I received this email as a mailbag question, but I think the author makes a good point well and I don’t really have anything to add to it, so I’m just going to post it here for everyone to read. Thanks for writing, Kev from Australia!
I’m curious of your thoughts on the following concept which has helped me tremendously in the last four months of live play.
I reflected on how your state of winning or losing in a particular session can affect your table image, and specifically how it affects your ability to successfully bluff opponents. I came to the conclusion that a player’s decision to call a bet or raise can be significantly influenced by how their opponent is running in the game (even if that influence is sometimes subconscious). This is most obvious with losing players who are playing wide open, but also against winning players which I think can tip the balance on their decision to call or fold.
On the basis of this I changed my approach to both losing and winning sessions, which at first felt very counter-intuitive and took a while to feel comfortable doing. My C-game, when losing, would to varying degrees consist of playing too many hands, generally chasing, and trying to bluff my way back into the game. Obviously this is bad on many levels, but significantly I think even weak players are capable of sensing this phenomenon in their opponents and call them down like crazy. In other words, I think a losing table image has more impact on fold equity than most give credit for. My new approach to a losing session is to tighten up my starting ranges and be very selective with bluffing opportunities.
Conversely, when winning, I would sometimes ‘lock up’ my stack and protect the profit. I realised this was opposite of what I should be doing, firstly because it limited the size of the winning session, but also because I was failing to take advantage of 1. an excellent table image where I had generally strong fold equity at the table and 2. a situation where the cards may be running in my favour. 🙂
I now force myself to play more liberally with my winnings and try to run over the table. This felt very counter-intuitive at first, but the difference has been profound.
I know this ain’t rocket science but it’s made such a dramatic difference to my game I thought I’d share it.
Kind regards,
Kev (Australia).
Thanks for sharing.
After reading your mail I see more “realtime” analysis rather than after the game analysis with range simulation for siuations.
With all respect you draw false conclusion about reasons for your “dramatic” improvement.
The knowledge and observation of the relations did not make such dramatic difference in your game.This is an illusion.
Poker is mature and specific game.
Example:
The self-assessment: “I know I tilt” has (useless) very limited consequences for your game.
The “realtime” self-observation and self-awareness “I am tilting” have profound consequences for your game.
The real time self-observation is precondition to “force yourself” to implement new reaction-behavior.
The reason for your dramatic difference in your game is rather new level of self-observation and self-awareness rather than knowledge of the concept(s) and a theory.
You did not realize this yet.
Relatively few readers of you email will benefit from its premium content(knowledge).They will grasp easily logic relationships maybe even refine some points using math but they will fails short to implement the concept in practice (self-discipline,patience,etc).
Here’s a classic example of a winning image. Although Darvin hit the flop hard he really could have been cold 4 betting with a wide range and cbetting a dry ace high flop. One of my favorite WSOP clips.
“DMD, Don’t Mess with Darvin”
“Weapons of mass Darvin”
“You have 7 other people over here talking about how you’re catching every card in the deck”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iXusWYMtoQ4#t=140s
I find these observations to be quite true also. Most players, including those who dont play as much, will ‘sense’ when someone is not having the best night and assume they are opening their ranges in hopes of ‘catching up’. I have found that simply ‘shutting down’ for 3 or 4 orbits is plenty to re-establish one’s image as long as we can showdown a couple of hands. Actually showing down a winning hand is the key here though so the table can see that the cards have ‘turned’ in a players favor. I have been called down lighter on many occasion during a down session, thus the theroy that you should tighten your range automatically falls in line.
As far as ‘lock down’ … if you feel you have gone into lockdown mode, LEAVE. Don’t wait for the button or blinds, just leave. Mixing up your play and ‘changing’ your play are 2 different things. I have seen many a time where chips came out of a rack never to return once a player intended to leave plays ‘one more hand’. Players at 1-2 or 2-5 will give a player credit for ‘his day’ and thus allows for a potential wider range of hands to be played. I would suspect that more experienced players will narrow their range of hands and do more trapping against a hot seat since they ‘know’ the bets are coming. That is not a good combination to holding onto your chips in the long run. I would rather suggest you mentally push a ‘min’ level of chips to the side and continue playing your game as if those chips didn’t exist. If you drop down to the ‘min’ then it’s time to leave or shut down if you are going to play an extended session.
Our blogging leader has recently posted about a ‘last hand’ that even though was a ‘correct’ call ended up pushing a rack in the wrong direction. GL
Interesting points, answer, well said.
As far as I basically agree with the fact that a bleeding player wakes-up the sharks who would call him more often, I also found that people would be more willing to call down my bets if I doubled or tripled up at online small-stakes.
I have a lot of cases of people entering the game seeing my big stack and betting like crazy apes on a diet, shoving massive amounts of chips in the pot with 2nd pair or even less.
I found that more relevant online. Live, the monkeys are tamed and sipping wine while smoking the best Tobacco on earth, waiting for AA to go all-in, smiling and announcing with the soft innocence of a virgin : “I’m gambling, hihi”.
And I know, Andrew that I owe you some hand histories but I was unable to put my hands on any of them since I put them on a USB key which is now saying hello to some rats, somewhere on the sewers.
(I lost it, pretty sure while I was biking). Perhaps I can ask Pokerstars if I can find the long lost hand history by asking them to send it to me ?