Time for a milestone post. I couldn't decide what I wanted to do; theory, story, or well. So I decided to do all three. Here is part one, with the other two to follow.

Part one: Psychology of the Competitive Rec Player

I'm not a grinder. Never have been. I make money at poker, but it's not my main goal. The money I make at poker doesn't mean much to me. As so many have said “money is just how we keep score.” I am super-competitive, and always have been. To me, it's all about beating the other players, and the money just comes in as a side-effect.

I know for most of you, that sounds ridiculous. Most 2+2ers (at least in the strat fora) are generally looking to play optimally to win more money. Today, though, I'm going to talk about players who are looking to play optimally because they are competitive. What's the difference, you ask? Both are trying to play optimally, so they should end up playing the same. Yes... and no.

The competitive rec player (CRC) usually has some ego issues. They will usually play pretty tight (compared to an average LLNL villain) and will be pretty aggressive. They hate to be outplayed more than anything, and hate to make mistakes second most. These are conflicting issues, and you have to do some analysis on your target to see which predominates. The louder and more “alpha” they act, the more they can be goaded into overplaying for fear of being outplayed. These players tend more towards the LAG side, but with ego leaks. The more analytical they they are, the more they can be manipulated into folding equity against your perceived range. These players tend to be more on the TAG side, but with leaks that simulate scared money.

Alpha CRCs love to semi-bluff, and will do it after c-bets, often committing when they didn't mean to. If you put one of these guys on a range dominated by draws, you can c-bet small enough that they would actually be better off flatting for pot odds, and they will often sense weakness and overplay their hands. You can snap them off with TP pretty regularly. If you have a weaker made hand, it's better to c-bet bigger on draw-heavy board, leaving no room for semi-bluffing and no pot-odds for flatting.

Analytic CRCs are often pretty easy to spot. They make decisions based on pot odds, but they aren't practiced enough to have the math at their finger tips, so they often count the pot, pause while they do the math, and then act. They tend to under-estimate implied odds, and so you can be pretty sure they are not on a draw if you bet enough that a draw is not getting expressed odds and they flat without a pause. They are not as nitty as their methodical ways tends to make them look, though.

Both types of CRCs won't usually turn a made-hand into a bluff, as they are afraid of making a mistake and wasting their SDV. River bets tend to be somewhat polarized against players they think are good. This may be hard to spot at the table though, as they will value bet the players they perceive as fish pretty mercilessly. They love to bet/fold against fish, but beware of raising thir river bets if they have tagged you as a good player.

Where do you find CRCs?
CRCs LOVE tournaments. They love the idea that the goal is to beat everybody and come out on top. They will generally play somewhat fearlessly and better in tournaments than they will in cash games, as it is all about the competition, with no money to distract them from their main goals. If you want to get a CRC to chop in a tourney, always suggest leaving some amount (doesn't have to be much) in the pot for 1st place and play it out. They will agree to chops that way that are actually -EV for them when they'll refuse +EV chops. It's just about winning for them, and if you take away their chance to win, they really don't like it. Do NOT try to get him to chop by saying “fine, you can have X dollars and titular 1st place.” They don't want to be given the title, they want to win it.

CRCs will mostly be found at the cash table, though. They still love the tournaments, but they have studied enough to realize that the rake and the structure for most tournaments are unbeatable, so the regretfully pass them by to go to the cash tables. Here, the conflicting impulses set in. Their competitive nature makes them want to play against the best players and beat them, but their desire to “be a good poker player” makes them want to do what they know is right and just table select and value bet the fishies. If you see someone who has been stacking fish, but is looking wistfully at a tougher game, you can be pretty sure he's about the competition, not the cash. If you are part of that tougher line up, expect him to play much less ABC if he gives in to his competitive desires and joins your table. Instead, expect a weird mixture of scared money and FPS, especially as he gets used to new stakes and players he perceives as better.

That's enough on psych theory. I hope it help you understand a player type you see every once in a while. For those who just want story time, I'll post that in an little while.

Story Time! Yay!

