Deconstructing .... The Prof

Ste05

The_Prof is up next for this following on from this thread.

Same Rules:

There can be NO flaming, this isn't a chance for people to have a shot at who ever goes in. Entrants to the Deconstructing series will have their thick skins on but forum rule breaches will be dealt swiftly and harshly (1 week ban), so you have all been warned.

Just to spell it out: NO PERSONAL ATTACKS, criticise and critique his game and NOTHING else!

Keep it constructive and good luck The_Prof.

sitout

alex, from free rolls to 100/200 in 2 or so years yea . imo a very talented omaha player cash. one of the best readers of his opponents hands/situation that i have come across. warning ; dont ask him why he did such and such unless you have an hour or so to burn|! lol:). All round nice guy too.

The_Prof

thx con...ive barely played any poker in the last few weeks following my bad downswing so im glad to hear you think highly of my game. your post´s inspired me to get back to the tables, maybe put in a good few hours over the weekend. next time i bump into ya ill be sure to tell you whether playing again was a good idea or not :-)

Captain Tom

ohhhhhh baby

your game selection and tilt management online can be absolutely terrible, eg 25/50 hu plo vs aba20 (though that was a while ago). ive seen you start chasing before you're even down half a buyin.

you play high stakes lhe and occasionally nlhe where you know are a huge underdog. you should just stick to plo. seriously.

even in plo you shouldnt be playing as high as you do. you're not properly rolled for 25/50+. i think 5/10 would be ideal for you. you would be playing overrolled and would surely be +ev in most games you sit in. this would be way less stressful than high stakes and would probably help control your tilt problems.

you are way too big a station in holdem. you have a tendency to just put a player on any conceivable hand that you can beat and justify calling down light by those few times where it turns out youre right. i think this is what has probably hampered your live tournament results, where you have an edge over most of the fields you play in. your results should be better as your live game is generally quite good imo.

i think in general your biggest problem is that your ego gets in the way of your improvement as a player. if someone disagrees with you about a hand you tend to just dismiss their opinion. you never seem open to correction about hands that you have played badly.

i cant really comment about your omaha game because im not nearly qualified enough to do so but your results speak for themselves over the last 18 months or so. if you could sort out some of the above problems i think you could be a very successful online player long term.

one last thing. when you have a big hand playing live please stop hollywooding. it makes me want to punch you really hard in the face.

best of luck

The_Prof

1. I never actually played hu vs aba. He sat out

2. You´re right about LHE though I rarely play highstakes NL these days at all. Also, I´m a winner at highstakes NL thanks to the goldmine that was $20/40 on Tribeca.

3. I don´t have the most common form of tilt, that is to play terribly. My main problem is chasing. I hate having a losing session so I rarely quit unless I´m ahead. The strategy results in a regular high % of decent winning sessions, and the odd few devastating massive losing sessions that result in my quitting poker for weeks at a time

4. In big live tourneys I have gone out in like 90% of the ones I´ve played by calling allin light or shoving light (with middle pair) and have always, without exception, had the significantly best hand going in and gotten sucked out on. I don´t think that that kind of gamble, when it´s calculated, is my biggest leak in tournaments at all. In fact I think I´m generally too tight and protective of my stack. That and the fact that I´m incapable of gauging the thought process of your average tourney genius.

5. You are obsessed with the whole "ego" thing. I obviously have an ego, as does pretty much every other poker player on the planet. But an ego isn´t necessarily a bad thing. An ego can motivate you to play more, work harder on your game and just dedicate yourself passionately to it. Perhaps the motives aren´t the healthiest (e.g. wanting to "destroy" your opposition) but I find it a hell of a lot harder to imagine a consistent mid-highstakes winning player with little to no ego than one whose ego is probably greater than it ideally should be.

6. "your live game is quite good imo" -- pretty sure this is the first time I´ve heard you say this. What happened to the classics "you run like gold", "you never miss" and "omg this is f**king ridiculous"?

7. Oh God the Hollywooding thing again. Wtf? You havent played at a cash game with me in the last, what, 7 or 8 months? I must have done it like 2 or 3 times in my life. And the last time I did it, it was a T74 flop and I had 444 vs his TTT so that should have made it up to you for the other times my acting skills left you emotionally scarred.

8. "best of luck" -- you don´t usually sign off with that, so I can only interpret it, in light of the general tone of the email, as being the final "burn" in your post. And don´t even bother denying it.

Cheers.

p.s. hu 4 rollz?

Captain Tom

Phew! i didnt realise you had such a good handle on what appeared to be significant problems!

good luck!!!

