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peterbirksAndy Ward pointed out that, when things are not going well, it's far more of a slog than when they are running prettily. The week (ending today) will be only my second losing week of the year and, unless some kind of Lazarus-like reinvigoration strikes me later today, by far my worst. The strange thing is that I am not in the least bit downhearted about it. I'm not at new stakes. I know that I can beat this level. I'm just suffering a short-term bad run.
However, in my latest session I did notice some worrying shifts towards caution. Pavlov is at work here and when you get stuffed time and time again over a three-day period, it's hard to remember that your aggression paid off for the two weeks before that. Here's an example.
I get AJ suited in MP2 and raise first in. A noted loose player (50%/14%) who is on the button calls, as he has every other raise I have made this session.
Flop comes KJ9 with two spades and none of my suit. I bet, loosey calls. Turn is another Jack, giving me trips, top kicker. I bet, he raises, I just call. This is mistake number one. No need in pointing out to me why. But like I say, when you find people cold-calling your raises with QT and flopping straights with monotonous regularity, you get a bit scared of grasping hold of the rod, because you fear another electric shock. River is something innocuous. I check (this is mistake number two), planning to call, and he checks behind (which is why I should have three-bet the turn). I win, but I have thrown away one, possibly two, big bets.
Getting used to the downturns and not letting it impact your play negatively in this fashion is an important part of being a winning player. In one sense, having the rather tough bonus schedule at Empire is good for me, because it means that I have to "play through it" and I have to do so now. So there's no recording a quick win and then sodding off because I am frightened of losing it back again and, as a result, recording another loss for the session.
The other point, of course, is that the more hands I play, the more frequent will be downswings of more than 100 BBs. I reckon that I should expect them once every three weeks or so. Once again this is, believe it or not, good. Because the more often you experience this kind of thing, the less badly it affects your play. Even now my errors are what might be called "on the margin" -- but my style of play seems to dictate a long-term win rate of 1BB a hundred. I try to plug the leaks, and this works in the short term, but by doing so, other leaks spring up, and back I come to that long-term 1BB a hundred. This is also accompanied by a rather low standard deviation compared to that experienced by other players. You don't need to be a hold'em genius, therefore, to see what is happening. I'm winning a lot of small pots without showdowns (many of which I ought not to win), but my aggressive play mitigates against the building of large pots (as recommended by Mr Miller in Small Stakes Hold 'em). This means that I suffer fewer suck-outs, but I am probably reducing my long term EV by raising in places that I should just be calling (the so-called "build the pot" hands). To be frank, this is probably the best way for a person like me to play.
+++
I decided to tidy up my online passwords, records etc. Without much thinking, I compiled a list of 43 sites that require a password to access and which I use on a fairly regular basis. Some of these sites ask you to change the password once every 8 weeks or so. Others "allocate" the password. Some have several different things you have to remember, such as user name (is it pbirks, peterbirks, peter.birks, or peterjbirks?) "LogIn ID", password and a pin number. Then you have to remember the e-mail address (not such a problem for me, but presumably hell on earth for these compulsory e-mail address changers). Luckily, I tell the truth and only live in one place, so things like birthdates and home are not a problem, but I can imagine these causing problems elsewhere.
So, to hell with the warnings, I write the stuff down and keep it in a file. Except that even the file stuff is now out of date, so I have to update it.
My particular bugbear at the moment is American Express, which asks for a 4-figure code before you can speak to them on the phone The problem is that it is usually the four-figure code that I have forgotten and I want to get them to tell me. But they won't tell me. What they will let me do is set a new one. So I set a new one. And, of course, this means that I can't remember which one of the five regular codes I use I have used in this particular case. So I have to phone them up, and the cycle repeats. I think that the only way to solve this is to add a sixth "regular" code, that I can assign in my brain to Amex.
++++
I am not renowned for the smallness of my ego. But some bloggers/ contributors to blogs appear to have an ego so large that they have some system that notifies them whenever they are mentioned in another blog. I presume "crawlers" exist for the major blog operations (i.e., all the ones except the one that David Young uses) and that these guys religiously set them to run to check whether they have been mentioned in any other blog. Frightening. If I get that worried about what people are saying about me, shoot me now, please.