So this might not help anyone at all, but I hope you at least find it interesting

Part two: My poker story: The making of a CRC

I grew up poor. Dirt poor. Gov't cheese poor. Now I make a lot (by my standards) of money. This has left me with some weird views of money. On the one hand, the marginal utility of money is not much to me. I have more than satisfied my basic needs, having bought nice cars for my wife and I, a house bigger than I ever imagined, etc. On the other hand, I am grew up pinching every penny, buying the sugar that is 1.2 cents less per pound, etc. Thus I am cheap on little things by habit, and not very worried about bigger things because I'm doing fine. This has a lot to do with how I view poker. I never, ever, do any -EV gambling, and do flips only for social reasons, not because of any gambler's rush. OTOH, I consider myself the “winner” of a tournament in which I outplayed my opponent heads-up and got the money in with a set, even though he hit the 3% runner-runner inside straight. It didn't upset me at all because 1) I made a great play, and 2) He needed the money more than I did. The 3K swing just made for a great story, imo.

I started playing “poker” (penny-ante 5-card draw) as a kid with my grandmother, who loved the gambool. It didn't do much for me, but she supplied all the pennies and any I had left over at the end of the game, I got to keep. Fast forward to the early 1990s and I'm an Arabic linguist in the US Air Force. We deployed to Saudi Arabia a lot, and there was F-all to do there. We started playing poker to pass the time. Dealer's choice, 25 cent max bet, max of three raises (so $1 max per street). That was enough money to matter to me as an E-3 and E-4, so I played kinda weak-tight. That was my first poker break through. I learned how to fold. This was the only skill I needed for many years.

Eventually, the mix started including pot matching games, (with a $5 cap), and the 25 cent max started seeming small, so we raised it to $1. This made my winnings increase enough to be worth noticing. Sometimes I made as much as $50 in a night. Hold-em wasn't really part of the mix. It was mostly redic games like Rain Baseball, Follow the Queen, etc.

I organized a couple of games as a social thing after I started teaching at the language school in Monterey CA as an NCO, but didn't play much poker in the late 90s. I did learn the basics of (limit) Hold-Em at this point, but the limits in the card rooms in CA were too big ($3/6 or even higher <shock>) for my risk-averse self, so I never tried to play there.

The turn of the century changed everything. I got a divorce, took a commision, and started seeing poker on TV. I had more free time, but not much money (divorces are expensive, and a Second LT actually gets paid less than a TSgt, though the situation flips pretty quickly). I was playing IRC poker for fun when someone mentioned that you could actually play for real money on some sites. I checked it out and found Paradise Poker, where they had poker at stakes I could afford. I started with MTTs, but these took forever and I didn't have that kind of time, so I switched to SnGs (or “min-tourneys” as they were called back then). I was pretty bad, but the state-of-the-game was even worse, so after busting a couple of $100 deposits playing $10 SnGs (BRM FTW!) I started making about a 10% roi and never looked back. Still no HUD, no records, no nothing, but I was a winning player. This just got better when Moneymaker won and suddenly poker was everywhere and even worse players were signing up to play.

In 2005 I went to grad school back in Cali, along with new wife. I now had a BR of sorts and was making enough money to take some risks, so I started playing limit at the card-room as well as online SnGs. My first time in, I didn't even sit. Just went and watched and asked questions about how it worked. Second time I bought in to $3/6 with kill and made $72. I thought I was the all-time baller, and took my wife out to dinner to celebrate. Eventually I got my live BR up to $1k and took a shot at NL, losing $300 in my first orbit when my AA ran into AQ on a QQX board.

UIGEA hit during this era, and Paradise pulled out of the US market. I moved to Poker Stars mostly because I liked the graphics better than Full Tilt. I'm such a luckbox...

I was then transferred to Germany in 2007. My “BR” was about $700 online and about $700 for live that was separated from my regular money only by a mental note. I heard that there was a casino in Bad Durkheim that had poker, and decide to go check it out. I brought 200 Euro (about $300) with me and drove off to James Bond land. Seriously, the dealers were all wearing tuxedos, and I'm glad I happened to be in slacks and a button-up shirt, as that was the low-end of the dress code. The game was 5/10NL, with a 100 minimum BI. I knew it was too big for me, but I only had 200 with me, and figured it was worth it for the experience. I went home with 600 Euros and thought I was God's gift to poker. These guys were horrible. (they actually were, but still...)

