What I've Learned (Pooh-Bah type post)

[Paxosmotic]

Disclaimer: If you're happy making $3 an hour playing .25/.50, then you can read this thread only as a curiousity. It is not for you. This is not a post for people who play poker "to kill time" or "4 phun!" This thread is for people who enjoy the mathematical, psychological, and internal challenge that poker represents. If you aren't interested in constant advancement within poker and taking every dollar on the table, this doesn't apply to you.

I've been a member of this forum for a year and a half now, and in that time, I've gone through a few different cycles. The first post I ever made on this forum was a hand where I flopped two pair on a monotone flop. I was ridiculed for not betting. I was so scared that someone had a flush I couldn't control myself.

After that, I threw myself headlong into learning the game. I bought books faster than I could read them, and I was reading them as fast as I could buy them. Over the next few months, you couldn't enter micros or small stakes without seeing my name. Greg was the moderator of micros, but I was the emperor. These were the pre-Wookie days in micros, when he only had 93,000 posts.

And then, I disappeared. I burned out. Pax sightings were occasional but infrequent. I popped in once in a while to ridicule a bad play, and then I was gone. I started playing 5/10 full ring, but didn't have anything worth posting. My days of "I must be the seventh person in this thread to say raise preflop, go postcount go!" were behind me.

And now, six months short of the next phase of my life, knowing that I need to get serious about poker again, I have returned. I post in micros because it's home, I post in small stakes because it's my limit, and I post in STT and SSSH because it's what I need to learn.

In those eighteen months, I've learned a few things that I'm going to share now. You'll get no obvious information here. I hate when someone passes off obvious information as a revelation. Yes, we all need to observe our opponents more. Thank you, moron, that's called poker. These are things I never see discussed. Take from them what you will.

1) Stop paying attention to who is posting, pay attention to what they are posting

I have seen people with post counts that dwarf mine post positively terrible advice. I have seen people with ten posts completely reinvent the way we look at the game. Just because someone writes a ten paragraph post (just like this one), does not mean it's correct. There are going to be things in this thread that are wrong for your game. That's fine. No one is right all the time.

2) Multiway hands love multiway pots

Stop being so weak preflop with suited connectors. If there's a raise and a call infront of you, why are you folding 87s? You're going to have very simple postflop decisions, and your opponents will pay you off handsomely.

3) Preflop is an art, postflop is a science

I can't count the number of times I've seen people cite rote memorization of a preflop chart as a justification for a play. Every time I see someone "isolate a TAG" with AQo I vomit a little. When deciding whether to play a hand preflop, your primary focus is your cards. Your second focus is NOT your position. Your second focus is the abstract idea known as table dynamics. ATo sucks at a loose table but is a gold mine at a tight one. You can call 4 cold on the button with 87s at a loose table but shouldn't limp early with it at a tight one. This paragraph is the answer to the weekly post of "how do I loosen up pre-flop?!" You pay attention to the forest, not the trees.

4) Use pokerstove every day

Make a spreadsheet in Excel. Across the top, list their hand. Down the left side, list yours. Run simulations on every matchup you can think of. Memorize those numbers. I am not joking. You need to know, off the top of your head, how QJs will fare against K4o. Hint: not very good. Then, run simulations based on various flop. Learn how certain flops change the dynamics of certain hands. To wit: Is KT4 a good flop for QJs against K4o? Are you sure?

5) You need a mentor

Not a fellow micros poster. Do you have any idea how easy it is to look good at poker? Make big replies, have a big post count, you must be good. You need to find someone who posts in a higher limit forum and you need to stalk them. You don't have to tell them about it, but read everything they type. Learn WHY it's important. Don't just blindly reply to their threads 3 minutes after its posted with "POTY and it's not even close" like you're enlightened. Actually read it. If a post is five paragraphs and it takes you less than five minutes to read, you aren't learning enough from it.

