Weird Experience

I prepared myself decently for the last session. Looked at hands, read forums, prepared a blog. Within 20 minutes though I was getting crushed and playing awfully, with no apparent clue.

So I stopped, thought about what the fuck was missing. I was really looking at the player, getting to 'feel' players, thinking about how cbet ranges affect other ranges, etc, and really trying to tune into my instinct. Trouble is, it just wasn't there.

It was then I realised that I just hadn't been putting anyone at all on a range. Not a preflop range, flop turn or river! Absolutely mental. I think I'm ok at poker, but even this most basic of skills is not yet learned to the level of unconscious competence.

So I'm starting to realise the importance of a Zone profile Jared talks about in MGOP2. I'm going to buy a physical pad and start all these journals he talks about, but a brief start here. When in the zone I:

• Assign ranges every step of the way. This means whittling down the preflop range with every piece of information I have.
• Automatically pay attention to each player, and take notes of their hands at showdown.
• Listen intently to my instinct.
• Fold rivers, lol.

Anyway I came back and crushed, albeit I inflicted some big coolers along the way.

Warm-Up/ Cooldown

I played a session earlier where I felt a little rushed. I was going to the cinema in due course, and that may have played a part, but 'rushing' doesn't even make any sense in this context. I snap decided a couple of big decisions, and felt generally flustered. Not doing an adequate warm-up will have been largely responsible, which is what this is.

So basically, I just want to ensure that I expect 'annoying' or tricky decisions to come up, and really mentally prepare for them and expect them, and zone in take time on them, tune into the frequency of 'the player' and really feel what my intangible knowledge is feeding me back about what decision to take. So, no snap decisions will be a goal of this session.

Other than that, I'm really happy with my thought process at the moment, and I'm staying fresh in between hands by considering the implications of other hands.

Session Cooldown

Just wanted to get some thoughts down:

My entire approch of late has been centered on the player I'm up against. I'm sorta ashamed to say it, but despite 10k hands with some players my reads on them are limited to their stats. What I've been doing instead is really paying attention to every showdown to get a handle on how they think about poker, and play their ranges.

One thing that's really followed from that is that I'm constantly thinking of how that information can be exploited. This goes way beyond 'he bluffed, so can bluff' but instead means inferring all sorts of information based on limited starting info.

So these are all fleeting thoughts, but if I don't get them down they'll clog up my mind and eventually be forgotten. My goal is for these adjustments to be learned to the level of UC, and eventually form part of my intangiable competence.

So for example, some guy 3bet sb-btn VS me today and check folded 773ss. Another guy check folded A74r. Firstly I could categories each as relatively 'meek' players, commonly found at 1-2. This is fairly useful in a lot of spots, but it gets more interesting when you consider how that affects their other ranges.

If they're check folding 'good' boards to cbet, then that means they're never cbetting without any equity. If they cbet with equity, we can infer that they're going to be barreling the turn a high degree of the time. This would make any marginal flop calls IP very unprofitable, and so we should then just fold on the flop.

It also means we're going to realise much more of our equity, so can defend wider to begin with.

Also just other stuff, like...... barreling weakish top pairs in spots, meaning people's checking ranges are far weaker etc. There's almost an infinite number of examples, but I'm just going to keep thinking about it ingame and hopefully it'll eventually feed it's way into some intangible competence and I'll be a better player for it.

Blog for whoever

Jennifer, Alison, Phillipa, Sue, Deborah, Annabel tooooooo.

I have nothing particular to write here. All I know though is that recently I've been reading MGOP 1 and 2, and it talks about the importance of a warmup and especially cool down to expel thoughts. Otherwise, thoughts swim around your mind as sorta like unconscious phantoms, shutting off your higher level brain functions as they go.

I seem to be trying to 'remember' a lot of stuff at the moment. I have various technical goals, pertaining to things like 'look at our range, look at it from their POV, trust our instinct', but it's highly inefficient to have all these floating around, unlearned to the level of unconscious competence. Instead, I should basically just be entering a state of relaxation and confidence, and they would flow naturally from deep recesses within my mind, or something.

I've really been neglecting mental stuff of late, and sorta dealing with it by getting better at quitting. I'm not THAT good at quitting either though! I've hard a bit of a mental epiphany today, as it relates to something I learned during my years of anxiety suffering.

Basically, anxiety happens because of a secret lack of self esteem. Until my counsellor person pointed it out, it had never actually crossed my mind that I lacked self esteem at all. Just knowing that went a large part of the way towards fixing it, but beyond that it became simply a job of telling myself the opposite of whatever my anxious thoughts were telling me. 

