Bluffing for Value

Bluffing is an integral part of poker, and something a lot of players either over-do, or do too little. What exactly constitutes as “bluffing”? Simply put, bluffing in poker is to try and make your opponent believe that you have a better hand than he does. This is usually done in the form of bets, or the not-so-usual verbal connotations.

Let’s face it, the number of times you actually make a hand in poker is far and few between. A large number of hands you enter pots with usually end up missing the flop, and if you don’t “bluff”, you will usually end up folding when your opponent bets, simply because you believe he has a better hand than you do. This means that, most of the time, you will lose money by entering a pot, if you don’t bluff. A player that doesn’t bluff is also very vulnerable, as his hands are practically transparent to any semi-decent poker player, simply because he never puts money into the pot without a made hand. Thus, the easy way of countering these kind of players is to avoid paying them off, and fold most hands to them. How do these players lose money then? Usually by bad beats, mistakes, cooler hands and such, which all poker players face, but they can’t offset due to their meager wins.

Another reason to bluff is to disguise or rather, balance your play. If you occasionally raise with your worst hands, your hand strength will be hidden when you raise with your premium hands. Your opponents can’t simply fold to your bets anymore, or they risk getting run over. The key here though, is to keep a consistent betting amount for your bluffs and your premium hands. Some players bet overly large or overly small when they bluff, and do the exact opposite when they actually have a hand.

Bluffing adds value to your play, by forcing your opponents to pay you off when you have a hand. Make sure though, that you don’t keep bluffing at pots, so much so that you are called down by almost any player. Instead, limit your bluffs to times when you have an edge, like position, a board that’s friendly to bluff at, e.g. you raise with junk on the button and a rainbow disconnected flop with an Ace hits the board, you raise again to bluff opponents off their hand. Bluffing also adds value to your play, by giving you additional information about your opponents while keeping the strength of your own hand hidden.

An example of how bluffing can give you an edge happened a couple of nights before in a live game I was playing. Blinds were $2/$5, and I was on the button with Q9 suited. A few players limped into the pot, and I made a raise of about 6xBB. All players folded except one, a tight, and extremely passive player. His stack was relatively short compared to the pot, roughly 3 times the amount. The flop came 3s2c2h, he bet into me, and I re-raised him all-in. He calls with A3s, a Queen comes on the turn to put me in the lead and I take his stack. This was observed by all players at the table. After one orbit of play, I get J8s on the button, while there was a player who straddled. After the usual few players limped in, I again made a 6xBB raise. The blinds folded, and the player who straddled, went all in. His stack was again about 2.5 times the pot after I made the raise, which gave me the odds to call if he was making a move or even if he was holding two over cards. I chose to call to advertise my strategy. I lost that pot. Payback came when I got pocket Qs the very next orbit, once again on the button. I made a raise and a player shoved into me, I call, and my queens held up to take the pot.

Note that most of my “bluffs” were done from the button (the canonical position to bluff), which generally gave me a significant edge over my opponents simply because they would have to act before I did. Also note that you have to display your “bluffs” to let your opponent know you’re actually bluffing. Sometimes, if it doesn’t cost too much, it’s worth it to play to outdraw on your opponents, simply to do a bit of advertising, and get some implied odds on all future hands, e.g., you value bet the river as a bluff and get called, but your next value bet is for a monster made hand and you make the maximum amount.

This was a pretty unstructured article, but I hope I managed to convey the necessity and value of bluffing in poker. Till the next time, may all your bluffs succeed!

Play Like You’re Winning

I’ve been having a good run lately. Single buy-ins last me the night in live games, cashing out highly positive. Something that hasn’t been happening too often for the past couple of months. Sometimes, when you start running really bad, you question your plays, and that’s when you spot the leaks in your game, and if you have the discipline, fix them. I’d like to think that’s what’s happening with my game right now.

Running bad actually has a very negative impact on your game if you don’t have the discipline to stick to profitable plays. You start making bad plays, getting too conservative, generally playing worse poker. Either that or you start tilting, playing from random positions, with random hands, losing more in the process. I’d like to tell all readers now, if you find yourself on a losing streak, take a step back and review your game. Are you playing too passively, playing too many hands from bad positions? Stop now before you dig yourself deeper.

