Fear, and other stuff

Hello!

It's the 17th, and I'm a day ahead of SNE pace, yay! This is a new record for keeping it up, beating my old one of, er, the 2nd of Jan or something.

I've been winning pretty hard too, playing very well up until maybe a day or 2 ago where I've had a slight wobble. Much of that was mental stuff, a few fears crept in and stuff playing on my mind- not answering peoples' skypes, kept promising Ivey a video (not Ivey himself, he doesn't know who I am), etc- so I got up today and sorted all that out. I've also found myself slightly stuck in a few technical spots, perhaps forgetting exactly how to approach them.

I'm helping a friend win at poker tomorrow, so I thought this would be a good time to write an extended blog post about what I think are the key ingredients to crushing poker in 2015. The year when poker is supposed to be solved, but where all but the top 6-7 regs at 500nl still make big mistake after big mistake. I would theorise that poker simply isn't going to get any harder than this, and it's still really beatable for loadsa money. Yay.

Fear and Implentation

I've grouped the first topic into two, because I think they are very linked. Basically, what is discussed in 99% of poker conversations is poker theory, poker strategy- and it is taken for granted that if you know the correct theory, then this will always be implemented. For years, I read the strat posts of high stakes crushers, decided that we barely differed in our skills, and felt sorry for myself that my results didn't reflect this.

But actually implementing your strategy is a world away from actually knowing it. I've always known this, but had a decent epiphany a couple of months ago when I realised that the #1 obstacle to implementing our strategy is always some sort of fear.

Sweating other people for example, I would seemingly never be in difficulty giving answers. Why would I be? I was not identified with the outcome in either a monetary or 'I look so stupid' sort of way. As such, I could easily recommend big calls and big bluffs, and know in my heart of hearts that they were printing money.

Switch back to my own session, and I'm back 'playing it safe', with the odd spewy counter swing to this realisation to prove that I'M NOT SCARED.

I'll list a few common fears here: fear of losing (so our pride takes a dent), fear of our bluffs getting called so we look silly, fear of our big calls being 'spewy', fear of not being able to play for a living, fear of losing to some guy we hate, fear of being judged by some reg that we respect, fear of losing the winning session that we hold after a few minutes playing, fear of making mistakes etc etc.

How this fear manifests, is that it 'disguises' itself as your friend. This might seem far fetched, but I promise you that it isn't. And because it's your friend, it steals all your attention away from the important aspects of a hand: combos, position, sizing, balance, unexploitability, handreading and refocuses that attention to stuff that literally has NOTHING to do with the actual skill of playing poker. Let's take this hand as an example:

http://weaktight.com/7311603

This might seem pretty weird and unorthodox, but I wanted to call this river. We always bear our own balance in mind, but first and foremost we look for imbalances in others. In this spot, he polarises his range on the river, leaving him a range of 2pair+ (containing an ace), and all his missed draws. I had a note on this guy that he'd made an unbalanced raise at some point, which tells me he's going to be unbalanced in general, and as such we can go into exploit mode.

He raises a very wide range in that spot PF, bets all his flushdraws and straightdraws on the turn, and doesn't have to be bluffing anywhere near all of them on the river to make this a call. He also might have some other rando airballs I stoved it afterwards and we make 8bbs, which is huge.

But at the time some fear had crept in somewhere. I'd made the odd mistake, and this was nagging away at me. So in the moment, instead of counting the combos, thinking through the hand logically, I turned my attention towards the fear. It said, 'don't be stupid Dan', ignoring every other instinct which (as it turns out, correctly) was saying call. I thought 'don't be stupid Dan' was my friend, but it never is! So recognition of these fear thoughts is the main step to eradicating them. Whenever you're in a hand, thinking through stuff, we have to be aware enough to sort the strategy stuff from the bollocks.

The reason that fear is so pervasive, is that we mentally link the fear stuff with what we are doing. So thinking about money for example when in a big pot, instead of about the strategy of the hand. Once you realise that you might as well be thinking about pink elephants for all the relevance it has to your situation, it becomes much easier to let go of it. None of the fear thoughts has ANY RELEVANCE at all to playing correct poker. Stop listening to it, and it'll shut the fuck up.

So yeah, main thing there is awareness, or mindfulness. Most people aren't even aware that they're thinking total shit, so it keeps happening. Start to notice your thoughts, and this is a big step to eradicating fear and implementing our strategy without distractions.

