Media Blogs Forums CR Deals Chat HH Tools My TFPT Search Button

April 30, 2011

Thoughts on regulation efforts
Blog by : LearnedfromTV
0

I made a post in a 2p2 thread in response to someone saying we have to emphasize the skill game argument in media/talking to congress/etc. I disagree and the post I wrote turned out bloggish so I'm tweaking it a bit and posting it here.
--------------------------
When the DOJ was focusing on bodog for sports betting and random offshore roulette sites and partygaming (in 2006) it did make sense to say "hey leave stars and full tilt alone, skill game and no other gambling" and have that as something of a primary please-let-us-maintain-the-status-quo argument. UIGEA was supposed to cover poker, they said, but it wasn't poker-specific and there was wiggle room to argue it was excepted by the skill argument and hope they would leave us alone. Or at least to let Stars and FTP claim that and keep serving us on that basis until the DOJ stopped them. Now that they have stopped them we need to think about what actually will convince congress to write a law that benefits us and the skill game argument should be peripheral to our two main arguments - money and personal freedom.
We want to make a distinction between poker as a skill game and other forms of unskilled gambling. That distinction is valid, but making it doesn't accomplish much in the eyes of most people. Poker is gambling - some people gamble with an edge, some people try to have an edge and lose, and some people just gamble (and lose, like in every form of -EV gambling). It's different than most gambling in that there are a skill-based variety of expected results, but it is still a) wagering on a game and b) played like a pure gamble by many recreational players.
Again. To many many fish and to many many many congresspeople, poker is just another form of gambling.
To people in power who hate gambling it will never be anything but gambling and will never be acceptable. Skill argument won't persuade them and neither will anything else. This is why a moral argument in response to the anti-gambling moral rhetoric is pointless. Loud disagreement with that moral position is a form of political pressure and a fine tactic for persuadables, but we shouldn't waste breath trying to convince people who think gambling is evil/immoral that they are wrong.
To nearly all indifferent people in power it's in the same basic mental place as blackjack and craps and that is unlikely to change. Maybe they can see the skill argument, maybe they can't, but it's not going to change that you play poker at casinos like blackjack, that you win and lose money playing poker, and that poker is regulated by the same set of laws as other gambling.
Meanwhile, the majority of people in power in favor of regulating poker are not in favor primarily because it is a game of skill. Maybe that's *a* reason they are talking poker-only and not all casino gambling, maybe it's player vs player nature instead of player versus house, maybe it's just the fact that poker has a semi-loud lobby, is all over TV (both in the ESPN sense and the new CNN sense), just was the DOJ's latest target, and is a very popular game for Americans to play recreationally. But the real reason they favor it is money and politics, not the fact that it is a skill game and some other gambling games are not.
*Some* fence-sitting politicians who can go either way on the money and politics will probably be partially convinced by the skill game argument. But the distinction between poker and other casino games is too thin (or non-existent) in most of their eyes. And a few new ones being convinced otherwise is not going to help our cause as much as some people seem to think (hi PPA!). It needs to be an ancillary point, something to throw out there when people say "well then why not just legalize sports betting and online roulette and craps" (tho, who knows, maybe one day far away). A talking point, not a real means of political persuasion.
In order of merit, our points are:
1. personal freedom: Let adults gamble, it's our money and time! Restrict kids, restrict problem gamblers, let the rest of us play our game(s). (Or we're going to make a loud and compelling fuss for the cameras).
What gives the point merit ends before the parentheses, why many politicians, even generally/ideologically sympathetic ones, will care about this specific injustice is in them.
2. skill game/national pastime: Ok if you don't think adults should gamble on everything, what about letting them gamble on this skill game that everyone plays for quarters with their friends, that is all over TV, that clearly involves an element of sport/challenge/intelligence? (But not on the seedy table games where the house always wins like craps/roulette/slots, and certainly not on the NFL/NBA/etc with their heavy-hitter lobbies, the possibility of game fixing (but go ahead on horseracing - their lobby wants it and would literally die without gambling, whereas NFL can at least pretend gambling isn't half the audience's reason for watching.))
The parentheses are for the politicians, again.
3. There is demand for this, bring it out in the open, tax it, regulate it, make money on it, satisfy casino lobby. Better than the alternative where Stars/FTP/UB gets replaced by Cereus/Everleaf/whoever, government looks away a bit to deal with important (or not) things, offshore online poker grows back some, people still gamble. Government has no control over it and gets no money, they can probably stop it or smother it but doing so is a pain in the DOJ's ass. Cycle repeats. The "prohibition didn't work with alcohol, it won't work here argument" is embedded in this one and it's at least as appealing as the skill game argument to both an average American and an average politician.
On merit, the arguments rank 1>2>3. In Congress it is 3>1>2 and more than half of why Congress cares about 1 and 2 is political pressure, which should be *a lot* more potent for 1 than 2.. When PPA and anyone else on our side in the public eye realizes this we'll all be in better shape.
I made a post in a 2p2 thread in response to someone saying we have to emphasize the skill game argument in media/talking to congress/etc. I disagree and the post I wrote turned out bloggish so I'm tweaking it a bit and posting it here.

--------------------------
When the DOJ was focusing on bodog for sports betting and random offshore roulette sites and partygaming (in 2006) it did make sense to say "hey leave stars and full tilt alone, skill game and no other gambling" and have that as something of a primary please-let-us-maintain-the-status-quo argument. UIGEA was supposed to cover poker, they said, but it wasn't poker-specific and there was wiggle room to argue it was excepted by the skill argument and hope they would leave us alone. Or at least to let Stars and FTP claim that and keep serving us on that basis until the DOJ stopped them.

Now that they have stopped them we need to think about what actually will convince congress to write a law that benefits us and the skill game argument should be peripheral to our two main arguments - money and personal freedom.

