blonde poker forum

This probably aint gonna be your usual pha but  please spend the time and effort because i want some opinions ty.

Last night I dropped down to play a £150 at Dtd. The last few weeks I have had some great fun in these comps as people tend to be a lot more relaxed and up for the craic. Having said that we have had a couple of slow rolls and some definate angle shooting going on by people who on investigation have zero hendonmob flags so I have issued a couple of yellow cards and bollockings. I am sat in seat 9 and never even noticed PeeJay sit down as I have been talking bollocks and laughing at Amjad getting a young valet to pack in half way through who first shift just because after 3 attempts she could not manage to make a hot cup of tea. Tbf she did say she was gonna pack in at the end of the shift anyway because it was not the job for her.

I get involved in a hand and being results driven hate my fold but sort of thought it might be good poker at the time but am probably being too nitty as I am playing with scared money.

The villans in the hand are:

PeeJay. An excellent player but seems to be lacking live experience and confidence. I tell the table not to under estimate him as he is easily the 2nd best player on the table and will be dangerous if he gets chips. He has late reg'd having just arrived from Blackpool and has lost 11k of his 30k. He is looking ready to blow and I have alerted the table to the fact that he is gonna blow soon. Just as an aside I loved his exit hand were he was accused of angel shooting having appeared to check his 2nd nut flush on the turn and roger chexks behind. floor is called and then it gets a bit messy culminating in peejay jamming the river when the 4th club comes and his opponent has the bare  Ac. I saw exactly what went on. To the dealers eye and the other players at the table PeeJay was tanking for about 30 seconds on the turn when he makes the K hi flush then taps the table twice. What actually happened was he was riffling his chips and as his hand slides down to start the riffle again he did not actually get his finger under the bottom chip so moves his hand down almost instantly. It looked like the double tap of a check but obv was not. Floor is called Pam rules with PeeJay and lets him bet the turn which Roger spite calls and obv rivers the nuts.

Roger. Old boy steady away player quite easy to put on a hand bets if he has it folds if he does not sort of thing. Loves to limp call and has already limp called A 10 when I 3 bet with QQ, then checked down an ace hi flop after I cbet. He is decent straight up n down chap did gloat a bit after taking PeeJay out in the above hand and then went on to final.

Myself. Low in confidence, never getting above starting stack  not playing my A game as a consequence thinking I ain't won a race in 18 months and forgetting about all the times I get there as a 25% chance when jamming a short stack etc.

PeeJay BB seat 1 19k
Me SB seat 2  28k
Roger utg.  45k

Roger limps utg for 800 and picks up 3 callers before it gets round to me in the SB with  Jc  Jd.  I decide that if I just make up the small blind hoping that PeeJay might see that getting a jam through would add 5k to his stack and would only get called by a premium hand which would be unlikely as we had all limped.

I limp and PeeJay jams as expected and I already have the chips mentally over the line to call PeeJay but Roger starts tanking. After a while he calls the 19k (does not move all in for his 45k) and it folds round to me.

So I have under repped my hand and am left with this spot. I let PeeJay know I had set this up to snap call him to try and gauge some reaction from Roger. All the time I am looking at Roger who ain't in the best of health but he definatly is trying to force himself to look calm but he definatly ain't comfortable. I have seen plenty of old wizards limp with aces and kings expecting some young lad to raise it up and then they move all in but its a shitty play and telling roger that he's too nice a gent to do that I pretty much know he ain't got AA or KK when he tells me he could be doing that.

So I am not worried about PeeJay and pretty sure Roger would have raised with QQ utg too but still elected to fold thinking I could easily be up against 3 over cards despite getting the awesome price to call. I hate being out of confidence and so in certain about my game.

I ain't a big fan of the murder mystery in pha so I will tell you straight up what they had.

PeeJay had A8
Roger  had  AQ

Board runs out xx8xJ giving PeeJay the pot and me a headache.

Thx for reading a bit tldr and unusual

I think you answered you're own questions in this thread mate.

My 2p worth is that you've played the hand this way to get a shove, and whilst another guy HAS called you've got to be thinking he could be doing the same as you, while AQ isn't as strong as JJ I'd take it vs a guy who I think is ready to implode.

You read roger for NOT AA/KK/QQ so even with 3 overcards I think this is still a spot to get your chips in and HOLD especially when Peej could be holding some of Roger's outs. Also it looks like you've got just over 20 big blinds left?

Nothing wrong with a good moan once in a while, feel like going off on one sometimes myself as I'm really not having a good run at the moment, just do anything you can to keep yourself motivated :)

TL:DR. Don't let running bad make you do things differently than normal.~

Chin up mate, see you soon at DTD again hopefully :)

Ty. Tbh it never even entered my head that they could both be holding Ax.

It's probably why roger was hesitant because of the whole "Shit I only have ace high" thoughts people have when moving all-in/calling big bets

AK/AQ is Roger's most likely holding here for a limp UTG and call (but not jam) by a long distance. Premium pair seems so unlikely.

Without sounding like one of the kids, you're some distance ahead of PeeJay's range in this spot IMO and you know that because you tried to set this situation up.

You decided to induce the shove so that you could call off and win a race (or slightly better). When Roger calls, you now have possibly a third overcard but a third set of chips.

Your plan was to call (and fade like a hero). So follow your heart.

Yours sincerely, an ice cream.

Lol. Yeah went fishing and caught more than I expected :)

Playing when ur confidence is low is pretty hard going


gl with it jase

If their hands were face up and they had AKs and KQs, it's still profitable for you to get it in, and this is the worst case scenario aside from pj having QQ+, based on your read of Roger. I know when you're running bad it can seem like you'll never win in these spots, but I've always found I do better when I embrace variance than when I try to avoid it.

Funking for you to get some run good soon mate.

Its very very hard to play poker when your confidence is low. The most important thing to remember is that no matter how bad you're running, if you make +EV decisions, you'll win.

This isn't a nice spot for someone with a lot of confidence lol. Old guy limp calls an all in utg is never a fun scenario to be faced with. However, I think we can call pretty happily here purely due to the fact he's tanked.

You say here you're not worried about PJ, but I don't think peej is ever a million miles out of line here. However, we have a 9k overlay vs UTG who, IMO, probably has a better range for our hand. Im expecting him to play 99/TT and AJ-AK this way, maybe QQ+, but you said you didnt think he had KK/AA so maybe just QQ.

Iv typed this on my phone so probably havent put it how i wanted it to. Basically i think we should call and be happy about it, however, gut instinct is a bitch and 50% of the time we'll regret our decision whatever we do (call and lose, fold and win).

Dont dwell too much on these hands mate. Theyre ugly spots and the best thing to do is go with what your telling yourself deep down. Obviously get opinions, but dont be too results orientated and lose sleep

I think even with very little information it's a call and with everything you've said it's more of a call but i think you already know that. As for morale, even though it sucks to lose, I try to base my satisfaction/disappointment on how I've played. I think most would agree we are more frustrated when we make a mistake as opposed to getting coolered.

You make a good plan in this hand which when you follow through with it, even if the guy ends up having a better hand it doesn't make it a bad call with the info you had to go on. Certainly wouldn't be banging my head on the steering wheel over it.

This whole post is +Ev especially the bolded bit. How can you beat variance if you don't tackle it head on.

If you want to live you cannot be afraid to die

FWIW my advice is to try playing a comp without opening your mouth, lol. Is that possible? While concentrating on having banter with the table you miss a player sitting down. When you realise the player is there you furnish your oppos with free info about his abilities. You then tell the table about his state of mind and that he is about to blow. So when UTG makes his move who knows if your words have tipped the balance. You set up the trap, but because you announce it to the table UTG gets to execute the plan first. If your perception tells you what somebody is thinking why are you passing that info onto everybody else? Adding additional information to the game is only making it harder to piece back together when making a decision. You even announce the plan you limped to snap thereby furnishing oppos with free info about how ur playing. All these words are influencing the game and I don't really see how it's being influenced in your favour. You shudda announced bb was a rock.

Having a laugh is all well and good, when you are running normal having fun at the table makes for a great night. However, I don't see the fun in running bad. So I would strip it back to poker and focus just on that. This issuing yellow cards and policing the table, taking the piss, playing the clown and having jokes with everybody is winning you money how? Use your skills for your benefit alone.

Playing this comp because it's relaxed and up for the craic is a shit attitude when you are in a rut. These people are taking the food outta your kids mouth. Yo Jason, you need to get the eye of the tiger back.

Great post Mantis. Agree with every word.

Yikes.

I quote

"PeeJay. An excellent player but seems to be lacking live experience and confidence. I tell the table not to under estimate him as he is easily the 2nd best player on the table and will be dangerous if he gets chips."


Jason, and I mean this in the best possible way, STFU telling the table what you know about other players

It's a game of incomplete information. You have a piece of information, namely detailed knowledge of a dangerous player, that others on the table might not have. Why give them this information?

Just keep quiet and use what you now for your benefit not for helping anyone else


and I agree with Mantis. Shock.

Also, I'm sure you're just levelling with your remarks about PJ, but lacking in confidence is definitely a bad read from you. He'll be sat in that seat knowing he's the best player at the table and very likely to be one of the top 5 in the tournament. Which he is.

Experience? Of course, he's like 14 years old. He's still probably played more hands than you :P

Hate to say nice things about him too, trust me, he's one of the last people I wanna arse kiss!

I have to agree with Mantis and Tighty.

You have put them down on certain hands & assumed PJ's play, at worst you are racing in this spot.

As for anything else, you just need to get yourself in better shape at the table and stop thinking like the worst is always going to happen. Not only this, but I don't think you would have posted this if the outcome would have been different, as you would have been rather pleased with fold?

I am sure things will improve, refer to PM with regards to 'scared money'.

Chin up Jase, I am sure things will improve.

Great post from Mantis and congratulations on picking up on my attitude at the table. I am low in confidence and hating the game and this is coming out in my snide bitter comments at people. We had this one prick at the table who kept having a go at everyone for how bad their calls were, who announces a raise of 1600 then puts 12k in the pot and his mistake is pointed out to him, when another man makes it 3500 then gets back to prick who then wants to 4 bet to 8k in an angle shoot. Why should that ever bother me but it did so when he then had a pop at Amjad latter on in the day I let him have both barrels about his lack of a single decent cash and Amjad being Dtd's loyalist customer. It was like the shit old days of casino poker with me being the bigger prick and arsehole.

I have to have fun when playing poker and enjoy the craic but Wadey & Frankie have pointed out to me that I  talking to much. The not noticing PeeJay was a joke that I never noticed him was because I thought he was the "forgotten one" but that is Tom High (both pretty similar looking kids to me).

Once again the telling people PeeJay is the 2nd best player at the table along the same lines as telling the dealer she is the 2nd best looking person in the card room. I take tighty's point about not concentrating and admit in the past couple of years I am on here whilst playing. These days you never see me wearing the beats anymore even tho when I used to wear them I never had any music playing through em.

As for sharing the information about PeeJay this was also done with a purpose as he had direct position on me and would make my life difficult. I want everyone to know how good he is and not to Donk chips to him unnecessarily and also to understand as a decent player the game/moves he has.

As for my up for the craic attitude/image (bit like the hoodies) it all serves to help in me getting called light so often. I have so many friends in poker and love chatting to them and if I ain't seen  for ages I enjoy the social side and shooting the breeze with em.

The bit about PeeJay is a bit tounge in cheek but he does not posses that table aura that some of the younger players have. When sat opposite Tommy Bingham, Liam Batty, Tom Langley, Tom Kuggelstadt, etc they have an air of confidence that PeeJay does not have. PeeJay looks to be caught in the headlights but is undoubtedly got the ability.

When he got involved in the did he check or did he not hand he looked like he was about to burst out crying. I was not helping by telling Pam not to side with PeeJay just coz he is local.

I hope that I don't come across as a ***** at the table, I know sometimes people I never met take it wrong, but I got a few laughs when Gabby tried to sort out the hot tea fiasco with Amjad. She was wearing a nice dress showing off all her curves and thanked me for my compliment. She did not know what to do with herself when I then asked her what sort of knickers was she wearing for us to not be able to see a visable panty line.

You are right Aaron. Usually this stuff would not bother me but like I say confidence is low. Going for 2 years cashing for fun to 2 years of not getting above starting stack is not much fun. I even started blaming the last 2 years down turn on my mum getting cancer then dieing, which once again is complete bollocks.

Maybe we should move this thread out of pha coz its got fuck all to do with the hand either :)

Just read all that back Jason

Its ridiculous

You need to get your head in the game and stop shooting the breeze, talking bollocks and not concentrating at the table

Remove ephemeral crap from your mind when you are playing.

I dnt know u at alll, but don't be that guy...

For the record. I have shared many Tables with Jason, & although he says some unorthodox things, he does not do so with malice aforethought.

I'd go so far as to say he is an absolute pleasure to share a table with, & much fun is usually had when he is around, it's the very essence of Live Poker to enjoy ourselves - we are not Pros, after all, nor are hardly any of our table companions.

Live, he is a top top bloke, & I heartily recommend his company to anyone. 

Online, of course, he is a total pita & a complete cock. And that is on a good day.   

;)

so what do I do Richard, sit there quietly not enjoying my day out. Obv my primary reason to be there is win money and feed the kids as poker is now my only source of income but I have to enjoy playing poker or I might as well do 6-2 on the steelworks.


Hey Marty I always have a laugh with all the staff and they get treated well. Most of  em are friends on Facebook and talk regular. When I think back how many great people who gave worked at Dtd who no longer work there it is quite frightening. My latest fav Penny did her last shift yesterday. But we are discussingy morale not staff morale.


Lol Ty Tony. Pretty sure things may turn round soon, or not

Jason you are 100% right about having a chat and a laugh at a table, because you always want good company rather than all the seriousness of playing cards and trying to make a dollar. I hate sitting at the poker table and listen to people talk about poker and how hand just played out should have played or going through theories every hand, it is just dull. It is much more interesting to listen to random stories about pretty much anything, but from the one time I did share a table with a few months ago, you do talk way to much, you are not picking up what certain players are doing & so on, but to a certain extent you can't stop being you, which is being sociable.

You just need to talk a bit less, maybe wear a nice shirt once in a while too, creates less talking points ;) ;)

Get the balance right

At the moment, too much bollocks, not enough concentration


and I watch you play poker a lot, sadly.

There's some good advice here Jason, you should take it on board.

Quite a big reason I play live poker sometimes is for the social interaction. Being an online grinder can suck in that respect. But I am very aware that when I am chatting (which when I get going is usually pretty incessantly, sitting next to me is generally a bad draw if you're friendly), I am not concentrating properly, and am playing worse. Whenever I think it's time to concentrate, I get the old headphones out, and I'll generally be benefiting from it.

Having a good time at the table can be fun, but winning is more fun. Obv I'm not suggesting that is the reason you are losing, but you've got to give yourself the best shot.

yeah I know. I  am just looking for a quote from you when I was at the peak of my powers in 2010 when you said I was one of the best players you'd seen around the time I had finaled to deepstacks running and bubbled the next one.

I think if I remember right my lifetime of luck ran out in the hand where on the bubble we getting it all in

Me  Jc 9d
Villan   Qd x

On Q 10 8 and it came 8 8 to give him a full house. Gonna look back now to get exact hand :)



Thanks James, maybe I am kidding myself that I can chat and play optimally all the time. I am pretty sure I have chatted at the tables for ever, am I wrong about this tighty?

Yes you are who you are.

However there's a big difference between now and then, and its to do with table presence

Back then you were Bombastic and confident.

Now at the table the joviality is a bit forced (but I only notice because I know you reasonably). When you are quiet at the table meanwhile, you sit there like a frightened mouse, hunched over your chips, eyes darting around

Classic case of lack of confidence/money/bad run etc


This is meant to be helpful, its not a criticism. Its clear why this is happening, and I'd advocate some PMA, perhaps a read of Tendler and just concentrating on your game

There's more to life than poker.

Do something else for a bit - enjoy that.

You might not even miss poker.

Having a laugh and enjoying their day out isn't the priority for most people when they go to work. Enjoying work is a bonus you can afford yourself if you are producing acceptable results. If you're flopping at your job you SHOULD feel pressure and you SHOULD be knuckling down to basics. In the end if I kept trying to have a laugh at work while producing shit results my boss would sack me. So maybe you WILL end up on the steelworks if you keep producing shit results at your job.

In the hand if you tell people bb is a rock while secretly thinking he will blow up the info you get back is much crisper. The way you're doing things is using your skills to analyse the situation and then showing off to the table by telling them all about it. I could walk into LA Fitness today and tell them about a great marketing idea I have to get new members. They use that idea tomorrow to win loads of new members when I was gonna use it next week to win myself those new members. Because of me their business prospers and mine goes bust. How is this having a laugh? I don't think it's about malice or nice guy whatever, it's about how shrewd and calculating you are with the skills you've got.

Yeh last time we got drawn together I'm pretty sure I just folded for 2 hours =/

It really is surprising (or at least it was to me) just how tough it is to concentrate and play optimally while you're chatting away to a few people. Obviously its great to catch up with some of the people that you only ever see at poker events but you're probably better off shooting the breeze in the bar than at the tables when you're really in need of a decent score.

Fold all your bad hands, raise your strong hands,  and do some more bets after that, don't call for value. Within a few weeks you'll be back on track

Hi Jason,

Sorry to hear you are in poor form but confidence and cards can come and go in a heartbeat. One thing you can do tho is have the right approach and gameplan  and some of the things mentioned on here by others make a lot of sense.

One thing that helps me a lot when I hit the wall is get a copy of 'Feel the fear and do it anyway' by Susan Jeffers, go somewhere nice for a few days and just read it in one go.

cheers

i have always had positive mental attitude or so I thought. And used to be confident. I can't even find that hand were I flop the nuts and lose to running 8 8 on the bubble. Teller you remember it right? Thought it was April 2011 but I was not even playing and can't ever remember missing a deepstack so must have been at the Irish open or something.
Maybe I should have started a diary :)

I am taking this all in too Ty everyone.
 
My main focus in life is the 3 boys and everything revolves round them. I quit online poker after playing in my pants for 40 hours a week and becoming a losing player.

Poker has given me the lifestyle I have had, the holidays, the wedding the cars and being mortgage free for getting on for over a decade. On my table on Saturday was a guy from Hull and he was amazed to know I knew all the players in his card room most of whom were sat in there 5 nights a week ten years ago.

Maybe its time to face up to the fact that I can't make a living from playing live poker and move on. I don't like doing anything half heartedly and my match fishing career went down a similar road. I fished semi professionally and was sponsored and fished at the highest level in team fishing, qualified and fished the world club championships as a team then walked away. I gave away £20l worth of fishing tackle to mates and told em if I ever came back I'd get it back


Wow four more heros posted whilst writing this. Must get this posted but will read other replies now.

Ty so much for the responses as I am now feeling quite humble

The flopped straight on the bubble was a DTD. I updated it

You swatted it off like it was no bother.


If it happened now, you'd be at my side for an hour :-)



When you lost AK v QQ in the recent £500 you came over, i was writing. After about 10 minutes you thrashed your hand into the side of the chair in pure exasperation and disappointment and it obviously really hurt


Some good advice in here, but I think you've answered your own question. Other sources of income, other interests and then when you do play, it won't matter, you won't get down and you'll have fun again

Thank once again all the heros. Am definatly taking it all on board and wi be having a look at the reading material. It was funny but when George was selected to be the subject for the Tendler evaluation I was at the peak of my performance thinking at the time, "what does George need that for coz he is a cracking guy and its all about having a positive mental attitude".

100% the game is changing, gonna hold back from saying getting tougher as I think Glen also makes a good point. There are a lot of "less than optimal" players out there still getting the results playing thier game their own way. Even today I am reading stuff about guys who have made serious money on line questioning if the game is becoming to hard to beat and just one big gamble.

Yes losing a race hurt that day hurt more than any 1 outer I have ever taken tighty for sure. My attitude to beats used to be look how well played to there, and I used to be annoyed at sucking out on someone :(

Volume seems to be a problem, I went from playing 5 nights a week for years to playing twice a month 5 years ago when Alister was born. Now that he is in year 1 and the twins started in reception full time as of September it might be time to get back on the road again. Trouble is all the bread n butter £20 re buy 10k gtd that played somewhere every night of the week no longer exist and the DC games that we played after have all but died out.

Right gotta go shopping now so keep the advice coming please Ty.

Hi Jason, an interesting read .
I love a good laugh at the table but do think its getting harder to try and have laughs and play really well.
 From reading previous posts from you, and from write ups/reports it would be safe to say you are a'wear your heart on your sleeve' type of person. All well and good but in the tourneys now giving away any info/tells/thoughts is gonna be a bad idea, most of these young kids know what/how they are going to continue with a hand as soon as they see the cards(sometimes before they have seen them prob) .
 Saying PEEJAY (whom i do not know btw) has not much experience in life/live situations doesnt really matter because he prob has auto settings for situations in his head , if as you say he was near to tears in one hand he prob still played it out fine, and he isnt the one getting in a strop with himself and looking for reassurance on a forum.
 You seem a decent bloke and good luck with getting back on track.

Oioi Jason,

If you now depend on poker for a living then you have to try to make some regular income some how ether than playing super high variances tournaments with very Little confidence.

I'd suggest to start playing online. Not only will you be able to make some mony to supplement and support these big buy in monthly tournaments but you would also be able to gain confidence and learn.

In the last 3 months of poker what do ou think you hae learned? Strictly strategical...

Just might be the time to start learning poker again and seeing why all these pesky kids are doing. If you started a blog John black style you would get a huge amount of support and encouragement and I think our chances of both winning a live ornament and being able to support your family would increase ten fold.

Have you not bothered to read this? He has mentioned that he is losing player online.

you are very annoying guy and i cant really be bothered, but have you read the thread, he is not winning live either.

its easier to start to win online than it is to start winning live. you play more hands thus learn more.

there are probably less than 0.5% of people who support their family who can't beat 50nl online. If it is his job and plays 4-5 hours a day 5 days a week he would get significant amounts back in rakeback and then should win profits too. If he doesn't want to do that then it is just lazy and you're not really a "professional" you're jsut somebody playing a few comps for fun a month and hoping to bink something to fund the next few months.

But he is winning live though, just not at the moment, so what you are saying is that he should double his current losses as you think he will win, but he says he doesn't?

what do you mean he is winning live? it doesnt make sense.

he will never play a sufficient sample size live to show he is a winning player or not. its just variance when you play 12 tournaments a year, even 50 tournaments, its absolutely nothing. Moorman can play 250 tournaments and not be upset if he doesnt do so well, this is 5 years live time ffs, even 1k tournaments is nothing, this is 20 years worth of a torunament a week.

Its really not even close ffs.

It wont double his losses, he wont play 500 pound tournaments online, he will play micros and micro cash and learn to play proper 2012 poker.

Playing live tournaments when you're on a big downswing and low in confidence makes zero sense.

start playing online > stop all toghter > play just live.

Got to agree with pleno here, relearning the game or whatever you want to call it is a good idea, you can do it cheaply, i been playing $5 tournies and after reading advice/ideas different statagies etc it has shown through to my live tourney game.

You really have not read through all of this have you? He has mentioned he does not want to play online, because he is losing. You do not suddenly become a winning player, because you said so. Also, playing online is totally different game, you might win online, but it doesn't make you confidence amazing in all honesty. You are too much of an online player with less live experience to realise that online is just for not for certain people.

I have said that he is a winning player, he is just having a bad time of it at the moment.

Anyone else feeling self-conscious about just playing live?

Jase- you seem to be having similar problems that I experienced a couple of years ago. There's no easy way out of it. I agree with Tighty/Alex/Mantis and to some extent Pleno

How much time do you actually spend studying the game? Working on it? Keeping up with trends? You just cannot win in comps playing snug and making the odd move long term. Also larking about and having fun of course adds to the experience. I often play my best when chatting and interacting but this is part of a longer term plan in game. I get the feeling you're just talking etc cos you wanna be liked/be the joker.

