Been a while..

It's been a while I wrote a blog entry. I guess I'll leave this thought behind...

This is what almost all poker players go through at one point or another. I believe this is inevitable because one is trying to become better and do not want to end up being a dog to another player.

What I'm talking about is the notion of worrying of becoming too exploitable and having too many exploitable tendencies. You hear it all the time, "I have to 3bet this to protect my weaker/stronger holdings" or "I'll be too exploitable if I don't do X". I can guarantee that this is almost NEVER the case even against really good players who notices your tendencies. Yes, you should be somewhat mindful of the actions you take, but generally these types of thinking are not necessary to be successful.

There is an intricate balance here. If you can play in an EXTREMELY exploitable fashion yet you aren't exploited, you make the MOST amount of money. If you play in a completely unbeatable or balanced fashion, you make very little money even against terrible players. Being exploitable = more profit, balance = less profit, please don't forget that.

Part of being successful at the game is being able to adapt. As CTS has put it, you want to be one step ahead of your opponent. If your opponents think you never bluff, you need to bluff all the time. If your opponents think you are always bluffing, you need to NEVER bluff. These are both very exploitable tendencies, but you can understand why they can be extremely profitable. Table dynamics is key to the mid stakes tables. Sometimes I always 3bet/4bet bluff and never 3bet/4bet my big hands, instead always slowplay them. The reverse can easily happen also. Nobody but you knows your strategy, and as long as you know what you are doing, and that you understand your own tendencies, there is nothing to be exploited. Simply put, the game is a lot less complicated than some people make it out to be.

Coaching

I've started coaching one individual. And yes, it's for money. I definitely have a lot to offer to this student, and he has a lot to learn. Though we only started for a couple days, I already enjoy his willingness to learn. He's already a pretty solidly sound player, but he has hit a tough wall in his road. I believe a lot of poker players hit walls during their career, but the question is whether they are willing to look for a solution.

There are many reasons why I decided to take a lower stake player. I feel it's much harder to teach someone who has had bad habits already. I'm looking to teach him how to solidly think about the game and how to win against the toughest of opponents. It's going to be a challenge, because it forces me to think about what I had learned and organize it well enough to explain it to someone else.

Another reason for teaching is that it does help me in my own game. I can think even deeper past those fundamentals that I had already mastered and discover more aspects I had overlooked. As a teacher, I have pressure to make sure my student learns from me. Obviously I don't have to care since learning is his own responsibility. But I'm a perfectionist by nature and I cannot see myself half ass something that I started. Also, it really helps to have a student that is open minded and is willing to try a lot of things. He has a lot of potential and I hope to see to it that he will succeed(at least for poker).

And no, I'm not taking any more students until further notice.

Love this Post

"Here's your problem. You don't have the fortitude, nor bankroll, nor temperment, to be a casino. A casino is a big ol' building, where people's dreams might possibly come true. Especially if you own the building.

Casinos get rich, expand a whole city, and get richer, by offering bets where the casino has a two or three percent advantage. But the bets have to be offered, have to be wagered, a million times. Roulette, for instance: red or black, odd or even, high or low, the house has a 5.25% advantage on all but one bet on the layout.

Will the customer occasionally have a streak? Of course. A full third of the customers that evening will actually have a winning night. The casino doesn't care. You, of course, would be willing to walk in front of a truck. Will one drunken guy actually make several thousand dollars, having started with twenty bucks? Of course. The casino doesn't care. You, by the way, will not even walk out looking for the truck, you will put a bullet in your brain, right there at the table. The casino is right, and you are not right. "correct mathmatically" might be a better term than "right".

You think, apparently, that when you have a winning hand, and the 'customer' is drawing to a flush on the river, You've Got Him Nailed. You don't. You have only created a situation where you have four times the advantage that a casino has. You have a situation where it's 80-20 that you're going to win.

Now I want you to work really, really hard on this, because you haven't yet. If it's 80-20 for you, how many times out of a hundred can we predict that the 'customer' will hit his flush? The answer is twenty times out of a hundred. ('Grab that man. Don't let him dash toward the highway'.)

Can the 'customer' have a streak of winners? You bet he can. ('Grab that revolver'). He might hit several in a row.

Why do you care? (Because you're an idiot). No, it's because you haven't given it the appropriate amount of thought, and because you're not bankrolled well, and because you care about the outcome, and you should not care.

You should have enough in your bankroll that you can offer the 'customer' his flush draw about a hundred times a day. You want him (assuming he's dumb enough: but you're right, there are millions of 'em) to call your bet, and shoot for his flush draw. 80-20 in your favor, if he's betting on the river, 60-40 in your favor if he's betting on the turn (and, you get to charge him MORE for the river, if he's not all in).

If he wins his bet, and you're smart enough to be a casino, you should comp him: buy him a few drinks, compliment that ugly date he brought with him, buy him dinner if you have to, but keep him right there, making his bet over, and over, again.

But not you: you are involved. You are worried. You are so upset that he won one, or ten, of those bets. But the fact is, if that happens a thousand times (that bet where you are 80-20), you will be a rich man. You should be grateful, when you have put the 'customer' in a postion where you offer an 80-20 proposition, and he takes you up on it.

Here's what you should do: change your attitude. Play standard poker. Lose your emotion. You don't care about this bet, or the next one. You just want the guy to keep playing, if he's going to keep playing at the odds you're offering. Charge him for his longshot bet. He'll pay? He'll go for it? OUTSTANDING.......

Grind it out. (They call it that, for a reason). Lose your personal involvement with one hand, or one session. If you're playing right, the money, in smaller amounts, will roll in. (Not in larger amounts: you're not entitled to larger amounts. When your opponent bets his flush draw and loses, you didn't win the whole amount. You won the whole amount LESS the fact that one out of five times you're going to lose, and thus give some back. But believe me, there will be plenty left over.)

