As I've experienced more success with tournament Texas Hold'em, quite a few friends and others have asked how they might become successful poker players. How did you do it, they ask. Because, after all, I'm filthy rich and famous and grace multiple TV networks with my mug. And I'm not just struggling to keep my total winnings high than my buy-ins. Really...I swear. Okay, you got me. Perhaps I'm only barely keeping my head above water, but I'm making money, if not yet a living.
And there's the rub. A successful poker player is not defined as only the player that makes hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. With the vast majority of players losing money, poker success probably is best defined as actually making money, whether one dollar or one million. My path toward relative success follows, and while I recommend ignoring it completely, it is my story.
The Twinstalker Way
1. Remember how you were born to play poker. Selective memory plays a big part of getting started in the poker world, as well as justifying your poker playing to your mom and/or girlfriend. Everybody remembers constantly beating your relatives at "guts" or "in-between" or "baseball." The losses fade from memory, and the wins stand out. As do the compliments from Aunt Marion about how good of poker player you were. He's such a good little player, Barbara, you must be so proud.
2. Play the game. After learning how to play your favorite game, in my case no-limit Texas Hold'em, forget studying strategy and just dive right in. I decided to get an online account and started losing right away. It's fixed, after all.
3. Determine that the only thing that matters is your gut feel. When to bet, when to call, when to check...it's all a gut feel.
4. Learn the game. After excessive losing and having your wins packaged with chat room derision from your online competitor's, it might be time to learn how to play the game with a little. I went out and found a Phil Gordon book that explained the game to me at a very high level. It was the first time I'd learned the relative value of starting hands and heard of pot odds and implied odds. Awesome, I can use my math major.
5. Find a live game. I found this a great way to leave the internet derision behind and receive live chiding and denigration from a number of living, breathing, poker players. My wild-ass, non-strategic betting confused people enough to make my new cash game a winning proposition. At this point, I started to implement my new understanding of "odds" and proceeded to lose $800 on a Monday, $800 on a Thursday, and nearly my life on the Friday when the game was, um, interrupted. I didn't like cash games, really, so at this time I decided to switch to live tournaments, my favorite poker genre.
6. Realize it's not bad luck you're experiencing. This is actually the one piece of advice I give to anyone who asks. I started playing live tournaments in the fall of 2008, my improvement at it has been steady, and one aspect has stood out for me. Almost every tournament you play in, you lose. I won somewhere between five and eight live tournaments in 2009, probably twice the rate someone would expect to win if all players were equal, but it still meant that I lost 95% of the time.
The first time I lost, somebody told me I experienced a bad beat. I thought about it for a moment. Yeah, but what was I doing risking all my chips when I didn't have to. It occurred to me that I made a mistake by allowing someone to get lucky and knock me out. From that time on, I took note of the mistakes I made and realized that I could trace every loss back to those mistakes. Instead of attributing losses to bad beats or claiming to be card-dead, I learned from my mistakes and tended not to make them the next time. This led to much-improved play, better results, and, eventually, gruding recognition from my peers that I've made the transition from dangerous donkey to pretty good poker player.
Showing posts with label Poker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poker. Show all posts
Friday, December 25, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Poker, Poker, the World Series of Poker
The Twins are suffering the effects of horrible management, both on-field and general, and the Gophers football and basketball are a ways away from newsworthy. And given this "blogger's" apparent inability to write about his favorite frustrating teams, maybe his severe interest in poker is enough to jump start this blog. So I'll write about poker.
The main question an aspiring poker player needs to ask is: how good am I really? There are three certainties in life, namely death, taxes, and you thinking you're a better poker player than you really are. A general misconception of one's abilities shouldn't be too surprising, given the tendency of players to blame their losses on anything but themselves. Heard any bad beat stories lately?
Actually, one measure of how good you are might be how long it's been since you bored someone with a bad beat story.
