On Riverboat Ron and Success Stress

My Carolina Panthers won a franchise record eighth-straight game yesterday, whipping the undermanned Tampa Buccaneers to improve their record to 9-3. Sets up a big one next Sunday night versus division rival New Orleans who plays at Seattle tonight. If the Saints happen to lose, they’ll be 9-3 also, with two games between Carolina and New Orleans scheduled over the next three weeks.

Friends have asked me about the excitement level here in Charlotte regarding the team’s resurgence after four-plus years of disappointment. It’s funny today to look back to earlier in the season and how it genuinely appeared head coach Ron Rivera (in his third year at the helm) wouldn’t survive September after an 0-2 start.

They played the New York Giants during Week 3 at a time when it still wasn’t clear the Giants had a subpar team this year. (And when some of us might have even picked the Giants in certain pick’em pools, although there’s really no need to go back and research such things at this point.) A bye week was on the other side of that game, and most around here believed Rivera was toast should the Panthers have lost that won.

They won 38-0, then came back from the bye week to lose 22-6 versus Arizona in a dreadful performance. It looked bad, like having lost three-fourths of our starting stack by the second level bad. But we doubled up (so to speak), winning easily the next week against Minnesota. And now we’ve doubled a couple of more times and are challenging for the chip lead with the final table in sight.

So what do I say when those friends ask how we Panthers fans feel about all of this? I say we’re not getting too excited just yet. In fact, I’m personally full of trepidation about the whole situation. I look at those “Team Efficiency Ratings” from Football Outsiders my buddy Rich Ryan likes to reference in his Pigskin Diaries columns, see my Panthers now rated third in the entire NFL (behind Seattle and Denver), and I’m pretty much full of dread.

One explanation for the reaction stems from what happened back in 2008 -- the last time the Panthers were an above-average team -- when they cruised into the playoffs with a 12-4 record, then plummeted mightily in a 20-point first round loss to Arizona, the game the franchise’s former hero, Jake Delhomme, threw five interceptions and more or less bid farewell to Carolina.

Another reason, though, relates to the same irrational feeling of unease that some occasionally feel when winning at poker. I’m talking about that strange desire to protect against losing what you have already won, such as when you’re up in a cash game and start thinking about walking away a winner rather than continuing to play in a situation that is more likely than not a good one for you (as suggested by the fact that you’ve been winning). Or when a player unused to accumulating lots of chips in a tournament suddenly wins a couple of huge pots to take a big chip lead halfway through the event, then turtles up, not knowing how to proceed with the big stack.

Many who write about various forms of “tilt” talk about how winning tends to lessen one’s propensity to tilt, although it can introduce other problems. In The Poker Mindset, for instance, Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger point out how “players are considerably less likely to go on tilt when running well than when running badly,” although other “pitfalls” such as overconfidence, unrealistic expectations, and laziness can arise to chip away at or erase entirely one’s profits.

To that list I’d add another pitfall that I guess would have to be called “contentment.” You know, the kind of feeling that causes some to become strangely passive at a time when it is probably worst to do so.

As far as the Panthers go, I’m hoping they continue to play aggressively and take those calculated, well chosen risks that have now earned Rivera the nickname “Riverboat Ron” -- a hilarious moniker, actually, for those of us who got to know Rivera as more risk-averse than Tighty McTighterson who hates entering hands with less than pocket kings -- and not revert back to the cautious, play-not-to-lose mode with which they started the season (and which I was already complaining about after Week 1 in a post titled “Passive, Not Passing”).

Anyhow, that perhaps partly explains why winning eight games in a row makes me more uneasy than going 4-4 or 0-8. Not to mention why I never rose above recreational status as a poker player, too.

Following the Story of the Story (AP & UB)

Yesterday there were a couple of poker-related news items that grabbed my attention. Yours too, probably. Both concerned the Cereus network’s terrible twins, Absolute Poker and UltimateBet.

One was the news that Haley Hintze has a deal with Dimat Enterprises to write a book covering the insider cheating scandals at the two sites.

Just about anyone who has heard of the scandals is aware that Hintze has been investigating this twisted, troubling tale for quite some time. Since they first started to appear in the fall of 2009, Hintze’s “Still Conjecturin’” posts regarding the scandals have been required reading for anyone with any interest in what happened (and has continued to happen) at AP and UB. As someone with such an interest -- and as a fan of detective stories! -- I can’t wait to read Hintze’s account.

I have a couple of other reasons for being excited about the news of Hintze’s forthcoming book. For one, I’ve long thought she was one of the better writers/thinkers in this little field, and so would be interested to read anything Hintze wrote, regardless of the subject. I’m also a fan of Dimat and Matthew Hilger (whom I had a chance to interview for Betfair back in April 2010). I’ve found books published by Dimat have been of consistently high quality both in terms of content and presentation, which makes me even more pleased about yesterday’s news.

