More of the same.

Well, I've been more than happy with my HUSNG self control. I haven't come close to tilting this last few days, no matter how I get beat. I've also been quitting or taking breaks when too tired or not focuses, which is awesome. I have room for improvement still, but I look forward to playing a lot of A game poker this year due to how I'm approaching the game right now.

Overall, I'm pleased with my HUSNG progress too. I can see a long way to go still, and might look at specific HUSNG coaching at some point. I figure I might put in March first, and see how I feel about that month before doing anything. I'm not completely over 6 max, and still have thoughts about playing HU cash at some point, but do feel at home in the HU SNG's right now. However, I know how poker works, and I'm sure there will be times I'm ready to quit HU, but I'm hoping I'm strong enough to work through that next time.

HU SNG's and tilt

So, my HU SNG's so far. I've played some $55 turbos, in fact they were the last thing I played before my poker meltdown last year, and I can see why. Last year, my tilt control was 0, even though I thought I was a generally tiltless player, I was very wrong. I've come to the conclusion so far that tiltless is impossible. We can only eliminate as many tilt factors as possible. And playing tilt free is the goal to good poker. Tilt happens so quickly, and takes over so unknown to us. I remember getting upset by suckouts in these things, and then playing another match without clearing out those thoughts, not pretty. You basically play the next game as your C game at best, and I also see players do that against me now. They are playing good tight aggressive, lose one pot and start calling every raise, and calling down 3 streets with bottom pair. They just stop thinking about what's going on around them, and start playing bad.

So how am I minismising tilt now? Firstly, Tommy Angelos tips on Barts show are fantastic. He talks about being in the now. If you are tilting, you are thinking of the past. How does thinking of the past help when you are dealt AK and have a J94r flop? It doesn't at all. Also thinking about "oh he'll just check raise me" is thinking about the future, and again not focusing on what to do now. What you should always be thinking is "what could he have here", "what will he do with different hands", and now "what is my best play". If you are busy thinking about him sucking out on you or unrationally thinking he'll probably just raise, you can't accurately make a good decision.

So the idea for me is simple. I am currently 2 tabling these things, and if I have a match end, I'll take a quick thought about how I'm feeling. If I'm thinking clearly, I'll fire up another, but if I'm a little tilted, or just need a break, or want to think more about this match, I won't. After the 2nd is finished, I can take a break. It can be however long I need. Often it's just a quick breather and re-focus before firing up 2 more tables. The beauty of this in relation to HU SNG's, is you can easily get to a break time if you just wait a minute.

THe ROI in HU SNG's goes up about 1.9% for each extra match you win in a 100. So if you win 54 from 100, your ROI is 3.3%. If you win 55 from 100 your ROI is 5.2%. Now lets say you play 400 $55 turbos, the difference between 3.3% and 5.2% is over $400!!!! I mean each win is literally $110 different to a loss. So tilting just one game every 4 nights can cost you $400 a month. Now do you seen the importance of staying tilt free?

So there is one more thing. You may play fairly tilt free and still get crushed, it happened to me the other night. At 10:30pm (I can go to bed 11-12 if I feel up to it) I took a quick break, and really wanted to play more to get back to even. However, I was playing a bit tilted by now, was tired and had a lack of confidence, so I quit. I felt great doing this, as I'm sure -EV matches would have followed, regardless of results. I lost money, but felt great about it overall. Last night I was up some money, and felt like quitting, however, I was avoiding tilt well, thinking the game through well, and really had no reason to stop. So I took a little breather with the intention of playing more, and sure enough I played well after the break too.

The point I'm making is in poker, there are many, many things you can control, and need to to be a winning player. What you can't control is luck, and yet so many people focus on that too much. Whether I won a bunch or lost a bunch last night, if I played A game poker, against weaker opponents, I'm a big winner in the long term, and that's all that counts. Luck can go fuck itself really, I don't need it to win at this game long term.

That's a load off, I hope that came out well, but it's probably more a mess of words than anything. Hope someone out there gets something out of this, or at least agrees.