Avoid playing bad poker just because you lose from bad beats. These bad plays become habit and bad habits are hard to kick. Not to mention you being likely to lose more when you start playing bad. Play like you’re winning. One of the methods I’ve been using to keep my tilt meter in check is to keep myself in the “winning” mindset. It might not work for everyone, (some might even become more rash!), but it’s been working for me. Keeping yourself in a positive frame of mind is really important when you sit down to a game. The funny thing I’ve realized when playing poker is that when you’re winning, you generally start playing better poker, simply because you don’t want to lose the chips earned through bad plays.

Till next time, play good poker, and play like you’re winning. Happy new year everyone!

Making Hands

I just had a discussion with a friend yesterday on the subject of playing to make hands in poker. This friend plays a lot of online poker, and is a profitable player. There are a lot of poker players who just sit and wait around for hands like AJ or KQ, and then raise or call, see the flop and then depending on how well their hand hits, make further decisions from there. These players might turn out to be profitable, depending on how successful they are in getting their opponents to pay them off on their made hands. The problem with this strategy is that making hands is not a common occurrence, and these players lose money on hands that they miss and subsequently fold.

There aren’t many loose passive players online, and these are the type of players that you can expect to pay you off if you play to make hands. This generally results in a break-even or even a losing record for players who play to make hands (Fit or Fold players) online, simply because they aren’t getting paid off on their hands, while losing money consistently to hands that they don’t hit and the rake. Sites like Poker Stars give significant rake-back to players who play a lot of hands at higher stakes (ranked supernova or supernova elite), but how many players get to those ranks?

Fact is, in the game of poker, your two pocket/hole cards don’t matter until you finally showdown on the river. What matters before the showdown is what your opponent might be holding, your table image, your opponent’s table image, you and your opponent stack sizes, the money in the pot, and finally, your position relative to your opponent. Players who play to make hands simply ignore these important factors in the game, at least until they make a hand, which actually mean that they rely more on luck, i.e. they are gambling. Of course, there are times when playing to make hands is necessary. E.g. when you’re up against a loose passive player, and, that’s it I think. If any of you readers can think of more situations where playing to make hands is necessary, please comment.

How does one not play to make hands? Here’s an example in a recent online game I played. I was holding AcTc on a NL100 6-max table, sitting on the cutoff. The player to my right had stats of 38/25 which meant that he’s a loose aggressive player. My own stats were 15/12. My stack size was about $130, and he had $150 or thereabouts, so we were pretty even. Action was checked to him pre-flop, and he raised 3xBB. I decided to re-raise him and made it $9. Action folded over to him who flat called. The flop comes Kd9d8h, with suits different to the one I was holding, so I completely missed the flop, and had no draw. He checks, and I made a c-bet of $12 into a $19.50 pot. He makes a min-raise, which made the existing pot $55.50, a very nice pot. I had slightly more than $90 left in my stack, about the same as what he had since he put in $12 more than me. I decided to go for it, and raised to $40. He folded and I took down the pot.

A player who plays to make hands would do things very differently if they were in my situation. They would have called pre-flop, whiffed, and folded to any decently sized bet on the flop. Of course, they would only have risked $3, instead of $61 (half my stack), but think of it in a different context. Passive calling gives you no information on what your opponent might have. Say the flop comes AdKd7h, and your opponent makes a pot sized c-bet. Since you already made your hand, you would probably re-raise, and say the opponent 3-bets you. What do you do then? AT here is crushed by AJ, AQ, AK and A7, AA, KK and 77. It’s also only about even money against a pair plus flush draw, and only really beats a smaller Ace or flush draw. Most Fit or Fold players would not be able to fold here. They finally make a hand, but face a 3-bet. They would then call the 3-bet, and face enormous pressure to call all subsequent bets, possibly putting your whole stack on the line instead of only half your stack.

