Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Bad beats are good... well sometimes.

You see it all the time online. A bad beat or and horrific bad beat send somebody to the rail prematurely. Usually that player was well ahead in the hand, when the chips when in the middle. The next thing you know, the chat box is a rattling with more profanity than you can find on late-night television.

Most new players cannot control their anger when this happens to them. And because the frequency of it seems higher in online poker, frustration is often the mood of the day. Then, anyone at the table can be subject to verbal abuse by the frustrated player, who simply knows no better. The worse the beat, the more likely there is to be an exchange of a heated nature.

A lot of this activity really boils down to experience. The more experienced a player has, the less likely he is to flip out after a bad beat. This is partly because of his understanding of the game, but as well because of his proper bankroll management. In other words, anyone would be more likely to freak out if they lose a pot when they are playing with 50% of their bankroll as opposed to 2% of their bankroll. Think about that. If you know that you cannot realistically avoid bad beats, and that they are truly part of the game that you know and understand, then bankroll management should in fact, prevent any type of bad beats from hurting your emotions too much.

Understanding the backbone of finances and mathematics in online poker can assure in any newfound depth in dealing with losses at the table. No longer should you be emotionally drained to suck outs the way your opponents are, and in fact, you may then find yourself past a point of cosmic return and be able to turn those horrible plays of your opponents into cash in your poker account.

So the next time you are the victim of a bad beat, try and look at it in the way that you got your opponent to do exactly what you wanted them to do. They made a big mistake, you were way ahead, and they won the pot. That is very likely a positive EV play that you've executed perfectly, and even though you did not win it this time, you have actually won.

When you get to the point where you can laugh off the biggest bad beats that goal against you, you are very likely on your way to poker freedom.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Monitoring balance and streak indicators to find a player on tilt.

I'm doing another sit and go demonstration here with tournament indicator, but I wanted to focus on a couple of key indicators in the poker calculator software program, which I don't talk about often enough and that is the balance and street features and those in those two features together can help in determining when a player is on tilt and basically that.

And found that even though she is a solid player. She was on tilt. So that's rather significant, given some of the plays that followed in the tournament where I notice that given her statistical record on SharkScope her record wasn't consistent.

In other words, the styles didn't match as you see in the video. After only 16 hands TI has labeled her gambler. And that's generally not a style of play that wins you as many single tournaments that she has one especially for the early stages. You can see the VPIP here is 38% pre-flop raising 25% aggression factor is infinite - that means she bets out at the flop. Every single time she's in a hand. However, the balance and streak features, well I just wanted to focus on those because they show how many because for instance, if you take the balance indicator that shows how many chips that you and your opponents have lost or gained over the last 10 hands. Now, it's only 10 hands because now although you can just now, although you can adjust the range of hands that you want the balance streak to monitor.

I like to keep it at 10 hands because, really in tournaments, this goes to the premise of knowing what your opponent is feeling at that particular time and place as you know, lying and anti-structures of the tournament and payouts can have a huge effect on the way a player place, because emotions often get in the way. So keeping an eye on the balance indicator may help you make a decision when you are in a confrontational hand with that player, in spite of pot odds that may not normal be considered favorable. In this video you will see an exact example of what I am suggesting.

You can easily envision it yourself. The kind of frustration when you might've been in eight or 10 hands in a row and you just can't do anything you know, you just feel like you're burning chips and that gets frustrating. No doubt about it. My pot odds really dictate that I should fold this, but I'm NOT going to fold it against his player. She's on tilt on SharkScope, and I've been watching her stats here in this tournament - and she's on tilt here, right now. Balance indicates so, streak indicates so, player profiling indicates so, VPIP indicates so, pre-flop or raising indicates that as well. Her aggression factor is infinite so her betting is out of control too.

I call with what is normally a dominated hand, but I am sure I am ahead and my risk is rather limited since I have her way out-stacked too.


Friday, June 20, 2008

calculating a Push strategy from Orange MZone

From gadget in the forum:

I don't know if it's good poker math or strategically correct to do so, but I usually push before I'm red mzone. I will wait under certain conditions, but rarely, I want it to hurt as I've mentioned before, so I'm pushing around 12 down to 9 M. Most times I'm only red from embarrassment at not taking my chance earlier and I'm only grey after a stroke.
I agree about Ax though, event hough I don't like it, sometimes it's just the way it goes and from the cut-off onwards it's auto-push.

