AJ Chainey asked:


The good kind of FISH at the poker table

A couple of years ago a new concept emerged in work place across America about having fun while at work. The idea being the more fun one has at work, the more they enjoy their jobs, the more productive they are and ultimately the more money the company makes. The “Fish” concept was developed by fish mongers at Pike Place Market in Seattle. There are 4 basic principles: Choose your attitude, Be there, Play and Make Their Day. Can this concept move from the board room to the poker room? Does adopting this principle pay off in the long run as it does for companies?
Normally anything to do with fish and poker should be avoided. The last thing that you want is to be the fish. However, this fish may be good for you. The first principle is to choose your attitude. Simply, it is what attitude you choose to bring to work or the poker table. You make the choice. You can be surly, happy, aloof, whatever you fancy. It is more profitable and better for you to bring a positive attitude about having fun. That is right, focus on what brought you to the game in the first place, having a good time. I know that you have seen a thousand **** outs and bad beats and that you may be bitter and jaded. However, if you don’t approach the game with a positive attitude, there probably is no point even sitting down in the first place as mentally you have already lost.

The second principle is to be there. “I am at the table, I am there” is what you may be thinking. However, being there in this instance means that you are focused and paying attention. Whether it is with customers or other players, you need to be engaged with them and learning about them. If you are plugged into an iPod, surfing the net if you are on line, or participating in any other activity other than studying and learning from other players then you are not there. You may be missing out on information that will cost you money. While you are surfing the internet for the latest escapades of Paris Hilton, you may miss someone showing you their cards which gives you a virtual key to how they play.

Play. “Again, I am at the table playing, what do you mean play?” Well, like being there, play has a slightly different meaning. This means to joke around, have fun without being a jerk. People would rather lose their money to the person that is getting along with everyone and having a good time rather than the loose cannon who berates everyone for how they play. People will want to stick around and keep donating chips to you rather than looking for a seat at another table. This does not mean that you have to do a stand up routine, it just means have a good time and allow others to have a good time with you. If the table is having fun there is a sense that everyone is friends. Do you know what friends do? They confide in each other. People will be more apt to show you their cards…”look I had you, good lay down”. More information for you, more learning opportunities and more money in you pocket.

Finally, make their day. The idea is that you made them feel good in some way that they want to return. In business in means repeat customers that bring friends back with them. The same goes for poker. People have a good time and want to come back and may bring their friends with them. More customers, more money.

Where would you rather play, the quiet hostile table or the fun table full of laughter. You would rather play at the table that pays more money. If you use these principles to your advantage you should have great success. If you end up losing all your money, well, at least you had fun doing it. So choose the right attitude, be there, play and make their day so that you can make their day. It makes millions for companies in the business world, why not make it work for you?

Written by AJ Chainey at www.acejackonline.com



Peyton Manning Fans

jon don asked:


I’ll just stop playing after the first bad beat if it’s tilted me that much. Then look back over the hand and check that it’s a genuine bad beat and I got my money in good…

I think winning slow and sometimes losing fast is why it’s called grinding.

If I still have the urge to play (typically after I walk away for ten mintues) I change tables. I find myself seeking “revenge” on the person who gave me the bad beat and then I start leaking like crazy and making bad decisions out of spike.

Most situations are clear cut, but I Think a lot of times there’s a level of mis-play where you may have paid off a bad call making it “not” a bad beat.

The biggest reason that Bad Beats are so expensive? Because they effect you long after then had has passed.

Also. When you only have 100bb in front of you, getting stacked with top pair top kicker is a lot more acceptable than when you have 350bb in front of you. Getting stacked like that is a HUGE no no.

Rarely when we get our monies in, are we a 100% (or even a 90%) favorite to win. This provides our opponents with many opportunities to **** out on us.

It also accounts for 95% of poker-related mental-illnesses.

The more you grind, the more bad beats you see, and the less they sting when you get them. They are simply an inevitable part of this game that you’ve just got to accept. Some days you’ll see more than your fair share, and some days you’ll see less. Try not to go crazy on the former, and try not to get cocky on the latter.
The bad beats cost you money, but not the hand itself. Over the long run you should get closer and closer to what your expected value was over all hands that you played. For example you really want your opponent to make -EV calls with draws, or call you preflop with weaker hands (same concept)… that’s whats making you money.

Maybe visualizing your equity helps. If you get it in as a 70/30 favourite - only 70% of the pot is yours. 30% belongs to your opponent.

I agree however that it’s still hard to deal with over the short term. I thought I was pretty bad beat resistent, and I can go on 5 buy-in downswings and more or less shrugg it off, but this month I’m running 50% under my expectation over 30k hands for €1000, and that’s still hard to stomach. I won’t get that money back, but at least I know that over the course of the next 100k hands it won’t matter.

A big part of the psychology of it is that you got emotionally attached to the pot, but the pot is not yours if you don’t have the winning hand on the river. I made it a ritual to click reload at almost every all-in situation, just to prepare for loosing the pot. The beats that tilt the most are when you fully expected that the pot was yours.

