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 :-)

Update, and fear again

I've had a clear moment of poker enlightenment today pertaining to my mental game. I woke up, played, and was quickly stuck my usual 4 buyins. I stopped for a break, and for the first time I became fully aware of what my thoughts had been telling me.

'You're no good, everyone knows what you're up, everybody is so solid you can't make money, you play so predictably, other regs laugh at you and how you play'.

That last one is really the big one for me personally........ I haven't ever really heard others discuss it though so maybe it's unique to me. I think it probably stems from when I first joined Leggo, hit a big downswing, and was catching lots of lols and abuse in chat at how I played.

For some reason I took it all to heart, and I guess never really shook it off. Ever since, despite some decent winning spells, I've never really recaptured the confidence that I once had- the kind of deep confidence where doing stuff other people considered 'bad' in hands is almost a badge of honour.

I think for a decent while now, without realising it, one of my main poker priorities has been to not look stupid. Especially to the better players. In doing this, I've allowed myself to get run over, not run big bluffs, play straightforwardly with the odd spaz, and ironically probably lost much more of the respect of that type of player. I've been called a huge nit more than a few times.......

Anyway, back to my old friend cognitive behaviour therapy. It's something I learned to beat anxiety in the past, and what this poker fear is, is clearly a form of anxiety. I wrote out some affirmations, twanged an elastic band on my wrist, read them out several times, and before long was filled with complete determination not to let fear, any fear, be a factor in hands ever again!

3 hours later I'm 10 buyins to the good, with almost every big hand being fucking mental. I basically went to war, went with my first instinct 100%, and tried to really think about each spot and play as creatively as possible. I remembered that there's tons of scope to be creative with sizing- people have their ranges set up to deal with normal sized bets, so small bets and river overbets really fucks with people. Noticing our opponents' sizing is huge too, whether they are repping polarised or depolarised in certain spots, etc.

But anyway, the important thing is that I felt really happy playing again. Poker has been a chore for so long that I'd forgotten why I first enjoyed it. Read my very old blog grogheadflow.blogspot.com and there's so many fun and creative hands in there......... because I was fearless. I think I can now get back to that consistently.

Some fun hands from today:

Hand 1 - just kinda lol really, tough to explain other than his flop check weakens his range a shit ton- and I'm then obviously facing a polarised range on the river.

Hand 2 - I didn't believe his flop size into two wide players, IE with a set he'd bet smaller, so flop CC is to basically improve or CR turn. On the turn size I felt more disbelief and knew I either beat QT AQ AT type hands or can make tons of stuff fold on the river. No fear! This is actually one of the guys I was talking about whereby I've always had a complex about looking silly VS him, while he rapes me day in day out ha.

Hand 2a - Same player- again noooooo fear :-) . Logic of the hand is basically that he doesn't expect me to bet small with trips on the turn, so sees a capped range and does the usual high stakes reg thing of going ballistic. I thought me might lead turn with 6x a lot though, and just sorta read the situation well.

Hand 3 - Av it.

Hand 4 - Wouldn't stab Kx on the turn because it has showdown value. Then tries to rep either it or two pair. I'm not having it.

Hand 5 - Wide fish. Again, not having it, fear is the only reason to fold given his range (weaker than Jx checks, etc).

Hand 6 - Felt there was room for creative sizing here, so much of his range is mid pairs given original raiser is a fish, so felt like betting small for a bluff would be cool, then have to call off VS the spaz factor.

Hand 7 - A sorta semi fish, and a moral victory :-). I should fold, I suppose, was sure he had QJ though!

Hand 8 - Similar line to the AQ hand earlier. I get 55% folds on the turn CREV says, which goes with my gut feeling at the time. Sets and two pair insta get in the flop, leaving AAs and AsKo, and very rare flopped flushes. Mostly AQ and JJ just folds.

Hand 9 - Just a fun hand. PF is cool too, such a battle of wills to see who is going to have the capped range. I actually 4bet KK EP-BB today very deep too VS ElusiveMark. He 5bet and I stuck in a 6bet, intending to fold to a jam. I think that way I lose the minimum VS AA and still keep in all the weaker hands. Plus I want more credible 4bet bluffs.

