WSOP 2010 Main Event: Days 1 and 2
The majority of professional poker players consider the WSOP main event a combination of the most anticipated and most dreaded tournament of the year. Everyone dreams of the impossibly large score you make if you final table it, not to mention the fame and notoriety that comes with it within the industry. Others take the event with the seriousness of a zealot, finding themselves absolutely shattered when their journey through the event reaches it's destination in the form of an early knock out. I ran fairly deep in my first attempt at the age of 21 and haven't cashed it since. I view the main event as an excellent opportunity, but at the end of the day just another tournament and nothing to lose my shit over. I'm generally much too busy losing my backers money in it instead.
I elected to play day C of the main. Day A was not suitable because it was July 5th and I intended to be raging drunk throughout the 4th. Day B didn't work because I needed to pick someone up from the airport. Day D presented the highly improbable yet still possible chance of a lock out, and so Day C it was. I caught a ride with my roommate Aejones, who despite his online persona proved to be the most sensible and mature of the dozen or so young men who lived in our house throughout the summer. He also got us there in time for the start of the event, perhaps the second or third time that had happened on a day one all series for me.
I found my seat in the sea of tables full of people within the Pavillion room. It was mostly devoid of known and young players, outside online MTT player WiscoMurray a few seats on my left and a roommate of friend Mark Vos on my right. Much of the table was middle aged to older gentleman, and there was a woman perhaps in her young 30's on my direct left. Jack Effel brought Joe Cada on to the stage and had him make the "Shuffle up and deal!" announcement.
Things were pretty loose in the early goings. Some of the players were aggressive, but quite a few seemed pretty tight weak. Not long into the first level I played my first large pot:
Effective stacks: 30,000
Blinds: 50/100. I hold JsJc in the SB.
Preflop: UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to 225, two folds, MP2 calls, folds to me in the SB, I 3 bet to 1025, BB folds, UTG folds, MP2 calls.
I think flatting is fine here too, but the opener had been real active and MP2 was pretty loose passive post flop, so I wanted more money in the pot.
Flop: 4h 6h 8c
I bet 1500, MP2 calls.
Turn: 5c
I bet 2700, MP2 calls.
River: 5h
I check, MP2 bets 4500, I fold.
I think he was definitely loose enough to just be calling down with his flush draws, plus the possibility of a suited connector that'd made a straight, so I went with the fold.
The table allowed me to open pretty widely and there was very little 3 betting. Eventually the woman on my left decided to be the first one to make it happen:
Effective stacks: ~28,000
Blinds: 100/200. I hold 3c3h in MP1.
Preflop: Folds to me, I raise to 600, MP2 rerraises to 1400, folds back to me, I call.
Flop: Tc Kd Qs
I check, she checks behind.
Turn: 3c
I bet 2400, she calls.
River: Ac
And with that card I now beat nothing in her range that bets and absolutely no worse hands called a bet. I checked intending to fold but got a free showdown when she checked behind then tabled a set of queens.
Things continued to go poorly and I lost the majority of the small pots I played without note. We had a dealer sit down who was about 60 and an absolute stitch. One of the first thing he says upon arrival is "Hey did you guys hear they fixed that oil leak in the Gulf?"
"No they didn't" the guy in seat 5 replied instantly.
"Sure they did, they just put a wedding ring around it and it stopped putting out."
The table broke into unanimous laughter, lady beside me and all. His continual joking enticed conversation and the table become real fun. At one point we were discussing how some of us had sold off pieces or had backers, and the lady on my left discussed that many people she knew had a percent of her in the tournament. "You remind me of my ex-wife" said the dealer, "Everyone in the neighborhood had a piece of her too." Somewhere between the barrage of Dangerfieldesque one liners we also played some poker:
My stack: ~22,000
button: ~18,000
Blinds: 150/300 with 25 ante. I hold 3h 3d UTG.
Preflop: I raise to 800, folds to the button, the button calls, both blinds fold.
Flop: 4 6 7 rainbow
I bet 1200, the button called.
Turn: 5
The button was a very tight weak player who seemed totally incapable of betting without a big hand. He was also the type to fold some decent type over pairs on a scary board if I just barreled down hard. I decided to check because I thought he'd call a really large river bet a high percent of the time. Instead of the expected check, he bet 1275, and I called.
River: J
I check, the button bets 3025, and I call thinking that with this guy there's probably no worse hands that call a raise since he's a huge nit, though one could make an argument for check min raising here or something to get calls from sets. Either way he turned over Td8d. Looking at this hand on paper now it seems weird to justify playing it so passively as against many in the WSOP the turn seems like a clear bet for value, but I suppose I had a decent read at the time.
A little bit before dinner our table is broken up and I'm moved to the very far corner of the room. Waiting for me on the table are 2+2 posters Da_Captain, NoahSD (a guy who coached me a few years back), and USCSwimmer. There's also a loudly dressed older woman with dark hair with a strange demeanor with a mountain of chips a few on my left. She keeps saying that she hasn't had a drink in years, yet her words are slowly slurred out and her play is as erratic as a drunk. It was with that read that I entered my next major pot:
My stack: ~24,000
Lady UTG+1: ~75,000
Blinds 150/300, I hold KcTc in the SB.
Preflop: UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to 800, MP1 calls, two folds, CO calls, button folds, I call, BB folds.
Flop: Ks Qd 4c
I check, she bets 2400, MP1 and CO fold, I call.
Turn: 4h
I check, she checks behind.
River: 6s
I decided that if she had a better K she would bet it pretty much always on the turn, KQ included. I was splitting with KJ, and I assumed she would check back some of her queens and mid pairs that might peel a small river bet. I bet 2500, she raises to 7200, and I fold assuming she checked back a monster on the turn.
