Flexibility

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Jason Schlachter

Poker as in life, requires a great amount of flexibility.  Things come up, plans change,  and the ability to adapt and let things roll off your shoulders affect the way you deal with the current situation and influences the way you deal with situations in the future.  If you only think about one way of finding an answer, many studies have shown that it leaves you boxed into your solution set and unable to see other, possibly better solutions.  It is important to evaluate all of the information critically and effectively at the decision point so that you can make the best possible decision.  I cannot count the number of times that I have solved a problem in a way that did not occur to me when I began thinking about how to solve it.

It is easy to get frustrated when playing poker in person,  you are dealt only about 30 hands per hour, which means you are rarely dealt a premium hand.  There is little to do between hands but think about the hands you have played and how you are doing, evaluate the other players, and make small talk.   Since the solution to each hand requires a complete analysis of a new set of variables., the best outcome for me is one that I can look a back on away from the table and be happy with the result.  If you are not doing well during a session, frustration can build and can close off your mind to certain possibilites.  Things like “I never flop a set” or “I always lose with pocket kings” can be at the forefront of your mind and crowd out the optimal way to play each hand.  Your can begin to believe that actions you take at the poker table, which you know are incorrect in a vacuum are correct.  The most well known of these is known as tilt, where you get frustrated and play sub optimally to the point of giving away money.  I often remind myself at the table that I am capable of anything at any time and to open my mind up to figuring out the best answer, even if I have never done it before.

Often a hand can come up where you are planning to do something, but then the action in front of you changes your perspective.  This is one reason is why it is important not to look at your cards until the action is on you.  That way you are able to independently evaluate what is happening without being clouded by your hand.  If you look at your hand before you have seen the action in front of you, you are more reliant on your heuristics and are more locked into your solution set.  For example, if there is a raise and you look down and see K9o, you might decide that it is not worthy of calling a raise and decide to fold.  You might miss the fact that there are 5 callers and it has now become a profitable squeeze opportunity.

In addition, looking at your hand before the action gets to you makes you become more vested in the outcome.  For example, if you look down and see JJ, you might get excited that you have a great hand.  Then when there is a raise and a reraise in front of you, you will be frustrated that you have a good hand and cannot play.  Instead, if you saw the raise and reraise in front of you, you know that you will only be able to play QQ or better.  Thus, you see JJ and fold with the same feelings as if you had 72o, keeping your emotional balance.

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Poker is Hard Work

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Jason Schlachter

I have been playing mostly in the Rio in their $5/$10 game, which has no cap.  This means that you can buyin for any amount you want.  This has its pluses and minuses but overall, leads to a few very, very, profitable situations over the course of a trip.  These situations occur because most opponents aren’t used to have so much money in front of them, and the basic strategy varies a lot based on how many big blinds you have.

This makes paying attention to every hand extremely critical.  You never know when something you see will allow you to win a big pot because you can now act on the information you have discovered.  What this means is that every action a player takes has to be analyzed.  Did he bet, call or raise?  Did he show a hand down on the river?  Did he call or bet?  These are just a few of the many questions that need to be asked and answered about every hand played, categorized and then analyzed for use in future hands. It may seem like tedious work, but I look at each unique situation as a problem to solve and it’s a game to see if I can get it right.  It’s really fun to be right, and the bonus is that you win money when you are!

Here is a hand where the above came into play:

Someone limps, I limp behind with AQo and the cutoff raises to $40m, which he had been doing frequently and with a lot of hands, the button calls, the BB calls, the other limper calls, and I call.  So it’s 5 way to the flop for $40.  Earlier in the session the big blind turned trips and checked it from out of position on the turn hoping that someone would bet so that he could checkraise.  I had seen him do this and filed it away for later.

The flop comes KhKc4d and everyone checks the flop.

The turn is the 7s and the BB now leads $60. Using the information that I had gleaned earlier, I thought that he was likely to check trip kings on the turn.  Plus his bet looked like he was trying to win the pot cheaply with a weak hand.  So I raised to $180 and he folded.  Note that it cost me $180 to win $260 so it doesn’t have to work all that often to be correct.   He sighed and showed me 8h8c and folded saying “looks like you have a king.” I didn’t reply, but filed away “makes weak bet with weak hand in multiway pots on paired boards, and will fold to a raise” to his folder in my head for later use.

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A Very Big Pot Where Math is Important

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Jason Schlachter

I am out in Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker.  I am mainly playing cash games, mostly the $5-$10 no limit game at the RIO and the Bellagio.  Things are going well, and on  the heels of my blog earlier in the week, I was at the table for a very interesting hand.

The kid on my right was very friendly, knew a bunch about the game and was trying to play well.  He probably played ok, but made a massive error that showed some of his inexperience.  The hand goes like this:

There was a raise to $60 and 4 callers and he calls out of the big blind with 88.  There is $300 in the pot and everyone has about $3000 on the table.

The flop comes 8h7h6c.  The kid leads out $300, 3 players call and the small blind shoves for about $3000.  He was not a very good player and would often have the nuts(best possible hand) there, T9 or another straight, but there was also the possibility he was overvaluing something.