So where do I stand in line for future poker superstardom? It's a tough call. My results indicate I'm probably in the top ten percent of Minnesota no-limit Texas hold 'em tournament players. I am average at best at no-limit cash, and once the topic becomes limit hold 'em or any games besides hold'em, I would be considered bad at this time. For that reason, any discussion of "poker" in this blog means by default No Limit Texas Hold'em.
2009 Results
While I would like to brag mightily about my success, you can probably understand why I will provide limited information here. I will give a little background information prior to 2009 sometime soon, but suffice it to say the profit was always negative, and I generally look at pre-2009 as strictly a learning experience.
I will brag about my biggest win of the year, which the government is eagerly waiting to get its hands on. Mind you, I'm all about paying lots of taxes, but it still hurts. It seems I spend all my time collecting poker receipts these days. Back to the success. Running Aces started a new deep-stack tournament this calendar year (1st, 3rd, and 5th Saturdays of the month). At the time the buy-in was $550, and in my first attempt, I took down first place. It was a tournament where I was severely short-stacked with blinds getting big, so when I went all-in four times in a row and got called twice, I found myself with maybe the average chip stack, and I pretty much was in the zone thereafter. I played strongly, withstood the temper tantrum of a poker diva whose main characteristic is nastily chastising those who knock her out, and eventually found myself heads-up against Everett.
Everett is another top 10% player in the state, I have come to find. We played in the same World Series event last week, though his results I don't yet know--he told me he was short-stacked during our first break. Heads-up at Running Aces, I had passed him in chip count, and it wasn't long into our match that I threw out the standard raise--three times the big blind--with pocket sixes, he raised all-in with A7s, and we had a showdown. The flop yielded a 7, but I turned a 6, and I won my first ever poker tournament championship, nearly $8k.
That started a winning stretch for me, and I started to believe I was good and knew what I was doing. But as any seasoned poker player knows, success comes in streaks, and "running bad" is soon to follow. My bad streak culminated in late April at Canterbury during a $340 satellite to the Minnesota Poker Championship when I went all-in with fives, got called with Aces, and threw my cards so hard they landed face down on the floor. As I left, I told the tournament director Eddie to not let me play again that week. I no longer knew what I was doing at the poker table.
Daniel Negreanu is the one I credit with pulling me out of my slump a mere ten days later. I decided to join a poker internet site, one that taught the game, to see if it could help me. I chose Negreanu's PokerVT.com. It helped immediately, and I haven't looked back since, cashing in nearly every local tournament I've played. With the exception of some horrible luck at the World Series of Poker, I'm still going strong. I flew in from Vegas at 5:30 am this past Saturday, entered the Running Aces deep-stack tourney at 2pm, and took first place at around 1am Sunday morning. Since then I've had a non-cash at Canterbury and a 4th place at Running Aces.
So that's a summary of my 2009, and many of the items I mention in brief here, I'll expound on in future postings, including the WSOP, my recent win, chopping tournament money, running bad, and Poker Bitch. Maybe that's sexist...she seems nice otherwise, and trust me, there a lot of guys with issues, too.
The main question an aspiring poker player needs to ask is: how good am I really? There are three certainties in life, namely death, taxes, and you thinking you're a better poker player than you really are. A general misconception of one's abilities shouldn't be too surprising, given the tendency of players to blame their losses on anything but themselves. Heard any bad beat stories lately?
Actually, one measure of how good you are might be how long it's been since you bored someone with a bad beat story.
So where do I stand in line for future poker superstardom? It's a tough call. My results indicate I'm probably in the top ten percent of Minnesota no-limit Texas hold 'em tournament players. I am average at best at no-limit cash, and once the topic becomes limit hold 'em or any games besides hold'em, I would be considered bad at this time. For that reason, any discussion of "poker" in this blog means by default No Limit Texas Hold'em.
2009 Results
While I would like to brag mightily about my success, you can probably understand why I will provide limited information here. I will give a little background information prior to 2009 sometime soon, but suffice it to say the profit was always negative, and I generally look at pre-2009 as strictly a learning experience.
