GrogBlog- In Depth Analyis

Monday, 12 September 2011

Sigh......... Going Nowhere

To honestly evaluate the last 3 months or so, I've done absolutely terribly. It's continuing this month as well, both performance and results. I play some amazing sessions, then for some reasons my performance levels just drop and I do all sorts of stupid stuff.

I had a fairly tilty session today (in retrospect). Clearly I was frustrated at having no spots and at having to CF so many big hands, but times like that, when your W$SD stat is hovering around 25 after 1k hands, are the times to really knuckle down and play even better.

I'm just pretty pissed off at myself at the moment which is why I'm writing this. Erm what else, I can 12 table I believe fairly comfortably, and until I move back up I think 12 is opitmal. What I can't deal with though are the exponential complexities associated with being 250bbs deep VS very aggro deep players on 4-5 of those tables, which is what happened to me today. I simply need to really control myself and buy in 100bbs deep where so many of my defaults are sound.

When I am playing well, I think I'm playing very well. I've returned to my long held notion (but occasionally ditched) that in order to get action, you have to give action. Slowly bleeding to death every session is not for me, and I'm much happier starting every session off extremely squeezy/3bet/4bet happy and having people take notice and make spewy adjustments. I also follow my instinct in spots that can seem fairly ludicrous, making huge folds and huge calls, but in terms of my mental wellbeing I only scold myself for not following my instinct, rather than making a technically incorrect play or whatever. Basically I'm saying that usually my instincts are spot on and so long as I trust them I'll be ok !

So goals going forward are........ trust instincts, avoid PF spew, don't play more than 100bbs, trust instincts, trust instincts............ I'll leave you with some interestingish non standard hands where I've just felt super confident in what I'm doing for some reason.

$1/$2 No Limit Holdem • 6 Players • PokerStars

Generated by weaktight.com.

UTG	PeXXeN	$123.90
UTG+1	MadAgenda	$216.60
CO	selma_x2x	$181.20
BTN	GROG	$225.30
SB	bmlm	$236.30
BB	TillerMaN	$410.15

Pre-Flop ($3, 6 players)Hero is BTN

1 fold, MadAgenda raises to $7, selma_x2x calls $7, GROG raises to $25, 2 folds, MadAgenda folds, selma_x2x calls $18

Flop ($60, 2 players)

selma_x2x checks, GROG bets $24, selma_x2x calls $24

Turn ($108, 2 players)

selma_x2x checks, GROG checks

River ($108, 2 players)

selma_x2x bets $104, GROG folds

Final Pot: $212

selma_x2x wins $209 (net +$56)
GROG lost $49
MadAgenda lost $7

$1/$2 Ante $0.40 No Limit Holdem • 4 Players • PokerStars

Generated by weaktight.com.

CO	ranayr	$2,124.60
BTN	memphis1847	$423.45
SB	GROG	$840.85
BB	MadAgenda	$248.30

Pre-Flop ($4.60, 4 players)Hero is SB

1 fold, memphis1847 raises to $6, GROG raises to $20, 1 fold, memphis1847 calls $14

Flop ($43.60, 2 players)

GROG bets $24, memphis1847 raises to $54, GROG calls $30

Turn ($151.60, 2 players)

GROG checks, memphis1847 bets $89, GROG goes all-in $766.45, memphis1847 folds

Final Pot: $1,007.05

GROG wins $1,005.05 (net +$164.20)
memphis1847 lost $163.40

$1/$2 Ante $0.40 No Limit Holdem • 5 Players • PokerStars

Generated by weaktight.com.

UTG	Blahdieblah	$200.80
CO	GROG	$200
BTN	bodymindarts	$220.10
SB	Faiv	$261.40
BB	bocai8	$244.25

Pre-Flop ($5.00, 5 players)Hero is CO

1 fold, GROG raises to $6, bodymindarts calls $6, Faiv calls $5, 1 fold

Flop ($22, 3 players)

Faiv checks, GROG bets $14, bodymindarts calls $14, Faiv folds

Turn ($50, 2 players)

GROG checks, bodymindarts checks

River ($50, 2 players)

GROG checks, bodymindarts bets $21, GROG raises to $89, bodymindarts folds

Final Pot: $160

GROG wins $158 (net +$48.60)
bodymindarts lost $41.40
Faiv lost $6.40

$1/$2 No Limit Holdem • 6 Players • PokerStars

Generated by weaktight.com.

