It’s Situational

Originally I wrote this back when I was in the middle of my “Odds and Outs” series, and delayed posting it so as not to interfere with the series. And then I kinda forgot about it.

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As one progresses thru life one often reflects on things, once in a while an “Aha” happens. Aha, why wasn’t I more aware of how that perspective applies all the time?

This happened for me with the word “situational“. I suddenly became aware of how that single word applies to every hand of every poker game. Yesterday, playing a cheap SnG I was chipped down but hit a set from the BB and doubled up. Next hand I get AA in the SB, two limpers, I opt to only raise 2 BB to 2.5 BB in a mix between building the pot and making a proper raise (which in this case should have been 3BB plus 1 for each limper so a 5.5 BB raise to 6BBs, maybe more as I’m OOP). BB calls, limpers call and I realize I raised too little. Flop comes three medium-small cards, all clubs and I have the Ace of clubs. I shove, BB calls with a flopped set, no additional club comes and I’m out.

There are standard plays for given types of situations. These standard plays are based on relative strengths of each hand and expected logical plays of the other players, and assuming a standard range and mix of hands belonging to the other players. Raise AA preflop to eliminate weak hands that could draw out on you because all good hands lose strength the more players there are in the pot. But raise more if there are limpers otherwise you give them pot odds that are too good. Re-raise if there’s a raise ahead of you. Don’t shove in all your chips unless you’re short stacked or are playing weak players who might call with any two suited cards because you can get more value from someone who might catch top pair. But, you can limp AA from early position at an aggressive table where someone will likely raise behind you and you can 4-bet them. Or limp from late position or the blinds if no one else is showing strength as a means of trapping for value. I’ve also min-raised players with AA/KK for the same reason as a value raise that I think that they can’t fold. And there are more variables, like bubbles, weak or strong opponents, table image, stack sizes of opponents, ect. It’s situational.

That’s what made poker so difficult to learn when I was starting out. There is a decision tree for every hand, even just preflop. At one point I considered trying to draw out a decision tree for every hand preflop but it was really complicated. The way I seem to be keeping up on this blog, I still might get around to it, but not any time soon.

I guess that’s one of the things that I’m trying to accomplish by still playing a variety of levels, sites, and types of NLHE. I’m putting myself in different situations against different types of players, especially weak players, and trying to learn the most optimal way of playing against them. One of the things that I try to keep in mind this way is the wild range of approaches that players come to the table with. One example that sticks in my mind is the wide split between what loose and tight players will raise or call with at $25NL. I’ve made all kinds of blog postings that point in this direction. Other recent posts that come to mind include the table of good players agreeing to sit at $25NLHE to compare hands, as well as all the freeroll and most of the micro-limit entries.

It’s situational. The cards, your position, your experiences at that particular site and buy-in level, your reads, stack sizes, your image, recent plays by you and by those still in the hand, all these and more are factors that go into determining the best decision at that particular moment. Stay in the moment, don’t be replaying some other hand from your past or some other opponent from the past. Draw on your experiences to help you to evaluate the situation, but keep your advice for yourself within the context of the current situation.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

How serious to take poker?

Is it possible to be too serious about poker?

As I type this I’m casually playing at a $25NLHE table and I floated a tight/aggressive player. He’s played few hands, he’s raised preflop with most of the ones he’s played, and he’s been aggressive with them postflop. PokerTracker stats of about 14/10/4, with c-bet 3/3 for those of you understanding PokerTracker stats. That means he’s put money into 14 percent of his hands, raised most of those ones (10 percent), been betting postflop and not calling much, and has continuation bet all three times he’s had the opportunity to do so.

He raised to 4 big blinds from middle position, I have AT in the big blind. Now, I’m not a big fan of calling raises preflop except with pairs or suited connectors, something that I can stack people with. Otherwise I prefer to reraise, especially out of position. Ace-Ten though is not really strong enough to reraise, but I hate to fold it either so I let myself call.

Flop comes 832 with a flush draw. I check, he bets, I call with the intention of floating. Turn is a 9 without filling the flush. I bet into him, he thinks, and folds. For those not familar, this is what the term “floating” in poker refers to; calling a flop bet with the intention of taking the pot away on the turn.

In reality, not the best play as it didn’t make a lot of sense, other than if I called with 98, and even then most of the time I probably wait for him to bet the turn. But as I’m waiting for him to make his decision I say out loud, “doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

This is when I started to wonder if I take poker too seriously.

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I should be more comfortable making these kinds of plays when I think that there’s a good chance that it might succeed. Sure, money is a concern. A bigger concern is playing too casually because playing too casually is what gets me into more trouble. I start to lose discipline, calling and chasing against pot odds or against my reads.

If it’s possible to remain detached, almost casual, while maintaining discipline, then I think we have a winning combination. “Zen and the Art of Poker”, anyone?

And of course, I’m curious as to where this pressure that causes the seriousness comes from. Perhaps it’s a function of what I feel that I need to do in order to maintain my discipline. If I’m not serious, I can’t be focussed enough. If I’m not focussed enough, I will too easily become casual and lose my discipline.

Discipline slips easily enough if I’ve had a run of poor cards or if I get pushed off the few hands that I do get. It slips when I get frustrated, angry, impatient, bored, tired, irritated/annoyed, lazy, too casual, ect.

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If I do a search on maintaining discipline and filter out things like classroom, students, team, teenagers, I get a lot of stock trader sites. This is interesting. Like stock trading, I’m not interested in maintaining discipline over other people, I’m interested in maintaining my own self-discipline. If I search self-discipline, I get a lot of sites talking about defining goals in your life, working towards those goals, ect., as I’ve found before. Yes I have goals, but they’re not hard and fast. They’re flexible according to the situation and so it becomes more difficult over the short term to determine when this discipline is slipping away. It’s more of an attitude or approach that has to be maintained (right thought) that adapts to the specific situations as they come up.