Candio = Donkio

Watching last night’s 2010 WSOP Main Event coverage on ESPN was pretty painful. I was trying to like Filippo Candio, as I think it’s good for the game on televised coverage when you see poker players wear their emotions on their sleeves, but man, Candio is too much of a donk as far as his actual play to really root for him.

That huge pot with Cheong was just hard to watch, as everyone has been in that spot with a dominating hand, huge pot, and a donkey willing to stack off when he absolutely has every reason to fold yet somehow doesn’t, and gets donkfish lucky to win a monster pot.

If Only I Knew Then What I Know Now

First things first, a poker guru I ain’t. Let’s just get that out of the way. Yeah, I’ve played a lot of hands, yeah I’m a pretty good poker player, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think about poker far too often. All that said, I’m probably only about 60% of the way up ol’ Mt. Poker. So yeah, still very much learning, still climbing.

It’s been interesting lately as I’ve been helping assorted people get started with playing poker online, trying to distill assorted things I’ve learned into Grand Poker Truths, as far as giving them a simple, basic foundation for not immediately losing their ass. I think that’s a pretty good starting goal, as so much of success at poker is sheer stubbornness, sticking with it and sticking with it and sticking with it until you accumulate enough practical knowledge and experience to start winning, whether playing online or at a live tournament.

So, in no particular order, here are a few things I have recently realized the true importane/unimportance of, in the I Wish I Knew Then category.

Assume The Position, Baby

It really is all about position. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about limit, no-limit, pot limit, Omaha, Razz, whatever. While I don’t think I exactly ignored the fact that position was important, I didn’t place it any higher on the list than assorted other poker truisms. Yeah, cool, it’s good to act last, but it’s still all about the flop, and I can still crush you like a bug with my AJo from UTG if I get a good flop.

That’s half right (maybe one-quarter right), but it’s ignoring a really important concept, one that becomes increasingly important as you move up in limits. More often than not, the flop largely misses everyone, in a typical game with 2-3 people seeing the flop. If you have position in those hands, you’ll win more than your fair share of them. If you win more than your fair share of those hands, you’ll win money in the long run. It’s just that easy.

Yes, indeed, hands like AA, KK, and AKs will always be your biggest money-winners. From any position. That’s easy to see in your stats. What’s not easy to see, though, are all the times you pick up the antes and bets from limpers with A4o on the button when you bet on the flop and everyone folds. It’s not hard to win the hands when you overwhelmingly have the best of it. It’s also not enough to simply wait for and win with those hands. To be a long-term winner, you have to win a certain amount of hands when you have no cards. To do that, you have to be in correct position. There’s no getting around it.

If you’re going to focus on one thing, focus on your position at the table. Sometimes even more so than the cards in front of you, depending on the nature of the other players at the table. Blasphemy, I know, but it’s true. When the poker gurus talk about the value of position in whatever book you’re reading, pay attention. They’re right.

Don’t let it discourage you, as far as limiting the hands you can play. Look at the flip side of it, as it means you get to freewheel more on/near the button, opening your starting hand selection and playing more aggressively.

Know Thy Odds

I’m sorry, no. That’s bs. You don’t have an “intuitive” feel for odds. I told myself that very thing, too, on many occasions. Yes, over time you’ll develop a generally accurate read on situations that are grossly lopsided in one or the other direction, when you’re correct thinking “Gee, there’s an buttload of chips in the pot already, it must be okay to call one more bet with my gutshot straight draw”. But by and large it’s a mistake to claim any sort of intuitive mastery of odds, as more often than not you’re deluding yourself.

Where you bleed money, though, is on the marginal decisions, where you don’t quite have the correct pot/implied odds to call, or where you fold when you barely, marginally should call. The reason this hurts you is that marginal decisions like that occur frequently, each and every session, so while the wrong decision may only cost you .08 each time you make it, it adds up quickly over time, as you’re constantly faced with the same decision. Sklansky has a good example of this phenomenon, where he points out that always folding a royal flush isn’t that horrible a play, due to the fact that you so rarely hold a royal flush that it’s essentially not costing you any money to fold it, over the life of your poker career.

Don’t skip those sections in assorted books where they get all mathy and start talking about pot and implied odds. Just learn it. Don’t be stubborn and fight the battle. Look at it like a savings account with compounded interest. Yes, it’s a little work to save up and learn it, yes it makes playing poker “harder”, making calculations at the table, but it’ll make/save you an enormous amount of money over you poker career. And the sooner you bite the bullet the better.

