So February has been a slow month for me pokerwise. In looking at my HEM stats I have played about 1k hands and I am running right about breakeven (down 20BB to be exact).

The good news is that unlike my other recent step away from the tables I have actually been able to stay more connected with poker. Coaching as well as watching a whole slew of videos that I have had dl'd for weeks has helped with this. I have also been thinking a lot about retooling my game in a few key areas that I think I have become a bit too complacent in:

Blind Stealing
I constantly fluctuate between being too aggressive and too passive with blind stealing. The issue typically stems from playing too robotically and being a stat junkie as opposed to taking solid reads on individual villains in relationship to how they react to certain bet sizes (just how much makes them fold their blinds vs what will they call with junk?).

Blind Defense
Kind of the opposite problem of what I listed above. Historically these two issues have gone hand in hand with one another. When I become too aggressive or passive with blind steals I also do the same with blind defense. It is driven by broadcasting my current state of mind and/or playstyle onto others (a fairly common flaw that we lower stakes players like to exhibit from time to time).

CBet Sizing as it Relates to Flop Win %
Feeling that those weaker players would just fold if I bet closer to pot on the flop. I often find myself looking for ways to magically push the weaker players off of hands that they just are not willing to fold. It stems from perfectionism (obv) and the thinking that we need to win every hand.

The good news is that none of the above issues are horribly debilitating to my game. I am a bit annoyed that after all of this time I still fall prone to Fancy Play Syndrome from time to time (which is exhibited in all three issues listed above), but I am pleased that these are currently the types of things that I am looking to work on.

My plan is to actually hit the tables hard later this week to get some decent sized sessions in. I have some pretty full days tomorrow and Wednesday with coaching obligations as well as video work. Also, my wife just let me know that she is calling for another snow weekend, so we will hit Bear Valley again this Saturday & Sunday, which means that hitting the tables hard on Thursday and Friday will be key in helping keep the rust off.

So I went to the dentist for a routine Crown-ing and got stuck in a 5 hour mega session that was the result of me actually needing a root canal (ugh!) in the process. This irl bad beat sucked for a few reasons:

1. It was a root canal. If you have never had one then consider yourself on an irl oral heater. They're suckage is beyond words.

2. I have this intense fear of needles, so it sucks to be me when it is novacaine time.

3. I also have this lame issue where it takes like way more novacaine than normal to get my mouth properly numb. The typical routine is 4 or 5 shots of novacaine that get my gums and tongue numb, but I can still feel my teeth. So they pull out this other numbing agent (probably some vial with a skull and crossbones on it), shoot me up once, and then the whole half of my face is numb for like 8 hours.

So needle anxiety, coupled with multiple shots, and adding on scraping & grinding is quite the drag.

The good news is that my dentist is really great. The fact that I needed the root canal in the first place was due to a crack that she discovered in the tooth through the x-rays. As much as I hated to have it done, the tooth was slightly sensitive (something I had not really noticed until my dentist did a couple of tests on the teeth), which obviously meant that the crack had slightly exposed the root and if we crowned it like that I would have ended up with some nasty infection in the future.

The fact that I was stuck in the chair for so long was due to my nability to be numbed.

So the madcap adventures of my teeth have kind of made me blah, so I have not done too much more than just kind of rest. I have played some over the past week, so I will do another results post here in the next couple of days.

Sung to the tune of Welcome Back Kotter

Welcome Back!

So I finally got to play cards again. The plan was to play last Thursday night, but a last minute swell of work obligations coupled with a visit from my younger brother and his wife over the long weekend pushed me off until tonight.

I have to say that I was happy to get the semi-delayed "welcome back heater" that I have heard so much about:



How It Played Out

The First 1,000 hands

The first 1,000'ish hands were really weird. I wound up with some really horrible coolers/beats including:

1. Running JJ into QQ, QQ into KK, and KK into AA
2. AA < 88 (twice)
3. AK < AQ
4. Getting two sets flushed out (one flopped the nfd, the other was a bdfd where he held MP and floated light)

Even with this I still played relatively well, but definitely not as well as I need to. For example, on one of the AA < 88 the guy flopped a set and did not let it go when he c/r'd the turn oop (which basically screams "mad aggro son!" at 50NL). He was relatively LAGgy, but I still think that I should have been able to drop it. Of course, I did a great job on other hands (like the AK < AQ hand) in recognizing that I was beat and throwing it into pot control mode when I needed to.

