DrShoe's Surgery

As I sat at my usual table playing £5/10 no-limit holdem with about £1000 in chips stacked neatly in front of me, I looked down at my two cards and swiftly threw them back to the dealer. This feels so natural now, I know how it works, I knew the place, the game and the people down to the last little detail. I remember almost exactly two years ago, when I first set foot in this Casino Poker room, things couldn't have been more different. There are some days that you just do not forget, because it is a snapshot that sums up your life at that moment. 

I met Justin outside the Casino, he was a little shorter and chirpier than I expected. He gave me a firm hand shake and greeted me in the voice that I was far more familiar with than his face. We had known each other online for a few months. I found his skype group while trying to learn and improve my poker game, and since joining, we have spent many hours debating various poker theories, specific poker hands and life.

"There's a £50 tournament, I think we should play." Justin said to me as we registered at the front desk.

"Really? But you know I don't play tournaments, what if they're too good for me?" I was uncomfortable physically being inside a casino, it felt wrong, I felt like I was doing something bad. I'd spend the previous 3-4 months learning more about gambling than I ever thought possible, and yet I can feel my self getting slightly agitated.

"Tell you what, if it turns out that you think you're not good enough, I will pay your £50 back." Justin was clearly entertained by how much I was underestimating myself.

So that was that, I broke off £50 from the £200 I took out of the cash machine earlier, and registered. As luck had it, Justin and I ended up on the same starting table, so we took our seats and waited for the tournament to begin.

The tournament was self dealt, meaning there were no dealers and the players took turn to shuffle and deal themselves. No problem. I knew how to deal. The difficulty, however, was that by this point, I was shaking. I was acutely aware that I had no idea about live poker etiquette, I knew the rules, of course, but everyone else was riffling their chips, playing with their cards, while I sat there looking at the different chips trying to figure out what colour was worth how much. God I must seem like such an idiot.

The first few hands went by without much drama, and then it was my turn to shuffle. Somehow, and to this day I still don't know what happened, I managed to drop half the deck onto the floor, along with a few of my chips. I was instantly embarrassed and rushed to pick up the cards I dropped. Justin, on the other hand, was enjoying every second, "don't mind him guys, it's his first time."

Maybe it was poker justice, but Justin subsequently got knocked out, so he came over to watch, standing a few meters behind me, not close enough to see my cards, but close enough to see everything else. There was an old gentlemen to my right who I then won a pot off, he became somewhat annoyed, and squirming in his frustration, spotted Justin standing behind him. 

"Did you see my cards and tell your friend what to do?" he demanded.

"I don't know what you're talking about" Justin replied, to be fair, how could he possibly tell me what to do when he was standing behind both of us?

"Just move it."

Justin did not reply.

In the next hand, the old guy limped, I raised, it folded back around to him and he folded, with a loud groan. Looking round again, he saw Justin standing at the same spot, unmoved. He then shot out of his chair at a speed I thought impossible for someone his age, and darted towards Justin with his fist clenched. Justin quickly jumped out of the way while a security guard rushed to the scene. 

I later asked him why he decided to not move, Justin said:"So you're asking me, why did I do my best to annoy and tilt a terrible player to your right when the most likely consequence was his chips flowing into your stack?" While I don't agree with Justin's method of doing things sometimes, I really cannot fault their effectiveness.

The tournament carried on, and I got lucky in a few spots until I became one of the chip leaders when the following pot happened.

It was now down to 11 players on 2 tables. Meaning after the next 2 eliminations, 9 players will enter the final table.

I was in the small blind, with the most chips on the table. A guy with a short stack in middle position goes all in, and a guy called on the button, after a very long pause.

I looked at my hand, it was two Kings. I smiled on the inside, because I must have the best hand here, the short stack could have any 2 decent cards, and was just desperate to double up or bust, and unless the guy on the button was trying to win an Oscar, he would not have thought that long about calling with AA, the only hand that is better than mine. So I re-raised all in, and after another 3 minutes of agonising moaning "why did you do that, I didn't do anything to you." He eventually called with Ace Six offsuit (an absolutely terrible call). I proceeded to eliminate both guys and moved to the final table.

