Going skiing / January results

I am going to be out of town for about a week, up in the mountains on a ski trip with my dad. Really really looking forward to it, but I don't know what the internet access will be like, so might not see you. Things have been really busy this week and last wrapping up as many loose ends as I can before taking off. I'm able to jump into some IM and sweat sessions pretty easily, but the work doesn't go away, so I make up for it by staying later, working from home, or getting into the office early. That flexibility is something I really enjoy about my job, but it can cause things to pile up and for me to go dark for a while.

But back to happier thoughts. Lake Tahoe has been getting absolutely hammered by storm after storm; the conditions are awesome. Up until I met my wife, I skied 20-30 days a year. She doesn't care that much for skiing, so we didn't really go, and now with kids, it's pretty expensive to take the whole family. She and the kids would rather go to Disneyland or Palm Springs (and that's cool with me...I just golf instead of ski). So I'm down to like 5 days a year, and this is the big chunk. The last couple years, we've been really unlucky with the snow cover in Tahoe, but this year looks to make up for it. So, yeah, think snow.

Results for the month:


I love swongs. I ran absolutely terrible in the beginning of the month...the initial downwards motion. I feel like I ran neutral overall the rest of the month (some improbable hands, but split between going my way and against me). One thing is for sure: I suck at flips! If I have a combo draw, it does not get there, if I am against a good draw, it does get there. Pretty predictably. That said, I am not satisfied with the state of my game, either, and a lot of the down spikes after the initial one were at least as much due to my poor play. The more I learn, the more I realize how much I really need to learn.

In one group session, we were talking about those days when you were totally clueless, running well, and thinking that you had it all figured out. Now that I have learned more, and more importantly started to discuss things and sweat/be sweated, it is readily apparent that I have a long way to go, and it's totally appropriate for me to be at low stakes. I don't yet have the game for higher stakes. I'm not saying I totally suck -- I don't -- but although I am solid in a number of areas, I am not strong across the board. And I'm only talking about playing a fairly TAG game, not trying to get really fancy.

You can read a lot of posts by more accomplished players saying how easy it is to play ABC TAG (but that you can't keep doing it). It is pretty easy to play that style well enough to beat the lowest limits -- a lot of your competition is simply dreadful -- but I guess I'm still noob enough to think that it's not super easy to play ABC TAG to something approaching perfection. It's attainable, not easy. I believe (maybe because I haven't gotten to my potential) that even the guys with natural aptitude who have moved past simply ABC TAG actually had to work a decent amount to get to a rock solid ABC TAG mode. Realistic, yes. Easy, no. Anyway...


These are some pretty borderline stats, a little out of kilter with how I historically play. Could be sample size/bad stretch of cards, but it also looks like I'm playing a bit scared in some situations. Another possibility, and this is much more true for the 50NL hands, is that I'm table selecting better (I'll explain later). My overall VPIP is a couple points lower than it has been, and is on the very bottom of where I think I should be. It's OK, but barely. I think if I am table selecting well, my VPIP should be a tad higher than normal, not lower.

I may be folding to steals a little much in the BB, but maybe not. On the one hand, people are stealing wider and wider, and I'm trying to 3-bet wider too....so I should not be giving up the BB as much. On the other hand, I'm trying to get more loose-passive players with bigger stacks on my right and more tight players with smaller stacks on my left. If I've got a really passive button who does not steal a lot, I need to tighten up my defending range some. But this will bear watching.

I'm not stealing enough. True, if I'm trying to put shorter stacks to my left, I need to be careful because they'll be looking to get it in wider against a button steal. But still, 30% here should be an absolute floor, IMO. Also, my W$WSF is borderline low, but anything over 40% is acceptable to me. I'd like it to be closer to 45%, but this is not the worst of my problems. My W$SD is the same level it has been. This is somewhat out of my control, but I may still be making too many hero calls on the river. My river AF at 100NL specifically is too low. However, it's pretty good at 50NL where my W$SD is actually lower, so by stats anyway I'm not paying off on the river a ton.

Preflop raise is just a little low compared to my VPIP. I think this one is a result of some focus on table selection...if I'm able to get a couple limpers to me on the button or in the SB, I'm widening up my calling/completing range. I think I do a decent job distinguishing when to raise versus limp when I enter pots...the biggest thing I need to work on preflop is just which pots to enter at all, and make sure to look for some more spots, especially at 50NL when I have a better relative postflop advantage. I guess any win rate in the green is good, but I'd like mine to be higher :P.



Well, I don't have any problems sticking to tight UTG range, obviously. I'm pretty close to 3x looser on the button than UTG, so that's good. I probably need to loosen up throughout, as I alluded to above. But at least if I'm sticking to a tight style, I feel like the VPIP progression as I move towards the button is good. I always wonder what I limp UTG. This month, it was 86s when two people already posted. I guess that's not a huge leak.