We want to make a distinction between poker as a skill game and other forms of unskilled gambling. That distinction is valid, but making it doesn't accomplish much in the eyes of most people. Poker is gambling - some people gamble with an edge, some people try to have an edge and lose, and some people just gamble (and lose, like in every form of -EV gambling). It's different than most gambling in that there are a skill-based variety of expected results, but it is still a) wagering on a game and b) played like a pure gamble by many recreational players.

Again. To many many fish and to many many many congresspeople, poker is just another form of gambling. That is not going to change.

To people in power who hate gambling it will never be anything but gambling and will never be acceptable. Skill argument won't persuade them and neither will anything else. This is why a moral argument in response to the anti-gambling moral rhetoric is pointless. Loud disagreement with that moral position is a form of political pressure and a fine tactic for persuadables, but we shouldn't waste breath trying to convince people who think gambling is evil/immoral that they are wrong.

To nearly all indifferent people in power it's in the same basic mental place as blackjack and craps and that is unlikely to change. Maybe they can see the skill argument, maybe they can't, but it's not going to change that you play poker at casinos like blackjack, that you win and lose money playing poker, and that poker is regulated by the same set of laws as other gambling.

Meanwhile, the majority of people in power in favor of regulating poker are not in favor primarily because it is a game of skill. Maybe that's *a* reason they are talking poker-only and not all casino gambling, maybe it's player vs player nature instead of player versus house, maybe it's just the fact that poker has a semi-loud lobby, is all over TV (both in the ESPN sense and the new CNN sense), just was the DOJ's latest target, and is a very popular game for Americans to play recreationally. But the real reason they favor it is money and politics, not the fact that it is a skill game and some other gambling games are not.

*Some* fence-sitting politicians who can go either way on the money and politics will probably be partially convinced by the skill game argument. But the distinction between poker and other casino games is too thin (or non-existent) in most of their eyes. And a few new ones being convinced otherwise is not going to help our cause as much as some people seem to think (hi PPA!). It needs to be an ancillary point, something to throw out there when people say "well then why not just legalize sports betting and online roulette and craps" (tho, who knows, maybe one day far away). A talking point, not a real means of political persuasion.

In order of merit, our points are:

1. personal freedom: Let adults gamble, it's our money and time! Restrict kids, restrict problem gamblers, let the rest of us play our game(s). (Or we're going to make a loud and compelling fuss for the cameras).

What gives the point merit ends before the parentheses, why many politicians, even generally/ideologically sympathetic ones, will care about this specific injustice is in them.


2. skill game/national pastime: Ok if you don't think adults should gamble on everything, what about letting them gamble on this skill game that everyone plays for quarters with their friends, that is all over TV, that clearly involves an element of sport/challenge/intelligence? (But not on the seedy table games where the house always wins like craps/roulette/slots, and certainly not on the NFL/NBA/etc with their heavy-hitter lobbies, the possibility of game fixing (but go ahead on horseracing - their lobby wants it and would literally die without gambling, whereas NFL can at least pretend gambling isn't half the audience's reason for watching.))

The parentheses are for the politicians, again.

3. There is demand for this, bring it out in the open, tax it, regulate it, make money on it, (also, satisfy casino lobby). Better than the alternative where Stars/FTP/UB gets replaced by Cereus/Everleaf/whoever, government looks away a bit to deal with important (or not) things, offshore online poker grows back some, people still gamble. In that world, government has no control over it and gets no money, they can probably stop it or smother it but doing so is a pain in the DOJ's ass. Cycle repeats. The "prohibition didn't work with alcohol, it won't work here argument" is embedded in this one and it's at least as appealing as the skill game argument to both an average American and an average politician.


On merit, the arguments rank 1>2>3. In Congress it is 3>1>2 and more than half of why Congress cares about 1 and 2 is political pressure, which should be *a lot* more potent for 1 than 2. When PPA and anyone else on our side in the public eye realizes this we'll all be in better shape.

Entry Tags:,
Digg.
2916 Views | Comments(2)

January 18, 2011

Fitness Goals 2011
Blog by : LearnedfromTV
0

Poker's going bad this month so I thought instead of whining I'd blog about something that's going well. After doing tons of cardio to end last year and losing ~35 pounds (260 to 225 @ 6'3) I'm shifting to a lifting program. I blogged about this a while ago, but the gist of it is that there are five core compound movement exercises (aka lifts that use more than one muscle group) - squat, bench press, standing shoulder press, deadlift, and power clean. The program I'm doing is focused on doing those five lifts, with a couple warmup sets and then three sets of five reps at a top weight (only one set for deadlift), with the goal of slightly increasing the top weight every workout or every other workout.


I'm not doing the clean yet because I've never done it before and I want to focus on getting deadlift form 100% right first (they're related exercises). I've been doing the other four (usually three of the four in a given session) every M/W/F since new years w/o missing a session after doing a handful of days in December. Only doing cardio on a machine once/week or so now, playing basketball twice.
So far I've made some modest gains but still have a long way to go to hit my April 1 targets:

(1/1/11, Today, 4/1/11 Goal)

Squat (225x5x3, 245x5x3, 300x5x3)
Bench (185x5x3, 190x5x3, 225x5x3)
Press (95x5x3, 105x5x3, 135x5x3)
Deadlift (235x5, 250x5, 315x5)
Need to do a steady 5-10 pounds of gain/week on squat and deadlift and 3-5 pounds /week on bench and press.