See Hintze’s blog for more on the book announcement. Also, check out Hilger’s Internet Texas Hold’em site where a special thread has been set up for discussions about the book. Some fun title suggestions being batted back and forth there at the moment.

The other AP/UB news item from yesterday concerned the announcement that both sites were cutting loose all of their sponsored pros, which I believe includes one from AP (Trishelle Cannatella) and 10 from UB (Eric Baldwin, Brandon Cantu, Bryan Devonshire, Prahlad Friedman, Maria Ho, Scott Ian, Adam Levy, Tiffany Michelle, Joe Sebok, and Dave Stann). That news comes on the heels other stories regarding raids in Costa Rica, bankruptcy rumors, and what appears to be a steadily decreasing likelihood of players ever recovering funds from accounts on the two sites.

In the wake of that announcement, much of the subsequent focus yesterday afternoon fell upon Joe Sebok, who as both a UB sponsored pro and “media and operations consultant” for the site has drawn a great deal of attention from the poker community over the last year or so.

After a week of Twitter silence, Sebok penned a blog post yesterday in which he addressed the news of his parting with UB and reflected on his tenure with the site.

When Sebok first signed with UB, I wrote a post (“The Sebok Surprise”) in which I likened my impression of the move to sweating a friend who looked as though he might be misplaying a hand. Judging from yesterday’s post, it appears Sebok did just that. Sounds like his holding was never that strong, he thought he had more chips to play with than he did, and his read of others at the table was way, way off.

Sebok joined UB in September 2009, coincidentally right around the time Hintze started publishing her “Still Conjecturin’” posts. I suppose one could say that over the last 20 months both have been similarly motivated to publicize the story of the scandals.

But if it’s true both shared a similar goal, one was obviously much more efficient than the other when it came to achieving it.

BBT5 Begins, Betfair Interview

Hello, Friday. Has been another busy week here. I haven’t had the chance to play a heckuva lot lately -- just short sessions here and there -- although I always tend to do better when that is the case, so I ain’t complaining.

One bit of news this week was the launching of the Battle of the Bloggers Tournament 5, which gets underway this weekend. I’ve landed a spot in the invitational portion of the sucker, which means for the next few Sunday nights I’ll be playing some deep-stacked no-limit hold’em tourneys against my fellow scribes in the hopes of winning a seat into the Tournament of Champions that happens at the end of May.

There are other events associated with BBT5, too, to which all are invited to participate, with a bunch of goodies -- over $50,000 in cash and some WSOP seats -- up for grabs. Click here to read more about BBT5 and see the full schedule. And look for updates here regarding my efforts in those Sunday tourneys.

In other news, earlier in the week I enjoyed talking to the poker author and player Matthew Hilger. I interviewed Hilger for Betfair -- check it out.

Hilger runs a publishing company, Dimat Enterprises, which has put out several quality strategy books, including Hilger’s own Internet Texas Hold’em, a limit HE book of which I am a big fan.

Hilger also co-wrote The Poker Mindset with Ian Taylor, another book I like and have written about here before. A few times, actually.

Hilger and I discussed his books, the Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand a Time series by Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, and Jon “Apestyles” Van Fleet, and other forthcoming titles from Dimat, including Jeff Hwang’s next PLO book. We also talked a bit about the state of poker book publishing, generally speaking.

I’ve really enjoyed the interviews I’ve done thus far for Betfair. I had done a couple for PokerNews previously as well. I am thinking at some point perhaps pulling together a list of the various interviews and articles I’ve written for other sites and posting them here somewhere, if only to keep track of ’em all. Always interesting to talk to the pros to get their insights and thoughts, and I also get a special kick out of talking to authors about the writing/publishing game, too.

The BBT5 awaits. Now I’m realizing I should’ve asked Hilger for tips on deep-stacked NLHE tourneys. I suppose patience will be in order. I think I’ll only open with suited pairs until the antes kick in.

Enjoy the weekend, all.

The Familiar Struggle

Had kind of a so-so November, poker-wise, ending the month down just a touch (following an awesome October). Have been so busy of late I haven’t been able to play as often as I normally do. Usually I try to play at least a short session pretty much every day, but in November I see I only actually played 17 of 30 days. And so far in December I didn’t play at all until this past weekend, when I put in a few sessions of pot-limit Omaha.

Total hands in November amounted to just about 4,400. That’s compared to 8,100 in October. I generally fare better when playing shortish (100-200 hand) sessions, although missing days affects me negatively, I think, as I find it difficult sometimes to get my head back into the game (as the PokerShrink would say) when I’ve been away for even a short while.

I’ve written before about considering myself a “recreational” player, although perhaps a little more serious than most of that category when it comes to thinking about the game and trying to improve. Even so, I find myself often lapsing back into “Level 1” thinking at the PLO tables, especially when I haven’t been playing regularly. That is to say, I find myself thinking a lot more about my own hand than what my opponent(s) have, a bad tendency that leads to a more passive style that relies more on my catching cards than anything else.

Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger talk about “Levels of Thinking” in their book The Poker Mindset: Essential Attitudes for Poker Success (2007). There they call the level where one is only thinking of one’s own hand “Level 0,” the level where one also considers one’s opponent’s hand “Level 1,” and so forth. The idea is the same, though, no matter how we number the levels.

I think PLO is a game where the difference between those two levels is perhaps more obviously noticeable than in, say, limit hold’em. Players who are brand new to PLO find it exceedingly difficult to put opponents on hands or hand ranges. (Hell, some find it tricky reading their own hands.) Even experienced PLO players like myself sometimes find it hard to keep thinking about opponents’ hands. And when you stop doing that, you necessarily become less effective.

As Taylor and Hilger say, “most players tend to think at different levels at different times.” Various factors come into play, causing us to move up or down levels, but the one they focus on is experience. “When a player is in a familiar situation, he is more likely to think at a higher level than usual,” they explain. “However, when faced with a difficult and unfamiliar situation, the same players will just revert to the [lower level] with which they are more familiar.”

Like I say, for new players especially, PLO presents a number of unfamiliar situations that cause one to focus more on one’s own hand than worry too much about what others have. Other factors can cause such lapses, too, like fatigue or tilt or whatever. But I like that idea that familiarity leads to clearer thinking, and thus helps one think more clearly about what the opponents have.

Thus the problem I’ve been facing with my intermittent play -- when I log on after missing a couple of days, I have to refamiliarize myself with starting hand values, bet sizing, calculating equity, etc. Such is the plight of the recreational player, I think. Also of the older player whose jingle-brain stopped growing probably before some of his opponents were born.

Now let’s see if I can remember how to post this sucker.

(That picture above comes from the poster for the 1987 film The Stepfather. I just wrote a little something about that film for Film Chaw today -- check it out.)

Laurel, Hardy & Me

The PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker wrapped up yesterday, as did my work helping cover the sucker. As was the case last September with WCOOP, it was again a lot of fun to be scribblin’ alongside and collaboratin’ with a good group of folks. Am glad to have it in the rearview, though, as the frequent late nights (sometimes ’til sunrise) screwed with the sleep schedule a bit more than yr cranky gumshoe would’ve liked (or had necessarily anticipated). Goes with the territory, of course.

Have been so busy with SCOOPing I haven’t had a lot of time to think about this here Vegas trip I have coming up this week. Will say a little more about that tomorrow, which is the day Vera Valmore and I will be flying out. Have a lot of stuff planned, though, including meeting up with various blogger types and others. Like I say, stay tuned.

Wanted to write just a little today about my recent online play. Had built up the online roll a bit and moved to $1/$2 limit hold’em a while back where things were going just swimmingly for three weeks or so. Too swimmingly, really, as my win rate had climbed to a gawdy 6 BB/100 hands or something there for a while before finally settling back down into a more realistic range. Then came a nasty little crash over the last few days which ended yesterday with me doing what I did back in December and just cashing out a big chunk o’ change in disgust.

So I’m back to just a few hundy to play with online, meaning I’ll have to head back down in stakes again in order to manage the bankroll correctly. I might even get away from LHE a bit and explore some other games and tourneys in an effort to try to keep poker fun here in the near term. Try some of that change I was yapping about in my last post.

What happened yesterday was another quick, painful sequence of bad timing, misfortune, and a bit of what Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger in The Poker Mindset refer to as “passive tilt.” That’s when you react to a bad session by starting to expect the worst (e.g., believing your opponent will always hit that draw), and thus go into “check/call mode when faced with any aggression from your opponents unless you have an extremely strong hand.”

The authors explain how unlike other, more obvious forms of tilt (when you know you’re tilting), passive tilt can often operate somewhere below conscious thought, and thus “can go undetected for a considerable period of time, especially when triggered by simply running badly.” I’m pretty sure this is what I have been dealing with the last few days, and I’m going to point to one moment in particular from yesterday’s session that kind of woke me up to what was going on.

I came to a new table and within a few hands immediately recognized the player on my left to be an especially weak opponent, doing a lot of limping and calling, showing down subpar hands, and being exploited by a couple of other, more tutored players at the table. I ended up getting into at least three hands with this player in which I lost big pots after he hit unlikely draws on the end (e.g., rivering five-outers to make two pair, filling gutshots, etc.). Then, as often happens in this situation, the guy ended up giving it all back very quickly to the rest of the table, went busto, then left.

So my mood wasn’t ideal. There were at least two very good players at the table, and since we were six-handed that meant I probably should’ve just left, too, and found an easier spot. But being down, I was stubborn about it and so stuck around.

