I have seen the future and it works
Date: Mon, Jun 30, 2008 Professional Live Tournament
In the long term, I look at the profitability of my pocket aces rather than the number of times they win or lose. To maximize profit with them, I make a conscious effort to minimize my losses when I am clearly going to lose a showdown. Going all-in preflop is a good strategy. It takes the guess work out of post flop play---but it doesn't minimize losses.
At the end of the day, it's all about how many chips are coming back to your stack. The more you put in pre-flop, the more you should get out of the pot when it's all said and done. Sometimes, I like my opponent(s) to see a flop, to "catch" up, hoping they'll hit their card on the flop and bet out. I fgure this out by:
Basically, DEFINING -MY/THEIR- HAND EARLY - WHEN IT'S CHEAP TO DO SO. Firsts money in raises, and you re-raise, let's him know where you are at. If he goes over the top, it's probably Kings. If he smooth calls, you are probably against a small pocket pair or AK,AQ,AJQQ,JJ---put him on a range of hands.
DON'T BET DANGEROUS FLOPS IN MULTIWAY POTS. My AA demands isolation, But let's say I am under the gun with them, and find myself in a 4 handed pot and the flop is J-10-9. I am stuck without betting---It is better to check this flop with AA, even if was in a late position and it has been checked around to me . It is difficult to expect anyone to fold any sort of draw (even a gutshot) on this particular flop. Further, when I bet, they are correct in calling me.
GREAT players experience more bad beats than GOOD players. Great players get their money into the pot with the best hand and the suckers are forced to draw out. As a corollary, great players rarely deliver a bad beat: they almost never get their money into the pot drawing slim.
Small Ball Poker
Date: Tue, Jun 24, 2008 Professional Live Tournament
Smash Mouth all-in-preflop poker is somewhat of a river game. Small Ball Holdem, on the other hand, is somewhat of a flop game, so if you can see three cards cheaply, it is a good thing.
Smashmouth poker is about first in money- ----You can't immediately win by calling; you can by betting, or raising! Betting or raising allows the possibility of winning the pot immediately by forcing decisions on the other opponents, who may very well fold, with slim holdings.
Small Ball Poker is about calling one or two small bets, but more than that it is about Never getting all your money in pre-flop. The best way to win in small ball is to fold more!(after you see the flop). Smash Mouth players are looking for reasons to bet, Small Ball, reasons to fold. Therefore, folding, is the "invisable" way to win. Try telling that to a Friday night action player: "Let's go to the casino and fold 60% of our hands!"
Most of the bad beat smashmouth pedal-to-the metal stories you hear start out like this, "Well, I got my money in good... only to get sucked out on the river." On the one hand, smash mouth poker is about agression, and poker rewards agression (selective aggression). On the other hand, Infinite patience in poker is also rewarded immediately. (You can't lose money you don't put into a pot).
As Mickey Mantle said in his 1985 autobiography"When you keep aiming for the fences, you're bound to strike out a lot ." Small ball poker avoids the MIS (move in specialists) and let them have their hands.
With Small Ball poker, AFTER the flop, you can evaluate the texture and the number of players in, and attack. If the pot starts to get big, then you must be ahead to continue to play. If you can keep the pot small, you can read you opponent(s) and decide what is in your best interest.
You have to be a good post flop player to play small ball. You have to be willing to see a flop with TT, knowing full well that it might mean mucking the hand if the texture of the flop doesn’t match up with your cards (No Set, No Bet).
You need to make high value river bets when the board shows broken draws. You can also bluff someone who is chasing you down with AX when the flush card comes on the river. Ax players know the flush draw very well as its their favorite hand. They WILL notice and often muck TP (top pair) to a big river bet that makes a 3 flush.
