Well, not really. I was playing on a couple tables on 2/4nl, when I noticed Yawning Boy and a couple of my tables. I was even playing HU against him on one when everybody left. I soon realized that I've seen the name on CardRunners.com, and it was Andrew Wiggins one of the lead instructors on the site. I know he doesn't really play limits this low, so I thought that it was going to be a video.
At the end of his session he told the table that it was going to be a cardrunners.com video! I'm just glad that he had already finished recording and sat out when I tried to run a bluff on somebody. I wouldn't want to be called an idiot infront of the online poker community. I don't know if my ego can take that.....
So it went up on Wednesday and I watched it right away. The video was pretty good overall. On a more important note, though, the quality of the video was kinda shitty. So it's kinda hard to make out the names. Dammit. I also pretty much stay even the whole time I'm playing with him on two tables. I think I ende)d up about 20-30 dollars in the whole session that was recorded on cardrunners.com. So, he barely mentions me at all in the video. I think I only entered two-three pots against him, and I folded to his cbet, or he folded to mine. I guess I'll have to wait for another day to become an online poker celebrity.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Almost made a huge huge mistake....
So the other day I finally had access to my entire bankroll online. My Epassporte account was finally approved, so I can know move my bankroll between the different sites I played. With that in mind, I decided to take another shot at 2/4nl on Full Tilt. The first day I played pretty good. I ended up about 3 buyins. I was feeling good about myself. I was only 3/4 tabling, and I was definitely improving. Just paying attention to the different plays that people do and the plays being run on me really improved my game. So, I was feeling good with myself and the next day decided to continue playing 2/4nl.
Well, disaster stuck. I went on a 13 buyin downswing. It was sickening. Here are some hands:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039736
I guess this guy really wanted to gamble. He's dominated by so many hands it's unreal that he does this with 45s. Oh well, set is no good.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039748
I almost puked after this hand. When I saw the turn, I got this feeling that another spade was going to hit, and it did. This happened near the end of my downswing , so I was pretty pissed after this.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039752
AA, no good. I guess the flush really likes to hit when playing against me.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039757
Really frustrating when I lose those hands before, and I can't win this.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039762
This is a cooler, I think. I'm not really sure if I can get away from this hand. I don't know. From just the way that he bet I put him on 77 on the flop. Part of me was thinking QQ and AA, but I heavily discounted those just because I held the A and the Q. So I also somewhat discounted the flush draw because I don't think the flush draw would be 3 betting me as often here. This is because I thought they guy to be pretty tight and not stupid. I just don't see him playing the flush like this, he'd probably peeling the flop. I don't know though. I also don't think with the flush draw out there that I can fold. On the other hand can I even fold this flop EVER if the board was rainbow?
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039775
I don't think I can get away from this hand. Toughts welcome.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039782
Well, I knew I had the best hand on the flop and turn. However, I asn't sure about this river call. Is his range on the river big enough that my call of his push is +EV long term? I guess this is player dependent, and I shouldn't have called.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039786
I don't think I can ever fold this. It's just sick.
Well, there are also few pots that I tilted and general spew. Well, after this horrible session, I took a break, and somehow reasoned that I was playing really well, and decided not to move down. I was very very close to going broke. However things started to turn around and I started to gain some of the money I lost.
Since I was playing well, I decided to contine to play 2/4nl. Well I started playing a lot better, and my hands finally heald up. I made some money back, and then I took a break for that day. Over the next 2 days, I decided to 8 table 1/2nl. Well, 8 tabling 1/2nl was so much easier after my 2/4nl stint. I completely destroyed 1/2nl 8 tabling. I also destroyed heads up 1/2nl. In two days, I basically erased my huge huge downswing. I'm really pissed that I can't quit after say a 4 buy in downswing in one session. And the fact that I continued to play 2/4nl after a 12-13 buyin down swing really disturbs me. If I had continue to tilt or run bad, I would have completely destroyed my online bankroll. I need to learn to protect my bankroll. I'm completely gratefull that I completely destroyed 1/2nl and got my bankroll to it's previous position. I'll show the graph below.
My pokertracker stats of the run that helped me out of the holeI dug myself.
Well, disaster stuck. I went on a 13 buyin downswing. It was sickening. Here are some hands:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039736
I guess this guy really wanted to gamble. He's dominated by so many hands it's unreal that he does this with 45s. Oh well, set is no good.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039748
I almost puked after this hand. When I saw the turn, I got this feeling that another spade was going to hit, and it did. This happened near the end of my downswing , so I was pretty pissed after this.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039752
AA, no good. I guess the flush really likes to hit when playing against me.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039757
Really frustrating when I lose those hands before, and I can't win this.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039762
This is a cooler, I think. I'm not really sure if I can get away from this hand. I don't know. From just the way that he bet I put him on 77 on the flop. Part of me was thinking QQ and AA, but I heavily discounted those just because I held the A and the Q. So I also somewhat discounted the flush draw because I don't think the flush draw would be 3 betting me as often here. This is because I thought they guy to be pretty tight and not stupid. I just don't see him playing the flush like this, he'd probably peeling the flop. I don't know though. I also don't think with the flush draw out there that I can fold. On the other hand can I even fold this flop EVER if the board was rainbow?
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039775
I don't think I can get away from this hand. Toughts welcome.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039782
Well, I knew I had the best hand on the flop and turn. However, I asn't sure about this river call. Is his range on the river big enough that my call of his push is +EV long term? I guess this is player dependent, and I shouldn't have called.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1039786
I don't think I can ever fold this. It's just sick.
Well, there are also few pots that I tilted and general spew. Well, after this horrible session, I took a break, and somehow reasoned that I was playing really well, and decided not to move down. I was very very close to going broke. However things started to turn around and I started to gain some of the money I lost.
Since I was playing well, I decided to contine to play 2/4nl. Well I started playing a lot better, and my hands finally heald up. I made some money back, and then I took a break for that day. Over the next 2 days, I decided to 8 table 1/2nl. Well, 8 tabling 1/2nl was so much easier after my 2/4nl stint. I completely destroyed 1/2nl 8 tabling. I also destroyed heads up 1/2nl. In two days, I basically erased my huge huge downswing. I'm really pissed that I can't quit after say a 4 buy in downswing in one session. And the fact that I continued to play 2/4nl after a 12-13 buyin down swing really disturbs me. If I had continue to tilt or run bad, I would have completely destroyed my online bankroll. I need to learn to protect my bankroll. I'm completely gratefull that I completely destroyed 1/2nl and got my bankroll to it's previous position. I'll show the graph below.
My pokertracker stats of the run that helped me out of the holeI dug myself.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Over 100k hands for the year
So I just looked at all my PokerTracker hands and I'm over 100k hands in nlhe for the year. 113k hands to be exact. One statistic, though, really jumped out at me today - the amount of rake that I've spent.
I've given poker sites over 13k in business. That's mind boggling to me. What sucks even more is realizing that I played the majority of my hands (over three quarters) on sites that I don't have rakeback. That is unacceptable. What's crazy is the fact that I paid this much in rake, without even realizing it. Rake is like that scheme that they described about in Office Space, where they had the program which took cents off thousands of transactions. Nobody notices it, but over time it adds up.
What I'm trying to get at is that today, I finally realized the importance of playing your "A" game all the time. If I played the best that I could in every single pot that I was in, saved a bet here, put in an extra value bet there, I would be much much richer. Lets say over 100k hands, I averaged 5 cents more per hand. That's either 5 cents I save or 5 cents more per hand, that's $5k more that's in my pocket. So, lets play good in every single hand.
I've given poker sites over 13k in business. That's mind boggling to me. What sucks even more is realizing that I played the majority of my hands (over three quarters) on sites that I don't have rakeback. That is unacceptable. What's crazy is the fact that I paid this much in rake, without even realizing it. Rake is like that scheme that they described about in Office Space, where they had the program which took cents off thousands of transactions. Nobody notices it, but over time it adds up.
What I'm trying to get at is that today, I finally realized the importance of playing your "A" game all the time. If I played the best that I could in every single pot that I was in, saved a bet here, put in an extra value bet there, I would be much much richer. Lets say over 100k hands, I averaged 5 cents more per hand. That's either 5 cents I save or 5 cents more per hand, that's $5k more that's in my pocket. So, lets play good in every single hand.
A high... ship it
I was playing against this really aggro donk. He had position on me, and for the first half an hour with him on my right, I didn't connect with a single flop, and I couldn't take a single pot from him. On the flop I knew that he didn't hit anything when he didn't bet. Since nothing changed on the turn, I already told myself that I was going to call ANY bet on the river. I was going to call any overbets as well.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1012355
Pretty proud of this call. Who says you can't get reads 8 tabling?
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1012355
Pretty proud of this call. Who says you can't get reads 8 tabling?