The woman continued to play a huge percentage of pots and bet with reckless abandon, but winning many of the hands she entered. She bet almost always at people who checked, and often barreled multiple streets. She had a certain obsession with keeping her stacks nice and even, and all chips that prevented this from happening were a certainty to be spewed into the pot, cast away for having created a flaw in her elaborate design. We got involved again at the 200/400 level:
My stack: ~22,000
Lady in BB: ~80,000
Blinds 200/400 with a 50 ante. I hold A5o in the CO.
Preflop: UTG folds, UTG+1 limps. UTG+1 had been a very loose passive player, that had limp folded and limp/called then check/folded the flop numerous times before. When it folded to me I raised it up to 1500. The button and SB folded, the lady in the BB called, and the limper called.
Flop: As 8c 2s
She checks, UTG+1 checks, I check.
Turn: 3s
She bets 3000, UTG+1 folds, I call.
River: 6h
She bets 4500, I call immediately expecting to be way good, and get AK put right down in my face. My starting stack crumbled all the way down to 13,000.
Conversation was also quite active at that table as well, particularly since I knew so many players. Mid way through the 200/400 level, Da_Captain, aka Lance, began attempting to talk the table into a large round of white Russians. Lance is a long haired guy of perhaps 40 who sailed around the world in a small boat and bears a striking resemblance to "The dude" from The Big Lebowski. I was ordered one despite my protests (I mean, who could resist the affable and easy going charm of "the dude"?), as were numerous others and USCSwimmer, who said he was something like eight or nine beers into the evening thus far. He was maintaining nicely. Our round arrived with only 20 minutes or so of play left as I continued to be card dead on my short stack. Finally, with three hands left in the evening, I got involved in a large pot while I slowly slipped my milky alcoholic concoction:
My stack: ~13,000
BB: ~90,000
Blinds 200/400 with a 50 ante. I hold QsQh on the HJ.
Preflop: folds to MP2, MP2 raises to 1000, folds to me on the HJ, I raise to 2650, folds to the BB, the BB calls, the MP2 player folds. The BB was an older guy who seemed to be playing real loose.
Flop: Jd Td Jc
The BB player checks, I bet 3500, he called. I feel like a lot of my bet sizing in this report seems odd, but players in the WSOP seem to take all-ins so deathly serious that I often go for betting smaller in favor of shoving in spots that are close when going for value. I figured with my sizing every under pair would peel one then be close to committed by the turn when it was so little more. I assumed most strong draws would be check shoving on me, so it'd wind up with the same result as shoving against that portion of his range.
Turn: 3c
He leads 7000 which was the remains of my stack, and I called immediately. He tabled KcQc and I stood up thinking I was about to bust on the third to last hand of the day. Fortunately for me the river bricked out a 6s and I moved up to a bit over 27,000 in chips, just below starting stack. The dude ordered another round of white Russians, and all was well in the world. I caught a ride home with KingDan, Ansky, and Starky, with Dan particularly enthralled as he'd ended with a very large stack.
~
I woke up at the start of day 2 a little before 11:00am. It normally doesn't take me long to get ready despite my addiction to thorough attire, and I was out in the kitchen by 11:20. I had anticipated catching a ride with the three guys I'd been driven home by on our day one, but I found the kitchen to be empty. Matty was hanging around the couch, which he'd been living on since moving in a week or so prior.
"Where are the other guys? Did they leave?"
"Uhhh, yea....I think so."
"Shit...that's not good. I'll give them a call."
I called Starky and found they'd left but were merely a few blocks away on Cactus road. I'd never imagined they'd get out the door so early. They turned around, picked me up, and apologized for forgetting. I was quiet and lost in my own thoughts most of the ride while Dan was chirping away excitedly about how he was going to crush it all day. The parking lot was filled to the brim and we found some spot near the back. We hurried up into the players entrance of the Rio, wished each other luck, and ran off to our tables. Waiting for me at mine was online MTT regular BadcardsAA aka Raj, and Australian old school pro and consummate gentleman Gary Benson. Raj is always happy to have a chat on the table, and the young guy on my immediate right was soon involved and asking all kinds of questions about the guys I was living with.
Things went very smoothly early. I found many good hands, and the times I whiffed the flop my opponent often folded to a bet. At one point while chipping up I used a quick maneuver I thought up on the fly. I'd noticed an attractive and revealingly dressed woman give David Williams a kiss on the rail then continue to sweat him for some time. At one point I opened wide in MP1 and it folded to Raj in the BB who looked down at his cards then went for chips as if to call. "Don't do Raj" I announced "I'm trying to stare at David Williams girlfriend here." The entire table quickly head turned in the direction of my comment, Raj and the dealer included. Conversation broke out about the young woman of such prominent decolletage, distracting the action. Raj looked back at his cards, glanced again to the woman, re-checked his cards, then folded. The Italian guy who looked like Rafael Nadal said something brightly in Italian to nobody in particular. I turned to him and said slyly "Maaaaalto bene."
"Ah yes! Malto bene!!" he repeated with a smile.
Everything went easily all day. I won almost all my small and medium pots, all the small bluffs worked, and I was put in zero difficult decisions. I'd run my stack up to 42,000 before I got involved in a large pot:
My stack: ~42,000
Gary Benson's stack: ~90,000
Blinds are 300/600 with a 75 ante. I hold 8c8d UTG.
Preflop: I raise to 1500, folds around to Gary in the SB, Gary calls, BB folds. Gary generally plays on the tight side, but a very smart and generally aggressive tight, and he's been one of the more successful guys over the history of tournament poker in Australia.
Flop: K 9 8 rainbow
Gary checks, I bet 2500, Gary calls.
Turn: K
Gary bets, I bet 6000, Gary check raises to 15000, I call.
River: T
Gary bets 18000, I shove for 5400 more, and after unhappily thinking a moment he makes the call. I table my hand and he elects to muck his, which I'd guess was likely AK seeing as I doubt Gary raises the turn for value since there aren't many worse hands that will call him.