Goals for the month:
10,000 hands
Easily beat this goal this month. After a bit of thought, getting through Elements of Poker, and discussing the implications of volume goals, I'm no longer going to set one. Crap, I play every chance I get, so if I fail a # of hands goal, it's not from lack of trying. Better to focus on quitting well and maintaining focus rather than sheer number of hands.

Review hands
I reviewed just about every session I played. I'm like two behind for the month, but I did a solid job reviewing hands. In addition, I spent some coaching time and some group discussion time going over my PT. I think that this is a super learning vehicle for me, actually, in some ways better than getting sweated. My plan with my coach is to have a healthy alternating rotation between sweats and PT reviews.

Actively study 5 videos
I sucked at video review. I made it through two. I am going to focus on this much more next month, even if it means giving up some other stuff like blogs and forums. I watched a few more than 2, but when I talk about active study, it's like treating the video as a potential sweat session, but pausing the action so I can vocalize what I would do (and why). I need to do more of that in general, because that's an area I don't do well enough in my own game. Might as well practice it with someone else's.

Raise W$SD
Got this one up a few points, but it's still too low. Yeah, not a lot of this is in my control, but making hero (or just plain dumb) calls is, and that's really what I want to eliminate.

One poker book
Finished Elements of Poker. Great book. Will probably read it again this month!

Regular sweat sessions
Been able to get in severals sweat and review sessions. As I mentioned above, it has been instrumental in showing me that for every part of the game I've got down pretty well, there's another area lurking that probably hurts me. Also, even though I am dropping one or two tables, I find that I cannot vocalize my thoughts about my opponents' ranges quickly enough. Guys that I am watching...notably Noel, but not only him...are able to vocalize their thoughts on villains' ranges much better than I am. I think I am accounting for a range or a type of hand at least, but not good enough yet, and it shows in some of the lines that I take periodically. So, just the act of forcing me to get them on a range and then act off it is pretty helpful. I notice that guys who go through lots of sweats get better at doing this.

Still here, just busy

It's been a bit since I've made a blog entry, and actually over the last week or so, I haven't been playing too much, either. Work has picked up a bit after the holidays, and basketball season started for my kids. Out of all the sports they play, basketball is the one I actually know something about, and I coach both their teams. At this age, that means multiple nights a week I'm in practice, and most of the day on Saturday, I'm prepping for, or coaching, games.

I like practicing with my son's team because they play on lower rims and with a ball small enough to palm, so I can dunk! The best I was ever able to do consistently when I played was to dunk a tennis ball....every once in a while a volleyball.

Between work, basketball, and family, there is less time than usual to grind. Strangely, the part that bugs me the most now is not that I'm missing hands, but that I'm falling behind on blogs, forums, and videos. I'm reconciled to a lower volume of hands, and just want to play well when I do play, but not to force it. Well, I say that now, but I didn't hold to it yesterday. I was too friggin' tired, but fired up Full Tilt anyway...boo!!

I did an impromptu session review today...thought that I was going to be a watcher, but instead I volunteered to bring up yesterday's session and go through a quick review. First of all, it highlighted some really poor play on my part, at times. Second, it reinforced how valuable a group PT review can be compared to a sweat session. I think that in a group setting, a PT review may be even more valuable than a sweat session, as you can dwell on any topic that comes up as long as you need/want. I never mind being a guinea pig for those reviews...anytime anyone sees me online and would like to do a PT review, let me know...I will review or be reviewed. The nice thing for me is that those reviews can be short or long, which is nice if I have to head to a meeting in 30 minutes or something.

This weekend, I finally finished the last part of Elements of Poker. I know that I was going to write a detailed review (a couple people have pinged me to remind me), but that is going to have to wait until I have some more time. There was a post on 2p2 last week by Focault, or something like that, in the Books and Publications forum. He pretty much took the words from me anyway...if I wasn't so lazy, I'd find it and link it. The bottom line is that I really enjoyed the book. I get a decent amount out of most of the books I've read; either I wait until the book has been reviewed, or it's by an author I trust will turn out a good book. Even with those standards, I don't read too many books that make me think, "Wow, that's really cool!" about some passage in the book or whatever. Elements of Poker did that for me numerous times. It wasn't universally like that, but there were several "aha" moments. And throughout, Angelo writes in a really pleasing manner...the book is really easy to read. In fact, as I've said before, it might be a little too easy to read! I can't believe that there isn't something in there for everyone at mid stakes and lower, and probably higher, I just couldn't say without experience.

