Do you know this guy?

I had a fairly plain couple of nights, with the exception of playing a little while drunk... that was interesting, but still not worth blogging about. All up I think I'm playing well, but also running fairly well right now I guess. In the last week I can only remember two spots where I lost big pots to suckouts, and I seem to be on the dishing side of coolers in big pots I get into.

I subscribed to a few more CR blogs based on highest CR ratings, and read through a bit of good content. One in particular that opened my eyes to important poker concepts was elletse. His latest 2 blogs goes into good detail about what it takes to be a NL1000 regular. He explains the NL1000 regular TAG as a technically unexploitable player. Like, all their stats are too tight to exploit like their 3 bet %, cbet %, fold to cbet, etc etc. That is, if you were to profile the player, you'd find no easy money spots, so realistically a bad player to play against.

Firstly, thinking about this at NL25, I'd say every player has problems with their basic stats, probably still true at NL100. It really is worth thinking of every player as someone with a lot of leaks, and making it a mission to find those leaks, and of course exploit them. Also understand what they do well, as that can help you get paid too. On the other hand, the most frustrating players I face now tend to be those that balance up quite well. I can't easily cbet them, or float them or even 3 bet them, as they have solid enough answers to those easy attempts to make money without a hand. It's not that they always react to being 3 bet, it's that they react just enough to make it uncomfortable to 3 bet them light.

He went on to saying that this shouldn't be the ultimate answer, but knowing the perfect mix of everything and being able to play that way is important.

The more and more I uncover recently, the more I think that poker is all about those that you choose to sit with, and knowing how they operate.

Lesson 1 finished

Goals:
1. Pay much closer attention to stats before playing a hand and try to work out whether that hand works well against ranges, and likeliness for people to call/fold up to turn
2. watch other hands, tendancies
3. think about post flop betting chances when boards come down

How do I feel?
Very good, looking forward to paying more attention, will two table and table select (datamining)

Results:
1. Tick. I datamined a lot of tables before playing, and when I sat down had two aggro monkeys on my direct right, so life was good. But I labelled each player on my table looking at how much they might 3 bet or call if they had position on me, and how much they would fold to cbets or turn cbets, trying to profile how profitable they would be for easy bet/cbet poker. Looking at players on my right, I looked at how profitable they would be to set mine or how dominated my AJ type hands would be from their EP raises. I felt very comfortable with my play after doing a bit of this, and kept it up pretty well for the whole session.
2. Did this pretty well. I don't miss too much on the tables now while 2 tabling. If I miss a big pot I go the HH to find out more. Whether they were betting for value, thin betting or bluffing a lot is still a big focus. Looking to focus more on floating and how they handle 3 bet pots too.
3. What I mean by this is try to think more before betting. How does this board interact with villains range? How much value would this villain give me with my hand? So am I betting for value here or betting to bluff/semi bluff. And if it's a bluff/semi-bluff how likely am I to get it to work. If it's for value, how much value would I expect from this hand?

Overall, felt like I played well, probably the best I have before given new levels of attention. I also tightened up a lot in marginal spots like holding A3s from CO with a looser button, or betting the SB when checked to. And definitely if you find fishy tables, there is absolutely no need to try to force people off pots or play too much OOP, as you get paid a lot more often with big hands, which is what happened.

I also finished off the video coaching, which went make a video, get feedback notes then have a live Q+A session. While I wouldn't say my idea of poker was turned upside down, I definitely found out a lot about my game from doing this session, and confirmed things I don't understand so well. It really comes down to doing ALL the little things, and never leaving anything for chance. If a spot comes up where you think, "I'll just try to cbet here" without having valid reasons to do so, then you are allowing yourself to burn money and this lead to tilt. Assessing a situation and being wrong is a good thing, as it shows you can improve your game and winrate still. So I'm going to tilt a lot more if I bet without a reason than if I had the wrong read or reason.

Understand simple poker concepts, get reads on players, play accordingly, it's that easy.

