A note on Success, Failure, and the Downswing Mindset

I cam across this thread on two plus two http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=280899

I really made me realise that my poker mentality could be fundamentally flawed. I tend to think of my self as having a fairly sturdy poker mindset.... I am not playing for a living so I am not relying on running well in poker to support myself and I am being staked to play so I should have less emotional attachment to the money I am playing with. All this should mean that as long as I am content that I am playing +EV poker, the outcome of the game should not effect me... after all, so long as I am playing good poker, the immediate results should have zero impact on my mentality.... I am not looking to cash out every day.... I am not having to account for the daily swings out of my own pocket.... and I know that variance is a fundamental part of poker (albeit a rather horrible one). So, why is it that when I loose a HU match I am effected in a negative way?

There are 3 possible ways to loose a HU match:

1) I am outmatched and outplayed..... However, at the $10 HUSNGs on Full Tilt it is very rare to come accross even a winning player and so I think that it is unlikely that I am going to come accross many players who simply just dominate me. (I am not claiming to be a great poker player, just that my opponents tend to be worse than me)

2) I play badly and make -EV decisions..... We all make -EV decisions sometimes, (there is no such thing as the perfect poker player) and they are usually the result of not being in the correct mood to play poker. Maybe you are too tired, too tilted, too drunk.... playing in the wrong mood leads to making -EV decisions, which finally result in you loosing a match which you should have won.

3) Getting outdrawn.... It happens to the worst player in the world and it happens to the best player in the world, it is something that we cannot escape.


Reasons 1 and 2 are aspects of poker which can be avoided (in the case of HUSNGs you cannot leave a match once it has started..... but there is still an aspect of game selection at the higher levels), however reason 3 CANNOT be avoided.... we WILL get outdrawn again and again and again. We have NO choice. Since we have no say in the matter, this aspect of poker should not effect us in any way.

So... to improve my poker mentality... I am going to concentrate very hard on making correct decisions and ban myself from checking my sharkscope stats / cashier balance every 2 minutes.... Correctly calling a shove with 77 on a 355 board vs your opponents K8 and them hitting a K on the river (hand from today) should make you ecstatic that you made a great call, not bitter that your opponent always hits his cards.

I am going to finish with a quote from Irieguy from two plus two:

Everybody will eventually run worse than they thought was possible. The difference between a winner and a loser is that the latter thinks they do not deserve it.

So, am going to try to post much better content on my blog from now on, and improve my poker mentality and attitude towards running bad vs playing bad.

Gl to all

Pr1nnyraiding anyone?

So... have been reading through Krantz's blog and came across a couple of hilarious posts.... the first one was him and Ariel (AKA FoxwoodsFiend) doing flips for $20K PLO read it here.

The second one was a transcript between 'G' and 'R'... not sure if one of them is Krantz or not but it makes a great read:

(Taken from http://www.dangerlion.com/?p=249)


Exploit This:

G: Folding is exploitable here!

R: Of course it is.

G: Exactly!

R: Precisely! Well, unless he’s never bluffing.

G: Never bluffing… you’re right! We should fold. Since he’s never bluffing here.

R: Of course we should, he’s never bluffing.

G: Never!

R: Ever.

G: But how do we know that never is never ever unless we call? Folding is exploitable!

R: Exploit me, then.

Made me laugh :)

Tennis tilts worse than poker IMO

Firstly.... I still seem to be getting nutted by the deck.... still loosing flips and also had AA< JJ which didn't help, however, it appears that playing tennis can tilt me worse than playing poker (if my internet doesn't stop crashing as I write this it could top 1st place tho!!!! FK Orange!). I play recreational tennis on a regular (almost daily) basis at the moment, and I have to say.... loosing a tennis match because of bad play on my part seems to tilt me more than anything! I think that it is probably a good thing because I tend to take out any aggression on the tennis court rather than playing poker tilted and it is a good way to unwind (FFS... internet cutting out AGAIN!).

In other news, I have come across this chart . I am going to try to apply it to situations where I have less than a 10BB effective stack (I think using it for stacks greater than 10BB, although +EV is probably suboptimal) and basically, you match your cards to the chart, and if your effective stacks are less than the number indicated then you push/call, otherwise you fold. I think that at the moment I am pushing / calling too tight when the effective stacks are really small and so I am going to use this chart for a few weeks and see what gives. It should be noted that if your opponent is blatently VERY nitty or VERY manic, then you should adapt your pushing/calling range accordingly... but as long as you follow this chart your actions will always be neutral or +ve EV.

(P.S. The internet has cut out about 6 times while writing this post and is now officially the thing which tilts me the most!!!!!)

I have a really big pair of .......... beats!

I try not to flood my 'poker talk' with bad beats because, to be honest, no one wants to hear how you got knocked out of a tournament because you can't win a flip with AK vs TT.... its much more interesting to hear about why you made a squeeze play from the BB when the BTN called the MPs raise because you know that MP is a very weak player and that the BTNs range is very wide or why you decided to call a shove with A high because you had seen your opponent be very aggressive with flush draws and have a good read that he always bluffs the river when he misses......

Having said that.... some beats are worthy of a mention... and I think that to qualify for a mention, either the amount of money involved has to be massive (unlikely in my case) or the beat has to be of monumentous savagery.

