Poker CV

I would like to put up a link to a pdf document here.

If anyone could tell me how to do this it would be very much appreciated!

Top Weekend

Have been away this weekend for the Carling Cup Final. The new Wembley Stadium is truly breathtaking and the atmosphere inside was amazing, most of the noise coming from us in the Spurs end of course!

Great Stadium.
Great Day.
Great Result.

Good news on the poker too. Have finalised my 'Poker CV' and have designed an Introduction Programme for potential students.

I haven't advertised this yet but already have 3 students signed up for the six step intro programme which is cool.

Will try and get some links up on this later......

LOL @ Heads Up

Coaching

I have been thinking about coaching for some time and am almost ready to coach people playing 50NL and below. Just need to work out rates etc.

Cardrunners are looking to officially endorse some coaches and hopefully I will be getting involved with that although I am sure they will have a lot of people to choose from. My coach is on the panel so hopefully he thinks I am good enough....he didn't tell me to stop dreaming when we discussed it so that is a good start :-)

From my reasearch is seems that potential students are particulary interested in the stats of the people offering their services as a coach.

I think there should be a bit more to it as stats can be manipulated to look better than they actually are. Honest stats can also be skewed by many different variables. For example I have been experimenting a lot with different plays and styles at 100NL lately and that has a huge affect on my short term win rate. Long term it will benefit me greatly as I now have a better understanding of how my opponents are thinking and can adapt accordingly.

The site and tables you play also have a huge effect on stats. On one site my style is 18/16/5 and the same level on a different site is more like 25/21/3.

When I was first looking for coaching I just wanted to be able to play 'LAG' as I thought this was optimal. I now realise that the style you play should be flexible based on the table you are playing and more specifically the seat you have at that table.

I aim to teach my students a Flexible Aggressive style or 'FLAG'.

Just a footnote on Marc's comment on my last post regarding filters. I am still searching for a solution and PT3 is proving to be a real pain. Beta 4 has been released but they are using PostgreSQL 8.3 which is not supported by PT2 from what I understand. I spent sooooo much time trying to get beta 3 to work, and beta 4 has the potential to screw up my system yet again. I'm not going to chance it so will wait for PT3 final version to be released.

Have been using the cardrunners session replayer though which is pretty cool and highlights the pots you have been involved in.

The Gray Area

Am reading The Elements of Poker by Tommy Angelo and it is a superb book.

Here is a small extract:

"When you examine a betting decision......remind yourself that debates point to close decisions, and that close decisions matter least, and that the answer is sometimes unknowable."

I think this is very relevant to posting hands in forums such as cardrunners and my coaching group. A lot of the hands posted are very marginal all in decisions that are in the middle of the 'Gray Area'. The forum posters will debate the rights and wrongs of the play but these are not the hands we should be focusing on as 'close decisions matter least'.

In view of this I think I will start reviewing my medium sized pots. Need to give some thought to how I filter these hands though. Maybe a task for PT3.

Half-term report

I am half way through my 10,000 hands and playing 2 tables. It really is helping me develop my game a lot quicker.

I have decided that my session reviews need to be done every 5,000 hands (instead of 10,000) and I already have a number of additional things I need to work on.

Here are my 2 tabling stats so far:





And my target update:

1. Use site specific Bankrolls. 100NL FTP. 50NL Stars.
I am now playing 100NL on FTP only.

2. Play only 2 tables.
Am doing this but need to avoide net surfing, checking e-mails etc during quiet periods.

3. Range Equity Maximise
Need to focus more on opponents hand ranges.

4. Monitor and develop 3-betting strategy
Improving and ongoing.

5. Try and remove emotion from all decisions
Getting better but not there yet!

6. Watch and make notes on 1 opponent each session
I have found that focusing on 1 opponent makes me play a lot worse! This is to be changed to 'make notes on all opponents where possible and also note on possible notes they have on me'. For examole 'this guy watched me check/raise all in with nut flush draw'.

7. Practice good table selection
Ongoing.

8. Use time bank for difficult decisions
Need to do this more. Need to think much more about villains line and range of hands. Also I think I need to go to showdown less and by doing so give off less information.

9. Accept that if I play well I can still lose in the short term and vice versa
The 'vice versa' bit doesn't seem to happen that much!

Going deep at PKR

Played an MTT on 3d site pkr.com on saturday. Entry was $60 and I finished 4th for $1520!

To be honest I played appalling bad for the first couple of hours but sucked out a couple of times and made the money with an average stack and just 50 people left. I have a good record of going deep from this position and happily that proved the case.

I have never played on pkr before and I thought it was good fun. No poker tracker or HUD but lots of bad players and the cash games looked pretty juicy too. Aimed more at gamers than poker players so possibly money to be made there, but multi tabling would be tough.

Also had coaching session on sunday and my 6 max game is coming along nicely, so all in all a good weekend all round :-)

Finding the right balance

I am a quarter of the way into my 10,000 hands mission.

I definitely feel that I am improving as a player by playing just 2 tables but at the same time I am already becoming a little impatient and want to add more tables.

The main reason for this is that the disavantage of playing 2 tables is now obvious. I am reducing my hourly rate.

I could 4/6 table 50NL and make more money per hour, however if i did this then I would not improve as a player and would have less chance of playing higher stakes, which is the long term goal.

So sacrificing some short term winnings will have long terms benefits.........time will tell.