Fat Cook Poker

My friend said to me, the motivation of life is to live life better. I think maybe I am already beyond that. I cannot concentrate on making a decision to make life better for myself. Or maybe I am too disappointed with life to want to plan forward or to make it happier. As of now, I am not happy with the current state. Maybe due to the fact that I am very tired of my job or maybe tired of working. But yet, not sure what I want to do to make it better. But i think maybe my life lacked a little bit of social element to make it happier because recently when i talked to my old colleagues i felt more happy. So i think perhaps i am not totally doomed. 

So i think based on that, i will try to continue to move forward with my life. Now at least my wife is supportive.So maybe it is still worth the go to make some changes regarding doing something meaningful with my job. And get over this so called mid life crisis. 

I don't think life is meaningful. Its just disappointments after disappointments. Not a bed of roses and truly nothing to be happy about even you have so called "achieve" anything.

You can do 1000 right things but maybe 1 or 2 things go wrong and everything is ruined. That the so called meaning of things that was so meaningful all come crashing down and become meaningless.

Such disappointment and fragility of happiness is really worthless.

Many things that people find joy in or see meaning in.. are things that i do not think highly of. So i cannot celebrate those joy or meaning because to me those are meaningless things that do not excite me at all.

So i wonder if i am no longer relevaant to this society. And have become an outcast.

Poker wise I think things are not going fantastic for me for the past 2 months. The good times where you can win easily at the china poker apps games are pretty much over for now. The ever so popular wechat poker platform has ceased functioning. So suddenly there is a lack of good choices of platforms for us to play on. Even though there are 3 to 4 other poker apps that people are setting up games on, the game speed is much slower than the wechat poker. And also the player pools are not fantastic as well. So all in all, the process is becoming way more draggy now to so call grind out a bit of money. That’s why I think the best times are over. I can only look back and live in the good memories when time allows. 

So what is next really ? I think it is good to come to a good recognition that the good games are probably long gone. But it also teaches me how to do better game selection and also better game play and strategy. I know that I am weaker in my ante game play. So I would have to improve and refine how i deal with this game type if I want to continue to grind at these China Poker Apps. I strongly think that this is a big market, so at least for the moment being, it is still grindable in a sense because of the sheet number of new players in the market. 

I think if one is not too fussy and be dedicated to playing maybe 3 or 4 tables on smaller stakes. It would still be a good sum of money that one can earn. And enjoy the flexible life style of a good poker pro. 

I have ran bad these 2 days and have lost quite a bit. Even though not a lot compared to the good old times. But losing back all the small earnings all in a few games is not a fun thing to go through. The good thing is it allows me to put down all my phones and make this entry. It is quite refreshing in a way because i am doing something different. Writing is not something i do that often anymore in the past few years. But i think it is something that doesn’t come too difficult for me. When my thoughts are flowing, putting them into words is not difficult. What i have found myself in is that I am becoming lazy to do it. 

So whatever it is, i think this is a good article for me to remind myself to stay vigilant about the poker scene and act accordingly to continue to make sure I am doing something that is +ev. 

Like any business or skills sets, the better you get at it, the more different you look at it compared to the general population. So the way that a poker professional look at poker is probably vastly different than an amatuer player.

When an amateur player plays, we speaks about a hand as a standalone. But from the eyes of a poker professional he saw it as one hand out of an infinite hands of the same situation. He makes a certain move with the knowledge of running the same hand as if in his life time, he will meet the same situation many times enough for that move to be +ev.

So when he looked down at an Ax hand, with effective stack at 25 big blinds and below, he will open shove everytime until the cows come home. He looked at it as an aggregation of hand of the same situation. Even if in the end the opponent flips over pocket aces, he has no qualms about it.

This is the so called “long run” we always hear about. But many players still do not see it the way as described above.

I think it will greatly benefit any players to start to condition themselves to see and evaluate their play base on the long run. It will help in controlling of emotions, to deal with bad beats or other people bad plays better.

