Dealing With the Consequences of Being Results Oriented

I wonder if it will ever be possible to escape the tyranny of the overplayed mantra of "you must focus on the long-term, young grasshopper."  This advice would be great, but only if delivered in a dojo or a confessional or perhaps from high on a mountaintop in Tibet.  Everyone can understand this on an intellectual level- this has never, to my knowledge, been contested.  Yet to repeat it, as I have been guilty of many times in the past is to ignore the mechanisms which truly allow someone to enjoy success in poker for the long run.

When I was outside today talking to my Ipad (an article for another day), I realized that in many situations it is often far wiser to babysit your mood than it is to invite marginal situations.  What am I talking about?  While this will vary greatly from player to player and game to game, what I am referring to for myself personally, as a shortstacker, is usually one of two situations:

1.  I get 3-bet all in and have to decide whether to deviate from the script and make a close call against a seemingly aggressive and relatively unknown opponent, knowing full well that the profit is measured in a few theoretical dollars to defend a raise one-tenth of the size of the call.  The variance is enormous and the metagame benefits are tiny, if they ever even existed in the first place.  After all, does my opponent ever need know that I just folded A9s or 66?  He will most likely just assume I was on a straight steal and forget about this hand 5 minutes later.

2.  Someone open shoves on my big blind from the small blind.  I am holding a hand like A7s.  I know that the call is usually correct, but it is actually much closer than most of you will realize.  As that is a discussion for another time, I will just state the obvious fact that you aren't a monster favorite over anything, particularly after paying the rake.


These two situations are basically identical in that I must risk a relatively large amount of money to score a tiny amount of equity with no ancillary benefits.  Even if I prove that I am willing to take a flip with perhaps somewhat the the worst of it with the benefit of the dead money from the raise or the blind, the chances of being able to leverage the outcome of these situations in any given session is very small.

But wait!  The Mantra of the Long-Term says you should always take a profitable situation.  I will counter that with the other great poker mantra of It Depends.  What does it depend on, exactly?  Why, your mood of course!  If you are feeling good and know that the outcome of making this call won't hurt you or it will be fun to take the gamble, do it.  If you know that making a bad call or losing $160 to defend your $12 raise will scorch you, you should decline.  Better still, if you even have to ASK yourself if it will bother you, I can guarantee you that it will.

Monitoring your mood, I have come to believe, is one of the most important ongoing actions you can take at the poker table.  Virtually every time that we sit down we will experience a wide range of painful consequences that vary drastically in their intensity.  And just as you won't have the energy to run five miles every day when you wake up, your ability to cope with the swings in this game is far from stable and can run the entire gamut, often within a single session.

In my best month ever at the cash game tables where I made over $20,000, this was the exact approach that I took.  I woke in the morning and immediately sat down at just $1/2 tables with a sprinkling of some $2/4 game.  If I felt good, I would begin opening some $3/6 games and perhaps even some $5/10.  If I was having fun or doing well, I would continue playing high, but if I began to dread shoving 75s heads up for $200, I would drop down to whatever level that I felt comfortable at.  By doing this and only taking on the level of pain that I felt I could appropriately handle, I could play longer and more often.  The end result was not only my highest grossing month ever, but also my highest volume as well.

In conclusion, we can not escape that we are results oriented.  This is part of our most basic mental wiring and most of us have as much control over this as we do control over how fast our grass grows.  In essence, if we are to believe in the long-term, we are required to trick ourselves and our natural thought processes.  Basically, we must delude ourselves into seeing things for how they really are.  Rather than to engage in such a bizarre contradiction, I believe that we are much better suited to simply ride the ebb and flow of our emotions than to deny their existence.  We are all results-oriented.  Deal with it.

Tap Lightly on the Glass

The following article is a piece that I had written for publication for Parttimepoker.com.

Conventional wisdom tells us that we should do everything we can to avoid educating the fish.  This seemed simple enough to understand, and for the first six and a half years of my career I accepted it as gospel.  If they don't ever play any better, they can't ever beat you, right?  In an online session where you can always find a good game and might never see the same face again, I couldn't agree more.  But what about giving away a few gems in a live setting?

Back when I played baseball as a freshman in college, my team ran an annual fund raiser called the “Night at the Races” at the local Elks Lodge.  This was a rather embarrassing affair where we had to name a small wooden low-rider horse and then "ride" it by sitting on it and peddling our feet as drunken rednecks gambled on the outcome while bellowing out condescending vitriol in a smoky, cramped space.  As if this wouldn't have been memorable enough, it was also the first time I had ever received gambling advice that was just dangerous enough to get me into trouble.  Besides the veritable humiliation, the Night at the Races also spread notable sucker games such as Beat the Dealer and Parish-style blackjack.  Though Beat the Dealer was fun enough at first, I was eventually drawn to the illusion of control blackjack offered that other games did not.  Even though I was failing to exercise this perceived control at the time, the fact that you could handle your own cards and order the dealer to give you more cards seemed good enough.  I knew so little about this game that I didn't even care what the dealer was showing, I just thought that the goal was to get as close to 21 as possible without going over, much like games of paper football in after-school detention.