UTG	GROG	$215.45
UTG+1	Fidel4Real	$200
CO	nanbuxian	$209.50
BTN	TheGambler85	$220.40
SB	FMDeKuip	$203
BB	kowski80	$168.40

Pre-Flop ($3, 6 players)Hero is UTG

GROG raises to $6, 1 fold, nanbuxian calls $6, 3 folds

Flop ($15, 2 players)

GROG checks, nanbuxian bets $10, GROG calls $10

Turn ($35, 2 players)

GROG checks, nanbuxian bets $42, GROG calls $42

River ($119, 2 players)

GROG checks, nanbuxian bets $88, GROG folds

Final Pot: $207

nanbuxian wins $204 (net +$58)
GROG lost $58

$1/$2 No Limit Holdem • 6 Players • PokerStars

Generated by weaktight.com.

UTG	GROG	$209.45
UTG+1	Fidel4Real	$206
CO	nanbuxian	$273.65
BTN	TheGambler85	$276.90
SB	FMDeKuip	$207.40
BB	kowski80	$95.90

Pre-Flop ($3, 6 players)Hero is UTG

GROG raises to $6, 2 folds, TheGambler85 calls $6, 2 folds

Flop ($15, 2 players)

GROG bets $10, TheGambler85 raises to $26, GROG raises to $52, TheGambler85 calls $26

Turn ($119, 2 players)

GROG checks, TheGambler85 bets $52, GROG goes all-in $151.45, TheGambler85 folds

Final Pot: $322.45

GROG wins $319.45 (net +$110)
TheGambler85 lost $110

Tuesday, 30 August 2011

Cautiously Good Start To 15 Tables

Well actually a very good start. I'm only cautious because I need to keep it going. I think on the whole I've been playing excellently, and the adjustments I've made have helped an absolute ton. I've got defaults in almost every spot, all designed for maximum ease of playability rather than optimisation.

I'll write more about this at some point once I have a very decent sample behind me, but for now I'm happy with my approach and session goals......

Saturday, 27 August 2011

16 Tables ???????

Stuck record I know, swinging back and forth between 'deffo cant 16 table me, not my forte' and 'oh ok one more try'.

I kinda feel like I don't have an option right now. This has been a slow month 6 tabling 200nl. My roll isn't big enough to play any higher. I'm up $1k or something with minimal rakeback etc. I need something to change to get back my hunger and motivation. I'm pretty poor in real life and need to earn some money so I can take that money and then earn more money. My medium term goal is still to get to 600nl-1000nl asap and 4 or 6 table.

My physical health has gotten better in terms of my poker concentration, thanks in a big way to changes in my diet, and then the discovery of the wonder vitamin B12........ B12 is something only found in meat, and being vegetarian I obviously lack it. It's super important for converting food into energy and concentration, and in just a few days of overdosing on it I feel much better.

Part of the reasons I've been unable to 12-16 table is my concentration, so hopefully this helps eradicate that barrier. I need to look at other obstacles and help overcome them.

Lack of defaults in a lot of spots - a big part of my problem mass tabling is that I try to play the same way I do 4 tabling. That is, I have to think about every decision. Whether to cbet a basic board OOP for example, or maybe this is a good time to slowplay AA PF. I have to develop low variance, non-marginal defaults in a lot of spots that are easily adjusted based on villain tendencies. Give up AT7ss with no equity CO-BTN for example, except when villain is risk averse and I can barrel off.

Inability to eradicate marginal spots - in so many marginal spots 4 tabling I take the high variance route. Say flat ATs to a tightish 3bettor BB-BTN for example. When mass tabling, I need an alarm in my head screaming 'MARGINAL' and to duck the spot. Marginal PF decisions lead to marginal flop turn and river decisions, all of which have to be dealt with by a much thinner 'bandwidth' of my brainpower. This should naturally lead to a tightening up of my PF stats. No need to flat 86s OTB to a UTG+1 raise 100bbs deep for example.

Concentration - I talk about this above, but this is something I'm going to have to constantly re-assess and focus on.

Subtle Tilt - It is WAY easier to tilt off when 16 tabling than it is 4 tabling. Reason being that my tilt obviously doesn't come in the form of open shoving or anything extreme like that, rather in those spots that are slightly -EV but higher variance I take the higher variance -EV route. One thing that I've found works in the past is to consciously 'reverse tilt' each and every time something annoying happens. Lose AA pf to 33, then I hit my 'reverse tilt' timer on my desktop that lasts 5 minutes. During this time the test for whether a marginal spot is +EV gets much more brutal. So ATo OTB to a 14% bb bettor gets FOLDED. Again this is just something I'll have to grade myself on.

