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.

Biggest losers

November's basically in the books, and overall the month has been OK. I'll have all the regular pictures next week, but here are my biggest losers. The sample size is smallish, but I'm going to look through and see whether I can identify major problems I'm getting into with them. A lot of them are probably going to be one really big pot, but losing 2+ stacks with the same hand in only 13k total means it's more likely than usual I made a mistake, rather than just got coolered.

I made a video last night 4-tabling 100NL at Full Tilt, and this time, the sound worked :). There were a number of interesting spots, and I basically broke even during the course of the video, although I was up almost 2BI for the session thanks to stacking people on one table as I was waiting for the other tables to open up. I'm not sure if the cards were better last night or if I just knew more what to expect in terms of making the video, but it seemed to go a lot more smoothly. Probably some of both.

In 318 hands, I lost more than 20BB four times, and I didn't get stacked, although I did lose over 120 BB in two combined hands against the same 56/11/4 villain (my luck seems to be crappy lately against the 50+ vpip'ers). Coincidentally, they were both JJ hands. I would not have been surprised to find JJ and other high-mid pairs on the top of my loser list, since I probably need to develop a sense of when to invest a lot in overpairs and when to let them go.

The first hand was this one. Preflop and flop seem standard. My intent on the turn was to get a cheapish showdown with a bet, then check behind the river. A guy like this is certainly calling with a wide range, not necessarily a king. But the raise tells me all I need to know, IMO.

The biggest hand of the session was this hand. He had pushed me off a hand before, and was aggressive in general. I thought that I could well be ahead and on the river he might bluff a missed draw or try to value bet a worse pair that he would otherwise have folded to my bet. But I don't think looking at it now that I can afford to invest so much on the river, history and stats notwithstanding. I needed to make a blocking bet small enough that I can get away if he raises, but that he might call with a marginal made hand.

Thoughts on a failed video

I made a 46-minute video last night for workshop review. For some reason, the sound did not get recorded, though :(. The sound settings had also reverted back to the default install. I changed them back to my settings, did a test, and it worked, but I'll have to record another session. Hopefully in the next couple days.

It's just as well that it didn't record, probably, and it was a good practice session to get some thoughts articulated. It's a little bit different than a sweat session in that you can't ask, "What do you think?" And knowing that multiple people may see and hear it, my thinking was all over the place. I also had a couple guys on one table berating me for taking too long, which has never happened before. Maybe I don't spend enough time thinking about my decisions regularly! As far as I was aware, I never dipped into my time bank, but it was either a coincidence or else I really did slow down from normal as I was talking through hands.

I happened to have a tough session, which I have mixed feelings about not being able to post. On the one hand, my sub-optimal play would be brutally revealed :). On the other hand, I actually think for the most part my thoughts were OK, but it would be good to get confirmation on some tough spots. I've noticed lately that I'm more and more confident analyzing hands after the fact (my own as well as responding to posts), but I don't feel that confidence at all during game time, and it doesn't matter whether I'm up or down. So, I think in the end that I either am making the correct decisions (most of the time) or at least I'm pretty sure where I went wrong. But I would expect if that were true that I would actually be feeling more confident at the tables about my decision making, so it's likely that I'm missing some stuff.

I ended the session down a BI (played a bit after I stopped recording, but I think that's about where I was at during the video). I would have been up had I not stacked off 150BB with an underset. When he pushed the river, I had a feeling I was toast, but I made the call anyway. Here's the hand.

I would have also been in good shape results-wise had I not been immediately to the left of a 63/0/2.1 dude who ran sick hot against me, and then gave distributed it to the rest of the table. Here's a hand I double-barreled him after recently joining the table (it was less than 20 hands because I had no stats for him). I think it's OK with no read and a turn scare card: me aggro.

Here's one for a little comic relief, too. The same guy, plus one other loose-passive on the table were both sitting out for a while, and the table looked like it was going to break up. But I wanted to hang around in case they decided to come back. Sure enough, they did, and this was the second hand against Mr. 63/0: my ace-high is good on the river, right? At the time, I think I had ~50 hands on him, and his aggression factor was 4.5. I said on the turn that I thought my ace-high might be good, and I would call a small bet. I followed through, but the plan may be wrong, even as aggro as he'd been. Nice that he got max-value from that, anyway.

So, there were certainly some questionable spots, but I also made some decent plays. On a couple tables, I was OOP to some regularish seeming TAGs, and controlled them OK. I stayed out of huge trouble, but felt a bit under attack...but I don't think anything more than decent players picking up cards when I'm not hitting. Not fun, but I'm really trying to not let it affect me....pretty well for the most part.

I'm tempted to drop in stakes or drop a table to compensate for the video distraction, but I also want to get feedback on the game that I regularly play. Matt blogged about nailing basic TAG play so that your cognitive capacity is reserved for non-standard or creative situations. I don't have my ABC poker nailed yet at game time, making it difficult at times to keep up with four tables if I've got action on more than two. So, I know I sacrifice a bit of winrate from that, but I still want to get feedback on what it is. And dropping down changes the texture of the game for which I want feedback. Hopefully, as I make more videos, the process itself will affect my game a lot less.

Don't. Play. Tired.