That’s when I noticed the guy on my right was three-betting preflop every single time the player two to my left open-raised. I kept picking up winners like 7-4-offsuit, so I was folding out of those hands, of course. But it was getting obvious: the guy on my right for some reason had decided to try to isolate the other player whenever possible.

Finally those two started going at it in the chat box as well, and the gist of their conversation was that each believed the other to be a terrible player. I won’t rehearse the whole debate, other than to say there was a lot of rancor over a two-outer or nine-outer (they couldn’t decide) which one had hit against the other some time earlier. Silly stuff.

Then comes a hand in which I pick up in the cutoff. Player to my right, Laurel, raises. I three-bet. Folds to Hardy in the big blind who cold-calls, and Laurel calls as well. Flop comes a worrisome . Laurel checks, Hardy bets, I raise, and both call. The turn is the , and when both check I overcome my passive-tilty-what-if-I’m-beat fretting and bet. Both call.

The river is the . Passive tilt or not, I ain’t gonna be raising anymore on this one, I don’t think. Laurel checks, Hardy bets, I call, and Laurel check-raises. Ugh. Hardy just calls, though, so I only have to sacrifice one more bet to see this through, which I do.

Laurel shows . A boat on the river. Hardy shows . A straight. Neat. I’ve finished the hand in third place. I don’t bother to figure out what-outer it took to beat me. Neither do they.

Apologies for the bad beat story (or SIGH), but I share it mainly to say that the hand -- along with the two players’ bickering beforehand -- woke me up out of my listless, unprofitable funk and got me to the Cashier’s page. In that hand, from beginning to end, I was essentially overwhelmed by the feeling that there was no way I was gonna win it. Which is no way to operate, fer damn sure.

As was the case in December, cashing out a big chunk had an immediately beneficial effect on my overall mood. Time to regroup once again.

But first, Vegas! More tomorrow on that.

(EDIT [added 11:00 a.m.]: Just happened to notice Barry Tanenbaum posted something yesterday on a related topic, “Passive Play When Tired.”)

Stack Sizes in Limit Hold’em

Have been continuing to play mostly brief sessions of $0.50/$1.00 fixed limit hold’em, almost exclusively six-handed. Spending most of my playing time on Poker Stars, where I’ve nearly cleared that deposit bonus I mentioned going for last month. I’m also Silver Star now, and so as soon as that deposit bonus clears I’m going to go ahead and trade some FPPs for cash as well.

Incidentally, if you hadn’t heard, Stars has lowered the FPP requirements for its VIP program. It now only takes 1,200 FPPs in a given month to reach Silver Star, and 3,000 FPPs for Gold Star. That means it will be a cinch for me to maintain Silver, and I could even conceivably push for Gold one month if I really wanted to do so, although I’m not really seeing much purpose to my doing that.

I essentially made the move back over to LHE from pot-limit Omaha on New Year’s Day, and so far the year has gone fairly well. To be honest, my profit per week has been about the same playing $0.50/$1.00 LHE as it was playing PLO25 and PLO50 (though much less swingy, natch). Not sure if that means I’m a better LHE player than PLO player, equally bad at both, or nothing at all. Likely the latter. In any case, I’ve been eyeing my win rate and bankroll and starting to have thoughts about moving up a notch to $1/$2 (where I’d been when I last played LHE regularly online about a year-and-a-half ago).

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve begun to notice one issue that I didn’t even really think was much of an issue when I came back to LHE -- stack sizes. Theoretically of little (or no) consequence, right? I mean it is fixed limit, so who cares if you have $20 or $200 behind?

No-limit and pot-limit games are fundamentally affected by stack sizes, which necessarily figure into just about every decision someone makes. When I was playing PLO, I finally got to the point (after several months of experimenting) where I routinely bought in for the maximum, which seemed to be the most potentially profitable choice given my style and skill level relative to that of my usual opponents.

Moving back over to fixed limit hold’em, I’ll admit I didn’t really give the buy-in much thought at all. Usually I just took whatever default buy-in was suggested to me by the software. PokerStars suggests $20 for the $0.50/$1.00 games, so that’s what I took. Full Tilt Poker suggests $10, and I similarly just clicked on through and sat down with the suggested amount over there, too. Necessarily noticed on FTP that I was having to rebuy any time I lost even one significant pot, and so began buying in for $20 there as well.

Finally it dawned on me. I shouldn’t buy in for just 20 big bets. I should buy in for more. And there are several good reasons why.

I have a number of books on my shelf that either focus primarily on LHE or have chapters or sections devoted to LHE. Few make any reference at all to stack sizes, which makes sense because there are a lot of other, more important factors to worry about. I’m finding a couple who do discuss the issue, though, and in both cases they are mostly focusing on how players psychologically respond to the stacks around the table.

