Letter from Doke (12th March 2012)

Hi

I only got out of the house once this week. That was for an Irish Open satellite in the Burlington. Only 17 runners meant only one ticket and €1300 for second. I played and ran pretty well and ended up chopping it headsup with my namesake, Daragh Davey. Daragh played brilliantly: one call he made with sixes was one of the best I've ever seen live. I did have to get very lucky in the end: threehanded I shoved with pocket twos over a button raise only to be snapped off by 99. The old saying "pocket twos never lose" held true though and a flopped set saved the day.

Other than that I've been solidly grinding away online. I've been specialising mainly in satellites online and have been binking fairly regularly. I did have the disappointment of bubbling an online satellite for an Irish Open package. With two packages up for grabs, threehanded I was at different points a 70% favourite and a 93% favourite to get home, but managed to lose both.

I managed to pick up a few points on the Sharkrankings online table this week. Most nights there are points for anyone playing on Irish Eyes in three tournaments: for a full list of the tournaments, the current leaderboard, and the prizes on offer, see http://www.sharkrankings.com

I also won a "normal tournament" on the Merge network. I ended up headsup with former PCA final tableist Ricky Fohrenbach (regularly ranked in the top 100 in the world online) although I didn't realise it was him at the time. I'd love to be able to say I outplayed him headsup but since it was a turbo, it essentially came down to push/fold ranges.

As the Kenny Rogers song tells us, you have to know when to hold them, but also when to fold them. Folding is probably the weakest part of my game: maybe it's a result of learning the live game in Ireland where most casual players think the game is all about bluffing (and therefore do far too much of it) but I tend to be a bit disbeliever and end up calling it off with marginal hands more than I should. In his book Daniel Negreanu says that you should work on the assumption that people are not bluffing unless they give you clear evidence to the contrary. Well, that might work in Canada, but if Daniel does appear at the Irish Open this year, I'm pretty sure he'll quickly find out we do things a little differently here.

However, being able to fold when you're beaten is as vital a skill in poker as any other. Chips saved when you make a good fold are actually more important than chips gained from a good call. I've recently been reading a very good book on how the human mind works lent to me by Albert Kenny. It looks at how we reach decisions. Different types of decisions use different parts of the brain. Some decisions are best left to the rational calculating part, while others are best resolved by the instinctive emotional part. A friend who is also a professional player was joking to me that I was a pretty bad player when I started. Although disagreeing with him (I was a solid winning player from the start, both live and online, unlike most players who start as losing players), I did accept that on the technical and mathematical aspects of the game I was a lot less knowledgeable than I am now. But I pointed out that since I was aware of my deficiencies as a novice, I relied much more heavily on instinct and reading other players physically than I do these days. I often think that while I have obviously gained a lot from a sound understanding of the technical and mathematical details of the game, I have also lost something too.

Recently when playing live I've been trying to re-engage the instinctive part of my brain to read other players rather than just focusing on the technical aspects of the game. One hand I played early in the Burlington, I raised a limper with AK. The flop came AA6 and my continuation bet was called. The turn was an innocuous looking 8 and my opponent again check called. The river was a 9 and my opponent instantly shoved for twice the pot. This completely went against the flow of the hand : till now it looked like my opponent was either trying to keep the pot small with a marginal hand, or on a draw (there was a possible flush draw on the flop that didn't get there). When you're facing a river bet, you should replay the hand in your head to see what kind of hands your opponent could conceivably play this way.
In this case:
1) He could have a hand that I was behind even before the river so he didn't need to worry or even think about the river before shoving, like A6/A8/66/88. All these hands could conceivably be limp called preflop, and play the flop and turn as played
(2) The river could have improved him (A9 or 99)
(3) He could be overplaying a worse ace assuming it must be good
(4) He could be bluffing with a missed flush draw

Having done the analysis with the rational part of my brain, I now tried to look at what my instinct was telling me (what most players call their "gut"). My opponent looked very comfortable so I really didn't think he was bluffing. He also had not got out of line up to this point. I thought some weaker aces like AQ or AJ would most likely raise pre, and if I ruled them out, the number of hands I was beating shrunk even further. My gut instinct was my opponent wouldn't do this with a missed draw at this point, and when I put it all together I decided either I was beaten before the river, or got outdrawn on the river, so I folded. After I folded, my opponent showed A9, and when I told the table I'd folded AK, Daragh Davey was surprised saying "surely he can have a worse ace". The rational part of my brain agreed, but the instinctive part had convinced me he didn't in this
instance.

Good luck at the tables - unless I'm at the same table :)

Doke

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