So for example, in a certain situation like someone about to tell me a joke, I used to go into absolute meltdown, especially if they prefaced it with something like 'omg this is soooooooooooo funnnnnnnnyyyyyyyyyyy'. Thoughts would come in like 'fucking hell Dan ur in meltdown, ur not even gna listen to the joke, you're INCAPABLE of listening to jokes'.

Then the punchline would come and inevitably I hadn't listened to a single word of it, and a stupid fake laugh would come out. The experience reinforced the whole anxious experience.

All I actually had to do, was practice countering those (almost unconscious) thoughts when they came in, with positive ones. So, I would say 'no Dan, you CAN listen to jokes, you're a very capable person'. This worked in the short term, and slowly but surely over time the need to 'manually' tell myself those things dropped away.

So I feel like poker mental game is very similar. Without proper awareness, our mind tells us all kinds of things, such as 'you're not good enough for these stakes, you'll probably run bad, that last mistake shows you can't cut it'. Often these thoughts are so ingrained that it's hard to shake them, but literally (so goes my theory) all we actually have to do is counter those thoughts with overwhelmingly positive ones. 'I CAN cut it' 'that mistake doesn't mean I'm not capable, everyone including Sauce makes lots of mistakes' 'runbad is an illusion, money is an illusion', but most important are the ones pertaining to our self esteem while we play poker. 'You just made a mistake, but you're so sick good that this is just going to make us play even better', etc.


So yeah, that's all. Gonna work on this stuff.

Technical stuff I learned

Been watching a load of vids this week, and I feel I've improved my thinking tons. Phil Galfond philosophy vid was good, it went through a ton of complex calculations, but the gist was that having different betsizes (splitting your range) in a lot of spots makes it extremely hard for our opponent to adjust.

As an example, when someone tailors their CC turn range, they're basically doing so on the basis of facing a standard 2/3-3/4 bet. If we incorporate underbets, or overbets, then it means changing their entire decision to check in the first place, or even makes their decisions on earlier streets questionable. Different sizes was something I used to do all the time, and so I've mixed it back in during the times when the PSR is awkward (underbet) and also when stabbing the flop IP I'll go much smaller now. Dry boards too, only really 'needs' a 1/4 cbet and it totally fucks with people's gameplans and their ranges, and their handreading.

Another vid I watched was Gogol's nose. He explained all hands in a seemingly quite basic manner, but I felt like the real key to his success was considering his entire range when deciding on a bet, raise and specifically betsize. Way too often on the river we'll just be like, ok I want a call let's go small- but the proper process is to say, ok we have a bluff, so what would my size be for value? We may have gone $72 as a bluff, but $50 for value. That doesn't then mean we just say 'ok let's go $50 then', because we want to arrive on a size that's good for both bluff and value, and so at that point I'll take the midway point. The whole point of this exercise is to make the decision put to our opponent as difficult as possible.

I really want to keep up with that thought process, so I just need to keep up my vid watching, and possible start reading Matt Janda book.

Back into poker- update

I feel like I'm really making a lot of progress at the moment. I made an Ivey vid yesterday and had a great time doing the audio, all thoughts and analysis just seemed to flow into place. I'm posting a lot on RIO, in between like daytime chores and stuff, and just keeping my poker brain ticking over. I've watched 3 videos too, all part of just re-immersing myself in strategies and approaches etc.

One thing that's really improved is that in each flop and turn spot, I'm looking at what hands would go in cc, cr, bet fold, bet call, etc, and practicing doing this on each street really opens yours eyes to like, oh man this'd be a sick hand to CR bluff etc.

One thing I really want to focus on is to ZONE IN on postflop hands where I have a toughish decision. I'm autopiloting pf to an extent (though I am working on opening much tighter with 'red' (high 3bet) guys behind) but I then really need my narrative to kick in postflop before I just click a stupid button. So, that's what I'm working on during this next session.

Thoughts

I felt quite overwhelmed during the last session, basically felt as though my mental bandwidth was stretched to breaking point. I know enough from MGOP that the reason this happens is changing up too much all at once. I was being too 'intense' in each and every hand, rather than autopiloting plenty of hands until at least the flop.

Watching the 1-2 Sauce vid was good for me, although he undoubtedly played way more standard than he ordinarily would, what I loved is how much he just snap gave up no equity spots, or spots where his range was clearly inferior to his opponents', especially while the pot was tiny.

Mixing it with my own approach, it's clear that yes I want to be close to the most aggressive reg in the games, but simply pick the spots a whole lot better.

