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To the Grosvenor last night for the Insurance Day Awards. I snuck out at about 11.45pm and luckily caught a 436 bendy bus all of the way home, without it catching fire. Actually, it was so cold it might have been a bit of a relief if it had caught fire. The wind doesn't half whip through a bus with three sets of doors opening every couple of minutes.
And I officially am on time off! Mind you, I'll still be popping up to the Gherkin next Tuesday, if only because I enjoy disagreeing with Thomas Hess, chief economist of Swiss Re.
Chris Klein of Guy Carpenter was on the same table as I was last night. He's one of the two guys in the insurance world whom I always make a point of reading (the other is Bill Hawkins at Keefe Bruyette & Woods). Chris was a very nice guy, and eminently sociable, considering the fact that he has the brain the size of a planet and can write material on the reinsurance world that is, er, complex – although he always does so in a plain and readable style.
Any hopes that I had for the "Grinder of the Month" on Poker Table Ratings are already shot to shit. I really would like this running-bad-on-Stars to stop now please. Rotten flops for my hands; continually having to dump good hands that have clearly come up against something better, and not getting paid off. All the kind of stuff that can lead you down the "am I doing it all wrong?" path, until (as happened in October) it all runs right for a couple of weeks and you chop it off for three or four grand.
"Mr Hindsightitis" is rife in the poker world, and the near-invariable response if you have gobe 50k hands on a bad run is to say "perhaps you are folding to check-raises too often/not enough" and/or "perhaps you should bet more/less on the river" and/or "perhaps you should call more/less on the river".
In fact the last one is one where I have been pleased with my restraint. I've not been tempted to try to "catch people at it" because I seem to have come up against purported sets a bit too often. I've fallen into this trap in the past. The fact is, every so often, you just will run into people hitting sets more often than they should (just as, every so often, they hit sets less often against you than they should -- but you don't really notice that when it happens). So the mistake is to adjust your game, rather than to not adjust your game.
Until... one day... it is the right thing to adjust your game. But, hey, this is 50c-$1, not $5-$10 6-max.
But, I said to myself that I would keep at it until the end of the year, and I've done the calculations, and it actually is worthwhile. The trouble is, it isn't very worthwhile. This is the way of the world with poker. You don't have sudden shifts in your win rate -- it gradually declines, or stays the same, or gradually goes up. When you surround this underlying trend with 20 times as much "noise" that can last 18 months or more, it's very hard to make accurate strategic decisions. Most poker players, I think, change too soon. A bit of bad noise causes a losing streak, and they feel that they must change what they are doing. I think this is a mistake. Sure, have a look at the numbers, see where leaks might have crept in. but this is minor tweaking. For more fundamental changes, I think you have to give it a much longer run before you accept that what worked before does not work now.
And, well, I am getting better at the game. After all, a couple of years ago my main aim at FTP and Stars 50c-$1 games was to play them only when reload bonuses were available and to try to break even in actual playing. My profit came from the "fish" sites like Pacific and Party. Well, the "fish" sites ain't so fishy now, so if I can break even on Stars while playing three or more times as many tables at once as I did two years ago then, well, I've improved. There are very few players around destroying the games while putting in serious volume, very few indeed.
Even e306, whom I chatted with, and who is going for SuperNovaElite, said that he was about breaking even over the past 250k hands. And he is definitely one of the best ones out there at this level.
________
And I officially am on time off! Mind you, I'll still be popping up to the Gherkin next Tuesday, if only because I enjoy disagreeing with Thomas Hess, chief economist of Swiss Re.
Chris Klein of Guy Carpenter was on the same table as I was last night. He's one of the two guys in the insurance world whom I always make a point of reading (the other is Bill Hawkins at Keefe Bruyette & Woods). Chris was a very nice guy, and eminently sociable, considering the fact that he has the brain the size of a planet and can write material on the reinsurance world that is, er, complex – although he always does so in a plain and readable style.
Any hopes that I had for the "Grinder of the Month" on Poker Table Ratings are already shot to shit. I really would like this running-bad-on-Stars to stop now please. Rotten flops for my hands; continually having to dump good hands that have clearly come up against something better, and not getting paid off. All the kind of stuff that can lead you down the "am I doing it all wrong?" path, until (as happened in October) it all runs right for a couple of weeks and you chop it off for three or four grand.
"Mr Hindsightitis" is rife in the poker world, and the near-invariable response if you have gobe 50k hands on a bad run is to say "perhaps you are folding to check-raises too often/not enough" and/or "perhaps you should bet more/less on the river" and/or "perhaps you should call more/less on the river".
In fact the last one is one where I have been pleased with my restraint. I've not been tempted to try to "catch people at it" because I seem to have come up against purported sets a bit too often. I've fallen into this trap in the past. The fact is, every so often, you just will run into people hitting sets more often than they should (just as, every so often, they hit sets less often against you than they should -- but you don't really notice that when it happens). So the mistake is to adjust your game, rather than to not adjust your game.
Until... one day... it is the right thing to adjust your game. But, hey, this is 50c-$1, not $5-$10 6-max.
But, I said to myself that I would keep at it until the end of the year, and I've done the calculations, and it actually is worthwhile. The trouble is, it isn't very worthwhile. This is the way of the world with poker. You don't have sudden shifts in your win rate -- it gradually declines, or stays the same, or gradually goes up. When you surround this underlying trend with 20 times as much "noise" that can last 18 months or more, it's very hard to make accurate strategic decisions. Most poker players, I think, change too soon. A bit of bad noise causes a losing streak, and they feel that they must change what they are doing. I think this is a mistake. Sure, have a look at the numbers, see where leaks might have crept in. but this is minor tweaking. For more fundamental changes, I think you have to give it a much longer run before you accept that what worked before does not work now.
And, well, I am getting better at the game. After all, a couple of years ago my main aim at FTP and Stars 50c-$1 games was to play them only when reload bonuses were available and to try to break even in actual playing. My profit came from the "fish" sites like Pacific and Party. Well, the "fish" sites ain't so fishy now, so if I can break even on Stars while playing three or more times as many tables at once as I did two years ago then, well, I've improved. There are very few players around destroying the games while putting in serious volume, very few indeed.
Even e306, whom I chatted with, and who is going for SuperNovaElite, said that he was about breaking even over the past 250k hands. And he is definitely one of the best ones out there at this level.
________
