Retrospection or maybe Introspection?

It’s been a little over 4 months since I quit my job and embarked on my pro poker odyssey. To say it hasn’t been everything that I had hoped it would be would be an understatement of immense proportions and I feel like venting.

When I started this journey I did not really expect to get rich or be hugely successful, although deep down inside I did hope that it would happen, but I expected to do better than I had while working. Prior to quitting my job I had a plethora of excuses for my lackluster poker results: not enough time, forced to play when tired, not enough self analysis, and, of course, bad luck. In theory quitting allowed me to remedy all of these problems except bad luck. Let’s see how I’m doing so far.

Not Enough Time

Although I have no job somehow I still seem quite busy. I have more than doubled the number of hands I average per month prior to quitting my job, from ~10k per month to ~23k per month, but I am still not playing as many as I thought I would play, which is 30k per month. Why is that?

One answer is that playing poker is not that easy. Eight hours in an office is not the same as eight hours of poker on the internet when measured with respect to intensity of concentration. Another answer is that I’m lazy. I can’t ignore the simplicity of that argument. Regardless of the reason, the reality is that I am not playing as much as I probably should. At least I’m spending that time studying the game and analyzing my own play though right?

Not Enough Self Analysis

I had planned on reviewing hands everyday for at least an hour to find small things that I am doing wrong and try and remedy them and improve my play and thus improve my results. It didn’t happen. I started off killing the game and one universal poker truth is that when you are winning you feel as if you are doing everything right and nothing wrong so why would you analyze anything?

Of course that’s a horrible way of looking at things and I thought I knew better, but obviously I was wrong. Also, I can easily give you some excuses, like spending time learning tagalog instead of studying poker, but all of that is side stepping the issue that this is what I’ve always wanted to do and I’m not doing it as well as I would like. One of the few things I can really control is the amount of focus and dedication I have and analyzing my game is important. I am working on this very hard right now actually, but find it difficult to get meaningful answers. I still believe it’s the right path for me to improve my results though.

Forced to Play When Tired

I’m not forced to play when I’m tired, and this is important, and I don’t. Yay, me!

Bad Luck

The perennial poker excuse, out of mine, or anyone else’s control. It’s comforting to blame bad results on bad luck and good results on good play. Let’s take a look at my luck so far.

At the start I ran really hot and things looked good. I knew I was running above average but it was nice to get a good start. Things tapered off in December and I was a little flat. Then January was an Everest; I ran really hot at the start and really poor in the end. February continued the downward trend and tapered off at the end and that continued into March. March was rocky, and I lost money, but after the landslide it doesn’t seem too bad.

The landslide was the worst run I’ve ever been on. In fact, I’m still in the landslide since my results are still far below the Everest summit. I have been hovering ever since. Let’s dig deeper.

My main game is 10/20. I have played 74, 000 hands of 10/20 and am averaging 0.7 BB/100 hands. I expect, and hope, to make 1.5 BB/100, but am content with 0.7 BB/100. If I play 25,000 hands per month that will be 175 BB’s which is $3,500. I would also make about $2,500 from rakeback for $6,000 per month. I’d be fine with that.

I also like to play 15/30. Most of my play is at Eurobet, and the player pool is somewhat small. Most of the time the 15 isn’t very good but I cherry pick it and avoid those games. Occasionally the games are quite good and I constantly keep my eyes open for any opportunity where the 15 game is at least as good as the 10 and then I sit 15. So far I have played 22,500 hands of 15/30 and am averaging 0.09 BB/100. Yah, so I’ve made $588. Just to put that in perspective for you, the last two times I’ve played 15/30 I won over $2,000 one day and lost over $1,400 the next, so in reality I’m breaking even totally at 15/30. I should also mention that in 858 hands of 15/30 head’s up play I have lost $3,300. I am not playing 15/30 head’s up anymore.

A few times I decided to “take shots” at 20/40. I think that was in December after running good in November. 1,897 hands and -$4,373. The shots did not hit their intended target.

