hands

i don't post many hands, i dunno how interesting it is. i think these are the two biggest pots of the year, since i've moved down to 1/2. one was at regular 200 buy in table. t'other was at a deep table. both hands played out perfectly, just as i'd envisaged when making each bet/call.

Seat 6 is the button
Seat 1: SB ( $226.50 USD )
Seat 2: BB ( $200.00 USD )
Seat 3: utg ( $208.00 USD )
Seat 4: Hero ( $358.20 USD )
Seat 5: WHALE ( $383.25 USD )
Seat 6: BTN ( $200.00 USD )
SB posts small blind [$1.00 USD].
BB posts big blind [$2.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hero [ Qc Kh ]
utg folds
Hero raises [$6.00 USD]
WHALE calls [$6.00 USD]
BTN raises [$25.00 USD]
SB folds
BB folds
Hero raises [$62.00 USD]
WHALE calls [$62.00 USD]
BTN folds

** Dealing Flop ** [ Qs, 7s, 2s ]
Hero checks
WHALE bets [$72.00 USD]
Hero calls [$72.00 USD]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 5d ]
Hero bets [$218.20 USD]
WHALE calls [$218.20 USD]

** Dealing River ** [ Ad ]

Hero shows [Qc, Kh ]
WHALE shows [5c, As ]
WHALE wins $741.40 USD from main pot


Seat 4 is the button
Seat 1: agg reg ( $692.80 USD )
Seat 2: mp ( $547.65 USD )
Seat 3: fishy ( $261.00 USD )
Seat 4: Hero ( $487.00 USD )
Seat 5: SB ( $407.35 USD )
Seat 6: BB ( $455.05 USD )
SB posts small blind [$1.00 USD].
BB posts big blind [$2.00 USD].
agg reg posts ante of [$0.40 USD].
mp posts ante of [$0.40 USD].
fishy posts ante of [$0.40 USD].
Hero posts ante of [$0.40 USD].
SB posts ante of [$0.40 USD].
BB posts ante of [$0.40 USD].

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hero [ Ah Ac ]
agg reg raises [$6.00 USD]
mp folds
fishy raises [$18.00 USD]
Hero calls [$18.00 USD]
SB calls [$17.00 USD]
BB calls [$16.00 USD]
agg reg raises [$60.00 USD]
fishy folds
Hero raises [$116.00 USD]
SB folds
BB folds
agg reg raises [$626.40 USD]
Hero calls [$352.60 USD]
agg reg wins $205.80 USD

** Dealing Flop ** [ 4c, 3h, 7s ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Qh ]
** Dealing River ** [ 8c ]

agg reg shows [Jc, Js ]
Hero shows [Ah, Ac ]
Hero wins $1026.60 USD from main pot

things i've learnt to apply to life

specifically, things from poker.
i think the correct term is transferable skills. and i also think that the ones i pick up from poker are ones that i will find easy to apply to other aspects since they are in a very pure form when playing poker. and these are things that when you do them better your see the results.

there is a long list, ones i once considered adding to my cv. i may have even blogged about it before. i think it would be useful to keep them all in one place. but to start, i will just write some of the most recent ones that cropped up in my mind here.

responsibility
by this i mean taking responsibility for your results. "how is it possible to do this in a game where luck is so heavily involved like poker?" i hear you cry.
well, it is. accepting that you are responsible for your results is the first step to being able to improve. believing that you have the ability to create the results you desire is important, not just in poker, but quite evidently in life too. and i wouldn't hesitate to say that there is a large slice of fortune there too.
and one of my favourite quotes is by golfer Gary Player "The more i practice, the luckier i get"

mental blocks

on my betfair account many moons ago, i would run £50 up to £1k before promptly losing chunks. i tried many things to correct this such as withdrawing amounts etc, but could never significantly get past it. i still don't know why, but i do know that i now longer have any fears or lack of self belief about breaking that barrier and going past £2k. maybe it just took practice or maybe a bunch of other factors combined.
this transfers to life since i think there are many self imposed blocks that i place upon myself. and most of them aren't real but pigments of my imagination. much as henry ford was a terrible human being he was right when he said "whether you think you can, or think you can't. you're right."

