Midlife Crisis? What Midlife Crisis?

Originally posted by EmanuelC16

Originally posted by jbpatzer
Me and my best mate at uni

♦

♦ Hahaha

What is it with the Friends pictures today? ♦

I posted these videos in MisClick's blog to cheer her up, and because I thought there was too much music in my blog, but, fuck it, this is so good I have to put it here too.

Talk Talk > All other 80's bands (even Motorhead)

no more music pls ♦ Now I am listening to Radiohead and I cant help it ♦

BTW can u recommend me a good British college(preferably for computer science and security)?
People have to pay tution fee in every British college right?

Originally posted by THESHade
no more music pls ♦ Now I am listening to Radiohead and I cant help it ♦

BTW can u recommend me a good British college(preferably for computer science and security)?
People have to pay tution fee in every British college right?

Talk to me on Skype.

Ive jsut added u

Originally posted by jbpatzer
I posted these videos in MisClick's blog to cheer her up, and because I thought there was too much music in my blog, but, fuck it, this is so good I have to put it here too.

Talk Talk > All other 80's bands (even Motorhead)

OH DAMN. I can't stop watching video 2. I think I am in love with Mark Hollis.

^ edit. more appropriate than Oh dear.

Number one son's 16th birthday today. I am sooo old. On the bright side, at least he can now go to prison if he ever gets caught.

Mrsjb has allowed him to set up his drum kit in the house. He wants me to get my bass out so we can jam. The neighbours will be thrilled. To be fair to him, he's really rather good at it now. Fortunately he doesn't have a double pedal on the bass drum (yet).

Thanks to Sinn, I've been listening to 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' in the car. I told him I'm already 'highly effective', but he thought it was good, so I gave it a go. But I decided I'd listen to it with an ear to whether it had anything in it I could apply to poker. I haven't listened to it all yet, but here's my first thoughts.

He (the author is Steven Covey) says that how you view a situation depends on your mental model and underlying assumptions about what's going on. So what's my mental model and my underlying assumptions about poker? Well, I play poker like it's a game, and I suppose in the mathematical, game theory sense of the word, it is; but I'm starting to think that it's more useful to think of it as a puzzle (This is bad news for me as I've always hated puzzles. Put a Sudoku in front of me and I'm reaching for the dance music quicker than you can say 'sewing basket'.). You're presented with various bits of information, and you have to piece them together to decide how best to exploit your opponent. If you just look at your cards and the board (assuming you even know how to evaluate the board properly), it's as if you're trying to do a jigsaw without looking at the picture on the front of the box. And of course part of the information you need to obtain is the motivations of the other players. I probably focus too much on imposing my will on the other players. If it's a 'game' you have to try to 'win' (every hand?) and show how big your balls are. Although my cojones are indeed formidable, this is not a good idea, even from a game theoretical point of view.

I watched a video where Krantz talked about his life, and it turns out he went to film school (hence no surprise he's behind 'The Micros'), and it's clear that he views poker like an unfolding movie where you learn the players motivations as you go along. In 'The Thin Red Line' grindcore talks about 'honest' and 'dishonest' players, and how to recognize them from their stats. TT tells me it's a game of psychology, and not maths. He's both right and wrong (mainly right), because it obviously is a game of maths when it comes to choosing the correct strategy (game theory), but to gather the appropriate information, you need the psychology.

Her's what this has suggested to me. Playing NL10, your default position should be that every action by the other players means exactly what it seems to mean (big bet = big hand) unless there is an exceptionally good reason to think otherwise. But I still don't have a convincing mental model for poker. Does anyone else have any insight here? Is it a movie? A dinner party? A fight? Or what?

At the moment, for me, it is a model of Chaos.

Originally posted by jbpatzer
But I still don't have a convincing mental model for poker. Does anyone else have any insight here? Is it a movie? A dinner party? A fight? Or what?

like a beautiful girl who will only come home with you once you show you are truly indifferent to her

Cliché warning

Originally posted by jbpatzer
Number one son's 16th birthday today. I am sooo old. On the bright side, at least he can now go to prison if he ever gets caught.

Thread delivers. Again. ♠_cool:

Fortunately he doesn't have a double pedal on the bass drum (yet).

Hopefully he'll develop some technique first before getting Thor's double hammer out.

But I still don't have a convincing mental model for poker. Does anyone else have any insight here? Is it a movie? A dinner party? A fight? Or what?

And here's me thinking it was a game. If it's a dinner party the food sucks.

To be slightly serious for a sec, to me it's a game and I want to beat it. I guess it's a bunch of algorithms I need to learn and apply in order to do that. For me, that tends to work as a mental model because I'm a competitive prick underneath all these layers of apathy.

Originally posted by MisClick
At the moment, for me, it is a model of Chaos.