Another note, is thank goodness for the shortstackers @ 50NL imo. What could have been some really ugly situations were saved by the fact that the effective stacks were like 25-50BB.

The Dead Zone

I approached Tilt (not meltdown, but rather desparation) and contemplated quitting at around 1200 hands. After dropping the 2 BI that I had won and then running even for another 200 hands I started to get a little antsy. Nothing epic had happened, but the anticipation of finally getting to play was working on me and I felt the need to make something happen.

Fortunately I was able to take the necessary deep breaths, keep focus, and work on what I had concluded by thinking about my breaks as I wrote about previously: keep my mind clear, stay away from fancy plays, don't let the swings get you down. It is amazing how much things become magnified after a long break: a 2BI swing followed by a 200 hand stretched of fold-a-rama would typically not even get a second thought, but after 4+ weeks off everything seems about to be @ 5x view, especially on 2-4 tables.

Keeping focus allowed me to ride through and hit the heater.

The Bold 300! er, 600!

So the heater hit in the last 600 hands It was pretty sick, but had all of the ingredients of the standard Micro-NL texbook heater: strong starting hands that get a ton of action preflop, stay clean or improve on the flop, and when they need it get helped by stationy and/or overly fancy villains that try to steal from you with their LP0K.

Then some of them were just a combination of pure, dumb luck and benefitting from the Hatfields and McCoys thinking that they are the only two players at the table:

Full Tilt Poker, $0.25/$0.50 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BTN: $89.05
SB: $133.70
Hero (BB): $109.80
UTG: $40.75
CO: $21.80

Pre-Flop: A A dealt to Hero (BB)
UTG raises to $5, 2 folds, SB raises to $133.70 and is All-In, Hero calls $109.30 and is All-In, UTG calls $35.75 and is All-In

Flop: ($260.35) 9 9 4 (3 Players - 1 is All-In)

Turn: ($260.35) J (3 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: ($260.35) 3 (3 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $260.35 Pot ($3 Rake)
SB showed J K (two pair, Jacks and Nines) and LOST (-$109.80 NET)
Hero showed A A (two pair, Aces and Nines) and WON $257.35 (+$147.55 NET)
UTG showed Q A (a pair of Nines) and LOST (-$40.75 NET)

And You Left, Why?

With the heater on, I was planning on sticking it out for a while longer, but a few things happened to slow me down:

The biggest factor was that all of the live ones left at the same time. It was really odd - sitting at tables with 2-3 really soft , spewy players that all simultaneously stood up. In addition, I have not played for quite a while, so while 2k'ish hands is typically a drop in the bucket it was starting to wear on me, especially after working for 12 hours today. So I had to give it up when the brain started to feel mushy.

So based upon these two issues, I opted to stick to my "On Break" guns and be mindful of the fact that this was a return trip. To be honest, I am still happy with the decision as I believe that I was just starting to enter a stats of B game that could have very easily degenerated into C game.

Another Day

So I will work on booking another 2k-4k hands tomorrow. We will see just how sustainable 62.5 BB/100 is

The Current Break

Continuing on with the content from my last post, let’s take a look at the characteristics of my current break and think about how we can mitigate some of our potential problems:

Duration
So I have been off for a solid 4 weeks now. I have put in a few hands here and there, but I would definitely consider it to be a long break. We need to consider the fact that my skills are a little worn down and I will probably feel a bit like a fish out of water when I first sit at the tables.

Corrective Measure: Fewer Tables. By starting out with fewer tables, I have a better chance of being able to react to tricky situations. I am not worried about anything so dramatic as being completely overwhelmed when I sit down, because the players at the stakes I am going to be playing at are not tricky enough to overwhelm me, but I am concerned about losing value in tricky spots because I have to think more critically about them.