Note that this situation is not fictional, and occurs very often in a game of poker. A lot of experienced regulars online would make that 3-bet on the flop simply because its profitable to do so against a player who only plays to make hands. Every time that player folds, its instant profit. If that player goes over the top, it’s very easy to for them to fold since they can recover that loss in subsequent hands using the same line of play.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of how to play a more imaginative game. As always, comments and feedback are appreciated. Till next time, may you not play to make hands, but make your hand just the same!

Stayin' Alive

We’ve often heard people say tournament play is different from cash games, but what exactly does that mean? How much different can cash games get, when you’re playing the exact same game? The cards don’t change. Your odds and outs in a particular hand don’t change.

What changes is the fact that blinds played are progressively increased. Imagine playing cash games with progressively increasing blinds! You could only play as long as your bankroll can sustain your blinds. The more blinds (forced bets) you have to make, the more the game becomes a gamble. In fact, thinking about it, a single tournament could be used to represent a player’s progression at poker, that is, if you had the choice of remaining at a certain blind level until you’re ready to move on.

When you’re forced to move up in blinds, the more it becomes necessary for you to recover your losses through forced bets. This means playing more hands, which would eventually mean that luck decides the outcome. When should you start playing more hands in a tournament? At the beginning, where the blinds don’t matter as much? Or towards the end when you’re forced to play hands due to a diminishing stack size?

The ultimate goal of a tournament is to stay “alive” as long as possible. The person who stays alive the longest, wins. This is the fundamental concept of a poker tournament, and one that most players fail to understand. Everyone tries to accumulate as many chips as possible, but in an inevitable situation in the tournament when you’re forced to make a decision for all your chips in a cooler situation (e.g. nut flush versus a possible full house), players ignore the goal of “staying alive” when making that decision.

How does staying alive factor into a poker decision? Simple. Imagine that you’re playing a tournament with actual money. Blinds increases periodically, and you don’t stop playing till the last man standing. You’re given a decision to go all in pre-flop when you’re holding Aces, but you’d be playing for all the money you have left in the world, with no chance of earning more. This would mean that if you lost (which you will, at least 20% of the time!), you will be relegated to permanent bankruptcy. Would you still take the risk with Aces?

I was playing a hand in an online tournament just yesterday. I was the shortest stack, with 13 players left in the game. Blinds were $25/$50, and my stack size was $900, less than 20 times the big blind. I got AQs on hi-jack, and made a standard raise of 3xBB. Action folds over to the player on the Big Blind who was playing a loose aggressive style, and was at that time, holding the largest stack with about $4000 in chips. He thought for a while, then shoved me all-in. Based on his play, the chances of him holding a better hand than mine was slim, and I made the call. Sure enough, he was holding JTo, and my odds to win was almost 65%. The flop comes J66, and he flops top pair, but I flopped a flush draw, with two over cards. Even with him holding top pair, I was still the favorite to win with a 52% chance. His Jacks held up to take down the pot, eliminating me in the process.

I knew I had the better hand, based on all the information available, but if I had thought about it in terms of actual cash, and going bankrupt, I would never have made that call. With 15 big blinds remaining, and 6 players on the table, I could still see about 60 hands before I’m forced to play for all my (remaining) “money”. A lot can happen in 60 hands.

In reverse, the “staying alive” factor can also be used to advance yourself in the tournament. Big blind played an aggressive strategy, forcing me to make a decision for all my chips while only risking a 25% of his stack. He had 35% to win $900 if I called, and 100% to win $225 if I folded. He only had to risk 25% of his stack. This was an excellent play, and plays like this win tournaments. He ended up placing 2nd.

There are a lot of ways to view this, and the sheer number of possibilities that could happen is what makes poker an extremely challenging game. Sure, it was technically a suck-out by the JTo, but if you think about it in relative terms (since everything is relative), Big Blind was playing at a 25% risk, while I was playing at a 100% risk. The odds to win the hand was in my favor, but the odds to win the tournament was in his favor!

Which would you rather win? Till next time, make your decisions like all your money depends on it!

