the correct plan is in fact not a logical implementation. And of course there are times when I've got no clue at game time, but can usually figure out what I would have been happy with after the fact....to me that happens an acceptable amount of the time (to be non-zero, I would need to be able to pause the game), but it could always be something where a guy who's been there done that would think that I'm giving up too much by not having a clue at game time.

These aren't things I think you can address by posting even lots of hands. And I don't think they can be addressed in coaching session or two, either, but over time working with a good coach, they can be addressed more quickly than they would on their own as I play more and go through all the study.

Anyway, I didn't mean to write so much about confidence issues (again, although it really is pretty interesting to me) or coaching (since I haven't even started), but what the heck.

The several hundred hands I did play this week were on Poker Stars. I still like FT's software better, but wanted a change of scenery after having several losing sessions in a row. I think I was getting too impatient and just thinking negatively as I went through a mix of running like crap and playing probably a B- game. On Stars, I don't have quite the roll that I do on FT, so I dropped to 50NL. I've got like 1650 now, and I think that when I get to 1800, I'll play 100NL there a little short, with a stop-loss at 1500. The play seemed a lot more passive than FT, but it was also a level down. Definitely some kooks, too. One guy pushed like every third hand, but ran like a god when he got looked up (he tilted the crap out of one guy)...he stacked my QQ with A2s hitting an ace on the river. I stacked him when my AQs held up against K8o...lol.

PSA: There's more to life than x....

....where x is not equal to family, friends, or health. There's more to life than poker, more to life than money, more to life than most about everything.

I actually do a pretty good job keeping that in mind at this stage of my life...having kids will tend to keep you in line that way, but it never hurts to remind yourself of that. Unfortunately, a lot of the times you are reminded, it's due to a scary or sad event, and that's what happened to me yesterday.

A co-worker's son was born about two weeks ago with neurological complications, no possible treatment. He was put on a respirator, and the doctors said he would not last long off the respirator...days at most. I am not close with the father, have never hung out away from work or anything like that. But a couple people who are good friends of his went to visit them in the hospital, and told me that even on the respirator, the poor baby struggled for each breath.

Yesterday, they took the baby off the respirator and an hour later he died in his mothers' arms.

I don't know anyone in the family besides the father, and him not really well, but something like this happening to anyone you know hits home, at least to me. We've all got tons in our lives to be thankful for, and which we probably take for granted more than we should. The silver lining of a tragedy is that it can lead us to focus on the good people and other aspects of our lives with some extra appreciation and gratitude.

Confidence and results

I've been thinking a bit about confidence, both in terms of how it affects my game, as well as relating it to other things. My poker game is just not strong enough yet to have unwavering confidence in it, even though I believe that I usually have an advantage at the tables. I am OK at sizing up other players, and I'm improving there. I usually feel like I'm one of the two best players at the table, since I tend to leave unless I've got great position on someone...and then I usually feel like I can stay out of trouble from the guys behind me, if they are strong. I feel like I can recognize mistakes in my game and do a pretty good job analyzing others' hands...certainly I don't feel too lost in any poker conversation.

So, bottom line, in my head, I'm confident enough to succeed. But I think if I'm honest with myself that I don't believe it in my gut. I find myself questioning myself at game time too often for me to have confidence in my confidence, if that makes any sense. I cannot yet get past the hands I lose big, if it wasn't a clear cooler or clear bad beat (those bug me less and less).

I made a forum post the other day discussing what I think is a crucial step up in development, which is not worrying too much about getting outplayed. I cited Taylor's videos as an example...over and over (but not too often), he will make a play and say he's not sure it's correct. For example, someone will raise him, and he'll say something like, "I think I could have the best hand, but I'm going to give him credit this time," as he folds. To him, there's a distinct possibility that his opponent just outplayed him, but he makes the fold and goes on to the next hand. Now, I imagine Taylor is pretty secure in the knowledge that on the whole he is getting far the best of the outplaying battle, but that doesn't mean he won't get outplayed on an individual hand. That's the crucial step I was thinking about....not worrying about any particular hand someone outplays you. As long as you are realistically outplaying everyone else -- whether it be from well-timed bluffs, folds where other people call down second best, making thin value bets, or any other number of things -- who cares if they get the best of you on a single hand?

