Learnt a Lot and a Lot to Learn

First post in quite a while and I'm not going to make any excuses. I'm lazy. End of story.

But a part of me also wonders what's the point of this exercise - the Internet is crawling with blogs these days and interesting and all as it is to browse them, most don't warrant a return visit so why should this one be any different?

I suppose when I started I figured that actively writing about poker would help improve my game, which it has done, so I was never concerned about gaining a big audience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally without ego - the exhibitionist in me would probably like to think I'm at least being seen occasionally.

If property investment is about "location, location, location" then websites are about "content, content, content". For a poker weblog, your content needs to attract people who are interested in more than endless lists of hand histories.

Another problem I have with "blogging" is that if truth be told, I don't want to give too much away. Let me try and explain. Since starting playing online poker I have been big on analysing and documenting what I pick up along the way - plays, approaches to handling different opponents and situations, as well as recording results/wins/losses etc ctc.

Although I'm a student of the game I find it takes way too much time to continually re-read books, magazines and web articles, so as I go along I save any material I find valuable. I usually put this in summary form in a few A5 binders that I keep by my desk. These binders are my reference "bibles" and contain the result of a hell of a lot of reading and analysis over more than 2 years.

Of course anyone can do this if they are willing to put in the time. But many new and even intermediate players are looking for formulaic answers. Like the weak students at college who want a formula into which they can slot numbers and thus solve a maths problem. But if the question doesn't fit the formula then they're lost because they're unwilling or incapable of doing the necessary thinking that will enable them to solve problems generally.

What I'm saying is information is great to possess but the real learning occurs when you question and analyse it and think about it and question and analyse it and think about it some more until eventually you understand it. And then you put your own spin on it which is the important bit that helps make it stick inside your brain. So when I say I don't want to give too much away what I really mean is "Poker is a game of imperfect information so figure it out yourself". You'll actually be better off.

I consider myself an intermediate player. Which means I've learnt a lot but have a lot to learn. The best "aha" moments I've experienced as a student of the game have had nothing to do with strategy and tactics. The biggest leaps in my understanding have been in the area of psychology and self-analysis. This side of poker I have found by far the hardest to get a handle on, but it is also a fascinating area and one that relates to all competitive pursuits. And I'm pleased that in the last three months I have made excellent progress.

Let me explain. Up until last July I was having at least one, and often two major tilt episodes a month. It is only in the last while that I begun to realise the effect they were having and it was much bigger than I had realised. I suppose I thought I was a pretty good player and even if didn't play my A game all the time I figured I would still do alright. But I didn't feel great about my game a lot of the time so I decided to try and quantify the effect of tilt. After all you measure how well you are doing in poker by how much money you win or lose.

Because I record my results in graph form I can look at my progress month by month and at a glance I can identify tilt episodes from the dips in the graph. I'm not going to get into the reasons why these downturns used to happen but suffice to say that not only were they self-inflicted but they were ruining my mindset and enjoyment of the game as well as hurting my bankroll.

Looking at these dips for the months up to July I can see an average of one and a half "episodes" per month. Each episode was costing me about $150. And this is not even taking into account the insidious and not-so-obvious effect these tilt episodes were causing during subsequent sessions, where rather than actually losing I would simply play in a sub-optimal manner.

If I was going to do well from this game and do myself justice then I had to stop it. I declared 21st Aug D-day. This was the day I decided to genuinely try to stop tilting, and if I found I just couldn't then I would have to seriously consider quitting playing. I made my mind up.

It's been 3 months and two weeks since D-day. Call it 3.3 months. First let's see what I would expect tilt to NORMALLY cost me over that period of time. Expected tilt losses over this period would be:

1.5 x $150 x 3.3 = -$742

The good news is that since D-day I've only had one tilt episode, which cost me $200.

So subtracting the actual loss since D-day from what I would have "normally" lost gives

740 - 200 = $540

So I've saved $540 in three months simply by tilting less.

At $50 NL, over a year, based on an average of 30 hours play per month, this would equate to about about $2000, or 5.5 big bets per hour .

So by cutting tilt by just over 2/3 I increased my hourly rate by $5.5.

Not only that but it also means I will be in a position to move to NL $100 much sooner and with a much bigger bankroll.