Day Review (So Far)

Currently 5pm. So far today I woke up, butchered a ton of hands, before having a very pure epiphany about intuition. Yes I know I'm a stuck record, but the whole problem has been in not trusting my intuition. Like, I forgot it was there almost, or mistook my inorganic thoughts for it.

I mean sometimes it comes out with crazy stuff right?! 'That can't be right!!' is what my low confidence brain says to me. It's telling me to fold KK preflop, or fold 2pair where I don't have any stronger hands to call.

But it is right, it knows, it fucking knows!

We think our thoughts control our actions, but science has shown that we actually mostly follow our intuition day to day, and then thoughts about it can kick in up to 6 seconds afterwards. The same is true of poker, we think that our thinking leads us to press the button, but in fact we press the button and then rationalise it afterwards.

If this seems wrong, then bear with me....

Say you want to make a huge fold on turn, he bets and you know your AA is dead. You know this almost instantly right? What happens then is an investigation takes place, we fill in the details about why we should fold, and then either say these out loud or perhaps in our mind. This step is very crucial to improvement, so should not be taken for granted.

What I've been doing though is ignoring the first instinct, then attempting to use thought to conjure me up an answer. But to do so, is like trying to use words to represent the same thing as say, an actual tree. The tree is infinitely complex, words can't come close to describing it.

The first answer that comes to us in poker is like the tree. The mind's description of the tree though is a poor poor imitation.

So I've been ignoring that first answer, the one that is always in the moment, and instead reaching backwards or forwards in time to try to find me a 'better' answer.

Here are the morning's butchered hands that illustrate:



Preflop: Hero is BB with Q, Q
UTG raises to $4.50, 1 fold, CO raises to $15, 2 folds, Hero raises to $38, UTG calls $33.50, CO calls $23

Flop: ($115) 10, K, 6 (3 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $62, 1 fold, Hero calls $62

Turn: ($239) 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $94.35 (All-In), Hero calls $94.35

River: ($427.70) 8 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $427.70 | Rake: $2.75

Results below:
Hero had Q, Q (one pair, Queens).
UTG had A, K (one pair, Kings).


UTG is a whale, a wide whale. Intuition snap told me to fold the flop when he snap bet this size. That's crazy I replied, he has 55 vpip, so many bluffs. Agonisingly I clicked call. Then agonisingly clicked again on the turn. Straight away, the hand below occured.

Button ($60.87)
SB ($206.45)
BB ($192.80)
Hero (UTG) ($208.50)
MP ($174.43)
CO ($200)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with A, K
Hero raises to $5, MP raises to $16.70, 4 folds, Hero raises to $40, MP calls $23.30

Flop: ($83) 10, 5, K (2 players)
Hero bets $30, MP calls $30

Turn: ($143) 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $104.43 (All-In), Hero calls $104.43

Running it twice

First River: ($175.93) 9

Second River: ($175.93) 3

MP had Q, J

Intuition said just shove flop. Mind replied 'no dude, we don't have any offsuit clubs to bluff, shoving is silly', ignoring the AQo which intuition already knew we had in our range. So I bet small. Turn 9, intution said check decide. Mind said, 'no man, gotta protect or something'. Intuition said FFS I give up with you, lose all your money if you want you fucking degenerate.

I stood up in despair. Walked around the house, kicked my dog (not really). As I was pouring me some water it suddenly occured to me that I knew in each moment of spew that it was the wrong move. So even though I was obv in mad tilt, intuition was still there trying to be my mate, guiding me. All I had to do was trust it, no matter what it said.

So had a five minute break, sat down again and suddenly felt amazing again. No super sick hands or anything, but poker just felt easy again and my strategy felt clear. Trust intuition, relax, stay in the moment, and then again, don't grab onto any ideas, even this one, and in each spot simply listen to the one part of my brain that knows how to play poker well.

Like I'm still aware of what my mind has to say for itself. Sometimes it even comes up with something useful that my intuition can then use, but the thinking mind should never make the final decision. Its main problem is that it has too many other priorities than playing poker well.