OK, so where to from here? I will be focusing on mainly the stats and reads for the next little while. I need to start gettting this in my head, but when the opportunities come up I'll be adding a 3rd table to the mix. This will be when I'm comfortable at two tables, and I'm feeling switched on, not when I'm tired or tilted. My short term goal is to get to a point where I'm back up to 4 tables, but not losing much of my reads. I think this is very achievable, and like anything will take some work, which I'm prepared to do. Once I'm comfortable 4 tabling again, I will work at improving my game again, and start grinding towards NL50. The beauty of 4 tabling is I can get a winrate together that coupled with 350 hands an hour will mean I can start making some plans to move up to the next level, as long as I'm winning and not losing. My aim is to not give up any edge playing these tables, and still be table selecting, hand reading and player reading well with all 4 tables I'm playing on.

Video done, some thoughts

I finished my video (I think), and some interesting things came out of it. When I was doing the video, I didn't want to do the audio, because I thought it would be a mess, even though Joseph suggested putting the audio on after. Last night I put the audio over the top as suggested, and had a pretty decent insight into my game. I made the moves I pretty much would have except a couple given the hands and reads I had, which suggests my B game isn't far off my A game, as I definitely felt B. It also suggests my feelings of playing bad are probably more about not having the skill, than not being able to apply that skill. I mean, there is definitely game time room for improvement, like getting more solid reads, and using some pre flop and flop stats and stack sizes a bit more, and table selecting harder, but overall, a lot of the things I'm doing wrong there are due to the skills I bring to the table.

One thing that keeps bugging me is thinking about some hands I've had recently (and over time) is having way too many all in hands where I'm nearly drawing dead or am drawing dead, like he has KK vs QQ overpairs, or I have nut flush/straight on a paired board and he has a boat, I have two pair, he's completed a straight, etc etc. I find myself overplaying some marginal hands for stacks. So at times that's OK, and I get on an upswing, other times it's very dangerous. I would like to get a video done where more of these type of hands happen, so I could go over them in more detail with peers.

The one that did happen was AJ from the button. An aggro BB 3 bet, which he would do a lot if I had more button raises. I figure my AJ is ahead of his range by a bit and call, to see J88 flop. I just never put a huge part of his range on a JJ+, so when he cbets, I minraise, which I planned to do if I missed the board too a lot of the time. He miraises back, almost getting it in anyway, and I have no trouble getting it in, he has 86s. So i figured my Ace outs were good as well as J outs, and I might even have him crushed with him drawing to a K or Q or 2 outs to his lower pair. Reality was I'm drawing to 2 outs or a runner runner Aces :) This is really where I get myself into trouble, with no easy way out and it's frustrating. I maybe have to re-evaluate hands where I hold a normally strong hand that is now drawing dead or almost dead to some obvious hands, when players make what I'd consider a strong move.

I'm probably just rambling, but overall I'm excited to be getting coached right now, and I really feel like by the end of the month I will be a "better player without question", not just a "better player I hope" like my normal development goes.

Made my first vid

Goals:
1. Get 40 minutes of 2 tables done.
2. Play with some thoughts, maybe note down key pots
3. Work out those villains that can fold medium hands, those that can bet thinly, and those that bluff a lot, and those that play purely for value

How do I feel:
kind of tired, a bit off

How did I do:
1. yep, roughly
2. Not much of this, where did my thoughts go?
3. I was doing this on and off. I don't think I clearly got the answers I should have, and the information was there I think.

goheels (Joseph) from CR is going to assist in my learning curve. So last night I recorded a video, which I'll put audio over and send to him (or anyone else if they care for it). A little tiredness and tilt came along with the vid, but more than anything some nasty spots. If I was to analyse my plays now, there were a few too many loose bets/bluffs, but overall I think it's a great indication of where my mind is at with relation to poker right now, and since a lot of those bluffs worked, it can't all be bad. My only hesitation is that in a couple of spots, even though it worked, I risked money without "knowing" my opponent would have to fold, which is where it gets very dangerous.

