Digital Thinkbox

This hand for example:

BB bets like 2.5 times the BB, but there were 2 limpers so his bet was a little small. 180-200 chips if he was going to raise that hand at all. Frankly it is trash this early. Even more astonishing is that UTG called this raise. K6s just isn’t that great of a hand especially to a raise ahead from you.

The flop shows two scare cards, not the least of which is an ace. They both check. I suppose you could argue that the pre-flop raiser should have put out a continuation bet in order to induce a fold, or at least gather information. On the turn this occurs to him with a little min-bet. Well by now UTG has a hand, although a small one. River brings another ace, and BB bets 100, he should have done this on the flop since now UTG isn’t going anywhere.

Here is another example, with more chips at stake:

MP1 puts out a 2.5x BB + limpers bet, sorta. Its a little weak, but some people like to vary their bets. Personally if I’m going to bet/raise I want them all to be the same. If the hand is worth betting, I just use a standard bet size in all cases. This has the advantage of disguising my hand. Do I have AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQ? No one knows. Regardless, KQs isn’t something I’d play here, I’d probably fold this. Still it isn’t a horrible hand, and he did bet it strongly, and gets a caller; with A4s.

No doubt about this, calling 325 chips with A4s at this stage is a little loose. It sometimes makes you wonder if these players are even watching what is going on. MP1 c-bets the flop, he doesn’t have a hand yet, but he was the pre-flop raiser and he doesn’t have totally crap. He could be ahead. He sizes his bet a little low in my opinion because he is giving the CO 5 to 1 pots odds to call. CO calls, with nothing but A high, granted he is ahead now, but his hand sucks and he calls a rather large bet. Pot is getting pretty big now. MP1 is now pretty committed to this pot, and I doubt CO is going anywhere.

Turn is a 9, and MP1 throws out this weak bet. He might as well push it all-in here IMO, not that he has a hand. He has a flush draw with one card to come giving him 9 outs, but the same holds true for CO. In fact they both really only have 7 outs since they both hold clubs, AND CO has the Ace for the nut flush draw. CO calls of course, not that he knows this, but he is getting 10 to 1 pots odds with a 5 to 1 flush draw, calling is the clear choice here.

River brings the holy grail for MP1, his beloved king drops! His bet is small, he is already committed to this pot, might as well push the rest in there. Even more amazing, CO calls. With Ace high. He is clearly paying no attention to the MP2’s betting patterns. Oh well MP2 takes this pot down and now has a healthy stack.

Still neither hand is that great at this level, I would have folded BOTH of these hands and moved on. Both of these hands are dangerous. MP2 with KQs was behind the whole time until he got lucky on the river, spewing chips the whole time. Of course the same could be said of CO for calling down with A4s. This is why we play a very tight game early on. Let the loose player beat the heck out of themselves and pay us off when we get great hands.

My first day two-tabling $11 SnGs. Up to this point I’ve played a single table at a time. Some of the crazes who play a lot of these things 12-table if you can believe that. I’ve multi-tabled cash games before, but never SnGs. I played three pairs for a total of six games. Here are the results:

Set 1: 4th, 4th
Set 2: 6th, 6th
Set 3: 3rd, 3rd

Poker is rigged.

OK so its been 51 games since my coaching began about 2 weeks ago. Not a huge sample size I realize, so I won’t spew numbers since they will not have any meaning. I can say, with a reasonable degree of confidence, that my over all play has improved dramatically. For example:

1. Min-betting and min-raising – Gone
2. Tighter early play – Check
3. Paying more attention to push opportunities – Good
4. Being mindful of relative stack sizes – Getting better
5. Paying attention to other players and putting them on ranges – Improving
6. Stop overplaying huge hands (AA, KK) – Check

These are all examples of concepts and plays that I wasn’t even aware of pre-coaching. I was a min-betting fiend, hey its just a push of the button right? Just stopping that and using a large “standard” raise (3x BB give or take) has really helped. People either fold, or feed me chips. There is nothing better than this hand:

I’m not really certain what this guy was doing, but GIMME ALL YOUR CHIPS!

However, I’m still not rolling in the $$$. Clearly these players aren’t respecting my l33t p0k3r skilz. More likely, I’m missing +EV situations, although I’m getting much better at pushing in these +EV situations to grab the blinds. Blind stealing is the life blood of any tournament player, especially SnGs.

The other aspect of my play that I must work on is putting other players on ranges. This can be difficult at this level since these people can, and do, play everything. Of course that is a read in itself. Knowing a player is really loose give you an idea of what they are willing to call all-ins with, and really, the looser the better in some cases. Against strong hands, I WANT a loose player to call me. Sure they will occasionally suck out and get all my chips (Occasionally HAH! Like EVERY FRIKING TIME!), but the times they don’t I will have revitalized my stack.

