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Unfortunately not. I have dabbled in the past with some stuff, but lost the desire. I did however, have a hand in these hidden gems....
https://soundcloud.com/newsleak
YOU SHOULD OF CARRIED ON,VERY GOOD, LIKE THE OLD "TRUNCHEON NOT LIKE THAT THIS MORNING"
ALMOST EARLY,ROUND THE HORN LIKE
You will be assimilated – Part I.
Let me take you back to Star Trek – The Next Generation (Series 2, Episode 16) Q-Who.
Our old mate Q, transports the Enterprise 7,000 light years (a shade over the metric mile), where they first encounter the Borg.
These likeable rogues are a species that is part biological and part machine, with one intention. To assimilate your chips. Okay, not YOUR chips, just the entire universe. Fortunately.
They have a fixed strategy, involving shields and weapons. As they encounter other beings that are superior, they evolve defences and methods of attack to overcome their foes.
Here is an extract from one of the Borg’s personal diaries.
‘….D.D.S.S. Same old, same old today. Four races assimilated before lunch followed by a long flight to the outer reaches of the universe. I was sick again. This space flight malarkey is not suiting me at all. I was much happier being a poker player on Orion 7, but since being assimilated, the conscious collective can read my mind, making my semi-bluffs redundant. Struggled a bit with one of the races, who seemed immune to all our attacks and capable of hurting us ‘big stylee’ (a phrase we have adopted since overrunning planet Pop). Fortunately, we had a few cards up our sleeves and sank them with all-in strategy (gleaned from my own mind) that they could not withstand. All in all, not a bad day I suppose, in terms of hitting targets, but I yearn for a hand of PLO…’
How does this transfer to poker, you might ask? I sometimes ask myself that, and my physician says I should continue to do so.
The Borg* are a complex, but logical, species. They have a core strategy which they use most of the time. When this strategy stops working, they adapt.
Unfortunately for us, we are not Borg. Although our brain processing power is far greater than any CPU, we can only use a small amount of it to play poker. This is where we need to be the Devil’s Advocate.
No, not Keanu Reeves. It’s where we have to pre-determine possible playing conditions and have a strategy in place BEFORE we encounter it.
The first thing to do, is to determine what possible playing conditions we could encounter. Generally, we would expect two separate kinds of play. These being, at a multiple player table of 3 to 6 players, and heads-up. Hopefully, none of the third kind, which would involve actual Borg.
I never mention this, but my thoughts are all based on MTT play. I figure, if you want to make it rich at minimal risk, MTT is the way. That or a cupboard full of premium bonds….
To be continued…..Part II – The Search for Spock
Bench.
*Note: The Borg don’t actually exist. Well, not in this quadrant.
Some cry laugh moments,
Thank you.
Part II – The Search for Spock
(Okay, it should be ‘The Wrath of Khan’, but that doesn’t really work, although I heard his nickname at school was ‘Gutshot’)‘I am, and always will be, your friend’.
It’s a bluff, naturally. He wants you to go easy on him when you get the nuts.Half Vulcan, half human, Spock is a bit of a hybrid, like those new-fangled dual fuel electric cars.I own one, and was so embarrassed the other day, after having to call the RAC out. I’d only gone and filled it with 110V instead of 240. Who knew?
What can we learn from Spock, and how will finding our inner Spock help us win at poker?Being Vulcan is the epitome of discipline, logic and self-control. No tilts here. Unless, that is, someone hits a straight draw on the river, after calling your c-bet with 7-2 off. Every species has its limits. Damn you ShiKahr poker!!!!
The Vulcan part of your play involves ‘your system’. It’s not a radical thing. It takes into account all the standard elements of poker play and defines the boundaries to be used to keep play consistent.In essence, the Vulcan part determines how YOU will play. Rules and regulations everywhere here.Only by standardising your play, can you improve. Using a ‘see how it goes’ technique will never see your skillset increase. There will be no frame of reference. Kind of like when Dr McCoy asked Spock about being dead.
