Me and Poker

Damn variance can be hard. I’ve read on a 2+2 forumpost the following;

Variance doesn’t care about fair, and you have to do what you have to do to grind out of a downswing.

So what should i do?

It started about two weeks ago where i was just climbing up the ladder and got myself grinding the 25NL (again). I’ve tried it 2 times now to get working on that lvl instead of 10NL but it just won’t work. I don’t believe i’m doing something wrong right now. I’m playing it A.B.C with vpip/pfr of around 12/9 on both levels.
First lets split things up in two separate times to evaluate.

- One: the time i was doing well grinding my BR together;
- Two: The time i am not doing well and my BR is dropping BI after BI.

Here we have a pic on where i highlighted my ups and downs;

.
..PING!..
…
….FLASH!….
…
..BLAST!..
.

And then it hits you…. amazing! I’ve just looked at my graph, filtering them on stakes and what i’ve noticed is that i am way way to aggressive lately, my red line is moving down way to hard, and with that my blue line is moving down too. Why? Probably because i’m showing down too much. That’s an indirect response on trying to bluff to much where i get called. And as you know you can’t be bluffing to much here on the micro’s! So in theory, i should be less inclined to call people on the flop/turn/river… And stop after my cbet! I once said to myself that i’m good at folding AK – high pairs when i almost know for certain someone has hit something and i didn’t (or the AK with a 3810r flop you know). I think i have to get back to the basics and play a very simple fit or fold game. And that is exactly what i am going to do tonight. Open up 6 windows of 10NL, play it fit, fold and hard on value.

I’ve also noticed that i played hard for value in my winning period and doing that less now. So i’m going to be betting relentlessly from now on if i believe i’m the better one.

Goals to improve my game and get out of my losing streak:

- Be less inclined to call when i have not hit yet, think twice about medium pairs;
- Be less aggressive on the turn when the cbet gets called;
- Play hard when i have hit and believe i’m holding the nuts;

This is a paragraph i like very much. It is from the book “Small Stakes Hold’em, winning big with expert play” by _Ed Miller, David Sklansky & Mason Malmuth.

If you “run bad”, or get a bad beat for a couple of hundred dollars. This is the way to calm you down.

Random and Independent Events
The human brain is very good at identifying patterns. We draw quigles on a page to represent abstract ideas, and every literate person understands them as words. We can instantly identify individuals by looking at their faces alone, even if their appearance has changed and we haven’t seen them for years. Everyon recognizes these incredibly complex patters effortlessly and reliably.

………..

But sometimes people see false patterns that they believe are real. for example, people take placebo pills, feel better, and conclude thatt he pills have cured their ailments. In that case, one could argue that this glitch inour patternrecognition system is helpful.

When it comes to gambling, however, mistaking false patters as rea has led many to ruin. Most gamblers tend to ascribe meaning to purely random, indepentent events. They are wrong to do so. THE CARDS DEALT ON ANY POKER HAND ARE COMPLETELY RANDOM AND INDEPENDENT OF THE CARDS DEALT ON ANY PREVIOUS HAND.
When most people play poker, they tend to expect that which has recently occured to recur. For example, if they have drawn to five flushes so far that session and made thm all they tnd to exepect to complete their flush again if they flop another draw. of course, each hand is an INDEPENDENT EVENT. Cards cannot think, they cannot plan, they cannot make up ideas to screw you over and over by given you 5 flushdraws but not make the 5th card. Even if you have flopped 20 flushdrawes in a row, as long as you are not being cheated, your cahnce to complete your next flush draw by the river is 35%, just as it allways is.
bq. there is NO SUCH THING as flop lag. if you have have been ‘running good’, or ‘playin a rush’, you are no more likely than anyone else to be dealt a good hand in the future. It isn’t true that ‘someone allways makes two pair whenever i have aces’. pocket kings are not actually ‘ace magnets’ and not everyone hits his two outter against you. past results DO NOT AFFECT THE CARDS DEALT IN FUTURE HANDS.
bq. our brain invented all of this nonsense to explain something it clearly wasn’t designed to understand: comletely random events with absolutely no patter or meaning whatsoever. It is natural to begin to think that the cards are out there to get you when you are losing, or that you will continue to be lucky when you have been “hot”. But being natural does not mean it is helpfull. STOP YOUR PATTERNRECONIZER BEFORE IT GOES HAYWIRE by telling yourself:

“There is no pattern. There is no pattern.”

