The return?

With new iPad in hand I'm deciding on whether I want to return to blogging. I've kept pretty detailed records this year on my progress with "The Challenge", I basically just haven't been blogging the results; laziness I guess.

I don't know, I'll give it a bit more thought and probably post enough to get everyone up to speed on my year so far.

So maybe this is a "Welcome Back"?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Barrington Dr,St Peters,United States

Hand Reading

It sometimes amazes me how bad the common player is at these stakes at hand reading opponents. This hand happened last Saturday night against a pretty loose aggressive, maybe slightly losing Romanian player named Gabriel.

It was your normal Saturday night 1-2 game, the entire table was EXTREMELY loose-passive. This particular hand is limped around 5-6 ways and I complete from the sb with Qs10s from the 9 seat. Not a particularly good hand to be completing with from the sb, as I look to be dominated a good majority of the time. But I really like playing suited connecting cards in spots like this for the stacking potential, and I'm pretty confident that I can outplay this group post flop. I had about $450 in front of me.

$12 in the pot

Flop:

Qc 8c 10d

That's a pretty good flop for me, the board is extremely wet though with both flush and straight draws. I lead out for $15 into the pot. At $1-2 overbets of this size go pretty un-noticed by the field. If they have a hand such as KJ, 97, AQ, KQ or any flush draw they aren't folding to that, which is exactly the behavior I'm looking for. It's spots like this that make $1-2 live so much easier to play then online poker, where the villians are a little more savvy.

Mike(with $~150 behind), an older guy from the 10 seat calls, and Gabriel(with about $500 behind) tanks for about 15 seconds and then raises it to $37. The first thing I did was quickly run thru the range of hands he would raise in this spot with. I quickly eliminated an overpair due to the passivity preflop. With the board that wet, I felt that he would've raised more with a set or a flopped straight. That left q10, q8, 810 or a flush draw. I also noticed that Mike(to my left) didn't like Gabriel raise, as he quickly looked down and started fingering out how many remaining chips he had...

It was $22 for me to call. IMO a call in this spot is horrid. If my read was wrong and Gabe had indeed flopped a set or a straight, I wanted him to play his hand face-up immediately. Everything else in his range I was ahead of, plus I didn't want Mike to get a great price on whatever draw he was one. I 3-bet to $95.

Mike then says "I'll gamble" and pushes in $115 all-in. Gabriel then goes in the tank again for 10-15 seconds and just calls, giving me the information I was looking for. He most likely had flopped 2 pair as well. The action came back to me having to call an additional $20 and at this point I did something that I rarely do, but I think is shows alot of strength when I do it. With only $20 to call, I knew the action was closed, but I looked at the dealer and said "All in". The look on Gabe's face was instant disappointment. The dealer informed me that I couldn't move all-in, I could only call. I grumbled disgustingly and called.

Turn:

8s

The board pairing on the turn didn't alarm me at all as I knew no one would play a set in this manner. I insta-shoved all-in for another $180 and Gabe went into the tank again. After a good minute he folded and I tabled my top two-pair. Mike showed 10c 2c for a flush draw and middle pair. He bricked and I scooped a decent sized pot. Gabe reached into the muck and showed Q10 as well and looked at me and said "nice play".

This got me thinking about hand reading. Did Gabe put me on a hand? What was it? How could he not call my shove with his hand?

With my action, the ONLY hand I could have is the exact same hand he did. If I had flopped a straight, I wouldn't have insta-shoved when the board paired. I flopped a set and turned a full house I wouldn't have insta-shoved either! I wanted to ask him what he thought I had, but that's just bad etiquette so I didn't say anything. I did however get up from the table and walk around for a bit, replaying the hand in my mind from his point of few and trying to figure out how he could possibly lay that down.

I came to the conclusion that hand reading just isn't a skill that's valued at this level. Level 1 thinking is what most play with and anything beyond that is only used when villians hold over pairs and are scared of flopped sets.

Very interesting...

