AlexBowler.com » Discuss

Caution!

Alex Bowler — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 11:34:46 +0000

Playing full time

Alex Bowler — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:48:51 +0000

I was asked for some advice on starting to play poker full time, and its something I have written bits about in the past, so rather than just replying individually by email I thought I’d put a page on here. This way I can edit in extra good pieces of advice over time, and we can use the comments section for discussing any questions it raises. This initial content is partly from previous emails and partly from a questionaire I answered for someone else writing about the subject.

Introduction

It would be a good idea to read right through my blog, since its probably better to see what I thought about it at different times than remembering back. Also look at the graphs/results, to make sure you have a reasonable expectation of variance. If I’d had my biggest downswing in the first month I’d have had to quit.

Minimum bankroll

This entirely depends on your situation: If you are between jobs and ‘taking a shot’ you could start with 5 buy-ins and no savings, and be happy with less than a 2 in 3 chance of success. If you had dependants or would find it difficult to get another job you would need much more certainty.

I had decided I needed a career change whether I was able to play poker full time or not, so I wasn’t too worried about quitting; when I handed in my notice I had a 20 buy-in bankroll, and I started my first day as a ‘pro’ with 30 buy-ins and 2 month’s wages in hand.

Online or live? Tournaments, sitngos or cash games?

Online cash games are definitely my first choice for bringing in a monthly salary. The long-run is reached so much more quickly that there is “almost” no chance of having a losing month.

The transition time from amateur to professional

Turning from a mediocre amateur to a talented amateur is the bit that takes months, assuming the new job-title is the easy bit. I was finally convinced to resign from real work by Tommy Angelo’s quote –

“The only way to get by without a job is to not have one.” (http://www.tommyangelo.com/tommyisms.html)

I guess that the talented amateur may also have to work on his money management and discipline as he makes the transition, but for me those things were in place before I ever learnt to play poker.

Play part-time intially

That way you will have a very good estimation of your win rate before you start, and you will already know how much variance to expect

Stop-losses (and stop-wins!)

I don’t recommend these as a general rule, especially not cutting your wins when you are playing well. I’m sure that whatever prevents an individual playing at their best varies hugely. Personally I have discovered that I shouldn’t play for more than 2 ½ hours at a time, and not more than 3000 hands in a day. After that my concentration slips and I don’t realise it at the time, so having that rule in place helps.

Accounting

My poker withdrawals are paid into an account that has a standing order set to send my ‘salary’ to my current account on the last day of every month, exactly like when I had a regular job. Additional winnings are split between savings & investments and bankroll building. Poker doesn’t come with a pension, so I keep my ISA topped up. Another good tip for poker pro’s who probably have little to no taxable income is that they should put (at least) £3600 into a stakeholder pension each year, since up to that limit 20% ‘tax’ is refunded whether or not you have paid any – i.e. it only costs £2880 pa.

Minimum stakes

I wouldn’t want to play lower than $2/$4 nl. I think that below that, real-world jobs would be too attractive. But I live in London and only play 25 hours a week; I imagine people can make a living at much lower limits if they work longer hours and live in cheaper areas.

Confirming your win-rate

Play hundreds of thousands of hands, find your winrate and variance, and calculate a confidence interval. Finding a 95+% confidence that my true winrate was in a range that was higher than my salary was definitely a key factor in quitting. If you aren’t familiar with this calculation it might be an alarm-bell that most of your strongest opponents will have more mathematical experience.

In conclusion

I think my best advice snippet is to ensure that you have a mathematical expectation of twice what you want to earn each month (I’m talking about a satisfactory regular amount not a minimum, and don’t necessarily expect to play more than 20-30 hours/week). If that is the case then almost all months’ earningss will be sufficient and you’ll build up a cushion.

Don’t tap the glass!

Alex Bowler — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:42:16 +0000

The summary: Shinta, KalleKanin, and _Iverson_ are idiots. Please pass the message on if you know any of them.

What this image shows is the above 3 players sat out, and that “jumboshrimp” in the top centre seat then left the table. Jumboshrimp played a creative 57/44 style, and was the reason this table was running. Unbelieviably, and with no consideration of their own financial wellbeing, when jumboshrimp first got cleaned out and sat out for a hand, _Iverson_ instantly did the same, followed by the other two. Luckily, jumboshrimp wasn’t detered by this obvious indication that he’s the reason they were playing and did reload, but then the second time he got stacked the same thing happened again. This time we all waited 5 minutes with the 3 idiots sat out, and he eventually left.

