Put Action on Paper: Start your Poker Journal Today

Oftentimes, it’s possible to take real world applications and apply them to poker, and other times, it’s poker that can be translated into the real world.
Startup businesses are encouraged to formulate a business plan, to put their ideas on paper in order to get a better grasp of their business and what is needed to build success. It’s the same way in poker. If succeeding in poker were as simple as going out and “playing,” everyone would be a winner. Part of becoming a winning player is learning from your losses. Along these lines, I highly recommend starting a poker journal and putting your action on paper. I like to refer to this as a  knockout journal. It’s helpful to make notes whenever you get knocked out of a tournament, whether online or live.

Picking Apart The Hand

I talk often in my videos about playing a young person’s game being old. To give you some perspective, I am not that old, I started playing poker when I was 33 in 2005 and now I am just about to hit 40. Traditionally, most low stakes players are going to play extremely tight and passive which for the most part is how I started playing years ago. In the past few years, my game has changed a lot where I have keyed in some aggression, more like timed aggression, trying to find the right spots to make it work. For this article, I am going to discuss a hand and pick it apart where my bluffing was successful. This hand is from a $13.50 knockout tournament from Pokerstars.
I am not sure why I like discussing bluffing so often. In small stakes MTTs, it’s barely a part of the game anymore as so many players are calling stations and picking spots to bluff can become too difficult. I think it is because it’s almost a life skill to recognize these spots and I kind of take pride in being able to read a situation. So onto the hand so I can explain what on earth I was trying to accomplish in this hand.

What players want

Once in awhile, a card room manager asks me what players want. I usually try not to let the shock show on my face and try to give them a straight answer. With Bluff sitting in card rooms all over the country, I have an opportunity to answer the question for any members of management or staff that flip through the magazine. So what do players really want from a card room?
1. Consistency
A lack of consistency is the most common complaint and it is often the most valid. Players have a point when they complain about rules that vary from one dealer or floor person to the next, but the most frustrating lack of consistency is the non-standard rules that so many card rooms implement. If you have a rule that is unique to your card room, I can assure you that most players see it as unprofessional, annoying, and a reason to avoid your room in the future.
Almost all of these non-standard rules come from management who think their idea will allow their card room to reinvent the wheel. I’ve seen four or five different views on betting lines, what is required if a player makes a forward motion with chips, when you can listen to or text on your electronic devices, and whether cash plays on the table. To tell you what all the standard rules are would require a book rather than an article, but if you visit a few large card rooms, it isn’t hard to figure out what rule is the most common and the most common rule should almost always be the standard.

Let’s start with the basics

I believe poker is the most complicated game that humans play. With the exception of heads up fixed-limit hold’em, poker is the only game where computers cannot compete with us. The more I learn about poker, the more I realize how little I know, and I am a serious student of the game. This makes it tough to talk poker strategy with the average player at the table unless I feel like giving free lessons. My students usually have some idea how much there is to learn within a few lessons, and some of them are even intimidated by how long the road in front of them appears to be.

Loosening the tight

Most of the expert players you see play poker when you turn on the TV or open up the high stakes tables appear to play a loose style. Many novice and intermediate players consequently believe playing a loose aggressive style is optimal, and they overvalue loose play. Think about a common spot: opening from middle position. If you open 22 or A9s from MP, it’s hardly going to affect your results, because those hands are likely to be around break-even in the typical online game. Thus is it is only a stylistic choice whether or not to open those hands as a default. There are certainly tables where opening those hands from MP is profitable, and there are tables where it would be a mistake. The key to optimizing your profits is being able to tell the difference. You have to know with each situation whether it’s favorable to loosening up a little bit.

Be Flexible In Your Poker Planning

When we’re involved in a hand, there is a measure of both planned moves as well as moves we decide to make on the spot. To some degree, these two ways of going about things are zero-sum, as the more planned moves we initiate, the less spur of the moment moves we can expect to perform. We want to make sure we have a healthy blend of both pre-planned moves (better known as set-plays) and creative decision-making based on the ever-changing conditions we encounter.
If we’re planning on making a move on a future street, we’ll still need to take in and filter any new information that arises along the way. Let’s say that we have identified a player that tends to play weak post-flop. We’ll want to open up our calling-range in position, as well as from the blinds. Let’s say we’re up against this opponent and we have called in position. We’re obviously not calling in position with a hand like King-Jack or Queen-10 only to try and hit our cards on the flop. Knowing that we will miss the flop the majority of the time, we’ll need to work bluffs into the equation. Our intention is to bet the flop if it is checked to us, as well as working in re-raises and folds when we feel it is appropriate.

Two weird hands

Sometimes bizarre things happen at the poker table and only the smartest will prevail, says Jeff Kimber.
Online poker players never tire of telling live pros that they’ve played far more hands than they ever will and therefore, despite their age, they are the more experienced poker players. It’s widely accepted that an online pro, who can play 16 or more tables, each averaging around a hand a minute, can play a thousand hands an hour. In a casino, the live pro will be lucky to see 30 an hour. Tom Dwan reckons he had played more hands than Doyle Brunson in less than two years in the game, despite Texas Dolly having been playing for more than 50 years.
But there are some things that happen in a live game that no number of online hands can prepare you for, and how you react to those situations can be the difference between winning a major title or busting out early and wondering where it all went wrong.