Going Back to Basics...

For Blogs sake...

As we are now fast approaching The Unibet Open Glasgow which i was fortunate enough to win a seat into (thanks to RankingHero), i feel i have to change my normal study/play routine slightly...
As mainly an online player, i can quite easily "auto-bot" a lot of my decisions and plays partially because i have nice colour-coded stats and badges that can help sway decisions and partially
because it's what i've grown used to as my daily grind.

I am indeed a bit of a live "donk", i've played in a few leagues, pub games, local casinos and some underground dives
and it always takes me a little re-adjusting time to get used to live play. Once i'm settled everything is usually fine, i start to get very comfortable making live reads and throwing out a few reverse tells
for the benefit of the good players with fine observational skills.But initially i am that one fumbling idiot, knocking over his chips, putting the wrong chips in the pot, folding out of turn etc etc...

The one thing i always have to prepare for...is the increase or decrease of the skill deficit between live and online games(depending on the buy-in obviously)
.and the difference between sitting there in your underwear at home or having to control your excitement at a table full of actual people
So i always try and train myself to focus on specific moves, lines or plays that i need to mentally re-enforce before i get to said game.

I have a been a poker nerd for a few years now and as such have managed to collect almost every poker book or piece of poker related software that is currently on the market.
I spend a LOT of time studying the game, watching training videos, re-reading one of the 200 poker books i own or simply doing calculations, wether it's Expected Value or Showdown Theory
i can sometimes get bogged down by the masses of information that envelopes the whole poker universe and my tiny little brain.

Sometimes(usually when i'm running bad) i find myself having to take a step back and return to the fundamentals, just to gain a bit of clarity over the sometimes ridiculous mistakes
i see myself making when i watch back footage of some of my games.
I do find this to be my most useful tool in improving my game...seeing my own mistakes and trying to reduce them drastically can have a great effect on my overall performance..

Without drifting too far from the subject, i've returned to some basic refreshing of my tournament game, i picked up a book from the Author Ben Hayles,
the book is called "PostFlop" and although doesnt have tons of new information in it, it does have "compartmentalization" (if thats even a word).

Many of you will or will not know about "The Adult Learning Model" from "The Mental Game of Poker" by Jared Tendler/Barry Carter or perhaps another source
where you may have been trying to "learn" something and make it stick. Well, i was quite impressed to see the Ben Hayles book mention it at the very beginning of his new book.

The way we "learn" as humans is generally across four stages, we do it every single day of our lives without even knowing it sometimes....our brains really are amazing.

We start at;

Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence (we don't even know that we don't know how to do something)

Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence (we now know that we dont know how to do something and it bothers us)

Stage 3: Conscious Competence (we now know that we know how to do something and it takes effort)

Stage 4: Unconscious Competence (we now know how to do something and it is second nature; we now absolutely rock at it)

These are the basic stages of learning and if you're even reading this then you're already at least at stage 2, we are NEVER completely competent so have to strike a fine balance
between the final two phases and continue learning (while others go on auto-pilot).

My initial point was that i often need to re-affirm that between stage 3 and 4 there is a ton of learning and re-learning to do...
I actually enjoy studying poker a lot more than i do playing it sometimes, it has served me well in terms of becoming "unconsciously competent" at many aspects of the game
When i find myself dragging my feet in a tournament, i try and return to the fundamentals to make sure i have indeed mastered these things
and if there are outstanding weakness's i do my best to climb on top of them and "compartmentalize" them in such a way that i can return to stage 4 comfortably.

To me it seems common knowledge that "repetition" is one of the greatest ways we can improve at anything we do. It's been mentioned in hundreds of books and seems quite logical
, the more we practice something deliberately, the better or more elite we can become...and thus becomes clearer my reason for writing this post
The more i repeat something, the more i can stamp it into my fragile little mind lol....and hopefully inspire some of you to keep studying while i'm here ; )

Ben Hayles is a poker coach/player who i've learnt alot from over the last few years, he's made a video series on HoldemManager and statistics for TournamentPokerEdge and GrinderSchool
and his way of thinking is very logical. He has boxed off many of the basic aspects of postflop play into neat little chunks we can easily digest to make these things easier to learn.

Like i have said, none of this is "new" information, but i am finding as i read and re-read it, it is being "myelinated"** (book reference; **The Talent Code- Daniel Coyle) into my brain
and i'm dying to share it with some people
who may appreciate it more than my facebook friends. Also, i'm wondering if this book is being over-looked by people as they aren't sure who he is...

We all have different learning styles and levels of concentration and need to remain active when we are learning, passive learning slows us down somewhat
and Ben Hayles has managed to make the fundamentals that much easier to digest and re-gurgitate.

The map and tools we have for playing poker have been neatly tidied up into little pigeonholes for us...
How we approach and arrive at our decisions is more crucial than the decisions themselves.
Lets make some smart choices and better equip ourselves for battle next time the fight is on....

Dan Harrington, in his book "Harrington on HoldEm"(part 1) breaks down "preflop" thinking into "elements" of a hand....
Now we have a comprehensive "postflop" element to think about, making it a hundred times more easier to keep in your head till it becomes
second nature(unconscious competence)....

THE 12 POSTFLOP DIMENSIONS (of decision making)

1) TOURNAMENT SITUATION

2) NUMBER OF OPPONENTS

3) RELATIVE POSITION

4) SPR (STACK TO POT RATIO)

5) OPPONENT INFORMATION

6) PREFLOP AND POSTFLOP BETTING

7) YOUR HAND STRENGTH

8) OPPONENTS RANGE AND LIKELY STRENGTH

9) TEXTURE OF FLOP

10) ODDS AND OUTS

11) IMPLIED ODDS

12) BETTING LINES

Yeah yeah, i know we've seen all this stuff before a zillion times, but seriously, how often do you neglect to think of at least a few of these things before you make a decision?
When i watch back recordings of my tournaments, it's glaringly obvious when i've not even considered my stack-to-pot ratio or when i've not noticed someone else in the hand
and therefore completely butchered my intended line for the hand...