   

It wasn't long after I sat down that I found myself in a tough spot.  I had a hard 15 and the dealer was showing a 6.  Though I didn’t care what the dealer’s up card was, I did know that hitting a hard 15 meant that I was likely going to be watching my dollar bet sliding into the dealer’s tray.   A couple seats next to me was Paul Burke, our junior catcher and one of the team captains.  He was a great player who would later go on to sign a professional contract with the Atlanta Braves and a person that all the freshmen looked up to.  When Paul noticed my hesitation, he said, "Yelly- you have to expect that the dealer has a 10 for his down card, since there are more 10-valued cards than anything else in the deck."  His basic credibility combined with some quick common sense told me that he was right.  After thinking for a few seconds I decided to do something that I would never have done before- stand on 15 so that the dealer would bust.  To make a long story short, the dealer did just that, I felt like a genius, and thus began what would surely become a very profitable career as a professional blackjack player.  Of course, this would have been lovely, except for the fact that it never happened.  Intermittently over the next 5 years, my little bit of "helpful" knowledge was enough to get me to keep going back for more at our local riverboat casino and bled me to the tune of about $80 a session, which was my average daily take as a waiter at Applebee's.  How strange, I thought.  Why don't I ever win when I am as good as I am?

In the stores of every casino lobby, for $1.99 you can purchase a small card that contains the correct basic strategy for blackjack.  Ask yourself why a casino would sell such a useful item at such a low cost.  Surely the players would play worse without it, leading to a greater short-term profit for the casino, but is allowing them to do this better than earning their long-term business?  Does this card actually accomplish anything?  Yes.  It allows the owner to feel that he is smarter than his fellow tablemates,  even though he is certainly not going to follow the instructions on the card 100% of the time  (he’s psychic, too- don’t forget that).   This concept is not lost on the casino.  They understand full well the value of making that player comfortable within the game while still possessing an unbeatable, albeit smaller edge.  They would rather keep the golden goose alive and hatching than to slaughter it for its meat.

But what about the complete novice poker player?  Is he any different?  Does offering this player (read: potential customer) a bit of sound advice or perhaps recommending a good book really hurt your bottomline?  Should we really take the fly-by-night mortgage broker approach and punish them as harshly as possible on the first confrontation for merely being ignorant?  Much as getting a hot stock tip hardly makes you a solid day trader, no green poker player has ever immediately started crushing the games after being taught that 92o sucks.  Though Paul had no idea what he was doing when he gave me my first good tip about blackjack, he was definitely on to something...

Clearly, helping the semi-competent player who regularly wins the annual perfect attendance award at your local cardroom hardly makes any sense, but creating a long-term customer out of the curious gentleman who strayed a little too far from his regular craps game is sheer brilliance.  Though his motivations for wandering into the unknown might not be entirely clear, two things are for certain: he wants to enjoy himself and he doesn't want to look like a complete fool.  Obviously, berating this man's bad play is such a horrendous breach of good business policy that it warrants no further discussion.  Likewise, being courteous and sportsmanlike should be so obvious that it also need not be mentioned further as well.  But how about the heretical example of offering up a quick tip about something as remedial as pot odds or schooling him about the long odds of drawing to an inside straight and ask yourself which of the following it is more likely to accomplish: creating a dangerous adversary or potentially igniting a long-term interest into a game that on the surface seems so simple but is actually highly complex?  How about recommending a good introductory read such as Winning Low Limit Hold’em by Lee Jones or Getting Started in Hold’em by Ed Miller?  Will this man immediately stop donating to the Average Joe Poker Pro Fund or will this game instantly become more interesting than its upstairs 3-card variant on the blackjack felt?

From where I stand, I can only see the upsides to taking this approach.  After all, these novice players getting their feet wet in the game for the first time can never usurp your knowledge when you are the source of that knowledge.   You now know what they know, but they will never be able to grasp the depth of what you know and what it took for you to get where you are.  The next time they come wandering through and there are several open seats around, don’t be surprised if they choose to sit with you for being the helpful and kind soul that you are.  That tiny bit of knowledge that you drop on them will probably never be particularly helpful, but like Paul’s little blackjack tip, it might get them to keep coming back for many years to come.  After all, as we all know, you can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin him once.   

December and January Results

Cash: $23,619
Rakeback: ~$6,750
Tournament Winnings: $573
Gold Stack Bonus: $323
Gold Card Race: $310
Race Chase: $3,200

Not shown: ~$350 Rush Poker (played on my laptop)
$120 Heads up

TOTAL: $35,145

I was kind of reluctant to post this at first in light of recent security attacks on my FT account, my rakeback account, and the blog itself.  Rest assured, there is no more money in any of these accounts, as I cashed it all away on one misclick against Isildur1 shortly thereafter (though it is still in dispute on a datamining charge).  If said hacking scum is reading this right now, you know who you are and I hope you die in a grease fire.

Essentially this was all made in about 6 weeks time, as I was actually stuck about $500 as of the middle of December and then immediately began to run like Cantu.  Over this span I ran over $5,000 over EV, but would have certainly been happy running totally even or below.  I did manage to skeet by on the January Rake Chase which added heftily to my January total, which also pushed me past the $20k mark for the first time ever in the cash games, which was truly exciting for me on a personal level.

