Some good reads (the written kind)

Last night I thought of a couple of new things to do with this blog to expand its scope slightly beyond my own personal progress and the occasional strategy analysis post. The first thing that I'd like to start doing is posting links to articles on heads up NLHE (and heads up poker in general, for that matter) that I find insightful and suspect will be useful/instructive to other HU players visiting this blog. A second thing that might be fun is to post hand histories that strike me as interesting/ridiculous/revealing/whatever, along with relevant reads, and invite comments from readers as to their thoughts... this could also be done in a play-a-hand-with-me format to encourage discussion...

So, to get the ball rolling I'd like to suggest two articles on levels of thought in poker: Level Headed Thinking and How to Spot a Level 3 Thinker, both by Andrew Brokos. These articles provide a thoughtful explanation not only of the various levels of thought in the game, but also how to identify and respond to the level on which your opponents are thinking; goes a long way toward answering the perennial question "How the **** could you call with that?!?"

The sequel to the Carl Sampson article I mentioned a few weeks ago, Mental Disintegration in Limit Hold 'Em, Part Two, is now available for your perusal in the 2+2 Magazine. While I liked Part One better, this article still has some good discussion of personal tolerance limits and causes of tilt, and all of us can benefit by keeping aware of such things.

That's all for now. Perhaps I'll try a PAHWM post next.

PS - Seriously, what is with bad players over-betting limped pots in the early levels of a HU match? Why are you betting 100 into 40 after I check on a dry flop? Why did you bet 200 into 60 on the turn when I checked the flop behind? What the hell is that? I'm not kidding, like every other weak opponent I play does this. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?

Back on Track

Things are looking up. After 10 days, I've made almost as much as I did all last month, mostly as a result of a) finding my groove in the $25s on Cake, and b) going on a soul-crushing rampage playing the $10 and $20 games on Stars (undefeated yesterday). The problems I was having last month really made me analyze my game a bit. I also started watching a few videos from husng.com (the sample pack), tagpoker.co.uk (great site), and an excellent HU blog I just found, hu-sngs.blogspot.com. I've been much more aggressive pre-flop, increased my C-bet frequency, and become more selective in running bigger bluffs, among other changes, and it's made a huge difference. I'm a bastard to play against at this point.
I'm still a bit conflicted about playing on Stars, because they don't offer rakeback, which is even more significant now that I'm moving up in stakes ($1 fee per game at the 20s). However, the availability of games (and variety of opponents) is much better than at Cake, which means higher volume...
(BTW, let me just say that I would play at Full Tilt, but they suspended my account because it was associated, through fund transfers, with the account of a friend who owes them money... and who is probably never going to pay them... so FT is out for me for the foreseeable future :/ )

Stakes, ROI, & Profitability

It seems as though things are back on track. Up $300 on Cake, and another $75 on Pokerstars in the first week of April. About half of my profit on Cake is off of the stake, so I can't count all of it, but the point is that things are going better, and I've become much more confident about moving up. I made the conscious decision to focus more on the $25 games on Cake, which I'm playing on the stake, as well as the $20 games on Stars with my own roll, after doing a little examination of my ROI over the last three months.

It occurred to me about a week ago that I hadn't yet done a comparison of my ROI across different stakes. If, say, my average ROI is 35% in $5 games, but only 15% in $10 games it would be in my interest to focus my energies on playing the $5 games, since they would be more profitable for me. So I did the comparison. I used Sharkscope to ascertain my ROI at various levels at various times, including sessions when I was running like god and other sessions that I'd rather not talk about. Here it is:

My ROI in the bigger games is double what it is in the $10 SNGs, which have been my bread and butter up to this point. Since [$25 * .31] > [$10 * .16], the decision to concentrate on the $25 games was a no-brainer, and after going on a ten game winning streak, I decided to stick with it. I've also gotten better about handling the losses mentally, and not letting them discourage me.

Playing more on Stars has intrigued me. I kind of left Stars behind about a year ago because they don't offer rakeback, and have been playing on Cake almost exclusively since then. But the fact that Stars always has games available, and that they are at the optimally comfortable $20 level, has begun to pull some of my action their way... we will see if this trend continues...

March Results

A disappointing month. Still a winning month, but nearly all of those winnings were accrued in the first two weeks. After a pretty good start, I seemed to hit a wall that I don't think I've found my way around yet. Hopefully things will get back on track in April.

March 2010

Total games: 546

HU games: 515

Total profit: $635

HU profit: $646

Hourly rate: $5.63

Heads Up SNG Results

Total SNG Results

LOL Razzaments

Today I played a kind of shitty session in the midafternoon, and ended up down $50. The amusing thing about this is that, perhaps tilted, I decided to play an $11 razz tournament on Stars and took 4th (of 104) for $96, which for me somewhat redeemed the earlier loss... and amuses me to no end.

Stake Segregation

The other night I had a poker-related realization that came to me in the same way that most such insights have come to me lately: while lying in bed at 2am. Fortunately, this timing essentially forced me to write down my thoughts in the form of a message to Lorin, lest I forget by morning. The gist of my message was that I've been treating the $25 games that I've been playing too much like the $5 and $10 games, which has created two problems. First, because I've been integrating the bigger games into my lower-stakes grind sessions, I've brought the lower-stakes mindset, which is more or less ABC poker, to the bigger table where it isn't always enough to win. Second, the disparity between the $25 games and, say, the $5 games has a negative effect on my ability to focus on the latter; if I've lost a bigger game, knowing that it will take 5 wins at the $5 level to recoup that single $25 loss makes for impatient and distracted play, and completely disrupts the rhythm of a good session.

The solution that I put forward for myself was to segregate the $25 games into an entirely different session, separate from the lower stakes grinding that I do on my own time and my own dime. The text of my message to Lorin, as well as his reply, can be read here at his blog, The Short Stack Hero.

Not Sure If I Can Do This Anymore [LC]

The time-wasting streak continues, as I book my 4th losing-or-breaking-even session. At this point I think I'm losing the confidence that is necessary to playing a good HU game. I've noticed a pattern forming; I start a session, and win or lose a little, and the little suck-outs that occur hand-to-hand in poker start to irritate me perhaps a little more quickly than usual. Maybe I lose more than a couple flips in a row, and it costs me a match that I was leading initially. Then it happens; something not only unlikely but absolutely incomprehensible occurs, and it costs me yet another match. Now I'm right back where I was, dead even after 2 or 3 hours of play. My confidence is even more bruised, because now I expect to lose flips and I don't even really expect to win when I know I'm getting my money in good. Just the last couple hours have included my AK losing to A9, A9 losing to 98, KQ losing to K9, each of them pre-flop all-ins, and each of them costing me the chip lead or the match itself.

And then there are hands like this one...

...which just don't make any sense. And I think those get me the most; when I lose as an overwhelming favorite it sucks. But when I lose as an overwhelming favorite when my opponent played his hand in a way that can only be described as inexplicable (as well as foolish; I'm not talking about being outplayed), it's worse. And I'm aware that opponents who stack off 30-50 BBs deep with Q3s preflop, or with middle-pair-no-kicker on the flop, are the ones that I want to be playing against. But lately I'm playing against them and I'm still not winning, and I'm not exactly sure why or how to fix it. I'm not trying to blame my shitty results this week entirely on bad luck. I've made mistakes too. But it's hard to figure out exactly what they are, because it even when I feel that I'm playing a totally solid game, it doesn't seem to make a difference.

Anyway, I don't really know what to do. Obviously taking a day off wasn't enough, but I'm wondering if any amount of time is really going to make a difference.