Preflop: Hero is CO with Q, J
1 fold, MP raises to $6, Hero calls $6, 2 folds, BB calls $4

Flop: ($19) A, 8, 3 (3 players)
BB checks, MP checks, Hero bets $12, BB calls $12, 1 fold

Turn: ($43) 5 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: ($43) 8 (2 players)
BB bets $20.42, Hero raises to $40.84, 1 fold

In the above hand intuition told me to barrel off VS MP reg on basis of blockers.All good. BB fish calls then leads river 1/2 pot. Mind snap said obv fold, but I tuned in and intuition was saying 'wait, maybe there's another option'. Slowly dawned that 8x would bet bigger, Ax probably doesn't bet at all, we don't block hearts. We can't call because might be bluffing K9hh etc. So minraise. Yay.


Preflop: Hero is BB with 7, K
4 folds, SB raises to $6, Hero calls $4

Flop: ($12) 2, K, A (2 players)
SB bets $6, Hero raises to $24, 1 fold

Intuition doesn't just provide answers in the moment. It can also organise the brain into doing useful things, mainly providing strategic thoughts based on what the intuition is doing. Above, I think I like the idea of starting to bluff raise 2nd pairs IP a lot more. They make such excellent blockers, ability to turn things etc.


Preflop: Hero is CO with J, A
1 fold, MP raises to $4.34, Hero calls $4.34, 3 folds

Flop: ($11.68) 4, A, J (2 players)
MP checks, Hero bets $7, 1 fold

Just included this hand because I was thinking the same here with like all Jx had he cbet. If we just raise JT instead of calling we have such control over the hand, able to manipulate his range using sizing on the turn, etc.


Preflop: Hero is BB with J, K
3 folds, Button raises to $4.34, 1 fold, Hero calls $2.34

Flop: ($9.68) A, Q, 7 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $2.94, Hero calls $2.94

Turn: ($15.56) K (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $22.17, Hero calls $22.17

River: ($59.90) 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $42.86, Hero calls $42.86

Button had A, 7 (two pair, Aces and sevens).

The above hand was the one hiccup on the session, and it occured in an interesting way. Essentially on the turn, I think I have the nut hand to bluffcatch his overbet with. Villain is a reg, we have improvement potential, block JT AK KK. Deffo a good call, says intuition.

River I got tricked! Not by the villain, but by my brain. Intuition snap wanted to fold at this point, but brain came in and said 'look Dan, you said you were going to trust the intuition, and on the turn it said bluffcatch! Why would you forsake your intuition now, huh? It said bluffcatch on turn, so obv bluffcatch now, fool!'

Meanwhile my every fibre of being felt like folding, lol. 

I called. 

Lesson to learn is: intution is always right now, in this spot right now. It doesn't exist a second ago, or a street ago. If you think it does, that's ur brain masquerading as it.

PS: I am aware that having seemingly split personalities and talking about them as I do is slightly weird. Please don't get me sectioned :-) .

My boom and bust cycle

Greetings long lost readers, how's it going? The question is not rhetorical, let me know! I wonder how many original readers of this blog still play poker for a living? I know several of you who have dropped out along the way, which is a shame as I think poker is not much less beatable (albeit at lower stakes) than in say 2009, and that the reason many of you dropped out was not because of technical skill (or at least, technical potential) but because of falling just short in either mental game, professionalism or implementation. 

I don't mean this as a slight on anyone, I mean it as a 'sort out the easy stuff, and you probably still have the talent to do well, if you want to'.

The reason I mention this is that I can see right now how the same thing would happen to me if I kept on my current path. 

My poker career has always been a cycle of boom and bust, usually $50k+ rakeback years consisting of a couple of $25k months then a load of win $10k/ lose $10ks, but this year (until recently) I had for the first time found some consistency:

By month:

By stake:

July though has turned rather sour, I think I was up around $10k at one point from 99% 200nl, so currently on the end of a 30BI downswing which I now realise has been entirely self inflicted.

Games on Stars zoom have been much softer this year than in previous years. This is doubtless due to rakeback changes, which do suck, but I think that overall the increased softness more than compensates for that loss.

So here's the thing. In previous years I would've been very happy with the above winrates and results, but with the games the way they are I think 10bb/100 at 200nl is extremely possible at the moment.