Though I spent the first week and a half away from the tables this month, things are still looking solid, though I have a rather moderate goal of making at least $6k since I have not been able to log the hours.  Other than that, I am very excited to be an official affiliate of Rakebacknation and also have been invited to do some writing for parttimepoker.com, their affiliated site.  Though the details have not yet been worked out, I plan on offering more original content on that platform and hopefully offering my share of deranged humor as well!

As an aside, I would like to send a special thank you to my friend and colleague, Crazy Bear, whose influence on my game boosted my results practically overnight and without his help, none of what you see above would have been possible.

Alternative Line #2: The Mega-Raise Pot Shove

Unlike the previous example, this one does not actually need to be AK per se, but rather any medium-strong hand with showdown value. Here is the criteria needed:

1. You are in one of the blind positions.
2. You have a medium strong hand that doesn't play particularly well post-flop out of position, preferably in this order:
AK, AQ, AJ, 99, ATs, 88, KQs, KQo, ATo, KJs
3. You have no more than two limpers in the pot and first limper must be very loose, with a VPIP of 30% or higher. The higher the VPIP, the looser on the above scale you can go.
4. You raise to approximately 1/3 of the effective smaller stack.
5. You shove all in on any flop when called.

The theory: You do this because the alternatives are to limp (which clearly sucks and will never show any real profit), make a normal raise, or move all in. Making a standard raise makes your stack size really awkward for post-flop betting and makes these hands very difficult to play since you will miss the flop about 2/3 of the time. Moving all in is a fine, though sub-optimal play. Even a fish realizes that he needs a showdown value hand to call a bet this size and it will scare away his business virtually every time.

So let's be straight here from the get-go: usually when you attempt this play, your opponent will fold. In that regard, it is no different than shoving over a raise with your premium hands. You don't expect to get called with those hands in every instance, though you are happy when you do. When he does call, take a look at what happens in the example above. By raising one third of the effective stack, you are facing your opponent with a pot-size bet on the flop and offering him odds of 2:1 to call. In other words, you are putting him in the position of making the largest mistake.

Surely, for a bet this size on the flop, your opponents will only be calling when you are beat, right? Wrong. Here is a list of common calls you will see in this spot:


1. Top pair or better
2. Any pair
3. All draws including gut shots
4. Overcards
5. Naked aces

In a nut shell, very few good hands and a whole lot of complete shit. Once again, this play in not done for any kind of deceptive purposes, but rather is a strong psychological lure for weak-minded opponents and gamblers. By targeting exclusively loose opponents who have pretty much already told you explicitly that their hand was not good enough to raise but they wanted to see a flop anyway, you are seducing them into making a bad play.

Of course, when you flop a relatively strong hand, you should either bet very small or check. Typical opponents who are bad enough to call a raise this large in the first place are primed to make a hopeless bluff at such a large pot. By relatively, I mean relative the the board and your opponents likely calling range. A hand like AK on an A-2-2 board is extremely strong and even weak opponents are not likely to stack away with QJs in this spot (though they sometimes will!), but of course he is not getting helped by any free cards, so give him a chance to piss his money away.

Why does this play work? Perhaps it is best not to ask such questions. Never in my career have I been bad enough to get lured by such an obvious ploy, so I can't even begin to imagine what is going through the mind of someone who does. Admittedly, this play was not created by myself, but rather snatched from the hands of a short stacker who is much better than me. When reviewing his hand histories, I was astonished by the horrible calls his opponents were making, including a K7 on an A-A-5 board when he was holding KQ! I began making this play indiscriminately only to soon find that it was never working when I wanted it to, and "working" when I didn't want it to. It has only been recently that I have found it to work astonishingly well against very loose opponents. Against typical opponents or unknowns, you are better off either limping or moving all in with these types of hands.

A Glimpse Into the Mind of The Short Stack Hero

This is just an example of how I determine a line post-flop as a short stacker BEFORE I commit any money to the hand. This replay is a hand that had developed during a sweat session with one of my students. Although at first glance this appears to be nothing special, this is a common scenario where many short stackers tend to get lost because they do not understand the proper analysis. Though sweat sessions don't tend to be the ideal teaching tool, particularly for short stackers, I was very happy that this hand came up because this is a frequent danger spot.

Key concepts to note:
1) Position
2) Number of opponents
3) Board texture

When I raise from early position, as a short stacker I generally give my opponents credit for picking up on my tight image, therefore, I can usually (though not always) expect them to re-raise with better hands because they expect that I will be getting all in with them. So the first player calls. Given that the overcaller will be forced to play this pot out of position against two other players, I can expect him to re-raise all hands that beat me and even a hand such as AKo virtually 100% of the time, particularly because the original caller's stack is only 40BB. I can also expect him to re-raise with JJ and sometimes even TT.

Now that their pre-flop ranges are somewhat defined, we take a flop. The fact that the flop comes up K high is not necessarily a disaster. The board is very dry, particularly when coupled with the fact that I have removed two queens from the deck, reducing the probability that either of my opponents could be holding precisely QT, the only legitimate drawing hand that fits this flop. The only thing questionable here is my position after the flop.

