Cliffs:

In late May got some very bad family news, dumped about a couple K over three sessions when I played despite my better judgement. Then went to WSOP, and won a little in cash games but didn't cash in any tourneys and cut teh trip short because of said family stuff and my head wasn't in it. Have been busy and just started playing again in the past week to so and feeling steady in my game.

Averaging about $35 p/h for the year, which is fine, but way low on volume with less than 400 hours, so no way I'm meeting the goal at this pace. Which is fine, have just had lots of non poker work and life stuff to deal with, and the advantage of having poker as a form of income is the ability to put it aside when there are more important things to focus on.

I expect I'll get back in some sort of regular routine in late august.

From a Slumber

Here we stand, at the end of one of the strangest summer's of my life. In early May, I found out my father was suffering from serious and likely end-term heart failure, and had probably a year to live. Last week, he had a successful heart transplant, and is recovering and doing pretty well. He got pretty lucky - his time on the waiting list was on the lower end of the curve, and although there are still a lot of hurdles to overcome, particularly in the next 3 - 6 months, its now not entirely inconceivable he could live another 10 or 20 years. It's like swimming in an ocean of cliches "New Lease on Life", "Rollercoaster Ride" "Feeling So Grateful", but feeling the truth of all of them.

But back to the matter at hand, all of which has meant that I spent most of my summer in and around hospitals and played almost no poker. In June, July, and August I played a total of 20 hours and won about $1800, but there's no way I'm going to hit my 40k goal, but I'm not really too concerned about it.

I've got close to 400 hours in at the 15/30 this year at the Oaks, and am averaging $34 an hour (and this includes the dark period just after I got the news about my dad and dumped six racks in three days). I feel a pretty good measure of confidence that I can beat that game for between $30 - $40 an hour, particularly if I'm willing to leave on the rare occasions the game is bad. More often then not, I find myself looking out at the table and not seeings a single good player (for our purposes here, good is not "expert", good is just someone who knows enough not to regularly open-limp UTG, or power-limp an unopened pot in the LJ).

But of course this makes sense. Anyone who's good and has the BR to play 15/30, is only going to playing it for a brief window until the move on to the 30/60. Which I see for myself coming around the corner. If all continues apace, by the end of the year my BR should be somewhere between 12k and 16K, a fine position to begin taking shots at the 30 game, while still protecting my 15 bankroll.

It's a busy month ahead for me - lots of writing deadlines and a bunch of work running my company, but I hope to still get in something like 15 hours a week of playing, if I can.

Here's a situation from that came up for me three times yesterday, and I've been thinking about.

I raise from late-middle position with a marginal holding - Q10, A9 etc, maybe the pot is unopened, maybe there's a limper. We go four or five ways.

I flop top pair, and get donked into by a limper or a blind. The board has some wetish texture - a flush draw or obvious straight draw -Though the donk is always alarm-belling here, if there's no one inbetween me and the donk-er, I'm still going to raise close 100% of the time to shut out the rest of the field, and take control of the hand. But then donker 3-bets me out of position.

Against the usual mouth-breather at the 15 this screams monster strength, and I should probably just give up, but now we've got a pot with like 16 or 17 sb in there, and I just can't imagine giving up with top pair is ever the right thing to do against any but the rock-iest player. The question is - do we always give up unimproved on the turn? Now we're getting 9:1, and there's some world where we have six clean outs (that world being the one where villain flopped bottom two), or some even more remote world where villian is playing a flush draw in a super-weird way. But lets' say we call the turn. now we're getting 11:1 and don't we generally have to call getting 11:1 when we have top pair and there's some draw out there that didn't come in?

Great news. Glad to hear that your dad is doing so much better.

You're crushing the game over a decent sample. At ~30 hands/hour, you're getting to the 12K-15K hand range. Congrats.

My no-cost advice would be to start straddling the games, using your new ability to game select both as a big edge when your BR is right It sounds like you're already thinking that way, so that's good. Bankroll disaster awaits by playing a 30 game where you have a 0.25BB/HR edge, when you pass on a 1.25BB/HR edge in a 15 game due to now being a 30 player.

You make an iso-raise or an open raise with a hand that wants a small field, and you get a big field in a pot you bloated. If this happens a lot, are you making incorrect reads on table conditions or just getting unlucky?

