Attitude Adjustment

Life is what happens to you
while you're busy making other plans.            John Lennon

www.kiwiology.co.nz
   A few months ago I decided to take a month's break from poker. This was in the middle of a prolonged downswing. My results changed from very good to very bad from April this year, and looked set to continue downhill indefinitely. Something similar happened about the same time last year and my winning margin had turned into a losing margin by the end of the year. In an effort to prevent this from happening again, I called a time out. I had become increasingly frustrated with my sudden change of fortune and figured that taking a break would do me good.
   Although I spent the time reading up on poker strategy and thinking about how to improve my game, I didn't actually play any poker during that period. It was actually surprising to me how easy it was to go a month without poker games. Although I missed playing, I managed to find plenty of things to fill my time; things I used to do before my poker obsession started. By the time that I returned to the game I was feeling refreshed and ready to play.
   But my plan to break my losing streak didn't work. I continued to lose in my online poker games in a fairly consistent manner. In fact, in July I had a run of 15 online SitnGo games without cashing even once. The Seven Card Stud games were just as bad, with a steady run of bad results, albeit at very low buy-in levels. But this time around, the string of losses didn't bother me. Each time I lost I just brushed it off and carried on. No worries. At first I figured that this new-found attitude would wear off in time, but it didn't. It appears to be a permanent attitude adjustment. Although my live poker tournament results were a bit better, the new attitude was also evident when things didn't work out. In my second live game, when I was in the top seven players and went all-in with pocket aces, only to be knocked out by someone who called me with Q2 offsuit, I just shook his hand and walked off with a smile. No worries.

   I've been trying to put my finger on what it is that's had such a drastic effect on my way of approaching the game. The more I think about it, the more I come to the realisation that it's about expectations. I think that one of the things that got me so annoyed about my poor form earlier was the contrast with the previous period of very good results. Since the beginning of the year my bankroll had been increasing slowly but steadily and I'd come to the conclusion that I'd finally figured out how to play SitnGos successfully. Going on a losing run even though I hadn't changed my strategy was a bit of a shock to the system. But coming back into the game, although I hoped to start winning again, I wasn't expecting to.
   On reflection, this all goes back to the time when I first started taking the game seriously. When I first started reading about poker it was something of a revelation that there were actually people who could make a living out of playing poker. I think it was always in the back of my mind that if I got good enough, I could be one of those people. As a result, I became very results driven. Even a casual look at my previous posts shows a pre-occupation with my results and the size of my bankroll. So whenever I posted a few losses it was a big problem and the more I tried to analyse my way out of the hole the worse my play got. It wasn't about the game anymore, but about the results.
   Having a break from poker has given me a new sense of perspective. I'm now much more relaxed about the games. I'm no longer obsessing about whether my bankroll is increasing and drawing graphs of my progress. That doesn't mean that I don't care about winning, just that I care less about losing. Most importantly, I'm enjoying playing like I used to and am focused on the game itself rather than the results. Of course I still try to improve my game and play as well as I possibly can. Playing poker is such a terrific challenge and there is always something new to learn. So that's what I concentrate on: learning to play the game as well as I possibly can and letting the results take care of themselves.

Going Live

      Today I might be mad,
      Tomorrow I'll be glad,
      I've got Friday on my mind.      The Easybeats

