400nl Annihalation

The title sums it up. $6600 dropped there in around as many hands. Tilt has resurfaced and played a part, lack of physical fitness is again having an impact, and the sessions have been absolutely littered with technical mistakes.

Tilt and physical fitness I've taken care of today and I won't bore people with the details. It's so important to keep on top of both though, it only takes the tiniest amount of complacency for both to rear their heads and send me spiralling out of control.

I'm lacking a general gameplan at 400nl, and not being aware enough of recent obvious leaks that've crept in. For some reason, I feel only by writing about them here do I begin to cure them.

PF Spew - This has been huge. It just always creeps in after a while of not paying it too much attention. I guess I'll come up with a few HH examples of each point.

http://weaktight.com/3338554 - helloooooooooooo Dan???????!!!!!!!! Risk Reward??? Remember those two fucking words. 100bbs to win 10? Oh his 3betting range is wide? That's ok then....... ITS FUCKING NOT OK. His CALLING range crushes you, and he HAS IT way more often than he needs to in order to make a nice easy 100bbs decision while sometimes you pick up TEN.

http://weaktight.com/3338565 - same as above, you moronic backwards clownface.

http://weaktight.com/3338561 - you were tilted? Fold PF in this position with your recent history. Don't check jam with this risk reward. Don't play while tilted. If you must 3bet, fold to the 4bet. If you must flat the 4bet, CC the flop and decide turn and river. Basically just fall under a fucking bus before you do anything like this ever again.

Trust your instincts - No, really. Look, you don't do this thing to justify it to anyone else. There's no-one watching, no-one you have to look good in front of. Its absolutely no fucking good telling yourself that the call 'cant be terrible' when you know in your mind full fucking well that is indeed that. Stop being a station, make those big folds when your brain, sub consciously processing a myriad of information that your conscious brain is only a little bit aware of, comes back with a clear fucking answer that is FOLD.

http://weaktight.com/3338574 - I can forgive calling turn, as you were a little unsure. River is a stuck $3k call though, and by making it you reduce yourself to becoming that degenerate tosser loser that all your family think you are anyway.

http://weaktight.com/3338577 - ya ya ya. You can justify this all day in a forum. No one reading this even thinks it's that bad, good even. But you were there, you knew the villain, and you knew you were crushed on the turn. You knew. Dickhead.

http://weaktight.com/3338579 - Yes his line is bizarre, yes PF flop and turn are fine. But he gave away the strength of his hand on the river. You just knew, you were beat, absolutely stone cold factually beat.

Ok I'm done with the heavy berate-age, but you get the picture. There's a couple of other things I need to adjust at 400nl VS 200nl.....

PF Looseage- There's definitely much better regs here than at 200nl. They keep flatting your 86s utg raises, and 3betting them, and floating flops. I don't want to say tighten up as a general rule, but with those decent regs on your left, and with your current image, fold those unplayable hands. Oh and cbet less OOP too.

That extra level, and player studying- I'm definitely just getting pure owned in some spots that I wasn't at 200nl. In a lot of cases, I just need to go that extra level. Not in all cases though, but to identify those players where I have to step up my game I need to get back in the habit of reviewing all marked hands immediately post session.

Example of the above http://weaktight.com/3338592 - We'll call this guy Mr 400nl, and compare how he'd play the hand compared to Mr 200nl. VS Mr 200nl, I think he's just barrelling this card as a bluff because he sees it as an overcard to my PPs and doesn't see the vast majority of my range as floated Ax, which he really should. I also think he's betting all TT-KK again, because, like what else can you do? When Mr 400nl bets this card, I should be done with my hand as he's able to better read my range. Then on the river, I think Mr 200nl always just bets his Ax again, allowing me to fold, while giving up his hands worse than Ax and check folding a ton of TT-KK types.

So I need to stop getting owned in the above spots basically.

I'm going to make a 400nl video now. I always play better when I do, and hopefully someone (you know who you are) might watch it and correct some stuff or some of my assumptions.

Session Goals

• No PF spew
• Be aware of risk reward!
• Trust instincts, especially in the area of big folds and medium folds and folds in general.
• Look at player left to act, and tighten up PF accordingly.
• Review session hands properly and make informed notes.

Dan

Update and current thoughts..........

Hello ! I haven't blogged in a while, 'cos obviously I only blog when I'm losing and losing heavily, and of late things have been fine.

I managed to sneak into 5 figures for Feb with a late semi heater. I call it a semi heater because I changed a ton of stuff at the start of the upswing and I just overall felt much happier in how I was playing. I'll just outline some of the small and some of the drastic changes in overall gameplan I made........

4betting: I've scrapped the idea of not EVER doing it. Sorry Struiks for not getting back to you on your questions but I was basically undecided myself after a bit of gametime. The reason I'm 4betting again is that I've realised that there are a decent number of factors that go into having a high success % in doing it........

