Psychology type post + update

It’s funny, having a bad session doesn’t make me feel like stopping playing. I guess this is one of the reasons poker is so profitable, so many players just can’t quit when they start playing badly. When I have a bad session I become hugely driven to find out the mistakes I made and resolve them.



Being too results oriented
Looking back over the video I didn't realise I was so results oriented. I saw myself start to tilt and question my plays in hands I played perfectly. The amount of $$$ I was losing was directly affecting how I was playing. Being results oriented isn't so bad when I'm winning, but it really hits me when I have losing sessions... if I was results oriented through a long downswing it would really crush me. I need to focus more on how well I'm playing and the decisions I'm making, rather on the amount I'm winning or losing. I need to try to factor out my win/loss$ at all stages of playing a session.

Paying too much attention to short term results
During sessions I usually bring up PT every 30mins or so to check out my win/loss$. At the end of each session I'll look at my win/loss$ and check out my PokerEV and PokerGrapher graphs. This is just way too short term results oriented, hell I even posted recently on how well I was running across 1.5k hands. If I'm going to take playing poker seriously then I can't take too much notice of the short term results of the game. When you watch any top player play on CardRunners you just don't hear them talking about how much they're up or down for the session, it doesn't affect their decision making.

Playing my A game
This one's pretty tough. I need to make sure I'm playing my A game every time I play. This means both before I decide to play a session, and mid-session when I start tilting.

Different people tilt in different ways, I tilt by playing too passively. I'll start limping into too many pots, playing a few more hands than I should, and taking way too passive lines in hands. I just don't concentrate hard enough, don't analyse hands deeply enough, I feel like I'm playing to "catch a hand" rather than make money, and I 1st level think everything (just go by the strength of my hand).

There are 2 big reasons that usually cause me to tilt... The first is playing tired/fatigued. I need realise when I'm tired and quit instantly, or better still anticipate that I'll get tired before starting the session and deciding to spend time doing something else like watch a CR video.

The second is losing to bad players. This one has always been a big leak since I've started playing poker. I get stuck a buy-in or 2 to a massive fish and just lose it. I know I'm crushing this guy long term, but he's taking my money short term, it really frustrates me. Worst of all I don't want to quit because the action is juicy. However despite the juicy action I can't play unless I'm in control and playing my A game. I need to realise that he's put me off my game and apply the correct strategy to beat him, or stop playing completely.

By stopping playing completely I need to quit all tables instantly regardless of where the blinds are. When ending a regular session I'll uncheck auto-post and wait for the current orbits to finish on all of my tables. However when I'm playing on tilt I need to just get out of there before I get the chance to overplay hands trying to subconciously "win it back" on the last orbit.

Taking my foot off the gas
I've noticed this pattern not just in poker, but in everyday life too. Whenever I get ahead, I always take my foot off of the gas. Whether if it's playing pool, squash, football, or even with my workload at work... if I've got a strong lead I almost intentionally shift to my B game. I think I need to keep myself concious of this, and just try to focus on the situation less and instead on giving my 100% regardless.


Going to re-read my copy of the fantastic Zen and the Art of Poker over the next couple of weeks. I think that'll help reenforce some of this stuff in my head. Another great reference for those interested: free articles by Piemaster, who co-wrote The Poker Mindset with Matt Hilger.


In other news...

• I'm all moved into my new flat, got everything set up and settled in really nicely.
• Playing a home game at Andy's tomorrow night, not played live for a few weeks due to work and the move, looking forward to it!
• Circus are doing a £150+15 Christmas Cracker tourney at the end of december. The buy-in will represent under 10% of bankroll so I'm thinking of taking a shot at it. More to come.
• Just booked tickets to Stockholm for January, awesome cheap deal from Ryanair £30 all in return flights from Glasgow with some mates.

Attack of the iPoker Donks

Ugh, what a fucking shit session. Played on super-loose tables, lost some pots to donkeys, went on tilt, stopped analysing hands correctly while playing, started throwing away money. Worst part was despite playing bad, and knowing I was playing bad it took me like 30mins to stop playing. Ugh I just fucking hate the sessions that go like that. I don't have many of them but when I do they just piss me right off.

Playing against utter fucking donkeys catching no cards and they're just calling me down with nothing and hitting. Ugh fucking pile of shit session, there was no way I was getting away from a decent loss there, but I definately didn't help it. I should have just quit when I started tilting, and wasn't playing my A game. It's tough though when the tables are so good you don't want to leave. They were like 55/6 and 43/9 tables. It was ridicuous, as fishy as it gets any they just hit everything on me.