   As mentioned in my previous post, I've discovered a weekly live Texas Holdem tournament. This tourney is on a Friday night, and costs $20 to enter. My wife and I found out about this in late June and we've played five weeks in a row since then, although we're probably going to give it a miss this week as we have a pool competition on Saturday that starts quite early. If you make the money in this tourney (usually the top five) you're probably going to get home close to midnight. Typically there are 20 to 25 players involved, which means a total prize pool of around $500. So far I've finished 18th, 7th, 3rd, 6th and 5th, leaving me $20 down overall. I'm reasonably happy with this result although I think I need to work on my endgame a bit to get a better payout when I make the money.
   I'm impressed with the professional way in which this tourney is run. Firstly, it invariably starts on time, at 7pm. When I used to play in a tournament at a pub a couple of years ago, their 7pm start time usually became 8pm or later. The current tourney organisers also use tournament management software, displaying all the relative information on a big screen for everyone to see. It's good to be able to look up and see when the next break is, when the blinds go up next and by how much, how many players are left in, what the average stack size is and so on. Also, they usually manage to find someone to do the dealing once the numbers get down to the last three or four. I discovered last week that ten percent comes out of the prize pool for a charitable donation. This is a requirement under New Zealand's gaming laws, and is not much different from the standard ten percent game fee of most online tournaments. So overall, a very good event to be involved with.
  After playing online for so long, I didn't realise how much I missed playing live poker until I started up with this game. There's just nothing like sitting around a table with real live people, peeking at your hole cards and stacking up your chips. Although it's taken me awhile to get used to the duties of live play. You have to remember to post the blinds, not to act out of turn, to announce your raise, not make string bets and to refrain from commenting on the cards while the they are still in play, among other things. Unlike playing on a computer, you've got to do it all yourself.
   The people who play in this tournament are a pretty good bunch, all very friendly and have welcomed us into their game without reservation (even though my wife and I are not even members of their club - yet). Many of them have been playing for a while and know each others' play quite well. But I haven't come across anyone with a particularly intimidating playing style. Play is generally pretty loose and passive, especially in the early stages. For most of the players, it's all about the draw. Of course, being a club, there is a fair bit of drinking going on by some of the players, myself included. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that my lack of top two finishes has something to do with the cumulative effects of alcohol consumption, so I guess I'd better cut back a bit.
   Apart from this weekly tourney, we got involved in a monthly Texas Holdem tournament that involves a number of different clubs. This is a teams competition that is played once a month on a Sunday. Each club puts up an eight player team and they all play in a $20 entry tourney. Each person plays individually, in the usual way, but they also get points for their team, based on the position they finish in. Apparently some of the prize money goes into a separate pool that is paid out to the highest-scoring teams at the end of the year. As individual, non-team players can also participate, my wife and I both entered and played in this game. Oddly enough, it was held at our home club. It turns out that the poker players from our home club had been entering teams in this competition for some time, but this was the first time we'd ever heard about it. Anyway, my wife and I both went deeper into this tourney than any of our RSA team players managed, and I ended up making the top three out of a total of 59 players. We three split the prize pool and I walked away with $200. Nice.
   Despite this success, I'm not sure if I'll play in this monthly game again. A big chunk of the prize pool goes into the end-of-year pool, which amounts to a pretty big rake unless you are in a team and play in every tourney. Even then, any end-of-year payout would depend on how well your team-mates did. I just don't see poker as a team sport.
   But I will definitely be turning up at the Workingman's Club most Friday nights for the weekly poker tourney. My immediate goal is to take out first place and get a decent payout. But regardless of the results, even if I come up with a string of poor results, I think my Friday nights are booked for quite a while.

News Briefs

        What's the buzz?
        Tell me what's a-happening.           Jesus Christ Superstar

    Having taken a one month break from poker play in an effort to break my most recent losing streak, I am now back in the game. Although I haven't been playing poker, I've still been keeping in touch with the poker world in various ways:

SECRETS OF SITNGOS. I went down to the local library and got myself a poker book to study: Secrets of Sitngos. This was the only book I could find that dealt specifically with SitnGo tournaments, and I found it to be moderately useful. As usual it was aimed mainly at higher-level players but there were a few ideas that I found to be of interest. I particularly liked the end section, where particular scenarios were put forward and the reader was given the opportunity to answer a multiple choice question on what to do next. However much of the book was based on a theory called the Independent Chip Model or ICM, a mathematical model based on the assumed real-money value of tournament chips in different situations. This mathematical stuff went pretty much completely over my head and frankly, if being a good player in SitnGos is dependant on applying complex mathematical hand analysis, I guess I'll just have to keep swimming with the other fish.

