This thread is the best I’ve read in the live strat forum in a long time. Everyone is saying, instead of changing seats to find a good table and finding none, it’s usually better to make your own lively game.

But I never talk during the hand. I put on my poker face. Then I always congratulate my opponent if he wins the hand. I’m talking and joking when not in the hand.

If it adds context - I have what some call "the gift of gab", meaning I'm a good talker. I work in sales, I'm good at breaking the ice with strangers, I make friends in elevators or in line at airport security, etc.

I also grew up in a really dysfunctional environment, where learning to read people and situations quickly and accurately aided in survival. I got interested in the practical applications of psychology (things like determining people's deep-seated motivations) at an early age, and have made an informal study of it. It's not uncommon for me to meet someone, and in a very short time, tell them a lot about themselves.

For example, I had an "internet friend" I met on a forum. We never met face-to-face, and only spoke once on the phone. After only knowing him a few months, and only having his online and private statements to me as background, I told him I bet his parents were divorced, his dad moved away when he was young and he didn't get along with his mom, he was cheating on his girlfriend, how a tricky situation with a superior at work was going to play out, and how he could get away before it blew up in his face. He was stunned - I was right about all of it.

I wouldn't recommend anyone who isn't a real "student of people" start trying to do cold-readings on opponents at the table, and using table-talk in an attempt to manipulate someone or get them talking before developing an accurate BS detector.

But, if you're good at sizing people up quickly, or you want to get better at it, start practicing the skill. When you're at the table, watch and listen. Try to answer basic questions about people at the table, like:

- Are they brave, or cowardly?

- Are they friendly, shy, or confrontational?

- Are they flashy, or reserved?

- Are they trying to portray themselves to the world in a way that may in fact be the opposite of how they feel inside, making them conflicted?

- How committed are they to the image they're trying to convey?

- When under pressure, are they more likely to act in a way that aligns with how they portray themselves outwardly, or in a way that aligns with how they see themselves inwardly?

- Do they get their feathers ruffled easily, or are they more even-keel?

- Are they happy in general, or angry at the world, or are they trying to look happy while actually angry?

- How are they likely to react when challenged? What's their flight or fight response going to be when the risks are low, versus when they're high?

Don't get me wrong. It's not like I have a memorized list of these questions, and am running through them at the table. But I am always watching my opponents and listening to them closely, forming profiles of their personality types, so that I have some idea of how their personality informs how they play.

The cowards don't bluff or go for max value. The flashy types are usually pretty nitty and face-up. The friendly ones tend to be loose. The shy ones tend to be more tight. The confrontational ones will be more patient and look for advantageous spots to cause max pain. People who portray themselves in an exaggerated way will generally try to keep up that appearance, but under pressure they'll buckle and revert to their true selves. Happy people play loose. Angry people play very loose and aggressive. People who are angry but try to look happy tend to be maniacal. People with big egos will go down in flames rather than shrink from a challenge.

If you can confidently assess someone's basic nature, you can start to predict how they'll act or respond to various inputs.

In exchange for the entertainment, you’re always invited to take my money in my home game.

I never would have guessed based on the length of your posts

Fair.

I somewhat disagree with these categorization of macho guys tending to fold to speeches and passive guys tending to hero call to speeches.

On a sidenote, I have seen a few Villains do really well at the poker tables with their speech plays in terms of manipulating their opponents to make the decisions that they want them to make. One of them is a whale actually.

With that said, I think that you have to be very comfortable with your poker game to use speech play effectively. And if you are against tough experienced opponents, I think that opening your mouth to try some kind of speech play during the hand might cost you EV because they will often see through your verbal trickery.

I said the macho guys call with their best hands and fold the rest, and the passive guys tend to call too wide.

It's not absolute. I'm not saying one group folds 100% and the other calls 100%. I'm saying the one group will tighten up and the other will loosen up.

It's about understanding what motivates them. Neither group wants to appear weak, but whereas the macho guys have already and will continue to act like a table bully, and therefore don't worry about what folding here and there does to their image, the passive types feel bullied, and will look for spots to take a stand, so that they don't look like a willing victim.