I'm running out of time (see prior posts on time management), but I did take a snapshot of my lifetime 50NL and 100NL results which I think are pretty interesting. I'll try to make another post this week about them. In reality, I've found that I've had to limit my time spent blogging, as it's taking away from other "study" areas that need focus. I'm supremely behind on watching any videos, most of all, as in I've watched 2 this whole month. I have been trying to keep up with all the blogs, and have for the most part, although I have been a bit lax commenting. But I am reading all the blogs from the SSNL Grinders and from the workshop as well. OK, see you next time.

Back to 50NL to shore up some leaks

Had a PT review with my coach earlier in the week after playing a few thousand hands at 50NL. We agreed that I've got to work out some leaks. Some are due only to bad game play (meaning that I clearly know what I did wrong after the fact, but I'm still making mistakes at the table) and some are due to gaps in my game -- I'm playing as I believe to be OK, but I'm not approaching the situation correctly. Or, I don't have a good idea what to do.

I've got the roll, and probably the game (in spite of the leaks) to be fine at 100NL, because there is still plenty of bad play at that level to compensate for my own shortcomings. But my results will be that much more volatile -- as has been shown over the last 20,000 hands at 100NL where I go up and down fairly severely. So, I will stick to 50NL for now, and work on ironing out some of the kinks.

It looks like specifically my turn play is the most suspect. I'm turning good hands into bluffs and paying too much for my draws. To a lesser extent, I'm not getting away from 2nd best hands.

To that end, I played a session last night. Started off well enough when I stacked a guy on a cooler turned suckout...my flopped set ran into a flopped straight, but the river paired the board. That was the highlight of the night...from there it was a horror show of running like crap, although I played OK. If anything, I got away from hands too quickly. Noel (Peten2toms) sweated me for a good while, and I dropped a table to talk things through a bit. Right as I was getting Mikogo set up, the fish to my right effectively stacked me. He'd doubled up through me a little bit ago (about 60 BB's worth). He was something like 46/3/0.8, and goes to showdown a lot, and I lost with strong hands, not bad play, IMO. Some nights are just like that.

Noel helped me with a couple things, although he couldn't help the cards run my way. I had a 42/35 guy on my right at another table, and Noel encouraged me to 3-bet him hard, which I don't think I do enough. He also kept me focused on my (crappy) table image, and what its implications are. Plus, having someone sweat you is a good way to avoid tilting when things don't go your way. Other than 3-betting the guy I just mentioned, I don't think I got too out of line...but I did pick up a lot of decent preflop cards, raised, and whiffed the flop. As you know, it's no fun to keep raising, then keep folding.

In fact, one thing that I am doing quite well this rather challenging month is just taking the results as they come and not losing a lot of focus about them. I wouldn't say that I enjoy it by any stretch, but part of me is kind of eager to run bad -- especially at lower stakes -- just to confirm that I can take it in stride. However, I think I've just about proven that to myself now. It's time for the doomswitch to turn off, IMO.

Finally, regarding my last post about time management. I've thrown some categories and targets into a spreadsheet, and have started tracking my time, very loosely, against those targets. I'm talking about just kind of estimating in 30 minute chunks, what I'm doing. Basically, I'm just dividing up non-play activities into 8 buckets. (To btimm's comment, there does need to be some sort of administrative time we spend with poker. If you take some time to install PT3 and learn about it, that's a decent chunk, and to me it's part of the poker equation, for example.)

Here's what I came up with, in priority.

Play -- My target here is only 48%, as I'm constrained greatly by available time...however if you have more time, I'm not really sure it should be *that* much higher...while obviously important, there are a number of things crucial to development.

Review Play -- This is one of those elements. I think if you don't devote at least a quarter as much time reviewing your own play as you do playing, you will not improve as rapidly as you can. Of course if you do this early on in your career, you can gradually taper off the amount of time you spend reviewing your play compared to the amount of time you do play. But this is a blog about and for the low limits and the relative beginnings of a poker career. And for us, I believe it's absolutely essential to spend a significant amount of time reviewing our own games.

Coaching -- Percentage wise, this is a small time investment, but I'm very excited to have gotten some coaching kicked off, and this is a top priority for me.

Forums/Books -- You need to review your play. But, you also need to read, write, and discuss poker in general. There are a number of ways to accomplish this. I've found for me, forums are the best long term route. I wax and wane in terms of forum participation, but even when I'm not participating, I lurk them. If a thread has had a lot of replies, I'm sure to open it, and think out my response before reading the other responses there. Continually reviewing forums does something besides making me think about usually marginal situations like that...it allows me to determine somewhat quickly whose opinions on the forums I can trust. There is a lot of good and bad advice given out, IMO. Figuring out who to trust is key.