I make this mistake periodically, and the circumstances were the same last night. Haven't played much in the last few days, but have been thinking a fair amount about the game, chatting with some folks, etc. I wanted to play, wanted to try a couple things out, wanted to focus on one specific area (in this case it was getting out of RIO situations better). I had some work to finish, Sports Center just started when I finished, so I fired up Full Tilt, even though I was pretty tired. (I don't even know why I leave the TV on, since I am good about not focusing on it...probably just to mask the constant beep when it's my turn to act.)

Usually, a little tired is no problem. I keep up with the tables pretty well, and I'm used to doing a lot of stuff a little tired anyway, just a fact of life. But I misjudged last night, and sure enough ended up in 2 pots for stacks where I completely botched any sort of range analysis, and just went into like a level 1, or maybe 1.5, level thinking mode.

In one hand, I had pretty decent showdown value and a good draw, and the pot wasn't huge, and I went for a CRAI on the turn rather than a better play of a blocker bet allowing me to get away if he pushed on a scary board. Here I lost the max, and probably was going to win the least.

In another hand, I screwed up preflop and dug myself deeper postflop. I was in steal position with AJ, and an aggressive BB (33/25, fold BB to steal 50%) 3-bet me. I was playing too LAG, IMO, and 4-bet light. By his stats, he was probably 3-betting light, but there was no table history, and I think the first time he does this I can give him credit and get away. But I 4-bet instead. That's not an awful mistake based on his stats, but it's not a good play, at least not for me, until I get a little more comfortable in reraised pots. Flop is KQx, and it goes check-check. When he checks the turn too, I decide I have enough fold equity to push, which wasn't even a PSB. I think that I should have just checked behind and hoped to hit...yes I can fold out an underpair, but the board just hits a lot of his range, given no history between us, and he just calling my 4-bet. He snap-called QQ, but that's not the point...it was a bad play due to bad judgment.

It's too bad, because there were a number of hands that I played well, and lost the minimum on a couple trap hands. But those two pots I stacked off ruined an otherwise solid session. One thing that didn't occur to me was that if I really wanted to play, just to try something out that I've been thinking about, or whatever, there's no shame dropping a couple levels down. But more than that, I should have been more aware exactly how tired I was, and passed up on playing altogether.

Falling behind

Note: way little poker content in this one.

I think I'm trying to juggle too many commitments, and am falling behind on most of them. Most of the commitments are internal -- I decided I wanted to do them -- but some are even external. It's too much of a good thing, or really too many good things to do them all.

Time management has never been a particularly strong suit of mine, which makes things pretty difficult. Loose ends don't particularly frustrate me, but they do stress me out a bit. They make me feel like I'm letting someone down, even if that someone is myself only. For a poker example, I committed to myself to keep up with a number of forums, a couple study groups, review my play, and of course play. When I can't do all those things to my satisfaction, I get down on myself a little bit, even when I clearly have to focus on other aspects of life which mean more than poker.

If it were just poker, while I wouldn't like it, I would be OK. But, there are some work and household items that also suffer because I am not devoting enough time to them. And that's where I really need to be careful. Now, nothing essential suffers at work or for the house, but just like in poker where all the little blind steals add up and become a significant part of your profit, so do all the little details in the rest of your life add up and become a significant part of how well things are going.

It's all about finding the best balance. There are endless things I could find to fill 100% of my time either work related or home related, so I'll never do everything you could possibly do.

The big thing at work that I worry about now is how responsive I am to issues from my team and how well I push things forward. There are times when I could be critically analyzing software designs and helping everyone get things done a bit better, but instead I am critically analyzing a hand history or video. There are times when I could be revamping a project plan in anticipation of an executive review, but instead I'm reading about some new poker software. In the big picture, I'm spending a hell of a lot more time on work than on poker, but do I have the right balance? Usually I'm pretty confident I do, but lately I've been devoting more time and energy to poker, so the balance has changed. I think I'm OK, but I don't yet have the certainty I'm used to.

If I take a couple hours out of the work day to participate in some session or to sweat someone, I feel obligated to make that work time up later. The Company doesn't care when I get my work done as long as it gets done, but they clearly aren't paying me to sit around and think about poker (or write this blog, or anything else non-work that I do during conventional office hours). Aside from the whole job performance issue, which is certainly a good motivator to make up those lost hours, I feel a moral obligation to make it up.

So that leads to some of the household balls I'm attempting to juggle. Whether it's making up work time, or playing some hands, or my weekly golf and tennis games, there are some things at home that go undone. Again, it's not a question of whether I do any extraneous activity, but more about the balance. The family still gets a ton of time, so all is good in that regard. But there are a number of chores that have been piling up, which I've neglected recently. I used to be anal about getting all of our financial transactions into Quicken, for instance, but I'm now at a 2 or 3 month backlog. In and of itself, that's not terrible, because we have made no unusual expenditures and every time I pay a bill, the balance in our bank account is in the range I expect. But Jennifer looks at the growing pile of mail to be processed and gets annoyed with me, and she's probably right.

Somewhere in that pile are my license tags which I better remember to find and apply before the end of the month. And that's really the essence of what stresses me out about the house stuff. A bunch of stuff that I've deferred, but will eventually have to do, combined with a growing mental to-do list where things either are or have slipped my mind until I have to react to them very quickly (or I get a ticket for expired tags, or a bank charge, or something like that). Plus, Jennifer is annoyed with me. Nothing earth shattering, but a bunch of little things that collectively make a difference.