Has anyone any thoughts about my earlier than 'standard' pushing strategy?
My plan is to get back in with a chance of winning the game or get myself out. My cards become immaterial and I could put my hand over the screen if I wanted to - and sometimes wished I had!. I have found I can steal 2 or 3 times without resistance sometimes. The table dynamic is important here of course; no good doing it on a table of nutters and noobs; and position and previous action, etc etc.

Another thing is that later on players are watching and expect a push from the shorties, so pushing a bit earlier gives them more of a decision, as it reps a bigger hand from a previously tight player. There's lot's more to it of course, but it's been working well for me, especially NTM or just before. However, this is only over a few months, so I'm not stuck to it and of course results are not the point.

Friday, June 13, 2008

PT/HUD for tournaments not that useful.

From 2+2 below... My feelings exactly in regards to MTT play... but use TI to do the observation for you, esp if multi-tabling.

Re: How many successful MTT players use HUD's/PT in realtime
I used PT/PAHUD a lot. But I don't have the feeling that it helped me that much.

Usually in those large field MTTs you are rarely running into the same players twice. Also, once you have some stats on them, the table breaks.

The other thing I dislike about PT/PAHUD in tournaments is the dynamic of the table. People play differently when they have a bigstack/smallstack. If I have a nice stack and there are no super-shortstacks at my table, I raise like hell.
If half the table has 10xBB or less I even tighten up with a bigstack.

There is also M, Q, streak, tilt factor etc. you could be watching to make this a very useable amount of information from a poker calculator like Tournament Indicator.

What if you play the rebuy hour with a player and 2 weeks later you meet him at the final table only to label him as a maniac according to his stats?

When it comes to MTTs I've changed my opinion from PT/PAHUD to simply being observant and taking notes. I'm looking for players that call down light or can't be bluffed. I take notes about what players limp / min-raise from EP/UTG, if they are calling raises light. What kind of hands do they openshove from EP-MP for 20+ BBs or overshove the flop for 3+ times the pot.

When it comes to cash games there is nothing better than PT/PAHUD. Blinds stay the same, people play (almost always) the same, there is no bubble where people play completely different and so on...

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

ICM Calculations in Poker Tournaments

Thoughts from the forum in calculating ICM and what to do about it in sit and go tournaments and multi-table tournaments. Phadraeus writes:

Firstly, I have learned that push/fold is not an easy formula. Rather it is a question of judgement and feel, based on the following factors:

M;
Q;
ICM and tournament equity;
Position;
Profiling
tournament type (MTT v STT)
and blind speed (turbo or regular)

A yellow M and very low Q with fast blinds might justify pushing from an M of 12. However mostly, I would think that pushing with that large a stack will be premature.

Mzone is basically a system of risk management. The lower your M, the wider your risk window needs to be opened...that's pretty straight forward...

Now, in a STT (S&G) you also need to balance Mzone with ICM (Independent Chip Model). *Most* STTs involve most or all players being in orange and red Mzone at the end of the tournament. If you are pushing a wide range from yellow M when most of the other players have similar stack sizes, then IMHO you are probably not playing a correct ICM strategy.

In STTs, the push fold mode is partly about M, and partly about what leverage you will have for flop play (and the two are very much inter-related). However, a low M does not necessarily mean that your tournament equity is low. Low M and high tournament equity (i.e on the bubble with 4 players having similar stack sizes) is a time for more conservative play than pure Mzone strategy would suggest. In this case there are two ways of cashing. One by doubling up with the best hand and, Two, by allowing someone else to make a fatal mistake.

Remember that part of ICM strategy is that you profit by staying out of hands where your opponents are playing too loose. This is just another calculation in poker you must keep in mind.

The other functional aspect of the M strategy is post flop play flexibility. With an M of 12, you mostly have enough chips to make a 3xBB raise, manuevre post flop, make meaningful plays and/or get out of the hand and wait for a better spot.

However, with an M of say 5, any pre-flop raise is mostly going to leave you pot committed and/or having not enough chips after you pre-flop raise to put to any meaningful use. Accordingly, you are better off shoving and getting the maximum leverage possible from your stack.

My personal preference for this range in a STT (normal blind speed) is when my M gets to 6.