I will brag about my biggest win of the year, which the government is eagerly waiting to get its hands on. Mind you, I'm all about paying lots of taxes, but it still hurts. It seems I spend all my time collecting poker receipts these days. Back to the success. Running Aces started a new deep-stack tournament this calendar year (1st, 3rd, and 5th Saturdays of the month). At the time the buy-in was $550, and in my first attempt, I took down first place. It was a tournament where I was severely short-stacked with blinds getting big, so when I went all-in four times in a row and got called twice, I found myself with maybe the average chip stack, and I pretty much was in the zone thereafter. I played strongly, withstood the temper tantrum of a poker diva whose main characteristic is nastily chastising those who knock her out, and eventually found myself heads-up against Everett.
Everett is another top 10% player in the state, I have come to find. We played in the same World Series event last week, though his results I don't yet know--he told me he was short-stacked during our first break. Heads-up at Running Aces, I had passed him in chip count, and it wasn't long into our match that I threw out the standard raise--three times the big blind--with pocket sixes, he raised all-in with A7s, and we had a showdown. The flop yielded a 7, but I turned a 6, and I won my first ever poker tournament championship, nearly $8k.
That started a winning stretch for me, and I started to believe I was good and knew what I was doing. But as any seasoned poker player knows, success comes in streaks, and "running bad" is soon to follow. My bad streak culminated in late April at Canterbury during a $340 satellite to the Minnesota Poker Championship when I went all-in with fives, got called with Aces, and threw my cards so hard they landed face down on the floor. As I left, I told the tournament director Eddie to not let me play again that week. I no longer knew what I was doing at the poker table.
Daniel Negreanu is the one I credit with pulling me out of my slump a mere ten days later. I decided to join a poker internet site, one that taught the game, to see if it could help me. I chose Negreanu's PokerVT.com. It helped immediately, and I haven't looked back since, cashing in nearly every local tournament I've played. With the exception of some horrible luck at the World Series of Poker, I'm still going strong. I flew in from Vegas at 5:30 am this past Saturday, entered the Running Aces deep-stack tourney at 2pm, and took first place at around 1am Sunday morning. Since then I've had a non-cash at Canterbury and a 4th place at Running Aces.
So that's a summary of my 2009, and many of the items I mention in brief here, I'll expound on in future postings, including the WSOP, my recent win, chopping tournament money, running bad, and Poker Bitch. Maybe that's sexist...she seems nice otherwise, and trust me, there a lot of guys with issues, too.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The One from my Hotel Room
I have 48 minutes to shower and get to the noon tournament at the Venetian, so this has to be short. So far:
Arrive Monday night at 7pm, cab to Harrah's, check in, and go right over to the Venetian for their 9pm tourney. Only it is a 7pm tourney. I sit down at their $1/$2 NL Hold'em cash game, knowing that the cash game is not my strong suit. I just want to bide my time until the 11pm tourney at Caesar's (um, it was at 12am), but for the first time ever in a Vegas cash game, I win ($200). Between the rake, dealer tips, and drink tips, I am pretty proud to clear this much in ninety minutes.
10:50pm, arrive at Caesar's and discover I need to wait a while. I buy in to the 1/3 NL game and win another $186 before the tourney starts. The midnight tourney (cost is $70) there is small and only worthwhile because it's one of the few options at that time. I am playing extremely well, doubling my chips while risking very few. Then someone I identify as a poor player goes all in pre-flop against my KK. She has A8s and well, we all know that means aces will flop, and they do here, too. I lose my edge, and I'm soon going all in with 77 as overcards to a flop, only to lose to QQ. Sorry, I can't recall the betting (I'm taking a notepad to the Venetian this Wed noon). I place 20 of 32. I walk back to the cash game and win $170. It's late, and I go to bed, up $486.
