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One of my biggest goals while playing poker, a goal that I document often throughout this blog, is to be able to play poker and have my hours put in, level of studying, and level of play be unaffected by the results of poker. For a minute today, I felt like I had a moment where this was the case. But I was wrong, sort of.

I saw Imper1um sitting at 5ks today and, having player him before, sat thinking I had a pretty significant edge. And as I played him I saw that edge come out, I got it in good against him several times and when I didn’t, I was pretty certain my play in the hand was good if not great. Sadly, I ended up down about 23k against him. And when he finally declined our last sng, I stayed seated for a second and absorbed the moment. I felt great. And for a minute I thought wow maybe I am starting to get it.

But then I realized a couple things. 1) Throughout the session it would be clear to anyone watching that I played well and 2) I had won a couple sngs at the end. What I realized was that although I was happy despite the monetary results, I think I would have been angry if it went a different way even if my level of play was the same. Let’s say I played 1 sng with Imper1um, and going in I felt like he was the type of player to fold to overbets. I get into a spot that seems like a good spot to overbet bluff, and I do. However he times down and calls me with middle pair. Did I play any worse in this scenario? No, but I would have felt worse.

I hope to see one day in my future where I play a 6 straight hours of poker, lose 20k, run bad, get it in bad, and have several hands where I get outplayed. When that session happens, and I sit for a minute afterwards and realize I still feel great about game, I’ll know that I’m getting somewhere.

Winklevoss twins lose case

The link above is to an article about a court case involving Mark Zuckerberg and the so-called Winklevoss twins. The Winklevoss twins settled for a pretty large sum of money after suing Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing their idea which Zuckerberg turned into Facebook. The article is about how they tried to get out of the settlement because they believed they were misled about the settlement.

Scroll down to the comments section. The comments all have an interesting theme… can you guess what it is?

It seems that everyone who posted has seen the Social Network, which isn’t a surprise. What is surprising is that they all seem to think that this movie, that is based on a fictional novel is the absolute truth. The movie portrays the Winklevoss twins as rich, snooty brats who had some idea for a social networking site that wasn’t really facebook. In reality, we don’t know who these people really are and we don’t know whether Zuckerberg stole a vague idea of Facebook (This is what the movie implies), the entire idea, or something in between. But everyone assumes that what they see on a screen is the truth, even when the makers of the movie openly acknowledge its speculation. This is probably why Michael Moore documentary’s and 9/11 conspiracy movies are so effective, if a movie that everyone is supposed to know is fake is taken as reality, then a documentary telling them what its showing is real, when it’s not, must be the word of God.

It’s crazy how many people think this way.

This post may be way too personal, but I’ll risk it just because it’s meaningful to me.

I’ve been struggling recently in poker, which, like a typical poker player experience, has been depressing. It’s especially tough considering how well I have felt like I’ve been playing and how poor the results have been of late. There are so many financial pressure coming up, taxes, the WSOP, etc. that this downswing has been especially taxing (Ha! no pun intended).

I went to a therapy session this morning to try to become more clear on exactly what about the downswing bothers me and work through it. Going into the session, I felt like what I would probably get out of the session is that I can’t be attached to the monetary ups and downs, and need to stay objective about when I’m sitting down, if I’m playing well and am in a good game or not. But as I talked to the therapist and she helped me work through my thoughts, I realized that my skill of looking at my poker game objectively was fine, what wasn’t fine was my ability to look at my own life objectively.

I looked back at what life was like when I didn’t have money. What I realized is that I wasn’t as liked as I am now. When I had mild poker success, as far as I know people looked at me like any other guy. I wasn’t anything special, but I was a pretty decent friend, brother, son, grandson, etc. This assessment of what people thought of me could not even be true, as my Mom always says, you never know why someone likes you or how much they like you. But this was the impression I got from everyone, and there was nothing wrong with that. But when I really took off in poker, made a shit ton of money, had a major tournament score, and got on TV, people noticeably started to think of me differently.

Some people started to think of me as super human, especially admiring friend poker players. Some started to think I was destined to become a multi-millionaire. Suddenly ,I started to hear how amazing I was of a person. People seemed to want to be closer to me simply because of my small town celebrity. It all made me feel just like that. And I got attached to that, and was afraid doing badly would cause those high esteemed opinions of me to change.

What I came to realize though is that no one knows me better than myself. I’m not as cool, stupid, smart, jerky, nice, or superhuman as people think I am, so using others as a barometer of my self worth is flawed. In poker, the short term results can make you think things of yourself that are far from the truth; that you are a perfect poker player when getting lucky, and a terrible poker player when running badly. In life, what people think of you can make you think things of yourself that are far from the truth; that you are superhuman or a terrible person. But in both cases, to recover, what I must do is go back to my objective analysis of myself, and trust my own judgement.

All of the bluffs worked. So I guess it was a thinly veiled brag of sorts, but I felt like all the hands were pretty interesting bluff opportunities. On the first two hands he tanked, on the last hand I don’t remember how long he took.

So yesterday I set a goal to play 400 SNGs in a day because I wanted to play more when I a) felt tilted and b) didn’t feel like playing.

Read the rest of this entry

I have 3 hands for you. Put your answer in the comments if the bluff worked or not. You can do a simple yes/no or expand on why and I’ll comment. If you guess right…. well, you win a slight ego boost.

Relevant reads: I’m playing relatively aggressive but really have not followed through that much. I have overbet a similar amount in hand 1 over pot three times and he called once when he rivered two pair and folded the other two times. I have not raised his barrels in position after c/c the flop on the turn or river at all. I have not raised his bets past the flop period. I have been c/ring the flop a ton but have not followed through onto the river much at all.

