General Strategy Blog

I feel as though I've gotten very very stale at the moment. My mental game has been pretty good; I don't care about beats, coolers, or even mistakes. I quit when I'm a little tilted very easily, have a decent warmup routine, have my narrative present a lot and am decent at trusting my instinct. Strategy wise though, I feel in a bit of a slump.

There's part of me that feels it's a bad idea to have a 'general strategy', and that if we're truly present in each and every hand then the correct decision will come to us. Nevertheless, some decisions within poker are almost preprogrammed. I mean, it's certainly a good thing that these pre-programs exist, so as to free up mental space for other and bigger decisions, but sometimes this programming needs freshening up.

I feel at the moment as if I'm 'worked out' and not really surprising anybody. In addition, I've become very conscious of how poor my late position game has been, particularly BTN-BB where ranges are exceedingly wide. This situation is basically a HU situation and feels very unique from almost every other situation at 6max, but compared to HU we're at the disadvantage of not getting into a rhythm of playing the same guy, seeing how often he folds/ CRs/ calls one street to fold the next, etc. Occasionally I feel I have some strong ideas on the subject, but overall I don't think I'm doing as amazing there as I perhaps could be.

So I'm going to go over some areas of my game and get some thoughts down.

Late position, BTN-BB

What my instincts really want in this spot is a unique strategy, probably one considered quintessentially 'bad' in a game theory sense but which nevertheless has people confused a lot. At the moment, I sorta make it up as I go along. I'll cbet air sometimes, check it others, cbet top pair sometimes, check it others, cbet 2nd pair on a wet board sometimes, check it others yada yada. This leads to a rather split range whereby I'm not wholly confident in whichever option I choose because my range in that spot is not as strong as it could be.

To elaborate on what I'm talking about, I always feel like I want to choose a general strategy and load my whole range into it. For example, say I want to raise flops, then I feel it's best to be raising tons of stuff; sets on dry boards, top pairs, gutshots, overpairs, overcards etc. In BTN-BB, my heart wants me to be doing something like checking back 100%, or cbetting small a lot then 2xing turn, etc.

I can't really see anything that works as an 'all in one' strategy other than planning to check back the flop a lot, including top pairs and nutted hands. I think this probably has the most merit...... it means I can happily post oak bluff certain runouts, delay cbet, call turn and river leads, etc. Yeah. I like this.

STOP PRESS

After speaking to a very good player, I've decided to instead go the other way. This was in fact the way I was preaching to Stefan earlier, and that is just to be very aggressive but also super thin with value bets. I think the main reason swinging me the other way is the fact that in villain's shoes in the BB, I'd much rather face a passive btn than a fucking mental one. As the dude I was speaking to said, the trick is not to wuss out of value bets........ people generally want their value bets to be good a huge proportion of the time (same with bluffs) but some value bets should be made even if you feel you're only good say like 40-45% when called. Example might be A6 on 652 QK etc, it's just gotta be trebled.

So yeah, give up total airballs a lot, then 2 and 3 barrel a lot of stuff. I feel I've gotten much better at certain types of bluffs lately......... the kind of higher level bluff that doesn't work 100% but is more credible with a certain level of player.

Calls OOP/ Reverse Equity Spots

Caught myself playing this hand earlier today:

$2.50/$5 Zoom No Limit Holdem • 6 Players • PokerStars

Generated by weaktight.com.