Goodbye 6 max

Well, it's been just a little while. I think last blog I was really getting into the idea of not being results oriented, and that's still true. I did however fail at playing 6 max. I was going OK, playing maybe a little too tight, but there were problems.

I want to first explain some issues I have with 6 max. Firstly, when you datamine a decent percentage you soon realise some spots are not so profitable. What you actually find is that restealing off stealers is profitable, set mining with SC/PP's vs EP nits is profitable, and folding medium strength hands against tight ranges or OOP is also a good idea. So that's fine, but it leaves little left. Obviously its up to you to open up some more, but I'm finding myself making most money from 3 betting loose buttons, as even when I flop big I'm either not getting paid, or still losing. So you play 4K hands, get few great spots, and when things aren't going your way, the week is spent folding, getting it in bad, or getting rivered. Not pleasant. Also when you are waiting, waiting, waiting for a good spot, get a bad beat, but have fish on the table, you feel reluctant to just get up and take a break, but it's necessary. So I find myself grinding 2 hours straight without a break, and really just playing 1 hour good and 1 hour bad because of that. And if you do take a 15 minute break to clear your head, then it's another 30 minutes of table selecting to find good spots at the table. Nothing worse than getting on the 50 VPIP table to see two nits on your right and two loose aggressive players on your left.

So lets analyse reads. You make a read a player has check raised as a bluff. The rest of the session he never check raises you. I guess the problem I'm talking about is I'm watching players, getting reads, and it rarely gives me much help, as I rarely get into pots with people. If I'm only raising 15% of hands, I'm probably playing 5% of pots postflop, so in a 100 hands might play one hand against that guy I got a read on and he doesn't check raise anyway. Then I never seem him the rest of the week. I guess what I'm saying here is not so much reads are pointless, and certainly if you are getting reads off the loose fish on your right, that's great, but overall, even if you play 22% of hands, there isn't a lot to do but fold a lot, and bet when ahead or can get folds.

It just isn't that interesting to me, and especially when "running bad", it's very hard to untilt. What I mean is you get frustrated when AA < KK PF, then QQ < 99 in a 3 bet pot on 642r, and then you get 2 nights where not much happens. It makes you not want to grind. Then as soon as you start to get tired or tilted, you are discouraged from leaving the tables for 20 minutes for several reasons.

So hello HU. Cash or SNG, doesn't really matter, this is a game I can play. Now I've chosen HU SNG's for now, as they are a little easier again to untilt. I listened to half 1 of Bart's interview with Tommy Angelo, and he talks about physically sitting up, taking some deep breaths and refocusing. This has been a HUGE problem of mine. I sink into the couch, grind, grind, grind, and my mind gets further and further away from important issues. It's been a lot better recently, but still not ideal. Now I can play a couple of SNG's, do this excersize and focus on what's important. OK, how am I feeling, do I jump right back into the games, do I need a break, am I tired, am I tilted? OK, now take appropriate action.

So for now I'm HU SNG guy, playing the $55 turbos on Full Tilt. I do wish to move into HU cash at some point, but really want to play some HU SNG's for a while, at least til the end of the month. I figure I'll have played about 4-500 SNG's by that time, so I should have a pretty fair idea of how I'm playing them by then. Already I'm about 80 SNG's in and it's been swingy as anything. I'll report on this in another blog.

Happy with how it's going

I'll put in one more normal post, and come back to the tilt one which is still hot on my mind very soon.

So I played a bit on Friday and Sunday, and there is something in the air right now, because I feel like I'm crushing the game. Now this isn't a results oriented post, and there has been some sickness in some hands, but overall, my feelings are I've had great success at improving my game the last few months, and really feel like it's paying off.

Shout out to some skypers, joseph the coach mostly, but others too. But big shout out to HEM too. PT3 was a pretty big disappointment for me, but now using HEM, I'm finding I'm really using it, and using it well. I'm table selecting pretty hard for one, and finding myself on 2-3 soft tables on Full Tilt. From that point on I'm playing those tables pretty well. I'm probably playing a little too tight, but feel like I'm making good calls/raises/laydowns at different points in hands. I pretty much always look at positiong PF stats, and cbet/turn cbet %'s before making a call or raise PF. I find myself bluffing less and less, which I think is really helping, especially when you see what some people call down with, would hate to be bluffing these guys.

