20 The Newbie Chronicles: Dynasty+Clarkmeister in Vegas

[mdlm]

Last week I was visiting a friend who happened to be in Vegas and had the pleasure of having lunch with Dynasty and Clarkmeister and two other 2+2ers.

In person, Dynasty and Clarkmeister are just like they are on 2+2. Dynasty says little and is very blunt. Clarkmeister is more expansive. Both are friendly.

Here are some of the highlights of the conversation:
1. One 2+2er asked me how long I had spent playing fake money tournaments and when I said hundreds of hours he said, "That's terrible."
2. I asked Dynasty how many hands he had to see to conclude that an opponent is not very good and he said (something like) "one, particularly if he's playing many hands."
3. Clarkmeister discussed the hand EV information on pokerroom.com (?) and said that it closely matched the simulation work that Abdul did. Dynasty asked me if I had looked at this data and when I said I hadn't he sounded surprised. Obviously, this is something I need to do.
4. Clarkmeister said that he had taught his girlfriend to play ultra-tight, ultra-weak LL poker and he thought that she was break even or slightly +EV in Monte Carlo's 1-4-8-8 hold'em game.
5. Clarkmeister banged the table for Abdul's preflop analysis. He thinks it is the best there is.
6. Dynasty first started playing poker at a Foxwoods chess tournament. He played a total of nineteen hours of stud over several days and made money.

On the next day I watched the Monte Carlo 1-4-8-8 game for several hours. One young woman had on a pink sweater and when I arrived had a stack of at least 200 chips in front of her.

She proceeded to burn through them in the next hour or so. During this time she changed seats twice. The second time she changed seats, she moved back to her original seat and said something like, "That seat isn't lucky for me. Let me move back to my original lucky seat." She also asked for a deck change.

After she lost all of her chips, she changed seats again and happened to sit right in front of me. She bought in for another $100. Up until now, I had figured that the loss of 200 chips in one hour was just variance but since she sat in front of me I was able to see some of her cards. On one hand she limped in with T6s. On another, she checked in from the BB with T3. The 3 paired on the flop and she called a bet. The turn did not help her and she called another bet. She folded on the river. Within an hour she had lost her $100.

So in less than two hours pink sweater lost $300. Assuming that the drop was $4/hand and that there were 60 hands played in these two hours, she paid the drop at the table for the rest of the players. Another way to put it is that she lost 37 BB in less than two hours. Since there were no more than 8 players at the table, that comes to 4+ BB per player or more than 2+ BB per player per hour. Nice.

The best player at the table seemed to be a young chubby guy with a short military style haircut and glasses. He played fairly tight and he took down one pot with just a high card by betting on the turn and the river and getting everyone else to fold.

However, there was one crazy hand that made him go on tilt. He capped the hand preflop and the flop came something like AKQ with two spades. He kept betting hard and a third spade came on the river. He asked one opponent, "Did that river help you?" and the player showed 5s3s. He was furious since he had AK or AQ. The pot was absolutely huge.

What he did next was interesting. He racked up most of his chips and continued to play. He then lost almost all of the chips that he hadn't racked and left the table.

There was another curious scene that played out. A player sitting next to the dealer was consistently putting his chips too close to the dealer!? The cardroom manager told him not to do this and the player got steamed and cashed out.

Within a few minutes a casino employee wearing a red jacket appeared in the room. I say appeared because the Monte Carlo poker room is a small room with only one public entrance and I was standing right next to it and the red jacket did not go through that entrance. The red jacket talked to the cardroom manager and the manager went over to the table and made some gestures indicating that the player was putting his chips too close to the dealer. Red jacket seemed satisfied and walked away. Very spooky.

My friends and I also visited the Gambler's Book Club which is off the strip near Fremont Street. It's a wonderful bookstore with a very knowledgeable proprietor and has two large bookcases full of poker books.

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Comments on Comments

Pudley4 suggested a new goal to replace the PokerPages goal: Play ten real money hands and find an average of 1.5 mistakes per hand. This is an excellent idea and one that I plan to implement in Phase 2.

Dentist asks if Dynasty and Clarkmeister are legends. Clarkmeister gave a very modest reply. Dynasty is definitely a member of Sklansky's 500 Club (see Sklansky's essay "Pros Versus Wannabes" in the Essays section on this site) or at least he was until he decided to hang out with Clarkmeister and play LL poker. Clarkmeister would be a member of the 500 Club if he took poker seriously. [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

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Goal Update

This past week, I spent approximately 28.25 hours on poker: 3 hours watching poker at the Monte Carlo, 2 hours reading, 3 hours on 2+2, and 19.25 hours playing PokerPages tournaments.

This past week I spent $10 buying Dynasty a steak. I have spent a total of $476.43 out of my $1000 budget.

An update on each of the four goals (which are to be accomplished by 3/30/03):

1. Read and study Jones' "Winning Low Limit Hold'Em"
I have confirmed 2 1/3 out of the three points I need to achieve this goal. A point (flush draw value bet) is pending an analysis of 10,000 hands.

2. Beat Acespade
Goal Completed on 11/5/02.
Over a period of 100 hours (3600 hands) I beat Acespade?s best lineup at the rate of over 4 BB/hr.

3. Beat Masque World Series of Poker
Goal Completed on 11/17/02

4. PokerPages 85% rating in one calendar month playing 20 tournaments
Since the last tournament I played in January I have been guided by metaname's strategy and have been doing well. My current PokerPages rating is 87.27%. I played six tournaments this week and finished #24 out of 178, #16 out of 163, #5 out of 127, #55 out of 161, #12 out of 219, and #76 out of 168.