Finally, I've been getting abuse off this guy since forever, so because I was feeling playful decided he needed slowrolling. Devastation though, he got there the first run, leaving me sweating the 2nd one really hard, ha.

Year to date results, mental and technical update

Yo!

May as well start with a year to date graph that will show the context of the blog to come.

So yeah, overall certainly not the end of the world, but also not exactly setting the world on fire. I'm about 5 days behind SNE pace which is fine now I'm 6 tabling, hourly without VPPs is $54, and if I sustained the winrate all year I'd be on for a $165k year with SNE.

And yet! The breakeven stretch is coming close to 250k hands. I finished the back end of 2014 and started 2015 very strongly and felt, and do feel, that I'm capable of so much more.

For the most part during the break even stretch, I've played fairly consistently- I would judge both my mental and technical game during the period as being something like 6/10, with 10 being the very best that I am capable of with a little application. I guess what has happened is the affliction common to all SNE grinders; I've caught the virus of 'VPP chasing' which comes at the expense of perfection.

Re-phrased, I think I've thought that 6/10 is going to be 'ok'. And by ok, I mean better results than in that sample. I've been waiting and waiting for the uptick to return me to the mean of at least my long term 2bb/100 winrate, but at this point I don't think it's ever going to come, not playing this way.

So yeah, neither my mental nor technical game have been very bad, nor very good. Technically, I'm typically not making a ton of obvious mistakes, but not doing anything wonderful either. When I'm playing well then somewhat unorthodox calls, bluffs and folds happen fairly regularly. At the moment, I'm just sorta like 'flat 3bet, flop J85ss, call flop, turn Ks, fold turn with TT, next hand' which is obviously all fine, but there's no X factor there, no tricks or decent handreading or fucking with people, or feeling in any particular spot that 'yes, THIS is where my edge lies'.

There's loads of details in poker that get missed. Almost an infinite number, but I'm talking about all the low hanging fruit type ones that rarely get mentioned in videos and take a bit of effort to process ingame, thinks like betsizing VS PSR. Maybe high volume just means I can't go super duper spidey sensey in every hand, but I'm not buying that just yet. It's certainly the case that if I 1-tabled I'd expect to win at a very high winrate, so doing the same at 4 or 6 tables is just a case of finding a way of repeating that ability at high frequency.

I've always talked about brain 'bandwidth', which is basically the processing power of the mind. One tabling, tilt free, we'd have the most bandwidth ever, and our decisions would be the best we are capable of.

Six tabling, the bandwidth is spread much thinner, so it's much more important to be tilt free so your mind is not occupied with unrelated, non strategy related stuff. To that end, I can improve my tilt control- I simply need to be more aware of the types of tilt and get back into the habit of constantly injecting solid logic in order to nullify them. For example, playing a bad river call over and over in our head is our mind basically wasting energy trying to solve a problem that simply doesn't need solving right now, because the hand is over. Saying to yourself though 'some mistakes are fine, we'll review after the session' puts an end to the problem, and frees up that vital brain bandwidth re-focus on solving whatever poker hand is happening at the time.

There's another huge way for me to free up brain bandwidth though, and that is to have a lot more defaults on earlier streets, when the pot is small. What is happening at the moment is that I'm doing too much thinking in game, on all tables, across lots of different types of flops and turns. So many of these spots are very repetitive, and can definitely be simplified such that no brain power is really needed.

When brain power is truly needed is in those medium and big pots where it's likely we're going to be swapping 100bbs one way or another. Those spots are huge for our winrate, and doing consistently well in them is difficult when I'm in 3 other single raised pots deciding whether to cbet in a very common, BTN-BB spot.

Things like what to cbet BTN-BB, what size to take, whether to check or bet, are very very very common and I'm wasting a lot of brain power on them.

I'll run through some common spots now and get some defaults down.