The Spock method requires a lot of work before playing. It also requires a lot of work after playing.Prior to playing, all your ground rules need to be set. Range and position are the key elements. For every given situation (I’m not kidding here), you must decide on a range of pocket cards to play.This will generate a matrix that includes all the possible table positions, the bets placed and how many callers there are. An advanced matrix would include stack sizes too.That’s the Vulcan bit. Naturally, I can’t show you my matrix, for two very good reasons. One. Everyone who reads this will know how I play. And two. I haven’t made it yet.
You could argue that an inflexible style will let other players suss you out and be able to out-play you. This is where the human bit comes in. YOU have to decide which elements of your matrix fit into your current game, and when to slip in the odd currant bun to throw the dogs off your scent.
An extract from your system might be ‘open the betting on the button, when there are no callers, when you have cards Ax, Kx, any pair, or any two suited cards capable of making a straight. This may change to calling, if there is already a bet made, with hands such as A9+, KJ+, 55+ or suited connectors.
As you can see, there is structure to your play, but hopefully wide enough to avoid being spotted early on.
As a basic rule, your range should be narrow enough to win, but wide enough for you to play enough hands to progress.It may even be prudent to have tiered levels of ranges. You probably already have some. For instance, as the blinds eat your stack away, you drop to the level of ‘any ace’. This might be tier ten. For some, it’s tier one through to ten.
Think this will never work? Think it might work, but are not sure how exactly to get ‘The Spock Method © on paper?
Do not worry, for that is the next instalment..
Part III – First Contact (of pen to paper)
Live long and be a flopster
Bench.
Poker Player’s Thermal Arrest
As a reluctant gambler, I don’t risk a lot of money. In fact, I’m not a gambler at all really. I go out with the intention of losing, and boy do I get what I aim for.
I think I’ve hit what can only be described as poker player’s thermal arrest. In fact, it is a phenomenon that occurs regularly in nature.
Remember at school, when you did an experiment to measure the cooling rate of Naphthalene? They may not do it anymore, as they may have discovered it has poisonous properties. I don’t think they make the asbestos bird boxes either, these days.
Anyways, the temperature of the liquid would drop quite uniformly, then there was a pause, as the liquid changed to solid. The temperature would then continue to drop again, at a steady rate. Compare this with a standard learning curve. I don’t know the actual figures, but the upshot is, you learn quick at first, then you slow down to a snail’s pace (nit).
When you first start playing poker, you learn the hands, how the cards are dealt, how the betting works. You then learn about which cards to play, position and odds. Then you hit the top of the learning curve. You just aren’t getting any better.
Improvements in your play are so marginal that you may not notice them, or you may ignore them completely and lose them again. How do you become a better player tomorrow, than you are today?
One thing’s for sure, one swallow does not make a summer.
Improvement in your poker play can only be measured over time. To do this requires discipline. Every game. Every hand.
You also need to understand why you lose and why you win. Sometimes it’s not about you, it’s about THEM.
Yes, the other players.
I played a hand the other night. I had JJ. I bet and bet and bet, only to be beaten by a very poor hand that hit a straight on the river. Maybe I could’ve gone all-in pre or post flop? It still might not have stopped them. I’ll never know. What I do know is I should’ve been aware of that player’s strategy. There were a number of plays I could’ve made. Knowing he was reckless, I should’ve bet big pre-flop and then shoved post flop. At that point, he had the least chance of making a hand. If he was crazy enough to do it, good luck to him. The next ten times, he will lose.
Anyway, I digress. The point about improving I wanted to make was, there will come a point where you stall. Improvement will be slow and you’ll start to wonder if there is any point in continuing to play. It happens to everyone. It’s happening to me.
To continue to improve, you need to break down your game into smaller pieces, check that they all are at optimum, then put them back together again.
