Signs of the times
Aug. 7th, 2010 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksThere's a superb thread on 2+2 from an 18-year-old Swedish kid looking to play at nosebleed stakes by the end of the year.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/174/poker-goals-challenges/ill-play-nosebleeds-end-year-794635/
There's a lot here for any half-way serious poker player. First, there's the kid's hand analysis. Although I disagree with a few of his interpretations, in the main it is (a) top-rate and (b) frightening. I just think to myself; shit, this guy is too good.
Then there is his attitude to money. As he states quite specifically in the (long) thread, he doesn't need the money. Most of his friends struggle to find a hundred bucks. His bankroll is, quite simply, a means to an end. The pain that he feels when hands go against him are because of the game, not because of the (non)wealth that losing represents. I think that he would quite happily get to half a million bucks and then go bust trying to beat Tom Dwan, than to quit without trying.
Thirdly, I see so many metagame flaws! This is a great relief. As I've written here many times -- players who know what to do when they play Hold 'Em are two a penny. Players who manage to do it without spunking away bundles on various metagame leaks are rare beings indeed. I'm heading towards $100k "career" winnings now (i.e., since 2001), but the thing I'm proudest of is that I've never had a downswing greater than $3k, and, of the money that I have won, I've still got it. OK, some has gone into paying off the mortgage, and some is termed as sitting in my savings account in sterling, with only about $60k still sitting in dollars. But it's still there. I might not be the best poker player even in SE13, but I sure as hell am one of the best at holding on to my money.
"I'm From Sweden" has already spunked away one five-figure bankroll, through being scammed by the legions of nippers and borrowers out there. Remember, trust no-one.
He also falls for errors of backwards narrative (something was a mistake because it went wrong) and being results-oriented. He insists on believing that he should stop after losing one buy-in, because he is certain that as soon as he gets one bad beat, he tilts and loses another five or six buy-ins. This is despite evidence in his own recounting of times when he has "got out of it" from several buy-ins down.
However, the most worrying thing about this is that here we have a player who technically slaughters me -- his ability to calculate ranges and the chance that gives him and whether that makes a shove right or wrong is utterly petrifying. And yet he's not really building up his bankroll. This is a bloke playing only at $3-$6 NL, who could probably slaughter three-quarters of the "name" players with his eyes closed, and yet his bankroll remains stubbornly at about $22k. Yes, this guy has less of a bankroll than I do, whose expected swings are around four figures every day, who is 10 times the technical player I am, and he can't build up a bankroll.
What hope, I therefore wonder, is there for the rest of us mere mortals? Much though I can get my head round "depolarization" (probably the most important concept to master in the mid-to higher-levels short-handed game, and closely linked to "merging of ranges") I can't instinctively put in the right bet sizes, and I lack the courage of my convictions when I make reads. And, occasionally, I often wilfully forget that my opponent is, basically, a serial disbeliever, and that although anyone sensible would fold to my triple barrel bluff, this tossa will not.
Dropped $900 on Party yesterday after being $1400 down at one point. Added to a $200 loss on FTP, and a modestly good start to the month went spiralling downhill. However, I was pleased that I got my act together from about midnight and clawed back $500. I'd lost such a large amount partly because in a couple of slots I forced myself to make thin raises for value on the river, only to find that opponent did indeed have the goods. Six months ago I would have flat called and loss less, but I know that these raises tend to make money in the long run.
One reason for this is that the concept of "your opponent will never call with a worse hand and and will never fold with a better one" is horrifically over-emphasized. In reality, opponents often call with hands you can't believe they would call with, and often fold hands that you can't believe they would fold. But, unless you raise, you don't give your opponent the opportunity to make that mistake.
I really believe that much of the game at the levels I play is just giving your opponents as many opportunities as possible to make mistakes. The problem is, at the moment, there are better players around, and so they are making fewer mistakes. Which means that you make less money. The answer, then, is to find more plays where they can make mistakes, and thin raises for value on the river are one such a situation. It's a classic "courting volatility" scenario. But, hell, it really pisses you off when it goes wrong, because you end up stacking yourself off when you could have lost "just" a third of your stack.
I guess that was why I was pleased with yesterday despite the horrific bottom line. I didn't lose the faith, and I kept on plugging away because I knew that there were some weak players out there. And I won a reasonable amount back.