If blinds are say 100/200 then a 6M stack is 1800. If I raise pre-flop I will be raising 600 (3XBB). If there is a caller to put me into flop play, then the pot will be 1500 compared to my remaining stack of 1200. I therefore do not have enough chips to manoeuvre with relative to the pot size and since the pot is larger than my stack I am pretty well committed to it. Thirdly, if I fold post flop I will be down to an M of 4, where after I have considerable less fold equity for future shoves.

If I double up from an M of 6, I am mostly in the top 3 in a STT (unless I got to an M of 6 due to an early large loss). If I double up from an M of 4 comfort levels are not nearly so great.

So for all those reasons, an M of 6 is my preferred trigger point for STT normal blind speed.

Now, between and M of 6 (my pushing trigger) and an M of 9, there are more than 2 blind levels of folding time. That means if instead of pushing at an M of 9, if you played very tight and folded, waiting for a big hand, you would see between 20 and 30 additional hands before you pulled the trigger. Given that there are 1326 possible hands, seeing an additional 25 hands gives you opportunity to improve your pushing range by around 2%. Might not sound like much, but since a double up from an M of 6 will still put you back in contention for a win, it is pretty well a free 2% (2% is also the margin by which a PP beats over-cards - so it is frequently a percentage that we rely on).

However if you are playing turbos, then instead of 20 to 30 additional hands, you may only see 10 to 15. Now your percentage edge gained by folding is not as great. Also, because turbos force looser play and more frequent all-in moves, you need a larger stack than normal to retain any meaningful fold equity.

Accordingly, pushing with a much higher Mzone strategy seems appropriate for turbo STTs (M=9 to 12) would seem appropriate to me.

Now, for MTTs....

Here, things change quite alot, mostly due to the antes. Before the antes, I tends to adopte the same push/fold approach as Sit and gos (i.e M of 6 = trigger time). (and again, this is also Q dependent - very low table Q an M of 8 may mean you may have very little fold equity depending on stack sizes around you)

However after the antes start, your M drops considerably without a corresponding drop in stack size. This means that you retain significant fold equity well into the red Mzone. Consequently, you can afford to be more selective with your pushes in MTTs and I generally start pulling the trigger with an M of 5 or less. A higher M than that actually gives you opportunity for a significantly greater range of plays, including re-shoves, stop and goes and all-in continuation bets.

I also mentioned position above. This is a difficult and curly part of the whole equation. According to Harrington HOH v2 (which is really mostly applicable to MTTs) position does not matter much for inflection point play (i.e pushing from red Mzone). The reason is that in EP, you are under more deparation to make a move before the blinds swallow a big chunk of your stack. So you are pushing a similar range from EP and LP, just for different reasons.

However in STTs, position is a much more significant factor. First in Vigorish is still king, however ICM considerations demand that position is properly played. Again, because chip values are non-linear near the bubble, ICM is critical. Fundamental to ICM is the fact that if your oponent plays too loose, they hurt themselves, but they hurt you too. The players who benefit (with +ve EV) are the ones sitting back and watching the all-in clash.

In my experience, most players do not play the bubble correctly. When blind pressure is high, most people call a shove with way too wide a range. The sklansky gap concept seems to go out the window and all-in shoves frequently get called by Ax suited, A9+ off-suit, KQ, KJ, QT and any pocket pair. Because of all of that loose play, I tend to prefer to push through as few oponents as possible, meaning I still want genuine strength to push from EP on the bubble, irrespective of M (provided I have meaningful tournament equity in ICM terms).

Lastly, I mentioned profiling. The nightmare situation here is when you have a moster stack loose player on your left. Now you have very little fold equity and pushing from an M of 6 or 12 is not the issue. Rather this issue is that you need solid hand strength to push because you player profiling means you have negligable fold equity.

Similarly, pushing and re-shoving into medium sized stacks is much more important than M trigger points alone. For example, I might re-shove a marginal hand into a medium stack from an M of 12, but I would not push the same hand into a monster stack from an M of 7.

So, that turned into a pretty long post. That is just my thoughts on it anyway. Hope it assists and I'm sure others will have clearer insights...

(Calling out for a post from Raziel on this because his turbo ICM play is probably the best of the forum)

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Understanding Poker Odds

I was in a hand in a 5/10 limit poker game a few years ago and I called from the button with J9os about after 5 players had limped. Then of course the big blind decides to be clever and min raises. Everyone, including me calls again. 14 bets, $72 in the pot to start the hand in the pot! The flop comes Q84 rainbow.