Session Review

Loved that session there, felt like 2009 again with me basically trying to think of creative ways to win every pot, and also actually thinking about my value hands beyond bet big or check raise or bet small in really obvious spots. What can initially seem obvious changes dramatically once you start to factor in timing tells, PSR, betsize in relation to the PSR, and most crucially what our opponent perceives.

http://weaktight.com/6729108 - cool hand VS a 6% UTG opener, leading into a reg with a fish behind is often decent, and allows us to rep a really wide range including depolarized protection/ value. He just has to give us credit for 6x and 4x.

http://weaktight.com/6728743 - river, if we just bet a normal amount we probably just get a fold or a rare call. VS better regs though, we really need to get in their head and rep the opposite of the actual strength of our hand. Even the river 3bet size took some thinking about, tempting to go min or bigger than 100, but he's only going to perceive a bluff if we go like exactly this size, too big squarely reps value (no-one has the heart) and too small we're desperate for a call.

http://weaktight.com/6729114 - think this is decent cool at 1-2 at the moment. Every man and his dog is cold 4betting, but no-one yet really doing the cold 5bet, or even jamming light in SB's shoes which he should do decently often with hands like JTs.

http://weaktight.com/6729120 - kinda cool 'cos with a bit of thinking you realise that his cc turn/ cf river range is completely non-existent. Similarly in his shoes, he should realise my bet turn range (with this size) check river range is similarly non-existent, and so probably fold QQ on the turn. River is not a shove I would make when not playing well, 'cos when you see poker too simplistically it just seems like a big pot and a not-great hand, but I really didn't think AQ AK would cbet this flop, and would also always carry on betting AT.

Strategyyyyyyyyyyy Blooooooooggggggggggggggg

I'm sorta lurching from bad to worse at the moment in cash. My focus on tournys of late has definitely meant I've been going through the cash game motions, and so I want to get back to the point of finding every spot really interesting. I also find myself unsure in a lot of spots, which when I'm playing well just doesn't really happen.

I feel as though 1-2 Zoom is definitely in a state of flux at the moment. Maybe there's some videos I haven't been watching, but it definitely feels as though there's a lot of spots where regs were previously incredibly predictable, and are now not so predictable. As this has happened, I feel as though I myself have recently gotten more predictable, with less original thought and less thinking around counter adjustments that I can make. So, I'm going to start writing again until I'm comfortably back into a rhythm of killing it again.

A few random thoughts from looking at my 1-2 results for the year....

4bet bluffing has been insanely profitable for me (actually in profit, not just less than losing 2.5bbs), but my 4bet stat being only 11% definitely explains why a decent amount. Regardless, I'm going to look to double that to like 20% which is going to take a while for people to cotton on to.

My cold call on CO and BTN is decently high, but because I 3bet so much my ranges are generally weak. Looking at floating as opposed to raising flops, then in my DB floating a high card hand slightly loses me money, while raising flops makes me a decent amount of money. Intuitively, I feel a strategy incorporating lots of flop raises is infinitely preferable to a more passive one, but to that end I need to be raising some top pair types of hands, as well as slowplay preflop more often.

This goes for being OOP as well. Check raising VS wide ranges is a quality strategy, but one I need to balance with top pairs, both when flatting from the blinds and check raising as the PFR. This doesn't mean auto go broke every time I CR a top pair, but it definitely gives us control of the hand and we can then look to soulread turns and rivers based on the PSR vs their betsize, etc.

I am INSANELY profitable flatting 3bets. I'm just like, $6k up on the year doing it. I must be running hot, but doubtless there's room to flat a few more 3bets than I'm already doing. Or maybe I shouldn't tinker? Raising flops in 3bet pots is even more profitable, and again something I need to be looking at.

Theme so far is, RAISING IS GOOD.

• Squeeze bluffing is good.
• Flatting 4bets is good.
• 3bet bluffing is very good.

Everything is good! But there's room for more. More raising flops, more flatting 3bets, and generally worry about ways of picking up as many pots as possible and leave the big value situations to themselves.

One last leak that's crept in of late has been a reluctance of mine to let small pots go in a spot where my range is infinitely inferior to my opponents' range. Yes, apply tons of pressure, even more so than I have been doing, but when it's time to fold when a pot has not yet gotten out of hand, then do so.

(On that note, I think I have yet to see a 3bet on the flop actually ever be a bluff, probably 0/50 times I've bluff floated them I lose, which is just more argument for plenty more raising.)

Session review and hands to follow.....