End of January

Yeesh, January was painful. As alluded to in my last blog post I really did some analysis of my game this month.

Game analysis is something I really need to do more, in fact, I think all players should. It's so easy to not do self-analysis when you are constantly winning, it's easy to think that all the decisions you are making are the right ones and that you are finally not getting sucked out or cold decked. However, when things go bad, whether that's bad for a session, a week or a month; players tend to over-analysis their games and make radical changes to try to get back to winning. This in turn could lead to a further spiral down the tunnel of suck, since long streaks of losing sessions isn't uncommon for any player.

My analysis pin-pointed a few things that I needed to keep an eye on when it came to my play. Two of them I've listed below:

--The first being my image. Where online play table image is normally focused on things like LAG(Loose-Aggressive) & TAG(Tight-Aggressive), live play isn't as much. As Bart Hanson puts it, live play table images are generally categorized in 1 of 2 ways "Losing this session" & "Winning this session". Most low-limit players aren't sophisticated enough(or don't care enough) to really monitor how many hands you are playing out of 100, they just notice whether you are winning or losing. A losing table image will get you called down light more frequently, while a recent string of winning pots and a winning image will get you more respect.

--Open limping, I'm doing it way to much. Where there are many situations when over-limping may be the right play, I'm finding very few situations where open-limping is profitable.

The first picture is my running total so far and the second is a graph of just January. So as you can see January was another winning month, but it wasn't a great month, it was painful!

The roller-coaster downward slide that went on for the majority of the month had a very noticeable impact on my overall results this far. Although my standard deviation remained about the same, my hourly win-rate was halved and my average winning session was as well. I can't really complain about some of the bad beats/suckouts I took because everyone goes thru those, but let's just say they were numerous.

I'm still winning the VAST majority of my sessions(70.4%) but my winning sessions are trending to be smaller than my losing sessions. I attribute some of this to quitting too early when winning and/or playing too long when losing. I'll be more attentive to that moving forward. "Quitting well" is a skill, just like anything else and it's something I need to work on...obviously. I think I may have solved the other half of my quitting problem but just not posting individual session results to this blog, that was really weighing on my mind at the tables.

On the good side, I do believe I kept my cool during most of the month, even as I realized that something with my game was really, really off. The analysis I did towards the end of the month may have been my saving grace over the last 30 days.

Overall, I'm still pleased with the results thus far. Far be it from me to complain about winning!

Below is the graph of the challenge so far.

See you in February!

Change of Plans

You may have noticed that I haven't been updating this blog as much. After a pretty decent start in late December, I really cooled off at the beginning of January. I had a long talk with some fellow poker players and a couple of dealers and was quickly told that my game had changed...for the worst. I was told that I was playing "like a pussy", my aggression was gone!

I found myself locking up small wins so that I could post a "good session" on my blog. I wasn't pushing in spots that I normally would out of fear of losing a big pot. I was playing ultra-tight, etc.

In other words, having a winning session was becoming way more important than it should be. Instead of focusing on making the right decision, I was focusing on winning small pots, or more importantly not losing big ones. I had also fallen into a bunch of "fancy play syndromes".

After some analysis, and a re-reading of "The Poker Mindset"(a great book if you haven't read it). I decided that the way I was using this blog to track individual sessions was inherently flawed.

The blog was placing way to much focus on short term results and measuring them in dollars. This is silly, since my goal and mindset are focused on the long term!

Focusing on the short term was keeping me from playing my best game. In addition, every time I missed a monetary goal I would think of the session as a failure, when in fact sometimes they weren't. Making the correct decision and losing the pot isn't a bad thing. However, I would walk out the poker room in a really awful state of mind. Lastly, I could see what was coming up as January was coming to a close, I was getting a bit too over-concerned about my month "looking bad". How silly! I was chasing in spots w/o getting good pot or implied odds. I was pushing with marginal hands and a whole slew of other things.

So a change was in order...