Situation
So I am coming off of a forced break, which means that I have probably been less than optimal when it comes to poker connectedness (we will consider this separately). Also, there is the potential that I have other things on my mind, which I do as work has really been tough lately. So I have issues that are going to potentially keep me from focusing on cards as much as I need to.

Corrective Measure: This is one where experience helps quite a bit, in that I know that I am going to be preoccupied so I need to be cognizant of this fact and spend a little more time clearing my mind of non-poker thoughts and issues prior to playing. I think that everyone who actively works on getting the right mindset before playing has a slightly different way to get there. Not surprisingly I use the technique outlined in my Emotional Control Video (Part 2).

On a side note, if you are not actively working to clear your mind of the day to day clutter before you start opening the tables then you are making a mistake and need to fix this ASAP.

Poker Connectedness
So as is prevalent with forced breaks I have not been nearly as connected to poker as I want to be. A prime example of this is that my forum posting is down about 90% from where it was before this break hit. Some of that is due to other poker obligations (the Tilt series being the biggest), but for the most part this has been due to the outside forces that put me on the break in the first place.

Corrective Measures: The short term corrective measure is simply to realize that my skills have atrophied slightly more than they would have if I were able to keep posting on the forums as much as I usually do, review hand histories, etc.. With this knowledge I should focus on making fewer fancy/tricky/non-standard plays as there is a much higher chance that I am making a mistake. Please note that this does not mean I will play completely straightforward in every situation, but rather if I run into situations where my non-standard plays seem slightly +EV I will be more likely not to make them.

Obviously, getting back on track in order to confidently and competently take advantage of the slightly +EV plays that are non-standard is key since our edges in poker are so small. So the long term corrective measure (well not really long term, because we need to turn it around quickly, but definitely longer term than avoiding the marginal spots) is to get back up to snuff with the learning side of poker, which means getting back to posting on the forums, reviewing previous posts (I have a list of the more interesting forum posts that I refer back to often), watching videos, reviewing hand histories, participating in sweat sessions, etc..

Recent Results
So I am coming off of some really nice results that have lasted for the past few months (see previous blog posts). Based upon this I need to be aware of the fact that I may be slightly more likely to try and hit my stride and wind up FPS’ing myself into a big hole.

In addition, I need to be very realistic of just how slight our edges are in poker and that there is the potential for huge swings (variance), so I cannot go into shock if my winrate upon my return does not continue on where it left off.

Corrective Measure: Understanding the reality of the situation (that poker is a game of swings) and having realistic expectations going into the session will keep me on track. The key here is to keep myself from subconsciously drifting towards lofty, results oriented goals that are going to put me into desperation tilt when I cannot maintain a double digit winrate – especially since I will be quite rusty going into this.

Final Thoughts
So I hope that this helped with the thought process about how to deal with the special obstacles put forth by breaks.

The other thing that I hope it helped with is providing an example of how to approach, contemplate, and correct/limit the damage done by non-optimal situations that will affect our game. Something that I constantly repeat to my students is that continually heightening our awareness of an issue is the biggest step we have to take in order to mitigate it.

Link to Part One

So it has been a while since I wrote Part 1. If you missed it or would like to review it really quickly, here is your completley lazy link if you cannot be bothered to scroll down.

How Break Characteristics Affect my Results when I do Return

So the next step in analyzing the break is to think about how the break itself will affect my return to the game. This is the money step here as what I do when I return is what determines how much I win or lose. So we need to really consider how we react to the various characteristics and as always, be open minded and think critically about our reactions the whole time we are making our return.

One thing to keep in mind is that everyone reacts in their own way to each of the break characteristics, and while you (or I) may react in similar ways to other players, we do not all react the same. So we need to really consider how we react to the various characteristics and as always, be open minded and think critically about our reactions the whole time we are making our return.

Another thing to keep in mind is thatour goal here is to heighten our awareness to be sure that we avoid the pitfalls that come with skill atrophy and not being mindful of how we are really playing.

