∇xB

I started doing bikram yoga (the popularized version of hot yoga).  It has been fun.

I realized something, or maybe remembered something I forgot.  The difficult part of yoga is not maintaining your balance.  That is easy.  The hard part is finding your balance.  Once you have it, and realize you have it, it gets a lot easier.

I somehow conned my way into a high school teaching job next year.  Should be fun.

Each teacher is assigned a group of kids they will have for a daily block of time with and on Fridays.  Teachers are encouraged to teach things using games as a medium for learning during this time.  Teachers have this same group for the entirety of their high school experience.  

...How much progress do you think you could make with a 15 minute coaching session once a week for four years?

Also, I took my first shot at the Sunday Million this weekend, I think I will continue to play it in the weeks to come.  It was a little intimidating to start with a 10k stack but I got over that very quickly.  My run ended somewhat early on with AK<KK for about 50bb AIPF.   I think I could've found a fold with AQ vs. the particular player but it was a lolblockers spot and I thought he could fold hands like 88-TT that he 3bets with but could potentially call with worse himself if he calls AQ in that spot.   Whatever, there is always next weekend.  

This is my new cat.  He is very studious.   

It has been a week, maybe less, since I decided I would add tournaments into my daily grind.  All told I’ve probably played about 4 of the ~30 or so high valued tournaments I set out to play since then.  I am bad at following schedules.  Still, I am proud (and very lucky) to say that I have already found some initial success.  I managed to get third in the daily 40k gtd on stars for solid score of around 4k.  The tournament ended up drawing 6911 to smash the gtd, as tournaments on stars are wont to do.  I think I should be getting together with AMT to discuss the tournament HH, since I got to the final table probably more so on run good than on playing well.  Keep an eye out if you are a low-stakes MTT grinder.  We recently adopted a stray cat, perhaps a day or so before my previous score, so I have to assume this run good is a function of kitty-karma.

I have not been running so well in the cash games, and I completely blame myself for this.  The reality of the situation is that I simply haven’t been taking enough time to study and shore up my weak spots in my worst games and I just watch myself bleed money.  Certainly I haven’t been running the best either but I am coming across situations where I am uncomfortable and unsure of what to do and I am simply failing to address them when the session is over.  Coming to a new session without addressing my previous leaks is simply lazy and intolerable in my mind.  One of my strongest points as a poker player is that I have a very large set of tools available to me through my peers and my own mathematical insight to be able to understand how to objectively evaluate a situation and extrapolate what is important to be applied to my overall game.  This is why I play mixed games rather than zeroing in on a single game and trying to destroy it.  Also: short attention span.

I am very thrilled that by moving to tournaments, I find out there is a whole new toolbox with which I am unfamiliar.  I have only a vague idea of ICM and understanding of various tournament theory concepts, so I am excited at the prospect of adding more methods of analysis to my poker toolbox.  It feels like being in college again and taking new math classes and learning all sorts of new methods of analysis.  In a good way.

This tournament score has taken a lot of pressure off of my need to grind to pay the bills for a little while, and in theory this should motivate me to be working on my overall life goals.  Sadly it has had the opposite effect and created a sense of complacency.  It is my hope that admitting to that will be enough of a kick in the ass to get me motivated.  That said this feels like a good note to end on given that I have essentially neglected my to-do list for the past few days.  Hope you all run as well as I do.

I am a little late to the game on this one, but I want to get my New Years Resolutions in. New Years is kind of a crazy time for me since we all reform to be better in some personal or professional way, but my birthday is in early January and so I like to give myself a little slack so that I can still afford to do something punishing to my body in the name of celebrations. So there are a bunch of boring resolutions related to my health, but I don't think those are particularly interesting. If something interesting comes out of that I am sure it will organically become a topic in my blog. My self referential New Year's Resolution is to actually update my blog once a week or better. My final resolution comes with some back story. In early December it was going to be something to the effect of “pound the pavement, get out there and find a solid job and put poker on the back burner.” As healthy and balanced a resolution that might've been at the time, I've had to abandon and rework it.

I want to provide a little backstory here. In late November and into early December, Full Tilt was running its “Rush Week” promotion. Essentially if I cleared 1000 FTPs per day playing rush poker for a week, they were giving out $250. As sad as this is to say, prior to that I had never really put in series of high volume days, despite my being a “professional” poker player for the last 6 months or so. My volume was average, maybe 3 hours a day. It was basically a combination of run good and low monthly expenses that kept me afloat, since I was playing basically 1-2 mixed games and PLO50. Still, I just didn't have much to cover and so I never went out of my way to pad my BR. It occurred to me that this was in no way sustainable though, and I had an inkling that eventually something was going to give and I was going to be forced into a job. The thing was, I was okay with that. I wanted that, in some ways. The lazy life style of a poker pro, while appealing, isn't the end all be all for me and I know I can easily adapt to the working world. What I give up in free time I gain in structure and discipline in my life—something I am not afraid to admit I lack and sometimes miss.