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Bleh, gotta control tilt
Well, I started off playing pretty well today. I can multi-table really easily know. I'm using FullTiltShortcuts which basically automate my betting for me. So I can 8 table pretty easily now, and right now I'm just trying to grind so that I can move up stakes. So I was playing pretty well up to the last 200-300 hands in the session.
I misclicked in one huge pot and called instead of folding. Maybe it's because I haven't gotten much sleep, but I wasn't thinking right after that. Instead of just folding the later streets on the big hand, I got stubborn, and tried to bluff out my opponents in a three way pot! Then, I sorta went on auto-pilot on the 8 tables and tried to really run everybody over. Well, that didn't work out so well. So within half an hour, I erase basically all of my profit for the day. Oh well, at least I caught myself quit all of my tables before I ended up in the red.
Other than this I think I'm playing a lot better poker. I've changed up my game and I'm a lot happier with the way I'm playing right now. I've also started playing Omaha Hi. I've been dabbling in the .5/1 OmahaPL for the past month or so and over the weekend I moved up to 1/2nl. It seems as if there are a lot of awful players in Omaha that don't know what they're doing. You don't even need to outplay people, you just sit back and wait until somebody overvalues there hand, and you make tons of money. That, or you win money through a lot of coinflips.
I misclicked in one huge pot and called instead of folding. Maybe it's because I haven't gotten much sleep, but I wasn't thinking right after that. Instead of just folding the later streets on the big hand, I got stubborn, and tried to bluff out my opponents in a three way pot! Then, I sorta went on auto-pilot on the 8 tables and tried to really run everybody over. Well, that didn't work out so well. So within half an hour, I erase basically all of my profit for the day. Oh well, at least I caught myself quit all of my tables before I ended up in the red.
Other than this I think I'm playing a lot better poker. I've changed up my game and I'm a lot happier with the way I'm playing right now. I've also started playing Omaha Hi. I've been dabbling in the .5/1 OmahaPL for the past month or so and over the weekend I moved up to 1/2nl. It seems as if there are a lot of awful players in Omaha that don't know what they're doing. You don't even need to outplay people, you just sit back and wait until somebody overvalues there hand, and you make tons of money. That, or you win money through a lot of coinflips.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
College Night
Brag:
So, at Rice, all our dorms are separated into colleges, and you pretty much stay at the same dorm for all 4 years. Each semester, we have a college night, where the college buys booze and food, and you start drinking from the afternoon until you pass out. Well this year our theme was global warming and below was the email my friends sent out to the college:
melt, diluting the North Atlantic Ocean with large amounts of fresh water.. This
has disrupted the ocean's thermohaline circulation and slowed the Gulf Stream,
causing a rapid heating of the northern hemisphere. This has triggered a series
of anomalies, which have led to a coming GLOBAL SUPERSTORM hovering over
Hanszen College. The impact of the storm on Hanszen is uncertain, but
scientists are predicting that THE END IS NEAR.
There is only one solution.
Hanszen must PARTY LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW. This could easily be our last
College Night ever. Let's celebrate the power that is Global Warming. A
little rain is no excuse!
***************************
Well, this was the most fun I've had at a college night at my time at Rice. We got this inflatable slide with a tiny pull on the end, and we basically got really drunk and started doing all types of crazy shit down the slide. I think my highlight was a backwards slide, with a flip (inadvertently) half way down the slide.
Beat:
I was careful for the entire day not to put my shoulders at risk. I have dislocated my left one 8/9 times in my lifetime, and the right one once. Well, I was watching out for it the whole day. I didn't attempt going on the slip and slide head first because I didn't want to expose my shoulder. Near the end of they day, I decided to join in a game of slide HORSE. You had to replicate the slide of choice by the leader. Part way through the game, I attempted to go into a Superman pose, bounce off the slide, and then kick out my legs to end up going feet first down. On the bounce, I felt my right shoulder pop out. I was pretty pissed off at myself.
On a different note, later that night I went out to a bar with some of my friends. I usually don't get that many sugary drinks, but I guess tonight was one of those exceptions. The first somewhat notable drink I tried was a Yummy Bear or a Pink Beer. It's a shot of framboise, which is a raspberry lambic stout (one of the bar tenders explained this to us), and PaulanerHefeweizen. I really like Hefeweizen, so I thought this drink could be amazing. It was a little too fruity for my taste. The raspberry really overpowers the entire drink. Later on, I had a Colorado Bulldog. It's basically a White Russian with coke. I really liked this drink. Not only did it taste like a milkshake, but it brought me back to my high school days. If you haven't seen the movie "The Big Lebowski", I urge you to go watch it. I think it's one of the funniest and best movies I have ever seen. In high school, I watched this movie a lot. And there would be times, when we would do a Lebowski and White Russian night. We'd also smoke some weed to complete the Lebowski trifecta. Those were fun times. If you haven't had a White Russian, that's a damn good drink as well. Tastes like chocolate milk. I remember when I was younger I used to drink a lot of chocolate milk, I haven't touched that stuff in over a decade. Well the Colorado Bulldog was tasty, but it also elicits a lot of great and happy memories for me, perhaps from simpler times in my life.
So, at Rice, all our dorms are separated into colleges, and you pretty much stay at the same dorm for all 4 years. Each semester, we have a college night, where the college buys booze and food, and you start drinking from the afternoon until you pass out. Well this year our theme was global warming and below was the email my friends sent out to the college:
***************************
GLOBAL WARMING has caused large areas of the Arctic ice shelf to break off andmelt, diluting the North Atlantic Ocean with large amounts of fresh water.. This
has disrupted the ocean's thermohaline circulation and slowed the Gulf Stream,
causing a rapid heating of the northern hemisphere. This has triggered a series
of anomalies, which have led to a coming GLOBAL SUPERSTORM hovering over
Hanszen College. The impact of the storm on Hanszen is uncertain, but
scientists are predicting that THE END IS NEAR.
There is only one solution.
Hanszen must PARTY LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW. This could easily be our last
College Night ever. Let's celebrate the power that is Global Warming. A
little rain is no excuse!
***************************
Well, this was the most fun I've had at a college night at my time at Rice. We got this inflatable slide with a tiny pull on the end, and we basically got really drunk and started doing all types of crazy shit down the slide. I think my highlight was a backwards slide, with a flip (inadvertently) half way down the slide.
Beat:
I was careful for the entire day not to put my shoulders at risk. I have dislocated my left one 8/9 times in my lifetime, and the right one once. Well, I was watching out for it the whole day. I didn't attempt going on the slip and slide head first because I didn't want to expose my shoulder. Near the end of they day, I decided to join in a game of slide HORSE. You had to replicate the slide of choice by the leader. Part way through the game, I attempted to go into a Superman pose, bounce off the slide, and then kick out my legs to end up going feet first down. On the bounce, I felt my right shoulder pop out. I was pretty pissed off at myself.
On a different note, later that night I went out to a bar with some of my friends. I usually don't get that many sugary drinks, but I guess tonight was one of those exceptions. The first somewhat notable drink I tried was a Yummy Bear or a Pink Beer. It's a shot of framboise, which is a raspberry lambic stout (one of the bar tenders explained this to us), and PaulanerHefeweizen. I really like Hefeweizen, so I thought this drink could be amazing. It was a little too fruity for my taste. The raspberry really overpowers the entire drink. Later on, I had a Colorado Bulldog. It's basically a White Russian with coke. I really liked this drink. Not only did it taste like a milkshake, but it brought me back to my high school days. If you haven't seen the movie "The Big Lebowski", I urge you to go watch it. I think it's one of the funniest and best movies I have ever seen. In high school, I watched this movie a lot. And there would be times, when we would do a Lebowski and White Russian night. We'd also smoke some weed to complete the Lebowski trifecta. Those were fun times. If you haven't had a White Russian, that's a damn good drink as well. Tastes like chocolate milk. I remember when I was younger I used to drink a lot of chocolate milk, I haven't touched that stuff in over a decade. Well the Colorado Bulldog was tasty, but it also elicits a lot of great and happy memories for me, perhaps from simpler times in my life.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Up and Down
Well, I know I should have been doing homework today, but I decided to play a little poker.
At first things didn't start so well.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?993381
This was a couple minutes in, and I began to dread the session. It's hard to feel optimistic when you're in the middle of a huge break even session. However, things instantly began to look up.
I induced one huge bluff. I was calling this guy no matter what. He had been position floating me a lot, and I had decided on the flop that I was calling him no matter what. The A on the turn scared me a bit, but the river card let my call be that much easier.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?993391
I never took down any other huge pots, but near the end of the session I was up about 300. I was playing pretty good poker without having any monster hands. It felt good. Then this happened.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?993399
I played this hand horribly. I thought I would slow play the hand, so I check/called the flop, and I checked the turn intending to put a check raise in. However, when he quickly potted the turn I was completely confused. I had showed absolutely no strength, so with a big hand, why would he try to blow me off my hand. However, by the speed at which he potted it, I also thought monster. I was actually thinking that he had KQ. Any sizeable reraise I put in would commit me to a push, so I decided to just maximize my fold equity and shove over him - at least I had outs.