When I was struggling one person really impressed me when watching playing. Might be a bit surprising but I watched James Akenhead play on a few poker TV shows. Yes he's quiet and perhaps doesn't add much in terms of entertainment but watching him play with such intense concentration and focus was inspiring.

My advice- learn the game, love the GAME rather than the characters and focus on playing. All this chat can sometimes hinder rather than help esp when you're running/playing bad

please.

1) ive played as a professional live poker player
2) ive played more live poker than you

please done tell me what i know and what i dont know. I'm very qualified to answer here and what I'm saying is right, treat it as gospel, please.

Just because you dont win instantly online doesn't mean you wont learn and start to win. If you are in a position where you considr yourself a professional poker player you can make 3-4k online relatively easy.

You cannot say Jason is a winning player, he cannot say he is, you cannot say hes a losing player, nor can he. He has played an incredibly small sample size of tournaments lifetime and is in a position where he describes himself as a professional player.

He has posted the thread thus has the right intentions here but needs to put his sensible hat on and realize that he needs ti put some effort into the game.

Ofc he doesnt want to play online lol, he would much prefer chatting up the DTD valets, but doing what you want to do and what you have to do are 2 very very different things. There are less than 0.01% of professional players in the world playing solely live tournaments. Less than 1% of those are playing small-medium buy ins.

He needs to improve his poker, he knows this, he may be streetwise and have decent instintcs and semi good fundamentals, but with the tiny amount of lifetime hands played and the (what I can assume) very small amount of time put into studying his (like most strictly live players - not all before honeybadger gets on my case)  basic fundamentals will be seriously flawed.

Playing 3 months online and seeing how far he progresses and develops will not only tell him if he wants to be a professional poker player but if he can be a professional poker player.

Its time to man up Jason and treat this seriously, its life ffs!

What a load of nonsense.

You can't be a pro poker player with a Hendon Mob like this - http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=207359 - Unless you are about to say you just play cash of course.

You are too much in online world, to realise people do not want to play online because they don't make money or because it's just for them and Jason ticks one or both boxes. I am also not treating anything you say as gospel as it is not, you don't suddenly get your confidence back because you win a 3-4 figure online.

You mention Jason needs to put effort into game, maybe, we all need to. But you are saying if he has just been playing a year, he has been playing more than me and you have been on earth probably. Here is his hendon mob, I am sure it will sure he is a winning player, which you would realise if you read topic! http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=134376 - It was nearly as impressive as Camel's HB, which I only saw other day :D :D

Jason had a big bink in Marrakech?

Why has he never mentioned that?

Incred.

 ;whistle;

Aaron you've made some reasonable point in your discussion with Pleno but you're completely wrong here -

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=106966
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=208198

Could you be a pro poker player with a HM like these guys? I'll tell you now these are two of the best and most successful players in england.

Hendon Mob and poker abilty are completely uncorrelated. Gives an indication yes, but no direct connection.

i give up aaron.

nvm, gl jase.

I can appreciate that, they do not show all cashes, but very hard to understand why someone can say they are a pro and their comments should be seen as "gospel" when they have no reasonable Hendon Mob.

I still believe that some people are caught up in online world, to realise that some us really don't like it. Or the comments "you can't lose online" when you see hundreds of people with 6 figure profits, shows there are severe losers. The only disappointing thing is that some people are making assumptions (myself included) and not reading the whole of the topic.

Jason, what motivates you to play poker? Money? you enjoy playing? You feel like you NEED to play to pay for things? Degenerate reasons?

More important imo to re-asses why it is you play poker and build from that at this point, Pleno is right if you're relaying on poker for an income then you do seriously need to reevaluate your approach, Aaron is right that if you play because you like to play live poker and you feel like you'll make a few quid then you don't really need to dig all that deep here.

Agree with TK you're one of the nicest guys around, and always the type of person to help someone out when they are down in the dumps so I wanna offer advice that will actually help and not just say "keep going at it" because honestly imo keeping going at it as you are will lead you to more troubles. The realistic point of the matter is, if you need to make money from poker you have a LOT of work to do from this point, just need to answer the question of exactly what you want from the game at this moment and then i know people will give you guidance to get help get there. But Pleno is right this is a time for realism.

will be funking hard for you though x

please please think about this. or come back in 2 years and realise what you're saying. its completely wrong.

if somebody plays cash for a living and doesn't play one tournament then it really doesn't matter!

ofc if youre playing for fun then go to dtd and chat up the birds, but youre not you are a professional poker player whose aim is to MAKE MONEY.

Well, it's not about showing all the cashes, it's about being able to build a big bankroll, and be able to make steady money from poker without needing to win a big live tournament. I would actually argue the other foot some more, I know loads of people who are pro players, and effectively live of one huge tournament score. The way you build a big bankroll is lots of regular small wins, not by shipping one huge donkament, imo.


You're right, it's NOT as easy as Pleno makes out to win big online, and like you say it really just isn't for some people, however the point at the bottom of Pleno's argument is that anyone who would consider themselves a pro player should (and could) find a level online they can beat - might not be straight away and will require some decent amount of work, and that instead of traveling around expensively playing live poker if they are a little under it or under pressure to earn then THE BEST option for them is to find those games online, and really work playing them. Expenses are minimal, opportunity for high volume is there, and tbf he is absolutely right.

This won't suit everyone but as has been said if the question is "how to i rebuild confidence and improve my poker game" then a very good answer to that question would be, to really go at low stakes online tournaments, you're game is v likely to improve and you're prolly gonna make some money.

Problem is imo Jase is a little disillusioned with poker atm, so diving headfirst into a different type of play might not be for the best atm, if he was truly determined to conquer poker then I think Pleno's adivce would be the best line.

Never argue with idiots. They bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Stato said the other day that out of the top 20 alltime money winners at DTD according to theHM, he reckons only 5 or 6 could beat 50NL online. These are people who have cashed for over $100k lifetime in one club but couldn't beat a 25c/50c cash game. And I'd agree with that, and it just shows how ridiculous it is to go by the hendonmob as any sort of ranking system for who's good and who's not.

And this is coming from me who only really has the hendon mob as any legit backup that I'm a pro lol - I could very easily fall into the category in most people's eyes of one of the people that luckboxed a big comp and has not built a bankroll from scratch the hard way.

Wait, so Aaron isn't on a massive level?


how is he real?

its not true though because you really work on your game and you are legit good.

i'd say the binks helped you have the security and freedom to learn the game without financial constraints.

You won a comp at DTD?

:dontask:

Thanks Pads. If you want any help in beefing up your HM then lmk, mates rates an' all ;)

Hi Alex, not saying its the case with Jason as dont personally know him, but do you think a lot of the problems people have when they THINK they are not running well/getting results is that they just get complacent with the gameplay that used to (or they thought did) work for them. When i backed horses a lot i heard all sorts of rubbish from people in betting shops, but then met a really good professional gambler and could instantley tell what he said made sense, talking to a lot of you  on here has also made sense compared to bull you can pick up in various other places.

Very humble of you to admit to Al ;)

omg. Went shopping, took Catherine to work, picked the boys up from school, did some reading and cooked tea

Just sat down for two minutes and a couple of pages to look at. Saw a spat between Patrick n Aaron but this is gonna take some time to respond to.

Sort of hoped Tighty would have moved this out of PHA before all the kids woke up and pokerstoved my life. :)

Give me time I am on it but might be after bath time before I can respond properly

Right got so much I want to say but we are painting ATM and I've just knocked a pot of mucky paint water everywhere so have to give the kids the time and attention they deserve. Nice to see Dave n Titty post but will read in a bit.

And by the way 64 replies is more than double the amount of replies that I can see for any other hand :)

Edit: is that all you wrote TiTty ffs

I hate jacks

See, you cause trouble without even trying, even when you are offline!

Moved at OP's request hint.

Over/under on number of Pages set at 10.

I'm a buyer.

Candidate for BoB if it does :)

its actually pha though, poker is more than hands.

Yes but pha is for hands, ducy?

Yes Patrick but I needed it moving before all you guys got here and ripped me a new one.

Love Tals reply too.

Really appreciate all the comments and will reply. I especially like what you are saying Pleno but as you know my attitude towards poker is closer at Aaron's than yours. I can't even remember my user names from back in the day when online poker first started. I thought it was smashed/smash etc but when I've asked people to bring up my stats we can't find em. Some sites might have been Jason Herbert but am pretty sure my wsop and UKIPT seat wins were under smashedagain. Just wish I could find all my stats to look at because I am pretty sure I am on on line losing player despite winning seats for fun for a few years. I played a few mtt's in the mid 2000's but nothing of any substantial volume but was playing 30-40 hours a week.

New diary so much better than the old one Jason.

Ha, just read thru this shit. Are the people who bang on about HendonMob real. FML, sooo deluded and such tiny brains. Do they not get it? Do they not understand? Grrrr, tilted me a bit tbh reading Aaron esp bleating on about Hendon Mob? WTF?? Tilt!!!!!!!

lol. Both heart on sleeve stuff open and honest. Just as if you give it you have to take it , then crowing about Marrakesh, Herbiemob and stars paying forum wedding then I t has to be balanced out by some bad times.
Once again I find myself feeling like I am stood in Tesco naked with posting what I am feeling at the moment but will carry on regardless. Will reply later when I get chance.

Lol hi Simon. Lets be constructive and see if we can get Cos to post :)

Someone asks for a stake into a decent sized tournament. They have nothing on the Hendon Mob, but tell you that they win £500 a night at cash playing 1/2 & 2/5, what you doing? It's all about Hendon Mob with regards to showing how good or bad someone is.

I am trying my hardest not to turn this into a very opinionated thread when there are such lol comments from pleno. But then again, pleno sold a live package for 1.27 or something, when had nothing on the herbie mob.

Jason, you not thought about dropping down with regards to buyin? It is very patronising, but sometimes we all need to just get back to basics.

what if they play 700 tournaments costing 1.9m and cash for 700k? please aaron stop it, you kill good debate on so many threads.
(facepalm)

This is just absurd. If you make living from playing poker, you are a pro poker player.

My hendon mob (http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=53177) isn't much better over the last 3 years, but I really dare you to challenge me that I'm not a pro poker player.

Other examples:
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=154680 <-- "WushuTM"
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=234486 <-- "tonkaaaa"
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=158916 <-- "live@pompeii"
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=99313 <-- "JayPez"

Sorry to derail Jason, this just tilted me incredibly.

There wasn't a debate on this topic until I posted. But then again, still have the respect to read through all the topic, not just the stuff that suits?

Aaron, pleeeeeeease tell me you are on the level mate? Please? ;irheniugfhvebjgoerfkjsda,

Is this officially a 'diary'? Just asking

Online sharkscopes for tournament play is where it is at for the best assessment for how good a tournament player is. Unfortunately, Hendon mob can never be taken terribly seriously because it doesn't show profits. Of course if there is someone who has had a vast array of scores it shows that he is getting funding into these tournaments which shows he is probably relatively wealthy maybe from poker profits or has a backer that is confident in his game so he is probably good. He could also just be rich and then it would be hard to use the Hendon Mob at all.

To suggest that limited entries into a Hendon Mob shows you are not a capable player is just absurd. There is weight to say its nice to have a lot of live poker experience, but after you get the initial gist of things I think it is so much better for your game to be playing loads online and beating that as you are always having to evolve your game to keep winning.

Sharkscope>HendonMob, shouldn't even really be much of a comparison.

There is no level here, just my thoughts I am afraid. I have been pretty disappointed with Patrick's comments in thread the whole "I'm a pro, take it gospel" blah, blah blah. Jason says "losing online" Patrick says "go play online". I don't think there is much to point out to Patrick, when he hardly plays live & stuck in the online world, million miles between both.

My comments based with the old Hendon Mob are there to be struct at, but the general feeling across many poker forums, is that you need to have one to be looked at. I am not saying for one minute you are not a pro or a good player, because you do not have one, but if I have no Hendon, then where am I getting staked from? Not sure what even defines a pro player in all honesty, another talking point, but we really have took this off topic.

Plus also trying to work out if Jase has bought a new shirt whilst shopping or not.

PS - Why can't I keep my chuffing mouth shut!!! :) :)

[HenryKissinger] Everyone's still supportive of Jason, tho, right? [/HenryKissinger]

Can someone suspend Aaron for a while and get him to re-read everything he has ever posted. If he agrees with more than 10% of his posts suspend him for longer and re-read some more.

So frustrating when you have the likes of Pleno, Alex, lildave etc etc giving their time posting on forums and thinking about situations like this and someone just comes in and makes a mess of everything.

From my experience playing with yourself you cannot beat a DTD deepstack nor 10nl online, regardless whether you had a WSOP ME trophy to your name and 1000 Hendon Mob entrys.


Do you know who Alex Millar is?

Whole thing is a joke and a huge negative having to read it over and over



Don't mean to be overly offensive but hopefully you get the point

Why is everyone getting so wound up? If he thinks that HMDB is the be all and end all let him

Just seen this


Dropping down from £150 live tournaments?

To support a family?

To be a professional poker player?

Do you know how much money can possibly be made from £150 live tournaments, filtering in travel, petrol, food+drink, rake, etccccccccccccc



Stop and think before posting anymore


"We have to go back to basics" - Who is "we"?

Pretty much this. Just ignore his posts, I can´t understand why anyone is still reading them unless some people are fortunate enough to find them funny. Not having met the guy I still can´t feel sure that he isn´t just trolling, it just doesn´t make sense.

If somebody replies to me, especially criticising me r something the. In definite going to read as reply after the 10th time it's just beyond frustrating.

At last.......

You should be grinding smaller stuff online a few days a week Jason, just to give yourself a bit of extra income and to keep your finger on the pulse. Playing only a few times a month can't be good.

Only if you let it. Give Jason your advice- I'm sure he's old enough to pick out the pieces he wants to

Jason, hope I don't derail this, but what do you do?

Do you play just the weekend MTTs @ DtD or are you playing live most nights? The old £20 rebuy cash cows in the North dried up some time ago.

If you want to get a serious roll together I imagine you got to grind online cash. If you hate online or think you'll lose you got to play live cash and be prepared to travel.

Playing MTTs live seems to be the nut worst way to try and make a living.

You might need to get a "proper" job again?

I'm disappointed with how this has gone of course and feel really bad, but without opinions, we wouldn't have a forum.

Like I said Patrick when you posted I didn't think you took time to read the whole topic, you came in and posted and I had an opinion, that is all. For you to come back and say "I'm a pro, take what I say as gospel" was ridic, especially when we are talking about live play & you have no notable or many live cashes.

we can talk about online, but it's not about online, Jason wants to play live poker, but is running bad with certain ways to put it and certain ways of saying "go online" is silly when by the looks of it Jason needs a quick upturn as he said he was playing with "scared money" why put more scared money on the line at something you are losing at?! I don't mind playing smaller stuff, I will play it all night long when I am not upto much, but there is much difference between me and Jason and that it's not that I am sat here relying on it or worrying about a loss.

I think it might be an idea to drop down the buyin, till everything brightens up. You have to take a step back sometimes, look a Crystal Palace, they drew a game one time, then came back and won 5 or 6 on the bounce.

POKER IS POKER

ONLINE IS HARDER


IF YOU CAN BEAT ONLINE LOWSTAKES MARGINALLY YOU CAN CLUB LIVE PLAYERS OVER THE HEAD OVER AND OVER




Hendon mob is immaterial and gives wrong impressions.

Such a base misunderstanding of variance and how MTT Poker works itt from OP and Aaron.



I am the joke tilt.

So why don't you? (very successful Online iirc)

 rotflmfao    ;tightend; ;tightend; ;tightend;

but I am learning and its all about educating myself and Aaron if he wants to listen. Remember when you had your run of 18 months or so of not making a day 2 at Dtd and I used to laugh my cock off because I was cashing every other tourney and satting into em all in the same period. Shame on me :/

Kids in bath so on lifeguard duty but will give a tldr response to the last few pages in a bit.

Posted on Facebook earlier that some may not have seen.


Alister (5) just asked me something and I said "if you are lucky son" to which he replied "of course I am lucky, you are my dad" :) I was made up

shaddap and wait for the PM (I sent you a message on fb after pwning your status).

Quite simply, Aaron doesn't seem to listen or at least take in what he reads on the screen.

edit-
oh if we're facebook status bragging then one comment was-


"Kids don't understand variance"

my response.

"Andrew Wayman Nor does his dad"


<3 me

Jason

distiling all of it and giving my honest view I think you need to get a non poker job and play recreationally. You'd then enjoy it again and quite likely win again

I don't think grinding low online and putting hours of study in is for you (though all of things being equal it would be preferable to dropping down live in the absence of suitable games these dayss), especially with three kids under 5/6 quite rightly your main priority.

I am of the view that you are trying to beat the live games with one hand tied behind your back (bad analogy, but you get the point)

Tighty wins thread - absolutely pmsl

However, I think lots of good advice in the thread - and Pleno's input, IMO is very pertinent and spot on.  If I look at my experiences over the past 3 years, there is a clear correlation in both the good and bad times (current bad) to both playing on line and discussing hands and strategy with heroes.  In addition the other key factor is confidence, I don't care what anyone says, it's confidence game - combined with learning, education and playing volume (from a variance and an experience perspective).

My advice would be all of the above and get some work doing something you love; I'm not sure of your financial circumstances, however doing some other stuff you enjoy and getting some perspective on poker is a good thing.

Gl mate - I empathise with a lot of what your saying and feeling; and to be honest personally I know the reasons / advice Pleno is giving is fundamentally the way forward, just hard for us old boys to learn

PS - Aaron must be levelling

Just my two cents worth...

In my opinion there is no such thing as a 'live tournament professional'. It is simply not a feasible and realistic means of making a living.

There are a LOT of players out there who are definitely +EV in live tournaments. But that is not the same thing as saying they can realistically expect to make regular money. The variance in tournament poker is immense. The vast majority of those who think they know this actually do not fully comprehend it. And the amount of volume that it is possible to put in over a year is tiny. If you grind extremely hard all year you may be able to play 250 live tournaments right? That is a tiny sample size. After 4 years you may have played over 1000 tournaments - still a tiny sample size. A lot of +EV players will be losing money after 1000 tournaments. In fact, quite a lot of the very best tournament players will lose money over 1000 tournaments. It may be +EV, but it is not a viable and realistic way to try to earn a living.

I want to give an analogy. Imagine that you somehow knew that certain numbers were more likely to be drawn in the National Lottery, and thus you could select 100 different combinations of numbers every draw and would have a positive expectation. Would you be +EV entering the lottery every week? Of course you would. Would it be reasonable for you to expect to be able to support your family for the next five years through doing this? Of course it wouldn't. By far the most likely outcome after five years is that you would have lost money. There is a small chance that you will win a LOT of money - that's what makes you entering the lottery +EV. But it would be silly for you to hope that this can provide a regular income. You still would be making a good bet, but that does not mean you can expect to win - even over a five year period.

That's basically what live tournament poker is: a +EV lottery. There is nothing wrong with entering live tournaments for the competitive challenge, the sporting drama, and for fun. If you are +EV in these tournaments then so much the better. If you could live for 1000 years then no doubt you'd have made money from live tournaments by the end of your life (if you are indeed +EV). But to try to 'make a regular living' from live tournaments is completely unrealistic. It is a good gamble, a good bet. That is all.

There are plenty of players who you could point to and say, "well, what about x, y or z... they have been making it pay for x number of years. So it IS possible." That would be missing the point. There will always be players who have been lucky enough to outrun the variance in the short term. And make no mistake about it... your entire tournament life is nothing more than the short term - it is impossible to reach the long-term in a lifetime of tournament poker.

In my opinion the only way to realistically make money in live poker - without needing to 'get lucky' - is through playing cash games. Even in cash games the variance is huge and it is very possible to run below or above expectation for several years in live cash. But you at least have a fighting chance of making a living in live cash without having to get hugely lucky to beat short-term variance.

The only way tournament poker can be a realistic way to make regular money is if you play online and put in serious volume every week. And by serious volume I mean that you'd play about the same number of tournaments every week as you could do in a year of live play. If you are +EV in online tournaments you could still expect to have losing stretches that last several months on a regular basis. But you'd have a fighting chance of realising your expectation over the course of, say, a year of online poker.

I have nothing against live tournaments BTW. I play the odd one myself very occasionally and really enjoy them. I just know that anyone who has 'made live tournaments pay' over the last few years has been LUCKY. They may very well be excellent players who have a very high expected ROI in tournaments. But they have still been lucky, because there will have been many players who were just as good as them who have played just as many tournaments over the last few years and are net losers.

If anyone disagrees with what I say, have a read of these three excellent articles:

http://www.thehendonmob.com/alex_rousso/id_rather_be_lucky_than_good

http://www.thehendonmob.com/alex_rousso/brace-aments_are_too_much_of_a_gamble

http://www.thehendonmob.com/alex_rousso/vegas_trip_simulator

At the end of the day its an internet forum, these are meant for discussions and for people to share their views and personal beliefs about certain topics. Aaron is only voicing what he feels is correct and from his comments throughout this thread (when aimed towards the OP) he has been nothing but supportive, and this is the right approach, however i have to say that the majority of the content is wrong.

On topic of OPs first post, I must admit that i 100% agree with everything Pleno has said and think that online poker is definitely the way to go in regards to his dilemma. There's numerous benefits to it; your game will become more diverse, you'll be able to put the amount of volume in required to make a good living from the game (not saying OP is not already doing this, but this will make it so much easier), Expenses can and should be kept to a minimum (assuming OP owns a PC/Laptop)... The list goes on. However, playing online poker does require a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot dedication, playing one/two live MTTs per week is a world away from the sheer volume you'll be required to put in if you decide to pursue a career as an online MTT grinder - and it this you need to realize! If you wish to support not just yourself, but a whole family, it will actually be very hard work, but if you love the game enough, have the time, and are willing to put the amount of effort in, then it can easily be done!

OP, if you decide to make the transition to online, then i suggest you do a few things (will rank them in order of importance):
1) Buy HEM - It's a very useful tool and as much as some people will disagree - you'll definitely be at a disadvantage without it.
2) Start Low - Just because you (i am assuming here) have played live MTTs with large buy-ins, do not assume that you are going to get the same types of results at the same level online, because you most likely will not!
3) Get coaching - A few sessions with a decent MTT coach will be enough to learn you the basics of online MTTs (It's a different kind of poker).
4) Study - Review your hand histories, learn from your past errors, fix your leaks - you'll be surprised how much a few hours a week studying can help your game - and therefore increase your profits!

I hope your confidence returns soon!

In the current climate, having a guaranteed source of income is not bad advice.

Everyone can give an opinion but only you know what you can afford to lose and that, I have always believed, is the only stat that matters.

As a bona fide rec, I enjoy poker as a hobby. I had a good first 6 months of the year, playing prob 3 weekends a month, but I have a rule that I play within my means (borne out of a couple of really stupid cash games a couple of years ago!), so I stay at a level where I am comfortable playing what I think is my best, without having pound signs hovering above the drain in my mind.

The last five months haven't gone anywhere nearly as well but I'm in work and I'm only using "disposable" income to play.

I like having a hobby that basically pays for itself and poker has pretty much done that for me (I don't keep records but I have a basic idea). There are plenty of interesting and pleasant people around at casinos and I have fun socialising with them.

I've played long enough now to have an idea broadly what I am doing and to know there is a lot more I'd need to do to if I ever want to move up to playing at a higher level.

I don't really fancy putting the graft in for that tbh (Heaven forbid I learn in the process I'm not good enough!), so I accept my lot, chat about hands, gradually improve and have fun.

But, to me, I don't see it ever becoming more than a hobby.

Cliffs: work out what you want. Then work out how you're going to get it.

feel like there is nothing that can be said on this topic that will make the blind bit of difference.

really wanna see jason do well though.

just watching a bit of Tom and Jerry then a story before bed then will get on with this.

