More evidence of too serious poker attitude?

Further to the seriousness of my poker playing attitude:

Recently I played at a $25NLHE cash table at an event we ran on PokerStars. The plan was to get some good players together, fill up one table with the agreement that everyone would send the hand histories to one player. He would merge these hand histories together and someone would do a video analysis of everyone’s play with everyone’s cards showing.

I think I’m the only one of these players who regularly plays at this level; the others are mulitablers at $50/$100 NLHE tables. I’ve played against most of them before in private tournaments so I know that they are good aggressive players, and at the beginning I made the mistake of playing as if I were playing a typical $25 table.

Two plays in particular that I question. One was a late position call of a raise with AJ, then folding to a 446 flop bet. I considered reraising but AJ seemed too weak, and folding seemed too weak, so I called preflop. On the flop I considered floating but didn’t know if I could bring myself to do it against a very strong player so I just folded.

The other was a limp UTG with 77, which got raised behind me and two other callers including myself. The flop came very low and I considered donking into the preflop raiser but didn’t. He made a strong bet at the multiway flop and we all folded.

In retrospect AJ is too weak to call an early PFR, especially with this level of competition and I should just fold. 77 I should raise PF from UTG, probably fold to a RR. As played, with 4 in, no point donking the flop.

~

But those weren’t the interesting hands. I had an aggressive player to my right who raised liberally from late position. One time I had QJs in the SB, and reraised his raise. He 4-bet, and I folded.

Later he raised again from the button, I 3-bet my AK, the BB 4-bet. Button folded, I shoved, BB folded. A fine play on my part; AK has great preflop equity and you really want to be the last aggressor with it preflop.

(For anyone who knows the phrase “the fourth raise means Aces” it doesn’t apply in this circumstance. Like all aphorisms it’s mostly true but not always. Here the first raise is from the button, so he could be trying to steal with almost anything. My raise could mean a big hand but could also just be a test of his hand to see if he was stealing. The BB re-re-raise is probably at least a decent hand but he could be squeezing knowing that the button and I could be both trying to steal from each other.)

But it’s not to pat myself on the back that I mention these hands. It’s that I’m not capable of doing this with a wide range of cards when I think that it might 1) win right there, or 2) be good to add some shows of additional aggression to my play. Even if the cards don’t get shown down I think it has value to be able to 3-bet and 4-bet light when the situation might be good.

Overall I think I wasn’t too bad aggression-wise. The 3-bet/fold from the SB, the 3-bet/shove with the AK, and later a 3-bet/c-bet with QQ. Still, in this particular game against these players that are good and aggressive, making a few plays is necessary.

Later edit: It turns out the AJ hand the player was playing LAG raising/c-betting with T9 from early position. The 77 hand the raiser/c-bettor had AK and the other two callers had 44 and 33. The QJ hand the button had AA (good 3-bet for information/fold on my part) and the AK hand the button had 22 and the 3-betting BB had JJ.

~

This is where I feel that I might be still too tight, taking the game or money too seriously.

I’ve documented fairly long windedly about my problems adding aggression to my game, around about this time last year. It started with trying to 3-bet JJ/QQ in $10NL. Then trying to open up my raising range more from late position as well as from the blinds. Then a very short attempt to learn to play LAG. All of this in a relatively short period of time, and then my game fell apart as I had unleashed a monster. This monster would not let me fold, was constantly seeing bets as challenges, as tests of my courage and conviction.

This colored my decision making, narrowing my perception of the range for my opponent’s hands down to draws, low pairs and pure bluffs. All of these happen of course, but I was far too often reading their hands as such. I still see these quite often at the low SnGs that I play where the stacks are short, time is short (because I’m playing turbos), and players can’t let go of what might have been a decent hand early on but is now probably behind and they desperation shove, or, they just can’t conceive of the possibility that you have top pair no kicker beaten. In these games I’m somewhat more inclined to call.

~

You know, I don’t want to blow the cap on my aggression again. It was frustrating, somewhat expensive, and took a lot of time to try to get a handle on. Even when I thought I knew the source and the types of circumstances it seemed it was something that I have no life experience with so I had a hard time developing a mental muscle to use. I have a visual image of something like a glottal attack (similar to a cough).