Noon, Tuesday, and I enter the Venetian tournament ($150) as one of 139 participants. I am mostly short-stacked, because I learn the hard way that the play in Vegas is different than the play in Minnesota. I basically lose my chips to two limpers, one limping with KK (I had QQ), and one limping with JJ (I had 99). These two losses make me play short stack poker, and I lose all in A10s to the chip leader's AQ. Place 50 out of 139.
Tuesday 4:30, I head to the Bellagio to see baseball people. I don't have a clue who's who, and only recognize that people are wearing media passes. I look for Aaron Gleeman and don't see him, so I go play poker. I buy in for $200 for a cash game when I learn that there is a Sit and Go for $130. Top 2 of 10 get into the $540 Bellagio 7:15pm tourney (and $30 in cash). I get third, of course. On the way out, I pass a blackjack table and decide to put my remaining $70 down for one bet. I get 73 and the dealer has an 8 showing. Of course, with your one and only bet or your last bet, you always get a double down situation! I have four twenties and get $80, $70 of which I use to double. I get a 2, dealer turns over a King, and there goes $140. I bet the extra 10, get QQ, and the dealer gets three cards to 21. Yuck.
Tuesday 7:35pm, I arrive late to the Venetian and pay $120 for the evening tourney. I play the short stack the whole night, surviving by risking the stack and having the table fold. I finally have AJs and get two players to call me. Flop is AK6, turn is 6, river is 2. I think I've won, but the chip leader and hottest player happens to have a 6. Place 18 of 85. Go to bed. Down $550 for the day, $64 for the trip.
Noon Wednesday, Venetian. I'll keep better notes so that I can give some analysis of the interesting hands. I'll try to update before bedtime.
Update: I had zero hands, once going 18 hands with no card higher than a 10. I played one of these tens and made top pair on the flop, only to be bet of the hand by a player who flopped a set. I got blinded down, and my limps all got raised, so I was short stacked immediately, finally went all in with A9 and got caught by AQ. I lasted ninety minutes and decided basically I didn't want to play short stacked all day again. Down $150 on the day, $216 for the trip.
Arrive Monday night at 7pm, cab to Harrah's, check in, and go right over to the Venetian for their 9pm tourney. Only it is a 7pm tourney. I sit down at their $1/$2 NL Hold'em cash game, knowing that the cash game is not my strong suit. I just want to bide my time until the 11pm tourney at Caesar's (um, it was at 12am), but for the first time ever in a Vegas cash game, I win ($200). Between the rake, dealer tips, and drink tips, I am pretty proud to clear this much in ninety minutes.
10:50pm, arrive at Caesar's and discover I need to wait a while. I buy in to the 1/3 NL game and win another $186 before the tourney starts. The midnight tourney (cost is $70) there is small and only worthwhile because it's one of the few options at that time. I am playing extremely well, doubling my chips while risking very few. Then someone I identify as a poor player goes all in pre-flop against my KK. She has A8s and well, we all know that means aces will flop, and they do here, too. I lose my edge, and I'm soon going all in with 77 as overcards to a flop, only to lose to QQ. Sorry, I can't recall the betting (I'm taking a notepad to the Venetian this Wed noon). I place 20 of 32. I walk back to the cash game and win $170. It's late, and I go to bed, up $486.
Noon, Tuesday, and I enter the Venetian tournament ($150) as one of 139 participants. I am mostly short-stacked, because I learn the hard way that the play in Vegas is different than the play in Minnesota. I basically lose my chips to two limpers, one limping with KK (I had QQ), and one limping with JJ (I had 99). These two losses make me play short stack poker, and I lose all in A10s to the chip leader's AQ. Place 50 out of 139.