Not sure i understand the above bit Dave. I am listening and taking it all in. Am just waiting on a pm from Titty that he started an hour ago too. It's gonna be a pretty long one.
Where are you off to play tonight?

FYP

Think it's gonna be over 10 pages fwiw.

Also, I have no hendon mob cause I'm BAD/Play cash games.  ;whistle; Anyone want a piece for the smaller deepstacks?  :D

Live cash seems like the way to go for you. You've got experience, enjoy live poker and can play like a rock right? Undoubtedly you'll make money in anything up to £1/2. It's got to be better than working a 9-5.

Great thread Dewi.

Thanks, it took some effort but seems to have worked  ;)

The cleaners in Marrakech knew about this....

Totally agree. Gl Jas

Tikay was being (very) sarcastic!

I dont know you Mr Herbert so apologies if this comes across badly (Its just my observation and I might be way off) I can only go on what I read on here, but I've thought it before reading some of your posts - it seems like you are clinging on to your past success or to the 'faces' you know so well - you're actually hiding behind them a bit imo, it clearly makes you feel good, like you're part of the scence - which no doubt you are and would be without trying so hard to be (if that makes sense).  Just because guys you meet are amazed because you know everyone in the card room it doesn't mean its only a matter of time before you start to win money again.  

Some excellent advice in this thread, but I'm almost sure you wont take it.  

GL though

plenty of banter in live cash too

Agree that live cash is the way to go for you Mr Herbert.

Play recreationally. Your mindset and approach is completely wrong and nearly impossible to change. Thats not an insult, just purely a generation thing. The biggest mistake in life in terms of ££ the majority of people on here make is choosing to play poker for a living, especially the well educated under 25s- big short term gain but an astronomical longterm loss. Can put myself in that bracket when i made the decision

LOL this thread is classic.

Yes for cash.

But if the £150 is scared money, how he going to get off and running?

 ;frustrated; ;frustrated; ;frustrated; ;frustrated;

Right I'm on this now. Just spent 20 mins reading a pm from Tittty which really is the best piece writing I have ever seen. Unfortunately I can't share the full post with you as Andy calls a spade a spade and some of the stuff can be quite offensive.
Cliffs :  listen to Pleno, and obv other heros like Stu.

I wanted to respond to everyone individually but the thread has gone ballistic with posts this afternoon and really has snowballed. My head is spinning at 100 mile an hour now and am gonna spend sometime reading the thread then gonna re read Tittys pm again.

Just a quick point. I don't actually enjoy playing hold em. I first started playing stud and draw in pubs n clubs and i find playing DC a much more enjoyable. When I die and go to poker heaven I will be found with all the old boys shooting the breeze.

And now Dave Shallow is here  ;tightend; ;tightend;

Totally agree its a generation thing too. I became blinded by my own run good and arrogance for years.

Send me the Titty Pm pls  :D

Me too.

I Think I realised that I'm not good enough to become a pro
Not mentally good enough
 Playing once a week is not enough either u need to be playing minimum 5 days a week IMO

Hi Jason,

I've only shared a table with you once live, at a DTD500, and to be honest I was very surprised that you consider yourself as a professional poker player.  

Not to do with the standard of your play, as from memory you played very well and then lost a pretty standard flip.  I was surprised mainly because of your attitude at the table.  You seemed like a guy there who plays to have fun/banter.  And if you consider this to be your living then it was just too much weighted towards the table chat/catching up with mates etc on the rail than actually looking as to whats going on at the table.

I would also say that you really can never ever expect to make a living out of live tournaments.  There are a couple of extremely flawed poker players on the UK scene who consider themselves to be pros at 150 to 1k tournies purely because of running hot over a very small sample.  These players couldn't beat 20nl online.

There are a great deal many more of people who are considered and indeed still consider themselves to be live pros who have had their bout of 3/4 year run good come to an end live and now they are under it to the absolute extreme.

I can't really compete with Pleno and Titbean's advice but I will just add to it.  If you think you have a future in poker then you should just dedicate some serious time to grinding online.  You are a popular member of the community here and would have tonnes of people willing to help you on your way.  I don't know what your experience online is, but if you are able to play 6-8 tables then you should very easily have at least a decent shot of making some kind of success at it.

Once you get a solid grounding in online cash, and a nice roll behind you, then a man of your connections in live poker should easily be able to scout out enough private cash live cash games.

With regards to the Hendon Mob discussion....I could name easily a couple of dozen people who would be totally unknown in the live poker community and have far bigger BRs/discipline and poker intelligence than majority of people who are regular well known players at DTD.  They just aren't interested in grinding live tournies because to them it's just not worth their while.  

Anyone who puts any kind of serious weight towards a Hendon Mob page really is totally and utterly clueless about poker.  They are interesting to look at and its nice to have a record of your successful cashes live but thats about it.

Good luck.

/end thread

Don't listen to him. I can't 'write' well. I just splurge rants via keyboard onto screen.

I'm not very politically correct when i'm ranting so wasn't willing to post it here, it is extremely focused upon Herbie and his mindset so it would probably not be of immense use to many others.


Suffice it to say I stopped writing a chunk when I saw Stus post and just said +1 lol. ty Stu!




Last line is a pretty good summation which shows clearly he read and understood my messages even though I didn't say the last line myself.

sick post scotty, really really good.

Though I can't help reading stuff like that and what others have written is that I'm one of the super livedonks on a heater you're referring too! :(

if you don't know that you are a fish ldo

edit not the donk bit the heater bit lol

only halfway through your last post Andy but you really must start a diary. I love your humour too.

dont geddit?! i know im on a massive lifetime heater in donkaments u dont need to tell me again!

You do geddit then lol

Silly billy.

Ha it took me a full minute to work out wtf your response meant. I'm blatantly gonna get in trouble for that.  It just made me laugh so much, then dream ldo.


And sorry don't mean to write walls of text I just type fast and spew thoughts out.

Still haven't read the OP if i'm fully honest lol :s

These articles are great. Thank you for linking

All aaron1867 posts, I'm like

(http://i.imgur.com/9qdYS.gif)

There is so much good advice on here I do hope it helps.Going back to the start my only ten pennyworth is that 'to love the game' you maybe have to respect the game a little more and part of that is deciding what you are trying to achieve when you sit down at the table ( talking live). For me for 18 months or so it was for social reasons and a level of enjoyment from 'playing'.
I enjoyed the banter,the craic and as a 'social extrovert' it was the perfect recreational activity,especially as I didn't do it for a living.However even a recreational activity becomes 'not fun' when you are continually losing and beginning to feel like the table mug/muppet/nob. So motivated more by pride than the need for revenue I decided to give the game a little more respect.Concentrate less on being the 'life and soul of the party' and to concentrate more on all the dynamics so apparent in the live game.Masses of information,incomplete information,moods,vibes,personalities,betting patterns,hand ranges,showdowns,etc etc etc. You cannot do this if you are telling funny stories or chatting up the valets ( :-) .
    As poker is a game based on decision making my first decision has to be ' what is my purpose today ? '. If it's to have fun,be the life and soul and play a bit of poker play the £15 comp,get a poker fix and have a laugh.
    If it really is to optimize the chance of making money then you have to give the game and the other players maximum respect from the beginning and get in the ' game zone '.  From the ' game zone' you can still have fun and be sociable but it is from this ' zone' and only when appropriate and not to the risk of breaking the spell as it where.
     Watch Neil Giblin play cash. Sociable,enjoys the banter but always 'from the zone' and never at the expense of 'the zone'.
      The same goes for Kieth Johnson and James Keys.
       Watch Simon Deadman in competitions.He ' goes to work '.
         If poker is your choice of income generation and if part of that is to play live ( I have nothing to contribute to the online element here ) then my advice is to concentrate more on the game,develop your game focus and build your confidence 'one hour at a time'  or ' one level at a time'  so you can go to a break saying to yourself ' I am really pleased with my game that level,I think I made optimum decisions' It is this which builds confidence.That is a better hour than learning that Madge is going out with Henry,Freds got banned from driving and have tou heard the one about the Irishmen,Scotsman etc.
        As a social extrovert with a young family to support Poker is a challenge but it seems to me going back to fundamentals and putting the game first rather than the social bit there is no reason why live results shouldn't improve dramatically.Whether enough to support a family I have no idea.My take is grinding online and playing ' controlled cash ' should with the right approach should suffice.


There,hope you don't mind my input.Please accept it in the spirit it is meant.

Sorry to finish on a cliche but results will only change when you change some of the things you are doing.
I think you already know that.
Hope to see you soon.Game face on and in the zone.

I always love a good thread that descends into gifs/pics.


Feel like you think each new post will explain it and then he shimmies past the pertinent part of the post.



(http://i47.tinypic.com/2vc6x6v.gif)

Absolutely this.

Thanks Ian and Ryan both excellent responses too.

These days poker is hard, study, get good at it or get a job. Night night, I''ve gotta be up early for work. Fml.

 ;iagree; ;iagree; ;iagree; ;iagree;

Yes, I think almost every losing player will put losing down to bad luck or variance and winning down to their own skill. This is of course not limited to losing players. Winning players are absolutely guilty of this, perhaps even more so than losers.

It takes an extremely astute, modest, and humble person to do otherwise 100% of the time. We all think we deserve to win sometimes, we deserved to knock x out because we've been outplaying him, or when we lose to y that it's injust because he's bad etc.

In my opinion, so much of being a professional poker player is in the mind, in the attitude of the player.

When there's an allin at a table, I always watch the faces of those involved rather than the cards. You can learn a huge chunk of what you need to know about someone (in a poker sense of course) from these moments. I find them fascinating actually. I'd go as far to say that you can spot a winner or a loser in these moments. You can definitely spot who has the right/wrong attitude towards the game and who might make a good professional or who won't.

Those that get rattled by losing, those that lash out, curse, or lose their cool even in small ways, are likely to struggle if they want to make their living out of poker. What I look for in a potential horse is those who are calm, respectful and who can embrace the variance with both arms and deal with the consequences in a mature and rational manner. That's a huge factor for me and goes above skill in many respects. I've turned down staking proposals from far better players than some who I've accepted, sometimes entirely because of this issue.

Similarly when I'm sharing a table with an unknown player, they becoming far more intimidating to me when they lose AA vs KK and don't flinch, smile and carry on with their game. When the guy with KK is fistpumping and shouting across the room to his mate, he becomes the easy target.

Jason, How many tournaments have you played this year?

A lot of awesome posts ITT!

What do you mean by this mate?

People that are smart enough to make a lot of money through poker, will probably be smart enough to make way more money in a job in the longterm. Only stipulations obviously would be well educated, live near London and be good with people. I have friends on 200-300k a year at 29/30 who can barely add up, have a bad degree from bad uni but got in the market straight after, are street wise, good with people and have therefore "made it"- their income is on the upswing whilst poker players potential earnings remain capped to an extent barring the 0.01% run good expectation that can happen.

In 5 years time whilst your friends will be looking to buy fancy gadgets, you will be looking to buy the companies that produce them

lol you're the worst at passing quotes from films and TV shows as your own Dave :P

Good post Alex! Temperament is entirely crucial imo, a lot of people have a kind of deluded sense of entitlement with poker, and whereas this belief in their own ability is ofc a strong weapon in their arsenal, the mental unraveling that follows a string of "injustices" is likely there biggest leak.

I can't argue with the advice to grind online, study poker hard and really tighten up the fundamentals so you can earn the crust online and continue to chase raainbows live, it's good advice, and its absolutely what you should do, the question I have is do you have the capability, and the will to actually do this?

I fear Jason (and you know I love you and don't want to be harsh) that you're not going to be able to do it, if you can say "Yes! This is really what I want to do" then I'd say go for it and would be rooting for you, but to be brutally honest I think you just don't have it in you.

So either persue another source of revenue to provide for the family, or buckle up, strap in and get ready for a seriously tough grind.

As have said before over and over I genuinely want you to nail it, whatever that is :)

What do your friends do out of interest? I presume they work in the city. I know literally nobody who fits this pattern.

You get this a lot but... again, spot on, great post.

I remember talking about this with Julian and he said something along the lines of "I had read all the kids talking about how brutal variance could be but I didn't believe it, until I went through it myself"

And no offence to Julian but I believe his downswing was just the tip of the iceberg. In a lot of cases that is what it takes though, especially with older players, they need to go through it themselves before they will believe it, just like Herbie is now. The beauty of it is, for the liquidity of the game at least, it means all those that were more than just a little bit lucky to have binked a big score can delusionally just put it down to variance since " I must be good, I won x comp for x amount" when really they're just not very good.

Good post Ray and you are correct. My heads still spinning this morning and want to post so much more. I am quite aware that I may be leaving myself open to looking like an idiot buy i think the thread running is essential to opening people's eyes to the truth about variance.

What a great thread Jason. So much advice too. I busted the UKIPT Bristol with the same hand up against aq and ak but was happy with my play as I needed a double up so a triple up was a no brainer.

I personally think your fold is perfectly ok in that spot as you still have 35 bb left and you don't really have to take a flip on.

And live cash is a fine way to build a roll matey just remember table selection is key along with leaving any ego at home. Just play the weakest players in the room and build up your confidence again. Bum hunting I believe is the term. Importantly though, be nice to the bums when at the tables and they will be easy to range.

How many live tournaments a month do you play? I wouldnt imagine its more than 6 seein as you only play the slightly better structured 1's. Over a period of 2 years that doesnt add up to many and probably doesnt even count as a downswing.  It is very possible this could continue for a while without you even doing anything wrong. Good luck hope things turn around for ya.

Hi Jase

Have just started my way through this thread and have already identified how good a read and what good advice is being given here by loads of respected members of Blonde, I am only on page 2 and I just came across this bit...."Going for 2 years cashing for fun to 2 years of not getting above starting stack is not much fun."

I had never met you till Tighty introduced us at the £1million guaranteed Nottingham UKIPT, I had fluked my way to day 2 and no doubt Tighty was showing me every friendly face he could muster as this was my first buy in game of over £200 (I had won a sat for £56 at DTD to get in)

Amazingly I fluked my way to day 3 as well and there we were....May of this year on the last 4 tables of the UKIPT with £219k up top, I was sat to your right, you had Jamie Dale to your left and you were sat on above average chips. You played some great pots vs Jamie Dale using your wit and banter in a good way I thought, you were very kind to me and made many a comment to keep my spirits up as my chipstack decreased!

4 tables left and eventually I lost a flip, the cash for £2700 was phenominal for me, a micro stakes player online and a £20 casino player live and I attribute a large proportion of that success in that game to your calming influence, your kindness and admiring some of your play, I was literally the fish out of water that day and you put me gently back in the goldfish bowl!

I can't offer any constructive poker advice but I can remind you of this, this was only May or even June 2012, you went on to cash for £3500 which i know isn't life changing but is good for 2 months take home pay and you played fantastic confident poker so once you get the mojo back you will crush again.

Never got to properly thank you for you help over those two days so now is my chance, THANK YOU JASE and hurry up and get your mojo back!!

Dave

Except for the slight derail regarding Hendon Mob and stuff this has been a great thread and a credit to Blondites and Jason.

If you are only playing this sporadically you have to think about how much money it will really yield. When I'm thinking about playing a tournament, I try and consider what I expect to earn from it in the long run (even though it's rightly been established that we never really reach a long run).

Yes you can earn £10k from £150 or whatever, but I think my way is a bit more of a professional way to look at things. I tend to work on a 100% ROI basis, which is probably generally going to be reasonable. So maybe I earn £500 over 2/3 days for playing the £500 deepstack, which means my time is better spent online probably, but I enjoy the odd live outing.

So assuming you have a 100% ROI, I've not played for an extended amount of time with you so I can't really judge how well you play, even then playing a few of the DTD tournaments isn't likely to add up to more than £1k-£1.5k a month in the long run (unless you're Rastafish obv), which isn't very much to those of us with kids to pay for and wives who like to go shopping!

Maybe higher ROIs than this are achievable soft DTD tournies, I'm not an expert on that kind of thing, but I think as has been said, it's incredibly difficult to make a living out of live tourneys in the UK.

mbn to run good enough to think you have 100% ROI in live tournaments.   I remember the days when you could do 100% ROI online.

This is a very good post in a thread full of them.  I try and think this way with my sports betting so if I have a £100 bet at even money which i think I have an ROI of 10% with whether it wins or loses I think of it as £10 earned.  If I want to earn a monkey a week i need to be placing fifty of those bets.  In any given week I could potentially have a cashflow of +£5000, -£5000 or anywhere in between but in reality I have earned £500.  I think you need to apply this thinking to your game.  MC suggests he thinks he has an ROI of 100% which he may he is one of the best players in the UK.  For you it may be that you have a realistic ROI of 20%.  If you want to earn an annual wage of £24k a year or £2k a month then you have to play £10k worth of tournaments a month and unless you are playing very high then you pretty much can't do that playing live.  Most nights the biggest tournament going in the UK would be £50 and I would think the average player that doesn't want to rack up huge travelling costs would struggle to get above about £3k of buyins a month and that is playing almost every night.  At an ROI of 20% that is £600 a month with expenses to come off that.  That is a nice bonus if you have a job but it isn't a salary to support 3 kids and a wife.  Of course my ROI may be wrong for you but even at 50% it is not really a living wage.  Of course sat at home in your underpants you could play £500-£1k of tournaments a night on Stars and a 10% ROI would give you an annual income of £18k-35k.  It isn't glamourous but you woudl get to spend time with the kids and put food on their table.  Anyone that does that is alright by me.

Really cant stress how tough it is to win online. It's all well and good if you're Pleno with more enthusiasm than a jack russel on pills or a natural sicko like some people, but it's really really hard.

Middy (who I think we can all agree is one of the best online tourney players in the UK) has played tens of thousands of online tournaments, he has notes on nearly every reg, he discusses hands with the best every day and he LOVEs (and I mean LOVES) playing online poker tournaments...he told me recently he thought his ROI in average stuff online was between 20 and 40% - if a player of his calibre can only make $30 playing the big $109 every day then thats testament to how tough online poker is.

Cash games are the same, these days I'm struggling to keep my head in the game cos I'm only playing half the time, a yr or two ago I used to drop in and out and never find myself in trouble, nowadays I take 2 weeks break and I'm feeling like iv never played the game before.

You like the dealers choice games yh? Play live DC, the games usually play shallower (£2/£2 with £50 buyin, or £2/£5 with £100 buyin - there is a game in Leeds £2/£5 £200 buyin that runs weekly) so you dont need to outlay huge and you like, enjoy the games, know all the players well. You can travel out 4 nights a week, make £200 a night on av £800 a week £3200 a month £40k a year no tax, plenty of shoes for Mrs Herbie and punt the spare change at live tourneys so that Hebert Mob page can stay sharp.

You might need to just sharpen up, sit shallower and really focus on the games a little bit whilst you get back into it, but i think you could prolly get to that level comfortably.

Ticks all the boxes, get yourself to live DC games - if you wanna talk about any of the games (except padooki im fkn woeful at that) then hit me up I love talking abut these games as they not widely played I only have Stu B but he makes me feel silly cos he's so much better than me :P

Stay away from online tourneys imo.

you gotta love the game and endeavour to keep learning or getting better

ROI in that last 3 years is very negative, but I play very few tournaments. I might be a bit optimistic about my ROI in them, I'm not sure tbh, but I only play big field DTD generally.


Good follow up post, but fixed it for you :)

I remember back when I played 180s another reg told me he never fistpumped when he won a 180-man tourney, because in reality he had only earned $2 for winning that game, not $600 or whatever. Monda will tell you this is essentially when he is trying to achieve.

Another way to look at it could be hourly rate. I didn't realise you were playing so few tournaments. If you're putting in 50 hours a month or something, think how much your hourly rate would need to be to earn a living. Say it's £40 an hour. There's just no way to earn that in sub £300 tournaments. I'm sure you've got the gist already from all the excellent advice already, probs don't need to drill it home anymore.

But you def need to put much more time into it if you stick with poker.

he has his own business

Jason, the only time I played with you was some kind of high roller (£2k at UKIPT?) at DTD. Because you were excited by/in respect of the tournament, you hardly said a word. You played great.

I would strongly agree with others that it is really unlikely that you can play as well when you're bantering the whole time.

Pipe down and let your play do the talking, glgl Jase

Havent read the thread but I hope its 11 pages of love for this line

Enjoy the ride, sir.

By the sound of it Jase you need to consider a more secure primary income stream and use poker as a hobby and potential source of a bink.

Have you ever considered asking for staking? You could maybe tag on to a long term backer for your tournaments and get a normal job to pay for the family's upkeep.

I've been staked myself now for a couple of years. Although I can afford to pay for myself it just suits me better to keep poker and real life separate. I have to give up 50% of any profits but that's a small price to pay for the knowledge that whatever happens at the tables it 100% won't affect whether or not I can pay my mortgage or shoot off on holiday when I feel like it.

It's also good to know that if I have a tough month financially in real life I haven't got to worry about which comps I can afford to play.

Keep it recreational and keep it fun i my opinion. Leave the stress of having to win to survive to the kidz with no responsibilities and MC.

On another note regarding your play in tournaments.

We were sat at a table together in the recent £500 at DTD and I was quite surprised by your lack of concentration.

You spent a lot of time chatting to a guy sat next to you giving him some very helpful tips on how to win at poker. You were even showing him how to go to DTD online to find everyone's names and then HM them to see if they've ever won anything.

Don't forget that improving every other player's EV puts a slight dent in yours. If you're there to make a living you've got to be brutal.

This all took you quite a while during which time you were missing a lot of action and a few good spots at the table. If you did happen to notice something you'd announce it to the table. You mentioned several times about my raising range being any 2 cards. It was a bit jokey but it still bought it to everyone's attention. All you achieved was to make me adjust a bit until everybody forgot and cost yourself a few potential good spots.

I also noticed that you seem to have your ipad on all the time and were always doing something on it. Again lacking concentration probably posting away on Blonde.

Players doing these sort of things are the ones who professionals have to rely on to make their living. They aren't maximising their EV so they make the pros EV a bit better.

I know most of this has already been covered but I just wanted to reiterate it so that you knew it had been noticed by other people.

Please don't take offence by this but sat 2 to your left I didn't consider you any kind of threat at all. I wouldn't have said that a year or 2 ago when your whole persona and table presence was very different.

Time to get serious again mate and get back to winning ways!!

Very best of luck!!

 Keep it recreational and keep it fun i my opinion. Leave the stress of having to win to survive to the kidz with no responsibilities and MC.


I like this post lots of sense here ,also stay off line ,you can't beat someone when the dealers behind a curtain !
Personally I run real bad on line I've almost packed it up ,just play live twice a week now n really enjoying it and showing a profit .
It feels like the whole worlds against you when you are running bad ,but it isn't there's lots of love/ advice for you on here ,hunker down keep the losses small ,it will come back

Cheers for all the advice guys, lots to take in and learn from have tried 3 or 4 times to put a post together then just deleted it. I remember all the games you've mentioned and people I have talked to. Might be time to bring back the hoodies and beats. Will put together a better post tomorrow. So pleased the thread has generated some really decent posts from some of the best in the business.

Sigh, thread was going so well...

Yah, ditch the hoodies you're too old for them, especially the shiny chav ones you used to wear  ;D

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

oh no he diduuuuunt

And as for you and your hats  :-X  :P

get it right, 'hat'.


IS IT!?

I fold JJ after the call from Roger but I also don't limp with it in the first place.

Best advice: buy a player a beer who has achieved consistent live MTT results over last 12 months. eg Chris Brammer. The advice you can get off these successful players will be invaluable.

yeh he loves it missing a tuesday!!

Mate he's gone back to silsden this ones not on me! im sat in a casino playing live poker as we spk like a propa pro :-)

^Turn up at Triggs with a Dominoes and rail him for a night.