The overall goal is to reduce body fat, build strength, and maintain weight, maybe settle in at 220. I view this stretch of three months as a different version of what I did from 9/1-12/30. Then I went 100% after cardio to lose weight and I succeeded. Now I want to put the same effort into lifting, see where it gets me, and then set new targets for both for the next three months. In general, I feel like three months is a good goal-setting time frame for me. Anything shorter and I stress too much about individual days, and yearlong goals seem too massive/vague. I also don't feel like I'll be "fit" by my standards until after this three months of lifting, and that three months is about how long it should take to change that. I'm ok weight wise and look better than a few months ago but feel weak and lack muscle.
One thing I like is that even though this is a new program that I started on New Year's, it's not a typical workout New Year's resolution thing, because I've been going steadily since September. There's a ton of new people at the gym the past couple weeks and I feel good to have started earlier.
Entry Tags:
Digg.
2165 Views | Comments(1)

January 08, 2011

2011 Poker Goals
Blog by : LearnedfromTV
0

One of the main things I've learned from 2010 is that it is a bad idea to let ego drive a poker career. I cared too much about how my results looked and not enough about doing the daily grind that accumulates into results, in part because I had a safety net of book and coaching and video income. With this mindset, it is very easy to set huge, unrealistic, ultimately self-destructive targets. "I'm going to win @ 5ptbb for 40 hours/week nine-tabling 5/10. All I need is a calculator to tell me how much money I'll make." Of course it doesn't work that way, and you end up chasing losses, trying to ride streaks. I spent most of 2010 trying really hard to win at least one buyin in the next hundred hands.
So, old news by now, my life was messed up in lots of ways and I tilted and drank and tilted my way to an awful year, basically breaking even after bonuses and tourneys factored in. I made my living from those other sources of income.
In 2011 I have two sets of goals.
The base goal is to make $10k/month from playing poker. This should cover my expenses and allow for decent savings/bankroll growth. Although I'm not ashamed of making money other ways, I do not want to go through another year relying on that. Non-playing income should be gravy.
Here is one model for making $10k/month:
50k hands/month @1/2. Six tabling this is ~30 hours/week.
Over a year this comes to ~500k vpp, which is worth ~$40k in bonuses. That leaves 13 cents/hand (3.33 ptbb) as the winnings needed to hit $10k/month.
------------------------------------
The secondary, ambitious goal is progress through the stakes as mentioned before in my challenge thread and blog here, winning 100 buyins at a time. Honestly, even though it's just arithmetic, I do not even want to put the $ numbers to that progression. And there's a chance I stay at 1/2 longer than 100 buyins.
I'm still deciding how I want to handle networth/safety net versus bankroll - the divorce took me from being one of two incomes to being the sole income, with the same mortgage and half the savings (less actually, since I bought her out of our equity in the house). So I have to be risk averse and frankly, I don't trust myself with higher-stakes swings right now. Hopefully I'll accumulate winning months and confidence in my self-control at the same time.
The most successful year along those lines that I am willing to imagine would look like:
150k hands @ 1/2
300k hands @ 2/4-3/6
150k hands @ 5/10
----------------------------------
Here's 2011 so far, running bad but right on pace in ev-adjusted winnings. Going back to 12/7/10 it's been (ev-adjusted) 14 cents/hand for 40k hands.
One of the main things I've learned from 2010 is that it is a bad idea to let ego drive a poker career. I cared too much about how my results looked and not enough about doing the daily grind that accumulates into results, in part because I had a safety net of book and coaching and video income. With this mindset, it is very easy to set huge, unrealistic, ultimately self-destructive targets. "I'm going to win @ 5ptbb for 40 hours/week nine-tabling 5/10. All I need is a calculator to tell me how much money I'll make." Of course it doesn't work that way, and you end up chasing losses, trying to ride streaks. I spent most of 2010 trying really hard to win at least one buyin in the next hundred hands.

So, old news by now, my life was messed up in lots of ways and I tilted and drank and tilted my way to an awful year, basically breaking even after bonuses and tourneys factored in. I made my living from those other sources of income.

In 2011 I have two sets of goals.

The base goal is to make $10k/month from playing poker. This should cover my expenses and allow for decent savings/bankroll growth. Although I'm not ashamed of making money other ways, I do not want to go through another year relying on that. Non-playing income should be gravy.

Here is one model for making $10k/month:

50k hands/month @1/2. Six tabling this is ~30 hours/week.
Over a year this comes to ~500k vpp, which is worth ~$40k in bonuses. That leaves 13 cents/hand (3.33 ptbb) as the winnings needed to hit $10k/month.

------------------------------------
The secondary, ambitious goal is progress through the stakes as mentioned before in my challenge thread and blog here, winning 100 buyins at a time. Honestly, even though it's just arithmetic, I do not even want to put the $ numbers to that progression. And there's a chance I stay at 1/2 longer than 100 buyins.

I'm still deciding how I want to handle networth/safety net versus bankroll - the divorce took me from being one of two incomes to being the sole income, with the same mortgage and half the savings (less actually, since I bought her out of our equity in the house). So I have to be risk averse and frankly, I don't trust myself with higher-stakes swings right now. Hopefully I'll accumulate winning months and confidence in my self-control at the same time.

The most successful year along those lines that I am willing to imagine would look like:

150k hands @ 1/2
300k hands @ 2/4-3/6
150k hands @ 5/10

----------------------------------

Here are some screenshots, beginning with the first week of December, which was the first week of the challenge. I was nine-tabling and playing sloppy and got crushed. Second screenshot is 12/7-12/31, when I began six-tabling and playing better. Third is 2011 so far, running bad but right on pace in ev-adjusted winnings. Going back to 12/7/10 it's been (ev-adjusted) 14 cents/hand for 40k hands - hopefully the first step in the right direction.










Entry Tags:
Digg.
1195 Views | Comments(3)

December 13, 2010

Progress
Blog by : LearnedfromTV
0

Last few weeks have been good in most ways. I have been working consistently on the book and am finally haven't some new finished material to show for it. About a week ago I released a large section of Chapter 10 (~45 pages), bringing the total released to 300 pages of Volume 2 and 600 pages total. It looks like the final Volume 2 will push 500 pages with some large sections mostly unwritten, so still some work to do, but I am satisfied with my pace lately. I also am about ready to release most of one section of the workbook - a set of 10-question quizzes covering everything in both volumes. The final workbook will have 50-60 of these, I'm gonna release the first 30-35 or so this week.

