Sunday, June 18th: The $20,000 Day!!
Yep, 20 grand. Break open the champagne, put on your fancy pants, and go out for a stroll, because it was a banner day yesterday. Um...well, actually wait a few moments on that champagne. Might want to stick with the regular pants today...seems like it was twenty thousand dollars in the wrong direction. I would post a PokerPatterns chart or PT screenshot, except that (thankfully?) most of yesterday's session wasn't recorded in PT because I someHOw corrupted the hand history files...perhaps when I put my fist through my computer's motherboard, I don't know, I can't be sure.
Yes, not long after vowing to step up in stakes, I spent a few days nearly exclusively at the 80/160 and higher tables, and oh-my-god, you would not believe me if I told you how juicy they were. I had seats to the immediate left of the aforementioned 65/40 fish (how do they get the money to play so high!!) on TWO different tables, and gleefully 3-bet him all day long, much to the chagrin of the other players who folded helplessly. The string of beats that I sustained rivals anything I've ever experienced (more than doubling my previous worst single day)...well, perhaps it only feels that way because it was at higher stakes. I guess it was really only about 120 big bets, which is completely within the realm of reasonable variance. In fact, when I first moved up to 15/30, I immediately experienced a painful $3,500 downswing, which I Suppose is very comparable in terms of magnitude to what went on yesterday. It just wasn't at the hands of such awful, awful opponents. I played 5 or 6 handed, and the table average VPIP was between 45 and 50. There was one other solid player at the table, and 4 players that were inconceivably bad. Alright, enough whining for now. It's hard not to think of the weeks of profits that 3 hours of atrocious beats wiped out, but I'll live to fight another day. In fact, it's perhaps fortunate that (for the first time ever) I actually ran through all the funds in my Neteller account, and that's probably a good thing, because so help me God, I would have deposted another 5 grand in a hearTbeat to keep after those fish (i actually even tried to use my credit cards, but my damn cards aren't accepted at e-gaming sites.)
Well, rather than restrict this to a bitch-post, I'm going to try and take a slightly different approach...yes, it's true that the beats were "bad", and no amount of decision making (other than staying in bed entirely) would have prevented a very bad day, but I still think I made several mistakes that exacerbated the magnitude of things, so I'm going to try and stay constructive here, and pick apart a few of the mistakes I felt I made, whicH will hopefully help me turn things around. I'll go on record here saying that one of these days I'm going to simply go off for a $50,000 day or something ridiculous -- that is, if I can get another few tables like the ones I sat at yesterday. I'll try to stick with my top 3 mistakes.
1. I got waaaaaaaay to excited and aggressive when I got heads-up with the maniac.
Typical hand (which I'm just making up): Maniac raises UTG, I 3-bet with AQ, and it's folded around to maniac who calls. Flop is completely innocuous, something like 2,5,5. Maniac leads out. Now in my head I'm thinking "whatever buddy, there's no way that flop hit you, easy raise." Maniac inevitably would 3-bet me here, and I think I often capped it. Then went into call-down mode if he bet into me again again on turn and river. The bottom line here is that I didn't incorporate information that I learned about the maniac. For starters, his pre-flop raising standards were approximately as follows: any pair, any ace, any two suited cards, and any medium-to-high connectors. Not suited connectors, just connectors. I also noticed that when he had to act before me, he would bet out with ANY part of the flop, and ALWAYS played top pair (any kicker) as though it were the nuts. His flop action could mean a 2, a 5, or some inside straight draw like A3. Most importantly, if he led out on the flop, he ALWAYS 3-bet it if I raised. I did not properly adjust to that, and continued to employ a free-card raise type play (although I genuinely thought I was raising for value) when I knew it was going to cost me 3 small bets instead of one. I should have simply called the flop (or at least mixed in a healthy percentage of calls instead of raises) and reevaluated on the turn.
2. I did not make correct folds when other people (who undoubtedly witnessed my maniac isolation strategy) played back at me.