So, here i am. Writing a real blog about my ROI% . I have to admit that i once tried to keep up a blog, but i failed to keep new posts after doing two or so. Hope that these will stay more up to date. Hell, if they really have something to say it would be nice. But most of all i’ll just write it to keep myself posted on things i’m doing and not doing. I’ll be writing about Sit’n Go’s a lot, since those are my definate favorites to play. Mostly STT right now. Later in my career i’ll go into some 27 or 45 MTTSTNG.

I’ll save up all the chitchat and get up to speed right away:

First of all, i want to formulate goals. A goal, or goals for the long term, and ofcourse for the short term to reach those long terms. Ofcourse i make my goals SMART to keep them manageable. (you know, Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic, Time)

LongTerm Goal 1: My first long term goal is to make a $1000 by the end of september.
LongTerm Goal 2: Become Holdemmanager master for analyzing SNG’s before the end of 2010.

Longterm goal 1
I’ve “Donated” 75 dollar to my pokeraccount, with te doubling up bonus i would have at least 150 dollar soon. With this amount of money in my cashier i’m able to play on the micro limits STTSNG’s. I play no more of a buy in than 5% of my total bankroll. That makes the $3.75 games. Since those are awefull at FTP i’ll do the $2.25. I don’t believe i’ll lose 20 times in a row at these stakes (ok its possible, but i wont :P)

I find myself comfertable playing 4 games at a time. This way i can still keep track on whats going on at the tables and play a descent amount of hands. On average one table lasts over 30 – 45 min. So i should be playing about 16 games per 3 hours. Good start if you ask me.
I’ll try to play at least around 75 games a week for now to get to 300 a month. Therefore i would need 5 sessions of 3 hours. I can play for 6 hours a time, so at least 3 days a week i’ll be fully concentrating on the game NLHE Poker itself with 3 hours a week for analyzing my game. (i believe this will be more since i don’t have much else to do right now).

So what do i need to do to get to my goal #1 with this amount of playtime?
I’ve got a raw 2 monts of playing, equalling 600 games. I need to earn $750,- (1000 – 150(bonus)). $750 / 600 = $1.25 per game on average. Doesn’t mean a lot, untill we convert it to the ROI per game. ROI is calculated as follow: ROI = [(Payback – Investment)/Investment)]*100. So all we have to do is fill in the blanks. Over 600 $2.25 games i invest $1350 (2.25*600). So that is the total investment. What i want to make is $750,00. So how do we get that? -1350 + ? = 750. Well:(750 minus -1350)=2100. So we got to make a profit of $2100 in total. Here is the equasion:

ROI = [ ($2100 – $1350)/$1350)]*100 = 55%.
ROI = 55%

Very interesting to know that my ROI should be at 5,5% or higher to get to $1000 at the end of september! We’ll keep track of this in Holdem Manager. For now my ROI at these stakes is -6% over 40 games. I’ll measure my ROI over 75 games a time to get a real good image. If things are not over 5,5% i’ll dig into my play and have a look at my troublepoints.

LongTerm Goal 2:
How i’ll reach this one, will be my next post i think. I’m not sure yet :P

Now i want to make go even further and calculate how many times i should be in the money over those 600 games.

The payout structure is as following:

1st: $9
2nd: $5.40
3rd: 3.60
average is $6.

$750 / $6 = 125 times in the money. That is 125/600 = 20.8%
But this would be to simple. Cuz this means i got to be a 1st all those times. (the only way to get $6 out of a game is to get in 1st place)

So per place to get $750,00:

750 / 9 = 84 times;
750 / 5.40 = 139 times;
750 / 3.60 = 209 times.
average of this is 144 times. That equals ~24% of the total games.

So my goal for these games would be to get an ROI of 55% and i should be over 25% ITM.

If you think something is wrong here, please let me know :) I’d love to discuss.