It's been like two months since I've blogged. Not much was happening. A lot of boredom, saving money, grinding micro stakes--- Which I happen to be very bad at. I did discover the main problem I was having, and am finally back in the driver's seat as it pertains to my poker career, that problem was PRIDE. : [
Even after four months in the red, I was still so hellbent on the idea that I was so much better than the fools at 50 and 100nl and even 200nl that I could play 37/33 - 33/28 and own their souls. God, I make so many mistakes. The other issue was I became so complacent with my attitude and general gameplan that I just started opening a bunch of hands, c-betting every flop, then giving up when called or raised, or double barreling when I had a good hand. I tried to win every pot and stack anyone I was in a hand with at any time. Wow as if it's a wonder I struggled through the first 6 months of this year. I think a lot of the delusional confidence and pride came from the fact that I was still coaching a friend who was struggling at 400/600nl. We had a lot of discussions about game theory, evaluating hand ranges, perceptions of ranges, and hand reading. Immediately after that he started killing the games. In just one sweating session I ended up making him like 6k in 3 hours at 600nl. I dunno, he had a ton of confidence in me, enough to pay me to help him, so it kept reverbing in my mind that I should just do what I was teaching him. This just doesn't work at micro stakes. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Micro stakes isn't real poker. There is almost zero psychology to it.
So anyways, FINALLY I swallowed my pride and just screwed down to a 18/15 game at 50nl and 8 tabled it up. Ended up being able to move up in like a week and a half because I was winning something ridiculous like 15bb/100. So I moved to 100nl. Was there for about 3 weeks to a month, 8 tabling playing 20/17 for the most part, other than certain occasions where I would 4 table and play a bit looser. And now I'm up to 200nl, been there for about a week, up something like 4800, playing my old 25/20 game. I still don't even think I'm playing that well, not as well as I'm capable of, that's for damn sure. I guess one of the biggest things I learned through this recent forge upwards is that to beat the micro games, all you really have to do is NOT SPEW and avoid marginal spots. LOL, avoiding marginal spots is basically the antithesis of my normal game, maybe why I struggled so much. When I stopped playing that crazy laggy game and just tightened down, the results were basically instant and immediate. It's amazing how easy it became. I suppose anyone could just chalk it up to running hot or whatever, but at this point there's no way I can prove to anyone that even if I keep winning for over 100k hand stretch that it's nothing more than a heater. LOL I think I've decided that basically everyone is result oriented at their core. If in general you don't win, you suck. If you won for even a HUGE sample you suck, it gets to be to the point that it's so ridiculous that people who once respected my game decided to tell me how terrible I am and how I just got lucky. ANYWAYS enough ranting about that, I just think it's interesting how people respond, it also says a lot about a person who thinks something crazy like that.
Anyways, in the spirit of continuing to swallow my pride, I've hired myself a coach, one who's been extremely successful w/ other players, so I'm very looking forward to that, beginning in August after WSOP. At some point in the future, after I can show a longer period of success, I'd really like to get back to coaching microstakes myself. I have always enjoyed doing it even moreso than playing. Hopefully that's something that I can re-materialize a little bit down the road, maybe when I am back at 2/4.
And lastly, in addition, I've developed an excel spreadsheet outlining the money I owe to credit cards and others, showing how I'm going to pay it back, as well as begin saving 20% of my cashout every month. At this point I have no other choice but to be responsible.
This article is going to be a bit long, but I think worthwhile if you stick with it to the end because the insight I gained might help you to understand the inner workings of the game a little bit better, just as it has me.
Okay so, I've never been big on the mathematical side of poker, I mean, I can do the rudimentary calculations, but I've always relied on my psychological skills in order to beat the game. I think this is a big reason why I'm capable of high winrates versus thinking/adjusting players, yet tend to have so much trouble killing fish. So as an addendum to my recent post about my entire run up to 1knl being pure luck, I'm going to add that I ran very well over that period in time, but I've recently discovered a lot of the reason behind my success. That's what I am going to share in this article.
Anybody who frequents this blog knows that I play a crazy lag style, always trying to play big pots and always attempting to push my opponents off hands when mine is second best, or induce a bluff or calldown when I have the goods. That's basically what I did, and when you play a lot of big pots over a relatively short sample size (100k hands) your variance is going to be huge which is going to account for high (or low) winrates.
So I was just approached by a past student of mine who is struggling to beat the mid stakes games, he came to me with something along the lines of: I have taken the entire month of May off from work and want to focus purely on my poker game, what do you think I should do and is there any kind of deal you can offer me?
I thought about this for a little bit, and of course since I've coached him before, I already knew what some of his specific weaknesses were. But I also knew that he had been through the standard 'sweat and ask questions' style of coaching many times by many other players. This obviously hasn't gotten him to the point he wants to be. So what I ended up suggesting was a month long course, in this course, the majority of focus would be on discussion and application of the specific concepts necessary to beat the games he plays in. What I told him I'd do is come up with a syllabus (yep, homework assignments included) that covered the most pertinent topics, and we'd spend roughly 20 hours over the course of the month discussing these concepts, as well as reviewing the sessions he plays during this time to make sure he is understanding and applying these concepts correctly.
Obviously since I have never done anything like this before, I had to first figure out exactly how to structure this so that we would be covering the basics first and gradually progress to more advanced concepts. I've spent about six hours already preparing this, and I'll list here the topics we will be discussing in the structure that I came up with (so if anybody actually takes a look at it and thinks there might be something important I'm missing or that I've possibly structured it incorrectly please feel free to lend me your advice:
Hand ranges and game theory: Focusing on G-bucks, as well as comparing that mathematical approach to poker with Pooruser's article on Singularity, which takes the focus off the math and into a psychological approach.