LOSING IS A PART OF THE GAME! Sorry to be so blunt but Somebody has to win, somebody has to lose. Pro’s also lose hands so obviously, anybody can and do! WIthout the actual hand though, we have to take your word that it was actually a BAD BEAT and not a hand you got married to…til death (BB) do you part!

The question isn’t why are bad beats so costly to one’s bankroll because if they were costly to one’s bankroll, then one wouldn’t be rolled properly for the stakes.

The question is, why does one or two bad beats destroy 2/3 of the income that took two hours to grind up? It’s so frustrating when you spend two hours in tedium grinding away at 6 tables, taking down small pots, getting closer and closer to the nearest benchmark, only to have almost all of that work done for nothing because some lucky idiot hit a full house with 69o when you hit your flush.

Stop looking at poker in terms of sessions and whether good luck or bad beats define them. Start looking at the big picture and be more results oriented in the long-term. And if you got your money in good and some fish made a horrible call and ****** out on the river, so be it because you’ll want him to make that same horrible call over and over again.

If I feel prone to tilting and getting emotionally attached in a given situation I make a point to think over my decision once more, put all the money in, reload and look at a different table as the hand plays out and then try to forget about it.

In this, I am giving up the edge that the additional information (what he actually played this way) can give me in future hands (though I can of course always check the hand history), but I am preventing tilt, which allows me to play better for longer.

The situations that are most likely to cause tilt are mostly self created. Basically what you do is you envision one result as the one you are going for (you winning, typically), you get emotionally attached to that outcome and even if you might intellectually accept that other outcomes are possible, you do not prepare yourself emotionally for those other possible outcomes. So when they occur they still manage to shock you and that starts the whole rollercoaster of tilt.

I believe the trick is to learn to be intellectually and emotionally prepared for any of the remaining 47 or 46 cards to come with everything that entails, and to understand how that effects your equity before it suddenly comes around and slaps you in the face with the loss of a stack. I think a great way to build this resiliency is to analyse hands and situations to a point where you more intuitively understand how equity changes depending on what cards come. This should remove some of the surprise element and allow you to assess dispassionately whether your action was +EV in the first place and not get bogged down in whether or not the outcome in this particular hand gained or cost you money.

As some of the more experienced people in this thread also said - if you understand your equity against your opponents range on a given street calculate with winning your 70% and losing the opponents 30% in your head and in your emotions, ignoring the actual outcome of the hand - this should help tiltproof you. You do need to play mind-games with yourself and practice this particular perspective and technique for it to be effective, but it’s a pretty important thing to do as playing on tilt will cost you lots more money than you can earn by playing well.

Bad beats are costly- suckouts are profitable.

Become better at suckouts and avoid bad beats. You need to really push hands like backdoor flushes, gutshots and underpairs/ undercards hard in order to become the Suckout King. Following the same line of reasoning you should fold whenever you know you are in front.

On a more serious note, maybe you are not pushing your edges hard enough? If you only push 70/30 situations and folding 55/45 situations your good hands need to hold up often to sustain a profitable winrate.

Couple of thoughts:

- You grind and grind until you lose a big pot- then quit.

- Losing feels worse than winning feels good.

- Suckouts are common for fish and sharks, not for TAG fish

- Everything is possible in poker. Sometimes you can not lose even how hard you try.

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Alexis asked:


 

When you prefer to play poker online in a poker room you will better to do decide to play in a site that has less experienced players. This is particularly important when you are trying to make some money out of your playing of poker online. An indication about weak players in a poker room is where the flop percentage is less. Any player that is playing a high number of flops of more than 25% then such a person is not a good player and when you play poker online if you play in a poker room where most of the players are seeing a lot of flops, then you are likely to have a better chance.

Any poker room that has players that see more than a normal percentage of flops is an indication of having been occupied with lot of fishes in the room; however, if you are personally that kind of person who is seeing more than an average number of flops as prescribed for a healthy playing, then regardless of where you play, you will not have that mighty edge. Only disciplined players that know what they are doing when they play poker online will have an edge against fishes. Playing in a poker room of inexperienced players is a means to increase the general winning and it is not a source of making the winning for every fool play. Whether you play in a poker room of intelligent players or in a room of inexperienced players you will have to play right. Unless you play right you will mess up regardless of whether you play versus intelligent or cranks.

The advantage with having most players paying to see the flop is that the pot size will be juicy enough. But when you play poker online in a poker room where the players see less number of flops, the pot will be less juicy. Responsible players know to fold early; in a poker room of disciplined players there is going to be an early fold. But this is also the place where money dwells because experienced players play no limit and high stakes especially when the final table is going to be played aggressive, and then the pot is going to be worth a lot of money to sustain you for months together.

Well, to make money as you play poker online a basic discipline of playing is sufficient. Never play with temptation, play with lot of logic and discipline for making average money. High winnings are a difference story and you will know it when you are in the field.



7 card stud high rankings

Alan England asked:


Most of your money will be made before you sit down to play. Literally this isn’t true, but in a broad sense, it is. In order to make up the disadvantage of having to pay rake, you have to sit yourself next to players who are of a significantly lesser skill level than yourself. Sitting next to players who are of equal skill or even of a slightly lesser skill just isn’t good enough.