auto pilot

this one will be familiar to any poker player. playing without really concentrating, surfing the tinternet, watching telly, talking on the phone, or just not really paying attention to what you're doing. all give you poor results. sometimes, you can even win when playing on autopilot, but really, you know how terrible it is for your results. if you're gonna do something, commit to it, and do it properly. if you're going spend 2 hours playing, either play to the best of your ability or do something else.
i don't think this is too hard a concept to apply to real life. make sure you know what you're doing and why you're doing it, and then commit fully to it - don't be on auto pilot, simple reacting to what happens around you; you are the one in control.

poker epiphany #16.2

i went to play live last night. once again i am reminded not only how much i don't like it, but also how bad i am at it.
afterwards i was quite depressed. and annoyed with myself. and a wee bit angry. all at the same time. and then this afternoon i started playing a little bit with a focus on decision making. I have really got to learn to take all this very seriously else i will be resigned to getting a job in the not too distant future. and this was when i realised something which made me happy when playing. something really obvious, but i hadn't put two and two together.
everyone knows that winning or losing, in the long run, is based on making the correct decision. and so i always tried to judge my play on whether or not i'd made the correct decision. but i'd always based my happiness on winning/losing. and it doesn't really make sense. and it's something really obvious but i'd just been reacting to winning/losing by the first thing that came to mind (happiness) instead of how i want to react.

of course, i'd always got annoyed with myself for making mistakes too, but never been happy with making the right decision. this should be obvious to everyone, it's kinda obvious to me, but i like this way of thinking about things. this might even be the post i was looking for to reread before i start each session. so that i know exactly what i want to be focussing.

as for playing live, saw some amazing beats, and comments. the best by far was all combined into one hand. on an a82 all spade board, a massive whale who bet with nothing and called with any pair/draw got all in vs a standard live player, with a9 against standard's 83ss.
turn9. river a.
table erupts in headshakes and disbelief with but one man banging the table in glee.
after this dies down, a kid on my right says nice hand, not loud enough for the winner of the hand to hear, but close enough so that the loser could. the guy who lost understandably, doesn't take it too well, saying "not actually a nice hand was it?"
kid replies, "no, but you're supposed to say that to the winning hand aren't you?"

internet commentators

much as i wrote this blog for me, it's always nice to get comments.
however, i can understand why you's wouldn't want to. it was bruce who once quipped that "..as everyone knows youtube commentators are the lowest forms of intelligence"

i have written many an article on the complete lack of thought that goes into many a bbc article. this is often the journalist, though not infrequently the people they quote. i have of course, always avoided reading the general public's opinions because whilst as a group the conclusion can be sensible, individuals' thoughts are alarmingly alarming.
and sometimes it's hard to tell when they joking, mostly because i'm hoping they're not serious more than anything else.

this article is about crocodiles eating you. as some comments rightly point out, the whole article is retarded by saying the best way of not getting eaten is going nowhere near them. so stupid on a few levels. not least because the article is titled "How do you fight off a crocodile?"

and then the comments section. early on, a comment worthy of youtube intellect appears, and doesn't seem to be anything other than serious. remember, this is on an article about how to defend yourself when a crocodile is about to kill you:
"...I don't think poking it in the eye is the best idea. You do that your going to drive it mad, because its in pain and the last think you want to do is drive a man eating creature with 13 tones per square inch gob mad."

reading just that part it actually seems quite humorous, although i think that's just because it's taken out of context. and once again, i'm hoping it's a very witty person who has caught me out, because the alternative is so disappointing.