BTN-BB - definitely pretty crazy that I spend so much time thinking about this spot in-game. The jist of the spot is that I minraise, so BB's range is extremely wide and weak. I waste thinking time on whether or not to cbet, whether to barrel, and what size to take. This stuff is all fairly easy to get down: I'll cbet depolarised, so all pairs, and mostly be betting the turn too. I'll chose one of 3 sizings, 50%, 66% and 75%, depending on the wetness of the board. t44r is 50%, t82ss is 66%, QJTss is 75%. In terms of bluffs, I'll cbet anything that can bet the turn most of the time. On dryer boards, this might mean QJ on t44r. The other boards, just kinda common sense stuff. If we check and it checks through, we take our weak equity hands and delay bet, and leave pure bottom of range for post oak rivers. Anthing else on the flop, check!

Flop OOP spots as the caller. We flat and face a cbet. We're OOP, do we cc or check raise? Well, as a default I'm just going to solve this by never check raising flops, and going for turn check raises instead. The spots to do so should be fairly obvious- we have equity and can't check call. If flop checks through, we'll be bombing turn with all equity stuff, bombing med- strong value too (bomb = 75%), and leading 2nd pairs to med value at a 66% size for protection. Protection bets are only made when there are some worse hands that can call, thus shoring up the value element of the bet enough to make it profitable.

Flop OOP spots as the cbettor. If we have equity to continue, then I think I'm just going to have definitive plays depending on board texture. Type 1 and type 2 boards (very dry, and medium dry) are getting cbet, while type 3+ boards are getting checked with everything. It sorta follows that if we're cbetting type 1 and type 2, that our range when we check is going to be very weak and therefore not delay stabbing very much at all. I expect our cbet % HU for the type 1 and type 2 boards though to be pretty high, so this is not a big factor. Again, cbetting range is top pairs+, and hands that can barrel often. On the type 3 boards when we check, we can go to town with CRs and delay bomb bombs given the uncapped nature of our range.


So the above accounts for the most common spots I'm talking about that currently eat up brain power. What this should do is free up creativity in other spots allowing me to think more in the medium and bigger sized pots, this should lead to running more bluffs, more decent call downs, that kind of thing.

I'm tired from writing this, but I think I'm going to have to start blogging some hands to keep up my technical sharpness. So, I'll have a rest then put up another blog with hands, or maybe just update this one.

Fear, and other stuff

Hello!

It's the 17th, and I'm a day ahead of SNE pace, yay! This is a new record for keeping it up, beating my old one of, er, the 2nd of Jan or something.

I've been winning pretty hard too, playing very well up until maybe a day or 2 ago where I've had a slight wobble. Much of that was mental stuff, a few fears crept in and stuff playing on my mind- not answering peoples' skypes, kept promising Ivey a video (not Ivey himself, he doesn't know who I am), etc- so I got up today and sorted all that out. I've also found myself slightly stuck in a few technical spots, perhaps forgetting exactly how to approach them.

I'm helping a friend win at poker tomorrow, so I thought this would be a good time to write an extended blog post about what I think are the key ingredients to crushing poker in 2015. The year when poker is supposed to be solved, but where all but the top 6-7 regs at 500nl still make big mistake after big mistake. I would theorise that poker simply isn't going to get any harder than this, and it's still really beatable for loadsa money. Yay.

Fear and Implentation

I've grouped the first topic into two, because I think they are very linked. Basically, what is discussed in 99% of poker conversations is poker theory, poker strategy- and it is taken for granted that if you know the correct theory, then this will always be implemented. For years, I read the strat posts of high stakes crushers, decided that we barely differed in our skills, and felt sorry for myself that my results didn't reflect this.

But actually implementing your strategy is a world away from actually knowing it. I've always known this, but had a decent epiphany a couple of months ago when I realised that the #1 obstacle to implementing our strategy is always some sort of fear.

Sweating other people for example, I would seemingly never be in difficulty giving answers. Why would I be? I was not identified with the outcome in either a monetary or 'I look so stupid' sort of way. As such, I could easily recommend big calls and big bluffs, and know in my heart of hearts that they were printing money.

Switch back to my own session, and I'm back 'playing it safe', with the odd spewy counter swing to this realisation to prove that I'M NOT SCARED.

I'll list a few common fears here: fear of losing (so our pride takes a dent), fear of our bluffs getting called so we look silly, fear of our big calls being 'spewy', fear of not being able to play for a living, fear of losing to some guy we hate, fear of being judged by some reg that we respect, fear of losing the winning session that we hold after a few minutes playing, fear of making mistakes etc etc.

