Andrew’s Blog

I’m going to attempt to break down the different styles within poker and what they mean in the real world. This is going to heavily sit with those in Europe since my analogies are based upon English Football (If anyone reading this understand what I’m saying and wants to rephrase it in terms of NFL/NBA/NHL then please do).

The reason for this post is because I disagree with a lot of the general attitude in the online poker world in regards to how the game is played (by this I mean turning around and saying THIS way is the best way in which you can win and it’s the ONLY way you should play). Poker online is a lot tougher nowadays because everyone is learning from the same information, and thus they are learning how to be the SAME player as the next guy. This is very much seen in the English Football.

Manchester United:

The reigning champions and one of the biggest names in the league. They play a very espansive, fast-paced style. They are the ultimate LAGs of the Premier league. Very rarely will United draw a game, they’ll either destroy a team by sheer attacking power or get caught by a “calling station” (suckerpunched). THATS why I love the way United play. But let’s talk about this LAG.

Loose-Aggressive-Aggressive. Very open and risk-taking, in poker terms this type of player will allow you lots of chances to take his stack. The reason is because HE is so focused on taking yours. He isn’t interested in checking down to the river (much) and wants to either take the pot off you right now or you to prove to him you’re the better hand. Try to play around with this guy and he’ll have you in knots, because you know he is bluffing and yet you can’t do a thing about it because you don’t know if this time would be “the one time he has it”.

Arsenal:

This team plays a lot more of a TAG style.  It is often said that Arsenal can “pass themselves to death”. The reason being is that they like to take their time, they use precise movements in the fact that they know what they are going to do and how they want to do it. They are in total control of the action, because they don’t allow you any. There’s almost no freedom in their actions. Creativity, yes, but true freedom no. If the ball falls right for them then they will destroy everyone in from of them. However if they are up against a real “nitty” team then they become stuck. They very rarely lose, in fact their variance is extremely less than United’s. However their wins:draw ratio is a lot tighter. They are a BREAKEVEN team.

Tight-Aggressive-Aggressive. You control everything. You know when you’re going to enter a pot, how much with and why you’re doing it. You don’t enter many pots (you keep control of the ball and thus the tempo of the game) but those you do you are wanting to take down. People can’t mess around with you because usually you’ll have something.

Chelsea/Liverpool:
These are the counter-attacking teams. Also known as the ROCKS of football (for those in the know, think Italian teams). They are the check-raisers and the calling stations with the nuts vs aggressive players. These two teams want to not lose first and win second. They can (and do) win the big trophies but it’s a true grind and not the “pretty style” that some people, this poster very much included, demand and want. Their margin of victory/defeat is usually very slim. Often if things aren’t right it’ll be a lot of breakeven results because that’s better than a slight loss.

Tight-Passive-Aggressive. This player wants YOU to make the moves. He gives control over the action and pot to you because he knows that with the nuts he can “sucker-punch” you out of the hand. In fact they can sit around for hours on end doing nothing much in particular and yet somehow they end up with a whole bunch of chips!

Rest of the bunch:

The rest of the teams are really bad. The bottom bunch who are relegated (pushed to the lower leagues) are usually Loose-Passive-Passive. Way too many leaks and no punch to their play whatsoever. The best of the rest are generally Loose-Passive-Aggressive. Again, a whole bunch of leaks which COULD be plugged but with enough skills to get a result or two at times. Yet almost every team has one thing in common when they come up against one of the big teams I mentioned. They attempt to tighten up and sucker-punch for a victory. They REALLY don’t want to lose.

So what happens and where am I going with this? Well Arsenal are the TAGs, so unless they “get the right cards” then it’s going to end up as pretty much a grind/break even experience. A TAG isn’t going to allow the other play enough room to play back and hang himself so it comes down to cards vs cards and how each poker player (team) can react to the bigpot situations.

Liverpool and Chelsea? TPA. Again they are looking for the right spots, using the right cards in order to extract the most amount of damage. If the cards don’t come, they may look for spots in order to pick off enough small pots (chances) in order to come out a slight winner. After all a slight winner is better than not being a winner.