FYP

You could pick out a large number of players who have had great results over the last 12 months, and many of them are bad players with a negative expectation in poker. That's just how variance in poker works - 12 months of live tournaments is a TINY sample size.

BTW this would not apply to the example you gave, of Chris Brammer. He is clearly a very strong player (and would be even if he had had a bad last 12 months). But my point is that just picking someone who has done consistently well for 12 months is very, very far from a guarantee that they are actually anything other than just on a heater.

In fact from what I gather from this thread Jason himself was on a heater for a couple of years a while back. I have no idea whether or not Jason is actually a good player since I have never played with him. However, the one thing I am certain of is that the two year period he went through when he was 'final tabling for fun' has almost no significance in determining how good he is at poker. 

People try and make out they're innocent victims of variance when things go wrong but the truth is they're inevitably contributing to their own downward spiral. In op I get the impression the main objective is giggles and looking up history to beat other players down. This don't pay the bills. When you're in a rut I say forget any mystical variance bogeymen and concentrate on the job in hand because that is all you can control. If I was busto I wouldn't see a £150 comp as some kinda step down. Rather it's the level I'm at, and prob lucky to be playing in the comp at all. In the here and now I have a chance to replenish my bankroll, do my confidence the world of good, start a new cycle of success, and hell win a game of poker. So I would play hard and not give my oppos one inch of advantage, sure I would still have fun but I wouldn't be too proud to give it my best shot. I wouldn't waste my time doing or saying anything that isn't going to help achieve that ambition. Can Jason say he played his best game that day? If he cannot then any talk of variance is poppycock, variance is certeris paribus or something?, and if you play bad that ain't ceteris paribus.

I disagree two years of 'final tabling for fun' has no significance in determining how good a guy is at poker today. It is the building blocks of your current mentality so it's easy to think somebody can become a too casual player when success comes easy at first. In fact fellow players have stated itt noticing a change in Jason's demeanour at the table, so I would say it's that rather than variance that is the culprit. Anyway, like I say it's the only thing you can change so the only thing worth talking about.

Eye of the tiger Jason, like Rocky chasing the chicken in the 2nd one.

Too easy ....

It was meant to be :D. Can't believe nobody picked it up before now.

I like this a lot. makes lots of sense.

Yh, I didn't quite phrase it correctly. What I meant was that the fact that someone has had a good year or two of results is not especially significant as evidence as to whether this player is any good at poker or not.

I'd guess that less than 1 in 20 of the players who are regulars on the live tournament circuit have the ability, temperament, discipline, work ethic and stamina to theoretically have a very good ROI in the live tournaments they enter (let's arbitrarily say this would be 100% ROI for tourneys of up to a £1k buy-in, and less than this for bigger tourneys like EPTs). So pick any tournament regular at random and there is around a 5% chance that he is a really good player.

Now pick any player at random from a list of players who have 'achieved consistent live MTT results over last 12 months'. Would it still be only a 5% chance that this player is a really good player? Of course not. The fact that he has achieved consistent results over the last 12 months does make it more likely that this particular guy is a very strong player. But it does not increase the chances as much as many people would think. I'd suggest that the chances of this player being a very strong one would still be less than 50%. My figures are unlikely to be absolutely correct here, since I have just guessed rather than running variance simulators. But they are likely to be roughly in the right ballpark (I am probably being a little generous in my numbers rather than the other way round BTW).

Which means that if you show me a player who has 'achieved consistent live MTT results over last 12 months', there is less than a 50% chance that this player is actually a great player, an expert whose advice is worth buying him a few drinks for.

On the same subject... of the 1 in 20 players who are truly excellent at live tournament poker, a scary amount of them will fail to hit their expectation over the course of their tournament careers (of course a small number of them will outstrip expectation by a HUGE amount). In fact a small portion of these truly excellent players will end up net losers over their lifetimes. And a much greater portion of these excellent players will be net losers over any given five year stretch. This is just the effect of short-term variance, coupled with the fact that your entire live tournament career never leaves the short term. And, of course, this is precisely why playing live tournaments for a living is not a realistic thing to do.

Should any of this be in your mind when you are sat at the poker table playing a tournament? Or when you are analysing your bust out hand to see if you did anything wrong? Of course not. We can't do anything to control the variance, and we don't gain anything by moaning and feeling sorry for ourselves. We should only focus on the things we can control, like our play.

But that does not mean that we should not be aware of the stark realities of variance in live poker tournaments. There are a LOT of guys out there who genuinely believe that they will be able to make a regular living from playing live poker tournaments. They think they understand variance, but they believe that as long as they play well consistently, and keep going when things get rough, they will succeed. In my opinion a very large % of these guys are doomed to failure - they will never out-run variance. They are engaged in a completely unrealistic pursuit, and their success depends on them simply getting lucky. I am not saying they should not play live tournaments, and I am certainly not saying they are -EV in these tournaments. All I am saying is that they should not rely on their tournament winnings to provide them with a regular income over, say, a five year period.

I have 5 years of live MTT and cash game player data that indicates otherwise.

Can you tell us live monkeys the maths behind ;

- number of live MTT we need to play to know we are a winning player and not a luck box

- number of live cash game hours we need to play to know we are a winning player and not a luck box

I'm not saying the online theorists are not correct, just wanna understand the maths, as my figures show consistent live winners at DTD, it's a small % but broadly the same people. My numbers do not take into account player travel expenses though.

Cheers Rob

Problem is one of selection bias in your db Rob.  If people are playing a significant sample of tournaments they are more likely to have been the winners because a lot of the losers (even if they could have become winners) drop out and stop playing so in effect your database by its very nature is more likely to include winners amongst those that play a significant number of tourneys.  Of course there will be some long terms winners in it but, realistically, your database is probably a better indicator of those players that have run well than those that are good.

http://www.nsdpoker.com/2011/01/mtt-pros/

This is the best explanation I've read with regards to variance.

That is a truly superb link.  On that basis I am withdrawing  my offer of 15% of you today Ray ;-)  (only joking obv)

Rob, if you look at any five year period of time there will be a group of players who have been consistent winners throughout that period. Some of these will be excellent players, but others will not be so good. How can a mediocre/bad player have consistently good results for five years? It seems really unlikely right? Well yes it IS unlikely that any one particular weak player will have a consistently successful set of results over the next five years. But if you get a group of 1000 such players and let them play regular tournaments for the next five years, at the end of that period a reasonable number of them will have posted consistently good results. It is something called 'survivor bias' - you only notice the ones that have succeeded and assume that their success means they are definitely good rather than just lucky. Its like that old expression about a million monkeys with a million typewriters.

Abridged version.

Best thread on here for ages this.

I agree that checking someone's Hendon Mob is not as good a guide to their play as simply observing them for a couple of hours at the table. However, it can be very useful to determine whether a player has any experience of big final tables or heads up ability etc.

agree^  just like the game of poker , which is a game of incomplete information, so is a herbiemob.
It will give us the major successes a player has had but not all the failures, but can be useful as a general guide/pointer.
Sometimes you will get a springer in the market, bit like the horse that won 5 open PTPs in Ireland then wins its first run in a maiden by 15lths at 20/1 and no one has heard of it(although not as probable nowadays with all the internet access.

Roy Cooke once wrote a really good article about this subject, using the million monkey theme as an inspiration. He imagines 100,000 monkeys in a room playing HU card cutting (highest card wins) starting at $10 a game.

After the first round half the monkeys have been eliminated and half the monkeys have $20. After the second round a quarter of the monkeys have survived and each has $80. After x number of rounds there are only a small number of monkeys left, and each of them is a multi millionaire. And these surviving monkeys are really pleased with themselves and their card cutting skills. Many are celebrities and their card cutting skills are admired by others. After all, they must be the best card cutters around right? Some are now writing strategy articles for Cardcutter magazine. Other may even have secured sponsorship based on their undoubted card cutting prowess.

The point of this story is to warn against survivor bias and to warn against attaching too much significance to skill in a pursuit that has so much luck involved in it.

I am NOT saying that tournaments are all about luck. And I am not saying that everyone who has done well in tournaments over the last few years at DTD or elsewhere are all weak players who have simply got lucky. However, I AM saying that you cannot simply go to your data and pick out, say, 20 guys who have done well in tournaments at DTD over the last few years and make the assumption that these guys must therefore all be very good players. Some of them really will be excellent players. But probably around half of these guys will not be much good at all.

I realise this sounds counter-intuitive. After all, part of the human experience is based on using results to inform our judgements. The problem is that this does not work properly in gambling, due to the high luck factor that is present in the short-medium term. Five years of playing DTD tournaments five nights a week is nowhere near enough to get out of the short term.

Which is why I believe there is no such thing as a live professional poker tournament player.

You really do have a great way of getting points across honeybadger, love the monkey story btw.
Some are now writing strategy articles for Cardcutter magazine.    this made me lol

LOL

All wrong, some people are just born to be successful.

there is always an exception to the rule............
prob found it  :)

Haha.

The key is to rule out survivor bias.

A way to show what is being talked about here would be if Rob were to pick his group of winning tourney players and then see how many of them have a profitable 2013. I'd bet it would be not as many as some might think.

On a similar note, take any one of the top tourney players that are currently bandied about as being 'any good' (Brammer, Moorman etc).

What price would people give about one of these players having a winning 2013 in live tourneys?

Might actually be one of the best things I've ever seen on the internet.

Explained in an A/S Level maths way that my brain can grasp. Live players will take a long time to get to 1,000 tournaments and there can't be many people on the circuit who realistically have >40% ROI at their bankroll level.

I suppose the question is: how do I know what my expected ROI and therefore mean result is?

I am so proud to be page 1 of this epic thread.

Jason, SOOOO many heroes have given you amazing advice here and every single person in this thread wants to see you doing well again.

Matt was 100% right in what he said though (amongst almost everyone here lol), concentrate on your poker. When you poker comes back, then bring in the banter and everything else. Definately bring back the hoodies and beats mate. Just lock down, when you feel more confident again start to bring in a little more table talk

And therein lies the rub with live MTTs. Sufficient volume can essentially never be attained (whilst game conditions and therefore theo ROI remain constant) to calculate one's ROI.

Jason, will you be playing GPS next week?

If he can find his way there...

Love this thread.

I have a theory that everyone who considers themselves a serious poker player/fan/hobbyist/pro etc probably ran like god in the first 6-12 months of them taking up the game. Nobody likes to lose, and most new players who ran badly when they first started playing probably stopped before they were able to experience some positive variance, which would have been enough for them to take an interest in their game and improving. Of course no matter how much anyone of us would like to think, there is no way at that time that we would have been able to realistically distinguish the variance from skill, and this in turn will have created some long term biases about how we perceive ourselves at the tables.

So anyone who claims they run worse than anyone, you've probably already had your fair share of run-good but never even noticed it.

One of the best gifts my old mucker Jared Tendler gave me was making me realise that I wasn't anywhere near as good a player as I thought I was, rather than shattering my confidence it was actually a really liberating experience.

I am really pleased that the thread is generating so much advice from some of the best players around.

I remember all the players, tourneys and hands that have been mentioned, particually Dave in the Ukipt, Stu R in the high roller, Matt in the 500 etc and thank you all for the advice and input. The main point from a personal point of view is that I talk too much. It's not very often I sit quite at the table and people think this has a detrimental affect on my game. I have to say that in my opinion I play far better with engaging people at the table and getting them chatting. Everything I try to do is with a reason or plan and getting people to call or fold when I want is all part of the plan. However i will certainly give some thought into playing a few tourneys with the mouth buttoned.

I have always tried to be open with my thoughts and Tbf this has generated some interesting threads with great debate. I can't hold my hand on my heart and say "I am not results orientated" because quite clearly I am. When things are going well you think you can do no wrong and are full of advice. Now that things are going bad I am turning to Tittybean et al for advice.

I also studied to quite a high standard and have a degree but still struggle to get my head round certain concepts. I can understand that in a world where everyone is playing perfect and with the same information the game is extremely hard to beat then variance becomes a massive factor. But the games I am playing are not like that. If we use Dtd as an example Are we to accept that Rastafish, Wadey and Alex are on the right side of variance and Key, Keith and Mitch are on the other side. If we all start believing that two years of doing well then two years of winning fuck all ( the UKIPT in May was an exception) is all luck then we may as well all give up and play blackjack.

I accept that the sample size matters but I just can't believe that we not play enough live hands to know if we are good or bad. If you want to put all your chips in pre flop with QQ against someone who can only have AA/KK or want to run a bluff by a calling station you only have yourself to blame. You can't put it down to being a cooler or it being sick because they should fold. The poker I play is not like. The game I play is an enjoyable one where I want to beat consistently. Maybe I am just in a dream world :)

My point exactly.

possibly. Up to now I have resisted the urge to play the series but as Sheffield is so close I should do.

I feel like you've missed the point here. Here we are talking about the extreme random nature of variance, and you're essentially suggesting someone with 5 second places and 0 1st places in MTTs must be lacking in heads up prowess! :)

i only ever got 3 handed with you once. No sign of variance there, just your ability :)

Jase out of interest, what £ figure would you require in exchange for not playing poker again?

i would be stupid to turn down £250k but think I would end up breaking my promise :)

5*

Definitely agree with this too

i did not mean it in a derogatory way. Andrew is a great guy with a great sense of humour that I appreciate far more than poker ability

I think this kind of sums up that, where live poker is concerned, it is pointless being anything other than results oriented. It doesn't matter whether player a is 'better' than player b or whether player a is excellent and player b is weak. All that matters is the result. As you point out, you can't level out any variance live so different measures need to apply.. ie how much profit you made. Probably contend as well that the absolute amounts matter a great deal more than the ROI over a lifetime small sample. Agree as well that 5 years success cannot be any serious predictor of future success

Also would agree that a live pro MTTer prob doesn't exist with any kind of deece lifestyle, aside from the TV pros

When? Is this true? Floor!

Jason, I suspect you still have not fully got it! I'm going to try and make three of the key points really explicitly and really clearly:

1. It is possible to play enough hands of live tournament poker to know whether you are good or bad. However, the way you 'know' you are a good or bad player is not simply through looking at your results over the last few months/years. Short-term results give a small part of the story, a very incomplete and often incorrect description of your ability. You need to look at your play in order to determine how good or bad you are. Analyse your hands, discuss strategy with good players, think about your game deeply both at the table and away from it. You need to see which opponents are making mistakes, what those mistakes are, and how big they are in order to work out how much of an edge (if any) you can have over them. When you have a sense of your own skill level and a sense of your opponents' skill levels, you can have an idea of whether you are a 'winning player' or not. Regardless of your results in the last x number of tournaments you have played. But you need to have an objective view of these things, which is always very difficult - especially if you are results orientated, and especially if - like most players - you are inclined to over-estimate your own skill level and under-estimate the skills of your opponents. It is entirely possible to know whether you are a 'winning player' in the DTD deepstack after playing only two or three of them. You will have had plenty of chances to objectively analyse how your own play matches up to the different opponents you have faced. It does not matter at all whether you cash in any of these three tournaments, or whether you bust out of the money each time. Results are irrelevant - objectively analysing your own play is the only thing that matters.

2. Even if you are a 'winning player' there is no guarantee at all that you will actually make money over the course of merely a few years of live poker. In fact, there is a scarily large likelihood that even someone with a 100% ROI who plays every £1k event in the UK over 2-3 years will end up being a net loser over that period.

3. When judging the ability of other players the same principles apply. Look at HOW THEY PLAY, rather than whether they have been on a good run for the last year. Imagine two new players are moved to your tournament table and you do not recognise either of them. Someone you trust comes and whispers in your ear that Player A has had a tremendous and consistent set of tournament results at DTD over the last year or so. You know nothing about Player B. Based on the information you now have it is now mathematically more likely that Player A is a better player than Player B, and if one of them is going to turn out to be an excellent player it is more likely to be Player A (this is called Bayes Theorem I think, although the maths guys can correct me if I am wrong). But this is very far from certain. The fact that A has had some good results makes it more likely he is a good player than a complete unknown, but that is all. So what you do now is to look at how these two players actually play, and analyse their abilities yourself. If you see Player A open limp 52o and then call a raise for 15% of his stack you can deduce that he is likely not as good a player as you might have suspected from his recent results (BTW one of the guys who is lauded as a great tournament player at DTD did precisely this vs Lil'Dave a while back and hit two pairs vs Dave's AA). Now sometimes your own lack of knowledge/skill might lead you to underestimate or over-estimate a player's ability, just as it might lead you to do the same about your own ability. This goes with the territory - and in general the better player you are the better judge you will be too. But this is the way you decide who is a good player, not just looking up their Hendon Mob or being impressed with how they've final tabled the last few deepstacks.

TBH Jason, in many of your past posts you have given examples of old school players who have been getting the lot for years. I am not going to name any names, but I can tell you that some of the guys who you worship are NOT good players at all. I can also tell you with 100% certainty that these guys have not been 'getting the lot' - they are actually net losers at poker, both in a theoretical sense AND in practice. Honestly, some of the guys you think have been getting the lot for ages lose money almost every year at poker, have always done so, and will continue to do so.

fking sick rubs

another great post and I really am grateful that you are devoting so much of your valuable time to this thread especially with the new addition to your family. I am setting myself up as the patsy here because I know there are a lot of guys out there too afraid to ask the questions or  willing to put themselves up there to be shot at. The thread is a real eye opener and some of the stuff does need re reading a few times before it sinks in. 

And of all my hero's in the game that I admire I bet that less than 5 at a push are true professionals in the true sense of the word and have an income from outside the game of poker. I also do understand how little relevance the Hendonmob has on profitability but it started as a bit of a joke a few years ago and just snowballed. How I never became the 5th member after all the promoting of the site I do, I will never know. I only found out the other day they have a forum over there too.

(http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ryan-point-agree-the-office.gif)

HONEYBADGER i know i said this early but after reading your last post must say it again, you REALLY do know how to get a point across. Without appearing to p1ss up your back and telling you its raining ,   iREALLY think, not just Jason but MOST people who read this forun should be glad you are posting on here , well done brilliant stuff.

hehe

I would think if they have 5 2nd places then they have loads of experience tbh.

Thanks pal, always nice to be appreciated :)

People make good points here but I feel the live long term is way shorter than the online stats players claim;

Example: if Keith Johnson played 2-5 nl every week in 2013 against a standard DTD Friday night line up, he will not lose over 52 sessions. Fact. Estimated hands played would be 25 per hour x 6 hours x 52 weeks = 7800 hands.

What is the theoretical long term for Keith in this game then? I wud actually say he would almost never lose over 3 months in reality.

What would be the long term online at 2-5 nl?

I'm not sure if this is true, or the person I heard it from made it up (can't remember who or when I heard it from), but similar to hobeybadgers point.

A poker theorist ran a 4 handed holdem flip between 4 random computerised players. He ran millions of flips,expecting the players win/loss lines to rise and fall, crossing in the middle as variance would suggest. Supposedly, 2 players won the whole way and 2 lost, apparently disproving variance over x million sample size of completely random flips.

As I say, could be BS as I have spent a lot of time in gala, but its a good story nonetheless lol

A really good article, and it is nice to see some sort of data/simul-based proof of what I have always intuitively believed.

In particular, this part of the conclusion should give everyone pause for thought:

"Anyone except a true tourney god is more likely to lose over 100 tourneys than to win, which also sucks, and even a great tourney player has a decent chance of losing over 1k+ tournaments"

The definition of long term gets longer and longer as the winrates reduce. Bigger winrates lead to lower variance so ldo variance gets more severe.

http://www.evplusplus.com/poker_tools/variance_simulator/


Edit Rob, even with high winrates, 3 months of live poker results can be utterly inconsequential.

I read a few years back about an experiment in which several identical poker bots were set to play each other. They all had identical skill levels and were running on identical processors. And they played something like 20m hands - i.e. more hands than any human could ever play lifetime. At the end of this period some of the bots were 'winning' millions and others were losing millions.

The experiment proved that a lifetime of poker play is NOWHERE NEAR long enough for variance to even out.

Or you could just point to Jamie Gold - no matter what happens to him in poker in the future, he will end his life having run above EV.

Think I'll just stick to enjoying playing poker, rather than thinking too hard about all this shit  :)

Finally a decent post ITT

This is not what the maths says should happen - if two of the players go up early on, you would expect them to hold on to that lead more often than them cross over to become losers.

C Jason , every single person that read blonde poker love u to bits .
U r more famous than Prince William & Kate Middleton combine .

That's selection bias again. We're talking about going the other way, i.e. saying someone that won for 3-12 months in that game is probably as good as Keith Johnson. Hopefully you can see that that isn't true.

Few points to make on this Rob:

First, you are talking about live cash games. Variance evens out in cash games much more quickly than in tournaments. The points I, and others, have been addressing re variance have mainly been in relation to tournament play. I very clearly said to Jason in one of my earlier posts that if he wanted to be a professional live poker player he HAD to do so by playing live cash games, not live tournaments.

Second, as Andrew pointed out - the bigger your edge the quicker variance will even out. Keith likely has a very big edge in the DTD cash games (he is a great player). Much bigger than even the very best tournament players can achieve on the live tournament circuit. This is another reason why Keith's 'long-term' will arrive much faster.

Third, I agree it is pretty unlikely that Keith will have a losing year in the DTD cash games. But it is just wrong to say "he will not lose over 52 sessions. Fact.". It is POSSIBLE that this will happen, fairly unlikely but entirely possible. If you ran Keith's next year of poker one million times (i.e. a million parallel universes) then in quite a few of those parallel universes Keith WILL have a losing year.  And tbh, we do not need anywhere remotely close to a million parallel universes for this to happen. It's only 52 six hour sessions after all.

Fourth, there is a MUCH greater chance of this happening if you are talking about only 3 months - that's only 12 to 14 six hour sessions. I have personally had some sick stretches of negative variance when playing in some insanely soft games (in which my edge would have been much greater than Keith's edge in a 2/5 DTD game, no matter how great a player he is). When I first started playing in the most profitable game I have ever played in, I was LOSING MONEY after my first 24 sessions in the game. It didn't bother me too much because I knew I was playing well, and I also knew that I was a 'big winner' in the game even though I had not yet won any money.

Yes, thats the whole point.

Yep. Furthermore one of those three 'right side of variance guys' realises this and, in fact, has stated this several times in his diary. And guess which one of those three is actually a really good player who understands poker...?

We had a lovely afternoon chatting about maths and then someone made it personal ::)

Play nicely :)

wow thats a depressing post.

The Mtt variance is obviously where you ping your 3 outers, in big live events or in 20r's online

agreed that a lifetime sample cant really prove if someone is a winner in mtts.
the best indicator has always been respect from peers.

And what is your job again?  :D  ;whistle;

If you're referring to my last post, I was being complimentary to the person I was referring to...

And what about the other two?  ;whistle;  ;ifm;













Ok that's my shit stirring done, I'm outta here  ;D

I have never played with one of the other two, and have only ever played DC cash games with the other. So I have no comments to make on their tournament prowess.

Good swerve Stu  :P

Thanks pal ;)

Tbf it's a Herbie thread so I think that sort of thing is encouraged.

I take it this is meant with regards to results at DTD ?

Those on the "other side" ain't done to shabbily.

Unless Alex' true ROI is about 5000% then he's on the wrong side of it as well.

Also if Keys, Keith or Mitch's true ROIs are 0% then any cash means they're on the right side of it.

Also I think Keys' little win in Australia put him on the desired side of the graph.

In simple terms at least all this mathematical analysis (which FWIW i know is accurate) just confirms the game is predominately driven by luck, rather than skill which means those that stay on the ride side of variance should continue to avoid the tax man - phew glad thats sorted

Is it me?

Sick Maths brag :P

lol. I saw you had posted, not actually read the last four pages but just about to. Had a few hours off from Blonde and spent some quality time with the wife tonight.

Putting Alex in the group of 3 was my little joke Stu, but it goes to show that in a subtle way I do understand. Mitch has also collected a few Nice HerbieMob flags this year.