I continued to chip up steadily until dinner, which I went to with a group of guys included the now busted Raj, 2+2 poster Foucault, the guy who was sitting next to me, and my roommate KingDan. Throughout the entire WSOP I ate every dinner break I made except one at the Indian restaurant, Gaylord's. I feel it's definitely the best food in the Rio and the service there is excellent about attending to the guys who are in the tournaments.
The day wound up playing out quietly. I won a few small pots, semi bluff turn raised an open ended straight draw on one of the last hands of the day, and finished up with a little over 100,000 in chips. I caught a ride home with Starky and Dan, Ansky having made his escape of the Rio after busting. Even though the day proceeded without incident, I found myself surprisingly exhausted for a not so long day of poker. I looked forward to getting some rest over the next couple of off days.
The Theory of Grinding
It will come as a surprise to very few people that those who become the most talented at a certain skill set are those who practice the most and spend their time the most efficiently. It's no secret that in order to excel at something, you have to do it with enormous volume, repetition, and frequency, particularly if it is in a field where your competition will be doing likewise. Poker is just such a field, and a difficult field to stay at the top of because its demand for time forces us into a conflict of interest between pursuing excellence within the game and pursuing our passions outside of it in order to become a more well rounded person. Additionally, a sect of our competition will have few interests or activities outside of poker, lending them the opportunity to envelop themselves within the game and with a fervor that is difficult to match for those of us with more obligations.
What many people aren't aware of is their potential. We generally assume that we are naturally talented at certain activities and functions and that our capacity for learning the others is limited by genetics, resources, time, opportunity, or our own apathy. As a result of years of social conditioning we have had programmed into our personalities what are known as "limiting beliefs": assumptions we make about we are able and unable to do based on our own experiences, what society has told/taught us, and the feedback we get from peers and loved ones. Limiting beliefs are especially restrictive and damaging to those who have no prior success to draw upon; if you were never successful at one thing what makes you think you could possibly be successful at something else? We often believe that we are capable of what we are currently doing and perhaps a little more, and few of us have the confidence, ambition, or sheer audacity to believe that we have the ability to be elite at something, particularly something that's highly competitive. The truth is however, that you have a near endless supply of potential and options, and over the last few years I have watched my own limiting beliefs get shattered so many times that I now understand that near anything is possible.
Of course, all of this falls under the scope of reality and sensibility. I am a 25 year old man of 6'1" and no matter how much I want it and work at it I will never be a center in the NBA. What I am capable of however, is becoming astoundingly good at basketball, were I so inclined, even though I have near zero natural talent at the sport. Most people assume too high a degree of correlation between natural talent and success, but it turns out that our perception of natural talent is often exaggerated or illusion. The truly relevant causality is in practice; hours upon hours of practice. Writes Malcolm Gladwell in his masterpiece Outliers:
For almost a generation, psychologists around the world have been engaged in a spirited debate over a question that most of us would consider to have been settled years ago. The question is this: is there such a thing as innate talent? The obvious answer is yes. Not every hockey player born in January ends up playing at the professional level. Only some do-the innately talented ones. Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play the bigger the role preparation seems to play.
Exhibit A in the talent argument is a study done in the early 1990's by the psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and two colleagues at Berlin's elite Academy of Music. With the help of the Academy's professors, they divided the school's violinists into three groups. In the first group were the stars, the students with the potential to become world-class soloists. In the second were those judged to be merely "good." In the third were students who were unlikely to ever play professionally and who intended to be music teachers in the public school system. All of the violinists were then asked the same question: over the course of your entire career, ever since you first picked up the violin, how many hours have you practiced?
Everyone from all three groups started playing at roughly the same age, around five years old. In those first few years, everyone practiced roughly the same amount, about two or three hours a week. But when the students were around the age of eight, real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up the best in their class began to practice more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight hours a week by age twelve, sixteen hours a week by age fourteen, and up and up, until by the age of twenty they were practicing-that is, purposefully and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get better-well over thirty hours a week. In fact, by the age of twenty, the elite performers had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice. By contrast, the merely good students had totaled eight thousand hours, and the future music teachers had totaled just over four thousand hours.
Ericsson and his colleagues then compared amateur pianists with professional pianists. The same pattern emerged. The amateurs never practiced more than about three hours a week over the course of their childhood, and by the age of twenty they had totaled two thousand hours of practice. The professionals, on the other hand, steadily increased their practice time every year, until by the age of twenty they, like the violinists, had reached ten thousand hours.
The striking thing about Ericsson's study is that he and his colleagues couldn't find any "naturals," musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any "grinds," people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn't have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.
The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.
Or as music great Charlie Parker put it "Master the instrument, master the music, then forget all that shit and play." The necessary task then becomes finding the motivation to go through so much repitition, developing the discipline to follow through with it consistently, and seeking methods to make the time spent doing so as efficient as possible. Time is your most valuable and important resource. It has taken me years of practice to reach the non-reactive and temper-less disposition I carry myself with, but the one thing that seems to still create a glimmer of annoyance from me is when someone wastes my time, because I know how precious it is and I'll never get it back.
Learning to appreciate grinding takes further reprogramming of our social conditioning, especially for Americans, as our culture puts the highest emphasis on instant gratification. In the technological age we are used to being able to obtain things, be they physical or merely informational, with great ease and low investment of our own time and resources. In order to achieve excellence you must teach yourself to be much less reactive to the short term and constantly think about what is best for you long term. You must learn to appreciate the value of the grind, or as rapper 50 Cent put it "Most people can't handle boredom. That means they can't stay on one thing until they get good at it. And they wonder why they're unhappy." To further quote The 50th Law, a book on the importance of work ethic from the combined genius of author Robert Greene and rapper 50 Cent:
Once we reach a certain level of mastery, we see there are higher levels and challenges. If we are disciplined and patient, we proceed. At each higher level, new pleasures and insights await us--ones not even suspected when we started out. We can take this as far as we want--in any human activity there is always a higher level to which we can aspire.
