Keeping a Poker Journal

(Apologies for going so long without an update - I actually have two other blog posts in the works but they both kind of turned into "bit off more than I could chew" scenarios.)

So, I don't know what's going on lately. I feel like I've been playing well, doing the same things I always do, with one significant change: I am suddenly sucking at poker.

Anyone else had that feeling?

I should say, I didn't know what was going on at first. Then, I opened up something I haven't in awhile - a MS word document titled, "Poker Journal."

My poker career maybe hasn't been as long as some others, but I've been doing this for over a year now, and I've learned a lot of things, from a lot of different people, and from myself, too. All of that learning and studying and practicing pulled me from marginal microstakes loser to significant mid stakes winner. There's just one problem: Most of what I learned just doesn't stick.

It's not my fault, really. Studies show that no matter how good people think they are at remembering things, human memory is actually pretty crappy. No matter how much they do things by feel, they're wrong as often as right. So here I am, my knowledge slowly slipping, my play slowly regressing, until that stubborn microstakes loser is piloting my mouse in a handful of 5/10 games. Whoops.

The poker journal is the fastest and most efficient way to stuff the skeleton of that microstakes loser back in the closet. For example, when I took the Short Stack Revolution course, my VPIP went up, my 3bet stat went up, and the difference between my VPIP and PFR shrunk by a lot. But over time, that stuff started slipping. Without a journal, I'm screwed. I either have to go back and learn everything from the beginning, or, even worse, I have no idea what has slipped and I have no way back. The journal turns days or weeks of hard study into a one hour refresher course.

If you're like me, you flirt with the line between profession and addiction with poker (okay, actually I do that with everything I enjoy). Even on my days off, I'm constantly thinking about past plays, new lines, math tweaks, or whatever. Now, I know you think you'll remember it and apply it later. The honest truth is, you usually won't. The poker journal serves as a quick catch-all for all the wild poker thoughts roaming around in your brain.

Usually I try to update my poker journal about twice a month, once with thoughts about whatever I am digging through (even if it's something relatively devoid of strategic content), and once with an analysis/report of how the month turned out, plus whenever the impulse strikes me or I learned something specific I don't want to forget.

It might seem like a waste of time when you're doing it, but when you need it later, it'll prove invaluable. My suggestion: Take an hour a month and give it a try.

Apocalypse Nope

WARNING: Video spoken in the international language of comedy

Pondering the Aftermath

Update: The official statement is, apparently, that Full Tilt and Pokerstars have reached an agreement with the DoJ and will return all US players money, as well as continue service outside the United States, presumably in exchange for obscene amounts of money in fines.

However, at this point, the DoJ is saying "hey, we don't want your money, we'll make sure FT gives it back" while FT says "Hey, we want to give you your money, but the DoJ has it and won't give it up.

It's probably a waiting game at this point.


Friday April 15 is certain to become a legendary date in online poker history, as the United States Department of Justice issued a scathing indictment against three major poker sites: Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute/Ultimate Bet.

With the apparent removal of 20bb tables from Party Poker, Pokerstars and Full Tilt are rapidly becoming not only the best places to play, but the o

nly places, if you're a short stack player. If you're an American, then it's no choice at all.

I wish there was more that could be said on the topic, but for now it's all questions and no answers. It's unclear as to when (if) American players will be able to access their bankrolls on these sites, and these poker giants are currently blasted with epic volumes of customer e-mail, and hesitant to change customer addresses (I suspect their suspicions may be aroused by the thousands who allegedly managed to relocate outside the U.S. mere days after the announcement.)

For the record, my next blog post wasn't going to be about this at all. It was going to be about the importance of taking time off from your regular poker play. I guess I jinxed us all, because we're all getting a bit of time off. Even if you're not an American player, game quantity is shrinking and shifting considerably.

For those of you that don't know, I currently live in South Korea. My wife and I went on vacation to the port city of Busan, famed for its beautiful beaches. Yep, that means Asian swimsuit girl post-savers.

Thanks a lot, Department of Justice.

So for now, we wait.

