Sensei’s Poker Dojo

I joined a basketball league in SF with a few friends and our first game was tonight¹. It has apparently been too long since I played ball. I couldn’t make a basket to save my life, aside from the occasional breakaway layup. I was winded after 10 minutes, though to be fair we only had one sub and he got injured in the first half. My passing and dribbling (really just about all of my skills) were rusty and weak. Lame. It didn’t help that our team was sort of a thrown-together bunch of dudes who wanted to play, and our opponents were a finely tuned squad of guys who seem to have played together for a while. I think the final score was something on the order of 70-35, and I only contributed 3 points² but probably 6 or 7 rebounds, a few steals and a few assists.

On the plus side, I got some shiny new basketball shoes beforehand, and it was still fun to get out and run around even though we got crushed. Fullcourt indoor basketball is so much better than the outdoor and/or shorthanded variety which seem to be the standard here. We were spoiled at Duke to have a really nice gym and pickup games going at just about any hour. That and the real basketball, of course.

1. technically the first game was last Tuesday but I didn’t join in time for that one [↩]
2. no, not a 3-pointer, just a basket and one of my two free throw attempts [↩]

Since I mentioned that I was concerned about my luck turning around, I’ve been getting crushed. I’ve only put in a few real sessions, but nothing has gone right. Ugh I hate variance. Obviously its mostly been coolers and beats, though I’m sure I’ve misplayed a few hands. Of the 4 times I’ve gotten it in preflop with AK, I’ve lost all of them, 3 times to coinflips and once to KQ. 88 < A7 on a 743 flop. A3 < A8 on an A83 flop. AK < 99 on A93 flop in a reraised pot. And so on. The only hand that was really enjoyable was this one where I tricked a regular into turning his made hand into a bluff and spewing his stack off in a pretty boneheaded manner:

PokerStars Game #21448588120:  Hold’em No Limit ($5/$10) – 2008/10/24 4:43:48 ET
Table ‘Susilva IV’ 6-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 2: DerekJC9954 ($1985.55 in chips)
Seat 3: kawish ($597 in chips)
Seat 4: DJ Sensei ($1015 in chips)
Seat 5: ioutplaydara ($1485 in chips)
Seat 6: Good2know4U ($1061.50 in chips)
DJ Sensei: posts small blind $5
ioutplaydara: posts big blind $10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to DJ Sensei [Js 9s]
Good2know4U: raises $15 to $25
DerekJC9954: calls $25
kawish: folds
DJ Sensei: calls $20
ioutplaydara: folds
*** FLOP *** [8h Td 7s]
DJ Sensei: checks
Good2know4U: checks
DerekJC9954: bets $60
DJ Sensei: raises $100 to $160
Good2know4U: folds
DerekJC9954: calls $100
*** TURN *** [8h Td 7s] [Jc]
DJ Sensei: checks
DerekJC9954: bets $300
DJ Sensei: calls $300
*** RIVER *** [8h Td 7s Jc] [6c]
DJ Sensei: checks
DerekJC9954: bets $1500.55 and is all-in
DJ Sensei: calls $530 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($970.55) returned to DerekJC9954
*** SHOW DOWN ***
DerekJC9954: shows [Ts Ks] (a pair of Tens)
DJ Sensei: shows [Js 9s] (a straight, Seven to Jack)
DJ Sensei collected $2063 from pot

I just have to figure out some good gypsy spells or something to turn this around. That or just stick to triple draw where I’ve actually been doing well.

Oh and remember how I mentioned that it was getting cold here? Its been warm and sunny the last few days. I guess the jinx works both ways.

Apparently there exists an actual DJ who goes by the name DJ Sensei. When I came up with the nickname, I had no idea of his (or her?) existence, and of course I didn’t do any research into the matter. I had no expectations of ever becoming well-known by such a silly moniker. Well, 7 years later, I’m kind of a big deal¹. Tonight, I googled ‘dj sensei’ and discovered that my blog is the number one result. My 2+2 profile is #2, and my DeucesCracked page is #5, which seems a little off but I guess has to do with their algorithms or something. Take that, other DJ Sensei!

I guess this is also a good time to explain exactly where my nickname came from. In high school, I was the star of my Mu Alpha Theta² team. My friends who composed the rest of the team were very good too, so we usually smoked the other schools at the regional competitions. One day we decided that we’d give ourselves silly nicknames on the scantron sheet that you used to register. I more or less randomly decided upon “Sensei” and my friends dubbed themselves “Commander” and “Master”. During the awards ceremony at the end of the competition, they actually read out my name as Sensei, and it was awesome. So I kept the nickname and would always put it on the name sheet. After another competition or two I began to be well-known for it. Naturally, as a nerdy high schooler, it was glorious to have all the other high school nerds idolizing me as ‘Sensei’.