OutOfPosition

Captain Tom wrote: »

one last thing. when you have a big hand playing live please stop hollywooding. it makes me want to punch you really hard in the face.

best of luck

The_Prof wrote: »

p.s. hu 4 rollz?

where is that homer eating popcorn picture when u need it;)

Conbro

Please feel priviledged that Im dedicating my first post to your deconstruction;) I played quite a bit with you at the Irish Open on the 2/5 and 5/10 plo tables, overall being very impressed with your game. Your understanding of the game for a player so young was quite astounding and in general didnt see too many leaks. However there are 2 hands I recall form that weekend that I felt you didnt play optimally. The first hand you flopped top 2 pair with no redraw and got all your stack in [about e1350 if I recall correctly] against 2 opponents. You were never ahead in this hand but miraculously hit runner runner to win with the wheel. The other hand involved you betting into a dry sidepot with a drawing hand when there was a player all in[with obvious AA]. Ive yet to listen to a convincing arguement that supports this course of action [betting into dry sidepots] but perhaps you can enlighten me more on the "pros" of this arguement. As I said though, overall very strong and best of luck in the future.

The_Prof

thx conbro...appreciate your comments. ya that hand when i got it in i was obviously crushed, and i probably shouldnt have called. having said that, i think it was only about 850 or so that I got in, and I seem to recall getting very good pot odds. (not good enough considering how crushed i was in the hand because one guy had top two and the other guy had openended straight draw, top pair with one overcard (ace) and nut flush draw and to scoop that was a miracle. in fact, i remember id brought 3.5k to play the cash games and if i had lost that I would have had about 1k left and totally demoralised. after i won that things turned around and i ended up winning more live there than I probably have in the macau overall.

betting into dry sidepots is not a "conventional" play, but ive had a fair bit of success from it:

pros are -

1. metagame, plenty of opponents get tilted when you show up your hand and find out that their top pair or whatever would have won the pot had you not bet.
2. this point is fairly subtle, but basically ive found that on drawing boards if you bet out with a draw yourself and get called, depending on the strength/predictability of the player, you can judge whether or not he's on a draw himself. thus, you build a sidepot with the initiative. if he misses, you take down the sidepot itself. also sometimes they might have marginal hands like twopair that they will call one bet with but not 2 or 3. obviously it's a high variance play but i think live, if you have a good enough read on your opponent, it's certainly +ev

3. a way of expanding on the 2nd point is this:

sometimes you have say on a Tc8cTd board you might have 976x with 3 clubs in your hand. you're confident one guy has AAxx. it's 3way to flop however. the problem is that if you don't bet your equity may be way worse than if you isolate the guy with the overpair.

if the other guy checks into you, rarely will you face a checkraise without him having a ten. if you get a call, you will usually get it from guys who have a wrap OR a flush draw, the kind of guys you can get off with either another barrel or a triple barrel especially if they hit their draw and you feel you're beat.

also on paired boards oftentimes they'll just throw away any draws, and you're left with a very high likelihood of all your draws now being live, which increases your equity hugely.

anyway, i g2g rite now, hope that explains it (not saying my play was correct in that instance, coz i dont remember it)

Captain Tom

OutOfPosition wrote: »

where is that homer eating popcorn picture when u need it;)

lol sry wont be any drama here. my post didnt include anything that i havent said to him a hundred times face to face already.

sitout

The_Prof wrote: »

thx con. next time i bump into ya ill be sure to tell you whether playing again was a good idea or not :-)

anytime bud . i always enjoy your point of view. seen you when i see you
shiobhan

mormank

so why are u called the prof??

Jam-Fly

Just came across this thread now so I thought I'd chime in.

1) playing live, you have a tell where if your going to play a hand, you'll cap your cards, and if your going to fold, you'll get ready to muck them. Not sure if you've altered this, but at the Irish Open, you certainly did this.

2) You seem unwilling to listen to advice. E.g. I told you about the above tell and you didn't seem to take it on board. "True knowledge is knowing that you know nothing" That's so true, and I know that you have an infinite want for knowledge so always try to pluck bits of info from everyone you meet

3) Stop being so emotional. Poker is a bitch, life is a bitch. Accept it and try to work around it. Your a good player and eventually, you'll end up with the money. Eventually.

4) Sometimes you tend to over think hands. Like, before, you couldn't see someone's reasoning for pushing with AxKs on AsXsXs board. Their reasoning "sure it was a great flop, I had to go all in, what do you expect me to do". I know it's tough for you to do, but sometimes you have to dumb things down. Not everything is as complicated as you make it out to be. Even in life (the light was ****ing amber, no discussion, you lose). So basically, try not to overthink hands. It's hard to give general advice since this kinda thing is so specific to the particular hands.

5) Play the PLO games on Stars, they're apparently quite soft.

CaptainNemo

Jam-Fly wrote: »

1) playing live, you have a tell where if your going to play a hand, you'll cap your cards, and if your going to fold, you'll get ready to muck them. Not sure if you've altered this, but at the Irish Open, you certainly did this.

One of my favourite tells. When it's a player on your left it's very useful in a tournament, it's like you're 1 seat closer to the button than you should be on most hands.