I'm one of the "lucky" few, planning on moving to Canada in the next few months anyway to rebuild. How to rebuild is still a big question. It's a question that will likely remain unanswered in the coming weeks, as the dust on this won't settle anytime soon.

Good luck everyone, no matter how your poker is (or isn't) going. If the poker community can use their collective "one time" to find a strong way through this, I'd submit now is the time to bust it out.

Building True Loyalty in Online Poker

I read recently on Bill Rini's excellent blog which covers the online poker industry that the concept of "Loyalty" programs are a complete joke.  Poker is essentially a commodity business so most players will rationally act in their own self-interest and respond to whoever offers them the best financial incentives.  I generally agreed with this but got to thinking about ways that this could be changed.

Of course, when we are referring to loyalty programs, this generally only applies to players of the high volume nature.  While liquidity from recreational players is ranked the highest in terms of value, we still can't overlook the role played by high volume regulars whose play is necessary to run the engine that grinds recreational money down into rake for the site.

I received my Full Tilt Black Card in November.  I was fully expecting it to be just another piece of laminated card board, but was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was a credit card shaped piece of painted steel with my name inscribed on it.  I know it's kind of cheesy, but I couldn't help but feel a little bit of pride while feeling it's weight in my hand.  Kind of like a trophy, I always thought.

On the surface, this can also be said of many of the items with Full Tilt's logo that can be found littered throughout their store, but herein lies the problem: once you have items that can be exchanged for points in lieu of cash based rewards that can be purchased with the same points, you have forever tainted the symbolic value of those items.  Let me explain:

Rakeback Nation has a great rewards system that offers items that can be exchanged for points built up by generating rake.  Unlike items bought at an online poker store for points, getting these items does not deduct from your rakeback in any way.  Similarly, there are no optional bonuses or gift cards that you have to pass up.  What does this mean?  This means that I can thoroughly enjoy the Kindle that I "achieved" without having to feel like I paid for it. 


While Full Tilt can counter that they offer a special avatar or watch for those who finish first in their FTOPS or Mini-FTOPS events respectively, since everyone understands that only one winner gets to enjoy these symbolic items and that there is a certain amount of luck needed to achieve them, they are not an appropriate way to incentivize play.  In the same vein, having your handle being listed on any kind of anonymous monthly leaderboard only to have it swept away the following month doesn't feel like your accomplishments are exactly being appreciated, either.  And just how are they recognizing such achievements?  By offering cash and buy in tokens, of course!  Once again, Bill Rini is right: all the sites are doing this and again reducing their product into a commodity business.  While this might be good for future advertisements of one's coaching services, it doesn't exactly appeal to someone's emotions and sense of loyalty.

Here is my proposition:  the sites should begin mailing out actual trophies and plaques that recognize personal, stakewide, and sitewide milestones that are achievable to anyone who grinds hard enough.  Furthermore, they should offer a permanent place on the site for a "Hall of Fame" for various achievements where a player can choose to be awarded with a photo and their real name.  Here are some suggestions:

Stakewide and Sitewide (based on minimum number of hands played):

• Most hands played
• Most money earned
• Highest winrate
• Most first place finishes
• Most knockouts
• Most cashes
• Most final tables

Personal:

• $10k in career winnings
• $100k in career winnings, etc.
• $10M in total wagers, etc.  (doesn't mean much, but makes you look a total baller)
• 100k hands played in a month, etc.
• Best poker blog ;)

It is no secret in business that people have bigger needs than just wanting more money- they want full appreciation for the work that they do.  Most of the work done by poker players is never recognized in any formal way- even for those at the top of their craft.  What player do you know that wouldn't want a special trophy room dedicated to honoring his achievements in a way that his friends and family can understand?  And how do you think they would feel towards the site that finally acknowledged such performances in a tangible way?

Let me know what you think!

Introduction of a Poker Player, Part 2

Serious question time. Are you losing at this game?

Check your gut response (of course I’m not!) at the door and ponder it. How much do you make? How much time does it take you to get it? How do you feel when you’re done?

