Back To The Trap House

I like to refer to many different things as a game. I guess this mentality stems from the 1000’s of hours spent listening to gangster rap, my preferred music of choice for many reasons.

I recently had a few AHA! moments that have really pushed my game forward and one of them which may seem quite obvious to some of you is thinking of poker as a video game. The money is points of course and whoever scores the most points wins. It’s mos definitely not that simple but every level has it’s new challenges you must adjust to.

Ok, I’ll admit it, I was a huge video game nerd growing up although upon meeting me you would never have thunk it. While the setting stays the same the challenges in game are constantly changing. The players are of all different types that you do different things against. The higher up you go the harder it gets much like a video game.

The thing is that people get stuck on Level 1 for what I think is 1 major reason.

Before getting into what it is let me explain to you how I play. I am a Full Ring player being coach backed to play high stakes. My style of play is extremely loose for full ring and somewhat loose for 6 max even. This month my stats are a VPIP of 33.9. PFR of 27 and a 3bet% of 9.8%!!!

How do I make any money you ask? Well let me explain. In the beginning my coach had taught me lots of advanced Baluga poker Theory. The attacking style I use in FR is part of what I call the Front End of my game. This is iso raising, value batting, semi bluffing, bluffing, etc.

So why was I just break even after 15K hands or so and eventually losing around 20K in hands? Well, the answer you would say is quite obvious. You would tell me that I am playing WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY to looose.

Wrong! The problem is what I call the Back End of my game. Its not as flashy as the front end. Its the defense to a teams offense. It doesn’t get much play but it is extremely important. It’s not any more important than the front end. It is equally as important. Both parts must be in balance. In fact, you could call poker a team game!

So what is back end? Back end is folding at its most basic level but also tilt control, lopping off the C-game as Tommy Angelo might say, not playing when your tired, and everything else similar you want to lump into this category. It’s discipline

My problem wasn’t how loose I was playing it was just that while I was raising a ton I wasn’t folding enough. I wasn’t giving these low stakes monkeys enough credit.

To Be continued……