Some analysis on the QQ hand

Tons of awesome input from people on the QQ hand in the previous post, cheers for that. I'll go over my thoughts on it here.

Firstly, villain is VERY TAG. His style as shown by his aggression factors is to constantly put pressure on opponents. I've never specifically seen him 3barrel light, but he's the type of player I would expect to and I think that's evidenced by his aggression factors by street. He's a good winning reg, one of the better at midstakes on the site and I'm assuming he can hand-read pretty well and make SOME folds.

When I check river villain will perceive my range to be relatively weak, like JQ and shit. He'll bet KQ/AK, obviously any 7, KJ, and triple barrel with a lot of bluffs. I doubt he'll value bet KT or AJ, but it's possible. So his river is pretty polarized to strong Ks, 7s, missed FDs and bluffs.

The thing is players don't check-raise bluff the river that much in general at mid-stakes. Villain doesn't perceive me to have a weird/crazy/tricky image and he doesn't have enough info on me here really to know that I'd make this move with a bluff like a missed flush-draw. So I feel like the first time he's a lot more likely to give me credit for a monster and realize his hand is no good.

When I do raise I need to make him fold 60% of the time for the move to be profitable. I think that like 60% of his range is outright bluffs, around 30% is Ks and around 10% is 7s. He's calling with 7s 100%, AK around 50% of the time and folding all other Ks, missed FDs and bluffs.

It's worth mentioning that this type of move is good for (I hate this term but...) meta-game. I will be noting that I've pulled this move on this specific player and I'd be expecting him to adjust and call me down lighter in the future. Possibly not the next time but certainly the time after, at that point I'd lower my bluffing frequency and widen my value check-raising frequency and expect him to call down light.

Flatting vs Checkraising
Here's my kind of hacked structured hand analysis, the hand combination percentages aren't exact but should roughly illustrate things. I'm not sure the maths is right so feel free to correct me...

If I checkraise...
If he has 7s I lose 644 (10%)
If he has KJ he calls I lose 644 (5%)
If he has AK and calls I lose 644 (5%)
If he has AK and folds I win pot (5%)
If he has other Ks I win pot (15%)
If he's bluffing I win pot (60%)
Checkraise profit = (0.6*523) + (0.15*523) + (0.05*523) - (0.05*644) - (0.05*644) - (0.1*644)
Checkraise profit = 314 + 78.5 + 26 - 32 - 32 - 64
Checkraise profit = $290.50

If I flat call...
If he has 7s I lose 234 (10%)
If he has KJ he calls I lose 234 (5%)
If he has AK and calls I lose 234 (10%)
If he has other Ks I lose 234 (15%)
If he's bluffing I win pot (60%)
Flat call profit = (0.6*523) - (0.15*234) - (0.1*234) - (0.05*234) - (0.1*234)
Flat call profit = 314 - 35 - 23.5 - 11.7 - 23.5
Flat call profit = $220.30

So provided I've not made some error check-raising is more profitable that check-calling, even if he finds a call with AK every time rather than 50% it's still more profitable. Adding in the meta-game advantages it's the better play I reckon.

Kenny, good analysis imo, you're bang on that my raise is designed to fold out strong Ks. I wouldn't expect many players at 1/2 to triple barrel really, but I'd expect more MSNL players like this guy to fire the third barrel... so I do think it's likely he has a bunch of shit in his range.

Danny, I'm check-raising rivers with air against you in future homegames ;) The question is really how often he folds the Ks, I think this player is good enough to put me on a hand that beats him. But I'm not sure if he can put me on a missed FD too and just decide to look me up a bunch. Remains to be seen really... will be fun testing it out!

Off for Christmas

Headed up north for a few days tomorrow for Christmas, so Merry Christmas to all! Here's what other random things have been going on.

Travelling
Looks like I'll be heading to Asia on the 19th of January. Fucking stressed at the moment as I didn't get allll of the immunisations I should have. The final one I need is a serious of 3 injections over the course of 3-4 weeks, not sure if I'll have time to get it. Trampaids here I come!

Also not too sure what flights to book. One way flights to/from Phuket cost like £450 more than a return, but I'd like to leave the trip open. I've noticed that it's possible to fly back a bit cheaper from Hong Kong, so tempted to head there via Bangkok for a couple of weeks on the way back. Bleh, I hate organising stuff, might just one way it and leave the whole thing open.

Poker
Not put many hands in this month. Been working on my game instead. Although I have jumped on the tables when the games have been particularly soft and had good results, so I probably won't be having as bad a month as I thought.

Studying
I've been beasting studying over the last week or two. I purchased the Slowhabit/CTS book and have been working pretty hard with that and encorporating things into my game. In the short term this will probably mean I'll play like a total spewmonkey while trying things out (see hand at bottom), but in the long term I think it'll work really well for me. Is it worth the almost $2k pricetag? Drop me an email if you'd like to know what I think.

