SiPie

Kenny

Once again you’ve taken some stick on this thread, but IMHO if anyone does have a chance of succeeding in this game, then it may as well be you.

However…if I see one more ‘where is my life going and which skirting boards can I re-map to give me the purest diamond thread’, then I will withdraw all my moral support immediately

Just do it

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

I dread to think of the planning he puts into his nights of passion with his other half....

LG John

I don't feel that to be honest - I've found it to be quite a positive thread? Is there vaped abuse I've missed?

I learnt how to do the facings myself and bought the timber at a timber yard - quite the little joiner at the weekend I was

That's easy:

Step 1. Foreplay - skip!
Step 2. Blow bolt asap
Step 3. Snoooooooze

LG John

Wow, sounds like he's pretty lucky! I find there are two types of winning poker players:

1) The type that love to gamble and are very good at poker. You usually find these sorts earn £250,000 a year at poker but lose £200,000 a year at Blackjack, Roulette, the horses, dogs, etc, etc.

2) The type that hates the 'luck' element of the game and wouldn't even stick £5 of their £500,000 bankroll down on a roulette wheel!

Guessing the guy you know of is category 1.

Hoppy

Kenny, professional poker is a mind game. It's about manipulating vulnerable people, to your benefit. Ruthlessly. It has very little to do with mathematics or anything technical, analyitical or objective. It's about exploiting people's weaknesses and, in effect, stealing their money.

I'm not making a moral point here, just asking you how your personal mind-set fits that relentless, ruthless discipline. Day in day out. You've actually answered that question directly in an earlier post in this thread. The answer is no.

Playing cards for fun is completely different. The risks are minimal and, win or lose, you have a good time. And a full-time job/income. But professional is different - if you have a bad day, you don't get a salary and you've lost money. If you're ill, you either earn nothing or lose a lot. It's entirely different. The pressure will get to you.

Option B it is.

Good luck and best regards,

Richard.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

I am going to learn how to play it, havent got a clue !

Funny cos someone got me a poker set for Christmas that went straight in the cupboard.

The Pro player parent at school goes to Las Vegas and stuff, surname is Breeze apparently.

LG John

Nothing you say in the above post is incorrect but a lot of it doesn’t apply to the degree you think it does. Top level professional bricks n’ mortar play can be a game of the mind like you say and some of the higher levels of online are as well. However, online poker by its very nature is a different animal to live and it’s more a game of patterns, maths and discipline than mind games (although they do play a part). The first consideration to figuring out an opponents hand online is the betting decisions he has made to this point and how they relate to his known style or hands you’ve played with him. Live you might clock he is fearful from looking/listening to him and figure him for a bluff or weak hand but you don’t have this luxury over the net.

The great many online pro’s that have done well/won key live events have also proven that the old view of pro poker players engaging in great battles of the wit is just that…….an old view. Pattern decoding and mathematics play far more of a role; so much so that I can still operate a win rate, albeit low, playing 8 tables of ‘maths’ poker were I play my hand according to a set of my own pre-determined rules – I could do this and watch TV at the same time as it requires little thought.

I never play cards for fun – it’s always serious. Every 0.50c is a prisoner even if I’m winning or loosing $100s at a time.

The key factor in online poker is it’s a game of mistake management. All players make mistakes and errors of judgement. The best players make fewer of them You are right though that it’s about ruthlessly exploiting the weakness of your opponents to your advantage – as I said above the best way to identify a persons weakness online is recognising their patterns (too tight, too loose, weak post-flop, shows down to many hands, folds anything but the nuts to a 3-bet, too aggressive, too passive, etc, etc, etc).

I can give you a simply mathematical example of what I mean. Let’s say you are at a table with a player that hasn’t been too out of line and plays reasonable hands in a fairly aggressive manner. Lets say you also clock that if this player raises preflop he’ll always continuation bet any flop that comes, but you’ve seen him back down several times to flop resistance from opponents. You also note that this guy is playing on two of your other tables so you know his concentration is spread over a number of tables. He raises into your big-blind for 4bb and you call (our cards don’t matter here). The pot on the flop will contain about 8.5bb and it comes down Q,7,2. We’ve got nothing of this flop but check to the raisor who bets 8bb. Live we might have watched his eyes when the flop was dealt – did that queen create a reaction, did he glance at his chips thinking of a bet when any of the cards came out, etc, etc. We can’t do that here and we have nothing of a hand so surely we should fold to this bet?