Anger for me blows fast and hard, and then it’s gone. Aggression is similarly hard to maintain as I’m by nature a mellow, even apathetic personality type. Maintained, controlled, sustained aggression I’m only used to using when playing competitive sports of some type so the aggression is matched with some physical activity. If you run hard at a loose soccer ball, battle someone for it, then it pops out but obviously closer to your opponent, then you quickly shift to a defensive attitude and start calculating angles to cut him off from the goal and from likely passing lanes. The aggression, physical activity, competitiveness, strategies, all go hand in hand.

Trying to maintain and control aggression without the running/physical activity is just not something that I have any experience with. I’ve had to create or build a faucet myself by practice and exercise, just like developing an underutilized muscle.

Playing poker, blind

Not “blind” as in from the big blind/small blind, but “blind” as in not seeing my cards.

Recently I watched the $4-180 tournament that annette_15 claims she played and won without seeing her cards. Apparently she says she looked once when someone shoved on her or something. There were some fortuitous shoves with AK and other good hands, but lots of other aggression and suckouts with weak hands too as well as some folds of KK preflop, so I think I believe her. I also think that she’s done this more than once and just made the hand history for this one available because she happened to win it.

This is something that I’ve been meaning to try for some time and I think that I’ll make another project of it. I tried one last night, so I’ll review that game first, then think about objectives and application.

~

First try, a 25,000 play money SnG. In the past I’ve found these to play fairly reasonably, somewhere comparable to $1 real money SnGs. Not that that’s saying much, but it’s better than a freeroll or low play money situations. This one was a weak one though; multiple limps, a few preflop raise attempts that were called in 3 or 4 places, ect. My plan was to avoid any hands for the first orbit or so to see how the table plays and how the players play, but there was so much crappy limping that I ended up some 20+ hands in before doing much of anything. The one hand I did play/win I think there was one limper and the SB, a low paired flop that I bet at, called by the limper, and then I bet harder at the turn and he folded. I kept the hand history up so it was fun to look and see that I had K9o which had no connection with the flop at all. My first successful blind play!

Unfortunately the play was so poor that I kept forgetting to pay attention :/. More than once I had to take myself away from whatever I had loaded up in the browser window and remind myself to watch the game.

I won another hand from the BB betting the turn when no one bet the flop, then betting the river to get the caller to fold. Took a few blinds shoving when the blinds rose, folded one of my preflop raises to a shove from the button (T3o probably not good here ) Doubled up when I shoved one hand and got called by a blind. Funny enough, not only did I win when I rivered a Q, but my hand turned out to be KQ so it wasn’t even embarrassing to have gone all in with less than 10 BBs. Took one hand in a blind battle when the SB minbet the flop and I raised 3x. A couple of orbits later he minbet the flop again so I decided to call instead. He minbet again on the the turn and I raised 4x. He paused and shoved so I called, getting like 3-2 pot odds even though I had no idea what hand I had. The truly amazing part was that I had A9 on a J high board, but he was minbetting/shoving over my raise with AT on a totally missed board as well. My excuse was that I didn’t know what my cards were; wtf was his thinking?

~

Definitely an interesting experience. Takes me back to my entry about separating “me” and my on-line persona. Again I’m putting “myself” at risk making plays without knowing what my cards are so I feel newly vulnerable. I will try some more play money games but if the quality of play keeps up like this I may need to move to real money as it’s hard to play against really weak players.

• I have to make a conscious attempt to get in some pots in position, either limping behind or more raising of limpers in position. As it was the only hands I played through the first 5 or 6 orbits were 2 that I took from the blinds. Later I raised/shoved from later positions but the blind to stack ratio was too high to play postflop. I want to do some postflop play so I need to get into some hands when the blinds are smaller.
• The old bet/raise/fold exercise still shows it’s usefulness here as I have to be able to get off hands if I don’t have good pot odds. ‘Course, it’s easier to give up on a hand when you have no idea what it is
• I have to work on the visual system. I could see through the sticky note sometimes, and it also covered my stack size which I need to be able to see. Plus, on this site the play money hand description shows up in the corner of the screen so I have to hide that as well.

~

I’m not in these to win or even to ITM. My chances are much lower than in the previous projects, and other than playing “well”, the results don’t even matter. On the other hand, donking out early because of useless aggression doesn’t teach me anything either.

