Rant Follow-Up

You know those days when you read over the post you've just written, and you just know you've hit a goldmine? That was me yesterday. I must have read, reread and re-reread that post at least ten times during the morning and again in the evening. I absolutely love the fucking thing. With me this level of rant is so infrequent, you just have to sit back, enjoy and appreciate it for what it is. Even Waffles himself couldn't bring himself to comment on that rant, so you know I did something good.

As you can tell, there is a lot of frustration surrounding my poker play these days, in particular nlh tournaments. I've done quite well in my non-holdem poker pursuits -- although even those have been a source of some frusrtating happenings of late -- but my no-limit holdem tournament game, for the second time in this calendar year, is in a prolonged slump. The three cashes in a week in the 25k guaranteed tournament on full tilt a month or two ago are now such a distant memory, that I barely even feel the drive to play that 25k anymore, after being determined along with some fellow bloggers to make that thing our biatch there for some time. Although I still make some final tables, the blogger tournament circuit has been kicking my ass lately, in situations where it seems far more often than not that I am going down despite being ahead to some varying degree when the chips go into the middle.

So yes, there has been a lot of frustration welling up within me for quite some time with respect to my nlh tournament game. All that frustration boiled over again yesterday with my fun rant about Wes when he called my allin reraise preflop with AQs, ran into my pocket Jacks and then naturally found a Queen as the first card on the flop to knock me out once again when I was ahead. I have a lot still to say about that issue, so I'll get to that shortly. But first let me say for the record, I'm fine if any of you, or all of you, don't think Wes's move was "donkey". Frankly I'm surprised at all the focus in the comments on the question of whether or not this was "donkey" or was not "donkey". My point is Who Cares if it's officially a donkey move or not? "Donkey" is just a word. It's no different from calling the move "bizzlebub" or "snaff". It's just a bunch of letters combined together to make a sound. If you don't think it's "donkey", then I'm fine with that. As I mentioned in yesterday's rant, I am pretty sure Wes called because he figured I was putting him on a naked steal and thus was restealing with nothing. And he did have AQs, not garbage, which he had reason was a better hand than what I would normally put him on when he steal-raises preflop from the cutoff.

So fine, I don't care, maybe what Wes did was not a donkey move. I don't care. As I mentioned a few times in yesterday's post, I wasn't just talking about Wes yesterday. I was more talking to all of you zobos who have made these kinds of allin-call-with-just-dominated-overcards moves against me, basically every single one of which has managed to spike the card they need to beat me out of blogger tournaments. I'm frustrated about it, and I'm pissed about it. Yesterday's rant was not really me talking specifically about what Wes did -- which I freely admit, was easily the least bad of all the silly stoopid allin calls I have suffered from of late -- but rather just the culmination of all that frustration about a large number of worse calls than that that are just plain hideotic.

Now I'd also like to address some of the comments to yesterday's post, of which there were many. First off, Pokerwolf and Tripjax both commented on how horrendous my general attitude towards nlh tournaments is. You're right. 100% absolutely positively correct. I agree that I probably need to change that before I can start winning these things again, though I suppose under the right circumstances I could see winning again even when I don't expect it. The thing is, I'm not changing my game at all because of that bad attitude and pessimism I have towards surviving in these things, so I don't think the attitude issue is that huge of a deal. For me, I've always known it's bad when you start actually changing your game -- overbetting the pot to chase out the drawing donkeys, not raising preflop with Aces since you already know they're going to get cracked, etc. -- because of what you "know" is going to happen. That's not me. Look at my play, I am still consistently getting in with the best hands, and when I don't, 9 times out of 10 it is just a pure donk play on my part, but not one that is motivated by my seeming knowledge that it's going to turn out badly. Anyways, I appreciate those comments, I mostly agree and I certainly acknowledge that it's true, my attitude towards nlh tournaments is despicable and not helpful these days. Guilty as charged.

I also want to address again this issue of the whole pot odds thing. I understand fully the argument made by people who say they always use pot odds, for every individual decision, and that is enough for them to always make the right call. I do not agree with this, but I can understand and accept that others view all decisions in that way. And it's not like I am disputing the math that says that, once Wes had already put the 450 chips into the pot and I was only raising him another 1400 or so, so that his pot odds are technically enough at that point to justify him calling my allin reraise, even when he knows (or should know) that he is behind any hand I am reasonably raising allin with at that point in time. But the thing is, I simply don't think that just blindly using pot odds for the second decision (whether or not to call my allin reraise) is necessarily the most correct (tournament-wise) way to make that decision under all circumstances. I will use the example I gave in the comments yesterday to make my point:

Let's say, for example, that Wes had been sitting on 2000 chips, and that he decided to kick it up to 750 in the cutoff when holding 73o. Just a blind steal attempt while holding pure trash cards. Now I go allin from the bb for my last 1700 chips. Wes now has to call 950 chips to win 2600. It's nearly 3 to 1 for him to call. Are you going to call there too then, since chances are that his 73o is somewhere close to 1 in 4 to win the hand? I can only hope the people in my nlh tournaments always say yes to call there because of the pot odds. The very same pot odds that are only even remotely close for him because of the 750 chips he bet with his shizz hand to begin with. So yes, you can choose to look at the second allin-call-or-fold decision as an independent event with independent pot odds which dictate a call or near-call here. As many of the commenters explained, I don't have much to argue with that decision if that's the way you want to look at it. But I will also say that I definitely do not look at it that way. Why would I ever call off my last 950 chips -- even with 750 chips already in the pot from my stack per my preflop steal attempt -- just because now, counting the 750 chips I foolishly put into the pot already in this hand, now I have the right pot odds to put in my last 950 chips. I'm telling you, I like to win nlh tournaments, and I would not make that call. I wouldn't make it even for one second. Period. I'm folding. I got busted, I got caught on a naked steal attempt with nothing, I got allin reraised, so why now would I compound the mistake of my original preflop raise by now using the pot odds that are so swayed by that original steal attempt that they now dictate I should call off the rest of my chips. This is not a cash game, it's a tournament, where I can't buy back in once I get busted. So why would I call of my last 950 chips with a 3-to-1-against hand, where if I lose I am eliminated from the tournament? I wouldn't. But that's just me, according to a lot of the comments, and I accept that. I just don't agree with the theory that following pot odds for each individual decision in a hand in a freezeout tournament is necessarily the best thing to do at all times. 'Nuff said me thinks.

