Almost there with Success and Failure (Long)

[Gigabet]

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and it is my belief that this is why i have won over 10k in the last 3 months playing live yet at the same time am barely even.




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Are you bluff calling the flop? Online you cannot bluff call without a very deep stack, something I do all the time live. Exception is if you are big stack and the other stacks are about the size where they have to start worrying about the size of the blinds.

[The Yugoslavian]

Thank you.

Yugoslav

[morgan180]

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I would say that this is the same advice that 90% of the posts on this forum are about - put an opponent on a range of hands based on their actions, act accordingly, and pay attention so you can make your reads. Play hard. Yes, it's a nicely written post, but if this is all that revelatory, have you really been paying much attention?

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Any time you read a "what should i do with XX hand on XXX flop ..." you should re-read this post. We talk a lot about math, a lot about what to do with specific hands, which on one level is a good approach for learning the basics of the game, but on the other hand doesn't open up your thinking to how to really play and reach your version of success in poker.

I am a perfect example of this, I ask a lot of what to do, but I struggle to take the time to sit back and think about why is a person making a particular play. I get the numbers, I lack the understanding.

For every person on these boards searching for the formula, the answer is there is no formula, there is no wrong or right, there are only choices. The better you get at knowing why people are making choices, and then crafting your responses in return to those choices, the better poker player you will become. It's like the matrix, you can't bend the spoon, for that is impossible. First you have to realize that there is no spoon.

So this post comes from someone watching everything going on on this site, and is a already in my favorite threads. Thanks Gigabet, it is very TOP-esque.

[dankhank]

I really believe that everyone has the "psychological fortitude" to manage the vicissitudes of the game. It is simply a choice. A choice to change the way you think about results. Stop thinking in terms of winning as good and losing as bad. The two concepts should be grouped in your mind exactly the same.

what's revelatory is the dissonance between this post and numerous posts such as the one irie made. for me, this post struck a deeper chord in terms of the open-ended fate that will be each of our poker careers, coupled with the myriad options (and yet the best option is often so simple) we have while sitting at the table.

consider this: giga wrote that just because one person doesn't achieve the same thing he does, that that doesn't make one a winner and one a loser. this is very different rhetoric than the sklansky maxim "remember, above all else, we are playing poker to win money."


Practice trusting yourself, you will be wrong enough in the beginning to doubt yourself, but don't let that stop you.

what this post did, actually, is relax me into trusting my game me than i did an hour ago. i had a slight losing weekend - ending a two month rush - and i felt like i wanted to walk away from the tables for awhile, partly to protect my winnings, partly because i felt myself not playing as well as i can. playing too recklessly, too loose, too bluffy, too apt to tilt after a bad beat/result.

i also just had a week where i blew off some online profits playing drunk at two relatively tough club games. this post made me feel, concretely, "okay, you really need to be sober when you play there tomorrow."

this post relaxed me in a way that similar psychological-bent posts have done, but only partially. the theory put forth here, in a vague way, is more totalizing than other such posts.

have you really been paying attention?

[bball904]

Outstanding post. Thank you.

My favorite part:

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This is how you become a real player, then you can ignore the "sng" formula and really start to play. Post flop is where the real game is at, and it is fun to play.

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It amazes me how much this entire post contradicts the consensus of this forum, yet many "sng formula" posters can understand the significance of it. However, I doubt very many can leave the formula behind which answers the first question I had after reading this... Why would Gigabet disclose so much (but really yet so little) in this brilliant post?

[gumpzilla]

Going to reply to two hands in one post here.

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Any time you read a "what should i do with XX hand on XXX flop ..." you should re-read this post. We talk a lot about math, a lot about what to do with specific hands, which on one level is a good approach for learning the basics of the game, but on the other hand doesn't open up your thinking to how to really play and reach your version of success in poker.

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The point of the lengthy mathematical discussions is that these form a framework for HOW to think about various situations. Implicitly, by showing the calculations that are relevant, posters are explaining "Here's how I think about a situation. I've filled in some of the variables." Such calculations are virtually impossible to do in the middle of a game. By doing or going over many similar calculations in situations outside of the game, though, you can start to gain a sense of what might or might not be appropriate in a particular situation. You're not preparing yourself specifically for holding QJo on the bubble as the second shortest stack UTG in an SNG, but for many other situations which have a lot of similarities going for them.

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For every person on these boards searching for the formula, the answer is there is no formula, there is no wrong or right, there are only choices. The better you get at knowing why people are making choices, and then crafting your responses in return to those choices, the better poker player you will become.

[/ QUOTE ]

Better implies that there is something right or wrong, namely right or wrong choices. The major discussion here is how to make choices that are right if winning money is your primary concern. If winning money is not your primary concern, and you're more interested in fun, then make fun-maximizing decisions instead. There are fewer of those people who post here, because the people who like to take the time to analyze these situations are usually inclined towards winning/making money, and it's a much more subjective topic, so it's not discussed much. A fun-maximizing player might shove with 72o much more often than he should because it's so fun to show the bluff if everybody folds or suck out on somebody. I know people like this.

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what this post did, actually, is relax me into trusting my game me than i did an hour ago.

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Is that a good thing? Trusting your game is excellent if you have reason to believe that your game is good. This was the thrust, if I understood it correctly, of Irieguy's post. If a losing player is interested in becoming a winning player, the solution is rarely going to be "trusting his game." Instead, it is in critiquing his game, and discovering where the problems lie.

In context, I believe Giga's trust comment was specifically about trusting reads on your opponents, which is quite a bit more specific than trusting one's entire game. Given such reads, including ideas about how your opponent will interpret your various actions and how that will cause them to react, there is going to be an EV-maximizing play. Trusting your reads seems wise; if you can't make any read, it's going to be hard to decide on a good play. But blind trust is no good. You need to be willing to acknowledge when your opponent turns over a hand that you had ruled out that you still aren't making reads as good as you could be. It's too easy - and I suspect almost all of this know this from experience - to blame bad luck rather than questionable decisions for unhappy outcomes.

[MagnoliasFM]

Thank you.

It's good to know that a player as successful as yourself believes in God.

[The Yugoslavian]

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Why would Gigabet disclose so much (but really yet so little) in this brilliant post?

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To Gigabet (under the 2+2 forums constructs) we are not sharks but merely monkeys.

However, under his own construction (or deconstruction) of the poker world, it would seem we are simply other *people* who are caught in a mental mind-f*ck.

Gigabet's post is about the significance of one's fundamental approach to poker and how it impacts playing in a fulfilling and meaningful way. For him, it would seem this is maintaining absolute focus constantly while improving and crushing the game for tons of $$.

Now, there is no judgment on whether or not this should be the 'correct' way to approach poker. It is his way and seems to be the end 'result' of what so many 2+2ers are striving for. I think he feels for everyone (to a degree) wrapped up in the poker win/lose or success/failure trap.

Since we are all 'monkeys,' he need not be very concerned about his post impacting his future poker income. In fact, I would guess his aim is more to help people enjoy poker rather than improve their play.

IMO, what Gigabet has done is turn the poker tenets we have been reading/thinking/living on their head and given us all a chance to not only rethink our fundamental approach but reattach our mind to poker in a more helpful (and ultimately enjoyable) way.

Yugoslav

[PrayingMantis]

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It's good to know that a player as successful as yourself believes in God.

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This is very funny. It also looks like you have completely misundertood what Giga was trying to say about being "successful" or being "a failure". But what the hell. If you think believing in "god" has anything to do with playing strong poker, well........

[GtrHtr]

Thank you. Was this the missing secret from your post a week or so past???? Outstanding.