Keeping Book

There are several good poker authors out there suggesting that you keep a book on your play, the people you play against, and the type of games where you win and when do you lose.

I kinda went nuts with it and developed a short hand that allowed me to quickly put a detailed sanario on the style of nearly every player I was up against. That was when I played a minimum of three cash games a week no limit holdem, Omaha, and Horse all with in minutes of my house in Boulder Co.

Many were real tough players who played six days a week and could lose a couple of grand and still play a sober game the next day.

There seem to always be some body who was having a good night or even a good week. It was rare that we all did about the same. You know, just passed the money in a circle. There were many games when the worse player walked off with the most money.

I saw a lot of patterns and even started to pick up on who I was likely to make bad plays against. Seemed like they could read me like a road sign and even when I had the nuts on the flop they would out draw me.

I had three tough months of bad beats that broke my bankroll.

I got out of the loop of live games and started to play low stakes no limit holdem on the internet. WOW, the potiential to keep book on patterns of personal play and how poker was playing me is amazing. When I was winning, I could play three tables at once and although I could not possibly keep book on the players I could mark the exact time I was winning and when I started losing.

If I was winning at two tables and losing at the third it was usually due to one player who kept getting the nuts at that table especially against me. You know, I would get AA and he would have AA, four people would be all in, and he would draw the flush.

I started keeping a new book which is still in a development process that overlaps what I was learning from my first book but now it is more about noticing when I'm catching cards and what others are catching when I'm in the hand.

I would bet that most of you internet players have stories to tell of how you had days when you could not win more than the blinds with pocket aces and time after time if your Bullets did get called they would outdraw you with no matter what they had in their hand.

Well I had three months of that in my last days of those live games I use to play but kept thinking it was me, my attitude, or my karma. But on line, you can play so many hands in an hour that the patterns become obvious. If you know the basics and play above average you should generally make money. Thats the main reason I play and generally made money. It was not untill my losing streak that I decided to play around with my style and keep track of other things.

Only a small percentage of people regularly malke money at poker and even the really good players have losing streaks.

If anyone is interested in stuff that I am learning from keeping book on these patterns let me know. I warn you that its seems a little wierd at first but there is no doubt that I'm onto something here.
I'm on the road for the next couple of days so be patient for me to answer any request.

Play like it matters,
Grantiferus

I think alot of what you are talking about has good potential and should be practised (about keeping books). However I think it sounds like there is also a lot of coincidence pattern making that would actually be detremental to overall play if you ajusted according to it. ie when you talk about a certain player at the table who seems to always outdraw you. It seems like your bookkeeping would then tell you not to play against him because he is outdrawing you but the reality is either your betting is off or if it's not, and you're playing the hands right, it would actually be beneficial to play against such a player because he will call you when you have more chance or winning.

Does that make sense? I am interested about what you're doing but I want to clear up about this coincidence makingness.

'Law of Independent Trials' applies to each poker hand; the cards have no "memory".

Trying to find a "pattern" in something like who is hitting their draws is a fallacy that the human brain is programmed to look for-- don't fool yourself: it's variance plain and simple.

IRiis,
Just packing my things and thought I would check to see if I caught anybodys interest.
Thanks for yours.
Your guess suggest that what I am learning is like, if I fall out of an oak tree, I don't climb oak trees any more especially not that one. Well that would put a big damper on life wouldn't it.

So the answer to your surmise is more complicated than a flat NO but for now it that will have to do with one thought added on.

If I am making the obvious right plays and being beat consistantly by a player who seems to be making the right plays also, (playing a hand that he has the second best possible, is a hand thats more than hard to lay down especially when the stakes arn't going to bust your bank roll to call an all in bet) I have top boat he the a smaller one. River comes and he catches four of a kind. OUCH you would say... lol

So in my previous example from the earlier post I talked about playing three tables at once, and winning at two of them yet having only one player, (JOey) who is beating me consistantly at the third, and bad. JO's stack is bigger than everybodys. When JOey has AA two or three other people have high pocket pairs also. JOey gets them all in and nobody catches anything but him.

I don't care how good I play, or how often it seems like JOey is playing a bit of dumb luck, I am going to wait for another day to go up against him, when things arn't going so good for him... and on the internet there are lots of other tables that need cleaning.... Thats practical good poker.

What I'm learning with this new style of book keeping has more to do with another demension than practical good poker. Like when and where are the cards more likely to go your way and you could have a JOey day.

