More coaching

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What would you ask a coach before signing up?

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

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

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

Motivation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bad hand, cool object

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

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

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

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

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

Here's the Permalink, just in case.

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

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

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

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

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

Standard?

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

OK, consider this situation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LOL Full Tilt Doomswitchaments

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

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

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

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

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

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

March Summary

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


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


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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

Why do we write about bad beats?

Noel left this comment on a prior entry: "Bad beats have no place in our thoughts. Only poor decisions. We cant control suckouts we can only control our decisions."

He's right, of course, and I think that we all know this. Many of us, including me, have said something along these lines in our blogs at one time or another, and then not too soon afterwards, a bad beat (or a cooler, or whatever...I'll refer to the whole category as beats) creeps in. On the major poker forums, they've created specific forums to bitch about beats because otherwise they fill up the strategy forums. I think that BBV has more traffic than the strategy forums on 2p2!

So, if we all know we're not supposed to worry about them, why do we write about them? It's one thing to steam over them at the table....we're not supposed to do that either, but it's obviously difficult sometimes to shrug off the bad things right as they happen. But for the most part, we don't write blogs as we're playing (well, we shouldn't!). We write them afterwards, when we should have had some time to decompress, at least a little, from the specific hands in the session.

I think there are a number of reasons we write about them, to varying degrees of benefit. Not that there's a complete list below, but here are some reasons.

Therapy. This is probably the "best" reason. We're trying hard to not let beats affect our play, but if they do, we need to minimize the impact to whatever extent we can. Venting about something that happened to you helps you get over it. If writing about a beat somewhere (blog, forum, AIM) helps you put it behind you more quickly, then it's good to do that. In parallel, we should work on not letting beats affect us in the first place...but once they do affect you, it's time to minimize the damage. Sometimes, just writing about them is enough to let them go. Sometimes, it helps to get some empathy back...we've all been there, you're not alone, etc.

Education. Another "good" reason. Obviously when your aces go all in against kings preflop and a king spikes, it's a bad beat. Or if your kings go up against aces and the aces hold, it's a cooler. But some spots are not so clear, and we write about them to get feedback that we really didn't make that bad of a play, because when we lose a few big pots, we question ourselves and lose confidence. We want to make sure that we're not playing incorrectly. I've written before that one of my biggest fears in my own poker development is that I'm not recognizing my own bad play, and just chalking things up as coolers and suckouts. Most of us need to take more accountability for our results, I guess a few here and there need to take less, but in any event resolving confusion about bad play vs. bad beat does help to calibrate the amount of accountability we should take.

Entertainment. Some people like reading about bad beats (for a number of reasons...maybe the subject of a different post?). Others of us like providing content that people like to read. I guess some people feel genuinely amused at what other players are capable of, and so write for their own entertainment, too. Or it could be related to therapy in the sense that you're either going to laugh or cry/scream/break a mouse.

Proof. I wasn't sure what to call this reason, actually. The idea is that the writer wants to prove that he's really not that bad a player...that without these freak occurrences, they'd win more and maybe play at higher stakes by now. The old, "I'm losing, but it's just variance" mentality. We want see ourselves and have others see us as good players, in spite of negative results. I'm sure that's one of the reasons I write about them sometimes (...took a shot at 200NL, but you wont' see me there because I took too many beats...I would still be there if I weren't so unlucky...sound familiar?).

The funny thing here is that I personally don't believe I've ever read anything about a bad beat that made me think more of the writer as a good player. If I thought they were nothing special before, I thought it afterwards. If I thought they were good before, I probably still thought they were good afterwards...although there are a couple guys I've probably downgraded my opinion of them after reading one too many bad beat stories with nothing to counter it. I doubt that I am alone in that regard.

A related funny thing happens when we write about the beats to prove that we're really not that bad, sometimes. We end up getting an education. How many times have you written or read a bad beat post in which someone comes back and says, "OP, you played that hand horribly!"

Well, that was quick

LOL, Friday night fun. 4 BI given back, and back down to 100NL I suppose...not because of the play, but more because FT reactivated the doomswitch. I definitely was not playing timidly in big pots. I think I spewed some, but nothing horrendous...more just not hitting flops, and hoping 40/10 guys are going to fold to c-bets.

