Thursday, December 22, 2011
Example Of A Leak
If you're hoping to hear about technical things I'm changing to improve my game, so you can implement them into your own, I'm sorry to disappoint. The fact is when ElRupert, for example, tweets a link to my blog post (which I do appreciate, thanks mate) and then next time I play he's on three of my tables, it would be cutting my own throat to talk about a lot of the changes I have made.
The reason balance is not that much of an issue in online MTTs is that you just don't build up that much of a history with other regs. That means it's difficult for them to spot patterns in your play (and vice versa of course), especially when you're only taking particular actions with a small subset of your hands. If I blab about them on here and people are reading it though, that cuts out the process of picking them up through piecemeal observation entirely!
I can give you an example of one leak though, as the solution is (unusually) making my play more balanced rather than less, and it comes up quite rarely anyway. Say you're at a final table with a high bubble factor (in English, you don't want to get knocked out right now) and you pick up a hand like AJ or 88 with 18 blinds or so. My original idea was that if I raise small with these hands then I will have odds, even allowing for bubble factor, to call a jam reraise. But AJ, 88 etc is not a sufficient favourite over the reraising range to want to get it in, so, assuming villains will call a jam less often than they reraise (generally a reasonable assumption), I'm better off jamming.
On the surface it sounds plausible, or it did to me, but it's sloppy thinking and it's wrong. DUCY? Quite probably. The problem is that any better hand than AJ is going to get it in with you whatever you do. The fact that AJ isn't in good enough shape against the whole reraising range isn't the issue, what you need to consider is how it does against the extra hands that reraise but don't call a jam. Against those extra hands you're in very good shape because, depending exactly on ranges, there are a bunch of KJ, A9, JTs, 98s and so on that you're way ahead of. Even allowing for 66-44 etc that you would rather force out, you're in good enough shape against the "extra" range that you're happy to get it in against that range allowing for bubble factors.
So the solution is not to jam these "middle" hands but just raise-call them instead, which means I'm raise-deciding with everything I play. It's not a big leak because it's such a specific scenario and both raiser and caller have to have a narrow subset of hands to bring it into play, so not that big a deal. But it illustrates quite nicely some of the ways in which other leaks have developed, particularly :
- Changing something that was working perfectly well before through trying to be too clever
- Fixating on being unexploitable and so
- missing out on opportunities to exploit others
- worrying too much about being exploited by people who mostly aren't capable of it
It's just an example as I say, but it's the kind of wrong turning that I've taken in the last year and it's not the only one by any means!
Addendum : By the way, it's unrelated but I was flicking through the old Full Tilt Tournament Strategy book and while some of it's pretty lol, re-reading the Gavin Smith section I was really impressed. A lot of what he said is standard online aggressive play now and he was way ahead of his time really.
The reason balance is not that much of an issue in online MTTs is that you just don't build up that much of a history with other regs. That means it's difficult for them to spot patterns in your play (and vice versa of course), especially when you're only taking particular actions with a small subset of your hands. If I blab about them on here and people are reading it though, that cuts out the process of picking them up through piecemeal observation entirely!
I can give you an example of one leak though, as the solution is (unusually) making my play more balanced rather than less, and it comes up quite rarely anyway. Say you're at a final table with a high bubble factor (in English, you don't want to get knocked out right now) and you pick up a hand like AJ or 88 with 18 blinds or so. My original idea was that if I raise small with these hands then I will have odds, even allowing for bubble factor, to call a jam reraise. But AJ, 88 etc is not a sufficient favourite over the reraising range to want to get it in, so, assuming villains will call a jam less often than they reraise (generally a reasonable assumption), I'm better off jamming.
On the surface it sounds plausible, or it did to me, but it's sloppy thinking and it's wrong. DUCY? Quite probably. The problem is that any better hand than AJ is going to get it in with you whatever you do. The fact that AJ isn't in good enough shape against the whole reraising range isn't the issue, what you need to consider is how it does against the extra hands that reraise but don't call a jam. Against those extra hands you're in very good shape because, depending exactly on ranges, there are a bunch of KJ, A9, JTs, 98s and so on that you're way ahead of. Even allowing for 66-44 etc that you would rather force out, you're in good enough shape against the "extra" range that you're happy to get it in against that range allowing for bubble factors.
So the solution is not to jam these "middle" hands but just raise-call them instead, which means I'm raise-deciding with everything I play. It's not a big leak because it's such a specific scenario and both raiser and caller have to have a narrow subset of hands to bring it into play, so not that big a deal. But it illustrates quite nicely some of the ways in which other leaks have developed, particularly :
- Changing something that was working perfectly well before through trying to be too clever
- Fixating on being unexploitable and so
- missing out on opportunities to exploit others
- worrying too much about being exploited by people who mostly aren't capable of it
It's just an example as I say, but it's the kind of wrong turning that I've taken in the last year and it's not the only one by any means!
Addendum : By the way, it's unrelated but I was flicking through the old Full Tilt Tournament Strategy book and while some of it's pretty lol, re-reading the Gavin Smith section I was really impressed. A lot of what he said is standard online aggressive play now and he was way ahead of his time really.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Bounce (2)
The real message Matthew Syed is trying to put across in Bounce [1], as I understand it, is how we under-rate the benefits of focused, motivated practice. Hard work. Grind. I have come to realise that for about a year, from September last year to this, I was trying to cruise in poker, making no effort to improve and blaming lack of results on bad luck or the game getting tougher.
I was (and still am if I slip back) in danger of becoming like one of the live pros who were overtaken by the "internet generation". I always felt that they had no one to blame but themselves. Young players came in and devoured the game, they lived for it, players like Durr and Galfond, or Mercier and Elky in tournaments. Starting from scratch they were able to overtake the "old school" remarkably quickly, partly because online poker allows you to play so many more hands per hour, per day, per month.
The thing is though, what was stopping the old school from working just as hard, starting off a long way forward of scratch? Taking the experience they had and building on it with the same focus and determination? Taking what they knew and playing 200 hands an hour online from that base? Complacency and laziness. In other words, nothing. There was no reason why any of them couldn't do what Ivey did, but it was easier to cash the sponsorship cheque and cruise. It's also very easy to say "Oh, Ivey's some kind of supernatural genius, no one else could do that." I wonder who else tried?
That may sound overly critical but I apply it to myself over the last year too. Now I'm making an effort to find and fix leaks in my own game and I've been shocked how many I have found (and am still finding). The problem is it is very hard, in tournaments, to gauge progress because actual $ results are so random. I am trying to find ways to measure how effective my play is outside of just the bottom line. It's not easy but HEM is a big help and there are some tools in there that you can use if you're very careful with them - all-in adjusted EV for example.
As I mentioned in a thread on 2+2 a few days ago, this has also helped with my motivation. It's a positive feedback loop. I have new lines to try and new things to remember - it's very easy to think of something you should be doing, do it for a couple of days, but even if it goes well you forget and move on to the next new trick. I keep a record of the points I should be remembering and mistakes I shouldn't be making, as recommended by Jared Tendler in his book.
As for the bottom line it has been going OK but nothing spectacular. Then again, that's partly due to two or three bad mistakes at final tables, spots where I just did what I always do and what I thought everyone else did, but when I analysed them later I could see how they were wrong. And those are the mistakes that can really cost you $$$. If I can fix those then I'm confident that I can go on an uptick over the next couple of months.
