A basic method of playing poker

More life turmoil today and yesterday, hopefully now put behind me! I've continued work on my mental game, and just I felt I hit a pretty good 'grind spot'. What's a grind spot? Well, it's a word I just invented, so nothing, but I'm talking about the default mode of playing in terms of mindset and approach that allows me to play decent quality, long sessions.

There was nothing amazing about today's grind spot, and that's what felt good about it. Re-reading MGOP for the umpteemth time, the concept of the inchworm really started to make sense to me.

What this theory says, when applied to poker, is that our mind has a certain range of abilities, and before learning more advanced topics we need to first solidify the basic ones. Failure to really understand the simpler elements in poker approach and strategy means that learning more advanced topics is simply impossible, because our brain implodes.

I've probably always been guilty of this. Lately for example I've invented all sorts of advanced strategies for big pots, though never committed them to paper to really test and understand them. The goal is to reach the level of unconscious competence, and I haven't done that. Not only that, I've also not fully understood my game-plan for the simpler, high frequency spots. So, raising the button, flopping 2nd pair on a wet board VS the BB and having to think about whether to cbet or not means my mental 'range' is too wide, leading to over-stretching myself, leading then to implosions and eventual poker exhaustion.

Once a base subject, such as PF for example, is learned very well, then we can progress to some basic postflop stuff. Once that's really learned to UC, we can start to come up with more advanced strategies, and so on and so on.

Throughout my poker career, I've been convinced that certain abilities have been learned to the level of UC, only to find that a few months later that I've forgotten everything I once knew. Thus the cycle of boom and bust is perpetuated. Right now I'm bust, and I want it to be the last time.

So back to today...... I just went back to the basics of playing solid poker. My initial instinct on playing fairly well, if unspectacularly, was to say to myself 'ok, time to work on the more advanced stuff'. But of course inchworm makes clear that doing that without really getting down a very basic approach to 6max poker will result in eventual meltdown.

I have a massive list of topics to get through, but for now I'm just going to write about the title of this blog, 'a basic method of playing poker'.

There's two aspects to this, the technical side and the implementation side.

Implementation- what do I mean by implementation? Basically, it's the steps that precede me choosing a button to click! The most important thing about implementation is that it is based, ultimately, on instinct. What I mean by instinct is not to disregard the technical aspects of the hand, quite the opposite- but instead that I make sure that having taken in all the necessary technical details of the hand I then relax and trust my unconscious competence (blink, whatever you want to call it) to come up with the correct answer. Whatever answer it gives, I click that button. If it's saying make an enormous call, or a huge fold, or a spazzy bluff, then so be it- there is no other ultimate decider of what is right or wrong than what my UC is telling me to do.

Sometimes the decision will be tough, and so my instinct will give me no clear answer either way. At such points I'll tank a little, take in more information, until eventually the instinct will choose which side of the fence to sit on. Being in touch with it requires real clarity of thought, and mindfulness to be aware of when tilt is clouding its judgement. But as soon as I look at the technical details, relax, an answer always comes.

Training whatever part of the brain responsible for coming up with that answer is something done outside of playing, through blogs like this one incorporating appropriate CREV sims and HHs. We should not be inventing new strategies and over thinking while playing!

Basic Technical Details- there's infinite poker situations, so listing every appropriate technical detail is impossible, but there are always a few very important things to consider. As a foundation for almost every spot, we need to carry out the following steps to gather information, and then allow instinct to process it. In order:

1. Handread opponent- his current range. This is relatively simple preflop, but gets exponentially harder street by street. On the flop we have to look back at the PF action, take in things like raise size and players behind, 3bet and cold call numbers, and just roughly approximate the width of his range. Turn, we get to utilise whatever he did on the flop, so whether he bet or not, his sizing if he did, in conjunction with the PSR and the board texture. River, same as with turn. All we have to do is transition this range street by street, so by the river we have a really decent handle of his cards.
2. Handread opponent- his continuing range if we were to make an aggressive action. Here we're just whittling down the range we worked out in 1). Is he forced to fold too much or too little?
3. Handread ourself if we are considering continuing- this simply ensures that whatever line we may take will be credible.
4. Plan ahead- take the above information and plan for future streets. This can take many forms depending on the type of spot. For example, we might be in the BB facing a minraise holding Q7s preflop. Planning ahead, we are going to flat but not be overly concerned with defending too much on flops as our PF defend is predicated on amazing pot odds- allowing us to under-defend flops with our junkier hands. In a different spot, if we are making an aggressive action, it means planning for a re-aggressive action and also checking out the PSR, and roughly planning our next-street move on various flops/ turns/ rivers. Planning ahead also means factoring in bad rivers, failed bluffs, potential coolers, etc- which is an amazing tool for mental game. 