Keep in mind that in poker, the only reason anyone makes any money at all (and they do) is because there are hordes of people who don’t realize they are losing. If they did, they’d quit.

If you run far enough, there's a $20,000 bonus at the end!

Just don't overthink it.

Poker players are notorious for not being able to assess their own skill level. Well, finally in December 2010, after pushing myself to the absolute limit for three months, I was ready to really look at my poker game in the mirror, and I did not like what I saw. I was, without a doubt, a losing player. I had plenty of justifications for it (some legitimate, some... less so), but there it was. At the end of the day, it was costing me money to play poker.

A poker friend of mine told me about someone he knew, a guy named Lorin. He claimed that Lorin’s shortstack class was not only useful, it was a hell of a bargain. My first thought? Fuck that.

I’d already spent hundreds of dollars on poker related stuff. Hold’em Manager, Table Ninja, Leak Buster, coaching time, the list goes on. (Sometime, I’ll do a product review of all the crap I bought.) Any winnings I may have made were long gone to these “investments.” I was thoroughly convinced there were more people making money selling stuff to poker players, than their were poker players making money.

No matter which way I sliced it, I needed help. My “win”rate sucked, and I wasn’t really improving, despite all my study. So I made a deal with myself. I’d take a chunk of my quickly dwindling bankroll and spend it on Lorin’s training. Then, I’d dedicate the rest of my roll into learning his system. If I start winning, great. If I go broke, fine. I quit.

My first impression of Lorin was that he was a professional. A good thing, too. If I’m paying for a service, I'm looking for someone who takes the job seriously. A good poker player isn't necessarily a good coach.

With Lorin, it was clear he knew what he was doing. He had a clear system, a simple presentation method, and a no-nonsense attitude.

Every mentor is different, but despite my repeated begging,

Lorin refuses to teach me the secret to bitchin' abs or a date with

Helena Bonham Carter.

His repeated request was simple: If you want to make money from my system, just do everything I tell you to do. Fair enough. I figured, I paid him the money, no sense only going half way.

So off I went. I stopped playing at Pokerstars. I stopped mass-tabling. I started shoving more and calling less. I stopped playing at fishless tables. As each new video came out, I watched it like a religion and committed it to memory.

I can overlook the rest of it Judas,

but if you flat call with Q9o one more time,

we are going to have a fucking problem.

At first, it wasn’t easy. I immediately hit a severe downswing where my EV line made modest gains, but my actual profit line dropped like a stone. But something was happening. My EV line was heading somewhere I’m quite sure it was very confused and disoriented to be: up.

The downswing ended as they always do, and I started making money. Compared to where I was, I feel comfortable saying it was “a lot” of money. I moved from the .25/.50 game on Pokerstars, to the .25/.50 game on Full Tilt, and then very quickly to .50/1.00 and into 1/2. The best part was, because I was following Lorin’s system of table selection, the games didn’t really get much harder as I moved up. There became fewer games to play (not playing fishless tables meant more and more ineligible games as I moved up), but the games were still good.

Today, just two months later, I have the bankroll to play at 2/4 (NL400) with consistency, and I’m a winner in that game. Best of all, most of my profit comes from kicking ass (winning), not kissing it (rakeback).

I’m still learning. I’m not there yet. Right now I’m transitioning from working guy to full time pro. I expect that in the future of this blog, a lot of my posts will be about how I made and am still making that transition. But I can say with certainty that’s the direction I’m heading, and I wouldn’t be there without Lorin’s help.

Thanks man. I owe you one.

Introduction of a Poker Player, Part 1

I wish this was a story I could have told from the beginning. It's an interesting one, all told - one guys journey from a casual tournament player, to a fish on a heater, to a mass tabling low stakes grinder, until finally getting it together and finding myself short-stacking for high stakes, with enough money on the line to make my parents and most of my friends feel a bit nauseous just hearing about it.

When it comes down to it though, there's an underpinning of consistency, logic, and hard, hard work that - for all the highs and lows - lets me make a living doing something I love: playing poker.

