Card Death

A session I had a week ago gave led me to an important insight.  I’ve been trying to take note when emotion rises and falls with me at the table.  Trying to determine what triggers tilt in me will give me a good place to start in better managing my mental game.  It’s really hard to fix a problem if you can’t clearly define it.  With technical skills you would never see a player voicing a problem with their game with statements such as “I just can’t win, I suck!”  So too with the mental game there are lots of different facets and flavors of problems  and trying to get at the root of what’s going on isn’t always very easy.

One problem I’ve been having is coping with card death.  I’ve tried deep breathing, going for walks, changing seats, all with spotty results.  It’s a form of injustice tilt with me, I understand that getting “my fair share” of good starting hands means I should be playing one out of three or four dealt to me.  I also understand, rationally, that a nice distribution only happens over a large sample.  It’s crazy to think that I actually do play every third or fourth hand I get.  That’s not how distribution works; it’s very messy in the short term.  When I do coin flips I would never expect EVERY “heads” result would be followed by a “tails” and vice versa.

In a session of Hold’em I might play 100 hands and it’s possible that I would be dealt about 20 or 30 that are playable.  But, 100 hands is much too small of a sample to see an appropriate distribution.  Most of on line players recognize that 10,000 hands is the minimum sample size to obtain reliable statistics.  Anything smaller and you run the risk of results being influenced by chance.  The larger your sample size the more confident you can be in trends and not errors in calculation or just simple random occurrences in the data.

So, if over 10,000 hands my VPIP (voluntarily putting money into the pot) is still only 18% I’ve got a problem with too tight starting hand selection and I need to figure out where I’m missing equity.  If I’ve got a VPIP of 18% after only 100 hands, I may have a problem, I don’t really know.  It’s just as likely that I’m facing a cold deck as I am getting too nitty with my hand selection.  This is where my mind gets foggy at the table.  70 hands or so into a session getting playable hands maybe once every other orbit I start to attribute my low VIPIP to things that statistically I can have no confidence in.  I start to think that because there are 3 limpers in front of me I can play J-9 off suit because “I’m getting 5:1” and I think I’ve been playing too tight.  This sort of thinking will clearly spell disaster for me.

If I can rationally understand that card death and cold decks happen, quite frequently actually, then why am I allowing it to put me on tilt?  Much of it comes down to some of the intangible reasons I play cards.  I enjoy playing well, making good decisions and trying to think through situations.  I enjoy evaluating other players and just the mechanics of how poker works.  I enjoy winning.  I like the respect winning commands from others and I enjoy the banter and exchange of ideas with other strong players.  When I compare what sets most players off, bad beats and suckouts, to what upsets me there’s a difference.  No player likes getting outdrawn, the fall of an unlucky card and the pot shoved to a player without the same level of skill.  But, these situations generally do not put me on my ear the same way card death does.  Somehow I’ve equated conservative (i.e. winning) hand selection with not playing at all.  Folding hand after hand doesn’t feel like striking out, it feels like never even being allowed to come to bat.  When I get a strong hand and get drawn out on I feel like, “So be it!”  I tried my best and I got beat, I can live with that.  But when card death stretches into its second hour with me I feel impotent, like I’m wasting my time and jipped.  I didn’t even get a chance to try and use my skills.  I’m like a second stringer, begging the coach in the fourth quarter, “Put me in!  Give me the ball! I want to play!” but never getting my shot.

So, what is it about hand selection that makes it feel like a jip?  The adult learning model talks about levels of mastery starting with 1.) Subconscious incompetence (clueless, you don’t even know what you don’t know) 2.) Conscious incompetence (understanding your shortcomings) 3.)  Conscious competence (learned skills you still need to focus on in order to use) and 4.)  Subconscious competence (skills learned so well, they are employed without thinking about it).