For thousands of years this concept of learning was an elemental part of practical wisdom. It was embedded in the concept of mastering a craft. Human survival depended on the construction of instruments, buildings, chips and more. To build them well, a person had to learn the craft, spending years as an apprentice, advancing step by step. With the advent of the printing press and books that could be distributed widely, this discipline and patience was then applied to education-to formally gaining knowledge. Those who posed as people who possessed learning, without the years of accumulating knowledge, were thought of as charlatans and quacks, to be despised.
Today, however, we have reached a dangerous point in which this elemental wisdom is being forgotten. Much of this is due to the destructive side of technology. We all understand its immense benefits and the power it has brought us. But with the intense speed and ease with which we can get what we want, a new pattern of thinking has evolved. We are by nature creatures of impatience. It has always been hard for us to want something and not have the capacity to get it. The increased speed from technology accentuates this childish aspect of our character. The slow accumulation of knowledge seems unnecessarily boring. Learning should be fun, fast, and easy. On the Internet we can make instant connections, skimming along the surface from one subject to the next. We come to value breadth of knowledge over depth, the power to move here or there rather than digging deeper to the source of a problem and finding out how things tick.
We lose a sense of process. In such an atmosphere, charlatans sprout like weeds. They offer the age-old myth of the quick transformation-the shortcut to power, beauty and success-in the form of books, CDs, seminars, ancient "secrets" brought back to life. And they find many suckers on which to prey.
This new pattern of thinking and learning is not progress. It creates a phenomenon that we shall call the "short-circuit." To reach the end of anything, to master a process, requires time, focus, and energy. When people are so distracted, their minds constantly moving from one thing to another, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain concentration on one thing for a few hours, let alone for months and years. Under this influence, the mind will tend to short-circuit; it will not be able to go all the way to the end of a task. It will want to move on to something else that seems more enticing. It becomes hard to make things well when the focus is broken-which is why we find a gradual increase in products that are shoddy, made with less and less attention to detail.
Understand: the real secret, the real formula for power in this world, lies in accepting the ugly reality that learning requires a process, and this in turn demands patience and the ability to endure drudge work. It is not sexy or seductive at first glance, but this truth is based on something real and substantial-an age-old wisdom that will never be overturned. The key is the level of your desire. If you are really after power and mastery, then you will absorb this idea deeply and engrave it in your mind: there are no shortcuts. You will distrust anything that is fast and easy. You will be able to endure the initial months of dull, repetitive labor, because you have an overall goal. This will prevent you from short-circuiting, knowing many things but mastering none of them. In the end, what you really will be doing is mastering yourself-your impatience, your fear of boredom and empty time, your need for constant fun and amusement.
Now that we understand the importance of a determined work ethic and the time we devote to it our goal becomes making the time we spend as efficient and effective as possible. To highlight this idea, I quote Timothy Ferriss from his best selling book on modern business, The 4-Hour Workweek:
Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to yours goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.
I would consider the best door-to-door salesperson efficient-that is, refined and excellent at selling door-to-door without wasting time--but utterly ineffective. He or she would sell more using a better vehicle such as e-mail or direct mail...
Here are two truisms to keep in mind:
1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.
From this moment forward, remember this: What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things...
Four years ago, an economist changed my life forever. It's a shame I never had a chance to buy him a drink. My dear Vilfredo diet almost 100 years ago.
Vilfredo Pareto was a wily and controversial economist-cum-sociologist who lived from 1848 to 1923. An engineer by training, he started his varied career managing coal mines and later succeeded Leon Walras as the chair of political economy at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. His seminal work, Cours d'economie politique, included a then little-explored "law" of income distribution that would later bear his name: "Pareto's Law" or the "Pareto Distribution," in the last decade also popularly called the "80/20 Principle."
The mathematical formula he used to demonstrate a grossly uneven but predictable distribution of wealth in society--80% of the wealth and income was produced and possessed by 20% of the population--also applied outside of economics. Indeed, it could be found almost everywhere. Eighty percent of Pareto's garden peas were produced by 20% of the pea-pods he had planted, for example.
Pareto's Law can be summarized as follows: 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs. Alternative ways to phrase this, depending on the context, include:
80% of the consequences flow from 20% of the causes.
80% of the results come from 20% of the effort and time.
80% of company profits come from 20% of the products and customers.
80% of all stock market gains are realized by 20% of the investors and 20% of an individual portfolio.
The list is infinitely long and diverse, and the ratio is often skewed even more severely: 90/10, 95/5, and 99/1 are not uncommon, but the minimum ratio to seek is 80/20.
Naturally, the portion most relevant to improving our ability at something as time consuming as poker is that "80% of the results come from 20% of the effort and time." All these ideas have been sifting around in my head for a while now, and when the WSOP is over I intend to put them into practice as thoroughly as possible. As a result, I've been contemplating what my options are for improvement, which I should pursue, and how I should pursue them in the manner that is the best use of my time. I've come up with ten ways in which one attempts to improve their poker game. They are, in no particular order:
1. Playing poker
2. Hiring a coach
3. Watching training videos
4. Reading forums
5. Reading books.
6. Reading articles.
7. Reviewing your own hand histories.
8. Reviewing the hand histories of others.
9. Discussing hands with friends or watching them play.
10. Watching poker television.
What's next necessary is a break down of the effectiveness and efficiency of each option.
1. Playing poker: Obviously most important for improvement is actually practicing the skill itself. How much you should play compared to how much you should attempt to improve through other methods depends on a variety of factors, including how much you need the income (assuming you're already profitable), how much volume you personally find you can tolerate, what your outside obligations and responsibilities are, and numerous others. I find that I'm capable of putting in my personal maximum volume at poker by creating a routine, as then time becomes set aside for specifically that purpose and any other opportunity I'm offered can be declined because I've already created a mental obligation to myself to be at work (unless the opportunity that comes along is much too good to resist, which happens here and there.) I also seek ways to make my play overlap with my study; during down periods in tournaments I read poker forums and when I encounter a spot I'm uncertain about I immediately copy/paste the specific hand history into a notepad file so that I can review it later or post it if I'm still confused.