Bets

Making bets is pretty much what you do when you play poker. Big bets, small bets, pot-sized bets. The general mistake a lot of people make with bets is that they don’t size their bets correctly. Bets that are too large overly expose your stack, and increases risks. Bets that are too small don’t extract enough value.

When playing poker, its easy to get carried away betting into a pot in the hopes of getting a player off a hand. Sometimes though, it’s good to just recall the fundamental reason to bet. You bet to increase the money in the pot for hands that are strong. You avoid increasing the size of pots for hands that are weak. When you’re firing several barrels into a pot with an average made hand (or even on a bluff!), and your opponents are not folding, you know you’re doing something very wrong.

I think the amount to bet depends on the reason you’re betting. If you’re betting to push your opponent off a hand, you have to know from previous experience the amount and situation he would fold a particular hand to. For example, if you’ve observed that he folds top pair to an 80% pot bet on a possible made flush, you can do the same when you’re in the hand with him in a similar situation. If he folds to 80% pot bets 4 out of every 5 times, you should always make this bet in similar situations regardless of what you’re holding, simply because its profitable to do so. Bets like these also help you read your opponent’s hands better. If he doesn’t fold when you bet 80% into the pot, you can pretty much be assured that you’re up against something better than top pair and you can let go of your hand unless you improve.

If you’re betting to increase the size of the pot for your monster made hand, there are several things you have to note. Bets the opponent calls on a regular basis, your stack size and your opponent’s stack size, the aggressiveness of your opponent and his opinion of your aggressiveness. I was in a situation some time ago, in a $2/$5 live game, when I had JTs out of position against a tight solid player (TSP) in late position. I have a loose aggressive image, with a pretty deep stack ($650 or thereabouts). TSP had about the same amount and called my pre-flop 4xBB raise. The flop came JJ9, with a possible flush draw, a monster flop for me. The only thing you should be thinking at this point is to make as much as you can from your opponent. I knew TSP for a passive player from previous games, so I knew I could not slow-play. I raised $28, 70% of the pot, and he calls. TSP regularly calls me down with a pair or Ace high (because of my loose aggressive image), so I put him on a 9 or a possible flush draw. The turn comes a T which made the flush, but I had the nuts. I bet $60, and he makes a raise to $165. If I went all in or even made a raise at this point, he could barely call me with the nut flush, and anything less would generally fold, so I flat called. This made the pot equivalent to our stacks. The river came a 5, and I made a bet of $300. He calls with the nut flush, and I take down the pot.

This example might not be the best, but I think it illustrates the need to know your opponent’s style of play and also his view of how you play. The turn and river bet was also important imho. The turn bet increased the size of re-raises from possible strong made hands, while the river bet was strong enough to avert suspicions for an extremely strong made hand, while putting enough value for a strong made hand to make the call (2 to 1). Many people might be tempted to check the turn with the nuts, but there’s no guarantee that your opponent would bet in position if he made the flush.

This is a complicated topic, and I’ve barely scratched it, but I hope this gives a bit of insight on the intricacy of making bets in poker. 

Comfort Zones

Winning a major pot in poker is the ultimate high of the game, especially when you’ve outplayed your opponent to do it. I’m not talking about cooler hands, where you have set over sets, or *gasp* straight flush over quads! This actually happened in a live game played in the poker room I frequent. Check out a shot of it I managed to capture…

Have you ever noticed how some players manage to win huge pots on hands that contain a single pair, or some mediocre holdings like AT versus A4, when both hit the ace on the flop? Often times, players put wins like these down to loose cannon players and luck, but I believe there’s more to it. Many players, especially tight players, play weakly because they’re afraid of getting stacked by bad beats and cooler hands. They make puny raises, take down small pots, and wonder why the other player at the table makes 5 times his buy-in in the same amount of time he makes half a buy-in in profit at the end of the session. What’s worse is when they have a bad session and get sucked out multiple times, losing several buy-ins in the process. Imagine the amount of patience required to sit for hours at the table, making minimum profit and losing it all in a run of bad luck.

