Poker Moth

I’ve been playing a lot of heads-up SNGs, lately; specifically the 4, 16 and 32 player tournaments on Stars. (I currently run good). I mention this because today has been one of those poker days with a theme, namely opponents doing appallingly stupid things, and then calling *me* a donk. For example, it’s the first few hands of an encounter and I make a standard raise on the button with KJ offsuit. My opponent minraises back at me, I call, and the flop comes down KJx rainbow. There’s 200 chips in the pot, and my opponent shoves his remaining 1400 chips in with AQ, and THEN types “omfg donk how do you call preflop with KJ?” (He missed his gutshot, surprisingly). I mean, assuming I wanted to answer that question, where would I start? It’s amazing to think that one player could fuck up so badly, in so many ways, with just three clicks of a mouse, but it’s even more amazing when he then turns around and starts criticizing his opponent…

…I’ve always been fascinated by this sort of behaviour, for three reasons – firstly, it’s always funny to see the terminally deluded rail from the rail, secondly, understanding their motivation is a fast route to understanding the way they play, and thirdly, I always try to remain aware of the fact that I don’t necessarily know everything myself. I’ve blogged about my self-doubt in the past, but I know it’s not a major issue, because I can easily check my results and see that, yes, I am consistently profitable. This always comes as a relief.

ANYWAY, there’s a point to all this. After dispatching Mr Acehighshove, I had some time to kill before the next round started, so I started to read old posts on Ben Goldacre’s excellent Bad Science blog. (If you haven’t already read the whole caboodle from start to finish, I’d recommend doing so immediately). ANYANYWAY, I stumbled across this post, in which Mr. Goldacre discusses the uselessness of drug death statistics, and, more relevantly, links to what he describes as one of his favourite academic papers of all time. It is this -

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments (PDF)

Give it a read. It’s not overly heavy on the psychological mumbo jumbo, and it’s very well written. The conclusions are fascinating, and confirm a lot of my suspicions about the reasons why unsuccessful poker players continue to play the game.

Yeah, yeah, it’s been a long time. I’ve been busy conquering the wonderful world of Badugi.

if you’re unfamilliar with Badugi, it works like this: -

It’s lowball draw poker, with three drawing rounds – just like 2-7 Triple Draw. Unlike 27TD, you get four hole cards. The objective is to make the lowest hand possible, with no shared suits. If you can draw a hand which contains four unpaired cards of different suits, you have a Badugi. If you have paired cards or shared suits, you don’t have a Badugi, and any Badugi will beat you, so Ad 2h 3s 3c will lose to Kd Qh Js Tc. If no-one has a Badugi, the best three card hand will win the pot.

It’s a lot of fun, in and of itself, but what makes it truly fantastic is that no-one knows how to play it. Literally, no-one. The game originated in Korea, (and is sometimes known as Korean poker), and although it’s been spread on a few other sites  (Doyle’s Room offers it, I believe), there’s an incredible lack of information about Badugi strategy on the internet, and some of the strategy articles up there are just plain wrong. This is particularly strange because it’s really not that complicated; once you’ve worked out the basic mechanics of the game, most plays are obvious and automatic. And yet! No-one else seems to have grasped the fundamentals yet, and I am cleaning up.

It’s the wild frontier of poker, or something. There are no books. There are no strategy articles on Full Tilt. It’s the levellest playing-field of all, and if you know what you’re doing, you have a HUGE edge. Currently, Stars are only spreading STTs and 50c/$1 limit ring games, and I’ve been focusing on the STTs; I have a ROI of over 130% across all limits, and better still, I’m showing up on the upper echelons of the weekly leaderboards for low-limit STTs (across all variants) on Stars, which is something I couldn’t get near to playing Hold’em. My best run of form was eleven straight STT cashes, playing $3.40 and $5.50 STTs. ELEVEN! Including six wins. I’ve also had a couple of bad streaks (it can be a punishing game, especially if you get a loose table where you can’t protect a made hand from five or six people drawing at you, which is all too common), but overall I’m running at 75% ITM, which is what scientists are calling pretty sick.