In retrospect though, I should not have played the hand like this. I didn't think and reevaluate the situation. I went into the turn thinking I was going to checkraise, and that turn card made it easier for me to do so. I should have thought about it, and I like a call better here, so that I can reevaluate it on the river. However, now that the hand is over, I realize why he put that pot sized bet on the turn. I played the hand exactly like a flush draw would, and he was scared of being drawn out on. I guess it was so hard for me to see this because this is exactly, how I wouldn't play my set. I wouldn't want to blow out of the flush draw, because everytime the flush draw calls, I make money. In fact this is more like how I would play the flush draw, I play them very aggressively. I need to hammer it into my mind that not everybody plays the way like I do.
After that hand, I played for a bit more, and then decided that I was going to quit. I don't want to feel like I have to make my money back. I just need to keep an even keel. So I already sat out on ALL my other tables. I was utg here, and I wasn't going to play the next hand, so this was the very last hand.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?993443
I was so excited on this flop, I thought I was actually going to end up tonight. However, I guess Full Tilt knew that I was going to sit out, and decided to tease me a little. That's just fucked up. There was no way that I was not going to get all my money in on this hand. I actually miniraised because I thought the sb might have had a big pocket pair, but when he folded and the bb instapushed, I knew that he had slow played something. But there's no way I'm EVER going to fold this hand. That's just silly.
On another note, I've been going through my PokerTracker hands, and I haven't sucked out on anybody in a long long time when all the money is in the pot. Nothing. I haven't even sucked out in a position where I'm a 2-1 underdog. I guess this is partially because I won't put my money in a situation where I could be a 2-1 dog. I haven't shoved any draws, is what I'm trying to get at. But FullTilt's random number generator has got some catching up to do for me. Is it wrong that I actually expected to see a to heart peel off in the first hand and the case 9 to come out in that last hand? I don't think so.
Where here is a graph of today's session if anybody's interested.
Well, I'm off to do homework now so that I can graduate this May.
At first things didn't start so well.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?993381
This was a couple minutes in, and I began to dread the session. It's hard to feel optimistic when you're in the middle of a huge break even session. However, things instantly began to look up.
I induced one huge bluff. I was calling this guy no matter what. He had been position floating me a lot, and I had decided on the flop that I was calling him no matter what. The A on the turn scared me a bit, but the river card let my call be that much easier.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?993391
I never took down any other huge pots, but near the end of the session I was up about 300. I was playing pretty good poker without having any monster hands. It felt good. Then this happened.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?993399
I played this hand horribly. I thought I would slow play the hand, so I check/called the flop, and I checked the turn intending to put a check raise in. However, when he quickly potted the turn I was completely confused. I had showed absolutely no strength, so with a big hand, why would he try to blow me off my hand. However, by the speed at which he potted it, I also thought monster. I was actually thinking that he had KQ. Any sizeable reraise I put in would commit me to a push, so I decided to just maximize my fold equity and shove over him - at least I had outs.
In retrospect though, I should not have played the hand like this. I didn't think and reevaluate the situation. I went into the turn thinking I was going to checkraise, and that turn card made it easier for me to do so. I should have thought about it, and I like a call better here, so that I can reevaluate it on the river. However, now that the hand is over, I realize why he put that pot sized bet on the turn. I played the hand exactly like a flush draw would, and he was scared of being drawn out on. I guess it was so hard for me to see this because this is exactly, how I wouldn't play my set. I wouldn't want to blow out of the flush draw, because everytime the flush draw calls, I make money. In fact this is more like how I would play the flush draw, I play them very aggressively. I need to hammer it into my mind that not everybody plays the way like I do.
After that hand, I played for a bit more, and then decided that I was going to quit. I don't want to feel like I have to make my money back. I just need to keep an even keel. So I already sat out on ALL my other tables. I was utg here, and I wasn't going to play the next hand, so this was the very last hand.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?993443
I was so excited on this flop, I thought I was actually going to end up tonight. However, I guess Full Tilt knew that I was going to sit out, and decided to tease me a little. That's just fucked up. There was no way that I was not going to get all my money in on this hand. I actually miniraised because I thought the sb might have had a big pocket pair, but when he folded and the bb instapushed, I knew that he had slow played something. But there's no way I'm EVER going to fold this hand. That's just silly.
On another note, I've been going through my PokerTracker hands, and I haven't sucked out on anybody in a long long time when all the money is in the pot. Nothing. I haven't even sucked out in a position where I'm a 2-1 underdog. I guess this is partially because I won't put my money in a situation where I could be a 2-1 dog. I haven't shoved any draws, is what I'm trying to get at. But FullTilt's random number generator has got some catching up to do for me. Is it wrong that I actually expected to see a to heart peel off in the first hand and the case 9 to come out in that last hand? I don't think so.
Where here is a graph of today's session if anybody's interested.
Well, I'm off to do homework now so that I can graduate this May.
I was called a cheater....
So recently I've been ponying up some money for coaching. I figure it's good investment because it'll enable to improve faster, and he can tell show me how he plays. After my unsuccessful move up and my long break even session I figured I needed somebody to figure out what my leaks are and plug them up. I think he has really improved me game.
So, a couple days ago I told couple of my friends who don't play poker that I've been getting coached in poker. When they asked me what it entails, I told them that my coach calls me through Skype, and then we use a program so that he can see my tables. He then basically tells me what he does in each situation that comes up. He goes through his thought processes and I get insight into how a winning player thinks. However, one of them asks me, "Isn't that cheating?"
I told her no, because it's not like we're affecting the outcome of the game. But she explains to me that somebody is basically playing for me. She then asks me if you're allowed to do that live. I said no. She then proceeded to call me a cheater.
I mean is it cheating? It's a common fact that plenty of people shadow each other over the Internet and they give each other advice over the Internet. I know for a fact that a lot of the top players do it with each other. I've read a post about a top Internet pro, who when starting out would play on the same computer with a friend and they would discuss what to do with each other. I personally don't have a problem with that. They're not affecting the outcome of the game. This is completely different than when two players sit on the same table and tell each other there hole cards, that would be cheating. I've also heard some people say that using PokerAce HUD is cheating. PokerAce HUD gives players information that the computer calculates - it's outside help. However, everybody uses it, and it's impossible to multi table without it.
I've thought about this a lot and I never ever considered any of this cheating. I guess it's because I learnt how to play poker online and through the online community. In the online community both of these practices are perfectly acceptable, however, if we had outside help in a casino it would probably be called cheating. I guess as technology progresses, we're going to be faced with different scenarios which might have been deemed immoral by previous standards.
Back in the day children were allowed to work, because it was necessary for subsistence families to have their children work in order to survive. However, once the industrial revolution came around children were taken advantage of, so, child laws came about, and it became immoral to hire children. The same thing happened when genetic engineering first came about. At first it was a huge controversy, it was immoral to change the natural order of things. But, as people started seeing the upside, it became more acceptable. I think that in the next 5 years, we'll be seeing the same perception about stem cells, there's just too many benefits in stem cells. I for one would like a new ACL, shoulders, and perhaps they can enhance my calves so that I can fulfill my life long dream of dunking.
So in short, is shadowing and PokerAce HUD cheating? No, because the online poker community hasn't deemed it so.
So, a couple days ago I told couple of my friends who don't play poker that I've been getting coached in poker. When they asked me what it entails, I told them that my coach calls me through Skype, and then we use a program so that he can see my tables. He then basically tells me what he does in each situation that comes up. He goes through his thought processes and I get insight into how a winning player thinks. However, one of them asks me, "Isn't that cheating?"
I told her no, because it's not like we're affecting the outcome of the game. But she explains to me that somebody is basically playing for me. She then asks me if you're allowed to do that live. I said no. She then proceeded to call me a cheater.
I mean is it cheating? It's a common fact that plenty of people shadow each other over the Internet and they give each other advice over the Internet. I know for a fact that a lot of the top players do it with each other. I've read a post about a top Internet pro, who when starting out would play on the same computer with a friend and they would discuss what to do with each other. I personally don't have a problem with that. They're not affecting the outcome of the game. This is completely different than when two players sit on the same table and tell each other there hole cards, that would be cheating. I've also heard some people say that using PokerAce HUD is cheating. PokerAce HUD gives players information that the computer calculates - it's outside help. However, everybody uses it, and it's impossible to multi table without it.
I've thought about this a lot and I never ever considered any of this cheating. I guess it's because I learnt how to play poker online and through the online community. In the online community both of these practices are perfectly acceptable, however, if we had outside help in a casino it would probably be called cheating. I guess as technology progresses, we're going to be faced with different scenarios which might have been deemed immoral by previous standards.