I've also signed up to DeucesCracked recently and am VERY impressed. The Krantz videos are freaking amazing, him and FoxfoodsFiend are very very good at explaining things. Watched about half of the Parallels series now, awesome stuff. It's only like $25ish a month, well worth it.

Coaching
Done a bunch of coaching this month with two new students which I think has went really well, should have 7-8 hours of coaching in by the end of the month. I feel like I'm able to give good advice and I think the guys are happy with the service they're receiving. Will be offering a coaching packages in the new year.


I'll leave you with an interesting hand... genius or spew? :)

$3/$6 No Limit Holdem
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

UTG		($1209.00)
UTG+1		($2138.35)
CO		($1200.00)
BTN		($550.70)
SB		($974.40)
Hero (BB)		($1021.20)

Pre-flop: ($9, 6 players) Hero is BB

2 folds, CO raises to $21, 2 folds, Hero calls $15

Villain is very tight, very aggressive and value bets thin. He's playing like 17/16/5 with 60/45/35% street aggressions. He's a regular and has a good winrate at the limit.

Flop: ($45, 2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $34, Hero calls $34

Turn: ($113, 2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $88, Hero calls $88

River: ($289, 2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $234, Hero raises to $644, CO tanks...

Almost a $3k pot :o

$3/$6 No Limit Holdem
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

UTG		($671.01)
UTG+1		($1538.85)
Hero (CO)		($1468.50)
BTN		($1301.50)
SB		($969.65)
BB		($1446.50)

Pre-flop: ($9, 6 players) Hero is CO

UTG raises to $21, 1 fold, Hero calls $21, BTN calls $21, 1 fold, BB calls $15

Flop: ($87, 4 players)
BB bets $87, 1 fold, Hero raises to $233, 1 fold, BB raises to $466, Hero calls $233

Turn: ($1,019, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $666, BB calls $666

River: ($2,351, 2 players)
BB goes all-in $293.50, Hero calls $293.50

Final Pot: $2,938
Hero shows:

Hero wins $2,934.50 ( won +$1,488 )





BB shows:

Upping my game

This post is going to be a bit of a beast. I was planning on making it as my end of the year post but I feel like now is a better time. I had been thinking about continuing to grind to the end of the month but I've played enough to know I'm not happy with my game right now, changes have to be made. I've got a bunch of time to take a look at things while I'm away from the tables at the moment due to being ill. It was either do this or order Christmas presents... *yawn* ;)

Next year I want to dedicate a lot of effort to online poker, progressing myself and making as much money as possible in the current state of the games. Despite what people are saying there's still a LOT of money to be made out there and now is a really good time life-wise for me to do that.

Goal
I'm planning on having one main poker goal for next year and that will be to make $150k (£100k).

To achieve that I'm going to either have to double my volume at 1/2 and 2/4 by playing more tables/hours, or move up in stakes. I don't really want to become a 12+ tabling grinder as I think I'd be bored, growth stunted and burned out within the first few months. I've got respect for people who can do that, but unfortunately I'm not one of them. So the route for me will be to progress in stakes up to 3/6 and 5/10 to achieve roughly $15k months. To be able to do that I think I need to make big changes to the way I learn and approach the game.

Where my game is at
Just now I'm at the stage where I can beat $1/2 for 3-4ptbb and $2/4 for around 1-2ptbb. So the next step is to grind a ton of $2/4 and $3/6 and improve my winrate to the 3-4ptbb kind of bracket. That's what I've been doing this month, but I don't feel like I'm crushing the games as much as I do when I play $1/2. I can feel that my edge is weaker due to there being less bad players. I feel like I'm improving but not as fast as I'd like, I want to be making bigger steps forward.

Since the start of the month I've been making notes on specific areas that I don't feel confident in and need to improve. They all relate to not having enough of a fundamental grasp in certain areas of the game. My learning up until now has mainly been from training videos, hand reviews, things like that. While they've taught me the correct tools to crush the smaller stakes games it's made my play somewhat formulaic.

Education
The 2/4 and above the games always contain a few good regulars who have learned from the same material I have. Top high stakes players I chat with all seem to have the same thought that you need to be crushing the regulars when you play a limit, not the fish. You should be crushing the fish anyway. I feel like I need to 'tune up' and take my game up a level to feel confident exploiting the regulars, the training site memberships isn't enough.

So I have a list of specific areas to work on, some I have the required resources to get started on, some I do not. I'm looking to invest roughly $3k in education over the next couple of months, but I'm not yet sure what the best route is. At the moment I'm thinking CTS/SlowHabits new $1,850 book, plus some one-on-one coaching with a high stakes player. This stuff is in addition to the regular head reviews, forum posting and training video watching, not instead of it.