POKER ON TV. I'm still watching Poker after Dark and The Big Game each week. In fact my wife and I have got into the habit of watching these shows over breakfast on Saturday and
Sunday mornings. The new 'loose cannon' (the amateur player) on The Big Game is doing pretty well, especially after doubling up through Phil Hellmuth. He's so far ahead of the other contenders now that he's basically shut up shop. He even folded pocket aces at one stage in order to preserve his big stack. Meanwhile I've found yet another poker show playing on Thursdays. This one covers the Aussie Millions tournament and one of the commentators is Aussie poker pro Joe Hachem. His comments about the play and what he thinks the players are going to do, or what they should do, are always interesting and insightful.

POKER SCHOOL. I also checked out the Poker Stars Poker School which looks to be a useful tool for learning about correct poker play. However I only read the first few sections, as I wanted to concentrate on the SitnGo book. I will get back to it sometime soon, but for now I'm concentrating on actually playing.

WSOP. The World Series of Poker is now in full swing and I've been checking out some of the results on www.wsop.com .  It's nice to be able to go to the website and see who's winning or losing in different events. They're even streaming some of the final tables live, with commentary. Last year they showed the Main Event live (delayed by about 10 minutes actually) on ESPN. I don't know if they're doing that again this year, but I think Day One starts tomorrow, so I'll be keeping an eye out. Actually, I may be approaching saturation point for Poker TV programmes.

LIVE TOURNEY. After searching high and low I've finally found a decent live poker tournament. It turns out that the Workingman's Club just up the road from the RSA where I usually hang out has been running a Texas Holdem Tournament every Friday night for the last three years. This tourney is $20 entry, no rebuys, no add-ons, no extra chips; just what I've been looking for. The entry fee is technically beyond my buy-in limit but I'm willing to bend my buy-in rules for the sake of being able to play in a live tourney. My wife and I have played for the last three weeks and intend to continue going up there pretty much every week. The first week I was eliminated 16 out of 18, week two I came in 7th and this week I made 3rd out of 26 and made my three buy-ins back.

NEW CONCEPTS. The book I previously mentioned introduced me to three new poker concepts.
   The ICM. The Independent Chip Model basically tells you how to act based on your chip stack and that of your opponents and a number of other factors. Apparently you can get software that does the calculations for you. I'm not really interested in going down this road. I had enough maths in school.
   Sharkscope. This is a website that gathers information on online players. You go to www.sharkscope.com , type in a player's username, and get a lot of information on their results from the tournaments they've played online. This could be potentially quite useful. I went to the site and discovered that 888 poker doesn't allow this sort of data mining so there is no info available for 888 players.  So I tried typing in my own username for Pokerstars, as I've played a couple of SitnGos on that site. The info that came up said that I'd played 1 SitnGo and 1 Omaha Pot-limit Tournament. I've never played an Omaha tournament in my life, so I guess the information available on this site is not entirely accurate.
    ROI. I've seen players refer to 'return on investment' before, as a measure of success in games, but never paid much attention to it. But having it explained in the SitnGo book has made me realise that it is a much better way of measuring poker success than my current method. It's very simple. ROI is just a measure of the amount won (or lost) as a percentage of the amount 'invested'. This provides a useful measure of results regardless of the buy-in level. I will definitely be re-assessing my record-keeping to accommodate this new concept.

NEW ATTITUDE. The online games I've played so far since my break have yielded very poor results. It seems that my losing streak is still alive and well, as far as online games go anyway. But the difference is that it's not bugging me anymore (at least not so far). I've come back into the game with a whole new attitude. Maybe I was getting so worked up over losing before because it was in contrast to my previous good results. Now, even though I'm losing consistently, and have actually dropped down a couple of levels in my SitnGos, I accept my losses with good humour and just keep trying. I seem to have gained a sense of perspective on my poker play that I didn't have before and I think that I will be re-assessing my whole approach to the game. But more on that later...