Since AA, KK, AK, and JJ have mostly been eliminated from my opponent's ranges, this board is not particularly bad. A partial concern here is giving a free card that beats me, namely to gut shots. However with only 4 outs to a gut shot, I am far more concerned with getting my money in bad on the flop than letting either opponent draw for free. The question that remains, however, is how to get my opponents to reveal the accurate strength of their holdings without overcommitting myself in a potential two-out disaster.

Given that the board is so dry, this is surprisingly easy to do, though it really is a function of several years of experience reading common opponent tendencies and bet sizes. The small blind begins by checking. No matter the strength of the small blind's hand, I expect him to check every time. He clearly is never folding anything that beats me, but of those hands that do, I expect him to almost always either check call or check raise. Far more importantly, I am interested in how the last player to act will respond to both of our checks, but I already have my line in place.

After two players check, many online players will tend to bet despite the quality of their hand. I have noticed, however, that the size of their bets is often teeming with information. The presence of the third player in the hand tends to glean higher quality information than when he is absent, and coupled with the dry nature of the board and the effective stack sizes, I can expect that he will:

1) Value bet precisely between 2/3 to full pot with top pair and two pair strength hands with the full intention of commitment.
2) Check behind sets, which have pretty much been eliminated from both players' ranges, with the exception of a set of fours.
3) Check behind on a miss or weak draw.
4) Bet 1/2 pot or less with 2nd pair type hands, open straights, and sometimes even gut shots, and complete air.


Therefore my plan with this hand is to check fold if the last player bets EXACTLY $13 or more or bets $10 or more and gets either raised or called by the small blind. If he bets $12 or less and the small blind folds, I will check raise him all in, or if he bets less than $10 and the small blind just calls, I will check raise both of them all in, because now my stack-to-pot ratio is very good to get it in with 2nd pair and perceived weakness on both players.

I prefer this to leading out because in order to get back the right quality information, I need to bet a substantial portion of the pot, approximately $13 or more. At that point, it becomes a very expensive probe and I am nearing a threshold where I might find it difficult to fold even though I am almost always getting my money in with very little equity. Betting less than that will often get low quality information because it would appear exactly to be what is was: a probe with a weak hand. Furthermore, if I lead out and do not get raised (as I would expect to after giving the illusion of flop commitment and they like their hand), then I will have to push the rest in on the turn, barring some highly unusual information. Due to the dry nature of the board, I can reasonably expect that they might tread somewhat cautiously with the few semi-bluff type hands in their ranges, fearing that I may be slowplaying on a board such as this, yet even still, most players are so senselessly terrified of giving that free card that I can also expect that the last player will still bet a K even when he is highly suspicious of being beat and then proceed to talk himself into cashing away for the rest.

But that is not all- if the last player checks behind, I now get to see how the small blind reacts on the turn. I am somewhat concerned about an A or J hitting on the turn, but the quality of my hand has still not been defined enough to be all that concerned about getting drawn out on. Just to restate, I would rather get drawn out on holding a weakish hand having only invested $6 than be drawing to 2 outs having invested $45.

When the turn is a veritable blank and the small blind leads out for pot, most all bluffs have now been eliminated from his range and he is betting to take this pot down, most likely getting a little leery of the developing flush (once again, for no good reason). His bet sizing is unrestrained and very much looks like he is committed. I can now safely fold with a clean conscience.

On a final note, had the small blind bet another amount, I would have to re-evaluate how to proceed, but given the actual turn card and his decisive action, with the player left to act no longer being any concern and given his flop inactivity and barring any unusual draw out (namely a low set) I am effectively playing this hand heads up.

Trusting your "Gut"

Let me start this off by explaining in no uncertain terms that I am in no way superstitious. I don't play hunches. I did however realize a few years ago that certain "gut feelings" have merit. It was after I saw a social anthropologist talk about the subconscious and how it pertains to instincts. You see, the subconscious brain can analyse and interpret data way faster than your conscious, thinking mind can. Then it pushes you in the right direction.

Let's think about that. Have you every met anybody that you "just didn't like" and couldn't figure out why? You may have been picking up on subconscious gestures that he was untruthful or insincere. Later you found out some really shady stuff about the guy and said "I told you so". Or has one of your friends talked you in to trying to kidnap a Llama while drunk from a guy known to have a shotgun just to win a drunken bar bet? Yeah, I had a feeling that wouldn't work out very well, and it didn't. It wasn't that I could see into the future, it was that my brain added up all those layers of risk and realized that there was very little chance that this wouldn't end in some kind of disaster. Now, my conscious mind was way too hammered to see all those, but my subconscious (as drunk as it was) knew it was no good.

Even Lorin, as much of a tight ass stickler for the numbers as he is, finally learned to trust this about me, and himself for that matter. After spending years playing poker and watching hundreds of thousands of hands, you should have (as long as you weren't playing too many table to pay attention) accumulated massive amounts of information on the tendencies of players and the type of hand that is going to bite you in the ass. While you can process a lot of that information consciously (K9o sucks...period) quite a bit of it is just filed away in your brain, waiting for the chance to be used.