Back in the day children were allowed to work, because it was necessary for subsistence families to have their children work in order to survive. However, once the industrial revolution came around children were taken advantage of, so, child laws came about, and it became immoral to hire children. The same thing happened when genetic engineering first came about. At first it was a huge controversy, it was immoral to change the natural order of things. But, as people started seeing the upside, it became more acceptable. I think that in the next 5 years, we'll be seeing the same perception about stem cells, there's just too many benefits in stem cells. I for one would like a new ACL, shoulders, and perhaps they can enhance my calves so that I can fulfill my life long dream of dunking.
So in short, is shadowing and PokerAce HUD cheating? No, because the online poker community hasn't deemed it so.
Breaking Even Sucks
Okay, so up till today, I've gone on a long long break even session. This is basically all of this month up to today. There was definitely a day when I could have sort of broken out of it, but I tilted away a bunch of my losses. So here's a picture of the break even stretch. Right around hand 7,000 I made a bunch of stupid calls, and tilted it up. Guess I still have to work on that tilt control.
But today things finally turned around.
WEEEEEEEEE
Now I just gotta keep on going.
But today things finally turned around.
WEEEEEEEEE
Now I just gotta keep on going.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
My 2/4nl debacle
Well, up till the late March, I thought I was doing pretty well for 1/2nl. So, I decided to steadily take shots at 2/4nl.
I first started buying in short, and I would play extremely tight. I was looking pretty much to double up. I think I was pretty much a break even player when I was doing this. I've never given too much thought about how to play a short stack, so, this was what I attributed that break even stretch to. I realized that I was still playing all pocket pairs, and at points I was set mining. That's not a good strategy with a short stack. I realized this. However, sitting at the 2/4nl tables let me get some idea of how they played, and I finally decided to start buying in with full stacks.
My first couple forays didn't go so well, I probably lost 2 buyins pretty handily because I was 6 tabling. I had four tables of 1/2nl and two of 2/4nl. Recognizing that this was a big leak, I decided that I was going to drop down to just 4 tables, and play only 2/4nl.
Well, my results were less than stellar.
Well up to about hand 2500, I was buying in short. As you can see, nothing much was going on. However, I then lost 2/3 buyins when I 6 tabled, and then, a lot of my hard work just went down the drain in one session.
I lost roughly 10 buyins in one session. I don't want to say that I went on tilt like I used to do, but I wasn't playing good poker at all. I probably decided to worst time of day to start playing 2/4nl. I decided to play at the end of a long winning session in 1/2nl. It was 2am CST, and none of the regular games were going on in Absolute Poker. Most of the players were regulars, and I got utterly destroyed and outplayed.
It doesn't help that Absolute doesn't have a lot of games going on. So, at night, it seems as if the 5/10nl players and 10/25nl players, move down to the next highest stake at 2/4nl. So, I was getting played back a lot. I guess I may have initially painted a target on my back because I think at first I was playing scared. I would fold top pair good kicker to any flop raise, and I really just wanted a lot of my hands to go to showdown. Well after a while of leaking like that, I got a little frustrated. I started moving at pots, however, people either had hands and wasn't folding to my moves, or, they were being way too over aggro. Regardless, I decided not to fight them, and just laid a lot of hands down.
As you can see, I wasn't winning any pots at all. I have to admit, the cards really weren't going well for me, but I definitely wasn't playing my "A" game. Plus, I should have quit when I lost 5 buyins, but I lacked the self control needed, and tried to power through it. Silly me.
During that stretch, I more than 4 buyins with AKs/AKo, 1/2 buyin with AA, 1/2 buyin with KK, and the rest may have been spew. Not sure.
Here are a couple AK hands.
I posted this on 2p2. And got a lot of comments on it. Some said to check the turn, others said to shove the turn. But this guy had been floating me so much, that I think I should have shoved this turn. I'm not sure about calling that all in. I guess I haven't played with him enough for me to figure out what he shoves with. I also should have reraised a lot bigger pre flop. I did this on Absolute and there was no bet pot button, and I screwed up my pot calculation.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?990575
This one was heads up. I don't think I can get away from it. I was check shoving the whole way. This was against the same guy above. I don't know what he thought I had on the flop, but I got absolutely no respect from this guy, and constantly floated me.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?990592
Here's another one. I don't know what this guy thinks I'm repping. I guess that shove right there really does look like a straight draw, but I didn't want to reraise and have him flat call and be left with a difficult decision on the turn. And he does have the up and down straight draw, and he has one of my outs. GAMBOOL!
http://www.pokerhand.org/?990586
Here's another one where my tptk is no good. Up to this point, a lot of people were calling my cbets and then firing on the turn when I checked. I checked with the intention of shoving.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?990600
Here's the AA hand that I screwed up. This is against a stupid donk. I should have shoved the flop. I was going to shove the turn, until the absolute worse card came out. I think it was a good fold.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?990613
Feel free to berate me if you think I played these hands like a donkey. I don't think I played them too bad, other than calling the shove on the river when the guy had trips.
I first started buying in short, and I would play extremely tight. I was looking pretty much to double up. I think I was pretty much a break even player when I was doing this. I've never given too much thought about how to play a short stack, so, this was what I attributed that break even stretch to. I realized that I was still playing all pocket pairs, and at points I was set mining. That's not a good strategy with a short stack. I realized this. However, sitting at the 2/4nl tables let me get some idea of how they played, and I finally decided to start buying in with full stacks.
My first couple forays didn't go so well, I probably lost 2 buyins pretty handily because I was 6 tabling. I had four tables of 1/2nl and two of 2/4nl. Recognizing that this was a big leak, I decided that I was going to drop down to just 4 tables, and play only 2/4nl.
Well, my results were less than stellar.
Well up to about hand 2500, I was buying in short. As you can see, nothing much was going on. However, I then lost 2/3 buyins when I 6 tabled, and then, a lot of my hard work just went down the drain in one session.
I lost roughly 10 buyins in one session. I don't want to say that I went on tilt like I used to do, but I wasn't playing good poker at all. I probably decided to worst time of day to start playing 2/4nl. I decided to play at the end of a long winning session in 1/2nl. It was 2am CST, and none of the regular games were going on in Absolute Poker. Most of the players were regulars, and I got utterly destroyed and outplayed.
It doesn't help that Absolute doesn't have a lot of games going on. So, at night, it seems as if the 5/10nl players and 10/25nl players, move down to the next highest stake at 2/4nl. So, I was getting played back a lot. I guess I may have initially painted a target on my back because I think at first I was playing scared. I would fold top pair good kicker to any flop raise, and I really just wanted a lot of my hands to go to showdown. Well after a while of leaking like that, I got a little frustrated. I started moving at pots, however, people either had hands and wasn't folding to my moves, or, they were being way too over aggro. Regardless, I decided not to fight them, and just laid a lot of hands down.
As you can see, I wasn't winning any pots at all. I have to admit, the cards really weren't going well for me, but I definitely wasn't playing my "A" game. Plus, I should have quit when I lost 5 buyins, but I lacked the self control needed, and tried to power through it. Silly me.
During that stretch, I more than 4 buyins with AKs/AKo, 1/2 buyin with AA, 1/2 buyin with KK, and the rest may have been spew. Not sure.
Here are a couple AK hands.
I posted this on 2p2. And got a lot of comments on it. Some said to check the turn, others said to shove the turn. But this guy had been floating me so much, that I think I should have shoved this turn. I'm not sure about calling that all in. I guess I haven't played with him enough for me to figure out what he shoves with. I also should have reraised a lot bigger pre flop. I did this on Absolute and there was no bet pot button, and I screwed up my pot calculation.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?990575
This one was heads up. I don't think I can get away from it. I was check shoving the whole way. This was against the same guy above. I don't know what he thought I had on the flop, but I got absolutely no respect from this guy, and constantly floated me.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?990592
Here's another one. I don't know what this guy thinks I'm repping. I guess that shove right there really does look like a straight draw, but I didn't want to reraise and have him flat call and be left with a difficult decision on the turn. And he does have the up and down straight draw, and he has one of my outs. GAMBOOL!
http://www.pokerhand.org/?990586
Here's another one where my tptk is no good. Up to this point, a lot of people were calling my cbets and then firing on the turn when I checked. I checked with the intention of shoving.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?990600
Here's the AA hand that I screwed up. This is against a stupid donk. I should have shoved the flop. I was going to shove the turn, until the absolute worse card came out. I think it was a good fold.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?990613
Feel free to berate me if you think I played these hands like a donkey. I don't think I played them too bad, other than calling the shove on the river when the guy had trips.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Moving Up The Poker Stakes
Okay, so basically I didn't build my bankroll playing cash games, so I never had to develop the necessary tilt control and perhaps introspective objective look at whether or not I was actually a good cash game player. I had horrible discipline and would make stupid plays for the sake of making a crazy bluff just because I got bored. Although I did play .1/.25nl, I don't really think I was a winner in those stakes at all. I got pokertracker after I decided to move up to .25/.5nl. I got bored playing .1/.25nl and since my bankroll got bigger from playing other forms of poker I decided to move up before I think i was a clearly ready.