100bbs - As we approach 200bbs I think the level of thought needed for each decision on each street increases massively. Do it right, 4 tabling, and you'll make more money. Do it badly, ie when 12 tabling, and you will lose an absolute ton. Thus, I need to avoid playing deep, and unless the spot is amazing leave the tables when I double up.

Reg Reads - I still of course think that making adjustments to players is super paramount. When 6-4 tabling I can get these reads in realtime and think properly about the adjustments. I'm going to have to spend some time after/before each session going through the hands of the previous session and making notes. Then, I need to have some default adjustments to common traits; risk averse, over aggro, PF 3betting tendencies etc.

I think the most important of the above is to fold the marginal spots very early. PF, with 3 regs behind, I just don't have to open 86s in the co. I just don't have to. Stars has a dealt rakeback method I believe, so if I get into the habit of being generally tighter PF and less marginal post, then I could quad up the amount of rakeback, quad up the amount of hands played, and only marginally affect the amount of brainpower I'm able to give to each decision.

Plan is to start off playing 1 hour at a time, and if successful to extend the length of the sessions.

I'll do a session review afterwards based on the following goals:

Eradicate marginal spots
Concentration
Tilt management through reverse tilt

dan

Wednesday, 17 August 2011

Session Reviews

Blah ........

I played 2 sessions. In the first, I had to abort hilariously after 9 minutes on account of my 'not light headed' rule. It's fine, it meant I won $78 instead of probably losing $1000 as per usual, but it is sickening how I can't quite my finger on the reasoning for it. I'm in the best physical health I can be (I know this from my footy playing), my diet has been superb of late (won't bore with the details), I'm drinking water, sleeping well, and showering before every session and STILL !!!

Some well played hands, here postflop is standard, but I think 4bet folding small VS this guy PF is super superior to flatting. Have a note that he flatted a 4bet with 87s, and he's only 3bet/5betting hands that crush me from these positions. I get the initiative, can rep more hands, don't get owned, etc. Just an example of a hand I play like this 6 tabling after some decent thought, but play in a shit manner 12 tabling.

Unfortunately I dropped $400 in some very very marginal/ bad hands. Here I lose around $100 every time I'm forced to call it off, whilst only picking up $26 the times he folds. So I need him to fold like 4/5 times. Now the reason I did it was because the btn had a 98% BTN open range, thus making a wide 3bet from the Sb more likely. His 3bet from that position in a vacuum was already 9%, but even given those variables I think 4/5 times is optimistic to say the least.....

This hand I have to put out there. Snap call PF, I assign weakness and wide range, decide he's FOS on the turn and go with it. Oops. Here's the thing about this hand, it's a really really subtle form of tilt. Seems like oh my god megatilt, but it's not. I timed, thought it through, decided to go with a sick read. Except I had no sick read except a strong feeling....... that is fine on it's own, but there is a part of me simply wanting to ramp up variance when a little stuck and I'm going out and I'm actually not light headed. This form of tilt may still be present, so it's important I slightly overcompensate on the careful side in order to avoid high variance 'sick' plays like this.

Here's another one. I could go into details, but essentially the hand is a 98% BTN opening range, that by the river has not changed very much at all. He would also pot control a lot of Ax along the way. I snapped the river as I do all my hero calls. I'm not too sad about this one.........

I'm not always wrong

So happy enough anyway, need to crack on and play another session, with an eye on playing the same but folding early in ridiculous call down spots, just to be on the safe side. Any decent read though and I'm obviously still snapping.

Just need to go through the hands and make notes, drink a coffee, and should be good to go.........

dan

Reset Of Sorts Needed

I've entered into a sort of poker malaise. As you can see my year isn't horrendous by any means, (although I've done much worse at 400nl than 200nl and so the recent downswing is sharper), but I've lost the impetus I had in the 3 months immediately after black friday.

I guess I'm currently coasting along, waiting for variance to reward me again, but not making any true effort to encourage it to do so. Sure, I put in hands whenever I can, but as I've said before that's the easy bit. The hard bit is to do stuff that doesn't come naturally, the stuff that can be a little tiresome and inconvenient, the stuff important for ME to do well.