UTG	hamanof	$901.16
UTG+1	visjeatwater	$769.24
CO	mustanggino	$447.50
BTN	TeamLeader29	$508.99
SB	RUNITSRANN	$599.61
BB	hero	$601.39

• Pre-Flop ($7.50, 6 players)Hero is BB
• 

1 fold, visjeatwater raises to $12.50, 3 folds, hero calls $7.50

• Flop ($27.50, 2 players)
• 

hero checks, visjeatwater bets $18.64, hero calls $18.64

• Turn ($64.78, 2 players)
• 

hero checks, visjeatwater bets $45.87, hero folds

• Final Pot: $64.78

• visjeatwater wins $107.85 (net +$30.84)
• hero lost $31.14

and as soon as I called flop I had a sudden realisation that I'd be doing far too much of this, calling OOP in horrendously bad positions. Often it's decent to CC more playable stuff when you know exactly what cards are getting barrelled, when you can pick up on betsizes etc, but in a spot like this we should be talking about either a preflop fold, flop CR, or flop fold. Really used to pride myself in not getting myself into such spots, but it's definitely crept back in. So I'm going to be really big on that from now on...... flop CR in the above spot doesn't rep a ton, but it's still going to get a lot of raw folds from most, or a float with Ax that then checks down. CC flop just makes everything so easy for our opponent, and overall I'm probably going to look to getting my flop CR back to around 20%.

Flatting 3bets and raising flop

A while ago, I started to minraise a ton in 3bet pots and it just raped the fuck out of all the meh regs. People just play very ABC to it, flat AKhi oop, 3bet small with overpairs and tptks, cap their range in obv spots and leave themselves open to a PSR bluff, etc. I think I stopped doing it as I felt I repped less, but basically I feel we need an aggro strategy in 3bet pots, as call call call might protect a bluffcatcher and value range, but doesn't leave a ton of room open for bluffs. When we go call call shove we get looked up a decent amount, etc. So yeah, I'm not going to 4bet anything so have all strong hands in my range, and look to do very well postflop.

Other Stuff

I'm going to stick with my general strategy of being very very solid preflop at 100bbs, and then 3bet like a 20% range or something IP when deeper. People play extremely straightforwardly deep at Zoom, and if anyone doubts this they should go play the regular Stars deep ante tables for a bit where the dynamic is somewhere near the moon and cold 4bets 5bets 7bets, postflop moves and light stackoffs happen seemingly every other hand. Checked out my results by stack depth the other day, over a very decent sample my winrate at stacks of 100-125bbs was only 1.3bb/100, while my winrate at deeper stackdepths (though about 1/3 as many hands) was much better. I have the pic actually:

So basically I do a lot better when deep, where the PF lagness is exponentially more effective. At 100bbs, the change to a more solid style is a recent one and one I'm happy with when there's so much less room to maneovere and really apply pressure postflop.

So yeah that's it for now. Hopefully this gets me back on track. Just need to not lose sight of the mental side, but I'll leave that for another blog.

Blog saver:

Major mental reset

How do?! Feels like it's been a while........... but suppose I only really blog when I'm failing in some aspect and feel the need to write it down and turn it around.

I've been doing pretty well since April 1 (until this month) when I resolved to just become a 100% devotee of mental game of poker. May as well throw the results out there, if only to help me regain a bit of confidence after a chastening few days!

The first 4 months above, I was super hot on all mental game issues. Yesterday I engaged in some brutally honest introspection, and it struck home to me just how bad my mental game has gotten in the last 4 months.

Having 'good mental game' doesn't just mean 'being calm' or 'not tilting'. Just being calm, or not tilting, is impossible without addressing the fundamental beliefs and core values that are at the heart of all tilt.

I realise that I've kinda gotten away with it in the past 4 months........ though not exactly I guess, as at present it's 4 months breaking even. During this time I've been paying 'lip service' to the mental game, telling myself and others that I have it, whilst not doing anything day to day in order to maintain it and correct erroneous thoughts.

I'll give a few examples....... say I sit down to play and I don't feel 100% right about it. Maybe there's something nagging at me from real life, maybe I'm slightly light headed and a bit hungry. Currently, I'd probably give playing a shot anyway, because there's no core belief stopping from me from doing so.

When mental game is good though, I walk away from the computer and have the complete belief that I'm actually earning money by doing so. This isn't tricking my mind or anything close to it, it's 100% truth. Money lost is money lost, and money not lost through good mental game is as good as money won. So your month ends up being more like heater heater heater heater, actually legit downswing, heater heater heater and you end the month up 40BIs instead of the 10 you would've won.

