This blog started out as an anonymous means of tracking things that I was learning in poker. From my university studies I knew that writing about things works a as a means of trying to cement them in my head, and then the writings expanded to include various meanderings around in my brain on topics like emotional reactions and attempts to analyse myself as well as my connection to my poker game.

“Open up his range” is a phrase that I’ve heard often lately, and though I think I understand what it means I haven’t looked at it in here so it’s worth spending some time with it to work it into my thinking properly. Essentially it’s a shortened form of “not showing strength in order to encourage weaker hands and air to feel more confident and be more willing to bet and/or to call a later bet by us.” In other words letting our opponent make plays than to just fold to our bet.

We raise preflop and get called, flop top pair on a non-dangerous flop, and our opponent checks to us. If we bet he may or may not call with bottom pair or an underpair. If we check behind, he starts to feel more confident with his weaker hand, thereby “opening up his range”, encouraging him to take a stab on the turn and maybe encouraging him to stab again on the river or to check/call our river bet. We can possibly get one or two streets of value where we might otherwise have got one or maybe no more. Similarly if we did c-bet the flop and were called, we can also check the turn hoping to induce a bet or check/call on the river from perhaps a medium pocket pair.

Sound good? There are a lot of caveats in this however. The first is that we can’t do this at the lowest levels, like 0.05/0.10 or lower. It can possibly work there but the opponent has to be willing to play his part. Most, but not all, opponents at these levels will happily call flop and turn bets chasing with bottom pair and an Ace, gutshot draws, weak flush draws, or other weak hands, so against this type of opponent we leave more money on the table by not simply betting for value. The opponent has to be a little smarter, smart enough to not call three streets with middle pair just hoping that his hand might win, so we can’t win more money by just betting. They also need to be slightly more aggressive so that if we give them opportunity to bet a later street they might do so.

There’s also the danger of letting our opponent outdraw us. A drawy flop is not a good time to check to induce bets as we let our opponent draw for free. And this is another reason not to do this with beginner opponents as they may be calling with a wide range of hands and virtually any card on the turn could give him two pair.

Scare cards could also shut down our action and kill our plan. An Ace on the turn or a card that might complete a 3 flush or 3 straight might scare off our opponent even though we’re sitting there with just a big pocket pair or top pair with a good kicker.

When we make this play we accomplish something else as well. Normally this play is made with a medium to medium-strong strength hand. Often in these cases we’re looking to win a medium sized pot, and by checking an early street, either the flop or the turn, we keep the pot from getting too big.

I was just thinking about how various types of players, various situations put us on tilt.

We spend a lot of time, discussion, thought, about how to avoid tilt, how to deal with tilt, how to get off tilt. But it’s often interesting to look at things from different perspectives. For example, if I wanted to put myself on tilt, how would I go about it? If I were doing a psychological exercise and trying to devise as many methods of putting someone off their game, what techniques could I use? We get the same random cards as anyone else, so manipulating cards to suck out isn’t an option.

Then the next step might be assuming that most players do not intentionally try to tilt us, that often it’s pure ignorance that they chase weak draws and always seem to hit, or get in our way when we’re trying to isolate and eliminate a short stack from a tournament, or bet into dry side pots on the bubble. We know what they’re not seeing, but what are they seeing? And how can we exploit that?

So first, here’s how to annoy me at the poker table:

• Bet into dry side pots on the bubble
• Iso-raise instead of calling a short stack on the bubble with a marginal hand
• Spend time in the chat box calling players names, even if it’s not directed at me
• Chat in another language, particularly if the site specifies chat in English only
• Keep trying to engage me or the table in general in chat when no one shows any interest
• Constantly take the maximum amount of time to fold your hand
• Bet at all unopened pots
• Minraise preflop often
• Minraise my flop bets
• 3 bet me in position or raise or check-raise my flop bets every time we’re in a hand together
• Limp AA/KK utg
• Slow-slow-slow play flopped sets

Now, I know some of these are reasonable actions even if I find them distasteful, like limping big hands or slowplaying to the max, but still they annoy me, personally. I get particular satisfaction when I raise a marginal hand which has little implied value because I’m not going anywhere with less than two pair, and then I stack AA or KK that tried to trap, or bet my flush draw and hit, getting paid off by a set on the flop that opted to slow play. And playing aggressive against me is a good plan because it’ll cause me to fold some marginal hands and make me likely to increase my aggression level and spew.

I play various levels, from freerolls on sites where I have no bankroll to 0.25/0.50 cash tables on sites where I do have a bankroll. I don’t usually play a lot of tournaments or sit and goes, but when I do they might range anywhere from 0.25 to $10 + 1 buyin levels so that explains why I run into some of these plays which are typical of bad or beginner players.