2. Hiring a coach: Hiring a coach is an excellent and highly effective way to improve. The drawback is the cost, as many poker coaches charge somewhere between $100-$500 an hour to work with them. On the plus side, a coach will specifically address your questions and leaks and can instill a huge amount of knowledge in a short period of time. I think if you were to hire a coach and do a lesson in person or over Skype it is a smart idea to take notes about what he says and explains throughout the session. This is because an hour spent with someone who can impart so much knowledge can lead to a sort of information-overload, making remembering everything at once quite difficult when it needs to be applied in the future. Having permanent notes to review will allow a deeper level of comprehension over time when you can more gradually reflect on what he's told you at your own pace.
3. Watching training videos: I consider training videos to be a mixed bag. I intend to watch many poker training videos over the next six months, but before I do that I'm going to inquire amongst my peers which guys have made the best and highest quality videos, as I don't want to waste time watching videos which won't be of much use. Additionally, it's important to identify which guys are amazing players but aren't capable of articulating their ideas in video. In these instances, watching their videos becomes inefficient because you have to remember their patterns then spend more time breaking them down and seeking outside opinions to further your understanding of that players motivation for his actions.
4. Reading forums: My career was essentially built through 2+2 poker forums, and I owe them a huge amount of credit for getting to the level I've achieved. However, there are effective and ineffective ways to use the forums. If you aren't that familiar with who each poster is online then it's important to investigate his results and see whether his opinion merits the consideration he seems to think it does. Some posters who are losing players over a huge amount of volume make posts that are surprisingly thoughtful and articulate and are worded quite confidently, creating land mines of potential misinformation. I'm not saying you can't consider the thoughts and opinions of losing or developing players, but if someone's going to give me advice on how to properly execute something I'd like to know that they are living proof of that information's legitimacy. When posting I strongly advise you to be polite and respectful to your other posters, and when giving advice think about how to frame it in a way that seeks to impart knowledge and generate discussion instead of just point out that you're smarter than fellow posters.
5. Reading books: I must admit I am not terribly familiar with some of the more modern poker literature. At the beginning of my career I read every book I could get my hands on, and while some of them are still relevant and merit rereading there are others that have become obviously obsolete. Additionally, books again offer the potential for information overload, so I prefer to go through them and note or highlight key sections then try to commit them to memory through more repetitive means. For example, one thing I want to do after the series is take the optimal shoving and calling range charts in the back of Lee Nelson's Kill Everyone and put them on flash cards. Then I'll make myself run through the flash cards over and over until I have programmed the optimal ranges into my brain, reducing the amount of variables I have to consider when playing and time spent plugging things into a program like Pokerstove.
6. Reading articles: Much like reading books or forums the most important aspect is making sure that the person whose article your reading actually knows what the fuck they're talking about. It's not that I think someone not as good at poker as me is incapable of teaching me something, but if I have the option of reading articles from 50 different authors and only have time to read what 10 of them have written then I'd better make sure I'm reading the 10 guys who are the combination of the best player and best writer. Don't simply address the potential quality of the article simply by the quality of the player, as a genius poker player who has no idea how to explain himself will be useless to you in article form.
7. Reviewing your own hand histories: I believe that reviewing your own hand histories are a great way to improve. It's very difficult to decipher the optimal decision during every hand of poker over the course of your session, and it's in review that you'll catch some mistakes you made that become obvious once you have a moment to reflect. The issue with reviewing hand histories is that it is time consuming. As a result, make sure to use a program like Universal Hand History Replayer that designates with colored dots which hands you won and lost chips in. Wasting precious minutes watching yourself fold 94o early in a tournament won't do anything for your improvement, though I think there is merit to watching almost every hand of play as the tournament progresses to see what kind of meta-game details you may have failed to notice during play and to make sure you're not playing overly loose or tight in certain pre-flop situations. I think the best way to review your own hand histories is the evening after you played the session or within a few days after it, as you will retain the most memory about what kind of factors lead you into making your decisions during the hand.
8. Reviewing other players hand histories: Reviewing others hand histories is a great way to improve, especially if you can obtain the histories of excellent players. Some players are extremely protective of their hand histories, while some others, such as myself, will give them to you with so much as a polite request via PM. Again, it's important to make sure to review them in a replayer that allows you to skip obvious hands, though I would put a greater emphasis on watching additional hands when reviewing someone else's hand history because you're more likely to discover patterns that you previously hadn't considered. Also, it seems obvious that you put a greater emphasis on reviewing mid to late stage play, as much of what occurs early in a tournament is more straight forward as a result of many players mass-multi tabling. When watching, look for the things that you don't do, and if you can't understand the players motivation for it then note it and ask friends or post it on a forum.
9. Discussing hands with friends and watching them play: This is not a one size fits all method of improvement. Discussing hands with friends or watching them play is useful when friends are somewhat comparable to you in skill. Doing this with someone much worse than you will wind up with your practically coaching, and doing this with someone vastly better than you will wind up with a lot of ideas going over your head because you don't have the necessary knowledge and experience to fill in the context of what they've told you. This can even change based on which game you're talking about. For example, I often discuss hands with my roommates KingDan and Luckychewy, and when we're discussing tournaments we are on at least somewhat of a comparable level and it is rare that anything they say goes entirely over my head despite their both being better than me. However, when I attempt to watch them playing a high stakes cash session it is not particularly useful or efficient for me because so much of what they're doing has yet to become standard due to my lack of cash experience, causing me to ask questions about concepts which are currently outside my level of comprehension because I don't have all the necessary fundamental knowledge yet. You've got to crawl before you can walk, and if you can't even crawl yet then asking everyone to teach you how to walk isn't going to work out.