If you find yourself in this spot again and again due to villains cold-calling too much (they have wide ranges), you need to adjust your ranges to account for that. A9o isn't a raising hand in a pot that is 5 ways much of the time. T9s or 98s might be and JTs is. Your ranges need to change to play against your villains tendencies.

If it is bad luck, just realize that the later tough spots are a reflection of the initial bad luck of running into stronger than normal hands. If you keep running into the top of their ranges, expect to have tough spots.

Let's say you iso raise and get 5 way action from the CO with A8. You flop A97 and get donked into by the MP limper. You need to consider his range before you blindly "take control of the hand". Start with his preflop range. Is he limping AKo, 99, or 77? How often does he lolslowplay monsters on the flop (removing them from his donking range)?

What we're trying to understand is how this can come up often. Is it really just bad luck? A guy donks middle pairs and junky draws, while slow playing his monsters 80% of the time. This gives you huge equity. He fast plays two sets and you just get coolered. However, if his donk range has too many hands that beat TPMK, you're making a bad play to isolate yourself vs. a better hand. The more often that happens, the more you have to question your reads.

To my mind, taking control of the hand when you're a dog is bad. It shows potential issues where you're uncomfortable playing without the betting lead. How can the villain 3 bet us 80% of the time and always show up with a better hand than ours? He does it by mostly donking strong hands.

If the villain never donks draws, maybe not. Time to drag out equilab and sim it -- we need to force ourselves to put the villain on ranges both pre and post flop.

As always, enjoy your posts. Best of luck.

Sunday (not so) Bloody Sunday

Played a 4 hr session yesterday, ended up +200. Although the game was playing pretty wild and loose, my own cards made it pretty uneventful. The most I was up was $400 and the most I was stuck was -$200, so there you are.

The game tends to be much wilder on Sunday afternoon, as people busting out of the Sunday $200 tournament sit down to play. Some of these Sunday regs have some decent card sense and do all right in the tourneys, but they just play too many hands in too fancy ways to beat the game. It's Tournament Derangement Syndrome. In the long run, I would even guess that these Sunday players lose more than the slow and steady drip from the loose passive men who make up the weekday afternoon edition. But they also make the game much swingier, and (because there are so many of them) much more difficult to play.

Someone on the web (probably Tommy Angelo) has written about this more eloquently than me, but on the weekday afternoons, I have a massive Homefield Advantage. The pool is pretty small, and I know them well, so if there's one or two new faces I can concentrate my attention on just the unknowns. Whereas if I go to Vegas I have to try to take in the patterns of 9 unknowns, while the regs can have the pleasure of just focusing on me. Sundays at the Oaks are a bit of a mix. As many as half the table can be people I've play with less than two or three times. Which means more work for me. Why put up with that?

Perhaps not coincidentally, when I have Poker Journal divide up my play by day of the week (going back about 2 years) Sundays are my only losing day. I'm stuck about $3,000 on Sundays. I think there's other personal reasons for this - on Sundays I'm more likely to be thinking that there's some better way I could be spending my time and that probably doesn't help the focus or causes me to get up earlier in a session than I may otherwise want to. All of which is good to note the next time I consider heading out the door on a Sunday to go to the Oaks.

Here's a hand I maybe misplayed?

I'm in the BB wearing my double-engine Rocket Pack.

Old passive man limps, aggro bad tourney play raises, another aggro tourn player calls, somebody else calls. SB calls. I 3-barrel. Everyone calls.

KJ4ss. My Aces are red.

I bet Old man calls. Raiser calls, 2nd aggro player raises, I rinse and repeat the 3-barrel. Old man calls, Original raiser drops out. 2nd aggro calls. We go 3 to the turn.

7s. Ok, I should probably bet out here, but a flush draw has to make up a decent part of the bad passive old man's range (what is he just calling 3-bets with?), as well as the aggro player's range, who may have been raising for a free card.

And the pot's too big for me to lay down if I get popped, since someone could easily be doing that with the Ace of spades + a pair. There's some chance they both just have a King, and also some chance one of them has me crushed (two pair, set) and was going to pop me on any turn card. BUT I hate giving on of them a 25% free roll for this huge pot, and losing $60 worth of value out of say, one guy with AK and one guy with Q10. I should probably stove it, but as I don't know either well, its hard for me to give them ranges. Preflop, ranges are not to far from ATC. Postflop, I give the raise credit for more than total air, since I'm implying massive heat, but beyond that, who knows? Could old man be holding on with just bottom pair? Sure, maybe.