I was amused the other day to find an old outline where I had sketched out plans for the book when I began writing it. At that time I was planning 15 chapters in a single volume, with the first 12 chapters essentially identical to the 12 chapters in volumes 1 and 2, and Chapters 13-15 essentially being the equivalent of what the workbook will be. The outline estimated 250 pages for all of it!!! When I'm going crazy about not being done, one of the things I remind myself is that I've already written and released more than twice as much as I originally planned and that the total for all of it will be roughly 1000 pages (including a 200-300 page workbook).

The other main piece of progress is with working out. I have been consistent with the gym 5-6 days a week and am down to 230 pounds, which is 30 below my peak and 10 from my goal of 220. My focus is shifting to lifting now more than doing cardio, though I'm going to do both. I tried to start a lifting program on Dec 1 called Starting">http://startingstrength.com/">Starting Strength which focuses on doing the five core lifts (squat, bench, shoulder press, deadlift, and power clean) and is recommended on the 2p2 fitness forum. I haven't done great with it yet because my wrist is messed up and I decided to take some days off. But I still did cardio this past week, plan is to get back at lifting next week. Haven't lifted much at all the past five years so I expect some solid gains in a relatively short period of time. My target is to be down from 230 pounds/15% body fat today to 220/10% by March 1.

The third leg of the triangle is playing. That hasn't gone as well, but I feel good about the past few days. There's a 2p2 forum for "Poker Goals and Challenges" and I decided to set myself a long-term challenge starting Dec 1 to win 100 buyins a level moving from 1/2 to 5/10, 400 buyins total, so roughly a yearlong challenge if I'm playing 40k-50k hands/month. Link">http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/174/poker-goals-challenges/plo-200-plo-1k-100-buyins-time-929173/">Link. I set restrictions on session length, stop losses, etc in order to play my A-game as much as possible. Then I promptly dumped 35 buyins in the first week, running well below EV (but with EV-adjusted losses of 13 buyins over 15k hands). I changed my table limit from 9 to 6 and have played several consecutive focused sessions, winning back 7.5 buyins in 5k hands. I have to tell myself I have zero chance of erasing the bad year in less than a year, so I might as well stop trying to do it in a month/week/day.

Guess that's it for now, I'll post challenge-update blogs with graphs and such every week or two, but am gonna save the first one for a few days, mainly because posting the month so far would depress me.

In CR news, get ready for the first video in a new dual series called "LearnedfromSkjervoy," featuring hands played by me and discussed by Skjervoy and me. We made two of them (one for December, one for January) and will make more if people like them.
Entry Tags:
Digg.
1152 Views | Comments(2)

November 07, 2010

Goals Type Blog
Blog by : LearnedfromTV
0

It has been quite a while since I have blogged and I'm going to resist the urge to write a super long one. There are definitely enough things that have happened and are happening since WSOP to write a ton but I'm gonna try to keep it mid-sized.

The cliff notes on my life for the past few months has to start with some personal info that I'm not wild about talking about publicly, but it's the pinnacle of what has been an awful year in nearly every respect and has had a major and obvious impact on the real topic of this blog/site/etc, poker. So... after a year or so of trying to work through many difficult issues, I'm now divorced.

That this happened during my worst playing year is no coincidence, and there is certainly a chicken-and-egg type feedback cycle at work. I'm hoping 2011 will have a positive feedback cycle, with productivity on the book/nutblocker/cardrunners videos and being physical fit leading to me playing better sessions, which leads to winning, healthy sleep, more productivity, etc etc etc.

My ex and I haven't lived together since before the wsop (although she visited me once out there), but I didn't really start to move toward getting my head right until September or so. I still haven't had great poker results since then, and I've tilted some, but I've played zero drunk hands since I pushed the big phantom reset button, starting a new database and moving my workstation from the main living space to what used to be the spare bedroom. (I kept our condo and still live in Chicago).

I've also been working to finish Volume 2 of the book and have finally gotten into a good rhythm lately, both with cleaning up Chapter 10, working on Chapter 11, and working on the workbook. The target I announced to the purchasers is end of 2010, and it would be an amazing relief to achieve before moving forward to a new year. But after the past year I know better than to tie my hopes to a deadline, so I'm just doing what I can day by day, ever grateful for the patience of my customers. The final Volume 2 might push 500 pages (260 are released as of now) and the workbook will be 200-300. The workbook in particular is coming along well, with about 50 10-question quizzes covering all key topics in Volumes 1 and 2, 10-15 detailed range versus range case studies, a handful of templates for analyzing hands and a collection of analyzed hands, and some applied math situational analysis. It might even be done before Volume 2 (although the next release will be a lot of new Volume 2 material).

I'm also working out like a madman, have dropped about 20 pounds (260 ---> 240), am lifting three days a week, doing cardio, pushups, and abs 5-7 days/week. And eating fairly well too, especially lately. If I continue at this pace I'll be pretty much where I want to be at new year's - 220-225 and stronger than I am now. The workout goals are actually a nice metaphor for what I'm trying to accomplish across the board to finish out this year - step 1 was get from doing nothing to consistently doing enough something to get used to the gym again and build back cardio and muscle endurance. I'm there now. Step 2 is maintaining the regimen, hitting targets, and preparing for Step 3, a full year of consistency.

Not much else to say. As always, it's all about execution. Will try to blog more often than once every couple months going forward.

Entry Tags:
Digg.
1521 Views | Comments(3)

August 26, 2010

A Top Ten List
Blog by : LearnedfromTV
0

Things that go through my head when playing drunk. Inspired by recent events.

10. "Nothing wrong with playing a couple tables for a bit"

9. "Can't win a big pot unless I three-bet"

8. "Can't win a big pot unless I call the four-bet"

7. "Flush draw!"

6. "At least I'm gonna suck out on caprioli a bunch"

5. "Nothing wrong with adding a few deep tables"

4. "I'm quitting after this beer"

3. "Hey, the sun's out!"

