What it Takes

To be a winning poker player, one must possess a combination of many qualities, the easiest of which being skill. Poker as a skill is quite easy to learn and most people of even modest intelligence would be able to learn a +EV playing strategy, either by reading forums & literature or being mentored from someone else who knows the game. I've known players who are smarter than I with a better understanding of the game who have had results far below my own. It's all of the other qualities a player must possess that makes it so hard to be a long term winner in poker.

Gugel made a post in his blog saying in summary, that a player needs to master 3 things: hand reading, emotional control, and strategy. In my opinion, hand reading and strategy should count as one entity. Both of these are your concious mind at work trying to defeat your opponent. It's no coincience that both of these things go out the window when you are not emotionally stable. What I am saying is this, there are rarely instances when a player player is great at one of these and bad at the other, the two qualities go hand in hand.

For me, emotional control is far more important and should be broken down into even smaller parts. The first and most obvious part is tilt. How easily and badly does the player tilt? The worse they tilt, the worse off the are. The second part is how sensitive they are to money and it's real-world value. Some players are not capable of keeping the monetary value of their bets out of their mind. Instead of playing for BB's these players see dollar signs and fear enters their game. For these players, success at the higher limits will never happen until they can let go. A third segment is mental endurance/focus. Sure it's easy to win over the course of a month or two, but when faced with a bit of bad luck is this player able to maintain his level of play? It's easy to get tunnel vision when playing large amounts of hands. Some players simply get bored with the game and dont put in hands unless they get stuck. A fourth aspect is confidence/self-awareness. Some players tilt and dont even realize it. They are unaware that their play is at such a low level so they go on feeling good about their decisions when in reality their play is poor. Conversely, there are players who, when in a rut, doubt the quality of their play and start to adjust their game when no adjustments were necessary to begin with.

In the short run, it's not hard to be a very good poker player, but what I admire most is when I see someone's graph, regardless of limits, looks like a positive linear line over a large sample of hands. My graph of course consists of spans of steady winning followed by a sharp dropoff repeated a few times over 200k hands. I can never seem to quite keep my mind in check for too long without crashing from time to time.

The level of thinking that goes on in Phil Ivey's mind versus a 50NL grinder on a good day is not as desparing as some may believe. To me, it's those who are mentally sound within themselves who are truely great. When a player can continue to play top notch poker regardless of stakes or previous shortcomings and do so day in and day out. This is what I aspire towards.

October sucks

October has been so awful. I'll precede this rant by saying I havent played enough hands to be as mad as I am right now. I played my B- and ran very bad to go in the hole about 1k over only 6k hands or so. Since then I've played another 6k hands at my A- game and have broken even. Just so many coolers in a short run of hands really has me rattled. Boat over boat, flopped flushes over flushes, 2-pair in 3bet pots vs better 2 pair, it's just sickening. My EV luck in pots is also pretty sick, losing every flip in sight and people sucking out quite often. My EV graph has me at 800 below EV. To my credit I've really been crushing these guys over this small sample. To be break even given the poor run of cards I've had to deal with is a small victory. I had to stop just now however, cause I've boiled over with anger. I get coolered, grind it back, get coolered again and grind it back up... coolered and repeat. I've certainly been doom-switched in the short run. The thing that's bad is I'm so rattled right now I dont even know if I could handle getting sucked out on or coolered again. The quality of my play with go straight down the drain.

New Place

So I got a new place in Amherst for the coming year. The computer science department offered me a full-time job with them programming educational software. It's a super plushy job with no real rules or real boss looking over my shoulder. I can pretty much come in whenever and leave whenever so long as I get my hours in. I can also work from home if I chose which is an added bonus. It doesnt pay the greatest as far as programming jobs go, but with the economy as it is I could be doing much worse. So ya, my place! It's 1900 sq ft 3 floor condo. It's owned by an older couple who uses it for their summer home and they just want someone to take care of it so it's fully furnished. It has a 80" HD projection screen w/ surround sound in the basement, a gas fireplace, a huge 2 person office, a private patio, marble counter-tops in the kitchen, memory foam beds, a covered parking space, just so so nice. It is pricey, but it's another luxury afforded to me through poker. My programming salary alone could never afford this place.

Poker in the month of september has been one of my best ever. I've been completely crushing 100NL HU and beating/running good at 100NL 6max. It's my best month ever in terms of BB, I'm up about ~3100 about 60/40 HU and 6max respectively. I've been doing everything right lately. Making huge calls and huge bluffs alike; really reading my opponents and exploiting their weaknesses. Here's the graph:



Then add ~950 on cake 100NL HU over about 6k hands. I've been playing super well, but the real test is seeing if I can maintain this level of play amidst an imminent downswing and run of shitty luck. That's all for now.