I'm using software programs and studying not only other people that win or lose big but also applying my book keeping experiment to the markets, and politics.
There is no book that I could find on this method and the few people that I found that said they had the professional answers for me on this deminsion I paid them to tell me but they were about as far off the mark as I would have not wanted them to be.
So are you still interested?
I've got to go.
PLay like it matters,
Grant
PS ..click on the poll at the top of the page Please!

Aliengenius,
In no way am I suggesting that the CARDS have a memory. I don't even think that the Universe cares if I win or not or that something out there has a concept of what winning is and dishes it out to those who deserve it. Thats all silly thinking as far as I'm concerned.

Watching to see who is hitting their draws is deffinetly worth observing, but that is not what this study is about. It is about me and how I'm doing and how I fit in the ebb and flow of things right now.... As I prove it works for me, there are good odds that it will also work for some other people.

Not paying attention to patterns is like not learning when and where to Fish. Who cares if you have the right bait when the fish arn't biting or they just arn't where you are.
There are the practical aspects of fishing and then there are the sub layers of those days that you just do every thing the wrong way, make all the wrong choices, and catch fish that you can't get enough meat off to make worth your while. Or there is of course the exact opposite days when you make all the right choices.
If you could know when that time is, wouldn't you want to know?

Play like it matters!

I guess I don't understand what you are talking about then...

Yeah it seems a very fine line between you making false connections and what aliengenius and I (in my first post) thought it was you were doing. I think I might be getting a hint of this having something at a bit deeper level, I'm going to remain the sceptic of course, but an intrigued one at least.

Before this goes much deeper why don't we all read Malcom gladwell's book Blink. This might provide a framework for tis discussion.

Well my trip got delayed a day by the excuse of a painting accident.... Guess I was not quite ready to get going.. but will hit the road tomorrow morning with an occasional check in to the web.

Thanks RugbyO . Did a search for reviews of the book BLINK and it does look quite appealing to me, I shall pick it up on my trip...

I agree with every thing that Malcom Gladwell was quoted as saying and have applied what he is talking about, consciously, to each of my professions and my personal relationships, with a knowing that if you think too much about anything you are likely to make the wrong choice. And I also agree that we sometimes subconsciously know what the other people are feeling. You certainly see both aspects in poker all the time. Love the term "Thin Slice"

This book though is NOT at all nessessary for this topic but from the excerpst that I read it does overlap and would be a nice addition to this discussion

Isn't it funny that each responce to my invatation to share my newly discovered information has approached my topic as if they know already what I have discovered or that they have at least to some degree been there and done some of that.

But I feel most assure that no one here has applied these techniques together with the software tools I am using. So saying that the same tools used for different research can serve up a completly different product or result.

Hard knocks are of course the common way to motivate a new perspective and I have pleanty of scars to say I have been pushed into new perspectives many times as I guess so have we all.

Yet when knocked to a new perspective and I'm sitting on the other side of the fence with out the desire to grow my awarness I will not change. I will still be the stuborn me I was on the other side of the fence. More information but no more awarness. .

The easiest way for me to gain a new perspective and more awarness is to entertain the possibility that there is perhaps a better way than the ones I have tried and to reach out for it empty handed as if it is the unknowned.

So far the only person who has said they want to know what I am discovering is Iriis.... thanks for that...
Does anyone else want to know?

wait so you're basically datamining and then "discovering" patterns in results of hands that you expect will help you play better/differently?

The answer to your guess is a flat NO....
I love the game of poker because it is so fast at giving response and then giving another oppotunity to get another response. Put all those responses together and you get a little sand painting. Everyone gets their own little sand painting and the sand painting all go together.
In every game at every table we all get a different sand painting and it defines us to a superficial degree. If we foolishly accept the definition beyond the game it might as well be holloween. The game is not who we are, the way we treat life is who we are.


There are some people who strongly believe that the game responds to the way you are thinking.... and to some degree I agree but in a very small way. I do NOT think that we can control the outcome of our life but influance it by the way we treat it. Our life is everything and everybody that is going on in our perception. How we treat our world is how our life is for us.


Every poker player worth his salt has seen the worse poker player, the one who always looses, win all night long once a year or so. Yay for him and yay for the other players as he keeps feeding the game his hard earned money the rest of the year.
Ask not why did he win, ask what was happening when he was winning. Well a lot was happening.... thats were the software comes in.