In his newly revised Internet Texas Hold’em, Matthew Hilger writes mainly about online play, and toward the end of the book has a short section on “Stack Sizes.” Hilger opines that players sitting at the fixed limit hold’em tables with small stacks generally fall into one of two groups: either they are playing lots of hands and thus have probably lost chips, or they are tight players who have just moved up from lower stakes. “Play aggressively against the scared player and don’t try to bluff the loose player,” Hilger advises. Clear enough.

With regard to one’s own stack, Hilger doesn’t specifically address how your own stack size might be interpreted by other players at the table, though one can infer that they’ll read your small stack similarly to how you read theirs. Hilger does recommend not letting your stack dip below ten big bets, thus leaving you in a situation where you may not have enough to maximize your profit should you hit a big hand. That said, Hilger says he “prefer[s] to sit down with at least forty times the big bet to minimize the chance [he] might have to add chips later.” That would be $40 at my $0.50/$1.00 tables. (Hilger’s discussion of stack sizes in LHE can be read online here.)

Tommy Angelo also talks about the issue in Elements of Poker in a section titled “Stack Size Matters (Limit).” Angelo’s focus is primarily on live games, or “table games,” as he calls ’em. He starts off recommending that one “constantly survey the stacks” around the table for a couple of reasons: to remain aware of how people are doing, and to be prepared should you get involved in a hand with a player who hasn’t enough chips to play out a hand normally.

As far as one’s own stack goes, Angelo says “it is imperative to maintain a sizable stack at limit hold’em at all times,” both because you want to avoid ever getting into a hand without adequate chips to play it through and because of other, less quantifiable benefits that come from having big stacks of chips in front of you. When you are winning, you have lots and lots of chips, so you look like a winner. When you are losing, you still have a lot of chips in front of you, so you don’t look like a loser. And when you leave, you always are leaving with chips rather than not, which also tends to affect the way you feel about yourself. (The article, along with Angelo’s other discussions of stack sizes in no-limit cash games and tourneys, can be read online here.)

I do think that even at the $0.50/$1.00 tables other players will take note of your stack size and play accordingly. Thus, if I start with $20 and then manage to dip down under $10, I look vulnerable. Everyone knows I’ve lost a couple of pots, and I think the single digit has an added effect of suggesting further weakness (like I’m afraid to rebuy). If I start with $40, however, that issue generally doesn’t come up. I also don’t have to endure the dammit-I’ve-lost-and-now-have-to-rebuy-to-keep-playing feeling that isn’t always the most pleasant. Rebuying is a very small nuisance online, to be sure, but also can have a not-so-small psychological effect that can be avoided entirely if one starts out with a big enough stack to avoid having ever to do it.

Of course, some people seem to have no problem whatsoever with rebuying. I remember a session a couple of weeks ago in which I played a good while at one table with a fellow who constantly topped off his stack to $50 whenever he slipped even fifty cents below that mark. He’d win some hands and lose some hands, but to be honest I hadn’t really picked up on how he was doing overall. Finally it dawned on me that he must be losing pretty consistently if after all that time he was still sitting there with exactly $50. Checked PokerTracker afterwards and saw he’d dropped a whopping $60 in the 150 hands or so we’d played. (Of course, if I’d been using the PokerAce HUD I’d have seen just how much he was down while we were playing, but I’ve gotten out of the habit of using that.)

So I’ve been starting with $40. And I’ve been keeping track of what others have, too. It helps to have some idea who is winning and who is losing, and since many players just take the default buy-in, it is usually easy to see who’s up and who’s down.

This issue actually came up at the very beginning of the 2/26/09 episode of Cash Plays, the show over on PokerRoad that used to be hosted by Bart Hanson and has now been revived with Jeremiah Smith hosting. On that episode, Smith had Nick Schulman and Joe Cassidy as guests, and early on Schulman was talking about how he would play $100/$200 limit hold’em and would “always sit down with at least ten times what everyone else had on the table.”

“Why do limit players do that?” asked Smith. “You walk by a limit game, and you see players with a mountain of chips.” Schulman initially joked that he did it because he was an asshole, but added that he thought people “loved having tons of chips.” Cassidy agreed that “it is a perception thing.” “So it’s like a ‘mine is bigger than yours’ kind of thing?” asked Smith. His guests both agreed it was.

That’s part of it, for sure, but I think there’s definitely more going on here than just simple ego-boosting. As Al Alvarez eloquently put it in The Biggest Game in Town, “Chips are not just a way of keeping score; they combine with the cards to form the very language of the game.” And so the chips you have in front of you are always communicating something, even when they are sitting there quietly in stacks (large or small) before you while you play fixed limit hold’em.

A New Beginning

Yesterday was my half-birthday. Yeah, you heard me. Maybe today I’ll go get myself half a cake.

No, I don’t normally mark the half-birthday milestone, but I just happened to have had a horrific couple of days at the online tables -- following a very nice stretch of several weeks -- which knocked me back a bit and thus has further encouraged this here feeling of “starting over.”

