I'm pleased that you're making a serious return to poker. Are you staying at OnGame for your 100NL games?

I don't know exactly what you have in mind for your postflop program, but it'll worth clicking the links in this thread:

forum/viewtopic.php?t=25588

Ok, a new update.

This time about the mentality and psychology. For the moment it is the biggest problem for me (I suspect that for many other players as well). I have a skill level high enough to beat 400 and 600NL for a decent winrate (may be even bigger games), my problem is the motivation to put hours and mental stability with respect to the fluctuations.

I think that I have a solution. At least, I am trying to implement it changing my view of the whole affair. The analogy that I want to use belongs to the games with complete information like chess and GO. If you played enough in such games, then you know that if the difference in skill is high enough it doesn’t matter if you play tired or a bit unfocused, you are going to beat the amateurs in 99% cases. Actually in poker it is also true. We just need to identify the amateurs. I am not talking about the so-called ‘fish’, I am talking about the players who put hours to actually learn the game, but who are well-below you in actual skill level. If one moves a few levels below his ‘normal’ level the difference in skill even with the better players is high enough that there is no need for the A game. The worst game that you show will be good enough to beat all the players. This fact gets hidden a little by the large fluctuation that everyone experiences, but it is true never-the-less. When you play chess you see big mistakes that amateurs make and you exploit them, the same is true for the poker, when I see people calling a button raise with 65s OOP it is a mistake which is equivalent to playing ‘1. d4 Nc6?’ in chess. It is not a blatant error, like playing ‘1. d4 a5??’, which is equivavlent to the fish calling a raise with A3o, but it is a mistake. (For those familiar with chess, it could seem that 1. … Nc6 is ok, in reality it is not good, one already loses a little bit by this move.)

So the first change that I want to make in my view is to equal chess = poker in the long run. It’s not easy to do, as our brains are not suited for judging long term results well enough. We get frustrated by bad beats, it is also more difficult to judge one’s actual performance in poker, as we don’t get the immediate result after the game like in chess. Nevertheless, I think that it can be done.

I think that this idea was hidden from me because I moved up in stakes every time when I started to reliably beat the previous level. In such a situation, I always played on the edge and couldn’t afford to sway from my A game. Now, after playing for some time at 100NL, I start to get the glimpses of this new vision. It’s easy to see that even the better TAGs do a lot of exploitable mistakes, like playing too many hands OOP, not 3-betting enough, etc.

Second change that I want to make is to increase my bankroll requirements up to 100 buy-ins. Yeah, I know that’s excessive from the game-theoretical point of view, but it seems that I can have a very high degree of psychological comfort with such requirements. It seems to me that it is easier to spend more time acquiring a big enough bankroll and be at ease, than to really persuade oneself that 5buy-ins fluctuations per session are ok with 30 buy-ins bankroll (or even 40). (The estimation of overall EV goes as follows, X$ lost due to not moving up in stakes, Y$ lost due to not having motivation, psychological comfort to play enough. Looks like Y$ >> X$. )

These are the changes in mental approach to poker that I want to make. I feel that it is very important and could improve my game a lot. I believe that mental stability is one of the most important aspects for being a long term winner. (Second one is intelligence, obv.)

1. d4 Nc6 is called Queens Knight Defence, and I could beat you even using that.


What you are descibing is a shift in focus for you, I think!?
From trying to be as good as possible - proven by beating higher and higher levels, to making a decent amount of money without doing what it takes to continously become better and move up. Since continously becoming better and moving up requires a total focus and a mental readiness to handle large swings, and tighter bankroll for the stakes you play.

It seems like a fair plan, although I think your BR requirement of 100 buy-ins is a little too much. Considering taht you plan to withdraw money every month (?) that will take ages to build up?

Anyways, GL with you plan.

@ excession
Short stacking is not for me, I like the intellectual challenge of playing fullstacks, I also have higher winrate then I can expect sortstacking.


I also think that games are now going to change becoming similar to the chess/GO, i.e. a big part of players are those who actually study the game, and most of the time we are going to play with such players. (An occasional 'fish' will always be present, though.)

I like your plan for BR management, zmej. Actually, if you take time to check the history of the most successful poker players, it seems that they have all gone broke at some point. If you are considering a long term poker career then having a solid plan for not going broke sounds like the way to go.

