Scissors, Paper, Rock - Player Profile

As per MBB's comment on my last post, I have found that increasing post-flop aggression has forced me to become more aware of player profiles. I've been aware that my post flop passivity has been a problem for some time. HEM just presented it in a format that I could no longer ignore.

Coincidentally, I was reminded of the maths of Paper, Scissors, Rock over the weekend and revisited a strategy site. The parallels with poker are amazing. I completed a Player Profile Survey and would be very interested to see if all aspirational bloggers are from a similar mould. Perhaps you'd be kind enough to add your Profile as a comment.

Apparently, my Spiritual Player Profile is as follows ... "You trust your emotions. When competing, you focus on your own game seeking inspiration from within and rely on inner harmony to select your throws. Winning or losing is not the primary focus of your game. Instead you focus upon playing the right throw for any given situation, regardless of your opponents actions. The Spiritual player can usually benefit greatly from strategies that rely upon proper form and technique (such as Cloaking and Shadowing). The downfall of the Spiritual Player comes from being so inwardly focused that you fail to recognise an opponents obvious mistakes."

Not too far off. Strategy for little old Scissors, Paper, Rock, eh? Who would have thought.

Red Lining it

It amazes me that after all of the years that I've played poker, listened to podcasts and read books that there are still Ah-ha moments that are both shockingly obvious and have so far gone unnoticed by me. I'm hopeful that this one will transform my game. You need to be an eternal optimist for poker, eh?

So what is this miraculous find? Don't laugh. The good old Red Non-Showdown Winnings line. I got Omaha Manager free with my Card Runners Full Tilt sign-up and love the product. For the first time I can see what was going on. By comparison, PT Omaha is a dinosaur.

Anyway, a quick click on Graphs showed my Showdown winnings going up at a 30 degree gradient and my non-SD winnings dropping at a 30 degree gradient. Almost symmetrical and straignt as a die almost.

Thinking about it rationally, I spend a lot of time working out if my cards are ahead or behind and acting accordingly. The problem is that most flops miss most people and my opponents are doing the same plus c-betting, stealing blinds, picking up orphans and pushing me off missed draws on the river etc.

I've always known that I am passive post flop and tried on multiple occassions to rectify this but my Mr Logic side quickly kicks in again and lets me down. I find that no matter what I do, I struggle to make inroads into my AF stat.

The Red Line is different though. I have taken to having HEM Graphs open with AI EV and Showdown Winnings clicked for the last 1000 or so hands. Every big hand, I find myself glancing at my chart to see if I am playing well and playing aggressively enough. My results have been flattered by running good, but I know that I am playing better too. Just need to be careful not to get rope-a-doped (which has happened a couple of times). Or betting Pot on the river to manipulate my stats :-).

The real improvement came fromn reading several excellent strategy articles and posts on Showdown Winnings. They really put things into perspective. Including a reference to Fgators "famous" graph. Sad to say, mine was as bad or worse. Hopefully those days are behind me now.

Running good again

As hard as I try not to be results oriented, it feels really good to be running good again. The world looks brighter. Over the last 1500 hands, I am running good against All In EV to the tune of 10 big bets / 100 hands. Unsustainable, but happy days while it lasts. Over this small sample size it made the difference between being a decent winner or a pretty bad loser.

Also, I may have stumbled upon the secret of how I can lose less. And it isn't to stop playing. Watch this space.

Poker as a career?

I'm much further from having a rewarding poker career than I thought I would be at this stage. It's not that I'm not further from the start, it's just that what represents the finish line is getting further away.

Not only are the games getting harder, but I can see that what starts as a hobby can become a grind if you're not careful. Another important factor is that if the stakes are too low, the time required to eek out a living encroaches on your ability to make any "meaningful contribution to society / family".

As always, Jesse has captured this from experience much more eloquently in a recent post.

Overdue Poker Progress Update

It seemed to me like a long time since my last post, but in actual fact it is only 4 weeks. To put that in perspective, it is a lot longer since I last contacted a few of my very good friends. The truth is that I just got out of the habit, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

A lot has happened in the interim, but as with life it has simply merged into an abstract blob in my memory. Poker has been as prominent and, if anything, appears to be settling into a very healthy space. It is still as time consuming but more purposeful. It is also more varied without appearing to have an overly adverse impact on my bankroll.

I am convinced that, if poker is your intended career, online profits will be derived from specialisation in a single form of poker as the games are evolving to be very unexploitable at the higher levels, which requires the high level thinking/discipline of an exploitive strategy. With a 'real job', I don't have the luxury, or need, to specialise to that degree to derive an income from poker so I'm pursuing variety without losses - which I seem to be achieving.