So how do you spot such weak players before you sit down? First you have to know what to look for. If you were at a live casino, you’d have to stand at a distance and watch hand after hand to get an idea of how the players play. When playing online, all you have to do is check the lobby. You select a table, and the table’s statistics pop up. You’ll probably be given the following information for each table: hands played per hour, percentage of players seeing the flop, and average pot size.

You want the hands played per hour to be as high as possible, because the faster the table is playing, the more money you can potentially make. Generally speaking, you should look for 60 hands/hr or better at your low limit tables, and 80/hr or better at your high limit tables. Of course, the looser tables (which are the better ones because the players aren’t as particular about what hands they play) usually play less hands/hr, so you need to look at the stats relative to one another.

The percentage of players seeing the flop is your quickest and easiest way to determine how tight or loose a table is. The ideal table is a loose one. The more players seeing the flop, the better. This is the most important statistic to look at. I personally don’t sit down at a filled 10 person table unless that percentage is at least 30, and I expect at least 40 for lower limits, or short handed play. If you’re playing really low limits, such as 1-2, you can often find tables where 70-100% of the players are seeing the flop every hand.

The average pot size is your best gauge of how active or passive the table is. That is, at an active table, you’ll find a lot more betting and raising, or at least a lot of people calling all the way to the river. Although this affects my play (I’ll play less hands at an active table than I will at a passive table), it doesn’t affect whether or not I’ll sit down. I enjoy playing at both active and passive tables.

Another thing you may consider before sitting down is the size of each player’s stack (how much money they’re playing with). Bigger stacks are usually indicative of more serious players. Take this with a grain of salt though. A lot of good players will sit with small stacks so as to remain inconspicuous, and some really poor players simply have a lot of money to blow.

The last thing you can look at before you choose a table are the players themselves. If you’ve played long enough at any one site, you should have a list of the best and worst players you’ve played against. Obviously, you want to avoid the best, and sit down next to the worst.

Where to sit

The decision of where to position yourself at the table is not as important as the selection of the table itself, but still shouldn’t be overlooked. You are said to have position on your opponents if they are seated on your right - that is, you get to act after they do. Therefor, you want your stronger opponents on your right. Generally, this means your tight players - those that are very specific about which hands they choose to play.

If you aren’t familiar with the players sitting at the table, then before you sit down, you would be wise to watch a few hands in order to get an idea for how each player plays. Make note of which players are tight and which are loose. Try to get the tight players on your right, and the loose ones on your left.

In regards to the loose players, you especially want to try to get any maniacs (those that love to bet and raise with very little to back it up) on your immediate left. This will allow you to many advantages. First, you get to see how every other player after him reacts to his betting - whether they have good enough hands to call his raises, ect… Secondly, you’ll be able to use the maniac as an unwitting partner to knocking out those players after him. If, for example, you flop top pair and bet, he’ll probably raise making it too costly for the others to chase down their gut shot straight draws, and bottom pairs. Your final advantage comes when you have a great hand. Let’s say you flop four of a kind. You check to the maniac, who bets, and allow everyone else to call before you raise, gaining a whole lot of additional bets.

When to leave

Before every hand you’re dealt, you’re making a choice not to leave. You want to make that an active choice. You want to be the one making the choice to play with the other people sitting at your table, not the other way around.

Regardless of whether you are winning or losing (although especially if you’re losing), you want to be vigilant in asking yourself two questions. Is this the best table that I could be playing at right now? And, am I still playing my best game?

In order to find out if you’re still playing at the best table, you need to first check to see if the conditions that made this a good table to play at still exist. Have any of the fish left? Have any sharks sat down? Is everyone still playing as loose as they were when you began? Check the table statistics in the lobby to confirm that the percentage of players seeing the flop is approximately the same or higher. Even after you confirm that the table conditions are the same or better, you should check the other tables. You may be at a good table, but perhaps there is a better one.

After you’ve confirmed that you are at the best possible table, you have to determine whether or not you’re still playing as good as you possibly can. If you’re losing, should you to contribute your losses to a string of bad luck, or are you outmatched? In order to come to the correct, and therefor profitable answer, you need to be honest with yourself. You need to objectively look at your play and honestly critique it. Are you tired? Are you overly frustrated? If you are, then you’re probably not playing your best game, and you should leave. Even if you aren’t, you still might be outmatched. Perhaps you judged the table wrong. The safest thing to do when losing is leave. You can’t lose any more money by leaving. If you are convinced that you are indeed playing your best game, and that you aren’t outmatched, then you should feel perfectly safe in continuing to play. I’ve been down 800 dollars before but still knew that I was sitting at a good table, and playing my best. So I kept at it, and by the time I left, I was up 300. The important thing to remember in such a situation is to remain calm so that you can continue to play your best.

You should note, however, that most players make the mistake of blaming bad luck when they are in fact outmatched. If you’re even the slightest bit unsure, then I recommend following the simplest rule of all: if you’re losing, leave.

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