I think I get pretty hung up on the 16 tablers. Especially the ones like Bruut who grind out 1.3ptbb winrates....... and make $600k a year. Maybe the day will come, when I have the bankroll and the financial room to experiment, where I too am this kind of beast. Right now massive flaws in my ability to execute strategy, apply theory, stay concentrated and stay tilt free prevent me from doing so.

So 6 tabling is my forte. God knows how many times I've written that sentence....... but still I find myself adding the odd little extra table where there's a fish, then 3 sessions later I'm again giving the full blown 20 tabling thing a shot, without any alterations to my strategy and without any reason why it would be different this time.

My problem is that 6 tabling 200nl, even with the winrate I think I'm capable of, doesn't make a stellar amount of money. I need to move up stakes, and have a clear plan to get to 1000nl+ asap. I think my 4 tabling game especially, where I am able to pay sick attention to detail is very good. I can see myself doing very well there, given a lot of similar regs play there.

But that's a pipedream so long as I'm winning meagre amounts of money, and withdrawing it. I've started to make a ton of leggo vids*, the plan is to live off this income and leave all the poker roll intact, the way all the 20 year olds in this world are able to do while living at home.

*note on leggo vids, I'm trying not to do any 'fillers', but rather ones that are a little innovative. I've a sb betting one coming out, a dual HU one with bobbo........ I'd like to do a leakfinder too but with the guy who's playing also commentating so it comes out like a coaching session. If anyone has any other ideas please shout me.

I also need to review sessions prior to the next session to get reads on regs and make myself able to infer stuff in gametime. I could also do with writing about poker a fair bit more, especially on the technical side. I need to do more session reviews basically.

Right, so I'm back on this whole skill of poker thing. He's the skill of poker as it applies to me.

It's my job to apply said skill. Barely any of it is about having technical poker knowledge. The word 'poker' to me from here on out comprises the above. I think my technical knowledge is really good, but if someone asks me if I'm any good at poker, I'll refer to this pie chart, evaluate my recent play, and give an honest answer. Getting good and staying good is hard but I think through experiencing a small amount of pain I can get there and stay there............

Sunday, 26 June 2011

Since Black Friday ..........

Since black Friday, I dare say the games on Stars have gotten a bit easier. Particularly during this WSOP where even the decent Euros are in Vegas, there seems to be a lot of fish and a lot of bad regs, albeit the hardcore of difficult regs including KingTenClubs, Gogols Nose, Flaggelator etc are still on every table.

Black Friday coincided with my decision to move back down to 6 tables.... whereas of late I have moved back to 9, the month or so of 6 tables really opened my mind to a ton of stuff I was doing wrong and am now doing right. (as an irrelevant sidenote, Jesus I have gotten so bad at writing !!!!! )

Anyway, I've done well in terms of winrate, and since spending the first 2 weeks of June splashing around in live Vegas cash games, I spent the 10 days since returning making all my money back and today crossed $10k for June.

Here are my results since Black Friday......

http://www.tessies.co.uk/giraffes.jpg

So running hot EV wise, but I would argue not particularly situationally...... and this is a small sample in the scheme of things obviously, but given the EV PTBB is 6.9 I should at least be able to hope with a high confidence interval that the true rate is around 3.5 or something..... if anyone has a link to that Noah article about winrates and variance please send !

Anyway, I put recent success down to (in no particular order, but probably all of super equal importance ).

Never playing light headed.
Quitting as soon as I'm not 'feeling it'
Having a super focus on regs. Not individual reads, I'm not really interested in those, but one or two reads from which I can infer their level in a whole range of spots.
Always ensuring I'm one level ahead, not one behind, not two ahead, and not on the same level.

So with the whole one level ahead thing, I've literally given up approaching poker in the 'general' sense. By that I mean I used to go in with a whole set of goals; 3bet more, or less...... cbet more, or less..... 4bet more, or less....... play looser, play tighter, etc.

So, I don't even know what my VPIP/ PFR is these days. I dare say on some days its 32/30, on others 22/18. I'm basically just reacting to each situation as it comes up, generally meaning I raise PF, see what my opponent does, then ascertain what level I put him on, then go one level further.

In practice, this can mean a ton of stuff. Ie, VS slightly winning regs I'll bet check bet every hand as a bluff and get 100% folds. VS the same opponent I'll check raise wet boards small and barrel off if flatted safe in the knowledge all nutted hands are getting 3bet. VS very good players, I'll flat sets on said wet boards and let them barrel off, etc. It's such a broad concept but just one I really feel I have the hang of at the moment.

A few fun hands to finish !