After umming and arring for a while I decided to give Vegas a miss this summer. I've been every other year since 2007 so seem to be keeping this trend going. I've decided to give it a swerve for a few reasons; firstly I am just not that keen on live poker in general so don't have that 'can't miss the WSOP' feeling that a lot of pros seem to have. I actually think the WSOP is overrated in terms of how soft the tournaments are and people (as usual) overestimate their edge. Yes, the 1k and 1.5ks are full of people with few poker related brain cells but you have about 15 chips to play with so it's obviously a crapshoot every time.
Usually what happens is I get fed up with playing live poker pretty quickly and then struggle to find many other activities to do there beyond ones that involve degeneracy. This ends up getting expensive unfortunately (though it's always fun of course). I really don't like the weather in Vegas that time of year either. On my first trip to Vegas I went in December and the climate was so much more pleasant. Walking up and down the strip without feeling like you were going to pass out from heat stroke was a real treat! Muzone and Wongaman claim they like this weather which I cannot understand. We all like a bit of sunshine but 40 degree heat, c'mon!
Anyway, before I start bad mouthing Las Vegas too much it is always a hoot and I expect there will be moments when reading tweets about fun times I will wish I was there. I was actually thinking of buying something expensive and frivolous with the money I would no doubt have spanked in Vegas. I was randomly looking at pinball machines the other day. They cost more than you would think, though I have always wanted one. We'll see.
Poker Update
Poker has been going decent recently. I had a good May with a couple of good tourney results. I came 17th in the $1k SCOOP event for $11k ish. 1st place was $560k and this was by far the closest I have come to life changing money. I never had big chips and grinded my way to that 17th place so never really had realistic expectations of winning. I satellited into that event so I was very satisfied with the $11k.
I've tried playing a few other sites in cash games though I always seem to do best on PKR. It just seems to suit my skill set the most as it has a small player pool and not too many games running which forces me to only a play a few tables and therefore better overall. Although I wish there was more 2/4 running on a regular basis there has been some good 5/10 action where I have done quite well. I've been taking shots vs a reg at 5/10 and 10/20 (when he will play me) which hasn't gone great so far but I'm optimistic of my chances in the future.
I'm interested in doing more poker related writing though my attempts to find any work in this area have proved fruitless. I did this piece for PKR's Raise Your Game section: http://www.pkr.com/en/raise-your-game/opinion-and-meta-game/meta-rhymenoceros/
I think networking in poker is a very important thing in improving as a player. I knocked this up pretty quickly and wish I'd spent more time on it to make it a bit more punchy. It's not the most thrilling read ever but hope those that did check it out got something from it. I had another idea of an article on accepting and making allowances for your emotions in poker so hopefully that one will be better. I actually signed up for a football journalism master class which the Guardian are putting on in September. It's just one day and I'm just doing it for fun but hopefully I can learn some things from it too.
Apart from that there's not much planned for the next couple of months. I've said this before but I am going to try and get fit this summer. I got recommended this personal trainer who I'm going to give a try as motivation to do exercise seems to be my main stumbling block. I have been doing some running and playing squash pretty regularly but it's not enough. Also I'm planning on doing EPT/ESPT Barcelona in August as its a great city and probably a great value tournament series.
Good luck to all those in Vegas, particularly Brother Muzone. I have a percentage you see. #selfish
Sunday 24 June 2012
Monday 16 April 2012
blah blah blah
I feel like this blog could be ending soon as I can't even come up with titles anymore. The entries are becoming more sparse and fewer people are reading it. Oh well, I suppose all pieces of literary genius have to come to an end at some point.
Anyway, so far this year has been pretty tough poker-wise. Cash has mostly been a constant struggle, and even though I think I am playing decent, and against people who I feel I have a significant edge on, the results haven't been coming. I am at least in profit on the year, so it could always be worse. I sense things are starting to turn around though in April. At one point I had won 7/8 days but was still down on the month due to one disastrous day. But since then things have gone well and I have turned around an $8k deficit to +$8k. Yay, go me.