Below is my graph of all my pokertracker hands at .5nl. Clearly you can see that I experienced some large swings and had less than stellar winrate, especially for those limits and when party poker was still in the U.S. I only logged in 10k hands, and before I was ready to move up, I decided I was ready to move up to 1nl.
When I moved up to 1nl, I started playing on pokerstars.com. Although I started to get better, I still had major leaks in my card playing abilities. I still had basically no tilt control.
You'll notice that once I start losing, it doesn't quite stop. So, before this year, I pretty much was a breakeven cashgame player. However, after I saw the Brian Townsend video, I got my act together (poker wise) and started studying and committing myself to the game.
Well, here are my poker stats for the first couple months of this year. I moved up to 1/2nl. And I'm very happy about my results at 1/2nl. A lot of the work that I have been putting in is showing in my 1/2nl results, and I feel that I'm playing some of my best poker.
I'm pretty happy now that I'm having decent success at cash games at a respectable stake over a pretty large sample size.
Below is my graph of all my pokertracker hands at .5nl. Clearly you can see that I experienced some large swings and had less than stellar winrate, especially for those limits and when party poker was still in the U.S. I only logged in 10k hands, and before I was ready to move up, I decided I was ready to move up to 1nl.
When I moved up to 1nl, I started playing on pokerstars.com. Although I started to get better, I still had major leaks in my card playing abilities. I still had basically no tilt control.
You'll notice that once I start losing, it doesn't quite stop. So, before this year, I pretty much was a breakeven cashgame player. However, after I saw the Brian Townsend video, I got my act together (poker wise) and started studying and committing myself to the game.
Well, here are my poker stats for the first couple months of this year. I moved up to 1/2nl. And I'm very happy about my results at 1/2nl. A lot of the work that I have been putting in is showing in my 1/2nl results, and I feel that I'm playing some of my best poker.
I'm pretty happy now that I'm having decent success at cash games at a respectable stake over a pretty large sample size.
My Stint as a Break Even Cash Game Player
I consider myself to a be pretty decent poker player. I've definitely made much more money than I've put in. However, the majority of my success has been in tournament poker. Most of my money has come from multitable tournaments (MTTs), some from single table tournaments (STTs), and before this year, I was pretty much a break even cash game player.
Poker players are known for overestimating their own abilities and perhaps even inflating their winnings. I don't think people do this intentionally. They either keep somewhat haphazard records, or I guess they don't want to consider that they're not as skillful as they would like to think they are. I'm guilty of both. I thought I had pretty good records of my tournament winnings. I keep a record on my computer, and I knew I was a winning player, but how much of one? Well, in my records I had myself as a huge huge winner. Using my records I can calculate my return on investment (ROI) for MTT tournaments, which is how much I should be making for each tournament I enter, and I calculated mine to be just over 200%. This was pretty amazing, and I believed it, too. I didn't intentionally leave out any tournaments to increase my stats because I wanted to gloat; I've hardly told anybody this statistic. I really wanted to keep an accurate database of my winnings, and that was the point.
Well, earlier this year, bluffmagazine.com came out with a database of all online tournament results. I signed up for it, because I sorta wanted to confirm my own database. I was shocked at how bloated my results were. I haven't gone through the math to add up all the numbers from the different sites I play, but I they calculate my ROI to be much closer to 100%. In fact i think it might be lower and close to the 80% range. This was a sort of wakeup call because it really forced me to reexamine some other "Truths" I held about my poker game.
I've always played cash games sort of on the side even when I played a lot of tournament poker. I reasoned that because I was a winning tournament poker player, I must be a winning cash game poker player. After all, it is the same game, right? Due to this "Truth", I attributed my lack of success in cash games to variance. It must be because I wasn't "running good". In other words, I got a bad run of cards, and there's nothing that can be done about my lack of success.
In fact, it's very common to hear that a recent string of losses, or lack of success, is because of a "cold deck of cards". After all, isn't poker a game of variance?
If you read my previous post, this attitude for me changed after I watched Brian Townsend's (SBRugby) instructional poker video on cardrunners.com. I have so much respect and admiration for him as a poker player, and from what I can tell he seems like a great guy. You can watch him play for $60,000 stacks daily on FullTiltPoker.com and I'm pretty sure he's already made more than a $1 million in poker this year alone. You can go to highstakesdb.com if you want to look up his actual winnings this year. He doesn't have to teach people how to play poker, he's already extremely wealthy. He says that he's doing it for altruistic reasons, and that he wants to give back to the poker community - I believe him. There's a large percentage of high stakes cash players who refuse to teach poker and give their insights into how to play poker, because they're afraid that they'll divulge some secrets about how they play to their regular competition and it'll eat into their profits. For that reason alone I have a lot of respect for him.
In his video, Brian Townsend's advice is that you need to take personal accountability of your results in poker. He doesn't deny the fact that variance does exist, but constantly attributing less than stellar results to a bad run of cards is not extremely detrimental to a players ability to improve. Yes, at times you will be given bad cards, however, most losses and downswings are much more often due to bad play than people would like to admit. This was the major step that I took to start to become more successful in cash games. I seriously looked over how I played, and started evaluating the way I would think of playing cash games. I started looking over all my old hands and tried to objectively evaluate them. I started seeing a lot of leaks, and general tilty play where I would call an all in or push all my money in at the most horrible points.
After realizing this, I have probably had the most educational three months of poker since I started playing. I've actually put in the time and effort into learning poker theory, putting in the hands to practice this game, and I am getting a lot better at controlling my tilt. Tilt still affects me, but nowhere near the extent to which it did before.
I know I've written a lot, but I'm done ranting for now. I'll be posting graphs of my poker results which will basically summarize my journey so far.
Poker players are known for overestimating their own abilities and perhaps even inflating their winnings. I don't think people do this intentionally. They either keep somewhat haphazard records, or I guess they don't want to consider that they're not as skillful as they would like to think they are. I'm guilty of both. I thought I had pretty good records of my tournament winnings. I keep a record on my computer, and I knew I was a winning player, but how much of one? Well, in my records I had myself as a huge huge winner. Using my records I can calculate my return on investment (ROI) for MTT tournaments, which is how much I should be making for each tournament I enter, and I calculated mine to be just over 200%. This was pretty amazing, and I believed it, too. I didn't intentionally leave out any tournaments to increase my stats because I wanted to gloat; I've hardly told anybody this statistic. I really wanted to keep an accurate database of my winnings, and that was the point.
Well, earlier this year, bluffmagazine.com came out with a database of all online tournament results. I signed up for it, because I sorta wanted to confirm my own database. I was shocked at how bloated my results were. I haven't gone through the math to add up all the numbers from the different sites I play, but I they calculate my ROI to be much closer to 100%. In fact i think it might be lower and close to the 80% range. This was a sort of wakeup call because it really forced me to reexamine some other "Truths" I held about my poker game.
I've always played cash games sort of on the side even when I played a lot of tournament poker. I reasoned that because I was a winning tournament poker player, I must be a winning cash game poker player. After all, it is the same game, right? Due to this "Truth", I attributed my lack of success in cash games to variance. It must be because I wasn't "running good". In other words, I got a bad run of cards, and there's nothing that can be done about my lack of success.
In fact, it's very common to hear that a recent string of losses, or lack of success, is because of a "cold deck of cards". After all, isn't poker a game of variance?
If you read my previous post, this attitude for me changed after I watched Brian Townsend's (SBRugby) instructional poker video on cardrunners.com. I have so much respect and admiration for him as a poker player, and from what I can tell he seems like a great guy. You can watch him play for $60,000 stacks daily on FullTiltPoker.com and I'm pretty sure he's already made more than a $1 million in poker this year alone. You can go to highstakesdb.com if you want to look up his actual winnings this year. He doesn't have to teach people how to play poker, he's already extremely wealthy. He says that he's doing it for altruistic reasons, and that he wants to give back to the poker community - I believe him. There's a large percentage of high stakes cash players who refuse to teach poker and give their insights into how to play poker, because they're afraid that they'll divulge some secrets about how they play to their regular competition and it'll eat into their profits. For that reason alone I have a lot of respect for him.
In his video, Brian Townsend's advice is that you need to take personal accountability of your results in poker. He doesn't deny the fact that variance does exist, but constantly attributing less than stellar results to a bad run of cards is not extremely detrimental to a players ability to improve. Yes, at times you will be given bad cards, however, most losses and downswings are much more often due to bad play than people would like to admit. This was the major step that I took to start to become more successful in cash games. I seriously looked over how I played, and started evaluating the way I would think of playing cash games. I started looking over all my old hands and tried to objectively evaluate them. I started seeing a lot of leaks, and general tilty play where I would call an all in or push all my money in at the most horrible points.