Poker's patterns are not our own
Date: Sun, Jun 22, 2008 Professional Live Tournament
I, for one, am guilty of the House Money Effect, with chip overload of playing loose with their money--actually it is ALL my money once won! Any strongly held belief that random events, objects, behaviors of others, etc., have a particular and unusual significance to oneself or ones play or game is purely incidental. The Rabbit's foot-good luck? Not for the rabbit. More than that, the in to your sane, "ruunning bad" or "running good", that it reflect your situation or , in fact, communicates about you or your "predicaments" is usually accidental in nature- so reading too much into it is counter productive. Usually if things are really bad, there are probably leaks in your game-and the quest for "good luck" is usually in these questions: 1.) How much of your bad run is your fault? Anyalsis may be paralysis but the meaning of a poker life--is get one! and the unexamined poker life is not worth living! Assign blame-- Do you find yourself saying "should" I shouda raised, I shoulda folded that. Be honest 2.) Do you need to step down in limits? Money can't buy happiness but it can buy chips, which is kinda the same thing, and you can't play poker without money! It's better to step down voluntarily to a game you can crush than to be forced to because you lost all your bankroll playing above your head on a bad run
Every hand of poker is a series of risk/reward decisions. Players cannot always figure out what is in their best interest. Money and risk are abstract, complex things. We act less rationally, less logically, and more emotionally when playing cards. When your left brain gets good at telling your right brain what to do, you even the score, and gain a competitive advatage.
Paper or Plastic? Live Cash game chips are not tournament chips! There is a difference between gambling and betting. Live "brick/click and mortar"poker is a game of money played with cards.
Yet, we tend to throw good money after bad---the sunk-cost fallacy is a common mental mistake. Just because we’ve spent money to see a flop doesn’t mean we should continue to spend money on it. It doesn’t even mean we should continue to play the hand . What matters is the hands ’s future value(flop-turn-river) to us, not how much we’ve “spent” on it.
The ability to take a small loss to avoid a big one is the hallmark of smart poker player. It's also the sign of a great investor. Great poker players lay down great hands. You have to reframe the situation and retrain your mind. In other words, you have to learn to love to take losses to be a long-term winner. Just like no one hand is going to make or break you, it is about exceling, about process, not results.
As in real estate, location counts-In Holdem it is position, position, position. The forced blind small bet is where most people call, even a riase, because they have money already in the pot. When you're in position, however, you have the luxury of getting the last action, when you're not you don't. It is that simple-yet common sense is not so common,e specially in the small blind.
Most people know hand values and preflop strategy, but post flop is where a bit of behavioral financing comes in: or The Power of Mind over Money. It is rooted in mental bias. It is our own idiosyncratic way to distort our map of reality. Just as the menu is not the meal, this map is not the territory--because everyone experiences gambling differently
Most wall street theories and models assume “investors” are rational decision makers who act in their own best interests. But, in reality, our investment brain often drives us to do things that are quite illogical, but make perfect emotional sense.
Poker's outward simplicity-The ability to affect the outcome is present, unlike roulette. If no one sees any cards, the cards did not play a role in the outcome. Thus, the outcome was determined by the betting of the players, clearly a process of skill or strategy.
Poker's patterns are not our own. Poker is more reflective of real-life "wild" randomness because that game has major strategic and tactical components to it that is mashed up with the quasi-dealer element of a shuffled deck. Makes me think of the ipod shuffle mode----the shuffle mode has an algorithm that randomizes the selection of songs that your IPod can select. Any 'pattern' you discern from what songs your IPod selects is illusory. Just because you lost five times in a row, doesn’t mean you are “due” to win one.
3.) Are you playing the right game? Without the right game, the right people don't show up. Game selection-(e.g. limit, no-limit sit-and-go tourneys, etc.) and also to choosing the right tables. The urge to "get back" when losing repeatedly can cloud your vision, leaving you stuck at an unprofitable table when there are plenty of loose, crushable games to choose from. Change Tables!
4.) Do you need to take a break? Well, I was joking the other day with my sister Kathy --You know why I won so much money the other night...It's like the Indian's and the Rain Dance. The reason it works---they never stopped dancing! I never stop playing poker! On the other hand , a broken clock is right twice a day---and because of the huge luck factor in poker, you can win lots of pots(not always chips). Clearing your head, getting away fromt eh game is not only useful, it is mandatory every once in a while.
Being Fooled By Randomness
Date: Sat, Jun 21, 2008 Professional Live Tournament
Feel athletic, go to a sports bar; feel lucky, a casino
Date: Thu, Jun 12, 2008 Professional Live Tournament
The real deal is that gambling is an addiction, and the Addictionary- is spelt with the letters WSOP, WPT, GSN and ESPN. The mess is the message---winjuries--- a cool revenue stream for the networks and promoters, OME, out of money experiences for everyone else connected to the "sport". Why? because NLH, no limit holdem is 100% skill and 100% luck, and luck lends but never gives.
