Heater

I logged 1.5k hands tonight and won 7.5 BI. This is my biggest night to date. I was fortunate enough to have several donkeys to my immediate right on couple tables. I took a 250 bb stack off of this one donk to my right bc he would lead into every single turn and river so I simply started calling his bets down and often bluffed raised him on the river. Easy counter to someone who value bets excessively. I saw him do it with air several times and began to exploit it. He never seemed to catch on. I eventually caught a big hand when I stacked him with my straight over his top pair. UF2B had a productive group sweat tonight. We had some interesting discussion during the PT review. We were also informed by Noel that he has a poster of Mark Seif on his wall. LuckySOB drew a beautiful landscape of Noel's bedroom here on his blog. Tomorrow, Verneer will be working with Malfaire and I. Tomorrow night is my night to play, so I am looking forward to that.


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August Goals Review

Every month, each of us will post a quick review of our goals from the previous month. I think this group helped improve our games a lot, but we're still working out ways to study as agroup more effectively.

LuckySOB: I think I neglected my goals this month. I did play more 200NL than I ever had, (over 30K hands), and I did win. The sad thing is, I also put in about 15K hands of 100NL and lost. With rakeback, bonuses, and my 200NL winnings exceeding my 100NL loss plus some 400NL winnings, (followed a few 200NL donks up and beat them), I was able to have +3500 month in BR putting me just over 9K. But I only took 1 day off, and didn't learn one new thing everyday.

Noeledge: 25-30hrs poker per week, I failed miserably at this with my biggest week in hours consisting of 18.5hrs. Trust in my reads, I feel this will be a never ending battle as we play the game of poker. This month I have become comfortable going with what I perceive to be villains range and playing accordingly. I feel I improved in this area. Advance my analysis of villains range(take notes on all villains), I slacked off on the notes but my hand range analysis is improving. Give UF2B everything I got and then some; In this area I know I was a major slacker. We all have lives and sometimes it is hard to make time for the crew. I think as the months come and go we will begin to get a good feel of the workings and dynamics of the crew. Until then I imagine it will be slow going. Write one theory piece a week, Try one a month. This is something I definitely will be improving on and have already wrote a piece this month on my new poker blog.

Dice: I did not accomplish my goals for August. This month I will have much more time to devote to poker.

DWarrior: I think overall this month was one of the best for me, both money- and improvement-wise. I managed to successfully move up to 100nl ahead of schedule, and changed my approach to the game. Unfortunately, I didn’t provide enough value to UF2B, and didn’t put enough hours at the tables.

DODGYKEN:I hit 40k hands fairly easily. I am now a winner at the $200s, although not at my desired winrate yet. I'm constantly working on ranges, and this is a target for September too.

Note: these have been sitting in my inbox for 2 weeks, but I kept forgetting to turn them into a post. Just pretend they were posted at the beginning of September. - DWarrior...Read more!

Game selection. We all hear it, but do we use it?

We’ve all heard them……..”If you can’t spot the sucker at the table, then it’s you”………”you can be the 10th best player in the world, but that don’t help if you’re playing the top 9”………. Yet so many players don’t practice this enough or at all.

Many times I’ve read threads that discuss taking shots at the next level, and there’s always a comment about “playing your standard game and good game selection”. Shouldn’t that go without saying? Good game selection should have nothing to do with taking shots at higher stakes. It should be how we choose tables every time we play any game regardless of stakes.

I’ve played live poker for a long time, and I feel my game selection has been a great part of my success. I will give a few quick pointers that I like to use, and then get into online selection methods.

Without knowing any of the players in a live game, I will just walk up to the floor person and find out which tables are spreading the game I want. Get on the list right away, and then watch each table for a few minutes. The first thing I look for is big chip stacks. Are the big stacks smiling upbeat players, or slouched over grumps. I want to be at a table where the big stacks are smiling and talking and having fun. This more often indicates someone just there to play and getting lucky a bit……….easier to get those chips and a fun table is usually a loose table. The slouched grump that is not talking and watching every move everyone makes…….don’t expect to get his chips easy (hell, it might be me). And then the obvious, look for a table that has a more players seeing the flop. Once you get a seat, make it clear to the floor you want moved to table X asap.

When playing online, I’m looking for the same thing, but in a different way. Every site is different, but I’m going to use Full Tilt for my example here. FTP allows you to open 16 tables at one time, I use a datamining program, but you could do this manually also. Open 16 tables by selecting the ones with the highest % players see flop and pot size stats. Start up PT and import hands on them for a while. I usually do this for an hour, but even 10 mins can help a lot. The first thing I do is close all tables that are full of TAGS and open a few different ones.

Then I start viewing each table one by one. I’m looking first for players that I’ve marked as major donks. I use a specific color for players that singlehandedly make a table worth sitting at. Getting on the table is goal one, then changing position hopefully can be worked on later if you start out too close to the right of the donk. Sometimes when I get seated just to the right of the marked player and there’s one behind me in the wait list. I’ll get up and rejoin the list, but this has backfired and I never got a seat before he was busted. So I only do this when it’s a known player that likes to raise a lot of c bets and pushes too much.