Overall, I have played 103,000 hands and have won $5,185. If you do the math it works out to $1,200 a month, not quite what I was hoping for. As an aside, these are only my online results. I have done very well live in a very short amount of time. They also don’t include rakeback, which is what I am really living off of at the moment. I get almost 10 cents per hand played which works out to $2,300 per month in rakeback income. Combined with my poker winnings I am netting $3,500 per month. This is less than what I made working, but is close. It’s enough for me to survive, without any savings, and that means it is perilous. As you can tell by this blog entry it is also weighing on me.

So have I been unlucky? I’m definitely doing poorly whenever I play higher which sucks. It also sucks because the 15/30 games have consistently been softer then the 10/20 games I play everyday. If I ran at 0.7 BB/100 in 15/30 I would have an extra $4,725 in my pocket – that’s a little unlucky. In 858 hands of HU 15/30 I’ve lost $3,300 – that’s a little unlucky. I lost a bunch in 20/40 – I’m willing to admit that maybe I wasn’t a favorite in those specific games (I doubt it though). Still overall, I think I am unlucky in my results so far. C’est la vie.

I started this venture hoping for financial freedom as well as life freedom. I do have life freedom, and I love it, but financially it has been stressful. I’m going to continue to persevere and hope things work out. I like my life. I like what I’m doing. I like the freedom that I have. I am lucky.

Bombarded with Mortality

I'm in Red Deer right now visiting my sister. Well, that's not entirely true - I'm sitting in the basement writing in my blog while my sister, my mom and my girlfriend partake in an orgy of scrapbooking. When I go upstairs all I see is a flurry of cutting, taping, stamping and god only knows what else.

As some of you may already be aware my mom ended up in a hospital in Mexico while attending my cousin's wedding. My mom, dad and sister went down there and shortly after arriving mom was not feeling well but they wrote it off as her having a cold or something else benign. After a few more days they realized that it was not something minor and off to the hospital she went. She was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, which, from what I read online, is when your heart is congested and your body is not getting the supply of blood that it requires. Your lungs begin to not function properly and accumulate fluid. This is what happened to my mom, she basically couldn't breath.

Fortunately my family is very conservative and took travel insurance and after a battle with the insurance company my sister managed to secure payment for hospital services rendered and for a medical escort for my mom back to Canada. It took a few days to arrange but a nurse flew out from Toronto with a supply of oxygen and then my mom was given a first class ride home escorted by the nurse and the oxygen supply. I guess that's one way to get into first class.

She was met in Edmonton by an ambulance and taken to the Royal Alexander hospital for observation. She spent three or four days in emergency before she finally got a bed. At least our health care is free though eh? Fuck Klein and fuck PC's and fuck our failing health care system. She arrived Wednesday and was released on the following Wednesday with the diagnoses of "a combination of factors resulting in atrial fibulation", which I translate to "we don't know what happened but we are doctors so it is required for us to appear to look smart so we are going to give you a vague non-conclusive answer. Go team!"

She's fine now, which is why I don't mind joking a little about it but to be honest it scared the crap out of me. When they told me why she was in the hospital the analogy they used was, "It's what grandpa had." "When he died?" "Yah."

While this was going on a friend of mine in Grande Prairie died of a massive heart attack. He was an older gentleman, I'm guessing 60'ish but I'm not really sure. He was a poker acquaintance of mine and as I mentioned in my original blog post I basically started my poker odyssey in the Grande Prairie game so he was influential in my development as a player as well as being an all around great guy. I never knew his real name, he was known simply as Guppy and he was known and liked by everyone. His poker game was fundamentally horrible while artistically beautiful. Watching him play helped me shed my weak tight mind set and opened my mind to the possibility of other styles of play that may be winning. Even today I am over dogmatic in my approach to poker, but when I think of Guppy my views soften slightly. But, more than poker, Guppy was a great guy with great stories. He was everything in excess, including personality and I enjoyed every minute of time I spent at the tables with him. RIP Guppy, you will be missed.

I've played a little poker during the past few weeks since my last blog, but I don't really feel like writing about it. Maybe later.

Too Cool

This video is too cool. What a simple, yet highly sophisticated program. I'm downloading it now.

http://www.badscience.net/?p=622

Two posts in one day? Crazy!

