Learning Less and Winning More

This continues to be an interesting problem.  In my first live tournament since my previous post I cashed again,  3rd of 39 players for $155.  After subtracting the $25 buy-in, $10 add-on and $10 dealer tip, my profit was $120.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that I accomplished that by studying less and thinking about fewer things.

I have been able to play a few online tournaments in the last couple weeks. As stated in my previous post, I'm trying not to learn too much at once, so I've been concentrating on one thing--continuation betting.*

I've been c-betting a lot more in my online tournaments, and I have been succesful in picking up a lot of pots where I didn't have much of a hand.  But when I played live today I had to concentrate once again on the table mechanics, especially keeping track of pot sizes and player stack sizes.  I did a little better at that last night, but it took so much concentration that I never thought once about how often I was continuation betting.  That part of my game was on autopilot.

So, I'm making money when I go to The Big Game Room, and that's definitely a good thing.  But it also brings up an issue that a lot of players deal with, short-term money versus long-term goals.  Studying and learning are for the long-term, and the things that I learn have to be applied at some point.  Poker is all about the long-term, about studying and improving, and being a winner over hundreds of tournaments and thousands of hands.  What happens over a week or a month shouldn't matter at all.

On the other hand, I don't have much of a live bankroll.  I started from zero, when in fact I shouldn't be playing any tournament with under 100 buy-ins (which means a $3,500 bankroll for a $25 + $10 tournament.)  My bankroll is less than 10% of that.

In the short term, these cashes will increase my bankroll, and that's important.  The long-term view is that if I took more risks and brought more skills to the table, I wouldn't cash as often, but I would be a contender to win the tournament much of the time.

Winning money playing poker tournaments isn't about playing to cash, it's about playing to win.  Depending on tournament structures, just a few first places are usually worth  much more than many small cashes.  If I had won my last two live tournaments, I would have cashed for around $1,100.

I'm not good enough yet to win tournaments like this, with many players who study, and talk about strategy with each other.  I don't continuation bet enough to build a big enough stack in the early levels to be a serious contender for first place.  In all of the live tournaments in TBGR where I have cashed, when we got into the money the chip leader always had a stack several times larger than mine.

It's an interesting problem, and it's very strange that I can apply a concept in online tournaments, but then have to ignore that same concept playing live.  As much as is goes against everything I know about playing poker, I have to think about the short-term.  I have to concentrate on my mechanical weaknesses before I try to apply intermediate-to-advanced concepts at a live table.

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*From http://www.pokerology.com/lessons/the-continuation-bet/:

A bet from a player on the flop who raised pre-flop is known as a continuation bet or simply a c-bet. That player has continued to seize the initiative, hence the term, continuation bet. The normal use of the continuation bet is by a player in position against a lone opponent who has checked on the flop. The use of a continuation bet is rooted in the wisdom that most of the time one’s hand does not improve on the flop. Therefore the first player to bet may take down the pot right then and there.

Studying Without Learning Too Much

Even though I can't handle learning a lot of new things, there are still things that I need to keep track of.  I need to follow the 2+2 poker forums, pokernews.com, and pokernewsdaily.com to keep track of what's happening in poker.  I started a thread on Michigan Charity Poker in the 2+2 Poker legislation forum, and I need to watch it for responses.  And I have to do try do this without putting any new poker strategies or ideas in my head.  That's tricky.

If I want to work on just one concept in one of my poker books, I have to use the table to contents to go straight where I need to start studying, and not look at anything else.

One thing that can be exempt from that is memorization.  If I want to learn, for example, what the top 15% of hands, playing all suited connectors and pair, looks like, I can memorize that without messing up my play.  It doesn't require that I watch other players, or do anything else that I have to think about at the table.  When I'm ready, I can apply that at the table.  Once I know what a lot of hand ranges look like then I can watch a player and see if he's playing more or less than that range.  And once I can do that, I can work on how to react to his range given the table and tournament situation.

I've always liked breaking problems into small pieces, and working on one piece at a time.  As a musician I would work on a difficult passage in the music just a few measures at a time, at a slow tempo, then either add more measures or a slight tempo increase, and do it again until I could easily play the section on which I was working.  I see no reason that I can't work on poker the same way.

That probably sounds like a slow, even ponderous way to do things, but if it worked for me in clarinet playing, I don't see why it can't work for poker If I approach each new problem that way, incorporating a new step during each tournament or study session, at the end of a year that's hundreds of small new pieces adding up to several things that I can do well, and that adds up to more money.

Good News and Bad News

The good news is that, with one glaring exception, I'm playing better and getting better results.  I've cashed a couple times at The Big Game Room since my last blog.  One of the dealers even said that he noticed I was cashing more often.

One of the cashes was my best profit to-date in a live tournament: 5th of 40, $35 entry, cash of $155.  That's a profit of $120.  I cashed a live tournament for $165 a few years go, but the buy-in was higher, so the June 28 tournament was my most profitable live tournament to date.

Keep in mind that I have ADD as your read the rest of this.

The bad news is that I'm having a very hard time concentrating at the tables.  I'm learning more and more, with very few chances to apply that that new knowledge at the table, and isn't seriously messing me up.

I've been playing out-of-turn quite a bit and making a lot of other silly mistakes.  It's to the point where I'm getting to be a joke:  "There's Clif, I wonder how long it will take him to open-fold his big blind again."

So my most profitable live tournament was the most frustrating I've every played.  I was so confused and frustrated that I was fighting back tears. I wonder how high I might have finished if I had not made all those mistakes.  As wierd as it sounds, there is too much in my head when I'm trying to play.

Basically what I'm doing is what is called in football "going through my progressions." In football (the American kind) the quarterback goes through his progressions by looking for his #1 receiver, and if he's not open, then he looks for his second and third options.  After a while, that routine becomes almost automatic.  If the quarterback takes to long, he winds up on his back.

That's what happens to me.  I'm going though my progressions, figuring out which of the new things that I'm studying apply to the current hand.  I forget about doing the things I already know how to do, I take too long and make dumb mistakes.  That has to change.

If things are going welI, I might work on just one new thing, such as watching the table for someone who likes to play a lot of speculative hands like small pairs and suited connectors. But that's all.  Just that one thing. The rest will have to wait.  I have to stick with the things that are automatic for me. Reading a new poker book and learning new strategies or doing anything else new will have to be put on hold.

I'm going to cut way back on the studying and spend more time with administrative and trouble-shooting tasks when I'm at home.  Today I'm working on getting my records  my records in better order.  Tomorrow I'll probably try to figure out why I can get to my blog on the desktop computer, but not on the laptop.  As much as I love to learn new things, especially where poker is concerned, I have to slow that way, way down for a while.