Quit caring about your results. Play standard poker. If you're doing it right, the money will roll in.

Play standard poker. If you're doing it right, you're offering the customer bets where your advantage is four times that which built Las Vegas. Do it all day long. All week long. All year long. Grind it out."

-2+2 abominable(I hope I give proper credit)

Preflop Game

These days, I've been concentrating on my preflop game. That's probably the most exploitable part of my game. Actually that's not quite correct, I just feel that other better players are much better preflop players than me, that's basically a huge edge over me in a long run. I needed to improve on that.

I guess the thing with preflop is that it's generally pretty high variance, you'll be bouncing up and down many buyins and it's very easy to think over a small sample that you are being a spewtard. The best way to remedy that is to really focus on the math and see your expectations on your plays. Even if the preflop plays are generally 0ev or small -ev, the aggressive image you put out there will make all your big hands greatly +ev.

I feel generally it's very easy to see a solid regular stick it in with like 77 preflop and think how big of a donk he is. But as long as he understands preflop well, sometimes it's correct to get it in that light. It's somewhat hard to see that distinction and preflop definitely has a lot of money to be made.

First Donkament Final Table!

While all the poker big names were duking it up at FTP HU tourney, I was...



Props to Brendan for railing me, makes me realize how much how little I know about donkaments. Ya, don't ask me for donkament advice.

Your Winning Edge/Player Types

It's another shitty Monday, the day when all the regulars are playing and not a fish in sight. You probably prefer to do something else than poker, but the girlfriend is out of town, you are bored as fuck. You go on your favorite site, load up your handy dandy HUD software and open some 2/4 tables. The hell? Everyone is playing those 18/16, 19/17, 21/19 stats! Those stats are indicative of what winning TAGs are, your edge is seemingly limited.


The truth of the matter is.. yes, your edge might not be as big against these TAG stats guys as opposed to like 30/5/inf maniacs, but it's still there if you are indeed better! A question that I always ask myself is this: what is my edge? why am I winning(or losing)? what makes me different than everyone else who watches some CR videos or read some poker books?

Online poker is seemingly "readless". Everyone is classified with a name and (with most site) an avatar. But the truth of the matter is, anyone can follow a hand chart and play like a pro preflop. The most standard HUD stats are VPIP and PFR, we can easily cookie cut people with similar stats in the same basket and think they all play the same. This is FAR from the truth. I can teach anyone to play my exact stats, will he play similarly as me? Of course not. But it's easy to fool someone in thinking he plays a similar style.

Player types is completely underestimated. In the past, I admit that most of my decisions are made completely by classifying someone(TAG, LAG, weak tight, maniac). This is a fundamental mistake as you play stronger and stronger players, they will not be making this mistake. I, SirNeb, plays my nuts hand like X and no one else plays exactly X with the same hands. Of course X might not be the most optimal play but it is still unique to me. Each player has his own unique style and what he is capable of. But you can generally put that player in a certain "player type". Someone who is playing scared money is not going to splash around with air very much, so it would be completely against his player type to bluff randomly. But someone who is willing to 4bet shove light preflop is probably not going to be afraid to make a pot sized river bluff. The theory behind player types is based on how they think about the game. If he plays a really strong hand weakly, that means he's generally either slowplaying too much or he's afraid that he got outdrawn and will lose his stack. I can generally say something accurate about a player just from 1 significant hand history. So just imagine if you play with certain regulars for thousands of hands, you can really get a strong read on someone.

That said, it's obvious our biggest edge is against a donator. But the reality is that even those "TAG"s or "solid players" make fundamental mistakes ALL THE TIME. I can spot them easily because I've made those same mistakes in the past and learned from them. They are not obvious, but it's extremely exploitable and profitable. In a long run, those little edges really add a ton to your winrate. Even winning players make lots of mistakes, as long as you keep exploiting them(make less mistakes yourself!) and the money will continue to flow your direction. Keep in mind that the first step is to identify what the mistakes are, this could be difficult and usually you might have to pay for such information. What I mean is not buy some database from your local poker black market(whatever they are..), what I do mean is you might have to make a light call down and lose some dough. The short term -ev will be overcome as long as you use that information in the future.

Losing Perspective

I'm going to keep this post short. But it's very easy to lose perspective in life. Sometimes you see what you want or you know what you should do but you get distracted by something that is irrelevant. An example is what I always try to preach: Focus on the decisions, results will follow. It's clear that my results have been poor in the past month or two, but it only gets worse as you keep focusing on the results which in the end affects your decisions. Honestly if you want to be blunt, results are completely irrelevant. Should it matter if you are up or down a session if you've been playing +ev plays throughout? It is stupid to even worry about it as long as you make good profitable decision.

This brings up another point that I find interesting, again, keeping the post as short as possible. Some people(including myself) might not realize when people refer to "decisions", it means much wider than the decisions in the big pots or tough spots. As little as choosing what table to play, what hands to open pf, or whether or not to call a minbet, they are all EXTREMELY important decisions you should be making. Every 3.5-4bb you raise preflop, it should be +ev with good sound reasonings. I don't remember how many times I lose focus and just play mechanical, this is completely exploitable and UNPROFITABLE. Every cent you put in the pot should have a positive expectation. Don't call a bet because folding would be "weak", call because you have a positive expectation.

Also the biggest danger in losing perspective is not just the results. You tend to start to build up certain emotions that are even more irrelevant. If you think you will get sucked out or lose every time you play, that "fear" you built up is completely idiotic and useless. If you think about it, someone who can truly focus on the decisions completely and none other, how can you tilt such a person? Results? what results? Does it actually matter?