10. Watching poker television: This a method for improvement I basically never use. I watch very little poker television and if I do it's from an entertainment standpoint and not an educational one. Much of what we see in televised poker is the most important and intense hands without any of the context or history of the hands leading up to them, causing the players decisions and actions to be only the surface information of a decision that had so much more go into it. Additionally, some clever players use televised poker as a form of advertising and make plays on shows that they're aware are immediately -EV in order to entice action at later dates away from the camera.
Also important in improving efficiency is finding ways to overlap learning methods. Reviewing your hand history or the hand history of others with a friend while you both take notes checks several boxes at once. Seek ways to combine methods that are naturally symbiotic and make the most of your time expendature.
After having put so much thought into these kinds of things I've created what I believe is the most appropriate way for someone like myself to improve over the next six months. When the WSOP ends I'll start playing online regularly again, but keep my volume lower at the beginning in order to commit more time towards watching videos, being coached by my roommates, and reviewing the hand histories of other excellent players. As those methods become less and less necessary I will switch my focus to a higher degree of play and review of it, coupled with additional coaching as I attempt to climb higher up the cash and tournament ladder. How you should structure your own improvement process is dependent on a number of factors that I can't advise you on, but hopefully within this article you've been given the understanding that with enough work, you can be as good as you want to be.
Cliffnotes: Grind real hard and you'll get all the gold.
WSOP 2010 Report 7
I believe that writers are at their best when they are fucked up. Hemmingway and Thompson were fucked up the vast majority of the time, which is not to say I think myself comparable to those giants, but then let's not pretend I didn't intentionally take a few cues where I sense them. I'll pass on all the acid though.
I skip ahead enormously with this entry. I have no particular hand histories to report; not because I am at a lack for them, but simply because I cannot be fucked finding them and continuing things in a proper chronological order, though I'll get back to it later. I busted out of my 23rd poker tournament this summer today, making for my fifth cash. In some regards I feel quite good about how things have gone; in others I am less than pleased with myself due to one epic blowup and a greater sense from speaking with my roommates that I still miss so many angles and opportunities in this game of ours. It is an exhausting thing to be surrounded by so much talent, even though it is simultaneously such an appreciated resource and opportunity. A realistic person like myself cannot help but to come home and feel like a fucking idiot so many times I compare my thought process to that of my roommates and it is my hope that in the next six months of work and study I can potentially be on their level, or at the worst, close to it.
I am intoxicated because I went to the Doyle's room party tonight. It was an excellent time, and I had much to drink. I was all over the place as per usual, and in high spirits after "Busting that bloody donkament and getting my evening free to get drunk!" How did I bust? Well I actually thought it was semi interesting, and I ought to put at least one dash of strategy banter in an entry that will be predominately drunken banter:
My stack: ~50,000
Button: ~70,000
Blinds 800/1600 with a 200 ante. I hold QsQd UTG 8 handed.
It was the first hand after returning from dinner break. I'd gone to dinner with online players 'Apestyles' and 'Grafyx'. Grafyx is a good ol' boy online poker player that I've known for years and a frequent poster on 2+2, and as nice as they come. Apestyles is the well known and much beloved Jon Van Fleet, online tournament mega badass who has written two books and quit drinking and the enjoyment of food in order to drop from something like 30% body-fat to 12. The homie is looking smooth. Oh right, I'm trying to talk about a hand here.
Additionally on the table was Kara Scott, who is relevant to the story because:
A. Kara Scott is relevant to all stories in which there is any potential for Kara Scott inclusion.
B. She said something during the hand.
The villain in the hand was a young guy who had been on the table for about 20 minutes prior to the break. He was young, very blond, and stoic; so I assumed he was Scandinavian and like the rest of them, was a sort of terminator-esque, cold, hard, calculating poker machine who would not experience emotion even were he to witness a baby rabbit being hit by a speeding truck. Such is the determination of the Scandi's.
Leading up to the hand the player in the BB had still not returned from break, apparently having ordered food too delicious for his time constraint. I raised things up to 3600 and after a couple players folded Kara remarked "You're just doing that cause the BB isn't here."
Don't think I believe her to be rude. Kara Scott is anything but; an intelligent and personable woman who is stunning both on and off the camera. Imagine the look on my fucking face when I rocked up to the table today and found her waiting two seats over to my right. Having talked with her today I found out she's actually Canadian but spent 10 years in England, leaving her with a similar style of quasi-fake accent that I find myself with after five in Australia. I watched a man tell her in nearly the most certain terms that he had KK today after she 3-bet him, and offered to show when the hand was over. Kara made a slow and painful lay-down with what she said was AK, and her opponent instantly flipped up the kings he promised he'd had. "God I wish I were a hot chick" Ape and I both said instantly. Having spoken with her it's quite clear why she's one of the few women in poker who somehow manages to avoid an avalanche of hate. There's nothing to hate on with her; she's as attractive as she is charming. Norman Chad has excellent taste. I digress from the hand though, again.
Things folded around to the button who counted out the necessary chips and called. I could swear there was some red gleam behind his eyes. The blinds folded.
Flop: 3h Ts Js
I bet 5500, the button calls.
Turn: 9h
I thought over my options slowly before taking action. I decided that he would likely 3-bet TT or JJ pre given that the BB was missing from the hand and I'm clearly pretty aggressive, so if I bet and he moved in I should likely call since his range will likely be a combination of two pairs, flush draws, occasional straights, strong top pairs, or combo draws; of which there are many he can push with. I counted out a bet of 11,000 (which should be larger) and slid it into the center of the table. My opponent thought briefly and announced that he was all in. "Yea well I told myself if you did that, that I was gonna call...yea I call." My opponent flipped up KQ and had me drawing to three outs for a chop. The river bricked a 7 and I was busted. I made some crack about how I was going to throw my coffee in his face which he laughed about and started shaking hands and wishing people luck around the table, then announced cheerfully "Sweet as! Time to get drunk!" And as my grammar and this entry shows, I made a proper go of it.