I read somewhere that the game of poker is essentially a game of trying to win the blinds. To take this one step further, it is a game of winning what is in the middle of the table. We try to do this with not only our cards, but also from the information we get from players action and the community cards. From the way a professional see it, the question he asked himself in the very essence of it is “ have I fully realised the value of my holdings given the situation”.

I want to simplify this to say just a game of push or fold poker where you can only shove, fold, or call someone elses shove. The equation boils down to “ have I realised the value of my hand and my position” . The one who can realise the max value of his hand will be the one rising to the top.

Having a more wholesome approach or philosophy to the game often helps us to keep our mind more open and thus allow us to received teachings better and also handle our emotions better as the mind reacts closer and closer to machine.

Then again, isn’t the rush that brought us to the game in the first place.

So you look down at AKs. Suddenly the back of your neck feels more relax.You look around the table enjoying everyone’s expression. Suddenly you so wish they start putting more chips into the middle of the table. 

I have always felt that way. Invincible. Relax. James Bond kinda trappy trappy with AK. But there is a sense of insecurity every now and then, but often that feeling does not last long preflop. 

Today I was in a similar hand where UTG raised and I am in middle position with AKs. I have a healthy 45 big blind stack, well covering the guy who raised earlier. I three-bet with gusto and faced an 4 bet all in from a 20 big blind stack. I happily called the all in and it was a race with pocket 9s. I lost the hand and is now left with 25bb. 

Logically, one shall not feel sad as it is after all a flip. Everyone loves a flip. But a thought struck me suddenly. All flips are equal, but some are more equal than the others. 

Choose the higher Sadness Index of the below

a) All in with 99 for 25bb and lose to a bigger stack and gets knocked out of the tournament

b) All in with AKs with 25bb of your 45bb stack and lose it and ending up with a 20bb stack

Some may argue that b) is a better choice because after all you still have your tournament life even if you lose the flip. But I have a slightly different view. 

The upside of the 25bb stack is moving from a 25bb stack to about a 50bb stack. The downside is of course losing the tournament (or needing a rebuy).

The downside of the bigger stack losing the flip is going from 45bb to 25bb. The upside is moving from 45bb to 70bb. 

It is more valuable to move from 25bb to 50bb than 45bb to 70bb. The extra chips between 50bb and 70bb usually are slacking chips. Meaning chips that will not come into effective play that often. It is a good to have cushion, not a must have cushion. The cushion between 25bb to 50bb is more of a must have cushion than the former. 

I think you sort of can get what I am driving at by now. In this hand, I should have avoided the flip and avoid running myself the risk of giving up my must have cushion for a good to have cushion. 

Note that this article is not addressing whether the UTG player should be making the flip but more of whether me, the bigger stack should be going for a flip. 

Hence, next time when you are foreseeing yourself to be in a flip situation. Before building up that intended flip, ask yourself if your flip is more equal than the others for the subtleties that I have highlighted above. 

One of the greatest overall advice I have come to realize myself is try your best to avoid getting into difficult spots. And a lot of this can be rectified by making correct decisions at preflop during hand selection and preflop betting actions. 

It may seem an over generalized statement by saying “ the less hands you play, the less mistake you make”, but it does have a perfectly simple logic to it. People cannot fault you on a hand that you did not participate.  

There are a myriad of factors to consider when you decide to play a hand and how to play it. And often many see the cards at face value and proceed with it, only to find themselves easily being caught in difficult decisions at multiple painful spots. It’s these spots that we increase our chances of making mistakes. 

One of the beautiful thing about tournament poker is that ranging players’ hands becomes somewhat easier as compared to cash games. Tournament life factor is a new variable that is often an area where a lot of the edges come from between an experienced and a less experienced player. 

My poker mentor once said to me “ The meaning of a player’s opening raise varies with his stack size”. This immediately opens my mind up a lot. It is like a striking a gold mine because it immediately allows me to have a new perspective into ranging a players’ hole cards.

This new found wisdom allows me to focus even more on the aspect of ranging an opponent’s hand. And allow me to make more clear cut decisions and less mistakes. Especially so in reducing my opportunity in spewing chips unnecessarily. This in turn allow me to make better leverage of my preserved chips in the tournament.