Rolled On The River

I get pretty into certain computer games, and they sometimes stress me the hell out, I throw my headphones when I’m winning in Dawn of War 2 just to have my army wiped out by a carnifex because I looked away for a second, turning the tide of the whole game and causing me to lose. Like Call of Duty, Dawn of war, World of Warcraft, Counterstrike, Supreme Commander and a thousand other games I’ve played over the ages, Poker has the ability to stress the hell out of me. This is Tilt.

Tilt is the poker term for anything that causes you to go off your ‘A’ game. Bad beats and bad runs are a definite cause of tilt, and I’m a victim in this early stage of my poker life. I get thrown off this whole game because I’m new, I’m learning, and I’m losing. I’m a decent way in the red now and I’m getting easily stressed out by situations that shouldn’t occur. Finding an opponent beat you by raising J2 suited UTG for your whole stack when you had kings hurts. I’m told it’s better to be losing at the beginning, so you dont take loss later so hard and you don’t take winning for granted. I agree, and say ‘hey I’ve learned that lesson’, now can we get onto the winning?

I was recently talking to a friend of mine who is rather well off, and who used to play Poker recreationally quite frequently. Although he was ultimately a losing player, he didn’t mind losing a few hundred dollars on the weekend since he considered it to be ‘entertainment money’. Unfortunately, he is no longer interested in playing after a couple of heads up matches where his opponent decided that, in some way or other, verbal abuse gave him some hidden psychological edge.

As a collective, we should be promoting poker, as well as trying to create a fun atmosphere where one doesn’t need to understand every nuance and rule of the game in order to enjoy his or her self. When I was learning poker, and a total fish, I remember having a whole host of people willing to help me out, and to ensure that I was comfortable and enjoying myself. I’m seriously wondering if someone just starting out today would feel inclined to play through more than an orbit.

I really don’t mean to be so negative about this issue, but it seems like you can’t play at all lately without seeing somebody berating a player for their Ace high call on the river, making a snide comment about a poor pre-flop call with a hand like J2 offsuit, or making a scene when somebody pushes all in with a low pocket pair and sucks out.

If you are one of these people, please stop! If you see somebody making a play like this, relish the fact that, although you may have lost the hand to a poor player with poor cards, you made a winning decision and can be happy that the game of poker is alive and thriving. As for the age-old excuse that table talk will somehow cause your opponent to stack off against you lighter – nonsense! Any small temporary edge you’re gaining by tilting this opponent is offset by the fact that they’re more than likely to quit you earlier (increasing your chances of being hit and run), or won’t re-deposit once they’ve run through what they already have online. Instead, if you get sucked out, just reply with ‘nh’ and enjoy knowing that, although you lost your money, the chances having it returned are much better than if the TAG player down the road scooped the pot.

I’ve taken a new student on board who’s learning poker from the absolute ground up. This student is a real life friend of mine, who I’m staking and coaching for the long term. My coaching was under one condition: That he is to make 2-3 blog posts a week, as he progresses in knowledge, which will provide himself and others with a diary that shows a player’s progress from not even knowing the hand rankings correctly, to beating the mid-stakes online. The link to his blog is http://padawan.rolledontheriver.com – Enjoy!

Thinking like those who you are playing against is critical in this game, it’s easy to see why. What message is what I’m doing sending my opponent? Does checking the turn mean I’m weak, will he see this as an opportunity to put me on the back foot, or is he sure that he is behind and will be thankful for a free card? Everything seems like it needs to be considered all the way to the river if it is to be played effectively.

For example:

I have a weak hand, but good position, my continuation bet is called and my opponent is short stacked, does his stack give me good pot odds on my hand with my draws compared to the draws of the range I have put him on? If it’s a close call, I should put him all in now as his hand may not be good enough to continue in it’s current state to the river. I guess it’s this kind of thinking that gets poker players onto the big bucks. If I do a, and opponent does b, then his range will be narrowed down to c, and I can make a decision based on the next card, though, if the next card helps the majority of his range, and it’s likely it will, I can do d now to reduce his chance of seeing the next card.

I’m sure there have been instances when serious poker players have come up against absolute fish and not known it, stretching their intellect trying to wrap their head around a players line, attempting to break into their train of thought using psychology, maths, and logic only to find that the guy made a call because ‘he felt lucky’. I know the whole deal with playing poker proffessionally is you make a decision based on the outcome over the course of a billion hands, but it would still be great to see the guys face when he is all in after Billy-Joe Hicksbury rakes in all of his chips because he ‘liked threes’ or something of that ilk. To a smaller extent it goes for me too, what are these guys thinking, the guys I’m playing against, where is their head at? Are they playing with a bunch of stats on the wall like me, attempting to study every aspect of the hand, or are they half-watching Simpsons re-runs and talking on the phone, it would be good to know what I’m up against, but I guess I won’t so I have to get over it.

