Has HOH2 hurt anyone else?

[wegs the wegs]

I read HOH vol 1 from about April til June (I'm a really slow reader. As I was reading it my finishes in MTT's really improved, making the money far more often than had previously in my poker lifetime. In mid-July, once I had finished the book and re-read a few important chapters I went on a really good streak of tournaments, playing 10 online tournaments in about two weeks, moneying in 7 of them with an 11th, 7th, 3rd and 1st place finish included. I was feeling pretty good and pretty confident, playing exceptionally well with a tight aggressive strategy.

In early August I picked up HOH vol 2 and working my way through it. Ever since then I have played like CRAP in tournaments. I always seem to be overly aggressive, noticing too much that my stack is getting a little too small, overstealing, and committing all my chips far too often with the worst hand. I keep telling myself that it's the correct play, to be aggressive and avoid the low 'zones' as much as possible. I believe I have moneyed maybe two or three times since August with no big payouts.

Am I missing something here? Am I overthinking these situations? I knew before vol 2 that it is a no-no calling with small pocket pairs when the blinds are huge and my stack is not. And I knew that waiting around for AA and KK in the middle stages of tournaments is not healthy. But where is the line? Any suggestions? Yes I will post hands in the MTT forum. Should I reread Vol 1 to try and have that mindframe while playing again? Has anyone else struggled with being too aggressive after reading Vol 2? Should I cross-post this in the MTT forum?

I apologize for the 50 questions, but I'm dying for answers here.

Hmm, I'd have to say my experience has been that it MAY have hurt my results, or it may be variance. Can't tell really as I haven't played enough SNG & tournaments. I think after HOH2 I started to play weak/tighty and that's a death sentence. If you search the MTT forum for the last couple of weeks you should see several posts about M and focusing too much on it to the detriment of actually playing the people at the table.

[Niediam]

You need to go and learn about variance in MTTs. They come back and read your post. You will be embarassed. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]
You need to go and learn about variance in MTTs. They come back and read your post. You will be embarassed. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

That was my point too. I think it's probably variance, but being over concerned about M will hurt anyone's game.

sorry but what do you mean by "M"?

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]
sorry but what do you mean by "M"?

[/ QUOTE ]

He's referring to the classic Fritz Lang movie starring Peter Lorre - Dan Harrington recommends watching it before every tournament you enter, because there's a scene where the German authorities in lieu of searching for the child predator are playing poker and one of the police officers makes a really good call on fifth street.

[ QUOTE ]
sorry but what do you mean by "M"?

[/ QUOTE ]

'M' is calculated as your stack divided by the total of the blinds and antes for one full circuit of the table, ie the pot size before pre-flop betting. It was created by Paul "X-22" Magriel (sorry if I misspelled that) a professional backgammon and poker player who incidnetally knocked Phil Helmuth out of the main event this year.

In HOH2, Dan Harrrington talks about the range of plays open to you based on your M. Think about a close football or basketball game, as the time runs out the teams are more limited in their choice of plays, in football, you have the two minute drill and then the hail mary pass. In poker, when a player's M is greater than 20 a player has the ability to use his entire skill set, between 10-20, a player loses the ability to play many speculative hands, bewteen 5-10 you're down to premium hands, between 1-5 your choice is down to any pair, or any two 10 or higher and you should be pushing all-in everytime you get these hands so long as no one is in the pot before you. Under 1, you're in the dead zone and no matter what you do, you'll get called.

[megabit]

Actually I have found just the opposite to be the case. I do see how if you misapplied the concepts they could hurt your game. You need to remember the 1st in vig and not just push because your M is low now. I don’t really change my play much until my M gets around 5. At 10 I am concerned and watching it close but not ready to just shove all my chips in or fold.

Mike

I found that at first, as I played and was trying out some of the concepts I read, I'd start overemphasizing what I had just been learning, like I'd semi-bluff almost 90% of the time. It was just because I wasn't putting it all together and was still really new to poker, that I was blowing money and games. After I read through both books and played a little more, I steadied and got back to winning.

[benkahuna]

It hurt me too when I overapplied the theory in it related to low M. I found I was already pretty damn aggressive and rather than using low M as an excuse to be aggressive (particularly later in a tournament), I try to just use it to make good decisions. I also reread some of HoH v.2 related to M and found I'd misremembered how to apply it so some extent. After I made the adjustments, my results improved and are still overall better in tournaments.