However, in my latest session I did notice some worrying shifts towards caution. Pavlov is at work here and when you get stuffed time and time again over a three-day period, it's hard to remember that your aggression paid off for the two weeks before that. Here's an example.
I get AJ suited in MP2 and raise first in. A noted loose player (50%/14%) who is on the button calls, as he has every other raise I have made this session.
Flop comes KJ9 with two spades and none of my suit. I bet, loosey calls. Turn is another Jack, giving me trips, top kicker. I bet, he raises, I just call. This is mistake number one. No need in pointing out to me why. But like I say, when you find people cold-calling your raises with QT and flopping straights with monotonous regularity, you get a bit scared of grasping hold of the rod, because you fear another electric shock. River is something innocuous. I check (this is mistake number two), planning to call, and he checks behind (which is why I should have three-bet the turn). I win, but I have thrown away one, possibly two, big bets.
Getting used to the downturns and not letting it impact your play negatively in this fashion is an important part of being a winning player. In one sense, having the rather tough bonus schedule at Empire is good for me, because it means that I have to "play through it" and I have to do so now. So there's no recording a quick win and then sodding off because I am frightened of losing it back again and, as a result, recording another loss for the session.
The other point, of course, is that the more hands I play, the more frequent will be downswings of more than 100 BBs. I reckon that I should expect them once every three weeks or so. Once again this is, believe it or not, good. Because the more often you experience this kind of thing, the less badly it affects your play. Even now my errors are what might be called "on the margin" -- but my style of play seems to dictate a long-term win rate of 1BB a hundred. I try to plug the leaks, and this works in the short term, but by doing so, other leaks spring up, and back I come to that long-term 1BB a hundred. This is also accompanied by a rather low standard deviation compared to that experienced by other players. You don't need to be a hold'em genius, therefore, to see what is happening. I'm winning a lot of small pots without showdowns (many of which I ought not to win), but my aggressive play mitigates against the building of large pots (as recommended by Mr Miller in Small Stakes Hold 'em). This means that I suffer fewer suck-outs, but I am probably reducing my long term EV by raising in places that I should just be calling (the so-called "build the pot" hands). To be frank, this is probably the best way for a person like me to play.
+++
I decided to tidy up my online passwords, records etc. Without much thinking, I compiled a list of 43 sites that require a password to access and which I use on a fairly regular basis. Some of these sites ask you to change the password once every 8 weeks or so. Others "allocate" the password. Some have several different things you have to remember, such as user name (is it pbirks, peterbirks, peter.birks, or peterjbirks?) "LogIn ID", password and a pin number. Then you have to remember the e-mail address (not such a problem for me, but presumably hell on earth for these compulsory e-mail address changers). Luckily, I tell the truth and only live in one place, so things like birthdates and home are not a problem, but I can imagine these causing problems elsewhere.
So, to hell with the warnings, I write the stuff down and keep it in a file. Except that even the file stuff is now out of date, so I have to update it.
My particular bugbear at the moment is American Express, which asks for a 4-figure code before you can speak to them on the phone The problem is that it is usually the four-figure code that I have forgotten and I want to get them to tell me. But they won't tell me. What they will let me do is set a new one. So I set a new one. And, of course, this means that I can't remember which one of the five regular codes I use I have used in this particular case. So I have to phone them up, and the cycle repeats. I think that the only way to solve this is to add a sixth "regular" code, that I can assign in my brain to Amex.
++++
I am not renowned for the smallness of my ego. But some bloggers/ contributors to blogs appear to have an ego so large that they have some system that notifies them whenever they are mentioned in another blog. I presume "crawlers" exist for the major blog operations (i.e., all the ones except the one that David Young uses) and that these guys religiously set them to run to check whether they have been mentioned in any other blog. Frightening. If I get that worried about what people are saying about me, shoot me now, please.
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Password Fantasy land
Date: 2006-02-25 04:15 pm (UTC)'This is MBNA, I wanted to talk to you tonight about blah blah but first can I check I'm speaking to the right person, can you give me the first letter of your password.
