Matt Matros' take on running bad...(LC)

[yanicehand]

Well, Matt Matros knocked me out of the 350k guaranteed on Sunday so I decided to pick up his book, and find out where he can explain the strategy behind calling off his stack with 3 outs and hitting with one to come. I was a little bit surprised at how I liked the book, not necessarily from a strategic standpoint but just in a writing sense. He had one interesting chapter on running bad, and seeing as he plays a good deal of shorthanded limit, and that I'm on a 200BB+ losing streak, I figured I'd post some of it here, as its scary how much this applies to us when we hit a downswing:

"Most people don't bother to work on their games when they're winning. They don't sit down and think about what hands are truly profitable from what positions, in what situations semibluffing is most useful, when to pay off with a marginal holding... or when to wook to game theory to find the best play."

This is one area where I think 2+2 really helps out. We constantly analyze our hands, winning and losing, arguing over the play of a hand while almost completely disregarding the results. Posting hands during an upswing is just as important as posting hands during a downswing.

"...it is easy for a winner to go overboard with what he thinks are winning techniques. I was making money with razor-thin value bets in the five-handed games on Paradise Poker at the beginning of 2002. As I started reconstructing my game, one of the first things I noticed was that my value bets had gotten thinner and thinner until finally they weren't value bets anymore. They were stone bluffs."

This is the passage that hit me right in the head. I can't think of one thing I've been more guilty of than valuebetting too much or too little. Either you're confident so you valuebet when you shouldn't, or you're playing too weak b/c of a downswing and checking hands you shouldn't. Valuebetting and blind play have to be the two cornerstones of shorthanded limit, in my opinion.

"But betting the flop too often was probably the smallest leak in my play. Far more problematic was my strategy on the turn and river. It's important to follow through on a lot of flop bets on the turn, especially with marginal hands that very well may still be best... but continuing to bet with my weakest holdings here was a serious mistake. Once my opponent calls the flop bet, I should need at least a draw to continue firing... I was staying aggressive with far too many hands on later streets."

"Toning down my aggression in the appropriate places was the most noticeable adjustment I made in the restructuring of my game."

This last bit really helped me out. He's right in that its very easy to fall into a pattern of unfettered aggression and the "he can't call without XX" syndrome. I think when we look at our hands and our sessions to rebuild, we often find ourselves being a little too loose and a decent amount of misplaced aggression. Whenever I find myself in a downswing, I look back and realize I've let my play slide - and the solution is almost always tightening up and being more aggressive in the right situations and more passive in the others.

"The reconstruction of my play didn't take place over a day, a week, or even a month. I had to reanalyze every aspect of my game -- a game I'd spent three years building, tweaking, rebuilding, rerranging, and adjusting. The changes I just discussed didn't come about in one moment of divine inspiration. I struggled along the way."

This is probably my favorite section. Its pretty humbling to have to go back after 20, 50, or 100 thousand hands and admit that you aren't as good a player as you thought you were or that you still haven't figured things out completely. But there's always room to get better, and always a line of thinking that you didn't see before. I remember another poster, wheelz, saying in another post that with time, lightbulbs would go off in your head and you'd realize an aspect of the game you didn't see before. That's the thing we look for.

Anyways, this post got way long and seemingly pretty pointless, but I know I'm struggling with a pretty large downswing and I'm sure others out there are too, and hopefully, this will help a bit.

[obsidian]

I'd say value betting is the cornerstone of all of limit poker actually. Anyways, the quote "I was staying aggressive with far too many hands on later streets" is exactly what I have been trying to work on.

[yanicehand]

I'd agree for theory's sake, but I've played maybe 2k hands of full ring limit in my entire life, so I'll take your word for it. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Transference]

nice post yanice, I dont think its LC at all

[jacksup]

Glad you enjoyed the book.

"Well, Matt Matros knocked me out of the 350k guaranteed on Sunday so I decided to pick up his book, and find out where he can explain the strategy behind calling off his stack with 3 outs and hitting with one to come."

If you have the hand history, I'm sure I can explain it.

Best,
Matt

[yanicehand]

Sorry Matt, I don't have the hh on me. But I would like to say I was really impressed by your book, and can really relate to your beginnings in a lot of ways. Normally newer books are just rewritings of older, books, but I found a good amount of fresh content in the game theory, shorthanded, and a few other sections.