I think for most players the "move up to make more money" is actually overrated. Back when i was a winning player every time i moved up was quite interesting because i was able to beat the games with minimal adjustments. I do remember reading a lot of people having a lot of troubles when moving up and the reason was exactly what you are going to avoid by staying in stakes you know you must be among the best 5players: Their edge was much smaller, therefore their downswings were supposed to be bigger and more frequent.

I think your plan is very smart. You will do great. GL.

I your journal.

I decided to make a ‘short’ return to poker, I am not sure for how long and how it will go on this time. The last time I went back to poker when I needed some money for myself, I think I wrote about this in my journal.
This time I have enough money for myself, but I have some projects in my head which I want to make real. I’m still unsure how to realize them, but the problem is that it would be very hard to find investors for this kind of initiative. The outcome of the plans is far from certain and doesn’t promise short time interests. All-in-all a shitty business plan.
So, at least for now the plan is to raise some money by myself, then multiply it several times and then to start realize the BigPlans . Sounds childish? We’ll see.

And as I promised to put some content into the journal, I am going to make a post on the strategy. Hopefully the readers will find it interesting and on the other hand it should please poker Gods.


New Entry:



There are two big branches of approaches to play poker. I’d call them ‘game-theoretical’ and ‘people’ approach.

Game-theoretical approach.
Everything is quite clear here, especially for the math-oriented people. As we know from the game-theory there is an optimal strategy for the poker, and if you know it no one would be able to beat you. The problem is that no one knows it for the moment and the best we can do is to construct an approximation. Second problem is that the classical Nash equilibrium approach works well for the heads-up situation, in the multiplayer situation it becomes hard to apply these principles. There can exist several types of Nash equilibrium without a smooth transition among them.
IMO game-theory is a must know for any serious poker player, as it gives some guiding principles for the construction of your strategy and evaluating the strategy of the others.
Still, game-theoretical approach doesn’t maximize your winrate in all situations, sometimes one needs to adjust to the big mistakes that our opponents make producing in turn some holes in our strategy as well, but against a weak opponent we gain more than we lose.

People approach.
If you understand the man you understand his strategy, and the reverse is true: if you understand the strategy you understand the man.

When people try to construct a complex strategy in any activity they base it on the previous experience, on their personality. Here we understand the personality as the set of guiding principles that people develop in their life. The more complex the task is the more rich representation of the personality we can see.

After formulating the principle, the important question is how we can use it in our play? The answer is simple and hard at the same time.
By looking at how someone plays we should try to reconstruct his strategy glimpsing at the small bits of it here and there. As soon as we develop the approximation of our opponent’s strategy (or of his personality) we can do better than game-theoretical approach, as the hand ranges become narrow. In many cases we can anticipate his actions and plan our response for many streets in advance. (Imagine the case of a ‘rock’ and a dry board when you have air, or the case of a ‘calling station’ and you have an overpair.) Actually every good player does this without formulating what they do, when we describe someone as a ‘calling station’ we describe their strategy.

Now we come to a hard part. How one can do this, i.e. reconstruct the strategy of the opponent? I don’t know. I suspect that no one knows.
It is really hard, you have your own strategy and your own personality. Now, you need at the same time, in a small part of your rarely used brain, construct a different personality, of someone who is very aggressive or of someone who is very shy. You need to construct a personality of someone knowledgeable or stupid, short of money or wealthy, logical or superstitious, someone who read the books of Harrington or some stupid book like ‘Poker for dummies’. There are tens, may be even thousands of parameters and you need to choose the right combination. Sometimes lacking some important elements: if you don’t know how to be a maniac how you can construct his personality and strategy?

How we do this? Once again, I don’t know. We don’t know how the human brains functions, somehow we are able to extract the relevant information, but we don’t know how.

There are some tips, though. Understanding people helps a lot. A good psychologist already can construct these small models of other people and this skill is readily transferable to the game of poker. (And it correlates well with what we know about great poker players, they are often very good in understanding people and in social interactions.) Knowing different strategies helps a lot too, if you know how rocks, calling station and maniacs play it will be easier for you to construct the corresponding strategy. So try to play different styles and construct ‘quasi-optimal’ strategy for each style, this will make easier the reconstruction of the strategy of your opponents.

P.S. These are some ideas that I had recently about poker and life in general. I hope that you find them interesting. Any feedback is appreciated.

Welcome back zmej - keep it coming.