Blogs -- You could link blogs into the whole forums/books category. For me, I called it out separately due to the study group...I want to make sure that I reserve time to check in on everyone's blogs. But, to me, they kind of serve the same purpose...although I would never think out something like this on a forum ;).

Videos -- I think for a lot of people, videos might be even more important than blogs and forums. For me, they're not (yet), but they're definitely important because the pros can convey a lot more information, and it's just a different media for learning. The more the better. One way that I use videos is to try and do the same thing with them that I do on forum posts...I pause the video and think out what I would do, if I think an action is upcoming...then I let it play and see if I'm right.

Poker Discussions -- If a forum/blog based discussion is good, I think that a real-time discussion can only be better. Simply due to the nature of discussing things, though, this goes down on my list...pretty difficult for me to spend a lot of time discussing things (despite what Aaron says!).

Sweats/Reviews -- Along the same lines, it's difficult for me to put together an extended period of time for sweats and reviews (whether real time or watching a video). I would love to do this, but the ideal time is in the evening, and if I'm not doing family stuff, then I want to be grinding out hands myself. However, here and there, I've been able to sweat some guys during the day.

Admin -- Like I said, some amount of administrative time is necessary to your poker career. Hopefully, not much, though :).

So, over a short sample size of several days, I'm behind in my top 2 areas....playing and reviewing my play. I can't do all that much about the playing part. Anyway, since it's a relative distribution of time spent, what it really means is that I could just be spending more time than usual on non-playing activities. That's probably true, as this week, I tried to catch up on tons of blogs, and also sweated a couple guys, plus sat in on Verneer's CR sweat session earlier in the week. I'm actually playing a decent amount for me...few thousand hands/week for the first couple weeks of the month.

It's the review play that I must get off to now, as it's lagging. Next up on the study rotation..watching another video. I'm actually over my target by quite a bit on sweats and blogging (no wonder with posts like this one!). Thanks for slogging your way through!

Time Management

Posted this one on the NL Theory forum, but thought I would cross-post it here, as I'm trying to come up with a reasonable plan....

Borrowing a bit from "real life," I'm thinking about putting together a high level plan about how to allocate my poker time. I'm trying to come up with a percentage of time spent on different aspects of poker, rather than a set amount of time, so that whether I have 5 or 25 hours per week, I can distribute roughly the same over time.

Anyone serious about the game who does not play full time probably has more they wish they could do with poker (study as well as play) than they actually have or make time for. And even for full-time pros, there are still some better ways to spend time than others, as far as development.

I'll lay out 3 main areas that have smaller components. I don't know how important it is to break them down, but perhaps some of you have thought about this more deeply for yourselves already and feel that they would require their own buckets of time (like for me study is one big category, but there are various types of study, and maybe they should each have their own dedicated percentage).

Study -- 30%

• Review your own play (PT, replayers, etc.)
• Strategy/theory forums and books
• Watch videos
• Blogs (writing and reading, but again, strat and theory)
• Coaching

Play -- 55%

Other -- 15%

• Administrative (for lack of a better term -- organizing your records and roll, setting up software, anything really that doesn't fit into a nice category
• Talking/chatting with your buddies, study group, etc. (could be part of study I guess)
• Sweat sessions, where you rail them

I feel like for this to be helpful or interesting, the time breakdown should probably get somewhat into the components of each area, so like for studying, try to spend x% reviewing your own play, y% on videos, and z% on coaching. So, I'll probably try to work that out for myself, maybe try to just track high level how much time I spend.

Anyway, I'm using up too much of my "Administrative" time ;).

Quick update

Got less than half an hour, so this will be quick (rare for me). First, in regards to Willie's comment from last entry, villain flopped the nut straight. I'm still frustrated by my play in that hand. Grrr.

I am almost done with Elements of Poker. Not sure whether I can write a full review because I'm not sure I could easily describe the book. Here's my quick recommendation. Go to Tommy Angelo's website. Read some excerpts from the Universal Elements section. This was by far my favorite section of the book. Go to the Articles section, and poke around. The reciprocality article is actually interspersed throughout the book. If you like what you see, buy the book....it is more of the same. I will be happy to try writing a more detailed review rather than referring you to his site, but I don't have the time right now. I am certainly glad I read the book, and will go through it again as well. If you are looking for a review, and don't see one in the next week or so, leave me a comment.

Poker went well over the weekend. I actually continued to run below expectations (the gap widened, according to PokerEV), but I was hit so hard by the deck that I was still able to have decent results. It feels like I'm getting a crapload of big pocket pairs and AK. I'm 3-betting a ton and getting action because of it. They aren't holding up as often as they "should" but I'm getting them so many times I'm still turning a profit. Flopping the nut flush and stacking a guy who flopped a lower flush helped last night, too :).