[1] In the first section anyway, the second and third are also interesting but have different themes.
I was (and still am if I slip back) in danger of becoming like one of the live pros who were overtaken by the "internet generation". I always felt that they had no one to blame but themselves. Young players came in and devoured the game, they lived for it, players like Durr and Galfond, or Mercier and Elky in tournaments. Starting from scratch they were able to overtake the "old school" remarkably quickly, partly because online poker allows you to play so many more hands per hour, per day, per month.
The thing is though, what was stopping the old school from working just as hard, starting off a long way forward of scratch? Taking the experience they had and building on it with the same focus and determination? Taking what they knew and playing 200 hands an hour online from that base? Complacency and laziness. In other words, nothing. There was no reason why any of them couldn't do what Ivey did, but it was easier to cash the sponsorship cheque and cruise. It's also very easy to say "Oh, Ivey's some kind of supernatural genius, no one else could do that." I wonder who else tried?
That may sound overly critical but I apply it to myself over the last year too. Now I'm making an effort to find and fix leaks in my own game and I've been shocked how many I have found (and am still finding). The problem is it is very hard, in tournaments, to gauge progress because actual $ results are so random. I am trying to find ways to measure how effective my play is outside of just the bottom line. It's not easy but HEM is a big help and there are some tools in there that you can use if you're very careful with them - all-in adjusted EV for example.
As I mentioned in a thread on 2+2 a few days ago, this has also helped with my motivation. It's a positive feedback loop. I have new lines to try and new things to remember - it's very easy to think of something you should be doing, do it for a couple of days, but even if it goes well you forget and move on to the next new trick. I keep a record of the points I should be remembering and mistakes I shouldn't be making, as recommended by Jared Tendler in his book.
As for the bottom line it has been going OK but nothing spectacular. Then again, that's partly due to two or three bad mistakes at final tables, spots where I just did what I always do and what I thought everyone else did, but when I analysed them later I could see how they were wrong. And those are the mistakes that can really cost you $$$. If I can fix those then I'm confident that I can go on an uptick over the next couple of months.
[1] In the first section anyway, the second and third are also interesting but have different themes.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Bounce (1)
First bounce, perhaps I should say. I've just finished the book Bounce by Matthew Syed and I thoroughly recommend that you read this book. Don't even finish reading this until you do it. Download it now from the link (install Kindle for PC if necessary, it's great).
I picked this up on a recommendation from everyone's favourite Twittering footballer Joey Barton. The central thesis of the book is not new, it's the basic idea that Malcolm Gladwell put forward in Outliers. Bounce is a much better book though IMO, much less anecdotal and has the advantage of being written by someone who, as Britain's top table-tennis player for several years, freely admits that he used to believe that this was largely due to his own natural "talent" rather than the circumstances of his upbringing combined with extraordinary amounts of practice.
In some ways this is only tangentially related to poker but there's not really anywhere else I can put this now so here is going to have to do :). It does, however, have some relevance to a snippet on a Late Night Poker episode I caught up with today. Players were asked (for some reason) what sporting figures they would like to be/have been. They rattled off more or less what you would expect - Tiger Woods [1], Roger Federer, Michael Jordan.
I know it was just a flip soundbite question but I wonder if the answer "well I'm not sure I'd like to be a world-class sportsman at all" actually occurred to anyone as a possibility. Because you can be assured that those three people have devoted their entire lives to their respective sports. How they will cope with retirement remains to be seen.
Thing is though, I think we really know whether the players actually want to be Tiger Woods, for example. Because they have their own field of excellence in which they already have a platform and an opportunity to excel. Poker. So are they practising with the intensity of Tiger Woods? Every day, like Michael Jordan? Desperate to improve and build on every setback, like Roger Federer? Well, we don't know. But I reckon they probably aren't.
There's one poker player I can think of who might have done. He reputedly played 18 hours a day in Atlantic City for 2 years straight when starting up. He's one of the few "live" players who saw online poker as a tremendous opportunity to learn and improve, rather than just exploit by association. And funnily enough, albeit for completely the wrong reasons, he is sometimes known as the Tiger Woods of poker...
[1] Tiger Woods was chosen by Vanessa Selbst on the grounds that "golf doesn't look like you have to train for it very much" - LOL. That depends how good you want to be. To be Tiger Woods, you have to train incredibly fucking hard for your entire life, is all.
I picked this up on a recommendation from everyone's favourite Twittering footballer Joey Barton. The central thesis of the book is not new, it's the basic idea that Malcolm Gladwell put forward in Outliers. Bounce is a much better book though IMO, much less anecdotal and has the advantage of being written by someone who, as Britain's top table-tennis player for several years, freely admits that he used to believe that this was largely due to his own natural "talent" rather than the circumstances of his upbringing combined with extraordinary amounts of practice.
In some ways this is only tangentially related to poker but there's not really anywhere else I can put this now so here is going to have to do :). It does, however, have some relevance to a snippet on a Late Night Poker episode I caught up with today. Players were asked (for some reason) what sporting figures they would like to be/have been. They rattled off more or less what you would expect - Tiger Woods [1], Roger Federer, Michael Jordan.
I know it was just a flip soundbite question but I wonder if the answer "well I'm not sure I'd like to be a world-class sportsman at all" actually occurred to anyone as a possibility. Because you can be assured that those three people have devoted their entire lives to their respective sports. How they will cope with retirement remains to be seen.
Thing is though, I think we really know whether the players actually want to be Tiger Woods, for example. Because they have their own field of excellence in which they already have a platform and an opportunity to excel. Poker. So are they practising with the intensity of Tiger Woods? Every day, like Michael Jordan? Desperate to improve and build on every setback, like Roger Federer? Well, we don't know. But I reckon they probably aren't.
There's one poker player I can think of who might have done. He reputedly played 18 hours a day in Atlantic City for 2 years straight when starting up. He's one of the few "live" players who saw online poker as a tremendous opportunity to learn and improve, rather than just exploit by association. And funnily enough, albeit for completely the wrong reasons, he is sometimes known as the Tiger Woods of poker...
[1] Tiger Woods was chosen by Vanessa Selbst on the grounds that "golf doesn't look like you have to train for it very much" - LOL. That depends how good you want to be. To be Tiger Woods, you have to train incredibly fucking hard for your entire life, is all.
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Late Night Poker (Finish)
I caught up with the Late Night Poker final today - look away now if you haven't seen it!
In the event, it turned into a rather disappointing crapshoot. The combination of an 8-handed final and only 5 being paid anything at all was always going to tend to produce cagey play in the middle, which leads to blind pressure at the end if the structure isn't set very carefully, and that's what happened.
From what we saw, I think the last 3 players were probably the 3 who played best on the day, and from there it was all about the flips. Sam Holden won 2/2 FTW, fair play to him. I'm sure Luke Schwartz is the best player in the line-up with any depth of stack, but he may have failed to adjust to playing 3-handed with 20bb stacks. Qualifier Rob Okell played very well from what I saw and would have been a big favourite to win if TT > KQ, which it didn't, so gg.
If people really think that calling it "Late Night Poker" makes it more significant than any other TV tournament then good luck to both the people thinking that and the people who made them think it :). That seemed to be the impression they were trying to create.
