As part of my campaign to get serious and improve this year, one aspect I want to place greater emphasis on is post-session review. While this has been part of my repotoire in the past, its easy to overlook it when you’ve just lost a stack to a two outer, or even more likely, when you’ve had a winning session and automatically assume you played well. I usually go through PT and drag up the biggest winning and losing hands and have a look-through, but I don’t think this is enough. For one, I’m not convinced that its always the biggest hands that are really the problem. If you get stacked getting all in pre KK vs AA there’s not much to look at, and if that’s all you look at then I think things are being overlooked.
One of the things that I have noticed is common since I’ve been on the current downswing is not that there are a lot of big losing hands, but a lot of middle sized losers that all add up to a losing session of a buyin or more. Here’s an example I plucked at random from my DB:
FullTiltPoker Game #5039221582: Table Eaker (6 max) – $0.25/$0.50 – No Limit Hold’em – 5:06:10 ET – 2008/01/29
Seat 1: Sitting Out ($10)
Seat 2: SB ($60.30)
Seat 3: BB($50.85)
Seat 4: UTG ($9.25)
Seat 5: CO($80.20)
Seat 6: Hero ($52.65)
SB posts the small blind of $0.25
BB posts the big blind of $0.50
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [Qc Ah]
UTG folds
CO raises to $1
Hero raises to $3.75
SB folds
BB folds
CO calls $2.75
*** FLOP *** [4h 6s 2s]
CO checks
Hero bets $5.50
CO calls $5.50
*** TURN *** [4h 6s 2s] [2d]
CO checks
Hero checks
*** RIVER *** [4h 6s 2s 2d] [3s]
CO bets $10
Hero has 15 seconds left to act
Hero folds
Uncalled bet of $10 returned to CO
CO wins the pot ($18.30)
Perhaps there’s an argument to bet the turn here, but without delving into the strategy of the individual hand too much, lets assume that the CO had lets say pocket 77. So there’s nothing much to be done here. But if you have a two hour session and see 300 hands and have a series of these sort of hands, you end up with a decent loss on the session, and no really big hands to analyse.
So my point here is that I think my current analysis method is missing a fairly large perecentage of the hands where I am actually slowly bleeding (or slowly gaining, if villian folds to cbet) chips. What I need to do is find a better post-session analysis methodology. Would be very interested to hear reader’s views on this topic, or if you have read particularly good articles or literature that covers this topic.
Cardplayer is currently reporting that Joe Sebok has the chiplead in the WPT Winter Borgata Open currently underway in the US. I’ve always been a bit of a Sebok fan since I used to listen to “The Circuit” with Joe Sebok, Gavin Smith and Scott Huff. Not only was that a good show because it was a great way to keep up to date with whats happening in the poker world from afar, but those guys always managed to inject enough humour into it to make it a real fun listen. Over time they’ve evolved and Joe now runs his own site and podcast over at Poker Road.
Anyway in all the shows Joe always seems to come off as the guy who is trying hard but can never quite get the results or the accolades – being Barry Greenstein’s son it must be a fairly large shadow to live in. He’s also a guy that has taken up the game (relatively) recently so in some ways he’s easy to identify with, the newcomer battling to learn, improve and aspire to greatness in much the same way that all of us amateur grinders would love to. I’m not sure that Joe would agree with this impression, but for me at least I always hope to see him finally break through and take a WPT event down or win a WSOP bracelet – it would be inspiration to us all that with hard work you can come into this game and make an impression. Sure he’s got a great coach in Greenstein, but that must work both ways in terms of the expectation placed on him as well.
In any event, I’ll be cheering for Sebok to win, or at least make the final table. Go Joe!
UPDATE – clearly spoke to soon, just checked Cardplayer and Joe has busted.
Ok so as you may have picked up from earlier posts, one of the primary things I don’t ever want this blog to turn into is a place where I just come to vent and tell bad beat stories. I have fairly strong opinions on this Trouble is, when you are on the worst run of your life, its really hard not to think about it! So rather than post about coolers and beats, what I am interested in is this … just how do you clear your mind and regain that balance?