I digress though. Rush week. I was going to find that discipline I lacked and use rush week as a launching pad. My goal for the week had little to do with the monetary value of the $250 bonus. The bonus was a carrot to keep me at my computer plugging away. Because of this I opted to only play rush PLO25. For those of you who don't know, rush PLO50 rarely runs and rush PLO100 is just not a very good game. I have personally had massive swings in that game and felt that the variance involved playing that much volume was not worth a $250 bonus and again, I am here to start learning how to grind.

It actually went pretty well the first day, I put up good numbers, won at a decent clip, and felt I was hitting a groove. Wake up, eat, session, gym, session, lunch, session, dinner and relax. It felt very naturally right away. The second day I didn't run so hot, and the third day I ran basically terrible. Over 15k hands or so I was down 12BIs and my confidence was shaken. On the 4th day of rush week, I decided I had had enough and settled on taking my $125 bonus for half the week, and taking the rest of the time off. On December 3rd I was felt so tilted and frustrated that I opted to withdraw almost my entire roll. I left myself $100 on Full Tilt and $100 on Stars because no matter how tilted I am, I don't yet have the capacity to just stop playing poker. I can however just play lower and work on my game while I allow myself time to mentally recover.

I need to be clear here: I wasn't bothered by the financial loss. All told 12BI at PLO25 isn't really that significant to me, and given RB and the bonus I probably broken even or was a marginal winner from the endeavor. What bothered me was my inability to beat a game that I felt was below me. I took some time to examine how I, a PLO coach, could get so thoroughly flogged at a stake I consider to be below me. The long and short of it is I simply wasn't prepared for the mental fatigue that comes with playing so much poker in a short period of time, nor was I ready for the speed at which 4 tables of rush PLO action happens. I ended up autopiloting pretty badly and when I looked at the 4 days of stats I was playing a style of something like 16/12. For reference, I typically play something like a 30/20 when I am playing my A game. I was disgusted with myself and my lack of ability to apply the skills which I had taken so long to acquire and hone, and so I promised myself that when the New Years rolled around, I would begin attacking the job market voraciously. For logistical reasons I couldn't start right away.

So I spent the month of December in what I would call a completely undeserved vacation. With only $200 in my effective roll and no desire to reload, I opted to play small tournaments just to keep myself mentally occupied. I wasn't really expecting to do much but pay rake and keep myself from starting drinking at 6pm. What I did not expect was that I would run fairly well early on. I got second place in a low limit quintuple shoot out and then another second place shortly after at a 4 handed PLO8 event. All of the sudden, I had somewhat of a functioning roll. I decided that I should at least clear my final month of ironman for the year end bonus, so with my new found capital I jumped back into the 1-2 10 game and 8 game. Here I proceeded to run hotter than the sun. I tend to feel awkward posting information like this but it is substantially buried within the bulk of this post, but I managed to clear something like $2000 in December playing almost exclusively 10 game and those few tournament wins. It was wholly unexpected and completely appreciated. Between that and some small bits of coaching income, I actually managed to even move up and take shots at the $2.5/$5 where I eventually stuck. To provide a nice cap to a huge month, I managed to place second in a 3k gtd 7 game tournament on Tilt for another ~$800 or so. Suddenly the roll that I sought to take away so that I could focus on the job search had reappeared, and grown stronger than ever.

So I found myself at a decision point. First of all, I came back from my vacation playing higher than I did before I stopped, and therefore making more money. On the other hand, the mental anguish associated with poker is something jarring to my personal life and I needed to remind myself there was a reason I said I needed to put poker on the back burner. Furthermore I needed to admit to myself that I am simply not cut out to be a true grinder. This is clearly evidenced by my insistence to play mixed games rather than focusing on pursuing a single game. Presented with the problem of trying to reconcile all of these factors I think I've come up with a solution. Also for those keeping track, this brings us basically up to present date.