Anyway, it wouldn't be a TV blog from me without picking someone's play apart in hindsight, so let's do that. Roberto Romanello made what I think is a mistake on his exit hand which (result oriented klaxon) cost him dearly. In truth I don't blame Roberto for what he did, I'd have done exactly the same 3 months ago. From a stack of 13-14 bb he made a small open raise with AQo. The idea is, presumably, to induce some shoves (which you call LDO) from weaker hands and provide some balance for the times you want to raise-fold off that stack.
Balance though, as I said last week, can GIFAFI [1] in a TV single table. This is something I was doing for a couple of months online, but I found that on empirical analysis of a few thousand hands, it just wasn't as profitable as jamming. Inducing shoves from a few hands against which you're maybe 60% overall isn't that big a gain, especially in an ICM heavy spot like this one. The real downside of the play is that you give the BB in particular a very cheap option to call pre and stick it in if he flops anything, which is exactly what Luke does with KJ. Luke chooses to bet out on the J22 flop, where I would have check-raised, but it comes to much the same thing.
Turning it round, this is something you can easily do in the Big Blind when someone minraises and effective stacks are small, just call and checkraise jam any pair or draw. It's even better with antes in play. That's all for now, though I will probably talk soon about a book or two I read recently.
Addendum : @Standaman60 on Twitter mentioned the hand where Simon Trumper raise-calls a 3-bet from about 20bb with AK and check-folds a Jack high flop. One thing I'll say about that hand is that if you ask Simon about it, I'm very sure you'll hear the words "I put him on a middle pair". So this line is somewhat more profitable if your "read" is correct but, as I've said before, if it's wrong you could be burning chips. There's no way this line is beneficial against another AK, and against AQ or KQ it's just horrendous.
[1] Although it probably wouldn't FI, being so balanced and everything.
In the event, it turned into a rather disappointing crapshoot. The combination of an 8-handed final and only 5 being paid anything at all was always going to tend to produce cagey play in the middle, which leads to blind pressure at the end if the structure isn't set very carefully, and that's what happened.
From what we saw, I think the last 3 players were probably the 3 who played best on the day, and from there it was all about the flips. Sam Holden won 2/2 FTW, fair play to him. I'm sure Luke Schwartz is the best player in the line-up with any depth of stack, but he may have failed to adjust to playing 3-handed with 20bb stacks. Qualifier Rob Okell played very well from what I saw and would have been a big favourite to win if TT > KQ, which it didn't, so gg.
If people really think that calling it "Late Night Poker" makes it more significant than any other TV tournament then good luck to both the people thinking that and the people who made them think it :). That seemed to be the impression they were trying to create.
Anyway, it wouldn't be a TV blog from me without picking someone's play apart in hindsight, so let's do that. Roberto Romanello made what I think is a mistake on his exit hand which (result oriented klaxon) cost him dearly. In truth I don't blame Roberto for what he did, I'd have done exactly the same 3 months ago. From a stack of 13-14 bb he made a small open raise with AQo. The idea is, presumably, to induce some shoves (which you call LDO) from weaker hands and provide some balance for the times you want to raise-fold off that stack.
Balance though, as I said last week, can GIFAFI [1] in a TV single table. This is something I was doing for a couple of months online, but I found that on empirical analysis of a few thousand hands, it just wasn't as profitable as jamming. Inducing shoves from a few hands against which you're maybe 60% overall isn't that big a gain, especially in an ICM heavy spot like this one. The real downside of the play is that you give the BB in particular a very cheap option to call pre and stick it in if he flops anything, which is exactly what Luke does with KJ. Luke chooses to bet out on the J22 flop, where I would have check-raised, but it comes to much the same thing.
Turning it round, this is something you can easily do in the Big Blind when someone minraises and effective stacks are small, just call and checkraise jam any pair or draw. It's even better with antes in play. That's all for now, though I will probably talk soon about a book or two I read recently.
Addendum : @Standaman60 on Twitter mentioned the hand where Simon Trumper raise-calls a 3-bet from about 20bb with AK and check-folds a Jack high flop. One thing I'll say about that hand is that if you ask Simon about it, I'm very sure you'll hear the words "I put him on a middle pair". So this line is somewhat more profitable if your "read" is correct but, as I've said before, if it's wrong you could be burning chips. There's no way this line is beneficial against another AK, and against AQ or KQ it's just horrendous.
[1] Although it probably wouldn't FI, being so balanced and everything.
Friday, December 02, 2011
Protect Your Stack, Not Your Hand
I'm finding watching Late Night Poker a little easier to watch if I fast forward through all the dwell-ups. Quicker too. Especially the ones when we know you're going to fold. Seriously. It's better for your image to insta-fold anyway when you're caught bluffing, but I suppose then you don't get so much camera time.
Anyhoo, a moderately interesting hand came up in the last heat. I can't remember stacks exactly, but it doesn't matter for the point I want to make. James Bord opens K9o in the cut-off (fine) and Ram Vaswani flat calls Jacks (probably from around 25bb) in the small blind. I like this play a lot, you can induce a squeeze behind you (it didn't in this case but never mind) or check-raise a whole bunch of flops to leave your opponent with a nasty guess to make. Shoving all in pre lets an aggressive player off the hook here IMO, although 3-betting small to call a 4-bet has its merits. You might argue about balance but I feel balance is an over-rated concept in tournaments at the best of times, let alone in a one-off hundred hand TV single table. And anyway, there is a way I balance it, but I'm not telling you :).
So the flop comes King high, oh well, nothing comes for free and every play has its downside. Ram check-calls James' c-bet which is all standard. Then the turn comes a Queen, so its KxxQ with no flush draw that I remember, if there is it's back door. James now shoves something that looks like about 1.5x the pot [1]. This is a play that I really don't like. A lot of people will say "he's probably got the best hand" and so he can "protect his hand" with the allin bet. Yes, but...
Probably having the best hand is not in itself a reason to bet. If Ram is behind, he has one possible hand with 7 outs (AJ) and a few with 5 outs (AQ, second or third pair) - and he could easily fold some of those on the flop. The rest are 3 outs (worse King) or 2 (underpair like he has). Let's be generous and say 5 on average. James is shoving 1.5x the pot to "protect" the 5/44 of the pot that Ram has equity for if he's behind. Meanwhile if Ram is actually ahead, now James has 5 outs, or 3, or none for the whole lot.
The main reasons to bet are to make a better hand fold or a worse hand call. Now OK, you'd have to be pretty good to call with KT and fold K8 in Ram's seat, but that's not really the issue. If you were to either call both of those hands or fold both of them, then that would be pretty much a wash. With any significantly better or worse hands, Ram is not going to make the wrong decision. It's not the only time I've seen this in the episodes I've watched (so I don't mean to single James out) and I can't blame James and Vicky on commentary for not really explaining this (level one is best for the majority of viewers).
What really rang a bell for me though is that I'm re-reading Gus Hansen's book on Kindle and he does almost exactly the same thing by over-shoving I think QT on a Q high turn. His own justification is the line I use above, that you'd have to be a great player to call QJ and fold Q9, but that (as I suspect Gus knows very well) is not the point. I haven't even mentioned the other possible benefits of checking, viz. that your opponent (Ram in this case) might bluff the river. You are, I should say, usually calling the river after pot controlling in this kind of spot. If the villain bluffs the river then you make more money when you're good as well as not losing the lot when you're behind! And finally (unlikely but still a freeroll) you might be behind and improve to win on the river.