A hand that I played a few days ago, made this point screamingly loud. I had about 17bbs on the table and hadn't played a hand in FOREVER. I decided to use my tight image to steal a pot from the hijack with 87 suited. I raised. The small blind raised all in and the the BB called. I instantly went to muck my hand, but couldn't do it. I literally had the clicker over the Fold button and could not click it. My reads on my opponents were that the initial raiser had AK and that the BB had AA or KK. And I was pretty sure about this. I still couldn't fold. I thought about it for a minute and called. The SB turned over AQ (I was close) and the BB had aces. I flopped a pair of 8s, and a gutshot. I turned a flush draw and made the straight on the river to pick up a little over $100 pot.

I got up and immediately called Lorin because I had to figure out why I had done that. It was a hugely weird feeling. After a while, we cranked out the math and realized that with my read and the pot odds, my call had a slightly positive EV. We couldn't believe it. I think that my subconscious had worked that out even though all my training says that it an easy laydown.

To make a long story short, if you have been playing poker for years, don't discount experience. If all things are equal or it is a neutral EV situation, go with your gut. Now it may take you a while to figure out the difference between a gut feeling that is boredom or fear (or a bad burrito) and one that is a subconscious tug, but if you listen close enough, you can hear it. If something about a guy's betting pattern seems off but you can't put your finger on it slow down and listen to that gut. As long as it isn't an obviously mathematically stupid situation, go with it. That is why your teachers told you that if you didn't know an SAT question, just go with your first instinct. You know a lot of shit that you don't know you know. And now, hopefully you know that......

Good luck at the tables (and away from them too)

"Clearing the Desk"...and Other "Non-Poker" Poker Tips

One of the things that I've realized (as I am sure that most of you have) is that there is so much more to this game than the cards sitting in front of you.  And no, I will not bore you with the cliche about playing your opponents cards or even playing your opponents.  People way smarter and vastly more qualified than myself have written entire books on the subject.  What I am talking about are those little things, completely removed from the game itself that can cause you to not play at your best.  With how competitive the game is becoming and the overall higher skill level of the players (as compared to say, 3 years ago) means that in order to be successful,  you can't EVER play below your best.  Here are a couple of mistakes that I have made (or still make) and I invite anybody that has any of there own "detrimentals" to post them up so the loyal readers of The Short Stack Hero can all improve our games a little bit.....

1.  Clear the Desk

This is a term that you will sometimes hear in the corporate world.  It generally applies to finishing off little tasks before going home, leaving for the weekend or taking a vacation so that you are not distracted while away from work with those little things hanging over your head.  My experience with it has been a little different.  Just recently I went through a definite downswing for about two weeks.  When looking at it afterwards,  the cause was obvious.  It wasn't bad beats or any crap like that, it was that I hadn't "cleared the desk".  During the same period I was working on a project.  I had no set "due date" to complete the job so I found myself pushing it off a little even though I knew that I should be working on it.  Instead, I would log on to play cards with the thought "I can play for 90 minutes, then I need to get to work".  I found myself being a little too aggressive to try to eek out some winnings in my short time span.  Meanwhile I was slightly distracted thinking about the work that needed to be done.  Then when I would take an (inevitable) loss it would feel twice as bad, because if I had just been working like I should have, I wouldn't have dropped $200.  While it wasn't a huge financial loss, it sure felt a lot worse because of the situation.  We have all heard "don't play with scared money".  I think that playing with "scared time" might even be worse.   Clear the desk before you play, so that you can  bring the full brunt of your focus to the table and not needlessly sap your Emotional Bankroll.

2. Don't Throw Out the Baby with the Bathwater

When going through a downswing (even as short as 2 or 3 days) when you have just been getting your teeth kicked in, one of two things happens.  A donkey will  automatically blame it on bad luck. This may or may not be the case, but they never seem to even consider the chance that it may be of their own doing.  A good player will sometimes over-analyze everything to the point of insanity.  This is the situation to which I am referring.  They think that they must have a glitch in there game so they start trying all kinds of things.  Playing more hands, playing fewer hands, making more bluffs, making no bluffs, laying down to any raise or never laying down, no matter what.

If you have been a consistent, winning player, stick with what works.  There is actually something I say to myself all the time (mainly because I have so much faith in Lorin's System).

System + Time = Money  
And it is so true. Lorin has started telling his students this as well and it is a great way to get through the bleakness of a downswing.  If what you do works, feed it some hands and let it do it's job.  We will all have those standard deviations from the mean.  And while I have found that a downswing is a decent time to do some evaluation and tweaking, don't throw out the baby while dumping out the dirty bathwater.  If a pitcher has a bad game, he may check to make sure that he was arching his back or that his release point is where it should be.  He doesn't just scrap his entire motion and delivery and start over, and neither should you.

Well there are two points to start off with.  I plan on doing more in the series on mistakes (it could take me years to cover all the ones that I make).  I do hope that you will throw up you own little tidbits here on The Stort Stack Hero.  It's not giving away any strategy,  and maybe it will help exorcise some of your own little poker demons by having to call them out into the light of day.

Best of luck at the tables (and away from it for that matter)......

Who Are You, RIGHT NOW?