Two posts in one day may be a bit much but there are a couple of hands from the weekend I've been wanting to write about.

Last week there was a pretty good tournament at the Cash Casino. I didn't play in it because of the bad run I've been on - I didn't feel like putting $800 into a tournament. If I was flush with cash that would have probably had been different. But, a friend of mine was in town to play and of course, during tournament time the cash games are always good so I went down to the Elbow to play $15-30 a few times (Wed, Fri, Sat... I already wrote about Wed).

So Friday I'm playing in $15 and have been playing pretty snug and winning some nice pots. Everything has aligned itself so that I have a pretty snug image since I've been getting an easy distribution of hands (83, 83, 92, AK, 82, etc) so I haven't been in many pots and when I've had to showdown a hand it's always been a pretty good hand. This image set up a nice play for me though.

It's a kill pot, which I've explained in the past, and the killer is two to my right. Everyone folds to him and he checks his option. The next player folds and it's on me in the cut-off. I have Q8o and pop it. Through the night the button has kind of been staying out of my way when I've gotten involved so I thought there was a good chance that he would fold, instead he put his last $55 into the pot and the SB also called. SB is a really good player, but is much too loose pre-flop in my opinion. He is quite agressive post-flop and is also has good imagination. The killer also calls, but he sucks. So we see the flop 4 ways with $15 in the side pot and $235 in the main pot.

The flop is JJ4 rainbow and it's checked to me so I fire a $30 bet. SB check raises pretty fast and the killer folds his hand. What to do? Well, in reality, with my hand and the fact that the side pot was really small and their was no way for me to win the main pot with a bluff I probably should have checked through on the flop and then given up on the turn if I didn't improve. In hindsight, as I write this, that seems like the best move to make. But, I bet, and was faced with a raise by an imaginative player. It felt like he probably didn't have anything and if he did at most he had something like 55 or 66. Now, he may have a Jack, but odds are against. He would play a Jack, or any pair this way (except big pairs) and would also make this check raise with an ace and also with some bluffs. Well, shit... now I don't want to give up getting 3.5-1 in this side pot. I can reraise now, which is what I do a lot of in these spots, but this time I took a different route. I just called his check raise.

The turn was a blank. In reality, I was probably going to bluff raise every card on the turn except for a Q or 8 and possibly a 4 or J, so most of the deck is a blank in my eyes. That was my plan when I called the flop so this card didn't change anything for me and when my opponent bet out $60 I popped him to $120. He thought for a few moments and folded. The button who was all in says, "Well, you must have me beat." "I doubt it," I reply calmly and turn over my Q8. He turns over ATs and wins the main with ace-high. The tricky player I beat was quiet, which is hard for him, and looked very solemn. I have rarely seen someone look so dejected and taken aback and I was giddy with excitement.

Fast forward to Saturday night and I'm in another juicy game but have been card dead for a while when I pick up 45s on the button. Now, this is not a good hand, but I would definitely like to play it in a multi-way pot from the button. Everyone folds to middle position (rare in this game) who raises the pot and this opponent is the same one from the above hand. A late position player cold calls and this guy is the big fish in the game. It folds to me and I kind of say F.it and decide to gambool and call. Now, I give people shit for these momentarily lapses in judgement so it's hypocritical of me to play this hand in this spot for two bets, but I'm ok with being a hypocrite. I freely admit this call is a mistake, so I don't feel bad criticizing my friends for making it. Both blinds call and we see the flop 5 ways.

The flop is A3x (can't remember the last card but it might have been a 9). The blinds check to my buddy who bets and the donkey calls. I'm getting 12-1 with my beautiful gutshot that no one in their right mind will put me on so it's an easy call for me (actually, I call pretty liberally with my gutshots. Some of you have experience with this tendency of mine.) Both blinds fold so we go to the turn three ways.

The turn is a 5 and my buddy bets again and donkey calls again. Now, I have a pair to go along with my gutshot but there is little chance that my pair is good. What the pair does do for me is to make my draw a lot stronger which means I now have a lot more equity in this pot. There is no way for me to fold in this spot so my choices are to call or raise. I insta-raise. My tricky opponent calls my raise with a speech and the donkey deliberates and folds. Having a tight image is nice.