Duration: For me, longer breaks can actually prove to be less dangerous than short breaks. After a long break my skills have defintiely atrophied more than when I have been on a short break. But with a long break I tend to be more aware of this and do a better job of playing a tighter, less fancy game as I get back into the swing of making reads, get my notes on regs, look for the biggest fish, etc.. After a short break I sometimes have a tendency to try and "pick up where I left off" and mentally I see myself as the same exact player that I was two or three weeks ago (i.e., I will not acknowledge the fact that my skills have atrophied). Obviously, by being aware of this, I can help to head this problem off, but it does require a concerted effort. The obvious problem with long breaks of course is that the longer they run the greater our skills atrophy and the more time we will need to get back to our top form.

Situations: Forced breaks tend to carry with them a greater potential for me to be less poker connected (more on that below) and may be the sign of some other type of distraction (personal, occupational, social, etc.). The key to this is realizing that if the distraction is large enough that we need to clear it from our mind during our sessions when we do return to the game. Typically unforced breaks will be more of the “I need a vacation” types and are much easier to come back from.

Poker Connectedness: Obviously the less poker connected one is during their break, the more one's skills and game will atrophy. Being able to periodically surf the Leggo forums, watch the new videos, or knock out some reviews of previous sessions will help lessen our skill atrophy.

In order to remain at the peak of our game, we need to maintain a mix of playing and studying/learning. If we wind up stuck in a spot where we cannot play then studying and learning are the next best thing. If we were to make a ‘gator chart it would look something like this:

Optimal Mix of Play & Studying/Learning >>> Playing >> Studying/Learning >>>> No Poker at All

So depending where we fall on this chart will determine how much our skills have atrophied.

Recent Results: If I am running well going into the break then I have the feeling of knowing how to beat the game and I am less likely to tweak my game. I have also found that when I return I may tend to play overly aggressive if I had run well before the break (3Betting, semi-bluffing, bluffing) much more - the problem with this of course is that when our game has slipped then we run the risk of putting ourself in tough spots or making poor decisions if we think that we are playing at a higher level than we really are.

To Be Continued (again)…

In our final installment we will look at my current break (which hopefully ends tomorrow) and see how we can use the above information to facilitate a triumphant return to the tables!

Snow Weekend Recap

So we had a really great time in the snow this past weekend. The place that we stayed at was in a very small town called Dorrington, which is about 30-40 mins before you get to Bear Valley.

We spent the Saturday hitting a few of the turnouts where we did the things you do when you have small kids - sled down the icy hills, have snowball fights, tease the kids about not eating yellow snow, etc etc.

On Sunday my son, sister, niece, nephew and I headed up to Bear Valley Ski Resort and took snowboarding lessons (well, my son and I took the lessons, the others knew how to board already). Having never been on a pair of skis in my life (and certainly not a snowboard) it was an interesting experience to say the least. It is strange to think that I grew up in the Bay Area and never once put on a pair of skis, but that is just how things worked out.

In any event, snowboarding was the nuts imo. The days were actually quite warm (hitting the mid-50's on Sunday) so true to the old saying - the hardest part of learning to snowboard was definitely smacking the ice. I have been told that it is a much easier and softer experience to learn how to board on nice, newly fallen powder, but I certainly won't complain as it was a great time for sure. We are definitely hooked on snowboarding and are planning to head back next month. With any luck we can reserve the same place we stayed, but this time hit it on President's weekend and get a nice 3-dayer out of it.

One thing that was really interesting to observe while snowboarding was the difference in what each person who is learning picks up on first. A prome example of which would be my son and I. My son was able to keep his balance while leaning backwards (on his heels) but would basically flop when he tried to lean forward (on his toes). I was the exact opposite, where I could keep damn near perfect balance while on my toes and slowly skim down the hill perpendicular,with my back to the run. Yet anytime I tried to face the downhill I couldn't maintain even balance on my heels and either fell back, or had my nose drop down and gained a whole bunch of speed before crashing hard! I guess there is really nothing amazing about this, but it was just neat to observe how each person picks up on different aspects of the sport faster. I of course instantly made a correlation to how people learn Poker and proceeded to bore everyone with my wholly unappreciated parallel.

Back to the Front!

Like the title said. The weekend was great, but I am working my way back in to the day to day. I have the fast paced week of work ahead of me, which looks like it will break on Thursday (woohoo!). Not that I won't be busy at all, but not as crazy at it has been.