Full Tilt remains a weird site for me. It's the only site where I have ever gone broke (late 2006 at $2-$4 Limit), and right the way back when I joined in 2005, I recall that, of the first 12 times I got KK, six times I walked into AA.
Yesterday on FTP I got my TT all-in against 99 on a 3568 board with one card to come, and a nine duly appeared to stack me off. Today I got it all in with KT on a KT2 board, only for opponent (who in MP1 had flat-called a raise from another player UTG -- at least I was on the button!) to turn over 22. Needless to say a king came on the turn to get me out of it. On FTP, you begin to dread getting all of your money in when you are ahead!.
I played 45,000 hands last month, and it was too many. Since March 31 I am a grand total of about $900 up, and I suspect that in open play I am about $1,500 down (having paid $6k in rake!). OK, there's about $1.8k in Stars bonuses that I haven't bothered to collect, but the fact remains that full ring play is beginning to require a commitment and effort that, to be honest, I don't think it is worth my while putting in. You've just got bundles of regulars bashing each other to death with looser and looser three and four-bets from CO/Button SB and BB. At $100 BI part of my problem is that I play too loose out of sheer boredom. Once I rein myself in, the profit reappears, at an absolutely funereal pace.
This can actually be seen in the shrinking of the rake I am paying. From an average of five cents a hand at $100 buy in, I've seen it shrink to little more than half that. While 25,000 hands a month at this level used to be enough to maintain Supernova, now I am looking at 35,000 hands. It's a similar story on Party, where you used to get a point every four hands or so at $200 buy-in, and every seven hands or so at $100 buy-in. Now it's one point every seven hands at $200 and one point every 11 hands at $100 buy-in.
All of this impacts your rakeback because, of course, rakeback is "progressive" rather than flat. So you have to play 130 hours a month rather than 90 hours just to achieve the same roughly 30% effective RB. If you carry on playing 90 hours a month, the effective RB shrinks to 20% or less.
And so, all in all, times are tougher. The great players can't crush the games any more. The good players are becoming marginal winners, and the ABC grinders are now marginal losers. And Stars keeps raking it in.
There was little doubt in my mind last night that the $200 games on Party were weaker than the $100 games. or, rather, they were different, with more "gambling" players. These players are not hard to beat, but, to be honest, you need hands and you need guts and, well, you need a little bit of luck over a session of only 1,500 hands.
Come the end of this year I'm going to make a big reappraisal. I know that going for bonuses and shit like that is never the right idea, and yet I still fall for it! Far better to focus on higher, more gambly games, when I am awake rather than tired. Play four tables rather than six or eight. Focus on players and their tendencies. Keep more diligent notes on the fewer players that you face at the higher levels. Stop playing by rote as I just try to "get the hands in" to maintain Supernova, or get my Iron Man, or attain Palladium status.
All easy stuff. It's just a matter of applying it.
______________________
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/174/poker-goals-challenges/ill-play-nosebleeds-end-year-794635/
There's a lot here for any half-way serious poker player. First, there's the kid's hand analysis. Although I disagree with a few of his interpretations, in the main it is (a) top-rate and (b) frightening. I just think to myself; shit, this guy is too good.
Then there is his attitude to money. As he states quite specifically in the (long) thread, he doesn't need the money. Most of his friends struggle to find a hundred bucks. His bankroll is, quite simply, a means to an end. The pain that he feels when hands go against him are because of the game, not because of the (non)wealth that losing represents. I think that he would quite happily get to half a million bucks and then go bust trying to beat Tom Dwan, than to quit without trying.
Thirdly, I see so many metagame flaws! This is a great relief. As I've written here many times -- players who know what to do when they play Hold 'Em are two a penny. Players who manage to do it without spunking away bundles on various metagame leaks are rare beings indeed. I'm heading towards $100k "career" winnings now (i.e., since 2001), but the thing I'm proudest of is that I've never had a downswing greater than $3k, and, of the money that I have won, I've still got it. OK, some has gone into paying off the mortgage, and some is termed as sitting in my savings account in sterling, with only about $60k still sitting in dollars. But it's still there. I might not be the best poker player even in SE13, but I sure as hell am one of the best at holding on to my money.
