Losing my "natural" game....

Hi All,
A bit of background for context:. I make my living reading people, negotiating and working with numbers. The main reason I do well for a living comes from having pretty good instincts. I'm 40 now and have been playing cards pretty much from about 5 yrs old. I started getting into Holdem about three years back and found that I was a decent player. I generally play 2/5 NL cash games and for the first 2 years or so would typically end a night with 2-3x what I started with.
More recently I have been reading more about odds, pot odds, implied odds, position, hand range etc etc etc. Now I am finding that the more I read and study up on the game, the worse I seem to be playing.
In essence, I have become a very conscious player whereas before it was a lot more instinctive.
My question is; do you think people can have a "natural" game without thinking through the odds every time? I know with golf, I was a decent golfer until I took lessons and then it all went to pot!
Would be very interested in the responses.
Many thanks,
CuttleFish

It is hard to give an answer w/o a bit more info.

First question is: How many games are we talking here, in your run bad phase? It may just be standard variance.

IMO if you have good instincts, this is worth a lot. BUT, knowing the numbers - since you work with them anyway, this is gonna make sense to you - is never a disadvantage. Learning when to rely on the numbers, and when to rely on your read is key here, I would think. Maybe you are neglecting your "strength" and trying to play more by the book?

However, the things you speak about above are good tools to use. If you think your read on a player tells you he has you beat on the flop, but he makes a raise that you can call and have great implied odds if you make your hand, then this is info that can help you in the long run, assuming you were not thinking in terms of implied odds etc. before.

As far as golf goes, I know that when you play "by feel" and then learn some good golf technique, your game can suffer at first.
Poker is not much different. I would imagine that if you were pretty good with your reading skills, and now are trying to implement other areas to your play, just keep at it, do constant review,and it will come together.

But I have read about players that play "by feel" i.e. a "natural" game and do very well, so whatever works.

GL!

Hey Fletchdad,
One post and Ive learned something already! I love this site. The bit that struck me was :

"Learning when to rely on the numbers, and when to rely on your read is key here, I would think. Maybe you are neglecting your "strength" and trying to play more by the book?"


I think thats whats been happening. I start the reads from when people walk into the room, how do they look, what are they wearing, what does their wallet look like, how are their notes bundled etc etc. this is all about finding out what money means to them in the first place. There's hundreds of little bits of information people give before they are even dealt a card. Once they sit down, where do they sit, do they have a card protector, where are they sitting at the table, why did they choose this position, how do they stack their chips, where do they put their cards when dealt, how comfortable do they look etc etc. This normally gives me enough information, not on what they are holding, but how comfortable are they in what they are holding. Once the betting starts most of them might as well turn their cards face-up! Playing on this basis and I was doing well.

Lately though, Ive been instinctively in front and then not made calls if the maths havent made sense. Ive abandoned my biggest strength to play more by the book just like you said.
The bad run isnt that bad, maybe about $1k down over the past month but ive got a big final coming up in December for $15k first prize so i wanted to get some good feedback.
thanks mate, really appreciate it.

CuttleFish

You probably wont believe this but its entirely possible you were on a 3 year heater (lucky patch) and that's ended.

Live poker you are being dealt 20 or so hands per hour. Online its 70 per table. If I play 6 tables then that 420 per hour vs 20 live

So every hour of my online play is equal to 21 hours of your live play.

Its entirely possible to go on 20K hand heaters 10K hand heaters are standard and 50-100K hand heaters are not outside the realms of possibility.

Lets consider how many hours it takes you to play 10K hands.

10000/20 =500

so a 6 hour sessions every week week, means it takes 500/6 weeks to play 10K hands or just over 18 months

20K over 3 years.

Now lets look at online.

10000/420 = 23 hours

lets keep the 6 constant (although Id say online playters play more hours per week due to convenience)

So 10K = about month (personally I play about 30K in a month)

20K = 2 months

For me thats about 3 weeks vs your 3 years

Do I get 3 week heaters? Yes!