Playing Awesome, but Not Enough Volume

So I've been playing so little lately. I really need to buckle down on my thesis work and my work work. Weekdays are spent doing work and weekends are spent with the gf which leaves almost no time at all for poker. Despite that fact, I'm playing super well as of late. I decided to play only 2 tables instead of 3 and I think that really helps you to re-focus on your game and make sure you are playing tip top. I also noticed my long term graph has a very steady, sharply descending red line. I long thought this was because I wasn't bluffing enough but but I think it's more, much more, because I'm not calling enough bluffs and playing far too tight especially preflop. Playing only 2 tables really lets me play to my opponent as well exhibited in this hand:

Hero (BB): $281.50
BTN/SB: $154.60

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with Q A
BTN/SB raises to $3, Hero raises to $10, BTN/SB calls $7

Flop: ($20.00) 6 7 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB checks

Turn: ($20.00) 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $12, Hero calls $12

River: ($44.00) 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $20, Hero calls $20

Final Pot: $84.00
Hero shows Q A (a pair of Nines)
BTN/SB shows Q J (a pair of Nines)
Hero wins $83.50
(Rake: $0.50)

I'm not trying to brag about this call or anything, I actually think it's somewhat standard but had I been playing 3 tables I may have overlooked the fact that this guy was a bad player playing very LAG. I called turn cause I though I could be good and I had overcards with spade outs if not. On river I'm getting 3:1 to call and I'm certain this opponent will be bluffing that often. His line doesn't make sense for anything. He wasnt good enough to v-bet slim with one pair so his hand is very polarized between air and monsters.

Anyways I really wish I could play more but I have a lot of pressure on me right now to finish my thesis work and get a full-time job come august and september. We'll see how that pans out, in the mean time, with the little time I spend playing poker, I hope I can keep playing at this level.

Whoa Variance

So I went over Jasons last night to hang out and we ended up playing some poker. I was playing pretty well then hit a huge downswing that was totally out of my control. I lost every AI possible; it was so sick. Over 1k hands I managed to lose 700 playing very well, and tilting off a stack at the end. I have recently set a stop loss at 500, but the hands I was losing I was playing well, I think i've finally experienced the sick HU variance. This is why I dropped to 100NL to learn HU instead of playing 200NL HU. Rather than post each hand, I'll just post links to the hands in pokerhand.org if you're really that bored to look.

Setup after small 3bet, he was 3betting 35%
Lost coin flip #1
Lost coin flip #2
KK < AK, aipf
cooler, 66 is the only hand i lose to and hes calling with worse
cooler, this one is a bit questionable i suppose
bad beat, set in 4bet pot cannot hold
my tilt bluff to cap it off

Aside from my tilt bluff, all of these hands more or less played themselves and all of it can be chalked up to variance. Yet again my classic "have a good month then dump it in one session towards the end of the month" strategy has come into play. Obv I just havent been putting in enough hands and if I did this would just end up looking like a little bump on a graph but it's still pretty sick. But it's an enlightening experience to know that running this poorly is probably not that uncommon over large samples of hands.

More of the Same

So the semester is just ended and I've had a little more free time to put into some hands so for the last 10 days of the month I was able to log about 12k hands, some at cake but most at FT. Not a very big sample but I was winning at about 7 ptbb/100 over the 11k hands up about 1300 and couldn't be playing better, my true A-game. I was using no game selection and just playing whoever and pounding them, the regs included. So i was playing a session tonight which was going well, up about 200 when this guy sat at one of my tables:

At 100NL specifically he was down $5,700 over 16k hands putting him at -18.7 bb/100. Right away I could see he was bad making terrible bluffs and playing 80/65 and 3bet was at 45. Right away I went up on him 200. We continued to play and he caught some nice cards to get back to about even. He then hit quads in a 4bet pot vs my KK and got set over set in a 3bet pot with a FD board. Then he hit a random 2pr in a 3bet pot where I had KQ for top pair and very good kicker on a FD board. At this point I was only down about 200 in the session overall which isnt bad considering how the cards were falling, and I closed all my other tables but this guy was so bad I couldn't justify leaving the table, so we played. I played worse and worse and he played better and better and continued to run like god and ended up putting me down 1k on the night. I probably wont play tomorrow so here is my monthly graph now:



I played so bad vs him but to his credit he played pretty well. Over 1k hands his fold to 3bet was 4%, his fold to 4bet was 7%. He was 3betting 35% and folding to flop cbets under 10%. I normally like playing players like this but I was card dead throughout the entire match and then I fell into a bad place and just allowed him to push me around. I took a few ill-timed stands which then made me not want to take any more stands but that's exaclty what I needed to do.

Basically I didn't stop when I should have. Once I was down 500 to him I knew it was because I was playing bad but I said to myself, "this guy is so bad, even my c-game is better than his A-game." but I guess I was wrong. This is a trend I always repeat. I play well and grind steadily upwards for a while, in this case it was only 12k hands. Then I'll play someone who I perceive as bad, get a few bad beats against them, then spew off multiple buy-ins to them justifying it the entire time by telling myself, "I'd be losing money by walking away from this big of a fish". I have these melt downs, the other time was vs bautrotrimm who actually turned out to be a very solid regular.

If I could just avoid these reaccuring melt downs Id be so solid. My overall bb/100 has been about break even over my 130k hand sample. However, I think for about 90% of this my winrate was something like 2-5 bb/100. For the other 10% of the time my winrate is -25bb/100. I go on these tilt swings which just nullifies all of my good play before hand. It's hard to have a stop-loss for myself but maybe I should. I think losing more than 6 buy ins in one session is abnormal and probably means I'm playing badly. Even if I lost 6 BI's all by way of coolers it still has an effect on my play from there on out for the rest of the session. I have a tilt problem.