To top it off I was playing 1 last table (after I should have insta-quit out them all), but this one was still super-fishy... guy shoves 20xBB with 45o, I call from SB with AQo, BB (massive donkey) calls from the BB with A4o, we get it in on an A84 2-flush flop, I drop a buy-in while waiting on the orbit finishing. New rule, if quitting because I'm not playing well, don't uncheck auto-post... just quit regardless.

Ugh fuckit, at least I didn't break anything, and for some reason I did record the whole 2nd half of it with Camtasia, was gonna use it as a vid for the study group, but for some reason that PAHUD stats didn't show up in the recorded video. Unfortunate because the video is kinda like watching a GP video descend into Tuff Fish. :)

So, not gonna play another session 'til I've analysed my last 2.5k hands. It always goes like this, start the 10k running hot, then piss money away. I do this with everything, pull ahead hard, then take my foot off the gas... every time. I need to sort it.

EDIT: Actually sklansky bucks run me as break-even for that session. I dropped $250 btw, in 350 hands. VPIP/PFR was 21/15. 2363 hands played into the new 10k. Position stats looking good, no thanks to this session though. Running at 12BB/100, $575 up.

I must concentrate and play my A game in my future sessions. There's just nothing more frustrating that playing your Z game and getting done by a bunch of donks.

Rant over.

Crushing $100NL *bragpost* :)

On a tear right now at $100NL, absolutely loving it. $650 up in the 1,600 hands I've played over the last 3 days. Running at 20BB/100, playing 21/16.


I think a lot of the profit has came from good table selection. I fire up 6 or 7 tables before settling on 4 to play, as soon as a table tightens up I fire up more tables to pick one that's more profitable. Lots of the weeknight tables are full of regulars, but there's still fishy tables to be found with good selection.

Bleh, it's late so no time to post up some hands, will just do that at the 2k mark. Won a sick $300 pot with quad 9s on Sunday, and tonight a delicious $240 pot FH over FH. Here's some quick screengrabs though... new stats are getting there. Gonna try to open up even more from the CO/BTN and get my PF Raise up about another 1% too.


Oh yea...
Check out www.pokerroad.com for podcasts, videos, interviews, strategy, etc. Listened to the podcasts hosted by Sebok and Gavin Smith quite a bit today and they're really good. Pretty funny with some great stories and hand analysis too.

EDIT: who's that Amanda Leatherman chick on their site, she's gorgeous! She looks kind of posh-cute but filth at the same time. Yum.

10,000 hands at $100NL

Goooood evening. Time for the much put off 10k stats review, with the goal of trying to find a lot of leaks in my game to give me specific areas to adapt or improve on in my next 10k hands.


Results
The first graph shows my actual $$$ win/loss, the 2nd graph plots my bucks against Sklanky Bucks... this is my theoretical win/loss removing (as best possible) how the cards ran after we got money in.

So I started off by swinging up HARD, which was nice. Then I've gradually been dropping $$$ since the 3k hands mark, which has sucked. But as the 2nd graph illustrates my equity has actually been rising steadily right from the off. It's amazing to be able to see this, mainly just to be able to tell myself that I'm still playing theoritically good poker despite not winning $$$.


So my profit over the last 10k hands was $507. Running at 2.5BB/100, which is good but an ideal achievable winrate for me at 100NL would really be 7-8BB/100. If I calculate my theoretical winrate by looking at the Sklansky bucks it sits at around 6BB/100, which is really good.

I've paid $626 in rake, so on my 30% rakeback deal at BlondePoker I've recieved about $200 of that back too. I took me 136 table hours to log 10k hands at 6-max, 4-tabling that's 34 hours, so really I should be able to log around 8k hands per month playing part-time. My BB/Hr rate was 1.86. Meaning that my hourly rake without RB is about $7.50/hr, and theoritcal hourly rate is around $24/hr.

I'm ignoring the winning sessions stats, they really mean nothing. I can't datamine at iPoker so I'll often sit in 5-6 tables before deciding on the best 4 to play, so often take small losses.


Tight Aggression
There are a few key stats for detailing how tight aggressive I'm playing in the pic above. Here are the ones I think are most important.

VPIP/PF Raise
Current = 22/13
Ideal ~ 19/16
Play less hands but raise more often preflop.
VPIP is the amount of money I "Voluntarily put in the pot", or more simply just a percentage of the hands I play preflop. It's a good indicator to how loosely I'm playing. PF Raise is the percentage of hands I raise preflop. 22/13 means I'm playing a a little more hands than a "tight" player, but certainly not raising enough to be an "aggressive" player. My aim here is to tighten up to improve my discipline, then I can maybe add in more hands in the next 10k. The main thing though is that I need to be more aggressive preflop. My PFRaise should be 3-4% under my VPIP, so I'm aiming for a very TAG 19/16.

