“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.

~

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.

A lot of “basic” poker advice is geared toward at least 0.10/0.25 or 0.25/0.50 levels, $1/$2 live games, or $10 tournament buyins levels or higher. Advice such as “continuation bet 80% of your hands” or “fold when your opponent bets a co-ordinated flop” are good, but only if your opponents understand that you are not giving them odds to chase their flush draw or that bottom pair is not usually a winning hand.

So what I want to do with this post is to give some adjustments to make when playing $10 cash tables, $2 tournaments, or lower. Of course, for these adjustments to be useful you first need to understand the basics as well as the more intermediate level theory such as pot odds, implied odds, outs, the standards of aggressive play, reading board textures, and putting your opponents on hand ranges.

If you’ve got all of the above and are still struggling or getting battered around at the lowest levels of poker play, then there’s a good chance that you’re applying these useful basic elements against players who don’t know any better. In the veeery long run you should still come out ahead, but you’ll be slowed getting there by the times that you pay off opponents when you don’t need to and by the times that you don’t maximize value when you should. (I suspect that the second is actually more costly than the first for many struggling players, but they just don’t notice when it happens. They win a little and are happy that they didn’t lose but they don’t see the money that they left on the table.)

A lot of this comes down to putting your opponents on accurate hand ranges based on how you’ve seen them play, and on anticipating the future play of the hand based on how you’ve seen them play. This is what makes your opponents different from the opponents at higher levels; the hand ranges are not the same when someone calls an early position raise preflop at a 0.25/0.50 table as at a 0.02/0.05 table, and a call or raise of a flop, turn or river bet does not mean the same at both levels either.

These two aspects of playing the low, low micro players are what is different from the opponents that “standard” poker advice refers to and is what causes the difference as to how to play against them.

On the topic of betting postflop:

1. Don’t continuation bet against players who don’t fold. Check their showdown statistics or just watch their play. There’s no point betting a missed flop against a player who won’t fold 22 or any pair. Unless as next.
2. Do bet your good hands for value. If you have an overpair or even JJ on a flop of K93 ask yourself; how likely is it that he has a King? If your opponent sees the flop with 45% of his hands that he’s dealt and calls 40% of raises preflop, then there are far more hands that don’t have a King that will be his hand than those that do. Bet for value. If you know that he calls with any pair then there’s as good a chance that he has a 9 or 3 as a King, as well as 88/77/66/55/44 or maybe even some weird gutshot straight draw, keep betting until more bad cards come or you become convinced that you are beaten.
3. Worry less about losing your opponent by betting too much, and focus more on betting as much as you think you might get a call from. Too many players lose value with their hands by betting too small because they’re afraid of losing their opponent. Much of the time your opponent will simply have nothing so there’s no point trying to make your bet so tiny that you lose value on the times that he has a decent but weaker hand than you.
4. Don’t slowplay. There are exceptions, like you have the board absolutely crushed (I flopped quad 5s!) or you know your opponent is aggressive (he continuation bets 80% of the time) or both. Too many players lose value by trying to trap, or trap themselves by letting their opponent draw out on them.
5. If he calls your flop bet and before you continue betting, ask yourself, are there more hands that I’m ahead of that he might play this way, or more hands that I’m behind? If you’ve seen him call down with middle pair on the flop and you have top pair with a good kicker, then keep betting. If not, don’t be afraid to stop betting, and even fold if he is normally passive and suddenly bets into you.

Bet sizing:

1. Don’t be afraid to use unorthodox bet sizes. 2.5 to 4 x is standard, but sometimes you just know that your opponent is going to call a big preflop raise when you have AA/KK, so don’t be afraid to raise big. Other opponents will fold to anything so don’t be afraid to steal their blinds with minimum raises.
2. If you are going to try to raise limpers, don’t make the raise bigger or smaller than you need to. Some players will fold to any raise, others will call no matter how big you make the raise so keep your opponent and your objective in mind. If you create a huge pot with a big preflop raise and get two callers who don’t fold postflop you get yourself in a sticky situation when your AK misses the flop. Keep your opponents playing style and your objectives and in mind, and plan for the future.
3. Weak opponents won’t pay attention to pot odds or stack sizes or pot-to-stack ratios. Bet your good hands to plan to build big pots, bet as small as you think will serve your purpose when you have a marginal hand.