“I’d be a great poker player, if only” … I had the bankroll to play higher levels … I wouldn’t get tilted and spew off my winnings … I had the time to play more hands … I had time to review my hands … I wouldn’t pay off the idiots who chase always chase their draws …

You’re only as good as, well, as good as you are. You’re not “a great player, except …“, you’re just a player that does some things well and other things not so well.

So, what defines a good player? And then, if someone has those abilities and characteristics, when do they go off them? For example, a good player is aggressive, but, maybe if they are tired they’ll play passively, or if they just had a fight with their girlfriend they’ll play too aggressively.

1. Knowledge: Knows the basics; hands by position, odds and outs, implied odds, flop textures, putting opponent’s on ranges, equity against those ranges, variety of plays.
2. Application of knowledge: Knows the hows and whens. Understands that sometimes the hands are secondary to reads, stack sizes, position. Knows when the situation is appropriate for plays like check-raising, continuation betting, semi-bluffing, bluffing, trapping.
3. Flexible: Can adjust the application of knowledge to different situations such as buyin levels, table dynamics, reads. In some instances this supersedes the application of knowledge because there will be things that you never do at certain levels or against certain opponents but you usually do at other times.
4. Stable: Doesn’t get thrown emotionally by bad beats, opponent aggression, a run of poor cards, pressure, variance. Is patient and confident that in the long run they will come out ahead. Is able to maintain their standards and quality of play consistently.
5. Continuous learner: I laughed in my head when someone claimed this buzz-phrase in a job interview that I was giving simply because it gets overused and is often a meaningless claim. But when real, it is necessary. Over time one’s game will change and the opponents will also change so there is no such thing as remaining the same. Without striving to move forward, you inevitably slip backward.

I probably need 3) to a greater degree than most, or at least more than many players. That’s a function of me playing with different sized bankrolls over 4 different sites at the moment. It’s tough to maintain the concept of the players at all these different sites and levels and, as someone said to beginning players, playing too long at freerolls hinders can one’s development as a poker player. You can develop bad playing habits, and for me, trying to maintain that wide a range of player concepts is the difficult part. It gets strained further by videos and hand analysis of games at higher stakes than I play, resulting in the standard “outleveling” myself. I make plays or assume a range for my opponent that goes beyond where they are capable of doing or understanding. If I raise preflop, the flop comes K78 two tone, I bet and get raised, what are the chances that he’s being aggressive with a draw? Almost none. He either has a K or two pair, or sometimes A8/A7/QQ/JJ, once in a while AA. A set almost always gets slowplayed, no matter what the dangers of draws on the flop. That’s the kind of players that I’m normally up against.

It would be really cool, and worth a lot of money if Chris Ferguson had kept an honest blog or regular review of his progress and evaluation of his opponent’s and his own adjustments necessary when he did his $0 – $10,000 grind project. The information on adjustments, general opponent skills and traits and variance would potentially be invaluable.

But to get back to the traits, maintaining flexibility definitely decreases my stability. For that matter, some of the continuous learning also gets in the way of stability when I don’t move up in levels but continue to learn thought processes and plays for opponents who are much better than the ones that I generally face resulting in erratic play on my part, some FPS (Fancy Play Syndrome) and out leveling myself.

My new mantra. I don’t think it’s for everyone ’cause some people will interpret the “cautious” part as meaning “don’t bet without a strong hand”, but I think it’s good for someone like me that, on the one hands sometimes falls into a passive mode and alternatively starts to spew when I think that players are playing back at me, or when I guess that they’re playing at a level that they probably actually never thought of.

Cautious Aggression means things like:

• Open raising shamelessly from late position, to put pressure on the blinds
• 3 betting judiciously, especially in position
• C-betting almost any flop heads up
• Raising any c-bets on dry flops in position (heads up assumed), this includes blind-versus-blind play
• Betting almost any flop in position that is checked (heads up assumed)

The “cautious” part means:

• Folding most stuff that I can’t bring myself to raise from the small blind
• Folding when a short stack raises, offers no implied odds and I don’t have a hand to shove over top of them
• Folding when I meet resistance postflop, even to min-raises
• Giving up early on small pots. Too many players seem to want to make a big deal out of small pots, especially ones that are limped preflop
• Give up easily to 3 bets when I’m readless, especially since I’m raising so often with marginal hands from late position or with all pairs from any position

I read an interesting post on a forum the other day. The topic of the thread was bad beats and one female player, whom I know is a decent but not yet a great player and has played for some time, made the comment that when she gets bad beats, her “feeling are hurt by poker“.