Later, during my senior year of high school, I randomly purchased some computer software³ to design and produce techno music and fooled around with it, eventually producing some songs that didn’t totally suck. They didn’t really spread much outside my circle of friends but I needed an artist name and DJ Sensei was the obvious choice. I stopped making any music after I graduated from high school, but the nickname stuck. When I began playing online poker Junior year of college, it was the clear choice for my screen name and the rest, as they say, is history.

1. People know me. I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany. [↩]
2. A series of math competitions at the regional and state level [↩]
3. ’Acid Techno’, I believe [↩]

I haven’t been playing all that much poker over the last week or so. Partially due to laziness and coaching sessions taking up a fair bit of my prime playing time, and doing a good bit of socializing in the evenings. That of course tends to put a damper on my late-night sessions. I’m not sure if my skills decrease all that much after a few beers, but I’ve always had a rule about not playing after I drink (with an exception for low-stakes live games, of course). I figure its best not to test my limits in that regard, at least at my normal stakes. I don’t get much enjoyment out of playing lower stakes either, so I generally just end up playing Settlers online or screwing around on the rest of the internet or reading a book if I get home with a few in the tank. Now this of course is not to say that I have any kind of a drinking problem¹. I just have a pleasantly active social life during the week, and many of our endeavors involve a cold one or two.

Another factor which has made a larger impact than I’d like to admit is related to the fact that I have had such a sweet upswing lately. There is a part of me that is afraid to break that streak and ruin its gloriously upward-trending graph. Its not that I’m concerned about my karma screwing me over for bragging, I’m not that irrational. I guess its just my inner nit wanting to ‘book the win’ or something. Meh. Tomorrow I don’t have any students, so I’ll try to play a good long session, win or lose.

On the life front, I went to Lake Tahoe this weekend with some folks from my ultimate team. We did some hiking, played lots of board and card games, drank pumpkin beer, enjoyed the hot tub. A great weekend all around, though I’m afraid we may have brought the cold air back with us. Perhaps San Francisco’s warm fall weather² is coming to a close. The worst of it is that the daylight hours are shrinking too. For folks like myself whose sleep schedule rarely involves waking up before noon, it is particularly unfortunate. At least the SF ultimate winter league is starting up in a few weeks!

So yea, I reckon there’s not much else to talk about³. I added a page on the left menu with links to my favorite Pandora stations, so if you like good music you should check that out. Oh right, also my roommate discovered this picture of me skying the crap out of some fools at the tournament in Hawaii last November. Nice.

1. I tried to find a video of the scene in Airplane! when the dude pours his drink on his shirt, but couldnt But Matt found one! Woo! http://drinkingproblem.ytmnd.com/ [↩]
2. Curiously, September and October seem to generally be warmer than June-August here. We have strange and unique weather patterns. [↩]
3. or is there?!? (I’m really enjoying this new footnotes plugin if you hadn’t already noticed) [↩]

During the final presidential debate tonight, there wasn’t all that much exciting new ground covered on either side. It seems that such is the way of things in politics nowadays, which is unfortunate. However, when the candidates discussed education, I thought Obama nailed it:

This probably has more to do with our economic future than anything and that means it also has a national security implication, because there’s never been a nation on earth that saw its economy decline and continued to maintain its primacy as a military power. So we’ve got to get our education system right. Now, typically, what’s happened is that there’s been a debate between more money or reform, and I think we need both.

In some cases, we are going to have to invest. Early childhood education, which closes the achievement gap, so that every child is prepared for school, every dollar we invest in that, we end up getting huge benefits with improved reading scores, reduced dropout rates, reduced delinquency rates.

I think it’s going to be critically important for us to recruit a generation of new teachers, an army of new teachers, especially in math and science, give them higher pay, give them more professional development and support in exchange for higher standards and accountability.

And I think it’s important for us to make college affordable. Right now, I meet young people all across the country who either have decided not to go to college or if they’re going to college, they are taking on $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, $60,000 worth of debt, and it’s very difficult for them to go into some fields, like basic research in science, for example, thinking to themselves that they’re going to have a mortgage before they even buy a house.

And that’s why I’ve proposed a $4,000 tuition credit, every student, every year, in exchange for some form of community service, whether it’s military service, whether it’s Peace Corps, whether it’s working in a community.

If we do those things, then I believe that we can create a better school system.