Well, if you have confidence in your game...feeling it in your gut...I don't think you do care too much. You let them have this hand, and just get on with business. I still have a hard time accepting getting outplayed, and I think it's mostly to do with the fact that I don't feel in my gut that I'm outplaying people on a regular basis. I probably am, but I'm not 100% behind that thought.

My NL career is still under 100k hands, and my win rate over that time is pretty anemic. The issue with poker is that even over 100k hands, you don't know exactly how good you are, and especially over the first huge chunk of hands, your game (and most everyone else's you play against at the micros) are changing anyway. But what sorts of objective measures do you have of how well you're doing? Even someone watching you and providing good feedback isn't objective for true confidence (although it helps) because they can only see you for such a small sample.

There are a lot of subjective measures, including the feedback you get, which are all extremely helpful, but the bottom line is that there is only one bottom line, and that is money won/lost. And that's a crappy measurement as far as feedback goes because it takes so long for win rates to normalize. By many subjective measures, my game is solid, but the two kind of objective measurements...experience and win rate are undecided.

So, when I have a week like this, where the last 5 sessions all resulted in small or moderate losses -- even though I can point to the reasons why some of it would have occurred, where I actually made good decisions, and where I successfully identified my mistakes, I still look to the small losing streak (and we're only talking about 6 BI over ~3k hands), and a part of me wonders. It wonders whether I'm looking at things as realistically as I think I am...not that I'm deceiving myself, but maybe I really don't know as much as I think...well that my gap is more than the normal gap between how much people think they know, and what they actually know.

Thinking about the tone of this post, it may seem negative, but it's really not...I'm comfortable with the belief that I basically know what I'm doing, and I know enough to know that there's a lot I don't know. I'm just dwelling on this post on the little nagging doubt that still exists, that keeps me from being 100% sure of myself -- and therefore uncaring of any negative results -- when I hit the inevitable bumps in the road.

It sucks for me because I am so results oriented in the sense that I want to win whatever I'm doing, and losing takes away from the enjoyment of the activity...and this is the same in poker as it is in other sports as it is at work as it is doing a crossword puzzle. My happiness depends on too large a part in whether I'm succeeding at all these things, and not as much on the activity itself, on the pursuit of learning, improvement, and just having fun.

There's a saying (I saw it on a bumper sticker first) that the worst day of golf -- or fishing, skiing, etc. -- is better than the best day at the office. But that's not really true for me. My favorite sport is now golf, but when I'm not playing well, I really can't wait for the round to be over...and this is after waking up at the crack of dawn to get there. Same thing was true when I played tennis a lot....even in a social match if I were not playing up to my standards, I couldn't wait for it to be over. Forget the exercise, the outdoors, the camaraderie, the chance to practice something that wasn't working, the fact that you are not at the office. Results matter.

At least in those other areas, you are much more responsible for your results, or at least luck does not enter much into it at all. In poker, you don't even get that luxury (and that's why I've never been a fan of BB/100 related goals). When the chips don't slide my way, I get too easily disgusted. When I'm not on my A game, that disgust snowballs into worse play and more bad results. When I am on my A game, I still don't enjoy it, and that's nuts...not to the point I should just find something else to do, but the true measure of enjoyment at the low stakes should be about how well I play, and that's about it. Of course the profits are nice, but they are not going to be life changing, nor will the losses. That may come one day, but it's not there yet. I understand it's different for pros who rely on that income...one of the many reasons it must be much harder to be a pro. But I'm not in that situation.

Actually, the situation that I'm in right now is that I need to go help the kids with something, so I'm going to finally wrap this up. To reiterate, my state of mind remains positive overall. I'll try to make the next post a little lighter, in length and in attitude.

Software tilt

It's been a challenging week for me in terms of software, both for poker and for work. Grrr...I hate it when it doesn't go smooth.