So... I present to you, two beats of monumentous savagery:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3058659

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3063286

For those of you who like equity calculations.... here they are:

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt
990 games 0.094 secs 10,531 games/sec
Board: 4c 3s 4h
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 95.101% 95.05% 00.05% 941 0.50 { QhQs }
Hand 1: 04.899% 04.85% 00.05% 48 0.50 { Qc9c }

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt
990 games 0.281 secs 3,523 games/sec
Board: 7h 2c 6s
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 98.485% 98.48% 00.00% 975 0.00 { AcAs }
Hand 1: 01.515% 01.52% 00.00% 15 0.00 { QcJh }

Swongs?

So... looks like HU variance has finally caught up with me.... over the past few days I have tried to put in the hours and have managed about 40 HUSNGs on pokerstars. Apart from a couple of retarded plays I think that I have been playing well, but the beats seem to just not stop..... I guess that it is in the nature of HUSNGs because you are very often getting it AI with overcards vs undercards and therefore you are often getting it AI as no more than a 60% favourite.... so obviously its not always going to swing your way... and lately it has not been doing so for me.

I am still debating wether to play on full tilt or pokerstars and so I think that for the moment I am just going to play on whichever site I feel like until I made a proper decision.

Anyways.... so you can all pity me:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3054812
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3054837

The rest are all 60/40s which swang the wrong way....

Going to spend a bit of time going through some of my sessions to iron out my leaks (aka gaping holes) and hopefully will be able to avoid the suckouts..... I am really starting to like HUSNGs and it seems like they can be very profitable.

Sorry for the rather low quality entry.... better update to come soon ;)

HUSNGs Cont

So... its been just over a week since my last post and what have I achieved? Well, not much as I have been away sunning myself on the French coast for 5 days. However, a 4 hour drive on my own each way allows one to think about poker and dig up a few theories (or maybe I have just had one too many beers tonight?).

Although I have been away for most of the past week, I have managed to play about 5 HUSNGs in the past 2 days (not a lot I know). Although I am finding the level of play very poor, I am also finding that I am much more prone to tilt when playing HUSNGs. It seems that if I loose more than 2 HUSNGs in a row I have to quit my session and get some air before playing again. I am not really sure why this is as I am winning/loosing much smaller sums of money than I was playing 50NL cash, but I think that because a HU match is so much more personal, it tends to tilt me more when I get outplayed/sucked out on. I think that part of the problem is that I am playing a very small volume of HUSNGs at the moment, and so winning/loosing 2 or 3 in a row really makes a difference, but when I get some more time on my hands (haha like thats going to happen in the next month) and I am playing 10/20 a day, then I think that I will be less prone to tilt.


Have mostly been playing the Full Tilt $10 HUSNGs with a good winrate, but also add in a few $6 Poker Stars Turbos when I am in the mood and it still amazes me how bad some of the players are...... however one hand came up today which I was really not sure about:

PokerStars Game #19504559000: Tournament #101256960, $6.00+$0.25 Hold'em No Limit - Match Round I, Level I (10/20) - 2008/08/10 - 08:30:05 (ET)
Table '101256960 1' 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Poppy021184 (1420 in chips)
Seat 2: hero (1580 in chips)
Poppy021184: posts small blind 10
hero: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to hero [Td 5d]
Poppy021184: calls 10
hero: checks
*** FLOP *** [7d 5s 2d]
hero: bets 60
Poppy021184: raises 80 to 140
hero: raises 460 to 600
Poppy021184: calls 460
*** TURN *** [7d 5s 2d] [Ks]
hero: bets 960 and is all-in
Poppy021184: calls 800 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (160) returned to hero

My notes on the player are:

Plays around 70% of hands, raises about 20%. His raises tend to be minraises.
If he limps btn he calls a raise from the BB.
He likes to call down light and will call with draws.

Meh..... I am not sure how else to play this hand... I guess I could have been more passive on the flop and turn but FD + pair is a really strong hand and ahead of a lot of his range.... what do you think?

Got to get some sleep... but expect an update soon... maybe even with some sharkscope stats.

HUSNGs

So.... over the past few months I have not had a lot of time to play poker..... and when I have had time to play I have been grinding the $10 HUSNGs on Full Tilt.

When I last posted I was going through a rather unpleasant downswing which left me about $400 down.... and since then I have been trying to rebuild at the HUSNGs.

I have (only) played 167 games, for a profit of $174 and an roi of 9%... obviously completely meaningless given the short sample and nothing compared to Paul's efforts as he seems to manage more SNGs in a day than I do in a month (credit to him... he is crushing the games and I am kinda hoping he might give me some tips....).

The reason I chose to play HUSNGs is because I find the game really interesting. There is a lot of scope to become creative and every opponent is really different so you have to adapt to each unique situation. The average player at these levels seems to be pretty poor and, although the variance is quite high, I think that the HUSNGs can be really profitable (again, see 147star's blog for proof!).

As far as I can see, if you can maintain a 10% ROI and average 10 games an hour, thats about 1BI per hour..... and even playing the $10HUSNGs, thats $10 an hour.... however, I only 1 table at the moment and so get through about 6-7 games per hour.

Time for me to get going.... but will be posting again soon

The Comeback

Ok..... I am very sorry that I have not been updating my blog recently... I have been quite busy and I guess a bit lazy. So, welcome to the 'comeback' of my blog, hopefully I will keep it going longer than before and there should be lots to talk about.

Will try to compile a summary of events since my last post and publish it sometime over the weekend, and then post at least twice weekly.

Its good to be back :)