Our best choice to make in each moment is how we precieve what is happening as we do not get to choose how life happens. All these patterns I have been tracking have shown me a key that I am still learning to desifer that tells me when I might expect to be in the next right game for me.
Unfortunately I have to wait till July for another poker foray. Thats a little unusual but it has to do with where it is better for me to be.
If you want to know more say Yes and click the poll at the top of the page.

PLay like it matters.

Wait a second....is this Zeebo?

Anyway, just answer me this one question. You said earlier that you look for patterns so that you know when you might have a "JOey day". Does this mean that you are looking for days when you will make draws, etc?

I didn't vote because never wasn't an option...

1 more thing... keeping book becomes much less important if you have a HUD. If you don't do either, you're missing out on tons of information. Although keeping book might help you in certain, very specific and repetitious situations, an HUD will keep track of more information than you can possibly handle, especially while multitabling.

I always thought keeping book referred to live poker. If you have any information on live huds please let me know. Live casinos that let you multi-table would also be nice .

Unfortunately, the "responses" (feedback) that the game of poker gives are not necessarily correlated with correct decision making (unlike most other things you will do in life):

feedback.jpg (http://www.cardschat.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=21574&d=1245454866)

Read this book.

AG wins imo

Interesting, but I disagree. If you go about it right you quite clearly will learn from your mistakes and over time develop a sense of what is right and wrong.

If we did not learn from our mistakes, humans would have died off by now... But lets give Aliengenius his due, after all he is quoting some of the masters.

It is a reference to the trickery that the mind plays on itself in order to keep the world in accordance to the beliefs that dominate or egos.

I know a few people who love to get a suited Six Nine.... I heard it called the Sweet... They almost have to play it. How often have they played it and it hit, compared to when it didn't? We can make a pretty close guess and just say Rarely, but they still play it. What part of the mind causes us to ignore the obvious cost of playing lucky favorites.

The part that wants to have the emotional coco rush of being able to win it the way we want to. Getting rewarded for dumb plays is like winning cotton candy , (which by the way is bad for more than your teeth), and if we are emotional players we often have more than one favorite draw that makes no sense at all.

so yeah, learn form your mistakes, watch the pattern of when you win and when you lose, and don't think about it too much. If you study and practice what you study, when you need what you have learned you don't even need to think about it.

Surprised, dissapointed, felt the wind go out of my sail, so much I could say about the general response I have gotten to the original direction of this thread and my desire to unvail and discuss what I have discovered through a relatively new method of keeping book.

Don't get me wrong though, I like the other directions this has started to go and Keeping Book is a very valuable tool if you know how to adjust your game from what you see in the book.

I would love to discuss more how internet book keeping reveals something different than live bookeeping that is also very useful. How could we possible have a thorough discussion about the play of poker and not discuss LUCK. Generally we only say what Luck has done to us and rather skip that topic as it is so unpredictable.

The internet allows you to play many many hands in a short period of time at any time of the day. Thus Bookeeping on the internet reveals a pattern there that speaks louder than it does is live games

No matter what the subject though, if there was something I was doing that I found was interested enough to participate in an online forum and somebody there said they had done reasearch with software tools and tracked patterns that revealed ways to better their performance,
I WOULD DEFFINETLY WANT TO KNOW MORE.
I have read a lot on the topic, and participate in most levels of play with thousands of hours under my belt so I know I am not addressing the topic of poker in completly irrational terms. I have not suggested that you have to wear a Rabbit hat and keep certain gem stones in different orifices for different times of the day,(does that work?). So how is it that people DON'T REALLY CARE what I have discovered? Thats another topic...




PLAY LIKE IT MATTERS.......

If your referring to hand analysis by using a poker database were way ahead of you on that one

I think people are misunderstanding you as your extremly verbose


Try downloading the trial for holdem manager.
Then read their articles. They have collected millions of hands and their respective statistics/ win rates to find what attributes (or patterns) winning players have.

Unsurprisingly the stats that directly correlate to large win rates are tightness, aggression, stealing, folding to raises and many more.
Have a look at it

ok I'll bite, what have you discovered? I still don't get the point of this thread. You're being extremely vague about everything.

PLAY LIKE IT MATTERS ZACH

Hey thanks for the tips, I just read over the entire thread and did not see where I have been excessive in my explainations, although I have been introducing a philosophical point of view which is difficult to do in one liners unless treading a well worn path. Like "Wait and Bait" or "Know when to fold them".