The problem live players have is that they just dont understand how many hands they need to play before their winrate begins to converge.. if you post samples of under 50K people will tell you that the sample is too small to have any meaning and even at 50K people say its just too small a sample to determine much. Realistically you need 100K+ hands before you can get a feel of your winrate.

Due to the speed at which hands are played online, swings last a few weeks, often only a few days. Live, this translates to months and years.

So its difficult to say what the cause is as we cant rule out the possibility that you have just got quite lucky for 3 years, because poker isnt really measured in time its measured in hands played.

^what stu said.

It's also possible that you only feel this way because you're constantly trying to implement what you're learning. Since you are just learning, you're probably "getting lost" in the hand if you will, which makes you think you're losing skill.

Just drop down to 1/2, read the golden archives here, this: Why are you betting? , phil gordon's little green book, maybe play poker with play money online in your spare time, and post hands that you played in the Cash Game Hand Analysis section(most valuable thing to do). GL

interesting thoughts, what stu and bgomez said is very good; just a little more explanation on bgomez' comments:

there is a process of "putting it together" to become a genuinely better card player; putting it together= the #'s, the maths, understanding equities (which is odds based percentages to realize various types of equity (ies) value); odds, as well as learning how to apply ranges. . . .as well as adjusting to table dynamics.

These are all things that take time and ALOT of practice to implement into becoming a more solid player.
The goal is for all the variables to become so "ingrained" it becomes almost natural to filter any given situation in seconds. At least this is what i know i am trying to package together.

like you, i have had reasonably good success playing live over several years; then a "door" was opened and i realized how bad and narrow my understandings are. The rabbit hole is alot deeper than i could have realized. . .

this is going to take some time to digest.........................

I do remember that the first time I tried thinking about hand ranges I started playing awfully. You over think, you become scared. Lots of bad things can happen to your game but it's because you're learning new concepts and applying them badly. Once you get the hang of them you improve. It could also have been a heater.

this happened to me at first but but it could just be misapplication of the concepts or trying to force them into your game to hard.

Ok, so the ego has taken a bit of time to accept this might have just been a heater....
I played yesterday, a 5/5 (yes, you read it right.....) cash game at the local club. Started with $300 buy in, finished with $550. Most of it on a hand that is typical of what Ive been talking about. I won the hand, but thats not the reason for posting this one. This was a hand I played based on reads and instinct, with no attention payed to the maths. I would really appreciate someone breaking it down to tell me if I should have played it differently if I played by the book. Did I play well or did I get lucky?
8 Handed game.
Josh - $220
Kate - $ 70
Dee (dealer)- $150
Hero (sb) - $250
Max (bb) - $440
Lane - $250
John - $180
Kevin - $ 650
I have pocket pair, 6h 6d
Lane folds.
John calls.
Kevin folds.
Josh calls.
Kate folds.
Dee raises to $15 (Dee plays any cards that have an ace in them. It doesnt matter to him what combination, as long as one of them is an Ace)
I call for another $10
Max calls for another $10
The rest fold. Now 3 players.
Flop comes down 5s Qs Qh
I want to know if anyone has a Q, so put out a $10 feeler bet. Max raises to $30. This is his typical bet whenever he is chasing a flush. For about 5 times already during the day, he has raised to $30 chasing a flush. I put him on a spade flush draw.
Dee folds.
I call the additional $20. I didnt want to push more, I wanted to limit the damage if another spade hit.
Turn card is a 2h. Nothing card, and from my perspective still leaves me in the best position with 2 pair versus a flush draw.
I raise to $25. A bet big enough to maybe put him off chasing his last spade. It isn't, and he calls.
River card 6s. Dream card for me, he has hit his flush and I have hit a full house.
I check, knowing Max will now bet into me.
Max raises to $100.
I push all in for $180.
Max folds, I take down the pot.

So the idea of this hand for me was staying in front with what I read was the best hand, weary of Max's off his flush draw, and trying to limit the damage if the flush hit.

Any thoughts on this hand please???

Big thanks,

CuttleFish

Oh dear that hand was bad. I pretty much did not like anything about it.

