thisfool's microscope

Hi.

I posted something in July stating I was "back", but then I got distracted and left. Actually, I got sick of playing on Carbon Poker, where the interface and player pool were quite to my distaste. I have since turned to an old flame, Magic: the Gathering, where I've been having some fun, but I can sense that the poker Jones may also be returning of late. As a US gamblorz, my options are limited, so I turn to the $38 or so I have in my Carbon account and prepare to see what kind of micro grinding I can apply to it.

As you may but probably don't know, in June I graduated from dental school. I have since aced my board exams, obtained my license, and become fully positioned to practice dentistry in the state of California. Unfortunately, the job market hasn't been kind to anyone lately, particularly us young grads. I've been on a few interviews in the last three months, but to no avail.

Funemployment could have left countless hours for the pre-Black-Friday plan of grinding on Poker Stars, where I was happily on pace to make Supernova by October and showing an acceptable but improvable winrate including rakeback. Instead, my days have gone to playing Magic, bowling, the occasional video game dabble, and of course, combing the job boards.

On the note of bowling, the one piece of awesome storytelling I can provide pertains to a fateful day back in June. It was the eighth, to be exact. This particular Wednesday was the day when all senior dental students were evaluated for graduation. A bigwig type committee of instructors got together and decided if any student needed more time in school (in other words, whether they would graduate on time). Everyone thought it would be them. I woke up, having slept horribly, and had to meet my friend for mimosas because we wouldn't find out the results until the early afternoon. While the booze helped, it didn't pass the time well. I found myself pacing the halls at school anxiously, where I was definitely joined by several dozen of my classmates.

Some time around 1:00pm, a group of administrators emerged into the clinic, and casually began slipping envelopes into the students' mailboxes. I ran over to my part of the hallway, where the administrative assistant who handled my part of the alphabet had envelopes in hand. She saw me, and immediately began fumbling through the pile, with a slightly excited look on her face. This moment began the magic of the day. I got the letter, ripped it open violently, and observed the results: cleared for graduation! Yaaaaaahhh!! That sure was a nice feeling, and I had to share that with all of facebook. This instantly became the coolest day of my life, and of course, how could it get any better?

That night, I went to my bowling league, and I bowled a 300.

 I showed up to the lanes that night, feeling essentially invincible. I jammed my right middle finger getting a ball out of my locker and had to ice it for twenty minutes, and it took two months for the bruise to grow out of my fingernail. But who cares? I was a dentist! We definitely drank more than normal that night in celebration.  I have to think that some combination of the booze to calm the nerves, along with the news of the day to make me so happy, made it possible to do this crazy thing on such an already mighty day.

I wish the afterword to this story were better, as I'm still unemployed but ready to fix some teeth; however, the legend of June 8th, 2011 will live forever in my life. I bought a 14K gold ring from the USBC awards store to commemorate that occasion, which has been engraved with my current bowling nickname, "Dr. 300". It looks roughly like a gold version of this.

SO, as of yesterday, I'm back on the poker grind. We'll see how long I can tolerate Carbon and its antics. If you play on Carbon, find me as thisfool. On that note, if you play Magic Online, I have the same username.

See you there!

Hi all.

A lot has happened - obviously - since Black Friday and over the past few months!

Time and events have snowballed over the last few months, which make it hard to get back on track with blogging -- every time I would sit down to think about writing again, I'd realize how much I have to cover before I can get back to my routine entries.

I have so much to say that it's going to take a little bit of time and several entries before I can catch up.

One of the main goals I have for this blog is to keep a journal of sorts. Every now and then, I do come across something that would make a fun or interesting story, and I try to capture it in a way that would make for a good read. I have no idea how many people followed or read my stuff in the past, nor will I really ever know. Some day, as my poker journey gets more interesting or relevant, I'm sure this blog will become more effective. For now, let's see if I can get all the information in here, and if anyone can enjoy it!

See you soon!

If you don't know what black friday is, in the poker-related way, then you live under a rock.

For nearly a month, in reaction to the exile of US players from the mainstream poker sites of the world, I simply closed my poker programs and took to life's other pleasures. I'm in my last month of dental school; PS3 games are hawt right now; I've played a little Magic again with my old pals; and, of course, there's always gf, friends, and drinks. Enough to keep me busy.

Today, I longed for poker again. I logged onto the forums of DC, knowing with rough certainty that there were other sites out there where US players could turn for action. Sure enough, I found goldseraph's "tool time" video, which game a review of the sites currently available to Americans.