2. I'm quitting after I get back to where I was when I said I was quitting after this beer"

1. How is Poly_Baller still looser than me?"
Entry Tags:
Digg.
2794 Views | Comments(8)

July 09, 2010

Main Event day 1
Blog by : LearnedfromTV
0

Finished Day 1b with 43100. It was a pretty boring day overall, I don;t really like playing live NLHE anyway and didn't have many interesting spots, but here's a quick summary.

I had a bad seat at a good table. There were really only two other decent players, a young Norwegian on my immediate right and a Russian on my immediate left. The guy on my right played solid/standard, the Russian was non-crazy for a Russian but still a bit of a pain especially because he was table chip leader for basically the whole day. I still got to take my share of steals/small pots against the fish but he kept me from raising a ton.

A few hands:

I had about 29k at 100/200 raised a limper to 800 with QQ and the Russian three-bet. It was the first time he had three-bet me and we were in middle position so I didn't think he was wide enough to make 4-betting and getting it in good. So I called, flop was Kxx and I check called the flop and check-folded the turn. Don't really like any option in these spots and early on at a good table I felt like it was better to let it go.

Was down to about 18k at 150/300 and raised 76o in the CO, middle aged fish calls from the SB, flop is A94r, I cbet and he called. turn is a 5 and he leads 2k into 4k, I call, river obv 8 and he check-calls 7500. Pretty dumb way to win biggest pot of the tournament to that point, but whatever. Needless to say he wasn't pleased. A few hands later same guy raises in EP, someone else calls and I call from the BB was A3dd. Flop is Ac3c2c, I lead 2k, raiser makes it 5k, I shove and he folds.

That got me to like 35k and I pretty much cruised from there, no big pots, pretty sure I didn't make a river decision for more than 4-5 thousand chips the rest of the night. Made one silly payoff of a small river bet with 44 on AA8K2 and got shown KJ which had check-called the flop.

That same guy was the opponent in the only mildly interesting hand the rest of the night. He was a loose 40ish rich guy, mostly passive postflop. Didn't seem to care about the money. He limped called a bunch pre and was doing a lot of standard fish talk, don't go broke with one pair, he hates playing AQ, etc - actually limp-called pre, check-folded AQs face-up on 852 a bit earlier. I was raising him and a couple other limpers a decent amount and winning with cbets. So at 200/400/50 there were three limpers to me including him and I had A9hh. I raised to 2200 and he was the only caller. Flop was KJ8ss, he checked and I bet 3500 into 6k, nice spot to bet size smallish relative to pot because the absolute amount was larger than most flop bets had been. He check-called which I figured meant most draws, kings, and jacks, turn was a blank, I bet 9k and he tank-folded KQhh face up. I was mostly trying to get him off of a jack and was probably going to give up if he called.

Going to day 2b on Saturday with an average stack.

Plan to write the second part of my last blog before then, probably tomorrow. My next video is part 4 of the postflop theory series with Brian Townsend, we already recorded it once and it was up briefly but there were some sound problems that people said were too irritating so we are planning to rerecord in a few days.
Entry Tags:
Digg.
1780 Views | Comments(1)