Just one note I have just posted whats running through my head and shot names out and I am obv not wanting to upset people. As you might imagine I am getting a lot of pm's here and on Facebook offering advice, pointing out other players with no Flags but worth $millon from poker and some who have recorded winnings of $millon plus who don't have a pot to pee in etc.  I am loving the thread and hope plenty of people are learning from it.

There is still a lot of fish out there but games are starting to get tougher, there are more good players out there and people are getting better quickly.  To stay ahead you really need to stay on top of your game, go over hands with people, ask opinions, talk strategy with players you respect, try to analyse hands that you have seen from other players and work out what they are doing good that is different from you.  If you dont do this you will be left behind and you never fully notice until you hit a downswing. 

From the posts Ive read from you it sounded like that when you where "winning for fun" you felt your game was perfectly suited for the games you were playing and Id guess you didnt put in much work in your game.  If you're serious about continuing to make a living from poker you have to break down your game, work out what you do well and find ways to implement it more and either eliminate the things your doing wrong or find ways to make it work.  If you do this and can learn from it, it should naturally filter through to both your online and live game and you will feel much more comfortable and confident at the table and you wont need to worry about if you're socialising too much.

I agree with Pleno, maybe give online a try.  There are so many games on so many networks there has to be something that you feel you would enjoy playing and could realistically beat.  Sharing HHs with people that can give you good advice will improve your game much quicker than playing live a couple times per week (more hands to look over, quicker turnaround time between identifying a leak, correcting it and then implementing the change to your game) and hopefully things can turn around before you lose whatever money you're prepared to lose at poker and you're forced to find other means of income.

If you're not prepared to put in the work then it may be time to face reality and find another source of income to support your family while playing poker on the side and look for the binks.

You really don't get variance

Surely you can get enough from OPR to know that some people deserve to be lifetime winners? 

If you look at things like the percentage of time finishes in top 10, ROI, tournament size etc, you should be fairly confident you could find better players than you would by asking a bunch of poker players who they respect.

Where as a lifetime sample may never be enough to decide if a once a month live player is a winner, you can be pretty confident that some mass multitablers are after a few months data.  By that stage you will have sample sizes into the tens of thousands of several pieces of data. 

I use way less data than that to produce reasonable distribution for most of the things I do in the real world.

I was so chuffed with my live results this year until people started posting reality checks in this thread.

Thanks for that.

Maybe you've been running really bad for years and you're supposed to be a millionaire.

Said someone to James just before the Aussie Millions.

That'll be it.

I really do get variance. I just typed this on my phone while walking down the road lol

Hmm I can definitely see this is true in some cases. Personally I lost money at poker in the first 2 years since I started playing. I started off with £10 freezeouts at reileys in Cambridge and didnt cash for the first 20 probably, lost quite a lot of my university money lol playing 50/1 at DTD and Alea before I had a clue what I was doing.

I couldn't give it up though because I thought I was smart enough to learn how to be a winner and I can't really give up on something just because of my personality.

I agree with whoever said that it's respect of your peers / legit sickos that means a lot. For example, my results prove almost nothing about my ability, but the fact that Keith and Keys backed me, probably gave me more confidence than anything else ever has, and when friends/sickos say nice things etc, that means more than any 2 year heater means.

This has got me thinking about people charging markup for events they have no record in.

I knew before I played my first £1k that I'd be profitable in it. How? I had no results at all, how could I justify any markup or even selling at 1.0?

To my mind, I knew the players that were playing it. DTD locals, the same guys I've played £50 comps with, despite my blank canvas and their hendonmob full of cashes and flags, if the field was full of those guys then I knew I'd be +EV in it. Of course, you can't expect anyone else to believe you but you can know deep down that you are a winning player.

Now where does delusion come into that?! I've read the same sort of thing on staking proposals from guys that in my opinion, definitely aren't winners! Who's to say who's right and wrong? The guys with the results/cashes/flags? Oh but that could all mean nothing too remember...

And there is the beginning of an entirely separate discussion. Not directed at you but just generally about us as poker players and our blind beliefs whether its true or not  :D

I still can't re-affirm more how much of a bad idea I think taking up online tournaments is Jason. Also, don't get staked for live comps that's the LAST thing you should do imo.

"Variance" doesn't actually exist practically in poker either imo, because the "long run" is never reached - the long run for say $2/$4nl online, lets say this is 2,500,000 hands - even if you play that (and some people have) you haven't truly reached the long run because so many different scenarios of $2/$4nl online that you've not really play 2.5m hands.

2/4nl online prolly the most sterile type of game as well, so lets use an example like $5/$10plo, you run very badly on average in deepstack spots, you run very good vs the weaker players when they play the game these things are going to have a phenomenal impact on your results and there is no reasonable liklihood you should run well one day in a very soft game just because you ran bad the previous time the game was like this. I know players with 7figure bankrolls and players with low 6 figure bankrolls and really the only difference between them is that they ran better when games were soft and huge than when they were small and tough.

Don't even consider this stuff imo, just understand that we're all at the mercy of good or bad fortune (like in any walk of life) and try play the best you can at every juncture, focus on the quality of your play, you're mental control and temperament alongside good financial management - put yourself in good spots and let the cards fall where they are going to fall.

LIVE CASH GAMES JASON. You like live poker, you know where the games are and the people who play them, you don't need a monstrously big exposure to make money even intially and you can drive around - banter in some of the DC games is top class!

Isnt this just a feldmanesque come and play in my game fish type invitation?  ;)

hhaha, this is an article i wrote on my blog over 6 years ago. still think its of use here.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2006

Have You Got Lucky?
it is important after a win in an Multi-tourney or Sit & go, to evealuate your game, and realise the pots which you won, could have gone the other way.
On very few occasions is it possible to win a, say 100 runner tourney without winning at least one coin flip (50-50) and a lot of the times you may be forced to put your chips in with say KQ v A10 where u are a 60/40 dog.
Often it can be easy after winning a tournament to feel like you have played very good poker and have deserved your win. At times like these you have to remember he times you have been lucky in a single pot and realise that this won't happen in every tourney. My own opinion is that you have to have luck on your side to win a tourney. The differnce between the good players and just the average players is that the good players give themselves the best possibe chance to get lucky by only getting involved in very few showdowns per tournament, this way they may only have to win say 3 coinflips per tourney as opposed to other weaker players who may need to win a lot more, due to their inabilty to steal pots and become more aggressive in the latter stages. I have seen many players who at one time were winning tourneys left right and centre, and they were last seen entering $2 bonus freerolls.

It is very naive to disregard luck in poker. But for a good player the luck comes, by why that they may be lucky not to get unlucky....

Ie they will go into a pot with AK v AQ in a showdown obviously the AK is about 73% favourite but if you are involved in 4 of these coups, you are favourite to lose your stack by the 4th time...

They say that good players don't understand how much luck is in the game and bad players don't realise how much skill is in he game. This is probably right, however bad players often endeavour to learn more about the skill in the game. It is also important for the good players to not learn but understand luck and don't get blinkered into thinking you are invincible, and never forget the times when you get lucky as this will help you take the beats that other players inflict on you.... because as they say "what comes around, goes around".........

Great stuff..
This is so true .... and to think you knew all this over 6 years ago . fk me you must of had it good back then  : )

Excellent post from Action Man imo.

Inline with his post i think the following is worthy of thought.

To win a MTT tourney you will need luck and good timing, e.g

player a could get aces v kings 4 tournies in a row.
player b could get aces v kings 4 tournies in a row.

BUT the TIMING of when these hands occur in the tournament/and against whom can make a vast different to how much player a or player b win.
i.e
player a gets his aces in level one 3 times and final table once. They hold up all 3 times level one but lose final table he wins£500 say
player b gets his aces 3 times in level one and they hold, he then gets them on bubble and they lose, he wins£0
they could of both played as well as each other, but player a had better timing.
Very interesting discussions and opinions tho imo.

shhhhhhhhh :P

Haven't read all the posts ITT but a general observation people are far too quick to blame variance for bad results..  Pretty sure, if people played better they would be far less concerned about 'variance' - I know when I play, that I am up against variance (granted, I haven't played enough to feel the full force - not many people have)  ...but far greater than that I'm up against myself and my own ability/temperament/focus.  People would do well to forget about variance and concentrate on looking at themselves, and their own game imo

or god forbid they run into one of those fish that folds the kings pre flop :)

they are like the guppy brother of the ones that fold jacks.............  :D

oh wait a min, how did this all start.......... ;gobsmacked;

All joking aside Jason, have you decided where you gonna go from here yet?

A lie down in a darkened room, I'd imagine.

He'll probably win the Genting series next weekend and in his winner interview say 'if it wasn't for luck I'd win all of em, sample size my arse, when are they next having that One Drop thing?'

lol. Yeah touché as they say. Wp.
My next thread was going to be entitled "Confidence is high so playing well and in the zone".
I had actually thought about doing a hand by hand description of  the next tourney I play and just like Gus will obv be winning it. I really wanted to play the GPS in Sheffield next weekend but had forgotten that the wife is away Friday- Monday in Dublin with mates Christmas shopping. I don't expect her to comeback with much except a headache.

I have had a quite a few people sending pm's and the love and support on the forum is amazing. I have had some fun times at the table and it turns out quite a few people have enjoyed them too. Obv I might come across as a complete cockend at times but that's not my intention.


Edit: and for balance just got my first bit of hate mail from Milligan :)

Doing report on tourney would be quite good idea in theory, but would prob mean you are spending too much time writing about hands gone than concentrating on hands being played, its all double edged swords :)
You dont fancy the £150 saturday?

obv cant cos of shopping drip ldo.

realised that after i posted it, still as mr gas would say, its another post towards the 300

It's GPS she is away for. This week she is at work till 4 but getting a sitter for a couple of hours ain't a problem

ok, i will be there for a rare visit, if i see you will say hi.

100% agree with this.
Variance is massively over-played by good players, and is a constant hinderance to them becoming more profitable.

Players bring their technically proficient online games to live MTT's, have a bad run, and auto-blame variance.
Players who used to win, stop winning, and blame variance.
Players have a losing month, following a few winning months, and blame variance.

Sure luck is a short-term factor in results, especially in large field MTT's, but it should be one of the last things we look at, when trying to root-cause a bad run.

Well said Neil. We cannot control variance so we might as well not worry about it. And we certainly should not get hung up on blaming it if we are on a bad run. By using a bad run as stimulus to examine and improve our play we can get something positive from negative variance. If we just write it all off to bad luck then we don't get this benefit.

There are two caveats to this, however.

First, it is important to recognise the effect of variance when examining our play. For example, imagine we make several good well thought out bluffs in a particular spot, but each time run into the top of villain's range and get called. We might end up starting to think that this is a bad spot to bluff in, even when it is in fact a good one and we have just been 'unlucky' each of the last few times. This is an example of how we need to understand that variance plays a big part in short term results, because if we don't do this then we can end up drawing an incorrect conclusion from these results. We should not absolve ourselves from responsibility for our results by writing it all off to variance. But we do need to constantly ask ourselves if the learning feedback we get from examining the cause/effect link between our plays and the results is 'real' or if it is merely a variance-based illusion. If we don't do this then we can end up modifying our play in the wrong way. It should always be remembered that the link between input and output (cause and effect) which is normally so rational in everyday life is extremely tenuous in any form of gambling. We need to understand variance in order to learn effectively.

Second, it is VERY worth thinking about variance when deciding which path to choose in our poker careers. Everything I have written in this thread about variance has had one goal - to explain that trying to make a regular living as a live tournament professional is a very, very bad idea. And the reason for this is because it seemed that Jason was under the impression that being a live tournament pro was a viable way of making a living.

You are correct again Stu. I was actually trying to think of someone who plays live tournaments for a living. I can't actually think of one player who does not play either online or cash. In all reality you probably can't even play enough tournies a week to make a living from them.

Ok enough is enough u have had enough advice an basically mr David Nicholson advice of best way to get confidence back is not online but playing live cash as its a lot easier an that is where u should start an c how u feel in 6 months time ! Or forget about all the drama an get a job like normal honest peopl do! X

hey Pete, thanks for popping in. Yes they are two options that seem the most likely but I also gave had some offers to go down the online route which do appeal because I would love to do a thread "Can old dogs be taught new tricks".

Whilst you are here can I ask you opinion on the game we played  recently when Matt was also at the table. It's his opinion that I talk too much and am constantly on my iPad and its bad for my game. I don't actually own an iPad so can only assume he means my phone but the main thing was really about my speech play etc.  I was pleased to see you as I had not seen you for a while and was happily chatting away. You seemed to not enjoy the drink guy in between is 3 betting you almost everytime you opened.


Then i remember a hand where the flop possibly came two hearts and you made a bet and I said something like "I was pretty sure I had the ace of hearts". The turn came a 3rd heart. You then paid me off on the river which was an Ace and said that you would not have paid me had it not been for the talking. Did you actually see what my other card was and would you have still paid me off if I had not said a word?

if anything it did stop me betting turn which I should of done as I had top Pair an 2nt flush draw! But probaly would of called river anyhow if you happen to call my bet on turn which you probaly wouldn't of being getting the right price too.       

                    I've actually started playing again last month mostly in London an I  would say I have cut out a lot of the friendly banter which I guess old age is setting in as being away from my family is hard work at most of the time so conserving energy an just focusing on trying to get £ into my pocket as become priority rather than enjoying my time at table.

I think you are of roughly my age group or I would bet u r older but playing Online would defitnely not suit you IMO but that's me just hazarding a guess as I don't know alot of your game but can only go on what I have seen an heard e.t.c . It's hard enough having a family to support but staying at home an playing in that environment is fine if things are great an you winning £ everyweek, but separating the two is so important an when things go wrong can you honestly put your hand on your heart an say you show your family the same love an attention. ? It becomes a vicious circle which affects both mind sets.

 Ahrt Thread, going for liedown now after all that in one day :) wp all

I've been thinking about all the chat we've been reading on this thread.

Say you only play live tournaments (because that's what you enjoy most). You'll likely take years to play enough comps to make your results statistically significant and even that much is debatable.

So, you can work really hard at your game, spending hours over old hand histories, watching training videos, months of coaching, 500 PHA and 2+2 posts a week and an NLP Practitioners' course...and STILL face a 50% chance of losing money on purely your tournament entries (forget your expenses) over that time.

Or...

You could play as frequently as you can afford to lose, play your best when you play, discuss hands and look to improve.

Over the course of 5 years' live MTTs, variance is still wide enough to mean you might be no better off and the expected ROI isn't likely that much more.

I completely agree that if you want to make proper money and rely on poker as a main source of revenue, you have to treat it with respect and that means hitting the bell curve of variance hard by playing a LOT of comps online, with forensic and rigorous analysis, else you will be left behind and lose your income.

However, if you take poker as a hobby, you can afford the losses and the swings make a massive difference to your life. Win the Super 50 and you can take the family on holiday. Win a 150 and you can go abroad :) Even a local comp win pays the mortgage for a month.

I said all this before, but you have to decide - try as we all might, none of us can do this for you - YOU have to decide what you want to achieve. Then, all you have to work out is how you're going to achieve it. That's the most basic and effective coaching technique there is.

Alot of great stuff itt. What does the Mrs think about you playing poker?

Correct. Forget online unless you satty into big Sunday comps. Even then it's nigh on impossible to navigate from 4 tables in without software. Live cash is the way to go if you can stay sober and not wind players up!

All your speech play does is widen players ranges Jason which makes the game harder.

Al

When I say stay sober I mean go out and play fri/sat night nlhe in any casino with the non sobers. I know you don't booze yourself.

I 100% agree with this post, I hear so many players blame variance for their own lack of success as well as the envy of other players achievements. My live stats for all players since DTD opened show live MTT and cash game variance is WAY WAY LESS than some of the comments on this thread, we have consistent winners at the same buy-ins.

If I put 100% of the buy-ins up and got 100% of the winnings, I believe it would be very profitable for me to;

- back Keith Johnson over 50 £2-£5 cash game sessions at the same stakes at DTD (8000 hands - not 2.5M!)

- back Roberto Romenello in 100 live £150 + £18 Deepstacks (100 comps - not 10,000, so player needs to win <£16,800 in prize money)

To be honest, if this want not the case, and I was way out, why do staking threads even exist? Players are selling themselves at 1.35 and there is no shortage of buyers.

Poker is a "performance related occupation" -  in a commission sales job (eg. recruitment) a person makes x calls, does x meetings, chases up x leads, converts x deals, there is no GTE that the person gets paid as they are on performance related pay, just like poker, but IN REALITY, most of my sales team earn the same commission each month, with the odd spike. There is luck in almost every aspect of life, when do we ever reach the long term of most of our decisions?

I am sure there will be a formula for variance and reaching the long term for my sales staff i.e. someone must do 20 million calls until the long term is reached and they know there true earnings, but in reality, things end up evening themselves out each month if my staff put the same effort in.

There is a great saying "There are Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics"

Cheers Rob

Rob, it has already been explained why your stats will show a number of consistent winners over a five year period - it is due to a concept called survivor bias.

Also, cash games are completely different to tournaments in terms of variance. So looking at your cash game data has no relevance to a discussion of tournament variance which is what we have been discussing.

Your comments about staking threads don't make sense. If someone has a ROI of 100% in a tournament then it is profitable for me to buy a piece of his action at 1.5. It does not matter whether he goes on to win the tournament or whether he busts out first hand. I made a profitable play by purchasing his action in either case. When I buy action in tournament players I do so every time with the knowledge that the most likely outcome is that I lose my money. But I am still making a profitable bet. Results are irrelevant.

If you back a racehorse at 200 to 1 and you somehow know that the true odds are 50 to 1, you have made a very profitable bet. But you will still be a big favourite to lose your money on the race. And in fact it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to run at expectation for this race - when the race finishes most of the time you will have run below EV (you will have lost) and one time in 51 you will have run massively above EV. If you could somehow keep making the exact same amazing bet every day (200 to 1 on a 50 to 1 shot), how many days do you think it would take until you were likely to have 'hit the long term'? i.e. have results that are within, say, 5% of your expected value.

About a year ago I decided to start buying lots more action from tournament players. I bought a little bit of online action, but mainly I bought percentages of players' live tournament action. I am a pretty good judge of who is a good player and I'd expect that almost every single one of my action purchases was profitable for me - I only bought action in good players who were charging reasonable mark up. And you know what? Right at the start I had a run of well over 100 tournaments in which I got only 2 min cashes. Was I unlucky in how my action buying worked out for those 100+ tournaments? Of course I was. Was this bad luck some sort of statistical anomaly that was extremely unlikely to happen? Of course not.

There are two points to the above story (moan lol!).The first point is that my results in the first few months of my new project were completely irrelevant. I knew that I had 'made money' through my action buying - even though I had actually lost money. Anyone who understands the previous sentence and does not think I have contradicted myself 'gets' gambling.

The second point is that if I can only have two min cashes in well over 100 pieces of purchased action then it is just as feasible for a really good tournament player to only have two min cashes in over 100 tournaments. Is this likely to happen? No. Is it extremely unlikely to happen? Again, no.

I 'get' gambling and the theory is clear but I'd rather just be results oriented - results & fiddies - I can't really see the point in being anything else

I don't really understand what you mean by this Nirvana.

I rarely do either mate.

I guess I think it makes sense to be 100% results oriented in poker (not hand by hand), but say over a year of tourney play.

Being self aware enough to know you often get lucky in poker tournaments and that you never stop learning is probably more important than a discussion about variance. Despite that, I do think acknowledging variance is pretty important in deciding 'live tourney pro' is not a great career choice for most

Hey Gouty, I seem to remember getting a light call out of you on one final table that we played. It was probably the first time we had met each other. I distinctly remember you telling the rest of the table you would not have made the call had it not been for my talking. Having said that later on in the evening all the talk back fired on me because as we got 3 handed I told you both that I was prepared to do you both a favour and deal, you both snap refused :).

I really must reiterate a couple of points. I have never been drunk playing poker as tbh I don't drink. Last month I did have a couple of ciders with an old friend and I was pretty much worse for it and would never do it again.  I may have given the impression that I am drunk or never concentrating on the game. I really must emphasise I am always observing everything without people actually noticing. If people think you are watching there every step then they start doing things differently. 
I am always on my phone but the truth is the wifi is that poor that half the time its not working anyway or the battery is dead. It's a similar thing to when I used to wear headphones, quite a lot of people knew that I did not even own an iPod or MP3 player. Sitting away nodding my head or occasional sing the last 3 words of a song gives the impression that I'm actually not listening or concentrating and when I make a raise I have to have a premium hand.

I do remember playing a final in the Irish winter festival where I was high as a kite and absolutely destroyed the final table, we ended up doing a deal heads up where all I wanted was the comedy cheque and the trophy. The lad I was playing had got in through a Paddy Power promotion and they were keen for us to do a deal for some reason and I agreed. But that's another storey for a different time.

I don't understand why people are arguing with Honeybadger, he is clearly 100% right about everything he has said, and has explained everything really well. It would be more efficient spending time trying to understand why he is right than considering why you think he's wrong.

You say that because you have a solid understanding of variance and have played thousands and thousands of thousands of tournaments online. What he is saying is going to be proper this

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iD1AO7osvQ

and this (Dont watch it if you plan on watching Lost ever)

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb1kidLw3SU

and this

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbV5hn_ET0U

For some people

How many £300 & £500 deepstacks have been run since DTD opened? It'd be interesting to see how many different winners there have been during that time.

Also, there will be quite a few people in profit during that time who aren't actually that good and plenty of good players who aren't in profit. I think I'm right in saying that Nick Hicks, Neil Giblin, Andrew Hulme and Ben Vinson have never won one of these (apologies if I'm wrong). But I'd rather back them than some players who have won it in the past, and some of them have won it more than once.

i hope its not seen as arguing and just people openly putting their point of view. Stu is obv devoting a lot of time and effort to contributing to the thread. I also appreciate the other people like Rob, Glen and dare I say even Aaron because they are having the balls to go against what everyone "knows" to be correct but are saying what a lot of people are thinking. If we are to believe that live poker at Dtd is just one luckbox fest then what is the point of playing.

Here are a few points I want people to have a go at answering.

1. Is live poker a game of skill or is it luck. For years people have been arguing this and many cases have gone to Court. I have always been in the skill camp but you are making a very good case for it being all luck.

2. It is possible to take low variance lines when playing hands, is it generally accepted that these are losing plays in the long term.

3. A top online player once told me some stuff about the top players playing poker to such a high standard that they played almost perfect always taking the correct lines so that they were not able to be exploited. If you knew exactly how this player played everyhand then surly you must be able to exploit this.

Yo, I agree with nirvana. Variance is like riding a roller coaster, you strap yourself in and away you go. Sure, you could have a guided tour of the roller coaster before you set off and learn all about the mechanics and why it wont come off the rails. Then you have the knowledge to identify spots on the ride where the gravitational pull stops the cars coming off the rails due to various theories about speed and bank. Or you can embrace the ride by just putting your arms in the air and screaming and laughing wildly as you go. Either way everybody is on the same ride and are free to choose whatever attitude they want, the actual ride never changes.

We have already established people wont play enough live comps to make the data statistically relevant. I also think any semi-intelligent player can appreciate when he played well but got unlucky. So really talk of variance and understanding the mechanics of variance is all very irrelevant, in fact it is all associated with ego imo. The title of this thread is 'Confidence at an all time low so playing badly' and most of the talk has been about variance. One of your biggest weapons in poker is confidence and without it you probably will play badly. Once you are playing badly any talk about variance is even more irrelevant. So working on and understanding your emotions and behaviour and anything else within your control is a much more productive use of your time.

Loving the thread. Sooo many heros giving advice and opinions, just need RedDog to honour us with his presence and we almost have a full house.