There is a brightside to the story though; when he got up the 3 morons all got up as well, and then 30 seconds later he sat back down and the table filled up with a much softer line-up.

A hand from this afternoon

Alex Bowler — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:56:14 +0000

Here we both know that we both know what he’s holding, and I can presume that he thinks I think he’ll never call this big check raise ‘bluff’, and so he does…

$5/$10 No Limit Holdem
6 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

UTG	AJH	($975.00)
UTG+1	Dexter_08	($1015.00)
CO	Joeik4	($985.00)
BTN	etant_	($1485.00)
SB	Hero	($1104.00)
BB	quaril_	($210.00)

Pre-flop: ($15, 6 players) Hero is SB

3 folds, etant_ raises to $20, Hero raises to $75, 1 fold, etant_ calls $55

Flop: ($160, 2 players)
Hero bets $80, etant_ calls $80

Turn: ($320, 2 players)
Hero checks, etant_ checks

River: ($320, 2 players)
Hero checks, etant_ bets $215, Hero raises to $944, etant_ calls $729

Final Pot: $2,208
Hero shows:
etant_ shows:

Hero wins $2,205 ( won +$1,106 )
etant_ lost -$1,099

Tournament Strategy

Alex Bowler — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:06:31 +0000

This is a note for my own use as much as anything else, below is a copy of a post made by Negreanu in a response to Galfond, discussing Durrrr’s poker strategies.

The summary is that tournament players tend to play badly, or at least on a lower level of thought, and that when cash players play in tournaments they can overestimate the plays and adjustments that their opponents are making, because their regular cash-game opponents play to a much higher level.

This is a mistake that I made in a £20 live tourney I played at the weekend. Within two two rounds I had 3-bet the guy to my right for a 3rd time and there were a few comments about ‘internet playing style’, I’d had AK and AA, but neither had gone to showdown. This time I had AK, and the button cold-called. I thought that given my opponents had reason to believe I had a very wide range they would cold-call widely and try to win the pot frequently when I missed the flop. This meant that on a 955 flop I thought my AK still had a load of equity against his range, and with 1600 in the pot and about 3.5k left to play (and I had another 1500 behind that) a check raise shove might even fold out the mid pairs that actually are ahead of me.

So I made the check-raise all-in and he called with AA. He actually called with a hint of hesitation and a mention that I might have a 5 that could have been considered a slow-roll in a cash game! I now think that I completely overestimated the likelihood that a tournament player was adjusting and making play here. Giving up with AK on all 955 flops with only 2x the pot behind, to a 3/5pot bet, would be disastrous against good cash game opponents, but is probably fine in tournaments, especially considering that this was a realy low buy-in. As DN explains here:

“I fully understand why both Patrik and Durr sometimes take more risks in tournaments. I get that they do have other places they can make money and their hourly rate is always a concern. That actually kind of proves my point a little bit. They make plays in tournaments that aren’t always optimal, but they make them because, for example, being short stacked in a tournament is less lucrative than playing side games.
The biggest criticism I would have for Tom’s tournament game is that I don’t think he realizes sometimes how basic, and weak, most tournament players are. They are so much worse than the players he’s used to playing.

This might not make a whole lot of sense, but I’ll try and put it into words the best that I can: when I play tournament poker against typical fields I use about 55% of the weapons that I could. The reason I choose to do that is because the low risk approach is good enough to consistently build my stack without taking any risks. That same type of approach against sophisticated players, either in a tournament or a cash game, is simply not good enough. If I face better players, especially later in tournaments I usually make the adjustments and add more “play” to my game.
I watch lots of great cash players play tournaments at 100%. They still might be playing great poker, but not necessarily playing tournament poker properly. A simple example would be something like: Patrik and Gus are at a table full of weak/bad players. Instead of just picking on them, Patrik will start to make plays against Gus, the only real threat to him at the table. David Oppenhiem- same exact thing. Instead of being more cautious against the tougher opponents and picking on the weak, he’ll go right after the best players at the table- full steam ahead and mix it up. That’s a mistake.
Those aren’t exactly the types of things I’ve seen Durrr do, and frankly, I don’t have a ton of hours against him in tournaments either, but I did see him make high risk plays that weren’t necessary for him to build his stack. Durrr is well bankrolled when he plays cash games and can fade the inevitable swings. In a tournament, though, you are restricted.
I broke him in a WPT event at the Bellagio in a hand where I raised under the gun, Thorladen re-raised me in second position, and Durr called on the button. I then went all in (had him covered). He called with 10-10. There are two tournament mistakes in that hand. He should have just folded the 10-10 in the first place, and then when I went all-in he could have gotten away from it. (I had AA)”

A nice 475bb pot

Alex Bowler — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:14:21 +0000

Still £4k down for Feb, but this pot helped.