OK, enough about all that life balance stuff. Like I said, things are pretty much great, and I'm just rambling. As far as poker, I haven't played much at all since my last blog entry. What I have played has been pretty interesting, has gone up and down, and has given me a fair amount to think about.

I'll dig some thoughts/hands out in the next couple days. Provided I get my work done and can make a dent in that mail pile :).

Back to even 100NL

Ugh...last time I played was Friday night, and once again ran like crap, played pretty poorly, as well. I actually started off by stacking someone without even paying attention...one table up as I tweaked my PAHUD layout. But from there, I proceeded to drop 4.5 buy-ins over 1600 hands or so, leaving me up less than half a buy-in at 100NL.

Nothing went very well after that early hand, either from cards or my play. I got dealt a ton of PP's, but in 59 hands that went to a flop, I only got one set, and only got a continuation bet from my opponent out of it. A half dozen times, I successfully took MP and BP to valuetown on the flop and mostly turn, only to have them hit trips or two-pair on the river. Other people were hitting their good draws, but not me. All that crap happens, but where I really need to improve is taking those things in stride. I think I let it affect my game too much, and then I get frustrated that I let it affect my game, making things even worse.

My tilt has changed over the years, maybe as an evolution in my game as a whole, maybe because in general I approach NL (newer game for me) differently than Limit (which I used to play). I believe that in NL, when I'm having a cooler session, I get pretty weak/tight. All things considered, that beats what I used to do, which was to become a spewtard if I was tilting...I mean weak/tight is going to stop you from going completely busto, but obviously it's still unprofitable. The great thing about playing a weak/tightie is that you can run them over and avoid giving them action on their big hands. Well, that's exactly what was happening to me, even by some players I didn't think were all that good. Either that, or I just got unlucky to hit premium hands when everyone else had squat (which is certainly possible).

Here are some hands:

Hand 1:
Villain is a total unknown (33/13 /2.6 over 15 hands).

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

Hero (UTG): $158.30
CO: $97.20
BTN: $76.10
SB: $96
BB: $117.15

Pre-Flop: Kd Jd dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $4, CO folds, BTN calls $4, 2 folds

Flop: ($9.50) 9c Th 3s (2 Players)
Hero bets $7, BTN raises to $14, Hero calls $7
I call his flop min-raise for implied odds, and I think it's fine. I don't think I can narrow his range a ton, since he's unknown, he can do this with a very wide range, IMO....sets, TP, a draw, even air, as the flop probably missed me as well.

Turn: ($37.50) 7d (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $10, Hero calls $10
I pick up a double-gutter on the turn, and he bets small. At this point, I think that I could have maybe checkraised all-in, as it's difficult for Tx to call, if that's what he was playing. If he has me beat, I now have a lot of outs, in any event. But, he gave me such good odds to just call and see if I hit, and I'm playing a little scared, so I elected to just call.

River: ($57.50) Js (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $48.10 and is All-In, Hero folds
I've played the hand to hit my draw. Yeah, I hit TP, but he also got there a lot of the time if he was semibluffing before. I think if he just had TP, or even 2 pair on this board, that he would likely just check behind, so my hand is a bluff catcher, IMO. I don't have the odds to snap a bluff on this board, so I pitch it.

Hand 2:
Another unknown....31/31 over 16 hands. I'm pretty sure here, but want to make sure I'm reasonable in a 3-bet pot OOP. Almost embarrassed to post/ask about it, but if I'm missing something, I better find out, since this comes up a lot.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $97.25
Hero (SB): $106.95
BB: $40.25
UTG: $106.35

Pre-Flop: Qc Ah dealt to Hero (SB)
UTG folds, BTN raises to $3.50, Hero raises to $11.50, BB folds, BTN calls $8
Standard 3-bet

Flop: ($24) 2c 2d 6s (2 Players)
Hero bets $16, BTN calls $16
I assume here, without a read/history, it's make a c-bet and give up if called UI.

Turn: ($56) 4d (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $40, Hero folds

Hand 3:
Villain is 28/12/1.8. No direct history between us, but I have a somewhat LAG table image.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

SB: $149.85
BB: $100
UTG: $47.15
MP: $39.80
Hero (CO): $349.05
BTN: $57.10

Pre-Flop: Jc Tc dealt to Hero (CO)
UTG calls $1, MP calls $1, Hero calls $1, BTN folds, SB calls $0.50, BB checks

Flop: ($5) Th 4s 5d (5 Players)
SB checks, BB checks, UTG checks, MP bets $5, Hero raises to $15, SB calls $15, 3 folds

Turn: ($40) Jd (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets $26.50, SB raises to $133.85 and is All-In, Hero calls $107.35
I put him on a made hand with his check/cold-call on the flop. When he pushes, I'm obviously worried about a set, and we're deep, but his WtSD is 41%, so he has to be getting there with some marginal hands. I made the call with top two and a poor image. Other than a set, I thought he could have a trappy overpair, a really poor Tx hand, possibly middle diamonds for a combo draw. I think of everything, his just smells like a set, and in fact my plan for the hand was bet and fold to a push, but I talked myself out of it.

