Every now and then you find yourself in a live game with a couple of experts who must've gotten lost on their way to the interwebs. And although any sane person's response is to pull on some diapers cause there will be some shiteing-in-you-pants moments of awe, it's also instructive to contemplate what they do differently from us mere mortals whilst you're rummaging around in your murse for a wetwipe.
We're all familiar with the stereotype of the internet kid as the brash, loud, obnoxious barely-post pubescent kid who's just dying to tell the dealer 'tits or gtfo'. And although there is a small-but-distinct subset of the population that live up to this stereotype (many of whom just need a few years to grow into themselves), the vast majority of the guys you meet (and they are overwhelmingly guys, still, my darlings) are more-or-less polite, well reasoned kids who really, really fucking know their shit.
Livepros, when you get them to be candid, like to talk about how these kids lack some of the 'essential skills' of making it in the 'live game' (as if winrate somehow isn't the primary one), but I'm pretty sure they're wrong. And while we can talk about mechanics of whatever the actual game in question itself is, or wax poetoic about just who is better equipped to adjust to shifting aggression and ranges between the live and the interweb, let's look at the head-game for a seccie here kiddos.
Live players tilt. Online players tilt. And while there is some ineffable component of tilt that is personality-driven, there is a still a significant component that is totally experiential.
People have long talked about how playing hundreds of thousands of hands in your still-nascent poker lifetime makes you better at the nuts and bolts of poker, because you have seen similar situations before and novel situations are where you are more likely to make novel mistakes. But what people don't talk about is how, over the course of those hundreds of thousands of hands you've also experienced the sequential stringing together of thousands of independent events.
This means that you have also experienced patterns in the somewhat stochastic process of 'running bad' or 'running good'. Humans, as a species, are not good at intuiting statistical randomness; we're a pattern-matching species. Which means we are very very good at finding signal where there is really only noise. And worse, we have emotional responses to those false signals. If you have no experience with what those pseudo-signals look like you are much more likely to react to them in ways that are not healthy for your bankroll.
Have you ever seen a live player just lose it over losing twelve bets, or a buy in, or even a pot? What about live players who enter 'downswings' of 100 bets and make terrible terrible adjustments to their games because they just can't possibly be running this badly and they must be doing something wrong, or who stop c-betting because they never hit, or who just torch whole buyins on fire because they are running badly over 100. hand. samples.
Now online players do these things too. But the distinct difference is that there is a magnitude-scale difference in the pain tolerance of anyone who has had any longevity online. Because 100 bet downswings happen in fast succession and having emotional responses to them will literally torch your roll in the relatively tougher online games. Because you see units of 100 hands so quickly that the pain is come and gone really quickly.
What has functionally happened is that the kids with millions of hands under their belts have first-handedly experienced more possible sequential permutations of the random combinations of the three outcomes of each individual hand: win, lose, or break even. It's tolerance plain and simple.
So what does this translate to when one of these lost experts wanders into, say a live midstakes limit holdem game populated with fishies? It means that even tho they're running horrifyingly badly by any live player standard, they're calm. Stuck three racks? lol 30 bet downswing. Frenzied spewing? Not here. Worst ever table captain starts taunting them (literally taunting them) because they haven't won a single pot they've three bet with a range that is so much ridiculously stronger than the fields? They just smile, laugh, make a joke about how it's too late to stop now, and just keep playing their A game.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Triple draw is a stupid game
I love duece to seven. I'm pretty much a nooblet to the game, but it's one of the few non-hold'em poker variants that I find consistently compelling. And while its NL variant, the 2-7 single draw, is a really interesting game, what's really taken off 'round these parts (and the rest of the country if the interwebs is any indication) is is the fixed-limit triple draw version of the game.
And while you see some wacky stuff in the small-stake online games, it doesn't even come close to the festival of drawing to the only marginally 9875 that happens in the live mid-stakes games.