All that said, I?

Ouch (I exclaim as the deck hits me in the face)

For some reason there was no 30 game going, so almost the whole 15 table was full of the 30 guys. Which was fine, as none of the toughest players in that game were amongst the crowd. But I admit to being marginally intimidated by the slightly more aggressive game, and made a few small mistakes. When most the table exited to start the other game, I was about even, having never been up or down more than $200. We get refreshed with familiar faces, and I proceed to run over the game, winning 40 Big Bets in 90 minutes. I flop trips, I chop pots I should be losing, I play A9 four times in a row and win three of them (we're shorthanded by this point).

By the end, we're six handed with three props, and one very stuck short stacked old man. The game's on life-support, so I call it.

It's good to be back.

I wish your father a speedy recovery. Good to see you are back to punishing the Oaks regs!

Step Right Up

Interesting day at the office. There was no 15 game when I got there, and although they got close to starting to five or six handed, some of the Maybes lost their enthusiasm, and the list dwindled to three. I wondered whether I should just call it day and head home since I didn't really want to wait around for 2 or 3 hours for it to fill in.

But then a seat opened in the 200 max, and I took it. I had to wipe some of the cobwebs off of my spread-limit game, and the hollywood-ing and pace is enough to drive a man mad, but the game was as good as I remembered.

An hour or so in, I get into this hand: I have about $500 and cover everyone.
I'm on the button with 8-10 off. There's a straddle on, two people call, I call, small and big call, straddle checks.

Flop A79cc (I have the 10 of clubs)

checks around to me, I bet a friendly 20 into about 40. Shortstacked small blind calls, leaving himself about 80. BB folds, straddle folds, 1st limper makes it 65. This villain is a guy I used to play with a bunch. He probably beats the game, but has huge leaks - gets his money in bad in situations with no fold equity, misreads other players, has bet-sizing tells etc

I think if he's c/r with a flush draw, he probably makes it bigger. This looks like a value c/r. But its 45 to me with 145 in the pot, he's got about $250 behind, and I think I have 8 clean outs (short stack may call too giving me better odds, but may be calling with a flush draw and dirting them up). And if he's got a value hand, I don't think he's good enough to fold it if I hit.

I call turn the J for a straight.

Villain beys $160 or something, I put him in for the rest. He calls and has 79 for bottom two.

Of course he rivers the 7 for a boat, because that's how you play the game.

Thinking about this hand after, he really played it completely backwards. If you flop his hand in early position on such a wet board with no pf aggressor, you usually want to lead, in hopes that someone raises on a draw or and A and we can get it all in while its good.

Ho-hum. Around this time, a seat opens up in the 30/60. Although I'd wanted to wait till I was a little more deeply rolled to start playing this game, sometimes the circumstances dictate these things, so I took the seat.

It was all folks I'd played lots of hours with in the 15, but everyone seemed to play a little tighter and more aggressive here. I played for about 2hrs before the finally got the 15/30 going. Looking at the jokers who were taking seats at table 18, it was a no-brainer I should be moving over there. Not that the 30 game felt unbeatable by any stretch, but there's absolutely no question that the 15 was going to be more profitable given each table's line-up.

So I pick up with my $300 win and move over, play another hour, win anothed hundo, and call it day.

[x] new milestone
[x] book win first time moving up a stake
[x] ready for more.

I'm still going to focus primarily on the 15 for the rest of the year, as I'd really like to be very nicely rolled for it (meaning at least 300 - 400 BBs) when I'm playing the 30 more regularly, but its nice to know it's no big deal really. Same cards, same players, same game, just different colored chips and not quite as many fish (and the fish that are there play a little more aggressive, since they see others doing it).

Pardon me: I'm now going indulge in my geeky pat-myself-on-the-back moment. When I started playing 4/8 Omaha at the Oaks several years ago, I would look over longingly at the 30 game, which just seemed so unimaginably huge. What would it be like, I wondered, to have both the bankroll and skill to play and beat the biggest game in the room.

The answer it turns out, is both a) not all that different or exciting b) still pretty awesome. Slowly, inch by inch, I've dragged myself up there. There's a real satisfaction that comes from earning your way up limits.