Went deeper than ever yesterday

No, not in an MTT....in a golf round, under par, or at least I think so...to be honest I haven't kept track of it. But I'm pretty sure that yesterday was it. Through 12 holes, I was one under par, with 4 birdies and 3 bogeys. That's nice in and of itself, but what made it a little extra sweet is the fact that the previous round was so bad, the computer asked me if I was sure. One of the things I enjoy about golf and poker is overcoming the challenge of bouncing back strong after things don't go your way.

Unfortunately, I could not seal the deal over the last 6 holes. On the 13th hole, I sent a ball OB, and that's where something that may relate to poker comes in. My mindset changed on the 13th tee. Up until then, my primary swing thought had been on one particular move to address something that had been bothering me about my swing. Just focusing on that move and letting it rip. On the prior two holes, my tee shots had been a bit poor, going too far to the left. Not terrible, just not great. On the 13th, I got away from my preshot focus, and got very cautious and tight. My whole swing changed, and blocked the ball way out to the right (and the funny thing is that on the 13th hole, there's tons of room to the left, you almost can't hit it too far to the left to get into trouble).

In every sport I've played, a big key, like poker, is controlled aggression. Not forced, controlled. When you get away from that and play to not lose, things don't usually go well for you. There are certainly some reasonable times to change from an aggressive mode to a more "prevent" mode. To me, that's the "controlled" part of controlled aggression. The keys are knowing when to make that switch, the cost/benefit of making the switch, and the fact that you are choosing to do it because of some external factor rather than doing so as a result of being nervous or scared.

The same thing must apply to poker. If you go into a passive mode because you believe that's the best way to get the money in when you're good, by all means do it. But when you go passive because you stacked someone and are now up for the session, and you want to protect your win, I say recognize that and just quit. I've done just that before, where even in a pretty good game, I'm having a winning session after several losers in a row. For me, it is psychologically important to break a losing streak -- I know it shouldn't be, but it is what it is. Other people have other reasons for protecting a win, and that's cool....but don't keep playing if you are just playing in protect mode....it's not your A game.

This is certainly not the deepest insight into the game, and is probably obvious to everyone. But I enjoy linking other sports to poker. And I couldn't miss the chance to brag about a good round of golf :).

User experience for posting hands

It's been a while since I just posted some hands. A lot of good poker players post hands on their blogs, but as a reader, I've always found the forum interface more compelling. The best thing for me, from a learning standpoint, is getting into a running conversation about how a hand illustrates a concept or two. It seems like blogs aren't conducive to that as much as forums (or email, chats, etc.). But I have noticed that the act of typing out my thoughts is a good learning tool, regardless of how much conversation goes on, so I'm going to start grabbing some hands to post in the blog. If any seem really interesting, or I don't think I have a good answer for myself, I'll try to post more of those on one forum or another. I'll also try to post no more than 4 hands at a time, so in case a conversation does break out, it won't be going all over the place.

With that....

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $165.50
MP: $94.75
CO: $84.05
Hero (BTN): $118.30
SB: $99.70
BB: $118.85

Pre-Flop: Tc 7c dealt to Hero (BTN)
2 folds, CO calls $1, Hero raises to $5, 2 folds, CO calls $4
Villain is 47/5/4.5 over a pretty small sample, and no history. I've been trying to abuse the button position a little more, hence the raise. Not something I'm making a habit of yet, just trying some stuff out.

Flop: ($11.50) 7d 7h Qs (2 Players)
CO checks, Hero bets $7, CO raises to $21, Hero calls $14

Turn: ($53.50) 6s (2 Players)
CO bets $25, Hero raises to $92.30 and is All-In, CO folds

In a sweat session last week, Noel talked about allowing an aggressive opponent to keep bluffing. From a decent villain, when I make the 2nd call, I shouldn't be getting any more action from a hand less than trips. In that case push or call probably don't make much difference because he's likely to be check/folding the river. But just by this guy's stats, he's probably a poor player, and he's aggressive postflop to boot. So, the money is much more likely to go in with him betting on this board than by calling. Raising this turn is a significant error, IMO.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $111.95
MP: $18
CO: $214.80
Hero (BTN): $102.15
SB: $98.45
BB: $103.55

Pre-Flop: Qh Ks dealt to Hero (BTN)
3 folds, Hero raises to $4, SB raises to $13, BB folds, Hero raises to $30, SB raises to $98.45 and is All-In, Hero folds

Another somewhat experimental hand, 4-betting light. Villain is 20/14, but only has a 1.1 postflop AF. We don't have a lot of table history, but he is really aggressive from the blinds when the pot is unraised. Interestingly (although I didn't know this at the time), his PFR from BB is significantly higher than any other position -- 25%, while only 15% from both BTN and CO. I had not been out of line on the table, but it was looking like with his stats, he would not be afraid to take a stand against a standard steal, and I thought a lot of his range would fold to a 4-bet. Admittedly, I haven't really thought about the pros and cons of 4-betting light in much detail, and such plays as this are probably much better served to wait until I have thought about this more.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $43.05
SB: $109.25
BB: $191.65
Hero (UTG): $100.05
MP: $148.40
CO: $104.25

Pre-Flop: Qh Qs dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $4, MP raises to $14, 4 folds, Hero calls $10
Villain is 21/16/1.4, and somewhat positionally aware, but only over 109 hands, so I'm not sure about that. I think he's got a decent range for 3-betting me, but I'm afraid that 4-betting turns my hand into a bluff.