How this fear manifests, is that it 'disguises' itself as your friend. This might seem far fetched, but I promise you that it isn't. And because it's your friend, it steals all your attention away from the important aspects of a hand: combos, position, sizing, balance, unexploitability, handreading and refocuses that attention to stuff that literally has NOTHING to do with the actual skill of playing poker. Let's take this hand as an example:

http://weaktight.com/7311603

This might seem pretty weird and unorthodox, but I wanted to call this river. We always bear our own balance in mind, but first and foremost we look for imbalances in others. In this spot, he polarises his range on the river, leaving him a range of 2pair+ (containing an ace), and all his missed draws. I had a note on this guy that he'd made an unbalanced raise at some point, which tells me he's going to be unbalanced in general, and as such we can go into exploit mode.

He raises a very wide range in that spot PF, bets all his flushdraws and straightdraws on the turn, and doesn't have to be bluffing anywhere near all of them on the river to make this a call. He also might have some other rando airballs I stoved it afterwards and we make 8bbs, which is huge.

But at the time some fear had crept in somewhere. I'd made the odd mistake, and this was nagging away at me. So in the moment, instead of counting the combos, thinking through the hand logically, I turned my attention towards the fear. It said, 'don't be stupid Dan', ignoring every other instinct which (as it turns out, correctly) was saying call. I thought 'don't be stupid Dan' was my friend, but it never is! So recognition of these fear thoughts is the main step to eradicating them. Whenever you're in a hand, thinking through stuff, we have to be aware enough to sort the strategy stuff from the bollocks.

The reason that fear is so pervasive, is that we mentally link the fear stuff with what we are doing. So thinking about money for example when in a big pot, instead of about the strategy of the hand. Once you realise that you might as well be thinking about pink elephants for all the relevance it has to your situation, it becomes much easier to let go of it. None of the fear thoughts has ANY RELEVANCE at all to playing correct poker. Stop listening to it, and it'll shut the fuck up.

So yeah, main thing there is awareness, or mindfulness. Most people aren't even aware that they're thinking total shit, so it keeps happening. Start to notice your thoughts, and this is a big step to eradicating fear and implementing our strategy without distractions.

FWIW, I knew this completely in 2009 when I was renowned as pretty insane. I knew that people made calls that were wrong and their minds conditioned them to want to be good 50% in spots where they only needed 25. I knew they'd stop making bluffs when i called, again because their mind conditioned them to want their bluffs to mostly work, when in reality they mostly shouldn't work! If your bluffs mostly work, you're definitely not making enough of them. The same is true of calls. Once fear crept in though, I became like everyone else. It's up to us as poker players to break out from that fear, rely completely on logic and maths.

Right, enough of that!

Technical Stuff

This might go on for a while,  but I'm just going to go talk about the way to approach common spots. This will help get things clearer in my own head too.

Keeping the lead- I watched some of the value bluffing series on RIO and it was revelatory. By coincidence, I was chatting to one of my German poker friends around the same time and he was talking about the same sort of thing. In a nutshell, betting for protection is a lot more important than I ever realised. Not simply protection from cards, but also protection from being bluffed! Say we raise JTs EP, get a CO caller who flats around 8% there. We cbet T84hh and turn brings 6o.......

Sticky spot, and standard for me there for years was to either check the flop, or check the turn. But this is not going to end well for us! You might well stove this spot, decide that we have less than 50% VS a calling range if were to bet, but this is missing the point that it is still by far the best option VS check calling and check folding. Check folding is insane given all the draws and floats out, but check calling leaves us completely at our opponent's mercy on the river on a ton of cards. He can basically look at the river, come up with his range, and make us indifferent with our bluffcatchers. Which is another way of saying he's going to win the pot a ton of the time.

Checking also allows him to check back, letting him improve either to the best hand or another card that gives him a good bluff, like he might bluff 8x on an Ace river.

So if we're going to check to CC, which is going to cost us x amount of BBs, then those BBs are much better spent simply betting ourselves. It folds out AQ which is a win given the situation, occasional value happens, and we get to very credibly bluff cards like the Ah, rather than allow our opponent to do so.