My play also feels solid to me, but to be honest I've run out of time to actually go through all the hands and review them. I should be doing that rather than writing this, probably :P. But this, I can wrap up in a few minutes, and I like to dedicate a continuous chunk of time to review, as like playing, I feel better when I get into the flow of it.

Before I review my play, though, I've got a number of blogs to hit, as the study group has grown quite a bit. Then perhaps review some forum posts, then review my own play. Ack, that's why I never get to my play.

Non-poker, the other coach for my son's basketball team basically admitted she didn't know a thing about basketball and since I did, could she just kind of sit on the bench and do nothing, maybe shadow me so she could learn for next year. That was kind of a relief because now I can just do what I want for practice, setting the lineups, and giving the kids instructions during the game. I didn't want to step on her toes, and I'm glad she initiated the conversation.

Both kids' games went really well, and a few of the things I tried to coach actually came out during the game...those moments are just awesome.

OK, got to head off to that meeting.

Glimmer

If you want to see a humorous link, just go straight to the end.

Busy week so far...everyone is back from vacation at work, and we're cranking things back up again. That's good and bad, I guess. I'm managing several smallish and one big project right now, all in different stages of development (software development). The big one is near the beginning, which is my favorite part...we are fleshing out high level functional requirements and getting into some detailed functional design.

For those of you not familiar with software design, you usually start from what you want the software to do, then figure out how it's going to do it, then build and test it. I used to absolutely love the "how" part, technical design. Now I'm more interested in the "what" part, functional design. I think that this is the most creative phase of development.

I've played a couple sessions since last post, with better results, playing pretty well, still not running all that good. I think long term, I probably run worse than just about everyone, and the fact that I can overcome that and still win is pretty amazing.

I kid.

Last night, things were going pretty well, but I didn't quit well, and it cost me the better part of a stack. I was kind of thinking about calling it a night or at least taking a break, having played for a couple hours. It was late, but I thought my focus was still OK, and I was just starting to get a little tired. Then, I found myself in the SB with 75 and a limpfest already. So, I did my part and completed. TAG in the BB checks. Flop is 765 rainbow. I led out for just a bit over pot, the BB raises smallish, and everyone else gets out of the way. At this point, the warning bells were firing, but since he could raise pretty wide, I put in a 3-bet, to $16 (this was at 50NL, BB had a full stack and I covered). He min-raises me.

Villain is a textbook TAG from all the numbers on my HUD, albeit on the nitty side of TAG. By that, I mean he does not appear to ever get out of line, and he is also a monstrous winner over the hands I have on him (36 ptbb/100 over 1.5k hands). Not the guy to get involved in a big pot with. What do I do? Jam it in there. I'm vaguely thinking he's at worst got top pair and an OESD, but more likely he would shove with that...the min-raise is most likely at worst top two but more likely a set or straight. I mean, I'm thinking that, and yet I still jam it. There's the other part of me going, well he could be FOS this time, and I've still got some outs against a straight. Yuck.

It wasn't frustration...I was playing well and up at the table, and was pretty sure I was up for the session (don't check until the end). It was kind of bad discipline, but more than that, it was just being tired. Due to time constraints, I want to eke out as many hands as I can so this will be a balancing act for me, but it will do no good if I overstay my effectiveness at the tables. I'm thinking about making myself sit out for a couple orbits per hour(ish) even if I don't think I need to do it. Just to make some mini-quits, and so that I can ask myself before starting up again if I'm still on my A game and if the table is still right to play. Actually, that's usually not an issue because my sessions are not much more than hour long chunks whether or not I want it. So, maybe there are better things on which I should focus.

Hmm, I spent a lot of time talking about that one hand, and the end, showing the importance of quitting well, I guess. But throughout the session, I thought I played pretty decent. The only other 100BB+ hand I lost was against a massive maniac when I flopped top two and he turned a gutshot. Don't feel bad about how I played that one. Maniacs get paid when they hit. He was running amazing, though. That was the only big hand I lost to him, but it wasn't the worst he did to the rest of the table...he also won with runner-runner flush and a two-outer on the river against some other guys. Sick.

I'm way behind on my session reviews, though, so I'm stopping here, and will comb through my last several days to look for some hands I can post. I also need to email some hands to my coach with my thoughts in them.

OK, for the humor I promised. I've been following Jman's well on 2p2....an amazing thread, if you haven't read it yet. Someone kindly linked this Jman post from the archives. On a sad note, I realize after reading stuff like this that I am not nearly as funny as I would like to believe.

Carnage

Hoping to get the converse of the old "don't post your good results, or you will be hit with the doomswitch"......





Obviously, things have not started off too well in 2008 :P. I know that this is not a lot of hands, but still, it's been 2 weeks since my last winning session, and 2 weeks is 2 weeks.