There are of course, several good books on the subject and many articles scattered all over the internet. In book terms, I like both Schoonmaker’s “Your Worst Poker Enemy” and Hilger’s “The Poker Mindset”. (Side note – I registered as an Amazon affiliate and was going to promote those books here – becuase I think they are excellent – only found out AFTER I registered that WordPress doesn’t allow it!). But I’m also interested in how “real” people handle the inevitable period in their poker lives where they run worse than they possibly imagined.
For me, I’ve thought about it hard and come to the conclusion I need to make two major changes to my approach to cope. Number one is that I have been physically dormant for far too long, and I am getting back into exercise in a disciplined and regular way. I think feeling fitter and healthier can only improve my general state of mind. Secondly, I’m going to take a far more disciplined approach to poker play and study. I’ve developed a schedule whereby I have 10 hours a week to play, and 6.5 hours a week to study. Outside those times, I’m going to leave poker right alone. That might not sound like a lot a week, but in between full time work and family life, that’s a pretty full schedule. I’m conscious that although I’ve taken a whole heap of beats and coolers over the last few months, I’m also guilty at times of sitting down and firing up a few tables on a whim – which I think is not conducive to A game play, (a) becuase you are not in the right frame of mind, and (b) becuase I don’t do proper post session analysis when I play ad hoc.
So there’s my two major changes, with the primary goal of clearing my mind and taking a more disciplined approach. I’d love to hear from readers how they deal with keeping focused and balanced in their poker careers, irrespective of whether they are running hot/cold or normal.
One of the things we are doing here at HPC Poker is a little idea I came up with called the 2008 HPC Poker Bankroll Challenge. Essentially it is an incentive for HPC members to work hard on their game, set a goal and work steadily towards improvement. Becuase we have people playing quite different stakes, we are using a BR Index, much like a stock index. Participants in the challenge took their bankroll as at 1 Jan, and equated that to an index of 100. Each week (in theory) we are reporting back on the HPC Forum on our progress. So far we have had a double up, a few of us slightly down or level, and even a complete bust!
I’ve heard it said its not good to set monetary goals for poker, becuase no matter how well you play variance can always come into it. While this is true enough, I think the index is a moderated version so to speak … and its not a goal in itself so much as a motivator to take your BR seriously and play with discipline. Ultimately, thats all you can really do BR wise – have a good set of rules and stick to them hard. It definitely works in the group environment, and lets the up and comers compare on a level playing field with those HPC’ers who have been playing longer and have larger rolls.
Was just doing a bit of surfing and read this little gem over at Covert Ops 100k challenge. This one post rang so true to me I immediately wanted to blog it, as much to share as to jam it into my memory! The line in question:
3. minbets/raises are usually weak hands. Min-reraises are usually strong hands.
As they say in the (internet) classics, QFT, Quoted For Truth.
I might even go so far as to say minraises full stop. I agree on the weak lead, this is usually what it represents, a feeler bet blindly hoping that you will fold. But the minraise is often the gotcha move. It happens to me so often lately. For example, lets say you have a loose crazy at your table, 70 VPIP. I’ve been waiting to catch this guy, and I pick up lets say AQs in the CO. Std raise to the donk in the BB who calls. Flop comes Q 8 2 rainbow. Lovely. Villian checks, standard continuation bet, donk calls. Turn is a non-descript 4, donk checks, I bet for value, get insta-minraised.
Painful experience is that nine times out of ten donk has Q4 here and makes two pair. It’s the minraise I hate becuase of course you cant put villian on precisely Q4. Maybe he’s got a Q and picked up a gutshot, maybe he still has the naked Q, maybe he’s got 99 or something. The point is with the minraise you’re often getting great odds to continue. So you might call that minraise only to have villian lead pot on the river, again screaming strength. Then what do you do?
I hate the minraise. Its usually villian instantly mashing the raise button with glee as they make their hand, but I hate throwing away a good hand getting 4 to 1 or so to continue.