Player reads: (these are somewhat unique to the lowest micro stakes)

1. Keep your eye out for chasers. Players who are very loose preflop are often flush chasers because they’ll play any suited cards, and many micro stakes players will call down with any Ace in their hand waiting for their Ace to come. Bet big when there is a flush draw on the board and you have a hand because they will call no matter what odds you give them. Make them pay big to chase every time but you may have to fold when it hits. If they bet tiny, go ahead and call if you have some kind of hand. They’re not getting value for chasing and there’s always a chance that they may be bluffing the scare card.
2. Keep your eye out for bad bluffers. Some players like to make oversized bets (often playing short stacked and shoving) whenever they think they see “weakness” or when a scare card like an Ace comes or a flush fills. After you see them make this play twice, look for opportunities to call them down when you have a decent hand. These players are simply the easiest way to make money at the lowest levels of poker. Often the key is just to sit at the table and wait to see who is the player that is going to pay you off, and then wait for the hand to collect from them. Maniacs are like this too, but they play consistently wild. Other players will play seemingly normal games but suddenly make big bets that they think “no one can call”.
3. Look for routines. Some players routinely call preflop raises, call the flop bet, then fold the turn because the if you bet the turn you must be serious. Others always limp from late position and then bet any pot that no one bets at. The lower the stakes, the smaller the repertoire of plays that the players have in their arsenal so they will make the same plays over and over again.

Playing aggressively: (mostly re-iterated from information above)

1. Don’t try to steal from late position against players who don’t fold. If you have a good hand, bet for value, but don’t try to make them fold if you miss the flop.
2. Be careful trying to raise them when they limp preflop. Don’t build a huge pot preflop if no one folds at your table unless you have a huge hand. Iso-raising with marginal hands can cost you more than it earns.
3. Against the loose players, don’t build big pots postflop without a hand and don’t try to push them off their holdings. Tighter players will fold but loose ones will call down with an underpair “just to see what you have”.

In ‘Zen and the Art of Poker” there’s a line that goes, “You need to think of folding as a club you are using to pummel your opponents with.” The line prior to this says, “Very few events, games, or sports work this way, with the winner being the one who withdraws himself from competition at the proper moments.” This is not all there is to poker. You do need to bet and to be aggressive at the right moments, but too many players play too many hands and then play all or most of them too weakly, but it’s true; winning outside of poker rarely requires more inactivity than activity like it does with poker. Maybe survival, during a riot, benefits from a similar ratio of inactivity to activity but I can’t think of many other situations.

The use of the word “withdraw” is interesting. The poker term is “fold”, and really it’s a quit or giving up the current hand. The term withdraw could also be used when describing a defensive feint, like stepping back when your opponent goes to throw a punch or pulling back your troupes in a war to protect them or to co-ordinate them with other forces, but a poker fold is not like these types of withdrawals. Folding is a decline-to-play, a giving up on the hand and can involve the sacrifice of chips already invested in the pot whether these be blinds, antes, or earlier bets or calls that were placed. These chips are like prisoners of war that are being sacrificed to the enemy, even if it’s just for the time being.

The quoted line wouldn’t seem quite as palatable, especially to a competitive person, if instead it read, “Very few events, games, or sports work this way, with the winner being the one who quits at the proper moments“, or “Very few events, games, or sports work this way, with the winner being the one who gives up at the proper moments.” A competitor doesn’t want to quit or give up, even temporarily, but we have to do this when we fold.

I multi-table cash games. Normally I have eight tables going and I can go click, click, click, folding well in advance the hands that I know that I don’t want to play given the situation at that table. J9 from middle position, click fold. 94 from the small blind, check to see that the big blind isn’t a nit, click fold. Hands in late position I leave until it gets to my turn unless I know that the blinds or other players directly to my left are calling stations or LAGs, both of whom will devalue the use of raising with weak hands. If I have very tight or weak players to my left my open raising range widens considerably so the decision to play or not is not so card dependent so I can’t auto-fold quite so soon. But it’s not “withdrawing”, it’s folding, giving up, over and over again. It’s not easy to keep giving up when my objective is to win.

The massive folding that we have to do has to do with the fact that we often play against 4, 5, maybe up to 9 others at a single table, each fighting as individuals and not in teams or partners. If we were fencing we’d do a lot of withdrawing, mixed in with attacking. Parry, thrust. Now imagine sparring against 4 or 8 opponents all at once and not as a team like the Three Musketeers. (Somehow this brings to mind some wrestling cage matches that I saw years ago, where 4 wrestlers are all supposed to be fighting each other with only one eventually emerge victorious. I have no idea whether they still stage these or not.) Poker is a series of battles with everyone looking out only for themselves. All for me, me for one.

If you compare trying to win at poker to a fencing match against 8 other opponents then you can see the advantage of not being involved all the time. If you were fencing you’d pick your spots, conserve your energy, look for weaknesses, find situational advantages. In poker the same holds true. Only get involved when you think that you have an advantage, be that a card advantage, a position advantage, a skill advantage, or a combination of advantages. Conserve your resources the rest of the time.