A Blog to Somewhere: March Results

Day 2:

• Completed First Session
• Hands: 340
• BB/100: 13.85
• Articles: Preflop: Blind Steals - How to Adjust to your opponents
• Videos: Blind Steals - How to Adjust to your opponents
• Training: Equilab: 100 Qns HBTN vs BB

Kind of a difficult day to log sessions as I'm expecting to leave at some point on short notice. That and a storm knocked out the power for a couple hours. I did study as planned before the sessions started today, and then watched a video after the session as a refresher... but in terms of actual hands logged I played very few. I'm hesitant to include a winrate at all lately since I think its more important for me to focus on volume. I'm not sure.

Here's what I worked on today. I couldn't find a good quiz for blind steals but a short handed quiz seemed close enough.

Winrates are subject to factors outside of your control.. IMHO your daily review posts are more relevant without them.

Yeah i think you're right waiboy.

Its a pure fact that on any given day its bordering on impossible for me to play enough hands and/or post a high enough winrate to produce anything of statistical significance. With typical winrates, BB/100 only approaches significance after 10's of thousands of hands.

Posting bad results doesn't necessarily work for acknowledging my shortcomings either... but I do want to be able to keep a keen awareness of my need for improvement.

Keeping track of my progress without dwelling on short term results is an interesting challenge. I could look at my accuracy on equity training questions, but that only looks at one aspect of the game.

Session reviews and posting hands for evaluation the result from that review is probably the most effective method for determining how well you're playing. Takes a bit longer than checking for winrates of course.

Day 3:

• Completed All Sessions
• Hands:840

Just logged hands today. It was a rough one. I made a really bad call down in one hand and a few others i was uncertain about. I think I need to revisit playing 2nd and 3rd pair type hands OOP as well. Doing a session review on monday with a good player from my stakes so I'll get to it then.

The day was already going very poorly when this awesome hand came up. I actually felt good about the hand, i guess because I knew I played it well.

The bright side is that I'm still up for the month, though not by much.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 Limit Hold'em - 6 players

UTG posts a big blind (1 SB)

Pre Flop: (2.4 SB) Hero is CO with K K
UTG raises, MP calls, Hero 3-bets, 3 folds, UTG caps!, MP calls, Hero calls

Flop: (13.4 SB) 6 Q K (3 players)
UTG bets, MP calls, Hero raises, UTG 3-bets, MP calls, Hero caps!, UTG calls, MP calls

Turn: (12.7 BB) 2 (3 players)
UTG bets, MP calls, Hero raises, UTG 3-bets, MP calls, Hero caps!, UTG calls, MP calls

River: (24.7 BB) J (3 players)
UTG bets, MP raises, Hero calls, UTG 3-bets, MP raises all in, Hero calls, UTG calls

Final Pot: 35.2 BB
MP shows A T (a straight, Ten to Ace)
Hero mucks K K
UTG shows Q Q (three of a kind, Queens)
MP wins 34.4 BB
(Rake: $0.40)

Originally posted by datsmahname

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 Limit Hold'em - 6 players

UTG posts a big blind (1 SB)

Pre Flop: (2.4 SB) Hero is CO with K K
UTG raises, MP calls, Hero 3-bets, 3 folds, UTG caps!, MP calls, Hero calls

Flop: (13.4 SB) 6 Q K (3 players)
UTG bets, MP calls, Hero raises, UTG 3-bets, MP calls, Hero caps!, UTG calls, MP calls

Turn: (12.7 BB) 2 (3 players)
UTG bets, MP calls, Hero raises, UTG 3-bets, MP calls, Hero caps!, UTG calls, MP calls

River: (24.7 BB) J (3 players)
UTG bets, MP raises, Hero calls, UTG 3-bets, MP raises all in, Hero calls, UTG calls

Final Pot: 35.2 BB
MP shows A T (a straight, Ten to Ace)
Hero mucks K K
UTG shows Q Q (three of a kind, Queens)
MP wins 34.4 BB
(Rake: $0.40)

Didn't you think about folding on the river instead of calling? If I were you I couldn't fold though

27:2 = 13.5:1... flush is really unlikely. I'm just hoping to see QJ and AA or 66 or whatever else a blind poster might spew.

MP didn't quite have 4BB on the river so at max i would pay 3.5BB

at worst 31.5:3.5 with top set on the river.... i dont think i can ever fold here.