When I was starting to learn to play poker, thinking about what cards to play was a big part of my learning curve.  I had a list in my head and it didn’t really matter my position, my table image, the pot size, the action, the number of players in the hand and the relative quality of those players.  I had to consciously match my hole cards with the list in my head in order to know what to do with them; fold, call or raise.  Card death wasn’t such a problem for me at that time because so much of my thought process was occupied with this one element of hand selection.  As hand selection has begun to receded into subconscious competence I’m no longer focused on it.  It’s more or less automatic.  Now my focus is much more on post flop play, evaluating my opponents and their range, calculating my equity and pot odds and other considerations that happen AFTER I’ve decided to play a hand.  Does this mean my skill at hand selection has gone away?  Heavens no!  It’s just that it’s being employed at a level I’m not aware of as much.

So, no wonder that card death is eating at me more and more.  It’s not so much that I’m not being dealt my “fair share” of cards.  It’s much more that the things I’m paying attention to I don’t get to apply as much as I want.  Understanding this aspect of tilt, what’s getting under my skin and why is going to go a long way to resolving this problem and will help me inject logic when I feel my frustration rising.

“You are playing your share of hands, it’s just that the skills you employ in selecting those hands is going on at a level you are less aware of.”

Confidence

I got some interesting insights from Jerrod Tendler’s book about poker psychology on confidence.  I’ve often suffered from lack of confidence at the tables.  I get intimidated by other players, I begin to doubt my decision making and make mistakes.  When my confidence is threatened the adrenalin rush blocks out my ability to think and I get kicked into fight or flight. I see threats that may or may not be there but clearly don’t pose the danger I think they do.  I over play hands feeling like I have to defend myself.  I play timidly and fail to bet in raise in spots I need to.  The biggest problems with this short circuit in my thinking is that I start to focus on the wrong things.  I start to worry about a meta game that probably doesn’t exist and even if it did, shouldn’t result in making too many changes in my play.  I fail to put players on a range of hands and make proper betting decisions based on that range, the strength of my hand and the size of the pot.

Jerrod points out that all humans in general and poker players in particular, are terrible psychics.  We make errors all the time in estimating our abilities.  Poker players love to envision themselves as dangerous players who can take on all comers.  We also frequently miss the mark in evaluating the strength of other players as well and envisioning them as clueless fish, waiting for us to come and take their money.  Evaluating my strength as a player and the strength of my opponents is very important to playing winning poker, but it’s not that easy to do, especially in live play.  Learning to accurately evaluate my play and the play of opponents is a skill that has to be learned and practiced.  It’s not just a feeling you get when you sit down at the table or a judgment you can make by watching one or two hands.

These errors in judgment, particularly in evaluating the strength of my own play is at the root of confidence issues.   I had a pretty good run earlier in the year.  I played fairly well but there’s no doubt I was touched by positive variance.  In the midst of it I erroneously assigned too much of my success to skillful play and also began to underestimate the skill of my opponents.  The truth is I’m a decent player but still very inexperienced and prone to making a lot of mistakes better players avoid.  I’m still a novice and it’s going to take a lot more work, study and experience to be an advanced player.  I’ve begun to grasp a lot of the fundamentals and this does give me an edge over a lot of my opponents but I’ve got a long way to go. 

Subconsciously, I knew that my confident stand was a sham.  I was overconfident.  When poker eventually slapped me down my confidence level collapsed like the house of cards it was.  The trouble is that my level then dropped below any semblance of reality.  I began to underestimate my ability “I suck, I’ll never be a decent player” and over estimate my opponents “That’s the second beat that guy gave me.  He’s targeting me!”

Cultivating certainty is the solution to confidence issues.  Learning and putting in the work to accurately assess my skill, to be able to consistently spot variance and learn to correctly evaluate my opponents abilities will enable me to put confidence issues behind me.

Game Notes

A tool I’m going to be using to help with my mental game is taking notes on how I'm feeling and what I’m thinking during my sessions.  I booked a nice 5 hour session yesterday morning.  There were two fairly drunk fellows at the table; leftovers from the night before from a game that broke an hour or so prior.  We started a three handed game.  I’ve been playing short handed games a lot on line lately.  These are play chip games so opponent ranges are wide open.  I didn’t compensate enough for my live play and so I got hammered a couple times with hands like 2^nd pair losing to top pair. 