Lara Miller had invited me to the Doyle's room party at Blush, and I called up my friend Devo to arrange some company as I knew he was planning on going. As a resutl of recent happenings and study, I find that I am ultra direct when I go out these days. I tell women I am a polyamorist as quick as possible so I can gauge their reaction then continue from there. For those not familiar:
"Polyamory (from Greek πολυ [poly, meaning many or several] and Latin amor [love]) is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved."
So the internet says. Naturally it's Greek because back in the day, well that's just how the Greek's rolled. When I tell people what I am in real life I always get the same response: "Oh, you just haven't met the right girl yet." The right girl for someone like me is the kind of girl who has the same ideas about the whole thing that I do, and the two of us will be so pleased to find someone who isn't fussed about what they do away from one another and can come home to tell each other the story with no dramas. I tell the women that I date that they are free to go out with me and go home with another man; there is always weed waiting for me at the house and it's really not a big deal. I have met few polyamorous women in my day and although there are plenty of girls who will date casually because they're not at a stage to settle, there are very few women are genuine "polys". I knew one, an amazing woman, but some cocksucker went and ruined her by talking her into being exclusive then cheating on her. I told her it was "Like watching the Mona Lisa get kicked in the face, it makes me so angry". She said I was very sweet, and nice that I wasn't being a robot for once.
It is such an awkward thing to be a polyamorist. Women will disqualify a polyamorist because they are certain there is never any potential for an exclusive relationship yet not a guy who pretends that he might consider one despite being a blatant player. Conversely, some women will intentionally seek you out because it's understand that you are absolutely the correct person to have casual sex with and there will be nothing weird after. It is a double edged sword; but the assumption is always made that you're out to avoid intimacy at all costs. This is by no means the case, and I can say that no matter what kind of hell I raise around Vegas I always wind up missing my girlfriend at the end of the day. From what I can tell about speaking to people who have gone through many relationships, there are in fact only a select few people that you really, genuinely click with. As much as I love the physical aspect of it all, it's really the quiet and personal moments that you really remember about someone. Getting blown in the back room of a Starbucks is a better story, but Valentine's day with my girlfriend is the better memory, and to hell with the juxtaposition of it all.
The series is almost over now. I have only the main event left to play, and if I can run good perhaps I'll last longer than the two hours I made it last year. I am so excited for it this time around, and even if it doesn't go well there is still the Bellagio Cup up after. When it's all over there will be no rest for this wicked; I intend to play an enormous volume of both online tournaments and cash games between mid July and January with the only break being in August when I return to Wisconsin to visit family and attend a wedding. I hope to fulfill my dream of being the "Worst Man" at one of my friends weddings. When I return to Vegas I feel like with the combination of an enormous work ethic and the coaching of my talented roommates I just might have the potential to do something with myself other than being yet another drunken writer.
WSOP 2010 Report 6
I arrived at my table for day two of the $5,000 six max one hand late into play. I’d forgot it was Friday and the traffic heading into the strip on the Vegas 15 was heavier than expected, causing a delay. I rushed through the hallways of the Rio in my suit and tie and started stacking up my gigantic pile of chips the second I arrived at the table. Waiting for me were professionals ‘Mr.Smokey’ and Mclean Karr and three players that were unknowns to me, which is a pretty good situation for a tournament which is mostly packed with known professionals. Just a few hands in I was already involved in the action:
My stack: ~185k, CO: ~60k, SB: ~100k,
Blinds: 600/1200 with 100 ante. I hold 8d8c in the BB.
Preflop: Folds to the CO, CO raises to 3200, folds to the SB, SB calls, I call in the BB.
Flop: 3s 6d 6s
SB checks, I check, CO bets 8000, SB folds, I call.
Turn: 5h
I check, CO bets 13000, I call.
River: Ac
I check, CO shoves, I fold.
My stack drained slowly over time. Every instance in which I tried to 3-bet someone light was either met with a 4 bet or a call and additional aggression post flop. Meanwhile, Mclean on my immediate left took over Shawn Buchanon’s job of making my life hell from the previous day and did a fine job of it, pummeling me with a near endless string of 3 bets. My house mate and backer Mike ’Mad Dog’ Watson was moved to the table after the weaker players were busted out, and not long into his arrival I found myself in a three way pot with both him and McLean.
My stack: ~130,000
Mclean: ~200,000
Watts aka Maaaaaaaaad Doooooooog!!!: ~90,000
Blinds 800/1600 with 200 ante. I hold As Ts on the HJ.
Preflop: UTG folds, I raise to 4000, Mclean 3 bets to 12000, folds to Mad Dog in the SB, Mad Dog calls, BB folds, I call.
Mad Dog’s flat is definitely scary and likely a strong hand, but he’s also out of position and I feel that when I flat I very rarely lose a huge pot to him post flop since he rarely has a better ace. If he has AK he 4 bets pre, and AQ normally makes a 4 bet or fold decision, though it’s quite possible he’ll flat something like AQs there. Additionally, I’ll have relative position and an excellent stack to check-raise if we wind up flopping a large draw.
Flop: 3s Ad 8c
Everyone checks.
Turn: 4d
Mad Dog checks, I bet 25,000, Mclean calls, Mad Dog folds.
River: 4h
I check, Mclean bets 47,600. I went into the tank for quite some time in this spot and tried to think over every piece of the hand. I decided that if Mclean was calling the turn with a pair he had 3 bet preflop then there was very little chance he was turning into a bluff when I checked the river since he knows I might check my good aces considering the dynamic between us, plus he has such excellent showdown value and may believe given our history I might not fold any ace to him. Additionally, I think it’s very rare he’s pulling some kind of sick turn float given he still has Mad Dog to act behind him and his cold flat of the 3-bet preflop is likely done with either a big ace or a pair that might peel for one bet. I also believe that Mclean is smart enough to check back this flop with a big ace since he knows it’s a hard texture for him to get paid on by betting. I wound up folding.