Day 4:

• Hands: 110
• Articles: Preflop: Starting Hands & Equity (Sec. 10), Concepts: Semi-Bluffs - Theory & Practice
• Videos: Semi-Bluffs: Theory and Practice
• Coaching Sessions: FL Gold with Cornholio, Session review with Solid reg.
• Training: Preflop HBB vs 4-60% range.

With a coaching session on the schedule and a session review planned out I spent a little time on a lot of things today... but my main focus was blind defense. I didn't get to play many hands, however.

In the quiz today I was reminded of the notion that playing our best means sometimes simply giving up. It was hard to find a quiz specific to my topic but since we're very often OOP in a blind defense it seemed like a reasonable option.

I reviewed the preflop article to confirm the required equity for a blind defense.

Finally I focused on semi-bluffs to get a handle on some postflop scenarios that may come up when we have a largely speculative hand range like that of our BB.

Day 5:

• Completed All Sessions
• Hands: 530
• Videos: Grindathon Hand of the day #1 by GiantBuddha

Pretty standard day 5. Played a decent number of hands and unfortunately forgot to attend the 4:00 FL coaching session. Somehow that time of the day i'm constantly distracted.

I still made plenty of mistakes today... and I think I'll have to work a little harder when it comes to remembering to tag hands during the session.

Day 6:

• Completed All Sessions
• Hands: 530
• Articles: Pre-flop: When can you cold-call or over-limp?
• Videos: When can you coldcall or overlimp
• Training: Preflop: Hero's BTN open raising range vs 4-60% PFR range.

Interesting day... I think i found a few leaks in my play which I'll work on changing. It was a swingy day and I'm interested to look at a few things that happened just after losing a few big pots. Playing poorly in response to negative results is an area which interests me a lot. I have some work to do.

Tomorrow is my day off of poker, but I think I'll study semi-bluffing and Heads up play again.

On my day off poker I spent some free time reviewing from my human factors engineering coursebook and I thought some people might be interested to consider their game within this context. Specifically, Human Factors Engineering studies and improves the interaction between people and the systems with which they work. Over the next while, and depending on my level of interest I'll continue to post on this subject as it applies to poker.

Source: An introduction to Human Factors Engineering 2nd Ed.

Say for instance we wanted to improve our ability to make complex decisions where a number of factors need to be weighted. A regular for our stakes has taken a line that is not easy to read and we are left with a marginal call/fold decision on the river. How do we evaluate our decision? One method would be to use a Normative Decision Model, one such theory is the Multiattribute utility theory. Here we can also start with an equiation.

In words, we can say that: The overall utility of an option or U(v) is equal to the sum of the value of the attributes (i). The value of the attributes is the magnitide a * the utility u for each attribute (i).

Basically, for each decision we take everything that counts as being important, and put a number on it. Then see how each decision performs with respect to those attributes.

Back to our example, it might work something like this.

Attributes / Utility
a1: Make the highest EV play / u1: 10
a2: Get useful information / u2: 4

Decision: a1 / a2
Fold: 5.5 / 1
Call: 4.5 / 5

So here we've put making the most money as very important, but against a reg getting that information is also important. Folding gets us often no information, but its not a complete loss either. We can simply analize the hand later and get helpful information this way. Calling gets us much more information, but we suspect its a slightly -EV play in the long run... of course, calling can help us in this evaluation. Which decision is best?

U(fold) = 5.5*10 + 1*4 = 59
U(call) = 4.5*10 + 5*4 = 65

By our example (simplified and easily modified) we've calculated that calling against the reg is the best overall decision despite our expectation that its slightly -EV.

This is just one simple example of how a human factors decision model can be applied. Factors like information and monetary value are often like apples and oranges: difficult to compare, but here we can see them being compared quite easily (though with somewhat questionable validity).

Day 1:

• Completed All Sessions
• Hands: 587
• Articles: Postflop: Standard play: Advanced
• Videos: Standard Play Advanced, Setting and reaching goals: Investing In Yourself
• Training: Preflop Hero 71% range vs 4-60 PFR. 2.9% average deviation.

With all the work I've been putting in on my game its been really easy to deal with the way things have been going just recently. I'm on a 12K hand break even streak right now, first time thats ever happened to me yet. Just going to keep working to improve and from there its only a matter of time.