A few people that are worth reading: Private Joker, W.Deranged, Nate tha Great. People who aren't worth reading: Anyone who descends from on high to give a four word reply as if they are the final authority on correct. If they can't elaborate and prove why, they aren't worth your time.

Don't be afraid to contact people from the forum, either. Of the probably ten 2+2 people on my AIM buddylist, all but about three of them play at limits I've only taken shots at. Why would I talk poker with someone who isn't better than me? What's that going to teach me? If I have to tell someone at .25/.50 to raise AQ preflop, is that helping me at all? But if I can discuss a close turn decision with a player like baronzeus or bozlax (who is far and away the best poker player in micros), I'm learning. PS, do not AIM bozlax for advice, he's all mine, get your own [censored] mentor.

A mentor is a teacher, not a winning player. Some of the biggest winners on this forum are a complete waste of your time to read. As an example: Baronzeus. One of the biggest and most consistent winners that small stakes has ever bred. He wins when he plays. He loses when he posts. Sure what he posts is right, but he's never expanded on an idea in his life. He understands that his learning happens when he reads what others write, not when he does it. So when you're looking for a mentor, you're looking for a verbose player, not a winning one.

6) Your reads aren't as good as you think

It's ridiculous when people use their reads to justify absurd plays. I'll give you an example. "Villain was 19/8/2 over 1,700 hands, and I had seen him bet on the river with an unimproved ace, so I called his river bet with my pocket sixes getting 4:1." Do you have any idea how stupid that is? Out of 1,700 hands, how many times is villain getting to the river with an unimproved ace? You saw one measily play out of thousands he's made, and that's a read? This is why I don't pay attention to reads when you post them. Because you can't possibly know what villain is really doing.

To wit: Ask Housecalls about my style of play and he'll tell you I'm an uber-lag. That's all his sample tells him. He'll tell you about me betting third pair on the river or raising the turn with air. That's how he's seen me play. My true stats are 21/13/2.5. Not too uber-lag now, am I? But based on a few plays he saw, he incorrectly pegged me as a blindly aggressive moron.

If you want to look at plays someone is making, fine. Look at EVERY play they make. Don't just pull up one hand and go "raised 97s preflop? LAG, my god!" and be done with it. This is why I always have, and will continue to advocate looking at numbers rather than individual plays. Numbers never lie.

7) Be more confrontational

Call people out when they're wrong. Then prove it. Don't just skip past the ugly parts, attack them. This forum is about poker, not getting along. Each thread should be a constant battle as we search for the truth. I don't mean insult the person, but if someone posts something wrong, then prove it wrong, don't just skip it.

8) If you can, play poker on a different computer

Don't play poker on the same computer you play games and watch movies on. When you play poker, you're going to the office. Get in the right mental place for the game by getting in the right physical place for it. If you're disciplined enough that this doesn't apply to you, then more power to you. Unfortunately, it doesn't for me right now. It helps me to go to my spare bedroom. I'll be hanging out, watching a movie, and get the urge to play poker. At that point, I am not just blindly clicking around while watching the movie. I am moving to a different location with the intent of taking money from people. It is a job. Until you're able to turn it on and off like a switch, you need to condition yourself.

9) Ask rhetorical questions

Be the devil's advocate frequently. No one ever said that everything you post needs to be exactly what you would do. If you post the wrong action in a rhetorical sense, do you think someone on the forum is going to go "wow he must not be as good as I thought"? Who cares? If someone has shown they're willing to discuss a hand and has some good ideas, then play the other side of the fence. Advocate folding a set of aces on the river for one bet. Find some evidence to support your decision. Then sit back and get educated. Ignore every lemming who comes into the thread screaming about "I would never fold a set omg!" Pay attention to the person who talks about your opponent's hand range and how his actions indicate his hand, etc. You don't have to be right on the forum, you need to learn. You need to be right at the table.

10) The Detroit Lions will never have another winning season

Ever. It's just not going to happen. You need to get over it.

