Rolled On The River

Awesome session, did basically all of it with Skelm watching over my shoulder throwing hints and slapping me upside the head where appropriate. Queens were my lucky card tonight, as I hit my hands on the river with queens not once, twice, but three times. Was a definite underdog for all three, won about $75 (3BI) from them and ended the session up by about $50 from 800 hands.

Still having to watch my bet sizing, picking my spots to shove, and not acting like I’m playing with scared money, but yeah a good session overall. I guess this is what I’m doing it for, trying to get to a point where winning is a constant thing, but always learning at the same time.

I downloaded and installed SpadeEye, a handy little table search tool, I like the way you can custom define all your parameters and single out tables with the most fish on them for you to play on. Don’t know how much of an effect this has had on my game so far, since I’ve only played 800 or so hands while using it, but I’m sure it’s a silent asset.

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Please sign the petition and help everybody to be heard! If you didn’t catch the link in the entry you can find it by clicking here.

I’m watching videos, Skelm is playing at my stake to get a feel for it to assist me, and I’ve been getting a few hands in, so far with Skelms help it’s been break even, but still a pretty small sample size, but I’ve been learning. I’ve also been lurking in the 2+2 small stakes forums a lot more, havn’t made a post on the site yet, will do eventually when I have something of significance to crontibute. Significance from me is a rare thing, hell, it might not even exist.

The good thing about poker is there’s not always a right thing and a wrong thing to do, it’s all painted in greyscale and you can take artistic liberties wherever you want, a lot of those choices aren’t profitable, and in this quest for knowledge, you really want to find profit wherever you can, maximising opportunities for your opponent to make mistakes while minimising your own. I was watching an Ed Miller video showing how using information obtained through training videos and the like can be misused and it struck me, there’s really never going to be the same situation twice. This game is both infinite and evolving, as you will never get the same hand, position, opponents, opponent stats, opponent histories and sample sizes twice. The average player is slowly becoming better at this game, and since the average player is a fish, it’s quite scary to think that skill is only relative to your opponents. Poker becomes a race against other players for who can comprehend the most study material within the shortest timeframe, with those who have tossed aside their 9-5 for the poker life having the most to gain through 24/7 access to study materials while playing online, but also the most to lose with the threat of ‘Mr Average’ slowly creeping toward their skill level at an increasing rate.

Sorry if I’m getting too deep with this line of thought, but I find it interesting. I guess it’s our responsibility as proffessional, semi-proffessional and One-day-I-wanna-be-a proffessional (me) poker players to help polarise the average players skill to the average proffessional skill, and there’s only two ways of doing that, making an effort to decrease the skill level of the fish somehow, or to motivate people with 0 skill to get into poker through promotion. The latter is much more realistic, it could also deviate on a ‘don’t tap the tank’ tangent, but I think just having a positive attitude towards the game, tolerating silly questions from friends and relatives, and generally spreading the word that ‘poker is fun’ is the best way to achieve this.

This is the book I’ve been reading the past few days, Skelm passed a copy onto me and told me to get onto writing a review about it, which I’m basically doing now.

I know I’m going to rant so as a preemptive strike for those TLDR’ers, the book is great. Buy it and put it on a shelf. Don’t buy it, read it and use the knowledge contained to crush me online, just buy it so the authors get their deserved renumeration for the awesomeness they bestowed upon us in this literary masterpiece, put it up somewhere high, and leave it alone. The voodoo contained within its pages is too much for you.

Seriously, this book was great, I’ve put a few books down recently because a better one has come along, one that was more attuned to providing me with the information specific to my situation, and this one topped them all. Every time I found something worth noting, I would type it out in my own words, and before long found I was basically just re-writing the whole book. Seriously. Fucking. Good. Shit. My skill level hasn’t really been tested, but I feel this book was aimed directly at where I’m at, I understood everything in it, nothing was over my head, and nothing was dumbed down, right on the money.

Ok, onto the content, this is basically a guide how to beat 200nl, most of the examples given are 6-max, but a lot can easily be translated into FR pretty easily. All of the critical parts of a good TAG style play are addressed here, with emphasis on online play with the use of HUD statistics and how it affects your decisions. 3bet-4bet-5bet, position, player types, barelling, stealing, and isolation are well covered, and can easily be used as a reference. I don’t know how the games are going to be in 5 or 10 years, but I’m sure this book will play a part in getting the edge on the opponent in all of these areas for a long time.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you would know I’m fond of making things to put on my wall for quick reference. I’ll be adding about 10 pages of stuff because of this book everything is just really at my level. You might not find it as useful if you are crushing the Mid-stakes, since there’s not too much number crunching or talk of level upon level upon level, but for us grinding the lows, this is the new bible.