FWIW, I knew this completely in 2009 when I was renowned as pretty insane. I knew that people made calls that were wrong and their minds conditioned them to want to be good 50% in spots where they only needed 25. I knew they'd stop making bluffs when i called, again because their mind conditioned them to want their bluffs to mostly work, when in reality they mostly shouldn't work! If your bluffs mostly work, you're definitely not making enough of them. The same is true of calls. Once fear crept in though, I became like everyone else. It's up to us as poker players to break out from that fear, rely completely on logic and maths.

Right, enough of that!

Technical Stuff

This might go on for a while,  but I'm just going to go talk about the way to approach common spots. This will help get things clearer in my own head too.

Keeping the lead- I watched some of the value bluffing series on RIO and it was revelatory. By coincidence, I was chatting to one of my German poker friends around the same time and he was talking about the same sort of thing. In a nutshell, betting for protection is a lot more important than I ever realised. Not simply protection from cards, but also protection from being bluffed! Say we raise JTs EP, get a CO caller who flats around 8% there. We cbet T84hh and turn brings 6o.......

Sticky spot, and standard for me there for years was to either check the flop, or check the turn. But this is not going to end well for us! You might well stove this spot, decide that we have less than 50% VS a calling range if were to bet, but this is missing the point that it is still by far the best option VS check calling and check folding. Check folding is insane given all the draws and floats out, but check calling leaves us completely at our opponent's mercy on the river on a ton of cards. He can basically look at the river, come up with his range, and make us indifferent with our bluffcatchers. Which is another way of saying he's going to win the pot a ton of the time.

Checking also allows him to check back, letting him improve either to the best hand or another card that gives him a good bluff, like he might bluff 8x on an Ace river.

So if we're going to check to CC, which is going to cost us x amount of BBs, then those BBs are much better spent simply betting ourselves. It folds out AQ which is a win given the situation, occasional value happens, and we get to very credibly bluff cards like the Ah, rather than allow our opponent to do so.

So this and similar spots happen very very often. Our goal should be to give us easy decisions. If you're constantly checking to basically 'guess', then this is not an easy decision. If we're not guessing, and playing GTO, then we're still giving our opponent the chance to make us indifferent and thus lose the pot.

This stuff is less important when the board is dry, which also affords fewer bluffing opportunities to our opponents. We can still go into check mode, but I'd probably still just bet A6 twice on AK2r OOP for example. One final piece of information here is that this strategy probably works as well it does partly due to people not having the balls to attack uncapped ranges. Like, the obvious counterstrategy to depolarised betting is to raise turns and stuff, but currently people see an uncapped range and that old fear creeps in of wanting the bluff to be highly successful, and thus it doesn't happen.

One final final piece of information is that this is very important in big pots too. Example I 4bet KK the other day, flop AJ5r, standard check check. Turn is 9s giving flush and straight draws. Rather than check again and allow him to bluff turns and rivers with decent frequencies, I bombed the turn to check the river VS KJ. I guess part of it is just knowing how much you are 'supposed' to lose in this spot. If he bets the turn himself, we have to call at least one bet. That one bet is much better spent when we do it ourselves.

Rivers- in some river spots we'll have a range of primarily value, given there's no draws out. I mean we always should be bluffing the bottom of our range, but in reality we'll sometimes end up with a zillion potential bluffs and sometimes with none. I'm talking first about dryer boards where we basically have a range of value, from sets to maybe TP3k or something. How do we decided a betsize?

Well, often we need 2 betsizes. One betsize deals the polarised part of our range, so that will be big in order to maximise value and maximise fold equity. So we'd have a betsize of say pot for this range, and then a more 2/3 type betsize for our depolarised value, which might include hands as strong as top 2 pair that we won't fold to a raise. Our goal in spots where our range is strong is to take his bluffcatcher, and make him indifferent. This can be done technically by counting, but is more easily done but just putting yourself in his shoes and deciding what betsize you would most hate on the river with say AT on AKQr 5s 7 in whatever spot. I wouldn't hate 2x, I'd easily fold, I wouldn't hate min, I'd easily call. Half pot would probably still make me happy, while 2/3 might be the one that makes you go 'fuck'.

Mathematically though, remember we need a big betsize for our nuts, so having the 2 different betsizes in a lot of river spots works out well.

Handreading

My approach to poker is all sort of 'contained' within a game theory framework. Every hand, I'm thinking about correct ranges to call down, correct ranges to bluff, etc. But why do we do this? We do it so we're unbeatable, that our opponents can't take our line and make exploitable calls that cost us money.

