Cardinal sins of poker

I just committed several massive poker errors and cost myself two buy ins at a higher level. This is 8 buy ins at the lower level so it will take a while to undo. I did not play against better players, I was not cleverly outplayed and outclassed, I read the table well and bet all my good hands for value. So how did I manage to donk off all my chips?

1. I played for too long and was not focused on good decision making. I usually stop after 40 hands but pushed on.
2. I tried to recoup losses before quitting the table so was pushing marginal hands too hard.
3. I continued sitting in an unfavourable position on the table, kidding myself that I could overcome it.
4. I fell in love with top pair and later, an overpair when they were both obviously beaten

I am not angry/tilted or whatever but I do feel very very silly. In theory I am rolled to continue playing at these stakes, but unless I learn some self control there is not much point as I will lose my entire roll in no time.

Play Money Holiday

Whilst off work and recovering from a sedative in hospital I have sensibly avoided cash poker and been playing for play money:) I have always argued that there is no point in playing poker for no stake at all but this is simply not true as it is actually great fun. Some of the highlights so far have included sextupling my play roll in omaha cash during a 9way all in fest; quadrupling through in the second hand of a 6man nlhe sit and go, then trying my hand at 7 card stud and doubling through my starting stack in no time! Now obviously all my run good has arrived at once but the fact is that these games are a great training ground for the lowest limit play anyway.  You have to think long and hard before bluffing in play money because of the insanely wide calling ranges but conversely you can bet the pants off players with your better starting hands and flop hits. These are two of arguably the three most important elements of poker besides choosing good starting hands. Players also tell you more or less straight away with their timing and betting patterns how strong their hand is in a very exaggerated way.  If they insta check you can bet as a bluff, if they dwell you can charge them to draw/pay you off with a worse made hand etc. I met a player today who insta potted all his bluffs for example, which baffled the rest of the table into submission whilst I took note of it until I was in a position to make a play.

Play money has also given me the bug for seven card stud again. I definitely enjoy 7stud more than omaha as you get more reward for selecting tighter starting hands plus glean lots of information on other players' hands as you move through the streets. I only play omaha from time to time in an effort to become a more rounded player but I find that it is a very swingy game better suited to people with more money to burn than I have. I also nearly got pwned heads up in a  nlhe sit and go until I noticed that my opponent was adjusting and not playing a static 'loose passive' game. I was card dead, limping into pots and bluffing at a rate of 0% because I thought I faced a 'calling station' passive opponent, but they suddenly morphed into a stabbing, aggressive pot stealer heads up. This was better play than I have typically faced in dozens of heads up matches and it left me wondering. If this player is able to get heads up in a sit and go, plus make strategic adjustments based on their opponent's game, why weren't they playing for real money? Perhaps they were just ill/tired and off their regular game or maybe it is because for them the true essence and appeal of poker is in beating and outwitting your opponents,  not the strategic and systematic acquisition of cold hard cash? I think I have just (re) discovered or reaffirmed in my mind poker's magical dichotomy which separates (or at least should separate) the thinking players from the social gamers: I am calling it the donkotomy of poker. Game on:)

Tagpoker competition entry

Tagpoker competition entry

I knocked up this silly animation for Tagpoker.co.uk $500 free bankroll/coaching competition. The aim is to advertise the site in a 'wacky' manner. I made it just after watching a Tagpoker leakfinder vid and thought it would be funny to do a tilt based skit on donkey plays.  I used the free version of Goanimate to make the basic animation and then edited the footage using windows movie maker, camstudio and videodub.The music is a backing track I knocked up to use when teaching guitar although I wanted to have 'Loser' by Beck but I was scared of getting copyright spanked once it was up on Youtube. The competition runs until September so it will be interesting to see how many hits it gets. It still makes me laugh, partially because the animation and text-to-voice are so stilted. I highly recommend playing about on Goanimate because it is very satisfying creating a character and have them say funny stuff, especially out of context swearing. I also recommend Tagpoker.co.uk for no-nonsense poker strategy. It is mostly heads up based videos but this will sharpen your game like you would not believe.

Losing my rhythm

I am sick at the moment and finding lots of time to fill whilst sat around the house. Naturally online poker can do this very well but it is not really a profitable exercise.  I am losing my rhythm, finding myself stranded across the beat unable to make sense of the pulse of the game. I am misreading strength as weakness and misreading weakness as strength and often folding better hands. The more you play with donkeys the more you start to play like one since they make such odd size bets at random times and routinely play any two cards. I have been trying to nit up and play solid hands, but the high proportion of rocks in the cash games makes this unprofitable. Your aim is to stack a donk but this can take time and I am firing at all the wrong times and not punishing tight players enough to keep afloat. I want to be able to move into multitabling but I see potential pitfalls that many bad reg players suffer from. You can limp into too many pots because it is easier to think 'i can flop a flush with A5s if I limp, so I call' than it is to note your position, who is behind, who might pay you off if you hit, and what would happen if you repeated the move 100 times? I am already having problems limping in the small blind too often multiway and errors like this compound when you multitable. You also lose the ability to spot timing tells which have become very useful to me. So many players routinely quick check polarised hand strength and have a long think about marginal situations, making your post flop decisions easy in heads up pots. Of course if I am being truly honest with myself the main reason I want to multitable is that I have just discovered how to tile the tables together into a neat pattern on the screen and it looks very cool indeed.

My first proper brag post

This is my first real 'check me out and chill' post because I have made my first $100 in pure profit! I nearly reached the landmark around one year ago but donked off 10 buy ins and then withdrew all my starting capital. I came very close to the threshold a week ago but had some mental problems crossing the finish line as it were and lost a few buy ins trying too hard. This felt like the start of a tilt-induced downswing so I took a few days off to reflect and since then it has all come together with a cash game mini-heater and freeroll final table finish tipping me over the edge. To make the magic $100 I landed 6th place out of 3000 runners in a freeroll through a combination of insanely good luck, bad calls and suckouts:)

I have already started playing some cash games at the next level 2/4 (or 4nl if you want to use forum speak) but these are mostly 6max which is a format I am not as successful in as full ring.  In a recent foray into 2/4 I played a $5 pot and it would not take many of those going the wrong way to send me into screaming monkey tilt! I have also dabbled in 2-tabling 1/2 (2nl) but the problem I see with this strategy is that it is tricky to table select well and there are a lot of regular 2nl multitabling players, many of whom play across the microstakes. I am not sure if I want to sit in a big pool of rocks waiting to be coolered in overpair vs set confrontations. I really enjoy the challenge of heads up play but took a break from turbo HUSNGs because I kept losing to weak-tight players and I had to take a step back and admit that my heads up game is a little too spewy. I would rather work on my heads up game in a regular speed format which on my site is more than double the buy in of the turbos, so I need to wait until I am suitably bankrolled before I can regularly play in these games.

The good thing is there is a high proportion of donks across the stakes on my site so as long as I keep my bankroll management tight and keep working to improve my game, I stand a very good chance of climbing up the ranks. I often open up tables at the higher stakes and it is great to see weak players I have notes on entering $24 tournaments or playing 5c/10c cash games for example. Even better still I have seen $5/$10 cash game players limping in then min betting AK across all 3 streets. That is the kind of action I am used to seeing at 2nl! Oh boy...