United on the other hand don’t care about cards. Like Doyle Brunson says (immortalized by Matt Damon in the winning scene vs Teddy KGB in Rounders), they’ll keep pushing and leaning on the other team until that team either plays back or crumbles. And very rarely does the team play back. It’s a massacre. But it only works if United (a LAG) is on their A-Game. If they’re not and they come up against a decent side then they are the ones who could get destroyed. But that’s the risk they take to control every game they play.

I hope this is making sense. What has happened with the US rooms is that the fish (smaller/lower teams) are not playing back at the bigger teams. This happened with Arsenal a few seasons back. The team had gone an entire campaign undefeated but once the smaller guys spotted how to defeat the team they couldn’t buy a win for love nor money. This is why it’s a nit-fest in the US tables. The weaker guys are trying to limit the damage first and then go for the winnings second. Against a TAG, that’s the perfect way of playing because it now means the cards have more say in proceedings. A TAGgy player is going to pass themselves to death unless they get a break, or gets unlucky and lose a bundle because they get sucker-punched/counter-attacked

A really strong Rock team is going to come up stuck (not get the breaks) a lot of the time in this situation either, pretty much for the same reasons. But a LAG team like United? They’ll run right over the tight-ass mo-fos and keep smashing that hammer until either the opponent breaks or they do. And they will have the SKILLS to make sure that they very rarely break.

For me that is the key. In the short term you don’t need to match skill levels versus a TAG if you play a tight-passive-aggressive game. A weaker player does not need to go skill vs skill against a TAG, he can let the cards do the winning for him and make sure not to lose any/too much in the mean time. In the long term that statement is completely wrong. If two teams play each other over and over again the one with the greater skills wins out. But just like A-A vs 7-2o, you never know what ONE session/game will produce. Hence why the FA Cup - if you know of it - is famous for “Giant Killings”). A TAG is putting his hopes on the long-term, a +ev. Even if it’s a small value.

On the other hand a LAG is all about putting their skills vs your skills in every single game. A LAG is going to push and push and push into every player, every hand, taking every victory they can. This is why United has been so dangerous down the years. But it is also why the “standard” skill level of online poker appears to be getting higher.

US Tables - Tight, counter-attacking players who are trying to compensate for lack of skill. They don’t want to go skill vs skill, they KNOW they’ll lose.

EURO Tables - Fishy only in regards that these players DO try to match Skill vs Skill. It’s just as dangerous as the US tables but in a different way.

You see the fish everyone wants to see are those matching skill vs skill. Pushing AI with top pair no kicker. But what they are finding are fish who are trying to limit their actions so that WE open up and get caught on the counter. They are playing a style which lowers the potential wins of a TAG player but they aren’t raising the potential losses at the same time.

Now I’m not advocating one style over the other (although there IS a style I prefer). You have to chose what is best for you out of your personality and playing style. But it is always good to understand the positives and negatives of each style. If you can’t deal with an All-or-Nothing session then be tight. If you’re looking to control everything around you, attack with SKILL. But remember, for every style there is a style which counters it. And then it comes down to which player is better over the long term.

I’ve basically posted this in a thread as well as on here, just to see people’s thoughts.

This thing called poker…

It’s an interesting game this Poker. You play cards, you make bets on how good you think you are compared to someone else’s “hand” and whoever has the better of it wins. And people make millions doing this every year!

Not quite. It’s neither not that simple or as easy as it sounds. So I’m going to take a moment to really sit down with you and talk you through exactly what you’re getting yourself into.

The Game
Poker is about doing the right things long enough for the law of large numbers to take effect. In the Poker world it is called EV - expected value - but it means the exact same thing. Salesmen use it, investors use it and now you’ll be using it. Let’s say I have a bag filled with 100 coloured balls. There are ten red balls and 90 blue balls and I’ll give you $100 for every red ball you pull out. Ready?

You can reach in and take hold of a ball, pull it out and find out it’s a red. $100 for you. Now what happens if the next 90 balls you pull out are blue? Are you going to stop playing just because you haven’t picked the other 9 red balls or are you going to keep picking because you know that at some point you’ll get them?