Finally, there is the mind game. This is probably the hardest of all to address. Indeed, my biggest enemy at the table is Me. Getting bored, pissed, distracted, etc will damage my game more than folding a hand. This is especially true when I’ve played well, but still lost. I HATE that. Nothing makes Jack more cranky than playing a good game, and getting busted in 4th place.

OK so I was going to put a pic of a crying baby, but a panda is sooo much cooler.

I figure after the one hundredth time this happens I’ll be able to laugh it off, rather than screaming in rage at the poker gods.

I’ve been playing poker online now for over three months now. You would think with my continuous play, reading and studying that I would be a poker genius by now right? I mean in three months I could have picked up a new computer programming language without problems and be hammering out code. Programming software is more complex that poker isn’t it?

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t but I’ve been exposed to computer programming for almost 20 years. It all started when I was a kid and was typing in BASIC programing from magazines and books. Granted this isn’t “programming”, but it is exposure to code and how software works. Over the years I’ve developed a large amount of familiarity and skill with software development; I should be able to pick up poker and become and expert in a couple weeks right?

BZZZZZTT! Wrong. Poker isn’t software development (duh!). Playing poker has it own set of skills that have to be developed over time. You can’t just sit down at a table and start tossing chips any more than you can sit down at a computer and begin writing code with no knowledge or experience. Unless of course you hate money, and there seem to be a lot of players that feel this way. If you hate money, let me know so we can schedule a game.

Clearly it takes time to develop your “poker muscles”, for lack of a better term. Indeed to become good, and good is a relative term that is defined differently by different people, you will have to study, practice and read. In fact, more study and reading than play.

Poker also different from programming in that while it is a series of problems that require a solution (bet, call, raise, fold), it is a solution that is based on incomplete if not inaccurate information. Where in programming you can use logic to determine an optional solution, in poker you sometimes have to make the best decision based upon the information you have at the time. You will rely on your “gut” and your “instincts” as often as your brain.

Additionally, in poker you don’t get the opportunity to go back and corrector your errors. In software development you can always re-factor your code to make it better. If you make an error in poker, say buh-bye to you cash, its gone. There are no do overs in poker.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone, but humans excel at self-delusion. We think “Hey! I’m smart. I should be able to dominate this poker stuff in a couple of weeks. How hard can it be?”

Two thousand dollars later we figure “oh its just bad luck.”

Two thousand dollars after that its “Those stupid players! They keep playing bad cards and hitting their hands and beating me!” I love it when I hear someone say “If I could only get on a table with good players, then I could really start making some money.” HAH! Good players will LOVE you, and your money.

So where does this leave me? Well after 3 months of play I am definitely a much better player. I read books, study my plays, and practice. I’m improving at a decent rate, although sometimes not as rapidly as I would like. I’ve decided to focus on one specific aspect of my game, namely single table tournaments or Sit-and-goes, for the time being. I’m hoping by focusing on this one type of poker I can become good and generate vast riches.

At least enough to buy lunch.

So bottom line, there is no way to become an expert overnight in poker, or most other endevours. It takes practice and experience. Unfortunately, unlike programming, experience in poker comes at a cost, to your wallet.

So I’m on a 10 session SnG loosing “streak”. I’d like to say it was because of bad beats, unlucky cards, and stupid players. Unfortunately, its because I played bad and made a number of very poor plays. Granted I had some unlucky cards, but no more than usual. Unlucky cards + really bad play =

In order to repair the chip spewing I went to the hand histories to study my play. Between me and my SnG coach I need to work on the following:

Pay more attention to how people are playing

This means
a) Not surfing the Intarweb, but concentrating on the poker game. You know the one I paid money to play in. Yeah that. This is huge. I’ve started doing this, and guess what, I’m loosing. Perhaps I’m getting bored with the slow early play. At some point I said to myself “Most of these guys will bust out anyhow. I don’t need to know how they play”. Well surprise, surprise. Some of these people actually survived and I end up having ZERO clue how they play.

b) Trying harder to put the players on ranges. Sometimes this is hard at the $11 level since these people will play anything.

Watch the stacks

I definitely need to be more mindful of the stack sizes. Not just mine. I’ve missed push opportunities because I didn’t look at the callers yet to act and determine how they might react to my push. This is especially true if I have a pushing situation and have more big bets (BBs) than the possible callers.

For example:

This should have been a push from me. Folded to me, and the BB only has 4.5xBB left where I’m sitting on 8xBB.

In summary:
1) Mind opponent’s stacks.
2) Put them on ranges.
3) Don’t do stupid shit.

I hope I can remember #3.

Sept 2nd, 2006 I ended my 10 game loosing streak with a nice 2nd place finish. We won’t talk about the game that followed this 2nd place game however.