I was interested to read JimmytheHat over at One Day at A Time talking about how he’s fallen behind clearing his 2007 Iron Man bonus at Full Tilt. Timely post becuase I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing. So far I’ve only cleared about a quarter of it and I’m clearly not going to get the whole thing in the time left this month. I really agree with Jimmy though insofar as you feel forced to play – I’m sure thats exactly the idea the sites have in mind, they want to generate sufficient rake to pay the bonus! To me that seems like getting you twice – after all, I had to play a lot and generate plenty of rake to qualify Iron Man and earn the bonus in the first place. To then turn around and say you need to get thousands more points in one month to release the bonus you’ve already earned just seems a little greedy.
But the major problem is that its really hard to play your A game when you know you are really sitting down at the tables just to clear a certain amount of points per day. I’ve been guilty of this for a few months now and I really need to stop this practice – once I’ve cleared as much of this bonus as I can As I commented over on Jimmy’s blog though, you have to be careful that by forcing yourself to play when not in the right frame of mind you dont end up actually costing yourself more money than you make in the bonus!
I’m behind for January, so on the surface it appears I’ve fallen into the trap somewhat. Closer analysis though shows me that the majority of the loss has been through some pretty brutal suckouts by villians – generally I’ve been getting my money in good. So at least I appear to still be making reasonable decisions and plays, and as we all know thats all you can hope to do. In this scenario at least the bonus/rakeback takes the edge off what would have been a pretty ordinary month. I downloaded PokerGrapher again the other day, what I might do is post my monthly graph each month and try and see if there’s anything to be learned by what its telling me. In the meantime, I’ll continue to earn a little more of that bonus for the end of the month – but this is the last time!
…too tired to play tonight so was just surfing around poker sites and blogs and checking out the latest. I came across this video entry over at Pot Committed … Change100 there is one of the writers for Pokernews.com. I actually got this video link from YouTube directly, so I hope this isnt copyright … if this is naughty then someone tell me and I’ll take it down. Anyway the link is an interview between Amanda Leatherman and Annette Obrestad.
I admit, I’m fast becoming a fan of Annette. I just think its an incredibly good thing for poker to have a bright young woman as one of the premier up and comers in the game – nothing will finally kill the old image of poker as a smoky back room game faster than people like Annette continuing to have great success. The more poker displays its increasing diversity the better in my opinion. Anyway, while the interview was moderately interesting, that was actually the first time I’ve heard Annette speak … thats an interesting phenomenon in itself, that online “stars” can become so well known via their online prowess yet many people may never have actually seen the person at all. Anyway, I kinda expected Annette to have a heavy Scandinavian accent due to her Norwegian origins, but it wasn’t nearly as detectable as I expected. I almost would have pegged her for American if I didn’t know better. Shame she didnt do well down here in the Aussie Millions – but good luck to her in the future, I think she has potential to be a real superstar of the game.
Despite my previous post on O8/b, I seem to do much better in the tournament version of this game. Played in a $11 tourney the other night on Full Tilt, had 64 runnners, interestingly including Full Tilt pro Karina Jett. It’s the first time I’ve played in a tourney with a name pro – busting them earns you your buyin back as a bounty. She wasnt at my table much unfortunately – she did get moved there late but some other guy busted her. I don’t think she was paying a hell of a lot of attention to it, she seemed to play very few hands and just got it in with a decent starting hand. I assume its part of their contract to play x number of low level tournaments per month or something.
I managed to cash for 6th position, after three hours of play. The thing I notice about these tournaments is that the preflop play of the large majority of the field is atrocious. I realise I’m still a relative novice at this game, but I think I do reasonably well in these tournaments becuase I am very disciplined with my preflop hands – I dont speculate at all after the first few hands. I’ve read the Full Tilt Tournament Guide chapter on O8/b tournies – interestingly written by Mike Matusow, and I’ve found it to be a really good chapter for offering solid, basic advice for these tournies, enough to give you a decent edge on the majority of the field at this level.
Busted out when getting short on the final table, I raised A4QQ with the A suited into the chipleader who had a very loose starting range. Not a premium hand but couldnt afford to wait any longer with the blinds really getting up there. He called with AKxx – lowish x cards, so probably a reasonable play given he had a big chiplead … he made the high with an A and K hitting the board.