In a way, this is going to be a little bit of a brag post, strange as it seems. The brag is in the way that I have been handling this at the tables. I'm usually good about not carrying around any negative emotions for too long after a session. But I do have a decent amount of work to do in limiting the effects of a bad run while sitting in the game. I've been on the wrong end of draws getting there and long shots beating me a fair amount this week, but I am shrugging it off better than usual for me. I haven't been ideal, but I've let go of frustration a number of times before the guy who just got there's stack has incremented. It's a significant step in the right direction, at least for me, in a continuing quest for simple acceptance of a bad result.

I've actually been thinking about what it takes to get to true and total acceptance of your bad results at the table. The kind of acceptance where they affect you as little as humanly possible, whatever that may be. I'm starting to think that I'm not sure I want to get to that total acceptance, even if I could. The reason: I think it would take some fun out of the times that I do well. I just don't see being totally dispassionate about your losses yet still relishing your victories. If I were a pro and/or played at much higher stakes, it might be more important. But if so, it would change the significance of my motivating factors. Namely, the element of fun would be reduced. I'm not saying that pros and high stakes players don't have fun, but the emphasis changes.

There are a number of different poker aspects that can be fun, by the way. It's fun for me to work my way through a problem away from the tables, whether or not I was in a hand, whether or not I won the hand. It's fun chatting with other guys about their poker successes. But I'm talking about the fun of playing a hand and profiting. Not Sklansky bucks or G-bucks, but real profit. I'm not playing for life-changing money. But it's still more fun to win than to lose for me. And that's not only OK, it's good (to maybe paraphrase Tommy Angelo, it's good because I choose it).

So, if I enjoy the winning of a pot and don't enjoy the losing of a pot, and want to continue attaching some emotional meaning to it because I like that meaning, I really need to make sure that it minimizes any impact on my future hands...and elation can be as harmful as despair. The trick for me is to compartmentalize those feelings...to on one level enjoy/hate the outcome of the hand, and on another level...the get-ready-for-the-next-hand level....to ignore the outcome. And that's what I've been doing for the most part over this brief little slide.

My play, for the most part, has been decent, IMO. Last night, in an absolutely card-brutal session, I only made one significant mistake. To be fair, it was a pretty big one, and I also made a number of smaller mistakes. And to be more fair, I'm sure there were other mistakes I made that I didn't detect upon review. But those are always there. I uttered a couple one-word profanities, but was ready to go the next hand both times, and one of them the next hand was kind of tricky and I got max value. The only time I really cost myself something on the next hand was when I was on a steal, hit top two, and the BB predictably called and led into me on the flop and turn with bottom pair, then called my turn raise to put him in. He spiked one of his two outs on the river. I shook my head and typed "lol" in the chat box, while I had a playable hand on another table. I don't normally get into chats.

The graph looks a bit tilty, but other than that one mistake I referred to, my big hands have been either coolers, beats, or reasoning mistakes on my part (i.e., bad play technically, not emotionally).

Bottom line, I think that one really good indicator for me is that although I've had a rough few sessions, I'm looking forward to the next one in a positive way...same way I do when I'm winning.

Still on the schneid

Yet to book a winning session for 2008 :(. I had a couple that I should have won, but ran like crap, but I still feel I'm not playing my A game, either...although that was mainly the first two sessions...since then I think I have been playing pretty well. My hands are holding up well against the little stacks, not so hot against the full ones...and my draws are just not getting there.

I'm doing a better job of not getting into really big pots with my one-pair hands...as long as I'm not taking it too far and losing value, it's all good. Even if I am losing some value, learning how to find the fold button with an overpair is a good lesson. I can always begin to fold less as conditions warrant, but I want to convince myself first that I can regularly lay those hands down.

I did have a slightly abbreviated coaching session last Friday. There were a couple interesting spots with medium pots. The good news for me is that we were in agreement how to play what I thought were those trickiest spots with the big hands. There were a couple other times, in smaller pots, where I would have approached hands a little differently. Those are kind of the gold hands as things come up.

Our plan for the next couple weeks is for me to drop back to 50NL and play a few thousand hands...then kind of do a mini-checkup and review. Along the way, I'll document a couple interesting hands per session (day) and detail my thought processes. This will do a couple things:

• Help my coach learn my game a bit more quickly...specifically where I need to develop my understanding better.
• (Hopefully) reinforce some confidence, as I've been on a slide this month so far. My confidence is actually OK, I think, but it sure would be a nice psychological boost to have a session or two end in the green.