(Trust me, if you want to win, you better really love poker, because there are plenty of days when poker does not love you back.)

So, like most trendy stories these days, let's go ahead and start from the middle.

In November of 2010, I had had enough. I knew I was a winning poker player, or at least, I had it in me to become one. I just wasn't working hard enough.

Contrary to popular belief, desire and hard work are

not always a guarantee for success.

Nevermind that I was already playing five hours a day, studying when I wasn't at the table, and just generally driving myself insane. I was playing .25/.50 and .50/1.00 20bb games on Pokerstars, about 20 tables at once, about 200,000 hands a month. I got coaching. I played better, faster, harder and smarter than I ever had.

The month sucked. I posted something like a -2bb/100 loss rate, kept afloat by the rakeback I had generated.

Okay, bad luck. Still getting my feet wet. It happens. So December rolled in, I started with a clean slate, moved back down to .25/.50, and hit the tables harder than ever.

An artists rendition of trying to play on

Pokerstars in December.

On December 22, I was still losing. Badly. (Okay, not that badly, about the same as before. All I knew is that I had a goal - to play full time - and unless I planned on playing roughly 37 hours a day, I was never going to make enough money to do that.) Again, the Pokerstars bonuses were the only money I made, and had to use them to offset the losses, too.

It was time. I'd played literally hundreds of thousands of hands of poker. Sample sizes were not an issue. Nor was tilt, lack of discipline, or any other excuse I could come up with.

I was a loser. Not the funny, good natured hollywood loser who gets the hot emo girl with his fumbling charm, either. The kind destined to leave his money behind on the poker table.

Something needed to change and soon, or my poker career would be busto before it even took off.

Rethinking Lines for Creative Short Stack Heads Up Play

In the ever elusive quest for original material, I have been away for awhile plotting my next move.  While shooting a video for my Short Stack Revolution strategy video series, I discovered some very interesting lines that can be used to combat aggressive heads up min-raisers.  The short stack tourist reader might find the idea of creative short stack play to be shocking, but the advanced player should immediately recognize the need for taking tricky lines against such opponents because they know that even frequent 3-betting or playing fit-or-fold after the flop is the perfect recipe for getting robbed blind with minimal villain effort.

The first hand isn't truly interesting when viewed outside the realm of traditional short stack strategy.  When dealt A9s heads up and facing a min-raise, the knee jerk reaction is to shove, but that will just allow him to get away unscathed far too often for my taste.  The caveat here is that this particular villain is open-raising 90%.  However, once I make this call, I am probably never folding but I will have to let the flop texture and his betting line determine my overall strategy.  In this case, the flop makes it very easy to see how to proceed.



To the naked eye, it should appear obvious that this flop is hitting few players' ranges, but just to be clear, let's see what Flopzilla, another great program by the maker of Cardrunners EV, has to say:

After accounting for card removal, we can see that villain's range has only connected 16.3% of the time.  Even more telling is precisely how villain's range has hit.  The fact that he has bet on all streets on this board texture means that his range has become more polarized with every single bet.  Essentially, there are only 6 real categories of hands that can conceivably bet both the flop and turn:

1. Flushdraws
2. PP below TP
3. Overpairs
4. 3 of a kind
5. Full houses
6. Quads

Given the tendencies to check full houses and quads, we can discount those from the range, leaving probable villain hits now at 14.24%.  Of course, since we can estimate that he will be checking a Q as well some lower PP's and overpairs on either the flop or the turn, we know that this actual range of hits is considerably less in reality.  Given the overall board texture and the bet sizing, a call down is clearly in order.  Taking this line has more benefits than just winning the pot.  It also lets your opponents know that you are patient and fearless.  Though by habit he will most likely continue to open 90%, he will be forced to give up much more frequently after the flop, which in turn will allow us to call even lighter pre-flop and swipe away more hands with pure bluffs.

You don't need to be the Rain Man to figure this out in real time, but it certainly helps if you take a little time out of your day when you aren't playing to learn exactly how to handle some various situations.