Flop: ($29.50) Ac 4c Ts (2 Players)
Hero checks, MP bets $22, Hero calls $22
He's not aggressive, so without an ace or better, I don't think he fires again. So, my thinking was that I can get to the river with one call, and my hand has some showdown value. Looking back at it, I'm only ahead of 88 (slight possibility any lower PP), 99, JJ, and maybe KQs. I'm behind a lot more, so this is probably a fold.

Turn: ($73.50) 9h (2 Players)
Hero checks, MP checks

River: ($73.50) Kh (2 Players)
Hero checks, MP checks

I can't really see the sense of putting any more money in the pot, but I included the streets just in case someone thinks I should bet. But again, I think it's an easy check/fold. And to be results-oriented, I did get a free showdown out of that flop call.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

BB: $98.50
Hero (UTG): $129.80
MP: $95
CO: $83.40
BTN: $138.05
SB: $220

Pre-Flop: Th Tc dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $4, MP folds, CO calls $4, 3 folds
Less than 20 hands on villain.

Flop: ($9.50) 7h Ks Qs (2 Players)
Hero bets $7, CO calls $7
I think the c-bet is fine, but I could see giving up. If he's got a suited hand and/or straight draw, I would like to protect. When he flat calls, I want to be cautious, even with the draws out there, since a K or Q is possible. A strong hand would probably raise due to board texture.

Turn: ($23.50) Qd (2 Players)
Hero checks, CO checks
I think my hand has some showdown value. I don't want to lead that turn, as no worse hands are very likely to call.

River: ($23.50) 3h (2 Players)
Hero checks, CO bets $12, Hero calls $12
After I show more weakness on the river, I think I'm OK to call that 1/2 pot bet. It could be a king scared of a c/r, but also none of the draws came in.

AK gets 4-bet

Had a lonnnng day at my customer conference. It's surprisingly tiring work. Most of the time is just spent talking with people, but I don't know, I'm always drained at the end of the day at these conferences. Was riding the train back home with a co-worker after grabbing a beer, and we were laughing at ourselves because we couldn't go a minute without one of us yawning. So, too tired for poker last night, but a hand in a video got me thinking about a somewhat typical situation.

Full stacks, nothing of note except you are up against a TAG. Villain opens 4xBB in MP and you 3-bet AK to 12BB from the button. Villain 4-bets to 36BB. Now what?

I've participated in some discussion threads that go over this situation, and have a default play. I forget all the equity calculations that went into the discussions, so I'm going to try doing them on my own again. For what it's worth, I've seen a number of decent posters weigh in with different opinions of what to do and why. The conclusion I came to is that there is not a clear cut correct answer. There are style and variance preferences that come into play as well.

Back to the problem...first, let's assume a range for the 4-bet: QQ+, AK. So, we either flip, chop, or get crushed. But there is also some dead money in the pot. I want to figure out how much equity we need to be profitable pushing, assuming villain calls. I'm pretty sure that the size of villain's 4-bet doesn't matter since we're playing for stacks. At this point, we are going to put in 88, and if villain calls, the pot will be 200. So, to break even, our equity in the final 200 pot would have to allow us to recoup at least 88. If we solve for equity=x,

200x=88, or x=88/200, or x=.44

well, against his range, we only have 39% equity, so we cannot profitably push if we believe he calls. But Verneer brought up an interesting point the other day about TAGs 4-betting, and it is that you can discount AA somewhat, since a lot of people will just smooth call your 3-bet and trap on the flop. If you discount AA (I'll give one instance of of aces rather than all 3), our equity goes up to 42%. Closer, but not quite enough to be profitable.

So, we probably don't want to push in this situation, but note that with a little bit more dead money in the pot, we might be able to. I've got to run, so I will leave for another time how much extra needs to be in the pot, and also talk through whether we can make a case for calling AK.

All work and no play

Just finished preparing for a customer conference that begins tomorrow. I put it off until the last minute, but since I need to hit the ground running first thing tomorrow morning, I couldn't wait any longer.

Saturday, my daughter finished up her soccer season with a tournament, and we barely beat the rain. That was all we beat, which is how the season went in general....we only won a single game. Took a nap when we got home, then had a nice family dinner and watched a movie. After the kids went to sleep, Jennifer and I got through a few shows we had sitting on the Tivo. Exciting stuff :).

Since it wasn't raining this morning, I got out for a round of golf, but it might as well have been raining. Birdied the first hole, but the rest of the day was terrible. For those that don't play much golf, if you belong to a golf association, you post your score after each round. The computer asked me if I was sure I had the right score. Great, it wasn't bad enough taking crap from my buddies as I paid off the bets, even the computer got in on the action.

From there, it was off to my sister-in-law's house. My niece and brother-in-law have birthdays last week and next week. It turns out that my wife's sister's husband's brother's wife (is there a name for that relation....my sister-in-law-in-law-in-law-in-law?) and her daughter and another niece all either had birthdays in October or November too, so we celebrated the whole gang's birthdays. Which was great fun, but it took a long time, and also about 90 minutes for my wife and her sister to say good-bye to everyone, so we didn't get back to the house until later than I thought/hoped we would.