Of course, what with this being frontier poker, and with a fairly small pool of players on Stars, I’m not going to be offering any strategy advice on this blog just yet. After 100 STTs, I reckon I’ve encountered two, maybe three players who have any clue what they’re doing, and I’m quite happy with that situation currently. But I’ll say this – if you have any understanding of the mechanics of draw poker, sit down with a pen and paper and work out the odds on key propositions, such as catching a Badugi card with one draw to come, and the odds of improving a strong two card draw to a hand that can beat an opponent drawing one card (and they draw to all sorts of nonsense; the biggest school of fish are the players who’ll draw one to a Jack, or worse…).

Or… don’t. Leave me alone in my Badugi paradise, please. It’s a completely skill-free game, designed for luckbox chasers, and it’s probably rigged. Yeah, that’s exactly what it is…

I mean, I really am. I totally suck. Or at least, I have been totally sucky for about… ooh. The last 18 months? Maybe more, probably no less.

I realized this last night in a rare moment of self-awareness, brought about by a similarly rare day of playing extremely well.  As I was attempting to banish the adrenaline from my body in an effort to get some sleep, I started thinking about what I’d done differently that day. The answer surprised me; I’d kept a close eye on my opponents, I’d exploited my reads judiciously, and most importantly, I’d taken my time. Well, I’d also tilted like the Titanic on two separate (although mercifully brief and inexpensive) occasions, but over the course of the whole day I was focused and, for want of a better word, professional in my attitude.

This Lidl Epiphany begged another question: “why have I not been doing that before”? And the answer to that one is long and complex, and large chunks of it are far too tedious to go into here (you know, relationship stuff – I’ve flogged that horse too hard for my liking on these pages already). Other parts of the answer are merely quite tedious, so I’m prepared to ride the Catharsis Express on that stuff a little further… I’d stop reading now, if I were you.

SO! Let’s start by making it clear that I haven’t been playing badly, as such – just nowhere near as well as I should. The fundamentals of my game have been solid for years, and that hasn’t changed any; I’m solid preflop, generally solid postflop… you know, all the basic strategy stuff that will stay with me to the grave, much like knowing how to ride a bicycle, or hating Liverpool FC.  I’ve not been losing money, in other words – I’ve just been leaving rather a lot on the table.

How? Mostly by being far too blasé about my game. If I were to draw a graph of how much of a shit I gave about improving my game/playing my absolute best/poker in general, it would start out very high, climb to a peak after about a year, stay there for about another year, and then drop right off… and it would look fairly similar – considerably more extreme, but essentially the same pattern – to a graph of my profits over the same period. Now, that might be a coincidence; it possibly has more to do with the natural progression of my game over the years from weak/passive noob, through tight/aggressive journeyman LHE grinder, to loose-aggressive pushbot spew artist*… but it’s probably not.

And why? Mainly overconfidence in my abilities, coupled with a lack of respect for my opponents, neither of which are particularly awful traits in isolation; I am pretty good, even when I’m not paying attention, and I purposefully play at limits where I know I’m not going to be overmatched much. The problem is that when you combine the two, along with my legendary inherent laziness, you get… more laziness.  And that’s not good for business.

The other problem with overconfidence slash entitlement is that it leads to tilt. I’ve blogged about tilt (and it’s even more ugly sister, table-experthood), before, and it really grinds my gears that, on occasion,  I’ve allowed myself to fall victim to that sort of mentality. I used to claim that I never tilted, and that was true for a good long while – I’d certainly get angry, but I’d walk away from the game and sort my head out before commiting any more clay.  Now, that ability to walk away was a luxury, and one that I’d take full advantage of, often for a week or more, but I can’t afford to take tilt holidays these days.  What I can do is fight off that stupid sense of entitlement that leads to chuntering, grumbling, gnashing and wailing… or at least, I like to think I can. the first step down that path is taking my poker seriously again, paying attention, striving to improve, and obviously shrugging the bad beats off for what they are; ocassional outbreaks of  misfortune which are sent by the poker gods to test me, and not an excuse to chew the furniture.

Obviously, I’ve made a flying start with this resolution – I’ve been playing a tournament while writing this post, ffs. The fact that I’m doing rather well (currently 3rd of 167 remaining, 1005 started, 144 pay) is neither here not there.

Oh, and my next post will not be about my navel, I promise.

* This may be something of** an exaggeration.