But the biggest hands were simply bad luck...ran ATcc into KK on a jack-high club flop, AK into a spew-happy fish on AJ93K board (he had QT), and my favorite...I've got J9 on a T87 flop, and the guy calls a PSB on the flop and turn with T3. Unfortunately the turn and river are both 8's, so his boat gets there :(. I checked the river behind, saving something, at least.

There were a few other hands in there, but those were the 3 biggest, and accounted for 2.5 BI, and just some tough luck. So, it's back to 100NL, but with the confidence that I can beat 200NL. Trying lessons with 2 or 3 coaches, so the timing is good in terms of getting some help to make the transition successfully.

Got a busy weekend with the family, if I'm pokering, it will only be here and there. Hope to have a more productive (poker) week next week.

Woot! for me too :)

Saw on Rasputin's blog that his Harrington books arrived at his local post office this AM. The last update I got on my tracking was that it hit my local mail center last night. I assume that means they're waiting for me when I get home!

Played a decent amount over the weekend and first couple days this week, including a shot at 200NL that worked out well. It helped that I made my 2nd ever 5-bet bluff preflop with 66 110BB effective and sucked out on AA.

I got a lesson there and not even for cheap. And it wasn't a don't spew lesson, either (I had a read and the table dynamics actually supported my play, I think). It was that I probably don't run enough big bluffs, at least for when I move up. I say that because I felt really really dumb when the cards came up and everyone could see I 3-bet/pushed 66. But I liked, and still like now, the play at the time.

Rather than feeling dumb, I think that I should have expected to lose when called, but that I would get away with it enough, as well as fold out some better hands enough...and that this is literally the 2nd time I 5-bet/shoved without AK, QQ+ in like 100,000 hands. And the other time *was* tilt. So, this time, even if my decision was wrong, it was a calculated decision and I should feel OK with it (and analyze it later), and I clearly am not bluffing a lot. I also think that's fine 100NL and below, maybe also 200NL, but at some point with all the reraised pots, I am going to need to shove at least once in a while with hands other than the super premium ones, just so that when I do shove with AA, there are a couple other hands that might call me. Like I'm pretty sure that if this 8-tabling regular takes any notes, he's going to note the donkey who shoved 66 into him.

One related, semi-random thought. Although true in a number of sports, I saw this most clearly when I played lacrosse: the guys that play aggressively (but not recklessly) and initiate contact get dinged frequently, and the guys standing on the periphery of a play either passively or protecting themselves get clocked. I wonder how closely you could make a poker analogy from that.

Software development

For the last week, things have been busy as usual, but I have been able to play quite a bit (for me). Been in the midst of a couple different software design exercises, and we have a significant milestone this week as we present our ideas for some new functionality.

I'm guessing not a lot of you are that familiar with enterprise software, as you don't really get too exposed to it without either building it or working in IT for a large company/university/government, etc. Unlike websites and more consumer-oriented software, our software's major releases take years (literally), cost us millions of dollars to build, and will usually cost our customers tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade (and way more to implement for the first time). It sounds insane, but the cost savings/revenue generation for our customers handily makes up for their costs, and of course they money they pay us makes up for our costs. There may be a better business model for large organization's software, but we haven't seen it in practice.

With so much on the line, and because there are such high costs to start over if we get it wrong, it's really important to work hard on the up front phases of development to get it right, and that's where my big project is at right now. When it's my turn to deliver a piece that other people depend on, everything else has to stop, or at least take a distant back seat.

Over time in my career, I've gone from the guy figuring out the details to being the guy who drives the features and the project. It's nice because I'm able to set the general themes and control a broad part of the software and of the business. It's unfortunate because I actually like figuring out the details...but it's difficult to be an architect, people manager, project manager, functionality/usability "visionary", and developer all at the same time. You try to do too much, and rather than doing anything really well, you end up doing a lot of things like crap.

