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.