Think about how a typical month goes if you're a winner. Something like, heater heater heater, downswing, downswing, heater heater, downswing. Well, I'm a big believer that 'variance' (in the sense that all variables such as player ability and mental state stay the same) is overstated, and the variance in your months comes largely from the variance in how you play and the difference in your mental state. I had so very very few losing sessions in those first 4 months, simply because I 'knew' I was going to lose before I even started, and felt a real buzz in walking away and going for a run instead.

This obviously also goes for being tilted mid session. Bit annoyed about something? Then boom, quit and you've just earned yourself a ton. And you don't even have to sit and grind to earn it! You can load up the wire, and you're sitting watching and printing the reciprocal dollars that every other reg is burning in the same spot.

To further prove my point about variance being overstated, when was the last time you played tilted and actually won? (from the point of being tilted). What I realised last night is that I've probably played like 400 tilted sessions in my life....... and I can't remember winning, literally, any of them! If variance was such a factor, then you should get away with being tilted from time to time and still come out 4 BIs up or whatever. Just never happens. Ever.

---

Another example......... you know when fish in a casino go on about how AK always loses for them, and you sorta do an internal eye roll at their stupidity. Well, this is in fact a mental leak. A really obvious and easily understood mental leak, but a mental leak nonetheless.

Now, when on top of my mental game back in June, other poker players in my Skype groups would come out with the pro-equivalent stuff like 'OTBaron runs so hot constantly', or talk about their own short term wins and losses, or post bad beats or coolers........ and I can remember doing the exact same internal eye roll as I would do for a casino fish. Probably more pronounced in fact, cos this shit is coming from actual professional poker players........ who don't seem to understand that bad beats happen and will happen again, and will very likely clump together in twos or threes from time to time.

That kind of chat is very common in skype groups, and hasn't gone away. Have I been having that same reaction to it though? The answer is no. I've become absorbed in it again, and maybe even posted my own hard luck stories. I don't believe doing so is compatible with not giving a fuck when your AA loses to JJ pf the 2nd time in a session. When mental game is good, then mental leaks in others and how they're going to affect them are instantly noticeable. My plan is to get back to that.

---

So yeah, I need to turn around this mental oil tanker, keep reminding myself and affirming this stuff until my unconscious brain actually believes all this stuff again. I'm very close to it now actually just from writing this blog.

Next step is to play a very short session and grade myself only on the quality of the play, not the $ won. (Which I've been obsessed with for the past 3-4 months). Think about mental issues before and after, and slowly build up my session time until I'm playing really well again.

That's all. If Dodgy is reading this, then let's arrange something to do with watching some of the Ashes together!

Bye, Dan

Mental Stuff for the Day

I'm up and ready to get my mental brain in gear and play some good sessions. Being mentally aware though, I'm aware of my thoughts, and I can recognise some faint areas of tilt to do with money lost recently etc. Injecting logic would typically say that 'no money has been lost, only invested in your edge', but it doesn't feel like that given a lot of it was likely spewed off with poor mental game.

So instead I think the logic is more along the lines of 'that particular downswing wave was always going to happen, the apparent free will that makes it seem that you caused it is an illusion as you were so mentally poor, and literally the only thing you can ever control is the present moment'.

I can still tell though that if I were to lose money today in this frame of mind, I'm going to be tilted by it. Kinda weird, it's like my brain is locked and won't come loose. I guess I need to do a bit of a mental warmup, perhaps watch some of the leggo vid of mine that just went up or read some old mental blogs.

Part of the skill of 'the mental game', is that if I'm not feeling it still in a little while, then I at least need to not play until the issues are resolved.

Actually, writing is perhaps helping. Getting sad at money lost is clearly crazy, and indeed I can almost feel myself loling at it now I think about it.

I'm going to go through some forum hands, watch a bit of a vid, and then play a session where I record my thoughts in a mental hand history again.