It follows therefore, that we cannot be disconnected from noticing our opponents's mistakes in this sense. Having a game theory mindset does not mean that we never make big calls or unbalanced bluffs, but that we are doing so having applied game theory concepts to our opponents and decided that they come up short.

In practice what this means is that if I see someone make an unbalanced bluff, ie one where if they are making that bluff then they are bluffing all sorts of other crazy hands too, leaving their range very weak, then I just tag them as 'unbalanced bluffer'. This means that I'm literally never folding any more than GT says to fold, and also might find spots to exploit.

Exploitation can be scary if you just want the nice and comfortable comfort blanked of GT to guide you, but it needn't be scary provided that we are making sound assumptions. If we're in doubt with our exploitative analysis, of course we can still call or fold based on numbers- but there are tons of spots VS 'unbalanced bluffers' where we can just sniff out their bluffs, and so should call wider.

How do we do this? Handreading! That old fashioned concept. People take different approaches, but I like the very simple one of just transitioning our opponent's range from street to street. This should be working side by side with our making sure we cannot be exploited- but if we end up making a call in order not to be exploited, but handreading tells us that it's wrong, then all it means is that we probably made a GTO mistake on an earlier street, or that the board change in a drastic way such that although we have to fold 80% of our range on this river card, we're still calling 65% of river cards overall.

So yeah, start with a range for opponent. Nothing too complicated, we don't need to identify every hand in his range. But it might be something like, 'flatted SB-CO 100bbs, doesn't have JJ+ or AK, has 7% range there overall, probably 3betting suited playable stuff, leaving a lot of mid pairs and a smattering of broadways'.

Then take this range to the flop......... flop J95ss we check check. Ok range to the turn is the same as PF. Turn is Jo. Oh wait, he didn't lead the turn, ok so now we can take that range and decide he'd lead his trips+, also all gutshots, flushdraws and straightdraws and therefore they are not a big part of his range, even less than they already were. As an aside, stab turn % is really useful in this spot. We're starting to handread him as having midpairs, and we can decide how to play VS that range. Not doing that very simple analysis though leaves us playing very blind.

http://weaktight.com/7311726

An example above- this guy is labelled 'unbalanced bluffer'. So it just goes, ok PF is 28% range.... flop he's cbetting 85% of that, maybe checking back 88 and 77. Turn- plenty of draws turned, he'd bet all JT 76, 54, all flushdraws, and so it's a call even if he was balanced. River.... well, in theory he should be bluffing a frequency to make us indifferent, so maybe 54, QJ would suffice. We think he's going to be bluffing beyond that though and make the call. The key thing he with the imbalance is that by utilising handreading we realise that he doesn't actually have a lot of value VS his potential bluffs. We block 99, 77 wouldn't have bet turn and river, 88 might not bet flop. 97 probably checks somewhere, leaving A9+, TT, etc.

Crucially though, he polarises his range with the overbet. Leaving his range extremely narrow. Just applying a pure game theory approach to calling this wouldn't take into account that TT-AA have suddenly flown the nest from his range, probably 2pair as well. He's left himself 33, 22, JT, 99. That's 19 combos. We need ~ 11 bluffs or something, and QJo makes up 12 of those already, never mind all his other stuff!

So you can see how game theory approach is not distinct from exploitative hand-reading, indeed they work completely in tandem. Sauce put it best when we says he's not looking for an unexploitable approach, but rather a balanced approach tailored to our opponent. So we're never saying, 'lol feels like a bluff, call ace hi, party like it's 2009', but we are counting combos, applying sound and very logical handreading concepts before applying our GT stuff.

So yeah, remember to transition ranges always!

I've been writing for ages, so some final short stuff...........

• We need 2:1 in favour of bluffs on flop raises- this means lots of bluffs! Then bet turns that help us.
• Our fold to 3bet should hover somewhere around 50%. Lots of speculative hands make money both IP and OOP.
• Always see poker in a GT sense. So like when Gogol loses a hand, he looks at it mathematically with his range and declares 'we won that hand really'- amazing for confidence because he's so right ya know!
• Always bluff the bottom of our range on the river. Even if it's a set.
• Mistakes are fine. Remember most of our bluffs should fail, most of our calls should fail. Really get down with that and worrying about any 'mistakes' seems very lol. Also actual mistakes are fine too, I'm doing really well $$ wise and make plenty. Just make less than our opponents :-)
• Plan ahead to future streets! This gives us the 'r' value of our hand a lot, where r is amount of equity realised. Before doing anything, think about how we react on future streets. If it all feels sucky and we have a pair, maybe think about raising :-)
• And finally............ remember