I guess this is poker…

One of the great perks of my position at StoxPoker is that I get to learn many different types of poker vicariously through the videos that I review, and also by chatting with various coaches. One of the games that I’ve been working particularly hard on lately is Pot Limit Omaha Hi. I posted quite an interesting hand from a session this week on TwoPlusTwo and StoxPoker, and thought I’d share the general feedback I received on the hand as I found it quite interesting. Enjoy!

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m doing my own hand reviews now, after I finish each session, I try to pick up on where I screwed up, and there’s lots of spots. I just hate making the same mistakes over and over, and making big ones that cost me, like basically losing 3 buy-ins in a row because I wasn’t fast enough to make the calculations I wanted to on each of the tables.

Skelm asked me ‘Why are random parts of your blog in bold’. I explained the bold was my basic learning review, so I, or anyone else remotely interested could skim through the blog and filter out the most useful information, I’ll continue with this trend since I think it’s an alright idea.

My biggest losses I don’t think I made too much of an error, I opened with KJo on the button, villain called, flop came Q9A giving me a flush draw and a straight draw, villain insta-shoved (31/7 with an AF of 6.0) , I expected to be facing Ax, AA, AQ, or A9, since I didn’t pair up, but was put on a flush and a straight draw, I called, turns out he had KT, and was also drawing to a straight turn was 6 and river was J, completing his straight and winning him almost a BI.

Second hand was a check in the BB with 4d 4h, flop came 4s Jc 9c, stupidly, I bet 10c in a 17c pot, not scaring off a flush draw, thinking I would scare off any TP hands. Turn comes Kc, really screwing me, putting 3 to a flush on the board not making the same mistake I put in 70c into the 37c pot, where, in hindsight I probably should have shoved, was called, river comes 6c, completing any 1 card flushes making my trips redundant, I checked (could have done better maybe here? I suppose pot control goes out the window when you are sure of second best, and you know you won’t fold flushes out on the micros with any amount of shoving), he bet the pot, I called, and lost to 5c 5s.

The next hand was KK, folding to a shove on an Axx board, think it was pretty standard, though I should probably scrutinize the values I VPIP, and see what message they are sending my opponents.

Those were my biggest losses, and I don’t think I played any of those hands HORRIBLY, though I do think some of my smaller losses were played horribly, anyway, another day, another loss, gotta work on getting my thought process in order, and folding good hands preflop if I’ve already got my stack in 2 other pots and need to concentrate.

What is proffessional poker about, if you could sum it up in one word? Well, what is proffessional ANYTHING about? Money.

I always wanted to articulate my feelings on my hate for the saying: ‘Money can’t buy happiness’. Because I’m here to convince you that it does.

The first question I’ll ask is, what makes you happy? What do you enjoy? What brings fun into your life? For me, I enjoy playing computer games, and riding freestyle BMX (you know, ramps and stuff). I’ve had to cut almost all of the latter out of my life because of work, takes me half an hour to get to the local skate park, which is usually filled with little scooter kids on weekends, and it’s dark if I get there before or after work on weekdays, so it’s basically something I dont get to do much anymore. The result is I’m out of shape and getting fatter. This is just one of a thousand problems more money in my life could solve.

Now I’m not saying money would solve all my problems instantly, but, if used correctly, it would solve 99.99% of them eventually. ‘What about those non material things?’ You ask, ‘What about love and friendship? You can’t buy those!’. True, but if a man with wealth enough to not work the rest of his life and an average Joe are both looking for friendship and love, who has the better chance of getting it? Average joe works 8.5 hours a day, breaks included, commutes to the city, taking 2 hours of his day, gets home, and collapses in front of the tv from exhaustion. Where the wealthy man can choose his time to go look for those things, he isn’t restricted to his 4 weeks a year holiday, weekends, or any of that, he can search for his true love any time he is awake, without consequence.

Money buys time, and the time buys the happiness for you. Unhappy with your body? Go exercise all day, in a gym, buy your own equipment and do it at home, whatever, get plastic surgery to fix the crooked nose you have from falling off the swingset when you were eight. If the money has no strings attached, meaning you aren’t a business CEO with shareholders to answer to, you are free to chase any dream you want! The best part is you don’t have to change your life if you don’t want to, leave it in a bank if you are happy where you are in life, as I’m sure never having to worry about being able to afford rent this week couldn’t be counted as a happiness-breaking emotion.

Time is life, people regret working every day until they are unable to, never being able to take a break, being forced to make decisions that would be much easier if they had financial backing. Any problem faced by a rich man will seem trivial to a poor man, rich man misses his flight, arrives at the Bahamas a day late, poor man misses his flight, he misses his job interview, the job, and has to sell his house. Most countries in Africa are well below the poverty line, with children dying on the way to get water, do you think anything you or I could say, could make them shed a tear for us? Probably not, as everything they are facing could be fixed with cash, and we have that cash. Ignorance of the global crisis aside, selfishly, I want money for me, because It would fix that 99.99%, and the 0.01% would be negligible, things like terminal illness.