First what was you're reasoning for calling preflop? Let me guess it was to hopefully hit a set right? That's cool and would normally be my play here too. However, no one has a 100 big blind stack. I know you ignore math but of no one has a full stack then you do not have odds to call preflop to hit a set.

Now if you think you have the best hand preflop and that dee or the other people will call a raise with worse hands(even AK is a worse hand than 66) then I might consider retaining Dee preflop. However, most of the time in probably folding.

Now onto the flop. Why did you bet first? How could you possibly deduce that no one has a queen if no one has acted yet? If you do this and someone raises you, you're probably going to have to fold and then you just wasted your money! Let's say you check now, it gets checked back to Dee, dee lets say has A5 decides to make a continuation bet which you call and gain a free $X amount since you have the better hand! So yeah, don't bet first(a lot of the time unless the board has a ton of draws and you're sure you have probably the best hand).

Ok so you bet and get raised and you call. Why? You said he does this with flush draws but why couldn't he do this with a queen too? You need to fold here. However if you trusted your read so much, why wouldn't you reraise him? He surely would call you with his flush draws or shove which is good for you because getting it in with a pair vs a flush draw is good for you.

Ok so the turn. The pot is 105 and you bet 25. This is not a good size bet and you actually are giving him odds to chase his flush draw I think. Always try to bet around 3/4 the size of the pot so 85-90 seems good there. Keep in mind that we should have folded on the flop and that max could still have a queen so I don't like betting here. However if you know for sure he has a flush draw then betting first is good here.

River is bad too. If max has a flush, he's probably not going to fold if you bet. In fact he'll probably raise to which you can shove! The problem with checking here is if he had trip queens he might check back because he might think you have a flush. Whereas if you bet he still might call with trip queens just to see what you have.

Main lessons:
Only call with small pocket pairs if you want to hit a set if people have 100+bb stacks.

Check to the raiser most of the time

Fold when raised and your hand sucks. Don't just put people on a draw, try to think of all the hands they do X play with.

Don't slow play your hands ever.

Just reading this thread makes me realize I dont spend nearly enough time playing to become good. All that stuff Stu posted just blows my mind as far as sheer volume of hands. I get spent after 2 hours of Ring play or after a couple of MTT's. I wouldnt know if I was on a 20K hand heater, if it warmed my house (LOL)

then I click the link on WHY DO YOU BET and its like, gawd Im so far behind and there is so much to think about and I think Im putting thought in now and Im probably not even scratching the surface

As far as the OP, I think you have the feel because you know that most of your players arent gonna turn over top notch stuff for the most part, its just like my live league, I can usually always do well but then I come and play online and realize that a lot of the junk I can get away with in my live league is killing my online play. THIS IS THE MAIN REASON IM TAKING A BREAK FROM LIVE LEAGUE and focusing mainly of my online play. (Im just taking a stab at a possible problem IM in no way questioning your play)

The why do you bet thread IMO is very important and something you really need to understand

Calling pre is ok.

Betting $10 on flop is terrible. Calling the flop raise is bad.

Betting $25 on turn into pot of $115 is lolawful wtfbad.

hmmm. maybe im just crap at this game.....

the $10 bet on the flop was to flush out if anyone had a Q. As much as Max likes to chase flushes, Dee can be a bit crazy at times and unpredictable, so with Dee to act after Max, he would have shoved if he was holding a Q. the only exception here would have been if he was holding AQ. Since he raised his standard "chase the flush" raise and Dee folded, when it came back to me I wanted to stop him chasing the flush. I didnt have enough behind me to push him to 75% of the pot otherwise I was so committed I would have been all gone if he hit, so i thought a $25 would be enough for me to represent having the Q and make it look like a value bet.
I am thinking along the way, but obviously not well enough.....

If you're playing people whose ranges are so face-up and depolarized it certainly makes things easier and you can get away with -EV lines but even here you misjudged your opponent.