Interestingly, one hand I won set me off a little bit.  Out of position I hit trip 9’s and turned quads.  There was very passive action so I was just checking and sure enough got a bet on the river, I raised and both called.  The room has a high hand promotion.  Hitting promotions are important to my win rate as they help compensate for the terrible rake at these low stakes.  Unfortunately, this room has a four player minimum to be eligible so I missed out on a $100 prize.  This room allows employees to play, especially when games are short handed to keep the action going.  There were two dealers sitting around chatting and not playing.  I was pretty pissed. 

The truth is, however, that I knew the rules when I sat down.  I could have waited until four players turned up to play.  I accepted the possibility of hitting a promotion but not getting paid when I agreed to play three handed.  AND, I’d do it again because I have a MUCH higher expectation playing against two drunks short handed compared to winning a promotion.  This is the equivalent of bad players slow playing sets trying to hit quads to win a promotion.  The amount of money you win on the extremely rare occasions your case card hits comes nowhere near making up for all the equity you miss by not betting and raising your sets.

I guess rationality finally won the battle because I was able to move on and keep a handle on my play.  I won a few hands and by the time the table filled up I had a decent stack and then “it” happened.

I have been struggling some with entitlement tilt, specifically to great feeling of injustice when I go through long stretches of being dealt nothing but unplayable hands.  I know the math says outside of the blinds I should be playing ¼ to 1/3 of the hands I’m dealt.  Any more than this range and I’m playing too loose; exposing myself to getting drawn out on and coolers.  Any less than ¼ and I’m too tight; risking losing equity and getting run over.  But, when a cold deck hits it and I enter the second hour of looking down at 8-3 and 10-2, I start to question my hand selection strategy.  This is easy to do since nearly all of my opponents at these low stakes will regularly play hands like these and occasionally win with them.  It’s tough to stomach folding hand after hand when my neighbors are raking in huge pots with 7-2.  Temptation comes calling when I get dealt A-rag UTG + 2 or suited trash in cutoff with 2 limpers in front. 

Another thing that compounds my “card death tilt” is that probability doesn’t take a break along with the trickle of hands I’m “supposed” to get.  Stewing in my entitlement I somehow believe that because I’ve waited “SO LONG!” for my pocket 10’s they should hold up.  But, as so often happens, the overcards come and I get played back at.  Instead of taking my foot off the gas I reraise trying to force the hand but only end up building a bigger pot for my opponent and I end up feeling even more spurned.

One or two of these overplayed hands can often emotionally swing me in the other direction and cause me to feel hopeless about my play.  One situation came up yesterday when I found KJ in the big blind with three limpers in front of me.  Instead of raising I just checked, I missed the flop and checked.  One of the limpers bet out and with such a small pot, I just folded.  As played, it wasn’t too bad, I lost the minimum.  But, because of my tilt I started feeling hopeless and deviated from my normal aggressive game.  My internal talk was, “Why raise?  I’m just going to miss anyway.  Why should I build a pot for an opponent again?”

The “Why raise, I’m just going to miss…” is very seductive because there’s a lot truth in it.  Yes, I am going to miss the flop, 2/3 of the time in fact.  It’s also some consolation (in a sick way) when I check fold the flop in these cases that “I lost the minimum there.”  When I’m this mode after my fold I’ll watch the turn and river very carefully and smugly gloat to myself as I would have missed those two cards too.

But, the definition of tilt is when emotion causes you to change a winning strategy.  Raising preflop with hands that likely have an edge over opponents is standard basic play.  Without it I have no chance of winning in the long term.  My entitlement and injustice tilt is causing me to play losing poker.

