I just genuinely don’t trust the reads of Bruce, and even if that’s true a passive game where people play like that is even easier than the games Clovis had. There’s no variance!
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I routinely see people table-select based on the idea that the table with the deepest stacks and the biggest pots is the best game. Sometimes. the best game is with the passive morons who aren’t sitting on huge stacks, especially when you’re the only decent player because no one good wants to sit in that game.
Streamed game hand. Effective stacks 15,500. 5/10/25/50 (straddle)
Villain in HJ raises to 15. Hero calls on button with 4 
4 
BB calls. Straddle calls.
Flop is A 
7 4 
Villain bets 200. Hero raises to 675. Everyone else folds. Villain calls.
Turn is 8
Villain checks. Hero bets 1500. Villain check-raises to 4,100. Hero calls.
River is 2
Villain jams for 10,700. Hero folds.
Pure brag post so read at your own risk.
I just played one of those pure sessions where every bluff works, you get insane action for showing bluffs, you fold when you should and you realize every ounce of thin value. Just pure flow. These perfect sessions are so rare I had to brag. 
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Yeah, when they come by, poker is the easiest game in the world.
I had a couple of players at my table just launch into a discussion right with each other in front of me about how I never tilt. The context was a PLO hand where I had three-bet preflop and check-folded an Axx flop. I don’t know if I should feel disrespected that they decided they could have this kind of conversation right in front of me. I think there are some exploits knowing they feel that way about me. I’m curious what adjustments y’all think I should be making against these players.
One of the few LAGs in my player pool came in late and complained that no one had three-bet him when he had been playing for two hours and raising 50% of unraised pots. When he comes in, what usually happens is everyone stops raising and they let him do the pushing. He gets trapped a lot and usually loses but sometimes he gets there and builds a big stack. He gets a bit annoyed that he loses in chunks at a time instead of getting people to play for stacks preflop or on the flop.
Man, PLO5 is the sickest game. I’ve now lost 13 sessions in a row and counting…but still a 12 bb/100 winner for the month. Just seems like it’s either constant god-mode or knowing you’re gonna lose a 60/40 before the cards even turn over and wondering if you’ll ever win again. Would be nice to just have some gradual wins for a change.
The losing streak is a bit deceiving b/c when I win, I will average 4-5 hours a session, but if I’m losing then I’ll just quit after an hour if I sense I’m getting a bit annoyed. So the “streak” is really only 14 hours (4400 hands), but down 38 buyins. My goal is to never give away a stack b/c I’ve tilted or loosening my ranges and 3/4-betting wildly to try and get even quicker. So part of that is quitting if I feel like my mindset has deviated from being happy to win a bit each hour to feeling like I need to get even immediately.
For some reason, I’m unflappable off the felt. My gf and I have never so much as raised our voices at each other in 3.5 years, and I can’t remember the last time I was angry at anything, but in poker I often get frustrated quite quickly, I’m not sure why. But I’ve put in quite a bit of work on the mental game and I think it’s paying off. I’d like to get to the point where I can put in a 5 hour session and still play well even if I’m losing everything, but not quite there yet.
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Yea when I’m running bad and lose a buy in or two early on I’ll just say fuck it and go do something else. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing though. I play enough poker as it is.
38 buy ins is nuts though, fuck that, I couldn’t handle PLO swongs
I once punched a hole in a wall because I lost money that was so small it really meant nothing to me. My mental game is top notch
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It’s one thing to be a nit, but it’s weird how often you brag about turning the entire table into a nitfest and making the game a poor experience for the players we’d most want to keep around. The idea is to keep bad players happy while they’re losing!
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I don’t know how live players do it. You could be a pretty sizable winner and still get your ass kicked badly for 4400 hands (2-3 months).
When I first started I broke several mice and even 2 laptop screens. I’d also tilt and move up to the highest stakes to try and win back losses in 1 hand. Busted a few 5 figure rolls that way. It’s an uphill battle for many.
My freshman year in college I ran up my party poker roll to over 100k at 5/10 NL being a complete maniac aggrotard. Then when 10/20 opened I was swinging 40-50k multiple times before losing most of it lol. Many mouses were broken that year, but fortunately no monitors!
If I had any semblance of a mental game back then I’d have a lot more $$ 
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It’s not bragging and it’s not making anyone quit. This is just the way games seem to run around me.
I don’t embarrass players by showing bluffs. I talk at the table. I never criticize their play. I don’t angle and I protect bad players from being angled. I don’t slowroll or any other bullshit intended to put people in tilt.
I’m just not super action and I don’t get into leveling wars. I don’t give action to get action. I’m boring and I lean into that. Tight and never reckless. More passive than I should be, but I do bluff. I just don’t have that FU bluff where I’ll bet/raise with a load of antiblockers because I think you don’t have anything in my repertoire.