That comment made me stop and ponder because I’d never thought to react in that manner, or to interpret any of my reactions to bad beats in that way. Probably because I’m of the wrong gender to react this way (which is why I point out that this person is female). I think that she is too emotionally tied to poker because she reacts this way, but it helps me as well to recognize that I too am still too emotionally tied to my poker game as well. I react in a more typical male manner; I get angry with the player. “What a donkey. You idiot.”

This emotional connection manifests itself in a number of other ways as well. I was watching an Ed Miller video on the dangers of running good or of running bad and he mentions that most times other players are not “out to get you”, though sometimes that will be the case. Rather, most times the players are just playing their cards, while playing 11 other tables at the same time or watching television or talking with a friend on the telephone.

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Individual personality traits can sometimes, though not always, manifest themselves in poker play and styles. By nature I’m not a gregarious person. I’m one of those people that identified with Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek; second in command, unemotional, basing his contributions to discussions on science or facts. I’m not a Trekkie but I’m still not inclined toward small talk or toward stepping forward and taking a lead in social situations unless I have specific useful information. As an example the other night my wife and I were out at a bar with a group of friends. The whole group of us were pretty spread out so it wasn’t obvious that we were all together when a woman on the dance floor apparently began flirting with me. I thought she was just trying to get me loosen up my dancing but I was otherwise clueless until afterward on the way home my wife pointed out what to her was pretty obvious. I was astonished, but I’m not exactly adept in social interactions. Spock or Data probably would have been similarly oblivious.

So for me to even step forward and open raise can sometimes be a challenge. For me to increase the financial risk by raising a flop bet can be difficult. Sometimes to continuation bet or semi-bluff or to outright bluff can be difficult.

But oddly enough at other times the “social” aspect doesn’t slow me down at all and I’ll open raise too much, c-bet too much, and especially run too many semi-bluffs and outright bluffs against players who don’t fold. My probably-testosterone-driven aggression, uncontrolled poker “superior knowledge” and impatience sometimes overruns the social inhibitions and poker-sense for the players that I’m up against. Hence the paying off of the obvious slowplays and slowrolls and ugly minraises from small stacks.

~

My wife and I have had discussions about her mother who is experiencing some vascular induced dementia. That is, her personality is fluctuating but is also changing overall supposedly due to age and her brain just not always getting the same degree of blood flow as it used to get, simply because the vascular system is old and not circulating as well as it used to do. The theory for the fluctuation and change is that some areas, especially inhibitor areas, may not be functioning as well as it used to do resulting in less inhibited or restricted thoughts and actions. For example she has missed appointments with friends and with doctors and others simply because she decided to do something else, which is a social pattern which she never would have followed in years gone by.

Sometimes my social inhibitors are more present than at other times. Sometimes my patience is higher or lower, my focus is higher or lower, my emotional attachment to my poker game is higher or lower. Unfortunately even though my social interaction skills are sometimes as clueless as Spock or Data, my emotional detachment and reliance on pure intellectual reasoning skills are not comparable.

Continuing on from the previous post on coaching. I was an education major (amongst other things) in my undergraduate studies and have done some teaching in music. I’ve also taken classes and private lessons as an adult in music, martial arts, theatersports, and others.

The email from my former co-worker who is now a management coach goes on to talk about weaknesses, how weaknesses show up during performance, and how coaches need to create a safe practice environment to work on your weaknesses, how you need to be vulnerable to work with your weakness before taking risks with it.

Being vulnerable is not easy. It means being open to having our weaknesses pointed out, having a surgical probe stuck into it, looking at it, accepting it for what it is, then working on it like you would do with a painful muscle, the difference being that the pain will be mental and maybe emotional rather than physical. “Why did you call that?” “What was your plan for the turn?” “What range were you putting him on when you made that play?” “Did you consider raising that bet? Why not?” Are you ready to answer those questions? It’s hard enough to ask and answer these questions yourself (teaching myself to play another instrument comes to mind, or in poker to spending time reviewing your hands or posting them on a forum for open discussion) but to be asked these questions and to have your thought process or lack thereof questioned, possibly attacked means putting yourself out there for viewing, making yourself vulnerable.

My wife and I are going through this on a personal level with a couple that we know who are experiencing difficulties. It seems that the couple are not really speaking to each other anymore, are operating in two separate spheres of existence, and worst of all they have young kids that are spinning around in these spheres moving between these two worlds that are frozen over with respect to each other. Siblings or friends go through this type of situation regularly, and often teens go through this with respect to their parents, all of which are fairly common situations and if not long standing it’s well within the realm of normal life. But when young kids have to grow up in this atmosphere between their parents it’s worrisome. Neither parent seems to be willing to open up to outsiders, at least to our knowledge, and they just seemed trapped in their environment, just doing what is most necessary to keep going, if not healthy. They’re unwilling or unable to be vulnerable to outsiders and apparently with each other as well.