But if there's a Serenity Prayer for moving up stakes, it should go something like this:

Poker-gods:
Grant me the serenity to not let my ego make me always play the bigger game, even if the smaller game seems more profitable.

Let me always pursue best action over best self-image.

Let me never find myself sitting in a ****ty short-handed 30 game, when there's a good 15 going, just because I think its beneath me.

Thanks - it's been an amazing and difficult couple a months. And nice to hear people are reading.

Ok - off to a birthday party.

Old Dogs, Old Tricks

Three stories from tonight on the theme of:
People Never Learn

1)There's a reg in my game, R. R's a very nice guy, even when he's losing, which is often. When I first started playing the game, he was a massive heater and I became friendly with him at first in part because I took him to be a better player than he actually was. In late spring, he was struggling to stay in the game, often dropping down to play 6/12 if he decided the line-up looked too tough.

One day the game broke early, and R and I were both dissapointed and decided to carpool over to Pachecho which had two games running. We got to chatting in the ride and I started to actually see R as a whole person, rather than just a guy feeding me money. He was on disability, and hoping to use this time off from work to make a-go of it at poker. But it had been going badly as of late, and things were getting tight for him.

So, on the ride home I offered him a tip.

"You limp too much." I told him :If you're the first person in the pot, you should be raising. And you should rarely cold call a raise."

"Why not?" he asked?

I tried to explain it in detail, and although he seemed interested, I wasn't sure that it really sunk it. But he agreed to try it.

Afterwards I wrestled with whether I had committed some cardinal sin by giving a fish some valuable information to improve their game. I finally absolved myself by deciding that this may allow R to improve his game a bit more, to stay in the game longer, which would ultimatley be good for the game and good for me.

But for a while there, he was using it, and it did make him more difficult to play against.

I hadn't seen R since my return to the Oaks last week, and then this evening he strolled in, as smiley as ever. He takes the seat to my left, and sure enough in the very first orbit he limps both UTG and UTG+2. Oh well. So it goes...

2) There's a prop that I've seen a lot but played with rarely, since he plays the night shift and I'm generally a day-time player. But I've gotten the impression that he's pretty good from my few experiences playing with him, and he props up to 30/60, which implies some level of skill, otherwise he would have been long broke. Then I play a hand with him in which he open-limped A7off suit UTG at a 10 handed game.

There's just no world in which this is not a terrible play. And I had to reformulate my thoughts about him. It's like he, and so many props are stuck in their strategy from some book they read in the 80s that said raise with xx hands in xx position, limp with xx hands etc. And they have just never adjusted to newer better strategies.

3) There's a player, an Asian restaurant who goes by a moniker of a family member. He'd been feeding the 15/30 and 30/60 pretty steady and strongly for much of the spring, playing 24 or longer sessions and creating great action. Since my return, no one had seen him in a long time, the assumption being he decided he just need to stop the bleeding and quit playing.

Then sure enough, tonight he turns up. The excitement for his return to the game is palpable. The table greets him like a conquering hero, which in a sense I suppose he is, rising phoenix-like from the poker graveyard. What's strangest about this is that he knows everyone wants him in the game for his action. The man is not an idiot and by no means the worst to ever pull up a chair in that game. By his own account, he'd do much better if he could just learn to play 4 or 6 hour sessions instead of 36. He announced as he sat down that he was going to only play 2 hours. Even money I'll see him still sitting in seat 7 when I go back tomorrow afternoon...

This brings up a universal truth and why reads can be highly specific and valuable. Every poker player believes they play well and losing is almost always attributed to bad luck. Over the years habits are reenforced and are rarely ever changed drastically. It is almost like they are playing subconsciously based on how they have played similar hands on the past.

If we want to improve we must look objectively at our play and consciously make adjustments.

Somedays They Make You Work

Whew, today felt like it was a job. I was stuck a rack in the first half hour and almost two racks 90 minutes in. Made a few minor mistakes, but mostly just standard stuff. Had a lot of draws that didn't come in. A lot I flopped twelve flush or open-ended straight draws and missed the first 11 of them, always in pots that gave me great odds to continue.

The game was good though - super loose with lots of big multi-way pots and I managed to flop good out of the blinds a couple times and get back in the black.

