Update time. The weekend was good. Will be interesting to track as the time goes on whether the tables are just nittier at my play times through the week or what.

Made back 4 of my 7 buyins so far. Playing a fair bit tighter, and taken bluffs largely out of my game for now. Its working, but probably not optimal, but it gives me a base to work foward from.

I had a real eye opening conversation with ISF in irc the other day. I'd seen some play in his and massimo's videos that just didnt make sense to me and wanted to ask him why they did it as it wasnt really explained at the time. Basically they would hit a flop weakly, call the flop bet and then fold to the turn. I just couldnt see the value in this. Whether opp was bluffing the flop or had a good hand, he's almost always firing again on the turn, which means hero is almost always folding. Surely we lose money over the long term playing like this?

ISF tried to lead this horse to water, but unfortunately he just couldnt manage to drink by himself. Eventually he gave up and just gave it to me. We play our weak hands like this, so that when we play our big hands the same way we get paid off with them.

Now at the time a little lightbulb went off. "Ahh, I see, that makes sense". Then about 10 minutes of tossing this around a bigger light bulb went off, "Hang on, this means we actually need to play our big hands the same way a fair bit for this to be +ev". "Eh?" said ISF. "Well, theres no point calling flop with weak hands and folding turn, if we always c/r our big hands on the flop!" I exclaimed. "Well duh!" or similar was his response. Hey, these things take time for me . It was almost an hour later that the great big lightbulb went off, kind of like turning on the sun. Let me explain (and I'll probably do a bad job):

For a long time now I've pictured poker as giant streams of hands. Any particular hand we're making a decision on will be one of a series of very similar hands we'll face over a lifetime of poker, and so we make the play that makes us the most +ev long term, not necessarily that specific hand. For instance calling a river bet when we're probably beaten because of pot odds v's his range. Heres a quote from an earlier post in this opp:
When starting out, most people think of expected value in terms of the hand directly in front of them. This is typically epitomized by the thinking "I have a great hand, I dont want him to fold, so I'll just bet small so I'm sure to get a call". They want to make sure they get paid off in that particular hand. The evolution players need to make, is to think of that hand as one in a stream of basically identical situations (i.e., in their playing lifetime they may see that situation, or very similar, hundreds or even thousands of times). Their goal isnt to win some chips on that hand, its to win the maximum amount of chips over the full lifetime of seeing similar hands.

Put simply as an example, if you think in a given situation that your opponent will call X amount 100% of the time, and will call 2X amount 2/3 of the time, then rather than bet X to guarantee X chips on this hand, its better to bet 2X, because over your poker lifetime you'll make 50% more chips in that situation.

Any time we make a bet (or any play for that matter), our decision is "on average, what is the most EV play in this situation", not "What is most likely to get me chips right now".
So at that point I'd moved from the very narrow view of 'what do I do in this particular hand' to 'what should I do long term when in this spot". My revelation was that thats only a slightly wider outlook. An even wider outlook is that poker is in fact a series of similar looking situations from an outside point of view. Its how we play we play those situations long term that affect our EV.

Gah, in my head this is basic, putting it into words is harder. We all know (or should) that its important to mix up our PF ranges. If we only 3-bet with AA and KK we minimise their value. We need to mix in some weaker hands if we expect people to keep calling/raising our 3-bets. We play some weak hands the same as our strong hands PF. It also applies to postflop. If we want to be paid off with our big hands postflop, we need to play some weak hands the same way. If we only ever c/r flop with the nuts, then people will stop calling our c/r's.

So its about manipulation (man I'm all over the map here). Lets get back to the initial scenario. If we only call the flop with big hands, eventually people will stop double barrelling. If we call with some weak hands as well as our strong hands, we "trap" them with our big hands. We manipulated them into paying off our big hand. It goes further though. If they notice they're paying off our big hands, they adjust by double barrelling less. Now those weaker hands (say middle pair) start getting paid off because he doesnt bet turn to fold us out. Now we've manipulated him into paying off our weak hands. And on it goes.

Now from our perspective, those are two different circumstances. My thinking was two different thoughts "I have a weak hand, whats the best thing to do long term with this weak hand" and "I have a strong hand, whats the best thing to do long term with my strong hand". Instead I need to think "villian has bet flop and its my turn to act, long term how can I make this situation as +EV as possible for myself?".

Hope that makes any sense to anyone. If not, well that probably helps explain why it took me so long to get this. I think this is starting to touch on that shania post ISF linked a while back in his "backwards theory of learning poker" thread in the BC.