So this and similar spots happen very very often. Our goal should be to give us easy decisions. If you're constantly checking to basically 'guess', then this is not an easy decision. If we're not guessing, and playing GTO, then we're still giving our opponent the chance to make us indifferent and thus lose the pot.

This stuff is less important when the board is dry, which also affords fewer bluffing opportunities to our opponents. We can still go into check mode, but I'd probably still just bet A6 twice on AK2r OOP for example. One final piece of information here is that this strategy probably works as well it does partly due to people not having the balls to attack uncapped ranges. Like, the obvious counterstrategy to depolarised betting is to raise turns and stuff, but currently people see an uncapped range and that old fear creeps in of wanting the bluff to be highly successful, and thus it doesn't happen.

One final final piece of information is that this is very important in big pots too. Example I 4bet KK the other day, flop AJ5r, standard check check. Turn is 9s giving flush and straight draws. Rather than check again and allow him to bluff turns and rivers with decent frequencies, I bombed the turn to check the river VS KJ. I guess part of it is just knowing how much you are 'supposed' to lose in this spot. If he bets the turn himself, we have to call at least one bet. That one bet is much better spent when we do it ourselves.

Rivers- in some river spots we'll have a range of primarily value, given there's no draws out. I mean we always should be bluffing the bottom of our range, but in reality we'll sometimes end up with a zillion potential bluffs and sometimes with none. I'm talking first about dryer boards where we basically have a range of value, from sets to maybe TP3k or something. How do we decided a betsize?

Well, often we need 2 betsizes. One betsize deals the polarised part of our range, so that will be big in order to maximise value and maximise fold equity. So we'd have a betsize of say pot for this range, and then a more 2/3 type betsize for our depolarised value, which might include hands as strong as top 2 pair that we won't fold to a raise. Our goal in spots where our range is strong is to take his bluffcatcher, and make him indifferent. This can be done technically by counting, but is more easily done but just putting yourself in his shoes and deciding what betsize you would most hate on the river with say AT on AKQr 5s 7 in whatever spot. I wouldn't hate 2x, I'd easily fold, I wouldn't hate min, I'd easily call. Half pot would probably still make me happy, while 2/3 might be the one that makes you go 'fuck'.

Mathematically though, remember we need a big betsize for our nuts, so having the 2 different betsizes in a lot of river spots works out well.

Handreading

My approach to poker is all sort of 'contained' within a game theory framework. Every hand, I'm thinking about correct ranges to call down, correct ranges to bluff, etc. But why do we do this? We do it so we're unbeatable, that our opponents can't take our line and make exploitable calls that cost us money.

It follows therefore, that we cannot be disconnected from noticing our opponents's mistakes in this sense. Having a game theory mindset does not mean that we never make big calls or unbalanced bluffs, but that we are doing so having applied game theory concepts to our opponents and decided that they come up short.

In practice what this means is that if I see someone make an unbalanced bluff, ie one where if they are making that bluff then they are bluffing all sorts of other crazy hands too, leaving their range very weak, then I just tag them as 'unbalanced bluffer'. This means that I'm literally never folding any more than GT says to fold, and also might find spots to exploit.

Exploitation can be scary if you just want the nice and comfortable comfort blanked of GT to guide you, but it needn't be scary provided that we are making sound assumptions. If we're in doubt with our exploitative analysis, of course we can still call or fold based on numbers- but there are tons of spots VS 'unbalanced bluffers' where we can just sniff out their bluffs, and so should call wider.

How do we do this? Handreading! That old fashioned concept. People take different approaches, but I like the very simple one of just transitioning our opponent's range from street to street. This should be working side by side with our making sure we cannot be exploited- but if we end up making a call in order not to be exploited, but handreading tells us that it's wrong, then all it means is that we probably made a GTO mistake on an earlier street, or that the board change in a drastic way such that although we have to fold 80% of our range on this river card, we're still calling 65% of river cards overall.