Over the years, I've acquired a bunch of expertise across the software development board. There's really not much about sofware development -- enterprise software, anyway -- that I don't know pretty well. Sure, there are some programming languages I don't know, as it's been a while since I've actually coded anything. I'm really talking about at the conceptual level, I know a fair amount. It's not really in conceit that I say that, more just that I've seen a ton. I've lost track of the number of projects and release cycles that I've been through, and I've taken on tons of different roles. Like poker, you can read about software development practices, which helps establish a framework, but there is no substitute for experience.

It's really rare these days that I actually come up against a problem that I haven't faced before. The settings are different, but usually I find some sort of parallel to what I've done before, and I know what works and what doesn't to solve it. One of the fun things about it is finding those parallels when they might not be immediately obvious.

I'm not really sure where this entry came from...I was going to give a quick update on how things are going in poker, and I started getting off course (and I've got to get back to my project). I have periodically thought about chucking the software career for something else, which causes me to re-evaluate how happy I am doing what I do...and the answer always ends up being pretty happy with it, all things considered.

Maybe I didn't want to jinx anything, as the good results last week have caught up with what I feel has been solid play over the last month or so. I'll try to get something else written about that soon. At least after last night, I no longer have to worry about anything I write stopping a win streak :P.

FPS Tilt

I'm making my way through The PokerMindset, and what would any book on the mindset of poker be without a section devoted to tilt. FWIW, the book is solid, but at about 2/3 of the way through, I don't think I've really learned anything...most of the ideas it contains I've read many times on the forums or on blogs. It's not really causing me to approach anything in a different way, but had I not spent so much damn time reading about poker on the Internet, I think it would be a really good book for me. Definitely a kind of tactical approach to the mental side of poker, and I can't think of anything in there I don't agree with.

But they did coin a nice term: FPS Tilt (if you don't know, FPS stands for Fancy Play Syndrome). The idea behind it is that if you're playing too cute (especially if you don't need to), you are on a subtle type of tilt. I definitely agree with it, and find myself doing it pretty frequently. Usually, it's slow playing a big hand, or just trying too much to induce bluffs. The thing that makes it bad for me is simply that I should know that my game conditions don't warrant doing a lot of this.

For instance, inducing a bluff with a good hand is correct when someone will bet with a loser more often than they will call with it. But at the low stakes, people call way too much, so why not let them do it? That's not to say never induce a bluff, but you should only want to do that if you're pretty sure that they won't call a bet, not if they just might not call.

I used to think that a classic bluff induction spot is with a showdownable hand OOP on the river after draws on the flop don't get there. Like let's say you raise TT in the CO, the button calls, you're HU, and the flop comes Qs 4s 2c. You bet, he calls. Turn blanks. You bet, he calls. River blanks. Against a lot of guys, I suppose check/calling the river is best because if their draw missed, they'll fold if you bet, but they might bluff. And if they had you, the pot stays small. But what I'm starting to see more, or at least being aware of it more, is that the guys who don't like to semibluff their draws on the flop with a raise don't necessarily bet the river on the end as a bluff to take it down. And on the other hand, guys are happily picking off my river bets with 55 here, whether I'm bluffing or not.

My point is that although each situation kind of stands on it's own, I feel that I particularly am looking too much at times for the clever play, and one that actually requires my opponents to be thinking on maybe a little higher level than they actually do (maybe than I actually do :P). Without a clear read that the fancy play is actually the +EV play, I don't think I should be looking to do it as much. I don't think at 100NL I need to worry too much about being too readable, or anything like that. Anyone that's good enough to really read me probably is too good to stay at 100NL for very long, anyway. And if I see them when I move up to 200NL, then maybe I can worry about getting read :).

OK, here's an actual hand...maybe it's FPS tilt, maybe it's a decent play, and maybe it's a decent play until the river, and then I missed value. Villain is pretty unknown (only 25 hands), running 24/0/5 -- small sample, yeah yeah.

http://weaktight.com/129958

I was discussing this hand with Aaron, and while he was cool with the flop call, he thought I should bet the turn. I argued that similar to the flop, I didn't really want to blow him off a hand that was not drawing well. Yeah, he could have picked up some draws with that turn, but I thought more that he either had a made hand on the flop or was just stabbing. If he did pick up a draw on the turn, I thought that a lot of my raises push him off, and that he may still be encouraged to bluff the river if I just call again, and also if a lot of money goes in, it's probably not going to be good for me.