I'm just getting ready to call it a day, up about $400 when the phone rings. I'm talking to my wife, not paying attention, and end up posting my blind even though I had meant to rack up. By the time it gets back to me, there's been a raise in five callers. I look down to find pocket Aces "I'm gonna have to call you back", I say. I 3!, it gets capped and I think "I'm gonna lose a lot of money on this hand".

This proves true, as someone backdoors a flush to scoop a 1K pot. Which remarkably I was ahead on till the river, despite the fact that we went two bets five ways on the turn.

All things considered though, I felt like my +150 was a solid victory...

Good Times

Fun session yesterday, and not just because I won a rack and a half. The game was teetering when i showed up, populated by two bad props, the son of the owner, a passive old man reg, and a loose passive old woman reg-ish (who's the wife of the big Iranian 30-fish, for those keeping score at home).

All in all, pretty much my dream line-up which I can just sit back and print money. It starts off this way, and I'm up a rack within the first 30 minutes. Then the table dynamic changes, I start missing everything, and more importantly people start making everything against me, and two hours later I'm stuck $400. But in a good way.

By which I mean I lost hand after hand to the passive old man reg mentioned above. This guy is to my mind, one of the core elements of the day-time 15 game. He's there most days, has lots of money, is a nice guy, and just lose lose loses. He was re-buying shortly after I arrived, and I was worried that if he lost what was left, the game would break. Then he went on a rush, at my expense. Hand after hand, he limp, I'd raise, we'd be heads up to the flop - Tommy Angelo's Bread and Butter Situation. He'd call the flop, as he likes to usually do, and then proceed to hit a huge card on the turn and either raise or c/r me. This happened at least 5 times. And being friendly towards each other, he'd usually give me a courtesy show, so I lost no sleep over my insta-folds. He ended up getting even, which made me very happy to see. You need to steady losers to win sometimes. "I just can't beat you today" I said to him at one point "yeah, well that makes one of the past ten" he replied. Good to remember that just because people have bad strategy doesn't mean they don't notice when they lose or you win.

After that I screw-down, play solid and get back to eventually get back to only being stuck about $150 or so, when I have about an hour left to play. Then owner's son and another players start doing drink-pots. I haven't had more than a beer while playing in I don't know, a couple years? But I'm leaving for a night of drinking in an hour anyway, and those gin and tonics look good, so what the heck, count me in.

One drink becomes three. The three of us agree to start straddling. Which is actually not as terrible as it sounds, since the table is so passive. Literally 50% of the time, the first person in after the straddly just cold-called. Which is just mind-blowingly bad. Between the drinking and the straddling, we're doing a tremendous job of giving of the "we're playing so crazy" vibe, while actually still playing pretty well. And then I go on a heater. I've got Q4ss in the straddle. It comes back to me capped five ways. I flopped the flush draw and turn the flush. Bink. I'm in the BB with A4. UTG+2 limps. No one calls but the SB. I flop trip fours. The SB had 24. We put in a bunch of bets. Bink. I'm in the straddle with AQss. A tight player raises UTG, the loose-passive woman (who's also on a heater) caps. I know I'm in probably bad shape, but then we flop QQ10. It's capped on the flop without me doing any raising. Bink.

All in all, the most fun I've had playing poker in a while. No, I don't intend to make drinking at the table a part of my regular routine. But once in a blue moon, as it were? Sure.

Also, it's pretty clear that I'm not going to make my 40k goal by the end of the year, I just haven't been able to put in the hours, took close to three months off, and don't anticipate being able to do much more than 40 - 50 per month for the rest of the year. Given where I'm at, I think 25K is a more reasonable goal. It would mean I'd need to have three solid but not insanely good months to close out the year.

And given that I'll probably have played less than 600 hours by the end of the year, I feel like 25K is a totally reasonably number and one I can be satisfied. The open question though is, how well does that scale? Assuming I've been running average (ok - impossible to know), could I reasonably expect to make 50K if I could do 1200 in a year? Or would I burnout and reach diminishing returns? Or more accurately how many hours can I play a year without the returns diminishing?

There's also the factor that by the beginning of next year I expect to be transitioning to playing more and more of the 30 game, which at the very least, should be higher variance.

It's so easy to obsess about winrate etc. But I try to just remind myself that these things are virtually impossible to predict, since game conditions change. What I'm doing right now works. I feel very confident that given the current player pool the 15 game can be beat for between 1.25 and 1.5 BB/hr. At least the loose passive daytime game. And for the moment, that amount suits me just fine as a partial revenue stream. What comes will come. I'll deal with it when it happens.

pop goes the weasel

How did things go wrong today? Let me count the ways.