By this point, I was in the zone, I sat up straight, watched the game carefully, it was no different to my normal games. I didn't flinch when I lost a pot, didn't smile when I won one, and it wasn't long before a middle aged guy opposite me blurted out "Everyone be careful, this guy's such a hustler, he told us it was his first time playing, but look at him, it can't be his first time."

"I said it was my first time playing live poker." I responded.

"Playing with real chips is a bit harder than clicking buttons huh?" said an old timer on my left, I smiled at him, maybe not all poker players are bad people, I thought.

After that I really felt relaxed and at ease. After all, I'd made a few thousand dollars online playing at this point, moving up stakes at a very respectable pace. I'd read upwards of 40 poker books, spent hundreds of hours playing, watching, learning, discussing poker, dissecting everything to the most minute detail, I doubt anyone else sitting at my table had done even 1/10 of what I had.

I ended up coming second in the tournament, for about £500 or so.

"So are you going home now?" Justin asked as we cashed out.

"Well actually, Anna's at this party I'm suppose to go to, and I'm late, didn't expect it to take so long." I answered, then looked at Justin, "You should come."

"O.K." And that was that, we spent the next 2 hours talking happily about all the hands we've played, about how he avoided getting a black eye from a pensioner, about how I should incorporate my "this is my first time" routine into my game to achieve maximum effect......

Anna was waiting for us outside when we arrived, she was all dressed up formally for her presentation that happened earlier, and music drifted out of the flat as the rest of her classmates were celebrating the end of term.

I introduced Anna and Justin to each other, and they exchanged pleasantries.

"What took you so long?" She asked.

"We got lost"

"For 2 hours?"

"Has it been that lo.... yeah I guess so."

Anna opened her mouth to speak again but I waved my stack of £20 notes in front of her, "But look! I won!"

She looked through the money with interest and suddenly looked up at me and said, "You mean to tell me, that for the last two hours, the two of you have been getting lost in the back streets of london, with all this in your pocket?"

I looked over at my friend Justin, who was nodding slowly, and then back into those big, pretty, blue eyes that I knew so well. I couldn't help but smile.

Life was good.

I started a new live grind schedule from Jan 9th, and it's worked out better than I thought.

Stakes played:

minimal 1/1

mostly 1/2 and 1/3

some 2/5 in the last week

Hours played: ~100

Profit: ~£10,000

my first 5 figure month, pretty happy, although rungood helped :)

 

Last night I couldn't sleep, and somehow ended up reading a book on pharmacology.

During the introduction chapter, it talked about how pharmacology, before the 1900s, was generally a "science" based around apothecaries that claimed to provide remedies based on nothing more than anecdotal evidence, and sometimes even less reasoning than that. It wasn't until relatively recently that a huge boom of chemists, biologists and doctors started investigating mediators, biologically active molecules and pharmacokinetics that an empirical approach to pharmacology was developed to the trillion dollar industry that we know as the drugs industry today.

Made me think of poker...

There was a time when people played poker the way they **felt** it should be played, if their aces get cracked 5 times in a roll, they conclude that it is not profitable to raise it preflop and hence start limping.

Then along came a few people that provided fundamental theoretical frameworks, while quite rough around the edges, they mostly still hold true today. I'm talking about Harrington's mantra of "solid poker is tight aggressive" and the supersystems approach of "aggression is king, semibluff till your villain goes broke". I may be paraphrasing but hopefully you see where I am going with this.

Fastforward to today. Fundamental frameworks for "good solid poker" is everywhere, 95% of the people on this site, (and hence >90% of people that play 400nl and above) are familiar with the concepts of equity, board texture, odds, implied odds, fold equity, card blocking, combo counting, skalansky bucks, Galfond bucks..... I could go on for pages.

My point?

As with so many things in life, being good at poker involves 2 approaches. Firstly, an academic, empirical approach that stems from the very basics of poker (i.e. preflop hand selection) that works its way up and through the streets and aims to quantify, as much as possible, each situation mathematically and logically. And secondly, an approach that puts much more weight on playing lots and lots of hands and learning from your mistakes.

Which is best? Well, I have my personal opinion in this.