As well as PKR I had been playing on a skin on the everleaf network which had some really soft games (Italians!) at mostly lower stakes like 1/2 and 2/4 euro. I did quite well on there and built up a decent roll but am now concerned about whether I can actually get my hands on this money. I've tried to make two small withdrawals to my debit card and my Neteller account and neither has been processed yet. They requested, and accepted, some security documents and are now not processing the cash outs due to something along the lines of 'high demand of cash outs are causing delays'. I'm surprised the company would admit they cannot process payments on time as it hardly fills the customer with confidence. Perhaps the whole Full Tilt situation has made me more paranoid (I have a substantial sum at risk there too) but I will not be playing on that site until the payments I requested are fully processed and after I will probably try to get most of my money off there.
I got back from Nottingham yesterday having played the UKIPT. It was a really good event with so many people turning up to play. Dusk Till Dawn was completely rammed the whole time. It's great to see a £700 event create a £1m+ prize pool at a time when the poker industry is hardly booming. The event itself never really got going for me. I actually think I played really well but never accumulated much of a stack. I had a few rubbish river spots where the villain was hardly ever supposed to be bluffing, but was also repping a ridiculously small value range. I patiently grinded a short stack for ages before shoving AJ into QQ and busting.
There were a few other things I was going to write about but I've forgotten what they were. While writing this I have watched an entire episode of Made in Chelsea and quite enjoyed it. I hate myself so much.
Anyway, so far this year has been pretty tough poker-wise. Cash has mostly been a constant struggle, and even though I think I am playing decent, and against people who I feel I have a significant edge on, the results haven't been coming. I am at least in profit on the year, so it could always be worse. I sense things are starting to turn around though in April. At one point I had won 7/8 days but was still down on the month due to one disastrous day. But since then things have gone well and I have turned around an $8k deficit to +$8k. Yay, go me.
As well as PKR I had been playing on a skin on the everleaf network which had some really soft games (Italians!) at mostly lower stakes like 1/2 and 2/4 euro. I did quite well on there and built up a decent roll but am now concerned about whether I can actually get my hands on this money. I've tried to make two small withdrawals to my debit card and my Neteller account and neither has been processed yet. They requested, and accepted, some security documents and are now not processing the cash outs due to something along the lines of 'high demand of cash outs are causing delays'. I'm surprised the company would admit they cannot process payments on time as it hardly fills the customer with confidence. Perhaps the whole Full Tilt situation has made me more paranoid (I have a substantial sum at risk there too) but I will not be playing on that site until the payments I requested are fully processed and after I will probably try to get most of my money off there.
I got back from Nottingham yesterday having played the UKIPT. It was a really good event with so many people turning up to play. Dusk Till Dawn was completely rammed the whole time. It's great to see a £700 event create a £1m+ prize pool at a time when the poker industry is hardly booming. The event itself never really got going for me. I actually think I played really well but never accumulated much of a stack. I had a few rubbish river spots where the villain was hardly ever supposed to be bluffing, but was also repping a ridiculously small value range. I patiently grinded a short stack for ages before shoving AJ into QQ and busting.
There were a few other things I was going to write about but I've forgotten what they were. While writing this I have watched an entire episode of Made in Chelsea and quite enjoyed it. I hate myself so much.
Monday 19 March 2012
EPT Madrid
Got back from Madrid a few days ago from what turned out to be a fun trip, despite disappointment in the tournament. Brother Muzone and myself flew out the day before day 1A as that's when the hotel was booked for which I won in a Stars satellite. The hotel was really nice, as you would expect when about 1.6k euros of the package value was for seven nights there. It was 27km from the casino which was a little inconvenient for the tournament but good in that it was right in the city centre. Stars also had buses which took you to and from the casino for free.