After realizing this, I have probably had the most educational three months of poker since I started playing. I've actually put in the time and effort into learning poker theory, putting in the hands to practice this game, and I am getting a lot better at controlling my tilt. Tilt still affects me, but nowhere near the extent to which it did before.
I know I've written a lot, but I'm done ranting for now. I'll be posting graphs of my poker results which will basically summarize my journey so far.
Grinding Away Tilt
Well I've been putting a lot of time and effort into improving my cash game, and I never realized that it was such hard work. I've spent countless hours studying lots of poker theory, like reading 2plus2 forums, watching tons of poker videos and going over my hands in poker tracker. Although this has helped me a lot, the one thing that I think has improved my game the most is probably grinding. That's right, grinding away thousands and thousands of hands at a certain stake before letting your results show that you're ready to move up. For some reason grinding has gotten a negative connotation. If I remember correctly, in the movie Rounders, the two main characters looked down upon the "grinders", people who play thousands of hands at the same stakes like a job. They wanted to go get rich quick, go win the WSOP or go on a rush in the big game. I have to say that I used to think like that, but in poker, as in life, there isn't really a quick easy way to do something, you have to put in your time and hard work to be succeed in anything.
Grinding thousands of hands at certain stakes certainly helps a lot in becoming a better poker player. First of all it helps players experience variance and how it shouldn't affect how you play. Plus over thousands of hands, one experiences it all: getting sucked out on an one outer, getting hit by the decked, not seeing premium hands for many many hands and so on. The greatest test, I feel though, is when a player eventually hits a downswing. Learning to deal with these downswings, I feel, is one of the major differences that separates the top poker players from the rest of the field. You won't experience the ups and downs and learn how to cope with losing money without actually putting in the necessary thousands of hands.
If people moved up the poker stakes the proper way, they would realize that grinding away at each stake teaches them something new: as the players get tougher different skills are needed in order to be a winning player at that stake. Basically you start off very fundamental and as you gradually move up stakes you have to start to become more perceptive and trickier as your opponents become trickier. You have to understand that the other players grinding away at the stake that you're playing, were most probably winners at the lower stakes that they play. Yes, there are recreational gamblers who play to gamble and are probably big losers, but in order to make money at various stakes, you have to be able to at least break even with the regulars if most of your profit at that level is coming from the donkeys at that level.
Although your poker knowledge will have to grow at each level, I think grinding will improve your ability to control your emotions at each level. I think that is one of my biggest leaks and probably that of most players. Basically at each level, you're forced to learn how to cope with losing X amount of money without losing your cool. This is absolutely necessary in order to become a winning player. I think I've read that most downswings last for roughly 5 buyins, and very rarely, one might experience a 10-20 buyin downswing. Your skill level, playing style, and stakes will of course affect how big of a downswing you'll likely experience. As you go up in stakes, the edge you have over the rest of the field will decrease, and that will add to your variance. Plus if you're a player that's very loose and aggressive, you should have higher variance than a player of equal skill that plays tighter, the theory is that you're compensated for this variance by higher overall returns. A player at the .1/.25nl stakes would have to learn how to regularly see $250 downswings, a 1/2nl player will probably see $1000 down swings, a 5/10nl would most likely see $5000 swings, and the highest stakes player at $300/600nl must learn how to deal with swings over $300,000 on a regular basis. These numbers are very rough guidelines and these are the "baby" swings that one has to deal with. In real life these swings can be much larger and will often be exacerbated by poor emotional control.
If somebody could play the same way and be emotionless even when one is losing money, their swings should be as tiny as possible. In reality, though, this is pretty much impossible. It's impossible to not let our present situation affect the way we play, however, I have found that the more I grind, the better I can recognize when I'm letting my emotions severely affect the way I play. I think this is because the more you play the more times you'll be put into situations that will affect your emotion. We all know that practice makes perfect, so you have to play thousands of hands against different opponents in order to practice coping with your emotions under different stresses. I have trouble keeping my emotions in check.
Personally, my biggest leak occurs when I lose money and for some reason or another I feel I absolutely must make back the money that I lost. This is often referred to as "chasing your losses". There are various ways to chase your losses. After a losing session at a certain stake, some will rationalize that if they move up takes, they can make back the money they lost at a faster rate. That makes sense, right? Except that the higher stakes are games with higher variance, and if you're losing money at the lower stakes, what makes you think that you can beat the higher stakes game? The way that I find that I chase my losses is that I will try to bluff out my opponents in many large pots, where it is highly likely that they have a good hand, and I'll find myself intentionally gambling as the underdog because I feel that I deserve to somehow suckout and get lucky. It's a vicious circle because as I lose more money, I feel compelled to make back the money that I just lost and I'll gamble even more.
One thing that I've recently discovered that absolutely infuriates me is when I lose a big pot to an obvious and obnoxious donkey. These are players who are utterly horrible, they play close to have of all their hands, however, they think that they are amazing poker players and aren't afraid to voice it and berate other people through the chatbox. For the most part I play my normal game against these players. However sometimes, when they suckout on me in a couple huge pots in a row, a switch goes off inside me. This is often ofcourse followed by them berating me or laughing at me in the chatbox. I know it shouldn't bother me, it's chat on the freaking internet, but I really let them get to me. It's perhaps my competitive nature, or perhaps even my pride, but I feel that I need to outplay and get back the money that I've lost to them and more.
I start to play horrible poker. I completely fall of my game and I don't concentrate at all. I bluff in positions that if I had time to think, are awful bluffing spots, and I try to get into as many big pots with these players to try and take their stacks. For example, I'll call big bets with a gutshot straight draw which has 10% chance of hitting on each street, because the only thing going through my mind is that I want to take their stack, or I'll shove with just a flush draw knowing that he probably has a pretty strong hand and probably will not fold. The only thing I can think of is hitting my card to take hi stack. I basically become a stupid gambler, which is something I don't usually do. My irrational and emotional decision making process starts to leak into all of my other tables that I'm playing on, and I'm basically giving away chips left and right. As soon as I "sober" up and realize what it is I'm doing, I've lost much much more than I should have lost. I start to play little better, however, not completely. Very rarely do I ever win back a reasonable amount of the money that I have already lost to the donk. He either has given it away to somebody else and has already quit because he lost all his money (plus mine), or he realizes that I'm no longer playing retarded and actually start to recoup some of my losses against him. He almost always quits right around here.
This has happened to me a couple times, especially when I was playing the lower stakes. This usually ended up in me going on some form of permatilt and I start playing awful awful poker. Whenever I win I can easily quit after an hour or two. However, if I'm losing, especially after a session where I lost tons of money to a donk, I can only think about making that money back, and the amount of money that I could have made from him if I didn't play stupid. Back when I didn't play much cash games what I would usually do is play winning poker, for the most part over a couple days or weeks. I'd get a couple hundreds hands in every so often but that's it. However, once I started losing, I would play for for hours and hours on end. I'd play for 8-9 hours plus determined to make back the money that I lost. Eventually I would either somehow make the money back, or more often than not I would lose a lot of my cash game profits almost overnight.
The reason why I bring this up is that before this year, I haven't had too much success in cash games because of my inability to control tilt. I never really had to learn to control this tilt because I never put in the time and effort needed to grind it out in cash games in order to become a winning player. I made the majority of my bankroll through multitable tournaments and sit n' goes where tilting does not affect your profits as much. For example, sit n' goes would last for at least thirty minutes and multitable tournaments would last for possibly hours. If I got pissed of I could only lose so much in a given amount of time. Plus, there was no way I could physically give me money to the players that really annoy. If I lost money to a really bad player, I could take solace in the fact that they probably are not going to cash because there are other players who should beat him for the prize. This is completely different in cash games. I could and actually did basically give money to horrible players that pissed me off. Another big thing with tournaments is that once I join it, the money is a sunk cost. I no longer have it, and it's pretty much gone. Plus even if I do play bad, I was never guaranteed the money prizes, so it wasn't too big of a deal. With cash games, however, the money you lose is money that you currently have. And I think this accounts for most of my inability to consistently perform well in cash games.
Up till the beginning of this year I would account for my lack of results in cash games to variance. There are ups and downs in poker, and I must just be experiencing them. Earlier this year SBRugby, Brian Townsend, who I think is probably one of the best, if not the best, cash game NLHE and Omaha PL players in the world, bought part of cardrunners.com and became a lead instructor there. He absolutely destroys cash games online and only started playing No Limit Hold 'Em around the time that I started playing in online poker. He used to be a limit player. He mentioned that in order to be a succesful cash player you must be acountable for your results. Too often you hear poker players who are losing money or are breaking even, and you hear them say, "Oh, I've been running bad". That pretty much takes the player off the hook, because it's not his fault that he's not playing well. I used to do this, and after hearing Brian Townsend say it, I reexamined why I wasn't making any money in cash games. I would have short periods of success followed by periods when I gave it all back. I realized then that a huge leak of mine was tilt control and I've tried to be aware of that ever since.