Bring Enough Bullets

This is a hard one, especially when you’re building a bankroll. But you can’t play with scared money. It just doesn’t work. While it’s possible to run $50 into a $10,000 roll in 3 months, the much more likely outcome is that you play for awhile then bust. Then rebuy for $50 more. Then play for a little bit longer. Then bust. Over and over and over.

Online poker isn’t going anywhere. You’re going to need years and many thousands of hands before you really start making money, anyway. If you don’t have enough of a bankroll to play the way you know you should be playing, save until you have the necessary roll. Spend that time studying, playing freerolls, learning. Wait until you can deposit enough to give yourself a decent chance of success. Don’t hamstring yourself by constantly nursing tiny bankrolls. All you’re doing is conditioning yourself to play scared, which’ll bite you in the ass later on even if you do run your roll up.

Playing poker seriously is an investment in yourself. If you’re going to do it, do it right. Give yourself the best shot to succeed, instead of trying for months and months to bootstrap $50 into a decent roll. If you don’t have the faith to invest $500 in yourself, well, where are you going to find the faith to succeed?

Yes, I know, that sounds harsh. Yes, I know, sometimes you have other bills, other much more important things to take care of instead of putting money into an online poker site. I’m not belittling or ignoring that at all. I’m just saying that it’s better sometimes to focus on the parts of your game that don’t involve actually playing at the table.

Results-Oriented Isn’t a Four Letter Word

Set goals for yourself. Tangible goals. Dollar figure goals. That’s why you’re playing poker, if you get down to brass tacks. Don’t shy away from it or act coy.

People will say over and over that you shouldn’t be results-oriented, that it’ll drive you crazy if you are, especially as you see your AA get cracked over and over and over by 74o. They’ll extend the argument and say that you shouldn’t focus on the results from one individual session, or a week’s worth of sessions, or even a month, as it’s the big picture you should keep a steady eye on, knowing that your solid play over time will cause more chips to congregate on your side of the table.

Bzzt, wrong answer. The warm fuzzy feeling that you’re playing solid poker, despite the mounting losses, is worth exactly jack and squat. Poker is a game of winners and losers, and the difference between the two is gaudily visible, impossible to miss. If you play better than the other people at the table, you win. If you don’t, you lose. Winners make money. Losers lose money.

Be results-oriented. Track exactly how much you’ve won or lost and set specific goals. No matter how you try to pitch it, success in poker is determined by how much money you win. Accept that. Accept the fact that you’re going to lose money while you’re learning and developing your chops. It’s an investment. Not all investments immediately skyrocket and triple in value. Get used to that fact.

Set realistic goals for yourself. Try to halve what you’re losing each month, if you’re losing money. Or shoot for 25% more profit than the previous month. Don’t just pat yourself on the back and say you’re playing good poker and to hang in there. Don’t just grin at how well things are going and keep flinging chips. Always have a destination in mind and a way to track progress towards it. If you don’t you just stall out, feeling alternately driven and adrift.

Does setting tangible goals cure variance? Of course not. No amount of setting goals or trying harder will. You’ll have some months where your losses will deepen and your goals will like freaking ridiculous in hindsight, no matter how solidly you play or how much you study. The point is that if you’re always setting specific, results-oriented goals you’re always questioning, always pushing, always keeping your eye on the only visible barometer you have.

I say this from direct experience, as I spent far too long not holding myself accountable, telling myself I was playing well, to keep on eye on the larger prize, that the cards would eventually turn, etc. When I started making real progress was when I got much more serious about analyzing the state of things, setting real goals, tracking my play to a pretty fine level of detail.

Have Fun

No, really. If you aren’t having fun anymore, you’re playing too much poker. It won’t always be fun, granted, as that’s the nature of the beast, but one of the worst things you can do is to keep grinding and playing when you’re not having fun. One of my biggest regrets is all the time I spent playing when I wasn’t in the right state of mind to enjoy it, for whatever reason.

Turn off the computer. Read a book. Go outside and throw rocks at squirrels. If you truly enjoy playing poker, the itch will return. If it doesn’t, well, that’s not the end of the world either, as you’ll likely save yourself the constant love/hate relationship that many people have with poker.