One unbelievably painful PLO hand in there in which the river card that gave me aces full also happened to complete my opponent’s straight flush, thus ensuring I would lose a pot so big I don’t even want to be specific here about the size. Let’s just say it was the biggest pot -- by far -- in which I’ve ever even been involved. Agony!

If we look back at those four stages of dealing with losing big pots as described in Matthew Hilger and Ian Taylor’s The Poker Mindset: Essential Attitudes for Poker Success (2007), I think it is safe to say I am still hovering between the first stage (“anger”) and the second (“frustration”) on that one. Will move on eventually, I believe, and perhaps this idea of a personal “reboot” will help along those lines.

I had been thinking further about those four stages, the last of which is “indifference” in which the player is able somehow “not [to] register any mental anguish from losing a big pot” and instead focus “entirely on how his opponents played and what can be learned from the hand.” I began to wonder whether or not poker would be fun if one reached that stage. Isn’t part of why we play tied to the various emotions the game produces? What would it be like to play without any emotion at all?

I decided to ask Matthew Hilger about that. In addition to co-authoring The Poker Mindset, he also writes a regular column for Card Player and a newly-expanded edition of his well-regarded book Internet Texas Hold’em (first published in 2003, I think) is appearing any day now.

In response, Hilger pointed me to a section near the end of the book titled “The Emotional Paradox of Poker” where the authors discuss that very issue of how removing emotions from the game (a key part of developing the “poker mindset”) could potentially turn poker into “a bland game that is more like an exercise in intermediate mathematics than the thrilling, adrenaline-pumping roller coaster that it can be.”

Thus the paradox. We play to win, because among other things winning gives us pleasure. But in order to win, we cannot let emotions (like feeling pleasure) affect us too greatly.

There’s more, but let me just again recommend The Poker Mindset to you and you can read for yourself what the authors have to say about this and other subjects.

By the way, there were some interesting comments on yesterday’s post about the WSOP apparently considering dropping rebuy tournaments for next year’s Series. (Check ’em out.) I liked Greylocks’ point about cash games being like rebuy tourneys. Indeed, one is “starting over” all of the time in cash games, whether we’re talking about rebuying into the game, or the smaller type of “starting over” that happens with each hand.

So I’m six months older. I sincerely think I am a much better poker player today than I was back on my last (actual) birthday. But there’s still work to do. And fun to be had.

Speaking of, let me shout out to my many buds who have gathered in Vegas for the big blogger hootenanny. Had a number of “wish you were going”-type messages sent my way, for which I am very grateful. Y’all enjoy yrselves, now. I trust everything will be comprehensively chronicled for me to read about over the next couple of weeks.

That’ll come later, though, I know. After you all have returned to your regular lives. And started over.

Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger’s The Poker Mindset

Mentioned a week ago how I’d been going back to Barry Greenstein’s Ace on the River to reread short chapters now and then. Another book that is good for such occasional rereading is Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger’s The Poker Mindset: Essential Attitudes for Poker Success (2007). Wrote once before not too long ago about the chapter on tilt, and yesterday found myself again looking through The Poker Mindset, reviewing other short chapters and reflecting on how the ideas related to my own game.

As the title indicates, the book is primarily focused on the psychology of poker, and does a nifty job treating several of the many unique challenges to one’s mental health one faces at the poker table. The book is well organized and well written, and I would characterize its advice as especially practical in nature, offering genuine courses of action one can take consciously in response to various issues (e.g., risk aversion, bad beats, downswings, tilt, bankroll issues, thinking clearly, controlling emotions, etc.), rather than strictly discuss such things in the abstract.

The book begins with an explanation of that title, defining what “the poker mindset” is and how developing such a mode of thinking can help one with all of the other stressors poker presents us. A lot of that has to do with understanding the relationship between luck and skill in poker. Both are part of the game. That’s reality. Thus the “poker mindset” (say Taylor and Hilger) is one that understands and accepts reality, and from there one can make decisions that are grounded in what is really going on when one plays poker.

Not intending to do a full-on review here, but mainly wanted to pass along one of the bits of advice I reread last night which struck me as particularly insightful and of use -- a section in Chapter 4 (“Bad Beats and Losing Big Pots”) that talks about how players tend to deal with losing big pots.

As someone who plays mostly pot-limit Omaha, I’m involved in big pots fairly frequently. Such is the nature of PLO. And as is to be expected, I will lose my fair share of them.

Just a couple of days ago I had a session start out with a wild hand in which I managed to lose my entire buy-in in the first hand -- flopped top set, got a flush draw to put it all in on the turn, and his card came on the river. I rebought, and as it happened the very next hand (my second at the table) saw me turn a nut straight and win back half of what I’d lost to the very same dude. Things were happening too quickly, really, to talk much about “image” here, although I think on the second hand my opponent certainly thought I’d instantly gone on tilt and thus stuck around to the river, giving me back some of my cabbage.