Here's an example of the four steps in action. Preflop, I take in the pot odds, the fact we are closing the action, the postflop PSR, and instinctively it's an obvious preflop flat probably regardless of their ranges. On the flop, the orginal 3bettor's range contains 32 combos of AK and AQ, various Axs bluffs, some other bluffs, then QQ+. In terms of his continuing range, he'll continue any middle pair+, but basically is folding very often indeed to a lead. If we lead and he calls, we'll shut down except on a turn giving us the nuts or an ace which puts real pressure on his QQ KK. The cold caller probably has AKo and AQs, but also TT and 99. I think to a lead he'll call TT and 99 to a flop lead but fold turn.

Hand-reading ourself, we have 9 sets and probably only 4 combos of T9s as our only bluff. Our lead is therefore credible for value.

Planning ahead then, if we lead the flop, then with the PSR and dryness of the board we'll be able to call a small raise to then fold turn (unlikely, but needs planning for before we lead). If called, we're betting every turn VS the cold caller to fold out TT and 99, but only nuts, ace and probably K turns VS the BTN.

Lets consider CC instead........ well planning ahead we have no real way of winning the pot on a turn X. It probably makes a bit of money, though not as much as leading.

So, all this hand takes is relaxing, thinking through the hand in the manner above, and my instinct was pretty clear that leading was the best option. The most amazing thing about planning ahead is that it's a complete tilt buster- there's no card that can fall or action from our opponent that we haven't already planned for, and tilt mostly comes from unrealistic expectations.

The above seems complex, but I've made it sound more difficult than it is. All I'm really trying to get down are a few simple steps that we can apply in all spots. Once this method is fully understood and learned to UC, I can use that foundation to start really exploring ways to destroy the 2015 reg.

Future topics- board coverage, bluffing into strong ranges, PSR manipulation, the effects of leverage, adjusting to our opponents' level, sizing and inflection points.

The four steps as currently applied lead me to playing fairly passively (though that's a relative statement, obviously I'm still pretty aggro, just not wayyyyyyyyyy outta line aggro), which tells me that the hyper aggro style I want to get to simply isn't learned to UC at the moment. That's fine, this style will win some money for now. If applied properly and consistently, I'd hazard a guess at around 2bb at 500nl - this style is really all about avoiding big mistakes and tilt by only implementing strategies that we know very very well.

Cliffs-  hand-read the opponent with skills, make a plan, get in tune with your instinct,  trust it, click the button :-)

Update- meltdowns and other stuff

I've played so little during the last month, which has probably put paid to my SNE chances, which is a shame because the incentive itself is enough to keep me playing high decent volume and keeping the money rolling in. I haven't been in a fit state to play though, so getting back there is my priority at the moment.

About a month ago I went on a stag do to Düsseldorf. Typically when I drink I have the odd vodka red-bull. This trip, being one where I only knew around 30% of the people going, gave me an incentive to drink plenty more of the stuff, including all during the day. All told, I probably drunk around 40 cans in 3 days.

I didn't feel great on the last day, not great at all, but I could at least just about hold myself together. I was afraid on the flight coming back for the first time ever, felt fairly jittery and 'empty', but nothing major. I got home and spent a few days basically kicking back in bed, sorta recovering. I knew enough about anxiety not to overthink 'why' the anxiety is there, but rather to treat is simply a physical symptom of caffeine over-use.

Then something mental happened, Nic- my girlfriend, told me about this weird phobia she'd read about on the internet. I don't want to write here what it is, because it still does creep me out and I don't want to inflict it on anyone else, but suffice to say it's something completely innocuous- like being afraid of a glass of water or something.

I told her I didn't like the sound of it, then 24 hours later she somehow repeated it again. This time it stuck in my head and started bothering me a little, and then later on I was by myself and I literally froze in complete fear of the thoughts. The images of this 'thing'  became complete mental torture, and I basically completely broke down for a couple of days. Constant panic attacks, hyperventilating throwing stuff around, in tears constantly, until I was able to see a doctor and get prescribed some valium. I went to a counsellor too and she said in her whole career she'd only ever once or twice seen someone in so much distress.

So, LOL. And gg SNE.

So I'm completely off caffeine now, I don't even want to risk a cup of tea I'm so mentally scarred. Haha.

Getting back up to speed has been a really slow process, sorry to anyone who I haven't spoken to on skype, or to whom I sorta just left a conversation hanging. A lot of the time I've been trying to act 'normal' to take my mind off things, then suddenly I got gripped and had to run away. I have probably 6 people I just haven't replied to their last messages, so again, sorry.

