Friday, July 25, 2008

Kung Fu Poker-Fear is The Only Darkness


The Power of NEW-Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, verses The Power of NOW--Staying in the Moment is poker mastery.

There are four basic stages that a player must pass through to achieve poker mastery:


1. Beginner's Passion"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's there are few." Shunryu Suzuki



2. The Student Emerges"He is now forced to admit that he is at the mercy of everyone who is stronger, more nimble and more practiced than he." Eugen Herrigel



3. Expert Level is Achieved"He who has a hundred miles to walk should reckon ninety as half the journey" Japanese Proverb



4. Poker, One Hand at a Time
"If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge of it is not enough. One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an 'artless art' growing out of the Unconscious" Daisetz T. Suzuki

"When the teacher is ready the student appears...








Sunday, July 20, 2008

Night Vision-playing 'in the dark': betting that your opponents DON'T have the cards rather than that they do.

Bad Beats are overhead; Chips, the cost of doing business. and business is good.

There is never a certain prescribed way to play a hand, just a way to think about them. There's the expected result, based on analysis, and the actual result, based on events.

It's not winning that makes a winner, but losing. The excitement is not from the winning, it's avoiding the disaster, because you're flirting with it every day. When my "behavioral finance" stuff kicks in, and I only want to win, but can't take the sting of a lose, I am "risk averse" or more accurately "lose averse", after all, I am gambling in a casino!

I always say-"Whether my decision is good or bad depends on how I make it, not on the outcome". LOOSE players are looking for reasons to CALL; TIGHT, to FOLD. Last night, I sat down with a bunch of loose players---and when the right people show up, the right game does too.

Focus on decisions not consequences


Here's the scenerio: Preflop decision with K10 off suit in a multiway pot- There's a six dollar straddle, I re-raise $15 last to act, trying to steal the straddle or at least go heads up. with the button! I get reraised to $100,(I am thinking small pair88 or JJ who wants to isolate) then something crazy happened: call, call, call. Pocket 99 folds. That's 4 to 1 on my money---I know I am a dog. I defined my hand early, when it was cheap to do so, and have to put others on pocket pairs, but poker is situational, and these cats at the table are loosey goosey. SO:

Making the wrong mistake at the right time

I call with ATC's (Any two cards) right? Ok, I get lucky and flop a made Broadway straight, with no draws! and rake in a massive pot---going from Zero to Hero. I went against my mantra--"When you don't have good cards, somebody else probably does" but I got my FREAKonomoics on!
Sklansky’s old school ABC's: The Gap Concept, didn't apply this time---“you need a better hand to call a raise with than you would need to open the betting yourself”.
I felt I was getting the right odds to call. Sometimes poker is a feeling, sometimes a verb. (That's the huge buckets of luck that go with the territory).

I didn't really make a probability based decision--How many outs do I have? What are the immediate odds-pre flop, flop, turn and river? (In this case, the implied odds of all the money left on the table was too huge to fold preflop) What are the long shot odds for you and your opponent, once you put him on a range of hands? I made the wrong mistake at the right time.
For these loose players , the second hundred was not worth as much as the first.

The reason for I called the $100 was that my opponents Utility of (Chips) Money changed based on how many chips they already had. Most $700 behind. In ECON 101: Each level of worth or income has associated with it a certain level of utility. That utility is not necessarily going to increase uniformly. For This is called Diminishing Marginal Utility.
And according to my theory of poker; Too much respect for money makes you a bad no limit player---These guys were "good" players because they had no respect for their money!
Doing the same thing over again is an obscenity.

Poker is too random to be left up to chance. It's situtational too. Big hands for big pots--not committing your big stack with weak small hands---I need a poker time out...because nothing fails like success. You can't lose what you don't put into the pot and if I keep on putting my money in bad like this I'll get broke.


Think about good decisions, not results. It's about the process not pots won---the chips will come. Do what you love and the money will follow--have a love affair with making sound decisions based on partial information. It is, after all, about excelling, not winning or losing a particular hand.

Make probability based decisions--How many outs do you have? What are the immediate odds-pre flop, flop, turn and river? What are the long shot odds for you and your opponent, once you put him on a range of hands? The universal tell in poker is called betting!

I once wrote:
It is better to be skillful than lucky but then again.... I wasn’t born with the math gene, in fact, I am a math atheist: but after "beasting out" both on The Theory Of Poker and The Mathematics of Poker, I realize that poker is less an exploitive strategy, and more an optimal one. Once having said that, we don't need to deify poker math and won't bring its math to the game ---we bring strategy to it, an optimal strategy, yet it still remains dependent on opponents actions and tells.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

The universal tell in poker is called betting!

You can always tell poker players, but you can’t tell them much.

Poker is not a game of cards played with money—It is a game of money played with cards. It is about M-O-N-E-Y., but too much respect for money makes you a bad no limit player.
High Stakes Poker is not about winning, it is a game about excelling, and making good decisions. More than that, it is not the winning, but the losing, that makes a winner in No Limit Holdem.
Whether your decision is good or bad depends on how you make it, not on the outcome. Bad beats happen, and they usually happen from making correct decisions. Anyone can get lucky once 100% of the time. That's poker.