I first had to decide if I wanted to keep the year-long challenge going at all. I quickly decided that I did, but it just needed to be tweaked a bit in order for really short term results(like individual sessions) not to affect my play. The bankroll management parts of the challenge I believe are solid, really solid. Tempted as I am to go back to playing full buy-in's at 2-5, or 1-2-5 I realize that any individual losing session at that stake would place my bankroll into a place that would have me playing scared(Remember I only gave myself 3K to start the challenge). Plus I like having a more conservative bankroll anyway. Although live play doesn't require as much of a BR as online play, my online BR is typically 30-40 buy-ins for the game i'm in. I'd rather be over-rolled than under-rolled, especially since I have the benefit of this not being my full-time job.

So the plan I'm working with now is just updating the blog less, maybe on a twice-a-month basis as it relates towards my progress thru the challenge and maybe mixing in some updates about some of the personalities that inhabit that place. Some of the regulars are real pieces of work!

That being said, look for my January end-of-month update shortly.

Session 32

Like I've said before, day sessions are very hit or miss. I got very lucky this time as the first table of the day was an action table. The table was filled with passive players, although some of them can be crafty(like JT in seat 1) none of them was I worried in the least bit about. The only player that had a game with any sort of creativity in it was Mark(in seat 6). Mark is a younger black guy, very amiable, laughs alot and is a pretty good player. I knew right away that this table was going to be about he and I winning pots and eventually clashing...

I decided quickly that I wanted to establish a maniac table image right away, with that sort of table image and this sort of lineup I would be able to extract maximum value for my big hands, and hopefully clog up some pots with limpers effectively limiting Mark's ability to play back at me because of the limpers b/w the 2 of us.

I open the first hand at the table to $10 in EP with Q9o and Mark makes a comment "Starting this shit already??". 4 people call. Flop comes 3,6,8 rainbow and I lead out for $35. Everyone folds and I table my hand face up. I glance I Mark and he's shaking his head...

The second hand of the table I re-raise 2 limpers to $20 with J10s. 1 person calls. The flop comes Ace high and I fire a standard CBet at it and he folds. I show the bluff again.

The 4th hand at the table I pick up QQ on the button and raise 3 limpers to $26. All 3 call. The flop is jack high and I shove for $300-ish. Two people call and both miss whatever they were holding. They both said they had AK but who knows.

For the next hour or so, Mark and I go back and forth winning pots. Actually he did more winning than I. I ran into a couple losses with TP over TP and lost a turned set to a flopped straight.

The session was short as the daily donkament started and the table dynamic changed back to the normal 'day game passivity'. I just racked and left.

Session 31

This was quite the interesting session, because I started so strongly, played very mediocre during the middle hours, and then played some of my best poker to date in the wee hours of the session.

I'm seated in seat 10 which in my opinion is the worst seat at any poker table. The dealer is to your left 100% of the time and you can't see the players in the 1 & 2 seats very well, and since they are on your left as well, typically that is where your money is going. But anyway, the guy on my right is an idiot. I wish I knew his name but I don't, he's just an idiot, I run to his tables. After about 10 hands at the table I've already doubled up, a cooler hand KK vs QQ, but a double up none the less.

So I'm sitting with ~$400 in front of me, maybe a bit less. The idiot to my right opens for $7 in with 90-ish behind. I make a standard raise to $21 with AKs from the cutoff. Folds to the BB and she ships for $45. Idiot to my left 5 bet shoves his stack. Now typically in this position I'd think about just lying my hand down, but I call because the idiot never has a hand.

FML idiot tables AA, I don't improve and he scoops.

I slowly build my stack up again and i'm sitting around $400 again when I wake up in the SB with AA. UTG straddles to $6 and 6 ppl call, I pop it to $40 and the uber donk UTG+2 whom had just limped for 6 in EP insta-ships his stack. Folded back around to me with $106 more to call and I snap. He shows 88, and proceeds to flop a set.