The moral of the story here is to avoid situations in which your range is very narrow and you still have 8-9 times the pot left to bet from out of position. Here I’m sure that his range on the flop is entirely overpairs, and he did have QQ . He gets almost 4:1 pot odds on the turn, which must make folding any overpair tough, and folding an overpair with a spade almost unthinkable. Probably helps to have a bit of a history of stabbing 1/3p bluffs in big pots.

The ace on the river is disastrous a small amount of the time, because obviously he can have AA as easily as the other overpairs, but since it’s the ace of the spades it ensures that KxKs calls as well as probably QxQs and JxJs, so its usually a great card.

Against some players I think its better to bet bigger on the turn, because they won’t fold many overpairs and certainly won’t fold one with a flush draw, but in this case I felt like he was playing a bit more carefully and might get away from JJ and QQ this deep since he hasn’t got any history of seeing me bluff in this situation (or ever have been in it with hiim before, for that matter.), I thought a spade river, or at least a lot of fake fold equity on the turn, might be needed to get the lot in, so the turn bet is small enough to make sure he sees the river if it does turn out to complete his draw.

$3/$6 No Limit Holdem
3 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

BTN	Hero	($1461.40)
SB	AceTorped0	($1401.75)
BB	Somerki	($708.55)

Pre-flop: ($9, 3 players) Hero is BTN

Hero raises to $21, AceTorped0 raises to $77, Somerki folds, Hero calls $56

Flop: ($160, 2 players)
AceTorped0 bets $124, Hero raises to $300, AceTorped0 calls $176

Turn: ($760, 2 players)
AceTorped0 checks, Hero bets $275, AceTorped0 calls $275

River: ($1,310, 2 players)
AceTorped0 checks, Hero bets $809.40, AceTorped0 calls $746.75

Final Pot: $2,866.15
AceTorped0 shows:
Hero shows:

Hero wins $2,863.15 ( won +$1,401.75 )
AceTorped0 lost -$1,398.75

170 bbs, bluff-shove raised flop?

Alex Bowler — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:20:17 +0000

This was heads up and had been quite a loose, aggressive match so far. However, I had hardly reraised from the big blind. I’d raised every button as had villain, and we had been playing postflop aggressively, but I’d been card-dead out of position and had hardly played a hand.

Given the game flow I expected villain to call the 3 bet very widely and to raise a lot of flops, but I actually thought he wouldn’t raise this one since it looked so much like I have a premium range from my tight preflop play out of position, and I didn’t think there was any reason to think that he would think that I’d be folding overpairs on this flop.

When he does make a small raise I feel like he often just decided to give stealing the pot a go anyway, since we both know I could have AK or something like 77 that I don’t want to put 170 bbs in with.

So then there’s ~$800 in the pot with $1400 left to bet. Thats a ~$1200 raise, about the size of the pot, and I’m thinking that if I shove, villain will definitely put me squarely on someting like QQ+,AdKd and only call with hands stronger than, say, JJ, which he can’t have often enough for me to show a profit (especially since he didn’t 4-bet, and 22 is the only likely set).

I think that if he does call, its often with 1 pair, a nut flush draw or a bigger draw like 3d4d, so I’d hope to have 20-25% equity, meaning I’m risking about $700-$800, so it has to work half the time.

Anyone like a shove? Feel free to leave a comment…
$5/$10 No Limit Holdem
2 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

SB	Kalacenikov6	($2072.85)
BB	Hero	($1723.00)

Pre-flop: ($15, 2 players) Hero is BB

Kalacenikov6 raises to $35, Hero raises to $120, Kalacenikov6 calls $85

Flop: ($240, 2 players)
Hero bets $165, Kalacenikov6 raises to $411, $246 to Hero ($1,438)?