Victories in Initiative

So often in poker, hands don't go to showdown. Whoever can win the lions share of those non-showdown pots will be the victor long term. How do we win those pots? By being aggressive, but also, by having the initiative at key points. What are those key points? What do I consider a victory of initiative?

Limping a trash hand and having villain let you do it. This is a victory because you have just had the opportunity to out flop your opponent and maybe get great value from his top pair hand postflop for a cheap investment preflop. If he knew you had trash he should have raised you off of it.

Raising preflop in position and not getting 3bet. This is a victory because you will be able to bet most flops and take the pot down or build a big pot with a value hand. Pretty obvious.

3betting a preflop raise and getting a fold. This is a victory because you correctly assessed villains raising frequency and calling range.

3betting a hand preflop, getting called, and betting the flop. While not always as simple out of position against a good opponent because you are playing a big pot out of position, this to can be quite valuable on it's own in the right spots. 

Shoving over a limp at high blinds and getting a fold. Villain tried to limp some trash and you caught him red handed. Nothing he can do but fold now. Victory.

Raise/calling a shove at high blinds. Victory. You knew he was 3bet shoving wide and you were only raising hands you were planning on calling a shove with.

Trapping with a strong hand at high blinds against someone who is shoving a wide range. You were committed, you knew he was shoving wide, and you limped, big victory for a lot of chips.

Raising a limp when he has a weak range. Victory. He wanted in cheap and you raised it up, now you can also bet the flop a lot. He's not too happy about it.


Don't let villain get away with these things himself! Don't let him limp in with trash and bet the flop in position constantly. Don't let him raise too wide of a range without 3betting him. Don't raise at high blinds, get shoved on, and not know what to do. Don't raise, get 3bet, call, and then autofold the flop when you miss. Don't limp trash when you're constantly being raised, or worse, call, and fold the flop.

Now not all of these are always as cut and dried. Since position is so critical I think it's important to realize that if you limp and get raised or raise and get 3bet, you are still in position, and that means a lot. It's still possible in those circumstances to sometimes make your out of position villains life hell. But know when those times are, know when you can float, know when limp/calling is going to give you sufficient implied odds postflop.

Passive Income: Assets and Liabilities

In order to become rich you must at some point break away from trading your time for money directly. Working for a paycheck doesn't allow as much room for financial growth as investing in passive income assets does. The key is to grow your assets(income generating instruments) while limiting or eliminating liabilities(money pits, depreciating items without resale value or income generating potential). Once the ball is rolling it's about reinvestment of time and resources into acquiring more and better income generating assets, hiring trusted managers, and automating streams of income and reinvestment.

Here is a list of good passive income investments and liabilities.

Passive Income Sources (good):

Time
Health

Personal Skills and abilities
Experience
Tools of the trade
Storage Units
Rental Properties
Equipment rentals
Billboards
Blogging
Network marketing
Patents and intellectual property
Vending Machines
ebooks
government benefit checks and grants
government subsidized education
leveraged income: trusted people that work for you or manage your companies or investments.
interest income: savings accounts, stocks, bonds, forex, mutual funds, instruments.
sheltering: offshore, LLCs, corporate tax structurings.
insurance policies
internet products and memberships: downloadable software, training, information services.
re-occurring billing for products or services.
finance charges and various processing fees for services.
affiliate programs and network marketing.
copyrights, books, original works, ideas, or art.
Specialized knowledge, skills, and abilities.(Education, training, )
Managed businesses
People that work for you.
Your savings: lending, venture capital
Entrepreneurships - projects, ideas, profitable ventures
Capital Gains - living in project houses while renting a portion and fixing it up, ect.
Items that you can sell that you don't necessarily need or use.
Good credit: for taking advantage of investment opportunities.
A garden
Livestock
Orchards
Land use and sharing agreements.
Good social networks.


Liability Examples (Bad)

Rent
Mortgages
New cars
Toys
Depreciating items with lowering resale value.
Time wasting activities.
Laziness.
Bad and costly habits. Smoking, drinking soda/alcohol instead of water, eating out.
Credit card debt not used to buy better assets or investments.
Spending habits
Lack of desire or willingness to save and invest money.
Overhanging debt that must be taken care of before investing.
Poor health
Investments that aren't outpacing inflation.(stagnated savings accounts,ect.)


Just a few ideas that I think influence peoples ability to grow and maintain wealth.

I'm ANGRY.

I'm angry. Every minute that goes by, more oil spills, more peoples lives are destroyed and the US looks more and more ineffectual. This is a big problem and it needs a BIG solution, not more talk, not more of BP trying to salvage it's own vested interests. You want to talk about money and resources lost? Every day that  the oils spills money and resources are lost. Shut the damn oil well off and drill another one later. Save the precious oil since that's what it's all about anyway.

FREE HUSNG HAND HISTORY REVIEWS :)

Do you want to actually MAKE MONEY at poker like I do? I'm here to teach you how to play better poker. For a limited time I will be doing free HH Reviews for all visitors that have a HUSNG they want reviewed. I will give you detailed comments on your gameplay and my thoughts on how you can improve your heads up game. If you want to just talk poker on skype, excellent, it's always good to have poker friends to talk poker with and we have a chatgroup dedicated to just that. I've been very busy lately so email me your HH and I'll do my best to get to yours when I can.

Email: smithson@mail.com
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Cheers,
-J

Giraffeage

I haven't been able to play as much as I want in October because of the online classes I'm taking(Statistics and Probability), but it's still been a good month overall. I can't wait to hit the tables and do some real hard grinding once I get to where I don't have to think about school as much.

September

September's been good at the micros. Slow start. Bonus whoring at pokerstars and then hoping to play at some less well known sites... more fish ect.

90K Hands

Here's the latest Graph of my Poker Winnin's.