Calling poker a sport is like calling bald a hair color. Yet this male pattern madness--- an 800 lb gorilla known as Texas No Limit Hold em (a.k.a. NLH)--- has replaced baseball not only as the national pastime, but also America’s bellybutton.ESPN’s WSOP (World Series of Poker) High Stakes Poker on GSN and the Travel Channel’s WPT (World Poker Tour) have done for poker what Jamba smoothies did for high fiber diets---it reinvented the often indigestible into an energizing and delicious (peak) experience that can no longer be ignored. This game has juice!
There's one guy to thank-Chris Moneymaker, and one event, the hockey strike!
The Hockey Strike was a negative sum event- NEGATIVE-SUM GAMES are games in which both sides lose. This represents the height of irrationality to positive-sum players, but it proves a surprisingly durable choice of game-players. Pull the grenade and blow us both up.
Smashmouth Poker is a less deadly version of combat, and therefore a good way to practice for it if you are out to have a good time and fully expect to lose all your money that you brought to the table that night.
While the Zambonis' sat idle, the strike created new programming slots for ESPN's niche "sports" like Poker-and fueled the Moneymaker Effect: and you know how that affected all our games---more AQ verses small pockets(races), more bad beats and suckouts by DONKS winning, not by what they knew, but what was absent from their game---like fear, experience and regret.Broke Back Poker-A Guaranteed income for life.Without the right game, however, the right people don't show up.
Raising with good hands, pairs. Calling with draws and throwing away junk. Yea, I wanna play with these guys because Karaoke Poker can solve any problem for which a solution is known to exist . Many still sing the patience, tight-is-right ABC by the book style of play--that's an even money scenerio-- You don’t play to break even, you play to break backs.
When weak players stay in the game, they use luck and because of the nature of NLH, can win buckets of money in the short run. Just remember they are only borrowing the chips from you.Feeling lucky and going into a casino is like feeling athletic and going to a sports bar---You can depend on the rabbit's foot for luck, but it didn't help the rabbit.
Whne playing people who feel lucky---Assume the worst, believe no one, and make your move when you are certain you have the stone cold nuts or at least, great odds. If you get drawn out on the river by this kind of player, be assured he will go broke chasing to the river the next few hands he plays. All players are equally good, it's their play that is bad: A little past playing good is playing badly. You beat bad players and bluff good ones. Bads call too often and rarely fold. The longer you have been playing, the "smarter" you get. Experience rich and technique poor players-smart players---are easier to bluff, because of this fact. They are usually paying attention to the action.
POKER GENIUS-Relax And Lower Your Standards
Date: Wed, Jun 11, 2008 Professional Live Tournament
The power of mind over money is rooted in mental bias . It is our own idiosyncratic way to distort our map of reality. Just as the menu is not the meal, this map is not the territory--because everyone experiences gambling differently. When your reality check bounces---change your map.FLOUNDERS verses ROUNDERS -The difference in playing with the belief and intention of winning against just being social. For the poker Balla, nothing is better than when that average Joe Player sits down at a poker table. Why? Because he just sat down with money he INTENDS to lose! There is no more +EV situation, and most tables in a live poker room are filled with players exactly like that. When you treat No Limit Hold em as only a game of chance instead of skill, it is not a law of probability, it's a fact for games with negative expectations: Risk of ruin is 100%. A Joe plays when he "feels" like it, a Pro, all the time! Call them perpetual shortcuts JOES make when losing poker ASAP; and as any of the PROS will tell you, they don't need cards to win--that's for amateurs. Pro Players specialize in other people's biases! especially that malignant optimistic one that beats its chest and says, "I'm the best player at the table". Poker is a game of partial information, and when you have a competitive advantage you have to take into account this and, more important, behavioral factors. There is wise.... and there is otherwise: Behavior Has ConsequencesIrrational default modes of playing tend to show up in our game both when we win---the House Money Effect chip overload of playing loose with their money, and when we are getting on tilt with bad beats: That's when emotion and even confidence cloud our judgment and misguide our actions. The Volatility and Variance of NLH rewards patience, a clear mind, and, selective aggression. American Airlines AA and the Concorde Effect—A True Story at the $100 Buy-In Bicycle Casino- Eating Dessert First.I’m UTG, deep stacked with four limpers. I raise and get called by all four. I should muck right there but I don't. I’ve got pocket aces. The flop is low ball 3 4 7 rainbow. I bet big-a Dan Harrington "information" bet to see where I am at... and lose three players. The turn is a 5, a possible straight. I bet big again and get re-raised all in. I insta-call. The river is a blank. I flip over AA and Lift Ticket has Pocket 