On the poker front, most of my struggles were with Camtasia....I recorded a couple videos, but the sound ended up way ahead of the video. It was a weird problem because the audio quality was fine, some stuff just got skipped, I guess. No one on the Techsmith forums knew why it was happening, as it periodically does for people (and reading through some of the older respones was pretty hilarious...about as unhelpful a response in one as I've ever seen, when he was actually trying to help, I think). That aside, I wasted a good couple hours just researching. Aaron was awesome, both with his general Camtasia knowledge, and for getting me a copy of version 3 so I can try again with a presumably more stable version. The solution I finally found is actually a pretty simple workaround, and v3 evidently uses a lot more CPU to record, so it's good to know I at least have options.

The next piece of software frustration is with PAHUD. I restored a large datamining database, and now PAHUD has been re-creating the cache for 7 hours. I know it can take a long time, but there's no visual indication that anything is even happening, other than the task manager.

The good news is that a couple of my old scripts I used to use for Stars still work. I decided to give Stars a whirl again after one too many frustrating sessions on Full Tilt. I'm really comfortable with Full Tilt's software, and have gotten an add-0n called Full Tilt Shortcuts that makes playing there even easier. But the last few sessions, I've run bad and played a little too spewy...they seem to go together all too often.

I've had a number of hands where my reads were good in terms of putting people primarily on draws and taking good lines to get the money in while ahead...only to have the draws get there...not really beats or coolers, just opponents getting there. Then I had a guy who 3-bet me in position or in the SB on my button 4 times in 5 of my raises. The fifth one, I had Tc 9c, and I decided to call and CR any flop that hit me. The flop was Ts 8c 7c. I c/r, he pushes, I snap-call, and his KK holds up. You can argue I had no business calling the 3-bet preflop, and you're probably right, but if I can't get there somehow on that flop, I'm not getting there.

So, I'm going to say fuck off for a bit, Full Tilt, more to give myself a change of scenery than anything else. I still believe that with some table selection, I have the theoretical best of it at Full Tilt...there are good players no doubt, but enough poor ones as well that it should be profitable...but I am becoming my own worst enemy there as I lose patience and discipline. I don't have quite the roll at Stars as I do at Full Tilt, so I'll play some 50NL there for a bit. That'll be good anyway, as I re-adjust both to the different site, and to getting myself more in a good groove.

Some responses to prior comments

Thanks for the insightful comments on my last post, guys...there was a lot of great thought in there, and I figured that I'd rather address them in a new post instead of another comment to the prior one.

@Willie: I will try to do a video showing my PT review, but it's not terribly exciting, I generally go through position stats, look at hands I played UTG, and then look through hands where there was more than a few BB's. I made a video for Verneer to review, and I could upload it for more general consumption, if you'd like. It's an hour long two tabling, but the last 20 minutes is PT review. I feel bad because I don't think I should be posting any vids without first doing a couple reviews of my own first, though. And I agree, the car analogy from that book is excellent.

@Barry: Yeah, the way that I review videos now takes me like 2x to 4x the actual length of the video. Like you, I do a lot of pausing and replaying, especially when I'm going to add some comments. The problem is that at work, there are too many interruptions and I don't necessarily want people to see me watching poker videos. At home, time is pretty scarce, and usually if I'm going to get hands in, that's it. So, the vids for some reason are really tough for me. If we had like 20 minute videos, it would not be so daunting, and I'm sure that I could participate in those a lot more. But the way it's going now seems to work for everyone else well, and I think that's great. I find it tough to go through a video 15-20 minutes at a time, for some reason...one thing I love about the format is getting into the flow of a game, and it's harder for me when the viewing time is all chopped up. That's a lot of the reason why I've hardly watched any CR vids, either.

I think I need to clarify too what I mean when I say that I review 75% of my hands. I don't sit there and look at the preflop decisions for each one...rather for each session or each day I'll review any hand that I won or lost more than 5BB...so I'm not looking at all the hands I folded preflop or picked up with a c-bet that wasn't called, etc. But if there were 1,000 hands that day and I looked through all the 5BB+ hands, I give myself credit for 1,000 hands reviewed, if that makes sense. Very similar to what you said, I just draw the line lower than 10BB. I just measure my completeness by # of hands, rather than # of sessions (tend to do them on a daily basis anyway).