Flop/Turn/River Aggression
Current = 4.3/2.5/2.8
Ideal ~ 4.3/2.1/1.7
I'm not too far off where I want to be here. My flop aggression seems ok, but my turn/river aggressions are a bit high. Also my river aggression is higher than my turn aggression, I'm not exactly sure what that means, maybe I take a bet/check/bet line too much or something? So my cbetting looks about right, but just tighten up a little more on the turn, and a lot on the river.

Position
One of the main areas I want to look at is my positional stats. I've been reading Verneer's blog a lot recently and also looking at Brymstar's low limit guide on CR and I found out pretty quickly that I'm not positionally aware enough at 6-max. So below is my position stats for the last 10k hands.


UTG (3)
Current VPIP = 17%
Ideal VPIP ~ 10%
So I'm playing way too many hands from UTG. I should raising out of UTG with KQs/AJ+/22+ and folding anything else.

MP (2)
Current VPIP = 18.5%
Ideal VPIP ~ 12%
Again, too loose out of position here, need to play MP similar to UTG but with a couple of extra hands. I should be opening with KQ/AT+/22+.

CO (1)
Current VPIP = 24.5%
Ideal VPIP ~ 30%
The CO is where it start getting fun. I should be opening with MORE hands from the CO. I can play a lot looser than I am currently from here. Again it's important that I don't limp often if at all, I should always be open-raising. I can add a load of extra hands here. High suited connectors and one gappers (QTs, T9s, etc), pretty much any 2 face cards. I can also open aces from A7s up.

BTN
Current VPIP = 27%
Ideal VPIP ~ 34%
I have a free pass to be super-aggressive from the button. I thought I was aggressive as it is, but I can ramp this up a little more with A4s+, and suited connectors/one gappers down to 67.

SB
Current VPIP = 32%
Ideal VPIP ~ 25%
I've already tightened up a lot from the SB over the past month, but I need to tighten up even further. Folding most hands, but calling with things like PPs for set value.

BB
Current VPIP = 11%
Ideal VPIP ~ 11%
I play about right from the BB, which is cool. Right being tight as a rock.

It's clear to see that my position play needs some work, and over the next 10k hands it will be my #1 priority to get it in check. Play tighter from the SB/UTG/MP and loosen up even more from the CO/BTN. I know the ranges of hands I should be playing now, so there's no reason not to stick to them.

Conclusion
I could look into a lot more things using poker tracker, but I've decided to keep my objectives for the next 10k hands focussed on the above. When I hit the 20k mark I'll hopefully have my stats much more in line with these, and I can begin looking at how I fare HU vs. Multiway, how well I play PPs vs. Suited Connectors, postflop play, etc.

For now I'm keeping it simple. Become a very positionally aware TAG player.

If I can achieve these goals in the next 20k hands then I'll have a great base to develop my game from. Back to the grind for me. :)

Last 1,000 hands

I've hit the 10k hand mark at $100NL, which is great. Well it'd be better if I wasn't running like a retard chasing a pigeon... but what can you do.

Anyways, I'll post a PT analysis for the last 10k hands at some point this week... and some goals on what I want to achieve with my next 10k hands. I've stuck up a new objective to get to 20k hands by the end of the year, which I think is achievable if I really drive towards it.

More importantly I'm now reviewing hands from every session I play, here's what I got from the last 1k.


How to play these 3-flush flops!?

JJ on 3-flush flop OOP - Villain is 60/22. I'll be honest I have literally no idea what to do here. I feel like I played this a little weaktight, I always end up getting bet off these types on pots.

JJ on an A-high 3-flush board - Villain is 27/11, bet this flop? Lead the turn? On the river I realised I'd ballsed the hand a bit, but thought my line could look like a FD, and also he could have air. Fire that river?

JJ again and another 3-flush flop with an overcard - No reads on villain, he's just joined. What am I meant to do on the flop here? HALP!


Am I weak-tight?

Pitching AK to an UTG 3-bet - UTG 3-bettor is 25/15, first time I've seen him 3-bet. I'm pretty happy mucking AK here.

Getting heat from a LAG - Another possibly weaktight play against a villain that's playing back at me a lot. He's 30/22. Should I just check the turn?


Other hands I played like a fish

AQ to a maniac re-raiser - This guy is on ultra-mega-spastic-tilt, I know he's going to fire big on any flop. Just call and try to hit?