My own summary of this is that any time I catch myself thinking about betting to "protect my hand" in a tournament, I try to think a bit harder. Protect your STACK. That's what's important. Trying to win every pot is going to hurt you if it means that the pots you do lose are much bigger.
[1] I stand corrected if Ram has less than a pot bet left and so effective stacks aren't that high, but that's not how it looks.
Anyhoo, a moderately interesting hand came up in the last heat. I can't remember stacks exactly, but it doesn't matter for the point I want to make. James Bord opens K9o in the cut-off (fine) and Ram Vaswani flat calls Jacks (probably from around 25bb) in the small blind. I like this play a lot, you can induce a squeeze behind you (it didn't in this case but never mind) or check-raise a whole bunch of flops to leave your opponent with a nasty guess to make. Shoving all in pre lets an aggressive player off the hook here IMO, although 3-betting small to call a 4-bet has its merits. You might argue about balance but I feel balance is an over-rated concept in tournaments at the best of times, let alone in a one-off hundred hand TV single table. And anyway, there is a way I balance it, but I'm not telling you :).
So the flop comes King high, oh well, nothing comes for free and every play has its downside. Ram check-calls James' c-bet which is all standard. Then the turn comes a Queen, so its KxxQ with no flush draw that I remember, if there is it's back door. James now shoves something that looks like about 1.5x the pot [1]. This is a play that I really don't like. A lot of people will say "he's probably got the best hand" and so he can "protect his hand" with the allin bet. Yes, but...
Probably having the best hand is not in itself a reason to bet. If Ram is behind, he has one possible hand with 7 outs (AJ) and a few with 5 outs (AQ, second or third pair) - and he could easily fold some of those on the flop. The rest are 3 outs (worse King) or 2 (underpair like he has). Let's be generous and say 5 on average. James is shoving 1.5x the pot to "protect" the 5/44 of the pot that Ram has equity for if he's behind. Meanwhile if Ram is actually ahead, now James has 5 outs, or 3, or none for the whole lot.
The main reasons to bet are to make a better hand fold or a worse hand call. Now OK, you'd have to be pretty good to call with KT and fold K8 in Ram's seat, but that's not really the issue. If you were to either call both of those hands or fold both of them, then that would be pretty much a wash. With any significantly better or worse hands, Ram is not going to make the wrong decision. It's not the only time I've seen this in the episodes I've watched (so I don't mean to single James out) and I can't blame James and Vicky on commentary for not really explaining this (level one is best for the majority of viewers).
What really rang a bell for me though is that I'm re-reading Gus Hansen's book on Kindle and he does almost exactly the same thing by over-shoving I think QT on a Q high turn. His own justification is the line I use above, that you'd have to be a great player to call QJ and fold Q9, but that (as I suspect Gus knows very well) is not the point. I haven't even mentioned the other possible benefits of checking, viz. that your opponent (Ram in this case) might bluff the river. You are, I should say, usually calling the river after pot controlling in this kind of spot. If the villain bluffs the river then you make more money when you're good as well as not losing the lot when you're behind! And finally (unlikely but still a freeroll) you might be behind and improve to win on the river.
My own summary of this is that any time I catch myself thinking about betting to "protect my hand" in a tournament, I try to think a bit harder. Protect your STACK. That's what's important. Trying to win every pot is going to hurt you if it means that the pots you do lose are much bigger.
[1] I stand corrected if Ram has less than a pot bet left and so effective stacks aren't that high, but that's not how it looks.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Still Here (Again)
I think I might start posting a bit more on here, there are a few interesting things I want to talk about. Regarding my own game, I've been completely turning it upside down over the last couple of months. I had a coaching session, which was definitely worthwhile and immediately plugged a few obvious leaks. I stepped down in stakes for a month or two (while still spinning it up on Sundays of course) to try to work on my game.
Recently I've picked the whole thing up and given it a good shake, I've done a lot of analysis with HEM and picked up a remarkable number of clear, systematic leaks. Some of them I will be able to talk about in forthcoming posts, some of them I'd rather keep to myself. I read Clive Woodward's book this week, and while I care little for either Rugby Union or the world of business management, a lot of what he says can be applied to any field in which you are trying to excel. Recommended. One point he stressed was to thoroughly examine those practices that everybody just does because everyone else does and that's how you do it. Check all your assumptions. That's what I've been trying to do, with some interesting results. I also found Jared Tendler's book very interesting and am trying to apply some lessons from that too.
As recent posts on this blog, well recent in terms of scrolling down the page if not in actual time, have been quite focussed on TV poker, a few thoughts on the current state of play. I have been watching some of the current Late Night Poker run and I have to say it's hard work. Vicky and James do an excellent job on commentary but the actual poker, and this applies to much of TV poker lately, suffers because the players are too good!
Allow me to explain. It's not that they are great in a lot of cases, they're just not making very many obvious fishy mistakes. Watching people play <20bb stacks more or less correctly is dull as fuck! I'm not blaming anyone for playing that way, or saying I'd do anything different, but since this format shifted towards higher buyins and smaller fields I think the entertainment value has really suffered. All the fun comes from watching fish disrupt the normal flow by making odd plays, and seeing how the better players cope. Matchroom addressed one end of the problem by having deeper stacks, but in my opinion made a big mistake by effectively excluding weaker players. In the end I think they have realised that the single table tournament format is basically dead and are trying new things instead. Late Night Poker chugs on, but I wonder for how long.
Recently I've picked the whole thing up and given it a good shake, I've done a lot of analysis with HEM and picked up a remarkable number of clear, systematic leaks. Some of them I will be able to talk about in forthcoming posts, some of them I'd rather keep to myself. I read Clive Woodward's book this week, and while I care little for either Rugby Union or the world of business management, a lot of what he says can be applied to any field in which you are trying to excel. Recommended. One point he stressed was to thoroughly examine those practices that everybody just does because everyone else does and that's how you do it. Check all your assumptions. That's what I've been trying to do, with some interesting results. I also found Jared Tendler's book very interesting and am trying to apply some lessons from that too.
As recent posts on this blog, well recent in terms of scrolling down the page if not in actual time, have been quite focussed on TV poker, a few thoughts on the current state of play. I have been watching some of the current Late Night Poker run and I have to say it's hard work. Vicky and James do an excellent job on commentary but the actual poker, and this applies to much of TV poker lately, suffers because the players are too good!
Allow me to explain. It's not that they are great in a lot of cases, they're just not making very many obvious fishy mistakes. Watching people play <20bb stacks more or less correctly is dull as fuck! I'm not blaming anyone for playing that way, or saying I'd do anything different, but since this format shifted towards higher buyins and smaller fields I think the entertainment value has really suffered. All the fun comes from watching fish disrupt the normal flow by making odd plays, and seeing how the better players cope. Matchroom addressed one end of the problem by having deeper stacks, but in my opinion made a big mistake by effectively excluding weaker players. In the end I think they have realised that the single table tournament format is basically dead and are trying new things instead. Late Night Poker chugs on, but I wonder for how long.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Poker Is To Cricket As ...