I mentioned my opponents speech. What he was saying was, "I guess I have to pay you off. I guess I have to pay you off." He said a few other things along this line as well, but in reality what he was saying is, "I want to showdown please don't bet." I don't remember what the river was but he checked and I fired out a bet at which point my opponent disgustingly mucked pocket kings face up. Booyaa! I quietly slid my cards face down into the muck and stacked the chips. I expect to play against this opponent many times in the future and it is profitable for me to keep him in the dark.

These type of situations don't come up very often in 10 handed games, but they are very profitable when they do.

What to do about all that "free time"?

Since "going pro" I've had a fair bit of spare time to take advantage of. I've been spending a lot of that time reading. Before University I used to read a lot, but, for whatever reason, during University I stopped. Of course, I read text books, but that's not what I am referring to. I'm referring to reading for the pleasure of reading. To experience life through the eyes of another.

But I've been revitalized and it's wonderful. I've been reading non-fiction as well as fiction and I find this balance keeps things fresh. There is a lot of really interesting, easy reading, informative, non-fiction available and when read with an open mind I think an individual can learn a lot about themselves and the world around them.

I've just finished Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and have started No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy as well as The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Blink is non-fiction and is about "the power of thinking without thinking", which is also the sub-title. I liked it a lot. It's a very light read with some interesting insights into human nature and our bias's that we are not even aware that we have. It also has some good information about intuition. At times I knew about the things he was talking about intuitively, but had never seen them explained before so it was still interesting.

As an aside, let me discuss one of the bias's that people have that they aren't consciously aware of. What's the average height of a North American adult male? According to Blink it's 5'9", and that seems pretty reasonable. It's what I would have guessed. Now, if I asked you to guess the average height of a Fortune 500 CEO what would you guess? Something greater than 5'9" right? You'd probably guess 6'0"+ and you'd be right. Why is it that CEO's of Fortune 500 companies are that much taller than the average person? Is it because tall people are smarter or more qualified than short people? No, that doesn't make sense at all. The answer is much simpler. We perceive help as a natural quality of leadership. This is not a conscious quality. If I asked you what you wanted in a leader you would not list height, but it's what you want. Subconsciously we are biased towards tall people.

Anyways, that is just one example that I'm paraphrasing from Blink. Another concept that I found interesting was "priming". One of the stories about priming I found interesting was about an experiment that two Dutch psychologists performed. In this experiment they took two groups of students and asked each of them 42 "fairly demanding" questions from Trivial Pursuit. Before they were given the questions one group was asked to spend five minutes thinking about what it would mean to be a professor and to write down everything that came to mind. The other group was asked to think about what it means to be a soccer hooligan and to write down everything that they thought. The first group, the "professor" group, got 55.6% of the questions correct. The second group, the "soccer hooligan" group, got 42.6% of the questions correct. That's a huge difference, and the conclusion of the experiment is not that the first group was in any way smarter than the second group. In fact, both groups would have been quite equal in that regard. The conclusion is that the first group was primed to be "smart" and thus, did better than the second group, who were primed to be "dumb". Neat eh?

Well, maybe it's not just neat. Maybe it has practical monetary applications to poker. I'm going to start each session I play by mentally priming myself before I begin. I have always noticed that if I start a session alert and anxious to play I typically do better than if I start off being a little tired or simply not into playing. Maybe it's coincidence, or maybe not. It can't hurt. I'm not exactly sure how I am going to prime myself so if you have any suggestions please feel free to post them.

Learning HU plus a little live action

I've been a member of the forums at www.twoplustwo.com for a long time. It's a poker strategy forum run by a publishing company who have always published the best literature on poker available. For a few years a group of short handed players have run a tournament amongst themselves. A list of captains draft players from a pool of interested people and then each week teams square off against each other and play head's up matches. I've never participated because I have never been into head's up play and was never sure I'd be able to play all of matches due to work and other commitments. This year I changed my mind and signed up for it.

