10:52pm: Well, in just my first game of my session today, the donators have already come out. However, I’m truly baffled as to what the justification for these kinds of plays are. A couple of days ago, we discussed how the guy on PokerStars betting $670 into a pot in which he had $150 invested in, and then folded to my shove (with the nuts) was a completely ridiculous play. Well, the mystifying play continues, except this time on Cake.

Cake masks the name of your opponent in hand histories, so I will just paint the picture for the hand myself. A few hands before the hand I will tell you about, the guy had just doubled me up when he shoved with Q8 on a Q 7 4 rainbow board, and I called with AQ. My hand held up, allowing me to take a 780 to 2220 lead. 3 Hands later, the blinds increased from 10/20 to 15/30. On the very next hand, the guy shoves pre flop for his last 750 and I look and see that I have two Jacks. This is a snap call normally, but with only 30 chips invested in the pot, I have to at least consider why he might do that.

In situations like this, what I’ll normally do is sharkscope my opponent one more time. I look at a few things:

1. Are they a winning player? If so, how good?
2. What does their last 8 games look like? Have they lost a few in a row?
3. What stakes do they normally play? Are they normally a $20 heads up player trying to make up for losses, or do they normally play at the $50 level?

I look and discover that he had just lost two games at the $25.00 level (yes, they have $25 heads up matches on Cake). Therefore, I came to conclusion he was on tilt, trying to recoup his losses and decided this was a no brainer to call. By the way, the only way I would have folded this hand is if the player had comparable stats to me, which is only probably 1 out of 10 matches - so even though I only have 30 chips invested, I call here >=90% of the time.

So I call, and he turns over K7off. WHY?! What is he trying to accomplish? If I fold, so what? Congrats, you’ve just won 30 chips. If I call, you’re pretty much screwed. Once again, this goes back to risk:reward ratio. Anyways, my hand holds up, and I win the match. But after the match I just sat there staring at the screen, and asked myself what possesses people to do things like this? How can you possibly justify this move? What hand am I going to call him with that he’s going to feel comfortable flipping over K7off. I can think maybe two: QJ and J10. However, what he didn’t know is that I’m not going to call him with hands like that generally until the 75/150 blinds, if that.

Anyways, sorry for the rant, this stuff literally just amazes me. More later

Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process

4:48am: It might be more for me than you guys, but I added a games section to the blog. Regardless, feel free to check it out.

Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process

2:19am: I get emails all the time asking if there’s a set routine I follow as pertains to cashing out. I hear horror stories about people winning big one night, only to lose it later and find themselves wishing they had cashed it out while they could. Personally, I don’t think the “cash out quick when you hit big” method has any validity to it (unless you are a losing player in the long run), however I do think that anything that is systematic and gets you into a routine in poker is always a good thing. Therefore, if you haven’t developed a system for cashing out, you should strongly consider it. So with that said, what’s mine?

First off, I always keep a set amount in my account. I won’t say what that amount is, but let’s say for the sake of argument $2,000 — which by the way, is more than enough for a $50 heads up sit n go bankroll. Let’s call this amount my “threshold.” On my net worth/bankroll sheet it’s always written down as having $2,000 in my PokerStars account, even if I actually have less in it. Let’s say I go 3-7 on the night and the final net profit is -$225.00. Let’s also say that I go 7-8 the next night, for a final net profit of -$87.50 . That brings my two day net profit to -$312.50. However, no worries because I’ll never write down that I’m actually down. I just don’t cash out until I’m up over my threshold. Wouldn’t it be nice to never have a losing day?

With this method, there are no losing days — just days. What this does is puts you in the right mindset of “I’m never down because I always win in the longrun”, so you only have to worry about how much time it’s gonna be until you’re able to cash out, not if you’ll be able to cash out. It might take you 2-3 days to get back to the threshold, so when you’re down you’re not really “down”, you’re just working for free at the moment. If you know for a fact that you’re a winning player in the long run, then you will be able to take full confidence in yourself knowing that you’ll always get back to the threshold.

So how much over the threshold should you cash out at? That’s totally up to you, but I recommend 2 heads up matches.

There is also another system for cashing out that I think warrants some consideration. I call it the “true expectation” method. Why? Because you’re paying yourself on a “per game basis”, according to what your long term expectation is. For example, let’s say according to Sharkscope you have an average profit per game of $5. Assuming that the data is valid, you can figure out a set number of matches everyday that you need to play in order to earn what you want. That being said, let’s say that ideally you’d like to make $100 per day. Well, in order to make $100 per day with a $5/game average profit, that would mean that you should play exactly 20 matches a day to assure that you will make an average of $100 per day. Notice I didn’t say “assure that you do make $100 per day.” That’s because deviations will occur, but will always average out to exactly $100 over a large sample size. If you don’t prefer playing a set number of games per day, try just simply paying yourself $5 per match and play as many as you’d like. Once again, since we’re working with valid data, you’re paying yourself according to true expectation — so as long as you have a sufficient amount in your account to handle the swings, you will almost always be at, slightly above, or slightly below your threshold. There is a small catch to this method: you need a REALLY big sample size before you can circle a number and call it your true expectation. For heads up sit n gos, I wouldn’t try this until you have at least 1,500 games under your belt.

These two methods are very different, but they have one thing in common: they are systems, and systems are an important part of playing for a living. Do you have one?