The right mental attitude

[peterbirks]

This has all the makings of being a rather long post, mainly because I just wrote down a list of all the things I have to do in the next 12 hours, and it's a very long list indeed, and I don't want to do any of them. So, writing this puts it off.

I was trying to work out what made me shift up in limits this week. Specifically, I was wondering this last night when at one point I was $800 down for the day. But then I thought about several other bloggers and blog entries (or, in some cases, non-blog entries) over recent weeks, and I realized that, in the grand scheme of things, $800 was not that much. OK, so it put me several hundred dollars down for the month. I could have carried on playing $2-$4 and accumulated a fairly regular $1,000 a month. But, was this what I really wanted? In other words, my move up in limits was probably generated by a "none of it really matters" kind of feeling. From one angle, this might appear to be depression; from another, apathy; from a third, serenity. You pays yer money....

As it happens, I worked my way back to $330 down for the day -- still my worst day of the year, but, pro rata, only 30 big bets over 1,000 hands. And I don't care what John Feeney wrote in Inside The Poker Mind, I feel a lot better when I get $500 back to finish $300 down than when I go from $200 up to $300 down.

My general feeling was, "well, let's see how it goes". Maybe my rate at $5-$10 will be worse than at $2-$4. But I'll only find out if I give it a reasonably long-term go. So, we'll throw in a stop-loss of $2,000, and see how it goes until the end of the year. If I end the year more than $12,000 up, then the move up was correct. If I don't, then I should have stayed at $2-$4.

So, what entries helped me to this "since it doesn't really matter, let's give it a go" state of mind?

Chris Fargis's entry "I am A Winning Poker Player" from a few weeks back was a definite help. Last night I got some horrendous cold decks against me (KK on button, raise, KQs reraises me from SB. I cap. Flop comes QQx rainbow. Called down to end. A few hands later, my AA loses to a fish with KQ on a board of T9xx ... J. You get the drift). So long as you are losing to hands like this, you know that you are just being unlucky, not outplayed. So, the mantra that "the tide will turn" is very helpful. http://twentyoneoutstwice.blogspot.com/

Eric at Three-bet posted his performance graph for the month of March so far. This showed how horrible Limit can be to play and why a lot of pot-limit/no-limit players crack under the strain and swear that the game is one of perpetual suck-outs. If Eric can go through stuff like this over many many hands, then, damnit, I thought, so can I. http://threebet33.blogspot.com/

Other helpful matters were less charitable on my part. It was "look at how many people have failed recently". Maudie lost her bankroll, steadily built up over several years, and had the guts to write about it. http://www.kebzweb.com/2006/02/requiem.html

Then Pauly referred to losing more than a third of his bankroll and not having a winning month for three months.

As for Pokergrub, well, the guy is a gambler and a blogger, not a poker player. His writing is entertaining and informative, but I do sometimes feel like saying to him: "do you realize why you get all those comps from the casinos?" (http://www.pokergrub.com/#112190622670934504)

Negative EV (http://foolandhismoney.blogspot.com/) freely admitted to flying too high for his own good, and recounted the experience of sitting at a table on Full Tilt where all the money at the table was less than the size of the average pots he had been playing in 10 days earlier.

Finally there is Eston B (http://eston.blogspot.com/), another player in his mid-20s who moved too far too fast. One day recently he reported losing $8.3K and his latest entry simply reads "sigh, that's all".

In other cases the evidence of the problems are more in the silence than in the writing. How many poker bloggers actually survive longer than a couple of years regularly posting their performances? Not many. It's easy when things are going well, but to record a car crash day-by-day cannot be easy.

I suspect that this was one reason that I was sticking to lower limits. I knew that I would be recording fairly regular profits month-in, month-out. At the higher level you are likely to see serious volatility from month to month. I wasn't sure that I would have the courage to report in gory detail a month where I had burnt two grand. But, if I warn you in advance, then it's okay, isn't it? I can afford that volatility. I may have some months where I'm $5K up. And, when the bad months come, I can recite the Chris Fargis mantra.

And there are other blogs and players. The Justin Zee site (latest headline from November 2005: "Justin Wins $137,000 in the Sunday PokerStars Tournament") is not very mysteriously silent. Hubris, hubris. Not a few other regular bloggers from last year are less than voluble this.

It doesn't take much perception to realize that this is a tough world and that in Pokerland a lot of people fail. From this point of view, my risk aversion is not so much cowardice as plain common sense. But my apparent risk aversion is deceptive. I'm playing at $5-$10 now. This is 10 times the level at which I was playing five years ago. Doing a quick bit of compound interest in my head, I make that something like 50% growth year-on-year. In ordinary business terms, that's a phenomenally fast rate of expansion. It's just slow compared to the loud noises that you hear around you. Does this remind you of anything? Yep, dotcom mania. Slowly slowly catchee monkee..