Here's a hand that sticks out for me. Maniac raises UTG, I 3-bet with AJ, another terrible 50/20 fish behind me calls 3 cold (which merely means an above average holding), and it's folded around to maniac who calls. Maniac leads out on flop of A,2,3 (suits unimportant). I raise, fish behind me calls 2, and maniac calls. Turn is a 9, maniac checks, I bet, fish behind me now raises me and maniac folds. This is a fold that I make approximately 90% of the time...I felt like I was drawing to three outs, but possible zero. But the pot was relatively large, and I was running bad, and just "wanted" it too badly. I called down all the way and was shown A9 for a turned two pair. Call it tilt if you want. I just call it bad play on my part. There were approximately 20 hands were I got "2 to 5 outed" yesteray (and perhaps 8 or so hands where I did it to someone else. Each of those pots were in the $2,000 range, so it's easy to see how a deficit of 10 to 12 'bad beat' pots can turn a day at high stakes absolutely putrid.
3. I got scared to value bet when i was quite sure that I was ahead.
The maniac had me playing on eggshells, even while I had a very, very good understanding of his post-flop style. He got me out of playing my solid TAG game, I knew exactly what it meant when he checked to me on the river. It meant "I don't have top pair, but I'll call your bet if I have ANY part of the board, sometimes even just A high". That's an easy, easy value bet with any second pair, but I got into this mindset where I was just happy to get to showdown with my marginal holding and take a pot from him.
Like I said: none of the above mistakes were so bad or prevalent that they could have turned -$20,000 into a winning session. But they undoubtedly exacerbated what should really only have been a $17K or $18K loser. Might not seem like much of a difference when you're losing that much anyway, but it's absolutely critical: a dollar saved on a losing day is worth just as much as a dollar won on a winning day. Think about it this way; i win between $1.25 and $1.50 / hand played -- The $2,000 or so that I cost myself with my errors explained above will require several days of play simply to erase. I'm not talking about the big $20K hole I dug for myself, I mean the teeny, tiny, seemingly forgiveable errors that I made, which I usually do not. The part of yesterday's loss due to mere bad luck and regular negative variance is all part and parcel of poker itself, and my long-term winrate will eventually compensate for those losses (I had actually run quite hot for the weeks prior). But not built into the variance picture is any type of corrective mechanism for simple player error, so those $2 or $3 thousand are an ugly sunk cost if you ask me, far uglier than the $20K figure itself.
EDIT: After writing the preceding paragraph, I re-read it, and actually think it might be one of the more important and insightful things I've ever written here. Worth another read if you ask me.
A few mistakes I did NOT make. I did not play tired/distracted. In fact, I felt like I was extremely mentally sharp yesterday and very attuned to my play. The mistakes I made were not due to tilt or fatigue, but rather due merely to irrational exhuberance, and a little overzealousness at having found such great tables at such high stakes. It's days like this for which keeping this blog is extraordinarily worthwhile for me. You think there's honestly anyone in my life right now whom I could comfortably tell that I lost $20,000 in 3 hours playing poker? 1) My family would freak out and probably try and get me into some sort of counseling, 2) My friends would ridicule me and probably try to stage some type of intervention, and 3) any online acquaintances would likely subscribe to the philosophy I once heard about how other people felt about hearing bad beat stories: "9 out of 10 people don't care, and the tenth wishes you had lost more." So instead I choose to write about it here, with a mostly anonymous audience. This is why, as I've written before, medium-to-high stakes poker is so socially alienating -- there's a very, very limited subsection of people who can actually evaluate the situation intellectually without getting blinded by the dollar figures. Perhaps most importantly, taking the time to think about and document the above shortcomings in my play yesterday, I hope will preclude me from making the same mistakes again next time around.