So, what’s my excuse for not having professional poker coaching? Well, I have done the other things; reading, participating in forums, getting a membership at coaching sites and watching videos, doing some hand analysis. I think that there are a number of items still holding me back.

• my own arrogance thinking that there’s a lot that I can learn on my own
• my own cheapness, not wanting to spend money if I can learn on my own
• my fear of moving up in levels, where my financial risk increases and my win rate may decrease (the old Islewars 60% win rate syndrome that I’ve delineated many times in this blog)
• my lack of focus; I keep moving my primary game every few months
• my definition of poker as a hobby, not as a profession or obsession

In the email the management coach goes on to talk about his commitment to improving his mountain bike racing and hiring a coach to do so. He follows this up by suggesting that we (I) should make a financial commitment to improving. Good idea, when he’s trying to sell me on paying him money for coaching.

It’s true that if you spend money on improving or working on something that the money spent can increase our dedication to making use of the training. On the other hand how many people have purchased a membership at a gym, only to go twice and never get their money’s worth? Or signed up for a class and stopped going after the first one?

It may be different with private coaching compared with signing up with a gym or a class, but still, I don’t quite feel ready for a poker coach, yet.

I’m on the mailing list for a former co-worker of mine who has gone into the business of coaching managers. Every couple of weeks he sends out an email writing about various management related topics and his thoughts on them.

Recently he was reflecting on the Olympics that are taking place and how top tier athletes are the ones that hire coaches and not the more average level athletes. He says that it’s because the top athletes want it more, which is true, but the top athletes are also the ones who are going to get more value from coaching. They actually have less room for improvement because they are already close to as good as they can be, but any tiny improvement can mean the difference between being the best in the world or fourth best, or fourth best versus not making the national team at all. Like an MTT, the value is highly skewed toward the top end so if you’re at all close then getting help to improve a tiny bit can mean a huge return on the investment. Of course, the reason that my friend mentions this is to state that top managers are like top athletes; they recognize the need for good coaching (and implying the question aren’t I a top manager, so don’t I feel the need for some good coaching?)

Compare this with a recreational skier, or better yet a recreational tennis player or golfer. Hiring a regular coach is going to improve your performance, but what’s the value of the return on your investment? You can now ski better than your spouse? Beat your friend at tennis or golf? There’s definitely some potential for value, especially if your skills are significantly lower than your partner(s) to the point that it’s not competitive or fun for you or them so the coaching just brings you up to their level. And you’ll likely just feel better about your game if you improve in general and perhaps can beat your regular golf or tennis partners slightly more often.

In poker a marginal improvement at any level has monetary value because we’re playing with money to begin with. If the investment in a book helps us improve 1 bb/100 it may pay itself off in short time. A couple sessions with a coach may improve our ROI and be the difference between simply ITMing in a big tournament versus making the final table. It becomes a matter of at what point and in what fashion is investing more going to give us a good bang for our buck. For a beginner the best option is probably reading books. For an intermediate player, maybe a membership with a coaching site. To get to advanced, probably paying for some sessions with coach.

At the poker table there are always adjustments to be made. Some are simply because we get different cards every time we play. Adjusting for the cards that we are dealt is the most basic adjustment. If we get crappy cards for the first 20 hands, we do a lot of folding. If we get some big pairs, we play more hands.

But there a lot more adjustments. Some even take priority over the strength of the preflop cards, and even early, as in the first 20 hands.

Adjustments, at the Poker Table

You’ll see a lot of people who have some kind of idea which hands to play; at least they’ll fold most of their hands at a full ring table. But they’ll be indiscriminate; they’ll play the same hands regardless of whether they’re in early position or late position. A4? Well, if I can limp it behind in late position, maybe if I limp from early position everyone will limp behind and it’ll be the same thing! Then they’ll try to do the same when they go to try a super turbo where they start with 10 big blinds, or the same in a freeroll, or heads up at the end of a sit and go. Adjust, people, adjust!

Play more hands against bad players, play more hands when you are in position, play more hands when the table is shorter. Raise a wider range when the table or the opponents to your left are tight. Be selective in your hands against loose-aggressive players. Also play fewer hands when the effective stacks are small, when you are early in tournaments against weak players, and also when the bubble is important, as in a satellite tournament, but play the big hands aggressively to minimize the chances of getting sucked out on.