I cant get any coherant essays thoughts together so I'm just going to think on screen here and maybe expand on these things another time.

When someone calls your raise in the blinds and leads the flop for a small bet, they almost always have weak made hand. It is actually preferrable to play against players that do this verses players who check out of position and put you in the position of continuation betting on an undesirable flop. I love it when people play there cards face up.

Too many players focus on umimportant issues while they are playing a poker hand. Your only focus should be to play a perfect hand here in the moment. The only way to reach anyone of your goals in poker is to play the hand in front of you to perfection.

Save your big bluffs for the know it alls. The guys who always trying to teach everyone how to play. They will be afraid to make big calls and look stupid and will be about the only ones on the table you can profitably make big bluffs against.

If a good player puts a lot of chips in the pot when they dont have to, they want a call. Good players generally want to play big pots when they have the best of it, big hands for big pots. There is a such a misconception that the best players are the best bluffers, the best players extract the most value and set up their opponents for future hands.

Every hand you play is a set up hand. It sets the table for the next hand, and that hand set the table for the hand after that and so on. You have a dynamic situaion that you have to respond to based upon everything that has happened. What this means, is that you can do anything you want to at a poker table if you have a reason that is strong enough. I remember one hand where i open shoved kings 100 bb's deep on a utg limper because I knew he would call. Totally unconventional but definately the right play for that exact moment. Have the courage to make the best play you can even if the whole table is going to call you a fish.

The best players right now and in the past have always been the innovators, the players willing to play a little bit differently and exploit the tendancies and weaknesses of their opponents. I'm not sure what the next great thing will be, but I am sure it will be whatever style works best against your opponents :) That was said somewhat tongue-in-cheek but thats the journey for each individual, what works best for me against my opponents will not be exactly the same for you. It is up you to invent it.

I've always told all my friends over the years, I dont want you to learn to play a hand. I want you to learn to think. A lot of the stuff I wrote 5 years ago was all about how to think and thats the stuff people still look me up to say thank you for even now. I used to have 5 rules I made everyone recite and know 1. Manage your bankroll 2. Hold your temper 3. Win the most chips with your best hands 4. Lose the least chips with your losing hands 5. Don't beat yourself. We had a lot with that in the old days.

Well that enough I guess. Aloha

I have wanted to write this blog for a while but i was waiting to gather enough information and win a pile of money so I could write like I was big stud and all happy. Unfortunately, I have only won 1 tournament in the past week and piled up a bunch of oh so closes for a modest profit. Life goes on and I will just cry in my small pile of money.

Gaining edges in tourneys is getting more difficult. The easy chips are going to be gone in the first half hour and it can be hard to figure out where they will come from. When you get seated at a table, most of the time you dont know who is decent and who is a recreational player(fish). One of the best tools I have found is the full table look up on the poker db. Just cut and paste a hand history and immediately you have the last 365 days of everyone at your table. You can then know how many tournaments they have played, what their average profit is, and their ROI. It takes about 5 seconds to know the results of everyone at your table.

The interputation of this data is a bit more difficult, but when married to a pokertracker3 or holdemanager can be interesting. So now you have the last years results of everyone at the table and you combine that information with every hand you have ever played with someone.

What I know is the biggest losers are the people who call about 50% of times and raise about 2% of the time. They are dead meat with about a negative 60% roi and easily the worse players you will run into. I love them, however, they are having fun and re"creating" just the same as watching TV or playing golf. I dont have any ill feeling towards them at all, I am glad they chose to recreate while providing to the poker economy. I do know they are calling stations and its stupid to try to bluff them out of any pot.

I have have also observed the even the most aggressive moronic type players tend to break even over several hundred tournaments. They can be raising 15 to 20 percent of hands and look like idiots but when I check their results they some how manage to break even or better over several hundred touraments. I guess folding equity is that important :)

I have noticed that the most successful players on Pokerstars are much more aggressive than on Full Tilt. On Pokerstars the players with highest ROI's have numbers like 13/11 while on Full Tilt it is variable. On Pokerstars with the average structure you have to be on your bike early and often to compete, where FullTilt allows you to play a bit slower.

