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.
Sunday 12 February 2012
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.
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