**A euphemism for “is unquestionably”

*edit* I finished 5th in the end, notching $263, which isn’t bad considering I started with $70 in that account. Absolutely incredible that I should pull out my best result in a big field tournament for six months following the above post, but there you go – it appears that paying attention really does pay dividends! I played like a god – A GOD, I TELL YOU – for the vast majority of the tournament and was a substantial chipleader from the bubble to the final four tables, but got over-adrenalised following a series of horrible suckouts versus dominated hands when it got down to the last 18. I’m just not used to going that deep in the big field games these days, I guess. Anyway,  encouraging. I’m off to have a bath then knock over some of the smaller tourneys on Betfair and Crypto.

What’s that? You’ve not heard of her?

Ms. Obrestad first came to my attention when I heard Daniel Negreanu talking about her, in awed tones, on High Stakes Poker. What I heard astonished me. This is (roughly) what he said -

“Did you hear about that girl who won the WSOPE? Apparently she’s been winning tournaments online without looking at her hole cards. No, seriously. Completely dark. Just playing purely position, I guess. Only 18 years old. Probably sticks a post-it note on the monitor”.

She started playing online when she was 15, built her bankroll entirely from freerolls, and three years later she’d won the inaugaural WSOP Europe event for $2,000,000, making her the youngest ever winner of a WSOP bracelet (it was also the biggest prize ever won by a woman in WSOP history), and she has a sideline in mindblowingly cool party tricks. I am awestruck. But perhaps not so awestruck that I can’t rip her idea off.

I’m keen to do this for a few reasons; firstly, and most importantly, it will be hugely educational. Secondly, I think I can set it up in such a way that I can blank my cards out without sticking stuff on my monitor, and then record it for the world to see, and thirdly, it’s just so incredibly cool and awesome and wow.

However, if I’m going to play dark, I’m not going in blind. My first attempt will be for play money, and then once I’ve got a feel for it, I’m going to take on a freeroll MTT. We’ll see how that works out before I try playing dark for cash, and I may never get that far; it’s kinda presumptuous of me to think that I have the skills to pull something like this off at all, frankly. We’ll soon find out, and it’ll certainly be interesting.

More news on this to follow. I’m off to have a crack at a playmoney SNG, and test the recording software out…

*edit*

OK. So, before I discuss my own attempt, back to Annette’s win. It was, believe it or not, a $4.40/180 SNG on Stars that she won – my very own bread and butter tournament. And, while there’s no video of this feat, she posted the hand history up to PokerXFactor (a rather nice hand history replayer site, among other things). You can view the game here – linky linky – but you’ll have to register with the site first.

Any doubts about the veracity of her claims are dispelled on the fourth hand of the tournament, where she folds KK under the gun. It’s really weird to see; it just looks so wrong.

One other thing to note – she claims that she looked at her cards once, when an opponent had pushed all-in at her. I’m guessing that’s very late in the tournament (I’ve only watched a quarter of it so far). One peek in 343 hands is pretty good going, though.

As for my own experiment… well, I’ve quickly realised that, just like non-dark poker, play money is completely pointless for anything other than acclimatizing to the table conditions. Briefly, I entered a 45 player NLHE SNG (for 300+20 play chips, if you care… incidentally, why do they rake these?), did nothing on the first orbit, then limped (WEAK) on the button in a multiway pot on the second orbit. The flop came down 778 with two spades, and the player in second last position minbet at it. Looked like a good spot to me, and I raised the pot, and only the minbetter called. She was shortstacked anyway, so I ended up shoving my chips in after a jack and a second 8 came on 4th and 5th street, with no help for the flush draw. She had the 7, and that was half my stack gone. No real complaints about that.

It was the second confrontation that reminded me why play money games aren’t the best environment for making moves. Again, I limped from the button, pushed the K94 rainbow flop after it was checked to me, and was called by… 62 offsuit! Who then hit his deuce on the turn and knocked me out. (I had Q8, apparently). He hadn’t even seen my apparently mental play with ten high earlier: I’d been moved to a different table immediately afterwards. He just thought he’d call me with six high and no draw. And I don’t think the pot odds had much to do with it.

So, two things are apparent. One: This isn’t going to work at play money, I either put my money where my mouth is or give it a miss. $1.10 STTs look like being the best place to practice. Two: I need to study that Annette_15 hand history file, and learn from the master.

More on this tomorrow, probably. I’m going to have another stab at the $20k now. *update* unsuccessful; played really well for an hour, then stacked off with TT against a player who my notes said I should not call under any circumstances. Especially not when he’s holding KK, obv. An extremely foolish and totally avoidable mistake, but that stupid blowup aside, it seems like my study of the dark arts is having some interesting positive effects on my positional play. We’ll see how it develops.