I'm still here, chugging along. I played a couple of SCOOPs and FTOPS but nothing too serious and am still, in the words of Homer Simpson, trying to "dig up, stupid". I did have an interesting conversation though that I thought might bear repeating.
Richard Gryko used to say that playing a poker tournament was like building an innings in cricket. I'm not totally sold on the comparison but there are some similarities. Now, at this point, this kind of article usually starts talking about cricket and moves on to how we apply that to poker. What is (hopefully) more interesting about this one is that we're doing it the other way round - talking about poker and try to apply the lessons learned from poker to something else, in this case cricket.
If you haven't been following me on Twitter then why not, because I bestride the world of Twitter like a colossus. Or at least I retweet some funny stuff sometimes. But if you have, you will know that I've started playing cricket again. After 8 years out of the game I'm pretty rusty, and I wasn't exactly Ian Botham to start with, but there are few problems that can't be solved by throwing money at them, so I've been having some coaching.
My coach is a smart guy, he's played first class cricket and a little bit of poker as well. We were talking about how I was struggling to take my form in the nets out into the middle. The conversation went something like this :
Coach : When you started playing poker, it was for small money, right?
Me : Yes
Coach : And the first time you played for bigger money, how did you play?
Me : Very tentatively, of course. Shaking so much I could hardly pick up the cards
Coach : But now you're more experienced, do you play any differently for bigger stakes than smaller ones?
Me (light bulb above head starting to come on) : No, no. If anything you have to play more aggressively at higher stakes
Coach : Right! So when you go out to bat in a match, it's like playing for higher stakes. You're more tentative to start with but you know that you have to be as positive as you are in the nets
Me : That's it, yes
Coach : And when you have a big stack, or a small stack, does that change the way you play when you're in the game?
Me : Sure, that's one of the key things that determines your strategy
Coach : So having a big stack or a small stack is like going out to bat when its 80-5 or 200-5, it affects your approach but the basic foundation of the shots (or the plays) is the same
Ding! Going out to bat last Saturday and scoring 1 run off the bat in 45 minutes [1] was like turning up for my first ever £100 Stud tournament in Luton and crapping my pants because Devilfish was playing. It may still take a while for me to do myself justice in a cricket match but at least I know what the problem is mentally and how I can go about overcoming it.
[1] Fortunately the scorebook looked a bit better because I was given four overthrows, and my batting partner was thrashing it everywhere so we put on 70 lol.
Update : My coach has linked to this blog entry from his website, Revolution Coaching. If anyone has found their way here from that site, I do recommend Steve's coaching very highly. I'm currently holding down a place in a team at a higher standard than I've ever played before, I even scored 42 a couple of weeks ago - should have got 50 (bad beat). I wish I could be as positive about poker lol.
Richard Gryko used to say that playing a poker tournament was like building an innings in cricket. I'm not totally sold on the comparison but there are some similarities. Now, at this point, this kind of article usually starts talking about cricket and moves on to how we apply that to poker. What is (hopefully) more interesting about this one is that we're doing it the other way round - talking about poker and try to apply the lessons learned from poker to something else, in this case cricket.
If you haven't been following me on Twitter then why not, because I bestride the world of Twitter like a colossus. Or at least I retweet some funny stuff sometimes. But if you have, you will know that I've started playing cricket again. After 8 years out of the game I'm pretty rusty, and I wasn't exactly Ian Botham to start with, but there are few problems that can't be solved by throwing money at them, so I've been having some coaching.
My coach is a smart guy, he's played first class cricket and a little bit of poker as well. We were talking about how I was struggling to take my form in the nets out into the middle. The conversation went something like this :
Coach : When you started playing poker, it was for small money, right?
Me : Yes
Coach : And the first time you played for bigger money, how did you play?
Me : Very tentatively, of course. Shaking so much I could hardly pick up the cards
Coach : But now you're more experienced, do you play any differently for bigger stakes than smaller ones?
Me (light bulb above head starting to come on) : No, no. If anything you have to play more aggressively at higher stakes
Coach : Right! So when you go out to bat in a match, it's like playing for higher stakes. You're more tentative to start with but you know that you have to be as positive as you are in the nets
Me : That's it, yes
Coach : And when you have a big stack, or a small stack, does that change the way you play when you're in the game?
Me : Sure, that's one of the key things that determines your strategy
Coach : So having a big stack or a small stack is like going out to bat when its 80-5 or 200-5, it affects your approach but the basic foundation of the shots (or the plays) is the same
Ding! Going out to bat last Saturday and scoring 1 run off the bat in 45 minutes [1] was like turning up for my first ever £100 Stud tournament in Luton and crapping my pants because Devilfish was playing. It may still take a while for me to do myself justice in a cricket match but at least I know what the problem is mentally and how I can go about overcoming it.
[1] Fortunately the scorebook looked a bit better because I was given four overthrows, and my batting partner was thrashing it everywhere so we put on 70 lol.
Update : My coach has linked to this blog entry from his website, Revolution Coaching. If anyone has found their way here from that site, I do recommend Steve's coaching very highly. I'm currently holding down a place in a team at a higher standard than I've ever played before, I even scored 42 a couple of weeks ago - should have got 50 (bad beat). I wish I could be as positive about poker lol.
Friday, February 18, 2011
ZOMG! I'm Not Dead!
I'm not even dead in blogging terms. I don't have anything specific to blog about right now but some of you may be wondering why I've been so quiet over the last few months. Particularly why there was no end of year post.
Unsurprisingly, that's partly because I didn't have a great year. I did still make money, and it was still more than I ever made in a regular job, to put things in perspective, but I certainly didn't have anything like as good a year as 2008 or 2009. Looking at Sharkscope I'm on a $50k downswing. Looking back a little further, I'm on a 1500 tournament break even run. But looking back further than that, I made great money in the previous 4000 tournaments.
Make of it what you will. In one way it's the most testing period I've had since going pro, but in another way it's not. What I mean by that is my bankroll is more than robust enough to handle it at this point. If I had broken even in 1500 tournaments straight away, or worse still gone on a $50k downswing (even half of that), I might never have made it at all.
Trying to analyse the situation is very, very difficult because of course variance just swamps everything. I finished 7th in the Party Million in May after taking a beat when even 2nd place would have made it a very good year, and I had a few other spots that could have made a big difference. It's big scores that make the big money and I haven't had one for 18 months and counting. I hope this doesn't come across as complaining, those are the facts, them's the breaks and I definitely had more than my share up to that point.
One positive is that I've been trying a lot of different things over the last few months and have learned a lot by doing that. For example dropping down in stakes and realising that there are still loads of chronically bad players at the 22 rebuy/55 freezeout level. However tough HSMTTs might get, and they are getting tougher there's no doubt about that, there's always the option to step down (even temporarily to regain confidence).
And stepping back I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that I won't ever be a Pocket Fives top 20 superstar. Not even top 100, unless I bink two Sunday majors in quick succession or something like that. You have to put in sick volume to do that, and that's difficult to do in this timezone. I have full respect for Chris Moorman and the other guys who do it, but I think I can take a lot of satisfaction in what I've done while maintaining a life balance, keeping my health and keeping my nose clean, poker-wise. And the start of the day (not the end haha) I can still lie in till 12 whenever I feel like it. Can't be that bad.
