Default of Winning Poker

I know I'm playing well when my 'default' of a session is to crush it. What do I mean by this? Well, let's take a time I wasn't doing so well. How about the whole of this year more or less........

I would play a session. I would try really really hard. I would check results.

'Hmm, $500 down at 400nl....... but then, I did have that QQ VS KK cooler, and then some 3bets that didn't work out...... but then how the fuck am I supposed to win when I don't get any KK vs QQ coolers coming my way for once??'

This is an example of poker that has a default of either breaking even, or losing. It's the kind of poker that needs cards in a session in order to win. If no big pots took place, then I would slightly lose. The big pots would balance out over time, leaving me wasting my time fretting over whether 3betting QQ otb VS an UTG raiser was correct. Or I'd post a hand where I flat a 3bet and the flop comes j76 150bbs deep and I'm all like 'hmmm guys should I stack here waddya think?'.

The above picture is a snap of todays HEM. I've filtered for 'number of bbs won or lost > 95'. In other words, these are the hands that most players spend all their time fretting over. In other (other) words, these are the 100bb bread and butter cooler type hands. As you can see I lost a net of $1117 in these pots today. In times gone past, coupled with negative showdown winnings, I was probably looking at a $2k losing day in terms of cooler/ recooler situations.

There's a 3bet pot HU at 3-6 where we both flop top pair and he has AQ and I have KQ. There's a 3bet pot with my QQ losing to his nut flush, I get AK in vs his QQ, etc. All in all, situationally in big pots I ran very bad today.

Default of winning poker though, means it doesnt matter! Here's my HEM of today's results filtered for '# of bbs won or lost <>

As you can see, it's massively in profit, cancelling out and more the $ lost in the big pots. I think an important point is that the big pots only accounted for 17 of today's hands, whereas the smaller pots accounted for 3668 of them.

So, on a day like today where I feel I ran pretty bad all in all, I made ~$600 profit. On days where I run absolutely terrible, I more or less break even. On days when I run ok in big pots, or even run well, those are the $2k/ $3k/ $4k days that keep cropping up at the moment.

So the above is obviously related to showdown VS non showdown. As in, the vast majority of the smaller pots I'm winning are at non showdown.

So, coming back to today's big pots accounting for just 17 hands, and the smaller (mostly non sd) pots account for 3668 (actually, if you filter for # of bbs won or lost <> 3, ie the hands that actually matter, then you arrive at 330) of them. These numbers, plus the smoothish red line graph above should give you an idea of what I'm talking about. The variance associated with playing a non-sd style is just so much less, and thus makes winning consistently so much easier.

So currently I'm playing Default of Winning Poker. I haven't really described how to play said style of poker, but if I could sum it up in a sentence it would be "don't build a medium or big sized pot without a clear plan to win the hand".

Some hands!

http://weaktight.com/2704078 - checked the turn, doesn't have the nuts, jam!

http://weaktight.com/2704099 - ok this one he has to raise the nuts this deep. I don't care that he just raised my turn overbet, I'm going with my flop read...........

http://weaktight.com/2704105 - fairly standardish, the ace is a good card VS a bad player which he is.

http://weaktight.com/2704108 - spots like this I'm happy to stack to any J, but I go with an assumption that he doesn't have one and stick to it. I can't jam the flop because of risk/ reward, so I have to wait for a turn bet before I can claim right of last initiative profitably.

http://weaktight.com/2704119 - a different type of line, but one you sometimes just have to grit your teeth and go for on the river VS good players who perceive you to be ok.

http://weaktight.com/2704125 - I refuse to bet call the flop with Q hi, so inducing a turn bet allows for profitable right of last initiative and folds out K and A hi's that could've jammed.

http://weaktight.com/2704129 - similar to hand 1, he just doesn't have the nuts when he checks the turn this deep and he's going to have make some pretty big assumptions to call without it, namely that I realise this AND am prepared to act on it. I feel like having relatively tight PF stats incorrectly dissuades people from assigning me such laggy moves.

I should be top of the PTR 400nl UGL, I'm not because they keep missing my sessions. But, 10 days left and I'm going to put in a ton of hands to try and get there.

In before $20k downswing now obv !

dan