All's good now, but no time for poker over the weekend, and probably none until Wednesday afternoon, when I think I'll be able to break free from customer meetings for a few hours. I hope to jump into a workshop Verneer started this weekend, but which I had to miss. I'm looking forward to the conference being over and getting back to just the normal level of insanity.

100 NL Update

Had a chance to play a little more than usual this week, including a few hours last night. Jennifer played in her monthly BUNCO game, and I stayed home with the kids. I don't know much about BUNCO -- she tried to explain it, but it seemed like it was a random way to pass $10 back and forth and really just serve as a structure to gossip and drink fuzzy navels or whatever. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Earlier in the week, Noel sweated me for a bit, which I appreciated a ton. I'm still feeling my way out on this level, but he's been there, done that, and where I am not making confident decisions, things are pretty easy for him. I played pretty well, and I think that's actually due to a good benefit of sweats. When you've got someone watching you play, you have more than usual incentive to maintain discipline and make solid decisions (not to mention you can bounce an idea off them before you act on it). I noticed and learned a few things.

I don't know how much of it was luck of the draw and how much of it was Noel's guidance, but I found myself in very few really tough spots in medium and large pots. In about 600 hands he watched, I had four that were greater than 80 BB in my favor, and my biggest loss was 41 BB. For the session, including a little before and after he sweated me, I was up $295 in 771 hands, so obviously things were going my way.

I booked another small win a couple days later. So, I was feeling pretty good for Friday night, but things for the most part didn't go my way....no action on big hands, but plenty of playing back at me with marginal hands, and I made some pretty dubious decisions.

Anyway, for the month so far, I'm still up, but my winrate has dwindled. The better news is that I feel pretty comfortable at 100NL. Here's what I've got so far (the top is 100NL, I couldn't fit everything into the screen shot):



I'll look through the last week in PT and hopefully find some interesting hands.

Easy come, easy go

100NL has been interesting, so far, if nothing else. I feel like I'm playing timid, but it may just be that everyone else is just playing more aggressive than I was used to at 25 and 50NL. I'm playing 18/14/4.3, which is reasonably close to my usual stats. Until the end of last night, my decisions have been pretty good, I think, if perhaps a little conservative/weak-tight (which I don't mind that much if it's just during familiarization).

My last two sessions seemed to have been a lot of uninteresting small pots -- some good, some bad -- punctuated by a few big hands. On Sunday, those hands went my way. The biggest was when CO raised 3x, button (who I thought was fishy, but I think he thought I was a donk) called, and I decided to cool call from the SB with pocket fives. I hit a set on a K65 suited flop. I decided to check to the preflop raiser. Unfortunately, he also checked, but button bet $10 into a $10 pot. I called, hoping that the preflop raiser had AK and was going for the checkraise, but he folded. On the turn, another king hit. I bet $20, button pushed, and I called. He had KT, and my turned full house held up, thanks very much. In the chat, he said he put me on K9 :).

Yesterday, the hands didn't go my way, although the biggest one was a somewhat retarded 3 street bluff. It was retarded mostly for the fact that I was, for the first time in a while, probably somewhat tilty. It was only somewhat, though, because I was acting on a read (it may not have been a good read, but my point is that I went with my read), the board was OK for it, and my image should have been spectacular for it if he was paying attention.

The tilt was from another table where I lost a little over a buy-in over back-to-back hands. I didn't feel angry actually, but was a little bemused, and not really focused 100% yet on the hand I was trying to bluff. One hand on the other table was when I raised AK from the button against a guy with a little more than half a stack. He called, checkraised a K96 suited flop, and checked a blank turn. I had intended to get it in, but thought he would fold if I pushed the flop. I maybe should have checked the turn behind, but I bet less than pot to put him in. He called with AA, and I had no outs. The very next hand in a blind battle from SB, my 2nd nut flush lost to a flopped full house...villain called my preflop raise with J6s, and the flop was JJ6. I was lucky he didn't take more off me than he did.

OK, back to the bluff in hand. I gave the context above because I was thinking about how I was going to get my money back from the guy who called with J6s, rather than just letting the hand go and focusing on the current hand. I usually just let the good hands and the bad hands drop. On the bluff hand, villain is 31/28/2.9. I had seen him lead an underpair all 3 streets into a preflop raiser on a 2-broadway flop. He was called down. I only have 54 hands on him. He goes to showdown a fair amount (26%, but over a short sample he'd also folded to river bets 71% of the time). I was running pretty well on the table, selectively playing back against a LAG to my immediate right but pretty tightly, and showing down good hands.