I found an interesting post from another player who seems to think in a similar way to me, even though he is a lot younger. The Sportswriter is a young Swedish limit player who has been trying to summon up the courage to move from $5-$10 to $10-$20. His plan is inked here. (http://www.stoxpoker.com/poker-blogs/moving-up-031006).

This is just about the standard "taking a shot" plan, but I don't think it works for me. I really have to be in a particular frame of mind (as mentioned at the beginning of the post). I think that I have achieved that state of mind now (last year it was late May before it happened, and then only after some serious mental doubts along the way!). Sportswriter is putting a stop loss of $2,000 on his $10-$20 foray, whereas I have a stop-loss of $2,000 at $5-$10. Maybe this signifies my realization that limit is more volatile than people think, or maybe it's because my bankroll is a few thousand dollars more than Sportswriter's.


I had a couple of interesting hands to post, but I've gone on long enough already, and now I have to write about insurance in the far east. Joy.

Comments

Variance and all that

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Pete. Brian Frew here.

Thanks for that timely post. I've just had a horrible week where I finished down 48 BB's - the worst week's losing run I have ever had.

It is certainly a test of character to come through these things. When you get mugged by somebody hitting a two outer on the river and it's the third time it's happened in the session, you just want to scream. Statistically you know it has to happen, but it's vital to take it with equanimity. I've only been playing for 9 months. I was aware that this sort of thing could happen, but until now it hadn't happened to me.

I suspect you are very right about the blogs. It is much harder to report a hammering than a week's steady progress. It's a matter of being honest with yourself, which isn't always as easy as it sounds.

[felicialee1.livejournal.com]

Great reflection. Be very careful who/how you read. Chris is a winning player, most bloggers aren't. There is a big difference between someone who takes poker seriously (no matter the limits) and someone who is working another job, full-time, and thinks it's "cute" to lose buy-in after buy-in with subpar hands. When they post on their "poker" (haha) blog that they are bust, one must read their antics with a grain of salt.

I learned the hard way, after trying to help for two years. Reading those blogs will not make one a good poker player, nor will advising them be taken seriously. It is simply a waste of time.

I, also, tend to reflect more when I'm losing. I am probably more honest with myself.

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Indeed Felicia. Be careful who you read. I wish I had thought to write that. Since I am a journalist, I bring a cynical eye to much of the material that appears on the web. I cited Chris Fargis' blog first because that was the entry that I thought of first.

If Chris is guilty of anything, it can be that he makes it seem easier than it really is, and (I suspect) understates the amount of hard work that he puts in. But reading the blogs of poor poker players can be a help (of sorts), because, even if those players are on a short-term high, you should be able to see which ones are heading for a fall.

Question everything. Take nothing at face value.

PJ

Attitude, Bankroll, Game Selection, Your Edge & Adjustments

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Peter,

The scenario you discuss could just be simple variance, and possibly the biggest one day fluctuation you might experience in a year. But your concern about the amount of risk you are willing to take is also about managing your bankroll. Plus there are a couple other points at issue here.

Bankroll first.

The question is how do you manage your roll, both with a view to having a very small risk of ruin (ROR) even though in your case you have outside income to replenish it if you were so inclined, and also how to maximize your roll (Kelly criterion kind of stuff). There is an interesting thread in 2+2's Poker Theory forum about Chris Ferguson turning $1 into $20K online in 6 months on his second attempt after busting the first one where he lost the buck in the microlimits. In his case he was mainly playing no limit with some tourney action thrown in. In your case, if you can calculate your edge, then you would know how large a roll in terms of big bets you need for a given stake level. In practice that number will grow as you move up since the games are tougher. The limit rule of thumb is 300 big blinds. Grow that to 600 big blinds and move up to next level, etc. But the key is that if you get behind so many big blinds, like maybe 100, then you drop down and restart at that level. The less your aversion to risk, then the more aggressive you can be in moving up with less of a cushion (cf. Mike Caro's discussion of bankroll in his guide to Super System I).


Your Edge

You can read various books or archive posts on 2+2 regarding calculating your edge. This basically has to do with how expert or not you are and how bad your opponents are. The more mistakes your opponents make, then the more you can make as well and still show a profit. If your variance is consistently high, then either your game needs to be fine-tuned or your game selection skills do. Just thinking about situations like you do here, with your recent post on waiting to the turn to pull the trigger with a set being the greatest EV move (you were right on this regarding multiway pots) coming to mind, shows that you can always improve how you handle common situations. And I personally find rereading various texts/articles that are applicable to the forms of poker I play and then thinking about them very helpful.