Law of large numbers. I’ll tell you something that is going to shock you hard and possibly make you faint. Are you ready? Right, here it is….If you play No Limit Hold ‘em and go all-in every time you get AcAh and I call you always with 7s2d I will win around 12.5% of the time. That’s right, out of 1,000,000 (1 million) times we do it I’ll come out ahead 122,000 times. You will LOSE with your AA over one hundred thousand times.

That’s what I mean by the law of large numbers. What happens if you lose all 122,000 times in a row? Well you’ll feel sick in your stomach, mostly likely say that the game is rigged and want to push me out of the window. However, the next 878,000 times you will beat me! You’ll win around 87% of the time, ALWAYS.

If you ever want to do more than have poker as just an expensive hobby then you’ll need to wrap your head around this law. Are you tough enough to deal with it when your aces/flushes/set/whatever get “cracked” by the numbers? You’re playing by the big laws now.

Your future in Poker
What do you want out of this game? Before you even pick up a deck of cards you need to know what you want out of the game you’re about to play. Now this doesn’t have to be set in stone but it has to be true for where you are in your life right now. Are you going to be a recreational player? Do you want to know enough so that you’re a “winning player” when you decide to play or is it more? Do you want to make as much money as possible until you find your true calling or is this your future? You must know where you want to take the game or else you’ll get nowhere fast and perhaps even learn to hate it.

This is completely personal and comes down to what you want out of the game. There are some people who play because they enjoy it so only learn what they need to know in order to “beat” whichever level they are playing at. There are players at all levels which are like this, they will never be great players but they will be very good ones and they will bring in the money. I’m sure there are some on here who are just focused on the money, focused on beating their level and secretly don’t give a flying fuck about getting out of their comfort zone. After all, why should they?

And you know what? That’s perfectly fine. That’s exactly what they want out of the game. But what do YOU want to do. First of all you MUST have your short term, medium term and long term goals laid out in regards to Poker (and life in general if you want to get anywhere). Focus on these goals, live and breathe these goals, become ONE with these goals. Above all, know the cost of these goals. Are you willing to pay the price of getting where you want to be? No one knows what that cost will be until we have to pay it. Don’t not-push yourself but never over-stretch yourself either.

Starting out
First you need to work out exactly how much you can afford to start with and understand the concepts of Bankroll Management. I’m going to put my own thoughts about BR management here…..

It comes down to WHERE DO YOU WANT TO TAKE THIS!

There are going to be a lot of people who tell you to move up as soon as you can. Find a “good” level where you can play at and move up after you gain 20-30 buyins for the next level. They’ll say just move between levels if you have to, keep taking shots until you reach it. But the reality is it has to be down to you, you’re the person who is going to have to “take those shots and miss” before finally getting the hang of the next level. Some people are fine with that but there are a lot who with each passing “miss” they hurt more and more.

My advice comes in two parts:

Recreational player - You want to just enjoy the game and make money. Follow the 20-30 buyin rule and shift between levels until you reach your settling point. This is where you could go higher but you’re ok where you are…for now. Maybe “for now” lasts a few months, maybe you never get past it but that’s ok.

I want to be the best I can be - Use tighter rules. Right now I am using a minimum of 50 buyins per level. Yes, even at 2nl to 5nl I am looking to go from 50×2nl to 50×5nl ($100 to $250). Why? Because I need to learn what 2nl means. My advice for those who want to learn about Poker in all its being is to find a place which has a decent 2nl level (Stars is the best one I’ve found) and grind! Grind, grind, grind! Or failing that, get to a soft 5nl level and do the same.

You see, poker isn’t just about AAs vs 72o. It isn’t about trapping someone when you have the nuts or making a play and getting people to lay down the best hand. Poker isn’t even about making money. Poker is about all those things and so much more. Poker is a microcosm, a world within a world in which you are the explorer. It’s your choice how much of the world of Poker you wish to see. Be a traveling adventurer or a stay-at-home-guy-made-good. It is anything and everything you want it to be, and you can only see it all by learning about each level you come across.

A lot of regs might be up in arms about this “gasp, deliberately be “over rolled” at xnl, NEVER!”. But let’s look at it from two different angles. Basics and money.

Basics - You need a platform in which to build on. You need to understand betting patterns, hand selection, folding, pot odds, implied odds and everything else out there. Being at the bottom level, with decent play (rather than UBs AI fest), is the perfect arena for you to learn what you need to in order to become a solid poker player. You can’t hit a bullseye if you don’t know how to throw a dart (or use a gun for those of you who have never seen such a fine English sport).