There is SO MUCH improvement to be made in the way I've played across the year.

Although I have improved in many areas, the year as a whole has still been caricatured in terms of mini booms and busts. These are not variance related, I feel I have decent skills to be able to ascertain in each session whether I'm EV crushing or not.

I think my year has been spent playing 50% 10bb/100 poker, and 50% -2bb/100 poker.

Which brings me to the point of the blog. I got a little stoned today, and in that period I could see with absolute clarity the mechanics of the boom and bust cycle that stops me winning consistently at a 10bb winrate. Here I will outline the cycle in full.

1) Breaking even/ losing/ struggling.
2) Downswing starts to become unsustainable, wakes me up.
3) Decide to put in work to correct behaviour.
4) Start watching a vid a day for 2-3 days. Also start producing recordings of myself playing.
5) 'Narrative' re-appears, the voice used for making videos is present in my mind as a running commentary on each spot. I'm playing B+/ A- game at this point.
6) The watching of videos and self production of videos, which I have found to be the nut best thing for my improvement, starts to result in my A++ game appearing.
7) A++ game is present, I'm in the zone, and the voice narration is no longer even present- it doesn't need to be. I know what action to take and why without even needing to consciously think any more.
8) Print money for a bit.
9) Poker seems ridiculous easy. Watching and making videos seems a chore compared to sitting and owning souls. Volume goes >>, work goes down.
10) Inevitable happens. Start to lose, but don't notice how horrible I've started to play. The narrative isn't present when A++ game, it isn't present now, so what's the problem?
11) Persevere, $ is lost, doubt creeps in, I suddenly find myself unsure in many spots.
12) Back to 1.

So by virtue of this blog I'm currently at 3) on the cycle. I am EXTREMELY confident that once I'm watching vids and making my own that I will almost immediately start to do very well again.

The sick thing about recognising the cycle is that I now have the power to get off the thing when I reach 8).

One thing I believe quite strongly when playing poker is not to have 'rules' about how to play. Having such rules and default lines means they are imported, inorganically, ingame and mask all the infinite nuance of a hand. 

Instead we should relax, take in all the information, and allow our intuition to take over the running of the hand. This doesn't mean 'oh, my intuition just says call or not' (at least not until A++ game is attained) but that the intuition will naturally move towards the information required to make the decision, process it, weigh up the EV and click the button.

So I've shied away from rules, but I don't see why rules outside of implementing/ performing should hold the same fear for me. I'm clearly in need of some sort of regime- good habits that I implement day in day out that mean I maximise my poker success and stop me falling into the trap of having the inevitable bust following a boom.

Nic randomly jumped on a plane to Amsterdam today. She's gone by herself, and is staying until Sunday night. This gives me a lot of free time to try and implement a system that I can try and carry forward.

So here's my goals for the next 4 days. By goals, I mean I physically will not allow myself to go to sleep until they are completed.

Today:

1) Write this blog. [x]
2) Record an Ivey League standard 200nl, 2 table session video, 40 minutes long. []
3) Watch at least 30 mins of a RIO video. Record thoughts in a blog. []

Each of Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

1) Watch at least 30 mins of a RIO video.
2) Record an Ivey League standard 200nl, 2 table session video, 40 minutes long.
3) Play 3000 hands of 200nl.
4) Write a careful blog summary of the day, featuring news, video thoughts, concepts, progress.

Here goes..............


Update: Watched 30 mins of Oxota's 500z review vid. He's very theory oriented in the PIO/ balance sense. He bluff raised a river in his first hand using 'the nut hand to bluff raise', but I was happy that I was decently sure it was going to fail, and it did. Just hacking his opponent's intuition, I was sure that his lack of raise on flop and turn, combined with his lack of PF raise just meant his opponent was going to see bluffs in a vacuum and little in the way of value. Villain ended up having set, but I felt that the line just wasn't credible enough to even make opponent fold the weak Ax that was his most likely hand.

I did like the 99 lead on 653r T 3way OOP in deep squeezed pot, but felt like the turn had to be a protection/ bluff more than protection/ value, and therefore plan should've been to jam river also. Having said that, I wasn't amazed at the PF call- feels instinctively like slightly losing $ VS two good players.