If your happiness is in a hobby, travel, meeting people, meeting the love of your life, or friendship, money gives you ample time and opportunity outside of ‘the grind’ to do it.

The sky is the limit!

Wait, Richard Branson isn’t a trained astronaut?

$

Still doing many things wrong, still screwing up heaps, but it’s to be expected, I’m sure I’ll eventually play the way I want to. I need to shut everything out when I play, no music, nothing, just the poker, or else I’ll make stupid mistakes and cost myself money, and get slapped on the wrist by Skelm.

Did another hand review with a sweat session, seems I’ve got a bit of FPS (fancy play syndrome), taking an elaborate path which leads to nothing good, as opposed to doing something with a singular purpose and a straightforward reason behind it. Slowplaying something non premium until I let myself get drawn out, and attempting to represent something else, or just trying to out-think someone who is obviously going ‘ooohhh top pair, i win good!’.

But, as always, I’m learning and, hopefully moving forward, have to also stop looking at my graph during games, distracting myself, it can lead to no good, really.

The hand review definitely helped my game, I havn’t stopped doing all the stupid things I do, but at least I can identify them and control the damage they inflict on me. I have 5 little pieces of paper currently stuck to my wall, all of which I conceived and created. I’m sure others have done it, but I wanna take some credit

Two of them are basically a print out of the pokerstove preflop hand window, in which I’ve highlighted the preflop ranges of 0% – 50% using a different colour for each in an increment of 5%, and 0% to 20%, which is the most common range, at an increment of 2%, not really a law, but more of a little guide to help get to know the pre flop ranges by checking someones PFR.

Just a snippet of how I’m using certain Aides to help me.

My first hand review was tonight, since I’ve been playing a fair bit now, it has become imperative that me and Skelm go over the decisions I’m making, so we can improve upon my strategy. My mistakes are plentiful, my reasoning is full of holes, and I’m just damn sloppy. These are my words, as I see my mistakes and feel kind of embarrassed when Skelm says: ‘uh, so what were you thinking here, what is your reasoning behind this?’.

I feel like a kid that has been throwing fruit around the playground, having been pulled aside by a teacher to admire the black and blue eye socket of a small child resulting from a rather hard peach and a good right arm. ‘Johnny, why did you do it?’ ‘I-unno miss, seemed fun at the time’. ‘Well, look at Billys eye… look at it! Are you going to explain this to his parents?’ ‘Sorry miss….’ I would say with my head down, masking the pain of the enraged teacher tightly gripping my arm. ‘Don’t say sorry to me, say sorry to Billy.’ ‘Awww….. *grumble* sorry Billy…’.

Yes, sorry Billy indeed, I feel just as stupid sitting there looking at a page full of red, a page of line after line of loss, luckily Skelm didn’t see much out of the ordinary, he thought a lot of what I did was solid, and that a few errors were a catalyst that were to bring the hand undone, and my damage control AFTER royally screwing myself wasn’t too bad either, so I guess I’m hard on myself.

I’m supposed to be tight aggressive, though I’m a little too passive at the moment, my opening raises aren’t big enough to bring about their intention, folding out weak and drawing hands, keeping strong hands in. So bringing in the rule: 4x BB for any hand that I’m opening with (opening hands are based on position) +1bb for every limper in the pot, as limping hands are generally drawy hands or good hands passively played. Drawy hands that hit usually blitz preflop pairs, and give the higher hands trouble, so getting them folded preflop with a ‘hey, if you want to go in with this crap, you are paying your way first’.

I also don’t go all in without having very close to the nuts, I’m a scaredy cat. Scaredy cats aren’t aggressive, therefore I’m as they say ‘doing it wrong’. Calling should be your least clicked button as a Tight aggressive, hell even the words ‘tight aggressive’ show that, tight meaning we fold hands that get us in trouble, aggressive means we are betting for fold equity or value, not calling, showing weakness to someone elses aggression. AGGRESSIVE…. Rawr.

Never minraise, make it 3x original raise, that was another note I made, why am I minraising? Haha, I clicked the raise button, now what are you going to do? It’s not a threat, it’s not a message, if they have a hand they think is best they will reraise, if they have a hand they think is decent, they will call, the pressure needs to be put on all draws to fold, and all those with a doubt whether they are best or not to fold as well.

And finally, considering the stack to pot ratio. I don’t look at stacks often enough, as evident by my stupid decisions ‘ok ill bet 3/4 of the pot here as a continuation bet and do the same on the next street…. oh, 3/4 the pot was 3/4 of his stack… and he hit that draw card he might not have called had it put him all in… damn. This goes along with aggression, but also just dividing the other players’ pot into chunks, and planning the future streets. Anyway, that’s what I have learned tonight.

Ok, now to check all this for spellign and grammar errors’. TLDR.

<3