Nothing really went my way in what was a tough tournament. My starting table seemed ok, there were what appeared to be three marks, though everyone else seemed very competent. The worse players got dispatched very quickly, sometimes by being unlucky and sometimes by doing something dumb. After that winning chips became very difficult. There was pretty consistent 3-betting, squeezing and lots of cold 4-betting. I would think any edge I have over the good tournament regulars would be playing better post flop than them. Unfortunately the incessent pre flop aggression makes it very difficult to see flops. Although the younger regs sometimes take this too far (by for example, squeezing a hand like 8Ts in position when they could call and see a multi-way flop with a great hand), it makes life very difficult, so it clearly works well. Unfortunately the regs are going to be a lot better than me at identifying good spots to 3-bet/4-bet/squeeze etc. I usually decide to 3-bet for reasons like 'I haven't done it in a while'.
My stack dwindled from a starting 30k to 20k before I doubled with JJ vs TT and got moved table. Once I came back from the break I raised the 1st hand and got 3-bet and folded. Next hand I opened and got 3-bet again by same guy and folded. He showed AQ. I could not beat that. A few hands later I double barrell TQdd on JxJx8d6d8x and give up on river and get shown 98. Next hand I raise co with randon hand, sb 3-bets, I 4-bet, he snap 5-bets, I do a fold.
It was at this point I figured my image wasn't fantastic and with a small stack I decide I'm not really going to get involved in pots without an actual hand unless it's too good of a spot to turn down. Obviously for the next 1.5 hours I get dealt eff all and do a lot of folding. I considered one decent squeeze spot with 62o but decided against it and eventually saw the raiser had KK and the caller TT. Must be nice.
The announcement of the last four hands of the day was called and utg opens, mp 3-bets and I have AQo in the bb with 33bbs. Utg player was playing pretty straight forward/tightish and bottom of his utg opening range is probably like JTs. I thought he could fold hands up to 99 if I ship though. MP was new to the table and had a lot of chips, and perhaps more importantly lots of ante chips. I decided to ship it and utg folded a millisecond before mp snapped with aces. GG.
Muzone also busted on day 1 so we spent the next few days wandering around Madrid, mostly just chilling out. Once Japete busted he became our tour guide and translator and showed us some lovely bars and restaurants. We also went to see Real vs CSKA Moscow at the Bernabeu. Amazing stadium and great game, albeit rather easy for Real as they won 4-1. I made a couple of bets which of course I wiffed, as did Muzone. You might not believe this but Japete cleaned up. You didn't think his run good was limited to poker did you?
I'm now back on the online grind. March has been going very average. I was putting together a few small winning days in a row but lost a decent chunk today. I was playing one of the tightest hu players I have ever encountered and it was quite fun to just 3-bet and barrell him incessently, because doing so is quite far removed from my default game. His game plan worked out well in the end though when he went on to hit the nuts a lot and being the fish I am, I make hero calls vs him. The last hand he 3-bets 86 and goes for the check/bet/check-raise line on 22868 and I bet/call river with K6.
I haven't been playing too much on PKR recently due to a lack of games running, and more recently because of some bugs in the software that are quite annoying. I've been playing more on a euro site which has very good action but the rake is high, especially in hu games where it caps at 5 euros. I'm going to keep playing there a bit to see if the good action is worth the rake (I do get 35% rb fwiw).
Got some more interesting things going on in April. It's my birthday on the 5th (28!) so will be going out that weekend. The weekend after theres UKIPT Nottingham which somehow is going to be a £1mill prize pool for a £700 tournament. Sounds like everyone is going so should be fun. Weekend after I might go to WPT Marbella. A few people had mentioned going but not too much recently so maybe interest has cooled. That's probably a last minute decision one. Then last weekend of April off to the Prince of Malpas Royal Estate somewhere in the Cheshire countryside. For someone as lazy as me that's an action packed month. I'll probably spend Monday-Fridays sleeping.
Check out this video which Muzone posted on twitter recently:
I forgot how much I love this video. There's so many great quotes in it. The guy just loves the game!