If the first hand was largely unconvincing, this next hand is sure to raise some eyebrows.  Once again, villain is opening approximately 90%.



Though this hand is more difficult to solve with Flopzilla, I can say this with some certainty: his line looks stronger than the previous villain's.  By checking the flop and betting both the turn and the river, he is representing a hand that was either very strong on the flop or one that somehow improved on the turn but yet was willing to check call the flop, and to a far lesser degree, 2nd pair or QQ that was going for pot committing thin value on the river.  So which categories of hands were most appropriate for this play and how often are they hitting the flop?

1. Top pair:  11.9%
2. Overpair:  0.63%
3. Two Pair: 2.83%
4. Set: 0.94%

Just as important as his tendencies to miss the flop entirely are the relevancy of the turn and river cards.  Even when opening 90%, there is still no guarantee that 82, 83, and 32 are in his range.  So this leaves us with a much higher probability of bluffs than strong hands.

The fate of this hand was decided ahead of time.  As soon as I flopped a straight draw, I decided that I was never folding, simply because I was aware that this flop is rarely hitting my opponent strongly and I can combine that fact with my overall equity.  The question then becomes how to maximize my overall expectation given possible outcomes.

Notice that in no point of this hand do I want to risk getting check raised.  If I had no equity or a vulnerable hand I would surely bet, but by checking along I now have increased my overall winning percentage in addition to the ability to snap off bluffs. I would like to also note that if at any point I catch a T or Q I am calling down.

I showed this hand to one of my students who was amazed that I would try to bluff any opponent who puts in half of the effective stack on the river.  In actuality, this is precisely the point.  He is only committed to the hand if he has what he is representing, which is basically Kx+.  He also probably assumes that I know he isn't willing to fold after putting in this much money and believes that this lends credibility to his bluff.  Being that I wasn't particularly familiar with this opponent, I don't necessarily know how willing he would be to bet a weak king on the river, but it is quite likely that he is looking to check call any pairs J or worse.  In this light it now is beginning to look suspiciously like a polarized range.  Given his incredibly high opening raise percentage, I am just not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Short Stack Strategy is Now on Video!

After two weeks of blood, sweat, and tears I have 90% completed a version of my short stack strategy seminar on a video set.  All of the theoretical concepts are completed and ready for immediate download, leaving only the sweat session and HEM mastery versions to be recorded so I will be taking pre-orders at the introductory price of $295.  Starting on Valentine's Day, I will be showing my love for the world by raising the price of the video collection to $395.  The videos contain over 60 power point slides and over 60 unique, fully-visual hand examples to illustrate each post-flop concept. All purchases will also include my hand charts and a half hour consultation.  Periodic supplementary content will be available by popular demand

Here is a list of the videos and some of the contents of each:

1. Essentials

• HUD setup with explanation of both weak and strong stats
• Game selection with effective player tagging
• Seat selection
• The 4 major goals of post-flop play: maximum value, pot control, protecting your hand, and unexploitability

2. Pre-flop Concepts

• Interpreting different raise sizes by position
• Recognizing an iso-raise
• Squeezing
• Facing cold 3 and 4-bets
• Counteracting unusual 3-bet sizes such as the min 3-bet and the single re-raise

3. Single Caller OOP

• Evaluating flop texture
• Criteria for C-betting
• Playing all marginal hands, including overcards, 2nd & 3rd pair, and TPWK
• Playing draws
• Bluffing the turn
• Check raising marginal value on the turn
• Interpreting and countering the 3 different donk bets: the min-bet, the half pot bet, and the full pot bet
• Ace high flops
• Multi-way Pots

4. Single Caller IP

• Same concepts as above, with a strategy for playing draws on the turn on river
• Playing vs. a single limper by position
• Range balancing
• Going for thin value

5.  Blind Play

• Evaluating limper strength by position
• How to proceed on your free play
• Heads up strategy for the small blind
• Playing the BB when the SB limps
• Countering aggressive heads up min-raisers

Total runtime of the videos is over 5 hours.  Contact me for payment options or if you would like a short preview of them, which I can provide over Teamviewer.