This is right up my alley - great stuff
I simply started paying attention to every player as they act & was amazed because I started correctly interpreting their actions without really knowing how or why.

But you have given me some good questions to think about, so I expect my instincts to improve even more. I honestly think that theory and strategy take a back seat to being mentally prepared to win.

No mental coaches really clicked for me until Jason Su. My emotional nature stood in the way, I experienced self-sabotage, but most of all I had unhelpful thoughts during the play of the game. Now, my mind is right.

As a retired career football coach, I’ve always been able to size people up well. But I couldn’t really put this skill to work playing poker, because I was cluttered with lots of unhelpful thinking. Since I began to play with presence, I’ve become very hard to beat. I’ve eliminated tilt and reduced variance completely. A bad event (cooler) is now something I laugh about when it happens & I nearly always recover and go on to win.

I might screw up the play of an individual hand like AK, I might bluff into 3 kings, but I’m not even affected. The whole world may say I made the dumbest play in history, but my confidence is unshaken, because I win nearly every time I play.

I had one losing season as a football coach. Nobody works harder than I do & now it’s poker. There’s no telling how good I will get at this game. I have no baggage - married to my dream come true, lots of people love me, martial arts has kept me healthy and poker is good for my mind.

I’m a really nice person and I think my love and empathy for people has always allowed me to see emotions and know what people are feeling and thinking. Now, I’m learning to channel that ability to the poker table. All those years of busting my butt to help young boys become men is past. But I can’t lay around and watch tv - I must compete.

I don't know what you mean, you win nearly every time you play, but let's say it might be 90%. This is probably not good for two reasons:

i) Not sustainable in the long term and/or
ii) You may be being way over cautious and trading low EV for low variance.

GG - what's your % sessions are you up? I'd suggest that that GGs win rate is probably the high watermark of what you would want as a win percentage.

Yeah, I mean obviously I don't trust anyone who says they've won almost all the sessions they've played (unless they've played, like, nine).

In 929 sessions of 1/3 NL, I've shipped 606 winning sessions (and had 3 exactly breakevens) for 65% session winrate. Used to be over 70% for quite a while but no longer. But... not a crusher either.

Although to be honest, I doubt session winning percentage is a useful metric at all with regards to winrate.

GbutapparentlyI'mmakingthisallupanyways,sowhatever G

Thanks GG.

Agree it's not a perfect Metric, but that was roughly what I was expecting - 70% feels like a long term upper bound for a long term win rate / session, especially given you play a lower variance style.

Going along with this thought.

If you wanted to maximize session wins, you could immediately leave as soon as you're up.

You could model this fairly easily using some form of sophisticated random walk and monte carlo it.

I don't know if it helps me win, but it sure does beat boredom. It probably does have a psychological effect when people build rapport with you. You might get soft-played or get to see hands you otherwise wouldn't.

I still somewhat disagree with this take on poker players.

There is a lot of other psychology going on with poker players that make them biased towards hero folding rivers versus hero calling rivers. I think that you are missing the forest by zooming in on particular tree here.

It's not that your tree is an illusion. You have a little something going on there. But it's probably a minor factor compared to all the other psychological stuff that is also going on.

I would also guess that the shorter your planned sessions (i.e. not hit and runs) then the more likely your session winning percentage would decrease, while the longer your sessions (so long as you don't completely suck as stacks get deep / get super tired as the hours drag on) the more your session winning percentage would increase.

To take a look at opposite ends of this:

I would guess that if I limited my sessions to just half an hour that I would have a horrendous session winning percentage (as I'm mostly stuck small until getting that big pay off every couple of hours).

And meanwhile if I played my 930 sessions (adding to my total last night) as a single session I'd obviously have a 100% session winrate (I mean, ignoring the fact that I might be a little tired to play that well).

But in the end, my guess is session winning percentage has little bearing on winrate.

GcluelessuselessmetricsnoobG

If you are a winning player and you either:
-Play 2 hour session and quit no matter what
-Play an 8 hour session and quit no matter what

Then yes, always playing 8 hours will allow you to maximize your winning sessions.