The bad players who are there for a social experience seem to like me. They are my main customers. The bad players who are there for a macho pissing contest like me less. Whatever. Maybe that sounds like a horrible game to you, but it doesn’t seem bad to me.
do you feel you get bluffed a lot? or that anyone notices your tendency and starts to overbluff?
I certainly understand targetting a certain type of player at the tables. i tend to go after the dick measuring contest guys if i can, because they’ll spew and i piss people off and tilt people even without trying
I feel like the regs who I’ve played a lot with are kind of wary about bluffing me because I’ve snapped off a lot of their bluffs in the past. They bluff me more when they are stuck and trying to get even, but I think they bluff less against me when they are running good unless they are starting to get too cocky about running like god. Their default against me is usually a polarized range where they underbluff.
I think there’s a tendency to want to believe they are making moves, but at small stakes, they usually have it and one of my edges is that I am disciplined. I feel a lot more uncomfortable playing against unknowns because I can’t tell how they view me. Against unknowns, I generally play a lot tighter at the start of a session, which affects how they view me later on in a session. I am just not the guy who’s going to start off playing splashy to induce future action. Quite frankly, I don’t think it’s in my social skill set to be that kind of player, so I don’t try.
One reason regs are cautious about bluffing against me is because I have balance between my aggressive and passive lines. I play nutted hands both ways and I’ve had players tell me this makes me difficult to play against. I am aware that this means that I am giving up opportunities to bet for fat value exploitatively in some spots, but it’s a style that is easier for me to implement. The way my mind works, a mixed strategy is more intuitive.
The only fun parts of live poker are showing big bluffs and getting spewtards to blast off into you!
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dont like showing bluffs because i dont like guessing how they’re gonna react to it incorrectly
I don’t enjoy showing big bluffs. I know people scoff at my thinking there is some correlation between aggressive poker and toxic masculinity, but showing bluffs usually comes across as a way to assert dominance and cast oneself as an alpha male. I don’t feel a need to be perceived as an alpha. I don’t play poker to make others acknowledge me. I just play. Maybe I am leaving money on the table by not embracing meta-game tactics, but a lot of these tactics just seem to involve being a dick and I feel like I don’t need to do that.
I did some googling. I haven’t really analyzed these papers and don’t plan to, but here’s some stuff people have done researching poker behavior that goes towards how I feel about some of this stuff.
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep18096
" Effects of Testosterone Administration on Strategic Gambling in Poker Play"
Testosterone has been associated with economically egoistic and materialistic behaviors, but -defensibly driven by reputable status seeking- also with economically fair, generous and cooperative behaviors. Problematically, social status and economic resources are inextricably intertwined in humans, thus testosterone’s primal motives are concealed. We critically addressed this issue by performing a placebo-controlled single-dose testosterone administration in young women, who played a game of bluff poker wherein concerns for status and resources collide. The profit-maximizing strategy in this game is to mislead the other players by bluffing randomly (independent of strength of the hand), thus also when holding very poor cards (cold bluffing). The profit-maximizing strategy also dictates the players in this poker game to never call the other players’ bluffs. For reputable-status seeking these materialistic strategies are disadvantageous; firstly, being caught cold bluffing damages one’s reputation by revealing deceptive intent and secondly, not calling the other players’ bluffs signals submission in blindly tolerating deception. Here we show that testosterone administration in this game of bluff poker significantly reduces random bluffing, as well as cold bluffing, while significantly increasing calling. Our data suggest that testosterone in humans primarily motivates for reputable-status seeking, even when this elicits behaviors that are economically disadvantageous.
Evolutionary psychology suggests that men are more likely than women to deceive to bolster their status and influence. Also gender perception influences deceptive behavior, which is linked to pervasive gender stereotypes: women are typically viewed as weaker and more gullible than men. We assessed bluffing in an online experiment (N = 502), where participants made decisions to bluff or not in simulated poker tasks against opponents represented by avatars. Participants bluffed on average 6% more frequently at poker tables with female-only avatars than at tables with male-only or gender mixed avatars—a highly significant effect in games involving repeated decisions. Nonetheless, participants did not believe the avatar genders affected their decisions. Males bluffed 13% more frequently than females. Unlike most economic games employed exclusively in research contexts, online poker is played for money by tens of millions of people worldwide. Thus, gender effects in bluffing have significant monetary consequences for poker players.
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You read way too much into it. Don’t you ever play at drinking gambley tables on the weekends where people are straddling, throwing chips around, and generally fucking around? The bluff shows are all in good fun (mostly) and generate even more action. Also I certainly would not be considered to have an alpha male type personality lol.
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