The best example, I can think of, of a fundamentally sound player, would most likely be galfond. His analytical skills remind me of professors at university that I actually respect, and relies on logic and reasoning before resorting to other means of determining the best course of action in each spot. Yet he is so solid, that he's managed to transcend the maths and equities and incorporate a good amount of "feel" into his game too.

Ziigmond, on the otherhand, would be my example of the second type of poker player. He feels things out, and very very likely, by what you could possibly call coincidence, happen to play fundamentally sound a majority of the time too.

I think that just as in the 1990s,where people lacked fundamental understanding of poker and the mathematics behind it. There is a big lack of intuitive play in the mid and low stakes these days. People are so caught up with various theories that they're often reluctant to experiment and truly come up with their own style, but instead doing various imitations of styles that they know work.

I'm not even going to pretend I'm a great poker player, I don't even think I'm very good. However, I plan to play only 4-6 tables, ever. And try my best to develop a style that I can call my own.

Dear DC

I am back,

rebuilding my roll

made a thread on twoplustwo

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/174/poker-goals-challenges/rebuilding-my-roll-gogogogogogo-1084037/#post28195712

Will post more later :)

So I played some live the other day, 1/1 at Fox poker, super soft table after busting out of a lol donkament, people were throwing money off everywhere.

It's funny how you usually remember the best hand you played, and the worst hand you played in a session, here's my best.

Pretty passive, loose table, only good player I can tell is in the BB, I'm in the CO with

QT

My image is tight and aggressive, and I suspect most on the table have realised that I probably know what I'm doing, seeing as I'm up a buyin from pretty standard Vbetting spots.

UTG straddles, Call, Call, fold, Call, 

I looked at my hand, and insta mucked.

1. My range is pretty tight in this game, and most people will at least subconsciously realise that, so if I iso and hit a pair, they will put me on the hand I have (or slightly stronger kicker) and play correctly.

2. Limping along is a bad choice, my 2 pair boards are pretty scary, and I have no flush draw, my trips boards gives me a bad kicker and I'm unlikely to get paid off enough anyway.

All in all, it's hard to picture a profitable situation with this hand, in a mass limped pot. 22 or 56s would be way better here, and KJo+ would warrant a much stronger argument for isoing I think.

So I've been back on the online grind for just  more than the last month, and have had some trouble beating it. The reasons for this being:

1. 100nl is full of regs that also play 200/400nl, and because of the small amounts of games on merge, I'd say 70% of 100nl regs play higher.

2. Bad beat jackpot seems to have attracted more regs than fish, which is very weird but nevertheless, they're the only tables running right now, they also have a 3-4bb/100 rake on top of normal, which really doesn't help.

I've talked to quite a few people about this, and many of them say "oh, the rake is so high and theres so little fish it might not be beatable"

While there's certainly truth to that sentence, I can't imagine Mr Galfond or Ivey looking at a 100nl table and say "omg rake is too high this is unbeatable".

Anyway, I've been working on my game a lot lately and I feel like I'm very close to beating it, just finished a pretty good session and hopefully my graph will start going up now.

Just a quick one before I go to play day 3.

I did ok yesterday, made some bad calls, made some bad bluffs, and the occasional good play :), but this one is probably the most money I've ever shovelled into the pot with a bluff.

Table image: very nitty EP, I think people respect my game a lot, and generally unwilling to make big moves vs me.

I raise UTG, BTN calls. BTN is a loose ish player who stabs at the pots when checked to, but doesn't raise as a bluff as far as I can see.

I hold black AK.

Flop:

484

I bet 1/2 pot, he calls,

turn:

2

I bet 2/3 pot, he calls.

River:

5

I bet 2/3 pot, he tanks for 2-3 minutes and folds showing T

I insta show my black AK.

Dragged the pot back to me, it was about 80k chips, I would've been down to 50k if it didnt work.

80k chips is worth about £1,300. I'm just happy I didn't have to throw up when he instacalls me.

Last month, I'd been playing mostly cash, however, by the end of the month I realised that while it was quite a good educational experience for me at the time, the games weren't really very beatable, or if they were, by a small margin. My plan this month was to go back to the grind online, improve my game and play some live tourneys, the reason for this was

1. to improve the fastest

2. to give myself a chance of binking a live tourney so that I can go ahead and afford to play the series at the start of next month

3. to get better at live tourneys, something I wanna do eventually, and get reads on the people at the club.

