The 2+2 Forum Archives: Pooh Bah Post : What matters, What doesn't

Well, I never made a "Poob" and I'm coming up on my Carpal Tunnel so I figured I better get this in first.

I thought I'd drop some thoughts on what really matters in being a winning player. I've almost reached 100k hands at about 8 PTBB/100. I've struggled with questioning my game, downswings, taking breaks; my win rate would be a lot better if not for some stretches where I was way off my "A" game, so I know what it's like to be a break-even/losing player and where win rate really comes from.

The first thing is to remember that the goal : being a profitable player, not making fancy moves, not doing what you're "supposed to", not being super-aggressive like you think you should be. Whatever it takes for you to be a winner, do that. Secondly, most of the things you need to be a winner are NOT strategy. Yes, read the forum, play hands, get practice, work on your game, but assuming you've got the basics (and trust me, any monkey can get the basics), strategy is probably not your problem.

What Matters :

1. Being on your "A" game. Poker is not easy. One of the traps I think we all fall into is thinking that the fish are so bad, we can be on our B or C game and still be profitable. Maybe we can tilt a bit and try to play through it. The fact is, that's not true. Beating the rake is hard and you probably can't do it on your C game. Furthermore, being on your "A" game is like a habit - you get in the groove and can keep it up. Once you start playing your C game, you get used to that and before long you find you're playing your C game all the time. It's better to just take a break when you're not on your A game and try to only play in that state.

2. Not "spewing" - just throwing away money. This isn't just bluffing, it's folding decent hands to tiny bets, folding monster hands because you imagine he has the nuts, etc. Anybody who's struggling with their game - I gaurantee that "spewing" in one way or another is a big part of it. If you really review your sessions you'll find hands where you just threw away a lot of money. Playing vanilla good poker and eliminating major "spew" will make a huge impact on your win rate. Note that "spew" can be subtle - not value betting top pair on the river against a calling station is a form of spew; you had an almost gauranteed big bet you could've made and you didn't.

3. Don't make the fish's mistakes correct. You should be playing most of your hands against terrible players if you're using good game & seat selection. These terrible players will do odd things, and you need to adjust properly. If you don't, you can make their mistakes into good plays. When you bluff a calling station, you've turned the fish into a better player than you. Most fishies have very high VPIP's, trying to get lucky on the flop. You punish them by usually having better hands and charging them to see flops. You turn them into experts if you pay them off when they hit. For example :

Fish UTG raises A

to 2 BB
You reraise K

to 12 BB
folds to Fish who calls

Flop 6

Fish checks
You bet pot
Fish pushes all in
You call!!!!

Oh no! you made the fishes -EV style of chasing flops into a profitable style.

What Doesn't :

1. "Tough" Decisions. If you're playing a hand and you hit a really really tough spot and you just can't figure out what's the best move - it doesn't matter! If it's truly a tough decision, that means the EV of the choices is nearly the same! Yes, you might lose a huge pot because you made the wrong decision in this particular case, but if you're thinking about the range of hands it was actually EV neutral. These sort of "tough" decisions are fun to analyze because they're very close and complicated, but the fact is they have almost zero effect on your win rate. You'll see these some times when you post a hand and good/respected posters disagree about the best move. Maybe there is in fact one move that's better than others, but it's a very small EV difference.

2. Little details about your play. Maybe you're 15% vpip, maybe you're 30% vpip. Maybe you complete T7o in the SB, maybe you don't. Maybe you reraise a lot preflop, maybe you don't. Again, these could be slightly +EV or slightly -EV, but the fact is, they have almost zero effect on whether you're a big winner. What you should not do is play in a way you're not comfortable with. Don't complete hands in the SB because you think you should if you're not comfortable playing them postflop. Yes, maybe folding T9o in the SB is a small leak, but it's a tiny tiny leak and not worth worrying about.

3. Marginal situations. You will run into lots and lots of marginal situations. You could fold almost every one of them and it wouldn't hurt your win rate that much. On the other hand, it's very easy to make a big mistake in a marginal situation, and that will hurt your win rate a lot!! This is sort of like a reverse implied odds situation. It's almost never bad to just be a wuss in these spots unless you do that too much. A lot of people are scared of being "weak" or "easy to run over", but that's not really a problem unless someone starts trying to do it, in which case you can try to trap them.

(synopsis for the tl;dr crowd : stop worrying about trivial details that don't affect your win rate much; fix your big leaks and play solid)

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