What makes a good poker player?

When I'm at parties or other social functions and people hear that I'm a professional poker player, they always ask "god damn, how did you get to be so good looking?" Once we have that out of the way they also ask "what separates the pros from the amateurs?" Or "isn't it all just luck?" Or "Isn't poker just gambling? I thought you couldn't win at gambling? Doesn't the house always win?" After that about 40% of people say "is it all bluffing or what?" The first thing I tell them is in order to be a good poker player you need to WAY overuse parentheses in your blog (seriously, have you see how often I use them; it's ridiculous). The second thing I tell them is there are a ton of things that go into being a good poker player.

First and foremost you need solid fundamentals as far as strategy goes. You can get a good deal of this kind of information from books and articles, but it takes putting theory into action to really internalize good strategy. If someone raises in front of you before the flop and you have AQ, I can make a good argument for folding, raising or calling in most situations. It takes experience to identify the correct times to do each. Furthermore, just like there are many different kind of attacks in chess, there are many different general strategies in poker. Some players like to see a ton of flops in the hopes that they'll win a few big pots when it will be difficult for their opponents to put them on a specific hand. Others see very few flops and only proceed when they have strong cards. Neither is correct or incorrect and part of being a good player is finding the style that suits you best. Other parts of good fundamentals are knowing the odds of certain things happening and having some math skills. This aspect of poker is often over hyped and really anyone can learn this part of the game without too much effort.

Secondly you need a lot of patience. Poker can move really slowly and can get boring if you're not getting good cards. It's much more fun to play than to not play and fighting the urge to get involved with marginal cards is something every poker player faces from time to time. You've got to wait for good cards or wait until the situation is right to make a move with weaker cards.

What about looking for "tells?" In the movies you'll see the hero spot the villain's nose twitching every time he bluffs and his lip curl up every time he makes a full house. In reality this kind of thing never happens. And while everyone always talks about having a good poker face having a good poker body is really much more important. Looking at an opponent’s posture, what they do with their arms and hands and even their breathing is much more important (if your heart rate goes way up because you’re nervous about something it's really tough to control your breathing and look relaxed). How a player puts their chips into the pot is also very important. Do the throw them in violently or do they slowly push in a neat stack? Did they sit there for 10 seconds or bet right away? Did they say anything as they bet or were they silent? Most importantly you have to remember what they did before so you can interpret all off this information. The same action will mean different things for different players and you have to know who you're dealing with.

At the highest level people don't give off much information with their movements (and on the internet you can't see people at all) so you have to use betting patterns to make your best guess about what they have. Sometimes your hand is so good (or so bad) that it doesn't matter what the other players have and your only goal is to get as much money in the pot as possible, but for the most part you need to try to figure out what they have. There are 169 possible combinations of two cards (neglecting suits) and your job is to eliminate as many of those as possible. When the hand starts you have no information and each player could have anything. As soon as a player calls or raises your information gathering starts (if they fold we don't care about what they had) and at this point you can usually limit what they have to about 20 of the possible 169 holdings. After the flop you can usually narrow it down to something like 10 possibilities. Hopefully by the river you can narrow it down to just a few (or sometimes just one), think about the likely each possibility is and then you look at how much is in the pot and how much you need to risk to win the pot. In order to do a good job at narrowing the possibilities you need to pay attention to how the other players play in various situations so you can interpret (and predict for that matter) their actions on future hands. If you've read my blog I'm sure you've heard me say "I knew this guy didn't have X because of this and thought he might have Y because of this other thing." Being good at making these guesses based on you opponents past betting patterns is a huge part of poker.

On the other side of the coin is making it difficult for your opponents to guess what you have. The way that the other players at you table perceive you and the way you play is called your "table image." You have to understand how the other players perceive you and use it against them. If they think you're a wild and crazy player who's always bluffing then you'll do better to wait for a good hand and if they think your captain conservative you should try bluffing more. Sometimes it's important to make non optimal or non profitable plays from time to time in order to throw your opponents off and make it tougher for them to figure out what you have in the future. If they see you do something ridiculous they'll remember and will always have to consider that maybe you're doing something else ridiculous when they come up against you in a future hand. The easiest players to beat are the ones that are totally straight forward and predictable.