My stack continued to drain slowly, and between watching the action and my stack dissipate I got to witness Mad Dog getting three outed for a large pot and get busted. Not long after I finally found a way to get some chips back from Mclean:
My stack: ~85,000
Mclean: ~400,000
Blinds 1000/2000 with 200 300 ante. I hold 65o in the SB. I had folded numerous SB’s to Mclean already leading up to the hand.
Preflop: Folds tome in the SB, I raise to 6000, Mclean calls.
Flop: Kh 2h 7c
I bet 7500, Mclean calls.
Turn: 8c
I bet 16000, Mclean calls.
River: 9c
I shove, Mclean tanks for a long time, seems to strongly consider calling, then lays it down.
Lucky for me our table was broken up and I got moved to one that was less aggressive and had three French guys on it. My stack hovered between 80 and 140,000 for quite some time before anything relevant happened again. Across from me on the table was Taylor ‘Elmastermind’ McFarland, who I bantered with often between hands. He’s been very successful over the last few years online and was playing quite well and aggressive on this day. I finally wound up playing another major pot when the blinds reached 2000/4000.
My stack: ~120,000
CO: ~80,000
Blinds: 2000/4000 with 500 ante. I hold JsJd UTG.
Preflop: I raise to 9000, folds to the CO, CO shoves for 80,000, folds back to me, I call. The CO shows 33.
Board: A T 2 Q 6
My stack soared back up over 200,000 and for the first time in a while, I was truly comfortable and sitting pretty, though I was actually still a dash below the average stack as there were only 30 some players left. Unfortunately, it did not last long. I held tight until the 3000/6000 level and played very few pots, mostly as a result of being card dead and the player on my right opening most of the pots in front of me. Then I decided to get a bit out of line:
My stack: ~220,000
Elmastermind: ~350,000
Blinds 3000/6000 with a 1000 ante. I hold Ts 6s on the CO five handed.
Elmastermind had been on the table the previous day when I went bet-bet-bet with KJ on the Q64K2 board blind vs. blind, so he knows I’m willing to go for three streets with top pair in spots like the one that came up:
Preflop: UTG folds, I raise to 13,500, folds to Elmastermind in the BB, BB calls.
Flop: 3c Jd 9h
BB checks, I bet 16000, BB calls.
Turn: Ac
BB checks, I bet 40000, BB calls.
River: 9d
BB checks, I think a bit and bet 85000. I'm aware that the 9 isn't the optimal card to bluff, but I felt that if I'm going to bet turn I need to bet the majority of rivers with my image (obviously no bet on a J) and I don't think there's a ton of 9's in his preflop range, plus occasionally a 9 folds the turn, though not often considering how good of a bluff card the turn is. I think he’ll fold a jack quite often on the river given my image and general style of play, plus it’s pretty hard to make a big hero call with 30 left in a major event against a guy who hasn’t gotten out of line at all. All of this sounds pretty sensible, right up until the party where you find out that after thinking things over for a while Elmastermind shoved it in my face, leading to an instant fold and leaving me with roughly 10 BB. Way to go Tony.
A few hands later I found KQdd and open shoved for 55,000 at 3k/6k. I got called by a friendly online player named Joe in the BB with A2 but luckily for me I slammed out a K on the river. As if KQ ever loses. Last time I saw KQ lose a preflop all in during a live tournament I picked up the two cards, examined them curiously and announced to the table “This is KQ.” “Yea?” replied one of the other players. “KQ never loses…I don’t understand. This is KQ yes?” I continued with a befuddled look. I stared at the cards suspiciously for a moment, set them back upon the table, and repeated “I don’t understand.”
Shortly after my double up a young Spanish guy who is friends with Leo Marget got moved to the table, which had the included benefit of her railing him and looking smoking as usual. Leo is definitely not one of those girls whose physical attractiveness gets exaggerated just because she’s a woman within poker, and from having played with her at the final table at the Aussie Millions 6 max tournament it was clear she’s pretty aggressive and smart when it comes to poker. Too bad her arrival around the table once again triggered my getting coolered out of a tournament:
My stack: ~90,000
UTG: ~79,000
Blinds 3000/6000 with a 1000 ante. I hold KcKd in the BB.
UTG is the young Spanish player who is Leo’s friend who I have little playing experience with.
Preflop: UTG raises to 12,000, folds to me in the BB, I shove, UTG instantly calls and turns over aces. I turn over my kings and start laughing. The board runs out Q high and I slide over everything but about 8000 chips. It’s safe to say, I was pretty fucked. On the plus side, I badly needed to use the bathroom and announced to the table “Perhaps finally I can take that piss, oh God please let me bust.”
I posted 3000 of my remaining eight in the SB the next hand, and when the player in early raised I stuck my chips in blind and after the BB folded I told him I’d turn my cards over one at a time. I wound up turning 76o and failed to improve against what I seem to recall being AQ, but I’m not really sure honestly. I instantly sprinted off to the bathroom, but made sure to come back and shake hands with people and wish them luck when I finished my necessary business.
I was escorted over to the pay out room, and as I always do when I bust a tournament in a money I made sure to be super nice and cheery to everyone there, first because busting never bothers me, and second because I know they deal with grumpy whiners all day and I enjoy being the outlier. I chatted up the girl at the desk about the book she was reading, cracked jokes at the woman who takes down the address information, and informed the floor man by the pay out booth that “No matter how cheery I seem now I’m about to get a hell of a lot more when I get home and start blazing.” When I got to the pay out booth I flirted with the woman there about her accent, which I unfortunately guessed wrong, then ran into Golfa and told him we should go meet some girls I know. He told me “I’m not as desensitized to all this as you are Bond” and declined. Better odds for me.