Yes, not long after vowing to step up in stakes, I spent a few days nearly exclusively at the 80/160 and higher tables, and oh-my-god, you would not believe me if I told you how juicy they were. I had seats to the immediate left of the aforementioned 65/40 fish (how do they get the money to play so high!!) on TWO different tables, and gleefully 3-bet him all day long, much to the chagrin of the other players who folded helplessly. The string of beats that I sustained rivals anything I've ever experienced (more than doubling my previous worst single day)...well, perhaps it only feels that way because it was at higher stakes. I guess it was really only about 120 big bets, which is completely within the realm of reasonable variance. In fact, when I first moved up to 15/30, I immediately experienced a painful $3,500 downswing, which I Suppose is very comparable in terms of magnitude to what went on yesterday. It just wasn't at the hands of such awful, awful opponents. I played 5 or 6 handed, and the table average VPIP was between 45 and 50. There was one other solid player at the table, and 4 players that were inconceivably bad. Alright, enough whining for now. It's hard not to think of the weeks of profits that 3 hours of atrocious beats wiped out, but I'll live to fight another day. In fact, it's perhaps fortunate that (for the first time ever) I actually ran through all the funds in my Neteller account, and that's probably a good thing, because so help me God, I would have deposted another 5 grand in a hearTbeat to keep after those fish (i actually even tried to use my credit cards, but my damn cards aren't accepted at e-gaming sites.)
Well, rather than restrict this to a bitch-post, I'm going to try and take a slightly different approach...yes, it's true that the beats were "bad", and no amount of decision making (other than staying in bed entirely) would have prevented a very bad day, but I still think I made several mistakes that exacerbated the magnitude of things, so I'm going to try and stay constructive here, and pick apart a few of the mistakes I felt I made, whicH will hopefully help me turn things around. I'll go on record here saying that one of these days I'm going to simply go off for a $50,000 day or something ridiculous -- that is, if I can get another few tables like the ones I sat at yesterday. I'll try to stick with my top 3 mistakes.
1. I got waaaaaaaay to excited and aggressive when I got heads-up with the maniac.
Typical hand (which I'm just making up): Maniac raises UTG, I 3-bet with AQ, and it's folded around to maniac who calls. Flop is completely innocuous, something like 2,5,5. Maniac leads out. Now in my head I'm thinking "whatever buddy, there's no way that flop hit you, easy raise." Maniac inevitably would 3-bet me here, and I think I often capped it. Then went into call-down mode if he bet into me again again on turn and river. The bottom line here is that I didn't incorporate information that I learned about the maniac. For starters, his pre-flop raising standards were approximately as follows: any pair, any ace, any two suited cards, and any medium-to-high connectors. Not suited connectors, just connectors. I also noticed that when he had to act before me, he would bet out with ANY part of the flop, and ALWAYS played top pair (any kicker) as though it were the nuts. His flop action could mean a 2, a 5, or some inside straight draw like A3. Most importantly, if he led out on the flop, he ALWAYS 3-bet it if I raised. I did not properly adjust to that, and continued to employ a free-card raise type play (although I genuinely thought I was raising for value) when I knew it was going to cost me 3 small bets instead of one. I should have simply called the flop (or at least mixed in a healthy percentage of calls instead of raises) and reevaluated on the turn.
2. I did not make correct folds when other people (who undoubtedly witnessed my maniac isolation strategy) played back at me.
Here's a hand that sticks out for me. Maniac raises UTG, I 3-bet with AJ, another terrible 50/20 fish behind me calls 3 cold (which merely means an above average holding), and it's folded around to maniac who calls. Maniac leads out on flop of A,2,3 (suits unimportant). I raise, fish behind me calls 2, and maniac calls. Turn is a 9, maniac checks, I bet, fish behind me now raises me and maniac folds. This is a fold that I make approximately 90% of the time...I felt like I was drawing to three outs, but possible zero. But the pot was relatively large, and I was running bad, and just "wanted" it too badly. I called down all the way and was shown A9 for a turned two pair. Call it tilt if you want. I just call it bad play on my part. There were approximately 20 hands were I got "2 to 5 outed" yesteray (and perhaps 8 or so hands where I did it to someone else. Each of those pots were in the $2,000 range, so it's easy to see how a deficit of 10 to 12 'bad beat' pots can turn a day at high stakes absolutely putrid.