In any event, like I say, the big pots aren’t that uncommon at the PLO tables, and I’d like to think I’ve learned to deal with losing them somewhat better over the time I’ve been playing.

In their discussion, Taylor and Hilger suggest there are different “stages” a player goes through when it comes to dealing with losing big pots. The “journey” through these stages is not “linear,” they explain (we go back and forth), but each nevertheless “represents a better response (and a better underlying attitude) than the last.”

The first stage is anger. The main focus here is upon the money lost, for which the loser looks to blame someone else. The loser searches for a target, usually the opponent. If a live game (the authors explain), the target sometimes becomes the dealer. Or one might blame “the poker gods, or whatever deity they believe in.” I think we’ve all been there.

The second stage is frustration, a stage which the authors say is characterized by a lot of thoughts or statements that begin “if only.” For instance, in the hand I recount above my response falls in this stage if I’m thinking “if only the flush hadn’t come.” Like the first stage, this one also finds the player looking to the past, i.e., failing to move on in one’s mind to the next hand.

The third stage is acceptance, wherein the player has “learned to put short-term results in perspective” and subsequently play without being affected by having lost the big pot. Such players can still respond emotionally to losing and feel bad about what has happened, but they don’t dwell on it in such a way that it affects them moving forward.

The fourth stage is indifference, a stage which Taylor and Hilger suggest few players ever reach. At this stage, the player possesses such self-control he or she actually is able to avoid all feelings of “anger, frustration, or even acceptance of the hand,” and instead is able to remain “focused entirely on how his opponents played and what can be learned from the hand.” Thus does such a player strike a nice, healthy balance between looking back and looking ahead, using the past to inform the future.

I’d like to say I’m usually above the “anger” stage, although I know occasionally I’m there. Whenever I’m tempted to type a snarky response in the chat box after losing such a hand (a temptation I normally am able to resist), I am surely stuck in the first stage.

More often I’m in the second stage (“frustration”), saying to myself “if only.” Sometimes after a hand like the one described above, I’ll open up a window, go visit Two Dimes, and run the numbers just to show myself that yes, indeed, I was a heavy favorite when the money went in. I suppose doing that is somewhat instructive (helping me recognize certain odds), but the exercise is mostly just to satisfy doubts or make myself “feel better.” Not really looking forward at all.

When I am playing particularly well, I will occasionally have moments where I am conscious of operating in the third stage, “acceptance.” That comes and goes, though. And I know for certain I’ve never experienced the detachment of “indifference” when losing a biggie.

Like I say, I think the book is quite good at spelling out certain issues with which we are mostly familiar, and offering practical advice -- like simply acknowledging and being conscious of these different varieties of reaction to losing big pots -- that can be helpful at the tables.

So, in which stage do you find yourself when losing big pots?

The Worst Hand Ever

Had a weird little session of pot-limit Omaha yesterday toward the end of which I believe I might have played my Worst Hand of Poker Ever. We’re talking major league stinker. Just horrific.

Oh, I won the hand. Of course I did. Why else would I bring it up?

I generally keep a level head at the tables. (Heck, just yesterday I was writing about I wasn’t prone to taking too much risk at the tables.) I’ll make mistakes, of course, but usually am able to avoid any real serious blunders. Looking back on yesterday’s session, I can see how a combination of factors led to my slipping into a wild little haze of irrational play right near the end of the session that led to the Worst Hand. Yes, I was most definitely on tilt.

In Your Worst Poker Enemy (2007), Al Schoonmaker includes a terrific chapter about “Preventing and Handling Tilt.” I’m rereading it again today, and am finding myself appreciating it even more after yesterday’s incident. He gives a list of tips for avoiding tilt, including keeping good records, identifying “your triggers and warning signals,” asking yourself questions about your motives as you “constantly scrutinize both your play and your emotional state,” avoiding the impulse to try to get even, and, of course, leaving the game at the first signs of tilt.

Running through the entire chapter is the general notion that the player who is on tilt frequently doesn’t realize it -- thus is it very difficult to leave the game at the first signs, since by definition tilt is a condition generally unrecognizable by the person suffering from it. Writes Schoonmaker, “Some people have even called a brief period of tilt ‘alien-hand syndrome.’ They feel that their brains have lost control over their hands. They watch, almost helplessly, while their hand does something stupid with their chips or cards.”

Man, that was me all right.

Have another book here on my shelf called The Poker Mindset by Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger (also published in 2007) which features a chapter on tilt. The authors talk about how “tilt has many layers and nuances” and “can lead to the deterioration of a player’s game into a loose uncontrolled mess.” They also do a good job identifying different types of tilt, including loose tilt (playing too many hands), passive tilt (checking and calling, checking and calling), formulaic tilt (too much “by the book”), aggressive tilt (betting and raising, betting and raising), tight tilt (losing confidence), and FPS tilt (where becomes overly affected by Mike Caro’s “Fancy Play Syndrome”).