Live players are often really bad at betsizing and react to betsizes in a static manner (i.e. a $50 bet is big to them, whether the pot is $60 or $200), but you should not expect anyone to fold a flush draw for $25 in a 5/5 game on any street. Betting in increments of like 1/5th the pot is probably never a good idea unless you're going for a cheap bluff, their calling ranges are static and they are never bluff-raising.

you got a great runout but what's the plan if you don't go perfect-perfect?

If you're that convinced he has a flush draw and only a flush draw, put him all-in on the turn.

maybe i was too simplistic in my thinking.
youre right about the betsizing, in this game a $25 bet is seen as a decent bet no matter what the pot size. in hindsight though, agree 100% it wasnt enough to push him off the flush. the way i was looking at it, there was more chance of the flush not hitting than it hitting so if he went away, all well and good, if he stuck around, it might have turned out ok anyway.
If another spade had hit that wasnt the 6s, I would have folded to even a $10 raise. that way i would have had enough, relative to the others at the table to fight another day.

am playing in a live tourney Wednesday in Perth. $40 buy in, 200 runners max, $ 1700 for first place. will try to decide by before it starts, which side of my brain i should be playing with..........
Also, should mention too that i have some pretty "out there" views on trusting intuition. the way I see it, each and every single bit of information, millions of little bits, from the other players, the cards, the room, past play etc gets stored somewhere in my brain. If i keep quiet and let my brain develop the answer, then i have access to a much larger volume of information than i do if i consciously try to access it.

What he said.
O yeah WTF are you talking about

Most spade draws are beating you on the flop.

In order for you to be ahead of a spade draw, both of the cards must be lower than a 6.

So if you hang out in a library for long enough you wouldn't need to pick up a single book in order to become a nuclear physicist, you could just get a chair, sit on the physics section ans keep quiet. Take in the information from the whispers of students around you and eventually your brain would have access to the same larger pool of information.

No, you would have to attend the lectures, read the books, listen in and be attentive in order to store the information. however to access it when you need it it would be best to be in a relaxed mode, not stressed trying to think about what you know.

Best way with threads is to read the whole thing, then comment. Otherwise you end up looking like a smartarse lazy prat who only reads the last few posts, and even then, only the ones with 20 words or less.

if you read cards like you read posts, i hope we get to play sometime.

So "intuition" is a function of knowledge stored and not some kind of paranormal ability. Therefore it follows that the more you learn about poker, the more intuition you will have.

Read through this one more time. Take your time. This post splain's everything to you about that hand, step by step.

Really... Use it like study material.

no u don't wanna play JoeBob!!. . .atm. . . .he was referring to the spammer in post above. . . . .that post. . . .

about the critiques u r getting; take them in and apply. . .or don't; its completely up to you, but just know that an inflated ego is bad for solid poker play.

I embrace criticism, i would rather someone tell me i am flawed in my thought process/ or that i played a hand very bad, than for some1 to tell me that i play awesome, and then never improve. . .
all the best man. . .

whatever u do don't take offense every1 is just trying to help, .

OK, my ego has been bashed into submission. I have part of the live game worked out, but sounds like I need to almost start learning from scratch again on the basics of play.
Is there anyone that can help me through bit by bit? Im not asking for tuition, just steering in the right direction for where to start.
I do appreciate everyones responses.

thanks,

CuttleFish.

Take up online poker (although I would consider starting either 5c/10c or 25/50c)

Then post hand histories for review.

after seeing the way he plays, youre advising him to try 50nl? Try playing the .01/.02 cent games.

Also read the golden archives here and the why do you bet article and post in the HA section

Isnt that what Stu plays?????

haha. i was thinking the same thing. here fishy fishy......

seriously though, it would make more sense for me to play a game with $50 or $100 buy in otherwise it would be meaningless and i would end up playing like it was monopoly money. $50 or $100 buy in and at least I would start playing like i do at the live tables which is what i would need to replicate in order for anyone to help me with hand analysis.

Im advising you to start somewhere between 10NL and 50NL

If you want to go higher, sure. I just think you'll struggle at 50NL. I could be wrong.

Yes

It's easy to lose a lot of money playing 25 NL, I'd be conservative.