Hellmuth says it's 100% skill and 50% luck

Gus summarised his Aussie Millions win in Every Hand Revealed by saying he was lucky. Paraphrasing it, he described the various combinations of luck as having good cards (AA in final hand, I know how it feels to be the wrong side of that scenario); other players having nothing to call him with when he was stealing blinds and making moves; and other players having good, but not good enough, hands to deliver big pots to him. Ultimately though he rode/used his luck to good advantage.

Maybe, if it weren't for luck, there wouldn't be any skill?

Having said all that - remember the Gary Player quote? "People say I'm a lucky so and so. Maybe I am, but the harder I practice, the luckier I get"

Whilst your words are very kind - and correct lol - don't be too disappointed that many people are unable to instantly accept the truth about variance. It is a very difficult thing for the majority of people to understand.  We are conditioned to thinking about the world in terms of cause and effect, input and output. And in order to make sense of our lives we need to see a direct link between our actions and the results of those actions. We learn by trial and error - a young child touches a hot stove and gets burned, he learns not to touch it etc. The problem of course is that this link between input and output is very, very tenuous in gambling - especially in the short term.

Also, when we look at the world we can see patterns everywhere. Often these patterns show us the truth. But just as often these patterns are just random outcomes. And of course, we sometimes also impose our own narratives on the data that we see - in other words we create our OWN patterns when we look at the world.

Rob has got data on tournament results at DTD. He looks at this data and sees certain patterns, and thus makes certain conclusions. The vast majority of people who looked at this data would likely make the same conclusions. Some of these conclusions are wrong. And this is because the vast majority of people do not understand how to analyse data properly and have no knowledge of important statistical concepts like survivor bias.

I have tried to explain these concepts, and to show why simply spotting that maybe 20 players have had consistent results in DTD tournaments over the last 5 years means very little (and it is in fact INEVITABLE that there will be a group of consistent winners even if poker was 100% luck-based - see the monkey cardcutter story). I think I have done a decent job of explaining all this, and I appreciate you complimenting me on it. But this stuff is so difficult for most people to 'get', it goes against all their prior conditioning, that I would not expect every person to simply say "Oh wow! Yes I get it now." Plus of course, many people simply don't want to accept these things. There are not many people who both fully understand variance, and then can accept it and 'forget about it' in their approach to gambling. These people have the ability to become very successful gamblers.  

Who is HoneyBadger in real life? He is owning this thread at the moment? Is it Barry Neville?

Jason, I am going to go through your points systematically. Ok, first two points:


AAAAGGGGHHHH!!!! No-one has ever said it is 'just one luckbox fest'. There is skill involved in live tournaments. But the point is that the VAST majority of people massively under-estimate the amount of luck involved, and also massively under-estimate the amount of time it takes for this luck to even begin to even out.

What is the point of playing? I am assuming you are talking about live tournaments, not cash games. There are lots of good reasons to play live tournaments. Here are three of them:

1. To satisfy your competitive and sporting instincts.
2. To have fun.
3. A good result can be life-changing.

All these are very good reasons to play live tournaments. And, of course, if you are a good player, then another reason to play is because you have a positive expectation through playing. So you are not making a 'bad bet' in order to have fun or try to win life changing money. If you enter the lottery you could also win life-changing money, but it is a bad bet. The beauty of a poker tournament (if you are a good player) is that you can 'enter a lottery' without having to make a bad bet.

However, some people have another reason to play live tournaments - "I want to make regular money to keep my family through results in live tournaments. I want to be a live tournament professional". This is NOT a good reason to enter poker tournaments. It is a completely unrealistic objective, even if you are +EV in the tournaments you enter. There is simply too much variance involved, and it is just too likely that you can go several years as a 'winning player' without actually doing any winning. If you need regular money coming in then you simply cannot achieve this through live tournament play. This is the reason I started all this stuff about variance, to try to explain this to you. I hope I have succeeded.



Poker is a game of skill AND luck. That's what makes it such a great game.

If I played tennis with Roger Federer it would be no fun at all. I'd not be able to return a single serve, and we'd both be bored within a couple of minutes. And if we played a full match I'd not win a single game from him, and in fact would only win a point if he made an unforced error. For this reason, I would never ever play Roger Federer for money. I would be GUARANTEED to lose. Neither would I play Garry Kasparov at chess for money. Or Tiger Woods at golf for money. You get the idea, right?

However, let's imagine I challenge Phil Ivey to a HU match. This would be the equivalent of me playing Roger Federer at tennis. Would I be guaranteed to lose? Of course not! In fact, if we started the match with only 40 big blinds each I believe I could simply open shove every single hand without looking and I'd be something like 40% to win the match (this won't be 100% accurate BTW and I can't be bothered working it out; a HU SNG specialist like Dan Morgan could no doubt give the exact figures). And if we just both played 'normal poker' I would win a decent chunk of the time. Of course, if we played 1000 times I would be a net loser. But it is perfectly feasible that we could play 20 HU matches and I would have won more matches than I would have lost.

This is what makes poker so amazing. The luck involved means that even a very mediocre player like me can beat the best player in the world in any one session, let alone any one hand. And this means that weak players are happy to play against much stronger players because they have a fighting chance of beating them in the short-term. And this, of course, is precisely why strong players should CELEBRATE variance rather than hate it. It is what allows them to make a living from the game because it means that weaker opponents are happy to play against them.

So what percentage is skill and what percentage is luck? Well, in the short-term poker is predominantly luck. And in the long-term poker is predominantly skill. I am not going to go through my spreadsheet for the last 8 years, but I am pretty sure that if I did then it would turn out that I win about 3 out of every 5 sessions I play, and lose the other 2 sessions. Which means that if I were to go out to play poker tonight there would be a 60% chance that I came home winning and a 40% chance that I came home losing. In other words, whether you win or lose in any one session is MAINLY down to luck. However, if I play 20 sessions of poker then it is MUCH more likely that I will be ahead at the end of this period of time. Far from guaranteed of course - I have had plenty of 20 session losing streaks in my career. But I am far more likely to be a winner than a loser over 20 sessions.

You get the point? In the short-term gambling is perhaps 90% luck and 10% skill (i.e. in any one hand). In the long-term poker is perhaps 90% skill and 10% luck. Our lifetimes are not enough for this luck to fully even out of course, but they are enough for it to at least START to even out.

BTW if this does not sound right to you, if you think this does not correspond to your experience of how life works, if you still believe that we should reach the 'long-run' eventually... consider this:

Imagine a child born in Africa during a famine. His parents both die, and he spends his life living in an orphanage, constantly hungry and ill. Then at the age of 15 he get captured by rebel forces during a civil war, tortured for a full 12 months, and then eventually dies in agony.

Now look at your own life. You live in the UK. You have enough to eat. You have a family who are alive and (I hope) healthy. You have a roof above your head. In fact you have life so cushy that you are able to spend a good chunk of your time playing a card game and even posting on an internet forum about a card game.

By the time you die it is very likely that you will have run 'above expectation' in life. Just having enough to eat every day probably puts you in the top 70th percentile of lucky bastards worldwide. The fact you are agonising about whether you can succeed playing poker for a living likely puts you into the top 95th percentile! By the time the poor African child dies anyone could look back on his life and say with complete justification that he ran below 'life EV'.

In other words, there is no reason to think that our lifetime is enough time for luck to even out. It isn't.

I'll deal with your next two points later on... I've got to go and pick my son up from school now, and then will likely be busy with family. But I will get to them when I have half an hour spare.

Thanks for taking the time Stu.

I don't know if you're serious or having a laugh but either way this really made me lol :D

In the Grand National, the horses are of different standards. To make it a more even race, the best horse has to carry more weight than the second beat horse, who carries more than the third best horse...who carries more than the worst horse in the field.

So why dont they all cross the line together? And why is one horse 4/1 and another horse 200/1?

If they ran the race a million times, the favourite would win more times than any of the others. But it doesn't mean it will win once in 100 times.

Should you back outsiders for the sake of it because "anyone can win"? No.

In poker, staking Andrew Hulme would be better value than staking me, even if he failed to cash five times in a row and I won five comps ( my analogy, my rules!). Over a million comps, you would make more money.

The problem - taking us back to the original debate (call, BTW) - is that you can't get a million comps!

Its no coincidence that those who work hardest and are most determined are the "luckiest". This is the case with most things in life

Lol I guess you're right Barry. I can't explain it any better than Honeybadger, but just for some really basic graphical evidence.

This is bfizz11's graph for $12 180-man tuournaments in 2010, in which he had an ROI of 20%. For those that don't know Bfizz11, he is an absolute hero at this format, and overall has won $430,000 in 65,000 tournaments online.

If we pretend that we can play 250 live tournaments a year and this is a graph spanning 19 years. Yes, somewhere in Years 2 and 8 he is Rastafish and gets the lot. But there are are about 6 losing years in there, and a least 6 break even.

Of course there are lots of differences between $12 180-mans and live MTTs, namely ROIs and field sizes, but it is still illustrative of a player, who is very +EV in the field, will encounter.

Is this why he carries more weight?

Just because people are willing to pay 1.7 for somebody, doesn't mean they are 1.7.  Even online where we have OPR and sharkscope and people put links to them in their posts, people are still willing to pay 1.3 for players who are barely better than break even over tens of thousands of tournaments.  People are either not using the information in front of them or are backing people for other reasons than to make a long run profit.

That saying about lies and statistics just reflects the fact that the vast majority of the population simply do not have enough understanding of statistics to realise that the saying is complete bollocks. 

Chris Moorman is clearly a great player, we can see over a long duration that he is a big winner at the game, I clicked on his sharkscope tee other day and he is on a $150k downswing on stars.  That is over the best part of 7000 games. 

Yet people still think they can tell the long run winners and losers in live MTTs over sample sizes that must be less than 1% of that.  You can have a better idea of who the winners and losers will be than pure pin sticking, but you really can't be anywhere close to sure.

If the statistics you use are relevant, and you have enough data, they can be very reliable, if you have taken a sample of 12 kids with autism then they clearly aren't.  It is badly used statistics that make people think the saying is relevant, and not statistics per se. 

I expect a decent proportion of the population still think Dr Wakefield was on to something.




   

This sounds nice, and there is a great deal of truth in it of course. There was that famous quote: "I am a great believer in luck; and I find that the harder I work the luckier I get".

But despite there being a great deal of truth in this, it is very far from the whole truth. In reality, many people will die and it would be possible to look back on every event in their lives and conclude that they had, on balance, been unlucky. And vice versa of course. As I made clear in my African child example, one lifetime is nowhere near enough for luck to even out. Not in life, not in poker.

The vast majority of people massively under-estimate the role of luck in life. This especially applies to successful people, to winners. They look back on, say, their successful career in business and attribute this primarily to themselves: their great ideas; their skills; their judgement; their hard work; their desire to succeed. If they were interviewed then they'd rarely mention anything to do with luck if asked about why they have been so successful. They'd say stuff like:

"I am a born winner, that's just the way I am."
"I think I just wanted it more than most people."
"If you want something enough, and work hard enough, you will succeed."
"I never gave up, that's why I won."
And of course, "Cream always rises."

If they are asked about whether they'd consider themselves to have been lucky they would likely say things like:
"You make your own luck in this world."
"I wasn't lucky, I deserve my success. I worked hard for it."

It's not that these guys would be wrong per se. There is a LOT of truth in what they say, and no doubt all the reasons they gave for their success were hugely important in explaining why they have done so well. But they won't tell the whole story, even though they think they do. There will be a huge amount of other variables, often invisible ones working behind the scenes, that also contributed to success. And many of these variables will have been beyond their control, and so were basically 'luck'.

Despite not being blessed with any great talent, I have done very well out of poker. Have I worked very hard at it? Yes. Have I continued to keep getting up every time I got knocked down? Yes. Have I 'wanted it' more than most people? Yes. Do these things alone explain my (relative) success? Not at all.

I could very well have gone broke through variance in the first few years of my career, before my bankroll was big enough to absorb the ups and downs of variance. I could very well have had a truly catastrophic run, twice as bad as the worst I have experienced (and I've had some REALLY bad ones), and this might have been too much for me to handle. For that matter, I could have contracted a serious illness that would have prevented me from playing poker. None of these things did I have any control over.

Yes, part of the reason for anyone's success is to do with their skills, their attitude, their hard work, their will to win. But there is ALWAYS a great deal of luck involved too. In every aspect of life. Just being born in the UK with food in our bellies automatically means we have been lucky compared to a child born starving in Africa.

There are also people who have been extremely successful in life and who are humble enough to realise that they have been very lucky. These guys are rare, but these are the ones that are really impressive - to be a huge winner at anything and yet maintain a sense of humility is something that only a very few people can do.

Totally awesome book on ^^^^ this subject called Fooled By Randomness, I'm starting to think Honeybadger may have written in.

I have done a LOT of thinking about this issue over the course of my gambling career. And my views are going to be a little contentious, especially with many of the younger new-school players.

I believe that in live poker it is necessary to make at least some concessions to variance, and to sometimes give up small amounts of EV in order to help reduce the effect of variance a little

I have had big arguments with friends who tell me I am talking nonsense, that we should always take the line that we believe is the most +EV, and that we should never let variance factor into our decision making. I think they are wrong.

Given that we are never able to reach the long term in live poker I think it is necessary to PAY to take away some of the swings. We do this by sometimes turning down very marginal +EV spots that are super high variance. For example, we see an extremely thin bluff spot - let's say we have to push all in on the river for £1,000 and we estimate that this bluff will earn us £5 in EV. We might sometimes choose to turn down this particular spot. We are costing ourselves a very small amount of money by turning it down. But we are also reducing our variance a LOT. In effect we are PAYING to reduce this variance - giving up a tiny amount of EV in order to buy a smoother ride.

The reason we need to make some very small concessions to variance is precisely because we can never reach the long-term in live poker. But we can pay a small amount to increase the frequency with which we reach CLOSE to our expected value over the short to medium term. Apart from anything, this is necessary simply to keep us sane. There is always something to be said for 'sanity EV'.

Many of those who have played with me think of me as an overly tight player, perhaps one with little imagination and little skill. One of the reasons for this is because I DO play a pretty tight style, aimed at reducing at least some of my variance. I believe this is necessary since I have a family to support and do not have the luxury of simply throwing caution to the wind and aiming for the stars like some of the younger players

When I grind online I never think this way though. I take any edge, however small, and make no concessions to variance. There are two reasons for this. First, edges are far smaller in online 6 max NLHE. If you start turning down any edges at all then it becomes impossible to beat the games. Second, it is possible to get much closer to the long-term in online poker. I have played well over a million hands of 6 max NL lifetime for example... I will never play anywhere close to that amount of hands in my entire live poker career. Most guys who have played live poker with me would be utterly shocked to see how I play when grinding 6max online. But the really good players would not be shocked at all - they get it.

Yep it is an AMAZING book. When I read it I just kept thinking "WOW! This is exactly how I have always thought about life and gambling."

Not many people get rewarded these days without hard work. life in all aspects is tough.  If in the job interviews in your e.g they "got lucky" to land the job that is because they made the effort (worked hard) to go to this interview and sell themselves as best they can. You can choose to see it as a lucky break if you so choose and there may be an element of truth in that but I would see it as effort bein rewarded.  Most will have to go to many interviews and not get the 1st 2nd 3rd  job applied for. Those who keep knocking on doors will most likely be the ones who eventually "get lucky" and offered a job. Poker is similar in that those who play most who work hardesst who sell themselves best will most likely be most successful.  Of course luck is involved but if you keep knocking on doors eventually you will put yourself in a position to get lucky. I would imagine that of all the money won in poker there are more players that are considered good than players who jus got lucky. FWIW I am neither good nor lucky  :'(

I think my point was if there are things happening behind the scenes that we cant control.(variance) (in life and poker) Why worry about them, All we can do is work hard and do our best to try put ourselves in the best position to achieve the best possible outcome, and if something beyond our control happens to to ruin that, (nasty river card, Someone better gets job etc) then thats jus the way it is but we gave it our best chance. If we keep doing this eventually good will come because of it.

Agree with this, kinda. If the wrong end of the higher variance line is liable to put you on tilt, and tilt is a big problem for you, then the lower variance line potentially more profitable for you if it ensures you play well for longer.

Obviously if you consistently go the lower variance route then it becomes a crutch and costs you massively in the long run, which is why it should only be done if you are actively working on fixing a tilt issue (Heard their was a manuscript out there to help you do that).

Thanks Jason for creating a quality debate, you do owe us something like this though
for all the trolling you do. Keep you're chin up and soak in the great advice this thread
has given.

My advice would be read Eckhart Tolle Power of Now. Has great views on ego and its workings.
Great diary any way. Big love you LEG-END

This makes no sense when applied to live cash.  Live cash and online cash are together just one big game.  You shouldn't be taking lower variance lines in one and not the other.  If it is right for your online game it must be right for your live game, and vice versa.  There may be psychological issues in place, as I know that I find it more painful to lose real cash I can touch than online cash of the same value.  It makes no real sense afterwards when I rationalise it, but it is definitely there every time it happens.

If you are playing live cash with higher blinds than you would in your normal online game or in a big tournament it can make much more sense.

A few years ago, I bust out of the EPT grand final and the WSOP main event very close to the money taking lines that I would not take now.  At the time I was thinking poker is just one big long game, got to attack the bubble, but now I realise I am never going to get above double figures lifetime in $10k + tournaments and I may not even get to double figures.  In the circumstances these $20k hits are always going to be significant in my lifetime poker earnings.

To NEWY....

You are right, it is often counter-productive to focus on luck. Especially when this leads to us absolving ourselves of responsibility for our lives. Or when it leads to us being jealous of others who who 'run better than us'. Nothing good can come of this.

However... when we are successful in something it is often a VERY good idea to recognise how lucky we are. And to realise that we did not succeed purely through the things that we did. This is a great way of maintaining humility and keeping our feet on the ground. It is also an important way in which we can avoid hubris.

The thing is, it is NOT TRUE that everyone who is successful obtained their success solely through hard work, drive, skill, commitment. These things are (usually) essential to achieve success. But they are not enough. Everyone needs a bit of luck, or at least an absence of bad luck. Imagine two highly talented footballers. Both have exactly the same talents, and also exactly the same motivation, work ethic, flair, competitive instinct etc. A scout comes to see them from a big club. One of them gets injured in the first five minutes of the game through a reckless challenge from an opponent. The other player is man of the match and gets signed up to play professionally.

Now maybe you will say, "Well if that first player is good enough, and wants it enough... he would eventually succeed. If he doesn't get signed up later on by a big club he can't blame it on the injury, he has only himself to blame." Well first of all... remember that both these guys had EXACTLY the same characteristics in EVERY manner. So if the guy who succeeded had been the one who got injured then HE would not have ended up later succeeding either. And second, what happens if the guy who gets injured is unlucky enough to have a career destroying injury? Or maybe he is just unlucky enough to be injured the next two times scouts come to visit.

I agree that we should not become obsessed with luck or with what 'could have been'. That way madness lies. But we need to recognise that there is a lot more luck in life than it appears at first glance. If only so that we are all able to realise just how LUCKY WE ARE.

At Doobs...

I did say that my opinion was contentious. And many people will not agree with it.

It is partly just a question of sanity. We are all human, and we we all have limits. I can probably endure much longer losing runs at poker than the vast majority of players. But even I will crack eventually. And apart from anything else, I need to pay the bills every month. So I must do what I can to ensure that, for example, I am EXTREMELY unlikely ever to have a 6 month losing period. It would be very unlikely anyway tbh... but there is always a chance, even if I was a great player rather than just a mediocre one. I feel the need to give up a TINY amount of EV in some spots in order to make the worst case scenario even more unlikely to occur.

Remember, I am talking about occasionally turning down some very marginal spots... I am not recommending anyone turns down thick edges.

There is actually a mathematical justification for this (that sometimes it is the most +EV thing to do to turn down a small +EV spot). But I have to go now. I will, hopefully, write about it later.

Edited to say: Actually, when you say this:


It is clear that you pretty much agree with me anyway. Because this is exactly the sort of thing that I mean.

BTW almost everyone (myself included) plays with much higher blinds in live games than they do in their regular online games.

Has anyone offered Stu a column yet?

This stuff is excellent; seems to me he puts more effort into this thread than some people I know do at their work on a daily basis.

Was thinking the same whilst sat at my desk reading his posts.

I am obviously on holiday today and I didn't really want to name names etc but there you go....

Ditto, I really must try harder.

Probably getting off topic as this was supposed to be poker related for herbies benefit so my last 2 cents wud be that footballer A did not get "lucky" he got scouted and signed because of his talent and hard work. Player B got unlucky gettin injured but that is completely diff. A footballer if talented enough WILL get scouted and is nothing to do with luck. Kids play 12 years + before the age of signing pro forms. so if they have the talent then they will get scouted. Anyone who says they did not get their "lucky" break is jus lyin and they were not good enough. Once scouted it is then upto them to work hard and prove their dedication and commitment in order to make it, again nothing to do with luck. Of course I recognise in life people get lucky and unlucky but it is jus part and parcel of every day life and with regard to poker, work and sport in the end people withh drive determination and are more likely to succeed. I would rather b good at somethin than lucky. Whilst u have to acknowledge there are luck factors that influence it should not be used as an excuse for failure. U often reap wot u sow.

Couple of interesting points brought up in recent posts.  

Firstly, I think there is some confusion with regards understanding how variance works and where it is important.  Newy gave the example of job interviews.  This isn't a particularly high variance pursuit.  Generally speaking the best candidate will get the position more often than not.  Of course there are elements of luck, variance and bias in all things but the point of Honeybadger and others posts isn't that hard work will not be rewarded but that in the short term in tournament poker it is less likely to be rewarded than we perceive and when it is rewarded it may be rewarded disproportionately.  This disparity of reward levels isn't evident in most jobs so of course Robs sales team will be fairly consistent in their returns and show a higher short term correlation with results.  Unlike a poker player Robs sales team aren't likely to get 100 sales on one call except in very exceptional circumstances so there will be a very direct correlation between the number and quality of the calls they make and their results.  Contrast that with a professional poker player who enters the wsop main event.  There is, say, 8k entrants of which maybe 1k have a +EV yet only maybe 20% of them will earn anything yet one in a year like this Greg Merson who may have had an EV of 100% overearned his EV by 300x or something.  That has to be paid by other people earning less than their EV.  Even if they are the worst player in the world everyone in the wsop has an expected value yet every year 85% of them walk away having taken home less than that ie nothing.

The discussion about taking reduced variance lines is also interesting.  In purely mathematical terms then we should always seek to maximise profits or, in poker terms take the highest EV line but in reality increased variance also leads to increased chance of going bust which for someone like Honeybadger with four kids and a wife to support would be catostrophic whereas losing, say £100 a week in earnings would be less so.  So effectively the correct route in terms of personal utility is to pay a premium (in the shape of reduced EV) for a lower chance of the catastrophy but what we absolutely mustn't do is tip that balance into -EV territory because then we stop earning.  We can only afford to take a lower variance line if more than one of the lines available are +EV.

There is a genuine luck factor where football, and most sports is concerned, and that relates to when a child is born. Children who are the oldest in their year (So in the UK it would be September-December) invariably are the biggest and most well developed kids in their class. So they get encouraged to play football and run rings around the other kids. This early encouraging start in life can actually become the catalyst for being a promising footballer and by the time the youngest kids in the class have caught up physically they have already took interest in other stuff. The same thing is true for Ice Hockey in Canada, their school year starts in January and most pro hockey players are born in between January and March.

I am not disagreeing with you, more clarifying.  As you stated, I pretty much agree with everything you have said in this thread, including on Fooled by Randomness and on Real World luck.  

In the real world people can be in very different financial positions depending on when they bought their house, when they had money to invest, if they were in the right place when a senior position became available, when they took their pension etc and indeed if they were lucky enough to be in work when good pensions were the norm.. and of course country of birth.

...and of course, when they started playing poker.  If I started right now, I would have to work way harder to make as much money from poker as I have done.


  

I thought you was Barry Neville at one point, when people started calling you Barry & mentioning Genting in Sheffield.