So, when I'd decided that it was basically a zero sum game, I was wrong. In basically all spots where we face a 3bet we can draw on timing, stacksize, position, inferred reads (polarised 3betting range etc), gameflow, stats (deliberately last) to accurately gauge whether villain will fold to a 4bet bluff or not. I left out of that list the level of the player, how they perceive you as a player, and what kind of player they are (without delving into animal types again, I'll list some: '12 tabling stats robot', 'alpha male whale', 'insecure monkey see monkey do' etc).

PF Looseness: Probably the biggest change in of itself. This next sentence is important. Poker, first and foremost, is about stealing the blinds! I started by looking at HEM, 'did raise' by position. Then I filtered for junk. I've always done well open raising from all positions, including highly speculative hands..............

So by virtue of the average 200nl Stars reg's inability to adjust, I'm back playing 29/27. Playing 12 tables, I'm almost on autopilot until the turn actually. My rinse/repeat is basically: raise PF, cbet flop, soul read turn and river. The soul reading comes back to what I've been saying about playing by instinct, which is still as important as ever IMO.

Don't Call: A simplistic way to look at it, but my HEM lifetime bb/100 for 3betting stuff, including junk, from all positions is exceedingly high. For flatting stuff, it is extremely meh. Unless OTB and definitely no light squeezers behind, I've just been 3betting or folding VS open raises. This means that if gameflow/ stacks/ player doesn't allow a 3bet with KQo in the CO, and I'm facing an UTG+1 raise, then I have to fold it. The same applies in the blinds.

I was up $3k this month at 200nl, but complacency had to set in eventually and I've been booted back down to $1.4k. I need a shot in the arm, and so I've decided to just move to 400nl. Initially less tables, but double the stakes will get me properly focussed again........

Is all!

dan

Bleh Blah Bling

No sooner do I win $3k in a couple of days, then I lose it all in the next 2 days. It's annoying that my confidence is so fragile that literally one bad session had it shattered, but I think until I stick 500,000 solid hands behind me then t'will always be thus.

Looking through all the big losing pots of the last few days, there's all the symptoms and hallmarks of lacking confidence. Outrageous spews, refusal to give up, 4bets flatted 100bbs OOP with small PPs, 3bet/ 5bets with no instinctive gut feeling that I'm getting a lot of folds.....

I can feel myself during gametime 'forcing' things as well. Making decisions for the wrong reasons, trying to fight the utter spew of the 200nl regs with utter spew of my own.

Basically, I need to chill the fuck out. Take the low variance option when I'm unsure. Be calm, soulread hands, capitalise on mistakes. For all the reasons I need to relax. When I'm not relaxed, I don't know how to play poker. My brain stops telling me what button to click. I take a wild stab, and on current form I'd be better rolling a dice as I don't think my success % has come anywhere near 33%.

For some reason as well during my troubles I've suddenly had trouble 12 tabling. Very weird, when I was winning it felt like I could play 20 tables without breaking sweat. I'm going to drop to 9 tables for a while. Theoretically my hourly drops by 25%, but I'd be shocked if my EV didn't rise by at least that amount to compensate.

Finish on a good note though which is rare for this blog. I think my A game makes me the best 200nl reg on Stars, and by a distance. I know what my A game involves, and I have the gist of how to play my A game. Before this crisis I was cruising to a 5 figure month, and if I follow these cliffs then I should do extremely well the rest of the month.

Be happy.

Chill the fuck out/ be relaxed.

Hate to lose.

Don't force stuff.

Soulread hands.

Trust instinct always.

Playing Deep..........

My month so far.....

A few weeks ago, I remember having some conversation about playing deep, and how comfortable I am with it as the AP games of old were all deep.

These stats suggest differently, and I think I need to face up the possibility that that I'm really misreading stuff in a lot of deep pots. Although I feel happy enough, and maybe I could just tighten up or whatever, I think I just have to start buying in for 100bbs and think about leaving tables where I approach 200bbs.

The chance that I'm wrong about being comfortable, and thus these stats actually being representative, comes to just too high a price.

This hand http://weaktight.com/3225986 is I think the last straw. I thought about it and went with my instincts, which PF, flop and turn were screaming weakness. River, it's hard to put me on a flush draw that check called down, and I infer from this he's more likely to bluff than say keep value betting AA/ set this strong.

Oh and PF's probably a fold obviously, but these are the scrapes I get into this deep, and there's just no need to put myself though the variance and potential negative winrate when I feel so comfortable 100bbs deep right now.

Some more deep disasters:

http://weaktight.com/3225993

http://weaktight.com/3225995

http://weaktight.com/3225996 - villain very bluff happy, potentially 3bet bluffing, but still I hated myself as I see raise getting in NNFDs as a huge leak for the most part.