Going over these 12 "dimensions" ( i might even stick them to my desk) is slowly helping me stay focussed on EVERY single hand being played(not just the hands i'm involved in)
If anyone out there is not familiar with any of the above concepts, get reading...these things are scattered across the entire book universe...

Looking at these things as "pieces of a jigsaw puzzle" is not a bad analogy, all credit to Ben Hayles for helping me think a little more logically...

This is the first chapter of his book in a nutshell... obv he goes through each topic in some detail, but this is the core of your thinking when at the table, if you're not
considering these then your fundamentals are not in place or perhaps just a little rusty.

In his second chapter, he goes a step further catagorizing all the postflop scenarios you can find yourself in. When i first started reading this, i was very unsure
of where he was going with it all and how it would benefit me, but after reading only half the book i had already gained a tiny bit more clarity...

Once these 6 categories are deep-printed in your hard-drive and commited to memory like the 12 dimensions above, you can then spend better quality time looking at the betting
lines used to exploit and demolish your opponents....
Further than that, once these betting lines and counter-strategies are then imprinted into your psyche you will have now compacted an entire map of the postflop game
into a beautiful little box wrapped in a bow that you open every time the flop hits the felt...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n73ajJOwsgQ

If you can't be arsed with the vid the 6 categories of postflop play are:

PostFlop Scenario 1: Preflop Aggressor In Position, Defender Checks...

PostFlop Scenario 2: Preflop Aggressor In Position, Facing Bet...

PostFlop Scenario 3: Preflop Aggressor, Out of Position...

PostFlop Scenario 4: Preflop Defender In Position, Facing Bet...

PostFlop Scenario 5: Preflop Defender In Position, Raiser Checks...

PostFlop Scenario 6: Preflop Defender OOP

Throughout the book, the author commands that the represenation of these scenarios is essential to grasp how he outlines the counter strategies and adjustments.
You only need to look at the flowchart underneath to see what options we have in each scenario and from there can devise an auto-response to each action
and will hopefully(in time) become more competent at recognizing situations where the correct counter-play is evident.

He does mention that sometimes a hand might not fit neatly into one one category as you could be multiway and be in and out of position simultaneously, in this case
he recomends considering yourself to be in two situations at the same time and should therefore perform a dual analysis.

I'm not going to go into detail on each dimension or scenario, there is just too much to cover and i'd end up typing out the entire book which wasnt really the point of this article/post.
But i would like to finish with a nice comprehensive list of Postflop questions we should all be asking ourselves so we think about the right things. If our mind ever wanders while we're playing
these questions should steer us back onto the correct path(hopefully).

POSTFLOP QUESTIONS:

~What is my tournament situation?
To what extent am i happy to gamble? Would i accept marginally positive EV?

~What is my opponent(s) situation?
To what extent is he happy to gamble? Would he accept marginally positive EV?

~How many opponents are active?
Do i need to isolate to one opponent?

~What is my relative position?

~Which of the Postflop Scenarios am i in?
What betting lines are appropriate?

~What is the effective stack size and what percentage of that is in the middle? (SPR)

~What information do i have on my opponent(s)?
HUD Stats- VPIP/PFR/CBET/Fold2Cbet/AGG Factor

~What information do i have from the preflop and postflop betting?
Who is the preflop aggressor?

~How strong is my hand now?

~Should i be trying to play a big pot or a small pot?

~How likely am i to be ahead?
How likely is my opponent(s) to have connected with this flop?
What information do i have about his hand?
What percentage of the time am i ahead now?

~How likely am i to be ahead at showdown?

~How committed to the hand am i? 100%?

~What is the texture of the board and does it suit me?

~How difficult is this going to be to play on the turn/river? Do i welcome another card?

~How many outs do i have against different hand categories?

~How many outs might my opponent have?

~What are my raw pot odds?

~What are my implied odds?
What is likely to happen if i hit or miss the next card(s)?

~How likely is my opponent to fold if i bet here?

~What bet size is appropriate? Bet more to protect or extract value, bet less to invite action.
How much do i need to bet to take the pot odds away from him calling on a draw?

~Am I aggressor/In Position/ahead/need to protect? Bet

~Am I aggressor/In Position/behind? What value do i have in continuing to bet?

~Am I defending /Out of Position/ahead? Lead, check-call, check-raise or check-fold?

~Am I defending/Out of Position/behind? Likely fold...

Many of these questions will already be a natural part of your natural thought process, and you are probably unconsciously competent at some of these if not all.

But if you're like me and still trying to do as much as possible to retain and recall some of this stuff (my memory is a little shady at the best of times)
then perhaps like me it's time to go back to the drawing board and look at your fundamentals and see where your leaks are coming from.
I know it's something i need to do again and again, i do feel like i have some of this down pat....but it certainly doesnt hurt to make sure : )

From here on in, i'm going to endeavor to write up my study/classrooom material for all to read(no matter how basic or advanced).
Poker is a lonely old game when you're not sitting at the felt, so it can be all to easy to forget about studying and become complacent, thinking
that your game is fine....YOUR GAME IS NEVER FINE......LOL.......KEEP WORKING(something else i should stick to my desk) hehe ; )

GL all, WP NH GG