All in all, I'm happy that I was confident enough in my own ideas that I wasn't blinded or intimidated by his confident use of theory ideas VS my own common sense/ intution.

An Update

Where is the edge? This is not a rhetorical question, I know that my edge exists, but I'm at a strange period in my poker mindset and I want to write some stuff to straighten it out.

First of all, just an update on my 2016 results to date:

So going off recent evidence at least, I make money at poker. I just feel so......... empty at the moment. It's been a stressful 6 months or so, ever since going on a stag to Germany, overdosing on Red Bull, getting home, nearly getting sectioned and subsequently melting down poker-wise.

It meant that for living expenses, I had to borrow from my GF's business. This came at a bad time for the business, what with Christmas coming up and stock orders to pay for. The knock on effect was that the store was badly understocked going into Christmas, which meant much less sales than is usual, which meant less money, and so on and so on. All the while I'm playing poker trying to make up the shortfall, and also eat, and also move up stakes, all of which is a bad recipe for mental stability.

So yeah, we're here again, with tons of orders to pay for depending on my ability to conjure up at a heater worth $3-$4k at 100nl, an ability severely hampered by a weird combination of stress, low BR, and coming to fucking hate the game. To be honest, given these factors, I'm amazed I've done as well as I have.

I owe a mate (cheers Chris, pay you back soon bro!) $500 too, plus various court driving offences and various other shit dating from years ago. Shop orders for stock were looking at ~ £3.5k. Then mortgage, food, and actually breaking out of 100nl while stressed and undermotivated. FML.

Solution yesterday- borrowed £3.5k off my Mum n Dad, used to pay for all the shop orders. Woot, it's meant complete separation finally of my day to day pokering from the business, and finally a respite from all the stress. I mean, I still have to make money to live, but that's fine I've always done that, and I can live frugally if need be!

Strangely, and this has happened before, the disappearance of all the stress has left a feeling of emptiness and depression. Almost like my body is just like beat up, and just has to lay there a bit to recover. It's also made me realise that I have indeed 'paired' poker with stress, and so minus the stress I can actually see myself enjoying it again now.

I had a weird rebound yesterday though where I swear to god I just lost money on purpose, almost as if to say yersssss it's not the end of the world to spew off a buy-in sometimes. This act then made me quit and had me worried, but I think to be honest it just came from a combination of relief and being under-motivated.

Motivation is hard for me at 100nl, sorry if that comes across annoying or whatever. The game is just so mind numbingly dull. Actually, scrap that last sentence, it came from the very place of low motivation that I'm trying to cure. It certainly has APPEARED dull given the low quality of play, but I guess it was probably the life sentence of 100nl that was mainly doing my nut in. Now that the tantalising possibility of escaping it is floating in front of me, I can see myself getting interested again.

The main thing to remember at 100nl is that when something seems completely and utterly obvious, so fucking totally obvious that you can't believe that your opponent isn't aware of how galactically super obvious it is, then it is the truth. There is never any need to go an extra level and avoid making the big fold when someone turn check jams a rainbow board in a 3bet pot when his range is like, sets, for example.

Man that was another depressive style paragraph wasn't it? The whole point of this blog is to move away from that stuff, and so with that in mind I'm gonna talk about things I think are important in poker that people don't really talk about much, or ever.

So back to the point of the blog, where is the edge? Well, I have a dozen or so concepts that I think I understand better than other people, simply by virtue of me basing all my decisions around them.

*writes several paragraphs about technical things, gets paranoid about opponents reading it and raping me, deletes and writes this instead*.  But fuck it, it had the desired effect on me.

Cliffs: bring yourself back to now, again and again and again. Do it now, and now, and now. And now. Not the idea of now that exists as a thought bubble, but the literal undefinable now. And just when you think you understand now, and can get on with playing, IT'S A TRICK, so do it again. If any question truly needs asking, it is 'who is the one asking?'. From this place, technical concepts and ideas naturally flow, understanding appears, and before you know it we've right back into another hand, another moment. And now.