Keep HFL Free

2:24pm: How you play off your opponents strengths and weaknesses has a direct correlation with how successful you are. In fact, the best heads up players in the world have no identity at all. They are merely just the “anti-you” when they play you. Spotting someones achilles heel is the key to success. Everyone has one. However, the one who spots it first will be the one with the decided edge.

As SteveK said, you must use tell tale signs during the match to formulate your idea of what their achilles heel is, and you must do it as quick as possible. The important thing to note is that everything means something. Examples of “everything” can include:

• Quick calls (usually weakness)
• Limp re-raises pre flop (usually strength)
• Long delays followed by checking (usually weakness)
• Over bets on the river (usually strength)

All of these things, and much more usually factor into the equation of reading your opponent. Betting patterns are also of the utmost importance in heads up matches. While there’s no one right way to read into betting patterns, there is indeed a wrong way to do so: by not making logical sense of it all, and failing to think it through.

Empathy is perhaps one of the most important concepts in poker. Empathy is simply the capacity to recognize or understand another’s state of mind or emotion. You have to anticipate how each move makes them feel, and to a degree even take it a step further by anticipating how they are anticipating how each move they make makes you feel.

A good practice is to try to listen to people talk, anywhere you go. Anytime someone makes a statement to the other, anticipate what their reaction is. Odds are, your first guess will be a lot more “off” than your next guess 20 minutes later, after having spent some time to get to know their personality. Same thing with poker. This is why you always hear me talk about “feeling your opponent out” early on, and not getting too involved at this stage of the match. The goal is to gather a series of reactions, using empathy as a database to predict with greater accuracy reactions later on in the match.

Keep all this in mind next time you find yourself playing big pots early on in the match. Sometimes playing the cards works, but sometimes it’s best to just slow down and most importantly, “think about it.”

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

The long awaited fourth tutorial will be released on or before Saturday at 3pm CST. I am done with the commentary, but have yet to convert and upload it. The main challenge with these tutorials is actually compressing them to a size and format that won’t overload the servers, because by and large the most accessed item(s) on this website are the tutorials.

As they should be. Most websites charge for these, but not I. Not here. HFL will always be free as long as the proper ratio of people support us by visiting any of the various sponsors you see here. (Yes, just clicking helps)

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

3:09am: A lot of people would use something as personal and self medicating as a blog to sit here and complain about their misfortune, and list to you every single hand where they got their money in good, only to lose. However, I’m not going to do that.

What I will do, however, is tell you that tonight was definitely not my night, and anything that could have gone wrong, basically did. This is to be expected when poker is your main source of income, and truth be told I was probably due for a night like this.

Couple of positive things:

1. People are still willing to put their chips in the middle in terrible spots.
2. I knew where I was at 85% of the time tonight, and felt like I played every hand in a satisfactory manner.
3. If hands always held up, poker would be a dead sport, and people wouldn’t keep playing.

It wasn’t my worst night in history (I finished 9-12). However, given the sheer amount of games I played today I would have expected something closer to 50%, given my near 61% winning percentage in the $50s over a 2000 game sample size. Part of being a professional is knowing when it’s not your night, and to keep your head up during these times.

It doesn’t feel good, and you don’t have to like it. But you do have to accept it — and most of all, move on. Tomorrow is a new day. However, nothing is guaranteed in poker, as tomorrow could be even worse than today. That’s not to say one should be pessimistic. It’s just the necessary mindset, because cards run good and bad over thousands of hands, not hundreds.

Something really comforting on a night like this is to realize that no matter how you cut it, no matter what, with no exceptions: I’m still making $9 every game I play, even if tonight was a slight deviation from the norm.

Good luck guys, and here’s to hoping your day today will be better than my session was tonight.