More coaching

Thanks for the responses to my prior post...some nice additions there. I definitely have a great group of guys to chat about poker with, and I know most of you would be willing to rail/review, etc. I truly appreciate that! I still think that I would like to get a coach. In part, it's because I don't think I would be able to give back as much as I get...one of the reasons I don't ask you guys to sweat me is that I am really unpredictable and bad about being able to return the favor. My poker time during the day comes in chunks here and there between work commitments. At night, if I play, it's usually for pretty short sessions, and is also subject to what the rest of the family wants to do.

In other words, I'm not really in control of my poker schedule. That's a conscious choice and while it sucks from a poker development standpoint, it works for me overall. Even if that were not the case, I'd probably seek out a coach. I'm really looking for someone to form a longish-term arrangement who can work with me to figure out the gaps (and strengths) in my game. Being able to help someone with that is a skill in and of itself, and not all good poker players can do it...probably only a minority.

It's not enough to know what the right plays are...you have to be able to explain to someone...in a way they can understand...why the play is right, and where they are not thinking correctly. And style is important, too. Some guys will want their coach to cram in as much advice, new plays, theory, etc., as possible. That makes some sense, as you should be paying a fair amount for a decent coach. Other guys, like me, would prefer more of a two-way dialog. And in fact, for me, I like to throw out my thoughts on a situation and then have a coach give his thoughts on my thoughts. But also, they may need to take the initiative for certain topics, because I'm not even aware that they should be topics up for discussion. I think it's a pretty rare person who can balance all that.

So, I think that there is certainly merit to working with a coach in addition to having a network of guys, no matter how good. The trick will be to find one who believes the same things, is good at them, and can work with me, where my coaching window is typically pretty limited.

I've been and am on the other end of the coaching relationship in sports and business, where I'm the one doing the coaching. They're different, of course, but there are a lot of parallels. It reinforces how hard it is to be a good coach, and also how already-good coaches can always get better. And while some people are blessed with natural ability, there is no corresponding shortcut for commitment to the people you're coaching.

With that knowledge, I'm probably a great student for someone I would consider a great coach. I will work my ass off away from the coaching sessions to improve. And one thing that I think is common to all great coaches is that a lot of their reward comes from their students getting better...that's part of their commitment, and at least projecting my own coaching, the more someone is willing to really work at what I'm coaching them on, the more I want to help them. The other big thing is that even when I'm playing well and my confidence is high, I know I've got tons and tons left to learn, and once I've committed myself to a coach, while I might question something, I'm pretty trusting to try whatever they recommend. Again projecting, it's more enjoyable to coach someone who will follow your advice...you (correctly) feel like you have directly contributed to their success.

That said, I'm probably a shitty student for a not-so-great coach. My expectations of a coach are pretty high. I mean, I think they're realistic, but they're high nonetheless. The nice thing about poker coaching is that if either side doesn't like what they're getting out of the other side, they can end the relationship. Most coaching is not like that. If one of my employees doesn't like the coaching they get from me, it's pretty hard (and drastic) to stop that relationship. If I don't like one of the kids on my team, I can't really kick them off (and believe me, I wish that I could...at least one every season).

In a short sample size, I've had what I consider to be pretty bad luck with poker coaching so far. The first guy I selected as a long-term coach should have been perfect. Sick player, some solid coaching experience and references, well known and respected on Cardrunners, has even produced some videos. Plus he's a nice guy. But I think he got overextended (or who knows, maybe I pissed him off at some point...wouldn't be the first time). He asked his students to keep blogs -- not a problem for me as I already had one going -- but he didn't make a single comment on mine or some of his other students I got to know. He was never available on AIM, and he was pretty unpredictable responding to email. I gave him feedback about what was working for me and what wasn't, but nothing really changed. All that said, I was learning, and was getting value, and would probably have continued. But, after a series of emails went unresponded...a mixture of hand histories, requests for other study ideas, and trying to schedule our next lesson...I just gave up...reluctantly. Maybe I should have kept on trying to make it work, but I felt bummed that I had to work so hard for a response.

Undeterred, I started researching again, and tried some lessons with a few guys, and after a bit got going with Messiah from Deuces Cracked. He is great, but I'm a victim of his success; things are going too well for him "in the real world." So, he is stepping away from coaching for a bit because he can't commit 100% to his students. Which while it sucks for me, also shows partly why he's a good coach.

So, I've got a couple recommendations I'm following up with, as well as waiting to hear some thoughts from Messiah...and hopefully I'll be making a post similar to Barry before too long talking about working with a new coach.