Poker Bonus Strategy 101

By and large, if you catch the poker bonus bug you’ll be playing at lower limits. While you can clear a bonus at 15/30, it’s more than likely that the extra $100 you get from the bonus won’t make a huge dent in your bankroll. But, just like all poker bonuses aren’t created equal, neither are all low/micro limit games. There are a few considerations to keep in mind in order to maximize the value of the bonus.

Minimize your Risk

The real value in bonuses isn’t locked in any one particular bonus; the true +EV lies in the ability to clear multiple bonuses. Read that again. If you can multi-table and consistently play break-even poker, you’ll make money. In any given month there’s usually $500-$750 in juicy bonus money available, through reloads and monthly bonuses. Your goal is to get that money, with a minimum of effort, and with as minimal risk as possible.

By and large, you shouldn’t be clearing bonuses at 2/4 or higher. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be playing 2/4 or higher, just that you should separate your bonus play from your other play at those levels and above. Look at the bonus money as hit and run missions to extract the most money possible in the least amount of time, at the lowest limits possible. Yes, I know, it’s boring and frustrating as hell sometimes to play .50/1, especially if you’re used to higher limits. But your goal in chasing bonuses is to build your bankroll, plain and simple. Recognize it as such. It’s an ends to the means, not the means.

The lower the limit you play, the lower your risk. Variance is a real issue with bonuses because you’re typically playing 1,000 raked hands or fewer. Anything in the world can happen in a sample that small. Analyze each bonus and determine the lowest limit you can play that will allow you to clear it in the available time you have. The balancing act is finding the lowest limit that still produces enough raked hands to clear the bonus quickly, so that you can move on to the next one.

Plan Your Mission

Be like the A-Team, loving it when a good plan comes together. Don’t just run around, jumping on this site and depositing for a bonus, getting bored when it’s slow to clear, jumping ship and going over here, then there, then back. Take half an hour at the beginning of the month to plan what bonuses you’ll pick off.

You usually have a fair number of monthly bonuses available. You also have initial signup bonuses to work through. You usually have reloads from the major sites, as well. For myself, I pencil in all the monthly bonuses in the middle of the month (trying to avoid the beginning of the month/end of the month influx of bonus chasing players that typically occurs, which causes the play to tighten slightly). I usually slot a new initial signup bonus or two for the first few weeks of the month. The last week or two is usually reserved for reloads that crop up.

That said, you’ll have to be flexible. Sometimes bonuses pop up with a small window of opportunity to complete them in. You can almost always move the monthly bonuses around in your schedule and the initial signup bonuses almost never expire, so it’s usually easy to work in time-sensitive reload bonuses.

Step Down, Not Up

I know people that normally play 5/10 and higher who clear bonuses at .50/1. Remember, you’re there for the bonus. Clearing it at lower limits reduces the swings your bankroll will experience, thus increasing the odds that you’ll clear the bonus and show a profit.

What you have to avoid is stepping up in limits, because you think you’ll clear it faster since more hands are raked. This is a recipe for disaster, as you’ll be playing with slightly scared money, always watching the raked hand total, watching your bankroll, anxious, wringing you hands.

If you can’t easily clear the bonus playing your normal limits (or below), then don’t chase after the bonus in the first place. It’s just that easy. There are so many good bonuses out there that you never have to step above 1/2, if you don’t want to. Again, I’m obviously not saying you can’t clear a bonus at 2/4. You can. But only if you feel comfortable at that level, your bankroll can support it, and there are no other better bonuses that you can clear at lower levels.

Understand the Bonus Terms

This is probably where people make the most errors, and what leads to the most frustration. Always read the terms and conditions for the bonus and understand how that site’s bonus system works. It makes a huge, huge difference if the site requires you to contribute to a raked hand, or if you simply have to be dealt cards initially in a hand that is eventually raked.

Don’t jump on a bonus without doing any research, only to discover that what looks like a great bonus will in fact take you twelve years to clear. Not only will you get frustrated and likely not play your best, even if you abandon ship and move on it will continue to mock you, always nagging at the back of your mind. Always make sure you understand the terms and that you have a good sense of how long it will take you in real-world conditions to get the bonus.

Don’t focus on the dollar amount, but instead on how quickly you can clear it. A $40 that you can clear in thirty minutes beats the hell out of a $300 bonus that takes you a month to clear.