As far as reviewing other peoples' hands when they went to showdown, yeah it's a bit of insanity with everything else going on, and that's why I never meet this goal :). I don't feel bad about it, but I do think that it would provide a really good amount of value. It is true that we can get some sense of hand reading by paying attention to what other people have as we review our own hands, and I do that, and I pay attention at the table as much as possible. This is just a little something extra, and like you say, it may not be that reasonable to get that done. I'm definitely not beating myself up about missing this goal. And it's true, I've got a number of my own leaks that I will get more bang for the buck fixing than doing this one.

November and December Goals

First, the November goal analysis:

8,000 hands. I played over 13k hands...I had a few more opportunities to get some hands in than I thought.

Community participation. This was a mixed bag. My CR and 2p2 posting was really low. On the other hand, I'm now keeping up with two different study groups and posted a fair amount on the workshop forum (yay, more posts than Verneer somewhere!). I did decent updating this blog...certainly not daily, but several times a week, and I did follow other blogs. All in all, I did a lot of reading and writing, just different formats. Plus, there were a number of group sessions I attended. The biggest gap was that there were some group members who put up videos, and I couldn't view all of them. I wish I could, but it's just difficult to find the time for everything, and at least for the study part, I need kind of 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there a lot of the time, and videos don't lend themselves that well to that format for me...I like to get in the flow of the video a bit.

Review hands. I had targeted 75%, but reviewed 64%. I wish there were some way to quantify the effectiveness of my own reviews, though, because I don't think that I'm taking enough away from them.

CR videos. I targeted 8 videos for active review (detailed notes/thoughts, not just watching the video). I only did 2, and they weren't even from a pro at the time...they were Verneer's. However, we'll call that good, since CR did the right thing and invited him to be a pro. Actually, between those videos and several sessions Pawel led, I felt like I got some great CR-type activity in there, so maybe this one isn't as bad as it seems. But the whole month went by without any TC, BT, or CTS video, and those guys have such great perspective that I need to get back to them as well next month.

Review showdown hands. Different than my own hands, this is going back in PT and reviewing showdown hands no matter if I was involved in the hand or not, and try to put people on ranges...since there is a showdown, I can see how good I am at it. Well, I did zero of this...just too many other things.

Overall thoughts for November. I failed more of my goals than I succeeded, but still feel it was a successful month. Room for improvement, but still productive overall. I certainly put a lot of effort into study, and got to log a good number of hands, for me -- I just do not have the time to grind out the serious hands. One area I'd like to improve is identifying leaks in my own game better...I feel sometimes that I lose the forest for the trees. By that I mean that I can go through my hands and analyze my mistakes, but I'm not sure it translates well enough into not making the same sorts of mistakes again, or that I'm properly generalizing from my mistakes into a pattern that I can correct as needed. I do think that the more you can play, discuss, and think about poker, the better some things will just sort of seep into your game. But what I'd like is for a more active guidance of those things, rather than just waiting for them to naturally happen by hard work. I think that's a lot of what I'll get out of coaching, or at least I hope so.

December goals. I don't think my goals should stray too far, mostly it's about getting better at executing on each one of them.

• 10,000 hands. Even though I played 13k, anything more than 2,000 per week is a stretch for me, but I will have a couple times that I can dedicate more time than usual to getting in hands this month, I think.
• Community participation. Same idea as the previous month.
• Review hands. In addition to just reviewing, find a better way to get value out of reviewing. Dice gave me a bit of advice to follow here....first take a look at Brian Townsend's second video for a PT review approach; second make sure to extend the mistakes you see in your own review to flaws in your thinking; third (a tactical suggestion), keep a file open as you play and jot down problem hands.
• Review showdown hands. Going to keep this on the list until I actually do it :). I need to start ingraining a process of getting people on ranges, and this seems like it's got to be a good way to go about it, since you can check your thoughts at the end.
• Active study of 5 CR videos. There's a lot of other stuff I'd like to do, but I've got this great video resource from some top-notch players...no reason to not use it. However, now that Pawel's a pro, I get to count any of his sessions in there!

Alright, that's going to keep me decently busy. There's a lot of process items here. I hope that for the new year, I can incorporate some strategy-related goals, too.