However, at the moment, it seems pretty unlikely that my bankroll is going to support this series (total liability is around 1.4k), and it just seems a giant waste if I don't play this series, as the tourneys are invariably very juicy.

So here's what I propose:

Of all the tourneys listed - http://www.gutshot.com/bforum/showthread.php?t=36939

The ones I would like staking for are the £300+30 (+5), £200+15( +5) and the £750+50(+10) events.

the total is therefore £1365, and I would like to keep 30% of that, leaving 70% at £136.5 each 10%, I will most likely be playing If I manage to sell 60% of the share.

Each event is therefore weighted as 24.5%, 16% and  59.5% respectively.

Now the only slight complication to this, is that I will also be playing satellites for each event, and in the case that I do get a seat, I have not decided whether to take the seat 100% for myself. So if you are ok with it, I would like to reserve the right to return your money back to you (for the event that I've satellited into), should I quality through the sats.

If I don't qualify through the sats, I will definitely, 100% be taking the staking deal forward and playing the events.

I feel like I should make a case for why I think I am +EV in these tournaments, however, if you're reading this, you most likely know me, and I can assure you, it's not so much that I think I'm +EV, it's that the players are so spewy, I can't really not be.

Please bear with me as this is my first time doing a tourney stake deal, if you have questions, please ask on skype, and I would appreciate if someone can confirm my maths.

So I've bee playing almost exclusively live 1/1 cash this month, and have a few thoughts to share.

Firstly, Rake.

I did not realise, but playing 1/1 live is almost falling into the same trap as 10nl online, where the rake 5% up to 10 pounds per pot. I've taken notice of how much each dealer walks away with after their 30 minute stint, and it is usually around 30-50 pounds.

This equates to say 80 pounds per hour, and after counting the hands I can safely say that a normal table never plays much more than 30 hands per hour.

Averaging at 8 player at any given time, the rake per person per 100 hands is therefore (80/8)*(10/3), which essentially means I'm paying between 7-10 pounds per hour for the privilege of being there, and that then equates to a disgusting rake rate of more than 20bb/100.

So, I think many would agree that even in the softest games, you cannot realistically expect to beat it for more than 40bb/100 over a large sample. Adding on the fact that it is very difficult to seat select, and usually impossible to table select during live play. Along with the long sessions which means you tend not to play your A game all the time (even if your B game is still 30bb/100, your winrate is still halved), the highest figure that I will allow myself would be around 30bb/100.

Taking away rake, that equates to 10bb/100, which is a meagre 3 pounds per hour. Ok, some of my estimates may have been a little on the high side, but it does prove a point that although live 1/1 has been very good experience for me, the tables at my club are not THAT soft, and there is a massive rake hurdle to overcome to beat the game at all.

Secondly, Live strategy vs Online strategy

I started playing live using a slightly tighter strategy than online, which involves a lot of pressure and semi bluffing. Running good at the start (hitting my semibluffs, getting action on big hands etc) gave me a healthy cushion which was somewhat vital later this month when I started running bad.

However, after losing some big pots and really thinking about them, I have concluded that there are 2 main adjustments one should make when moving from online to live:

Pots are generally harder to steal - people tend to call when in doubt, and err on the side of "not being outplayed", which is great for value big hands, but makes semibluffing a lot less profitable, and sometimes downright -EV when you have nowhere near the fold equity you would 6max online.

Money is made by folding - In general, good online players win by applying pressure at the right points, and putting your opponents in tricky spots, where they usually can't do anything right. Live, it seem to me to be all about making it comfortable for your opponent to call, and most of your money is going to be made by folding where your opponent wouldn't. Now before you start disagreeing, please read on.

Finally, the optimal live play - playing a 34/30 maniac style, in my opinion, is DEFINITELY the most profitable play. This is somewhat contradictory to what I have written above, let me explain.

