Durham Durham

Sorry about the lack of posts recently, only got back to uni yesterday and so have not had much time to play yet, but am now getting back into the swing of things and there should be some more regular updates.

Firstly, big congrats to James for cashing in the WSOPE main event (2 years running)... looks like it was a pretty tough tourney so really well done!

While James has been celebrating his cash of about £20K or so..... I just lost $80 playing HUSNGs loosing 13 out of 16 games. So, going to take a walk now to cool off ;)

Chow

Morocco!!!!!

So... i'm off to Morocco tomorrow for 16 days, flying out to Marrakesh and spending a couple of weeks travelling around. Will try to update my blog with a couple of pics if I find some free wifi, but otherwise it might be quiet for a couple of weeks.....

Going to be grinding full time when I get back tho, so it should pick up again....

Gl to all

G

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 ;)