Time to Reflect…

I can’t quite believe what’s just happened to me. I’ve lost $30,000 now in 3 days. WHAT THE FUCK…??? How does that happen? That’s like nearly $50,000 AUD. That’s like more than a yearly wage for a lot of people. I could buy a decent car, an awesome holiday, heck I could probably feed a freaking African village for a year…

I remember two years ago when I was a 50NL player I’d gawk at the blogs of the CardRunners pros who’d swing up and down $100,000 in a session. I’m not quite at that level yet obviously, but I still remember thinking how ludicrous and upsetting it would be if anything like that happened to me… Now that it has, I know I should probably be telling myself ‘don’t worry Joey it’s completely normal, happens to everyone, just standard variance’ but believe it or not (sarcasm) that really doesn’t make me feel better.

I lost 8 out of 10 races today. Of the ones I won, one was only for $1000 total. Of the ones I lost two were for pots greater than $8000. In all I ran $15,000 below-EV in the last 3 days. The funny thing is though (and I agree you’re going to find this hard to believe), I really don’t care how much I lost. Yes, $30,000 definitely hurts, but what really hurts me more is the stupid little things: the fact that my PTBB/100 is now much worse, the fact that I’m not going to be able to string together five $20,000+ months in a row anymore, the fact that my goal to make 100 buy-ins at 5/10 and ‘graduate’ from it will now take much longer. I know that these are all stupid little things that I shouldn’t really care about, but I do; they are what drive me as a cash game player. Unfortunately, they are also what make downswings hurt the most. I’m also sure a lot of poker players can relate to me when I say that whenever I fall significantly below a previous peak, I never feel quite right until I get back there. And that’s why this downswing is going to be so annoying; it’s going to take a hell of a long time to get it back, and I won’t be relieved until I do. Now it’s obviously terrible and quite sad to live your daily life slightly under the weather until you re-reach a completely artificial barrier that you’ve set for yourself, but that’s really how it feels and it’s hard to feel otherwise.

Part of the problem though I think, and this is something that I realised quite a while ago, is this blog! I started this blog one year ago because I wanted to hold myself accountable for my play, to stop myself from ever tilting away an entire bankroll again like I did in late 2007. I figured that if I had to publish my poker results at the end of every month, I’d be less inclined to tilt and would practice more discipline since otherwise I’d have to embarrass myself by publishing a losing month. What’s happened though is that I’ve gone too far the other way. I’m too obsessed with having good months, with publishing winning months, with bettering previous months. I’ve often stopped playing in order to ‘lock-in’ another good month for my blog, yet chased until midnight on the 31st in order to do the same. I like setting goals and showing that I’ve reached them, I like publishing good $/hr figures, good PTBB/100 figures, and pretty graphs that trend upwards. In short, I don’t treat poker in the way that it should be treated; as one long session. Instead, I treat it as a bunch of monthly snapshots where each snapshot must do its best to be better than the last. If it’s not, then insane chasing and a perpetual nagging feeling inevitably results. This isn’t how it should be.

What I’ve decided to do therefore is two-fold. First, I’m going to stop publishing my monthly results and graphs. I’m not going to mention how much I made in any given session, week or month. I’ll only do a yearly review at the end of December. Hopefully this will help me to treat poker as a long-term thing rather than rushing at the start of each month to get in hands and meet a dollar quota. This should also help me to relieve the pressure that I put on myself. I found that after putting together a string of solid winning months the last thing that I wanted to happen was for that streak to break. But since I also wanted each month to be better than the last, it became harder and harder for me to maintain the streak and since there were only so many hours in a month that I could play I found myself not only chasing but chasing in a mad rush, chasing under pressure. This I’m sure contributed to some bad plays on my part and when combined with running bad can prove lethal.

Secondly, I’m not going to look at my session results in HEM until Sunday night when I make my weekly cash-out (in order to see how much I can afford to cash out). Hopefully this will help me to focus only on the hands that I’m playing and not on all the money I just lost in the last 1000 hands I played. I tried this tactic for a little while last year in order to stop myself from chasing and rushing to win my money back but soon realised that it was pretty much impossible since I needed to constantly check my results to a) see if I could move up and b) publish my results in this blog. Since both those considerations are now largely gone, I think I’ll have a much better chance of sticking to that goal.

The worry of course is that without my monthly reports holding me accountable I’ll once again go on wild tilt some day and bust my entire roll. However I really don’t think that’s an issue anymore. I honestly only swore once today and it was barely in anger. I surprised even myself. Backtrack one and a half years ago and I probably would’ve slain a cat. The difference between now and then I think is that I really don’t feel like I have much to prove anymore, either to myself or to anyone else. Part of the reason I got so pissed off when losing in late 2007 was that I knew I was better than like 90% of 200NL players yet I was losing everywhere, often due to bad beats by bad players. Nowadays, with a decent track record behind me, I know that on the whole I’ve had it pretty good.