June 25, 2010

Downswings and Professionalism, part 1
Blog by : LearnedfromTV
3

Downswings and Professionalism
This blog is going to be long and split into two parts, one today and one in a couple days. It
combines two topics I've been thinking about a lot lately - my personal reaction to bad results
(whether through bad play, tilt, or running bad) and general observations on what it should
mean to be a professional poker player. I was planning to write my next blog on the second
topic, mostly focusing on things I'd seen over the past couple weeks at WSOP. Then I got
crushed (~$20k, ~30 buyins at 2/4-5/10, now 0 for 7 in wsop events) over the past week and
realized how well my flaws under those circumstances fit into the professionalism topic. So
here goes.
There are about 3-5 non-poker players in the world who I could tell I lost $20k last week and
have them take it in stride - my wife, a couple close friends, my mom, that might be it. To
any of them I can say without elaboration, "I got unlucky" and they understand the basic
principles well enough to know that this is a legit thing to say, i.e. you can be a winning
player and lose badly. And they would sympathize, feel bad for me, etc, but not really
understand what it feels like to go through it.
Meanwhile, all of the poker players I know have experienced the same or worse several times.
All have had stretches where they had awful results, have played horribly, run badly, tilted,
or some combination. And nearly all have been stupid and played drunk/high and/or blown a
bankroll tilting really bad. These people have a better understanding of how I feel right now,
but basically none of them would be genuinely sad to hear the bad stuff just happened to me
this week. One of the guys I live with this series is much better than me, plays much higher
stakes, and has had every type of swing I've had, but magnified accordingly. So when I say
I've been running bad, what the f kind of reaction is he supposed to have? Roughly the same one
I have when I'm playing a $1500 donkament and hear about aces getting cracked.
For better or worse, poker players are just desensitized enough to this stuff to only care when
it happens to them, and the best of them don't care then either. If I can read Brian Townsend's
blogs of a few months ago where he runs seven figures under EV and say "hey, ya, one time I got
runner-runnered with top set + nut flush draw for two buyins too (this literally did happen to
me two days ago), NEXT," then there is no way in hell anyone who plays poker really cares that
I lost a bunch at midstakes PLO this week.
It's just the nature of what we do. If you know a bunch of professional poker players, odds
are several of them lost money in the last week, some of them lost money in the past month, and
a few of them are down for the year and wondering whether they actually suck. Plus it's the
middle of the WSOP. I'd bet a lot of money that more than half the people I know in Vegas are
in the red since May 27.
But, because this is my blog and I can cry if I want to, here is what happened this week: I
had been up a few thousand in short sessions in the first two weeks of June, a couple at 5/10
and a couple at 2/4-3/6, and some random mixed game stuff. I was stressing about some non-
playing work I had to do (videos to make for Leakbuster's PLO version, my latest CR video,
communicating with students, writing) and skipped the $2500 PLO event on Tuesday to work. Got
some done, then when the basketball game came on (Game 6) I realized I couldn't watch and
record at the same time so quit that and decided to play a 5/10 session instead. Lost $10k,
started with losing flips, got tilted because "so far this trip I've been winning online, this
is less fun," probably spewed a little but mostly got coolered and ran bad in allins - EV
adjusted lost ~4, lost 10 total.
Couple nights later after I busted the $2500 PLO/PLHE I couldn't sleep (this is a perpetual
problem, I have bad insomnia which definitely negatively affects everything). So I played a
3/6 session in the middle of the night and lost ~4k, didn't really run bad, mostly played ok
but wasn't in the right mind to play but couldn't think of anything else to do. Next day I
played 2/4, was down 4500 or so and finished down 2k, was kinda happy about that (!) and had a
good steak and shrimp dinner grilled by my roommate. Later that night had a few drinks, couple
of us were joking about how bad our graphs on PTR look. Went to bed, couldn't sleep, went
online, kept staring at PTR feeling like I had to fix it, fired up some 2/4 tables, lost $6k
running absolutely awful... I actually know I ran awful because in a vain attempt to make
myself feel better the next day I downloaded HEM to my laptop and saw that I was $7k under
allin ev for the session. Which obviously doesn't change the fact that playing drunk is stupid
and I got what I deserved.
I said above that no one cares about a random mid stakes poker player's bad results, but that
isn't entirely true in my case, because I've exposed my results to scrutiny by selling an
expensive book, coaching, and making videos for CardRunners. On a personal level, I don't like
having this information be public. I didn't like it on March 24 (when my PTR looked good)
either. I'm just uncomfortable with having my results known, good or bad, and with the need to
meet public expectations. I don't handle the extra pressure well, or at least I have not over
the past two-three months.
But I created the situation - none of this would be an issue if I weren't selling something
that justifies people examining my results. And here I am sitting on a negative winrate over
200k hands of midstakes PLO. Yes, tilt sessions are a big part of the reason, but I also had a
50k hand breakeven stretch playing 1/2 in April, which is just an embarassing result,
regardless of how many tables I was playing and how affected I was by the bad night at the end
of March.
I've won money lifetime playing online PLO, but not nearly as much as I would like and
certainly not enough for my results alone to justify the price of my book or to explain why I
feel qualified to charge $300-$500/hour for coaching and be paid to make videos. On the
surface, the combination looks shady and there is a lot of shady stuff happening in the poker
coaching marketplace - people faking graphs, claiming winrates they don't have, claiming to
play stakes they don't play - so anyone who sees my public results and the cost of the book has
every reason to be suspicious. I have made roughly 100 of the ~700 pages in Volumes 1-2
available for free in order to give people the opportunity to evaluate the work - if I were
someone with Skjervoy's or cts' results I probably wouldn't feel the need to do this, but I
believe it would be wrong of me to sell without that free preview given the circumstances.
There is a contradiction between my poor results and the fact that there are very successful
players who think the work I've done is worth the price. Some purchasers names are public,
most are not and I would never make them public. But it is personally satisfying for me to
look at the list and know that a lot of top players consider the book a good investment. Many people on that list are too poker-smart to be suckers who were tricked by a good sales pitch. So when I'm doubting myself during a bad run, I am usually able to separate doubting my play from doubting the book.
There is an analogy that gets thrown around in threads about poker coaching between sports
coaches and poker coaches... "EVen Tiger Woods has a golf coach", "Mediocre players like Phil
Jackson can be great coaches," etc. Some people object that poker is an intellectual game, not
a physical one, so the analogy doesn't hold. I disagree, because poker is both an intellectual
game and a mental game. An athlete needs physical skills, intellectual skills, and mental
skills - the physical skill to hit a golf ball well, the intellectual skill to know which shot
to try to hit in a specific spot, and the mental skill of executing under pressure. It's easy
enough to see that a coach doesn't have to have the same physical skill as the athlete to help
him be successful, as long as he understands and can train the physical skills and/or can teach
either the intellectual skill or the mental skill.
An expert poker player has the intellectual ability to set assumptions about a situation, use
them to calculate the best game plan, *and* the ability to execute under pressure in real time.
There are several strategic conclusions that I have drawn in the course of writing the book
that I still, for whatever reason, do not execute, even on my best days. Couple basic
examples. 1. I'm convinced the ideal UTG vpip is ~15%, I know very precisely what 15% of which hands I believe should be opened UTG and why they are profitable, and I still have a 20% vpip UTG over a large sample. Lack of discipline, autopiloting, whatever the reason it drives me crazy and yet I still do it. 2. I make bad river payoffs in big pots a decent amount, maybe once every 1000 hands or so. After the session I can go back and break down the opponent's range street by street and see how bad the call was, but in real time I make the wrong decision, call, then usually get mad at myself for calling and play a little bit worse for the rest of the session. Stupid mistakes make me tilt, and it snowballs from there.
None of this means that I'm worth the price as a coach, but it does explain why it's possible someone with bad results can be a great coach. I wish I had an answer, I've done mental game coaching with Jared Tendler and have learned a lot about how my mind works in these situations, but still cannot move from understanding execution/tilt problems intellectually to fixing them in practice. I play long sessions when losing, short sessions when winning, am usually happy to win a pot where I get it in bad and upset to lose a pot where I get it in good, wins don't feel as good as losses feel bad, etc. Failure to deal with this stuff correctly is a serious problem for a professional poker player and I hope I figure it out soon.
This blog is going to be real long and split into two parts, one today and one in a few days. It
combines two topics I've been thinking about a lot lately - my personal reaction to bad results
(whether through bad play, tilt, or running bad) and general observations on what it should
mean to be a professional poker player. I was planning to write my next blog on the second
topic, mostly focusing on things I'd seen over the past couple weeks at WSOP. Then I got
crushed (~$20k, ~30 buyins at 2/4-5/10, now 0 for 7 in wsop events) over the past week and
realized how well my flaws under those circumstances fit into the professionalism topic. So
here goes.