Going through some more of the comments, I replied in a comment yesterday but I just want to say it again here. Several people pointed out that I "bring this action on myself" because I play such an aggressive game. I went out of my way to address this point in my rant yesterday, but I know I was pissy and obviously therefore did not get my point across sufficiently. So let me be clear -- I understand of course that when I play aggressively over time, I invite people to play aggressively against me because they put me on a wider range of hands, and therefore that they are justified in playing a wider range of hands against me. Nonetheless, and this is the point I tried so hard to make yesterday, I absolutely do not play so aggressively that I could be anything but ahead of Wes's AQ there, period. If you think I might be reraising allin there with no good starting cards, then I think you sound more like someone who is relying on other peoples' statement that I play very aggressively, rather than on actual experience of actually seeing me actually reraising allin with a crap hand like that preflop. So Yes I play aggressively, but No I do not regularly make allin reraises of preflop raisers with hands that are behind AQ.

Another comment that popped up a couple of times yesterday, and which I also tried to address in my rant post, is that I am well aware that the real problem here is not the alleged "donkey calling" I've been facing. As Duggles very well explained in his comment, I love those donkey callers being out there. I want them out there calling my preflop allin reraises with their KQs and KJo and A9s. The real problem here is not those donkey calls. It's pokerstars consistently rewarding the donkey callers by spiking them just the card they need when the community board hits the felt. So yes, I agree with that sentiment. You would most certainly not be hearing this stuff from me if I had won 5 of my last 6 races when someone unthinkingly called with KJ against my allin preflop raise. As is often the case, pokerstars once again proves to be the root of all evil. Well, them and full tilt, meaning the only two sites I play any significant time at these days.

To Windbreak247, yes I'm quite sure you're right that maybe Wes "just wanted to gamble" when he made that call. See, here's the thing. I'm not about controlling the decisions that anyone but me makes when I'm playing poker. Not once, never. I want you to do whatever you want to do. You want to play the blogger tournaments and not take them seriously and just call the first time you know you're up against a race situation for all your chips, of course it's your right to do so, and I wouldn't possibly have a thing to say about it. If you play the blogger events and "just want to gamble", more power to you. But, please keep in mind the corollary to that very much correct idea: if I choose to rant about a bad play you made while you were in "let's gamble" mode, I can do that too. That's all I did here. A play was made that I do not believe is close to the best interests of the guy who wants to win the Hoy, so I come on the blog and point that out. I defend to the hilt Wes's and anyone else's right to play however they want to play it, of course.

It's funny to me as well -- this has come up in the comments a few times on my posts -- that people think of this blog as a place where I try to show how clever I am and all the great moves I put on people. To me it is impossible to believe that people could think this about the blog, given the largely nothing but bad beats and donk play on my part that are detailed here almost exclusively over the past 6 months plus, but I guess people remember what they want to remember from a blog, and those "strategy" and "clever" posts I guess are some of the more memorable moves. But I am certainly not trying to use my blog as a vehicle to make me look clever, to brag about my play or anything like that. I use the blog to detail my daily adventures in poker, and when I see something interesting in a hand, or more often later during my hand analysis and hand reviews of the big hands I've played, I will often post the hand itself here, or at least some discussion of it. That's all. I guess I need to be more cognizant of the light that my posts generally tend to place me in. I certainly don't think I'm all that clever, and I have never intended the blog to be a place where I show how clever I am to everyone else. Sucks to be misunderstood in that way but que sera sera, I don't really give a phuck if you couldn't have guessed that.

One other quick point about bad beat stories: I like them. If I'm the only one, then so be it. But I like to hear bad beat stories as long as they're truly bad beat stories and not beginning with things like "so I called a small raise preflop with K8o...." I'm not saying I would enjoy discussing nothing but bad beats for the next 20 years of my life. But I am saying that I enjoy hearing about bad beats, and I enjoy posting about them if there is a good story involved. You know the routine, it's my blog and I can post whatever I want, yada yada yada. People generally seem to like what I have to say here, so I plan to continue doing my thing as only I know how. So thank you to everyone for every time I've been told how lame it is to post bad beats, every time I've read how you should never talk about bad beats, and every time I hear how I owe someone money every time I mention a bad beat. I like that shit, I'm probably going to keep posting them as I feel like doing so, and unfortunately for some of you, that's that. I accept that I am apparently different from many poker bloggers and many readers of poker blogs, but so be it. I yam what I yam.

OK I think that is enough for today. I will definitely be in the Mookie tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt (password as always is "vegas1"). So should you! Hopefully Wes will be there and I hope he takes my ass down on the exact same play as the one from the Hoy. Wes is a great tournament poker player, and it would be an honor to be eliminated by him twice in one week from blogger tournaments. I'm the deadest money around these days, so please hope you're at my starting table, because I'm probably not lasting long!