[Homer]

"This past week I spent $10 buying Dynasty a steak. I have spent a total of $476.43 out of my $1000 budget."

-- Hehe

"Since the last tournament I played in January I have been guided by metaname's strategy and have been doing well."

-- Why are you doing this? Metaname's intent was to show that this shouldn't be a goal because you can play a flawed style and still meet your goal.

Homer Sez: Buyin to Poker Stars for $4. This will give you 100 BB's in their new .02/.04 real money game. From what I have seen the play is not too maniacal. You can actually obtain some real money play experience cheaply.

-- Homer

[Clarkmeister]

"Dynasty is definitely a member of Sklansky's 500 Club (see Sklansky's essay "Pros Versus Wannabes" in the Essays section on this site) or at least he was until he decided to hang out with Clarkmeister and play LL poker. Clarkmeister would be a member of the 500 Club if he took poker seriously"

Two thoughts.

1. I have no desire to play poker for a living. Quite frankly to maintain the standard of living I like, I'd have to play very very high, and there is simply too much competition at those limits. There's a reason Roy Cooke only plays on weekends. I have the utmost respect for guys like Tommy and Snakehead who are able to do it, but its not for me.

2. Trust me, the 3 times in the last 6 weeks I have played poker with Dynasty hardly qualify as stopping him from playing anything he wants to play. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

[Clarkmeister]

"An update on each of the four goals "

Your goals are a waste of time at this point. You need to play real money games. Our brief stint at the practice table confirms this beyond all doubt in my mind. You have progressed as far as is possible without playing actual real live money on the line poker.

2 thoughts:

1. I don't think you are comfortable gambling. Because of this, and the extreme variance that is natural to limit holdem, I suspect that poker is not the right pasttime for you.

2. I freely admit I could be way off bas here, but here is the observation I made to Dynasty. He thought it was possible that I was correct. I think you don't want to learn how to play holdem. I think that you want to learn how to learn how to play holdem.

Boy, thats a mouthful. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

Play some real money games, post hands in Small Stakes forum and stop wasting your time on these goofy play money tournaments and tables.

Hope you enjoyed your trip out here. Now get your ass to an online poker room or to Foxwoods. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

[KrackedKings]

Clarkmeister,

I posted this before, and I hope mdlm is not offended. But I put a "read" on mdlm as being a mentor type -- he learns in order to teach. I actually consider that a complement of sorts. He is very interested in the learning process itself.
I often find it easier to learn when I want to pass that knowledge on to someone. I use much more discipline.

A question... Is there a url to Abdul's charts? I use Pokerroom.com's EVs and would like to compare.

Sincerely,

KK

[pudley4]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
I think that you want to learn how to learn how to play holdem

[/ QUOTE ]

Which makes sense if he's going to write a book about it.

Now, I don't know if he is, and I really don't care one way or the other. If you look at the way he has set this all up - breaking it down into 3 6-month periods, a clearly defined budget for each phase, clearly defined goals for each phase - it would be extremely easy to write a how-to book when he's finished.

I think he's clearly grasped enough of the fundamentals to proceed on to phase 2. I hope he doesn't let some artificial, irrelevant "goal" keep him from continuing.

[Clarkmeister]

www.posev.com

It can also be helpful to do searches both in the archives on twoplustwo and on rec.gambing.poker for stuff he has written.

[KrackedKings]

[Clarkmeister]

"If you look at the way he has set this all up - breaking it down into 3 6-month periods, a clearly defined budget for each phase, clearly defined goals for each phase - it would be extremely easy to write a how-to book when he's finished"

Sure, its easily converted into a how to book. That doesn't make it an efficient and correct how to book. In fact, the topic doesn't require a book, it requires about a 1-2 page essay.

As an example, my girlfriend started to learn how to play a little while ago. I love her to death, but she is nowhere near as bright as mdlm. She has spent a tiny fraction of the time mdlm has on learning how to play and essentially refuses to analyze her play in any serious manner.

I also have little doubt that her EV in a live 4-8 game or an online 1-2 game is significantly higher than mdlms.

It seems to me that mdlm decided on the correct "how to learn" strategy before he ever started. This is evidenced by his rigid adherance to his initial goals, even though he has been repeatedly informed that they are misguided. He has ignored advice from quality well intentioned people on this site that would have rapidly increaded the pace and quality of his learning. I think the comparison in poker development to my girlfriend is a testament to this.

He is a very nice and very smart guy. I also think he is proceeding in an incredibly inefficient and ineffetive path relative to his stated goal. For those who forgot, I quote him below from his post on Oct 1.:

"I have decided to try to become a semi-pro poker player within eighteen months.

In particular, my goal is to make $1,000 per month for three consecutive months before March 30, 2004. I estimate that the probability that I will succeed in this quest is less than 3%." - mdlm 10/1/02

If that is indeed his goal, then he is really way behind. Not behind his goal, but behind where he should be. He should be very close to accomplishing this goal already, and I would argue he has done very little towards actually achieving his desired result. I also think his % chance of success should be significantly higher, perhapse as high as 90+%. How he came up with 3% I have no idea, but he is certainly IMO proceeding in a manner consistent with minimizing his chances.

[pudley4]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
It seems to me that mdlm decided on the correct "how to learn" strategy before he ever started. This is evidenced by his rigid adherance to his initial goals, even though he has been repeatedly informed that they are misguided. He has ignored advice from quality well intentioned people on this site that would have rapidly increaded the pace and quality of his learning.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed 100%

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
He is a very nice and very smart guy

[/ QUOTE ]

This is how he comes across, which is why I hope he continues on to phase 2 and eventually succeeds. It also makes it even more frustrating when good advice seems to go ignored [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]