Why Not

Why not make a post here. It's been so long since I've done it and I was able to put in a nice session today at 100NL HU. This semester has been super busy with my classes and my flash programming. You toss in tennis club team and the USTA tournaments I have been playing in and I literally do not have time to sit and play. Really I have spread myself much too thin this semester and I just havent really played any poker at all as a result. Since I don't have time to play real sessions, I spend most of my time playing stupid short sessions on cake poker. The HU games there are much much softer than on FT and stars which has become a shit show in and of themselves. There are 30+ games of 1 reg at a table waiting and only like ~5 games actually running with 2 players. Everyone is bumhunting and its sort of ruining the HU games.

Anyway, I've been averaging about 8k hands per month or so. It's hard for me to tell since you cannot track cake hands. Whenever I play I forget how much I miss playing. My session today went so well. I was just mentally crushing the two opponents I was playing against. I think my constant agression was really running them over. There were a few times where I'd c-bet at a 223 type board and get a snap check/fold from my opponent even though they must know I have nothing since I was c-betting like 85% of the time. I would just think, "I have this guy just mentally beaten right now". Even though I have plenty of work on my shoulders pretty much at all times, I think I will find a way to put in some more hands tomorrow and just relax.

New Month - Fresh Start

January 2009 is over, thankfully. What started out as an awesome month took a turn for the worst a few times. I had 2 peaks in this month and fell hard from both of them. So my graph for Jan 2009 is here and it looks soo so ugly.

Lucky I was up about +1k on cake this month so it was not a complete waste of a month. Then you add that I won about 500 in rakeback and its meh, a month I'm not happy about but I guess im fortunate to be in the green given the quality of my play at times.

I'm pretty sure I have a chronic tilt problem of some kind. I have a hard time maintaining foucs over long periods of time at a time. I see glimpses of focus and good play for a few weeks at a time and then it disapears. If I ever look at any of my lifetime graphs they affirm this; what you see are long stretches of one trend or another over large'ish samples of hands. I'll be a consistant winner for 30k hands, then a consistant loser for the next 30k, then break even for 20k, etc. I've been watching deucescracked videos but I think where I really need to put my effort is into maintaining focus and playing my A-game as often as I possibly can. At the same time I need to minimize how often I play my B and C-games. I think at this point I understand poker theory enough and just need to focus inward and become better at recognizing when I'm playing well and when I am not.

Swing Start to New Year

So 2009 thus far has started off so so. The first 4 days I was on a nice heater and playing super well both at 6max and HU at NL200. I was at about +3k for the month within a few days. This was mainly due to the fact that HU play has made me much more aware of general poker play theory and has made me generally more aggressive. I went from 20/16 to 25/21 simply from playing HU. This winning got to my head however, and I spent the next few days playing SUPER LAG and dumped off about 1k. In the last day or 2 Ive played superb but running super bad. I played a little 6max session just now losing every flip and getting sucked out on a few times. I'm proud of myself despite this fact because I was still playing my A-game and really owning my tables. Just as I had about gotten back to even after 3 hours of grinding and running about ~700 below my all-in EV I ran into this gem.

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Mighty S3rb (SB): $219.95
tuti77 (BB): $385.90
nickyballz (UTG): $200.00
Hero (CO): $596.55
Katarak (BTN): $211.45

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is CO with 2 2
nickyballz raises to $7, Hero calls $7, 2 folds, tuti77 calls $5

Flop: ($22.00) 2 3 3 (3 players)
tuti77 checks, nickyballz checks, Hero bets $14, tuti77 calls $14, nickyballz folds

Turn: ($50.00) T (2 players)
tuti77 checks, Hero bets $34, tuti77 requests TIME, tuti77 raises to $101, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $67

River: ($252.00) 7 (2 players)
tuti77 bets $263.90 all in, Hero says "sososososososso gross", Hero requests TIME, Hero says "dont you dare show me TT", Hero says "blah k", Hero calls $263.90

Final Pot: $779.80
tuti77 shows T T (a full house, Tens full of Threes)
Hero mucks 2 2
tuti77 wins $776.80
(Rake: $3.00)

The villain in this hand was as tight/passive as a regular that you can imagine. He pretty much has no imagination or agression in him and will just play his cards and do a lot of set mining. Looking back on this hand I really think I could have folded. If he had any aggression in him at all I obviously cant, but TT is the ONLY hand in his range here. I just hope this doesn't set me on some chronic tilt and knock me off of my true A-game which I have been playing lately.

On a side note I've been talking with <3_tha_grind from 2+2 and we've been sweating each others sessions and occasionally sharing some action. It's been going well and I think it's mutually benficial to each of us. I know he's a winning player so it's nice to just get half his action if I'm not in the mood to play. Also if I see someone at 2/4 or even 3/6 HU who is a total fish, it's nice to know that I might know someone who might be interested in sharing my action.