3. I got scared to value bet when i was quite sure that I was ahead.
The maniac had me playing on eggshells, even while I had a very, very good understanding of his post-flop style. He got me out of playing my solid TAG game, I knew exactly what it meant when he checked to me on the river. It meant "I don't have top pair, but I'll call your bet if I have ANY part of the board, sometimes even just A high". That's an easy, easy value bet with any second pair, but I got into this mindset where I was just happy to get to showdown with my marginal holding and take a pot from him.
Like I said: none of the above mistakes were so bad or prevalent that they could have turned -$20,000 into a winning session. But they undoubtedly exacerbated what should really only have been a $17K or $18K loser. Might not seem like much of a difference when you're losing that much anyway, but it's absolutely critical: a dollar saved on a losing day is worth just as much as a dollar won on a winning day. Think about it this way; i win between $1.25 and $1.50 / hand played -- The $2,000 or so that I cost myself with my errors explained above will require several days of play simply to erase. I'm not talking about the big $20K hole I dug for myself, I mean the teeny, tiny, seemingly forgiveable errors that I made, which I usually do not. The part of yesterday's loss due to mere bad luck and regular negative variance is all part and parcel of poker itself, and my long-term winrate will eventually compensate for those losses (I had actually run quite hot for the weeks prior). But not built into the variance picture is any type of corrective mechanism for simple player error, so those $2 or $3 thousand are an ugly sunk cost if you ask me, far uglier than the $20K figure itself.
EDIT: After writing the preceding paragraph, I re-read it, and actually think it might be one of the more important and insightful things I've ever written here. Worth another read if you ask me.
A few mistakes I did NOT make. I did not play tired/distracted. In fact, I felt like I was extremely mentally sharp yesterday and very attuned to my play. The mistakes I made were not due to tilt or fatigue, but rather due merely to irrational exhuberance, and a little overzealousness at having found such great tables at such high stakes. It's days like this for which keeping this blog is extraordinarily worthwhile for me. You think there's honestly anyone in my life right now whom I could comfortably tell that I lost $20,000 in 3 hours playing poker? 1) My family would freak out and probably try and get me into some sort of counseling, 2) My friends would ridicule me and probably try to stage some type of intervention, and 3) any online acquaintances would likely subscribe to the philosophy I once heard about how other people felt about hearing bad beat stories: "9 out of 10 people don't care, and the tenth wishes you had lost more." So instead I choose to write about it here, with a mostly anonymous audience. This is why, as I've written before, medium-to-high stakes poker is so socially alienating -- there's a very, very limited subsection of people who can actually evaluate the situation intellectually without getting blinded by the dollar figures. Perhaps most importantly, taking the time to think about and document the above shortcomings in my play yesterday, I hope will preclude me from making the same mistakes again next time around.
posted by Blog Administrator at 11:56 AM
19 Comments:
Great post. Thank you for giving us the real and truthful deal. The paragraph about your mistakes costing you an extra 3k is right on point, this is something I struggle with at least 2 times a week; which means I can add another 40% to 50% to my bankroll If I can stop my mistakes.
Also I agree it is very weird how you can't really talk to your friends about your poker winnings and losses. I experinced the same problem and no way do I even come closes to your dollars. When I first started everyone was eager to talk with me about poker, but after I started winning consistently most started to become less interested and negative. Some even asked me if I were just making up the winnings in my mind. So I just plod along now just keeping my poker life to myself. Thanks again. I need this blog.
hey man actually 80/160 live in AC this past weekend made 3k quick and left in like an hour but 20k at that level is just 4 buys in and like you said that really isnt that bad. I usually play 4-5 2/4nl tables and have had days where u lose 3-4 buys which really isnt that much poker wise. Also really thought this was one of the better post u've ever written i really liked how u posted exactly how the other player played, his starting hands and his tendencies because i think the way you did but to a lesser degree and it just showed me how much more i need to work on pay attention to players tendencies in my own game....thanks
absolutely great stuff. I've been reading your blog since January and it has always provided some of the most insightful and valuable musings on poker I have read.
Your ability (that we have been allowed to witness growing over the months) to evaluate the nuances of your game has always been a highlight of your posts.
Keep it up.
Nice post. I've been reading your blog for a while now, and you provide a lot of great insights about poker and especially life outside of it.