But what if that was just FPS tilt? Here's a guy who by early stats is not that good, he's open completing in SB vs. BB, and he's weak-leading a pretty dry flop. Weak ace anyone? How do I know that he's going to fold it? Maybe I should be making the straightforward play and raise the flop or turn.

Also, what do you think about my river call, given the way I played the hand? Time for a raise at that point, or do I only get looked up by better?

A big call

Played some on Saturday and Sunday nights, both nights on the early side. I usually play after midnight (really 1:00) EST because I live in California and don't play until the family is asleep. I got on earlier than usual, and all I can say is that I wish I could play more during prime time :P. That's not to say I won this weekend (I didn't), but the games looked really good compared to my usual times.

I had one hand that cost me a profit for the weekend. At the time, I wasn't that mad at myself, but reviewing it later, I thought that I played it pretty poorly and incorrectly just chalked it up to a cooler. At least it didn't tilt me too badly.

I was on a great table, but unfortunately not catching many cards until I picked up KK in the SB with 100 BB effective stacks. A very loose (but running like a god) MP limps, a 32/22 assumed regular on the button over-limps, and I bump it to $6. The limpers call.

Flop comes Q96 rainbow. MP has a fold-to-cbet percent of like 7, and then pounces on weakness on the turn and river. So, I figure I can make a PSB on the flop, even though it's pretty dry. I think that's OK. Of course, MP folds. The lagtard button pushes, giving me (a little) worse than 2:1 odds to call.

I thought at first that he was bluffing a ton here, even such a large overshove. But I hadn't seen him yet get it in, and one of the reasons I liked playing with him is that I could 3-bet on him quite profitably when he opened from MP or CO. The other thing is that in spite of 3-betting him somewhat light, I have been playing really nitty in general these days, like 17/14 seems to be my typical session...and I'm not actually squeezing or stealing a ton either. (Those are separate issues which I really need to look at, but that's for another post.)

So with all that said, what is he shoving? Set of queens is out, as is likely any set, since I think he's probably isolating the limper with any PP. In fact, it's hard to put him on much since he would isolate light. A lot of his semi-bluffing hands are out because I've got 2 kings, but maybe JT. I don't *think* he'd shove with his likely pair hands (KQ and AQ are probably getting raised pre), and probably not with 9 or 6. The thing is, he was somewhat unknown, doesn't show down a lot, does fold plenty on early streets, and I'm likely to be WA/WB (open-ender not withstanding).

The range that I can put him on is really pretty narrow for this play, given what I've seen of him so far. Add to that, I should have lots of better spots later with my position on him. Add to that, how many times have you seen a regular -- even a bad one -- overshove as a bluff. I mean it happens I'm sure, but I don't think that's what 100NL regulars are doing too much.

So, I think this was a bad call. I will say that you could make a case for it, but I don't think you can make a great one. Turns out he had Q6o and it held. Hopefully that's besides the point. In other words, hopefully the fact that I lost the hand doesn't change the analysis.

When we talk about running bad and getting coolered, how many times are our coolers really just poorly played hands that we didn't realize? Had I not gone back over this hand and really looked at it closely, I would have characterized the session as down a little over a BI with some coolers (actually KK was a huge loser for me this weekend: once against AA for 65bb, once against AK for a stack where the ace hit, and once when I had AA and got it in, but the other guy's KK hit).

And that's just for this one hand, that I happened to catch. I'm sure there are a number of hands out there where I shrug it off, and in reality there are problems. That stuff aside, I'm feeling pretty comfortable with my game, which is one good thing about a 17/14 style. I'm giving up a ton of opportunity, but I'm not finding myself in a whole ton of awkward spots, at least past the flop. I'll have to fix that right up!

Actually played

Quick break between meetings, hopefully that limits me to a quick post. I got to play a couple times this week, which for me is a rarity these days. I feel like my game is solid, if unimaginitive, for the most part, although I am still being a nit preflop...17/14, and only attempting steals 27% of the time. I am however, opening up my 3-betting and even 4-betting range (as bluffs and for value) a lot. I'm 3-betting 13% of the time, which means I'm definitely doing so with air. I pick my spots against really active stealers, but in part that's why I'm choosing to stay tight otherwise.