Still, the interesting observation is that I cant seem to make any profit at all playing O8/b cash, yet do reasonably well in the tournament version.
It goes without saying that if you play poker long enough, you’ll run worse than you ever possibly imagined. I confess to be facing the worst cold period of my two year poker career … I’ve never seen so many one and two outers since December started. But that is actually not the point of my post, and I dont think in many ways its the hardest part of being on a losing run.
No the hardest part is sucking it up, and keeping it all to yourself. When you get all in of the turn with AA on a T852 board and you get called by A5, and the river comes 5 again, you just want to let everyone know that the 80 VPIP donk you’ve been stalking for the last 30 minutes just hit another two outer. Then he gets up and leaves the next hand, it makes you want to reach down that internet cable and …. *ahem*
OK, so I appreciate the irony that this post is about not whining and I appear to be doing so Allow me the one moment of weakness please to demonstrate the point! But seriously, I think this is one of the toughest battles you face in poker, being able to master your emotions and resist the urge to shout your misfortune from the rooftops. To resist the urge to mail your poker buddies with I got done AGAIN on a 96%/4% shot. Because deep down, no-one else really wants to hear it. Especially not if they are also struggling.
There are players who can just take it in their stride and know that good play will eventually be rewarded. I aspire to be this sort of player. I dont think I’m too bad at it … I can generally move on pretty quickly … but not instantly. Not yet. But I think to be the best player you can be, this has to be automatic, the ability not to think twice, not to berate the opponent for their donk play (you do, after all, want the donk to continue to make terrible calls).
A lot of players focus on what should I have done with this hand, did I bet the right amount, should I call or raise here, and neglect the mental side. Even more pay lip service to the mental aspect, understand the logic of it, yet forget it all when their AA gets cracked by J6 on the river. I’m adding this as one of my poker goals for this year – the ability to say Nice Hand sir, take a deep breath, and move on to the next hand. Because if you can do this, you’re in a much better state to make the right decisions again.
Around September last year I decided to give Hold’em a rest and make a serious effort to learn Omaha. I’d dabbled around in it before, at the very micro stakes just for fun, but in September I decided it was time to diversify my game a bit. I’d also heard several people say that working on your Omaha game could have extra flow on benefits for Hold’Em skills as well. So after reading some stuff on various forums, I finally bought two Omaha Books – Slotboom on PLO and Tenner on O8/b.
I was immediately captured by the Tenner book, I found it logical, easy to read, and interesting. So I decided to gravitate towards Hi/Lo … the side benefits were I think it tought me concepts that could be applied for other split games, and was also really beneficial to be able to play in HORSE tourneys and SnGs. Limit O8/b attracted me too as a learning game becuase it is essentially a game of making the nuts – you really know much better where you stand in a O8/b hand than you do in Hold’em … how many outs you have to the nuts etc. So I read Tenner through carefully a couple of times, made notes and started out. I’d read elsewhere how playing a solid tight style on really loose tables makes decent money.
8k hands later I’m a big loser at the game. No where near the success I’ve had at Hold’em. Its frustrated me substantially. I’ve used careful table selection, play the right hands, but consistently seem to get outdonked by guys playing random trash. Or raise up my A235 double suited to see the flop consistently come QJK rainbow. I don’t know if its just too small a sample but I ended up abandoning the experiement after losing a significant slice of the BR.
Why did I bring this up now? Becuase yesterday I dabbled in the pool again. This time I played a few tournies – I actually seem to do better in them than cash games. Got donked out of the first with ridiculous beats, did well in the second but bubbled in a 390 man $5.50 tourney with AKKJ double suited – got busted by AA who floppped a full house. Yes I know AKKJ is high only hand but I was getting a little short. So the frustration with the game continues – which is a shame becuase on the face of it, I find the game extremely interesting. I just cant seem to make a hand though.
Posted by Buzz 
Posted by Buzz 
Trouble is, when you are on the worst run of your life, its really hard not to think about it! So rather than post about coolers and beats, what I am interested in is this … just how do you clear your mind and regain that balance?
Posted by Buzz 