Flopped strong 2 pair on a super drawheavy high board - BB is LAG. I think I'm well ahead of a LAG range here with all the draws out... shove on him for $57 more?

Rockets against a maniac - CO is a LAG maniac, he's on monkey-tilt. I *heart* my preflop line, but do I play this too passive post-flop? I check because he's going to fire like 80%+ of the time here, but should I c/r? On the turn, lead or give him a chance to bet at it again? River JJ just got there, I bet for value.

Interesting opponent handreading hand - New to the table so no reads. Pretty standard follow up on that flop? I went for a delayed c-bet to control the pot size. He bets small on a 2-flush turn, was planning on floating and firing the river. He bets under half pot on the river and now I'm worried he's got a middle pair or something so ditch my AK. Is this a good point to fire at him on the river? I guess my line doesn't really represent any type of hand.

I run like shiiiiiiit

Nearing the 10k mark in hands now, 1 session away and I'm just getting shafted. Down 2 buy-ins to some Norweigan fishcake, TheGrinder87. You grind bad at 38/20 you piece of shit.

Anyway, to prevent myself moaning about bad beats and posting Sklansky Bucks graphs, instead go listen to Nine Black Alps because they rock, saw them supporting Biffy Clyro last night, speaking of which...

Some hands

After each session I'm going to try to post my analysis of the most interesting/toughest hands. Played a session a couple of nights back, 3-6 tabling, got about 600 hands in.

Pushing out weakness with a strong line – I don’t like c-betting at 3 players on this flop, I definitely can’t stand a raise and I might not get away with representing an overpair. I’m happy checking here, checked to the button who 1/5 pot bets, the SB folds. The situation has changed a lot now, only 3 players in the pot and both of them have shown weakness, so I like firing out a pot sized bet here, I think it’ll take it down 70% ish of the time, and I can follow up on the turn if the mini-raiser calls me and no draws complete. I’ve got some outs too.

Double-barrelling against a TAG – The flop looks good enough to cbet against a 11/11 player. He calls pretty quick, turn doesn’t complete any draws, I continue my strong line and try to push him off hands, he’d really need to have hit the K or have flopped 2pr+. If the turn had been a blank like an os 2 or 3 then I’d probably just check it to him, as he may still call with a weak T or A7, etc. I really like double barreling against a TAG player when the overcard hits in this spot.

Raising low pairs OOP seems to be putting me in some tricky spots. I need to put extra work in on when to cbet them when I miss. Might start a list of these specific situations that I’m not too sure how to handle.

Flop lead into 2 on a dry board - Flat calling preflop against a full stack for set value, and BB comes along too. Flop is really dry BB is 22/7, AAAASSSS2 is 20/20. Not sure if I like my lead here or not. My reasoning was that the flop is really dry and I could represent the K. Not sure if it’s +EV to leading 2 people in this spot though.

Ditch TT on the flop? - Villain is TAG here, running about 16/10. Not too sure if I played this one right on the flop? Might post it on CR.

Overshove on turn with OP to shut out draws – Preflop/flop pretty standard, should maybe bet a little more on flop but I think $10 is ok. Pot is $42 on the turn TAG player checks, 30/10 player leads for under half pot. I generally interpret this type of bet as a blocker (with a J) or a flush draw. Not too worried about the TAG player in the pot. How much should I raise here? $57 in the pot, I’ve got $113 behind. I feel raising it up to $60 would be about right here. I figured that commits me anyway, so I may as well just shove it in. Good decision?

I play poker bad - Ugh. I upped my tables to 6 which proved to be a couple too many for me to handle right now. I don't mind calling from the BB here, but I need to proceed with caution. I flopped a pretty good hand, I should probably just lead here. Instead I thought that the board would have connected with a lot of my opponents ranges, and didn't want to build a big pot OOP, so I checked to keep the pot smaller. Still not too sure what the best line is on the flop here. It's a tough spot. Lead-fold > lead-call > check-call > check-raise? I check-call a flop bet from the pre-flop raiser, everyone else folds.

Turn 3-flush and 3-straights the board. $36 in the pot, villain has $60 behind. I think at this point my hand's value has went down a lot. Best I can hope is villain has something like AT/KJ/JQ, but there are a lot of hands that have me beat. I don't think leading here to try to take the pot down is worth it. I should just check-fold. Instead I check, then he over-bet shoves.

I don't take too long to think about his exact hand, but think the over-bet shove could be a sign of weakness. Really tough even if it is a sign of weakness it could still mean 2pr/QQ/a set, etc trying to protect against the fd/sd. Easy fold for me. Really shows that I wasn't able to analyse the hand correctly at the time because I was playing too many tables to give it enough concentration.