Unsurprisingly, that's partly because I didn't have a great year. I did still make money, and it was still more than I ever made in a regular job, to put things in perspective, but I certainly didn't have anything like as good a year as 2008 or 2009. Looking at Sharkscope I'm on a $50k downswing. Looking back a little further, I'm on a 1500 tournament break even run. But looking back further than that, I made great money in the previous 4000 tournaments.
Make of it what you will. In one way it's the most testing period I've had since going pro, but in another way it's not. What I mean by that is my bankroll is more than robust enough to handle it at this point. If I had broken even in 1500 tournaments straight away, or worse still gone on a $50k downswing (even half of that), I might never have made it at all.
Trying to analyse the situation is very, very difficult because of course variance just swamps everything. I finished 7th in the Party Million in May after taking a beat when even 2nd place would have made it a very good year, and I had a few other spots that could have made a big difference. It's big scores that make the big money and I haven't had one for 18 months and counting. I hope this doesn't come across as complaining, those are the facts, them's the breaks and I definitely had more than my share up to that point.
One positive is that I've been trying a lot of different things over the last few months and have learned a lot by doing that. For example dropping down in stakes and realising that there are still loads of chronically bad players at the 22 rebuy/55 freezeout level. However tough HSMTTs might get, and they are getting tougher there's no doubt about that, there's always the option to step down (even temporarily to regain confidence).
And stepping back I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that I won't ever be a Pocket Fives top 20 superstar. Not even top 100, unless I bink two Sunday majors in quick succession or something like that. You have to put in sick volume to do that, and that's difficult to do in this timezone. I have full respect for Chris Moorman and the other guys who do it, but I think I can take a lot of satisfaction in what I've done while maintaining a life balance, keeping my health and keeping my nose clean, poker-wise. And the start of the day (not the end haha) I can still lie in till 12 whenever I feel like it. Can't be that bad.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
ZOMG ! More Premier League !
A TV programme where a bunch of sociopathic egomaniacs who are about 1% as famous as they think they are bitch at each other, recycle their "catch phrases" from 5 years ago and throw hissy fits for our entertainment. Well, 'tis the season. Premier League Heat 2 aired on Monday, the first half of it anyway, and having seen everyone in action we can try to divide the players into two camps : those who have at least some conception that risking all your chips early on is bad (or ICM as we call it in math land) and those who don't, as follows :
Yevgeniy definitely knows what's going on. Roland probably does, although he might not use the term "ICM" in case anyone thinks he's a nerd. Ian, Vanessa and Phil L either have some comprehension of it or are just naturally tighter players.
Luke is probably aware of it but just can't help himself trying to own everyone. David, Daniel, Phil H and Tony G have some combination of no clue and can't help themselves trying to own everyone. God only knows what's going on inside the qualifier's head.
That leaves JC who I can't figure out at this point. He's definitely not scared to bluff people, but so far he's managed to do it without risking his whole stack. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment. I should add though that JC is an excellent hand-reader who is totally fearless in backing his judgement and I have a lot of respect for that.
As usual it's what people say that's as illuminating as what they do. Most of the table is all over David for his "great call" with TT. Cliffs, Tony G opens with 55, David calls with TT, Roland calls with 99 and then Yevgeniy ships I think 20bb with 77. Tony G then makes the kind of play you see in a 10 dollar rebuy online by shipping 100bb with his 55 in the hope that this will get him heads up with Yevgeniy, flipping at best, with about 6bb extra in the pot from the two callers. On your bike in the words of the man himself, although to be fair he does acknowledge it as a mistake afterwards.
So in David's seat, in a winner-take-all situation, good call yes. I'm not going to say great because it's pretty fucking obvious that Tony G doesn't have a massive hand and probably JJ is all he can have that David is behind. In this particular ICM spot, it's a lot more marginal, but with the same assumptions, it's probably OK. Of course in the result-oriented world of TV poker, he called a huge bet without the nuts and was ahead = ZOMG amazing call.
Equally illuminating, in a more subtle way, was half the table mocking Vanessa for "folding AJo under the gun" in the previous heat. Now it depends to an extent on when it happened, but certainly 8-handed 150bb deep I have no problem whatsoever with folding AJ in first position in this event. It's something that Neil pointed out in commentary recently, where a lot of "name players", I think it was Annette in this instance, think they can play any old crap out of position because they can outplay their opponents, which is at best hubris and at worst ridiculous depending who they're up against.
I expect much more ego-comedy in future episodes, not least next week because a Hellmuth meltdown is clearly imminent. Yes alright, this isn't hard to predict from the clips they've already shown. Nonetheless, ain't no meltdown like a Hellmuth meltdown. Perhaps next week he's going to crumple to the floor in an unconvincing mock faint. Unfortunately he's been beaten to the punch there though.
Yevgeniy definitely knows what's going on. Roland probably does, although he might not use the term "ICM" in case anyone thinks he's a nerd. Ian, Vanessa and Phil L either have some comprehension of it or are just naturally tighter players.
Luke is probably aware of it but just can't help himself trying to own everyone. David, Daniel, Phil H and Tony G have some combination of no clue and can't help themselves trying to own everyone. God only knows what's going on inside the qualifier's head.
That leaves JC who I can't figure out at this point. He's definitely not scared to bluff people, but so far he's managed to do it without risking his whole stack. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment. I should add though that JC is an excellent hand-reader who is totally fearless in backing his judgement and I have a lot of respect for that.
As usual it's what people say that's as illuminating as what they do. Most of the table is all over David for his "great call" with TT. Cliffs, Tony G opens with 55, David calls with TT, Roland calls with 99 and then Yevgeniy ships I think 20bb with 77. Tony G then makes the kind of play you see in a 10 dollar rebuy online by shipping 100bb with his 55 in the hope that this will get him heads up with Yevgeniy, flipping at best, with about 6bb extra in the pot from the two callers. On your bike in the words of the man himself, although to be fair he does acknowledge it as a mistake afterwards.
So in David's seat, in a winner-take-all situation, good call yes. I'm not going to say great because it's pretty fucking obvious that Tony G doesn't have a massive hand and probably JJ is all he can have that David is behind. In this particular ICM spot, it's a lot more marginal, but with the same assumptions, it's probably OK. Of course in the result-oriented world of TV poker, he called a huge bet without the nuts and was ahead = ZOMG amazing call.
Equally illuminating, in a more subtle way, was half the table mocking Vanessa for "folding AJo under the gun" in the previous heat. Now it depends to an extent on when it happened, but certainly 8-handed 150bb deep I have no problem whatsoever with folding AJ in first position in this event. It's something that Neil pointed out in commentary recently, where a lot of "name players", I think it was Annette in this instance, think they can play any old crap out of position because they can outplay their opponents, which is at best hubris and at worst ridiculous depending who they're up against.
I expect much more ego-comedy in future episodes, not least next week because a Hellmuth meltdown is clearly imminent. Yes alright, this isn't hard to predict from the clips they've already shown. Nonetheless, ain't no meltdown like a Hellmuth meltdown. Perhaps next week he's going to crumple to the floor in an unconvincing mock faint. Unfortunately he's been beaten to the punch there though.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Premier League IV
The Premier League is back, if you didn't catch last night's episode you can see it on Channel 4 On Demand (UK only). Now I look at that I can see it's been on for 5 weeks already, but that was online qualifiers and Party Pros playing off for the last two seats, and even my life's too short. Now, these are not the best 12 players in the world (even discounting qualifiers), to be fair I don't think anyone involved actually believes that and you can allow them some hype. But it is an interesting line-up with a lot of different styles of play.