Nothing really went my way in what was a tough tournament. My starting table seemed ok, there were what appeared to be three marks, though everyone else seemed very competent. The worse players got dispatched very quickly, sometimes by being unlucky and sometimes by doing something dumb. After that winning chips became very difficult. There was pretty consistent 3-betting, squeezing and lots of cold 4-betting. I would think any edge I have over the good tournament regulars would be playing better post flop than them. Unfortunately the incessent pre flop aggression makes it very difficult to see flops. Although the younger regs sometimes take this too far (by for example, squeezing a hand like 8Ts in position when they could call and see a multi-way flop with a great hand), it makes life very difficult, so it clearly works well. Unfortunately the regs are going to be a lot better than me at identifying good spots to 3-bet/4-bet/squeeze etc. I usually decide to 3-bet for reasons like 'I haven't done it in a while'.
My stack dwindled from a starting 30k to 20k before I doubled with JJ vs TT and got moved table. Once I came back from the break I raised the 1st hand and got 3-bet and folded. Next hand I opened and got 3-bet again by same guy and folded. He showed AQ. I could not beat that. A few hands later I double barrell TQdd on JxJx8d6d8x and give up on river and get shown 98. Next hand I raise co with randon hand, sb 3-bets, I 4-bet, he snap 5-bets, I do a fold.
It was at this point I figured my image wasn't fantastic and with a small stack I decide I'm not really going to get involved in pots without an actual hand unless it's too good of a spot to turn down. Obviously for the next 1.5 hours I get dealt eff all and do a lot of folding. I considered one decent squeeze spot with 62o but decided against it and eventually saw the raiser had KK and the caller TT. Must be nice.
The announcement of the last four hands of the day was called and utg opens, mp 3-bets and I have AQo in the bb with 33bbs. Utg player was playing pretty straight forward/tightish and bottom of his utg opening range is probably like JTs. I thought he could fold hands up to 99 if I ship though. MP was new to the table and had a lot of chips, and perhaps more importantly lots of ante chips. I decided to ship it and utg folded a millisecond before mp snapped with aces. GG.
Muzone also busted on day 1 so we spent the next few days wandering around Madrid, mostly just chilling out. Once Japete busted he became our tour guide and translator and showed us some lovely bars and restaurants. We also went to see Real vs CSKA Moscow at the Bernabeu. Amazing stadium and great game, albeit rather easy for Real as they won 4-1. I made a couple of bets which of course I wiffed, as did Muzone. You might not believe this but Japete cleaned up. You didn't think his run good was limited to poker did you?
I'm now back on the online grind. March has been going very average. I was putting together a few small winning days in a row but lost a decent chunk today. I was playing one of the tightest hu players I have ever encountered and it was quite fun to just 3-bet and barrell him incessently, because doing so is quite far removed from my default game. His game plan worked out well in the end though when he went on to hit the nuts a lot and being the fish I am, I make hero calls vs him. The last hand he 3-bets 86 and goes for the check/bet/check-raise line on 22868 and I bet/call river with K6.
I haven't been playing too much on PKR recently due to a lack of games running, and more recently because of some bugs in the software that are quite annoying. I've been playing more on a euro site which has very good action but the rake is high, especially in hu games where it caps at 5 euros. I'm going to keep playing there a bit to see if the good action is worth the rake (I do get 35% rb fwiw).
Got some more interesting things going on in April. It's my birthday on the 5th (28!) so will be going out that weekend. The weekend after theres UKIPT Nottingham which somehow is going to be a £1mill prize pool for a £700 tournament. Sounds like everyone is going so should be fun. Weekend after I might go to WPT Marbella. A few people had mentioned going but not too much recently so maybe interest has cooled. That's probably a last minute decision one. Then last weekend of April off to the Prince of Malpas Royal Estate somewhere in the Cheshire countryside. For someone as lazy as me that's an action packed month. I'll probably spend Monday-Fridays sleeping.
Check out this video which Muzone posted on twitter recently:
I forgot how much I love this video. There's so many great quotes in it. The guy just loves the game!
Sunday 12 February 2012
2012 so far
So far this year I've been doing pretty atrociously in the form of poker I enjoy and think I am best at, and running hot in those stupid tournaments. The cash games have been good and I think I've been playing decent most of the time so I'm sure it will turn around. Unfortunately due to issues with my new pc I have been unable to move my previous database over which is a shame because the moan-worthy graph I posted earlier in the year now looks even more moan-worthy. After spending a conservatively estimated ten hours trying to get Holdem Manager working on the new pc along with my previous database I have now given up. Just when I thought losing at poker was annoying, I find something worse.