What would you ask a coach before signing up?

Here's what I'm thinking I would like to know:

• What's your track record at my level?  How long ago was that?
• What do you do different/better than other coaches?  In other words, what are your strengths?
• How will you go about getting to know my game?
• How long will it take for you to get to know my game well enough to help me with a plan to improve?
• What should I expect over the course of the first 2-4 sessions (and in between)?
• What do you expect of me?
• How much do your students interact with each other (i.e., is there any sort of community around your coaching)?
• Do you provide any sort of (written or recorded) summary of our sessions?
• In a typical session what's the ratio of talking between you and your student?  Answer for different formats if applicable (i.e., may be different for theory formats vs. live sessions).
• Do you have any sort of structured curriculum/progression for different player types?
• Do you give any sort of  "homework?"  If so, what is it?
• Rates and references, of course.

That's a few thoughts off the top of my head.  What am I missing?

Motivation

Before the meat of this post, thanks for the feedback on the hand from last post.  I thought there were some good arguments presented for differing points.  I'm convinced that you could make a good case for playing the hand in the first place, and that raising preflop with the context I provided is OK.  The flop may be a bit more murky, but betting cannot be a terribly big mistake....if the rest of the hand is played smarter than I played.  Yeah, it will cause me to commit a lot of chips on a marginal hand, but the reward is pretty big too.  The problem, once again for me, was overplaying on the turn.  Even if I made a mistake on the earlier streets, it would pale in comparison to the mistake on the turn.

---------------------------------------

Been doing a bunch of reflection on my poker game lately.  I'm on a big cooler, well at least for me.  I'm not sure that's a widely used term, but cooler seems to be about the opposite of heater, and that's where I am at.  In the last 10,000 hands or so, I am down 4 BI at 200NL and 16 BI at 100NL (but currently 2 BI up from the bottom!!!).  The cooler started off at 200NL and continued to 100NL in somewhat brutal fashion, but my play seemed OK in the big and medium pots.  However, my play has also sucked, especially the last few sessions for some reason.

LOL, been writing this post off and on all day, and just came back to read it, and decided to delete everything except that first paragraph.  I had written a crapload, but it amounted to the fact that I better not feel sorry for myself, and that my emotional game isn't as strong as I would like it, or as strong as I believed it was before I started coolering.  If it were stronger, I wouldn't hate this downswing as much as I do.  Not that I should be thrilled to lose (duh), but my emotions are influenced by the results way too much, rather than being dominated by the quality of my play.

Trying to find a silver lining, it's not 100% terrible to experience this.  If you have to experience a DS, better at small stakes than larger...and not that it won't happen at higher stakes, but playing -- and improving -- through it will help handle the next one better.  And I think for almost everyone, you tend to critique your own game more on a downswing than an upswing (maybe for good reason).  Certainly there are a number of things I can do better.  Not only technically, but also in how I approach each hand and the game as a whole.

One thing that really pisses me off is making an effort at something and still failing.  This cooler wiped out all my playing profits for 100 NL, which were not astounding to begin with LOL.  It took me 40k hands over 5 months to get 20BI and 10k hands over one month to give it back.  All I've got to show for 50k hands is rakeback and experience.  The rakeback has pretty much been spent on video memberships, coaching and books, so what I really have for the last 50k hands and 6 months is knowledge and experience.  And in the end, I think that's supposed to be more of a success than whatever buy-ins I could have made....true I'm at a stakes standstill for now, but in the long picture of a career the knowledge and experience acquired now should have a multiplier effect, and as long as I'm learning and improving my foundation, I should be pretty satisfied with it.

I came up with another source of motivation, but it kind of contradicts itself.  I was thinking that Full Tilt is a generally tough site to play...lots of regs at the 100NL and 200NL tables who are, if not world beaters, at least not total fish.  Would it be worth it to play elsewhere?  From an EV standpoint, almost assuredly yes!  But I'm finding the competitive (OK, stubborn) drive to want to stick it out and beat this frigging 100NL level.  It means something to me to be able to say that I did it, now that I've gotten beaten back.  On the other hand, I'm still going to be diligent about seat selection, so I'm not exactly looking to beat the toughest game or outdo the best players.  It's more just like Full Tilt in aggregate. 

