Damage control

After last weeks unpleasantness, I actually considered quitting this poker thing – it’s just too much headache and stress. As I said before, I live my life stress free, rarely getting upset about anything. Losing sessions were devastating my psyche, and I wanted to quit.

Well not really. But I considered it.

I needed to re-evaluate what I was doing (again) and try to discover some leaks in my game that may be leading to potential long term losses.

First, I dropped levels, from 1/2 NL to 0.50/1.00 NL. It hurt the ol’ ego, but the bankroll thanked me. Then I started to examine all my big-medium losses. Since I am pretty tight preflop, I figured that I wasn’t leaking cash by playing too many hands. It must be the big pots that I’m playing incorrectly or inefficiently. I started to notice a small but distinct trend. All big pots (won or lost) all consisted of me playing a little wildly (not unexpected). This “wild” style is basically how I play my tournament games, which is clearly not how you want to be playing cash games. Check raising with draws, and pushing all in with overpairs / 2 pair and the like are all fine and dandy in tourneys, where the blinds keep you pressured to push your marginal/strong hands to double up to stay in. But in cash games, the blinds aren’t going anywhere. There isn’t much need to push small edges unless you enjoy large variance. And what kind of sick motherfucker likes variance?

*quick note, “motherfucker” passes spell check*

One other thing I considered was how many hands I was playing preflop. I know I wasn’t playing too many, but I thought perhaps I wasn’t playing enough. Maybe I was giving up too many +EV situations by folding too much. And coincidently I ran across this quote in Caro’s Book of Tells that confirmed my suspicions.

“It's just as bad to throw a hand away that has an expectation of profit than to play a hand that doesn't. In other words, you lose profit by not taking advantage of hands that are strong enough and you lose profit by playing hands that are not strong enough.”

I play 6 max tables, which is just asking for variance to kick your ass in the first place. Additionally, you must play more hands than you would at a 10 max table (obviously). So you have to start seeing flops with hands like QTo and A6s – which I think I understand, I think. I’m not really sure which hands I should be seeing in certain situations. Like, how good of a hand do you need to see a flop when everyone folds to you on the button? Is any ace good? How about suited cards? Or 97o? I don’t know. And since I’m not a fan of “stealing” the pot when it is checked to me on the button (probably more +EV I’m giving up right there) I would lose the potential advantage from limping in with any 2 cards on the button. In fixed limit, its pretty clear which hands will show profits in pre-determined situations, with computer simulations and the like telling you whats +EV. But due to the nature of NL, you can’t ever really know what the optimal play is, since you could end up risking a lot more than you ever wanted to. You must consider your opponents first and foremost. If you are up against one of those typical multi-tablers who play the top 10 hands, a steal from the button is almost guaranteed a +EV play, but against a loose cannon, you could be asking for trouble.

The hand that causes me the most trouble, are Ax in late position when everyone folds to you. Is it +EV to raise, call or fold in that situation? Here are my pros and cons for each.

Pros for raising

• Ax is favored over random hands, therefore you should make your opponents pay to see the flop.
  

• You gain control of the hand, and you may be able to steal the pot when your opponent checks to you. Additionally you can get usually get heads up against opponents by raising, increasing your EV.

Cons for raising

• Generally speaking, anyone who will call your raise will have you beat, often times by a better ace. If an ace hits you could lose a big pot unless you have a good read on your opponent and can lay down your pair of aces.
  

• You really only have one card to hit on the flop, since if you hit your 2nd card you can’t be all that happy. Compare that to a hand like QJ where if you hit either card you are happy.

• If people see you raising with Ax, they may start to play back at you, especially if you are raising a lot. Playback is never fun.

So is calling the answer? Certainly folding an ace shorthanded has to be –EV.

Pros for calling

• You don’t invest a lot of cash in a hand that isn’t that strong. That makes sense.
  

• If an ace hits, people may not put you on it because you didn’t raise preflop.
  

• You can steal more liberally if it is checked to you since if you bet people won’t put you on a bluff since you didn’t raise preflop. They will most likely put you on a value bet, or maybe a position steal depending on how you play.

Cons for calling

• Limping in is a weak play, you lose control of the hand and you encourage more people to limp in giving you more opponents. Additionally if someone ends up raising behind you, you are faced with a tough decision, usually a fold and another wasted blind.
  

• Hitting your ace is a mixed blessing of course, since you can easily be outkicked. Also when aces appear on flops, people sort of freeze up when they don’t have one. Even the fishiest of fish may stop chasing their QTo unimproved once an ace hits. As its been said often, you end up winning a lot of small pots and losing large ones.

So after that investigation, I’m still not sure. I think it is –EV to fold, it has to be, but I’m not sure what the +EV play is. I need help.

Wow this post got a lot longer than I anticipated and I didn’t even get to what I wanted to talk about. Another post perhaps?

TUNE IN TONIGHT FOR A VERY SPECIAL EPISODE.