Expand Your Repertoire

If you want to extra full value from the world of bonuses, learn how to play Stud and Omaha. There are more than a few bonuses that require you to contribute to the pot for you to get credit for a raked hand, and Stud is great for those situations, as your initial ante counts as a contribution. Micro limit Omaha games usually have six or seven people seeing every flop, so nearly every hand is raked.

Omaha is also good for multi-tabling as you will insta-muck many, many hands preflop, so you have to make fewer decisions and see less flops, allowing you to focus on multiple tables more easily. (Stud, though, is exactly the opposite, as unless you have a photographic memory you’re going to be giving away a lot by not being able to remember exposed cards that have been mucked.)

Plus learning a new game never hurts and can even be, wonder of wonders, fun.

The Mo’ Tables, The Mo’ Better

You have to multi-table to get the full value from bonuses. Have to. And, honestly, you really have to play four tables at a time, or at least be working up to it. It’s hard at first and yes, indeed, you’ll make some errors while getting used to it and cost yourself some money in the short-term. But in the long-term it’ll greatly increase your profitability if you can manage four or more tables at a time.

If you can’t fit four tables on your monitor without overlap, start setting aside a certain amount of money from each bonus towards buying a monitor that can fit four tables. I was stubborn for far, far too long, thinking I could get by just fine on my wee little monitor. Don’t be stubborn. Having four tables on the screen with no overlap will increase your profitability. It will.

You Can’t Win Them All

Variance sucks. Even the best laid plains blow up in your face sometimes. Sometimes you’re going to chase a bonus, play a ton of hands, and show a net loss for all your efforts. It just happens. If it doesn’t happen to you, you’re not taking full advantage of all the bonuses out there. Dust yourself off and go on to the next one.

What to Do When Variance Rears Its Ugly Head

If you play in a casino or poker room for any amount of time, you’ll likely be quickly introduced to variance. As the name suggest, variance is simply the phenomenon that for any event with an observable outcome, the results will vary.

Let’s say you flip a coin ten times. While unlikely, it’s entirely possible that all ten times it will be heads. The odds are 50/50 so you’d expect five heads and five tails, but the sample size (the number of times the coin is flipped) is only ten, which is very low and prone to wild swings, such as results of ten heads or ten tails. Those swings are variance.

If you flip that same coin 1,000,000 times, the results will be much more similar to what the math suggests, with a final tally of something close to 500,000 heads and 500,000 tails. The larger the sample size, the more likely the results will be closer to what the mathematical odds say they should be.

Understanding and accepting that variance exists is pretty crucial for anyone who expects to spend a lot of time playing poker. Starting with the best hand in poker doesn’t mean you’ll end up with the winning hand. You’ll have frustrating nights that will drive you absolutely bonkers, where you have great hands but they keep getting beaten, over and over, by players with much worse hands.

It doesn’t mean that online poker is rigged. It simply means that one night of results isn’t enough to base any conclusion on. It’s too small a sample, too prone to variance. Because the variance is high due to a small sample size, you’re guaranteed to encounter some crazy, frustrating sessions that defy the odds.

All you can do is stick to your guns, and do what should be doing anyway. Read poker strategy books and review your play. Make sure you’re playing hands correctly and not letting the variance cause you to play badly or go on tilt.

If you’re a good player, and playing correctly, over time your results will reverse course. Poker is, at heart, a game of math, and your results will indicate that as your sample size increases. Your big hands will win more often than not. Your correct play will ultimately be rewarded as long as you stick to your guns.

Position, Position, Position

Good poker players are always aware of their position at the table. In some cases, your position at the table is more important than the actual cards you have.

If you’re first to act in a hand, with everyone else waiting, you need to have a really good hand before you should consider betting or raising. There might be a raise after you, then another raise, and suddenly you have to call two more bets, just to continue in the hand.

If you’re last to act in a hand, you get to see all the action before you. You know exactly how much it will cost you to see another card and you don’t need to worry about someone raising behind you.

The biggest effect that your position should have is on how many hands you play. If you’re in early position and have to act first, you only want to play the strongest of hands, such as AA, KK, QQ, JJ, 1010, and AK. Because you might get raised, you only want to play hands that you don’t mind potentially calling raises with.

If you’re in late position, you can play more hands, especially if no one has raised yet. You still want to only play good starting hands, but you can be a little looser in your standards, since you’ll be able to see the action before making any decisions throughout the hand.

Don’t just focus on your own cards and ignore everything else at the table, as sometimes your position can be just as important, especially when initially deciding whether or not to play a hand.