Although I'm writing all this in one day, I really want to get my blog up to date. So I'll add my next few posts in a sort of chronological order. I also think this specific post is also getting quite long.
Grinding thousands of hands at certain stakes certainly helps a lot in becoming a better poker player. First of all it helps players experience variance and how it shouldn't affect how you play. Plus over thousands of hands, one experiences it all: getting sucked out on an one outer, getting hit by the decked, not seeing premium hands for many many hands and so on. The greatest test, I feel though, is when a player eventually hits a downswing. Learning to deal with these downswings, I feel, is one of the major differences that separates the top poker players from the rest of the field. You won't experience the ups and downs and learn how to cope with losing money without actually putting in the necessary thousands of hands.
If people moved up the poker stakes the proper way, they would realize that grinding away at each stake teaches them something new: as the players get tougher different skills are needed in order to be a winning player at that stake. Basically you start off very fundamental and as you gradually move up stakes you have to start to become more perceptive and trickier as your opponents become trickier. You have to understand that the other players grinding away at the stake that you're playing, were most probably winners at the lower stakes that they play. Yes, there are recreational gamblers who play to gamble and are probably big losers, but in order to make money at various stakes, you have to be able to at least break even with the regulars if most of your profit at that level is coming from the donkeys at that level.
Although your poker knowledge will have to grow at each level, I think grinding will improve your ability to control your emotions at each level. I think that is one of my biggest leaks and probably that of most players. Basically at each level, you're forced to learn how to cope with losing X amount of money without losing your cool. This is absolutely necessary in order to become a winning player. I think I've read that most downswings last for roughly 5 buyins, and very rarely, one might experience a 10-20 buyin downswing. Your skill level, playing style, and stakes will of course affect how big of a downswing you'll likely experience. As you go up in stakes, the edge you have over the rest of the field will decrease, and that will add to your variance. Plus if you're a player that's very loose and aggressive, you should have higher variance than a player of equal skill that plays tighter, the theory is that you're compensated for this variance by higher overall returns. A player at the .1/.25nl stakes would have to learn how to regularly see $250 downswings, a 1/2nl player will probably see $1000 down swings, a 5/10nl would most likely see $5000 swings, and the highest stakes player at $300/600nl must learn how to deal with swings over $300,000 on a regular basis. These numbers are very rough guidelines and these are the "baby" swings that one has to deal with. In real life these swings can be much larger and will often be exacerbated by poor emotional control.
If somebody could play the same way and be emotionless even when one is losing money, their swings should be as tiny as possible. In reality, though, this is pretty much impossible. It's impossible to not let our present situation affect the way we play, however, I have found that the more I grind, the better I can recognize when I'm letting my emotions severely affect the way I play. I think this is because the more you play the more times you'll be put into situations that will affect your emotion. We all know that practice makes perfect, so you have to play thousands of hands against different opponents in order to practice coping with your emotions under different stresses. I have trouble keeping my emotions in check.
Personally, my biggest leak occurs when I lose money and for some reason or another I feel I absolutely must make back the money that I lost. This is often referred to as "chasing your losses". There are various ways to chase your losses. After a losing session at a certain stake, some will rationalize that if they move up takes, they can make back the money they lost at a faster rate. That makes sense, right? Except that the higher stakes are games with higher variance, and if you're losing money at the lower stakes, what makes you think that you can beat the higher stakes game? The way that I find that I chase my losses is that I will try to bluff out my opponents in many large pots, where it is highly likely that they have a good hand, and I'll find myself intentionally gambling as the underdog because I feel that I deserve to somehow suckout and get lucky. It's a vicious circle because as I lose more money, I feel compelled to make back the money that I just lost and I'll gamble even more.
One thing that I've recently discovered that absolutely infuriates me is when I lose a big pot to an obvious and obnoxious donkey. These are players who are utterly horrible, they play close to have of all their hands, however, they think that they are amazing poker players and aren't afraid to voice it and berate other people through the chatbox. For the most part I play my normal game against these players. However sometimes, when they suckout on me in a couple huge pots in a row, a switch goes off inside me. This is often ofcourse followed by them berating me or laughing at me in the chatbox. I know it shouldn't bother me, it's chat on the freaking internet, but I really let them get to me. It's perhaps my competitive nature, or perhaps even my pride, but I feel that I need to outplay and get back the money that I've lost to them and more.
I start to play horrible poker. I completely fall of my game and I don't concentrate at all. I bluff in positions that if I had time to think, are awful bluffing spots, and I try to get into as many big pots with these players to try and take their stacks. For example, I'll call big bets with a gutshot straight draw which has 10% chance of hitting on each street, because the only thing going through my mind is that I want to take their stack, or I'll shove with just a flush draw knowing that he probably has a pretty strong hand and probably will not fold. The only thing I can think of is hitting my card to take hi stack. I basically become a stupid gambler, which is something I don't usually do. My irrational and emotional decision making process starts to leak into all of my other tables that I'm playing on, and I'm basically giving away chips left and right. As soon as I "sober" up and realize what it is I'm doing, I've lost much much more than I should have lost. I start to play little better, however, not completely. Very rarely do I ever win back a reasonable amount of the money that I have already lost to the donk. He either has given it away to somebody else and has already quit because he lost all his money (plus mine), or he realizes that I'm no longer playing retarded and actually start to recoup some of my losses against him. He almost always quits right around here.
This has happened to me a couple times, especially when I was playing the lower stakes. This usually ended up in me going on some form of permatilt and I start playing awful awful poker. Whenever I win I can easily quit after an hour or two. However, if I'm losing, especially after a session where I lost tons of money to a donk, I can only think about making that money back, and the amount of money that I could have made from him if I didn't play stupid. Back when I didn't play much cash games what I would usually do is play winning poker, for the most part over a couple days or weeks. I'd get a couple hundreds hands in every so often but that's it. However, once I started losing, I would play for for hours and hours on end. I'd play for 8-9 hours plus determined to make back the money that I lost. Eventually I would either somehow make the money back, or more often than not I would lose a lot of my cash game profits almost overnight.
The reason why I bring this up is that before this year, I haven't had too much success in cash games because of my inability to control tilt. I never really had to learn to control this tilt because I never put in the time and effort needed to grind it out in cash games in order to become a winning player. I made the majority of my bankroll through multitable tournaments and sit n' goes where tilting does not affect your profits as much. For example, sit n' goes would last for at least thirty minutes and multitable tournaments would last for possibly hours. If I got pissed of I could only lose so much in a given amount of time. Plus, there was no way I could physically give me money to the players that really annoy. If I lost money to a really bad player, I could take solace in the fact that they probably are not going to cash because there are other players who should beat him for the prize. This is completely different in cash games. I could and actually did basically give money to horrible players that pissed me off. Another big thing with tournaments is that once I join it, the money is a sunk cost. I no longer have it, and it's pretty much gone. Plus even if I do play bad, I was never guaranteed the money prizes, so it wasn't too big of a deal. With cash games, however, the money you lose is money that you currently have. And I think this accounts for most of my inability to consistently perform well in cash games.
Up till the beginning of this year I would account for my lack of results in cash games to variance. There are ups and downs in poker, and I must just be experiencing them. Earlier this year SBRugby, Brian Townsend, who I think is probably one of the best, if not the best, cash game NLHE and Omaha PL players in the world, bought part of cardrunners.com and became a lead instructor there. He absolutely destroys cash games online and only started playing No Limit Hold 'Em around the time that I started playing in online poker. He used to be a limit player. He mentioned that in order to be a succesful cash player you must be acountable for your results. Too often you hear poker players who are losing money or are breaking even, and you hear them say, "Oh, I've been running bad". That pretty much takes the player off the hook, because it's not his fault that he's not playing well. I used to do this, and after hearing Brian Townsend say it, I reexamined why I wasn't making any money in cash games. I would have short periods of success followed by periods when I gave it all back. I realized then that a huge leak of mine was tilt control and I've tried to be aware of that ever since.
Although I'm writing all this in one day, I really want to get my blog up to date. So I'll add my next few posts in a sort of chronological order. I also think this specific post is also getting quite long.
Pipedream: To eventually get to 5/10 or 10/20nl
Even though I've taken some of my winnings out of poker, I don't want to actually live off any of it yet. Right now, my ultimate goal, is to move up stakes as fast as possible, and hopefully before I go to graduate school next year, I'll be able to make a decent income without having to grind the hours away. Right now, the plan is to be at 5/10nl or 10/20nl before August this year. I'm targeting those levels specifically because I think at those levels I'll be able to make a pretty good income while putting in much much less time than I do at poker right now. Right now I'm grinding a ton because I want to build my bankroll and poker ability to get to that level. The assumption is that I'll be a winning player at those stakes, which I know is a BIG BIG assumption. I guess you'll all see in a couple of months how whether or not this is just a big pipe dream.