Finally, I caught pocket 8’s in early position.  I raised and got called in four spots.  The opponent to my right had folded and commented, “You waited a long time for that hand!”  Usually, I catch myself giving too much credit to opponents but I forget that sometimes they do pay attention.  My c-bet on the flop got raised, I called grumbling about my probable beat again but a sweet 8 fell on the turn.  I check raised and the board cooperated on the turn, pairing and giving me a fullhouse.

I could feel myself tilting and I did make some bad plays but my worst play yesterday was far better than the worst I’ve ever played when on tilt.  This is really important because while playing better is important, playing less worse is just as crucial.  I’m beginning to feel like my A game is improving slowly but I’ve got lots of opportunity improve the back end of my game.  Playing better when I’m not at my best is a very worthwhile goal.  Staying with a winning strategy, even when it doesn’t “feel” like its winning can be done.  What happened yesterday is a good example in staying disciplined, being sorely tempted to play bad hands but resisting.  That patience allowed me to stay in the game and eventually get a few of the hands I was looking for.

What is Tilt?

Jarrod Tendler in his book, The Mental Game of Poker, lays out the concept of tilt and how it costs players so much at the tables.  He suggests that normal advice on self help and poker such as breathing exercises, meditation, visualization and positive self talk may help in the moment of a tilt storm but don’t get at the root cause of tilt.  Tilt will continue to happen it’s just with these “tricks” you may be able to cope a little better with it.  Jerrod is interested in helping players uncover what causes players to tilt in the first place, find ways to resolve these issues and in this way stop tilt from happening.

Here is Jerrod’s equation:

Tilt = Anger + Bad Play

We are all familiar with bad players.  Folks play poorly for all sorts of reasons, ignorance, indifference, superstition.  But, it is when anger (frustration, indigence, envy, arrogance, etc) results in bad play that we have the recipe for tilt.  Notice that anger alone is not tilting.  The best players in the world get angry at the tables but they have learned to not allow emotion to negatively impact the decisions they make.

Trying to find out players beliefs about and meaning assigned to poker is at the root of what causes anger, and subsequently tilt.  It’s natural to think that I need to find out what’s pissing me off to resolve my feelings about it, not just try some tricks to stop feeling pissed off!  But, one tool Jerrod suggests turns this upside down.  I need to critically examine what success means for me in poker.  I get angry at the table when I feel like my attempts to achieve success are thwarted.  So, what does success look like for me?

It’s easy to think that success in poker means winning money.  Money is how we keep score in poker.  A big win rate, a string of positive sessions and a swelling bankroll would tend to make most players think they are on the right track.  But, when I sit down at the table there’s more at steak than just money.  Trying to find out what those things are, how to measure them and identifying the thing preventing me from achieving them would go a long way to start getting a handle on tilt.

Tilt

I’ve been taking a beating lately.  My bankroll is draining fast and I’m worried about going broke for the 2^nd time since playing seriously.  My sense is that what’s going wrong is mostly due to variance.  A common pattern I’ve been facing is making one big hand early in a session and raking a big pot, then going card dead.  As the session grinds on looking down at 7-3, 10-2 and the like, those rare situations I do connect with the flop I end up over playing.  For example: having 9-7 off suit in the big blind, it checks to me and the flop comes 9-10-2 and the small blind checks.  I bet and get called all the way and am beat by a guy with 10-J on the button.

It only takes one or two of these losses (along with bleeding my blinds) and I’m stuck a rack.  I rebuy and start worrying about my short term performance.  “I’m down a rack, so I could double up on this rebuy and I’m still only breaking even.”  “Even if I only break even, after investing three hours my win rate will still take another hit.”

The grind continues with my 2^nd buyin and the crazy thinking starts.  “I’m playing way too tight.  I should just take a chance on the button and cutoff and just see a flop with any two cards.”  I also start making very dubious peels, calling one bet on the flop with small suited connectors trying to improve to a proper draw on the turn. Nearly every time when I do end up improving I miss on the river anyway and I’ve just pissed away 2 big bets.