My apologys to you and who ever else finds me a bit wordy but as I have said this is not the same old stuff that many have already tried.

And yes Holdem Manager can be a great tool for proving why you should play a certain style but that is not what I am doing. Funny that you say, "We are way ahead of you on that one." We who? It Sounds competitive.

If I am missunderstood then it is from what others are assuming, that
what I am just discovering they know already. I certainly have not said exactly what it is yet except for it is NEW. There is good reason for my Vaugeness.

Thanks again Deco in your efforts to set me straight.

Im sorry,but you are annoying,why dont you just say what you are talking about or drop it?




Snow

I'm not going to be quite as rude as snowmobiler, but it sounds like you're trying to drum up some interest in an idea that you want to peddle to newbie players who don't yet know anything and are looking for that "edge" or "cheat" that nobody knows about yet.

Why do I say this? You are possibly the most vague person I've ever seen. I can listen to politicans give answers with more clarity than the half dozen or so posts you have made here.

So PLEASE like snow said, either be CLEAR on what you're trying to say or just don't say it anymore.

This has got to be the most confusing set of posts I've ever seen O_O

So much extra random thoughts :P I realize it's a style of writing OP but sometimes it helps to be concise, especially if you're trying to communicate to the general public.

Looks more to me like a "OMG its rigged" thread once you clean it up a bit, but that is my opinion.

Sorry grant.

Sorry Guys,
I did say that I was being vague for a reason and perhaps that can be cleared up somewhat now. I was trying to see if I had enough people interested to lay something out that is hard to explain to most people. My answer to that question was a big NO, but I will at least expose to you the jest of it in an attempt to be mannerly in the face of rising hostilities.

For more than eight years I have been trying to nail down a method to predict the most likely moment that I will be in the right place at the right time to play Poker next and thanks to BOOKKEEPING on my Internet poker play I made a breakthrough.

My interest was first triggered back when I played a basket ball game better than I ever thought I could but in the moment I was playing like I thought I always should.
I was making left handed shots with as much ease as my right, and shooting 90% against players twice my skill level. Hooks, jump shots, and a array of graceful layups. Who was that guy? Only me in the ZONE!

It happened in other sports, in performances on stage, and ten years later it happened one day in the Comodity Market as well as a $9000 day in Vegas, It was obvious that some Zones were bigger or more intense in some fashion than other Zones, Not only in how long they lasted but also what area of skill that got inhansed.

Ok,so I'm losing you already and I have not even gotten to Poker yet.
Stick with me a couple of more paragraphs at least so that I can finish my explanation.

I have been working on a mutiplex system that combines several different software programs to pinpoint the best moments for you to play and win, Sometimes more like a Genius and other times just great dumb luck. It also and almost more importantly tells me when NOT TO PLAY.

Twice I have tried two different professional companys who advertised their capabilities to predict my good days and the best minutes to gamble, using Astrology .Which might be one explanation for how some people are having more luck than others. The professionals did not even come close. In fact I lost big at their perscribed times

If you can honestly tell me that you have not had days when you made all the right moves but got all the bad breaks or if you have not had days that the cards did everything you thought they should do, then you have not played enough cards.

Some players have more of those good card days than most of us do. Some players have very short bad runs, while others have way too long of bad runs to continue their gaming career. It appears to me that each of us has something going for us more often, that most of the others don't.

By tracking many hands of poker second by second of and correlating that with many of the other things going on simultaniously at the same time I have found a very promising technique to pick out my best times and worst times to play poker. So far so good.

In about six months if my bank roll does not show a huge gain, and if I don't have any other prominsing additions to my system I am going to scrap this thing as far as poker goes. I just wish I was one of those people who got more good days to play as it is by far one of the most fun ways to spend time.

You can prepare all you want, learn all you need to know, play against a lesser crew and still get your butt kicked by the least likely kid.. Thats fun isn't it?

So you've developed a "way" to predict variance cycles? I call BULLSHIT.

Prove your words by predicting your next "Zone Windows" and then posting graphs of actual play before, during, and after said windows.

FWIW I think you're just an idiot who believes in mystical forces that effect your "luck" and that you desperatley crave attention.

Have a nice day.

Let me guess,he wont do it because there isnt enough interest in his thread?



Snow

Sorry, but you lost me when you said you tried the astrology thing.

Poker might not be your thing; now market trading could actually be somewhere that your thoughts could be useful. There are actually patterns there and if you enjoy searching for patterns its a good way to make tons of money when you're right.