Now onto the more fun stuff: Donkaments! On a whim I decided to do a $215 hyper turbo tournament on Stars during their TCOOP and somehow managed to finish 6th for just under $19k. The only frustrating thing about this is that I was chip leader when the final table started and was hoping to deal straight away as with it being a hyper turbo, it was a shove fest with teeny tiny skill edges. Unfortunately to deal on Stars everyone needs to click on a check-box which at least one person didn't do, so no deal happened. I probably could have secured myself 35-40k at that point so it's a little irritating, but there's nothing more I could do. I also managed to bink a package to EPT Madrid in a 22r euro 3x turbo (seeing a trend here?). That's next month so looking forward to it.
This year I've also done a couple of live tournaments. The first was the 2500 euro WPT event in Dublin. Think I played really well in this one actually. There were about 70 left (36 paid I think) when I lost a big flip with AK vs QQ. This pot would have sailed me into the money and after that I couldn't recover and lost my next three allins to bust 50 something. I also played the £500 APT event in London and played pretty rubbish and busted early. Some luck sack went on to win that one.
Not a lot else going on. Bye for now.
Now onto the more fun stuff: Donkaments! On a whim I decided to do a $215 hyper turbo tournament on Stars during their TCOOP and somehow managed to finish 6th for just under $19k. The only frustrating thing about this is that I was chip leader when the final table started and was hoping to deal straight away as with it being a hyper turbo, it was a shove fest with teeny tiny skill edges. Unfortunately to deal on Stars everyone needs to click on a check-box which at least one person didn't do, so no deal happened. I probably could have secured myself 35-40k at that point so it's a little irritating, but there's nothing more I could do. I also managed to bink a package to EPT Madrid in a 22r euro 3x turbo (seeing a trend here?). That's next month so looking forward to it.
This year I've also done a couple of live tournaments. The first was the 2500 euro WPT event in Dublin. Think I played really well in this one actually. There were about 70 left (36 paid I think) when I lost a big flip with AK vs QQ. This pot would have sailed me into the money and after that I couldn't recover and lost my next three allins to bust 50 something. I also played the £500 APT event in London and played pretty rubbish and busted early. Some luck sack went on to win that one.
Not a lot else going on. Bye for now.
Wednesday 8 February 2012
Making good poker decisions
I was thinking recently about what goes through people's heads when they are making decisons in a hand of poker. The amount of variables you can analyse is huge, starting from the very basic 'what is my hand?' to the more complex 'he knows I know he knows my turn range is very polorised in this spot'. I recently read two very good examples of extremely thorough hand analyses by two excellent players:
Hand Analysis by Sauce
Hand Analysis by Phil Galfond
These examples give you an idea of just how deep your thinking can go when trying to make decisions in hands. They include things like player history, game dynamics, psychology and HUD statistics.
However, just how much of what these guys write in these entries actually consciously goes through their heads at the time is up for debate. Unless these players have brains that function at a massively higher rate than my own (possible I suppose, I'm not that smart) then they can't consciously think of all those variables in the 30 or so seconds you would have to make decisions. Therefore they are either pretending they thought these things (unlikely, though we all like to embellish from time to time) or much of what they analyse occurs in the subconcious. I believe the second factor is more likely.
It is my belief that the best poker players in the world are the ones that are able to process the most information in the subconscious when making decisions. I have found a lot of people, like those on 2+2, can analyse a hand perfectly on a forum and come up with very logical arguments for why they would do certain things but their actual long-term results suck. I think such people lack the subconscious set of skills. In poker, particularly on the internet, we do not have the time to consciously process lots of information. Also, consious poker thought is very mentally exhausting if done over long periods of time.