My bankroll is very small at the moment (I’ve just been swimming). Last night I played a sit n’go. It was only a £0.55 game, where the final two players cash. Whoop, whoop.
I figured that if I lost that, I’d be more or less done.
I do have more funds to add to my account, but figured ‘what’s the point’.
Playing my tight usual game, I managed to make it to short stack, the seat reserved for me. One player was eliminated after a rather dodgy all-in play after the river, where he had JJ and was losing to any ace.Then it was the usual grind. Lo and behold, I make it to the final two.
In this game, unlike, DYM, you play to the end.
I never win heads-up.
However, I’d been sat at thermal arrest for a while, and recently decided that I could improve that part of my game by reading up on ‘heads-up’ play. My strategy is still a little sketchy, but better than the one I had.
I won.
It was £1.40.
It saved my game.
Bench.
Umbrella-ella-ella
I have this strategy. When it’s raining, or look like rain, take an umbrella with me. I have another strategy. If there is a land slip and lava starts erupting from the earth….oh wait, I haven’t got a strategy for that.
Why? You might ask.
It’s so unlikely, I haven’t bothered coming up with one. My cousin, who lives at the base of Mount Etna has, but then, he hasn’t got a strategy for light drizzle.
As usual, this is leading to Poker.
I’m not the greatest poker player in the world. I think I’ve made that clear before. Plus, my ‘insights’ generally only relate to MTT. Speaking of which, I had to order a morse taper drill at work last week, and wrote on the order MTT instead of MT. Freudian slip?
I’ve played in a couple of tourneys recently. One was the Sky Omaha freeroll. Not my best game, but I managed to finish 10th out of roughly 250. I had a strategy. The strategy worked. Okay, okay, I know that a single strategy doesn’t win games. You need to be fluid. However, you have to start somewhere.
The other tourney I played in was last night. Not on here, unfortunately. Strip me naked and whip me until I tilt. It was on another site where, I guess a lot of stars play poker. Anyway, I figured I’d try a $2 buy-in, whilst the ‘missus’ watched the never ending funeral for Deidre.
I don’t know why, but most of my hands were less than premium. I was folding hand after hand. Easily beating the sensei’s record.
Still, I stuck to my guns. Even played a little tighter at times, and a little looser at others.
The good news is, I had QQ twice and won both hands. To balance that, I lost out on AA, JJ, 99, 77, 55, 33 and 22.
To cut a long story short, I finished 45/1265.
My improvements in poker playing have been small, but what I noticed last night is I could build (and lose) my stack. Usually, I would see me chips deplete until the blinds caught up with me. Hanging on for dear life until the bitter end. Obviously, something has changed (or I got lucky).
Now I’m afraid I might stagnate. Where will the improvements come from?
Looking back, I was aware of losing a large number of chips by not having a playable hand. This was magnified by tightening up as the better players used their stacks to keep me out of hands I would usually play.
My biggest single mistake of the evening was not shoving early enough, when the blinds were at my heels. I left it to the bitter end. At that point it wasn’t my decision. I should’ve gone a few hands earlier with A7o, but ended up blinding out with some complete rubbish. That extra 18c is going to change my life, for sure.
Back to the main point. What should I do when all my pocket cards are rubbish?
Last night, I didn’t know.
Today, I’ve come up with the plan of using position and odds.
I need to decide which hands have the best chance of connecting with the flop. This range needs to be wider than my standard range, especially as the blinds get higher. Also, I need to be sure that I am not going to be 3-bet. Not easy to achieve, but using position, I have a better chance.
I’ll have another go next week.
One thing I did notice was someone with 1,000 chips on the bubble, taking an inordinate amount of time to fold his hand, for the five minutes before hand by hand play started…
Not a strategy for those of us looking to the stars.
Bench.
SOME GOOD ADVICE AS WELL
It's not that I've given up. I have half a dozen unfinished articles lying about that require some attention.
