Rolled On The River

Poker videos come in two flavours, theory and practical. Theoretical vids show the math and psychology behind the games, and the practical ones show the teacher playing games and putting the theories to use in real situations, I started my little poker life watching mostly theory videos in the form of Ed Miller’s classroom clips, and slowly moved on to more practical ones. I would reccommend a combination of both, the theoretical ones are so valuable, they could replace almost any book, giving step by step instructions on the variety of plays out there, while taking the time out to crunch the numbers behind certain decisions and certain situations.

The practical ones take a coach on his thought process during a session, and the audio is usually (not always) recorded during the sessions, so you can get a grasp of what the coach is thinking on the fly. What I’m saying here is that both types of video should bring your learning full circle, which is the impact I’m beginning to feel. On one hand, you learn a bunch of theories you have try to match to the practical situations in which they apply (see Ed’s Art of Misapplication vid), on the other, you are watching the hands as they come up, and trying to work out what the most relevant information you should base your next move off.

You may be 3-bet with AJ, your decision has to be one of position, stack size, and player statistics. You also have to consider any history you have, and a few other situational factors. Watching practical videos will show you, for example if the guy was short-stacked and prone to 3-betting, you should put him all in, because thats what you saw a coach do. While on the other hand, the theoretical videos will give you the numbers behind stack to pot ratios, the advantages of position, and the ranges of players with a certain percentage 3-bet percentages.

Though this may seem like an absolute plethora of information to process in a short amount of time, continued theoretical and practical study sessions prove to help make the right theory stand out when you’re faced with a problem, the culmination bringing about better, faster, more informed decisions for you at the tables.

I’ve found both to be vital in moving forward so far, and I’m sure I’ll continue to in the future.

At the end of April I started staking and coaching a friend of mine (who had no exposure to poker whatsoever) from the ground up on two conditions:

#1 – that he would blog his journey with weekly entries

#2 – That he would watch at least three StoxPoker videos a week.

He has diligently been blogging whilst learning and I think his most recent entry provides some valuable insight into the path of learning via videos. With his permission I have included it below:

Poker videos come in two flavours, theory and practical. Theoretical vids show the math and psychology behind the games, and the practical ones show the teacher playing games and putting the theories to use in real situations, I started my little poker life watching mostly theory videos in the form of Ed Miller’s classroom clips, and slowly moved on to more practical ones. I would reccommend a combination of both, the theoretical ones are so valuable, they could replace almost any book, giving step by step instructions on the variety of plays out there, while taking the time out to crunch the numbers behind certain decisions and certain situations.

The practical ones take a coach on his thought process during a session, and the audio is usually (not always) recorded during the sessions, so you can get a grasp of what the coach is thinking on the fly. What I’m saying here is that both types of video should bring your learning full circle, which is the impact I’m beginning to feel. On one hand, you learn a bunch of theories you have try to match to the practical situations in which they apply (see Ed’s Art of Misapplication vid), on the other, you are watching the hands as they come up, and trying to work out what the most relevant information you should base your next move off.

You may be 3-bet with AJ, your decision has to be one of position, stack size, and player statistics. You also have to consider any history you have, and a few other situational factors. Watching practical videos will show you, for example if the guy was short-stacked and prone to 3-betting, you should put him all in, because thats what you saw a coach do. While on the other hand, the theoretical videos will give you the numbers behind stack to pot ratios, the advantages of position, and the ranges of players with a certain percentage 3-bet percentages.

Though this may seem like an absolute plethora of information to process in a short amount of time, continued theoretical and practical study sessions prove to help make the right theory stand out when you’re faced with a problem, the culmination bringing about better, faster, more informed decisions for you at the tables.

I’ve found both to be vital in moving forward so far, and I’m sure I’ll continue to in the future.

You can view the original entry here

Tonight was pretty horrible, I watched Skelm play earlier, he got sets and got paid off, got pairs and got paid off, flopped decent hands, and yes, got paid off. I logged on, bolstered with the knowledge that all is well in the world, there’s money out there, and I have to bring it in fron the harsh wilderness into my warm, cozy account.

Little did I know that the money had other plans, and apparently so did the money that was ALREADY in my account! Preposterous I know. I got 3 sets in the space of 10 minutes, one got cracked by a flush, another by a higher set, and a third by quads, we went over the situations and it seemed there was no getting out of the way, like getting your foot caught in between a railroad sleeper and a track with an oncoming freight train ready to run you the fuck down, It’s not a good feeling, but It’s a part of poker. I’m at around 18,000 hands now, which is nowhere near a large sample size, and all experts agree, variance is kicking the living shit out of me, the game I’m playing is a winner over the long run, I just havn’t had a long run yet.

Back to dagobah I guess.

Putting in session after session, and learning heaps, the learning never stops, you just get deeper into your opponents heads. I’ve moved over to Pokerstars for a few reasons, all the updates on Full Tilt have screwed me a bit, making it hard to log on without getting ‘This program is not responding’… helpful. So I’m getting some histories for PS to make my stats more accurate, customised my HUD to make it the same as Skelms, so he can give opinions on the fly without having to decipher my stats. I’m solidifying my 25nl game, making as little mistakes as possible, though when a tough decision comes up, I often trap myself, making decisions with something other than my brain.

Working on adding check-raising flop bluffs to my game, this play might not work too effectively at my stake, especially against fish, but the TAGs out there will be appreciative of the strength it shows, and depending on the board, it could provide a profitable amount of fold equity to the situation. Floating isn’t in my game at all either, so that’s getting added to the arsenal as well!

So, we’re moving ahead with it all!

Using SpadeEye, I’ve been concentrating on my table selection skills, looking for the best tables to play on, with the weakest opponents. This brings about a few situations that unnerve me. I’m using VPIP and PFR as my main stats, looking for as many players that go towards Loose Passive and Tight Passive that I can, as they are the easiest to play against. There’s an option to filter the amount of shortstackers on the tables out so you can play comfortably, but this filter generally reduces your options to 0, you generally have to play with at least 3 shortstackers.

I’ve found them extremely annoying and hard to play against, if you forget they are short and make a mistake, you could be giving yourself odds to make decisions you would rather have bypassed all together, and the options you are presented with are limited at best. You fold your drawy hands because you can’t play fancy postflop knowing they will shove or fold regardless of how much effort and thought you put into your bet sizing. Most of them are nits looking to make value from decent hands, which works well when they are to your left, you can generally steal from them a lot, but if they play back at you, you have to decide your level of commitment then and there, have they adjusted? or did they hit a hand? am I willing to put 25bb in to find out? Am I ahead or behind the majority of their range knowing that this is going to be the only decision in the hand I get to make.

It’s just an adjustment we all have to make, to pick our spots, and more importantly, know what to do when they have picked their spots, how to get away from being valuetowned by them. Playing in position is probably the best tool to use against them, if you can look at the players left who are yet to act, according to their stats you can judge who you will possibly be up against, and by looking at their stack, you can find what position you will put yourself in if you do find yourself up against them.

Ok, run on sentences and repetitive words aside, shortstackers are bad, and make life difficult, hang around them as little as possible.