Tournaments vs. Ring games.

Every serious poker player keeps a record of his loss/winnings. Every month I take a look at it to see how good I am doing. This month I saw a pattern that I never realized before; I am a better tournament player than a ring player. Combining my house games, online and live tournaments, I win 3 times as often as regular ring games in the casino or online.

As a matter of fact, my records show that I haven’t lost a single house game since April 2004. That may be because I usually play with the same people and friends (it is so easy to learn your friends tells J). But the same is true for ring games at the casino; almost always I end up playing with a table were 70% of the players I played against before but I still don’t win 100% of the time as in house games.

When I start thinking about it, it all make sense. In a tournament you will play the same players for an extended period of time, meanwhile in a ring game I’ve seen people changing tables in less than 30 minutes!!!! Therefore, it is harder to build a reliable history on players betting habits and tells.

In addition, I believe that tournaments are mercier on you than a ring games. I have dozens of examples where I did several mistakes and was the lowest stack in the table and I end up wining the tournament. However, a bad decision in a ring game tend to cost you all your stack.

Tournaments change gears all the time, making the table more dynamic. In a ring game you play virtually 8-10 people all the time which may lead to boredom or playing crappy/marginal hands. However, in tournaments, the number of players keeps going down changing the value of hands, betting amounts and the odds leading you to stay alert in the action all the time. Also, don’t forget the blinds which keep increasing with time!

Finally, I noticed it is easier to be patient in tournaments because as long as you are in the table you are winning. However, in ring games, chip stack is the winning indicator and as a lot of players had found out over centuries, it can be very volatile. This change in chip stack will affect your winning state of mind leading you to play more hands trying get your stack back.

One last word, when I mention tournaments in this post, I refer to single-table tournaments. I consider multi-table tournaments a hybrid between single-table tournaments and ring games. The speed of the game keeps changing because the blinds keep going up. And watching more and more tables being merged gives you a winning feeling. Once, you get to the last table, it becomes a single-table tournament and you should change your tactics accordingly.

BEST street festival ever.

On July 9th I went to the Street Festivasl here in Toronto. It was great, great singers, great talents and great music. It was an enriching experience.

When I went to listen to some beirut tunes in one of the stages, old ladies were dancing and trying to bellydance which i found really cute, then this skinny white dude jumps in attemping to arab dance, i never saw arab dancing being so enjoyable to watch so I taped it and uploaded it on YouTube.com, I linked it here. SO ENJOY and leave me a comment.

What to do when you hit the plateau?

Yesterday I was watching UFC 61 the first couple of fights were neat, however, the last fights were horrible; since both fighters were so good the fight became a boxing match, no one was on the ground, there were no good combos and nothing exciting.

This got me thinking. This years World Cup was not that exciting to watch as well. Why? Because of the lack of goals. Every team is using the same advanced defense techniques that makes it really hard to score. That’s why now the soccer community is thinking of new ways of making this sport exciting again since it hit the plateau.

There is plateau in anything you do; when you are on a diet, you hit a plateau, when you work out, again, there will be a plateau. And of course, there is a plateau in poker.

Lately, I was analyzing the players on my table at Casino Niagara. Disregarding he drunk college boy, every one on my table was playing exactly the same way. They tried to be random, being unpredictable, forgetting the odds and the stats…etc. At this level poker becomes a game of pure luck. As a beginner, poker (specially Texas Hold’em) is a lot about luck. As you advance in the game and adapt new techniques, the game becomes more predictable and more skill-oriented. However, as the poker community gains these skills, these new techniques are not as effective leading to the creation of new more advanced techniques.

Nowadays, I personally believe we reached a level were the game of Texas Hold’em has developed too much neutralizing the skill part of it and increasing the luck factor.

I believe that the new techniques that will rejuvenate poker are in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming). I am saying this because I have used it for years in poker and it works wonders.

For example, you flop a monster hand, but when you bet everyone folds so you end up winning a small pot. How can you maximize your winnings? By making your opponents bet. You can try making your opponents bet by commanding them to bet which I don’t see woking or you can persuade them to bet by using neuro-linguistic programming. Also, if you bluffed a pot ad would like your opponent to fold. You may attempt to tell him not to play it, or you can persuade him using NLP.

Finally, NLP will elevate poker to the next level. I don’t know what will be the next step after everyone uses NLP. Maybe a modified version of the currently game theory. We just have to wait and see.