66. for the nuts. The very next hand I get pocket kings--it was Dijon Vu, the same old mustard--My emotional return on investment however, my EROI, was saying "SEAT OPEN!" and the table could smell it and I got everyone calling, a family pot. I actually wanted to go home broke..and even though I tripped up, I lost to runner, runner, heart flush. I did. That's right,wanting to lose money. And that emotional return was more of a payoff than the financial one--when my black Kings got cracked by suited connectors (hearts, a baby flush!). Granted, too much respect for money makes you a bad NLH player but I walked away from that session with knowledge: First, that my brain is the "most powerful computer." Second, when on tilt, my brain is the most powerful "broken computer ."Tilt makes us sub-optimal for evaluating rewards, sizing up risks and calculating probabilities. It's like selling the car for gas money.I walked away with a less broken computer, less sabotaging behavior, and more insight into the fact that self-delusion is more than possible in poker - it's highly likely!Behavioral Finance --- The Black Box Flight Recorder has a name for my crash landing -- The Sunk Cost Fallacy --the refusal to get out of a losing position, because you've already written the money off -- resulting in losing even more money. The British and French governments continued to fund the Concorde project long after it was determined that it was a loser---merely to justify past investment in it, rather than assessing the current rationality of investing. You have an over pair on the flop and bet big. You get called. On the turn the texture of the board is dangerous. You bet out in the dark---suddenly you are stuck as your opponent straightens out.We are in fact more sensitive to decreases in our chip count than we are to increases in them. Doyle Brunson, a member of the MENSA Poker Club says: Great players lay down great hands. In fact, the ability to accept a loss and get away from a great hand is probably the most important (and difficult) skill to learn in poker. It's the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.The ability to take a small loss to avoid a big one is the hallmark of this poker genius.We all start out as geniuses, and then allow our emotions to de-genius us. If you put good players into bad situations they usually turn bad. Poker is not a form of gambling---but gambling is a form of ---loose-aggressive--- poker.All gambling involves betting, but not all bets are gambling. It depends on how much control you have over the outcome and how much luck you think you have at the moment.
Betting on positive expectations and predictable outcomes.—either you hold unbeatable cards or make other players belive you do, that’s a skill set that pays out 10x over time. A bet is a declaration that says I have a better hand than you---Find out if it the truth or a lie, act accordingly to disappoint your opponent. Unless you have the stone cold nuts, when you bet you want opponents to think you do, and fold.
Either raise or fold, but rarely call.Always aspire to be a nobody in poker. A nobody bets only when the odds are favorable. Gamblers are somebody--They splash the pot, make loose calls , bluff off their stack and bet money at unfavorable odds and eventually lose it all. A nobody cannot lose; he eventually wins all the money that "somebody" players risk. Most Somebodies idea of a good lay down is to flat call. Bluff raising for him is out of the question.
NLH is a safety net for somebody gamblers. Not knowing what he is doing because he doesn’t know what he is doing—shields him from his own efforts to lose! These kind of players back into a lot of hands and split pots., and generaly confuse nobody players.
Zero Sum and Then SomeSerious poker is a POSITIVE -SUM GAME. Everybody gets what they want or need. The game itself helps the pie expand. And in (game) theory everybody simultaneously wins in a positve sum game. Yet if Poker is all about reading game theory books and learning ABC theroies and systems, then the games are really like used bookstores---dead information. The game sure doesn't look like a used bookstore, thanks to dealing with everywhere--- ubiquitious internet poker. Nobody players routinely make more cash than people who work in used bookstores!
Process For Difficult Decisions
Date: Tue, Jun 10, 2008 Professional Live Tournament
The way to get better is to think about process not results—focus on better decision making and ignoring short term results.
Paper wins against Rock, loses to scissors and stalemates against itself.
Scissors wins against paper, loses to rock and stalemates against itself.
Think about good decisions, not results. It's about the process not pots won---the chips will come. Do what you love and the money will follow--have a love affair with making sound decisions based on partial information. It is, after all, about excelling, not winning or losing a particular hand.
You aren't a bad poker player if you get caught bluffing sometimes or most of the time. You only have to win a fraction of the time to net a profit. Sklansky's (game)Theory of poker points out that you cannot play optimally unless you include bluffing into your game.
Every bet or raise can be a bluff, and you can beat a bluff with a mediocre hand. The only way to compensate for the bluffs of your opponents is to bluff them back!
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