I am planning on playing a real session later this week (probably Thursday night) in order to start taking the rust off.

I am also going to get a delayed start on one of my New Year's Resolutions. One of the big problems I had when snowboarding Sunday was that I got so fatigued because I am way out of shape. So, I am getting ready to head to the gym here and start working out again. I originally planned on doing 6 focused sessions of both weights and aerobic (running/walking) per week like we did back in college, but there is just no way I can afford to spend that much time at the gym. So the plan is weights and the treadmill 3 days a week, with just the treadmill for 3 more days and one day off. Hopefully this will help with stamina at the tables and get the endorphins popping to help support the proper mood. While my mood has been great despite recent adversity, any help in maintaining it is always welcome.

Life or Something Like It

So I really have not had a chance to play cards at all this month (I think I have put in maybe 500 hands). This will hopefully change either this coming week or the week after. There are some obligations that I have to take care of with my job, but those will wind up clearing up sometime this week.

This Weekend!

So my wife made a command decision and it turns out we are running up to the snow this weekend.

One of the nice things about living in the Bay Area is that we have some really nice weather, lots of stuff to do, a major city (with its own set of stuff to do), tons of great places to eat, and we are still really close to the snow (about 2 hours from here).

I really enjoy the drive up to Bear Valley. You basically take Hwy 4 East until you hit snow!

Obviously the kids are all excited. My wife does a really great job of recognizing when we all need a break like this.

I promise to complete the Breaks line (pun not intended this time). I also have made a couple of passes through the first two episodes on TILT. I keep tweaking it, but it should be done fairly soon here.

Good luck to everyone and have a great weekend...

I want to wish everyone a safe and happy New Year, wherever you might be spending it.

Our evening here will consist of playing Wii and watching a couple of children's movies coupled with overeating (we have a nice spread of seafood here) and a little champagne. Having four kids at home makes for a pretty straightforward party. We do have the third Mummy movie set aside for when the kids finally fall asleep...hopefully the reviews were wrong.

On top of the regular festivities, my wife and I actually celebrate our wedding anniversary each year on January 1, so the excitement is doubled for us There has to be something said for a woman who loves you enough that she agrees to marry you on January 1st thereby ensuring that you will never forget your anniversary.

I will get the second part of my thoughts on breaks in my next post (in the next couple of days) and will follow that up with a look at my goals for 2009. It seems that nowadays I am running behind in everything, even goals and new year's resolutions!

Good luck to everybody in the New Year and agan be safe!

So as I stated in my last entry my time to play has been cut terribly short. I have probably played about 2k hands since last posting. So based upon this, I am currently (by my definition) on a "break" from poker.

For me, my work and my personal life tend to put me into a position where I take more breaks than I would like to, so I have found it important to think about how these breaks will affect my play when I return. The reason I think this is important is that when we return from a break our game is not at the same level it was when we left, because we are out of practice.

This may seem like an odd thing to really drill down on at the level that I am going to in this post, but I believe that heightening our awareness to and getting a better understanding of anything that may affect our poker game is +EV.

So, with the goal of understanding how breaks will affect us, we can perform our analysis by looking at the following:

Types of Breaks

I have, over the course of my poker career taken breaks of all sorts:

1. I have a headache break
2. My computer died break
3. My brain is now mush break
4. I cannot believe my day job is this busy break
5. Another 4 outer landed on me and cracked my two pair/set/overpair break
6. My brother is visiting from out of town break
7. Eff [insert site name here] break
8. Online poker is rigged break
9. Table poker is too slow break
10. Etc. etc.

I could keep going on with this list and come up with many more items. I am sure that you could go through and create a list of your own as well.

However, the reality of the situation is that more important than the types of poker breaks are the characteristics of the breaks, as these are what help us to define them in a way that allows us to anticipate their effects.

The Characteristics of Poker Breaks

All of the poker breaks we have taken or will ever take draw their form from the following characteristics:

DURATION: Long or short. To me short is any break longer than 3 days, but less than 2 weeks. After this they become long. This is just how I feel about a break. It is what I have come up with after analyzing how I feel after about 2 weeks. I should also note that for me a break becomes broke if I play poker for more than one hour on 2-3 consecutive days - this is again another duration that I came up with based upon experience...if I take any amount of time off it takes me about 2-3 days of play to get to a point where I do not feel like a fish out of water.