Following a series of links, I signed up for an account with Carbon Poker and made a deposit. I'm baaaaaack!!!

I accidentally went on a nine day hiatus from blogging. My bad. I was on spring break! This was not only my last spring break, but my last break as a dental student.

As you may recall, it's my goal to reach Supernova this year at 100,000 VPPs on PokerStars. During the first two months of the year, I had just started at 50NL with a history of two unsuccessful shots in the past. With an arbitrarily chosen $1,000 initial bankroll after switching from Full Tilt, I decided to allow a five buy-in shot before switching back to 25NL. Unfortunately, while I oscillated heavily in the first weeks, I ended up losing the shot. I had to adjust and clean up my game as I felt lost and exploited for a while at first.

While regrouping at 25NL multitabling, I was also studying for my national boards. I took those at the end of February, by which point I was again committed to trying 50NL once more. It went better this time, and luckily, I was able to stay there. Because so much of my time had gone to studying and playing at smaller stakes, I had only earned about 10,000 VPPs in the first two months, far below the SN pace of about 16,600. But I was committed to my volume goals and armed with a little bit of free time (especially with my spring break).

With March drawing to a close, I racked up about 14,000 VPPs to add to my total this month (with a few days to go). I'm almost exactly on SN pace now.

Unfortunately, during my finals week and over the break I felt gutsy enough to take a really aggressive stab at 100NL to see how it went. Due to 40% runbad and 60% playing errors, I lost more than I had planned, and wound up stuck ten buy-ins in a short time. This negated most of my winnings of late, and I vowed not to try it again until I had a more suitable bankroll and proven experience at 50NL.

This month I ran at 4.75bb/100 over 56,000 hands at 50NL. Overall this year I am at 2.25bb/100 over 85,000 hands at the level. I am fully comfortable now, happy with my results, and planning to continue to move forward.

In other news, I have purchased THIS:

 Actual link to the website

50NL has been going well. There's a mountain right in the middle of my graph, twice, but I still have a winrate of which I'm proud. I randomly tried to play 100NL on Tuesday instead of studying for finals, feeling feisty and coming off some previous wins. During 1600 hands, I ran AK into AA pre, ran AQ into AA pre, and lost a 55/45 megadraw, but still managed to lose only 2 buy-ins. I'm happy with that. Next time I take a super shot, I won't be so crazy with AQ. Since coming back to 50NL I've felt fine, and even added a few tables during two of the sessions just to see how it went (it went fine). I'll stick with the 8 tabling plan overall.

Anyway, one of the things I'm still trying to adjust to on Stars is the presence of numerous 40bb short stackers at the tables. As you know, Stars recently canned the 20-50bb games in favor of the cap tables, so I've seen more people migrate over to the 40-100bb games with the minimum buy-in. I have found a little bit of trouble playing against them, mainly because it's a bit more awkward to deal with them when they go for stacks with 40bb and there are other people at the table or in the hand. I don't feel up for posting any example scenarios, but I'll just note that I haven't figured out the best way to play against those guys. Anyone have suggestions on how to deal? Especially if there are, say, two of them present in a 6max game?

Reg reads this and replies "standard table change IMO"

WATCH THIS RIGHT NOW. YOU WILL ROFL FOR A MONTH

This is a post about the ways in which I've worked on my game this month and my excitement at seeing and feeling changes in my performance.

I just ran all of my March hands through LeakBuster. Although there are only about 11,000 in the sample so far, I wanted to see how I was doing on my target fixes:
1) Higher aggression % and aggression factor
2) Less cold calling, especially with suited Ax and random broadway hands
3) Fold to slightly more 3bets
4) Higher opening ranges from UTG, MP

To my surprise, LB reported that my sample showed zero leaks. None. There were 6 "potential leaks" that all fell within the optimal spectrum but toward one end. I was absolutely thrilled about this! I got an average grade of A+.