I say no! He could have a hand here such as AQ, AA, QQ, KQ, 77, etc but he could also have AK, AJ, KJ,A10,JJ, 10,10, etc, etc. We know that mathematically our opponent will hit a pair or better around 33% of the time he takes a flop. That doesn’t necessarily mean top-pair just ‘a pair’ and he wouldn’t be overly happy at hitting a 2 or 7 here against a check-raise. So we consider our raise with fresh air and we call the 8bb and raise 14bb more. In deciding to do this we risk 22bb to secure a pot that would be 8.5+8+22 = 38.5bb. We are betting ‘fold equity’ here (as we don’t have ****) so we need this bluff to be correct around 57% of the time to break even (derived from 22/38.5x100). Assuming we want something of an edge we really want it to be successful 60-65% of the time and thus we can afford to be wrong 35-40% of the time. But we already know that mathematically our opponent is only between 30-40% to have ‘something’ and that something won’t always be top-pair or better. We also have a safe board in that there are no obvious draws he can call on, only the one broadway card and we know from his previous play that he tends to back down here without a strong hand. We also know this player isn’t a complete nutcase so if he does call or raise we can fold even if we pick up something on the turn as we are absolutely toast. On examination of the maths, this player’s style and previous patterns we’ve observed we can go ahead and make this raise confident that we have an edge. You’ll often find our player folding the likes of pocket 9s believing that he’s probably facing a queen or better and thus his odds of hitting one of the two remaining 9s on the turn are 2/47=100 or 4.2%.....i.e. fooking slim

That’s not to say we do it every time against this guy – sooner or later (even multi-tabling) he’ll get wise to our trick and trying it on a J,10,Q board would be crazy as nearly all ‘normal range’ raising hands are all over that board or drawing well on it.

These sorts of basic maths and pattern based decisions should be second nature to solid online players freeing up some of their concentration to trying to find any other weaknesses or edges.

LG John

Jacko, don't know of him off the top of my head and can't google him as 'Poker+player+breeze' yeilds a lot of sites claiming that poker is a breeze

///\oo/\\\

Kenny

I never thought I'd hear myself say this but you are clearly far more intelligent than I've ever given you credit for.

Still not sure on the common sense front, but aside from that

Have you ever considered actuarial type roles? - Finaincial risk management, that sort of thing?

SiPie

Agree

Sorry dude... I was being positive

Was meaning that due to your dilligence and application to the cause and perhaps the intensity with which you apply yourself to finding out ALL about any new venture then you are pretty well placed to succeed in a hell of a lot of things. Not certain poker is one of them but if you enjoy something, then you stand a really good chance

Goood luck anyway mate

LG John

//00\\ - lol at common sense

I do apply a lot of time to learning about poker, testing theories and trying to figure out quicker and easier ways of doing the maths, etc. I've learnt a hell of a lot about the game and I really enjoy learning more. Most of the stuff I learn now isn't groundbreaking. It's very subtle variations on knowledge I all ready have (fine tuning). At lot of people I know have a natural talent for 'something' and I've often wondered where my natural talent lies. Truthfully, in 28 years I've never found anything that I can do effortlessly but better than 99% of the population. I wouldn't say I'm naturally talented at poker either but the skills/traits required to be successful at it are second nature to me.

1. Discipline - you must be controlled at all times
2. Aggression - you must be aggressive in poker and again I do have a forceful/aggressive side to my personality.
3. Obsession - you need to be a geek with poker; learn everything; become a stats geek, etc, etc
4. Patience - you have to play the long game
5. Self-belief - you need this to get you through bad runs.

Most of these traits are quite natural to my personality with the exception of 5. which I really struggle with sometimes.

Financial Risk Management is not something I've considered but if I was looking for a career change would probably be of some interest to me. The problem is that my basic maths ability is actually quite poor! I basically got into trouble and dicked around the whole time I was at school until mid-way through 4th year so even basic multiplication, division, subtraction and addition doesn't come to me instantly the way it does for most people that bothered to pay attention during those earlier years. I can't afford to be slow in poker so I've spent a lot of time pouring over the maths to find 'quick' rules to aid me. For example if I have 11 outs with just the river card to come I know my chance of hitting is around 24% using my x2+2 method. 4 outs would be 8% as less than 10 outs is just x2. I actually spent hours making a spreadsheet that would test and check these 'rules' as I didn't want a mistake and this is all because I honestly wouldn't know where to start if trying to divide 11 by 46. I fear that in a FRM role these basic shortcomings would be a problem.

TelBoy

Kenny, write books. We're well on the way to one here already

SiPie

Lol ...

War and Poker

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Anyone else got a mental picture of SB sat in a darkened room in his Gruds, swearing at a monitor in betweens swigs from a Bottle of JD ?

Just before he starts playing Poker.

LG John

LOL, online poker is a lot like that

TopBanana

I imagine a guy who washes his hands seven times before he plays...

LG John

LOL @ TB - you really have pegged me wrong. I'm a meticulous and thorough person but I’m not a compulsive person. There is nothing in my life that I feel I need or have to do….

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

I cant remove that image from my mind, and to be honest, its got dark and its now a bit disturbing.

LG John

Does this help?

SiPie

Dunno but it sure helped me ......

PS Can vouch for the above being true .... but I ain't seen Kenny in around a year so maybe he's borderline now

LG John

Flat is getting there - spent last night chipping away at the edge of a concrete floor and forcing AV wires into the cavity. I've now got workies hands (scared, cracked and scuffed!). Once its done we'll get you and your good lady round for chow and a catch up.

....then we can take my scooby out and go hang out at McDonalds