Having the right mindset is also important. Risking thousands of dollars on a card game can be some scary shit and having the fearlessness to do the right thing is very important. The best play is oftentimes the most risky (and scariest) and it takes guts to go ahead with it anyway. Confidence is also very important. You have to believe that the guesses you’re making are correct if you’re going to act on them. Good poker is aggressive poker and a lack of confidence usually manifests itself in timid play which is a recipe for failure. You can never be 100% sure of what someone has until the cards get turned over and sometimes you have to be willing to put all of your chips at risk when you’re 75% sure or 60% sure.

Having good focus is also important. It's easy to watch the game on TV while you're playing or talk with the casino employees or just space out, but if you do that it will be much more difficult to guess what your opponents have when you're involved in a hand. Believe me it can be EXTREMELY difficult to pay attention to the game when all you've been doing is folding for an hour and a half, but it's still important to do so.

Intuition also plays a part. Sometimes you'll hear players say "I don't know what he had, but I knew I was beat" or "It just felt like he was bluffing." Somehow your subconscious has picked up on something the other players are doing and it just gives you a gut feeling. Learning to trust those gut feelings is tough, but important.

Last, but not least on my list is emotional control. Have you ever seen a baseball player kick the shit out of a water cooler or throw bats onto the field? Or seen a golfer slam their club into the ground? Poker players have the same kind of reactions. Think about how you'd react of you had $1,000 riding on the turn of one card and you were a 10 to 1 favorite and lost? What if the same thing happened to you again a few hands later? You'd probably go bananas. When a poker player let's his emotions affect his play negatively it's called going on tilt and believe me it happens to everyone. Usually if things aren't going well the first thing to go is patience. Players on tilt tend to play more hands than they should. The next thing that comes is bluffing too much. A player on severe tilt will have a sense of desperation to get their money back as quickly as possible, but what happens is they make poor decisions and lose even more. But, among strong players tilt comes in more mild forms. It might be calling a raise with a hand that isn't quite good enough or raising when the situation doesn't warrant it instead of just calling. The thing I like about tournament poker is if something really bad happens to you, you're usually out of the tournament and can't make any more mistakes or do any more damage to your bankroll.


There are certainly other things that make a good poker player, but for my money these are the big ones. Now if someone asks you, "isn't poker all just luck?" you can tell them that it's not and have something to back it up. About 25% of the time I tell people that I'm a professional poker player they imply (sometimes not subtly) that I'm a big fat liar. Everyone's been taught from the time that they are small children that they can't win at any endeavor that involves betting. "The house always wins" is the mantra that goes along with this lesson. Of course it's true that casino's make money, but just because the house wins doesn't mean that you can't win too.

Back to My Specialty

I was once again reminded of the power of internet poker yesterday. The key to winning on the internet is volume. At the WSOP every decision is critical. Watching your opponents and learning their betting patterns and mannerisms over a period of hours helps you eventually take them out. In a live game you get about 35 hands an hour (which may sound like a lot, but it's really not). In the same game online you'll get 60-70 hands an hour. Why so much faster? Well it takes all of about 1.5 seconds to shuffle and deal the cards online, you don't ever have to count out chips and every action is just a click of the mouse. Also you aren't limited to playing just one game at a time. After playing online almost full time for the past few years I've gotten really good at managing multiple games and making quick decisions (plus I have a 30 inch monitor so I can see everything that's going on). The most games I've ever played at once is 9, but I usually limit it to 6 at a time. I was thinking that yesterday I played more hands before I had lunch (about 2,000) than I did during the 9 WSOP events I played (about 1,500). The bottom line is I played 62 single table tournaments (starting with 9 players with the top 3 spots playing - in a $100 tournament 1st pays $472.5, 2nd pays $283.5, and third pays $189) yesterday and won $3,702. Nice timing for a good win.

Well what was the damage?

I lost $17,239 playing WSOP events (I didn't actually play any other poker while I was there). Of that my share of the loss is 51.5% or $8,878. But let's not forget that I won $3,500 playing stupid casino games. There was also something like 1800 worth of expenses (I have exact records but have yet to add it up) so far and of course the opportunity cost of not working for 2 weeks. A decent showing in the main event could easily wipe all of this away, but you'll have to wait for the preview to get the full details.

I'll probably keep blogging a little between now and when I head back to Vegas and may continue after that. At the very least look out for the "Main Event Preview" which will be coming some time soon. For now let me just say that after 13 days in Vegas it's great to be home. Jen cooked me a FANTASTIC home cooked meal yesterday (she's turning into a super duper cook) and we caught up on some TIVO'd reality shows. I'll probably have a half assed work day today and then get back on my horse tomorrow. Thanks again for all of the good luck wishes and support I've gotten from everyone reading this blog. If anyone out there want's to get into online poker, wants recomendations about poker books (strategy books or interesting reads about poker), or has any poker questions send me an e-mail (or post a comment) and I'll help you get started, recomend, or answer.