Here are the things I've tried to do this month to work on the game:

--Think about each of my four goals before and during each session. Yes, I know, they're broad, but the general tone of them is to show more aggression and less passivity and it helps me to play with confidence and, well, aggression.
--Drop down the number of tables. The last two months, I was trying to be a RB fiend at 12-16 tables and I never stabilized at that or learned anything. As I blogged previously, I had mixed results and very large swings that weren't predictable. I started out this latest stretch at 4 tables of 50NL, then added two more when I felt comfortable, and recently added two more to make 8 tables. I'm making sure to take the time to watch hands I'm not in, take notes on players, and contemplate different lines I can take while in a pot. I try to ask myself questions and pause in order to make sure I'm keeping my focus.
--Table select well. I'm more apt to move tables if I feel like they get filled up with regs or I get put in a bad position. Tables die out a fair amount at the micros, so I'm often opening up new ones to replace the unfavorable. I am generally looking for at least 60bb average stacks, 15bb minimum pots, and 18% players to the flop.

Results will be posted later on. I don't want to jinx myself. The important thing here is that I have been reviewing my tendencies with the LB software, working hard to fix my problem areas, and managing a multitabling style better. I'm really pleased with how I've been playing this month.

Also, I'm on track to start making PlatinumStar this month, which I'm proud of at 50NL.

Tommy Angelo introduces the concept of reciprocality in his series, The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment. While I was thinking about poker today, this concept came to mind as a really cool and educational piece of poker theory. I want to bring it to your attention. Please read his article at the link below:

Reciprocality

The basic concept is this. In poker, you can get all-in preflop witih pocket aces against pocket kings. That situation, in a 200 big blind pot, will make you something like 162 big blinds on average due to your equity. Sounds great, right? The thing is, every other player can do that, too. Therefore, in the long run, who wins? It's a draw -- everyone is playing that situation the same way, and it happens to everyone evenly. Because life is just one long session, everyone will be dealt the same gamut of hands with the same frequency. You can win with AA>KK just as often as you lose with KK<AA. Now, on the other hand, say you're in a live game at a casino, and whenever any of the players at your table folds a hand, he closes his eyes and goes to sleep until the next hand is dealt; you, on the other hand, continue paying attention and observe everyone's play when you are not in the hand. It is not merely this behavior that benefits your game: it's the behavior DIFFERENTIAL between you and the rest of the players. Unlike getting in aces vs kings, you are doing something in your game that is different than what opponents are doing, and that difference is profitable.

Reciprocality is the process of doing something differently than other players in a way that benefits you.

I didn't mean to summarize the whole thing, but oops, I did! Please click the link and visit Tommy's article. If you don't, you're already missing out on reciprocality.

Here's what I want to do in my poker career

Note to the world: don't try and multitable excessively. I looked back at old posts on my blog, and realized that in the past two years, I went through at least two and a half cycles of the following events: Oh, I'm going to try and add a few tables today and see how I play; Oh, that went strangely well, so I'm going to crank it up to a really high number and try and grind for a while; Oh, this is going well, and at this pace I'm going to do x y and z in the near future; Oh, I had a ten buy in upswsing yesterday and a ten buy in downswing today, I'm going to relax for a bit; Oh, I have a very marginal and highly fluctuant winrate over that sample; I'm going to go back to my regular game.

Since getting back to 4-6 tables last week, I've played and run a lot better! A whole lot! So much that it's even FUN!

Still trying to make platinumstar/supernova pace though BTW

Current music: Kanye West "Hell of a Life"
Current TV shows: Archer, Californication, Modern Family
Current sports: SFGIANTS

I read an outstanding post from a DC user today titled "Why Your Goals Probably Suck". It discusses the difference between results and process in goal-setting and goal-achieving. Very thoughtful and well written. Click the link below to check out the thread, which in turn is cross-posted from the user's blog.

Why Your Goals Probably Suck

Here was my afterthought and contribution to the thread:

"A personal example from bowling comes to mind:

One of the things I haven't done yet as a competitive bowler is scored an 800 series (meaning a total of 800+ for three games in one night of league/tournament). Some argue that it's tougher to do than a 300 game. I once tried to set it as my "goal" that I would roll an 800 in the next two years. I jokingly referred to this in conversation with a fellow bowler, who plays in the PBA, and his response was friendly yet strong and resonant. He said: "You can't set a goal for that; it just happens. If you make it a goal, you'll never do it."

Making it a goal to bowl an 800 series is like making it a goal to get all-in six times in a row as a favorite and hold up. Similarly, it can be like wanting to win $X in a certain span of time. Some day, those things will happen. When you put the results first, you lose the process. Not only is the process what gets you there, it's the part that's the most fun."

Unfortunately, I haven't bowled an 800 series yet, because this story took place a few months ago. :P