When I first started playing poker, I was all about the tournaments. However, I've realized that to make money in tournaments you need to you need to be playing a lot. The large scores are so few in between that you need to be playing a high volume to see any steady income. Not to mention that any of the worthwhile online tournaments take 5 hours+ from start to finish, with the assumption that you make the final table. This will not be possible for me in grad school. I won't have the time to play that much volume. My life goal isn't to become a poker player, and I would like the time to take my graduate studies much more serious than my undergraduate years. Cash, though, is different because I'll be able to sneak in hands as my schedule allows. Another plus with cash is that all the higher stake online cash pros make much more money than online tournament pros.
I'm not saying that online tournament players make less money because are less skilled in poker than their cash counterparts. I don't think this difference is because of skill, I think it's more of a difference in stakes available to the online poker player. An online cash player has access to pretty much the highest stakes that people play. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a live game that regularly plays and has blinds over 300/600nl. One can regularly find up to 300/600nl games on the Internet almost everyday. Tournament players, however, have to go to live $10,000 buy in tournaments around the country. And you can't find stakes anywhere near that high that run on the Internet regularly. Pokerstars I think has a quarterly $1,000 tournament, but I think that may be it. Mainly because of a convenience-potential profitability ratio (I just made that up), I have switched a lot of my emphasis from tournament play to cash play. There's also one thing I absolutely hate about tournament poker: the bad beat very very deep in a tournament.
I don't remember many cash bad beats probably because I've experienced a lot, and there is nothing inherent in a beat that makes it more painful than another other than the size of the pot. However, I can recall two brutal beats in tournaments with almost perfect clarity. I was very deep in two huge tournaments online, and I was probably 4+ hours into both of them. First place was five figure score in both tournaments. There was 20 or so people left in one, and 18 or so in the other. Anyways, I got all my money in on the flop as a huge favorite to become the chip leader in both tournaments. When I saw the cards I was ecstatic, but that feeling came crashing down in a couple of seconds. With two cards left to go, I got knocked out with a 5 outer in one (80% favorite) , and 3 outer in the other (85% favorite). The moment right after the beat is the worse - the first time it happened, I was so angry that I was cursing at my computer at the top of my voice. Then, there's the acceptance phase and I somehow try to just move on. Then the realization set in that I was only getting a couple hundred bucks for over 4 hours of work seemed like pocket change in comparison to the chance of a 10k+ score. In each case, I didn't even break 1k for probably playing four hours of some of the best poker in my life. That's an additional slap in the face. Even though the euphoria you get after winning a tournament is pretty amazing, I don't think it balances out the feeling of a brutal suckout deep in a big tournament. The extreme of emotions that you endure within such close proximity to each other is probably unique to tournament poker: the high and excitement one feels when one sees the cards and having all that crashing down within seconds when the turn and river card is dealt sucks!
I'm done ranting about tournament poker and given some reasons as to why I'm switching to cash. As I finish writing this entry, two very memorable posts by poker players that I really respect and blogs that I read regularly come to mind.
The first one is by Taylor Caby (Green Plastic) and he likens tournaments to going to clubs. I find it very funny and I completely agree with him on all accounts.
http://www.cardrunners.com/fusetalk/blog/blogpost.cfm?threadid=15206&catid=89
The second is by Shane "Shaniac" Schleger and he recounts his brutal beat in the Aussie Millions. I can only imagine how shitty it must feel when you have to travel halfway around the world for a tournament and suffer a horrible beat with 20 left to go, and get a paltry 60k when first is $1.5 million. Couple that with the fact that you've been playing the tournament for probably 3 days straight. Must not be fun.
http://shaniaconline.blogspot.com/2007/01/dont-think-twice-its-all-right.html
http://shaniaconline.blogspot.com/2007/01/lily-rosemary-and-jack-of-hearts.html
On a side note, it was after reading this blog I decided to listen to Lily Allen. If she's good enough for Shaniac, she's good enough for me. I downloaded her entire album and I really liked her. I burned her album onto a CD and I left it in my car. I probably listened to her for about three weeks straight, naturally, I've since stopped listening to her completely because I may have burnt myself out on her. But she just came to the States on a tour and I got to see her in Houston for $18. I was there with two of my friends and we all agree that it was an amazing concert and that she is an amazing live performer as well. It also probably helped that she had her concert in a bar where the drinks weren't ridiculously priced, which allowed me to get quite drunk. It was a really fun night.
When I first started playing poker, I was all about the tournaments. However, I've realized that to make money in tournaments you need to you need to be playing a lot. The large scores are so few in between that you need to be playing a high volume to see any steady income. Not to mention that any of the worthwhile online tournaments take 5 hours+ from start to finish, with the assumption that you make the final table. This will not be possible for me in grad school. I won't have the time to play that much volume. My life goal isn't to become a poker player, and I would like the time to take my graduate studies much more serious than my undergraduate years. Cash, though, is different because I'll be able to sneak in hands as my schedule allows. Another plus with cash is that all the higher stake online cash pros make much more money than online tournament pros.
I'm not saying that online tournament players make less money because are less skilled in poker than their cash counterparts. I don't think this difference is because of skill, I think it's more of a difference in stakes available to the online poker player. An online cash player has access to pretty much the highest stakes that people play. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a live game that regularly plays and has blinds over 300/600nl. One can regularly find up to 300/600nl games on the Internet almost everyday. Tournament players, however, have to go to live $10,000 buy in tournaments around the country. And you can't find stakes anywhere near that high that run on the Internet regularly. Pokerstars I think has a quarterly $1,000 tournament, but I think that may be it. Mainly because of a convenience-potential profitability ratio (I just made that up), I have switched a lot of my emphasis from tournament play to cash play. There's also one thing I absolutely hate about tournament poker: the bad beat very very deep in a tournament.
I don't remember many cash bad beats probably because I've experienced a lot, and there is nothing inherent in a beat that makes it more painful than another other than the size of the pot. However, I can recall two brutal beats in tournaments with almost perfect clarity. I was very deep in two huge tournaments online, and I was probably 4+ hours into both of them. First place was five figure score in both tournaments. There was 20 or so people left in one, and 18 or so in the other. Anyways, I got all my money in on the flop as a huge favorite to become the chip leader in both tournaments. When I saw the cards I was ecstatic, but that feeling came crashing down in a couple of seconds. With two cards left to go, I got knocked out with a 5 outer in one (80% favorite) , and 3 outer in the other (85% favorite). The moment right after the beat is the worse - the first time it happened, I was so angry that I was cursing at my computer at the top of my voice. Then, there's the acceptance phase and I somehow try to just move on. Then the realization set in that I was only getting a couple hundred bucks for over 4 hours of work seemed like pocket change in comparison to the chance of a 10k+ score. In each case, I didn't even break 1k for probably playing four hours of some of the best poker in my life. That's an additional slap in the face. Even though the euphoria you get after winning a tournament is pretty amazing, I don't think it balances out the feeling of a brutal suckout deep in a big tournament. The extreme of emotions that you endure within such close proximity to each other is probably unique to tournament poker: the high and excitement one feels when one sees the cards and having all that crashing down within seconds when the turn and river card is dealt sucks!
I'm done ranting about tournament poker and given some reasons as to why I'm switching to cash. As I finish writing this entry, two very memorable posts by poker players that I really respect and blogs that I read regularly come to mind.
The first one is by Taylor Caby (Green Plastic) and he likens tournaments to going to clubs. I find it very funny and I completely agree with him on all accounts.
http://www.cardrunners.com/fusetalk/blog/blogpost.cfm?threadid=15206&catid=89
The second is by Shane "Shaniac" Schleger and he recounts his brutal beat in the Aussie Millions. I can only imagine how shitty it must feel when you have to travel halfway around the world for a tournament and suffer a horrible beat with 20 left to go, and get a paltry 60k when first is $1.5 million. Couple that with the fact that you've been playing the tournament for probably 3 days straight. Must not be fun.
http://shaniaconline.blogspot.com/2007/01/dont-think-twice-its-all-right.html
http://shaniaconline.blogspot.com/2007/01/lily-rosemary-and-jack-of-hearts.html
On a side note, it was after reading this blog I decided to listen to Lily Allen. If she's good enough for Shaniac, she's good enough for me. I downloaded her entire album and I really liked her. I burned her album onto a CD and I left it in my car. I probably listened to her for about three weeks straight, naturally, I've since stopped listening to her completely because I may have burnt myself out on her. But she just came to the States on a tour and I got to see her in Houston for $18. I was there with two of my friends and we all agree that it was an amazing concert and that she is an amazing live performer as well. It also probably helped that she had her concert in a bar where the drinks weren't ridiculously priced, which allowed me to get quite drunk. It was a really fun night.
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