I apologise.

@Rob Yong:

Making predictions in poker is a one way function (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-way_function), you can make reasonable predictions of someone's results from knowledge of their skill, even over relatively short periods, e.g. "I think Keith Johnson will win over 3 months/12 sessions in the DTD £2/5 game" (you're still overestimating this btw, you don't realise how good Keith has run), however it takes a long time to be able to make reliable predictions of skill from results alone, e.g. if you hear that someone new comes to the DTD £2/5 games and after 12 sessions is up £10k, you might think that means they are probably a good player, when in reality it means nothing at all. If you actually play in all 12 sessions with them and observe them playing well/badly, that is a much more reliable indicator.

edit: ^ can someone fix that link for me :(

EDIT: Done :)

I agree with everything you say. In relation to the above quoted part, I have an analogy to make.

Most of us have insurance policies, right? Sometimes we are legally obliged to have them (e.g. car insurance), but others are a choice. From a pure EV perspective, taking out an insurance policy is -EV. It is a mug bet. And it is not just slightly -EV... it is highly -EV. If this were not the case then insurance companies would not make a profit.

The most +EV line to take is to never get insurance unless you are legally obliged to do so, and to save (or invest) the money instead. I would imagine, however, that many of those who believe we should always take the most +EV lines and should never make any concessions to variance DO have some form of insurance, or will do in the future.

Taking out insurance is simply giving up a small amount of EV in order to smooth out the variance. It is an extreme example, but often extreme examples are the best at showing the logic behind a situation. If someone strongly believes that he should never give up any EV in poker as a concession to variance then to be logically consistent he should also never take out insurance on anything.

It's ok, I forget which one I am sometimes.

You set of wankers. Stu would be quite happy changing nappies and taking the kids to school. If it was not for me asking the dumb ass questions then he would not be giving the excellent responses.

Hi Will, just to put people's minds at rest I ain't giving up the game just yet and I am a million miles away from being at the end of a short rope. The traffic this thread is generating is almost as much as Tips for Tikay. Those guys are having a sweet month.

I do have another question that is going to generate some more debate but will leave it for a while to let the people absorb more the posts that are already written. I for one have to read a lot of this stuff a couple of times to take it all in.

Hey James, people regard Keith to be undoubtedly one of the best players in Dtd. I know this is true but have only played with him once or twice


Just saying :)

Jase u seem to be larking about on this thread like you do at the tables? Or is that just my harsh observation?

He's reading it, the larking about is for show just like the headphones and the hoodies.

Good point, George. Who fancies setting him a quiz?

Set of rules for his next comp.

Number 1 no talking

Number 2. Smartly attired.

Number 3. Has to put his hand up and ask the dealer for permission to go to the toilet.

Number 4 do not hendon mob everyone

This isn't a joking matter Barry

5. Only allowed to use phone for 5 mins every hour, pay attention to the table.

TEDxPennQuarter - Frank Lantz - Reinventing Gaming (includes EV in poker discussion)

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcD7p7snqNg



Fooled by Randomness is a great read.





edit Jase should have to do a Gus style every hand revealed. Then has to bam up some pha threads when he gets back.

lol, most excellent :-)

we do realise Stu plays poker semi regularly lol?!

he should be busy not sleeping at the moment!

This is going off the topic completely, but I am going to address it for completeness sake.

First, the top players DO NOT always take the perfect GTO (Game Theory Optimal) unexploitable lines. There are two reasons for this:

1. It is not always possible to know what the best GTO line is. Poker is far too complicated for that. It is true that certain spots are 'solved' - e.g. optimal shoving ranges when relatively short stacked. But it is still the case that the vast majority of spots in poker when you have more than 30 big blinds are unsolved.

2. Even if poker was fully solved, the top players would still not take the optimal unexploitable line. They would instead choose to EXPLOIT their opponents by taking a line that takes advantage of their opponent's leaks. If their opponent worked out what they were doing he could adjust and in turn EXPLOIT THEM. Any deviation from the GTO line is, by definition exploitable.

Easy example... if you think an opponent is a calling station then you EXPLOIT him by never bluffing and value betting a little thinner than usual. This would not be the GTO way to play - you are supposed to always have a certain amount of bluffs in your range. But you would make more money remembering never to bluff a calling station than you would if you dogmatically continued to think, "I've GOT to have a small amount of bluffs here, to balance my play. So I will make a bluff this time in order to keep myself balanced". You'd still win money in the long-term from this opponent if you followed a perfectly balanced GTO strategy (a balanced strategy will automatically make money against an unbalanced strategy, unlike in a game such as paper, scissors, stone in which a perfectly balanced strategy will only ever break even). But you would make more money if you deviate from 'optimal' strategy in order to exploit his tendency to call too much.

Of course, by deviating from this GTO strategy you make yourself exploitable in turn. So if your opponent realised that you had adjusted to him, he could counter-exploit your adjustment by never ever bluff catching vs you. Now you'd find that your value hands were not getting paid off, and your opponent was crushing you by folding. So you would have to start bluffing again.

This is what poker is all about of course! Adjusting to your opponents, then adjusting as they adjust to your adjustments. And so on.

Second, you are incorrect in your assumption that if someone is playing a perfectly optimal and unexploitable strategy then if you know what that strategy is you can still beat them. You cannot do so. The best you can achieve is to break even in the long-term through also choosing to follow a perfectly balanced and unexploitable strategy.

For example, imagine you and me get to the river in a hand. I have bet every street and my range is uncapped and polarised (i.e. I am either bluffing or have the effective nuts - so almost all your hands, even the relatively strong ones, are now bluff catchers). The pot is £1000 and I now jam all-in for exactly £1000. You are pondering what to do with your TPTK hand. Now I do something bizarre. I tell you my exact range. And this range is made up of 66.6% combos of hands that beat you and 33.3% of complete bluffs. And for whatever reason you KNOW I am telling the truth. Plus, you can't get any physical tells on me or anything like that, so you cannot work out which part of that range I have this particular time. What should you do? Call or fold?

The answer is that it does not matter what you do. Regardless of your decision, I have WON THE HAND. If you fold your EV is of course £0 and I win the £1000 that is in the pot. If you call then your EV is also £0 because you will win £2000 once for every two times you lose £1000. If your EV is £0 when you call and there is £1000 in the pot then that £1000 must have gone to me.

So, in this situation even though you know exactly what my strategy is the best you can do is to break even on the river. Which means that I win all the money that has been put into the pot before the river. Even though you know my strategy, you cannot 'win the hand' once it gets to the river in this exact situation.

weeee was so close to answering that point. ty stu

I'm gonna say this simply..and only once.

I totes get all Stu's points as I am way above average intelligence. However, this is one of those arguments/assertions that the more you understand the more you realise that you don't actually need to get it at all as a live poker player.

Temperament - so, how you deal with variance (whether or not you know what it is) may be the single biggest factor. This marks out a winning live tourny poker pro, and players like me that excel in this format, as you can then employ your arsenal of self awareness, empathy, courage & confidence to keep smacking variance in the face

(http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw8y5qfJZz1qdnki4o1_500.jpg)

I didn't think Barry was joking.


(http://s13.postimage.org/pca0ey087/tumblr_lpp0sozi_Yf1qjsoslo1_500.gif)

Utility Theory.

A simple example is Deal or No Deal. If you're left with 1p/£250,000 and are offered £50,000 then it is correct for the vast majority of players to Deal. You're obviously sacrificing a HUGE amount of EV in this example but for a lot of people the £50,000 represents getting out of debt, paying towards the mortgage, etc. £250,000 would obviously be really nice but the £50,000 represents such huge utility to them that it's simply not worth risking losing it. The other thing about DOND of course is you only get one shot at the game, so you will never reach the long term.

Poker is obviously different. Your life time of playing can be viewed as one long game.

But I agree with HoneyBadger, sacrificing EV to lower variance to me is not only fine, but also correct in a large amount of cases.

If you're using poker to pay the bills, and your bank roll isn't that big, then the number 1 priority is to protect that bank roll and keep the money flowing in so that there's enough to go out towards bills. I'm plucking numbers from thin air here but let's say you were playing low variance line that gave you a 50% ROI and this was comfortably paying the bills then it will generally be correct to keep doing this. You could well play a higher variance game that gave you a 75% ROI. This could make you more money, but it also puts your bank roll at risk if you fall on the wrong side of variance.

If your motivation is to support the family and your current method is doing this then the extra money you could be making isn't enough to justify risking your bankroll so the correct thing to do is to take the lower variance line.

Best thread on here for ages. All we need is Jase to bink the next deepstack whilst live updating and we got a BOB candidate

It isthe same reason if someone said eight of the worst players ever were sitting down for a 5/10 game and were looking for a ninth man, you wouldn't sell the house to play!

Exactly. It would be a +EV bet for sure but the chance of losing your house outweighs any possible monetary gain.

I never mind sacrificing a bit of profit if it means reducing any potential possible loss.
If you back a horse at say 10/1 for £100 on betfair and lay it off in running at evens for £100 you have in effect had a free bet, you will never go skint having free bets, BUT some people disagree and say they are losing too much of their profit to make it worthwhile, a lot depends on individuals aims long or short term for the bet.

What sort of house do you live in?

Or are you just used to REALLY deep games?!

In fact I would say heightened awareness of this additional factor makes you worse at poker. If we agree you wont play enough comps to even out variance all that really matters is how you play in this singular comp today. All your focus should be on playing the best poker you can in this one comp, and that means making pure +EV decisions at all times. If you make -EV decisions because you add variance factors into your decision making process then quite simply you are a worse player than those who do not. If you limp into the cash on the bubble then you aren't as good a poker player today as somebody who shoved without fear. Who knows what type of player you will become when you invite such uncertainty and hesitation into your game, letting additional outside factors infiltrate your thoughts, perhaps you will look to take weaker and safer lines more readily in the future. As hard as it might be the black and white of what is correct can't be diluted, well it can but the result is less effective poker.

I can learn about what makes the sun rise in the morning and worry about what would happen if any of the elements failed so we had no sun. Or I can accept things just happen, feel the sun on my back and enjoy the day. If you are worried about factors other than the game and doing what is right I suggest the game is too big.

More indicative of my level of confidence in my cash game against even fictitious recs

i am trying to inject a bit if humour George but am also taking it all very seriously too. I have just nipped back to my house and am off straight back out so have only read two more posts up to here so gave a quick reply.

I have also seen a notification about rule 1 don't talk at the table next time.  I am all up for trying this but in all honesty if I did not enjoy playing poker and did not have fun then I would not do it.

+1

Mantis, I almost always agree with your posts. In this case though I tend to disagree, although of course there is a decent chunk of truth in what you say. It all depends on how you look at it.

I don't think being fully aware of the realities of variance is a detrimental thing to being a successful gambler. In fact I think the absolute opposite - that it is essential if you are to be a highly skilled gambler. The thing that you perhaps haven't grasped is that those who truly, truly understand variance have made complete peace with it. It is impossible to truly 'get' variance without automatically becoming extremely zen about it. And this is the best of all possible mindsets to have as a professional gambler. It is possible to succeed at gambling without truly 'getting it', but this requires a person to be lucky enough not to experience a downswing that is more than he can handle psychologically.

A small number of gamblers will be this lucky - they will never experience the full, unlimited terrors of variance. But for most players it WILL happen to them at some point. And when it does many of them will struggle to cope and are likely to go under very quickly if they don't fully understand variance and are at peace with it. Fwiw, I know that I am not fully there yet - but I also know that I am a LOT further down the path of understanding than the vast majority of professional gamblers.

At some point in almost everyone's gambling career they will experience the most unlikely, most unbelievable, most mind-blowingly ridiculous run of bad luck. I am not talking about your common or garden bad run. I am talking about an extended and completely ridiculous string of events that combine to produce a run so bad that it feels like all the oxygen has been sucked from the room. A thing of wonder and awe... and terror. And when this has happened to a gambler they never see things quite the same again. Something changes forever.

Some (most) players go under when this happens and vanish from the game, never to return. Others survive the experience but are permanently damaged and their game is often ruined forever; for example they may play scared, weak-tight poker for the rest of their careers. A small number of people will, however, survive the experience and come out of it whole. And these people will take great strength from the experience of finally seeing the terrifying infinite void of variance in all its colossal glory... and surviving it.

The better you understand the truth about variance, the more prepared you will be for when that-which-shall-not-be-spoken-about knocks on your door. And the more likely it is that you will be one of those who can stare calmly into the void as it calls to you, and become stronger for the experience rather than going under.

Hi stu it is Stuart Barnett correct? I havnt read all of your posts as I would admit I find it challenging as you obv have a higher intellect but this post I wholesomely agree with an you couldn't of hit the nail on the head better if u were still stoned! Great post.

Yes it's Stu "ofc there's food on my top" Barnett.

Hi Pete. Yes I am Stu Barnett.

Thanks for the compliment. It is a bit of a stoner post I admit. But also it is the the truth, as you know. And hand-on-heart I have not smoked anything in at least a month!

lol smoked we talking about? Just need confirmation buddy ;technolog;

The problem I have is you talk about the career of a gambler and the entirety of the journey. We have already agreed you wont play enough live comps to make those stats a great consideration. Thus when you sit down for an individual comp the variables of longterm don't really compute with me. It's about the here and now of today and playing well today. If you do that each time you sit down they will be the building blocks of your own individual longterm success and that mentality will give you the best chance of success. If you are on the wrong end of variance so what?

I have played poker for 10 years and gambled for a lot longer. I haven't really studied variance in any detail and what's more I don't care to. When you have played for any reasonable time all you care about is playing well and you know through experience anything can happen after that. If I play well and then get sucked out on I don't give one fuck about it, I just shrug and move on. I did the right thing, it didn't work out, next game. So it seems without any great understanding or study I have arrived at the place you advocate. I think if people can't auto understand why you should retain this mentality when playing poker then poker is not the game for them. People are free to consider what they want and if I play oppos worried about the household bills and what could happen if they move all-in I am ok with that as my mind is free from those considerations. So who is in the better place for a poker comp?

The other night I bricked every comp I played although I played real well. My last comp was a much bigger buy-in to try and get out the hole. I really wanted to cash just for the sake of cashing something so got real passive around the bubble. I did cash for a good score and it was my best result of the day and the overall feeling I had was I played like a dog.

I agree with your line; those that take more risks in live poker and are relaxed about 'variance' will do better than those that dont. Tighter players will wait a life time for a bink. Give me balls over brains in live poker anyday, although preferably both.... (not saying iv got one or other, both or neither of course)

The thing is Mantis, it is very likely that you 'get' variance and are at peace with it. Even if you have not done any maths or run any simulations, you have an intuitive understanding of the truth of variance. And you have already accepted it ... and moved on. But a lot of people reading this thread have clearly got no idea whatsoever about the realities of variance and these are the guys for whom I have been writing my posts on the topic. Even some guys with a lot more 'experience' than me appear to be fairly clueless about something which is at the very heart of gambling. And I am trying to help these people understand it, because it is so important.

I believe that it is impossible to be a truly good gambler without a proper understanding of variance. It can be a mathematical understanding, an intuitive understanding like yours, or a combination of the two. But it is essential. It's like a musician knowing his scales. Yes a very small number of top musicians genuinely don't know any scales. But in actuality almost all of them know at least a few - they just pretend that they don't. And even those that have never studied any music theory at all almost always understand the principles of melody and harmony on a deep intuitive level.

To say there is no point in thinking about variance is like a seasoned rock musician telling a young kid not to bother learning any music theory because he doesn't use it and just plays by feel. But actually this rock musician DID know a few scales and a bit of theory when he started out back in the day, even if it was just stuff that he got shown by other dudes whilst jamming. The fact that he has transcended it all now and is able to feel the music just means that he has forgotten how important the fundamentals are.

You get it, which is great. But others don't. And I think it will help them if they do.

Those that truly understand variance will be more relaxed and accepting of it than anyone else. They will be fully prepared to take risks when necessary - and they will do so with their eyes fully open, staring variance in the face without shrinking from it. And they will be the strongest players.


Sigh. I wasted a lot of time writing my stuff. After all, poker is just about balls.

In real life u can b so condescending at times but on paper u r a genius! I love you more than ever  ;tightend; :cheers:

With all due respect I've read and digested all you have written - and I agree with a lot of it - and appreciate the time and effort you have taken to share it. However, the single point I made I still feel is very valid, if my choice of words a little limited.

have you seen Neil channing's post in Tikays thread.

happy to do this but would it really prove anything over such a small sample.

1. Talking helps my game. As a Nitty player I generally want calling and my talking does help this.

2. I don't own any scruffy clothes and think I generally dress smartly. The hoodies served a purpose as once again as a nitty player I want the hoodies to give the impression that I might play with more flair. And no one can argue that they have not got me noticed for the two years I wore them. I have had more than my fair share of photos appear in blogs and have good relationships with Mickey May, Anne Laymond and tighty. I am always mindful of the benefits of jumping through hoops for bloggers and photographers.

3. Sometimes when you gotta go you gotta go.

4. I can't see that knowing stuff about your opponents is a bad thing. Please don't think that I think the hendonmob is the be all and end all. I  am profiling people from the moment we sit down at the tables.  My latest trick at Dtd is being able to spot the Bankroll Supply players at the table within a couple of orbits. You can also tell the ones on different deals from the guys who get to keep a big chunk on the make up deal to those on the freeroll deal who keep an average chunk. From the moment people make their first bet the sizing etc you then start thinking about the type of player they are. And with some players you don't even have to wait for their first bet.... Sometimes the 30 second pause before they fold every hand tells you something.

5. As I have already said I don't have an iPad and here is another shocker, I don't actually have a phone either :)
It may look like an iPhone but it is only any good for the internet which is pretty sporadic in Dtd. It has a battery life of about 2 hours and Sinclair will testify that I am usually bugging him at some point to charge up the thing.  I give the impression that I am always on it but usually its dead. It's the same principle as having headphones on but not having anything to play through them. It gives the impression that I am not listening or watching what is going on. I assure you I am.

How often do you see players flash cards before they fold only for three or four players to say "what did he show"... I always snap "he showed aces" which it never is but all the players then say "oh nice hand" or "must be nice".

gotta wear a suit and tie imo. no talking just zen concentration!

i have about 7 suits. Pretty sure I would need to lose at least 2 inches from my waist to get any of the trousers on :(

You must have missed it, but there were a couple of posts on previous pages itt about what you can "know" from a hendonmob.

honestly wouldn't be surprised if you wandered in in suit jacket with no trousers!

i did read it James. You can pick up plenty from someone's hendonmob. I do accept you can't draw any conclusions from someone who does not have any profile.  For instance I see a guy who has results in his local casino where I might know some of the players there and strike up a conversation and make him feel more at ease and like I'm his friend.

I remember playing in the European open in the Vic Oct 2010 and Matt Jarvis was on my table with Joseph Cheung. There was a couple of people hanging around and Matt was holding court telling everyone that he really had a great chance in November. Joseph nearly covered everyone when spitting his tea out when I asked him "before he got lucky in the wsop this summer, was he just dicking about in $500 comps prior to this ". Just breaks the ice don't it.


I ain't got the tackle or enough confidence for the above Titty but will have a word with Mrs H and see if we can hook you up for a 30 second team viewer session if that's your bag :)

I wouldn't last 30 seconds before tearing my eyes out met.

:)

You have learned nothing :(.

Nice namedrops tho.

Hi again Jason,
I hadnt read neils post on 'greening up', but have now.
Dont want to derail this thread too much about it, but like i said, it suits some people, it doesnt others.
I always find it a good idea myself, and prob most people with smaller punting bankrolls tend to be the 'greeners' the bigger balla bettors let their bets ride, its their nature.
I was backing/laying horse on a site before betfair came into existence and did have quite a lot of experience in it and for me and what betting was to me did ok. I dont know what his point about people who backed van gerwin at 80 then layed off at 20 is about regarding saying would they lay him at 20s if they hadnt backed him at 80s, pretty obv they wouldnt. You can get into to massive + EV situations if you can get a couple of big odds bets in the same event in that then tumble, like i say everyone has their own way of doing it dependant on their situation, anyway as you were back to the important poker stuff. \

Hmm unfair imo, fair enough using it to identify people and strike up a convo. I was sat opposite Xuan Lui in Vegas and didn't really know who she was but recognised her from the telly, quick HM helped a lot tbf, good conversation starter - which then made her mad cos I "outted" her to rest of the table, think that spoilt my chances :P

ive just arrived back from a night on the town an one thing drinking does it helps say it as it is Jason. This thread was meant to help you focus being a pro poker player as you had declared you had lost your confidence an needed guidance to put you back on track an yet I feel others have failed to point out some home truths in case they offended you or we're judged in a bad light by others.

I don't give a flying fuck what any one things an its about time you realise to be. Pro player that makes a living from poker is the same as working at tescos stacking shelfs an working is way up to being a manger of the vegetables department as part of growth of climbing the ladder of financial gain as well as getting the respect of his peers.

All the excuses of variance is of no relevance as if you have the right mindset from day 1 an perhaps the ability you would not find yourself at the mercy of this forum asking for advice an sympathy in your current plight. If I was an older brother which I am to my younger bother I would say to you it's down to you what your destiny lies an get off your lazy ass an do something about it instead of blaming this that or the other an for once in your life be honest to yourself.

Maybe it's time you have lived in the delusion you are something you are not an the only  time you can really come to terms with this is through you excepting the fact you are not as good as you thought u were an then only then can you make the adjustments to begin a new chapter your life. I hope for your sake you cAn acknowledge where you have gone wrong in order to move on ! Good luck in your quest to find the right path. Big Charra

Quoted, going nowhere.

Hi Jason,

Im only on page 17 after starting from page 1 and fascinated by this whole thread and thought I would take a breather and post now, and rejoin the thread where I left it tomorrow as its so much info to digest.

I was quite humbled to be put in your little bracket of "air of confidence live young players" along with good players such as Tommy Bingham and Tom Kugg.

I definatly DONT think Peejay lacks confidence, after his win in the GP, he seemed to have gained alot and I saw him making alot more moves and getting extra creative, and his "rabbit in headlights look" when he plays is just part of his whole aura at the table, much like Tom Dwan looks hypnotised sometimes.

I dont think I can add anything more to the thread than what people have said already, but just coming from somebody who feels your pain, in live tournamernts and the fustration you must feel. I think like alot of people are suggesting, you need to do some hard work and study and learn the game. Maybe the game has passed you by just recently. I have been playing 9 years now, started off online in rediculous 1000NL and 2000NL games on 888.com and I thought I was unbeatable, generally crushing for weeks on end, but looking back the players I was playing against were so terrible it gave me a false sense of winning, when in reality it was setting me up to fail when I crossed over to the other side of the varience line where I was playing bad and running bad, and lost some rediculous amounts.

Studied really hard at the game like 5 years ago and its paid for alot of things in my life and alot of things for my future, just clicking buttons, its mad to think about it in real life terms. My friends think its crazy. After the whole FTP fiasco, I was pretty much crushed online as stupidly all my funds were in there to play poker with as I had just put a large deposit down on  a house and a new car with my bankroll from stars. So feeling pretty bitter about online poker, I stopped playing live "for fun" during mid week, and started playing the weekend festival tournaments but in order to do this without using all my real life income I   started geting staking and had a few nice results then got backed fully, however  2012 has been pretty terrible year for me in live poker. Like you getting down to the last few tables of the UKIPT Nottingham the only real highlight, yet ultimatly a huge disappiontment. All the day 2's I couldn't convert into anthing.