Here's a peak at the way i've been doing my preflop equity training. Its far from perfect and doesnt make any adjustments for playability because excel doesn't "know" what the hole cards are.

Day 2:

• Slacking off.

Woke up today a little more depressed than usual. Its an intermittent problem, and doesn't usually disappear after just a day. I'll probably log fewer hands per day over the next while because I don't feel comfortable playing poker when I'm feeling depressed. I do really feel good about studying poker in this mindset, so I'll probably double up on study days.

Tomorrow I'm meeting a solid reg from my stakes for a session review. That should be a good pick me up as well.

I might log some hands tonight after the UFC wraps up.

Day 3:

• Completed All Sessions
• Hands: 995
• Articles: Review Pre-flop: When can you cold-call or over-limp?
• Coaching Sessions: Met a reg from my stakes for a session review.

Looks like I've developed a weekly routine of meeting with a solid reg @ my level. I was hoping it would motivate me to log some hands and it did. I'm happy with the volume I put in and we worked pretty hard on a few interesting problems during the review. All around good day, and I'm confident enough at this point to move up and establish myself at higher stakes.

Day 4:

• Completed 2/3 Sessions
• Hands: 300
• Articles: Standard play: Advanced
• Videos: Standard play: Advanced
• Equity Training: Flop: Hero's CO range vs BTN cold calls

Found out today that the FL standard lines quiz currently links to a NL quiz on protection. Hopefully they'll fix that.

I did a pretty poor job of reading today's article. Somewhere between overslept and depressed as hell. I think tomorrow I'll read it again because some of the finer points failed to sink in.

In a couple hours I might see about playing that last session. William Hill has such low traffic at this time that its hard to collect points playing 6-max FL.

Below is a chart that lists my hours awake in green, and my hours asleep in red. Yellow is used for waking or falling asleep.

For a really really long time I've had trouble keeping a normal sleep schedule. More than a month ago I finally decided to take a more empirical approach to understanding how this happens. Its a work in progress of course, but if I'm right... then I spend more time awake than most people as a result.

The reason I bring it up is, well its kind of interesting... but it also totally mangles my weekly schedule because my "day" is a little bit longer than a week day.

Its relatively normal for people to have a natural biorhythm which deviates from the 24 hour cycle day/night cycle, but most people can sort of course correct this biorhythm by getting at least 15 minutes of natural sunlight during the hours from 10:00am-1:00pm. So far it seems that natural sunlight doesn't quite do the trick.

Day 5:

• Completed All Sessions
• Hands: 550
• Articles: Standard Play: Advanced
• Videos: Standard Play: Advanced
• Coaching Sessions: Caught the tail end of FL Silver.

Day 6:

• Completed All Sessions
• Hands: 990
• Articles: Standard play: Advanced
• Videos: What if...? Part 3
• Training: Preflop: Hero's 71% VPIP vs 4-60% range.

Well! My coach's stern suggestion to suck it up and play more tables and a lot more hands was the wisdom he expounded earlier today. 60K hands a month, a lot by my count.

Fortunately this advice seems to be sinking in. I played three ~1hr sessions at 4 tables each, all back at my old stakes, .5/1. A modest, but steady improvement.

I sort of overlook sometimes how important it is to grind up my BR as quickly as reasonably possible. The rake at lower stakes plays a game of diminishing returns that I'd sooner avoid, and the only way to do this is to grind.

So far I like playing 4 tables. I'm much more focused on my own decisions that I don't have time for distractions like short term gains or losses. This I think works out to my benefit. I also find that I'm collecting stats on my opponents very quickly, and that this helps me make better decisions.

However, I'm constantly aware that I'm not taking notes during play. Its really hard to type anything. To make up for this I'll try to take notes on regulars during my low volume/study days.

Day off tomorrow. I'm planning to do some study once some more important tasks are wrapped up.

June: Mid-Month Update

• Stakes: 7.2k hands at .25/.50-.5/1
• 2.0 BB/100
• 183 hands/hr
• Longest $ break even stretch: about 12K hands spanning into last month.

June goals:
[X] Move back up to old stakes by end of month (.5/1)
[11/4] 4 articles
[X] 1 HUHU article
[8/10] 10K hands
[0/5] 5 HUHU SNGs