Next I look for tables with deep stacks , this is the same concept as my live game selection. I’m looking for deep stacks that are not known regs or playing standard TAG. I love deep stacks in front of players with stats around the 40/12 range. These guys seem to be willing to pay too much for draws often. If I come across a table that has all other players right around 100BB, I’m passing. Yet I’m not too excited to see a table with a lot of short stacks either. I like find a mixture of stacks, but I would prefer more deep stacks than short ones.

Another thing I like to do is, every time a donk goes bust, I wait about 1 or 2 minutes and run a player search on him. I gladly will follow him all night long. Many times they will just sign off and have probably lost all monies on their account. But every now and then you will find them starting over on a different table, and you will have an advantage over the rest of the table in knowing what kind of player they are and the fact that they are probably still tilting. A few times I’ve even found them moving up in limits to recoup their loss quicker. I gladly sit in that game also if it’s just one jump up in stakes. Along those same lines, I will do a player search on all players I’m sitting with that I think I have a large edge over. Even donks are multi-tabling every now and then.

Once you’ve gotten a few good tables going. Always keep a few more open and review them in the same fashion to see if a better seat than the one you’re in becomes available. I’m very quick to jump off a table as soon as the lone fish leaves, and it’s nice to have a table ready and waiting.

Another thing to consider is moving down a level or even 2. This may not apply much until you get into upper mid stakes, but if you can’t find any good games, then search the next level down. Better to win at 400NL than to break even at 600NL. Don’t categorize yourself as a player of one specific level, be willing to move when the games are better.

One last thing I like to consider in my game selection is site selection. Those of you not in the US have a better ability for this than those of us that live in “The Land of the Free?”. I’ve found that certain sites are easier than others based on certain times of the day. And that’s based only on 3 sites I play at, so I’m sure it’s even better with the endless supply of rooms you “None Free” people can play in. I’m not going to give out all my info for which site is better at what times, partly because it seems to change a lot. For example, 2 months ago, the games on AP were so soft, that you could sign on…….take a nap and wake up with more money in your account than you started with. Now they are getting just as tough as many of the larger sites, (partly in thanks to an article in a major poker magazine stating how soft AP was). And I’m sure it’s also different for each level. But this is something you should be keeping an eye on and adjust your play accordingly.

All the great moves, styles, and methods of play you use only work better and pay you off more when you use good game selection. None of this should be new information to you, but I hope it motivates you to use it more and maybe will give you some guidelines to start out by.

LuckySOB...Read more!

Why do we win at poker?

What makes us winners at poker? Well, myself and Noel have been talking about this and

we've come up with a few reasons. One of the things that Noel has said is that a lot of the big pots we win/lose are when one big hand runs into another big hand. Surely these even out though and are pretty much neutral EV? Well, I agree that a lot of these situations are neutral EV. I think that the majority of our profits actually comes from other areas of our play.

I know that when I'm running well I rarely lose medium-big pots. I'll lose 100BB sometimes - normally when I make a bad read, run a big hand into a bigger one, or get unlucky - but the other pots I lose are rarely more than 25BBs. I just do not lose many medium sized pots. I think this is a major reason that we are consistent winners. I haven't asked the other guys in UF2B, but I suspect that their databases will show similar findings.

I've been reading Professional No Limit Holdem recently (which I recommend everybody purchases), and one of the ideas mentioned is that of deciding whether you are committed or not at various points throughout the hand. If you decide that you are not committed, they suggest that you shouldn't be putting more than 30% of your stack into the middle. This is an idea that I feel I've been using myself - albeit without the formailty of having it in writing. I tend to throw away a lot of one pair hands to resistance when I know that I'm not willing to call another bet or bets.

Another reason that we succeed is because we play consistently well. I know for a fact that I'm nowhere near one of the best players around, and I'm probably not even one of the best at my limit. However, I feel pretty confident in saying that I bet I'm one of the most consistent. I play to a very consistent level of play day in, day out. Part of this is due to the fact that I'm very emotionally stable, another part is due to the fact that I don't play drunk/tired/upset/frustrated/etc. The best player in the world might be able to hit 10BB/100 over 20k hands. If he also hits 0BB/100 over another 20k hands he still only makes 5BB/100 over those 40k hands.

A further reason is that I play a ton of hands at each level. I was saying to Noel that I feel ready to take a shot at the $400s on Friday and Saturday nights when there's some really good games running. I also have the bankroll to do it. There's no way I will though because I'm extremely disciplined and wish to prove myself to be a solid winner at the $200s before I try. It's the same with Noel - he's easily good enough to be playing the $200s right now, but he's chosen to prove himself at the $100s over a large sample of hands. I think this benefits us for when we move up in terms of having confidence that we can beat the level below, as well as acquiring a lot more poker knowledge at an easier level which will, in turn, make the step up easier.

Lastly, I think a major factor that separates solid winners from others is the amount of study they do. In my opinion, studying and analysing the game is more important than actually playing. Every single player who plays is going to be getting better at poker - even the fish. If you don't work hard to get better yourself, they will catch up to you, or even overtake you. Keep working hard on your game, analyse your hands, post on forums, read books and articles, watch Cardrunners videos (and watch them actively), and you'll stay one step ahead of the rest.

There are plenty of other reasons that we win and some others don't. The most obvious one, and this is what I lived by when I played limit, is that we make more with our winning hands, and lose less with our losing hands.

Maximise your profits, minimise your losses.

- DODGYKEN...Read more!