 Even losing my cool during one £500 deepstack when I was stationed down by top pair when I was running a tournament life bluff, and on the drive home I felt embarrssed by my actions, although not really aggressive or seriously out of line, I just must have come across when I left the table muttering under my breath about how I thought his call was less than optimal as a sore loser.
It was a wake up call and I started to study hard at the game, getting coaching and playing online again and it felt good to have that winning feeling back, its a good way to build your confidence back up, I was only playing 10,20,30,50 euro buyin MTT's but it was fun again.
I was still playing live but I was getting fustrated and annoyed at myself not winning anything because I was letting my backer down who had been so good to me and I felt like I didnt deserve his confidence in me anymore. We have ended our arrangement now, and Ive took a month away from live poker to get coaching online, learn and watch. I feel refreshed, and ready to go. I played last weeks £150 and played alot better than I have this year coming close to the money losing a flip with 77 v KQ and then next hand losing with KK v Q7, but as I took a sick beat I didnt feel fustrated, I didnt feel low on confidence, I didnt feel dejected, because I know I made the right discision in every hand I played that day, and yes I lost but if I keep playing good, I should win eventually. I'll be playing tomorrow and the GPS and the dtd500 for myself but then I may take a backseat and put large volumes in online once my FTP money has been credited to my bank account, and start staking a few friends of mine who I know are good but just need a little help playing bigger comps. I dont know, i'll see.

Sorry to go on a long winded post about myself, I just tried to get you to understand your not alone in feeling like this Jason. I do think you need to take a complete break away from Poker, go on holiday with the family, find something else to do for awhile and when you feel the hunger coming back, then do some homework!!! and come back a better player. It seems like your just playing poker for the sake of playing, you need to get that fire back and be that Jason Herbert who when I was at the table with I used to fear, now, and I dont mean to sound disrespectful in anyway or anything, but I dont give you a second thought if you were on my starting table or I joined your table. You just seem to go through the motions and your too nice a character to be feared, I know your a very talented player, Ive seen it myself, but the game changes so much, you need to keep improving and I dont think you are.

Im routing for you to come back a better player than what you once were, and being a better player, and confident, you will start winning again.

Liam BatEy, not Batty haha

P.S. sorry for the poor grammar and spelling if any, typed all on my iphone like a complete boss!!

 Lol. I don't take much personally Pete and appreciate what you are saying and your input.  Keys is just quoting you so you can't delete later, not that you would.

Just spent 2 1/2 hours in A & E with the wife because as we were going up the stairs to bed at 10.30 she decided it would be fun to do some Bruce Lee drop kick on me and did an epic fail and ended up on her back.


Thanks for your advice too Liam. That's another great post that I can take a lot from thank you.

Wow did I write that last nite! Must of been steaming, on serious note hope wifey ok!. Obv have to stand by comments as ink don't lie.

Hope Mrs H is ok.

Hey David. The wife's aching all over and badly bruised arm but nothing broke. We are always messing about playing silly buggers but I thought she may have been seriously hurt as she lay there flat on her back.

The stuff you write is all cool and there was nothing I found offensive in any of it. I think the thing that hurts most is the fact that people genuinely think that I am not concentrating and just having a laugh. This should not bother me at all as that's is the impression that I am wanting to give at the table.

The truth is all in the title of the thread. Confidence is low so playing badly. I know that I played JJ badly even tho I had a plan. If I raise when the action gets to me in the small blind maybe PeeJay still jams thinking I am squeezing Roger folds and I go on to accumulate more chips instead of beating myself up and fading away.

The lack of confidence means you start deviating from the game you know and play best. The truth is I have exited most comps lately by playing badly and have played a lot of hands badly. I hope that the answer is not that the game has moved on and left me behind. Guys that I taught to play poker are still winning seat into every Dtd comp, finaling and giq as they say.

It's all a work in progress and something I am prepared to work on.

Fwiw I wouldn't of jammed my hand if you'd have raised from the small because I think your range is usually gonna be pretty strong there and A8o is doing horribly vs that range. I kinda like your idea tbh but I also think you're massively overestimating how often I am going to be jamming in that spot. I know you said at the time something about 'any two cards' when in reality it's going to be a hand with some equity or blockers, I'm not going to be punting in there with 74o even if I've given off this illusion that I'm tilting or whatever and 'ready to blow'.

Losing a 1/3 of my starting stack in that tournament in that short period of time is not going to effect my decision making and overall thought process. (Had a lot worse hangs happen) So don't overestimate people states of minds with little evidence backing it up because it may end up with you levelling your self and making incorrect decisions vs them.

I also think JJ is right on the edge, I don't think folding can ever be that bad, pretty much snap fold 1010 and snap call QQ so either way is fine I guess. I do think AQ is somewhere near the bottom of that old guys range in that spot so I wouldn't beat yourself up about it too much. If every hand we played went 'according to plan' there'd be no need for pha and we'd all be filthy rich.

I agree with Jason, you seemed ready to blow mate.

Really ?? The tightest boy in Dtd blow up???

Frankie knows everything there is to know about tight boys

Pretty quick joke for you at 12pm?

The new Chinese " Jimmy Saville " .
Watch out  boys

ISIT

Taken me a few days but just finished reading the lot, great post and some thought provoking replies... Lots to digest and think about, think I just about get it though!  I don't claim to be a good player, just enjoy the game but this year has been tough, far too many times am I getting it in good and not holding... Which can be sole destroying especially when I rarely get it in behind (and don't win those either) been that bad that I've not been taking the beats well... So if nothing else reading this lot had helped me understand the game a bit more and maybe I'll approach the next game with a bit more confidence and who knows... Might bink one!

I remember how totally gutted I was to exit a DTD £300 in 10th back in 2010, just devastated...  My over riding feeling was that it would be some time before I would run that good again (kidding myself that I'd played well because I was running good). I knew that making it that deep had almost nothing to do with skill (just one spot of pure genius on my part which went the right way - so maybe even that was luck :)) although making a grand was very nice, knowing I would probably never run that good again and had missed out on maybe a £15k bink made me feel sick.... 

So at the next game, I'm going to remember to bring my confidence, A game and Lady Luck, and if if I get called by a hand I've got crushed and lose,  take it graciously, exit the building, sit in my car and swear to my hearts content...  Gl all x x

Making a living from poker is ludicrously hard and if you're fundamentally lacking (there's stuff that you literally HAVE to be aware off and grasp as a pro player imo) and haven't been very lucky at some point you're kind of doomed.

It's not about being the best player though, poker is unique that the best players don't make the most money, its about finding a game/style/format you can win in and winning in it, sounds simple but it's the reason why people who aren't particually good or talented players can make a good living from the game.

This x 10000000

Basically you have just described me.

arse off though with the level of work you've put in you don't fall into the "utter wank but grind it at some random level/game" status.

You are right, I am not 'utter wank'. But I do fall into the 'people who aren't particularly good or talented players' category. If I had started playing poker when I was in my early 20s (when my mind was still very sharp and I was a dynamic young dude) then perhaps I might have had some real talent at poker. But as it stands I have much less natural card-playing ability than most of you guys. But, as you say, I have worked VERY hard at poker. I have done this to make up for my lack of talent.

The one thing that I am quite good at though is knowing how to win at poker. And knowing how to be professional in what I do. This is a completely different skillset/talent from playing your cards well.

So many people who make money at poker are moronic. Let alone do they put any work in.


Stop trying to make out you no hard worky or good! It's all relative.




Hope the better half recovers well Jase, and that she connects next time.

Dude, I have worked RIDICULOUSLY hard at poker. If you knew how hard I have worked you would be shocked that I am such a mediocre player!

lol ok isildur. if you could just get the tilt and playing ivey/durr/antonius at the same time out of your game :P

Gonna shoot down to Dtd and late reg (not a fan of late reg tbh) for their comp all being well. Mate keeps falling a sleep at the wheel so needs a wingman and Catherine has given me a pass out.
 1. Cut down talking bollocks.
2. Wearing shoes not trainers.
3. Gonna go before I leave.
4. Be like losing a friend not hendonmobing
5. Only use phone 5 mins every hour will be easy.

#hero

Really enjoyed this thread!

Gl Herbie!!

this has been such an incredible thread, would just love it to include a bink for Herbie. GL Jase.... bring it home!

also, expecting a detailed trip report on your return!

+1  be shocked if herbie doesn't win!

Herbie has arrived at my table at DTD.

I shall duly grass him up if he breaks any of his promises.......

And we have caught him bang to rights already

He claimed in this thread a day or two ago that he never owned any scruffy clothes.

So unless he borrowed today's get up........

does your phone have a camera feature Mr Tikay?!?!

I was hoping that's what the '....' referred to!

Does my phone have a camera?

Sir, I am, by trade, a professional photographer. I have a proper camera, a Nikon57ZZ-VF.

A photo shall be tooked, and uploaded later, when I return to my studio.

Never mind that. Chip counts, please.

I asked him, he was most helpful, and said he has played 3 hands, and has 34,000.

did the play them well though?

Beautifully, like the silent assassin.

Make that 28,000

24,000

He's just making you think he's got 24,000.

Sly old fox.

(http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ma8zf7las11rsjv9lo1_400.jpg)

Smashedagain: the Chuck Norris of the North

Some great posts itt by honeybadger. You should really consider doing a diary :)

Just checked the results. Outlasted some heroes like RastaFish & Tikay.

Also outlasted Mitch.  ;D

The Father is in unstoppable form at the moment it seems. Yet another deep run and cash.

Trip report please Jason....

Shared a table for a short while with Jason and he played very well if a little short stacked at the time.Was unlucky against Bash in a big hand.

(http://i47.tinypic.com/2ngg1m0.jpg)

Herbalife makes all that effort to look smart and tikay can't even get him in focus.

::)

That was my best effort from 9 attempts!

Waiting for the roulette to open? Didn't see that advice itt?

PS. Is his top button done up?! Yoofs!

Maybe his top button was done up to hide the hoodie he was wearing underneath it.....

This is very true .

There have been a lot of great posts and advice within this thread on how Jason might get back on track with a lot of people recommending playing live cash.

Even if you are a EV+ player ,we all know how difficult it is to win playing tournaments so  I would agree that cash  is important for the majority of full time players to ensure an income.... however ... not everybody has the skill set for cash poker !  , so in line with the statement above its important one does identify their strongest form of the game and stick with it.

Jason ...I think its fair to say your best results have come from tournaments rather than cash ? , so if this is the case you then have to ask your self is it possible to guarantee an income for you and your family  playing tournaments alone  ?  Based on your current financial situation and state of mind the answer is probably not !

As you know I dont play poker full time , and as with George and many others I have a full time job (which sometime revolves around poker I agree )This way I know I have money coming in to support my kids and lifestyle outside of the poker arena , which in turn gives me greater confidence at the table knowing I dont have to cash to survive.

In the short term ( maybe even long term ) Id be inclined to get another source of income ( job ) whilst dipping your toe into poker when a value tournament presents itself and hopefully bink a score , you can do this safe in the knowledge you have something to fall back on should poker not prove successful .

Im sure you will make the best decision for you and your family.

Hope it all works out Mate

Fraser

Image is so so important, both in how others see you and your own confidence. Hiring Devilfish's hair is an excellent step on the road

Surely Jason's other source of income could come from new Milk Tray adverts?

or a bit of side work as a gamekeeper judging by that jacket.....

Agree with Fraser that a job would probably help you as a poker player rather than interfere with your game. I don't envy anyone relying solely on poker to support a family during a bad run, the safety net of another form of income could do you wonders.

Out of interest Jase, what are your options job wise? What do you have experience in, how long have you been solely playing poker etc? Is there something you could do which is not a standard 9-5 and thus give you more flexibility to play?

Thought it was a pic of frankie for a minute. IS IT

Not a lot to report from the trip really. Tried to stick to the five point plan turned up in shoes instead of trainers, never looked at hendonmob/blonde etc but the hardest thing to do was the not talking seeing as I drew a table of great guys like Tikay, Bash, Ish, Frank and later Father Gascoigne.

 I did get a little frustrated at one point by how wide certain people were willing to call my raises with but they were all gracious enough to tell me they had managed to get there at some later point in the hand by their play so made it easy for me to find the fold button.

I also managed to get away from some pretty big hands pre flop (AQ/AK/JJ) where people telegraphed the fact they had aces. All three hands could have been earlier baths for me and as all 3 guys showed it gave me a fuzzy warm feeling inside. The table was one of those were everybody was showing their cards, the highlight for me was the big 3 bet and C bet with  6s 3s from Tikay.

The hand that Ian refers to that crippled me was a strange one. Ian had limped and I made up the small blind with  Jc 5c and bash checked his option. A jack hi flop was checked round and when the turn card was also a jack I thought I was going to win a decent pot but sadly not as bash had  Jd 8h.

A few hands later I get  7h 7d utg and lose a race.

The other highlights of my night were watching Our Leader winning a substancial super stud multi way pot which included the animated/frustrated Wadey. I was also in the privaledged position of being able to watch a couple of guys playing h/u for a few hours. I was given some excellent advice on poker & life whilst I was watching, although at times it did feel like I was getting told off by my dad :)

Was that the hand where I hit my spade & scooped? If so, jeez, my arse was twitching a treat.

The Tourney Hand you refer to - a 3 bet & c-bet with  6s 3s - I think you must be mixing me up with someone else.

Yes they were the hands. I have mentioned it before but along with Frankie, Wadey is one of my favourite people at Dtd and I have mentioned it before but one of the funniest things is when he loses when he has monster draws. He stands up and starts throwing his cards, "look I've got this with this and this and this. How can I not win the hand?"

Gotta also say congrats to Ganesh "vindoh" who in the break was telling me he himself had been on a bit of a down swing of late. I am so pleased it turned round so quickly ;)

And it's nice to see Anon of Real Madrid to get straight back to final tables after his 6 month excile

Wadey had a bit of a hard time of it, the game had a most peculiar & very interesting dynamic, but I don't want to derail this thread, so I'lll maybe mention it elsewhere. If only I had a Diary. Oh, wait.....

For now, anyway, it was good to see you.

Yeah I was just going to answer  some of the questions I have been asked in the thread and by people on Saturday. Will have a look for the smashedagain thread and continue it in there later today when I get chance.

Fair play to you, Jason, for embracing such a sizeable amount of feedback so warm-heartedly. Not convinced there are many people - myself included - who would have been able to do the same in your (I hope polished) shoes.

Would have been brilliant (although, as we have collectively established, utterly inconclusive) if you had won it all on Saturday.

VBOL going forward, sir.

There is a small part of me (the red guy on my left shoulder) who wonders what else you would have done on Saturday if it has been presented as "fact" as helping you play better...

Did you play cash games Jason or just the tourney this weekend @ DtD?

Hi again Jason,
                   I was at DTD saturday (rare visit i live quite far) i got knocked out just before you, then i played bit of cash,was gonna say hi but you were quite busy talking to various people and dint get chance, at the end you were over with rob so didnt wanna butt in , have to meet u next time . Anyway GL .

Fair play to you Mr Herbert for making an effort here, it will be the start of something I am sure.

Are you in for Sheffield Thursday or Friday?

Hey, am always happy to chat just come up n say hi. Neither me or Rob bite :)

I won't be in Sheff Aaron as the wife is in Dublin Fri/sat/sun and obv I will be looking after the 4 boys. Considered playing today but would not feel comfortable asking someone to look after the boys while I am at poker.

The table you described sounded absolutely incred.

For those who did not see, at the weekend Herbie cashed in the DTD £150 then chopped the £50 with 1 Reload

No Hoodies were on view, and I hardly heard a word muttered at the table


Very well done

(http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6rpbr55eA1qfw2pz.jpg)

weeeeeeeee, wd m8

Moan it in ftw

Well done m8! Kids getting a white Xmas !

All in the tantrums Herbie well done m8 ;)

oiio, well done Jason.

Trip and how I did it report' to warm the cockles please.

BUMP

I will get something done this evening. Was quite an interesting weekend but as usual will be warts and all, good and bad. Probably tldr stuff :)

 ;popcorn;

Very pleased for you Herbie. WP.

This, nice chatting to you in the Mega Sat, hope this is the start of a upswing :)

Right had a pretty terrible night tonight, had to put up with the farce that was millidonks quiz which all went Pete Tong and then to top it off tried to down load the software to play the GPS satellite for the event this weekend. I understand it was a network wide issue with ipoker but that does not explain why my laptop that I got back Friday is knackered. Explorer not responding, program's not responding, stupid freezing and that circle thing just spinning around. And then to top it off I find that all my passwords for blackbelt paddypower chilipoker etc are invalid so something must have gone wrong in the couple of months since I used em.

You would nod believe how many laptops I have naffed up in the past 5 months.

Right on with the weekend report warts n all and I appologise in advance if I upset anyone or they are offended. I got accused of hating blonde/Dtd/tighty recently and nothing could be further from the truth and I just say it how it is IMHO and don't tend to think before I post or sugar coat things to lick arse.
 Kh
Having got my laptop back from my expert I.T. guy on Friday I decided that I would have a spin in the satellite on DTD for this weekends £500 deepstack. The plan was to have a shot in the €50+1r+1a for a total outlay of €150. The problem was after I did my early morning read of blonde I noticed that tighty had put that Friday nights comp is only 2 seats gtd as opposed to the 10 seats gtd that had been running all week. This was not Dtd's fault but I know I was not the only person to be caught out by this and won't let it happen again.

Both the Richards I travel with usually had already won their seats as they do every month and luckily they haad both decided they were playing different starting days and that gave me my out. No problem travel with the Specman on Friday play they sat and if I win a seat travel with Rick117 on the Saturday to play.

A quick phone call to Rick Specman and I organise for him to pick me up at 3 to give us plenty of time to get him to the deepstack but Rick being laid back he gets to mine nearer 4 which ain't a problem for me coz the mega sat starts at 8 but dies mean he won't make the 5pm start for the deepstack. Nothing fazes Rick but not being on time for the start of a comp makes my shit itch and I can't stand not being there at the start.

Anyhow we arrive at Dtd at 6 and I've got a couple of hours to kill so rock up next to tighty order a drink, the spinach pasta and generally get in his way and annoy him. With about half an hour to go before the start of the comp there was a little confusion over the comp. Was it just 1 re buy only or was it 1 rebuy and an add on? This did not bother me as i had enough for 3 buyins on me.The cash desk and the floor managers both said different things and Dtd's site and tighty's thread on blonde were contradicting each other. To save time and hassle as soon as I saw Simon I asked him and he dropped the bomb shell that it was unlimited re loads at anytime. In theory you could buy in for as many chips as you wanted at anytime no matter on the amount of chips you had already. As I only had £150 plus change I prayed that I had enough dough to last till the add on.


Just before the start Richard was on a break from the deepstack and came staggering over to inform me he had almost trebled up in the hour and half he had been playing. Now Rick loves a drink, spends about £30/ hour on beer whilst playing and was starting to look the worse for wear already. He also loves Larry the Lobster and the touch roulette and I came out of the toilet to find him tapping away at the wheel of doom.

"Looks like 30 is the biggest payout. Lump some more on and I will call it in for you" I said. He proceeds to tap on and around 30 until it won't let him put any more on. Boom I can see it pops straight in 30 and Rick won't believe me. His eyes are terrible for an optician but there is an awkward moment from me knowing its in 30 and then him actually realising its in when the machine confirms it. He lets out a scream and I get a massive bear hug from a 18 stone man that a grizzly would be proud of.
I did not want to celebrate to prematurely because there is a massive difference between winning a serious amount of dough at the beginning of the night and actually leaving with it at the end of the night.

It was time for me to take my seat so wished him luck and headed upto my table. I love playing at tables with guys I know well and this one was quite a good one as I had Dave Nesbit, Frank "the Nemisis" Flanagan, Bash Mahmood and a friendly RedSimon. Quite a lot of people were moaning about the fact that the competition was now unlimited re loads ( I still don't understand why they were not called Re buys) which really played into my hands. I was in the same boat as them with only holding £150 but I was not sticking a dirty great sign round my neck saying i am gonna play this tighter than a nuns chuff by moaning about it.

The re entry period went well for me and I managed to double my stack up with very few showdowns, usually taking the blinds or winning defended blinds with a C bet. The only other really active person on my table was Bash who was sat to my right and is fresh off the November deepstack win and he likes to play plenty of pots and loves a gamble.

The only real interesting hand occured in a pot involving bash,  myself and frank.

At 200/400 Bash limps utg +1 and I am next to act and have  Ks Kh and raise to 1600. It folds round to Frank  on the button who just clicks the raise to 3200. Those of you who know Frank will immediately have alarm bells going off here, and I am not saying Frank would never get jiggy in this spot as he is as consistent a performer as anyone in the games at Dtd but he has killed me twice in recent months where he had 3 bet me when I had QQ and AK and he took me out because I was to stubborn and was never ahead in the hand.

Bash then calls Franks raise and builds a nice pot giving me decent odds to call even if Frank has dem aces.

The flop  Jc  Tc Jd and bash thinks for only a few seconds and announces all in for about 13k which covered me by 1k and Frank by a few more. This seemed a bit like déjà vue coz Bash took me out of last months deepstack when he had a set of jacks (and so did I ). Bash knows my favourite hand is Alister  James and infact all 3 kids are AJ JK & TJ and I could easily have the Jack myself. This mystified me so thought Bash must have a Jack and is more than happy to take the pot there and then. Luckily Frank was already counting out his chips while I was thinking and piled em up again to be ready to put em I folded. In thinking what Bash could have I had forgotten that Frank was beating me pre flop and I was now an even bigger dog. I fold Frank puts his chips in and flips over his aces. Good call says Bash as he shows  8s 9h but obv makes a straight on the river.

Just before the late entry closes Rick wanders over "gone kid. Gonna play this now instead". For some reason Dtd was busier than expected and the floor managers Gavin and Dan were called upto deal whilst Simon and Nick manned the cash desk by the toilets. It was a terrific team effort but as they were short on dealers there were 13 people waiting to be seated after late entry closed and going into the last level of re loads. This was not a problem as they could buy in for any amount of chips they wanted as soon as they sat down. At the break I had not had a re load so donated the last £100 to the cause.

On the break there were 61 entries and for the first time in a long time Dtd had met the £5600 10 seats gtd and had £550 left over for 11th which proved to be significant later. I have to say that unusually the moaners did not just moan to one another but a couple of em sort to take up their issues with Simon. There had obv been some mis communication down the line and no one knew that the tourney was unlimited reloads and as they say assumption is the mother of all fuck ups. What I did see was Simon who obv was under the pump a bit as he was having to work the desk but he handled the situation perfectly. After letting the moaners have their say Simon just replied " I am awfully sorry, the mis understanding was all my fault and I can only appologise ". After that response no more was needed to be said on the subject and everyone was satisfied.

The comp was pretty uneventfull for me and I went pretty card dead after the break.

I managed to lose half my stack when 3 bet jamming  8s  8d an open from Bash who was still the most active, only for Amjad with half my stack to have kings right behind me.

Then my exit hand involved me jamming sixes and an attractive lady telling me she fancied a gamble with me and called with QJ and it was good night deepstack entry. Iirc someone also called behind with 10 10 so was never gonna win the hand but the Queen on the turn was a nice card for the lady.

Dtd had kindly donated the extra £10 to make the prize pool 11 seats and Specman was fortunate enough to win one to go with the other one he had already won that week. As he could not play the Saturday I persuaded Dtd to take back their £10 and let Specman have the cash. He was more than happy with that result, he was walking out of the club with a belly full of £60 worth of beer and a bag of sand more than he had walked in with.

Half hour an hour up the M1 and we pull in for his regular order of chicken selects from Macdonalds and by now he is starting to feel the effects of his beer, "I want to put you in the deepstack Jase, you've taught me all I know mate and you did the same for me in the UKIPT , let me return the favour."

I politely decline. "It's too much mate and confidence is low.  Why not go halves with me in the £150 instead. And as we walk out of the services we pick up a box of a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts to toast out newly formed partnership.


Fml its 1.45am and I started typing this about 11 Ish when I came to bed (anyone want to see a semi naked picture of our lass on the bed please see my facebook entry from 11 pm tonight). God knows how long it is but obv its tldr.

Will however continue with the £150 tomorrow.

Anyone know how to spell tldr?