A little math

Clearly I'm a little disapointed with my performance so far at the WSOP, but how bad was it? Let's look a few exmaples to put it into perspective. Imagine the player who is in the exact middle of the field, let's call him Middleton. Half the players are better than him and half the players are worse in every event he plays. Middleton shoud have exactly a 10% chance of making the money whenever he enters. So if Middleton played 9 events (just like certain other players we know and love) what are the chances of him finishing in the money in ZERO events (the math for 1 money finish is a little more complicated so we'll stick with this). Who said 10%? Nope. 26.57%? Now you're just guessing. The real answer is actually 38%. 38% of the time Middleton would have no money finishes after playing 9 events even though he's better than half of the other players.

Now lets look at a great player. We'll call him captain 20! Captain 20 is better than almost all of the players he plays against and makes the money 20% of the time he enters an event. What are the chances of him going o for 9? Who said 19%? Nope. It's actually 13.5%. Even a great player can still expect to get totally blanked almost 14% of the time he enters 9 events.

Now let's look at a player that makes the money 30% of the time. We'll call him the figment, because guess what he doesn't exsist. There's just too much short term luck and too many other good players for anyone to make the money this frequently. Even if you put Phil Ivey (who many think is the best player in the world) into a mythical $50 tournament (let's assume you agree to give him 100 times what he actually wins so he's interested) where they gave you plenty of time to play (a normal $50 tournamnet would have about 100 players and will usually be over in 4 hours or less) with a bunch of total amatures he still wouldn't make the money more than about a third of the time.

So where do I fit in. When I play tournaments on the internet that pay 10% of the field with buy-ins ranging from $50-$300 (which other than special events is as big as they get online) I've finished in the money about 22% of the time (in 2005 I played 606 tournamnets of this type). At the WSOP I'd put myself some where in betten Middleton and Captain 20, but it's hard to say and I may never really know where I fit in. In order to get any kind of idea statistically I'd have to play AT LEAST 100 events (and probably more like 500 or 1000). The problem with that (along with the insane cost) is after playing 50 events I'll be much better than I was when I started and after another 50 I'd be much better than I was after the first 50. So I really just have to guess where I stand. The real question is "If I played this tournament 10,000 would I have more money than I started with." At the WSOP if the answer is yes then I should play. In smaller tournaments the answer has to be yes and then we have to look at how much. I could go beat the shit out of some $20 players all day every day, but it wouldn't get me much.

Event 12 recap

It's a little late but here it is! Event #12, $2,500 no limit hold 'em, started with 1290 players and I had great feeling about it going in. On the very first hand of the tournament I easily could have gone broke. I was two off the button with J 9 and I considered raising because the players in the blinds had not yet arrived at the table, but their chips were still in the pot (you don't get a free trip through the blinds if you're not there yet). Despite what looked like easy money out there, I decided to fold and the player to my left, a 50ish Englishman, made it 125 to go (the blinds were 25/25). The player to his left made it 300, he called, and the flop came J J 4. I was kicking myself for folding what would have been trip jacks until the Englishman checked and called a bet of 800. It looked like one of these fellows probably had a J. The turn was another 4 and the Englishman instantly put the rest of his 1400 chips into the pot. After about a good 3 or 4 minutes the other player folded QQ face up and the Englishman showed a 4 to the table. He threw in both of his cards face down and someone asked "what did he show?" Everyone said "a four," but the Englishman reached out a flipped up one of the cards he'd just folded anyway. It was a four, BUT the card he flipped up wasn't the same 4 he'd already shown - he'd made four of a kind. I don't think anyone noticed that he'd grabbed a different card but I was sitting right next to him so I caught it. If I had seen the flop I would have been out on the first hand.

A few hands later I dodged another bullet. One player raised to 100, another made it 300 to go and I looked down at JJ - the 4th or 5th best starting hand in hold 'em. Raising, calling and folding were all options here. If I raised and got reraised I could be sure I was against a bigger pair, but I'd be risking about a third of my chips to find out. If I called and the board was all small cards I'd probably go broke if someone had me beat. I decided it was still too early and folded. The player who'd had QQ in the first hand moved all in with 99 and was called by one of the other players who showed KK and won the pot with a full house.