To be honest I havn’t heard of Sunny Mehta or Matt Flynn, but Ed miller is a favourite of mine, Skelm got me onto his teachings the first night we decided poker was going to be the direction I took my life, and from then on, his teachings were the basis for a large percentage of my knowledge. And it’s easy to see where he influenced this book, many of the prinicples he speaks about in his stoxpoker videos are summed up in this book (with less video obviously), and many principles are expanded upon.

All in all… this being the first book review I’ve ever written about anything ever, I’ll just sum it up.

Buy it, you need it.

My life isn’t too hectic, but I’m still trying to achieve a balance in it, I don’t want to burn out, get disinterested, or neglect any part of what I’m doing, because it just plain frustrates me. I’ve basically divided my week up into sections dedicated to poker, health and fitness, sleeping, working, socialising, and free time. Note that socialising isn’t classed as free time since it isn’t a default action of mine, it’s something I have to actively pursue or else it goes by the wayside.

Went to the gym this morning for two hours, got one of their trainers to basically show me how to use all the equipment properly and set out an exercise plan for me, I didn’t really understand how much pain running on their little hamster wheel for 20 minutes straight would cause me, but it’s all for the better. Diet will come naturally, since hating my body comes naturally, I’ll associate bad food with more exercise and that synaptic epiphany will be the classical conditioning stimulus I need.

So onto poker, I’ve been instructed to finish two books before I get left alone with a decent roll for 25nl, the books I’ll talk about later, but let me just say, they are primo quality.

I’ve been watching Skelm play and it’s like bloody frogger, he has the ability to aggressively press out into the traffic, yet dodge buses and cars that are trying to run him down, it’s beautiful. We’ve been discussing lots of different topics, and I’ve made a point of asking any questions that popped up, and to have him explain any alternate views on my study material, which just makes things confusing when a book says one thing, and he says another… theres only 3 fucking buttons on the screen and your opinion deviates from the book? But with every deviation theres a reason, and a plan for future streets.

I was doing a little bit of question asking about dividing stacks, which became pretty interesting. Simply, if you end up heads up, you are obviously only able to play for a pot the size of the smallest stack, and the stack sizes should be taken into consideration pre-flop. Looking to whoever will take action behind you, you can decide how you are going to play. If you are playing deep stacked with opponents who are also deep stacked, the chances of going all-in are less, so theres more room for bluffing, and more weight in aggressive play.

But if other players are short-stacked, you can run into lots of problems, like expecting to semi-bluff on the flop and turn against a tighter opponent with a decent hand, only to find out the pot is $20 and your opponent only has $2 left. If your opponent called you without you realising their stack was short, you could have essentially created an accidental all-in situation you didn’t want to be in, and more importantly, an all-in situation your opponent DOES want to be in. Situations like this will cause you to call marginal hands on drawy boards because you have set up stupid pot odds for yourself all because you didn’t take the time to notice the stack size.

I’ve made the mistake before, and it’s really just a concentration thing, making sure you take notice of stack sizes so you can play the hand properly, and only create all-in situations when you want it, or only have them created when you can back out without too much loss when you’r behind.

So Skelm and I have organised a method in which we can both play a reasonable number of tables and he can also supervise me and be available for assistance whenever I need it. On that note I’ll be moving up a stake, and decreasing the number of tables I’m playing to four, this is to increase the level of concentration per play, and give him an opportunity to explain all the reasons behind the play he would make in the situation.

Moving up the stake is good and bad, I never really got a hang of 5NL, and was never profitable at it, but I’m in Skelms more than capable hands, since everything I’m doing will now be under his watchful eye, no wandering from the flock, every bad habit will be beaten out of me immediately, every action will be questioned. This is good for both of us, as we will be reviewing each others decisions, him reviewing mine, and me trying to explain what I would have done in that position.

I watched Ed Millers ‘StoxPoker Project: ActionStan – Attack A Donk Edition ‘, It was awesome, in that it was a video showing effective ways of exploiting a Loose Passive player, and this was being reviewed my Ed Miller. It was the first video I had seen in which Ed was not just teaching or playing, but reviewing another player, so I saw how ActionStan played the hand, and how Ed Miller thought it should have been played. Kind of like a two for one deal. The moral was really just showing contempt for the small bets and raises of the Loose passive player, giving them no real room to breathe if they try to coast through and pick up small pots with rubbish hands.