If there was one positive to take out of the session, it was that I was at least thinking more about bet sizing. It's probably something I should keep fairly simple for now, but for some reason I saw value in trying some weird bets to throw my opponents off which worked OK.

Just before starting the video recording I got sucked out on with 2 pair and the flush draw versus a better flush draw on the turn. That plus the fact my computer was using 100% CPU the whole time the video was going (unrelated to Camtasia in the end) had me slightly tilted all session.

So I have to say, I have no clear goals in poker right now until I get advice from Joseph on where to focus most of my attention. I'm really pumped about putting the extra boost into my learning, but based on some of my plays last night, I can see I still have a lot of basic things like calling people down too light, calling 3 bets or opening bad hands at bad times that creep into my game when I'm not trusting/applying my reads. So in my opinion, some advice coming back will probably be, keep learning some ABC tactics. Still it should be good to hear that from a good player, and not just assume I know the answers, and always be 2nd guessing theories.

I'm Conciously Incompetent

Kirsty call George

I'm not setting goals just yet...

2 reasons. 1 is that I'm not feeling up to the grind right now. Secondly, I really feel like sorting something out after watching a Jared Tendler video. The video was his first I think, and I think he qualified by the end not to play thinking about what he said, and I agree, so I'll blog it out of my system, and see if I want to play afterwards.

So the idea was an old golf lesson I learned. Easy enough to understand, it's the 4 levels of skills, unconcious incompetence, concious incompetence, concious competence and inconcious competence. Now the idea is at first you totally don't have a skill, but don't know it, like spelling unconcious (yes I used a spell checker). You'd so far be unconcious incompetent. Next you are told it's spelt wrong, so you know you are wrong, but you know you aren't good at it. That is concious incompetent, you are aware, but know you aren't good. Next you get to concious competent, meaning you've studied, practiced and now you feel confident. In this case it's checking the spell checker and now understanding the spelling, but still having to think about it when typing. Finally, you don't even have to think about it. You are typing unconcious into a sentance and do so without thinking about the spelling at all.

Now obviously the above has one great place to be, and 3 terrible places for different reasons. Inconcious incompetent is bad because you won't even know you have an issue, however in certain circumstances, like a lot of poker skills, it's not dangerous to not know. Like not knowing about blind stealing isn't dangerous. Concious incompetent is dangerous because you know you should occasionally steal blinds but don't know when. So you can cost yourself more money trial and erroring this. However, it's also good, because you know it's something you need to learn more about. Concious competent is OK, but at high emotional times you really need things to just happen, and if they aren't inconcious yet, you may fall into trouble under pressures. So you may think you know something very well, but still fall to the negatives behind not knowing it sometimes.

Now Jared said not to apply this directly to your play. I think he's aiming to come back to this in later videos, but there is one really interesting point about this concept and poker. Now you don't know about stealing blinds, but now find an article or forum post about stealing blinds, and suddenly know it :) So you try it a lot, and wonder why you are no good at it after a while. So you finally decide it's a leak, and come back to learning more about blind stealing. Suddenly a few concepts about blind stealing click into place. So you go back to a "concious competent" phase now, knowing your blind stealing is good. It eventually becomes unconcious, only you still may not know it properly. So it becomes obvious that doing anything without understanding it first is vitally dangerous. This is so true of so many things in life, yet people love to just get stuck in and do something rather than learning first, then applying. Wow, it's so obvious, yet so me!!!

Because of the dangers of consious incompetent, I want to do Jareds idea of writing a list of what I think my 4 skill sets are in poker. Unconcious incompetent will obviously be hard, but I'm sure I can think of plenty for the other categories. I figure this list to almost be a long term goal list, but we'll see how good it is first. The idea being to have a lot in the concious incompetent (only has to be partially incompetent) list and working hard to understand what I don't already.

I'm actually getting a bit poker hungry so will come back to this, but this list will likely be kept locally anyway, and I'll see if I want to publish it to the blog or not.