So yeah, start with a range for opponent. Nothing too complicated, we don't need to identify every hand in his range. But it might be something like, 'flatted SB-CO 100bbs, doesn't have JJ+ or AK, has 7% range there overall, probably 3betting suited playable stuff, leaving a lot of mid pairs and a smattering of broadways'.

Then take this range to the flop......... flop J95ss we check check. Ok range to the turn is the same as PF. Turn is Jo. Oh wait, he didn't lead the turn, ok so now we can take that range and decide he'd lead his trips+, also all gutshots, flushdraws and straightdraws and therefore they are not a big part of his range, even less than they already were. As an aside, stab turn % is really useful in this spot. We're starting to handread him as having midpairs, and we can decide how to play VS that range. Not doing that very simple analysis though leaves us playing very blind.

http://weaktight.com/7311726

An example above- this guy is labelled 'unbalanced bluffer'. So it just goes, ok PF is 28% range.... flop he's cbetting 85% of that, maybe checking back 88 and 77. Turn- plenty of draws turned, he'd bet all JT 76, 54, all flushdraws, and so it's a call even if he was balanced. River.... well, in theory he should be bluffing a frequency to make us indifferent, so maybe 54, QJ would suffice. We think he's going to be bluffing beyond that though and make the call. The key thing he with the imbalance is that by utilising handreading we realise that he doesn't actually have a lot of value VS his potential bluffs. We block 99, 77 wouldn't have bet turn and river, 88 might not bet flop. 97 probably checks somewhere, leaving A9+, TT, etc.

Crucially though, he polarises his range with the overbet. Leaving his range extremely narrow. Just applying a pure game theory approach to calling this wouldn't take into account that TT-AA have suddenly flown the nest from his range, probably 2pair as well. He's left himself 33, 22, JT, 99. That's 19 combos. We need ~ 11 bluffs or something, and QJo makes up 12 of those already, never mind all his other stuff!

So you can see how game theory approach is not distinct from exploitative hand-reading, indeed they work completely in tandem. Sauce put it best when we says he's not looking for an unexploitable approach, but rather a balanced approach tailored to our opponent. So we're never saying, 'lol feels like a bluff, call ace hi, party like it's 2009', but we are counting combos, applying sound and very logical handreading concepts before applying our GT stuff.

So yeah, remember to transition ranges always!

I've been writing for ages, so some final short stuff...........

• We need 2:1 in favour of bluffs on flop raises- this means lots of bluffs! Then bet turns that help us.
• Our fold to 3bet should hover somewhere around 50%. Lots of speculative hands make money both IP and OOP.
• Always see poker in a GT sense. So like when Gogol loses a hand, he looks at it mathematically with his range and declares 'we won that hand really'- amazing for confidence because he's so right ya know!
• Always bluff the bottom of our range on the river. Even if it's a set.
• Mistakes are fine. Remember most of our bluffs should fail, most of our calls should fail. Really get down with that and worrying about any 'mistakes' seems very lol. Also actual mistakes are fine too, I'm doing really well $$ wise and make plenty. Just make less than our opponents :-)
• Plan ahead to future streets! This gives us the 'r' value of our hand a lot, where r is amount of equity realised. Before doing anything, think about how we react on future streets. If it all feels sucky and we have a pair, maybe think about raising :-)
• And finally............ remember

How to get better at poker

I feel like I've had a major-ish mental epiphany today. I've been struggling getting any sort of narrative going of late. My tilt at the downswing seemingly clouding any narrative..... leaving me staring blankly at flops and turns and sometimes having zero semblance of what the goal of poker even is.

A conversation with my GF today, not to do with poker, got me on this thought train. Essentially, she was having extreme difficulty coming up with marketing ideas for her business because she had no tangible direction from which to start. So, she'd be trying to come up with an idea of something interesting to put on her business Facebook page, and despite having tons of natural creativity her mind would return a complete blank. Having talked with a marketing expert today, she realised that the reason for the blankness was the lack of having something concrete from which ideas then arise.

So once she came up with a few starting ideas for brand image, out of that solid base came all sorts of ideas.

I realised that a very similar thing happens to me when I'm slightly on tilt. When I'm not on tilt, and I'm extremely relaxed, then a strategy 'narrative' will present itself to me. By narrative, I mean the internal voice similar to that of a video producer that tells us what buttons to press.

