Re: It's official...

Thank you Wayne, you have definitely given me stuff to think about.

You have made some wrong conclusions, but I think that I worded myself less clear than I could have earlier. I play online and live very differently. But similar results.

Live tends to be cash, online tends to be SnG and small MTT tourneys.

I would like to continue the conversation later, after I have had a chance to let what you have said sink in, and I pay a bit of attention to my play through your insights.

Cheers

Wayne Vinson wrote:
On Jan 13 2008 5:22 PM, johnny_t wrote:

Thank you for posting.

First, I *am* winning, just not covering the rake, slightly. Which means that I am not winning by enough over time. I definitely have very good days. I am not simply breaking even everyday. I am ahead with rake back.

The point is, most typical 1/2 casino games are beatable for 10BB/hour
after rake if you play a solid technical game but don't have exceptional
card sense. Based on the fact that you indicated you're not winning
(much) in those games, I more or less have to conclude your technical game
has problems. I could be wrong, but probably not.

That said, I appreciate your comments though. I do have a question. You are stating I am not picking up enough pots with semi-bluffs or pure bluffs. And then you dedicate an entire paragraph to the phrase "otherwise do not bluff."

Maybe I wan't clear. Your OPPONENTS don't do an apropriate job of
bluffing in the right spots and let too many pots go. They may also make
horribly ill considered big bluffs in other spots and lose tons of chips,
but those are not the same problem. The point is that if you show
weakness in a spot where doing so should elicit a bet from air, it
probably won't because they won't even notice they should have bet. So
don't bother trapping.

I generally follow all of the below advice.

OK, that may in fact be true, but I'm suspicious. Here's why: in your OP
you were willing to wear the "red fish" mantle and said you love to trap. But my suggestion was NEVER to trap at 1/2. And if you actually followed
my advice you would be (at least initially) very tight and very aggressive
postflop which is the antithesis of the "red fish" - you would show nearly
100% agression on every street ie almost never call since there's only one
rare cases where I suggested calling after the flop.

Only you can evaluate your own play, but my suspicion is that you're not
being perfectly honest with yourself about this and that you're splashing
around a bit more than you'd like to admit and playing passively post flop.

Step 4 may be the most interesting. Online, there are always calling stations. Or at least enough to make being aggressive on a draw a big pain.

Calling stations don't necessarily make it bad to play draws aggressively.
That's part of the magic of it. Get 2 callers on your 8/9 out draw, and
you've gotten through the street for "free" in terms of equity (2:1
against hitting, getting 2:1 on your money). If you're in position, it
may also buy a free turn if you miss, which can be very handy, and
misdirect your opponents about what kind of hand you have so you can bet
if you hit and they think you're on a pair rather than a straight/flush.

But what I think is being said here is be more tight pre-flop and more aggressive post flop.

In a nutshell, yes. Tight preflop definitely. Correct postflop play is
about aggression in the right spots, and avoiding aggression in some spots
where it seems on the surface like it might work. The number of opponents
you face, position, and how good your draw is are the deciding factors
between the good spots to be aggressive with a weak hand and the bad spots.

Which translates into more predictable hands and bigger pots. And more blinds won. I have tried this in the past, but I am not getting the returns I want.

Well, it's hard to diagnose what happened via internet obviously. If you
have hand histories dating back to the experiment, try finding some hands
where you either

a) you lost your shirt
or
b) made a hand reached a showdown after some money was bet 9regardless of
whether you won the showdown)

I'd be glad to look and see what I think. Looking at the a) hands will
potentially spot leaks. The b) hands will reveal how good a job you're
doing getting value for your made hands.
In a cash game I rarely leave an uncontested pot alone, unless I have reason to suspect that someone else is trapping. But almost always never.

That's a mistake if there's too many people in the pot. Notice the strict
cap I put on how many people you can c-bet against and what positions
you'll do it from.

As to the 1/2 NL easiest game to beat. What is the mistake I should be cashing in on. And is it enough to consistently beat the rake?

As to what mistake, that's a hard question. You should see all of them at
that limit. And every 1/2 I've ever played could be beaten.

I should also try better game selection. I have played WSOP bracelet holders, club owners, long time players, dealers, all of them are beatable in their own way, but very very few tourists or complete ignorant players. Part of the problem is that I can ONLY play days and not weekends. And I am not in the part of the country with huge numbers of tourists that gamble.

Well, you have to live with what you've got game-wise. I think generally
speaking the days of the true pre-boom "tourist" are over. Everyone knows
a little something about NL these days. But very few 1/2 players are all
that good. I can count on one hand the number of times I've played a hand
of 1/2 and felt like I was really outplayed and that my opponent did
something really sharp. it just doesn't happen much.

It may be true that I have a 5% leak in my game. Probably in money that is given away. But I may have money that I am not taking either, that would otherwise be given to me. I will say that 1/2 NL is much easier to beat the spread in a session than 5/10 where I have been the only winner after 5-7 hours, and I am only up like a 100 bucks, and the rest has gone down one of the three money holes. That is when I started becoming very aware of the friction caused by the rake.

Well, rake is certainly an issue. And many small limit games can in fact
support only 1 or possibly 2 winners because of it. That just means you
have to play far and away the best poker at the table if you want to be a
big winner. This can create the unusual circumstances where in order to
beat the rake at a small game with solid opponents you may actually need
to have both good techincal play and good card sense, but a larger seat
fee game in the room could be beaten just with solid techical play and no
real feel for the game.

Still, I would just start with the technical play issues. Because I think
you should be able to make some noticeable improvements on those fronts.

Wayne Vinson
http://cardsharp.org
Wayne (dot) Vinson (at) gmail (dot) com

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