In some of Taylor's old videos, I remember him saying that he will tighten up his preflop raising and compensate by opening up his 3-bet range. Not that the 100NL game is like the games he was showing, but the principle is the same. Until HUDs with 3-bets become more prevalent, my opponents will just see that I don't raise a lot, and that I'm pretty nitty. In fact, it's how I probably misperceive some of them as well, and it's not until you see the stats later that you realize it's disproportionately weighted to 3-bets.

Anyway, I'm playing a little bit more to stay out of trouble postflop and to play perhaps more defensively than I had been playing. I'm not winning as big as I might, but the variance is lower. From a psychological standpoint, I think that's good for me, as I have been in a pretty wild up and down mode for a few months now. For my last 33k hands at 100NL (which is most of them), I am a whopping .5 BB/100 winner. Hey, at least the number is green, not red.

Matt (schlucky1) happened to be online one night when I was firing up a session, and he gave me a nice sweat. I had a nice little session, but he did turn me on to one area that after thinking about it, I agree with him I've got a pretty decent leak. That is playing medium hands OOP against an aggressive player. I forget the exact hand, but I had something like 88 on a moderate board, OOP to a pretty loose passive player. On the turn, I checked and he bet kind of small. I said that I would call one street, since he was passive I didn't expect him to bet the river again unless he beat me.

The key thing is that I said I would have check/folded against an aggressive player because he would have bet the river if he bet the turn, making it too expensive to call on the turn. I now think I have that wrong, assuming I can trust an aggressive-player read. Matt talked about hitting a middle pair on the flop against a really aggressive player, and pretty much calling all 3 streets as a default plan, as the blindly aggressive player is going to make more mistakes betting than anything. Of course you need to be confident in your read, but the point is that you should not be looking to check/fold hands with showdown value against an aggressive opponent, even OOP. Whereas I am probably playing more to not make a (theoretical) mistake OOP.

[Edit after schlucky clarified: He did not say to call down all the time OOP...by "default" I meant that his plan against that particular player was to call down a hand with showdown value, and he stuck to the plan. My plan would be to pitch the hand because an aggressive player would make me pay on more than one street. This could be flop-to-river, but more of the time it's turn-to-river or flop-to-turn. The point still stands that for me, I was too quick to pitch too many really good bluff catchers due to being OOP. While being OOP sucks, you still need to use your opponents' ranges and tendencies correctly. At least I think I got it now :P.]

That's the sort of thing that comes up in sweats/coaching that you don't get from just reviewing things yourself because you don't even realize that there's a different way to view things. I'm finding it hard to get in a coaching session. Wish I had more time for sweats, but c'est la vie. I'm still making improvements, just not leaps and bounds. In the long run, anyway, it's a good thing it's not easy.

Played really bad today

Everything went left. I guess it's because I haven't played very much this year, but my swing has no groove at the moment, and I'm standing up/coming out of just about every shot. It really sucks because my preshot routine seems very solid to me. For the most part, it feels like I'm getting a decent backswing, but I know a couple of them, I kind of stopped short...one problem have is when I'm trying to relax during the swing, I just get really lazy in the backswing. Anyway, most of the problems are on my downswing, as I feel myself coming out of the shot for some reason. I compensate by lunging with my right shoulder, and the shot just gets screwed. If there was a greenside bunker on the left, I was in it today (luckily, my sand game was actually pretty good).

My short game was maddeningly inconsistent. I had a bunker shot and a chip both lip out and a couple more chips burn the edge of the cup. But I also chunked a ball into the bunker trying to flop it, and left another short pitch short of the green. I did drain one clutch putt to halve a hole, but I also 3-putted two holes in a row, one of which was really costly. My reads really sucked hard. But hey, at least I got out there, which has definitely not been happening much for me lately.

And unfortunately probably won't for the near future, as basketball winds up and baseball is already in gear (coaching, not playing). This will be the first year I've formally coached baseball, having only really helped out on game day the last couple years...and mostly then just keeping things organized. It's kind of interesting to start learning about baseball fundamentals, which if I ever knew them as a kid, I forgot over the years. For one thing, as I've been researching drills for the kids, I realized that I have been throwing a baseball wrong. Not radically, but there are some things we are going to teach the kids that I didn't know myself. LOL.