There are about 3-5 non-poker players in the world who I could tell I lost $20k last week and
have them take it in stride - my wife, a couple close friends, my mom, that might be it. To
any of them I can say without elaboration, "I got unlucky" and they understand the basic
principles well enough to know that this is a legit thing to say, i.e. you can be a winning
player and lose badly. And they would sympathize, feel bad for me, etc, but not really
understand what it feels like to go through it.

Meanwhile, all of the poker players I know have experienced the same or worse several times.
All have had stretches where they had awful results, have played horribly, run badly, tilted,
or some combination. And nearly all have been stupid and played drunk/high and/or blown a
bankroll tilting really bad. These people have a better understanding of how I feel right now,
but basically none of them would be genuinely sad to hear the bad stuff just happened to me
this week. One of the guys I live with this series is much better than me, plays much higher
stakes, and has had every type of swing I've had, but magnified accordingly. So when I say
I've been running bad, what the f kind of reaction is he supposed to have? Roughly the same one
I have when I'm playing a $1500 wsop event and hear a story about aces getting cracked.

For better or worse, poker players are just desensitized enough to this stuff to only care when
it happens to them, and the best of them don't care then either. If I can read Brian Townsend's
blogs of a few months ago where he runs seven figures under EV and say "hey, ya, one time I got
runner-runnered with top set + nut flush draw for two buyins too (this literally did happen to
me two days ago), NEXT," then there is no way in hell anyone who plays poker really cares that
I lost a bunch at midstakes PLO this week.

It's just the nature of what we do. If you know a bunch of professional poker players, odds
are several of them lost money in the last week, some of them lost money in the past month, and
a few of them are down for the year and wondering whether they actually suck. Plus it's the
middle of the WSOP. I'd bet a lot of money that more than half the people I know in Vegas are
in the red since May 27.

But, because this is my blog and I can cry if I want to, here is what happened this week: I
had been up a few thousand in short sessions in the first two weeks of June, a couple at 5/10
and a couple at 2/4-3/6, and some random mixed game stuff. I was stressing about some non-
playing work I had to do (videos to make for Leakbuster's PLO version, my latest CR video,
communicating with students, writing) and skipped the $2500 PLO event on Tuesday to work. Got
some done, then when the basketball game came on (Game 6) I realized I couldn't watch and
record at the same time so quit that and decided to play a 5/10 session instead. Lost $10k,
started with losing flips, got tilted because "so far this trip I've been winning online, this
is less fun," probably spewed a little but mostly got coolered and ran bad in allins - EV
adjusted lost ~4, lost 10 total.

Couple nights later after I busted the $2500 PLO/PLHE I couldn't sleep (this is a perpetual
problem, I have bad insomnia which definitely negatively affects everything). So I played a
3/6 session in the middle of the night and lost ~4k, didn't really run bad, mostly played ok
but wasn't in the right mind to play but couldn't think of anything else to do. Next day I
played 2/4, played well was down 4500 or so and finished down 2k, was kinda happy about that (!) and had a good steak and shrimp dinner grilled by my roommate. Later that night had a few drinks, couple of us were joking about how bad our graphs on PTR look. Went to bed, couldn't sleep, went
online, kept staring at PTR feeling guilty, like I had to fix it, fired up some 2/4 tables, lost $6k
running absolutely awful... I actually know I ran awful because in a vain attempt to make
myself feel better the next day I downloaded HEM to my laptop and saw that I was $7k under
allin ev for the session. Which obviously doesn't change the fact that playing drunk is stupid
and I got what I deserved.

I said above that no one cares about a random mid stakes poker player's bad results, but that
isn't entirely true in my case, because I've exposed my results to scrutiny by selling an
expensive book, coaching, and making videos for CardRunners. On a personal level, I don't like
having this information be public. I didn't like it on March 24 (when my PTR looked good)
either. I'm just uncomfortable with having my results known, good or bad, and with the need to
meet public expectations. I don't handle the extra pressure well, or at least I have not over
the past two-three months.

But I created the situation - none of this would be an issue if I weren't selling something
that justifies people examining my results. And here I am sitting on a negative winrate over
200k hands of midstakes PLO. Yes, tilt sessions are a big part of the reason, but I also had a
50k hand breakeven stretch playing 1/2 in April, which is just an embarassing result,
regardless of how many tables I was playing and how affected I was by the bad night at the end
of March. Variance is only a partial explanation - 200k hands is enough to know I've been doing something wrong at the tables this year.

I've won money lifetime playing online PLO, but not nearly as much as I would like and
certainly not enough for my results alone to justify the price of my book or to explain why I
feel qualified to charge $300-$500/hour for coaching and be paid to make videos. On the
surface, the combination looks shady and there is a lot of shady stuff happening in the poker
coaching marketplace - people faking graphs, claiming winrates they don't have, claiming to
play stakes they don't play - so anyone who sees my public results and the cost of the book has
every reason to be suspicious. I have made roughly 100 of the ~700 pages in Volumes 1-2
available for free in order to give people the opportunity to evaluate the work - if I were
someone with Skjervoy's or cts' results I probably wouldn't feel the need to do this, but I
believe it would be wrong of me to sell without that free preview given the circumstances.

There is a big apparent contradiction between my poor public results and the fact that there are very successful players who think the work I've done is worth the price. Some purchasers names are public,
most are not and I would never make them public. But it is personally satisfying for me to
look at the list and know that a lot of top players consider the book a good investment. Many people on that list are too poker-smart to be suckers who were tricked by a good sales pitch. So when I'm doubting myself during a bad run, I am usually able to separate doubting my play from doubting the book.

An analogy gets thrown around in threads about poker coaching between sports
coaches and poker coaches... "Even Tiger Woods has a golf coach", "Mediocre players like Phil
Jackson can be great coaches," etc. Some people object that poker is an intellectual game, not
a physical one, so the analogy doesn't hold. I disagree, because poker is both an intellectual
game and a mental game. An athlete needs physical skills, intellectual skills, and mental
skills - the physical skill to hit a golf ball well, the intellectual skill to know which shot
to try to hit in a specific spot, and the mental skill of executing under pressure. It's easy
enough to see that a coach doesn't have to have the same physical skill as the athlete to help
him be successful, as long as he understands and can train the physical skills and/or can train
either the intellectual skill or the mental skill.