My biggest problem at the moment, is that I've pulled back the curtain. No, not the one hiding the plumber and my sister-in-law, but the one that hides what playing poker is really all about.
When you first start playing, you think it's just a game of cards. You get dealt some cards. They are either good or bad and you then try to win more chips than you lose with them. If you win the most, you are indeed the winner.
Now I realise, it's a lot more complex than that.
Which brings me to my problem. For one, I'm not very good at poker. Actually I'm quite rubbish. I think my cat could play better than me. In fact, looking at my dwindling bankroll, I think he has been. Pity his ROI is still a negative.
So now, I have to go back to the beginning, and start all over again. Sure, I know more now than I did when I started. It just feels like I have a bag full of jigsaw pieces. They all need putting together, although some of them are from another jigsaw and need discarding.
This isn't supposed to be a negative article. It's just a decision to go back to the beginning and start afresh. Anyone who has been involved in training will know that stage one is unconscious incompetence and stage two is conscious incompetence. Here I am, at stage two.
I'm working on a new set of articles that aim to follow my journey from free-roll entrant to tourney winner. My general plan would be to work on a single aspect of my game and enter one of the Sky tournaments on a regular basis and see whether I can improve, or not. Sure, I could read a few more books and play by the numbers, but I want to build this car myself instead of just buying it from the store. That may make sense to some people. To others it may not.
Oh, and I'll try to make the articles a little more light-hearted.
Bench
*almost never
Just where have I been hiding ?
Well, I've been messing around with Twitch for a few weeks. It's only now that I realise I should've become good at poker and THEN Twitch it. Still, it never hurts to by the wrapping paper before the present.
I know what you want to know, 'Why are you not the greatest poker player alive yet'?
There are two reasons for this. The first being that bird flu failed to eradicate all the competition, and secondly, I'm still rubbish.
In an effort to improve, I have two aspects of my game to improve on.
1. I should be able to play a hand where I haven't seen my cards and still make the correct plays.
I know this sounds crazy, but I think there is some mileage in it. Not necessarily to win any money, but to change how you think about your game. Imagine it like this. When you perform a regular task, sometime's it's almost automatic. No thought, just action. Now this is okay, providing you are performing that task to the best of your ability. Now try the same task blindfolded. All of a sudden, every move, every decision matters. You are more aware of what's going on. Next time you perform the task, some of this remains with you and all of a sudden you are more effecient. A bit like unlearning bad habits, in order to improve. With me so far? No? Okay, just me then.
2. Another problem I have is that I always hold the best or worst hand, or so I believe. This makes me overbet good hands and fold marginal hands. Consider the extreme of this strategy. Shove with AA and fold everything else. Do you think I will win anything? Not likely. I think the idea of poker is that you need to be holding a hand that is only slightly better than the hand you are playing against, or at least make your opponent think so. With big pairs, I have been shoving and only winning blinds or against the occasional underpair. It's not a good strategy. When players talk about 'getting it all in', you need someone to get it all in with you. I've still some thinking to do about this one, but that's how I improve (or not).
Catch you soon.
Bench
November 2009 - I was made redundant after 26 years. I was gutted. The irony was, if I had stayed on the shopfloor, I would have been invincible. Length of service, qualifications, etc would have put me bottom of the 'to go' list. Unfortunately, I shot for the moon, became a production manager, and it all counted for naught. Heads just had to roll. As I'm quite short, I was surprised mine was the first to go..
I used my £20k (not playing poker at the time) to keep me going, although I was technically never out of work. I also used it to design a drinks bottle which I sent off as an idea to Dragons' Den. To no avail. I also invented some shopping trolley keyrings which, whilst innovative, didn't work. That was the end of that escapade, plus there were bills to pay.
Scroll back to 1994 - Using 'visual Basic' software, I developed an easy checker for football pools coupons. Then came the lottery and 'the pools died. I sold one copy for a £1.