Money - For some people $100 doesn’t mean anything. For some money just doesn’t hold too much of an importance unless it’s the “big bucks”. For others the very fact of losing 5 pounds/dollars from your pocket is going to freak you out for the rest of the week. Which is why there are different buyins for different people, with 20-30 being the starting block. What’s losing $2 if I have $100? 2% of my bankroll is fine. But maybe I can’t deal with losing 3%, or 5%. In which case a $50 roll at 2nl is bad for me but a $100 isn’t.

Who to listen to?
Find the person who is the most exceptional person at the level you want to be at and do everything they do. Easy.

Seriously. Keep an eye on who gives you advice, who gives “pearls of wisdom” and who just tells you you’re an idiot for playing that hand. Read up on anyone and everyone who seems to want to help you, take their words with a pinch of salt until you can be sure they KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT. And even then, adapt what you’re told into your own life. Take what you can use and discard the rest. Even this article, ignore it if you don’t consider me a good enough person to learn from.

You see, not everyone has been in the situation you are in and not everyone is in the situation you want to be in. If you want to know how to earn $30,000 a year then listen to career advice from someone earning $30,000 a year. But they sure as hell are not going to be able to teach you how to earn $100,000 a year. Find out where someone’s mental state is at, at what level have they allowed themselves to peak. Is that where you wish to be? If so, listen to what they are talking about. If not, listen, take notes, but understand there is more that what you are hearing. Otherwise the person giving you the advice would be at a higher level than they are.

Timing is Key
Some people make it to x-amount a week/xnl within months. Some people take years. Just like the law of large numbers, the time-frame is equally important and not so important at the same time. Take as long as you need to, know that it isn’t going to happen yesterday. But also know that the more #s you work through the faster you’ll move up. You can’t get to 100nl from 5nl by 1-tabling, 2 hours a week for 3 months but you might be able to get close after learning how to 4-table for 30 hours a week for 3 months.

That’s 24hrs total play vs 360hrs 4-tabling (1,440hrs total). See how the law of large numbers always comes into play?

See you at the tables!

I grew my bankroll around 30% last month and ended up going on a downswing once we walked into February. Nothing too major but it was pretty much eating into my entire profits. One major factor however was the fact I took a swipe at 10NL. Now that’s a big jump from 2NL - 10NL without a bankroll behind me but I needed to see what it was like (UB has no 5NL, how crazy is that!?!). I flopped trip Qs and played level 1 thinking, lost to a straight.

Which leads me last night and a decision which was instantaneous. I took a look at the tournaments and saw there was a $1+$.10 Rebuy and Addon starting 2am EST. I made a decision that I was going to win it. Not that I was going to enter, but that I was going flat out to win. 6 hours later and I take 1st place to push my BR to over $400 and a shot at 10NL!

In no way was it perfect poker but I played solid for the whole time. I made some good laydowns in a number of situations which, although most of them may be standard, was extremely disciplined for me. I remember only twice whereby I really got my money in with the worst of it. We were down to 3 tables and I’d pretty much hovered around the average stack count for the entire tournament. An average stack with the blinds and antes anywhere from 20-40% of my chip stack at times. In this case the big blind alone was 10,000 and two players limped with me in the big blind with 66. I push all in for my remaining 40K and hit a 6 on the river to triple up and leave someone crippled.

The second time was 4-handed and I was overwhelming chip leader with over 1.3m in chips compared to 600K of my nearest player. I had KJs and pushed hard, so hard that someone else went AI and I called. If I lost I would have been left with only 300K in chips (not too bad but maybe it would have tilted me?). I catch the flush versus a KQo.

So what can I take away from winning my first MTT? Patience is the key. If I feel like I’m beat, I probably am. If there’s a hand out there which can beat me and someone is betting like they have it, give them credit for it. There’s no rush. And THAT is the key, in an MTT there really isn’t any rush. If your chip stack is around 15K with the blinds at 2500 and 5000 with 100-200 antes don’t panic and go all-in with any two cards. Wait for the right moment. Sometimes the right moment doesn’t come and you have to try to play your way to a bigger stack, but that’s poker folks!