Hand Reading;
A. Importance of position
B. Reading board texture
C. Knowing your opponent
D. Evaluating villains hand range
(I decided to leave out 3rd and 4th level range evaluations since I thought that aspect might be better covered at a later point)
Psychological fundamentals:
A. Balancing your range
B. Metagame
C. Bet Sizing/Bet Timing (tells)
D. Multi-level thinking/Leveling
For the last week he said he wanted to talk somewhat about Live play since he plays in live deepstacked games regularly, so I thought a good way to finish it off would be to cover...
Live play; and
Deepstacked play
So from here I had to start scouring the internet, I've probably read close to 80 articles trying to pick out the best ones that illustrate these concepts. Most of what I found was garbage, generally a lot of what was posted on 2p2..... ironically (I'm hilarious aren't I?). But by wading through a lot of this muck, I actually came across quite a few VERY good articles that helped me personally to understand my own game and why I have struggled so much this year.
So anyways, late in 2007 during my huge upswing, I was constantly labeled by the better players in the game as a lag/station. I always knew I was a calling station, but my reasoning at the time seemed to be "Well, I've come this far, how can I let it go now, besides -- I'm not about to be bullied or pushed over by anyone." Now, based on my image, being a calling station was actually good, but not for the reasons I elicited above.
What I have learned by going through all of these articles about the way I approached the game has everything to do with perceived hand ranges. So here's how you have to think about it... The wider your perceived range preflop, necessarily, the worse your range will be by the time you get to the river. Conversely, the stronger (tighter) your perceived hand range is, it will necessarily have to be considered stronger by the time you get to the river. You can even take this a step further (or deeper if you wish) and presume that your perceived range is going to begin being assessed by your preflop action, but more importantly the position from which you acted, meaning position ends up being the most important thing in evaluating a hand range (Of course we are able to gather more information on later streets but that's a different and longer discussion).
So, getting to the point (finally I know), any thinking opponent is going to realize what I'm doing, and by betting and inflating the pot attempting to constantly push them out, they are forced to adjust in one of three ways, one to get run over, two to tighten up preflop and hope I don't notice him waiting for a hand, or three being to call me down and play back at me with a looser range, which would necessitate that his perceived range will also be weaker by the river THUS making my light call downs in the end generally positive expected value. ---Assuming I'm playing well and reading villain well, AND villain isn't TalentedTom or JonnyCosmo who own me and read my soul.
Anyways, hope this was insightful, because it was for me, GL,
I dunno, I think it's somethin Dr. Dre or Ice Cube said, so it obviously can't be a bad title for this blog post. No matter what you wanna call it, it is what it is, and it doesn't matter how it gets taken by the community.
"I know you are very dedicated and you study hard and I think you have what it takes to do very well in this game, but poker is much more ruthless then starcraft for example. No one gives a shit about you, they only care about themselves, and really theres no truer statement then that.
Beleive me Marshall I KNOW how much it sucks to be down, and I have a good idea of how you feel, I know how much it sucks to be kicked when you are already down but its almost second natrue in this game.. The point I am trying to make thought, For every decision you make in life or in poker you should expect every possible outcome so theres no surprises and everything is anticipated." -- This was sent to me in a PM after one of my previous posts, and I didn't ask for permission to post it here so I'm going to leave the name anonymous.
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. A lot. About poker, my life, my future, my goals. I wasn't doing any of this from the start of the year up until about mid March. The reason I wasn't thinking was because I was delusional. I think the anonymous comment above illustrates a pretty good example of how delusional, and needy (I'm about to get to this) I was.
I created this blog after a HUGE heater. I believed it was because of my 'superior skill' but what really happened is that for four months, the planets aligned and everything I did worked, regardless if it was good play or bad play. I'm stubborn, and my stubborness is rooted in how strong my belief system is. Meaning, if I think something is true, you'd be hard pressed to convince me otherwise, many can attest to this, particularly my roommate.
By playing hundreds of thousands of hands, I gained an elementary understanding of the game, nothing of the level to which I claimed and boasted in my previous posts. Thinking about the real reason I created this blog, it was an attempt to gain recognition and praise. I posed it as a means to help others, slyly concealing my neediness in regards to attention. Of course it wasn't all just a ploy, a few posts were sincere, but because my reasons were incongruent with the statements made, I suffered tremendously. A few of you were quick to figure this out, and what can I say but eat my words and admit you were right.
However, a lot of good has ended up coming out of it. I understand now how petty and unfulfilling the need to be glorified or recognized is. It's immature and it really makes no difference what anyone thinks about myself or what I have to say, except myself. For this reason, I am going to re-continue to blog here. I went back and re-read a lot of the things I posted, as well as the responses I received, I was able to use these as a barometer in terms of gauging my own personal growth--which should be the real reason I blog in the first place--everything else should be taken with a grain of salt.
So as of now, my new mission statement is this: I will write posts to document my struggles and successes in poker while continually outlining thoughts I have about the game, and how my life is affected by the game (and vice versa).
I think this is plenty for now. In my next post, I intend to cover my brief stint blogging at flopturnriver.com, which illustrates extremely well the emotional affects and strain this game can put on anyone unprepared, and the completely ridiculous assumptions it had caused me and could cause anyone to make. I'll also outline where I'm at in my game right now and what steps/goals I need to take and set for the future.
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