le petite tilt.

hey there.

after i have focused on that ego thing we have been talking about in the other thread i noticed a major leak of mine that only appeared on tilt. if you have read jared tendlers mental game of poker you might have come across the principle of tilt uncovering things we do not have mastered yet. 

to be honest it did not only appear whilest tilting, but playing as well. there was a big question mark over some situations that i did random stuff and i believe to have found an answer to this. i am sure you experienced similar situations... you have to make a decision in a more common situation but are lost because you are not on your "a-game". well most people's a-game is just winning. playing your a-game when loosing is a much tougher task. i think you are not going to loose if yuo are playing your a-game though. it is much easier to recognize variance if you are a great player and most people just are not good enough, so even though this might sound arrogant or sth, i am talking about you lol.

these days im running superbad again and posted to my blog that im taking some sparetime to get back on mental track, when Luke00016, who did participate in the old "everywhereyougo" thread.. posted a comment in there:

[quote]Duffte, 
Something I didn't ask in your forum post: 
Do you have these sorts of reactions to non-poker things in the rest of your life? Do you find yourself bubbling on the edge of rage/frustration frequently? If so, it may be beneficial to look at this as less a poker problem and more a life-view issue, and there are lots of ways you may try to address that which would transfer to a better poker mindset.[/quote]

with me replying this:

[quote] it's tricky.. i do hate people fighting for their own goods/ego, i actually do avoid competition as i dont want to compare myself to others and i give more than i take.. and do not take care of myself. so it looks like i am more of a wounded dog ego-wise. a wounded dog that that does not want to get in contact with all that. i recognize myself as not worthy or sth, but once i do not get the least and ppl try to take even that from me i start fighting. if that makes any sense. i rarely do fight because i avoid everything. i have a friend i use to play tennis with frequently and we are beginners.. but once he gets all competetive while i am exhausted and just wanna improve our game, i start hating him.  [/quote]

so one thing i always do when im on tilt is pushing equity to no good. i try to get the very least edge in there and start loosing big.i really am focused playing like this and i try to realize my whole skilladvantage over others while i don't see that skill will not always applies like this. if we understand skill as realizing our expected value, what i did there was to realize my hands equity without seeing, yet ignoring mandatory factors that have a huge impact on my EV. so i cannot realize ev shouldnt i be very sensetive about everything.

i wanna talk about something that is out there for so long and still nobody seems to really have understood it. im jsut saying that because nobody ever told me to take care of it and i didnt understand it until today. people are too worried to understanding the math behind everything while there are much more important factors that are shifting ranges and likelyhoods to a point where your mistakes and adjustments will have a huge huge impact on EV. 

i am talking about image. as i said this part of theory has been out there for ages and still i see people adjusting completly wrong to the situation occuring. maybe they don't even consider image, their credibility, once 3betting AQo oop after 3betting as a bluff 2 times. "yeah valuehand, gogogo"

flop 29Tr, cbet, call.. and now? 3barrel? you 3bet so you rep a strong range, my perceived range is TT+? no

relying on your credibility, on your image is the one option to play more strictly. it allows you to never be lost in a situation and be more on point in any circumstances. it allows you to avoid spots you should not be in and allows you to adjust more properly. this is the biggest leak of mine that made me tilt so often. my own mistakes made me tilt most. my ignorance made me tilt.. who am i to judge justice in poker? i propably just played bad. can i play bad? technically i am pretty good i'd say and i understand to weigh ranges, ev all the stuff that makes you a good player.. but just because we are able to apply all that, we still need a fundemantel to play upon.

this fundamental in todays games is everybody's hud. against 80% of players i think we are able to just stick to numbers as their lack of knowledge makes their image rarely shift. some people though are stressing their equity advantage to a level that will harm themselves. or they will overadjust by playing too many hands just bec villain folds so much... they will do that to a point where their credibility goes down and their FE shrinks and ppl adjust well.

now you might think that this is good for value then. it really is not, because the only thing the player that is loosing his credibility achieves is, that he is about to realize his equity. an equity that is threatened, because it cannot fold as easily, due to its image. an equity that is attacked by semibluff and bluffs.. an equity that has to hit a board :P

i want to paint an even better picture, to nail this down.

a good image means, that your ev is coming from equity + foldequity, while a bad image means your ev is coming from equity - foldequity. 

if your image is stressed, you'd have to play ranges that include much less bluffs, you wont be able to play as many hands.. or let's say you will create loads of aggressive deadmoney early on that you most likely will have to fold the times your hand won't hit. this is seen very black n white, still it applies in grey areas. and it is costly. everybody knows those tough "fish" that test our credibility all the time, they  float and bluff and we cannot do a thing about it.

an example could be that hero has attacked a certain villain he has position on over and over and sits in the SB against his late open with ATs. heros credibility, where credibility means the likelyhood of hero having a hand that villain cannot do anything about like a premium pocketpair, is down. hero might be attacked by 4bets that he cannot do much about, as against AT villain can have a wide range of hands that will do the job. hero might be attacked postflop by semibluffs against cbets, by valuehands and his own idiocy cbetting and barreling.

the EV of a hand that cannot bluff, but rely on deadmoney is a concept that has been lost for some time. people always consider foldequity when making decisions, they cbet blindly, barrel those cards.. but what if even our best perceived range is bloated so much that villain can call down anything? right, we have to retain a more valueheavy range still, so we need to give up much much more. 

im sorry that this text is not formatted correctly nor written that good, im just typing stuff down that comes to mind. 

the bottomline is that bluffing with a bad image is awful, valuebetting still is very tough and we have to realize the situation we have put ourselves in before it actually happens... not to have doubts about our entire gameplan. even though i have written down those lines i am not sure how this will help me not going crazy.

what is the best plan with strong hands such as AK that did not hit, with villains testing our credibility?

flopequity for strong premium broadways that are unlikely to be dominated is roughly 30%, AK has 30% equity to hit a flop against 22... without FE AK has 30% equity preflop and like 12% otf to hit a turn.

even with FE i see people worrying about cbetting AK or not.. some people just wont do it and end up loosing so much money. they dont even let their credibility be tested. their lack of skill, lack of theory makes their image not shift. then there are ppl cbetting AK, playing there perceived range and get away with it due to their credible image.. and then there is the guy gaining much more value on their ranges as ppl dont believe him anymore, x/f ak int his situation, barreling in that.. relying on his actual image, not the hud. 

your pick

i found it very interesting to try to build some kind of idiotic image, while im not sure how to be successful doing so at the moment... even letting the game come to you and adjusting to what happened in shortterm history is a big plus for our ev