Monday, February 01, 2016

PokerNews article #98

This one is about how we fail to improve at both driving and poker because of the lack of effective feedback mechanisms.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/you-might-play-poker-as-badly-as-you-drive-but-how-can-you-k-23977.htm

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I read this article and like it a lot. I have been playing poker for a while and constantly try to get better. I don't get tons of opportunities to play in a year. I can't hit the poker room each weekend. So what I have done over the years is try to analyze my play and read all I can about poker.

I have a good friend that we bounce hands off of each other to see what went wrong and if something else could have been done to change the outcome.

I played a deep stack tournament in 2015 with a good structure. Coming into the game I decided I would play mostly TAG early. It was working great. I played few hands and almost doubled my stack. After a break I decided to use my tight image. I raised early with JTs. Blinds were up and as they say the cost of poker was going up. So I open raised. I got two callers. Flop was Q8x. I came out firing and got called. Turn was an Ace. I fired again, of course increasing my bet size. I had outs. One folded. River was a brick. I fired one last time. I was called by A9 to my busted bluff/draw. I didn't bust in that hand and fought back to almost cash.

I thought about it for weeks why did this guy call me with A9? I decided the turn Ace was my worst card. Almost any other card and they fold. Sure I was tight, but the guy must have been praying for me to have KQs. He didn't put me on a set because no one ever bets out on the flop with sets. JK. Still I thought about that hand over and over. First I blamed the player, but I still dug further and came to my conclusion.

That type of analysis is what you have to do to get better at poker.

Nappy said...

Regarding the comment about A9 vs JT.

Some people like calling with any ace in there hand and some people don't pay to much attention and do not realize how tight you may have been playing preflop.

A lot of people will call the original raisers flop bet because you might make a continuation bet if you miss. So the plan is to call on the flop and if the original raiser does not raise again on the turn they they will raise there to steal it. But this guy hit his ace on the turn and at that point he is less likely to fold.