The part about money saved is money earned is something I struggle to keep in mind while I'm playing. Excellent point there, I hope everyone gets as much out of it as I do. Good luck rebounding from that session.
you said he took you off your "solid TAG" style, I'm now curious if that's your style of play majority of the time at those levels?
Along the lines of the last comment, I'm wondering how the games you describe are different from your regular games.
Your 80/160 experience so far sounds like just about every 5/10 table I've ever played. I often tend to have the same frustrations as you describe- feeling like I overplay strong preflop hands after I miss the flop, and then calling down hopelessly just in case.
Sometimes I wonder if just playing almost a normal TAG style even when sitting directly behind a maniac would be more profitable for me than opening up and 3-betting more often.
Or maybe my table selection is bad because I don't know how to properly adjust for the 60/40s I chase from table to table.
Good post, love the blog. Good luck with the relocation.
If you ever come up with a theory as to how these guys have the money to play at that level, I'd love to hear it.
I love playing the maniacs like you do and play them like you do. I know how frustrating it can be when you're not hitting any cards. You don't even need your fair share of cards, you just need 80% of your fair share and you'll tear them up.
Well my theory has always been that these are doctors and/or lawyers or other people who earn 300K+ / yr.
Think about it. If you took home 300K a year and wanted to play some poker in your spare time just for fun, you wouldn't play 3/6 would you? Heck, you prob wouldn't even play 20/40? The money, after all, hast to MEAN something for you to keep your interest. A 50BB win at 20/40 is a "mere" $2,000 -- peanuts if you make 300K. at 100/200, on the other hand, well $10K is a nice little evening at the poker table.
It's not a perfect theory clearly, but that's what i think.
And yeah, I'm not really a TAG, strictly speaking (I used to be...when my stats at full ring were around 19/7 -- once I opened my game up to around 22/12, my winnings really took off) So I guess I'm more of a sl-LAG
what does 19/7 and 22/12 mean?
They refer to the pokertracker stats: VPIP (volume put in pot, roughly speaking it's what % of hands you play, other than the blinds), and PFR (what % of the time you raise preflop).
SO a 22/12 puts money into the pot 22% of the time (not counting blind money forcibly put in pot) and raises 12% of pots preflop.
P.S. get pokertracker and learn how to use it.
Thanks. I do use poker tracker, just dont really know how to use it, my stats are 25/6 over the last 15k hands. Should i be raising more? Playing $NL25 and currently making 7BB/100 4 tabling.
btw its 6max
Great post. It's gotten me to analyze more on where and when I make these same mistakes.
I'm only playing 1/2 and running well (6BB/100) but I can already see the exact same 1-3 BB leak against 30+/12 opponents. When you're running well, these losing BB gets hidden in the +15BB sessions but are still there. Usually we only put in the effort to detect these leaks when we have a bad session.
"The part of yesterday's loss due to mere bad luck and regular negative variance is all part and parcel of poker itself, and my long-term winrate will eventually compensate for those losses (I had actually run quite hot for the weeks prior). But not built into the variance picture is any type of corrective mechanism for simple player error, so those $2 or $3 thousand are an ugly sunk cost if you ask me, far uglier than the $20K figure itself."
I disagree. Randomness (good and bad luck) aside; if you are going to include in the variance picture the poor plays that cause you to lose money (as you do above), then you must also include the good plays that cause you to win money. Note that the quoted text also contradicts itself; you say "not built into the variance picture is any type of corrective mechanism for simple player error" but also say "my long-term winrate will eventually compensate for those losses". Both statements cannot be true. Certainly we must be vigilant and analyze/correct any holes in our game, so your point about small but costly mistakes is excellent. But the larger argument is flawed. If you hadn't gone on to say "it might be one of the more important and insightful things I've ever written here" I wouldn't have bothered to point this out, but because you did I thought you might be interested to know where you went wrong. Picky, picky...
Oops, I misread part of that. So I take back the part about the quoted text contradicting itself. In fact, now my whole previous comment seems unnecessary. Feel free to remove both.
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