Completed thoughts from yesterday

Ninja.


I’d like to complete a couple of thoughts I left unclear last night. It was 4AM and I was a 50/50 mix of bummed and excited and exhausted (ou do the math) and couldn’t get it all written up.

To be a long term successful poker player your job is to remove as much gambling from your game as possible. You will need to win races and take risks; you can’t completely avoid it, but you do what you can to minimize those situations. The degree of risk you take on in a given hand has a lot of factors and I won’t try to be comprehensive here, but the big ticket items are hole cards, position, and action. You can follow that up with table texture and stack sizes and then probably find a few handfuls more. But those five are the biggies. The basic thinking is this- the earlier you are to act, the stronger cards you need. The more people in the pot ahead of you, the stronger cards you need. The later you are to act, the weaker cards you can try playing. Does this mean you cannot play J4off in early position? Most of the time it does- yes. If you play J4 from early position you are increasing the amount of gamble in your game. This sort of thing works out often enough to keep gamblers gambling- and casinos and sharks in business.

A hand with the right combination of cards, action, and position is what I think of as an opportunity hand. There are people who will say things like “you need to make your own opportunities” and there is a place for that thinking- but either they really mean “sometimes you adjust your thresholds for cards/action/position based on table texture” or they are gamblers. In situation A. they agree with me and in situation B. what they say doesn’t matter.

I talk about all this because while it was sad to see so few premium hands last night (hands good enough to play regardless of position and action) I had a lot of strong cards. What I did not have was opportunity hands. I had moderate strong cards in early position or with a lot of action ahead of me. I could have gambled and maybe won some chips- or maybe not… I don’t play poker to gamble. My run of card/position/action circumstances was anomalous and therefore, as long as I had the chips to afford to, I tried to wait it out. It never got better so I never got off the ropes, but I gave myself MAXIMUM OPPORTUNITY to double up and make a run for the end game. The alternative would be to try and coinflip my way up the positions.

The best part of the night was when I threw away one of the few premium hands I saw. I was in late position and drew AKoff. Somebody from midfield made a nice big raise. The move I wanted to make, and that Truth wanted me to make, was to push over the top of him. Sadly, the guy in front of me did that- 2x reraise to more than half my stack. I say something poignant like, “Fuck, I’m out” and Truth says, “Or you can push over him all in- do it!” (or similar)

I paused a second and then mucked the hand. The original raiser goes all in (he had me stacked) and the original reraiser calls (also had me outstacked). They turn over KTsuited (original raiser) and AKoff (reraiser) and Truth and I both groan. Here was my first big opportunity and I blew it. I could have A) chased everyone out B) chased out the AK guy C) chased out the KT guy and chopped with the AK guy… All nice money winning results. The flop comes KJ6 and we both groan even louder- fuck I feel stupid and timid. And then the turn comes a T. Holy shit! I dodged a 2 pair! But at the same time- given my life- I am fully expecting to see an Ace on the river. The river comes… ANOTHER T. The original raiser gets paid off and my tourney life continues. That was the best moment of the night for me.

So, I was struggling with my decimated bankroll when Truth got home. Cashing small stuff- getting sucked out on- the same ol’ same ol’- you read about this already. Truth begins to scour the listings for his preferred formats. He finds a 69+6 buy in with favorable conditions. What is more is it is a guaranteed prizepool that is under registered! What this means is:

Full Tilt makes a minimum guaranteed prize pool to entice players to sign up. If not enough players sign up Full Tilt pays the balance. This is awesome because it means you are fighting 100 people for 150 people in prize money (insert whatever numbers it turns out to be, you get the point). So we agree I should get in on this too, even though I can’t afford it. Truth transfers me money and I get in a couple hands after it starts.

Suddenly my whole night is changing direction. A) Truth is proclaiming (to the tune of 70 bucks) that he believes in my play regardless of the suckouts (nice tangible feedback) and B) I am going to rock some high stakes solid poker with, in theory, fewer crazy gamblers! Oh man it was exciting! I was giddy.

Then, I proceeded to slowly get drilled into the mat when I had no opportunity hands and the marginal stuff I tried to make work didn’t pan out. I went into Deep Seeth Mode. On the surface this is a terrible thing. I look like I am fuming- and I am- but it’s a controlled burn. Its me being angrily in the zone. When I am in this mode I am not likely to fuck up. I am too angry to fail. I am not enraged- my judgment is clear- but I am prepared to suffer whatever indignities I must to get the job done. Now, sometimes, this goes on too long and I go into tilt mode- but I can stay in the Deep Seeth for a long time- last night I did it from about 250 players left until there were about 70.

Anyway, I just wanted to get this up to complete those thoughts. I will probably write a new thing for today.