If anyone had any ideas on good things to study at this stage, or players to work with gimmi a shout. I've already contacted players I know regarding coaching. Cheers!

If u got this far u deserve pics of the new Miss World, from Russia... Kseniya Sukhinova

Shoot the glass!!

Quitting
Was hoping to put in a big session tonight but ended up quitting after just 270 hands. I made a poor river call in a soft 5/10 game and light calldowns against a reg in a 2/4 game, noticed I was playing poorly and quit right away. I'm pretty good at quitting when I feel like I'm not playing my A game. I've came down with some shitty cold or something at the moment which isn't helping!

FPS
I seem to be making a bunch of bad adjustments to some of the good regs games. The worst is convincing myself that they're double and triple barrelling in spots where it's really not that likely. I'm trying too hard to make big hero calls when it's really not necessary, I'm forcing things. It's something I'm working on fixing though.

Done with 5/10 for now
I still don't know exactly how much I'm up/down for the month so far but I feel like I'm getting crushed. Running really badly, especially at 5/10 despite feeling very profitable in the games I'm putting myself in. I'm going to quit taking 5/10 shots for the month as I think it's probably getting a bit tight bankroll wise.

Stopping results affecting your mood
I often feel really tempted to look at results at the end of each session, particularly if it was a big win or loss. But I've trained myself now just to step away from the laptop and chill out for a bit, then go back and look over the hands instead. After I've spent 30mins looking over the hands I've got a much better feeling of whether I've played badly or not, and I can improve in the spots where I've made mistakes. I think this is SUCH a great improvement over quitting a session up/down a bunch of buyins and letting that affect my mood. Basing your mood on short term luck is dumb. It irritates me to see people blog on it, it's just re-enforcing results-orientation. If I ever do the same thing I fully expect you guys to flame me :)

If I look over my hands and I've played well, I'm happy regardless of the result. If I look over my hands and I've played badly then I work on whatever mistakes I've made so that I'll be less likely to make them in future. So even at worst if I play very badly in a session, which really doesn't happen too often, I leave the session review feeling significantly happier due to the steps I've taken towards improving myself.

Die Hard
Rewatched this tonight. Last time I'd seen it was when I was finishing high school like 7 years ago, we used to watch it all the time. It's still SO DAMN GOOD, if not even better than I remember. The 120" screen size probably helps with that :) Alan Rickman. SO good.

Click it back ftw :)

$2/$4 No Limit Holdem
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

UTG		($1393.05)
Hero (UTG+1)		($1001.00)
CO		($400.10)
BTN		($452.10)
SB		($1187.30)
BB		($283.20)

Pre-flop: ($6, 6 players) Hero is UTG+1

1 fold, Hero raises to $14, 2 folds, SB calls $12, 1 fold

Flop: ($32, 2 players)
SB bets $32, Hero raises to $64, SB raises to $452, Hero goes all-in $987, SB calls $535

Turn: ($2070, 2 players)

River: ($2070, 2 players)

Final Pot: $2070
SB shows:
Hero shows:

Hero wins $2003 ( won +$938 )
SB lost -$1001.00



This hand is comedy too :) People play bad!

$2/$4 No Limit Holdem
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

Hero (UTG)		($1006.70)
UTG+1		($1201.25)
CO		($662.28)
BTN		($289.21)
SB		($937.67)
BB		($536.00)

Pre-flop: ($6, 6 players) Hero is UTG

Hero raises to $14, 1 fold, CO calls $14, 1 fold, SB calls $12, 1 fold

Flop: ($46, 3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $31, CO raises to $62, SB calls $62, Hero calls $31

Turn: ($232, 3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $144, CO calls $144, SB folds

River: ($520, 2 players)
Hero bets $696, CO goes all-in $442.28

Final Pot: $1658.28
Hero shows:
CO shows:

Hero wins $1654.78 ( won +$738.78 )
SB lost -$76.00
CO lost -$662.28

Deepstacked hand discussion

Thought I'd post this hand I recently went over while doing some hand reviews with a friend. It's a pretty interesting spot where we're deepstacked against a decent player at microstakes. I think it illustrates some of the adjustments that need to be made between playing 100BB and deepstacked.

Villain is playing 21/15/3, we are 270BB deep.