"I'm From Sweden" has already spunked away one five-figure bankroll, through being scammed by the legions of nippers and borrowers out there. Remember, trust no-one.
He also falls for errors of backwards narrative (something was a mistake because it went wrong) and being results-oriented. He insists on believing that he should stop after losing one buy-in, because he is certain that as soon as he gets one bad beat, he tilts and loses another five or six buy-ins. This is despite evidence in his own recounting of times when he has "got out of it" from several buy-ins down.
However, the most worrying thing about this is that here we have a player who technically slaughters me -- his ability to calculate ranges and the chance that gives him and whether that makes a shove right or wrong is utterly petrifying. And yet he's not really building up his bankroll. This is a bloke playing only at $3-$6 NL, who could probably slaughter three-quarters of the "name" players with his eyes closed, and yet his bankroll remains stubbornly at about $22k. Yes, this guy has less of a bankroll than I do, whose expected swings are around four figures every day, who is 10 times the technical player I am, and he can't build up a bankroll.
What hope, I therefore wonder, is there for the rest of us mere mortals? Much though I can get my head round "depolarization" (probably the most important concept to master in the mid-to higher-levels short-handed game, and closely linked to "merging of ranges") I can't instinctively put in the right bet sizes, and I lack the courage of my convictions when I make reads. And, occasionally, I often wilfully forget that my opponent is, basically, a serial disbeliever, and that although anyone sensible would fold to my triple barrel bluff, this tossa will not.
Dropped $900 on Party yesterday after being $1400 down at one point. Added to a $200 loss on FTP, and a modestly good start to the month went spiralling downhill. However, I was pleased that I got my act together from about midnight and clawed back $500. I'd lost such a large amount partly because in a couple of slots I forced myself to make thin raises for value on the river, only to find that opponent did indeed have the goods. Six months ago I would have flat called and loss less, but I know that these raises tend to make money in the long run.
One reason for this is that the concept of "your opponent will never call with a worse hand and and will never fold with a better one" is horrifically over-emphasized. In reality, opponents often call with hands you can't believe they would call with, and often fold hands that you can't believe they would fold. But, unless you raise, you don't give your opponent the opportunity to make that mistake.
I really believe that much of the game at the levels I play is just giving your opponents as many opportunities as possible to make mistakes. The problem is, at the moment, there are better players around, and so they are making fewer mistakes. Which means that you make less money. The answer, then, is to find more plays where they can make mistakes, and thin raises for value on the river are one such a situation. It's a classic "courting volatility" scenario. But, hell, it really pisses you off when it goes wrong, because you end up stacking yourself off when you could have lost "just" a third of your stack.
I guess that was why I was pleased with yesterday despite the horrific bottom line. I didn't lose the faith, and I kept on plugging away because I knew that there were some weak players out there. And I won a reasonable amount back.
Full Tilt remains a weird site for me. It's the only site where I have ever gone broke (late 2006 at $2-$4 Limit), and right the way back when I joined in 2005, I recall that, of the first 12 times I got KK, six times I walked into AA.
Yesterday on FTP I got my TT all-in against 99 on a 3568 board with one card to come, and a nine duly appeared to stack me off. Today I got it all in with KT on a KT2 board, only for opponent (who in MP1 had flat-called a raise from another player UTG -- at least I was on the button!) to turn over 22. Needless to say a king came on the turn to get me out of it. On FTP, you begin to dread getting all of your money in when you are ahead!.
I played 45,000 hands last month, and it was too many. Since March 31 I am a grand total of about $900 up, and I suspect that in open play I am about $1,500 down (having paid $6k in rake!). OK, there's about $1.8k in Stars bonuses that I haven't bothered to collect, but the fact remains that full ring play is beginning to require a commitment and effort that, to be honest, I don't think it is worth my while putting in. You've just got bundles of regulars bashing each other to death with looser and looser three and four-bets from CO/Button SB and BB. At $100 BI part of my problem is that I play too loose out of sheer boredom. Once I rein myself in, the profit reappears, at an absolutely funereal pace.