I am going to find a job. I am licensed high school teacher and teaching is something that I enjoy. In order to keep myself from losing focus (which was why I cashed out my BR in the first place), I am going to force myself to play only during what I consider “high value” times of the day, to maximize my overall EV. This is something I should've been doing all along. In the past I would simply play whenever I felt the whim. Now I have gone through looking for ways to make the most of my time playing. In particular, I find that I have the highest EV in mixed game cash tables. The monotony of playing only PLO for hours on end grinds at me and causes me to play poorly as time wears on. What I am opting to do to make up for a lack of tables is to add in some tournaments that I consider to be high value based on my financial and personal goals, as well as what I consider to be my overall EV in any particular field. In practice this means some 40k gtds during the day as well as the 7 game gtd tournament daily. These tournaments provide extra value for me to be at the cash tables because they run during Full Tilt's Happy Hour. Assuming I bust from a tournament early, I will essentially schedule myself into two 2 hour blocks of play per day. This scheduling of my play time gives me a better idea of time that can and will be spent working towards finding a job.

Overall I do not think I am sustainable as a professional poker player, however playing poker on the side is definitely a way that I can make significant money. My hope is that the stability the job will provide will allow me to grow my bank roll to the point of being able to start playing in much higher stakes games. As best I can tell, it is the same regs in the 2.5/5 game that tend to populate the 5/10 game, and from my brief shots at 5/10 the regs that do not carry over were not particularly tough. I'd like to be able to take shots without any concern of what a bad losing session would do to my ability to provide for myself. I also don't want to put myself in a position where irrelevant things cause me to doubt my ability to play or even my self worth. The more important that it is to you that you be considered a “professional poker player,” the more your sense of worth relies on something that often cannot be controlled by you in the short term. Variance sucks like that. So my New Years Resolution for 2011 is to find a real job that I enjoy and provides for me at least moderately well, and to make myself into a world class recreational poker player. I have high hopes for the year to come, and will likely be updating with all sorts of less serious stuff as we proceed. As a final closing note, if anyone is looking to hire someone hard working and intelligent in the area of Worcester Massachusetts, by all means get in touch. But I won't hold my breath.

-DxB

Last night I received my first coaching session ever from DeathDonkey.  It was incredibly intense in a way that I had not expected.  We ended up doing a live sweat on 27TD and what ended up happening by the middle of the video was I found myself questioning even my predraw ranges.  I tend to play a very tight predraw game and tends to lend itself towards making big hands and getting in a lot of vbets.  DD pointed out numerous situations where I should be opening or defending or bluffing that are marginally +EV, but still +EV.  Between trying to record a video (oh right, we made a video, it will be out whenever), playing two tables, and trying to absorb all this information being thrown at me, I found myself overwhelmed by the end of the recording.  It was a pretty cool feeling, and something that hasn't happened to me for a while in poker.  As someone who has never gotten coaching before, I was pleasantly surprised at how much can be accomplished within an hour.  Even after working with numerous students myself, it is sometimes difficult to determine how much they really gained from the experience.  

Speaking of that, I am going to be running a rather large discount on my 1on1 coaching.  Start Friday the 17th through the 27th or so, I am going to be charging $50/hr for coaching specifically scheduled during those two weeks.  Call it a holiday blowout sale.  The gist of it is that I am going to be visiting my parents house in that time and will be unable to adequately set up a grind station.  Given that my time is therefore far less valuable, I figure I might as well open up and maybe give some chance for new people to experience my coaching.  Furthermore I am happy to do sessions for groups of 2 for the same rate.  So if any PLO5/10/25 guys want to get together with a friend and pony up, I think this should be completely affordable.  I'll probably have more details about that as the event approaches and will make a less covert announcement (because who reads my blog anyway).  

Finally, I did post a member video of me playing some .5/1 8 game.  As I mention in the video, I had been running pretty badly and opted to just make a quick recording.  My play in the 27TD rounds was pretty bad even by my normal standards, but I'm sure I'd look at it now and think it is laughably bad.  Everything else I played fairly solidly (I think), and I discuss some general strategy in there.  Hope everyone is running well.

-DxB

I have a pet rabbit named Jeremy.  He is the nuts.  This is us:

 

He does an awesome trick, which you can see here:

 

Without the embed features, this blog post never would have been possible.  Thanks DC! 

It has been a long time since I updated this and in the last month or so I've barely had a chance to do anything poker related.  Being added as a coach to DC actually came around the same time I was hired at a new job and was trying to get certified for another.  I also moved during that period.  Between picking up several new students, studying, moving, and the general sort of shenanigans that are associated with having several friends graduating college right now, I have been overwhelmed.  Things are starting to settle down again and I want get into some routines, and blogging is one of them.  I feel like I largely founded my poker "brand" on the quality and content of my forum posts, and I'd like to continue to expand myself to the greater deuces cracked community by providing entertaining or informative blog content.