But there’s one last ingredient that I just want to mention, and that’s parents. We can’t do it just in the schools. Parents are going to have to show more responsibility. They’ve got to turn off the TV set, put away the video games, and, finally, start instilling that thirst for knowledge that our students need.¹

The italicized statement really excited me; A brilliant idea that manages to address multiple problems at once! It got me thinking: what if I were to create my own such scholarship program, offering a summer internship of sorts to one student with a great idea for a way to make the world (or at least one small part of it) better. I could request applications in the spring and then choose the one that I found to be the most intriguing and/or well-planned. The lucky student would then receive a stipend (enough to live on for the summer and conduct his or grand scheme) in exchange for frequent updates (presumably in blog form) and a conclusive report at the end of the summer. It seems like a win-win situation for everyone.

Obviously putting up the money would be a burden on me, but I’m sure if I was able to develop the program well enough I could receive a lot of financial support from other poker players who wanted to be generous with their winnings but also preferred to see the real achievements that their money helped to create.

Of course I know nothing at all about the process it would take to set up such a program, so, do yall have any ideas? Let me know!

1. Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/debate-transcri.html [↩]

Apparently, I can do no wrong. Booya.

This comes from a post I made on 2+2, in response to this thread by a dude who claimed to be very intelligent but unable to beat online poker even at the lowest stakes. It turned out pretty nicely though, and its been a while since I posted any pure strategy or theory, so I figured I’d share it with you fine folks as well:

The best player at any poker table, assuming that he has no glaring deficits in game theory or tilt control, is generally the one who can most accurately read the minds of his opponents. The first level of his advantage comes when he is able to interpret the meaning of their current actions based on information from previous streets or hands or sessions, and thus make the most +EV immediate response. The second level of his advantage comes when he is able to use similar analysis to anticipate their future actions. Armed with that knowledge he can adapt his strategies at a moment’s notice to put himself in the most +EV situations.

So how does this affect you¹? Well, the most likely problem is that your opponents are operating at a level of thought so far below yours that you are unable to accurately assess the direction their thoughts lead them. Many of their actions will seem irrational, and as such you are unable to analyze them in your normal manner. My advice when playing against such players is that usually the best way to beat them is not to try and out-think them, but simply to play a much more solid fundamental style of poker (Often called ABC poker, though it doesn’t have to be so basic). It will be very difficult for your opponents to take advantage of you, and in the long run their mistakes will compound and lead to you profiting.

Ideally, the best opponents for you (or any player) are the ones who are usually one level below you in thought. Imagine if you were playing at a table where you knew that every player had recently read the same poker strategy book as you, but that none of them realized that you knew that. It would be incredibly easy to exploit their weaknesses and profit from them, stealing many pots with air when they are obviously weak and showing up with a huge hand when they reveal their strength too early. Playing against people a level below you is just like that, in that you can often figure out what they’re thinking (and thus why they would take such an action) and then read their hand quite accurately. Also, they are more easily manipulated into making big mistakes when you can feign weakness. Alas, these players are not to be found in the microstakes, so either you need to grind up a bankroll to play midstakes or you need to acquire the money elsewhere somehow and jump right into it. I’d recommend the former, for the sake of your psychological development (being able to accept losing gradually larger and larger amounts of money, tilt control, and of course building up the “Blink” style subconscious library referenced in earlier posts²).

1. ’you’ = the original poster [↩]
2. ’earlier posts’ refers to the original thread as well. Someone mentioned the subconscious mental processes in effect during a poker game and referenced ‘Blink‘. [↩]

I have been grinding a good deal of 5/10 NL over the last few weeks, as a change from my previous habit of PLO cash games. Because I have coached a decent number of pretty solid midstakes players over the last few months, my creative MSNL/HSNL theory abilities are still quite sharp, perhaps even sharper than they were before. (Hopefully my students can claim the latter too!)

In any case, I’ve been doing pretty well, and finally hit a nice patch of positive variance, in the last few days particularly. I would say that overall, my long-term graphs often tend towards prolonged periods of relatively uneventful results followed by a colossal upswing, after which the modest results begin anew. Not a bad way to be, I suppose, though it makes downswings a little unpleasant when they do come along.

So in any case, here’s the graph of about the last two weeks of 5/10 NL:

Also, I sat briefly in a very good 25/50 cap PLO game, and managed to run pretty well while I was there:

So, poker is going well. Also, the Blue Angels are in town and flying around in tight formation above the city. It has been a long time since I saw them in action. I suppose from an environmental stewardship standpoint I can’t really approve of their existence, but it is impossible to argue that they aren’t badass.¹

Unfortunately the ultimate season is over for us as of sectionals a few weekends ago. My roommate’s team (our archrivals on the field but close friends off) beat us 15-13 in the final game of the tournament, with a bid to regionals at stake for the winner. They’ll spend this coming weekend in Oregon battling it out with the best other teams from the Northwest. We’ll probably spend it drinking Tecate and hollering at the Blue Angels from my roof. Advantage: them. On the one hand it was nice to get a break after a long season, but I’m beginning to feel the itch again. Is it time for winter league yet?