There's no 15 when I arrive and I miss getting the last seat in the 30 by literally footsteps.

I take a seat in a new 200max and on the 3rd hand get all in pf with qq against ak and 66. Down 300 there. They instantly start the 15 (where did all those people come from? There were two names on the list like 5 minutes ago). I sit down - the games ok but I lose a couple hands and am stuck 300. Then they call me for the 30.

I should probably just have stayed at the 15, but the 30 at this moment looks as good as it gets. Not a single truly tough player there. As good a time as any to take a shot.

My initial impressions were comfirmed - the game is not particularly tough, plenty of limping, not tons of aggression. I'm ready to go and proceed to get absolutely slaughtered.

Everyone makes their draws against me, whether they're gutshots, back door fd, flopping sets. And I of course miss all my draws. I go through long stretches of card-deadedness, patiently folding, only to run kings into aces, or have my aces cracked by KJ when it's button vs blind head up. I make only one serious mistake, where I fold the best instead of making an over call with middle two pair.

I end up losing 2.5 racks shucking off a not insignificant chunk of my br. The frustrating thing is, I know I can beat the game. But there's no question that after a certain point, the money began to affect decisions. I'll be licking my wounds in the 15 for a long while before sticking my head up again.

On the upside, it's only the beginning of the month. I guess we have our work cut out for us...

Also, the fact that I couldn't seem to lose last month has to be a factor. Although it's possible to justify nearly all my decisions I'm particular, in the aggregate I'm sure there were some error due to cockiness.

Sorry to hear about your tough session. We've all been there. I like lots of the things you're saying here -- it sounds like you made good quitting decisions. Keep sitting in good games that you can afford, and it will work out.

The Serenity Prayer

It's been an interesting 10 days or so since I take a shotgun to my bankroll, beginning with losing 2.5 racks in my failed 30/60 shot, plus a series of small to medium losses in the 15 which together cost about a third of the ole br.

I finally took a couple days off to get my head straight and found my way back to the light as a I have so many times before, through Tommy's essential Elements. I realized that I had fallen into this trap that is really part of a cycle for me - the trap of cockiness. I had lost my sense of humbleness before the Poker Gods. And when you refuse to bow to them, to acknowledge their unending power over you, boy do they ever make you feel their wrath.

Because it is the lack of humbleness that causes us to excuse bad play, to be overaggressive since "we're so much better than everyone, they should just lay down and give up". It's that slight reframing of the mind from rather than sitting down to a session and thinking "I'm a good player, better than most people here, I'm going to win money" instead sitting down and thinking "I'm going to strive to make the best decisions, and try to not worry about the outcome. I'm going to strive on keeping a calm and relaxed and detached state of being. If I do these things I am being successful." It's an unattainable goal, but I will always reach for it.

Here's the past three days:
Thursday I played at night, which I rarely do, and kept playing later than I should have, made some small mistakes and lost a little. As a result, I slept badly that night (one of the reasons I don't like playing late into the night is I have trouble sleeping after)

Friday, I was tired from having slept badly, but went to play anyway because "hey, friday is a day I play, who cares how I feel?". I started ok, but then lost a few pots and put on some massivley impressive feats of tilt. Granted my tilt isn't all that insane, it mostly comes in the form of not being able to fold when i know I'm beat, and opening waayyyy too wide a range in too early position. But it's still a great and reliable way to burn chips. All in all, the worst poker session I've played in months. Possible all year. It's a miracle I only lost a rack and half.

That night drove me back to Tommy Angelo, which helped me realize that in truth that night was sort of residual tilt from the my big loss the week before. It was fear about my shrinking bankroll, and frustration with myself for taking a maybe irresponsible shot. It was all me and my head. That night I finally slept well, possiblly for the first time in a week. I woke up refreshed, clear headed, and happy.

Then yesterday I went back to the Oaks with one goal - to keep a detached and humble attitude. To play well and not worry about winning. My BR with my winrate still puts my ROR around 3%, so I don't actually need to stress about winning money in any given session. I just needed to feel good while playing. To not care about anything but the hand I was in. The poker gods shine upon those who humble themselves, and they rewarded me with three quick racks.