Game/Table/Seat Selection

I know you have a persistent problem which you have commented on, in that the normal times you play are the worst times for playing with americans who constitute the majority of players you play with, i.e. it is full of the US daytime weak-tight rocks. Even so, since you have accounts on multiple sites and can in fact play more than 1 site at the same time, then you should be able to pick a mix of 3 or 4 tables across those sites that are the best ones available, and constantly be looking to change tables to improve your selection, instead of sticking with a table where you are stuck but which is really a bad table. Also important is your relative seat position versus LAGs or TAGs, since bad seating relative to the wrong players can doom you to at best a very modest winning session if not an outright losing one. Again, be willing to give up the seat and get back on the list of a good table when you have drawn a bad seat. Game selection should be one of your prime advantages in online play. So don't be caught on the 5/10 table with the lowest pot averages unless you are stealing their asses off.

(I exceeded the number of characters for a post here and am breaking it into 2 posts)

BluffTHIS!

Continued

[(Anonymous)]

Adjustments

All of the above shows that you must constantly adjust with your bankroll, how you play, and what games/tables you play. Failure to do so, along with insufficient poker ability, is the main reason as you say that so many players fail to be winning players long term. And the games on each site and all sites combined, ebb and flow and go from good to bad and back. When the games overall are bad, you must play much more perfect because you don't have the cushion of greater mistakes by opponents to make up for some of your own. Plus you have to adjust as you move up as you not only have to play better, but also have to adjust your tactics from the set you used on the level below.

Finally, regarding moving up/down, if your bankroll can stand it, then you should move up. And move back down when running/playing bad. Also, you are very right in your thinking that turning a $800 loss into "only" a $330 was a good achievment. This is the same thing Caro and Cooke have written about. From reading your posts over time, I don't think you have tilt issues, but I do wonder whether you sometimes start out a session too aggressive before getting a feel for the rhythm of a table and its players. This too follows Roy Cooke's advice that it is important that when you catch a 2K rush, you not be stuck 3K at the start of it by virtue of playing not up to par to begin with.


Anyway, just my long reply to your long post. Good luck and good skill.

BluffTHIS!

Re: Continued

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Thanks Bluff: I won't reply to all of your points, although all of them have validity. Indeed, it's tempting to delete the whole post because other players might find it too darned useful. (only joking...)

My stats on edge and variance could probably fill a book. I seem to have a remarkably low level of variance -- probably linked to the fact that I mostly play when the games are relatively tight. When I read the posts (and books) saying that "you can never bluff at low limit; you need the best hand to win", I have a slight chuckle to myself.

Your most interesting point was that of me perhaps being too fast out of the traps, so to speak. I had been pondering this very point. I think that I have always attempted to take control of the table from the word "go". I want to project an image of someone who will not be pushed around. Therefore I slightly over stake myself at the table (say, $450 sit-down at $5-$10) and always post. usually I will defend this post ferociously, often re-raising if I suspect my opponent might be raising on a less than premium hand.

However, I have wondered whether this is not just a reflection of my personality, rather than a well-thought out style. Think of the person who you never notice is at a party. Well, it isn't me. But that kind of person probably slips into a game, plays unobtrusively, and wins a fair amount.

The advantage of playing in such a way early on is that it gives you the chance to get the pulse of the game (as you say). Too often I have got involved early on with an opponent about whom I know bugger all.

So, yes, I may focus on "getting the pulse" of a game before I start firing from both hips.

PJ

Getting A Read On The Table

[(Anonymous)]

Peter,

Unless you first observe the table for a while before sitting down, then sitting down and immediately trying to be controlling does not give you an accurate read on the other players. Because now the only reads you are getting is mostly how they are reacting to you. So it is very possible that they will play you differently than if you had started out slower and tighter, and also play differently in the game as a whole. And the worst thing is that they now know how to play you off against the other aggressive players, but you don't.

Although I play PLO and NL tight, I am aggressive when I play a hand. And I too have to restrain myself especially in NL on a moderately tight table (but not so bad I should leave), from starting my usual late position blind steals with crap until I have a read on the calling tendencies of the players to my left, and particularly whether they are capable of playing back in the blinds with good but not great hands.

So I think it pays to play very tight for 10 or 20 minutes at a new table until you have a feel for the players and how they are reacting to each other.

BluffTHIS!

Honesty is best

[sirfwalgman.livejournal.com]

I prefer to be honest in posts. It helps get the poison out. I have had ups and downs, and crashed going too far too fast. It happens. It is all about learning to play poker over the long term.