I think this is why I feel so much more knackered after a live poker session compared to an online one, despite the online one requiring much more actual decisions to be made. Internet poker is what I have done for a long time now and what I know best. Therefore it is a skill where I can make decisions most of the time without really thinking about them. Whereas I am much less used to the live arena. It often brings into play variables I have never encountered before and therefore causes me to consciously think about more things all the time. Being able to shift a lot of your decisions to the subconscious in online poker is actually a very necessary skill if you are playing multiple tables. Using a lot of conscious thought on one decision can easily be at the detriment of another decision on another table which could lose you money overall.
This is why you will often see typically internet based players taking a long time to make decisions in live games. There is no merit to making quick decisions if it means you are not analysing all the available information properly. The only reason could be if you were slowing the game down too much and therefore making it worse.
The difficulty is that it's very difficult to train yourself to be very good at the subconscious level of thinking. The best people are probably just the ones that are naturally the most intelligent. I imagine just playing lots and lots of poker is the best way of advancing this skill set.
Big new tune from M.I.A and cool video.
Hand Analysis by Sauce
Hand Analysis by Phil Galfond
These examples give you an idea of just how deep your thinking can go when trying to make decisions in hands. They include things like player history, game dynamics, psychology and HUD statistics.
However, just how much of what these guys write in these entries actually consciously goes through their heads at the time is up for debate. Unless these players have brains that function at a massively higher rate than my own (possible I suppose, I'm not that smart) then they can't consciously think of all those variables in the 30 or so seconds you would have to make decisions. Therefore they are either pretending they thought these things (unlikely, though we all like to embellish from time to time) or much of what they analyse occurs in the subconcious. I believe the second factor is more likely.
It is my belief that the best poker players in the world are the ones that are able to process the most information in the subconscious when making decisions. I have found a lot of people, like those on 2+2, can analyse a hand perfectly on a forum and come up with very logical arguments for why they would do certain things but their actual long-term results suck. I think such people lack the subconscious set of skills. In poker, particularly on the internet, we do not have the time to consciously process lots of information. Also, consious poker thought is very mentally exhausting if done over long periods of time.
I think this is why I feel so much more knackered after a live poker session compared to an online one, despite the online one requiring much more actual decisions to be made. Internet poker is what I have done for a long time now and what I know best. Therefore it is a skill where I can make decisions most of the time without really thinking about them. Whereas I am much less used to the live arena. It often brings into play variables I have never encountered before and therefore causes me to consciously think about more things all the time. Being able to shift a lot of your decisions to the subconscious in online poker is actually a very necessary skill if you are playing multiple tables. Using a lot of conscious thought on one decision can easily be at the detriment of another decision on another table which could lose you money overall.
This is why you will often see typically internet based players taking a long time to make decisions in live games. There is no merit to making quick decisions if it means you are not analysing all the available information properly. The only reason could be if you were slowing the game down too much and therefore making it worse.
The difficulty is that it's very difficult to train yourself to be very good at the subconscious level of thinking. The best people are probably just the ones that are naturally the most intelligent. I imagine just playing lots and lots of poker is the best way of advancing this skill set.
Big new tune from M.I.A and cool video.
Sunday 22 January 2012
Results Orientation
Something poker players learn pretty early in their education of the game is to focus on making correct decisions as much as possible rather than on short-term results. To use the simplest of examples, if we get all in pre flop with AA (which, barring exceptional circumstances, is always a profitable thing to do) against another hand and lose, then we should not conclude that our play was unprofitable. Instead our play was definitely profitable (perhaps not optimal, but let's not get too complicated here) and factors out of our control have caused us to lose the hand.
Almost every poker player can understand not being results orientated at this level, because it is easy to understand. I say "almost" every player because you will still find players, particularly in the live arena, that fold AA pre flop and their reasoning for doing so will be because "they saw them get cracked twice yesterday" or something similar. This of course gives us internet geeks a good laugh at their expense. It is obviously worthy of piss-taking as folding AA pre flop for such reasons makes you a moron.