Online
I am playing PLO almost exclusively these days. I am profitable at PLO25, break even at PLO50 and losing at PLO100. Unfortunately, you lose 4 times as much at PLO100 as you win at PLO25 (assuming it is the AI coinflips that make the biggest difference). Hence, my grinding is funding my shots. Probably the nature of the poker climb. I'd like to be a winning PLO200 player so I have a couple of years of learning ahead of me, I think.

I am playing the $11 PLO MTTs and doing quite well. OPR has me as 98.4% which I think flatters my ability. It has helped me concentrate on decisions trying to make it into the 99%, if only for a day, but I haven't quite got there yet.

BTW, I've always maintained that I agree with general wisdom that claims that only 5% of poker players are winners. Based solely on my ranking and performance, I think that online with its ability to multitable that this number could be as low as 1%.

Live Poker - Home Games
I am blessed with a relatively soft, well bankrolled regular home game (every couple of Fridays). These are a lot of fun, the alcohol flows and we usually wrap up between 3am and 4am. No-one loses on a regular basis but a few of us tend to eek out a regular profit. We have a variety of styles which makes it a lot of fun, including two AI fiends that are as likely to have a hand or not.

Live Poker - Casino
The home games and online Omaha have just too much appeal for me at the moment and the Casino struggles to compete. I'm up overall but that is totally dependent on table make-up. Short-term variance affects almost every session result, but overall the trend is indicative of the mix being grinders, regular LAGs and recreational players. In Australia, we're blessed with heavily populated pub leagues that provide a steady supply of average live MTT donkament types.

Live Poker - Amici
This is the only regular live PLO cash game that I know of. It's a private Club with a time charge. The guys getting the game going are seasoned card players ranging from greek and italian old school to obnoxious internet kids. No soft spots in this game. Even those that don't understand PLO, understand cards and pick their spots extremely well. After 2 weeks, I'm 0 for 2. I'm hoping that that is variance, but each week I've lost a Buy-in early (got money in good both times) and then proceeded to play non-optimally. First week nitty scared money; second week my efforts to avoid that resulted in a bit tilty LAG style. Readying myself for third attempt. Big negative with this game is that smoking is allowed at the table. Big positive is that it is definitely training at live play altitude for me.

Study
Read a couple of books and magazines (I'm not a reader), kept up with my favourite Pokercast (esp 2+2 and PokerRoad) and watched a couple of Stox PLO Training videos. All of these have helped keep my perspective in balance.

Goals
I've never been able to come up with any meaningful goals that I was committed to sticking to. I try to keep things in balance, move forward incrementally, practice BR mgmt that suits my style and enjoy the game. Not really goals, but I think that they are all ticked for now.

Las Vegas
I'm off to Las Vegas for the first time since taking poker seriously. Can't wait! It's a work conference but I have a couple of days acclimatisation over the weekend of the 12th Sept - woo hoo! Feel free to drop me any tips that you might have.

Planning Ahead

Most of the time, I make a decision in isolation on a street when I could be anticipating what might transpire on future streets.

Hopefully this video can inspire me to think a few streets ahead ...

Jade Bubble

I needed to pick my daughter up from an 18th party in the City at midnight so decided to stay in town for a quick cash game. I've discovered that to get around legislation, the Jade Tavern runs a SnG format very similar to our home game. The key is that it goes for exactly 90 mins with unlimited rebuys and then you get paid out prorata. They call it a ChipChop. Effectively a cash game just inside the NSW law. Good on them, I say. It could be bette rrun as there were a couple of incidents that shouldn't have been allowed to happen, but I'm not rocking any boats here.

The first cash game was soft and a $100 tourney was starting so I though it'd fill the time nicely. I chipped up with TAG play into the final table from 33 runners and I was 5th. Picked up a couple of hands, one very big pre with AQ vs AJ, I'd raised in SB, BB re-raised, so I shoved on button. He reluctantly called. I'd like to think that I didn't give him any reason to fold.

With $1500, $1000, $500 in prizemoney, I was 3rd with 5 left. Two big stacks and two smaller ones. One of the smalls started stealing blinds and built up level with me.One of the bigs attacked the bubble and riled the other big stack to where he tilted of his stack, so we had a monster, 2 medium and a healthy female TAG shorty.

The lady played very well and patient, push/shove. Doubled up a couple of times and suddently I'm shorty with an M of 6 4-handed. My BB, limp, limp so I go AI with KJs and needless to say SB pocket 55 held up. Good experience and I played relatively well but shut down way too early - an old online habit of mine that I need to fix up live.