I recently read "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer.  The book was particularly interesting to me because it used poker players as an example of people making high level decisions in a somewhat glorifying manner.  I fully recommend anyone interested in the workings of the brain pick it up, as I think there is a lot that can be garnered from understanding the building blocks of our decision process.  The book discusses rational decisions compared to emotional ones, and whether we should be rationalizing or going with our instincts.  Specifically he elucidates which kinds of decisions should be rationalized, and which kinds of decisions we can just go with a read, so to speak.  The book goes on to further discuss when our mind fails us and what sorts of triggers cause these failures, as well as when our mind is capable of great creativity and problem solving in situations that seem impossible.  Finally he amalgamates the results to give a framework for using our decision making ability to its best while avoiding its short falls.

In particular I was interested in a section that discusses the maximum number of things we are capable of keeping track of before we overload our brain and inhibit our decision making ability.  The book said that we basically have the capacity for 7 ideas plus or minus 2, depending on the person.  This seems relevant to the common practice of online multitabling.  After all, if we can really only process 7 things how can we play 8 tables?  Doesn't our decision making ability decline?  How can guys like Nanonoko exist and still crush the games if he is playing 24 tables.  More importantly what is the different between a Nanonoko and a break even SNE grinder 24 tabling?  I am fairly certain it comes down to the scope of their focus.  I feel like it would not be unreasonable to make a blanket statement and say that most SNE grinding mega tablers just use standardized lines to make all of their decisions.  Even then most of them are break even to slight winners, which seems to correlate with the hypothesis that we have a limited number things our brain can focus on at once.  Where I think Nanonoko differs and is able to get all this thin value is that he seems to view playing 24 tables as irrelevant, and that he is just battling the same regs across multiple tables.  I would think that allowing his brain to lump multiple hands together as a single point of focus since they are all against the same player gives him the free brain space to make these close decisions and free him from using only standard lines.  I recall Improva talking about something similar and how he can more tables at higher stakes because there are more familiar faces at the table.

Anyway that was just something that occured to me while reading.  If you play 9+ tables and are actually thinking at each of them let me know how you do it, or if you are never forced to make more than a few decisions at once.  I'd recommend checking out the book though.  You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0618620117/?tag=ddcomp-20 . 

So as I posted last time, I played a session of rush PLO100 recently that was absolutely crazy. The player pool was about 22 players and there was basically 4 other guys who were going crazy with something like a 15%+ 3bet stats. Something else that made this extra crazy was that for whatever reason, I decided to 4 table—I normally just play one table of rush. I felt like given the short stacked nature of the game I had a bigger edge by getting myself involved in as many pots as possible. The other adjustment that I made was that I ended up playing something like 17%VPIP/15%PFR, which I think is a necessary adjustment when people are going that crazy on you. I also tried to steal from the BTN way less, and tried to mix in some 4betting preflop (which was only disasterous). All told I played something like 1k hands total, got involved in around 200, and about 40 of those pots were 3bet preflop. I was absolutely not on my A game, but I was probably in my B- game which might’ve been enough to still have an edge. All of the crazy action caused such a surge of adrenaline that I just couldn’t turn down marginal spots. I also made some misclicks and some awkward plays that ended up working. Here is an example:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi – 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $123.45
SB: $85.55
BB: $101.00
UTG: $43.95
Hero (MP): $146.60
CO: $111.80

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is MP with A 5 4 8
1 fold, Hero raises to $3.50, 1 fold, BTN raises to $12, 1 fold, BB calls $11, Hero calls $8.50

Flop: ($36.50) A 7 2 (3 players)
BB checks, Hero checks, BTN bets $26, BB folds, Hero raises to $114.50, BTN folds

Final Pot: $88.50
Hero wins $85.50
(Rake: $3.00)

So the open is somewhat questionable because I know I am getting 3bet by the BTN a freaking ton at this point, but because this is a hand that can flop a lot of equity and honestly his 3betting range is so damn wide I think the open is okay. The flop play is somewhat interesting. The pot is huge, the board is dry, and I have a gutter. I think he is going to be cbetting a super wide range here which I am probably ahead of most of the time so my plan was to check raise the flop if the BB folds. I think his calling range is really any ace+kickers, so I am probably flipping against most of his calling range. The BDFD also helps in that regard. Here is a misclick hand where I basically make the same play:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi – 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $338.60
SB: $39.00
Hero (BB): $100.00
UTG: $115.25
MP: $113.60
CO: $388.35