The past few days, I've felt pretty good in life though. Poker though has not gone well during the recent 3 days, and I think I know why.....

Basically, when trying to play I've had no real clue on what to do in lots of spots, and I put that down to mental game. I could tell my confidence was low, and with some living expenses was somewhat concerned about my busto-ness, so I've thrown everything into my mental game. I've read tons of MGOP, done lots of the exercises and discovered some hidden fears that have been lurking.

And that's all been well and good, but today again- no real clue in lots of spots.

This is a long winded way of saying that it's actually my technical game that I currently need to re-discover. I remember learning around a year ago, when I improved massively in a technical sense simply by joining RIO and watching every video- that mental problems largely evaporate with technical improvement. So long as you know the basics of MGOP- mindfulness, being aware of illogical mind patterns, injecting logic, then you can go a long way so long as your technical game is good.

By the way, throughout all of the above, I somehow managed to bank around $15k or something in April. Most of that was done pre-stag do, and the rest I put down to a heater really, slash I had a firmer technical grip that meant my atrocious mental state couldn't do too much damage.

So, I need to get my technical brain ticking again, and that means have a general approach that I'm happy with. The past few days I've just been trying to play, but nothing's really been coming, and I need to read up and watch some vids and do some sims and write some blogs to get back to where I need to be.

Prior to the meltdown, I'd devised a lot of cool stuff with regard abusing people using things like the multiple street factor, ruining people with PSRs, using betsizing to convey intentions and inflection points, hand-reading using people's unconscious use of all the above that largely gives their hand away.

One other thing that I am still convinced on is the importance of protection/ value bluffing a lot. Look, I know it seems the obvious thing to check your top or second pair OOP on the turn, but check there and we get destroyed constantly. Similarly IP, if we cbet flop and KNOW that we have a profitable call on the river if we check back TURN, this does make the turn check a good one! Stopping our opponent making that bet is worth much more than handing over the frequencies.

This is basically a sort of exploit, because the above wouldn't be true if people were able to bluff raise more often, or CC turn lead river with a decent range, but humans are very sheeplike in their poker behaviour and at the moment people are obsessed with 'protecting their calling range' and the like, (VS river overbets that never arrive, if they want a bluffcatcher to a normal sized bet they don't need the nuts).

I toyed around with GTORB, but in the end decided to take a simple lesson from it, and that lesson was this. Anyone who claims to be playing within a million miles of GTO in any spot is just plain delusional. Give GTORB some ranges, it calculates GTO play using those ranges. The plays it comes out with are extremely mixed strategies that are pretty much unimplementable by humans, and also nothing at all like conventional poker lines. Raise calling bottom pairs in 3bet pots like it ain't no thang; 3xing turns, 3xing rivers, etc etc. Bear in mind that even these lines are nowhere near GTO, because GTO would include PF, and calculating that stuff has more variables according to its creator than atoms in the known universe!

So it feels like regs are currently obsessed with their 'pseudo game theory', while still secretly being massively exploitable. I have a theory that this current obsession with game theory stems from a place of ego and insecurity- most poker players were in the top 5% brightest in their school years, they had promising University results and potential 'respected' careers ahead of them, but many of them dropped out to play poker, and so in the absence of that piece of paper telling them they're worth something- feel a need to sound clever discussing GTO and mathematical type concepts as a way to convince themselves and others of their intellectual ability.

This is not true of all, of course, but it's certainly something I've noticed. Also what I'm NOT saying is that game theory is worthless, I'm just saying that those people pretending to play anywhere near GTO are completely full of shit.

I also think that they're intellectually dishonest in how they describe situations. 'Oh leading the river might be good, but if I did that then he could counteract me in future by knowing that my checking range is weakened, blah blah blah'.

Oh really?! For that to be true, the following has to happen,  a) he has to notice b) he has to act on it c) the situation or very similar has to come up again and d) we don't re-adjust in the meantime e) etc etc.

In the moment, when we lead, he can do nothing about our weakened checking range, and nothing exploitive about the fact that we lead, without knowing our ranges. Nothing at all. This 'gap' in the knowledge of how we play our ranges is rarely discussed, but surely absolutely key to poker. It fundamentally is what poker is- two opponents trying to disguise their range from one another.

The back and forth argument that I described above is a way to get closer to GTO, because ultimately GTO is just two opponents exploiting the other to death, but as I've said, since we're about a zillion miles away from it, it's really not an issue. This has been my attitude when killing it in April, and this will be my attitude going forward.

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So, plan! Watch videos, write more blogs, do more sims, and get back to working out how to crush the status quo regs. Hope you're all well :-)