During my little tilty period yesterday, I did spend a few hands in the “passive tilt” phase, then had one hand where I probably demonstrated “FPS tilt,” then, in the Worst Hand Ever, it was pure “aggressive tilt.”

The session had begun with two fairly rough beats that took most of my original $50 buy-in. The first came on the very first hand. I’d been dealt A-A-x-x single-suited and raised preflop, getting a caller from a short stack who had about $15 to start. Flopped an ace and bet it, and my opponent called me with a gutshot to a wheel. He’d get there on the turn, at which time we got the rest of his chips in the middle. So a quick hit down to $35. About four hands later I lost most of that (about $30) after flopping a straight, then trapping a different opponent into putting his entire stack in on the turn with bottom set. He filled up on the river, and I was gonna be playing uphill for a while.

Managed to battle back (thanks largely to the very poor play of the short-stacker who’d won that first hand), and was close to even for a long stretch. Then I tumbled back down after losing three or four hands against a new, crafty player who’d come to the table. There was some misfortune involved in those hands, but really the guy just plain outplayed me (repeatedly), basically earning the maximum from me on his made hands.

So I was losing, but really was doing just fine mentally. Then came a weird succession of unlikely -- and costly -- bad beats. Not gonna recount them in detail, but there were no less than three hands, each against different players, in which my opponent rivered me with three, four, and eight outs respectively.

That’s what unhinged me. Might’ve been different if all of the beats had come from one player, but it seemed like the whole table was full of lucky SOBs who’d managed to pilfer my chips unfairly (so went my irrational train of thought). That’s when I passed through a short period of “passive tilt,” had a dumb blind-vs.-blind hand in which I’d flopped trips then mangled it (my “FPS tilt” hand), then cruised seemlessly into that scary “aggressive tilt” that led to the Worst Hand Ever.

Actually won and lost a couple of big pots first before getting to the hand, including receiving one absolute gift of a hand when my overpair of kings somehow was good against two other players who checked down a fairly big pot. Then came the hand. For those who are squeamish or easily upset, I ask you now to look away.

I had just about exactly $50 when the hand began (having rebought). I’d had a second table going for some of the session -- where things had been going better -- and so overall was only down about $25 at this point.

The hand started with me limping UTG with . (Already suspect, I know.) The fellow in the cutoff raised pot to $2.25, the button called, then a player in the small blind who only had $2.55 to start the hand reraised all in. It folded to me and as I knew the betting was no longer open to further reraises, I went ahead and made the call, as did the cutoff and button. So there are four players in the hand vying for the main pot of $10 or so, three of whom would be playing for a possible side pot.

The flop came . No flush draws. Not much in the way of straight draws, although someone could have a Broadway wrap. I have top and bottom pair. I checked, and the cutoff -- the original raiser -- checked as well. Then the button bet $6 into the dry side pot.

I’d seen the button make a couple of stabs at orphaned pots before, as well as some other cheeky plays, and so in my unreasoning state decided this must also be a similarly insincere bet. So what did I do? Reraise pot! (Channelling Jamie Pickering, there.) I pumped it to $28.20, it folded back to the button, and without hesitation he reraised me pot right back.

Oof. I have just $18 left, the pot has swelled to $80, and I know, know, know I am beat (by a set of jacks, probably). Well, I say that now. At the time I had no idea what was happening. My brain had lost control of my hands. So I called.

What did my opponent have? A set of aces, actually. He’d just called the preflop raise rather than reveal his hand with a reraise, and had trapped me fairly soundly. He held to my . So with an flop, what are my chances?

Exactly 7%.

Well, you know already how the story ends. The came on the turn, improving me to a whopping 10%. And the came on the river, giving me the straight and the entire three-digit pot.

Suddenly up for the session, I left immediately, almost frightened by my actions and the redonkulous good fortune of that undeserved runner-runner miracle.

As I said at the start, the Worst Hand Ever. Which I’m sure I wouldn’t be writing about today had it turned out the way it was supposed to.

But I did win, and so am therefore able to share it with all of you as an object lesson. Watch for the signs of tilt! Don’t put yourself in these spots. Just because someone else hits that three-outer on you, don’t make that an excuse to go for your own three-outers!

I feel like some sort of penance is definitely in order here. Think I might just have to take a day or two off from playing altogether after that applesauce. Maybe longer. Give me a chance to reread these chapters. Anyhow, I hope sharing my embarrassing play helps someone out there.

Now that I think about it, though, the fact that I won the hand doesn’t really help that much in the lesson-learnin’ department, does it? Ignore that last part of the story, everyone! Wipe it from yr minds, if you know what’s good for you!

(I am a crazy person.)