Cash Game Observations: Part II

In my last article, I discussed traits my opponents exhibited that certainly cost them money at the cash game table. In this article, I want to discuss some alterations that must be made to my game to increase my profitability.

During my four day, 60-hour long session at the Commerce, I made a point to sleep around eight hours per night. Despite this, I was somewhat lethargic at the table. I think I should have played around 12 hours per day instead of 15. This would have allowed me three additional hours in the day to relax, study and work out. I didn’t work out at all during this period, which certainly hurt my mindset. Now that I am back at home, I am making a point to go to the gym six days per week during the next two weeks for a moderate work out. While going to the gym this often is likely not ideal, it will hopefully imbed in my brain that once I wake up, I simply must get up and go work out. Forming good habits when times are easy will help you stick to them when the times are tough.

I also noticed that people tended to call my flop and turn bets super wide but seemed to rarely call my river bets without a fairly strong holding. There were a few hands where I would raise a hand such as J 9 and get called by two opponents. I would bet an 8 5 2 board and get one caller. I would frequently continue betting any turn that improved my equity or made the board scary, namely any spade, A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, or 7. My error was that I assumed my opponents would only call my turn bet with hands such as top pair or better. In reality, my opponents were calling with any sort of made hand. Since I made incorrect assumptions about my opponents’ turn calling ranges, I made the mistake of assuming they would call my river bet with almost all of their turn calling range. In reality, they planned to fold most of their weak made hands, such as 7-7, 6-5, and A-2 to a river bet. Perhaps, they would even fold decently strong hands, such as 9-9. Checking the river resulted in a few unfortunate spots where the river checked through and my opponent won fairly large pots with bottom pair. In the future, I will experiment with firing most often on the river when I notice my opponents are frequently calling the turn.

I noticed that I did not do a ton of reraising with marginal hands against my splashy opponents. While reraising with a balanced range is usually a big part of my game, I adjusted this strategy by reraising with only decently strong hands against my opponents who I thought would rarely fold, allowing me to bloat the pot when I had the best hand, especially in position. While there is nothing wrong with this strategy, I imagine I left a bit of money on the table because I failed to abuse my position as much as possible. I think it would have been better to get a little out of line, inducing my opponents to stop folding postflop so often with hands such as middle pair. This would allow me to extract maximum value from my made hands in the future. Instead, I simply won most of the pots I entered. It is always important to realize that a good result may not be the best result and adjust accordingly.

One other area where I slipped up was with my eating habits. During this four day period, I was making a point to eat overly clean, eating mostly grilled chicken, fish, and vegetables. However, after one fairly rough period, I had two glasses of wine and some cheesecake. Those certainly were not on the planned diet! Even though I only slipped up once, it is still a mistake that I must plug if I want to be the best I can be. While it may sound as if I am being a bit hard on myself, as lots of people have wine and cheesecake every night for dinner, I realize and understand that in order to operate to the best of my abilities, I must take phenomenal care of myself. If I make errors, I will see them over time in my results.

The final way I messed up was by not studying enough. Before leaving on my trip to California, I loaded my iPad with around 30 hours of poker videos. I assumed I would be able to watch around an hour per day, which was convenient because my poker trip was to last around a month. I ended up watching a total of six hours, which is pitiful. I need to partition more time for study. When I was initially learning the game, I would spend around four hours per day studying. While I now spend around one hour per day, during this trip I spent almost none. That isn’t going to cut if. If you become stagnant in your learning, the game will pass you by.

While I am sure you likely think I am being overly critical of myself, I think it is important to let you into my world and explain how I operate. At least for me, if I am not hard on myself, I will not live up to my potential. Assuming I want to stay on the top, I have to live my life in a way that will keep me there. If you want to make it to the top, live your life in a way required to succeed at the top. Eventually, you will get there. You must understand that there is always someone right on your heels, waiting to take you down. If you become lazy, expect to get devoured. ♠

Jonathan Little, 2-time World Poker Tour champion has won more than $6 million in tournaments since 2006. He is sponsored by 3bet.com, Instapoker and BlueSharkOptics and teaches poker at FloatTheTurn.com and www.JonathanLittleSecrets.com. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.