A Mental Hand History

This might not actually be a mental hand history. I don't know exactly what they are............ I do know though that keeping a log of my mental state in that session was extremely eye opening and useful. Because I was so focussed on the mental game, I was able to pick up when my mind drifted pretty quickly. Anyway, here it is in chronological order.....

Black screen- felt alright, just a wave! - This was about the fact that 20 seconds into my session my screen crashed, went all black while I heard all my tables timing out. I was in a 3bet pot with an AK hand and I was able to be aware of simmering feelings of annoyance, but shining the light on them made them seem pretty lol and thus go away. I was just like, oh man this is just part of the wave of poker, stuff like this happens to everyone! Smiley face!

Distracted by holiday - Felt my mind wandering to Nic going on holiday to France, and the chances of me going. Lol'd at myself for having such a wandering mind and was able to get my mind back focussed.

Maybe shoulda bet river with JJ, aware of some mistake tilt - Certainly aware of some mistake tilt where I underbet turn on a Queen hi board with JJ and shoulda vbet river IP VS TT. This time lasted a little longer than the other times, but injecting logic 'mistakes happen, and it's not a big one anyway' helped me get over it fairly quick.

KQs hand, he cc cc flushdraw, some tilt based on outcome lol - Some dude went CC CC as the PFR on 876ss with KQs and rivered a flush VS my flopped straight. Initial annoyance at the outcome quickly faded though when I became aware of it, and injected logic that this was basically a well played hand by me and perhaps even him.

Felt mind wander slightly about dude who cc down - as above, wasn't annoyed by it at this time but was definitely still considering the hand. Injected logic whereby I mentally filed the hand so as not to think about it any more.

Had good mental game facing a CR with tt on 764 or whatever, folded - I cbet and got CRd ep-bb with TT on 764, and was real happy that I was relaxed enough to come up with an immediate answer and not get annoyed. 'annoyed', lol. What is there to get annoyed about? This is poker, difficult situations happen. What I shoulda done to be even better would have been to see this as an amazing opportunity. Looking back now I can see that it was one, and I think I made a good decision. Basically, some people would have 88 99 55 here to make it easier to play, but this guy wasn't the type and so felt like a fairly easy fold of either being crushed or like not too far ahead.


Mind wandered to Sauce vid, caught it tho! - mind started thinking of Sauce's run it once vid. Not anything useful, was just like 'man why did Sauce need to have his face on it at the start?'. Good mental game resulted in me catching it tho and getting it back to poker.


Felt really good with k6s hand-  just a hard to play hand, but was so tuned in and relaxed that I played it really well and pulled off a decent creative bluff in a bit pot

Mind wandered to holiday lol - caught it tho!


had good mental fortitude to lead in the AK hand - basically CCd AKdd and turned a flush, and didn't just auto check turn but lead turn and won all the money cos he spaz jammed. Again, just happy to be so relaxed and tuned in.

Found mind wandering when winning a lot, felt like had to call it a session - was aware of winners tilt, and afraid to lose money back. Definite mental weakness, but not one I'm going to be super bad on myself on when the alternative is sometimes to play on when tilted and lose. Ideally of course, I'd notice the said tilt and get my mind back on the present.

Felt like checking results, decided against and felt good about it - certainly won a few BIs in the session, and tempted to check results as I have been doing for a while now. Resisted though, 'cos 'anything won or lost in the short term is just an illusion' and thus only negative things can come of knowing short term results.

Right that's it, that was fun. Definitely an amazing exercise if ever you feel you have tilt problems, just helps with becoming aware of them, and with awareness should come the death of them, or something. Going to play another session now and be all about the mental game again.

Mental Update

I'm here to talk about how my mental game has been TERRIBLE of late. Well, the past month and a half anyway.

As an aside, my writing has 'gone' atrocious as well. I swear to god I used to be pretty fluent and could write in a way that didn't sound all disjointed and, well, written by a 9 year old trying too hard.