So then, without poker reports, what on Earth will this blog be about? Well, I’ll still post about significant milestones such as moving up stakes or winning a large tournament, and I’ll still post about goals I set for myself (I just won’t track them!). I’ll also continue to do live tournament trip reports since I really enjoy writing them up. To fill the void of my usual “I made/lost $X this week” posts though, I think I’ll write more on poker strategy and poker theory and things that I’ve been thinking about and toying with and working on. I’ve done a few of these posts in the past and have enjoyed writing them and they generally have been pretty well received. The only thing that has stopped me from doing more of them is that they actually require a deceptive amount of effort to write, a hell of a lot more than simply pasting a graph and writing a couple of lines about how I ran well or didn’t!

Anyway, I think that’s enough reflective rambling for one day. I’m now going to cash out down to the nearest $10,000 and mentally set that number as my zero mark. I’m going to reset my filter in HEM so that today is zero and tomorrow is what I make it. I’m going to win that $30,000 back and more.

I’ll let you know how I went in December…

Officially in Recession…

FML

Worst Day Ever...

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK I got super doomswitched today, dropping over $15K, my worst day ever :( After last week I had visions of having like a 40-50K month but I’m going to be lucky to have a positive month now :( Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Running Hot, Overbetting, Vegas and Yearly Goals!

I’m running so hot I feel guilty, up $18,000 in the last 36 hours! I like to think that I’m playing pretty well too, but there’s no denying the fact that when you crack AK with AK, turn sets over sets, river flushes over flushes, and flop straight flushes versus turned ace high flushes, you’re definitely running well above average.

I have however made a few adjustments of my own which I think might have helped me eke out a little more value than I might have a few months ago. Firstly I’ve been playing almost HUD-less (I have no stats on the table but I still use a popup) and I think it’s really helped me to get a better feel for the table and where my opponents are at (not in terms of their hand range, but in terms of how they’ll react to my plays). Of course, it may be a complete coincidence but my big bluffs have been getting folds and my big value bets have been getting calls with a frequency that has surprised even me. Secondly, I’ve been playing multiple short sessions with breaks in between rather than playing one massive one. I know a lot of people probably do this anyway so this is probably not news to them, but I’ve definitely noticed my focus and alertness improving and my susceptibility to defaulting into ‘robot-mode’ decreasing. Thirdly, with uni now taking up the majority of my time, I’m actually really eager to play poker once again. Towards the end of the summer I was getting pretty burnt out from poker and every session seemed a chore. Now that I can only play weekends and can’t play for days at a time I’m really enjoying it again and making the most of every chance I get to play. I know it sounds cliché but like anything else in life, if you’re enjoying your poker, you’ll probably play better and have better results to show for it (admittedly the causation runs both ways).

The final thing that I’ve been doing, and the thing that I want to talk about in more detail here, is making a lot of overbets. I used to do this a lot but for some reason it slowly filtered out of my game. Anyway, quite often I’ll be faced with a situation where my opponent’s hand is face-up on the turn as say Jx or 99 on a J726 board and I won’t bother trying to move them off it since I’ll probably have to fire three barrels to do so. What I’ve been doing again recently however is overbetting the turn and preparing myself for a slightly above pot-size river shove. This has turned out to be far more effective way of moving people off one pair since they now know on the turn that a) they’re facing a huge bet and b) they’ll probably be facing a river shove for their whole stack. This is much scarier from their perspective than a normal triple barrel line and elicits a lot more folds on the turn. This in turn means that although you’re overbetting you’re actually committing a lot less of your chips to win the pot since oftentimes you won’t even have to fire the third barrel.

The problem with this style is that you need to balance it with your monsters, meaning that you’ll now need to overbet, say, a set on the turn when it’s clear that your opponent has a marginal one pair hand that can’t stand a lot of heat. This is obviously an undesirable result if your opponent would’ve called you down had you bet normally and means you won’t be getting as much value as you would like from your big hands. What I’ve been thinking about doing therefore is something that raptor said in a video ages ago. That is, balancing your overbet bluffs with marginal hands that you know are good and saving the monsters for normal bet-bet-bet lines. I remember thinking he was crazy when I heard it but it makes a lot more sense to me now. Basically, the idea is that when you make a river overbet your opponent will put you on a range of nuts or air. From his perspective, his medium strength hand is a bluff catcher that will either win if you’re bluffing with pure air or lose if you flip over the nuts. The important thing is that because of this, he doesn’t distinguish between the strength of his bluff catchers – bottom pair is a good as any other pair to him – meaning that if you start overbetting top pair he’ll still call you and, more significantly, still lose, just as if had you flipped over the nuts. This means that you don’t need to ‘waste’ your nut hands for balancing anymore and can use them to value-town your opponent in more conventional spots instead. The big issue with this style is that you need to really understand your opponent and you need to be a really good hand reader. You don’t want to start overbetting weak hands that you think are ahead and end up getting constantly check-called by better (your overbet range would become entirely bluffs in this scenario).