I don't have much of an update for poker. I *think* I got in about 7,000 hands this month, but I've lost a bunch switching between PT2 and PT3, upgrading to PostgreSQL 8.3 (from 8.0!), and re-installing PT3. Although PT3 now shows me basically even for the month, I'm pretty sure that I'm about $200 down. The beginning of the month was pretty bad (running and some bad play), then I got it back to even, then went through a quick but massive down spike where I played OK but got coolered more than anything else...and at the same time didn't cooler anyone else myself...I think I had like 2,000 hands where the biggest profit I made on a hand was 40BB, and in the same time lost a lot of big pots, but in a reasonable way KK into AA type of hands. The last little bit of the month, I came out of that a little and kind of won as many coolers as lost, and even had AK suck out on KK once!

I have not done a great job reviewing my hands, worst that I've done in quite a while. It's mostly like 10 or 15 minutes at the end of about half my sessions. I blogged earlier in the month about not believing I study that effectively, and that had something to do with it. Also, work has gotten a whole lot busier, and my usual pattern had been to play until I had to stop in the evening, waiting until the next day to diligently review the prior night's session. That worked well when I had time the next day. I haven't worried about it too much, as I think I might have been overstudying, if that is possible. By that I mean going into study autopilot, much like you can go into autopilot at the tables.

When I did have some time, I finally got PT3 up and running, along with a couple different HUDs. I did a beta test for a new HUD called Poker Observer, and also used the AHK HUD that "comes with" PT3, meaning you can get it on the PT3 forum. Both have some good points to them, and both forced me to think about some new stats available in PT3 compared to PT2. Seeing how often someone 3-bets -- if the sample size is decent -- is pretty helpful. There were a couple times I 4-bet as a semi-bluff with a lot of confidence But for the most part, poker is still poker, and the main things I was looking for were VPIP, preflop raise, and aggression. Not that my tables don't look like Christmas trees with all the stats on them, but I just don't have enough hands for them to be completely reliable a lot of the time.

More valuable was that I looked through my own stats at the same time, using the SQL that the AHK HUD uses, and thought about what those stats were telling me about my game. The good news is that I think my stats...not just VPIP, PFR, and AF, but even some more obscure ones...paint a pretty solid picture. I have some that border on too tight for sure, and maybe a tad weak in other cases, but nothing that looks glaringly wrong. I really believe that stats are only part of the story, and in a lot of ways, not even that important...but they can at least indicate that you have some really bad problems. In other words, if you have a lot of poor stats, you are really likely to be a poor player. You can still be a poor player with good stats, but you can also be a good player. And at least my stats are good.

Looking forward, the big thing I need to change is watching videos. I have gotten very very little out of Cardrunners the last several months, and it's no one's fault but my own. I have replaced the videos with blogs (reading and writing), talking poker with some other guys, and the odd sweat here and there, so it's not like I'm ignoring the videos for no good reason -- those other things are really good, and really important. But I think that there's still some great stuff to be gleaned from the vids, and I need to start getting back into them.

It's been a while since I've had anything other than a lackluster month, results-wise. I just kind of keep treading water, breaking even playing more or less, profiting from rakeback. I need to find the best way to study, and also tie in videos and sweats, with limited time. I've reconciled myself to the fact that I just don't have as much time as most of you to devote to poker. The fact that I've reconciled myself to it is good, because I'm not putting a needless load of frustration on myself about it -- which I've done in the past. And I'm not complaining about it either because the things that take me away from poker (and golf) are mostly family related, which in the long run is as +EV as you can get. So that part is all good. But it doesn't excuse me from doing the best with what limited time I do have. I guess that part of it...the how to do the best with what you have...is where I'd really love to have a mentor/someone who has been through it and figured it out. On the flip side, I'm not that far away from figuring it out, and perhaps I'll be able to kind of guide someone else later :).

Man...I need to figure out how to do more frequent shorter posts. All right guys, thanks for reading. Good luck, talk to you later.