Ever read Alan N Schoonmaker’s Psychology Of Poker? No? You should, it’s excellent. Schoonmaker’s shtick is to outline four different types of poker player, (Loose Aggressive, Loose Passive, Tight Passive and Tight Aggressive), explain why they play the way they do, and then explain how the reader can change their playing style to the One True Style, the tight aggressive ideal, assuming they’re not TAG already. It’s a fascinating read, and particularly good for players who are just starting out.

Of course, there’s more to poker psychology than betting patterns. You can classify poker players into various categories, but the problem is that making glib generalisations about your opponents based on certain aspects of their behaviour can be a risky business. However, there’s one group of players who can be psychoanalysed and pigeonholed relatively safely, and that’s the table expert. I’ve been studying these loudmouthed feckers for some considerable time now, and I’ve come to some solid conclusions, which I’m very generously going to share with you, the non-existent readers of my blog.

First up – a quick definition. Table experts are the people who volunteer opinions on how others have played their hands. They’ll usually be criticising the “worst” player at the table. Play online, at any level, for more than an hour or two and you’re all but guaranteed to run into at least one, if not several. And when you encounter one, you can draw some immediate conclusions about them.

1. They lose money.

2. They’ve read a book. Sometimes more than one.

3. They’ll play predictable ABC poker before the flop. They’re completely hopeless postflop.

4. They’re very, very prone to tilt.

You see, the reason why the table expert behaves the way he (female table experts are rare) does is because they believe they should be winning money. They’ve read a book, see? They know what hands you’re allowed to play, and what hands are STRICTLY FORBIDDEN, and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, they don’t win money. They lose it. And it makes them angry and bitter.

Most normal poker players realise that when someone’s playing badly, the last thing you should do is announce, as loudly as possible, “LOOK! LOOK! THAT PERSON IS PLAYING BADLY!”. This is because most normal poker players would rather their opponents played badly, as that improves the chances that you’ll win their money. Seems obvious, yes?

However, table experts have other priorities. They’ve read a book, they’ve memorised a chart of starting hand requirements, and yet they’re still losing money. To the table expert, this is inexplicable; they cannot for the life of them understand why they’re not living on a beach in Costa Rica surrounded by coke and hookers. They will quickly arrive at one or both of the following conclusions.

1. Online poker is rigged.

2. They’re losing because there are too many players who aren’t playing properly.

And bearing the above in mind, they quickly realise that it’s not their fault that they’re losing, and before long their dreams of a Costa Rican cokewhore lifestyle are replaced by an entirely different objective; to demonstrate how much they know about the game by telling everyone else how badly they’re playing, which somehow makes the table expert feel better about the dollars these “bad” players are taking from him.

*pauses, reads previous paragraphs back*

Hmm, hardly an objective psychological appraisal, is it? But you get the gist, and while the above may read like a horribly subjective rant (alright, IS a horribly subjective rant), it’s backed up by research. For several months, I’ve looked up every table expert I’ve come across on OPR. I haven’t been keeping a tally (I’ve got enough stuff open on my underpowered computer when I’m playing without adding a bloody spreadsheet to the mix), but I’d estimate that a bare minimum of 95% of the experts I OPR’d were losers. Most of them heavy losers.

And, of course, I talk to them. This always starts off with me politely requesting that they stop playing Teacher, and usually descends into an argument. (Table experts don’t take well to people challenging their authority, and while I happily admit to being an overbearing arrogant sod, I’m always careful to be ever-so-polite when I’m talking to these fools. It’s very rare that I’ll get a polite response, though). And whenever I can get the table expert to rise above gratuitous cackhanded insults, they almost always reveal themselves to be bitter losers who genuinely believe that their losses are someone else’s fault.

How can you take advantage of this? Well, as mentioned above, table experts are almost always tight preflop, and generally incapable of laying down a strong hand postflop. Implied odds for draws go through the roof against table experts, who seem to view flush chasing as being morally equivalent to ritualized Satanic child abuse, and love to call a flushed board so they can get that satisfying rush of indignation, mingled with the bonus high of knowing they were right all along; if it weren’t for the fish, they’d be winners, but it’s all rigged anyway, so who cares?!

In short, these people are poker’s answer to Daily Mail readers; they want to be outraged, and they’re happy to pay money for the privilege. Don’t disappoint them!