Anyway, whats really pleasing is I really find myself spotting more and more hands players are holding. I'm putting people on exactly AQ or 55 in spots, and getting it right more often than I'd believe myself. Last night I couldn't lay down T9 on a T55Tx in the slightest, but given the way he played it I thought he had 55 a lot and he did. I also value shoved TT on an ATxxA river knowing he had AK or AQ and would definitely call, and he did indeed have AQ. But it just feels great seeing their hole cards in your mind and getting it right a lot, really really pleasing, especially when most of the hands people show up with were in your ranges of what you thought they could have PF.

I'm contemplating leaving some BR on several sites. The reason is I'd like to experiment with multi-siting. If Full Tilt is tight or loose tables have waiting lists, then I'm pretty much buring money not sitting down, yet don't want to sit down on tight tables. If I had OnGame and maybe even UB or Party Poker open as well, then I could really sit down on 3-4 ultra soft tables most of the time rather than all soft tables 20% of the time I play, which I achieved for about 1 hour last night, but often don't have 3 soft tables. I passed it by a better player and he completely agreed it's a huge advantage to be able to play several sites.

Winning poker guide: Step 1 - Who is working

Well, as I said before in my recent blogs, results from now are completely banned from my blogs, my forum posts, my chats. So if I can't focus on my results, it does beg the question what is left for me to strive for. Well obviously, I'm aware that if I play well results will happen. You see I've been a believer of sorts that you have to play like the biggest genius in poker history to really beat games, and it will only get worse as opponents get more educated. The fact is it's not true. Think about sites like Cardrunners and their effect on poker. The training sites are improving players, no doubt and they have improved me a lot. But who goes there? Well if you listen to poker podcasts, everyone is going there. So lets look at some numbers. At any time there are well over 100K people on pokerstars, maybe half that on Full Tilt, and another 50-100K spread over all the other sites. So maybe 500K people playing online poker overall. Some are new and destined to play 1 month and quit, others are regs grinding 10 hours a day, fair enough.

So then look at the video sites. As at 6 months ago cardrunners had 10K members. That could be 20K now with all the publicity, but I can't see them being any more than that. Other sites may be doing well, but I'd expect a lot of crossover, maybe 5K of those guys are also on Deucescracked and another 5K are only on DeucesCracked. So lets so over 50K of players are members of video sites, which I think is high overall. So out of the 500K, we currently guesstimate 10% have ever seen a decent video on poker. Lets say for argument sake another 50K have participated in forums quite a bit too, making 20% of players more educated than just being self taught.

Now there is the obvious hole in that logic that it's very likely the 1c/2c players aren't on the video sites as much as the $2/$4 guys are. It's also safe to assume more players on the side of the smaller stakes. But with that I'd argue a lot of the 50-100K of "educated" players are just casually watching videos or surfing BBV forums rather than sitting down and logically working out poker problems for themselves and understanding what moves to make when.

The problems lies in that there is the big success stories, and there are the known tools of how to crush poker all out there. So you see mbolt1 go from a $30K per year job, to a $100K/month poker career. You are inspired, how did he do that? Oh he joined Stox, watched the videos, now he's $100K/month. Wrong. He worked, and worked, and worked, and worked. He networked, he worked at his game, he learned ways to avoid losing money, he succeeded. Isn't there a lot of work behind most success stories? Yes, there is. Now most people feel the inspiration, but most do not work hard enough to become an inspirational story. And yes some are becoming the competent grinders on Full Tilts $1/$2 etc, but most are not as good as they think they are. And while they manage to be better than break even, their work ethic, ego or tilt hold them back.

I will continue with a thread about tilt, that may very well include the essence of how to win at poker in my opinion.

Keep on changing.