Our sectionals loss did come with one silver lining though: this picture of me sitting on the face of a good friend of mine who was trying to cover me after a huck went up. I came in from the left side, the disc came in from the right, and he was in the middle. One second he looked back for the disc, the next he turned around to discover that I was jumping over him. Shazam.

1. Jacksonville Jaguars home games almost always have a fighter jet flyover immediately after the national anthem, because the navy base in town apparently needs something to keep them occupied. Like the Blue Angels, it is an awesome show of engineering and force. I am always impressed with how well they manage to time it with the singer of the anthem, too. [↩]

(If you aren’t familiar with Google Reader¹, please read the footnote before continuing)

Many of the content feeds in my Google reader are internet comics, updated daily and hilarious. However, one of the feeds had lately been sending me tons of posts which were nothing but advertising for the store which sold t-shirts exhibiting some of the comics from the past.  I began to get a bit miffed about it. Why would they clog up my feed box with ads, when all I wanted to see was the comics? So I decided to write to the guy in charge: the artist of the comic.
“Dear guy, I enjoy your comic immensely but the ads on its RSS feed are brutal, whats up with that.” I wrote, in about 5 times as many words and with more cushioning adulation.

He responded with a flatly negative tone, “I have to pay a guy to set up those feeds, and the only money I earn comes from my store. Of course I have ads”. (Not actual quote, but again, pretty close)

So I assuaged him with a response informing him that I had personally bought a shirt of theirs recently,  giving the address of the offending feed, and apologizing for being so bold in the first place.

Now at this point in the evening, it was just about 8 o’clock. I had finished up a rather long afternoon of work, which of course consisted of the standard swings and stress of a serious poker session, when I received his email response. For some reason, its arrival led to a significant dampening effect on my mood. It quickly became a point of interest to me that his response had managed to bother me so much, but winning and losing large sums of money in intervals on the order of seconds for hours on end had such a little effect on me emotionally. What a strange frame of mind.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. The artist responded again, telling me that I had been using the wrong feed all along! Apparently the feed I was receiving was ’scraping’ the comic instead of feeding it directly, which was lame, and of course they were also shoveling ads at me. He also issued me the salutation of a smiley face, indicating that everything was cool. My spirits immediately brightened again. (Good thing I had an Iphone and was able to read my email at the bar, or else I’d have had to wait another hour and a half for that emotional upswing!)

Such is the power of the internets.

Oh, and of course, the comic in question is Married to the Sea. A brother of toothpaste for dinner. I’m give both my full approval.

1. Google reader is a computer program on the internet which allows you to compile all of the things you read every day online into one convenient place, so you no longer have to check out each page individually. Its almost like a custom-made newspaper which delivers every new story immediately every day. Of course you need to choose the right ‘feeds’ to ensure quality reading. [↩]

For the last few years, since I started playing poker seriously, I’ve periodically had dreams about the game, and most of them involve little more than me just playing. This probably comes as no surprise. While I’m no expert in the field, I imagine that most people dream about things they spend much of their time doing. The interesting thing about poker dreams is that when you awake from one, the results of your imaginary dream session can effect a real impact on your subsequent mood.

For instance: Yesterday night I was fooling around on the internet, as usual, when I was informed by a friend that a particularly notable fish was sitting at a 50/100 heads up table. I sprang to action and joined the waitlist, hoping to have a shot at taking his gold. Unfortunately this wasn’t the kind of fish who any self-respecting player would ever quit unless he went broke, and I wasn’t even first on the list, so my chances of actually playing him were slim to none. But I kept my eye on the table until the fish busted and left. Shortly thereafter, I went to bed, but at some point in the morning I found myself playing him anyhow. This of course was a dream, but at the time I didn’t know it. I ended up winning some money from him, and another player quickly took his place. I don’t recall exactly who the player was, and were this real life I’d probably have immediately quit him, but in the dream I continued to play and ended up utterly crushing the guy. I don’t recall any particular hands or anything notable about my opponent (another standard characteristic of poker dreams, it seems). Interestingly enough, I remember exactly the amount that I ended up winning: $56,000. This of course would qualify as my biggest winning day ever, by far, so I was pretty jazzed about it. And then I woke up. Blast!

So, clearly it sucks to wake up from a dream in which you won a lot of money and realize that you didn’t actually even play a hand. But the magnitude of that negative feeling is definitely smaller than that of its counterpart, the feeling of relief that comes when you awake from a poker dream in which you get destroyed. So, in that way, poker dreams should have a net positive effect on your mood, as long as the relative frequency of the two types is not terribly skewed towards winning dream sessions. In my experience they seem roughly evenly distributed.