Back to 2013 now. We're getting there. I decide to try and write a mobile app for work. Based on engineering stuff. Conversions, tapping sizes, etc. There are a few already out there, but this would help me learn how to write an app from scratch. I have a copy on my phone. It's still a work in progress (and has been for the 2 years).
Which brings us to today. I have an idea. It's a poker idea. It won't make me millions, but with the onset of the internet, selling with a small profit in volume will make you money. Think 'flappy bird'.
The idea is valid. I can make it work in Visual Basic, though I have to do a bit extra to make it 'customisable' (if that is a real word). Then I need to translate it to Android (ios is a bit too much for me yet).
Natch, I can't give too much away, other than it is a poker tool that beginners will appreciate.
Updates to follow.
Bench (pressed)
The short answer is no, I haven't. I've been doing some wandering around and trying to change my game. I've played some cash and not very many tournaments. I've have to avoid the tournaments due to family illness, making it difficult to spend as 'scheduled' couple of hours at the felt. The ad-hoc half-an-hour, that cash can give you, has been much more accessible.
So, the second question is 'Am I any better at poker ?'. I'm not sure. I know I've seen a lot more poker played and my game has altered to a degree. One thing is for sure, I haven't made any money. Perhaps that makes the answer a 'No' ?
A few more obstacles to overcome before I can commit the time I'd like to in an MTT. Monday's DTD, for instance.
Anyways, that's where I am.
I hope the family situation improves and you find more time to play and especially to post.
I first got back in to poker a couple of years ago when I had a difficult family situation and I found "treating myself" to an occasional hour of escapism on the virtual felt really helped me.
I also shared my family situation in a diary thread, the positive support from the community and even a shout out for my wife on the TV show by Tikay were a fantastic boost.
You are missed when not here.
Google learnpython.org.
Expecting broadband to be Tikay-ti-boo by next week.
Expecting to win a tournament before Easter.
I'm ready.
After winning a ticket last week, to the £33 BH, I was hoping to at least take something from it. Alas, JJ led me up the garden path and then sold me down the river. Lesson's learned there. Now, although this isn't Sky poker related, to check my broadband was working before the BH, I played a cheap satellite game on another site (take me out and flog me now). As luck would have it, I cashed with a ticket for the next round. I have also managed to see that round off and am now in a €50 satellite game. I'll be using that to check out my Twitch stream set-up, for when I'm back to Sky poker proper. The game is tonight and my twitch nick is dognabbit. As I say, I don't want to take anything away from sky, and will be doing my twitching during their games in the future.
On a sadder note. It's my father-in-law's funeral on friday. Tough times.
Looking to put in an all-day MTT grind at some point. I'll probably put aside £60 or so to finance it. Think I might make it a regular thing, maybe three monthly, to use as a gauge for my progress.
I'm only a micro-stakes player, so I am under no illusions about my ability. However, a flip is a flip, no matter who you are.
In other news, I had some luck at the weekend, where I was down to 1BB in a tournament and managed to claw my way back to fifth place.
Anyways, I might get around to Twitching some of it, if I go deep. If I don't, you will probably never hear about this again.
good luck john.
make 'em laugh.
I've been trying to write an article on how to win an MTT, so thought I'd apply some of my thought process to a sample one. Naturally, I didn't win.
Had a close call early on, where I lost half my stack with a rather careless pre-flop call with 66 (against 99). Fortunately, I had the other player covered and only lost half my stack. I think I was reckless as I wasn't planning on hanging around and my internet connection was a bit unstable (it's usually rock solid).
Anyways, I played to my strategy with a couple of faux pas and a couple of lucky breaks.
Just when you're thinking that you will only ever be a bingo player, you make sense of the madness.
... and eyes down.
Have you snuck in the big MTT grind yet?
I reckon a live thread could be quite entertaining given your way with words and hopefully be a good draw from community well-wishers as the session progresses.
Congrats on the bink and gl moving forward.