3-betting 77 in a blind battle - Villain in the SB was like 30/28, and open-raised from the SB 60% of the time. I’d been pretty TAG blind on blind, folded to most of his raises, he folded to my re-raises twice. In this situation should I be 3-betting him with 77? I’m used to MTTs where I need to defend my blind, but I guess here I’m actually better flat calling and playing the hand for set value. Anyway, probably a mistake, but I raised. He makes it another $11 more and I’ve probably *just* got implied odds to call here. I don’t flop the 7, and have to fold.

So against an aggressive SB in future I think I’m better just flat calling and hoping to flop a set here. I guess I should have JJ+ to 3-bet him. Will post this on CR too.

Floating OOP with AK prob -EV – Villain is pretty TAG 16/11. Easy cbet on the flop into a TAG but I get min-raised. I see this as weakness most of the time, and I don’t mind calling in position here to fire at him if he checks a non-spade overcard on the turn. However, OOP here I think I’ve got to just muck it. I think calling and firing at him on the turn would be spewing.

Problem areas identified

• Playing raised pots with low pocket pairs OOP when I miss the flop.
  
• Playing more than 4 tables past the 1 hour mark. It's too many at the moment. Doing this to try to get more hand volume isn't going to be good for my game in the long run. After I've been playing for an hour my concentration levels start waining, it's madness to add more tables at this point.
  

NL Fishies, I'm coming to get you

New Study Group, New Layout
I joined the study group after being really impressed with some of blogs by it's members. Their hard work at improving really motivated me to join in, and after only a few days I feel hugely motivated to push forward with my NL cash game play. Some of the blog links are for Card Runners or group members only so they're mainly for my benefit... but some of them will probably work for all too.

The old standard blogspot 2 column layout seemed a bit rubbish (really, I thought Amatay's new layout looked sexy and decided to steal it) so we now have a new one. Delicious. If you're interested in sticking 3 columns on your blogger, there's a great tutorial here. Took me about 10 mins.

New Goals - and recap
I recently wrote this introduction of myself for the study group, which gradually turned into a re-evaluation of my goals for poker. So, from the top...

I started making some extra $$$ doing casino bonii to help fund my degree in 2004/2005 when it was really profitable. After I graduated and the bonuses dried up I decided to move to poker to make some extra income. Soon after this I became hooked on the fantastic game and I've been working on improving ever since. I started playing poker properly early 2006 with a $100 bankroll at the microlimits, and ran that up to over $10k by the end of the year without re-depositing. Most of the profits came from poker bonuses and incredibly lucrative affiliate freerolls.

I bankrolled myself $5k at the start of 2007, but due to work stress, having to move flat, and splitting up with my girlfriend near the start of the year I never really got going early '07. During the summer I sorted out my finances and set myself a new bankroll of $2.5k with new targets for poker. I used to focus mainly on SNGs/MTTs but I'm progressively moving over to cash games. I play primarily on iPoker with 30% rakeback, 6-max $100NL and $200NL. I'm winning at both but not over a conclusive sample of hands, and I feel that I've got a lot of leaks in my game.

I joined CR a couple of months ago and have found the community and videos to be fantastic. It's given me a whole different outlook on the game, and I feel that I now have the tools that I need to learn how to be a top player. My goal is to achieve an hourly rate of $100+/hour including rakeback, by the end of 2008. I have a lot of goals to meet along the way, which will involve putting lots of hands in at $100NL then $200NL and upwards, and a lot of study. But this should be a fun and profitable process!

Now I'm really enthusiastic to meet up with similar like-minded players, and put in some hard work to get to where I want to be. I enjoyed reading the blogs of a lot of players in SSNL Grinders, and gained a lot of motivation from the hard work put in by players like
Chris and Marc. I joined the group to help motivate me to play more hands, to increase my links with poker buddies to chat over hands with at sessions or on messenger, and to help others in the group achieve their goals.

Bankroll
Not gonna be classing my bankroll as split across Cash/SNG/MTT/Live any more. My whole roll is now together. I'll still be playing a few SNGs/MTTs but the buy-ins will just come out of the overall roll, my focus will be be on NL Cash a lot more. The main reason for bringing the roll together is so that I feel comfortably (30x buyin) rolled at $100NL.

I'll be moving up to $200NL when I hit the $6k mark and when I have a large sample of hands showing that I've crushed $100NL.

... oh, this probably means I'll be ACTUALLY posting hands now. With strategy and decisions and dollars and everything. Interesting.

Current bankroll: $3,747