'How the hell do I know you are MBNA? Can you give me the last letter of my mother's maiden name?'
'We're not allowed to give information like that out over the phone'
'Then why should I be giving out information on passwords to random strangers?
'But we ARE MBNA and...' at which point he decided he could talk to me anyway to try and flog me card theft insurance or similar bollocks.
At least when I had the same conversation with the loveable Smile, the woman I spoke to said she was ringing up from Stockport and when I refused to go further she did say that (a) I had a perfectly valid point, (b) that they'd only just started doing this and that she'd take it up with the powers that be and (c) did I want a loan at good rates.
Re: Password Fantasy land
Date: 2006-02-25 05:19 pm (UTC)As with you, this seemed good enough, and the person headed off into a sales spiel, which brought about an abrupt termination of the conversation.
I had a call from BT the other night, and my first question was "what department are you in?" After a couple of repetitions (I couldn't unentangle his thick Northern Irish accent) I worked out that he was saying "customer options".
"You mean 'sales', don't you? You are going to offer me some kind of monthly subscription deal. Actually, I think that you called me a few months ago, unless all of your team is in Belfast and it was someone else with a similar accent, so let me explain. (A) I only have a landline because I have to have it for your broadband service which, by-the-by, is very good. (B) I don't have any other landline service. I just don't use the phone very much. And (C) I don't have any friends, so there's no point in making it cheaper for me to phone them."
The 'conversation' ended after about five minutes, and I think that I had spoken for four of them. Pretty good with a sales guy, I thought.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 04:53 pm (UTC)If you go to Google News, you can set up a free notification of any mentions of your name in the news or on the web generally. I'm sure some of the major bloggers use that or some other better tool.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 05:11 pm (UTC)I've "ego-surfed" once in recent times on Google, and that was to find out which of Stan James, Gutshot or my blog were reaching the most readers (it's Stan James, you might like to know). But thanks for the info on Google News and the free notification tool. I shall be avoiding it assiduously :-)
PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 05:20 pm (UTC)PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 05:24 pm (UTC)If you put in the Google toolbar "link:" followed by the URL of your blog - or other webpage - it will generate a list of all the webpages that link to that webpage.
Our webmaster at Oxfam America showed me this trick once. He used it to follow the number and quality of links to our website.
I just use it periodically to check to see who links to my blogs. I'm so pathetic.
Linkage
Date: 2006-02-25 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 09:37 pm (UTC)I meant that you just put "link:" and the URL in Google's regular search engine. That generates all the links to that URL.
Have you put your home address into Google? That generates a satellite picture of your street through Google maps.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 05:43 pm (UTC)Who are these people? It could be great sport to randomly say drop names in blogs just for fun.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 07:07 pm (UTC)But I think that it would be unfair to name names on this front. I would have thought that in blogdom, you could guess the likely suspects.
I've played too many hands of poker these past two days. I'm going to watch a classic movie on DVD. I reckon I must have about a thousand movies on DVD or video by now. What shall I watch? How's that for a poll? You are home alone on a Saturday night. You (theoretically) have your infinity hard drive of movies. You can watch just one classic for the umpteenth time. Which should it be? Emmanuelle? A Bout de Souffle? Debbie Does Dallas? Raging Bull? American Pie 2? The Big Sleep? Three Colours Blue? Or Toy Story? Or what?
PJ
Decisions, decions
no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 07:09 pm (UTC)I'm too lazy or apathetic to even know who the suspects COULD be.
What shall I watch? How's that for a poll?
Sideways.
Groundhog Day.
Dogma.
The Great Escape.
The French Connection.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 07:13 pm (UTC)Seen the other four, although Dogma only once, and half asleep. I'm not sure if I possess it. G-Day. Yes, that would be in my list.
I think that I have seen Great Escape and French Connection just a few too many times by now. The Great Escape I probably know the script....
PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 08:24 pm (UTC)Sideways and Lost In Translation are the best movies of the last few years.
I think that I have seen Great Escape and French Connection just a few too many times by now. The Great Escape I probably know the script....
So do I, but it doesn't stop me from watching again.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-26 02:58 am (UTC)Titmus