So the problem when I'm slightly on tilt is that this voice more or less disappears. I flat JTs on the button VS EP, the flop comes AKTddd. I have no clue what to do. And no internal voice giving me any sort of idea.

In playing the last session, I'd just been watching a Gogol's nose vid, and his play in standard spots is extremely tangible and simple. He might say something along the lines of 'we're behind our opponent's range once he bets, and we don't have good bluffing possibilities, so this is a fold'.

So, straight way there, he's insta homed in on some very simple stuff.

What's our opponent's range once he bets?
How does our range fair VS that?
If we're ahead, does it play better as a call or a raise?
If we're behind, can we bluff?
If we can't, then fold.

This stuff is very easy to remember and thus cement in your mind. Rather like knowing your own name, it will be available even when we're on a bit of tilt. I've read about this concept tons of times in MGOP 1 and 2, but this is the first time that the power of it has really dawned on me.

Someone posted a hand the other day, facing a river raise on the river we had a very good hand, but we'd bet a large size in a spot where we're either outright bluffing or have close to the nuts. I suck at these spots usually........ but when in the zone feel very confident in picking off bluffs and the like. The trouble is, I don't know why I knew, and can't repeat it unless playing A* game.

Another poster in the skype group really simplified it, and said 'he's got no incentive to bluff, because you're betting a polarised range, so it's an easy fold'.

'Betting a polarised range, so no incentive to bluff raise'

Man, that sentence, or something similar, probably went through my mind whenever I was in the zone and playing well in those spots..... but afterwards it'd be gone forever, never to be utilised again. In being able to simply and tangibly explain what seemed like such a complex and intangible spot, we basically get to 'own' this spot from now on, no matter what level of tilt or tiredness might afflict us.

So in MGOP, Jared talks about reviewing hands played in the zone, to try to reverse engineer why we were able to play hands in such a terrific way. I never really understood why, or perhaps didn't believe in it, but the above example is exactly why. It's so we add it, lock stock and barrel, to our arsenal of poker skills learned to unconscious competence.


Today I've still been on a bit of tilt, but I've picked off a couple of river bluff raises here and here. The skill to do so came to me clear as day, it was tangible, it meant that I instantly knew the right question to ask when deciding whether to call. 'Are we betting a depolarised range, and thus does he have an incentive to bluff raise?' (Granted, the K7 was tougher, but the same concept applies given that trips is far from the nuts there.)

So, what I need to do now is to continue to build up a concrete store of knowledge, especially for common spots. As well as that, when I find myself playing well and make some sick read, I need to analyse why on earth my instinct lead me to that conclusion. Only then can I take that kick of inspiration, bottle it, and use it again and again for ever more.

So I'm quite excited right now. I have a list of topics to write about, and I just know that it's going to eliminate tilt problems whilst also making me much sicker in several technical departments.

I'll give one last example before I finish.

When in the zone, I often make decent and exploitative river folds that game theory would say never to make. When on tilt, I'm still sorta aware that my gut says to fold, but without something solid to go on I often click call. Witness this morning, making a very bad call..........

Now the call isn't bad from a GTO point of view. Indeed, we need to be calling close to 50% of our range on the river, and having KQo as the bottom of our range only gets us to 33%. If we fold here, he has a profitable bluff with 42o, no blocker.

So why is it so obviously still a fold? Well, it took some thought, but I really wanted to get to the bottom of it, and the answer I came up with is that it's because we can exploit a fundamental imbalance present in 99% of regs, and that imbalance is this:

'In spots where a decent % of our bluffcatchers are strong in absolute terms, regs will bet big with the nuts and smaller as a bluff.'

So say our bluffcatching range is obviously like 3rd pairs and stuff, then regs will bet small for value. But as soon as we play a hand like the one above, checking back a scary turn, leaving top pairs and trips and overpairs as our bluffcatchers, then there's no reason at all for someone to bluff big. If they have a rando JThh there, then 1/2 pot is all that's required 'cos we have a polarised range of air, or top pair plus to call. The big bet there is just always a very good hand because in a vacuum it thinks it wants to maximise VS a bluffcatching range that isn't folding to most sizes.