I think the next sweat session -- coaching or otherwise -- I'm going to drop a table or two so that I can really focus on articulating my thought processes...it may mean there is a little more dead time, but on the other hand when an interesting situation comes up, it will help whomever is watching provide better insight into my thoughts. I'm pretty comfortable 4-tabling normally now, even on my small monitor (1024 x 768....total ghetto!). I'm getting a fair number of notes and decent reads beyond just stats. But, I can think faster than I can talk, and more importantly converse/listen...so I'll see how it goes dropping to 3 tables.

Chris stole my post

I think I am seriously overplaying one-pair hands. I keep getting in large pots calling bets and raises with TPTK and overpairs. Sometimes this is fine, but the norm at 100NL should be that you need a good reason to get it in, especially if someone is calling your preflop raise, calling the flop, and shoving the turn. I have been the donk in the stack-a-donk game. I see it a lot when I review my play, and for some reason I am talking myself into big calls during the game.

Some of this is read-related, and I actually believe my calls have thin value...but the point is that when there is value, it's pretty thin. And realistically, I'm probably not doing as good a job as needed in making correct reads. So, what I think to be thin value is based on bad inputs, and it's not value at all. If the best I can hope for is to get thin value and the downside is that I'm crushed, I won't be making a big mistake in pitching more hands. Eventually, I'll need to be able to make those thin calls, but I'm not playing against the right players for it. I see that now. Will I see it when I play?

I've tried dropping a table or two, and it doesn't make any difference. Must be a psychological problem, a blind spot when playing. Or just stubbornness. Perhaps it is that I don't want to think that I'm getting run over in a game. Well, in all my posts, and all the posts I've read, no one has complained that they are just getting run over too much. It's all like me...spewing away too much or turning into a payoff monkey. OK, end of pep talk. Time to get out there and fold some more :).

Goals

Here's how I did on my December goals:

10,000 hands. Played just a little more than that.

Community participation. I did pretty good here, I guess there is always room for improvement. Strengths were pretty good blog updates and blog reviews. Did a couple of sweat/group sessions (would like to do more of those in Jan.). Forum participation was kind of spotty, but I did try to single out posts from my two main groups, and I think I responded to most of those, if they were in the Low Stakes forum. Biggest weak area was video reviews.

Review hands. I did a good job getting through the hands that I played, over 3/4 of them, going by day played. I am catching some things, but I am beginning to question how effective my self reviews are. I have a sense that there are a number of things I'm missing...perhaps that is what poor results will do to you.

Review showdown hands. I failed at this one. It's been several months in a row that I have wanted to do this and have not had the time. I think that I am just too busy with other stuff, and this one goes. I'll continue to think about it, but this may just be too ambitious right now. Barry suggested that I just pay attention when I review my own hands to get practice at this. I do, and I think it's a pretty important part of the review, so I will be satisfied with that for now.

Review 5 coaching videos. I did this one, and I mean seriously reviewed them with notes and pausing before they take a likely controversial action to work it out myself. That really helps get something out of them, but it makes it take a while. While there's a bunch of moaning on the CR forums about a lack of content, I can't keep up with it all if I really study. Between pauses, rewinds, and note taking, I would guess that it takes me over two hours to review a video typically. I'm now making enough in MGR to get free access to Stoxpoker (leave a comment if you want a referral for the same deal). They are utilizing a different format for some of their videos, basically giving lectures and made-up hands to illustrate concepts. I have to say that I really like that. I hope that Cardrunners takes that approach with some of their instructors as well.

Overall thoughts. From development standpoint, December was a good month. I didn't get to watch as many videos or participate in the forums as much as I would have liked. But I started reading a lot more blogs from all stakes, and there has been a lot of good food for thought. I also ordered a couple books I'm excited about. In general, I think that I am almost done laying a pretty darn solid foundation from which to expand. My 100NL results have not shown it, but I think I should be able to beat the low stakes pretty soon. My challenge has been, and will continue to be, balancing poker with all the other good things I've got going.

January Goals

• 10,000 hands. Seems I can reasonably hit this, although I would like to devote some time that I would normally play to some other activities. So, we'll see.
• Review hands. Same as before, I think the challenge is going to be to draw some actionable conclusions from the review, not just go through them. But in order to draw some sort of conclusion, you do have to get through them.
• Active study of 5 videos.
  
• Raise Won $ at Showdown. This one I'm less sure about, because it's a little out of my control, but I'd like to get this higher than it is now. I think what I can do to this end is not call down so thin. Hopefully general good play takes care of it...but it's one stat that has bothered me for a bit. I would accept a lower Won $ at Showdown number if I were being more LAG, but I'm trying to play pretty much ABC after the flop, for the most part, so I think that this should be higher.
• Finish one poker book. This is kind of a cheap one, because I'm already 2/3 done with Elements of Poker. But, it's still a good goal.
• Regular sweat sessions. Noel and I have been chatting about setting up some sweat sessions on alternate weeks, and hopefully that will take off. Noel is farther along with poker development and plays higher stakes than I, and I'm sure that I'll get a good amount of insight from his play and his advice, but I think I'll be able to hold my own as well, as someone to sweat him. It's a bit difficult for me to participate in sweat sessions, since I'm usually playing when the rest of the family has gone to sleep, and I'm trying to keep things quiet. But I feel it's a key part of improving.
  