Full Tilt Poker, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 4 Players
LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $197.80
Hero (BTN): $127.70
SB: $78.05
BB: $87.70

Pre-Flop: Qc 9s dealt to Hero (BTN)
UTG folds, Hero raises to $3, SB folds, BB calls $2

Flop: ($6.50) Ac Td Ah (2 Players)
BB bets $4, Hero calls $4

Turn: ($14.50) 8d (2 Players)
BB bets $8.75, Hero calls $8.75

River: ($32) 7s (2 Players)
BB bets $23, Hero raises to $111.95 and is All-In, BB calls $48.95 and is All-In

My thinking is that first of all, he likely does not have a big ace or a big pair. If I did have a big ace, I would probably play the flop like I did, and perhaps the turn as well. On the river, his hand has turned into a bluff catcher, and I thought that a lot of his range folds....any pocket pair, and even some weak aces. Given that I'm anything but a wild bluffer in general, I think looking back on it this morning that it's probably not that great, but not horrible. I'm more upset that I just did it without being fully focused on the hand than the way the bluff went down in general.

I may post this one up on the forums, but if anything I need to find a few more spots to bluff, not a few less, and it's not something I do frequently in any event. Usually when I float it's with a marginal made hand, and when I bluff it's a semibluff.

Anyway, on the last 5 minutes of my session, I lost 2 buy-ins. It was late and I was thinking about stopping anyway, and this sealed the deal. Overall, I'm up a little more than a BI over 2700 hands at 100NL, and feeling a little more comfortable each session, despite the bad ending last night.

First impressions of NL100

Got a couple short sessions in at 100NL. I came out ahead, but it was swingy, and I could easily have been down. You can see by the graph that I did in fact spend a lot of time in the red -- thanks in large part to my flopped set losing to a gutshot that came in. I drew out myself a couple times for less, though, and felt like I ran OK.



The sample size is still pretty small, but I think that this is the most dramatic level difference in terms of game texture that I've gone through. What strikes me compared to 50NL and lower is that there is more aggression in general, and the aggression is not just wild spew most of the time. This comes from both the fewer number of pots unraised, as well as people playing back at me. Not only did I get 3-bet more over the last 1,000 hands than before, which I somewhat expected, but there was significantly more aggression postflop. People still folded to continuation bets, but the ones that played played for raises more.

Aside from the aggression, it was noticeably harder to find a good table. They were there, and I only play 4 tables, so I never had to stay on a really bad table. But it took longer to get on an acceptable table, and they were noticeably less juicy than the 50NL tables.

The final difference I saw were that the LAGs are better on the whole. I've only been datamining for a few days at 100NL, so my samples are small, but a good number of 35/15 or 35/20 players are winning in my database and just looking at a few random hands, they seem OK. At 50NL, guys with stats like that were likely to spew. And that may be true at 100NL, like I said, I just haven't had a chance to really dig into the players.

It felt to me like I was making some pretty passive plays, calling down, but with the increased aggression, some judicious calling down is fine. And my stats have remained pretty much the same garden variety TAG they have been: 19/15/5.8. In fact, rather than being too much of a station, I might just be too weak/tight. My WtSD is only 15%. So, I'm betting hard postflop and either getting people to fold or folding myself. Could be worse at the beginning of a new level, though.

All things considered, I think I should be able to beat the level. I played pretty tentatively, but hopefully the fact that I actually booked a small win in both sessions will help me get confidence quickly as I adjust. It does reinforce the fact that I could benefit by some coaching, and I'm still holding out hope that comes together quickly. I'm excited that this level has started out on the plus side, too, since I was expecting it to be a bit harder.

One step closer

I'm ready to move up to 100NL. That puts me one step closer. In fact, I think that it probably only puts me one step away, but I'm not sure. I'm trying to reach a place that my wife starts to care about poker. And she'll care about it when it starts paying for stuff.

So far, I haven't really cashed anything out of my roll. Back in my Limit days, my plan was to plow money back into my roll until I was playing 10/20, and I shared my online roll with my B&M roll. After the U.S. legislation, I cashed about everything out online, leaving me with a dedicated B&M roll of several thousand. I still hit the card rooms once or twice a month, so it's good to know that it's there. I make small withdrawals from there for things like golf or taking the family into San Francisco for a day, but by and large it stays in its high interest savings account.

I left a couple hundred online, and have just been plowing profit back into my roll to move up the stakes aggressively. It's at $1900 now, and I'll start 100NL as soon as I've got a free evening (maybe tonight, not sure yet). But I still don't want to cash out. 100NL seems like a significant jump in terms of difficulty, and I want to grind through it until 200NL. I think at 200NL, even with a modest winrate, my hourly will be enough so that I can take my time getting up to 400NL and be able to use some profit to do some extra family fun or buy something nice for the house for which we wouldn't otherwise have the budget. I'm not sure whether that will happen at 200NL or some future level -- I guess a lot depends how successful I am.

Until that time, though, me playing poker is way far down on my wife's priority. She doesn't care in theory that I play, she's not against gambling or anything like that. And she's all for me having whatever outlet I want, within reason. She thinks it's pretty silly that I've got a couple poker books on the nightstand and that I spend time doing stuff like posting on forums, blogs, and whatnot. But whatever floats my boat. However, it's all within its place, and I understand where she's coming from.

Wow, I just deleted a freaking novella detailing how awesome my children are and where all my time goes after realizing that I can't do it justice to myself, and there isn't a single person who would read this who would give a shit anyway. The bottom line is that when work is done, our kids come first to me and my wife, and after they go to bed, we've got 1-2 hours to ourselves before she is going to crash.

