Competitiveness in Poker

Now that I'm multi-tabling cash games, a few leaks are getting exposed every once in a while when I have subtle tilt creeping in. And it is the source of the tilt that also manifests itself into the result of tilt. I figured out that what actually tilts me is just losing in general. I'm a very competitive person and I don't like to "give up". I don't like to be bluffed and I don't like losing pots.

When I played tournaments, I don't think releasing a pot wasn't as much of an issue because of the implications to my stack size. I was okay letting it go because I didn't want to risk losing a big pot and taking a hit to my stack. In cash games, I can just reload. Plus, when multi-tabling you have to make your decisions quicker so you have to not get caught up in the moment. I'm still learning to make sure I go through the steps of assigning hand ranges when 5-7 tables need my attention.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not constantly spewing chips because my ego can't handle losing a pot. It's more about specific spots against specific opponents and only when I have a little tilt setting in. I tend to not want to believe aggressive or really bad opponents and I put blinders on to the other factors in the hand. I may recognize them, but I ignore them because I don't want them beating me. For example if an aggro opponent 4bets me and I decide to 5bet shove, but I ignore that they are doing this from early position and they know that I have a good hand (yet why are they still 4betting me? Oh wait, they have KK.) Or a donkey checks and insta-calls flop and turn bets and then insta shoves the river. They are obviously drawing, so what hand is most likely that they have? 2 pair no good, why am I calling?

Well the one thing that I thought I knew, but am gaining a deeper appreciation for, is that in poker the "winning" and "losing" isn't about each individual hand. It truly is about long-term expected value on each decision. You have to look at pot odds and decide how often they have a hand that beats you and how often you are ahead and then make your decision accordingly. If you are getting 3-1 odds and you think they can be bluffing here more than 25% of the time then it's a call. Sometimes you will be right and sometimes you will be wrong. But you can't want them to be bluffing 25% of the time in order to justify a call because your ego wants to call. You have to inject logic and make a decision based on the way the hand played out and your history with that opponent. I think often times people get competitive and they justify decisions based on what they "want" the outcome to be. This is something that must be trained. I think it is part of my C-game and one of the things I will be working on is improving my C-game. I won't go into what that means too much, but I suggest watching videos from Jared Tendler on CardRunners. Basically, he says that your C-game is what shows up when you are tired, on tilt, etc. It is when you are on auto-pilot and your game is stripped down to only the aspects you don't have to think about.

Back to the concept of winning an individual hand, you can win a hand by folding and that can be a victory. When someone bets what seems to be a better hand and you fold, you can have pride in saying "nice try buddy, you aren't getting that extra $70 out of me". They may have gotten there on a draw, but what's in the pot is owned by the pot. By not calling that $70 bet, you can look at it as "winning" $70 because it's $70 you didn't lose. Or if you want to get technical about the math, let's say you figure you are only ahead 25% of the time. The $EV that you won is $70-($70*.25) = +$52.50.

Since I'm on the topics of improving my skills, something I'm learning and still need to work on is adjusting to different types of opponents on the fly while playing several tables at once. I'm still getting used to what all the HUD stats really mean in terms of interpreting someone's tendencies. I don't want to rely on them, but I also want to make sure I am making appropriate decisions when I haven't been able to observe their play. Sometimes I'll make a play based on stacks & bet-sizing but I have no reads and the play will be wrong because it didn't make sense for that particular person.

So moving forward, my goal is to do what I did last night and only play 5 tables so that I can focus on making reads and assigning hand ranges. This will help me interpret HUD stats better and just overall tendencies in cash games. As I make it second nature, I will start adding more tables. And now that I'm aware of my competitiveness being a leak, I can start identifying spots where it takes over and becomes something that affects my $EV.