However, more poker players have a lot of difficulty not being results orientated on the medium-term level. The medium-term level could be defined as ranging from a session to say, 50k hands. It will be very rare that someone will win over a session or medium sample of hands and conclude they played terribly, and equally they will often not lose over that sample and think they played their A-game. Obviously good and bad results positively correlate with good and bad play but clearly not so strongly that good play = win and vice versa. Even the best players are very susceptible to this. I've never heard a player win a tournament and admit they played badly and got lucky, even though this will happen frequently. When Phil Ivey final tabled the WSOP Main Event I remember him saying something along the lines of "I wasn't all in for my tournament life for six days". By saying this he wishes to infer that he had reached that far in the tournament by playing very well and never risking his tournament life. Whereas in fact we know that to play a tournament for six days and never be all in with a risk of busting requires you to be EXTREMELY lucky, no matter how good you are.
The main reason we have trouble ignoring results is that we are human beings and thus programmed to see actions leading directly to results. As poker players we are constantly battling these natural tendencies and trying to just do what we know as being 'right'. Of course the problem is that what is 'right' is often not entirely understood all the time and why winning players will make different decisions in the same situation. Another problem for the poker player is that we are playing a game where we need results. We need the results (money) to buy the things we need to live like food, clothes and Tony Montana quantities of coke. There comes a time where we need to look at results and analyse how much our decisions are reflecting this. Typically, poker players do this too early.
Not being results orientated is actually useful outlook to take into 'real life'. It's amazing how many people think a decision is bad if the outcome is negative and vice versa. Football is a great example of this. Manager brings on a substitute and within two minutes the ball deflects off his arse from a corner and ends up in the goal. The commentators and pundits will then agree that the substitution was a great decision then praise the manager until the next game when a similar decision leads to a less desirable result and then proceed to slag him off.
Yesterday, I was talking to a non-poker friend about WPT Dublin and how a player who I didn't think was very good ended up coming 4th for 50k odd euros and I also mentioned how he had had some very positive results on PKR winning the masters twice in a row then finishing 3rd on the 3rd occasion. I reinforced the point that I did not think this player was very good at all and also that I should be a decent judge of a poker players ability as I have played for eight years. Despite this, my friend simply would not accept that this person wasn't a good player. "Well he must be good surely, if he won all those tournaments" he would say. I considered explaining variance in poker tournaments but gave up at this point I'm pretty sure even if he eventually ended up agreeing with me that deep down he would just believe I didn't know what I was talking about.
Anyway, this is just a mish mash of some stuff that had been going though my head and hope it is coherent enough to read. I was probably spurred to write something about results due to my frustrating performance so far in 2012. Graph:
Of all the ways of running bad I'd say running below allin expectation is the best. This is because you can actually see it and know you can't be doing too much wrong and therefore your confidence isn't dented too much. Also, it's a great way to moan!
And a quick summary of other stuff:
Almost every poker player can understand not being results orientated at this level, because it is easy to understand. I say "almost" every player because you will still find players, particularly in the live arena, that fold AA pre flop and their reasoning for doing so will be because "they saw them get cracked twice yesterday" or something similar. This of course gives us internet geeks a good laugh at their expense. It is obviously worthy of piss-taking as folding AA pre flop for such reasons makes you a moron.
However, more poker players have a lot of difficulty not being results orientated on the medium-term level. The medium-term level could be defined as ranging from a session to say, 50k hands. It will be very rare that someone will win over a session or medium sample of hands and conclude they played terribly, and equally they will often not lose over that sample and think they played their A-game. Obviously good and bad results positively correlate with good and bad play but clearly not so strongly that good play = win and vice versa. Even the best players are very susceptible to this. I've never heard a player win a tournament and admit they played badly and got lucky, even though this will happen frequently. When Phil Ivey final tabled the WSOP Main Event I remember him saying something along the lines of "I wasn't all in for my tournament life for six days". By saying this he wishes to infer that he had reached that far in the tournament by playing very well and never risking his tournament life. Whereas in fact we know that to play a tournament for six days and never be all in with a risk of busting requires you to be EXTREMELY lucky, no matter how good you are.