BUT

If your only goal was to win as many sessions as possible, you would instantly give up the second you are up $1 or more. So that could simply be stealing the blinds and then leaving.

I am guessing you could achieve 90%+ session win percentage, but the few times you didn't win would more than offset all your small single digit winning sessions.

Of course there's other psychology going on. My profiling of opponents isn't something I started doing when I started playing. It's a skill developed over decades of actively studying people and what motivates them.

I definitely agree it's a minor factor, and think I at least implied as much in my earlier posts. I wouldn't suggest anyone abandon fundamentally sound play in favor of trying to win on speech play alone, and more often than not the best approach is to just clam up and let an opponent tank, regardless of what result we want.

My take is speech play can be useful in edge-case scenarios such as I described, where we want to induce a loose call or tight fold from an opponent we believe fits into a certain personality profile, and we're confident about how they'll react.

As for that reaction - perhaps we can agree to disagree about what macho or wimpy types will do as a reaction to the speech play example I gave. The only guide I have is my own experience, which says macho guys care more about not looking dumb and wimpy guys care more about not looking weak.

I play once a week for 5-7 hours, then I might slip in there once or twice a week for a hour or hour and a half. I guess I don’t have to believe that it’s not sustainable or whatever else you come up with. Always set hours, never just play until I don’t feel like it anymore. This is because the wife wants to make sure it’s just a hobby.

I’m way past the only here for awhile, so I gamble with poor hand selection. I play hard!
Maybe you are projecting what you cannot do, and don’t understand the possibilities of others. Might add, no day goes by that I am not studying NL Hold’em.

Now, I will say that I have not done as well as I have hoped in MTTS. I actually love tournaments more, but I’m better at cash. The only tournaments I have played are WSOP and I want a ring in the seniors on the Aug 10th. I have multiple Hendon cashes each year since I started this, but nothing significant.

So, I’m trying to stay positive on here, but I’m not making stuff up. I hope to add to the conversations here, as well as, learn more about poker. It’s not about criticizing other people, it’s about finding ways to improve your game.

Study how? It's not just quantity but quality.


There are worse ways to study than thinking about and discussing hands here, but there are better ways too.

I've listened/spoken to a few people who seriously study the game a lot, and they all communicate/think about the game in a certain way ... and for the people who post here a bunch I'd say that submersible or RaiseAnnounced would be two obvious starting points for posters who I'd bet are studying more than most and communicate in a similar way to people I'm very sure are studying a lot.

While you often come off as offensive as submersible can be, you don't communicate in the same way about hands/strategy.


I also have a lot more respect for gobbledygeek than most people show here and he obviously doesn't communicate (or, I assume, think about) the game in the same way. In many ways he reminds me of Buzz (very old school player who posted on 2+2, mostly played Big O) where he'd done a lot of work by himself, came to his own conclusions and often annoyed the much younger people studying in "conventional" lines/ways.

You also don't communicate like them.

I’m not trying to be anyone but me. I use a couple of trainers every day, have read the books, now I cliff note them, audible collection of poker books listening in the car. Why do I have to constantly defend myself. If you don’t like what I say, it’s ok with me. In fact, I don’t give a ****. There are some that will find I give them something to think about and I’m certainly learning from others.

I won’t defend a play when something better is presented to me. But I shouldn’t have to defend my competence. If you think I’m stupid, please just ignore me & let’s not waste our time. But if I think you’re stupid, I’m just not taking your advice, not confronting you. I actually think that would be a better option for some of you as well.

.

Plus One. He is our resident nit, and having played a fair bit of low stakes, I have no doubt that a well thought through nittish strategy can be a winning one.

Does he give up some EV for lower variance? Probably, but that doesn't negate his approach as a winning strategy.

You said you win nearly every session. What percentage are we talking?

My hypothesis is that unless you're employing a hit/run strategy (which you clearly said you're not), that GGs session win percentage of 65-70% feels like close to a long run upper bound.

If you're at 90% for like a 1000 sessions, count me as stunned.

+1

Gnothatin',justsayin',butgogogo,imoG