I am a regular listener to the 2+2 Pokercast with Mike and Adam. In my opinion, it is simply the most entertaining and thoughtful one running, with the most talented radio personalities. In their last one, they were reviewing a recent SCOOP event where former WSOP Champion Greg Raymer was complaining about his luck when he lost deep in an event to Christian Schlager when his quads lost to bigger quads in a game of PLO. He had mentioned that this did not surprise him as he had been running very bad lately. Schlager, ever the one to speak his mind in an apparently frank and obscene way had quipped that anyone who has won the World Series of Poker Main Event loses all rights to ever complain about running bad, ever again.

Is this true? Personally, I disagree with Mr. Schlager.

After all, Vanilla Ice had sold 11 million copies of his debut album, To the Extreme. Even still, I don't see anyone lining up to trade places with him. In fact, I would bet my entire bankroll that anyone reading this wouldn't even cross the street to piss on him if his head was on fire. So where is he now? Does anyone know? Do they even care?!

You see, Joe Hachem was fortunate enough to win the WPT championship the year after he claimed the title at the WSOP. In his own words, he felt like he was floating, that this was even better than his accomplishment the year before even though he had won less than a third of that this time around. It was instant validation, and everyone knew it. Raymer, on the other hand, has pursued a career in poker and has since had no titles to show for it and in a sense has gone the route of Chris Moneymaker. I certainly respect Raymer for his accomplishments and all that he has since done for the game of poker in America with his work for Poker Players' Alliance, but I can sympathize with him as well.

Look back on your own life. Should everything be OK just because you starred in your 5th grade play? Is life simply wonderful because you threw the touchdown pass in your homecoming football game? Will you die happy because you married the prom queen?

All jokes aside, this is a lesson that Platonic would be wise to learn. No ones cares if he was once a baller at the small stakes at William Hill. Today he is just another broke grinder begging for a stake. You are only as good as your last session and the relative size of your bankroll. Nothing else matters. Who are you today, in this very moment?

Beer Goggles and the Myth of Pot Odds

This is a couple of stories from my own personal experience. The poker hand happened just a few days ago. Afterward, while analyzing the hand, I had a sense of Deja VU. I put both stories side by side to show the similarities. I think we have all been at both of these places.

Dancing In the Rain

Well, here is my first Blog entry. I really planned on it being something funny, considering the intro the Lorin gave me. But I have been drinking all night after running a Promo at my Bar and I got home at 4 in the morning and called Lorin to check on him. After a 45 minute conversation, I realised that there was something I should touch on, and that is weathering the storm....

Every player....and I mean EVERY player will have downswings......some so severe that they question how you play this game and even if you WANT to play this game ever again. That is the cruel bitch that we have married ourselves to. Deal with it. Lorin, our own "Short Stack Hero" is worried that he is only on pace to make $4,000 this month. He is pissed, he is angry and he is worried. All I can say is ..

"ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS???!!!"


A $4,000 win in a month at $1-$2 is a dream for most players not named "Durrrr" It is only cataclysmic for Lorin because of his own escalating results over the last several months. Well let me be the Buzzkill and break the illusion. NOBODY WILL EVER BEAT THERE OWN FOR RESULTS FOREVER. PERIOD. All streaks are made to be broken and all streaks come to an end.....that is why they are called "streaks".


This game, and Life in general for that matter, is made up of swings. Call them standard deviations from the norm, call them luck, call them whatever. But they are what they are. Part of being a PRO is dealing with this. It will be rarer for you to run a month with no deviation than it will for you to run a month with deviations from either the positive or the negative.

The thing that separates those that can stick with it, and those who can't is simple. Can you handle it?


This is the only thing that I would say to keep in mind.


LIFE IS NOT ABOUT WEATHERING THE STORM (any single minded retard can do that)



LIFE IS ABOUT LEARNING TO DANCE IN THE RAIN........


If you can take $4,000 from people that have been studying, conniving and scheming to take your money, you are doing pretty well. Especially if that only happens 1 or 2 months out of the year and the other 10 months, you average $8,000. I WISH I could show a $4,000 PROFIT for my WORST month. Hell, as far as cash games go I wish I could show that for my best month.....


Nobody plays this game well when discouraged or downtrodden. You almost have to play this game with arrogance and ignorance. Not to the point where you won't examine your results, but to the point where the results don't matter as long as you are sure that what you are doing is right. As Davy Crockett once said " First be sure you are right, then go ahead....."


Basically, as far as advice from somebody that has been on almost every side of every fence in this game goes, never stop listening, never stop learning, never stop analyzing, but be careful when starting to doubt. Make your game plan, make your play, but don't look at the results too quickly. Make sure that it makes sense to you, then go ahead......


And when the inevitable storm comes, don't focus so much on surviving the storm, take a moment to learn how to appreciate that $4,000 (as bad as that may seem )and dance in the rain......

Tim Wakefield and the Knuckleball: A Metaphor

Enough right now of the frivolities, it's time to get back down to work. For this next entry, I am going to present a metaphor for understanding my short stacking mindset. I used to be a left handed pitcher up until my junior year of college at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. Being that this is the only sport I have played competitively, this is the one that I understand the best.