Gut shot. Man would I fell better if I was at least open-ended. Stupid to be in this hand I thought, bent on my tight aggressive style working out eventually. The small blind puts out a bet. Then 5 consecutive calls when it gets to me. Just another $5 to call... I should do it. I did it, now swelling the pot now $114. All I remember at that point was wondering what the hell they ALL had and how could so many players be that dumb.

It was painful to see the “brick-like” turn card of the 2 of clubs rounding out all four suits on the board. It didn’t stop the under-the-gun wanker from betting $10 now and sure enough NOBODY had folded when it came to me. That added $60 to the pot making it $174 while I pondered what to do. I have a gut shot draw to the nuts with no chance of an opponent outdrawing me to a flush. I needed a 10, but what are the odds of me hitting hit?

One community card left to show, 46 unseen cards, 4 unseen tens. Approximately a 9% chance of hitting the nuts or 11:1. I decided to fold, because I didn’t want to waste any more money and the session was going poorly for me so far, so I didn’t want it get worse here. The odds were so far fetched that my 10 would come, I figured I would just save it for a better spot.

Uhhh..... big mistake.

Of course, the river was a ten as I am sure you figured it out, but my mistake wasn’t because a ten did fall, my mistake was not properly assessing the odds situation. It really did NOT matter what came on the river, I should have been in the hand to see it regardless. My mistake was not fully understanding real poker odds.

It is $10 to call (with no chance of a re-raise behind me) a pot of $174. This is real math, from a real poker hand, using real poker probabilities and had I better understood at the time, I would have realized that sometimes it pays to draw to an inside straight.

The underlying benefit of seeing that huge pot go elsewhere due to my error, forced me to learn the odds of the game and re-evaluate my overall strategy. I can honestly say now, thanks in part to using poker calculators, whether tournament, ring or cash games, I am no longer ignorant of the odds in poker.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Poker Calculators for Bankrolling management

When Chris Ferguson blogged his Start from Zero Bankrolling Quest, he proved that it could be done. You can start an online poker bankroll from ZERO dollars. The fact that a Full Tilt pro with the reputation of Chris toiling in the penny tables went through the whole process not once, but twice building an account surplus of Ten grand shows that with due diligence and dedication to the task, you can probably do it too.

But only with a lot of self control that is. When playing online poker especially at a site like Full Tilt, that skill far more rare than you might think. Listen, if 75% of online players lose money, then not many of them know how to manage a poker bankroll. Itès not like the information isnèt out there either because it is.

So many players though end up playing above their skill level and even worse, above their bankroll that inevitably, these are the players that end up in that 75% cluster of money losing fish. Yes you are essentially a fish by playing above your bankroll. Chris Ferguson didn’t build his bankroll with magnificent bluffing, power all-in betting, and underground intimidation tactics. Are you kidding me? Have you ever played in the $1 sit and go tournaments? Strategies like thatare sure-fire ways to be searching for reload bonuses.

Chris Jesus Ferguson merely used fundamental poker skills to win as much as he could, but more importantly executed exceptional bankroll management with a strict set of rules that determined what his games of choice would be, and how far he would go in a hand or drawing situaiton.

Bankroll management is then, utterly important to your success online, and now there are software choices to help you keep track of that very aspect of your game. Personal Poker Pal is the latest in this market that with a variety of graphs, reports, and analysis tools can help keep your game moving up and build your bankroll the very best way – using OPM or other people’s money.

What a poker bankroll calculator can do for you is keep your skill set evenly matched with your bankroll. As your knowledge and understanding of the game improves, so then are you rewarded in your bankroll. It’s simple math really. If you jump too far up, you are penalized (eventually) for playing above your head and you take a hit.

However it is impossible to be consistently successful in the modern game without a detailed analysis of performance, highlighting the reasons for success or failure either in particular hands or over a session, with the aim of improving future results. There are many software tools on the market to assist the poker player, but at a price many players are unable (or unwilling) to pay.

You manage money everywhere else in your life don’t you? Unless you are just out having fun and you really don’t care about how much you spend on entertaining yourself playing online poker, then you need to start managing your poker bankroll, just like the pros.