So I'll set my BI amount to 100bbs for now, and maybe come back to an overall deep strategy later on.

_______

Oh and about that thread, I emailed FTP myself and got this reply:

Hello Dan,

Please also note that Poker Table Ratings is not permitted during play.

As you brought this issue to our attention, no action will be taken now. However, any repeat violations may lead to having your account permanently closed and any outstanding balance forfeited to compensate victims.

For more information on our policies about third-party software or website use on Full Tilt Poker, please visit: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/prohibited_programs.php

This link also contains a list of allowed and banned programs - if you are interested in using a program not listed, please let us know and we will confirm if it is allowed.

Please also note that as you are a black card member, you should email our dedicated black card support team: blackcard@fulltiltpoker.com in relation to any query - we aim to respond to an email within 30 minutes.

If there's anything else we can help you with, please feel free to ask. We're always here to help.

Regards,

Gearoid

Poker Specialist

Full Tilt Poker Support

Session Review # 2

Hands: 1924
Net: $219
EV: $55

Regardless of the small net, this was a successful session. Basically because in pots > 190bbs I lost $700, and made it all back and more in the smaller pots. I lost my head once all session and lost 200bbs, which I'm angry about but I believe is going to be the exception and not the rule.

In terms of generalities, it's important that my overall mindset remain one of calm and not try to push things too early. I was also very conscious of not making light peels, and I'm back in the routine of CRing rivers with value hands I don't think are good in the right spots.

My cliffs of how to win at poker right now:

3bet a lot
Stay happy
Trust instincts
Don't get in big pots and give up
Cbet a lot

INTENSITY
Oh, and be just a little tighter PF- 12tabling at 28/24 is not easy

So par for this session was probably around what I earned.

Next session now, 1250 hands......

Session Review 1

Hands: 935

Net: $-131

EV: $83

I'll start with the big pots, of the 4 200bb pots I played (losing 100bbs), one was badly played, one was a definite cooler (3bet pot AQ on KQQ), one was a big suckout and one was a PF flip AK losing to QQ

Of the ones I won, one was a fish spaz, one was a PF flip, one was a squeeze with 96s that made the nuts.

I'm sad at the big pot I played terribly, very terribly. May as well get it out there........

http://weaktight.com/3206851 need to bet turn, or as played fold river, or preferably bet flop and turn, and if checking turn don't bet river!

In terms of generalities, I'd say I didn't pay 100% attention to my instincts, and especially made too many loose flop peels with no plan to win the hand VS further aggression. I think I also need to seize on definite weakness more and not worry about my own lack of repping something.

Loose peels are the biggest thing I think, especially say, on the turn IP after I check flop with a GS and I'm then left making the worst (200nl) bluff ever on the river.

On the whole, I think I hit around par for this session, but I need to start sinking some birdies.

Goals:

• No loose peels
• Trust instincts and override the conventional wisdom

Current Things

A problem

Becomes a problem

When you lie to your friends

And, you lie to your people

Any you lie to yourself

...................................................

And only fools vultures and undertakers

Will have any time for you

________________________

Hard to know where to begin. Yesterday was a disappointing day, up 4 BIs after first 2 sessions, dropped 7.5 BIs on the last one. The session went on for too long, I was unaware of any dynamics for the vast majority of it, and I guess I was clicking buttons in all small pots and most medium pots waiting for big pots to develop.

http://weaktight.com/3206618 This hand I got wrong, and my opponent got right, though for all the wrong reasons. I've already gone into this hand deeply with someone on skype so won't do again, but the jist and lesson is that I need to stop putting my own thought processes onto others.

http://weaktight.com/3206623 Similarly, I have a hundred and 1 examples of this guy playing extremely weakly when deep. I mean literally he 3bets AA and pot controls J83r flops, or bets once OOP and checks twice.

Each to their own, but he's obviously very nuts or air here, where nuts cannot equal AK. But still, why do I even think him capable of running a bluff like this? Animal types! He's an afraid, terrified when deep, loss minimising scared weakling and I should treat him as such.

Anyway, I'm losing money in all smaller pots too, and my red line is dire which for me is usually an indication of something going badly wrong. My cbet has dropped to 55% again, and my 3bet down to 6%.

Too many tables? Indeed, but I think too many tables combined with a loss of purpose and a sense of inertia and a general lack of proper concentration are the biggest factors.

I'm going to try playing 1250 hand sessions and then review them on their merits, see how that goes. Goals and stuff, ratings and that. I think my general approach right now is the right one (listen to my instincts to make big calls and big folds and big value bets and big checks) but I definitely need to refine some problems, target some leaks, and generally berate myself a whole lot more................

dan