Tuesday 4:30, I head to the Bellagio to see baseball people. I don't have a clue who's who, and only recognize that people are wearing media passes. I look for Aaron Gleeman and don't see him, so I go play poker. I buy in for $200 for a cash game when I learn that there is a Sit and Go for $130. Top 2 of 10 get into the $540 Bellagio 7:15pm tourney (and $30 in cash). I get third, of course. On the way out, I pass a blackjack table and decide to put my remaining $70 down for one bet. I get 73 and the dealer has an 8 showing. Of course, with your one and only bet or your last bet, you always get a double down situation! I have four twenties and get $80, $70 of which I use to double. I get a 2, dealer turns over a King, and there goes $140. I bet the extra 10, get QQ, and the dealer gets three cards to 21. Yuck.
Tuesday 7:35pm, I arrive late to the Venetian and pay $120 for the evening tourney. I play the short stack the whole night, surviving by risking the stack and having the table fold. I finally have AJs and get two players to call me. Flop is AK6, turn is 6, river is 2. I think I've won, but the chip leader and hottest player happens to have a 6. Place 18 of 85. Go to bed. Down $550 for the day, $64 for the trip.
Noon Wednesday, Venetian. I'll keep better notes so that I can give some analysis of the interesting hands. I'll try to update before bedtime.
Update: I had zero hands, once going 18 hands with no card higher than a 10. I played one of these tens and made top pair on the flop, only to be bet of the hand by a player who flopped a set. I got blinded down, and my limps all got raised, so I was short stacked immediately, finally went all in with A9 and got caught by AQ. I lasted ninety minutes and decided basically I didn't want to play short stacked all day again. Down $150 on the day, $216 for the trip.
Monday, December 8, 2008
The One That Got Away
As I depart for Las Vegas this afternoon, I thought I'd briefly update all on the recent poker tournament I played in at Running Aces. There's not much to say, other than I again made my biggest mistake in poker--I assumed my opponent was bluffing or clueless. More on that some other time. This time with AK and a flop of A, 9, 2 rainbow, I disbelieved that the Big Blind, who made a pot-sized bet, had hit a set. His call of a preflop raise had me pretty sure he didn't have two pair, and I just couldn't put him on pocked deuces or nines. I went all in, and he insta-called with deuces.
To provide you all with the number one rule in all of poker: If you assume your opponent is bluffing or just trying to steal with a medium hand, you had better be able to rule out the hands that can beat you. In this case, I could rule out AA and 92 pretty easily, but what if the BB had stayed rather foolishly with A2 or A9 suited? It was possible, as were 22 and to a lesser extent 99, which he would more likely re-rasie with. My bad.
On Wednesday, I got away with one mistake in the $100 noon tourney at Running Aces and proceeded to make it to the final two, heads up. I played very well overall with good cards, a combination that has unfortunately been lacking in my game. My opponent had a 3:2 chip lead, and I went all-in with K5o. He had A8, called, and it held up.
Upon reflection, I became furious at my decision. I had about 110,000 chips with the blinds 6k/12k. I was on the small blind. While a king looked good, afterward I tried to imagine the scenarios, given the various hands he might have had:
Any pair: he calls, and I'm behind.
Ace mid or better, such as he had: he calls, and I'm behind
K9-KQ: he calls, and I'm dominated
Q9 or worse: he folds, and I pick up 12k, or about 4% of the total chips
That leaves QJ, Q10, J10, Ace low, and King mid or low as the only hands where he has to think. Given his conservative play and nice chip lead, he probably folds all the hands here where I'm in the lead, knowing I have those beat. The only positive impact of my going all in was to possibly push him off Ace low or King mid, meaning I'd pick up a few chips I shouldn't have.
To sum, he would fold all hands where I had him beat, and there were only a few hands he would fold where he had me beat. I was in a Big Lose, tiny win situation. Very stupid play on my part. Most times, he won't have a hand, so I'd get away with it, and truthfully, I'd probably already gotten away with one or two of those.
Tonight I play the Venetian tournament. Assuming I can get online, expect an update in the morning. If I can keep pumping out the blog material, my plan is to keep a running summary of tournaments I play in, starting today. Mind you, for 2008, I would have to win a big tournament to get into positive $$$, so a tax man need only be concerned with my 2009 running tally.