I need some kind of objective, some kind of evaluation method. I’m after

• hand reading,
• weakness/strength reading,
• board-based bluff reading

Preflop shoves when I’m small stacked doesn’t count for much, either than picking appropriate stacks/stats/position to do so.

Raising, c-betting and taking down pots doesn’t count for too much either except for appropriate stacks/stats/position, plus flop/opponent evaluation for c-bets.

Folding to preflop raises doesn’t count for much either.

3-betting preflop raises and taking down the pot would count.

Pushing off a preflop raiser or someone who bets weakly at a board would count.

Stealing unclaimed pots would count.

I can’t call down a LAG or maniac. Well, I guess I could, but without knowing what I have I still might lose. They might at least have Ace high against my J high.

Maybe I can come up with some sort of point system.

• One point for successful 3-bets, donks, post-flop raise-steals, pot steals. Basically for any pots except BB walks and,
• 1/2 point for successful raise/c-bet and shortstack shove, or maybe I should just get full credit for these as well, and
• one point for each position survived.

And negatives for

• getting slowplayed, even limped AA late,
• getting bluffed (flop and later)

Of course the negatives can only count if the get shown.

What is Tilt?

In the last 10 days or so I’ve found myself on tilt (and by that I don’t mean Full Tilt, although that’s were I was playing at the time). Even Sharkscope said so. .

Cash games were fine, but I use a different mentality when I still play the low buy in tubo Sit and Goes. There I assume that I am quite a bit of a better player than the rest of the competition. I expect suckouts (you can’t get sucked out on unless you get in with the best hand) but I still expect to be cashing at least half the time at the one table games.

But my game is patience, followed by aggression. When I get off my game I start getting too involved in hands early, and not making top priority of survival and chip retainage until the blinds become significant. I should fold if I’m putting my last 800 chips at risk without being pretty sure I’m ahead ’cause I used to say that if I could get to the point when the blinds get to 50/100 and I have 800 chips, I’m okay.

Recently the turbos seem to be slowing in pace up too. Players haven’t been donking out early quite so fast, and when the blinds go up and everyone gets really tight, I stack up with aggression, the other players note this and wait for big hands to play against me. Maybe I’m raising too often, or calling shoves over my raises too often or with hands that are too weak. Maybe not enough planning on my part as to which players I expect to call if shoved on.

This inability to fold to a shove when raising with more marginal hands, and not taking into account that these players often have big hands if they’re doing this is one form of tilt. Lack of patience early on is another form.

~

Being afraid to raise or bet or bet big enough is another form that occurs when you get bitten too often and get afraid of losing again.

In my previous entry I wrote about why we sometimes do not play aggressively even though we know that we should and tilt is definitely a factor. Tilt undermines our confidence and it’s very difficult to play patiently and aggressively when our confidence in our abilities is weakened. I mentioned stress and tension in that previous entry, and when our confidence is weak we react poorly to stress.

Another form of tilt is steaming, after a bad beat or a big loss or a stupid comment in the chat box. That steam fuels anger levels which makes aggression more difficult to control. Rather than playing too passively we go too far the other way and see our opponent’s bets/raises as intimidation attempts, responding with inappropriate levels of aggression and throwing more chips away.

In a longer and more dangerous time frame this anger can percolate under the surface and continue over the course of a week or longer, undermining our patience, causing us to overreact to aggression from the other players.

Any form of tilt can feed itself, as the tilt will cause us to play sub-optimally causing more and bigger losses which creates more frustration which feeds the tilt. It’s a cycle that sometimes only self-evaluation or outside review can point out to us.

Then comes the next question; how do we deal with it? “You’re raising with marginal hands from too early of position.” Stop and think every time you raise? “You’re re-raising too often when someone bets into you.” Stop and ponder whether you should give this person credit for the hand that they’re representing? “You’re limping into too many pots.” Call less, or raise more?

Sometimes if you were playing better before you need to evaluate why you’ve changed as there may be a source underlying the change that needs to be addressed first. Is there some source of frustration or anger, either poker related or from some other part of your life, that is sparking your sub-optimal reactions? Has your attention level or desire changed? Playing while tired, playing while drinking, playing while watching television? I’ve known players who tried to use poker as an escape during a difficult time in their personal lives but found that it only made it worse. They played poorly because of the distractions and baggage that they brought with them and the frustration from losing made them feel worse.