This spot is actually most common when we check back a weak ace IP, call turn, then face a river bomb. In the zone, fold but just go with feeling. Not in the zone- 'game theory says call, let's call'. Sorry bro, always 2pair+, ur bluffcatching range is top pair+.

Anyway, that's where I'm at atm. If you're reading this, maybe struggling a bit at poker, please take all on this board because it's important!

bye

Bloggety blog blog

Hello........

I've been somewhat resistant to writing a technical blog for a while now. I basically felt like doing so, and trying to 'force' myself into certain ways of thinking is bad for my overall concentration, and I was instead better off just getting into as relaxed as state as possible, and then seeing what happens.

Unfortunately, what is happening at the moment is that I'm making too many bad calls, too many rando bluffs, and not seeing things purely in terms of my range. So I just need a reminder of a few basic things.

1) Getting bluffed: lately I've been calling far wider than is GTO, mainly on the strength of extremely tenuous ideas and reads that evidently don't warrant the credit I'm giving them. The odd call like this is fine, but it has become a bad habit, and this is leading to mental problems whereby I cannot justify the call to myself in any sort of fashion......... also, if I'm slightly on tilt, it means I can find any old reason to make a call.

Whereas, if I'm just applying pure game theory then there is always solid reasoning behind it and I can at least be confident that the call is 'good' and makes money. So, this will be a key goal (though I hate calling it that, I'm just going to do it) in upcoming sessions. Plenty of close river decisions just have to get filed under 'getting bluffed sometimes, but not enough to call', instead of 'he has bluffs = must call'.

2) Our range, balance, defending enough, thinking ahead: There's not been enough of all this stuff, and it feels as though I've been playing way too vacuumy in general. Bluff spots, I've been going for 100% instead of only bottom of my range, again leading to tilt issues when they don't come off. By balance, I don't mean 'do the same thing all the time' or whatever, because virtually every situation is different from any other. That's why it's so important to be considering your balanced range in each and every hand, basically developing a strategy such that we can't be beaten. That's all that matters, not being beaten! Once you can't be beaten, winning takes care of itself. So, I need to stop 'trying' to win.

3) Getting 3bet: My 'raise, face 3bet and fold OOP' is now at 38%. I think this was fine for several months when my strategy wasn't so well known, but I feel at present a couple of things are happening. One is that I'm getting 3bet a whole lot more by players IP, which is a very standard adjustment to a player flatting 3bets a lot OOP. Secondly, I'm no longer getting the credit postflop that was once due to me, so people are barrelling lighter, bluffing more, and not folding to my bluff lines. As well they shouldn't, I usually don't have anything :-)

So a gear change is needed there. I'm going to shift to a very 4bet heavy strategy. At present, my 4bet success rate is certainly higher than optimal, but I've been loathe to exploit it with extra bluffs as I've been so balance obsessed pre. At this point a current trend makes its way into my thoughts, which is that more 4bets are getting flatted. People are just aware of the good odds they get and know they don't have to realise a ton of equity post-flop.

So I'm going to start 4betting a very depolarised range. Suited broadways, some pairs, AQ and the like. Some of these will have the benefit of being decent 6bet bluff jam candidates if we're a bit deeper, but I shouldn't be doing too much of that at present as my stats are just going to look like 'lol never 4bets' for a good while. It just means I'm going to print money in the short term VS all the folds I'll be getting, and when flatted I'm going to have decent playability.

4) Checking OOP. As I've said above, I don't like to overgeneralise, but I will be checking OOP as the PFR a lot more. Again, this is somewhat of a gear change, but also has benefits of making me extremely hard to 'beat' when we're OOP. The adjustment would basically be to check back a lot and realise more equity, as well as flat more VS me as they're going to see more turns. Both these adjustments are probably lost on most regs though, and it opens up many possibilities regarding delay bomb bomb lines, and flop and turn check raises.

So man, that's a lot of stuff, and this is usually where the problem comes in- remembering it all and being unable to apply everything. It's all fairly standard stuff though, and I'll play a couple of short sessions first to bed in the new approach.

Is all, say hello on skype if you haven't for a while. Byeeee