If we assume his opponent always has the straight there is $1800 in the pot and it costs him $2700 to call.  He needs to have 37.5% equity to make a call correct, and PokerStove says that he has 35% equity so if he “knows” the guy has the straight, a call costs him about $180.  The kid assumed he always has the straight and folded.

The problem is that his opponent doesn’t always have a straight there, and if he doesn’t our   equity(share of the pot) ranges from 95% to 60%, making a fold horrible.  If another person calls, then a fold is also very bad since he is getting better odds to draw to a full house.

The kid folded and two other players went allin.  Another player had 9h6h and someone had T9, and the original raiser also had T9.  That leaves him with 31% equity in a $12,000 pot where he needed 22% to break even, so it cost him 9% of $12,000 or ~$1000.

The kid and I were talking and he was telling me that he made a good fold and asked if I agreed and I didn’t say anything.  The way the situation unfolded was rare but it was an expensive mistake, and one that showed a need to understand some of the more complicated math of the game.

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What Percentage is that?

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Jason Schlachter

For those of you who don’t know me personally, I am a huge fan of The Simpsons.  I have seen every episode several times and know many of them by heart.  There is an episode where Lisa, skeptical, practical, middle Simpson child, goes with her class to see how a newspaper is created and is being shown around by an editor.  Their exchange goes like this:

Newspaper editor: …And to protect Mother Earth, each copy contains a certain percentage of recycled paper.

Lisa: And what percent is that?

Newspaper editor: Zero.(Lisa frowns)  

Newspaper editor: Zero’s a percent.

I often feel like Lisa sitting at the poker table.  Over the past year or so, newer poker terminology, that was mainly used on the internet to describe better play has permeated all the way to the amateur player.  Terms like “pot committed,” “having equity,” and “against his range” regularly fly out of my opponents mouths and are used to justify their play in a hand.  Unfortunately for them, many players have not learned the true definition of those terms and how to apply them.  They are merely window dressing, much like the editor who spoke to Lisa, and are merely making the same plays they always have with fancier new names.

It is really important to get to thoroughly understand an idea and its application, and to know specifics.  It’s not enough to say “he is bluffing some percentage of the time there,”  without having a good idea of what that percentage is.  Often times, that percentage is zero, and when doing calculations, need to include it as such, and not an unknown.

I am in Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker and will try to blog regularly while I am here with interesting thoughts and hands.

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A Reflection On 9 Years

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Jason Schlachter

This past weekend was 9 years since I graduated college and officially became a professional poker player.  It was not my intention to play poker full time when I graduated, but as I was applying for jobs, I was also playing poker and doing quite well.  I really enjoyed the strategy and thinking aspects of poker and was making a good amount of money at it, so I decided to continue indefinitely.  It’s amazing to see how far I have come in the 9 years since I started this hobby.

Poker was much more of a lucrative hobby than a job back then.  Back when I started, I used to play whenever I felt like it.  Now, I try to put in at least 40 hours a week and stick to a consistent work schedule that allows me to work when my wife is at work.   I remember using my old desktop computer from school to play, playing a few hands at a time and looking at the statistics program whenever I had a question about an opponent.  Now, I get a top of the line laptop every 2 years, so that it is fast enough for me to play 12-16 games at a time and so that it can run the necessary software I need.  I have coordinated statistics so that they are on the screen near my opponents names so I can constantly refer to them when making decisions.  No more switching back and forth between programs for me.    I have also souped up my mouse so that I can take any action I want with the click of a button.

I spend many hours a week looking through my database of hands, examining my own tendencies in order to improve them as well as looking to spot the tendencies of my opponents so that I can exploit them.  I spend hours reviewing hands and trying to figure out better ways to play them, discussing them with friends and trying to improve.  Every small edge becomes magnified because I play more than 1.5 million hands a year.  I have sought coaching from mental game experts (Tommy Angelo and Jared Tendler), in order to help me be more focused at the tables and to help deal with the inevitable swings that occur in poker.

Over the course of the last 9 years I have switched games several times from limit hold’em to no limit hold’em sprinkling in a few tournaments and a bit of omaha.  At each step I have been lucky enough to be ahead of the learning curve and have found techniques and changed my poker game to be successful.

I still vividly remember celebrating the first time I won a seat to the World Series of Poker Main Event and being so excited to play in it.  I have played in the World Series of Poker several times since then in addition to the European Poker Tour Championship.  Each time I played was a fun and rewarding experience and I hope to play more of them in the future.

Unfortunately, over the past 9 years, I have not been alone in my pursuit of playing better poker.  Over the last 4 years especially, many more people have become professionals and use the same tools and techniques that I do. This has made the games tougher as a whole, but I enjoy the challenge of competing against better opponents.  Everyone has aspects of their game that are weaker and it is my job, literally, to take advantage of those weaknesses.

I love the life that playing poker has afforded me especially the flexibility in my schedule.  I am excited to continue being a professional poker player and look forward to looking back in another 9 years with hopefully even greater successes!

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