Tim Wakefield is a knuckleball pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. He has had an illustrious career with them all this time and is arguably neither a pitcher in the true sense, nor even a “real athlete.” His “fastball” is known never to exceed 75 mph, but it doesn't need to. He doesn't have a devastating curveball, slider, or changeup. He basically has two pitches: a knuckleball and a straight pitch (described as being too slow to call a fastball). The key here is that is all he needs. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with the term, a knuckleball is an extremely difficult pitch to throw that is designed to have no spin whatsoever, allowing the ball to drop and curve sharply at angles so severe and unpredictable that even the pitcher and catcher have no idea which way it is going. Picture it like throwing a beach ball into a headwind, except that the beach ball is the size of a baseball and is moving at 55-60 mph. Now try to hit that with a round bat after you have been practicing all week to hit a moving target at 93mph that is speeding in a straight line. Suppose even further that you are prepared to hit that tiny beach ball and you can guess one of three directions that it is going to move, but now all of a sudden a straight ball comes down the pike that is moving far faster, but you have already slowed down your motion in preparation for that beach ball, but by then it is too late and that ball has already slapped into the catcher's mitt. You are fully aware of the pitcher's game plan, but a slight variation in the strategy throws you off completely.

You see, Tim Wakefield was originally drafted to play professional baseball. He was a Double A first baseman with no exotic talents and very little hope of ever making the Big Leagues. One day he was fortunate that a scout was watching him during a pre-game warm up and mixing in a few vicious knuckleballs. The scout was so impressed that he had him throw some more and then it wasn't very long before he was owning batters left and right and had a permanent spot on a top billed Major League franchise. While he certainly has peers and opponents who don't consider him one of the guys or a true athlete, you simply can't deny that the man shows impressive results. He's not trying to be the next Nolan Ryan or Roger Clemens. He never can and he doesn't have to be. He simply found something that he was extraordinarily good at and worked it to perfection. Furthermore, his career is likely to out-perform all but the most genetically gifted and lucky players, due to the fraction of the strain that he puts on his muscles and tendons.

I consider the story of Tim Wakefield to be a great lesson in humility. While we all grew up with notions of the being the best at every facet of life, at some point in time we are either forced to accept our limitations or embrace them along with the strengths that we own. I believe it is fair for me to predict that no one who reads this will ever be a winning regular at Rail Heaven, ever win a gold bracelet at the World Series of Poker, or ever win a World Poker Tour title. But none of us need any of these things to be or feel successful at this game. Don't be afraid to try new or unpopular things and accept that you will not excel at everything you try. Challenge the conventional wisdom and re-define success as a personal venture. Take the unbeaten path.

How We Are Deceived by Our Own Miscalculations of the Future

While not made for poker directly, I believe that this discussion has some very important concepts for understanding other players and our own misconceptions about future probability. For those of you who may have already read the works of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, you will quickly be able to appreciate and enjoy this highly entertaining (at least for us dorks!) talk by Dan Gilbert.

For those who do not see how this applies to the game, I would like to add a disclaimer that I believe long-term success at the game requires melding different disciplines to understanding the game in all its facets. And to people like Microstakes Bankroll Builder, yes, this also includes understanding the mindset and goals of short stackers rather than quickly casting judgment.

A person who seeks long term profit from poker isn't really all that different than someone who pursues art or music for the same reasons. Being able to draw or write a great song does not in any way guarantee you success. You have to understand the rules and regulations of your industry, understand and interpret the impact of the conventional wisdom on your field, understand the desires and needs of your audience, etc.

I hope you all find this both entertaining and enlightening.

Introducing Travis "TheDirrty" Rose

Travis will be a contributing blogger on The Short Stack Hero from now on. Although he has nothing important to say, this will give him an outlet to spout some worthless, although some might say "humorous" material while filling in the gaps while I ponder more important issues. So without further ado, please welcome Travis to his new home!

Next Stop: Hollywood

Reflections on March Short Stacking Results and "Proper Play Theory"

Winnings: $6,564
Rakeback: $2,249
Bonus from RaketheRake: $600

Total: $9,413


This month has taught me several things. The first is that you can be surprised just how long you can run good, and like it or not, no graph or EV calculator can actually sum up how good you are running. The second is that it can be very easy to forget just how long you can run bad- including 30k hand stretches. The third is that the strategy I have created is not sufficient to beat the $2/4 FR games and up at Full Tilt. The reason being is that these games are incredibly nitty and require more pre-flop stealing and re-stealing for finer edges, as these games are populated by very wary regulars and a generally more skilled breed of short-stacker.

The good news in this category is two-fold, in that it presents a new challenge to overcome (which keeps my mind fresh and interested) and that I have a team of 3 other Short Stack Soldiers working to crack it. Code name: Jon XYZ is on the Delta Force Squad and he is currently penetrating the upper limits to clear the brush so that we can infiltrate its depths. The outlook is hopeful that by the end of the year we will have ventured out into mid-stakes NL 6-max games as well as pot limit omaha, as the future action at any one game type and format is not guaranteed.

And now for the introduction of Proper Play Theory.*

*Bear in mind that this is nothing groundbreaking here. In fact, many of you will simply chortle to yourselves and think this is retardedly obvious...which it is. It is no more obvious than 2 + 2 = 4, but as simple as that equation is, it is the foundation for algebra and other advanced math. So with no further ado...