So while there's a part of my brain that thinks "great - you're on your way back, it's early in the month, just keep plugging away and you can be in the black for this month after all", the other part is there saying "this kind of thinking is what created the problem in the first place - who cares about the arbitrary month-long markers? You're crushing the game for this life-time, nothing that happens in this session or this month will affect that. So just focus on breathing, and playing one hand at a time."

What The Hell Happened In October?

Well, for starters, I posted the biggest monthly loss of my live poker life about -$3800. I also blew $400 donking around online, which in a normal month wouldn’t be such a big deal, but right now it sure stings.

On the bright side (there’s a bright side?) $2350 of this came from one terrible session in the 30/60, and another $300 or so from losing a flip with QQ in the five minutes I played of 200 max.

So I actually am only stuck $1200 in the 60 hours I put in with the 15 game for the month, which I know everyone who’s ever played poker will tell me is just totally standard variance and no big deal. 40 Big Bets. Whatever. BUT, I’m mostly shaken because I felt so off my game for much of this month. I let “downswing” mentality get to me, and had some sessions where I was really not playing well.

Sure it’s true; I hit some awful awful variance. Or at least that’s how it felt, set over sets, running my big pockets into bigger pockets, people backdooring all manner of terrible things.

All that being said, there’s no question the initial run bad fed the play bad in that awful oh-so familiar loop. I feel like I’ve mostly got my feet back under me now, but it definitely has taken some long dark night of the soul-type analysis of what I’m doing wrong.

So here it is:
The Slow-Learners Guide to Lessons I Need To Learn Over And Over And Over:

1) If you’re tired, don’t play.

This should really be rule #1, #2 and #3, and is no doubt my biggest leak. I’ll have a day where I don’t sleep well the night before, know I’m not feeling sharp and shouldn’t play, but I’ll play anyway. I’ll tell myself it’s ok; I’ll just play more conservatively and avoid putting myself in marginal spots where I have to think a lot (see below). But this is the thing, when I’m exhausted, it’s not just the decision-making machinery about whether to call a c/r on the turn that breaks down, it’s all decision-making machinery, including that which assesses how well I’m playing, how good the game is, and whether I should leave. It also means my emotional reserves are lower, so it takes less for me to tilt than it normal would.

2) I turn into a pumpkin promptly at 8pm. This is sort of a collary to rule #1. But on my current sleep schedule,, I just start to get very foggy around 8pm (I’m a daytime player). Even if I’m winning, and the game is good, and I’m a million miles from tilt, I’m never playing my A game at that point. So I should just leave. I know this about myself, but keep talking that self into the idea that I can “play through it”. Nope. Just go home. The other, maybe more important thing that happens is if I play late, my brain is still wired at night when I’m trying to go to bed. Which leads me to get a bad night’s sleep. Which leads me to play bad the next day. You can see where this is going if you rinse and repeat a few times.

3) Its not my job to punish bad players every hand.
It’s my job to make the best decisions, but just because some idiot is open limping with nearly ATC to my right, doesn’t mean I automatically have to iso-raise him with the top 50% of my range in any position. For one thing, people start to see I’m raising every hand, and then they start calling me, and then I find myself in a lot of spots, where for ex. I raise with the fish with Q8 in MP and get called by the CO and the Button and both blinds. Which is just an awful place to put myself, and just lighting money on fire. .

The bad players are punishing themselves by their bad plays, I’m taking advantage of it with my good plays, their bad plays don’t give me more latitude to make bad plays myself. It’s not my job to punish them. It’s my job receive the money they are desperately trying to part with.

4) If, at a typical 15 game, I find myself in more than one or two marginal/difficult situations an hour, I’m probably doing something wrong.

Sure, sometimes the cards run out in such a way that there’s an exception to this one. But in general, when I’m playing well, I encounter relatively few tough decisions. If I’m encountering a lot, it’s usually a sign that I’m playing too many hands. Which means I’m probably playing too many hands out of position, since we encounter way more difficult spots out of position (that’s why we like position!). Alternatively, it can be a sign that I’m being too aggressive - 3 betting light to often etc.