SITUATIONS: There are an infinite number of specific situations that require a break, but the breaks required by these situations can be fit into two basic categories...forced or unforced. My computer crapping out was a forced break, had it not died I would have played. My brain feeling like mush was an unforced break - I just could not concentrate effectively anymore, so I made a conscious decision to not play. With situations, there is a lot of grey area - for example, the fact that work is busy is what I deem a forced break, when in reality I could just call in sick and sit on FTP/Stars all day - however, this would actually be a -EV life decision for me, so I do not do it, which is why I deem this situation as causing a forced break.

So any break that results from a temporary obstacle or unsolvable issue (a dead pc) or a +EV life decision is a forced break. Any break that results from a +EV poker decision is an unforced break (if my brother is reading this, please take comfort in the fact that taking a break when you visited was a +EV life decision so it was a forced break).

POKER CONNECTEDNESS: How much we are able to still keep my mind on poker is actually a very important aspect of a poker break. The categories for this characteristic are: connected and not connected. Connected would mean that we maintain some type of contact with the game; we may not be playing, but we are still reading books, reviewing hand histories, answering forum posts, etc.. Not connected would mean we are detached from the game completely. When I threw a tantrum and deemed online poker to be rigged I was actually still connected to the game, as I started playing more live poker. Of course, when I threw my follow up tantrum and deemed live poker to be too slow I went into a long stretch of not doing anything poker-wise and entering a state of non-connectedness.

RECENT RESULTS: While not a direct characteristic of the break itself, how we have recently been running is something that can be important. I actually use four categories for this one: Very well (>12BB/100), profitable(between 5 and 12BB/100), meh (between -1 and 5BB/100), and wtf?! (less than -1BB/100). The reason that I started looking at recent results is when we go on break while running poorly we are much more likely to look very crticially at our game during the break and work retooling it prior to returning

To Be Continued...

In my next entry we will look at how the different break characteristics can affect our play when we return.

Thoughts on November
So November was a good month. I was able to actually continue improving on previous months' results, which was great. But, more importantly, I believe that I played my A-Game more in November than in any of the previous months, which is the biggest accomplishment of all imo - as Tommy Angelo wrote, "lop lop lop".

I ran at a nice clip...20BB/100 across a total of ~17k hands between 25NL and 50NL. The move up to 50NL went seamlessly, which is obviously very satisfying, but not entirely surprising given the similarities in our opponents at 25 and 50NL. I believe that the move up to 100NL will be a little trickier, but I will worry about that when my bankroll allows it.

November Graph - All Stakes


In thinking about it, I would have to attribute my results to the following:
1. Getting coaching here at Leggo (both one on one coaching and actively watching videos)
2. Educating myself and focusing on how to improve my mental game (emotional control, tilt control, etc.)
3. Choosing the right games to play in

I will make it a point write in greater detail on these three items in future blog entries, as I think it is important to recognize how each has contributed to my progression.

Looking Ahead
So what does December hold for me? Limited play time unfortunately. With the recent economic problems my day job has been requiring complete and constant attention (which is why I am posting my November Graph in mid-December ). Based upon this I have not been able to play as much as I would have liked (6k hands so far this month). So the country's economic woes, coupled with upcoming holiday obligations means that I am probably looking at about 10k hands this month, when I wanted to hit 20k. This is really a shame, since typically the low stakes games are juicy this time of year due to school being out. I guess that sometimes our +EV life decisions are –EV poker decisions.

Leggo Video
On a much better note, my Power Point presentation on Emotional Control allowed me to place 3rd in the Leggo One Year Anniversay contest. Thanks to the Leggo Staff and especially to all of the Leggo members that watched the video and gave me feedback in the review thread, pm’s, and on Skype.

Also, Leggo has asked me to work on Part 2 of the video, so I will get the slides done and get it recorded ASAP.

I will work those follow up posts I promised as well. It will be interesting with the other things going on, but I will try to get them done sooner rather than later.