The main reason we have trouble ignoring results is that we are human beings and thus programmed to see actions leading directly to results. As poker players we are constantly battling these natural tendencies and trying to just do what we know as being 'right'. Of course the problem is that what is 'right' is often not entirely understood all the time and why winning players will make different decisions in the same situation. Another problem for the poker player is that we are playing a game where we need results. We need the results (money) to buy the things we need to live like food, clothes and Tony Montana quantities of coke. There comes a time where we need to look at results and analyse how much our decisions are reflecting this. Typically, poker players do this too early.
Not being results orientated is actually useful outlook to take into 'real life'. It's amazing how many people think a decision is bad if the outcome is negative and vice versa. Football is a great example of this. Manager brings on a substitute and within two minutes the ball deflects off his arse from a corner and ends up in the goal. The commentators and pundits will then agree that the substitution was a great decision then praise the manager until the next game when a similar decision leads to a less desirable result and then proceed to slag him off.
Yesterday, I was talking to a non-poker friend about WPT Dublin and how a player who I didn't think was very good ended up coming 4th for 50k odd euros and I also mentioned how he had had some very positive results on PKR winning the masters twice in a row then finishing 3rd on the 3rd occasion. I reinforced the point that I did not think this player was very good at all and also that I should be a decent judge of a poker players ability as I have played for eight years. Despite this, my friend simply would not accept that this person wasn't a good player. "Well he must be good surely, if he won all those tournaments" he would say. I considered explaining variance in poker tournaments but gave up at this point I'm pretty sure even if he eventually ended up agreeing with me that deep down he would just believe I didn't know what I was talking about.
Anyway, this is just a mish mash of some stuff that had been going though my head and hope it is coherent enough to read. I was probably spurred to write something about results due to my frustrating performance so far in 2012. Graph:
Of all the ways of running bad I'd say running below allin expectation is the best. This is because you can actually see it and know you can't be doing too much wrong and therefore your confidence isn't dented too much. Also, it's a great way to moan!
And a quick summary of other stuff:
- WPT Dublin was a lot of fun but a losing trip for me unfortunately. I went deep but lost quite a big flip as we were approaching the bubble and couldn't recover as I lost the next three allins.
- Been watching The Killing on dvd. Great series which I highly recommend. Think Wire fans will like it.
- Spurs doing great and despite just losing to Man City (very unlucky) could still do a title tilt. Also managed to get tickets for Arsenal v Spurs game thanks to PKR which is always a great game.
- Going to APT event in London next weekend. Next blog update will be story of how I won.
Monday 2 January 2012
2011 etc
2011 was a good year for me in poker. I'm pretty sure I ran above average in cash games online, mostly due to running very well at the higher stakes I played which over-compensated for the run bad at lower stakes. I also did well at online MTTs with lots of medium scores, including five-figure results of 16k (Stars DNG), 10k (PKR 500) and 10k (Party High Roller) as well as some smaller cashes around the 5k mark. That big score (which I would class as being >$25k) still alludes me, but I can't complain given the volume of MTTs played. Live MTTs started rubbish as I went 0/10 until I came 3rd in the Fox Club main event for £7200 and have min cashed two tournaments since then making the year a bit above breakeven. In live cash I have run terrible but haven't played much of it and at relatively small stakes compared to my bankroll so that's all good.
I also hit a sort-of milestone recently of recording one million hands on my current HEM database which is by far the most hands I have ever had stored at any one time. Here is the graph:
I don't really have any specific poker goals for 2012. Mostly it's just to just keep enjoying playing and surviving. Winning a big tournament would be nice too!
I also hit a sort-of milestone recently of recording one million hands on my current HEM database which is by far the most hands I have ever had stored at any one time. Here is the graph:
This has occurred over a period of three and a bit years. I'm very happy with the consistency and winrate per hand but it also makes me think I should be increasing my volume. Given all the changes to the poker industry in 2011, there's no time to take for granted the ability to make money at this game. Looking at this graph makes me think another thing too....where has all my money gone!?
I don't really have any specific poker goals for 2012. Mostly it's just to just keep enjoying playing and surviving. Winning a big tournament would be nice too!
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