So I’m going to take the rest of the day off and relax. I’m able to move up to 10NL with a good sized bankroll and there’s another tournie just around the corner when I decide I’m ready to play again.

I’ve already made the decision I’m going to win.

It’s felt like months since I’ve had anything to say or even been able to get onto a table - I’m terrible with time - but strangely it’s only been about two weeks. The internet has been up and down more times than a yo-yo, costing me a few blinds every time I attempted to sneak out a bit of playing but it seems to finally have been fixed (touch wood!).

So how’s life at 2NL? More boring than watching a Chelsea game and more frustrating than watching your team squander chance after chance to win (for all you European football fans). I’ve been reading a lot of posts, asking as many questions as possible so that I can learn exactly what it is I’m dealing with both here and at higher levels. If there’s one thing I have learned down the years it is to find yourself someone who exceeds at what it is you want to do and then learn from them. Find the top 2%ers who seem to have it made in their chosen field and copy everything they’ve done without question. Oh ok, a few questions.

So that’s what I’m doing at FTR and it’s helping more than what is correctly obvious right now. My bankroll has grown by just over 20% in two weeks which is nothing to be sniffed at and I’m slowly learning to get a feel for what my range of hands should be in certain positions. Start tight and loosen up. Figuratively speaking it’s better to move from a virgin to a “lady of the night” than sleeping around with any two cards and trying to go backwards!

Which, added to the fact that everyone seems to want to buyin for 5 big blinds (yes, FIVE), is making 2NL boring, frustrating and a complete goldmine of experience. I’m having to learn table selection, hand selection and bet-reading down here simply because if I don’t I can lose it all by calling too many “baby allins”.

Of course that still doesn’t stop me from itching to jump up and play for more than nickel and dimes. The fact I haven’t already is testament to the quality of advice and amount of coaching you FTR “pros” give us newbies - as well as a bit of “coaching” by the other half.

The January I’ve been attempting to grind up from $0 playing just Freerolls on pretty much any decent poker site in order to build up a bankroll. It was tough going but I had actually managed to get myself up to around $10 before the urge to take my money to the cash tables. It was doomed to fail and indeed it did eventually. For a few days I kept bouncing from between $10 and $20 on Party until one night I went on complete tilt and flushed the entire lot on draws.

So what’s the moral of the story? Simply if you don’t have enough discipline and time to do what I’ve been trying then find yourself a decent enough deposit and some penny games or else the stress of playing under ‘rolled is going to force every decision you make to mean more than it should. Bad beats and bad run of cards begin to get under your skin to the point where you are gambling rather than playing ABC poker. If you can’t bankroll yourself for even micro stakes then there’s no point in putting money in the bank, it’s not good for your physical or mental health nor will it get you to the stage where you can actually play good poker. Which is why I’ve deposited $50 into UB for a 110% deposit Bonus and micro stakes of 2NL ($0.01-$0.02). I’m bankrolled for those lower limits and now I can go about and actually learn the game beyond my current skill level. So the aim of the game now is to grind up to 10NL. Let’s see how long it takes me.

This is a starting post to basically give a background to my poker life, philosophy and goals for the future beginning in 2008.

Having been around cards for 1/2 my life, it actually took me a long time to truly get into poker. I was a typical fish, having instincts and a knack for being a serious loose-aggressive player. However when you are just starting out it’s not a good idea to use the wife’s bankroll as a way of “learning life’s lessons”. My ups and downs hit me hard, going from $5 to $300 and back again within days sent me completely on tilt and I took a leave of absence from poker for almost a year. Now I’m back and I plan to be a lot more disciplined - well, as much as possible.

So now I’m using Party freebies as a way of building up a BR totally created and run by poker. This means working from 1,000s of players just to reach the money starting at a few cents but this will teach me the patience of grinding. I’ve decided to focus on making sure to always get ITM, building my patience and skills so that I can pretty much make the final table. It’ll take some time to build up the BR to what I need to move over to cash tables, but it’s something I feel is the right way for me to go about things. I’m looking to go from $0 to $50 within a maximum of two months using the freerolls. If I don’t make it by then I need a lot more work to my game.