Live is all about reads, people play completely differently and have wildly different styles. This means in any given pot, your action will differ wildly as well. Whereas online, there are usually not many "droolers" per table, and your main aim is to outplay the bad regs on the table, while making your money once you've isoed the drooler, quite a simple idea really.

Live, you are often in unique situations with various kinds of players, and to know what to do, in all these situations, on a variety of board, in a variety of positions is immensely difficult. And in order to play a maniac style profitable, you must navigate yourself through these complex pots almost perfectly 9 out of 10 times, and remember, when you play so many pots, and apply so much pressure, you pay a lot of rake.

Until one is good enough to read every opponent really well, and outplay them consistently, a tight approach is generally best, in my opinion. And that is how I'm playing the game. I am constantly finding more hands to play against certain opponents, as preflop selection is actually quite a complex affair.

I hope the above was interesting 

Ok so I was intending on carrying on the story from last time, but basically, I've been running bad, and even though I came first, and chopped for first in 2 tournaments last weekend, I am currently down £1,000 ($1,500) since the start of the month.

Instead I thought it would be more interesting to talk about 2 live cash hands, 1 I played well, the other I played badly, lets see if you can work out which is which.

Hand 1: Villain is a 20 year old, bright looking guy, drinking beer, offering drinks around the table, recently revealed that he plays up to 25/50 (that's 5knl) and 3/6 PLO online. And knows that I'm somewhat competent. BTN is fish, passive preflop, weak postflop.

£1/£1 live cash game:

Hero has a £210 stack, villain has hero covered.

Villain in MP, raises preflop to 7, hero calls at CO with TT, BTN calls, blinds fold.

Flop: (pot 23, 3 players) 953

Villain bets 15, Hero calls, BTN folds.

Turn: (pot 53) Q

Villain bets 30, Hero tanks, then calls.

River: (pot 113) Q

Villain bets 75, Hero (75 to call, around 150 behind) tanks and calls.

Villain shows A Q

So my reasoning for this hand, I think the call on the flop is super standard, a fold is out of the question, and I can't really find a good argument for raising.

The turn is by far the most interesting card in this hand. Since villain is competent, I had to assume that his barreling frequency there is not 100%, therefore the only hands he is continuing to barrel with are:

A hands, of which there are 4 AK, 3 AQ, 4 AJ, 2 AT.

3 of those have TPTK, 2 of those have the nut flush, leaving 8 hands with the naked A.

My assumption is that if a low card comes on the river, he will bet all his value hands, and stop betting most of his naked A hands.

If a  hits the river, I expect him to play honestly also.

So I called the turn, expecting a somewhat easier decision on the river. The rivered Queen is a very unexpected card for me, which says something about my lack of experience. Once the queen hits, I should have registered that he is much more likely to be thin valuebetting than bluffing.

However, my thinking at the time was that, the queen just removed another value hand from his turn range, and since my range is so face up (medium strength/weak showdown hand) that He must be continuing 3 barreling with A high to get me off it.

However, looking back on this hand, folding the river or raising all in, are both much better options than calling. As villain has no boats in his range (he may have QQ, but let's not worry about that), so his most likely range is AQ with A of clubs. This is the hand I was pondering about since the turn, and simply did not believe he could have it (only 2 combos left).

I also saw that folding the turn is also a viable option, as: the only worse hands likely have 2 overcards + better flush draw, and I'm crushed by all his value hands.

So, a hand that I played badly, however I don't think it was horrible.

Hand 2 - time for a more cheerful note.

I am in the big blind of a 1/1 game. The guy to my left straddles, relevant history: he straddles maybe 1/2 to 1/3 of the time, and has been sitting on my left for around 4 hours, of the 4/5 times he has straddled, he has reraised 3/4 times, so a majority. I chatted to him 3 hours ago and he said his wife wanted him to be home by 11:00, the time is  now 11:30.

Preflop:

Straddle, 5 callers, SB calls the 1 more, I pick up KK, and formulated a plan to insta complete as the action got round to me.

Villain announces a raise of 15, with 60 left behind. Everyone folds.

I think a few seconds and go all in. Villain sighs, looks at his cards, looks at his chips, looks at his watch, and calls.

Villain shows AJ and board bricks out.

Until next time guys :)