award time

an early contender for moron of the year goes to this lady
she, an employee for the department of transport, complained that messages she posted on twitter were used by journalists. she expected them to be private. obviously a ruling was provided that they are in the public domain. no doubt a decent waste of taxpayer money was wasted somewhere trying to defend her idiocy.

something else accidentally moronic happened today. i sky plus'd match of the day and went to watch it. as is usually the case, the programme begins recording at the end of the previous one, so you catch the last minute or two of the preceding one, which in this instance was the news. as usual, the last news item is sport, and the first thing that i heard when starting the programme was hearing the newsreader finish saying,
(if you don't want to know the scores)
"look away now..."
together with an image of all the day's results.

had another epiphany yesterday when losing a bunch of money. i often berate myself when losing money for making mistakes and bad calls. much as i try to avoid results based thinking there is a huge bias when looking at results which involve the calls that you make because you don't see the results from the times that you fold.
when i make a good call i assume it will be correct every time and bad calls are wrong every time. i don't think it's as simple as that but even after the event it's occasionally hard to know definitively whether what i've done is + or - ev.
and i shouldn't abuse myself so much. except when i've made stupid mistakes which i still seem to do an awful lot of. need to focus on correcting that and having better plans for hands when i invoke the call button. at least i'm worrying less about winning and losing. even though i need to pay rent!

also, got an hdmi cable for my ps3, and it's like my eyes are now open. fifa is much more beautiful! all for the princely sum of 37 great british pennies + delivery. and now i must sleep.

know thyself

i think it was sun tzu who said something like "know your enemy and know yourself and you'll win every battle"

like a lot of things i've been learning about recently, there is one more obvious step beyond this quote, which is that you need to be able to apply it. further, i think that the application of this is quite interesting.
i know myself, but recently i began thinking about really understanding what causes me frustration (especially at the tables) and most importantly, knowing how to deal with it in a way that will please my brain.
so this month i've been setting out to play 1000 hands, and i keep an eye on the number of hands played (not too frequently) and make little milestones in my head. so i notice when i'm 1/3 of the way through, half way through, two thirds of way through and also when i reach the 1k mark. then i decide how i'm feeling and whether to continue.
i find these milestones help relax me into not doing anything rash. this has kinda helped my overall play.

playing a bit of football and tennis recently and i think i've tweaked my hernia. i assume this is possible since i've done it before and it took a couple of weeks of rest to recover. whenever i hear hernia, i assume it's a terrible injury but that's just a pavlovian response i think.

on a related but an unrelated note i tried to call my gp today at 3pm. they'd already closed. what if i was ill!?

i wasn't though. but when i was relaxing on the throne i realised that i'm pretty sure the smartphone was invented by someone bored of reading the toothpaste ingredients for the umpteenth time whilst sitting on the toilet.

great success!

not really on the poker results front.
as is clear from my last post, i have what seems to be the football pundit mentality: you're only as good as your last result.
so regardless of whether you've won 7 in a row before throwing away a four goal lead, or you're bottom of the league and beat the league leaders your season's performance isn't as important as your last game. clearly, this is utter nonsense. though obviously it's more difficult when analysing your own performance, when there is no team involved. there is just variance.

anyway, i stopped feeling sorry for myself when i woke up the next day. that was a success. but the great success just followed this evening's session where i completely forgot to check my results till just now.

i need to concentrate and run good again as i need to withdraw some more money for rent. not much else been happening. other than a minor car crash. i was waiting (stationary!) at a junction to join a road, woman drove straight into my car. brilliant. when i was getting her details she seemed completely unfazed by the whole experience because i figured she was either out of bounds (an actual retard), giving me false details or has done this before lots of times. i was going with c.

last thought for today, i was watching the superbowl last night (first half till i couldn't stay awake any longer) and was most impressed by the coin toss ceremony. more accurately, the way the packers' fans celebrated winning with the stadium erupting in cheers!
finally, a statistic for the superbowl - the nfc team has won the coin toss for the last 14 games! variance!!