A fresh start

These past few days, while trying to write an insightfull blogpost about when to call bluffs, I had a revelation.
I was trying to do something diffrent with my blog. Instead of writing about my day and how much money I’ve lost or won, I wanted to have some real content.
The revelation I’ve had is that the blogs I read are of the day to day, win/loss nature. Nothing feels better than to read about someone’s bad beat or great win, and good blogs get updated every day.
If I happen to have some good things to say about a certain issue, I can still mix that in with my daily update. But as far as blogreading goes, I am sure most people do it for entertainment and human interest rather than looking for more poker strategy.
So lets start again.

My name is Johan Poulsen, I’m 28 years old and I play poker for a living. This will be my daily account of how I do at poker.

The future of poker

What does the future have in store for our favorite passtime?
Will the masses still bring their hard earned cash to the tables, just for a shot at riches and entertainment. Or is poker indeed a bubble that will burst just as quickly and unexpectedly as it has grown in popularity these last few years.

To answer these questions, we need to find out what we can compare poker too. Surely if poker is like Bingo or Blackjack, the mere fact that some people keep loosing won’t bring an end to the game. As long as Lottery games are well advertised, suckers will loose their money. And poker is at present by far the most advertised game of the bunch.

Yet that isn’t the complete picture, although poker shares some characteristic with the aforementioned games of chance, I think it differs at some points. Sure some people are drawn to the game in the same way they would be drawn to games of chance, hoping for a big win and paying for that dream one minute at a time.
Others however I think are playing poker for other reasons. They truely try to play well, because they want to win. They have seen or read or heard of the possibility of an easy living. Making tons of money at the tables, playing a game they love for a living. What I think this aspect of poker shares some traits with is pyramid schemes. I don’t think those players play for the thrill or the dream of winning. They play because they understand the possibility of winning in poker. What I don’t know is if most of them will come to the conclusion that they’ll never be part of that small percentage at the top and quit the game for good.

I have read quite a few articles about the issue, and the opinions vary from each new reading. Some think the game will only get bigger, others are sure of an impending doom. A few oracles say that Hold’em might fade a bit, but Stud or Omaha will take its place as the mainstay both online and live. One argument is that Asia and South America will propell the game to levels far above its current popularity, all it takes is advertising.

I know that I will try to get the most out of my time at the top of the pyramid. For although I do not think that the game will die, it might get harder to make this easy living.

The donation bet

Sometimes when you make a bet it’ll make all worse hands fold while all better hands call or raise. These bets have their place, for example if you call in late position after an early player limps with pocket 7’s. The Small Blind completes and everyone checks to you on a flop of 5c Qd 5s. It is obviously incorrect to check behind here, where any card higher than a 7 can make someone a better pair. But at the same time, if your bet is called the caller probably has you beat.
Likewise if you miss the flop completely when raising preflop, but feel there is a fair chance whoever called might fold to a continuation bet. You are basically betting with the intention of letting that money go if you are called, while realizing that if your opponent folds, you probably had the best high hand anyways.

I am however not a strong believer of making the “finding out where I am at” bet. On discussion forums and weblogs I often read that people made a bet, because they knew that only a stronger hand would raise. Or perhaps they fear that their opponent is likely to bluff if they check, so they think it better to bet.
I don’t know if my betting pattern is much diffrent than that of other players, but it is seldom that I don’t have an oppinion about if my hand is infront or behind. Perhaps I am wrong and I’ll loose some money because of it, but I am rarely so perplexed as to where I stand, that I feel a need to invest a bet purely to gauge my opponents reaction.
Perhaps it is a bi-product of playing trash hands and flopping bottom pair, that urges players to make these donation bets or because of too much multi-tabling hampering their hand reading ability. It just seems logical to me that if you don’t know what to do with a holding, then check your hand and figure out how to avoid ending in this spot in the future.

A 10 dollar hand

The true value of the hands you play

I have a software called pokertracker that keeps track of every online hand of poker that I play. All the information is organized in a database where I can search for any imaginable information about how I play and what results I get.
One of the things I look for is how much money I make on average each time I play a certain hand. Ace King offsuit for example nets me about $10 each time I play it at $400 NL. The blinds are $4 and $2, so if there is a limper and I raise it up to say $18 with AKo and everyone including the limper folds, that is an average win with AKo.
I see people being upset about players folding when they raise with Ace King or some other big hand, they don’t realize that often what they pick up in blinds and dead money from the limpers is a good win for that hand. Inexperienced player often have a hard time letting a good starting hand go, even if it completely misses the flop. I think they have an unreasonable expectation to how much any given hand earns them.

Since I started to think about hands in this way, knowing their true value. Some hands have gotten easier to let go. After all it’s only a $6 hand I tell myself. And as a result of this my hands start going up in value, because I am not throwing money away looking players up with Ace High just because the hand I have happends to be a good hand pre-flop.

Links of interest:

Poker Tracker

Bad moon sets, a new moon rises

How has my month been and what have I learnt?

So the month has finally come to an end and the tally puts me just shy of a negative $2000. This is my first loosing month in a long while and it has been a humbling experience. I remember reading a forum thread where winning high stakes players discussed how many loosing months they had. Surprisingly most of the players wrote that they had only had zero, one or two loosing months since going “pro”. So since the wind hit my sails in online poker I naively thought that loosing months were a thing of the past. Now I stand reminded that there is a reason why my bankroll is as big as it is, variance can be a killer if your not prepared.

Instead of trying to get back to even, I spent the last days of May studying the game. Going over hand histories looking for leaks, reading books and forums and cutting down on my multi-tabling. I have found that my initial loss from the first week of this month messed up my game somewhat. I have been shooting two barrels into passive players and gambling too much pre-flop. I somehow lost track of Sklansky’s theory, that I am here to make money of bad players’ mistakes. Instead of looking for bad players, fancy play syndrome had taken hold after some bad beats and I tried to win too many pots.
As I am writing this my game has really sharpend again, I am up $1500 sofar for the first two days of June. My confidence is back and I am focusing on making a profit instead of winning every pot.

However confident I feel though, this bad run makes me doubt that 20 buy-ins will be enough for my transition to NL $600. I expect the games to be tougher and I am sure I will be playing a bit scared at first.
Thanks for reading. See you at the tables.