So, before we get into hands, we have the commentary. Phil Hellmuth is first up on the mic and that means we are treated to an hour of self-aggrandisement and highly result-oriented analysis, to say the least. First of all Luke Schwartz five-bet shoves 64 on Yevgeniy Timoshenko, who can't call, and Phil is "standing up and saying Wow". Amusingly, he doesn't actually say "Wow", he says "I'm saying Wow". 10 minutes later Phil Laak 4-bet shoves 88 on Ian Frazer, who has Kings, and now Laak has just made the worst play ever, what a donk, etc etc. Naturally Frazer concurs with this analysis in his interview :).
The thing is, in Hellmuth's world, and Frazer's too I suspect, the concept of "range" hasn't yet come to light. When you think about the hand in terms of ranges, of course, Laak is making a fairly standard play against Frazer's three-betting range, in that he expects Frazer to fold some of it and he expects to have reasonable equity against Frazer's calling range, which might be something like [AK, TT], against which 88 is 31%. Now, you can argue that stacks are a bit too deep (Frazer has around 50bb I think), or that Frazer isn't folding much of his 3-bet range (impossible to tell without seeing more gameflow). Conversely, you can argue that Laak has ICM on his side, as he has Frazer well covered and the points system means that ICM is in play here (unlike most TV SNGs). Even so, you could convince me that the play is somewhat -EV because of stack sizes, but the point is that Hellmuth seems to have no idea why Laak made the play.
This comes up throughout, as Hellmuth repeatedly says things like "well JC isn't going to call here .. oh he does call". He's really quite bad at predicting what the players will do in various spots. And my point is that, even if, for the sake of argument, we agree that Phil is right and the other players are all donks, someone who fancies himself so much as a great hand reader (working out someone's hand from their betting action) ought to be a lot better at predicting what players are going to do (working out someone's betting action from their hand).
Well at least we were spared Phil's WSOP commentary where he was, by all accounts, even worse. Going back to the Schwartz-Timoshenko hand, I thought it illustrated an interesting point. Briefly, Vanessa Rousso limps, Timoshenko raises KJ to isolate in position, and Schwartz 3-bets 64o in the blinds. At this point Timoshenko has a decision. IIRC, Schwartz has made it 35k and stacks were about 280k at the start of the hand. With a stack of around 4-5 times the pot, shoving is definitely an option. You can weigh up the merits of shoving vs 4 bet-folding in various scenarios and it's probably quite close until you reach this one : if Schwartz has nothing but is prepared to bluff-jam over a 4-bet, then jamming >>>>>>>>>>>>> 4 bet-folding. That's probably not even enough >s. This kind of spot comes up on 2+2 every now and then and the super-confident regs will generally say "of course you shouldn't shove because 4-betting small achieves the same result if he has nothing ZOMG LDO you donks". I like to call this Devilfish syndrome. If your assumptions are correct then one play is somewhat better, however it could be massively worse if your assumptions are not correct. You can then take your choice between factoring in this uncertainty or calling your opponent a fucking idiot if he does what he shouldn't have.
Then we come on to ICM. The points structure for the heats is 16 to the winner, then 11-8-6-4-3-2-0. Based on these points alone, when play starts each player has a bubble factor of almost exactly 2. In simple terms, if you get all your chips in on hand 1, you need to be a 2-1 favourite to make it +EV. Just to illustrate how huge this is, suppose we're playing, on hand 1 it's passed round to me in the small blind, and I shove without looking. You, in the big blind, know I haven't looked. What hands can you call me with? Have a guess, it's in the footnote at the end [1].
ICM is fucking huge here and it's something that a lot of regs on the internet don't allow for correctly, never mind old-school live pros [2]. Consult Kill Everyone for a lot more detail on the subject. Anyway, in high bubble factor situations there are basically two ways you can approach a hand, either keep the pot small or be the first one to put all your chips in with good fold equity. The problem with the second approach is that you are relying on your opponent to be aware of the situation too ; if he just calls anyway then the two of you are spraying equity to the rest of the field like champagne off an F1 podium. I have decided that you're not generally going to get rich by trusting in opponents to do the right thing, and so I tend to try to keep the pot small in ICM-heavy spots unless I have a sizeable edge.
This comes up in the first elimination hand where Daniel Negreanu is "coolered" by Phil Laak. On the face of it, Negreanu's flippant "what could I do" interview seems fair enough ; he flops bottom two vs middle set about 50 blinds deep. Basically, Frazer raises, Negreanu calls with 65s and Laak calls behind with 66. It comes T65cc, Negreanu bets and now Laak raises, Frazer folds. Negreanu gurble gurbles a bit as per usual and then sticks it in, Laak calls LDO and Daniel gets "the bagel".
Once again we don't have the benefit of knowing gameflow, but Laak is generally on the T side of TAG and I think it's safe enough to say that he isn't bluff-raising this flop, but he could certainly have a big draw. Cutting short the Pokerstove analysis (DIY if you want to know), if we give Laak A-x of clubs (questionably IMO but let's be generous) as well as the sets and the combo draws then Negreanu's equity inches up to 45% which is just about good in chip terms. However, accounting for ICM, it's way short. Way way way short. Certainly I'd have been inclined to have a look at a turn, insta-check-fold a club and then make a decision on anything else. Daniel though is happy enough to say "cooler, what can I do" and walk off whistling. Anything rather than actually admit being, or even ask yourself if you were, wrong.
It's kind of funny that I'm advocating the old "take off a safe card" line compared to Daniel Negreanu's "I go arrr in", but this is what happens when ICM considerations are ignored in favour of the kind of "can't get pushed around, must be table captain" dick-measuring that we can expect from this line-up over the next few weeks. Even if you don't play poker (though why anyone who doesn't play poker would be reading this is beyond me), armchair psychologists can have lots of fun playing "spot the projection". Just as long as they get Hellmuth off the commentary ...
Update: The more I think about that last hand, the more I think Negreanu can actually fold the flop. I know, it sounds insane. However, if you posit that Laak is not bluffing ; has no worse made hand (eg an overpair) ; is never folding the flop or the turn and doesn't have A9cc-A2cc (except A5cc) then we see that Negreanu is 36% on the flop and only about 42% on a safe turn. Put it this way ; to make this even close to a call then you have to overturn those assumptions and say that Laak can be bluffing, or have an overpair, or some weaker flush draws. What it most definitely is not is a shrug-your-shoulders-what-a-cooler-what-could-I-do hand.
Another thing that occurred to me is that starting off with 150bbs and a bubble factor of 2 is a unique situation. You're just never that deep with a high BF in a normal final table situation. This could make for some more interesting spots in the shows to come.
[1] You can call with [88+, AKs]. Yes, AKo is a fold.
[2] To some extent the live pro attitude of "waiting for a better spot" is actually better than the internet style "I only play for first" in high bubble-factor spots, albeit for the wrong reason. The spot in consideration is often simply bad (in terms of $ EV) and so waiting for a better one doesn't even come into it. You could argue (and FredTitmus just did on ICM) argue that this is only semantics, but this falls down when the same live player folds for a better spot with 40 players left, because he just likes folding for a better spot.