I've got a standing tennis match one night a week. I can count on having to do something work-related at least once a week as well, for various chunks of the evening. So, we just plain run out of time to be with each other. The nights that she's finishing some household task, getting something ready for school the next day, or just going through her own email, I can opportunistically log some hands for an hour or two. But I usually stop when she stops, and I'm OK with it. There's also a night or two a week that I stay up later than she does, and most of the time I'll play some then. But going to bed separately all the time is not what marriage is about ;). And unfortunately, you can't just (at least too often) play poker right up until you go to bed together. So, a lot of evenings, the computer just sits datamining and that's the extent of poker. A lot of other nights, I get in an hour or so. And a few nights, I'll play for several hours. It all adds up to less poker than I'd like, but what I feel is an appropriate amount (maybe even pushing it), given only one of us in the household holds a passion for poker. But as the stakes go up and the money gets more meaningful, my hope is that even if she never develops a passion for it, she at least encourages me to play more.

As an aside, I think that if I were really serious about poker before we met, it would be fair to expect that I could continue. I play golf with a couple guys whom I'm amazed play as much golf as they do...we're talking 150+ rounds a year -- just about every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I ask them how they pull that one off, and they say that their wives knew what they were getting into when they got married. Fair enough. Also, their kids are grown (although they still played a lot when their kids were young, and one guy has two boys whose combined indexes are less than 1.0, so they played as a family.) Also, my index is lower than both of these guys. That's not really relevant to my point, but whatever....it's still cool.

To reiterate, I'm pretty happy with the balance and priorities in my life. My family is awesome. I wish there were more time for poker without sacrificing anything else. We'll see when that will come, but all in all, it's pretty minor. And even from a poker standpoint, it's not all bad. My work/life balance forces me to do more study relative to play. I have a chance to really learn and think about the game, and I think that has paid off, making me a stronger player compared to number of hands actually played, than a lot of people. It doesn't mean I'm a top notch player by any means, but it does mean that my progression will not stagnate due to all play and no study, as I believe happens to many good players.

Well, this has been another post that has kind of come in fits and starts throughout the day. I feel like I've got some more to say here, but for now will end and get home to the family!

For the time being, I'll double post on Blogger and CR. Good luck out there.

Please don't let it end

Here's a wrap up for October and a look forward to November. The only bad thing about October is that I was out of commission for 10 days. I played pretty well and ran better, but didn't have the days to put in the hands. I wouldn't say that I put many bad beats on people, but I won my share of flips and had my hands hold up well. Looking back to the worst month I've had -- August -- the most significant thing that I've done is tighten up from early position. I was actually more passive postflop this month than in the past.

Here are the pretty pictures. The sample size this month is too small, but it is what it is, and since it's the end of the month, I'll put up what I have.







It looks like I still need to loosen up in LP. I'm a little surprised that my turn and river aggression is as low as it is...I'll have to make sure that I'm not letting people off the hook, and that I'm not just calling down too much. Reviewing my hands, I don't see too much of it, and there were a couple times I remember in big pots letting people bet hands for me. Like I said, the sample is pretty small (although not that small for things like VPIP, PFR, and AF). The results are good, so hopefully, the postflop stats are from making the correct adjustments and picking my spots.

October Goals Review

1. 7,000 hands. Didn't quite make it. I had a little less time than I thought. My MT ratio was 3.16, which is a bit lower than normal. I have been paying a little more attention to table quality, so perhaps that is it.
2. Active community participation. Did OK here, especially towards the end of the month after I got caught up at work. Over the last week, I've tried to participate better on the CR forums, as well as the blog rotation for the study crew. I could do better on both counts, though.
3. Review hands. I reviewed 89% of the hands I played. It's fun to review when you see yourself dragging big pots, but I'm nervous about the fact that I didn't really identify any new systemic problems (leaks). Usually I've got 2 or 3 things to really focus on, and for now it's just the same things.
4. Review CR videos. It doesn't count if I just watched, I need to actively watch, which means pausing on decision points to see how close I come to what the pros do, and where different, note it and try to figure out why we're different if the pro doesn't provide an explanation. I did that with only 6 videos. I watched several more, but I'm not giving myself credit for them.
5. Play tight UTG. My button VPIP was 3x my UTG VPIP.
6. Practice hand reading. Not going to give myself credit for this one since I didn't devote enough time to reviewing PT hands that went to showdown. I think that in general I did a good job in my own play and in my own hand review, and even watching videos, but that was not the criteria I set for this goal.
7. Study sessions. I'm neutral on this one. I did two, one of which I was the subject (target ;)) of the review. I missed one while on vacation, and another week (this week) my schedule did not match up with the group....tried to get something going for today as a makeup, but it looks like we're missing each other.

November Goals

The goals have been working, so they'll remain for the most part.

1. Play 8,000 hands. I know I'll be out of commission for at least a few days around the Thanksgiving holiday, so let's call the goal 2,000 hands/week. I will be moving up to 100NL, so may be playing less tables as well, for a bit anyway.
2. Active community participation. I had set a number of posts (with content) before, but it's too painful to keep track, so this one will just be a judgment call.
3. Review 75% of my hands.
4. Active study of 8 CR videos.
5. Review showdown hands in PT. All showdown hands in a 1,000 hand block, whether or not I'm involved in the hand.
6. Study group participation.

For the time being, I'm going to cross-post between blogger and CR.

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!