$0.05/$0.1 No Limit Holdem at FTP
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

UTG		($16.35)
Hero (CO)		($27.05)
BTN		($10.00)
SB		($36.45)
BB		($21.00)

Pre-flop: ($0.15, 5 players) Hero is CO

1 fold, Hero raises to $0.35, 1 fold, SB raises to $1.20, 1 fold, Hero raises to $3.70, SB calls $2.50


So when this type of player 3bets us OOP deep I'd expect his range to be fairly strong. TT+/AQ+ pretty much, maybe KQs/99 at a push. When we're deep we actually respond to 3bets a lot different than 100BB. If we're 100BB here we 4bet and get it in, but being so deep if we 4bet here then he's going to slow down with the portion of his range that we have beat and raise with the portion which beats us... which sucks. So in this spot I'd really only 4bet as a bluff or with AA/KK. We're calling with 99-QQ/AK. This also gains us the advantage of villain perceiving our range to be a LOT weaker than it is, and we can play accordingly.

Anyways, we 4bet which isn't a terrible or anything. He flats, so now his range is very very polarised. Mostly AQ/AK/TT/JJ, a small amount of the time he'll flat AA, but it doesn't have enough weight against the rest of his range to worry about.


Flop: ($7.50, 2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $4.50, SB calls $4.50



Flop is fantastic for us and we bet out a nice amount. He calls. Now his range is heavily weighted towards AsKs/TT/JJ (he can't have AsQs/KsQs as we have the Qs).

Turn: ($16.50, 2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks


Turn isn't great, but isn't terrible either. Only AsKs really gets there, but note that a larger portion of his range is TT/JJ with a spade which he's playing for stacks now. Hell even TT/JJ isn't folding here yet imo, so we're playing for stacks. We have $19 effective and a $16.50 pot.

So given that we're never folding regardless of what happens we don't need to be worried about giving him good odds to draw any more, we can bet whatever we like. I'd bet an amount that he can't really fold to with TT/JJ and that commits him to calling a river shove. Installment plan time :) So $8 or $9 on the turn looks good. On the river we're betting the rest of our stack.


River: ($16.50, 2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $9, SB calls $9


As played river is a fantastic card for us and we have to bet. Thinking about his range again, he's folding overs and calling with the TT/JJ type hands. Given that we checked turn our range now looks a lot lighter to him so he's never folding river with TT/JJ. I'd betsize bigger, something like $14.50 as if he's calling $9 he's calling that too. He'll just never fold an OP there, he'll convince himself that because you checked turn you're bluffing big with AK as his line was passive.


Final Pot: $34.50
SB shows:
Hero shows:

Hero wins $33.50 ( won +$16.30 )
SB lost -$17.20


Interesting hand. It's a spot where villain's range was so tightly defined that we can play our hand SUPER OPTIMALLY. I think this is where a lot of the money is in todays games as people tend to play really spewy in 3bet/4bet pots rather than hand-reading.

More on Short-term Results Orientation

I noticed a lot of bad habits and negativity creeping into my game and routine towards the end of last month, so I've done some thinking and it's time for a change.

Bad things I do
Towards the end of the month I'll adjust my poker schedule based on how I'm doing. If I'm down I'll try to play a lot and get even, if I'm up a lot I'll miss out playing sessions when the games are good to maintain my winrate.

Despite not having a handcount goal for each month rather than a $ goal, I still have a $ goal in the back of my mind, and if I'm below it I tend to push harder to try to make it.

If I've had a good win I'm tempted to quit playing (or sometimes just tighten up) to increase the chance of leaving feeling on a high.

I look at my Holdem Manager graphs and balances too much, and I look at EV too much. Not so much during sessions, but after sessions I'll look at my winrate, my EV, my graph, etc. It's kind of a waste of time, and also affects my mood.

How to fix it
I've been trying to figure out how to fix all of these issues for the past few days now. But the solution is a lot simpler and much more effective than I expected. I was reading Brian/Ian's blogs last night and noticed that they're both experimenting with removing all of the money related stats from Holdem Manager. So $$$, BB/100, EV, graphs... all gone. Also not looking at the Cashier window at all, not until the last hand of the month has been played, then everything can be reviewed.

At first I thought this was a bit extreme. I used to like looking at my $$$ figures and stuff at the end of sessions, particularly if I've crushed. But really there is no positive reason for it, there are way way more negative affects than positive.

I tried it tonight for my first session of the month and the result was instantly fantastic. My mind was unable to be distracted by thinking about $$$ as I didn't know how much I was up or down. It became much easier to stay calm and evaluate situations, when to take breaks, and when to end the session. I don't know why I didn't try this earlier, it works so well. It really doesn't bother me that much not knowing how much I made/lost in a session or how much I'm up for the month either. In fact I'm happier not knowing as in enforces my non results orientation.

Also, this is my first month playing all 2/4 and 3/6. Played my first session tonight 6-7 tabling put in 2k hands, went well, I feel confident. The games are tougher but there are still fish and bad regs. Very beatable, but I'm still trying to game select as much as possible. Won't be playing much over the next couple of days, going to see Amy LaVere tomorrow night in Glasgow and Steve Coogan the following night... again in Glasgow. Shakaboom.