So, before we get into hands, we have the commentary. Phil Hellmuth is first up on the mic and that means we are treated to an hour of self-aggrandisement and highly result-oriented analysis, to say the least. First of all Luke Schwartz five-bet shoves 64 on Yevgeniy Timoshenko, who can't call, and Phil is "standing up and saying Wow". Amusingly, he doesn't actually say "Wow", he says "I'm saying Wow". 10 minutes later Phil Laak 4-bet shoves 88 on Ian Frazer, who has Kings, and now Laak has just made the worst play ever, what a donk, etc etc. Naturally Frazer concurs with this analysis in his interview :).
The thing is, in Hellmuth's world, and Frazer's too I suspect, the concept of "range" hasn't yet come to light. When you think about the hand in terms of ranges, of course, Laak is making a fairly standard play against Frazer's three-betting range, in that he expects Frazer to fold some of it and he expects to have reasonable equity against Frazer's calling range, which might be something like [AK, TT], against which 88 is 31%. Now, you can argue that stacks are a bit too deep (Frazer has around 50bb I think), or that Frazer isn't folding much of his 3-bet range (impossible to tell without seeing more gameflow). Conversely, you can argue that Laak has ICM on his side, as he has Frazer well covered and the points system means that ICM is in play here (unlike most TV SNGs). Even so, you could convince me that the play is somewhat -EV because of stack sizes, but the point is that Hellmuth seems to have no idea why Laak made the play.
This comes up throughout, as Hellmuth repeatedly says things like "well JC isn't going to call here .. oh he does call". He's really quite bad at predicting what the players will do in various spots. And my point is that, even if, for the sake of argument, we agree that Phil is right and the other players are all donks, someone who fancies himself so much as a great hand reader (working out someone's hand from their betting action) ought to be a lot better at predicting what players are going to do (working out someone's betting action from their hand).
Well at least we were spared Phil's WSOP commentary where he was, by all accounts, even worse. Going back to the Schwartz-Timoshenko hand, I thought it illustrated an interesting point. Briefly, Vanessa Rousso limps, Timoshenko raises KJ to isolate in position, and Schwartz 3-bets 64o in the blinds. At this point Timoshenko has a decision. IIRC, Schwartz has made it 35k and stacks were about 280k at the start of the hand. With a stack of around 4-5 times the pot, shoving is definitely an option. You can weigh up the merits of shoving vs 4 bet-folding in various scenarios and it's probably quite close until you reach this one : if Schwartz has nothing but is prepared to bluff-jam over a 4-bet, then jamming >>>>>>>>>>>>> 4 bet-folding. That's probably not even enough >s. This kind of spot comes up on 2+2 every now and then and the super-confident regs will generally say "of course you shouldn't shove because 4-betting small achieves the same result if he has nothing ZOMG LDO you donks". I like to call this Devilfish syndrome. If your assumptions are correct then one play is somewhat better, however it could be massively worse if your assumptions are not correct. You can then take your choice between factoring in this uncertainty or calling your opponent a fucking idiot if he does what he shouldn't have.
Then we come on to ICM. The points structure for the heats is 16 to the winner, then 11-8-6-4-3-2-0. Based on these points alone, when play starts each player has a bubble factor of almost exactly 2. In simple terms, if you get all your chips in on hand 1, you need to be a 2-1 favourite to make it +EV. Just to illustrate how huge this is, suppose we're playing, on hand 1 it's passed round to me in the small blind, and I shove without looking. You, in the big blind, know I haven't looked. What hands can you call me with? Have a guess, it's in the footnote at the end [1].
ICM is fucking huge here and it's something that a lot of regs on the internet don't allow for correctly, never mind old-school live pros [2]. Consult Kill Everyone for a lot more detail on the subject. Anyway, in high bubble factor situations there are basically two ways you can approach a hand, either keep the pot small or be the first one to put all your chips in with good fold equity. The problem with the second approach is that you are relying on your opponent to be aware of the situation too ; if he just calls anyway then the two of you are spraying equity to the rest of the field like champagne off an F1 podium. I have decided that you're not generally going to get rich by trusting in opponents to do the right thing, and so I tend to try to keep the pot small in ICM-heavy spots unless I have a sizeable edge.
This comes up in the first elimination hand where Daniel Negreanu is "coolered" by Phil Laak. On the face of it, Negreanu's flippant "what could I do" interview seems fair enough ; he flops bottom two vs middle set about 50 blinds deep. Basically, Frazer raises, Negreanu calls with 65s and Laak calls behind with 66. It comes T65cc, Negreanu bets and now Laak raises, Frazer folds. Negreanu gurble gurbles a bit as per usual and then sticks it in, Laak calls LDO and Daniel gets "the bagel".
Once again we don't have the benefit of knowing gameflow, but Laak is generally on the T side of TAG and I think it's safe enough to say that he isn't bluff-raising this flop, but he could certainly have a big draw. Cutting short the Pokerstove analysis (DIY if you want to know), if we give Laak A-x of clubs (questionably IMO but let's be generous) as well as the sets and the combo draws then Negreanu's equity inches up to 45% which is just about good in chip terms. However, accounting for ICM, it's way short. Way way way short. Certainly I'd have been inclined to have a look at a turn, insta-check-fold a club and then make a decision on anything else. Daniel though is happy enough to say "cooler, what can I do" and walk off whistling. Anything rather than actually admit being, or even ask yourself if you were, wrong.
It's kind of funny that I'm advocating the old "take off a safe card" line compared to Daniel Negreanu's "I go arrr in", but this is what happens when ICM considerations are ignored in favour of the kind of "can't get pushed around, must be table captain" dick-measuring that we can expect from this line-up over the next few weeks. Even if you don't play poker (though why anyone who doesn't play poker would be reading this is beyond me), armchair psychologists can have lots of fun playing "spot the projection". Just as long as they get Hellmuth off the commentary ...
Update: The more I think about that last hand, the more I think Negreanu can actually fold the flop. I know, it sounds insane. However, if you posit that Laak is not bluffing ; has no worse made hand (eg an overpair) ; is never folding the flop or the turn and doesn't have A9cc-A2cc (except A5cc) then we see that Negreanu is 36% on the flop and only about 42% on a safe turn. Put it this way ; to make this even close to a call then you have to overturn those assumptions and say that Laak can be bluffing, or have an overpair, or some weaker flush draws. What it most definitely is not is a shrug-your-shoulders-what-a-cooler-what-could-I-do hand.
Another thing that occurred to me is that starting off with 150bbs and a bubble factor of 2 is a unique situation. You're just never that deep with a high BF in a normal final table situation. This could make for some more interesting spots in the shows to come.
[1] You can call with [88+, AKs]. Yes, AKo is a fold.
[2] To some extent the live pro attitude of "waiting for a better spot" is actually better than the internet style "I only play for first" in high bubble-factor spots, albeit for the wrong reason. The spot in consideration is often simply bad (in terms of $ EV) and so waiting for a better one doesn't even come into it. You could argue (and FredTitmus just did on ICM) argue that this is only semantics, but this falls down when the same live player folds for a better spot with 40 players left, because he just likes folding for a better spot.