I would have included coaching in this list, but I'm already finalizing a time with Verneer for our first 1 on 1 session, and he's busy enough right now, that monthly may be all he has time to do. That's probably not terrible for me anyway, as that would mean getting some coaching every 10k hands or so, which is not a huge gap between coaching sessions, compared to a lot of full-time players. If he has time for more frequent sessions, great. If not, this will still be a valuable start for me, I'm sure.

2008 goals

So, I've been chatting with a couple people about overall 2008 goals. I'm not sure what to think about as a reasonable goal besides continuing the general goals that I've set out. Get the hands in, keep actively trying to improve (as opposed to going through the motions), and keep poker appropriately balanced with the other stuff in my life. But those are pretty high level.

I've still got the desire, determination, and potential to improve, and I guess that's what it boils down to for a year-long goal. The methods to improve will probably not change much from a lot of my January goals. Where would I like to see that culminate? I guess at the least, I would like to be a solid mid-stakes player by the end of the year, including being able to withdraw a significant chunk regularly once I hit 200NL or 400NL, just for some fun money for the family. I don't like making $$ or win rate related goals, because I don't play enough volume to leave that goal unaffected by variance. Let's just say my goal is to play as well as a solid 3/6 regular and leave it at that. If that means I'm at 3/6 or beyond, fantastic. If not, hopefully I'll still have the enthusiasm for the game that I have right now.

December results

The pictures:


I did the graph in terms of big bets, since I split my play between 50NL and 100NL. The graph by amount won is worse, since my score at 100NL was much lower than my score at 50NL. Hit a rough patch in the beginning of the month...combination of bad cards and bad play.


In addition to these hands, I had a little over $400 profit in live play, and whatever my rakeback will be (not much, since less than half of these hands are on a rakeback account). Results wise, I'm not too thrilled, but I think overall my play was OK, especially later on in the month. No higher than B overall I think, though, so plenty of room for improvement.

My preflop raise is too low for my VPIP, but some of that was intentional -- experimenting with some cold calls in position -- and some of it was due to good game selection. By that I mean, I found myself on the button or in the BB with a multiway raised pot already, and I had the odds to call. This didn't happen a ton, but it doesn't have to over such a small sample for it to influence the stats.

My Won at Showdown is really low, and it has been low for quite a number of months. A while ago, I asked Verneer about how to raise it in general. He had some ideas, and also posted the question to the NL Theory forum. I've been thinking about this stat for a while, since mine is much lower than the norm a lot of the time. I've come to the conclusion that it could be telling me the following...and I'm not sure in what order this is:

1. I am calling too light on the river. I need to watch out how many hero calls I make, even after inducing bets by checking behind the turn. Of everything, this is probably the most actionable point, and it reinforces my opinion that I probably let myself be value bet too often, and give too good implied odds to good players.
2. I c-bet too much when I miss. They call, I give up, and their marginal hand beats me. I may need to look into seeing whether I can push more people off hands, but my won when saw flop is already decently high, so I think that way lies spew. The other adjustment is to not relentlessly c-bet, but I tend to rely on the fold to c-bet stat a lot, and will pretty much always c-bet someone folding more than 50% of the time, as that should show a profit if the stats are right.
3. I may be running cold. I would give a lot more credence to this if it were a blip. But in only one month since June has my Won at Showdown been over 50%. Even though my Went to Showdown is pretty low (this month's is the highest by far..it's consistently been around 21%), I consistently lose frequently at showdown.

Related to the low Won at Showdown, I think that my river aggression is a tad on the low side. Aba suggested in one of his vids that aggression by street should be like 5+, 4+, and 3+, and to shoot for a 2.5 river aggression. Of course, he's in different games, but whatever. The point is that I should likely be over 2, and the fact that I'm not supports the premise I'm calling down too light.


I am doing a good job staying disciplined (tight) in early position. I am playing too weak in late position. I don't think there's too much more to say about this. Somehow, I've got to start getting a bit more out of line in late position. But my button VPIP is about 2.5 times as high as my UTG VPIP, so it's not terrible.

2007 Summary of Sorts

Warning...tl;dr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A little live poker

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Holidays

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Black muddy river, roll on forever

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Playing Scared?

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

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



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

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

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

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

Supdate

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

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

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

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

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

Busy, busy, busy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Confidence and results

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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