Hand 1:
PokerStars Game #60389910251: Hold’em No Limit ($2/$4 USD) – 2011/04/05 14:54:28 PT [2011/04/05 17:54:28 ET]
Table ‘Guisan VIII’ 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: BlackMojos ($1375.75 in chips)
Seat 2: heybude ($844.50 in chips)
heybude: posts small blind $2
BlackMojos: posts big blind $4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to heybude [Th 3s]
heybude: raises $4 to $8
BlackMojos: calls $4
*** FLOP *** [6c Ah 9h]
BlackMojos: checks
heybude: bets $12
BlackMojos: calls $12
*** TURN *** [6c Ah 9h] [7c]
BlackMojos: checks
heybude: bets $32
BlackMojos: calls $32
*** RIVER *** [6c Ah 9h 7c] [2d]
BlackMojos: checks
heybude: bets $184 (pots a little over 100)

Hand 2:
PokerStars Game #60387373810: Hold’em No Limit ($2/$4 USD) – 2011/04/05 14:07:35 PT [2011/04/05 17:07:35 ET]
Table ‘Vinifera VII’ 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: BlackMojos ($785.50 in chips)
Seat 2: heybude ($917.50 in chips)
BlackMojos: posts small blind $2
heybude: posts big blind $4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to heybude [Td 4d]
BlackMojos: raises $8 to $12
heybude: calls $8
*** FLOP *** [4c Qh 2d]
heybude: checks
BlackMojos: bets $18
heybude: calls $18
*** TURN *** [4c Qh 2d] [8s]
heybude: checks
BlackMojos: bets $48
heybude: calls $48
*** RIVER *** [4c Qh 2d 8s] [3d]
heybude: checks
BlackMojos: bets $142
heybude: raises $302 to $444

Hand 3:
PokerStars Game #60389830548: Hold’em No Limit ($2/$4 USD) – 2011/04/05 14:52:56 PT [2011/04/05 17:52:56 ET]
Table ‘Cohnia XII’ 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: BlackMojos ($954.50 in chips)
Seat 2: heybude ($546.50 in chips)
BlackMojos: posts small blind $2
heybude: posts big blind $4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to heybude [4c 6h]
BlackMojos: raises $8 to $12
heybude: calls $8
*** FLOP *** [8h Ts 2d]
heybude: checks
BlackMojos: bets $18
heybude: raises $38 to $56
BlackMojos: calls $38
*** TURN *** [8h Ts 2d] [5c]
heybude: bets $108
BlackMojos: calls $108
*** RIVER *** [8h Ts 2d 5c] [6s]
heybude: bets $370.50 and is all-in

I was playing the other day when my girlfriend Gwen came over. She asked me how the day was going, and I said pretty bad. I had lost probably 5-6k in the last 25 minutes and it was definitely affecting me, I was tilting. She said, “Why don’t you stop playing for the day?” I thought for a bit and said, “Actually I should do the Exact Opposite of that!”

My goal in poker for this year is to make the most money I possibly can. There are many elements to doing this, but the most important one is to play as many hours of poker as I can. I’m going to have many sessions throughout this year where I have losing streaks like the one that day. If I quit every time they happen and when I feel like I’m tilting, I will shorten the amount of total time I play poker this year. Furthermore, if I quit when I tilt, it will not help me learn to deal with tilt, which is important in situations where I can’t quit playing (i.e. a tournament or an online game with a whale).

I had one of those tilting sessions last night, losing a lot in a short period of time playing 1k sngs against a fish. Today I woke up and didn’t feel like playing, still feeling tilted from the other night. Because of this, I’m going to do the opposite. I’m going to play 400 hu sngs from the 100-1k level, no matter what my results are.

My goals for today are this:

1) Play 400 SNGs on Full Tilt. These will be a mix of turbos and superturbos.

2) Journal on every break (This will count as my first journal).

3) If I feel like I’m tilting, I must play for 1 hour more from the moment I become aware of it.

I’ll update throughout the day on twitter, @suitedAAces.

Despite overall having a relatively solid year, I had a very frustrating end of the month. I had a couple of big negative days, and overall I’m down a lot since the 28th of March. It’s been mostly at 25/50 HU, and mostly against relatively solid players who I believe against I have a solid edge.

This is particularly frustrating because both my theoretical knowledge and my gameplay level while in a match has been fantastic. I feel unbeatable, despite being badly beaten this past week. So I suppose that’s good; despite getting unlucky I still have a lot of confidence that it will turn around. EV wise I’m running very badly, and objectively I feel like my strategies against the players I’ve been playing and my level of play translates into a lot of cash.

I’ve also been going through a staking controversy, which has been a hot topic on 2p2. You can read about it here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/184/staking-selling-shares-live/harrahs-rincon-10k-1001130/

The gist of this is I bought a piece of a respected mtt pro… or so I thought. On day 2 of the tournament he informs me that he already had all the action bought and that he’d send me back my money. Of course, I don’t find it agreeable to allow him to cancel action in the middle of the tournament. Naturally, he gets 2nd, I’m owed around 17k, and a shit storm ensues. I’ll keep you guys updated on what happens, but right now I believe I am owed 17k and I am trying my hardest to get my deserved money.

I guess I should be a tourney pro cause I’m complaining about running bad after making a nice score ). Well this isn’t really complaining, just in the form of complaining. I’m just pretty astounded at the variance in supers (This is a 100 buyin difference in EV, which in 1ks is 100k). I’m also posting this in part to reassure myself that I am a nice winner in 1ks and that to maximize my profitability I need to keep playing them.

The red line is EV and the green line is actual winnings.

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