The next night, I took my 600 Euros back to the casino and ran it up to 3,500+. Most of that was on a redic cooler hand where I hit boat-over-boat while holding AQ. That hand was sobering. If I hadn't filled up on the turn, I would have busted almost my entire BR on one hand. I thought I'd better start learning some more, as the amount I was playing was actually meaningful.

The next night I didn't want to drive to the casino, so I decided to break out of my STT niche and play online cash for my first time ever. After playing 5/10, the idea of going the the micros seemed ludicrous, so I fired up .5/1 NL, and proceeded to bust most of my $600 in my account, most of it in one hand when I got AI OTF with AA against AQ on a Q-high board and he binked another Q. This taught me two things. 1) AQ is definitely the stone cold nuts, and 2) I needed to figure out WTF I was doing!

I googled “poker strategy” and found 2+2. It was kinda soul-crushing, as I realized I def couldn't play the soft 5/10 game anymore. My Stars account was down to less than $1 at one point, as I hit a horrible run of variance and had no cushion due to my redic 100NL shot. I was determined not to re-deposit though, and eventually ground it back up into 4 figures. On 2+2, my home was the Beginners' Questions forum, and I am very lucky that there has been a server change since then and all of my early posts are gone into archive land. The anthology thread (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...thread-340027/) basically taught me how to play poker. I huge shout out to CryMeARiver, *Split*, Pokey, and the uNL COTW crew for getting me to think in terms of EV and strat beyond “folding is power.”

Where am I now? Poker is still just a hobby for me. I'm rolled for $2/5, built up from a $200 initial stake I gave myself, but rarely play it because I live in Colorado, where it doesn't run. My “BR” exists on a spreadsheet, but I don't actually keep it separate from my life-roll. Online I play little STTs on Merge to pass the time. I was starting to learn uNL when Black Friday hit, but it totally sucks on Merge, so it's not worth my time. Maybe when Stars comes back. I spend a ton of time in the LLNL forum to keep myself sharp, but not that much time on the tables. 1/2-100 SL is not that much fun, and it's a long drive to the casino. I play more home-games these days, usually smaller than I'd prefer, but better than nothing.

Awesome story...one of the few I had actually looked forward to reading..Thank you for the share

OK, your turn...

Part three: the well

If that wasn't enough for you, let me know. Feel free to ask anything about the above psych, story, or ask me about:
- Being a career Air Force member (9 years enlisted, 12 so far as an officer)
- Being a language teacher
- Going from College Drop-out to College Professor
- Poker conditions in Cali, Europe, Colorado, and Vegas (limited experience)
- Whatever

How was/is your career in the AF? did you fly any jets? do you have a favorite? What did you think about the movie Iron Eagle?

Yawn, where is the hooker and blow part of story?

What made you drop out of college? Why went back?

College good or college bad?

a) I take offense to this and b) you never asked for the bigger ones...

The 50NL mixed game plays pretty big, the 100NL game is a reloading dream (and the softest), and the warehouse game 200NL... yeah that one is short and kind of sucks. I know of others though.

Why is APD such a better player than you? Is it the hoodie and glasses that he wears? Prolly.

Why is APD the man when it comes to finding home games? Hoodie and glasses?

What size hoodie and glasses do you wear?

Dude Ace, you have enough alone time with Garick to ask those "personal" questions.

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Tragically, yup.

You know me better than I know myself. Great post.

I've enjoyed it so far. I joined thinking I was just going to do 4 years and punch. I'd been delivering pizza for four years and told myself "there's no f-ing way" I'm spending four more years at Domino's." So I joined the Air Force to learn a language, and then they offered me a job teaching, so I re-enlisted to take it, and I just never stopped having fun, so I still do it.

I flew as a crew-member on the RC-135 for several years, but am not a pilot. I was a mission specialist. I loved flying, but hated deploying all the time. I also have a few missions on AWACs (comfy) and EC-130 (ghetto). I do technically have combat experience, but the SA fire never came close enough for me to feel it, or even for us to take evasive action.