[Str8Fish]

I think if you take some quality notes or have an idea how to take effective notes, they can be just as valuable as PT numbers. The problem with numbers is that many take too long to converge. With notes, you can get a pretty good idea who really sucks at your table and who is running just sick hot. Another good thing about notes is that you catch how the opponent is playing at that moment. Maybe he's on tilt after a bad beat. PT numbers won't identify tilt-tendencies as fast as you noticing them on your own, especially if you see the bad-beat happen. Taking good notes takes perfect practice. Knowing when your notes apply to a situation is another skill that you must master. Beginners go too far with something they consider a 'read', just like you said with your example.

Nice read Pax. A lot of truth to what you say.

[phosix]

i hate you pax.
but nice post.

[Darkplate]

I have pokerstove but I can't seem to find a good reader on it's use. Where would I find a link to that?

Pokertrace remains a mystery to me as well. I'd like to load up my hand histories into it but I'm uncertain how.

[Paxosmotic]

I don't know of any quick guide to PokerStove use, so I'll make one real quick.

1) Use the preflop range slider

You'll use this extensively during scenarios. If you want to do some math on raising AQ first in from CO, run scenarios against the BB calling with 20% of his hands (tight), 40% of his hands (average), and 60% of his hands (loose). Check your equity with those hands.

2) Always be conservative.

If you think villain will limp 25% of his hands in a given place, run your simulation against the top 22% of hands. Just tightening him up a little. It's erring on the side of caution so you don't get too loose thinking he's too loose.

3) Memorize patterns, not numbers.

Any hand with an ace is stronger heads up than any hand with a king. Any pocket pair is stronger than any two over cards. You don't need to know that AJo is a whatever favorite over KTo whereas A9o is such and such. Who cares. Learn abstractly. If you do a comparison between 88 and 44 you'll see that 88 has like 81.193% equity. Forget everything past the first digit. 80%. 4 to 1. That's good enough. If the difference between 81 and 80% ever makes a difference in a poker decision, your timer has run out and your hand has been folded.

4) Only use PokerStove away from the game

Don't sit at the table plugging stuff into stove. You need to think about the game away from the game. Install it in a hidden folder on your computer at work and fiddle with it for fifteen minutes a day. I like to take off my pants (for effect), close the door, and scream "king jack suited vs pocket fives, go monte carlo go!" once a day.

[Eeegah]

[ QUOTE ]
This is not a post for people who play poker "to kill time" or "4 phun!" This thread is for people who enjoy the mathematical, psychological, and internal challenge that poker represents.

[/ QUOTE ]

What are these mutually exclusive or something [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

[Paxosmotic]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This is not a post for people who play poker "to kill time" or "4 phun!" This thread is for people who enjoy the mathematical, psychological, and internal challenge that poker represents.

[/ QUOTE ]

What are these mutually exclusive or something [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]
You're giving up thousands a month to take part in a Korean study group. My fist and your chin are about to cease being mutually exclusive. Get to a table.

[bennyhana]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This is not a post for people who play poker "to kill time" or "4 phun!" This thread is for people who enjoy the mathematical, psychological, and internal challenge that poker represents.

[/ QUOTE ]

What are these mutually exclusive or something [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]
You're giving up thousands a month to take part in a Korean study group. My fist and your chin are about to cease being mutually exclusive. Get to a table.

[/ QUOTE ]

I take it you guys know each other?

[Paxosmotic]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This is not a post for people who play poker "to kill time" or "4 phun!" This thread is for people who enjoy the mathematical, psychological, and internal challenge that poker represents.

[/ QUOTE ]

What are these mutually exclusive or something [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]
You're giving up thousands a month to take part in a Korean study group. My fist and your chin are about to cease being mutually exclusive. Get to a table.

[/ QUOTE ]

I take it you guys know each other?

[/ QUOTE ]
About three and a half years now. He's one the few people on here that I talk to socially. He's a big teddy bear, what can I say.

[V4P]

So if bozlax is the best, does that make eeegah the second best?