I've put enough work in, have identified some problems, want to work with a coach to make sure my blind spots aren't too terrible, and want to continue to improve.  Outside of my actual job and family time, I devote far more time to poker than probably all my other personal interests combined.  My Tivo is hopelessly backlogged (1GB storage upgrade FTW) and my Blockbuster subscription is a total waste.  I read like one non-poker book every six months.  My golf game has gone downhill because I spend no time at the range.  Hell, I probably could have found a ton of side projects at work, but instead I'm reading, chatting, thinking poker....just to get better...maybe just to prove to myself that I can, I don't know.  I wonder what the bigger factor is:  love of the game or will to succeed at something I've already invested a lot in.  (Maybe in a microcosm, that's why I find it hard to fold once I've raised :P).

Geez, this ended up being long, even with deleting all that stuff.  If you're still here, thanks!

Bad hand, cool object

The I really don't like having to follow links to hand conversion sites from blog and forum posts...mostly I'm just lazy...but if I try to make comments, I've got 3 separate tabs open: the original post; the hand history (pokerhand, weaktight); and my comments. If I could eliminate one, that would be great, and the easiest one to eliminate is the hand history. So, I much prefer inline hand histories, again on forums or on blogs. But they take up a lot of room. /rant

Anyway, check this replayer out. I don't think you can embed the CR replayer or anything like that. Let me know if you have any problems with it....not that I post a lot of hands, but maybe it will catch on in general. I kind of like it. Pause before each of my actions, and see what you think.

For what it's worth, I think that this hand shows a lot about why I don't win more. There's some good, even creative thinking, but a significant mistake on the later streets that kind of torpedoes my previous good efforts. As for context...

CO recently sat down, but I have a few hundred hands on him, and a little recent history where I managed to stack off AK vs. his AA preflop, but it was pretty standard and a day or two ago, so I'm not sure it comes into play. He is 17/15, steals 42%, folds to 3-bet 85%.

BB is relatively unknown, but seemingly fishy. 32/10 over 88 hands. He folds his BB to steals 100 of the time, but that's got to be a really small sample size.

Here's the Permalink, just in case.

My thinking in the hand is that given his propensity to get way out of line (yeah, only a few hundred hands) and me with a hand I'd like to play on the button, I'd rather raise here than just call. Against someone who doesn't seem to get out of line in steal situations as much, I could see calling. I think even though a 3-bet here is OK, a call here might be good too, since the blinds are deep, and I might be able to trigger a cold-call-fest with a good speculative hand on the button. But, I don't trust them to come along...although the BB is loose in general, he seems tighter out of the blinds. Anyway, lately, given a choice between a safe, aggressive, and really aggressive line, I'm going with the last one.

The flop seems like a good bet to me. I'm worried about the BB (as I am anytime someone calls a 3-bet almost cold, at least until I see what they're doing it with), but he's loose/passive enough that he could be doing this with big cards, maybe suited, as well as all his pairs. CO has shown me that he reraises his biggest hands, so most likely he has a pocket pair and possibly some big suited cards as well. I would have put him on a much more narrow range had it been HU, but after BB called, I think CO's range opened somewhat because he plays deepish against BB. He's also got decent relative position because he'll be able to see what I do on the flop, and how BB responds. Now, I'm not saying he's good enough to realize all that, I'm just saying that there's a decent rationale to widen his range a bit. Anyway, the pot is pretty big already, and at least one of these guys could have overcards that I don't want to see come. If they have overpairs or sets, I still have flush equity (and backdoor straight outs), and also 2-pair/trips outs against overpairs.

The turn is where I really think I blew it. This guy is a tight, pretty straightforward player who does not seem to be the type that is going to put a move on me. It is possible that he got married to his hand and made a loose call on the flop, but what I didn't realize at game time was just how terrible a card that Jack was. Let's say he was on a club draw when he called the flop. A jack is in a fair amount of that club draw range, so with such a small amount behind, he's not letting go of TP+flush draw, IMO. He *may* call another bet with a non-jack club draw. That would be great...but also since I've got two clubs myself, I don't need to be super worried about a better flush draw catching me. But anyway, let's say he calls again with it, that would be a good result. Finally, if he has a pocket pair...he could have made a set on the flop, in which case he's just letting me hang myself. If he doesn't have a set, then I think his PP's are pretty much TT and JJ, and obviously he's not folding JJ.

Now, if I check behind that turn and the river blanks....if he bets, it should put me AI. I can probably find a fold, if I have a read that he's not particularly likely to run a big bluff. He may have a better hand and put me solely on missed clubs, and check again trying to induce me (which I would not do, since it's clear no worse hands will call and not many better ones will fold). Even if I talk myself into a huge hero call if bets on the end, my chances of winning this hand are a ton better if he's the one betting than calling. Again, given stats and what that means for his range.