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with Q 4 A 6
2 folds, CO raises to $3, BTN raises to $10.50, 1 fold, Hero calls $9.50, CO calls $7.50

Flop: ($32.00) 6 4 A (3 players)
Hero checks, CO checks, BTN bets $32, Hero raises to $89.50 all in, CO folds, BTN calls $57.50

Turn: ($211.00) 2 (2 players – 1 is all in)

River: ($211.00) 5 (2 players – 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $211.00
BTN shows K 7 T A (a pair of Aces)
Hero shows Q 4 A 6 (two pair, Aces and Sixes)
Hero wins $208.00
(Rake: $3.00)

This happened after the first hand against the same villain, so I think he realizes I am not afraid to check raise some ace high boards in 3bet pots. This was a misclick preflop but once I get to a flop like this, I think the play is to check raise again. His get it in range here ended up being only a 2:1 dog so he clearly isn’t making a mistake by calling here if he thinks I do this lightly. When someone bets so huge on fairly dry board I tend to put them on a TPTK+overcard kickers type hand and play accordingly. Looking at both these hands I think I should make a note that this player full pots it with value with hands in 3bet pots and seems to bet slightly smaller when he is planning on bet/folding. His play is standard, I think he is just getting out of line preflop. I played another sort of weird hand where I got lucky:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi – 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $100.50
UTG: $110.20
MP: $79.50
Hero (CO): $100.00
BTN: $241.20
SB: $175.40

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is CO with Q K J 8
1 fold, MP raises to $3.50, Hero calls $3.50, 1 fold, SB calls $3, 1 fold

Flop: ($11.50) T J 2 (3 players)
SB checks, MP bets $11.50, Hero calls $11.50, SB calls $11.50

Turn: ($46.00) 9 (3 players)
SB checks, MP checks, Hero bets $46, SB raises to $92, MP calls $64.50 all in, Hero calls $39 all in

River: ($280.50) 3 (3 players – 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $280.50
MP shows 9 2 A A (two pair, Nines and Twos)
Hero shows Q K J 8 (a straight, King high)
SB shows A 8 5 7 (a straight, Jack high)
Hero wins $41.00
Hero wins $236.50
(Rake: $3.00)

I don’t know if I can attribute this to me being a genius hand reader or what but when the first guy pots out into 2 people on a board with JT2tt I really put him on AAxx with or without a redraw. I’m really not sure why but my plan if the BTN folded was to jam any non-club that gave me 2 pair. I wasn’t happy to be overcalled but it obviously worked out well. Because of the SB overcall I ended up putting him on a drawy type hand so I thought it was reasonable one or both of them had flush draws. I am really not in great shape drawing to a clean river vs. 2 flush draws so I felt jamming the best play with something like 60% equity 3 ways, but I ended up in great shape as the big stack was drawing dead. My flop peel is certainly debatable and I’d venture to say that with a player left to act it is downright bad but the rest of hand plays fine. Here is another weird 3bet pot hand:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi – 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $611.15
Hero (MP): $107.25
CO: $83.35
BTN: $234.45
SB: $96.90
BB: $115.90

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is MP with 8 7 6 5
UTG calls $1, Hero raises to $4.50, CO raises to $16, BTN calls $16, 3 folds, Hero calls $11.50

Flop: ($50.50) 3 4 8 (3 players)
Hero checks, CO checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($50.50) 6 (3 players)
Hero bets $25.25, CO folds, BTN calls $25.25

River: ($101.00) 6 (2 players)
Hero bets $66 all in, BTN calls $66

Final Pot: $233.00
Hero shows 8 7 6 5 (a full house, Sixes full of Eights)
BTN mucks 3 2 6 7
Hero wins $230.00
(Rake: $3.00)

So I am obviously trying to check raise this flop since my equity vs. aces is pretty good, but surprisingly he checks with very little money behind. When the turn comes I wanted to bet such an amount that it looked like a cheap bluff on my part. I was hoping the 3bettor would go ahead and monkey jam so that I could reopen the action but he just folds. River is awesome since it is the only card that could get me paid, and the SPR is such that I don’t think he can fold any boat at all. In case anyone thinks PLO100 is tough, look at the hand he cold called a 3bet with. Games are so good. The other hands that I botched weren’t too spectacular. I 4bet AQJ9ds against something like AA85rr and wasn’t sure if I had the equity to call the 5bet so I just did and lost. Nothing special. Good session though, if I find any more gems I might post them.