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The line of scrimmage

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    The line of scrimmage

    This is more of a general holdem online cash game theory question. I hope this is the right section to post in.

    I play low level cash games(.25/.5), generally 6 seaters and I've noticed that sometimes I don't know when to cash in. I might double my stack and keep playing and typically when im "playing with profit" I'm a bit looser with my cash and tend to see more flops. I use a tracker and my PFR is still very low, as in I'm not all over the place but I tend to make less conservative decisions and end up back at the line of scrimmage so to speak. My end game is to raise my bankroll and get more experience to move up a level or two, but if Im not stuck for time, it's hard to leave a table when youre up, but easy when you run out of money!

    Are you better off setting a point at which you either log out or leave table and come back in with less cash, or is it just a case that I need to be more consistent with my game whether im up or down?

    Thanks in advance.

    #2
    Originally posted by marc View Post
    This is more of a general holdem online cash game theory question. I hope this is the right section to post in.

    I play low level cash games(.25/.5), generally 6 seaters and I've noticed that sometimes I don't know when to cash in. I might double my stack and keep playing and typically when im "playing with profit" I'm a bit looser with my cash and tend to see more flops. I use a tracker and my PFR is still very low, as in I'm not all over the place but I tend to make less conservative decisions and end up back at the line of scrimmage so to speak. My end game is to raise my bankroll and get more experience to move up a level or two, but if Im not stuck for time, it's hard to leave a table when youre up, but easy when you run out of money!

    Are you better off setting a point at which you either log out or leave table and come back in with less cash, or is it just a case that I need to be more consistent with my game whether im up or down?

    Thanks in advance.


    i have highlighted your trouble areas and your problem would seem to be discipline



    "Remember the time he ate my goldfish? And you lied and said I never had goldfish. Then why did I have the bowl, Bart? Why did I have the bowl?"

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      #3
      Ok clearly I did highlight that myself. But I'm sure you've been in a position where you were up a lot, and only left after you'd lost most of that back.

      should I not even consider exiting when I'm ahead more or is it all about making the right decisions regardless and just playing the amount of time you want to.

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        #4
        I generally have no idea how well or badly I'm doing in a session (Well a general idea, but nothing specific, and I've been off by a few buy ins many times which can be both awesome or crap when you finally check your balance). I used to regularly check my sessions in PT or HEM, it's a habit I got out of and it's quite a bad one to have, though I guess if you're only playing one table and not changing tables it's impossible to not know.

        But you know yourself what you need to do, and that's not care about how much you're winning or losing. Your "profit" is no different to any other money, it's your money now and it's a certain percentage of your bankroll, let's say you're profit is 2% of your roll at some point in time, you should treat it like any other 2% chunk of your roll. As for when to leave the table, there's a few ways of doing it, mostly if you feel you're playing well and have an edge on the table then you should stay no matter how you're doing (And play no differently no matter how well you're doing), and leave if either you start playing badly (Tilt or getting tired, whatever), or some people leave the table and it's no longer profitable to stay. That should be all that matters, if it's profitable to stay, stay.

        Maybe it could be good to get into a habit of timing your sessions, though. Say to yourself you'll play until half seven or something, and then leave once the click hits half no matter what. It'll get you out of the habit of basing your decisions on how good or bad you're doing
        "In the world, there are many kings but there is only one God. I am God, I am El Tren" :{)

        Comment


          #5
          Yeah, you need to be approaching the game with a longer term attitude.

          In "Fooled by Randomness" Taleb makes a really interesting point that can be applied to a number of different areas.

          He presents a hypothetical scenario of a man recently retired from a successful career. The man still has a significant proportion of his net worth tied up in various trade able stocks / commodities / etc, and has been a high volume investor for a large part of his adult working life.

          He used to receive a yearly statement of the value of his investments, but now that he has retired he finds himself checking on financial data numerous times a day. In the hypothetical, the man has invested wisely / sought solid investment advice. As such, the long term expectation of his interests is positive.

          When he used to receive his yearly statement, it was usually good news. Of course, there were down years, years where he lost percentages of value from his end position at the end of the previous year.

          So, he might receive 10 statements a decade:

          Year one: increase: he is happy
          Year two: bigger increase: he is overjoyed
          Year three: small dip: hie is mildly concerned

          and so on, and so on. In this scenario, there are two things worth noting:

          - there are only ten stress points. Good, bad or indifferent, there are only 10 times where the man can have an emotional reaction to his results. Over a 10 year period, that means there are only 10 occasions where he leaves himself open to making suboptimal results orientated decisions;

          - the fundamental premise of him being successful with his investments, is that they will be allowed to mature over an extended period. The less he checks how he is doing, the more relevant the sample of performance is when he does check and consider his next move. This helps to make his assessment of his position and decisions for the future more accurate;

          -----------------

          Now that he has retired, this is no longer the case. He looks in mid morning and it seems that his portfolio has had a small dip. He worries. An hour later, there is no positive movement. By the evening, there is a slight recovery towards his original position. He feels better about his prospects.

          - he is opening himself to more emotional exposures to his results. This does not help one's ability to rationally analyse their situation;

          - and any decisions made on such checks are likely to be poorer, because the data being judged is practically irrelevant due to it being a tiny sample in the relative sense;


          So, if you are constantly thinking about whether you are up or down during a session, you are failing to see the woods from the trees. Unless a player is awful, it is often difficult to start giving solid pointers on the basis of their playing statistics (i.e. %hands played / %raised preflop / aggression factor / etc) until after 10k hands or so. And even then, one could be running really good / bad in a number of different respects that is clouding the picture being painted.

          Where you want to get is to a place where you become only interested in making profitable decisions during a hand, and unconcerned with an individual hand's results. So, you got it in good but were dogged, and are happy to have played the hand well. Or, you got it in bad and sucked out, but are second guessing where you got lost in the hand.

          Now, I'm not contending that any of this is easy to do. We are emotional beings by nature, and judging good from bad in parallel with win or lose often feels right; despite it being actually wrong.

          All I could suggest is to aim to be playing at a level you are epically overrolled for. When you have 30+ buyins for a game of poker, the results of individual hands become substantially less bothersome.

          Good luck.
          "Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally." - John Maynard Keynes

          Comment


            #6
            Great post Lloyd.
            All I could suggest is to aim to be playing at a level you are epically overrolled for. When you have 30+ buyins for a game of poker, the results of individual hands become substantially less bothersome.
            Spot on here.
            "I can’t find anyone who agrees with what I write or think these days, so I guess I must be getting closer to the truth." - Hunter S. Thompson

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              #7
              Cheers Lloydy, loving the Barbar avatar...

              So (and this is something I didnt realise), most good online poker players dont frequently check their balances? Even at the end of sessions?

              Also yes, I play one table as my attempts at multitable haven't been great, largely because I dont quite have a comfortable enough bankroll to multitable at .25/.5, but easing myself in and I think it must be at that stage a lot easier to be dispassionate about decisions.

              Anyway, coming around to this kind of thinking, thanks for the advice!

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