I, personally, would be whole lot happier if there was no data collection sites. That's not the world we live in now, if your opponents are using data collection, you have to use them as well to level the playing field. This is not unlike studying your oppenents for tells I suppose, but it creates a big pain in the butt as I would prefer to be a bit lazier and just study timing tells, bet sizing tells and my notes verses checking all that plus 2 other websites.

The other major source of information is just taking notes. If I can get one decent note on someone I can get a good read on how they think. I prefer to make a note on actually what i observed rather than how I felt. A note that says "idiot" really wont help you in the future, but a note that says "shoved all in with pocket 77 with 100 bb over a 3x raise preflop" gives you a lot more information.

I guess I could go on and on for a while, but the key is where ever and however you can get information is going to be the difference in the best players. And of course how you utilize that information. If you are more diligent than your opponets you will have that edge and any edge is what the best players are looking for.

Aloha

Poker as a living is an up and down deal and I've been on the down lately. Still making the money at my expected rate of about 20 percent of tourneys but just never getting decent score.

So I cut and pasted this little gem over from thepokerdb website. It is a compilation of all the data that they have every collected on me over the years. There is lot of holes in the data collection but assumping the data collection holes are not designed to invalidate the data that they do collect... I have 7095 tourneys to look at the results.
<TABLE class=table_1><TBODY><TR><TD class=alL>total winnings: </TD><TD class=alR>$580,216.84 </TD><TD class=alR>return on investment: </TD><TD class=alR>89.19% </TD></TR><TR><TD class=alL>total est buyins: </TD><TD class=alR>$281,440.50 </TD><TD class=alR>cashes: </TD><TD class=alR>1448 </TD></TR><TR><TD class=alL>total rake: </TD><TD class=alR>$25,239.70 </TD><TD class=alR>wins: </TD><TD class=alR>37 </TD></TR><TR><TD class=alL>total est profit: </TD><TD class=alR>$273,536.64 </TD><TD class=alR>final tables: </TD><TD class=alR>197 </TD></TR><TR><TD class=alL>largest cash: </TD><TD class=alR>$13,445.80 </TD><TD class=alR>tournaments played: </TD><TD class=alR>7095 </TD></TR><TR><TD class=alL>largest buy-in: </TD><TD class=alR>$500.00 </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

Well when i first look at this data is it encouraging. It makes me feel a lot better about making the top 100 of 5 tourneys today just to break even.

So action plan number one when feeling like a dip....Reflect on your pass successes and take an honest look at your long term results.

Recently however, I just can't get there. I have so many finishes between about 50 and 20 in really large fields its aggravating. My mind is now playing tricks on me, sometimes I actually just expect to finish 20th. When its been going on for about 6 weeks straight you almost begin to expect mediocrity to avoid the disappointment of 1 more day of mental gymnastics and no medals to show for it. Especially, when you need the money to pay bills, you almost feel like you are developing multiple personality disorder on the spot, one personality is praying for divine intervention, the other is just saying screw it, its not fair, still another just wants to go sleep and avoid the stress, you just get so conflicted after a long bad run.

So action plan number 2 is lower the poker stress level... Play less tables, play for less money, and play less time. Back off and if nothing else mute the damage until things turn around.

Something I have always noticed in poker is momentum is a powerful force. When you have been winning, you tend to keep winning and vice versa. Now we could go all metaphysical at this point and talk about laws of attraction and so forth, but for simplicities sake lets just all agree, people get on really good runs that defy logic and really bad runs that defy logic.

So if you are on a bad run, momentum is not on your side, what do you do? Go find some game you can beat and book a win. It can be anything, 5 sng, 25nl table, some place they play so bad you know you can beat the game. Your goal is not make a bunch of money, its to change your momentum from loser with a capital L to someone who beats the games he plays. Reset your mindset to winner.

If you have a long poker career/hobby/passion you will have to do these things many times. Hopefully you know yourself more and more as the years go by and you can bust out of the tough times more rapidly each time.

Aloha