Winners are Losers

Per my stated goals for the month of April, I've been focusing on NL cash games. Most of my sessions have been $10NL 6max, with blinds of $.05/.10 and $10 maximum buy-ins. I seem to do better at these 6max games than the 9-handed tables, and I think the reason is one of patience-- or lack thereof, in the case of yours truly. Dunno why, but I tend to get antsy in 9-handed games, even if I'm multi-tabling. The result is I loosen up just a tad too much and...voila'...I spew money. In the 6max games, however, the action is fast and loose enough in general to keep me on the straight and narrow. Weird psychology indeed. It's almost as if I need crazy players at my table to keep me playing well.

My VPIP in the NL cash games for the past 4500 hands (i.e., the month of April so far) has been 21%, with a PFR of 11.45%. I like the first number, especially given that I'm mostly playing 6max, but the preflop raise is a little weak. Hmmm... or maybe it's not. See, I've come to the (obvious) realization that some of my biggest scores have come with two pair and sets, so there is tremendous implied odds to just limp in with medium pairs and suited connectors and hope to hit the flop hard. On the other hands, this means I'm forgoing the idea of just taking down the blinds with those hands, which is in direct violation of the conventional wisdom/Grinderschool advice of always opening a pot for a raise if you're the first one in. Guess I'm still struggling a bit with this one. Part of the answer obviously lies with how loose and aggressive the opposition is downstream of you, plus how likely the blinds are to fold to a raise. Each situation has to be evaluated independently; the goal is to maximize EV, which means you should play, say, 77 differently against a loose and aggressive player than you should against a tight-passive. In the former, you're probably better off limping and calling a reraise (assuming the stacks are deep enough to justify set-mining), and in the latter, an open-raise is probably best.

The other interesting thing (at least to me) that I've been thinking about lately is the idea that winning poker generally means long, steady, gradual losing sessions that are punctuated with big up-ticks due to monsters paying off. If you're playing "perfect" poker, you should be folding ~80% of the time, which means often you're giving up your blinds without a fight. You're also giving up with trap hands when reraised, and you're getting off medium and small pairs when they don't hit their set. All of these things mean a general loss of money over time (yes, if you're stealing the blinds when it's folded to you, you're slowing this ebb of money loss a little, but you get my point). What saves the day, obviously, is when a set hits and you get action. Note the graphs above. One is for today's session, and the other is for the month of April thus far. Both show this general trend of long losing periods interspersed with big upward variance, both micro- and macroscopically. In other words, to win at poker, you must be willing to lose. Weird.

All-in for now….
-Bug