Iron Eagle was serious cheez! I did find the lightly veiled parallels to the Gulf of Sidra incident interesting, but...

Yeah, can't help you there.

I dropped out because I couldn't drag my ass out of bed, so I was missing all my early classes. I kept thinking I'd turn it around, so I avoided dropping those classes until I realized I was about to fail, and then dropped all my classes. Then I got offered what sounded like an awesome job (but wasn't), so I left town to take it, and by the time I realized it was crap, I was stuck trying to make ends meet (see pizza delivery above.)

I finished my undergrad while on active duty as an enlisted guy. Military education benefits are the nuts! I always knew I didn't want to be stuck in a dead-end job/life, so when I decided saving tips to become an entrepreneur wasn't going to work, I made finishing my degree before I left the AF a top priority. Then once I finished, I applied for Officer Training School and got accepted.

As far as I'm concerned, college is awesome, but you don't have to do it right out of HS. I wasn't ready the first time through. Plenty smart enough, but not as smart as I thought I was, and no-where near disciplined enough. When I went back with more life experience and discipline, it was great. Would have been even better if I'd been single at the time...

Let's talk... I actually love the 50NL mixed game, because it appeals to the competitor in me. There are some really good players in that game, plus the odd games take a lot of thought. The warehouse game is on my martial arts night (or do you mean the monthly?), and the Mon night game... is better than nothing.

What made you want to get a second wife?

It's all the Blue Shark Optics <product placement payment, please>. The hoodie actually take the edge down a notch. When you were also wearing the Beats by Dre, I had the edge, but now that you've ditched those EV killers, I have my work cut out for me.

Serious answer: This is why sociability is so +EV. And why hoodies and headphones aren't.

bout tree fiddy.

Yes the monthly (warehouse)... I am surprised you don't like the Mon game... I enjoy being able to play 100bb stacks and when one of the donks get a big stack they like to give it back...

How did you learn Arabic? Interesting second language choice.

Yeah, I almost put "getting married at 19" into the possible "ask me about" subjects. But the answer is just one word. "Don't."

Second marriage has been awesome. My wife is fun, pretty, and super-smart. I'm a lucky man. Plus she has a Master's in Computer Science, so when I retire from the AF I can live off my retirement pay and her paycheck and play as much poker as I want.

This sounds a lot like me, except I think I am pretty good at estimating implied odds. I've also learned to avoid that timing tell and even throw out a false tell.

Your Monday night football story, is still the best story Ive ever heard, I'm definitely jealous.

But..... If you can be pleasant enough and crack a few jokes they never even notice...

I like the beats when I play tournaments... sometimes.

Like when I was razzing whoever about their shopping habit. LOL... gullible.

Tree Fiddy is a good size

Masters in computer science, that's incredible, how did you find her and where can I find smart successful women without going back to school?

It's very profitable, but as a CRP, it doesn't excite me much. Kinda like Cripple Creek poker without the drive but smaller stakes.

I joined the AF in 1992. At that time, Russia had just abandoned communism and opened itself to the West. I figured that I could join the AF as a linguist, learn Russian, and when I got out in four years all the big companies would be clamoring to hire me to help them with their profitable new ventures in Russia.

So I told the MEPS folks and they said "you'll have to score pretty high on the language aptitude test to qualify for Russian." I took the test and was told "you scored too high, you have to take something harder than Russian." Whey I asked what languages were hard than Russian, they gave me my choice of Korean, Chinese, or Arabic. I said "I can guess where Korean linguists get stationed, and I don't want to go there," (Korea was much more ghetto back then) "where do Chinese linguists get stationed. They told me it was a crap shoot between Korea or Hawaii. Then I asked about Arabic, and they said "England or Greece," so I said "teach me Arabic!"

Turned out to be a much better decision, as Russia's economy never really opened much, and Arabic has been huge job security.

Good post, thank you. I am a CRC and although a few of the things don't all,y to me (like tournaments), I definitely saw a bunch of things that do that I will mull over .

I first met her when I was bar-tending at a party (volunteer, not as job). Then I met her a gain a few months later, and there was just enough connection from that first time to use as a hook for flirting with her. As I said, I am a luckbox.