November's in the books

The obligatory pictures:



The swings were severe, and unfortunately I ended on a little bit of a DS, which has actually extended into December...almost 7BI in under 3k hands. My play through it was pretty spewy (I've posted some hands), but I've also had a number of times when my reads were right and the money went in good. I've got 5 hands just in this DS where my money went in as a >66% favorite and yet am losing just over 4 BI on those 5 hands. But that leaves a bunch of other pots where I am putting in one bet too many a lot of the time, I think....or maybe it just feels that way because I am losing.

The thing with 3-betting light and making a lot of c-bets in general is that you are relying on a lot of fold equity, and if your opponents pick up hands or have you figured out (and at 100NL I think the former is way more likely than the latter) you are going to have a tough time. What I have definitely not figured out to my satisfaction is when to keep applying pressure for FE, when to just get to showdown cheaply, and when to give up on the hand altogether. At least I have the "when to extract more value" scenarios down pretty well ;).



Looking at the high level stats, while I am looking forward to opening up my game a bit, I apparently have some more work to do in basic TAG mode as well. At 19/15, I may be overlimping or cold calling a tad too much, but hopefully it's just the situations. Since I try to table select decently, a lot of times I'll find myself to the left of a really loose player, and if they are also really aggressive preflop, I have started to cold call a lot of medium suited connectors and higher suited one-gappers...moreso than I used to do. I used to pretty much only cold call with pocket pairs for set value, but I am expanding that.

I'm reasonably tight in blind defense, and my attempt to steal is OK (I shoot for >30%), although this could be higher. That said, I enjoyed no love whatsoever stealing this month:


You can see right up on the top of the bad list is stealing with AA. I've looked over some of these hands, and what I've seen so far looks like coolers, although I might post a hand or two later. The thing is, you've got to love stealing with aces if you are an active stealer, since you get no credit for a hand. So if an aggressive defender plays back at you, I just can't see folding them, and that's precisely what happened a few times (and by the way the money went in good there). Anyway, if you are not making money with your steals, it's going to be damn hard to post a good win rate. So, I'm actually a little bit happy being in the green seeing how much blind steals actually hurt my win rate.

I'm getting to showdown a decent amount of the time (22%), but only winning 47%, which is too low, IMO. I'm not sure how many hands it takes for winning at showdown to mean anything more than how hot/cold you are running, but 47% is way low for that WtSD, and I need to look at how much of it is due to me calling down poorly, or perhaps being too easy to read in my own play so that people can profitably get to showdown with their marginal hands. The fact that I'm winning 45% of the time I see a flop tells me that at least I am not giving them a free ride to showdown. I'm OK with my aggression numbers, although I would like the turn and river to be just a tad higher....again maybe from not getting more aggressive with betting, but maybe a bit more selective with my calldowns.



From a positional awareness standpoint, I give myself a C+ or B-. The good thing is that my button VPIP is more than twice my UTG VPIP, but the button and CO VPIP in general is a little light. That could just be luck of the draw, but probably not. My profit (loss) from late position is terrible...again, just can't be making money if you can't win from late position. On a positive note, I'm profitable in the SB, and in the BB, I'm losing a lot less than if I just folded it all the time.

Next time, I'll recap how I did against my November goals and set some for December.

Wheeeee....GG Full Tilt

In the continuing saga of running absurdly bad on Friday nights....



The highlights:

The 70/36/4.6 villain who showed down any piece. This was actually at the end of the session, but was my biggest loser. He'd been running me and the table over (and was running at 104PTBB/100 over 72 hands). Finally got him where I wanted him, huh?

This guy's only 32/16/4.2 (fair enough, aces get cracked sometimes)

And the next orbit

This one's on me. He's 22/22/3 over 32 hands. I don't mind staying in the hand sometimes, but not just calling on the flop here, and then WTF with the turn? He's double-barreling AK? Ugh.

The good news: I booked a winning month my first month at 100NL, and that was with some pretty poor play on my part at times (and some good play, too....my A game is definitely better now than it was even a few months ago). My rakeback will be more than my winnings, but hey, it beats losing. And also, other than venting on a blog about some tough luck hands, I didn't really get mad during play, although the back-to-back stackings might have induced some bad play on that 44 hand later.

OK, it's late, time for bed and a better outlook tomorrow/next month. Looking forward to continued hard work on the game.