Which is why one particular orbit I played in an HOT mix game the other day was particularly funny. One walker, so we're six-handed, and I make, in no particular order:
Three 86's
The old number five (85432)
and the 76542 (which would be number four).
With the exception of the 7, all of these hands were pat after the first or second draw. In all of these pots (some of which were multiway) someone check-raised me out of position and then proceeded to draw at least one card. This is particularly entertaining when the count on the draw has gone 2:1, because that's pretty much like going "I caught up to maybe even drawing-wise! I hope they're not pat!". In short, if you're a fan of reverse freerolling yourself, this would be the primary weapon in your arsenal.
Unfortunately, 2-7 is sort of like Soviet Russia: sometimes the reverse freeroll rolls you.
In other words, lol variance.
On the plus side, later in the session, I got to call after the last draw with a Q5432, in a spot where villain was was more polarized than a magnet.
Pots won during the orbit of doom?: 0
Bets torched? ~30
Announcing "queen perfect"? Priceless.
And while you see some wacky stuff in the small-stake online games, it doesn't even come close to the festival of drawing to the only marginally 9875 that happens in the live mid-stakes games.
Which is why one particular orbit I played in an HOT mix game the other day was particularly funny. One walker, so we're six-handed, and I make, in no particular order:
Three 86's
The old number five (85432)
and the 76542 (which would be number four).
With the exception of the 7, all of these hands were pat after the first or second draw. In all of these pots (some of which were multiway) someone check-raised me out of position and then proceeded to draw at least one card. This is particularly entertaining when the count on the draw has gone 2:1, because that's pretty much like going "I caught up to maybe even drawing-wise! I hope they're not pat!". In short, if you're a fan of reverse freerolling yourself, this would be the primary weapon in your arsenal.
Unfortunately, 2-7 is sort of like Soviet Russia: sometimes the reverse freeroll rolls you.
In other words, lol variance.
On the plus side, later in the session, I got to call after the last draw with a Q5432, in a spot where villain was was more polarized than a magnet.
Pots won during the orbit of doom?: 0
Bets torched? ~30
Announcing "queen perfect"? Priceless.
Friday, March 18, 2011
When you read you begin with ABC; when you runbad you begin with OMG
This may seem like a strange way to start a poker blog; no intro, no about me, just jumping directly into the evilest of evils, the unholy of unholies... the downswing. The silver lining, at least, is that like all great art, we're driven by pain ;p, and downswings provides ample fodder for discussion.
There are strategies for dealing with downers, there are things you can do to make sure you keep playing your a-game, there are bankroll management guidelines that you'll have to apply during the really bad ones, and sometimes you just have to complain (though, caveat emptor: that's never productive. As the whiner or the whinee).
But no matter what you do, you probably should start at the very beginning-- it is, after all, a very good place to start. And with that in mind, I give to you, not-so-gentle reader, an ontogeny of downswings (with apologies to Shakespeare).
The Babies
These are the downswings that are relatively little. Like a new born babe, there may be some mewling, but eventually the downswing just spits up on you and then goes to sleep, leaving you in (relative) peace.
Subtypes:
The "OMG I lost a rack"
The tiniest of downswings shouldn't even really be considered one, except for the legions of live players players that drop their twelve-and-a-half bets and are snap on lifetilt. When you string these together across multiple sessions, you have a teenager (see below).
The "Bloops I lost 50 bets"
These are the online 6-max equivalents of "the rack". They're so frequent, and so standard, that they don't even really merit consideration. Except when that's all you really ever do. If you're not upticking ever, even within your HEM/PT graph, you should probably rethink some things.
The "Buy In"
Also known as 'standard' in NLHE parlance. Someone will probably punch you if you call it a 'downswing'. Other variants include bubbling one or two tournaments in a row. Suck it up, and buy yourself some ice cream. Unless it's the Main Event. Then you can legitimately throw a pity party. For a week.
The "I lost 50 bets/3 buy ins/a normal day of PLO but now I'm even"
This is not a downswing. Seek counseling.