Edit: Graham and Willie, I responded to your comments from my last post....thanks.

Standard?

First of all, thanks for encouragement from my last post. Nice to have the moral support for the downer days/weeks, etc., even though the results of even a few thousand hands have so much variance. And the good news is that since then, in the little I've played, I've bounced back a bit.

OK, consider this situation:

Villain is 25/9/2.3 over a few hundred hands, but you have no real table context. He folds his BB to steals 70% of the time, and he folds to a c-bet 65% of the time.

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $14.35
SB: $106.90
BB: $24.05
UTG: $308.20
Hero (CO): $102.00

Pre Flop: Hero is CO with Ad Ks
1 fold, Hero raises to $3.50, 1 fold, SB calls $3, 1 fold

Flop: ($8.00) 9s Qh 5s (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $7, SB raises to $21, Hero folds

I made this play without thinking much of it, and really, perhaps there's not much to think about, especially at 100NL. You could make a definite argument for checking back this flop, since he does have a good chance of having connected with it somehow. But as long as you're not overdoing your c-bets (and one of the things Messiah pointed out is that I'm definitely not c-betting too much :P).

But I happened to be going back over some old notes, and saw one where the pro shoved (albeit with a bit smaller effective stacks) with ace-high when he thought there was a decent chance that villain was on a draw. Stoving this is cool if we can put villain on a reasonable range, but what is his range with this play?

How often is a checkraise on the flop defending against a steal a bluff or semibluff? According to an sthief09 video I recently watched, it's fairly often, on a draw-heavy board. How often is it a made hand that is trying to extract a bit extra, but which can't stand the heat of a reraise? What does the size of his raise say about anything? I'm honestly not sure what the answers to these questions are. Thoughts?

So, let's say that I 3-bet him here. First of all, what size should the 3-bet be? I think that it should be a shove because if I raise anywhere close to pot, and he calls, the pot is going to be huge relative to the amount behind. An argument for raising smaller is that he interprets a smaller bet as a please-call-me bet and therefore folds. That probably gives him credit for a little better thought process than I think he warrants, at this point anyway. Plus, bet-3-betting AI looks like a credible line for a set on this board.

Now, let's look at the types of hands he has.

Pure bluffs. He could have these some of the time...he doesn't like to fold early in the hand, and he has a moderate aggression factor...so he might be playing back on flops if he thinks he can take it down. But not a tremendous amount of the time, I don't think. Anyway, he folds those, a good result for me.

Semibluffs. There are a lot of draws out there. I don't have any notes about how he plays his draws, so it's hard to say how much of the time he c/r his draws versus how many times he c/c them. If he has a naked flush draw or naked straight draw, I'm ahead, since I hold the Ks, and he makes a fundamental mistake calling a large push like that, but might anyway. Regardless, of what he does, pushing is still better than folding for me. He's definitely calling with a combo draw, and depending how big the combo draw is, it will either be pretty close to neutral or I'll be ahead but have less pot equity than he does.

Made hands. Obviously, I'm in bad shape against his made hands, but I do have my overcard and backdoor flush potential outs. The real question here is how often he gives up his middle or pocket pairs. I said earlier that I didn't think too hard about my fold, in the sense that I thought it was a super clear fold. And I still do...mostly because I just don't trust people to fold, even when they "should." And this is where I might have it most wrong, admittedly.

If he has a made hand plus a draw, he's even less likely to fold.

I think that overall, shoving -- even if you can make enough profitable probabilities -- doesn't give you that much EV over folding, but I may be weighting things too much towards the made hand/not fold scenario. Whatever, it will certainly be a lot higher variance, and until I'm pretty damn sure about the EV, I think I should be going for the lower variance route (maybe a whole other topic).

Also, given all the scenarios, how would you play Ad Ac with this flop action?

LOL Full Tilt Doomswitchaments

Half a buy-in was from bad play that I know about (one retarded bluff and two retarded calls). Two buy-ins were from AK into KK and AA OOP to some aggressive-but-somewhat nitty players...I think those are OK. The rest...beats and coolers, especially right towards the end..but you can see it was a somewhat steady decline with no real redeeming qualities other than the fact that while I was admittedly frustrated, I didn't go on apeshit tilt, and actually forced myself to talk out decisions so I wouldn't be angrily clicking (the wrong) buttons.