2, count that 2 tables

Goals:
1. Get some reads on a table, feel happy to play there
2. Start up another, try to balance the reads on two tables
3. Work on keeping reads and keeping up with the table changes

How do I feel:
OK, not tired, but a little distracted/work tilted.

Results of goals:
1. Had this early. Saw some weird looking bets and had two tight players on my left
2. Again, good early. Got the reads on both tables, saw and noted lots of interesting things
3. Somewhat good. I was getting tired after an hour of play, and really had gone into auto mode apart from getting reads from a couple of spewtards (I've always noticed spewtards). I did notice having one spewtard (actually a TAG tilting I think) did make it much harder to read other tables.

Again I feel I played pretty well. I have a little "monsters under the bed" sometimes, and don't 3 bet enough. Still I haven't felt like I've had a lot to 3 bet with, but oh well. ran pretty well on the flop again, and ran up a nice little 2 BI.

There were two near identical spots where I "ran well", but do feel like the way I played made the hand insanely easy, however it may not be ideal. I called 99 after being 3 bet, by a fairly TAG/LAG player and flopped T66, so raised his cbet. Flop is terrible for his range, but I feel I'm only folding worse, and getting called by better. Next was calling AT after a TAG (tilting a bit though) 3 bet. Flop is A73, he cbets big, I raise, he insta folds. Two spots where I had way ahead or way behind. Now the idea is to call here and let him spew off. Only in both situations, I feel like he might double/triple barrell as a bluff, and in both cases, I'm not happy to call down with the hand I have. Again in both cases, I'm not even turning my hand into a bluff, as AK never folds there, and even JJ never folds on the T66 board. Don't know, might post somewhere.

Two biggest losses were hitting KJ top pair and getting forced off it by the river, and strangest first hand ever, having a squeeze happen in front of me when I held QQ. Wasn't sure whether to call/fold/raise/shove without any reads or stats, but called to evaluate. Folded to Kxx insta cbet, and later found him to be quite tight, so maybe made a good fold.

The whole US poker thing is horrible, WTF is Bush up to? You have 10 days, retire (or rest) in peace and leave us chronic gamblers alone!!! I'm glad I'm not American, but can just imagine the entire poker culture dying off if poker is banned in the US properly. Some nervous puppies out there right now I presume.

Session review

Goals for this session:
1. COntinue to dig at player types as quickly as possible
2. Identify points where I'm falling into B or C game traps
3. Review the session

How do I feel:
Pretty great, I could grind NL50 tonight.

Time: 8:20pm

1. Not bad. Getting good early reads on some occasions
2. I didn't feel like I played any B or C game tonight
3. Reviewed some hands, really nothing interesting, except for a couple of read based call downs which where both correct calls.

Played some NL50 after feeling good. I ended up playing well I thought, but hitting very little. At one point I had to fold 99 to a big 3 bet (he had AA, but I would have flopped a 9 and won a big 3 way pot), next hand flopped a full house versus a donk who raised everyhing but folded, then would have hit top two pair, but again had to fold PF and the donk and solid player got it in with worse. Then I hit nothing for 2 hours :) Fortunately had 2 players spaz off rivers to me, otherwise it would have been a breakeven nigh with no pot over nearly anything. Overall though my hand reading was going well, situation reading seemed quite solid, and I was getting a pretty good impression of who were the big donks and who were the solid regs 3 betting for value or double barrelling with top pair etc.

I just don't really feel scared about any situation right now, because if it's bad for me I can quit the game, but usually I understand it, even if I don't like it. Like basically, you can almost categorise people into post flop bettors that bet only for value, bet too thinly or bluff too much. Apart from that preflop and cbets are all in the stats, so it's just a case of watching later streets to see how people play certain hands after the flop is seen.

Anyway, eventually I'll feel confident enough in how it's all going to add table 2 to the mix. I'll probably just play NL50 when I'm feeling very solid and not tired.