The School Boy
When your downswing grows up a little bit it's a lot like a kid just on it's way to school: looks proimising, but then it skins its knee, brings you a pretty picture that looks strangely like a graph that goes down and to the right, and then spits up on you and goes to sleep, leaving you in (relative) peace, again.
Subtypes:
The Bad Day:
These are the down swings that show up in the middle of otherwise bucolic stretches of rungoot, but make you question your sanity. Somehow, you torched five buyins doing nothing particularly different, out of line, or otherwise wrong. Somehow, you lost 150 bets 4 tabling online but every single spot was completely standard.
The "Where did all the fishes go?"
On top of the bad day, you lost 30 bets each to a 90/15 on three different tables. Inconceivable! And then they went away. (I do not think that means what you think it means).
The Teenager/Soldier
Sometimes it drinks too much, and then throws up on you (again). Unfortunately, it's also cranky and hungover in the morning.
Subtypes:
In addition to constant repeats of the School Boy (what teenager doesn't revert tantrum-like?) you are also being combo-punched in the gut by:
The "AGAIN?"
You're well into multiple sessions and or tens of thousands of hands (pick your poison. Not literally. Please). Every day is more of the same. Your W$SD is dropping more and more every session you play. Ace high is never good. Middle pair is never good. Top pair is never good. SD/FD combos never appear. You shove with the nuts. Somehow you do not have the nuts.
The (there is no) Justice
When nothing you do works. You consider throwing up on yourself, just to break the monotony.
On top of the Teenager, you are also subject to further indignity, in the form of the following Subtypes:
The "Fish is Challenging you to HU regularly"
You aren't winning this one. I know you should, but you just aren't going to. Your opponent is going to find every arcane combination of bizaroland spew human possible, is going to run into the top of your range non-stop, and is still going to find a way to win the pot. Over. And over. Again.
The "Someone has a case of the Mondays, and it's every. f*%$ing. day."
Self-explanatory. Now leave me alone, before I take a baseball bat to your office equipment.
The Old Man
You've pretty much weathered all the runbad in the world, and at this point, like the runbad's namesake, are just waiting to die. Upside: your downswing now has to change your diapers, instead of the other way around.
Subtype:
The "I don't even really give a s*%# anymore"
On the plus side, you have now achieved a Zen-like state even Tommy Angelo would envy. On the downside, you're wondering just how comfy a cardboard box would be as a sleeping arrangement. You've already lost with the nut full-house twice. Today. You laugh, although everyone is a little afraid you've just gone round the bend. But you're still playing some semblance of your A-game so at least you've got that to hold on to. And in 50,000 more hands, maybe you'll get to win again too!
The "I don't even really give a s*%# anymore, and I'm going to tell everyone"
Almost exclusively the domain of the actual very old (and very cranky), who have 'been running bad' for so long you might actually have shoes older than the last pot they dragged (or online, they're over 28). Difficult to distinguish between actual runbad and "the game has passed them by".
Return of the Mewling Babe
This downswing is so deep, so encompassingly frustrating, that it reduces grown men (and women) back to the mewling babes from which they come. Luckily, you're almost guaranteed a reincarnation... sooner or later.
Next week: a taxonomy of tilters.
There are strategies for dealing with downers, there are things you can do to make sure you keep playing your a-game, there are bankroll management guidelines that you'll have to apply during the really bad ones, and sometimes you just have to complain (though, caveat emptor: that's never productive. As the whiner or the whinee).
But no matter what you do, you probably should start at the very beginning-- it is, after all, a very good place to start. And with that in mind, I give to you, not-so-gentle reader, an ontogeny of downswings (with apologies to Shakespeare).
The Babies
These are the downswings that are relatively little. Like a new born babe, there may be some mewling, but eventually the downswing just spits up on you and then goes to sleep, leaving you in (relative) peace.
Subtypes:
The "OMG I lost a rack"
The tiniest of downswings shouldn't even really be considered one, except for the legions of live players players that drop their twelve-and-a-half bets and are snap on lifetilt. When you string these together across multiple sessions, you have a teenager (see below).