After the first big dip, that table broke, and I actually didn't find another table that I liked, so I kind of bounced between 2 and 3 tables...which I think is essential if you're even close to maybe tilting, if you don't just quit altogether. Having the time and making yourself mentally (or actually) talk through decisions I think kind of slows things down and ensures you don't do the worst of the possible damage to yourself.

It was really bad how the boards broke for me a lot of the time...beyond a couple 2 outers, they looked really scary when I ended up having strong hands, so even when I had the best hands, it was hard to extract. The sets I had that didn't lose to higher sets or better, I won a grand total of one continuation bet postflop.

Other than one hand, in my biggest hands, my opponents didn't really play poorly...they did get lucky (or I failed to when I was drawing). The days where you flop a lot of good draws and whiff while your made hands get frequently outdrawn are tough. I don't know actually how often I got outdrawn because I didn't make a lot of frustration calls when they told me the obvious draws got there...I think that's one silver lining I can take from the session.

This was my single worst session, and it also knocked me squarely back down to the 100NL game for a bit...I was pretty close to my take-a-shot-at-200NL level before the session, and for me to grind 8 buy-ins back, plus the few more that I need to take my shot, will take a bit on the calendar, since I just don't play enough.

I'd like to say I'm unaffected and it's just another session, but I'm a bit dispirited to tell the truth. Feels better to write it out, though...write it out to ride it out...I like it! Good luck to you guys...this was probably my only shot at logging some hands this weekend...busy busy busy. Hopefully things get back to "normal" next week.

March Summary

Not a ton of time, but I'll put my results up. I'll get some pictures up, then hopefully follow up with a bit more detailed PT review.


It was a good month overall, and I think my game has come a long way this year so far. The month ended on a bit of a downer...a mixture of running less hot (but not terrible -- just less worse than the beginning of the month), some poor plays in big pots, and a little bit of experimentation that didn't turn out like I'd hoped.


I'm still playing on the nitty side of TAG overall. As my position stats will show, that's mainly due to being extremely tight in EP. I've run this by a few different people, including a couple coaches, and clearly I need to open up at least a little in EP. My range for a bit has been 22+, AQ+, KQs. I think for some balance, I'll start including some suited connectors and maybe AJs. Hopefully, I'm competent enough to recognize when decent regs are playing back at me after I take initiative from EP that they're not just making moves.

My WtSD and W$SD are both much more in line with my preflop style than they have been for the last several months. Playing so tight, I should on average be showing up with better hands than my opponents, and I am finding ways to show down more (winning) hands than previously.

My aggression factors are a bit lower than usual. A big part of it is that I am trying to think through my c-bets....and in fact I may now be c-betting to infrequently. One of the experimentation pieces I alluded to above is the delayed c-bet, which I use when I don't think that the board is likely to hit my opponents. I may be overusing this tactic, but I've found it to be pretty successful.

Using PT3, you can see 3-bet percentages. I'm not sure where mine stacks up in the spectrum, but I *think* that it's pretty good. It shows I'm definitely going beyond premium hands (but so is everyone else). The good regs I've come across seem to be anywhere from 4% - 8%, and I'm in the middle of that range.

Finally, my steals are a bit low. I think that may have to do more with who is in the BB than anything else. Still, I need to stay on top of that.



I already talked about the biggest problem here, which is actually playing too tight in EP, not balancing my range enough. At one time, one of the prevailing guidelines in the CR forums was to have a 3x difference between UTG and BTN. In effect, you were fooling people who just looked at your overall VPIP and PFR. There are two problems with this approach, now. One is personal, and that is that I don't get out of line enough in CO or BTN to give an overall impression of someone a bit more LAG, so I don't get enough deception, and my strong hands in EP are a little more face up. Second, the people who you want to fool have learned how to figure out who is positionally aware, and exploit it.

Harrington talks about raising suited connectors in *full ring* EP sometimes for balance. If it makes sense for there, it certainly makes sense for 6-max. I guess maybe I'll have to buy a watch (HOC reference).

The next biggest issue with my position stats is the gap between VPIP and PFR in the SB. I'm completing a lot. Smallish sample, so it may be OK, but again, something to watch out for. I will say that with good table selection and better postflop play, there's a case to be made for completing a bit wider. Also, one of the other things that Harrington talks about is being more willing to open complete in SB, and then call a raise, rather than just opening for a raise. I need to think this one through a bit. I understand why he advocates the approach, just not sure I agree with it.