I’ve tried a few things to help my rising frustration.  Breathing exercises, positive self-talk, taking a walk and listening to music.  I even bought a watch with some of my winnings and I look at it or play with it when I’m in a rut like this.  These things help for a time but I continue to feel defeated and glum as the card death continues.  I lay my head on the table, start counting out loud the number of hands I don’t play in a row and audibly grouse about my bad run of cards.  A few times I’ve even crossed the monkey tilt threshold and stopped caring, finally catching a decent hand, missing the flop and blindly betting and raising despite a coordinated board and walking into a baseball bat.

There is little doubt that these bad runs are to blame for a chunk of my bankroll that’s missing.  There is also no doubt that my tilt in the face of this bad run is compounding the problem.  I would probably be just as frustrated with my bad run had tilt not been a factor but my bankroll wouldn’t be on life support. 

Not only is tilt costing me money but a more serious concern is that it’s making me miserable.  I’m getting to the point were I’m having some fear about sitting down at the table and wanting to “take a break” from poker.  I’ve even done things like deleted a disaster session and made plans to archive my database and “start a new bankroll” as a clean start.

There are a couple game conditions that I’ve noticed hasten my slide into tilt.  One is when the game gets really good.  One or two action players sit down and pots start getting really big.  I recognize that winning one or two pots from these guys would be enough to get me into positive territory for the session.  I want so badly to get in and mix it up with these guys but just can’t catch a hand to try.  As the fish inevitably spew all their chips to the table and leave, I’m still grinding my tiny stack, stuck a rank and a half and go back to trying to scratch a tiny pot or two away from the loose-passive regulars.

Another condition I often face is when one player at the table is running very good.  I’ve lost one or two big hands to this person and fail to recognize that other players have too.  As their mountain of chips grows, I start getting resentful and begin to imagine that this player is targeting me.  My rational mind knows this is ridiculous.  Nearly all players at my stakes wouldn’t know how to exploit a weaker opponent even if they could identify someone they had an edge on (not a forgone conclusion).  Thinking that a player on a heater is somehow singling me out is not only paranoid but granting way too much credit to an opponent.  The fact that most players are solely focused on their own hand, (not on anyone else’s potential holding) is the very thing that gives advanced players an edge.  Nevertheless, my reptile brain is in fight or flight mode thanks to my tilting reaction to my bad run.  I’m not only seeing monsters under the bed but across the table from me too, behind that big stack of chips!  I try to play back at these players with marginal hands and end up getting whacked.

Finally, the last situation happens so frequently that it undermines my confidence and sometimes has me changing my game to the point of endangering my winning status.  Rationally, I know that a hand like A-Q will win more than its share, probably around 30%.  I also know that 30% is not 100%.  Despite a big preflop advantage, I’m still going to lose 7 times out of 10.  To make up for these losses, I know I need to get as much money as I can into the pot early in the hand when I do still have an edge.  However, when I’m running bad and take a loss with A-Q I feel a great sense of injustice in that I’m falling far short of the 30% that’s due to me.  One of two scenarios play out here: I either go on monkey tilt and try to bull my way to winning the pot on the next occasion I have a strong starting hand or something much worse.

Early on I played hands like A-Q way too passively and missed out on a lot of folding equity.  One or two spots like this in a session when failing to play appropriately aggressive can be the difference between a winning and loosing session.  When I’m running badly I begin to lose faith in this very basic poker concept.  I become demoralized and begin to think things like, “What’s the use? I’m just going to miss the flop anyway.  Why not just limp in, see the flop and fold when faced with a bet.  That way I can cut my losses.”  That thinking is a total disaster to winning poker.  Giving in to thinking, “It’s better to win a small pot than lose a big one” will grind me down just as sure as my stretch of card death and a combination of the two could drive me out of poker all together.

Confidence problems and tilt are clearly impacting my game.  I’ve started reading Jared Tendler’s book, The Mental Game of Poker.  One of the suggestions he has is to use journaling as a tool to manage tilt.  I’ve decided to give it a try.  I can’t control a bad run of cards, but I have all the control in the world over how I deal with it.  The difference could mean life or death to my poker career.