This can actually be seen in the shrinking of the rake I am paying. From an average of five cents a hand at $100 buy in, I've seen it shrink to little more than half that. While 25,000 hands a month at this level used to be enough to maintain Supernova, now I am looking at 35,000 hands. It's a similar story on Party, where you used to get a point every four hands or so at $200 buy-in, and every seven hands or so at $100 buy-in. Now it's one point every seven hands at $200 and one point every 11 hands at $100 buy-in.
All of this impacts your rakeback because, of course, rakeback is "progressive" rather than flat. So you have to play 130 hours a month rather than 90 hours just to achieve the same roughly 30% effective RB. If you carry on playing 90 hours a month, the effective RB shrinks to 20% or less.
And so, all in all, times are tougher. The great players can't crush the games any more. The good players are becoming marginal winners, and the ABC grinders are now marginal losers. And Stars keeps raking it in.
There was little doubt in my mind last night that the $200 games on Party were weaker than the $100 games. or, rather, they were different, with more "gambling" players. These players are not hard to beat, but, to be honest, you need hands and you need guts and, well, you need a little bit of luck over a session of only 1,500 hands.
Come the end of this year I'm going to make a big reappraisal. I know that going for bonuses and shit like that is never the right idea, and yet I still fall for it! Far better to focus on higher, more gambly games, when I am awake rather than tired. Play four tables rather than six or eight. Focus on players and their tendencies. Keep more diligent notes on the fewer players that you face at the higher levels. Stop playing by rote as I just try to "get the hands in" to maintain Supernova, or get my Iron Man, or attain Palladium status.
All easy stuff. It's just a matter of applying it.
______________________
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The only way to win is not to play
Date: 2010-08-08 07:05 am (UTC)As an example. 15 years ago I spent 18 months as the journal editor for a postal history group. Lots of work but no thanks or recognition from the members or committee. It was only once I stopped that I realised how much trying (and failing) to please the members had taken over my free time.
thanks for the link
Date: 2010-08-08 12:20 pm (UTC)When your winrate is through the roof (pre uigea, or whatever) I guess you can do whatever you like, but when it's tougher I think that the skills related to being a good pro (bankroll management, table selection, blackjack, quitting, not going on tilt, dodging the nippers and so on) become all the more important.
Phil Galfond's blogpost on bankroll management (http://www.bluefirepoker.com/post-comment.aspx?postid=2052) might also be of some related interest. I've been told that Galfond's videos are far and away the best around, and what I've heard him write/say seems like he has interesting things to say. He recommends putting youself in tough spots to improve as a player, but reading between the lines ("I also had terrible BR management... for example, playing Ivey at 300/600 with a 300k roll") it sounds a bit like the best way to really do well is to take big risks and not run bad. Which is not really advice that is very replicable.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-08 08:38 pm (UTC)Jesse May's "Shut Up And Deal" makes a similar point: the best players are not necessarily the winners, who are the people who can take money out of poker - avoiding other gambling-related links. Being better at taking money out of poker won't win you as much fame as winning at poker, but it'll result in much more money.
At the risk of confusing terminology, fifteen or twenty years ago you would have said that that was the counterpart of editorial from a 'zine editor who was planning to fold before long. If you were to deliberately curtail your online poker grinding career, potentially leaving yourself some mad money to play the game at low stakes once in a while or leaving yourself a reasonable roll for ftf play, what would you do with the time instead? Granted, you don't have a second income any more, but with the US$60k you've made, that's a fund to pay off a large chunk of a mortgage, or get you a trip or two per year to warm, beautiful European destinations for, well, possibly the rest of your life. It's not as if you've actually been paying yourself much, other than trips to Vegas, rather than growing your roll over the years to date.
Rakeback: I would have thought that paying less rake is inherently good, and making less rakeback because you've been paying less rake no bad thing, but this may be naive and incorrect.
Come the end of this year I'm going to make a big reappraisal.
Are you sure you want to wait? You're not short of data already!
I always enjoy reading what you have to say about poker and it's a thrill to see you doing so well, in the long term, year after year. However, I always enjoy reading what else you have to say as well, even if I can't respond to it and cheerlead nearly so much. If you end up writing as much in the future about, say, classical music and your piano practice as you do about poker at the moment, that's cool too.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-08 10:50 pm (UTC)Well, yes and no. I thought hard about putting this bit in without further explanation, because it does a bit sound like "the more rake the better, because the better the rakeback", and that is clearly nonsensical.