Anyway, back to my terrible mental game, evidence of which I can see right at this moment as I rush to finish this blog so I can get back to playing with a mental fish's outlook and probably lose a ton more money.

If I was asked to describe the nub of my mental problems at the moment, I'd say I don't exactly feel 'relaxed' as I'm playing. I can certainly convince myself I feel relaxed, but I find my brain constantly taking itself off on a journey away from poker, or at least the things that are important. My mind will slightly drift, I find I've 3bet KJo oop to a good player deep. Flop comes J94ss and I check call a 3/4 bet. Uh oh, and then typically spend the next 2 streets berating myself for auto pilot 3betting it in the first place.

Certainly all my problems could be solved by being more 'present' in the Eckhart Tolle sense, but until I've mastered that art I certainly need to learn to deal with my thoughts in the way that Jared Tendler would advise in the more mainstream way of dealing with tilt.

Actually on that, I guess I don't need to become amazing at the Eckhart stuff (by the way, if anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about, read 'A New Earth' by Eckhart Tolle, it's the key to happiness (promise)), rather I suppose just 'noticing' my tilt thoughts as they occur goes a long way towards solving the problem.

Just had a read through some old mental game blogs; this one http://grogheadflowanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/april-results-going-forward.html I think is really good and helpful, and illustrates the kind of mindset I need to work to achieve again.

I suppose, (sorta a lightbulb moment) that the main aim of this blog, and the key to playing well consistently, is to make the mental game and the nuances of it 'THE MAIN THING' when going about my day to day poker business. My thoughts have certainly strayed before into thinking things like; the technical aspect of my game is letting me down, or like oh I'm not winning 'cos I'm not being aggressive enough or I'm not calling enough or I'm forgetting to do XYZ. The truth is, now that I'm a bit calmer, that if my mental game is spot on then I'm going to be at least a small winner in any 2-5 game.

Basically what I'm maybe saying is, that any technical improvement will only yield fractions of bb/100 in the long term, whereas mental game improvement is actually hugely beneficial, probably at a guess a difference of around 10bb/100 and that's not exaggeration. I'm not even talking about huge tilt monkey vs Zen master, more like average reg who doesn't pay attention to it and when tilted loses at 4bb/100 VS the same reg who works on his mental game and suddenly in the same situation manages to still have an expected winrate of 6bb/100.

So yeahhhhhhhhh, I'm all about the mental game from now on. Technical stuff will come to me in game when I'm super mentally zoned in.

I love writing blogs, I could never have unearthed these thoughts without writing them down. Mad eh?

I just realised something else....... I've got a big (internal, I don't generally smile to myself) smile on at the moment at this realisation. Basically, a lot Eckhart Tolle's teachings are about how noticing things within yourself makes them die and disappear. So like, once you notice your ego in certain situations, the sheer ridiculousness of it becomes apparent to you and thus it falls away and you become more present.

What writing this stuff down has done is much the same effect on me. Just the thought about getting upset about losing a flip, getting coolered, making the odd mistake is (I've just realised) just so SO ridiculous that I can feel it dying away even as I write this. Poker should be seen as basically a wave that your ride, and the skill is in riding the bad waves as well as the smooth ones. In fact, riding the bad ones is way more important than riding the good ones, and as such each 'bad' situation is an amazing opportunity (one that happens with the same frequency to ALL your opponents) to make a quality long term decision unaffected by mental noise or anguish or loathing of the past or fear of the future.

So that's my goal right now, to get to a place where I see a bad situation as an AMAZING opportunity. Can you imagine the mental power in actually thinking that way? And the best thing is, it's not a delusion, rather; the standard way most people think is the delusion.

I'm one tabling the shootout WCOOP at the moment, but after that I'm going to play a session and record all my mental thoughts about it here in the comments, or maybe the next blog I dunno.

Edit: Making a new blog entry having played the session

Thanks for reading........ woooo this is exciting!