An expert poker player has the intellectual ability to set assumptions about a situation, use
them to calculate the best game plan, *and* the ability to execute under pressure in real time.
There are several strategic conclusions that I have drawn in the course of writing the book
that I still, for whatever reason, do not execute, even on my best days. Couple basic
examples. 1. I'm convinced the ideal UTG vpip is ~15%, I know very precisely what 15% of which hands I believe should be opened UTG and why they are profitable, and I still have a 20% vpip UTG over a large sample. Lack of discipline, autopiloting, whatever the reason it drives me crazy and yet I still do it. 2. I make bad river payoffs in big pots a decent amount, maybe once every 1000 hands or so. After the session I can go back and break down the opponent's range street by street and see how bad the call was, but in real time I make the wrong decision, call, then usually get mad at myself for calling and play a little bit worse for the rest of the session. Stupid mistakes make me tilt, and it snowballs from there. None of this means that I'm worth the price as a coach, but it does explain why it's possible someone with bad results over a meaningful sample can be a good or great coach.

I wish I had an answer, I've done mental game lessons with Jared Tendler and have learned a lot about how my mind works in these situations, but still cannot move from understanding execution/tilt problems intellectually to fixing them in practice. I play long sessions when losing, short sessions when winning, am usually happy to win a pot where I get it in bad and upset to lose a pot where I get it in good, wins don't feel as good as losses feel bad, etc. Failure to deal with this stuff correctly is a serious problem for a professional poker player and I hope I figure it out soon. In Part 2 I'll write about that issue a bit more as well as other thoughts on being professional in this job.

Entry Tags:
Digg.
3802 Views | Comments(19)

June 17, 2010

Turning 30, 0 for 5 @ WSOP
Blog by : LearnedfromTV
1

I haven't played too many events yet this series and haven't cashed in any of them yet. Last weekend (7th) was my 30th birthday and my wife came into town. Went to a couple nice dinners and also met up with some CardRunners guys at Tryst at the Wynn and had a good time. Definitely getting old compared to some of the young kids in the poker world but haven't noticed it too much this series since I've skipped all the NLHE events.

In the middle of a weekend of partying found time to bust the $10k Stud 8 event faster than I thought was possible - just missed every draw, every scoop chance, and got scooped every time I was getting freerolled - didn't even make dinner break. Wasn't much fun but also not a lot I could do.

Also busted the $1500 PLO a couple days later really fast, flopped bottom set with a blocker to top set on K64 in a multiway limped pot (I was BB) and ran into KK, and then lost a flip with AK + nut clubs against top two on ATx with two clubs to bust. Was a very soft tourney, I had a couple good players at my table but there was lots of limping and limp-calling with trashy hands. there's a lot of variance in a PLO tournament though. Had to skip the $2500 on Tuesday to get some other work done, but looking forward to the half PLO, half PLHE event tomorrow and the 5k and 10k PLOs later in the series.

Didn't play again until the $10k Omaha 8 on Saturday, had a good run but didn't cash. On Day 1 I chipped up through most of the day and had like 55k at the peak (started with 30), but ran into some lame nut low spots where I got quartered/sixthed a couple times and got counterfeited to turn a quarter into being scooped when Barry G has A642 to my AQ52 on 653x2, so I ended Day 1 with starting stack (almost exactly) and busted before dinner on day 2.

Next events are the 2500 PLO/PLHE tomorrow and the $3k HORSE on Saturday. Both should be decent sized fields for 5pm events (400-500) and I feel pretty confident, tohugh of course you have to run good to do anything in these events. It's nice to have a few more chips to withstand a bad run, obviously nothing like the 10k events but still a lot better than starting as short as you do in the 1500s.
Entry Tags:
Digg.
1383 Views | Comments(2)

May 31, 2010

dammit
Blog by : LearnedfromTV
0

Busted early in the second level of the day. Big hand was (A3)A where we jammed for four bets three-ways on third street and Scot Seiver turned (A7)6 into a ten high straight and I never imrpoved but bet 4th/5th and paid off 7th. Small victory that he tried to checkraise me on sixth with a 69T8 board and I didn't bite. after that I was in the best spot to be a shortstack ever, with Scott and Alex Kosistyrysbfmgbn to my direct right playing LAG wargames, but I got a bunch of 82o type hands and ended up busting in 2-7 when I stuck my last 33k in with 752 and never improved.

Overall was a great experience but not too happy right now, Other than Scott and David Baker (who I have 3% of) my closer friends in it are bust already, but will still be interesting to see how it plays out. A lot of great players left in the field.

Next event I'll play is probably the $2500 limit 2-7 on Tuesday, then probably one of the cheap NLHE events before playing the $10k stud 8 on the 6th, which is the next one I'm really excited for.
Entry Tags:
Digg.
1384 Views | Comments(0)



1   2  >
 
 
Poker Blog Network
 
Follow Cardrunners :

LearnedfromTV
Userprofile
LearnedfromTV , Member Since '06

Featured Blogs
 

Contact Us

Email Affiliate Program
 

Services

Shove Hold'em Manager Discount Poker Instructors Poker Articles Free Poker Training
 

FAQs and Terms

Technical Support Account Support User Agreement Privacy Policy Poker Tools FAQs

CardRunners is the world's best online poker training site, with training videos for all stakes and games. Learn poker from the best poker players online, including Brian "Stinger" Hastings, Andreas "Skjervoy" Torbergsen, and Mickey "mement_mori" Petersen. View our instructor list to learn about all of our poker pros. In addition to poker training videos, CardRunners offers an active strategy forum, poker blogs, podcasts and pro interviews.