5) Just because they make the stupid decision to open-limp too much, doesn’t mean you doesn’t mean they have nothing. This is a big one that I love to ignore when I’m on tilt. Just because I would never limp KQs or AJ in middle position, just because it’s wrong to do it, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t. If they’re nitty, that means their limping range is pretty strong too, and you have to respect that. i.e. when tight old man open-limps, 3-betting K9 suited is ok arguably just because he’s going to fit or fold a lot. But this is only the case if you’re feeling sharp and totally on top of your game post-flop, because chances are you have a lot less equity going in here, which leads to

6) Acknowledge your own table image. Just because they make the same strategic mistakes over and over doesn’t mean they’re blind. They’re not all total idiots. Most of the time, they notice if you’ve raised four out of the past six hands. You get away with more when you’ve either 1) been winning or 2) been perceived to be playing tight, which is why playing more hands when you’re stuck because you’re a little tilted and want to get even is such a recipe for disaster.

7) Save your bluffs for spots where they have the best chance of being effective. Triple barreling in heads-up pots usually just ain’t worth it without a very good reason to do it. On the other hand, if you save those two big bets for a multi-way pot where a scare card comes, and you have some kind of equity,, and you can c/r the turn, now that’s an investment worth making. Also, bluffs tend to be more effective when you are taking away the lead of the hand, rather than when you’ve had it the whole time. Cliffs: semi-bluff more, pure bluff less.

8) You just can’t fold in big pots if you have a chance of winning. Another place where tilt/feeling like you’re “running bad and never win” can hurt. Twice this month, I folded on the river, rather than making an overcall with two pair. In both spots, given the play of the hand, it seemed insane that the villain could be bluffing into two people who both obviously had something in a pot so bloated. In both cases, the villain (who was a giant fish, though not the same one each time), thought he was value-betting, with what turned out to be the third best hand. Moral of the story: You have to factor in the possibility that they’re just doing something really stupid. When there’s more than a lot of bets in there, just suck it up and call if you think you have a chance to win. It’s just way too huge a mistake to miss out on a monster pot.

9) Chin up. Tomorrow’s a new month.

The First Day Of The Rest Of My Life

Put in a long (for me) session today - almost 8 hours, and played pretty solidly for most of it. I was quickly up about $300 after getting a series of decent hands that held up. Then I proceeded to not win a single hand for the next 3.5 hours, losing two racks in the process. Considered quitting at several points where I started to feel a bit shaky, but buckled down, stuck to my rules, played well, ran good and won back those two racks, ending up back at +300 for the day.

By the time I left, the game was unbelievable. There was a guy to my right who was so absolutely terrible at poker that I almost felt bad taking so much money from him. But I was stuck, and he was gonna give that money to somebody...

A couple things I've been doing more of in the past few weeks - one is in multi-way pots, when I'm the pre-flop raising in early or middle position and flop a decently big hand (an overpair, or TPTK or two pair or something), after c-betting the flop and getting called in a couple spots, I'll c/r the turn to make a huge pot. In the past, I'd usually just take a bet/bet/bet line with these hands. But I'm realizing that if you are the pre-flop raiser and you check the turn, every just auto puts you on AK and will bet all manner of things (mid-pairs, draws, etc) behind you. Also, doing this sometimes with a big hand is good for the few people paying attention, since it's also something I'd do as a semi-bluff in the right spots

I've also started c/r the river more in heads-up pots against all but the wimpiest opponents. I used to feel like I was just giving up to much by letting people check behind when a scare card comes, but now I'm more trusting of my ability to put them on a range and assess whether they will try to value bet it or not. With most of the standard players in the game, the decision for them to value bet the river is based less on what they think you have than on what they have. So, they will say, always value bet pocket Aces or a set regardless of the board, but when they have a hand that a good player would make a thin value bet with, like middle pair or something, they will just check behind.

I know, obvious stuff, right? It's one of those funny things. When I first was learning the game, a very good player who used to run the 100/200 HOE game at our club told me to never c/r the river. His reasoning being that if you bet you can win 1 or 3 bets (if they raise) whereas a c/r is going to win you 0 or 2 bets. This was back in 2003, so maybe at that time, this was true enough for how passive people played in that game, or maybe this guy wasn't as good as I thought he was , or maybe he was just keeping it simple for someone learning the game. Who knows. But its one of those things that buried it self so deep in my brain that it was hard to overcome.

You are one of the best players I know able to play tiltless, keep playing your A game. I like that line of betting otf then c/r turn.