Update/ Getting back into it/ Getting back intensity

Can't remember when my last update was, but likely since I last wrote anything I had another good month in July, $18k or some such + rb. Since then I've felt EXTREMELY poker lazy. I had a 5-10 session at the start of the month, got slowrolled by Average Greg for $3k pot, and if I'm honest wasn't in a good mental place to deal with it. Dropped $5k that day, then somehow ground back up in a couple of swingy 5-10 sessions to be up $1k or something this month.

Spot the errors in the above paragraph........ virtually all of it! Especially mentioning monetary amounts........... ESPECIALLY in a period as short as a day. I suppose I'm doing it to illustrate a larger point though, namely that I've had really poor mental and thus technical game all of August so far.

I haven't 'wasted' the time. I've got very drunk very often, played a ton of golf and snooker (aspiring snooker pro is my new part time obsession) and watched tons of cricket. The cricket matches I've been watching last for 8 hours per day, and 5 days. There's been 4 such matches so far, with 6 left between now and January. So that's taken 20 days of my life thus far, with like 30 yet to lose, never mind all the one-day matches in between.

So yeah, in between snooker, golf, footy 5 x per week, girlfriend, dogs, parents; poker has taken a back seat. The times I have played have been meh and sorta just been going through the motions. What I'm here to put down in paper though is that I don't think it's really possible (for me) to do poker part time. It has to be the main thing, with other stuff coming second, and with almost equal time devoted to hand reviews, reg reviews and mental reviews.

I think pre-session reviews of previous sessions are really important. They keep you on top of any mistakes that might be creeping in, but more importantly feed into your unconscious specific things about regs and how they play/ think, and then gets you thinking how this impacts other parts of their game. I really doubt there's much of an edge at all in playing a standard 'one size fits most' style at 2-5, especially when it's not late at night. The edges for me come in the little details that swing huge pots our way, and these details are only accessible through being extremely attentive either pre or post session, and in being relaxed enough in-game to be able to access our unconscious and thus these reads and thus give us the correct answer.

Anyway, this has gotten me back in the correct mindset I think. Time to play, take time on decisions, have fun, relax, be aware of the forms of tilt, and then review review review.

Goals Update

My mental game has somewhat slacked this month, both in terms of motivation and application when playing. I've been feeling EXTREMELY lazy, like I always do when I've been on a good run. Lots of life stuff is clicking into place though so hopefully now I can start applying myself some more.

On the mental side when I am playing, I've been too results oriented. This leads to all sorts of well documented complications, and I need to break this habit right now and get back on evaluating sessions based on quality of play.

A few technical things, and then I'll set some mental goals. I don't cbet very much these days, but 33 is still too low. Granted there are plenty of situations to check and win the pot later, but without a super clear idea for doing so I need to just be pretty unbalanced and go for the cbet. My 4bet stat is incredibly low through slowplaying PF, but people won't realise the 2nd part and simply think low 4bet = strong 4bet, so I need to start throwing in more 4bet bluffs. Finally, I'm probably being too loose with a few blind flats at 100bbs, things like 96s 3way I should only be flatting with a good reason..... fish involved and what not. In the BB, I should really up my 3betting to include loads of polarised stuff, K3s and the like. Finally, I'm probably folding a little too much to barrels when I should just apply GTO to a lot of spots where I'm unsure and be happy about it.

So yeah, cbet a bit more, 4bet a bit more, 3bet the BB a bit more have the mentality of winning pots, slightly tighter when calling PF. GTO calls when unsure.

Mentally, I need to remember to relax...... easier said than done, but a good way is to make sure that I take several seconds over most decisions, breathe a few times, make sure I'm taking in every detail, and then finally talk through the hand in my head like I would do in a video and apply all the 'snap' handreading stuff. I also need to trust my instinct virtually always, especially when I'm super relaxed.

So, mental goals, take time over decisions, relax, do the snap handread, trust instinct 100%.

I'm going to just play a short 20 minute session to grade myself on, review the hands, and hopefully get back onto a crushy path.