Staying Focused

I have a confession to make. I’m 36 and I’m reasonably convinced I have attention deficit disorder. That’s the affliction mainly experienced by eight-year-olds – but then I like the Transformers movies and have a Steven Gerrard keyring, so it’s not the biggest surprise in the world to find I also have a child’s condition.

I blame the internet, multiple channel TV and the ludicrous level of distraction available in our modern world. To people like me who started poker in the live arena, online poker is like a frickin’ non-stop 24-hour Bellagio buffet, but with hot girls and wall-to-wall football on massive TVs – why would you ever want to leave?

With online poker my weakness is opening new tables; it’s so easy to do and so much fun to make more and more decisions. However, after intensive research over many years I can definitely conclude that once I get over four tables my play starts to drop off. In fact, I think three may be my optimum but who plays just three!? That leaves a table-sized gap on the screen just begging to be filled and any fewer than four is sort of girly.

Focus, man!

After a certain number of tables you start to miss things. An on-screen HUD can help you play more tables profitably but you inevitably end up playing more by rote and thinking less. You fail to notice player tendencies, timing tells and other key information from big pots you’re not involved in.

We all know this. I know I should never play more than four tables and should always be focused, yet I often find myself playing six or seven tables with the TV on in the background while I browse the internet and chat to someone on IM.

I’ve vowed to change this and I’m already seeing the benefits. I’ve started to play better, I’m taking more notes and I’m becoming more player-aware. On the second session since turning this new leaf I made a play which isn’t that remarkable in itself, but that I may have missed without my newfound focus.

It was a blind-on-blind battle with me in the big blind and an okay TAG (aren’t they all these days?) in the small blind. He raised and I chose to call with 7d-8d. The flop came Kc-8c-3d. He bet, as he’ll always do, and I called.

The turn brought the 4d, giving me a backdoor flush draw to go with my pair of eights. The villain bet again and this probably means I’m behind most of the time, even though nowadays in cash games good players are firing the turn far more often than they used to. This is a product of continuation bets not being believed and being called far more lightly. So my opponent is more than capable of firing with air on this turn, particularly blind versus blind.

However, he’s not a particularly aggressive player by current standards and the turn isn’t a good card to bluff, in that everything I continued with on the flop I’m probably continuing with on the turn. I should probably have raised here – it’s a good semi-bluffing spot and I put him to a tough decision if he has a better eight, weak King, pocket pair or whatever. Instead I called, which is a little girly.

The river brought the As, which isn’t the best card for me as he could easily have been betting with Ace-high. He thought briefly and bet half the pot.

Memory Bank

This instantly triggered a recent memory of him making this same river bet against another player. That time he’d been called and shown up with the winning hand but not a strong hand and I’d made a note that he made this kind of semi-blocking/semi-value bet. I confess at the time I didn’t think through his range completely but I knew two things with certainty – I almost always had the worst hand and he definitely didn’t want me to raise him after this bet. I shoved my chips in and waited. He tanked and folded – I’m guessing he had a pocket pair or a King but I didn’t care as I was too busy celebrating.

Tragically, I actually jumped up and clapped when he folded. Imagine a very awkward, middle-class celebration and you’re about there. It wasn’t that I’d won that pot, it’s that I’d made a good read that I wouldn’t have made a couple of weeks ago when I was playing 23 tables while making a soufflé and finishing my latest sonata. Focus, you idiot.