The Secret is about the law of attraction and results—the secret of high stakes poker is the complete opposite! The way to get better is to think about process not results—focus on better decision making and ignoring short term results.
Everyday Players enjoy the risk associated with winning; and are for the most part, risk averse--they don't want to lose---and when they do, you can be sure TILT is not far behind.
Our brain is the most powerful computer. When on tilt, our brain is the most powerful broken computer . Tilt makes us sub-optimal for evaluating rewards, sizing up risks and calculating probabilities.
Winner,winner chicken dinner...
There are two ways to put opponents on TILT: Win a pot to showdown with the best hand, or bluff with the worst. The former is "regular", the later, "extra crispy". This is what seperates the PROS from the JOES, the ROUNDERS from the FLOUNDERS--Ain't nothing but a thing, chicken wing--the big shrug, and "oh well". Chicken's have wings but can't fly. Don't worry about it.

Poker Without Cards-Bluffing If you never get called, you can never lose!
Bluffing is a big part of NLH since most players miss the flop 33% of the time.IN NLH there are 4 opportunities to bluff, 1 pre and 3 post flop. LOOSE players are looking for reasons to CALL; TIGHT, to FOLD. Yet, if the right players don't show up, the right game doesn't either.
You aren't a bad poker player if you get caught bluffing sometimes or most of the time. You only have to win a fraction of the time to net a profit. Sklansky's (game)Theory of poker points out that you cannot play optimally unless you include bluffing into your game.
Every bet or raise can be a bluff, and you can beat a bluff with a mediocre hand. The only way to compensate for the bluffs of your opponents is to bluff them back!
You don' t get what you deserve in poker, you get what you negotiate--Bluffing is the quintessential negotiator. If you are going to be a winning player, you have to include bluffing in your game.
The more your bluffs matters, the harder they are to pull off because they are, after all, bluffs. It is, however, impossible to defend against a solid bluffing strategy. Reality is perception, and appearance reality.
Sell Don't Tell-ABC "Always Be Closing".
Tells can give you a competitive advatage. HINTS or suggestions are better ways to describe the leaks in opponents (and your) game.-The universal hint in poker is called betting—jamming the pot when you have the best of it, and punishing opponents for their draws.

Betting is the language of poker; the more money behind your bet, the louder your voice! It's a slang that rolls up its sleeves and spits in the streets.

Poker is whatever you can get away with--either you bet with the best hand or you bluff with the worst. In the real world, If your girlfreind is cheating on you---you don't want to believe it.(Truth bias). So she bluffs you and gets away with it but then...one day her own Fear of being caught---detection apprehension---will be the non verbal (TELL) communication that speaks to your subconscious and allows you to divorce her! That is, if your left brain gets good at telling your right brain what to do.
Misleading Vividness-Learn The Lines
Bluffing is giving yourself permission to win, even if you do not have the best of it. When you show up to a game, you have to be script driven, and the lines are simple--I am going to win, NOT I should win , NOT I deserve to win. If you can pull off a feeling of acceptance, not even belief, you will have a reasonable amount of success in your bluffs. Be misleading not confusing in your bluffs.
Use position, psychology and bluffing to tip the scales. One thing for sure-POSITION makes every bluff easier. What is your RRR, your risk reward ratio? What are the CP's, calling patterns of your opponents? What are their BP's, betting patterns? The bluffing quest is in these questions.
You don't get a second chance to make a first impression on any given hand. Commit to a hand, and the prosperous termination of desired events--scooping up the pot. Bluffing really means I am against something but appear to be for it. Creating a false impression, disguising the "truth" is easier said than done. Overcompensating in either direction usually occurs---that's a bad bluff. Manipulating how confident you appear, a person who is bluffing will almost always overcompensate 100%, to convince or convey.

Body Languaging
The visable sign of your inner state is Body Language. The air is thick with non-verbal communication. Performance gestures- A bluff will either be performed or unconscious. The modesty lie is a good example of an unconscious bluff---when you win a big pot, or send someone home broke, that is the one lie that most of us can pull off with no regret ---playing small when we want to get up and scream, ,"Yea baby".

WYSIWYG

To be a great liar/bluffer , people around you have got to want to believe you. It is much easier in the real world because there is TMI, too much information in our daily lives so—we pull back and tend to accept everything at face value, calling a spade a spade, WYSIWYG, What you see is what you get.

In poker it is all about survival, so there is no filtering out the bad for the good. You want to be informed. There is such social pressure to handle the truth, to tell the truth, or even to be tactful, but when we bluff, we must go through a whole series of mental effort and consideration. It is natural to tell the truth, and unnatural not to.

First you have to come up with the correct response---the truth; Next,you have to figure out how to quash that response; Finally, you have to come up with the lie response. It is not only hard to do, it is hard to sustain. Don't do anything out of the ordinary. Don't freeze up. Don't talk, unless you think it will influence a fold. Remember, bluffing is never impossible.

Here are some good bluffs-By Sammy Farha and Chris Moneymaker