The "Bloops I lost 50 bets"
These are the online 6-max equivalents of "the rack". They're so frequent, and so standard, that they don't even really merit consideration. Except when that's all you really ever do. If you're not upticking ever, even within your HEM/PT graph, you should probably rethink some things.
The "Buy In"
Also known as 'standard' in NLHE parlance. Someone will probably punch you if you call it a 'downswing'. Other variants include bubbling one or two tournaments in a row. Suck it up, and buy yourself some ice cream. Unless it's the Main Event. Then you can legitimately throw a pity party. For a week.
The "I lost 50 bets/3 buy ins/a normal day of PLO but now I'm even"
This is not a downswing. Seek counseling.
The School Boy
When your downswing grows up a little bit it's a lot like a kid just on it's way to school: looks proimising, but then it skins its knee, brings you a pretty picture that looks strangely like a graph that goes down and to the right, and then spits up on you and goes to sleep, leaving you in (relative) peace, again.
Subtypes:
The Bad Day:
These are the down swings that show up in the middle of otherwise bucolic stretches of rungoot, but make you question your sanity. Somehow, you torched five buyins doing nothing particularly different, out of line, or otherwise wrong. Somehow, you lost 150 bets 4 tabling online but every single spot was completely standard.
The "Where did all the fishes go?"
On top of the bad day, you lost 30 bets each to a 90/15 on three different tables. Inconceivable! And then they went away. (I do not think that means what you think it means).
The Teenager/Soldier
Sometimes it drinks too much, and then throws up on you (again). Unfortunately, it's also cranky and hungover in the morning.
Subtypes:
In addition to constant repeats of the School Boy (what teenager doesn't revert tantrum-like?) you are also being combo-punched in the gut by:
The "AGAIN?"
You're well into multiple sessions and or tens of thousands of hands (pick your poison. Not literally. Please). Every day is more of the same. Your W$SD is dropping more and more every session you play. Ace high is never good. Middle pair is never good. Top pair is never good. SD/FD combos never appear. You shove with the nuts. Somehow you do not have the nuts.
The (there is no) Justice
When nothing you do works. You consider throwing up on yourself, just to break the monotony.
On top of the Teenager, you are also subject to further indignity, in the form of the following Subtypes:
The "Fish is Challenging you to HU regularly"
You aren't winning this one. I know you should, but you just aren't going to. Your opponent is going to find every arcane combination of bizaroland spew human possible, is going to run into the top of your range non-stop, and is still going to find a way to win the pot. Over. And over. Again.
The "Someone has a case of the Mondays, and it's every. f*%$ing. day."
Self-explanatory. Now leave me alone, before I take a baseball bat to your office equipment.
The Old Man
You've pretty much weathered all the runbad in the world, and at this point, like the runbad's namesake, are just waiting to die. Upside: your downswing now has to change your diapers, instead of the other way around.
Subtype:
The "I don't even really give a s*%# anymore"
On the plus side, you have now achieved a Zen-like state even Tommy Angelo would envy. On the downside, you're wondering just how comfy a cardboard box would be as a sleeping arrangement. You've already lost with the nut full-house twice. Today. You laugh, although everyone is a little afraid you've just gone round the bend. But you're still playing some semblance of your A-game so at least you've got that to hold on to. And in 50,000 more hands, maybe you'll get to win again too!
The "I don't even really give a s*%# anymore, and I'm going to tell everyone"
Almost exclusively the domain of the actual very old (and very cranky), who have 'been running bad' for so long you might actually have shoes older than the last pot they dragged (or online, they're over 28). Difficult to distinguish between actual runbad and "the game has passed them by".
Return of the Mewling Babe
This downswing is so deep, so encompassingly frustrating, that it reduces grown men (and women) back to the mewling babes from which they come. Luckily, you're almost guaranteed a reincarnation... sooner or later.
Next week: a taxonomy of tilters.
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