Proper Play Theory is the assumption that you are playing against a sane opponent who is attempting to both 1) win money and 2) avoid losses. He has at least a basic knowledge of the game that includes the ability to identify the intrinsic and relative value of his own holding, identify the nuts, and has a working knowledge of pot odds, position, aggression, etc.


Notice that we make most of our money from players who fall outside these parameters, those of course being loose-passive fish and maniacs. Also notice that some of this information was not true 4 years ago when the poker boom was in its relative infancy. For the rest of the competition that falls within these guidelines we employ a different strategy, and the strategy that I personally use to beat such players is highly dependent upon the Range Map. Now that I have laid the foundation, I can then introduce the Range Map in my next post, and you will see how this "retardedly obvious" information suddenly becomes relevant.

Reflection on March Results and "Proper Play Theory"

Week 2 With No HUD....Another $3,000

There are two brand new things to note about this week's results. The first is that I had a brief and unsuccessful venture in $2/4 where everything possible went wrong. Surprisingly, not once did I get in pre-flop less than a coin flip. Being that I have been short stack crushing $1/2 so hard and getting comfortable doing so, I decided that making the instant jump was adding on a level of stress that was not necessary at this point, so I have decided to just sprinkle in a few good $2/4 games here and there until I make the total transition.

The second point is that you will notice that I have decided that I will not be covering up my pre-flop stats anymore, for two good reasons. The first is that I want to shock and appall everyone with how tight I am yet still able to win at the rate of a strong, successful full stacker. In fact, Poker Listings currently has me ranked as the 50th tightest player in the world, a badge that I wear with honor.

The second reason I do this is because I am no longer concerned that anyone can read these stats and steal my game plan. Great short stack play is not a pre-flop shoving contest. It is about staying ahead of your opponents' ranges, finding +EV spots and risking your buy-in to grab them, and making the optimal plays post-flop.

In my next post, I will be introducing a revolutionary concept called the "Range Map" and how that ties in with what I call "Proper Play Theory." The range map is a term I am coining that allows me to consistently beat completely unknown players without the use of any prior statistics or knowledge of them. This is a concept that applies to both live and online play and is adaptable to changes in the future flow of the game and will thus always be relevant.

The Triple Lindy Magic Insult Hand

By keeping the chat off, I entertain myself by imagining what they are thinking.

Pre-flop

"I'm ahead! Just don't throw that ace!"

The Flop

"Ah fuck! Well, I still have a shot here..."

The Turn

"Shit! I'm dead to a chop..."

The River

"Ah, come on now! Was that shit really necessary?!"

Implied Odds in a Short Stacker/Full Stacker Scenario

This next entry is something that I had written in response to a post about short stack theory that I was reading on another player's blog. Even though it may be the height of egotism to quote myself, I thought that this concept was far too important not to mention here.

I wrote the following response at Poker Anon where the blog author (as a part time short stacker, mind you) recommended making an overcall vs. a shortstacker early open raise and nitty full stacker flat call with 44. Here is my take on the matter:

This is kind of a conundrum. I like the way in which you analyze hands and play, but your short stack theories are wildly inaccurate. I think this mainly comes from a misunderstanding of implied odds and how this applies to full stack play. I consider the concept of implied odds to be the greatest con ever pulled on the poker community at large.

I noticed that you said if you buy in full and a SSer raises 4x and a tight big stack calls, you should call with 44 to bust the big stack. Where to begin here?

The SS range up front is very tight, typically TT+, AQ-AK, and sometimes tighter (like myself). The nitty full stack is almost always re-raising the hands you are likely to bust him with, namely QQ-AA. However, look even further here. He is only likely to stack off with QQ and KK IF no ace hits the board. And given the effects of card removal because of the short stack, he is more likely to contain hands like AQ, AJs, 77-TT. The only way that these hands are likely to stack away against another full stack acting behind him is when he either flops 2 pair (still has 4 outs), pair + nut draw, nut straights, and bigger sets.

And now back to the (very) optimistic scenario that this guy was actually smart enough to cold call with QQ-AA. These hands are just as likely to flop a set as you and if they are going to stack away every time here, guess what? You are right back to being a 4:1 dog with your 44. And that doesn’t even factor in when the board comes really bad and you happen to get bluffed off your set.

In addition, the concept of flopping big and stacking someone is simply the wrong way of looking at things. If you assume that you play your 44 perfectly, you still need to look at what your AVERAGE profit for this scenario is. In a $1/2 game, I would say it would be VERY optimistic to assume that this situation will even net you $3 on average, but the variance you will be taking on to win this $3 is enormous. And yet again, it also ignores the negative psychological effects of missing your set an inordinate amount of time, flopping it and getting nothing in return, flopping it and losing to a higher set, flopping it and getting little because of scary boards, and the worst of all, flopping it, building a large pot and then getting bluffed off it.



As a foot note to my response, given the negative scenarios that can result even after flopping your set, the potential ensuing tilt probably makes this play neutral EV at best. In a round about way, what I am really trying to say here is that set mining in general is a bad policy and goes against basic good play which requires that YOU be the aggressor.

A Quick Quiz...

What is wrong with this picture?