You need to read this.

Originally posted by arisko
Cliché warning

Spoiler

Like a court-room where we both act as judges and witnesses, evaluating stories and telling them.

Is that a cliche? I like that.

Originally posted by Waiboy
To be slightly serious for a sec, to me it's a game and I want to beat it. I guess it's a bunch of algorithms I need to learn and apply in order to do that. For me, that tends to work as a mental model because I'm a competitive prick underneath all these layers of apathy.

No way is it just a bunch of algorithms. But I do believe that you're a competitive prick.

(I've just realized that in this forum can be used as code for 'I'm going to write something offensive, but it's ok because I'm smiling'. Something to look out for there.)

And last but not least

Originally posted by TwiceT
like a beautiful girl who will only come home with you once you show you are truly indifferent to her

This is deep, profound and baffling. I clearly still have a lot to learn o wise one.

I remembered another thing I learnt today from Dr Covey. He said that it's in the gap between stimulus and action that we assert our individuality. Thinking about this will help cure me from both 'flop -> cbet' and 'see a raise - think he might be bluffing -> call' syndromes.

And I just had to watch Sex and the City 2 with mrsjb. If you have a Y chromosome, I seriously suggest you avoid this movie.

Originally posted by jbpatzer
And I just had to watch Sex and the City 2 with mrsjb. If you have a Y chromosome, I seriously suggest you avoid this movie.

My wife didn't even bother to ask if I wanted to watch it (she knew....).

poker is a club (disco in your language jb) .

It starts pretty quiet, chilled, relaxing.
Then you have to avoid the bouncers (security guards) while you try hit on the drunk girls. And when the drunkies think its time to go home you BEG them to stay and splash some more cash at the bar.

Originally posted by lessthanthreee
poker is a club (disco in your language jb) .

It starts pretty quiet, chilled, relaxing.
Then you have to avoid the bouncers (security guards) while you try hit on the drunk girls. And when the drunkies think its time to go home you BEG them to stay and splash some more cash at the bar.

I think that sounds like turbo SnGs, not SH cash games starting calm and then going out of control.

It's like a Rocky movie (Rocky is played by jbpatzer). You start good, then you get beaten down, then you swear and curse and promise your wife (mrsjb) you're gonna quit, but in the end apollo creed (TwiceT) comes around, you go through some hard training to an inspiring soundtrack, and always win in the end.

I rest my case

I agree with many things you said about which type of game poker is and have been thinking about it myself quite a lot. I'm also guilty about wanting to impose my style to beat it. It really is quite a struggle since I never had so much trouble with anything in my life, specially strategic and card games, they always came to me prety naturally.

I'm always having the feeling that I'm just missing a real AHA moment and that after that everything will be easier. For example in shortstacking I know what I'm doing and why all the time and I'm 100% aware where I earn money. In the big guys game however, even if I have quite a good theorethical grasp on many aspects, I just don't clearly see where the money is laying.

I'm fairly inexperienced in chess, but I guess it's the same way there, when you see the situation you want to achieve and a way to do it, collateral damage is quite irrelevant, yet some people will fall for unimportant tricks all the time.

Maybe the problem with poker is that you don't play to win every hand, but just try to be optimal in every situation.

I think the main difference between shortstacking and fullstacking is where you pick up the majority of your money. In shortstacking you're basically getting it in with a hand ahead of an opponents range but giving him odds to call. In fullstacking I think the the majority of the money is to be found in these 10-60bb pots, where you can outplay your opponents and take down a medium sized pot. The majority of money does not come from showdown winnings. "Proof" of this in my aspect is when I look at my HEM graph with the blind positions taken out, obviously the blinds are a real eat at your red line, but with them taken out I find my Non-SD winnings up above my total winnings, showing that I seem to win mostly middle sized pots.

Not only are the medium sized pots won in Non-SD, another very important aspect of fullstacking is to start to call down lightly with mediocre hands such as middle pair when the situation calls for it. Once I figured this out at NL25 I saw my winrate skyrocket compared to my previous breakeven results

In terms of what I see poker as, apaprt from lesstahnthree's excellent club analogy (♦) I see it as a research module in University. At the beginning you have the introduction (Learning basic rules and theory), then the lectures get progressively deeper into the subject (More advanced theory), eventually you have research/practicals to do where you put the theory you've learned into a real life situation (Playing), after this you have to look at your results from the research practicals and come to your own conclusion (Analysing play, fixing leaks, and developing your own strategies). Then finally, after slacking off and procrastinating you get your mark back and you've failed.

♦

Spew! Play sensibly. Claw back losses. Spew! Play sensibly. Claw back losses. Spew!...........

Tilt->Play bad->Lose Money->Tilt.

Does it sound familiar from somewhere?