Despite my Matrix style bullet dodging I was still getting hit with some shrapnel and found myself down to 1100 chips after the first hour. I had yet to win a pot even though I'd been getting some pretty good cards. I caught my first break in round 2 with the blinds a 25/50 when the button open raised to 150. After finding 22 in my hand, I got aggressive and moved all in. I'd be about a 53% favorite against any non pair and I was planning on winning the pot before the flop. My opponent called in about 1/10 of a second and I said "show me ace king!" AK and pairs much bigger than 22 were the only hands that would require no thought before a call. Happily he showed me AK, the cards that came out in the middle of the table were all garbage and I doubled up to about where I started.

Perhaps the easiest chips I picked up in the entire WSOP came to me a few hands later. The Englishman (who was super aggressive) open raised to 150 (this was a little out of character because he was normally raising to 5 to 10 times the big blind - too much in my opinion) and the button called. I was in the big blind and picked up two red 10's. I thought about just calling, but I figured the Englishman could have a wide range of hands and if the other player had anything great he would have rerasied so it was likely I had the best hand. I made it 650 to go and after about 30 seconds the Englishman called and the button quickly folded. The flop came down 10 6 5. DING DING DING! I had the best possible hand and I tried to figure out how to get the most money into the pot. Hoping to get called or raised, I bet 500 into a 1475 pot. The Englishman thought and asked how many chips I had left (a sign that he was considering moving all in). After some more thought, he just called. At this point I was checking no matter what came on the turn. If he was thinking about moving all in I wanted to give him every indication that I had a weak hand. The turn was a small club (which put two on the board), I checked, the Englishman immediately moved all in and I almost beat him into the pot. He turned up KJ of clubs and after no club materialized on the river I took down the pot.

Up to 5000 in chips I was feeling great as I moved to a new table and we went on break. My new table was tougher than my first and I found myself sitting across from Clonie Gowen, one of the best (and best looking) female players in the world. I bled off about 1000 chips in unspectacular fashion and found myself moving yet again to another table. At this new table I found Mike "The Mouth" Matasow. Mike has the most fitting nickname in all of poker - he never shuts up. I'd seen him on TV plenty (he finished 9th out of 5600 in last years main event and has two WSOP bracelets) and he's always seemed like a prick, but he was really nice to me and was actually pretty well behaved. Of course he was still talking constantly.

Shortly after arriving at my new table I got involved in the hand that was the turning point of the event. At the start of round 4 with the blinds at 100/200 I was in the big blind with 77. The player on the button raised to 525 and I had a decision to make. I could just call the 325 more and see a flop or I could reraise and try to win the pot right there. I looked at my opponents stack and he only had about 2000 more while I had about 4000 chips so even if he called me AND I lost I'd still have 1500 left (not a ton of chips but enough to work with a little). After about 10 seconds I moved all in and he instantly called. Uh oh. I was hoping to see AK again, but instead he showed me 99 and took most of my chips. I know this was the right play and my opponent easily could have had plenty of hands that he would have folded or plenty of hands that I would be a favorite against (in fact if he had anything but a pair bigger than 77 I was ahead). I spent the next 30 hands or so looking for ANYTHING to move all in with and managed to steal the blinds a few times, but of course I had to go right back through them again. Finally with about 1200 chips left I picked up A8 of spades in late position. One player just called the big blind and I moved all in. After asking for a count of my chips he called with A 10. The flop was 9 10 J giving me a straight draw and some hope, but no help arrived and I was out.

Event #12 recap preview

Get ready for a preview of the recap! I had another mid stream exit today (it seems like everyday I went broke in round 4, damit!). I'm going to go have dinner and a few drinks now, but I'll write a recap either later tonight or tomorrow along with a few thoughts about how things have gone so far, what I need to work on and just what the hell happened. Remember there's still hope -the $10,000 main event starts July 28th. Hopefully I've been saving up all my good luck for "the big one."

Today 3 years ago

On July 7th 2003 I had my first day as a professional poker player. I won he first hand I played that day with four aces. I won $98 and left the casino feeling like a million bucks. In the three years since I've had plenty of good days and bad, but I've had 34 winning months and only 2 losing months (September of 05 and March of 06). I tell everyone who'll listen that I have the best job in the world. After all if I was retired or had tens of millions of dollars I'd still spend a great deal of my time playing poker. Hopefully today will be just as revolutionary and today 3 years ago.