Interestingly enough, I didn't run too good last couple of nights. However, this is it for complaints. I looked over the plays I made, and all but two were good, and all but one saw me mostly getting my money in good, or what would be good a lot. That one was a brain fade shipping it in with 99 PF against a guy who I thought was raising over 30%, but after figures settled down it turns out he was more like 20/16, lol. Either way, 99 AIPF is not a good thing at these stakes, almost ever.

Instead of bitch about how the pots shifted from me being heavy favourite to villains collecting them, I will mention a couple of interesting things. Firstly, after a while at the table, and down a few blinds, mainly from raising one too many hands and having to fold on the flop or after, I got AA in the CO. Raise, 3 folds, steal, YES!!! OK, so what happened there? I'm raising 30% so far on this table, yet when I get dealt AA, get no action. What's happening is people are still looking directly at their cards. They aren't saying "well, this guy is raising too much, I might try to exploit him" or "I wonder if I can 3 bet him lightly here" they are literally saying "I have J4o, I'm folding." So what you say, J4o is a perfectly normally fold. Well, it's just that you feel if you'd raised 12% of hands, that AA should never be called/raised, and that raising 30% gives you the right to get more calls/raises with AA. It does. However, it's not that much more often. Someone calls with 55 on the button, regardless of what you hold, because they want to hit a set. They might however, play a hand like A9 or 76s differently depending on the raiser and position. But it's still literally a handful of hands they might play differently depending on villain and positions, and the rest are all simple folds, raises and calls. Bad players may give you more or less credit postflop based on your PF stats, but to be honest, they are still looking at their hands a lot, and sometimes at the board textures.

So where am I going? Nowhere really. I guess the point might be that if you open Q7s on the CO, you need to realise what it's going to do for you. In higher stakes, it might help disguise your otherwise good starting hands, but in lower stakes, this isn't necessary, as people aren't putting you strongly on a range anyway. So waiting for the bigger hands is not a horrible play.

As for my read of other players, it's getting pretty good. I still have stacks of ideas off the tables, that don't always make it into my decisions at the time, but it's coming. I can now quite easily factor in some things, have an idea about possible scare cards, and thanks to Joseph, also think about not only what people would do with different made hands and drawing hands, but also how they would bluff.

I might set this as a short term goal. Try to work out what things I'm not thinking about enough at the tables and add those decisions in one by one, until they become natural. Like for now I might focus on putting people on a range on each flop, and see where that gets me.

As for where and what I play, I have no idea. I'm contemplating moving from OnGame for a while, and trying something different. If it means I get my game in a better place, then that's a good thing overall. I "might" get onto FTP again, but it's really quite hard to say. Time will tell, I haven't made up my mind yet, but at least it's never permanent.

Stuff is happening

Blog has been updated pretty poorly in recent times. It probably doesn't help that I'm not getting anything decent going for my efforts at poker right now. And I could swear at the end of January I was ready to start "earning" the monies from poker.

Feb so far, cooler after suckout after bad play after weak play. It shows massive amounts of immaturity. I have had some sick beats, and they just seem to weigh down on my play far too much. And then I'll play 50 good hands to start a session and won't be thinking anything negative. First beat happens, and I'm straight back where I've been all month, wondering how I'm ever going to profit from poker.

I have had some great chats with some players though, and I can't understand in any way that if I stick at it I won't be a very profitable player long term. It just seems unrealistic to me.

It's possible, although only a small chance right now, that I may not be grinding much longer. A possibly great web idea work opportunity has come up, and if it seems as good as it does now if a couple of weeks, I can only imagine I'll be shifting my time away from poker and into this idea. But if anything that puts my play into the perspective that I must make the absolute most out of the time I get to play. So I'll keep playing as well as I know how in the short term, and see how things turn out on the work front.

As far as my goals in poker go, I really feel like I've been playing my best this last week for no returns, but at least haven't kept the downslide going and really feel my next upswing will be "big". So I look forward to methodically tearing apart NL100 or NL50 games at OnGame this week when I play. I will know my opponents hole cards always, and will play those hole cards for maximum profit. It will be a beatiful thing, and the poker gods can do what they will with to make my week profitable or not.