To provide you all with the number one rule in all of poker: If you assume your opponent is bluffing or just trying to steal with a medium hand, you had better be able to rule out the hands that can beat you. In this case, I could rule out AA and 92 pretty easily, but what if the BB had stayed rather foolishly with A2 or A9 suited? It was possible, as were 22 and to a lesser extent 99, which he would more likely re-rasie with. My bad.
On Wednesday, I got away with one mistake in the $100 noon tourney at Running Aces and proceeded to make it to the final two, heads up. I played very well overall with good cards, a combination that has unfortunately been lacking in my game. My opponent had a 3:2 chip lead, and I went all-in with K5o. He had A8, called, and it held up.
Upon reflection, I became furious at my decision. I had about 110,000 chips with the blinds 6k/12k. I was on the small blind. While a king looked good, afterward I tried to imagine the scenarios, given the various hands he might have had:
Any pair: he calls, and I'm behind.
Ace mid or better, such as he had: he calls, and I'm behind
K9-KQ: he calls, and I'm dominated
Q9 or worse: he folds, and I pick up 12k, or about 4% of the total chips
That leaves QJ, Q10, J10, Ace low, and King mid or low as the only hands where he has to think. Given his conservative play and nice chip lead, he probably folds all the hands here where I'm in the lead, knowing I have those beat. The only positive impact of my going all in was to possibly push him off Ace low or King mid, meaning I'd pick up a few chips I shouldn't have.
To sum, he would fold all hands where I had him beat, and there were only a few hands he would fold where he had me beat. I was in a Big Lose, tiny win situation. Very stupid play on my part. Most times, he won't have a hand, so I'd get away with it, and truthfully, I'd probably already gotten away with one or two of those.
Tonight I play the Venetian tournament. Assuming I can get online, expect an update in the morning. If I can keep pumping out the blog material, my plan is to keep a running summary of tournaments I play in, starting today. Mind you, for 2008, I would have to win a big tournament to get into positive $$$, so a tax man need only be concerned with my 2009 running tally.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
The Return of Twinstalker
Originally I had intended to talk about poker along with opining about the Twins, Gophers, etc. Between never finding a good voice, not have the time to commit to a blog, and general laziness, I sort of let the blog go. Now, however, I am playing a lot of poker and getting better at it. I realized the time has come to keep a log or a diary of hands I've played. What better place to do this than a blog? Twinstalker lives!
In a few minutes I will be leaving to play in a poker tournament at Running Aces near Forest Lake. I think the buy-in is $550, so I'm going to try to win a satellite entry. I'm leaving on Monday for Las Vegas and need all the cash I can muster. Tomorrow I will report on my tourney results for all to read. "All," heh, that's funny.
In a few minutes I will be leaving to play in a poker tournament at Running Aces near Forest Lake. I think the buy-in is $550, so I'm going to try to win a satellite entry. I'm leaving on Monday for Las Vegas and need all the cash I can muster. Tomorrow I will report on my tourney results for all to read. "All," heh, that's funny.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Off to Vegas
I have a marathon to run this Sunday, and then I am testing my poker skills at the MGM Grand through Thursday this week. Thus far my tournament finishes (with # of participants) are 3rd (60), 3rd (70), 75th (150), 17th (150). Unfortunately, the money I won in the first two tourneys only paid for my participation in the 3rd and 4th.
This means I will not be blogging for a while, but I will try to address the Johan Santana deal that is sure to happen as soon as I can. Let's hope the Twins can pull the equivalent of Kemp, LaRoche, Billingsley or Ellsbury, Buchholz, Lowrie. Have a great week!
This means I will not be blogging for a while, but I will try to address the Johan Santana deal that is sure to happen as soon as I can. Let's hope the Twins can pull the equivalent of Kemp, LaRoche, Billingsley or Ellsbury, Buchholz, Lowrie. Have a great week!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)