Not much poker, maybe that's OK

Life isn't leaving a lot of time for poker this month, either playing or studying. I'm bouncing all around over only 4400 hands, and the results have not been there for me. The first 1900 hands were pretty brutal, and I think my play sucked, plus I was getting cold-decked. I was running about as nitty and passive as I ever have. In the past, whenever I have played poorly, it hasn't been so scared throughout all streets...more like spewing on the early streets and paying off like a fish on the big streets. But for the first 1900 hands this month, it was 16/12, stealing on 24% of the time. Some of that was just running cold over a somewhat small sample, but still there were spots that dictated more aggressive play based on the game texture, and also that's a pretty big gap between VPIP and PFR for such a low VPIP. I then quickly climbed out of a 4 BI hole for the month, and even though I wasn't the paragon of aggression in that stretch, it still picked up a bit.

Since then, over a paltry 2100 hands, I gave it right back, and then some, dropping 6 BI over that short time. It has been interesting as I've been going through my big losses. For the most part, I actually feel my play has kind of snapped back to solid play from where it was the last month and a half. I will be interested to maybe do a full PT review of those 2100 hands with someone...get in touch with me if you feel like dissecting a downwards spike with me.

There have been relatively few really big losing hands...but a crap ton of medium pots. But in going through those, I see mostly that things just aren't working out, and I'm actually making reasonable bets...then just getting played back at and giving people credit. Since one of my bad habits is not giving people credit, if I am letting myself get pushed off marginal best hands, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world...and that's what I think a good PT review will confirm -- or maybe deny.

On a related note, I've begun to really question how effective I am at my own self reviews. For the last several months, I've been really good about reviewing them, OK about getting some feedback on tough hands, but poor in using those reviews to actually plug holes. Maybe my expectations of what I'll get out of my own reviews are flawed. I asked my coach for some pointers, and if any of you have some ideas about how to translate self review into better play, I'm all ears. It's one thing to make the time to study, but it needs to lead to different play, at least over time, and I'm not sure that's happening for me.

On the personal front, there is some sort of flu raging through my kids' school and now through our house. I had it last week for a couple days (Friday and Saturday of a holiday weekend >:( ). That's another reason I didn't play, as I was totally wiped out and mentally fuzzy. Instead, I slept a lot and kept myself loaded up on liquids and Advil. Today my son is laid up with an even worse fever. It spiked over 104 today, and is now a little under 102. Pediatricians confirmed it's going around, and we shouldn't be worried, but we'll bring him in to the doctor's office tomorrow if he still has a fever. Sorry for the downer ending, but I'm sure he'll be better tomorrow after sleeping it off a ton today and tonight.

I'm Back

Had a lot of fun on a ski trip with my dad. Crappy internet was actually a blessing, as it left me with no conflicts just kind of hanging out with Dad, which we don't get to do much. He goes to bed a couple hours before I do, and I would have liked to have logged some hands, etc. then, but whatever. There was a decent storm the couple days before we went, and the first couple days were winter skiing...then the rest of the time was like spring skiing. Lake Tahoe at its best, IMO....but you have to know how to get through "Sierra cement" if you want to have the most fun. Fat skis or a snowboard make that a lot easier than when I was growing up, too many years ago.

I've got a crapload of stuff to get caught up on, having been out of it for a week. Hundreds of emails from work, a lot of which actually need thoughtful response. New deliverables I need to create plans and progress tracking against. Tons of personal email, blog entries, forum posts, etc. Oh yeah, and a couple basketball teams to resume coaching.

I'll try to start checking back in on blogs, but probably not until closer to the end of the week. Sorry about that! But I will at least get caught up on posts so I know what's going on.

Also, to the study group, I'll be back in that loop later this week or early next week...looking forward to some PT reviews or sweat sessions, but again I've got to get unburied.

As far as poker, I have actually played 2,400 hands, and am up a whopping .85! I won 4BI in my last 421-hand session, so it could be worse. I need to go back through my notes from a couple weeks ago. I'm sure my next session will be pretty rusty. My stats suck...very weak/nitty, so maybe "rusty" won't be all bad...but anyway, I've been much more worried about postflop than preflop lately.

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!