I was drafted 20th out of 24 players (some did not get drafted) and it was probably a fair draft pick since I am not very experienced at head's up play, but I do want to get better. I believe there is a lot of potential money out there for a head's up player and I think it should be part of my arsenal. Tuesday I played my first match. It was a 50BB freeze-out and I won it after approximately 2 hours of play. I feel like I played very well and also ran decent. Also, our matches are just played for play money but every player in the tournament put in $200 and the winning team splits the total prize pool. My team went 3-2 this week so we are doing ok so far.

That's the part of head's up which I am having problems grasping right now. Tough to see where I am winning (or losing) due to variance or getting out played. At times I think it's hard to differentiate. For instance, last night, for fun, I played a friend of mine. We have played 3 times recently and he has beat me all three. The first one I was experimenting with a few things and ended up not liking them. The second one I just quit after a little while because I couldn't handle it. I was getting run over and never making anything. Last night, I also got ran over. It felt like I also may have gotten outplayed, but it's hard to say. He told me that he was getting hit over the head with the deck, which I believe. So did I get outplayed? It's hard to know. I play him mainly to learn the game (through experience against a good player) and he is doing the same. In the future we are each going to make video's via camtasia studio and then merge the hole cards into one video so that we can each see what the other person hand on each hand. I think that will be the best way to truly learn from the matches with him.

Wednesday night, after squash, I went down the Elbow and played some 15-30. For the first time ever the games were not good. I mean, they weren't horrible, but just weren't as good as I expect for live games. Since I made the effort to get down there and wait in a 4-8 game for a half hour I decided to stick around and see if they improved. They did not, but at least my game became short handed.

Live players do not play much short handed at all, so most of them really have no clue how to adjust. This is good for me, a short handed expert. So when my table dropped to four handed I felt pretty good about my chances of coming back (I was stuck $650 at the time) and maybe booking a win. One problem, they all knew each other. What was happening was that if I was in a pot then they would play normal, betting, check, check raising, etc. But, as soon as I wasn't in the pot anymore they just checked it down to the river. This is very bad for me. In fact, it's cheating. Now, these players were not consciously cheating me, and I could tell that, but never the less they were cheating me so after a little while I said something.

"So, you guys aren't playing against each other at all? Just against me, eh?"

"Well, yah, I guess so."

"Hmm, well this is my last hand then. I would rather play while waiting to get into the main game, but it's really bad for me if you guys are not playing against each other. You can bet and raise until I fold and then check it down."

"Yah, you are right, but we haven't done that."

"I know, but still... it sucks for me right?"

"Yah, it does suck for you. I understand."

One of the other guys pipes up, "Yah, I understand too. Makes sense. We won't do that anymore."

"Yah, if you want to play still we will play each other."

"Giddy-up!"

A little while later I was even. We all moved to the main game, which sucked. I stayed another hour and basically broke even on the night (lost $77), but I'm glad I spoke up. I'm usually not one to speak up as I don't like confrontations, but for whatever reason I decided to that night and am glad that I did.

An interesting hand

The contest is wrapping up. It doesn't look like I'm going to win it though. Some dude really turned on the jets on the weekend and caught up, pass me, and pulled away. I have to give him props; he played hard to do what he did.
Today is the last play day for the contest, and I haven't seen results for yesterday's play yet, but I really don't think I can catch him.
Anyways, yesterday I played a pretty interesting hand. I'm in the big blind with some janky Ace, like A6o and the button open raises in a 6 handed game. He's the reason I am in this game. Pretty aggressive donkey. I call and we see a flop head's up.
The flop is AAK. Bingo! Well, I am going to check raise him because he will go to the river with anything and I don't really feel like getting too tricky. He checks behind! OK, foiled. Maybe the turn will be kinder.
The turn is a 4. I check again. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." He checks behind. AIYA!! I can't believe this guy will check two times on that board. He must have like 23 or something. Well, I better bet the river and hope he calls.
The river is another 4. I bet out and get raised! This doesn't make any sense. I guess he was getting really tricky with an ace too. I reraise, just in case he's goofing around, and he caps it! Oh well, chop it up.
Villian turns over... wait for it.... wait.... wait... wait... KK!!!!
Talk about letting me get there!