Anyway I’ve only been experimenting with this style for a week and a bit so I obviously don’t have much experience to go on but I think (in theory at least) it looks very promising and if I’m able to master the fine balancing act that it involves I think I’ll become very difficult to play against. To give you guys an idea of how it works in practice, here’s one example of a hand where I was able to pull it off in a big way.

Party Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
Hand History Converter by Stoxpoker

CO: $1,253 (125.3 bb)
BTN: $1,000 (100 bb)
Hero (SB): $1,005 (100.5 bb)
BB: $1,000 (100 bb)
UTG: $1,773 (177.3 bb)
MP: $467.15 (46.7 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is SB with 7h Th
4 folds, Hero raises to $35, BB calls $25

Flop: ($70) 7s 2s 4c (2 players)
Hero bets $55, BB calls $55

Turn: ($180) 9h (2 players)
Hero bets $144, BB calls $144

River: ($468) Kc (2 players)
Hero bets $525, BB calls $525

Results: $1,518 pot ($3 rake)
Hero showed 7h Th (a pair of Sevens) and won $1,515 ($756 net)
BB mucked 7d 8c (a pair of Sevens) and lost (-$759 net)

The turn value bet in this hand is pretty standard but on the river I’d usually check-call or ‘range-merge’ by betting for value (but bet a normal 3/4 pot amount). Since I was pretty sure my hand was good here though, I decided to use this river as a spot to balance my overbet bluffs and at the same time was able to induce a call where a normal 3/4 pot bet might not have (since my range in his eyes becomes infinitely more polarised when I overbet).

Switching topics now, it looks like I’m definitely going to Vegas for the WSOP Main Event! I’ve got some friends who are eager to come so there should be about six of us down there in July. We’re staying for two weeks and are currently looking at hotels to stay in. I’ve never been to Vegas before so I’ve really got no idea which hotels are good but at this stage it looks like we’ll be staying at the MGM Grand for one week and either Caesar’s or the Mirage for the other. If I can get a good deal at the Venetian or the Bellagio though I’ll definitely be looking to stay there. Wherever we stay, it should be an awesome two weeks regardless. Watch out for six 21 year old Aussies wreaking havoc at a hotel near you!

Finally, I’ve decided to set myself a few poker goals for the year. I realised that ambitious as I am there really is no way that I’ll just stop at 5/10 and 10/20. Although reaching those stakes has always been my long term goal, now that I’ve got there, I really want to see if I can be a 10/20 and 25/50 regular one day. The difference this time though is that I’m really in no rush to get there. When I was trying to get to 5/10, I always felt like I had to get there quickly because I felt like if I didn’t I was a failure. Now though I don’t feel like I have anything to prove anymore and if I don’t ever reach or beat 25/50 I don’t think I’ll see myself as having failed since 5/10 and 10/20 is still really good money and 25/50 really is the land of the full time pro so there’s no shame if I don’t make it. Anyway, to set myself on the right track, I’ve set myself the following goals for 2009:

a) Make 100 buy-ins at 5/10 (70 to go!)
b) Make 100 buy-ins at 10/20 (105 to go! :()
c) Amidst all the cashing out, somehow have an online roll of 200K at the end of 2009
d) Start 2010 as a 10/20 and 25/50 regular and say goodbye to 5/10!

I know that’s a pretty ambitious long-term goal to say the least, but I’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge :). Anyway, good luck at the tables.

Back to Uni…

It was our first week back at uni this week and I have to say it was pretty hard for me to get back into the swing of things. After nearly three months of playing poker basically full time, the thought of once again settling down to do hours upon hours of law reading was not a particularly tantalizing one.

I’ve played about 18 hours so far this month and currently I’m up a little over $3000. Unfortunately I’m about five buy-ins above-EV at 10/20 so really I should be well down for the month. It’s a bit disconcerting for sure but I guess I’ll take the good runs while they last.

In other news, I joined the uni poker society this week. They run a weekly $1 (about $0.65USD) tournament every Tuesday with first place being a few free drinks so I don’t think the standard will be very high but I’ll try to go down at least once this semester to see what it’s all about.

I’ve also started thinking about where I could go on exchange next year. I really want to go to the US so at the moment my options are something like NYU, Cornell, Duke, Harvard and the University of California campuses. I seriously doubt I will get into any of the Ivy League universities (there’s only one spot available for each to a Sydney Uni student) so basically I’m hoping for NYU and if not I guess I’ll see how close Californian life really is to the OC/American Pie/etc. (and whether people really use red plastic cups!).

Anyway, that’s enough for this update I think. Time to hit the books…