So, the boot camp has started, I mean really started, It’s on… I’ll be playing and learning each day, and hopefully making a blog post too. Every day I’ll be doing something poker, whether it is reading books, watching videos, listening to podcasts or playing tables, my life revolves around this, it shall be forced into my body by whatever means neccessary until is has flooded my being and assimilated with my soul.

We must become one.

So, I’ve hit -$100 in less than 10,000 hands of 5nl, and its slightly depressing. That’s a lie, it’s pretty fucking depressing. I feel like I’ve been making good reads and good decisions, but it’s just been going bad for me. I know you can thrown your fancy words around like ‘Sample size’, ‘Variance’, and ‘Learning curve’ but it still doesn’t change the fact that in the big scheme of things I’m a loser at the moment.

Everything to do with poker has been a little haywire, because of certain circumstances in my life, but that’s all about to change, I thought I would see results if I played more hands, since my studying to playing ratio was at about 5:1, so I switched it to about even, then went the total opposite way, and thought I could overcome my variance by playing more, since certain elements of my studies weren’t really applicable at the micros, well, I guess I’ve been humbled once more.

I need a lot more one on one time with Skelm, I must demand more of his time, as however much books and videos on the theory of a winning game may help, it’s nothing compared to real time training based on the current hand, and I’ve be underutilising that resource. I suppose my stupidity has caught up with me, and I have to face the fact that I don’t know as much as I think I know just yet. This isn’t really a tilting moment, more of just a quiet acceptance of my own ignorance and where that road lies.

So the solution is simple, and we have organised it, a strict regime that dictates set time out of our lives to go through every aspect of the game. A physical piece of paper printed from my computer showing what times during what day of the week we are both committing to poker and poker study. If we remain faithful to the plan, this shall be a success, I can see no way of it failing, but if we lose focus of the long and short term goals, it could spell doom for this whole project… and more importantly, my bankroll.

Help me Skelmer Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope!

I want it, I need it, a graph that points up towards the sky, but I’m still losing more than I’m winning, I’m just not thinking clearly, it’s not all the tables, it’s just that my concentration gets broken for a second, and I find myself calling as a default, which is stupid. Calling is the last thing I should be doing in a high pressure situation, firstly, I should be reaching for the time button, it’s a saviour, it really is, but does my supid clumsy finger hit it? No.. Why not? I don’t know. I’m creating habits I shouldn’t be, and I’m losing money I shouldn’t be either.

I’ve banned music from my poker sessions, as it is so goddamned distracting, if this is going to be my life, and it requires concentration, the comfort of Dave Grohls groovy tunes has to go. Lyricless music is still even too much for me, it’s all about the poker, I have MASSIVE holes in my game, holes that need plugging as they are leaking money.

I got all my little posters reprinted in colour and laminated yesterday, so they look at home on my wall, so crisp and clear, if only my dumb ass would hit the time button and look up at them and take stock of the situation I’m in. The PFR charts came out especially pretty, can’t remember if I explained it before, but it’s basically a one page printout of the pokerstove window, which shows the range of certain PFR percentages. I thought myself quite clever.

I had 2 little solo sessions today, the first one, I finished up by 1.5 BI, the second, I was down by 1.5 BI, losing 80% of a BI in 3 consecutive hands, making my graph look like an escalator into hell. Lessons were learned and asses were kicked.

Please note this article mostly covers the Rakeback’s inner workings. To find out more about signing up for Rakeback, vist: http://rakeback.cardrunners.com

As you may already be aware, online poker rooms take a small portion of each pot to finance their operations. This is referred to as the ‘rake’. Rakeback is a portion of this that you, as a consumer, can claim back through an affiliate. Essentially, the affiliate receives a portion of the rake for referring you to the poker room, and then affiliates that offer rakeback push a generous portion of this to you, the consumer.

Unfortunately, because rakeback is managed through affiliates, it is only open to new accounts (existing accounts cannot be tied to a new affiliate, since that would prevent your original affiliate from receiving the income it already does from your play).

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Havn’t been blogging recently, also, havn’t been playing much poker, I just ended a 2 year relationship with my girlfriend, and got crippling internet problems in the same week, both required time and patience, and have been concluded. So, I’m single now, which gives me more time to study and get back into the swing of things.

Back to blogging more than Skelm, can’t let him relish in getting more posts than me for too long.

Watching some four-tabling of Ed Millers now, mmm..