Again, I went back to the grind didn't win many big pots, but I adjusted my bet sizes enough that I thought I was getting a bunch of extra value out of many of my hands(ie. better $22 rather than $20, or opening for $13 rather than $12). I was also value betting pretty then on a bunch of rivers and value-owned myself a time or two, but that I can live with.

On the table behind me, Brian "The Kid" Biagi was chatting it up with an older black gentleman who appeared to be feeding the table chips.

Soon I looked up and it was almost 4am, my table was the only table going in the room and it was running 4 handed. 3-handed play followed and soon after I was playing HU with the same gentleman that Brian had been punishing so handily hours earlier. This guy had NO IDEA how to play HU poker. His fold, fit or bluff-shove game was very easy to pick apart and I just continuously raised the button and folded 70-80% of my BB's so that all my hands played were in position. I eventually finished him off by raising the button with Ac4h to which he called(he always called). The flop came 5c,6c,3c and he insta-shoved for about $100, I snapped and he said good call and mucked his hand before the 7c turned giving me a flush anyway.

I chatted briefly with Nick and Jason and then headed back to the garage to brave the snow

Session 29 & 30

They say that you learn more from your losses than your wins. That's definitely true after this session, but the lesson that I learned from this session wasn't really about the ins-and-out's of poker strategy and much more about the importance of table image and table selection.

Table selection was always one of my strong points when playing online. There were times that I even elected not to play games because they were filled with regs. However, when playing live a big leak in my game is not occasionally getting up and looking around to see if there is a better game that I should be sitting in. 9 times out of 10 the table that I sit in when I arrive is the table that I'll be at hours and hours later, even if the game is 'the suck'. I think I put a little less emphasis on table selection when playing live because it sometimes tends to ruin a game. The few times that I did do it, the party-fun-time atmosphere of the table I was moving to would quickly turn to serious because a player with chips had elected to come there and ruin the fun. Now I understand that taking the risk and possibly killing the action at the 'party-fun-time' table is far better than me staying and playing a bad or even a very tough table.

Lesson learned...

Bart Hanson recently spoke extensively about table image at low stakes poker, but not in the classic way that many do. He contested that at low stakes poker your table image has less to do with your playing style(ie. Loose-aggressive, Loose-passive, Tight-aggressive, etc) and has much more to do with "A Winning player" or "A Losing player". I agree with this 100%.

If the players at the table you are at perceive you as a 'winning player', you are less likely to be called down light and less likely to be played back at w/o the nuts at these games. However, if your table perceives you as a losing player(or even a winning player having a losing night), then it's best to tighten up your range because nothing you do will get any credit.

And this is the situation I was in during session 29. The room was quite busy when I walked in and I was seated at table 7. There was nothing about table 7 that made the game any better or worse than any other table. There was one guy in the 9 seat that I didn't recognize that had a sizeable stack of chips, so my plan was to sit back for an orbit or two and see what was really going on at that table. However, before I knew it I found myself in a really tricky spot with Q10s OOP on a Q59J10 board, and soon after I was reaching in my pocket for another buy-in. Do I think I played the hand badly, probably not. Did losing a major portion of my stack that quickly after arriving at a table effect my table image, for sure. From that point forward, I really couldn't get anything going at the table. Even being card dead for a few orbits gave my bets no credit, I was being called down super light, drawn out on river after river, and just slowly sinking into a bad funk.





I honestly didn't realize this until a friend I have that deals there asked if I had seen another table. "Another table?!" Oh how simple a solution!

Session 30

I move tables to a much better table! There are quite a few losing players that I recognize(and thus I know what they are and aren't capable of) and only 1 player that I would consider competent. He's an Ameristar regular named George. We typically have a good and friendly relationship and 9 times out of 10 just choose to stay out of each others way. Unfortunately, the table sort of dried up soon after I arrived. It was getting a bit late and a few of the bigger stacks decided to call it a night. I won a few big pots, and lost a few but I was much less concerned with my play or the money changing hands and much more excited about the lesson that I learned this night around table image and table selection