In fact all other things being equal, lower rakeback > higher rakeback. But all other things aren't usually equal.
Look at it this way. If I break even after rakeback, I would rather have paid $3,000 rake than $2,000 rake.
Of course, this means that I would have "won" a top line pre-rake figure of $3,000 rather than $2,000, which is why it "seems" better to have paid the higher rake.
The two factors that matter here are (a) it's not contributory rakeback. This is the factor that helped so many short-stackers. They benefited from large stackers paying higher rake.
It's also what helps tighter players, because they benefit from looser player paying more rake.
So, if all opponents are tighter players, I "lose" even though I am paying less rake, because I am going to win less off these players.
So the full maths of it might be as follows (numbers are exaggerated to make the mathematics cleaner and clearer):
Old times: I win $5,000 before rake. I pay $3,000 rake (leaves me net plus of $2,000), but the average for the table is $4,000 rake, of which I get 25% back, = $1,000. Net gain; $2,000 + $1,000. = + $3,000
New times. I win $3,000 before rake (because opponents are tighter and better). I pay $1,000 rake (because fewer hands are raked for smaller amounts on average). And this is the average for the table. So my net win is $2,000, plus 25% of $2,000, = $500. net gain $2,000 + $500. total win is $2,500.
So, although my net "in play" win is $2,000 in both cases, I actually benefit from the rake being higher, because it is coincident with the players being worse.
Clearly, if all other things were equal, I'd much rather be paying $1,000 rake in scenario (a)(old times), because that would give me a headline win of $4,000 rather than $3,000. So although the rakeback would shrink from $1,000 to $500, all of that shrunk rakeback (and more) has shot through to my top line, making my total gain $4,500 rather than $3,000.
__________________
no subject
Date: 2010-08-09 08:39 pm (UTC)But I am looking forward rather more to playing far fewer hands, back to 11,000 or 12,000 a month, and seeing whether it hasn't in part been sheer jadedness that's led to my poorer results. I've spotted myself putting in calls and raises just to alleviate the boredom. If I stop playing when I get bored, rather than aiming for my "target" number of hands, then I should do better. It's not a case of "the more you play, the more you win". Not at all.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 10:54 pm (UTC)Thank you also for your comment on Facebook comparing cricket scoring and cricket statistics, another distinction I had not properly grasped.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 11:18 am (UTC)So, if I point out that less rake is being taken from games and that this is a bad thing, the reason is that the "price" has not changed -- the reduction in deduction is just a reflection of generally tighter games.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 11:29 am (UTC)As I've pointed out with somewhat relentless monotony, the difficult thing about being a sustainable winner at poker is that the personality-type who is drawn to live poker is not the personality-type that can make a living out of grinding, either online or live. Not for nothing have many of the successful online multi-tablers moved over from online video-gaming. These guys do not have the gambler's personality flaws, because at heart they are games-players rather than gamblers.
However, the flaw that they do have is that, because it is all a game to them, they don't actually appreciate that it might be an idea to hold on to some of the money that they have. In this sense, the games-playing nature (wanting to get to "the next level" ) is as big a flaw as the gambler's (wanting to win "just a bit more" and needing the thrill of anticipation).
Once the gambler learns how to win at poker, poker loses its appeal. As James Caan said in that great film The Gambler, "What's the point of sticking to games where I know I can win? Where's the thrill in that?"
Most Poker players, good or bad, want to defy God. They want that thrill of uncertainty. So if you tell them that one of their first aims must be to play at a level whereby an individual bad beat means nothing to them emotionally, then you will have taken away the main reason that they play the game in the first place.
My own aesthetics are rather more arcane. It's process. It's the feeling of "a job well done" at the end of a long session -- a bit like making one of those miniature bits of furniture that the Lester Pearson put together in The Wire.
Schmidt, I guess, is saying roughly the same thing. But it won't do most players any good. because, paradoxically, the moment they master what Schmidt is telling them; well, they just won't want to play any more.
_______________
hyzdypkq
Date: 2011-09-07 09:07 pm (UTC)cbvyamim
Date: 2011-11-02 06:43 am (UTC)