There are two ways to lose money in poker. Bad beats and bad plays. Whenever you lose, it’s either one or the other, and it’s important to identify which. But knowing why you lost is not enough. You have to know how to compensate for it. If you lost due to bad plays, you have no one and nothing to blame but yourself, and the remedy is simple. Don’t repeat your mistake. Bad beats on the other hand is a different story altogether. Beats are part of poker and instead of whining about how your bottom set got cracked by a two pair hitting a four-outer, think about how you can recover from it. Tight weak players will find this hard to do, simply because it’s rare for them to get a huge win (unless of course there are donkeys that pay them off regularly), and it will take many, many sessions of no beats before they recover from a downswing.

Which brings us to the topic at hand. Comfort zones. Every player has a comfort zone, and it is important thing to note of your opponents when you play a game, especially during live games, when there are no stats to help you make decisions.  The famous quote from David Slansky, which states that, whenever your opponent plays differently from when he can see your hole cards, you gain, and whenever you play differently from when you can see his hole cards, he gains. A simple example of this would be, if the player holding the quads in the picture above could see his opponent’s hole cards, he would fold his quads, and he would gain. This is pretty much the goal of poker, to make your opponent play differently from what he would if he could see your hole cards, that is, to make a mistake. The only way your opponent will make a mistake, is when he is pushed out of his comfort zone.

A regular player that plays at the room I frequent (who incidentally is also the person who held the straight flush over quads) is a very good example of such a player. He has a loose cannon image, one that’s well deserved, and initially lost a lot of money learning that players can’t be bullied out of pots by money and two rags for a hand. He is however, a quick learner, and all keen observers in the room would note that his play has improved tremendously. He’s quick to spot and prey on weak tight players, pushing up the stakes with a massive re-raise on their raise, forcing them to fold weak to mediocre hands pre-flop. Some of them try to counter this by flat calling, hoping to hit a monster on the flop, but more often than not, end up folding when his flop play pressures them to fold hands like Ace high. If they could see his hole cards, they would play differently, but having been forced out of their comfort zones, they naturally make mistakes they wouldn’t under normal circumstances.

It’s enough to observe from this that players can be pulled out of their comfort zones by hyper aggressive play, but there’s also a technique to it, and one can’t place a random huge bet into a pot and hope to take it down. I will write more about this in future articles, on bet sizing and value bets, that extract the maximum out of opponents, while maintaining a decent ratio on your “return on investment”. It’s also important to know that when you play within your bankroll, it is difficult to pull you out of your comfort zone, simply because your zone is so much… wider! Once again, more emphasis on bankroll management. So, till the next article, may you play successfully for bigger pots, and force opponents out of their comfort zone!

Burn Out

Can’t bring myself to go play poker for some reason. I’ve not played at all for almost 6 days now! That’s something new for me since I started the poker craze this year. Kind of weird feeling this way after playing so intensively for months. It feels exactly like when you’re at a job and you take a break to go on vacation, and when you get back, you just don’t feel like working.

Poker is a grind, and when you take all the glitz and glamour away from it, you see that it’s nothing but hours of sitting at a table, waiting for safe, decent hands. Still, when a guy like Joe Cada makes 8.5 million in ten days, it does make one dream somewhat. This makes me wonder though, when a poker player actually plays for a living, does it all become mundane for him? Imagine having to make your living playing poker for hours each day. Sure, they talk about travelling the world and such, but what does it really come down to?

I think to play poker, one must limit oneself to a certain time frame, say, 3 or 4 hours a day. That’s it. Win or lose, or break-even or maybe even a paltry win of 30 bucks. Leave, refresh yourself with other activities, catch some sleep, and come back the next day for another 3 hours. Come to think of it, this would probably be the best way to control tilt. Not by limiting your buy-ins, but by limiting the time you spend.

Just some thoughts. I’ll probably be back to full swing come the weekend, but for now, I’m burned out…

Reflections…

Took a short break from poker over the weekend. Reasons being, a night out clubbing resulting in a significant hangover the next day, and… some losses the day before due to inconsistent and just overall bad play. Gave me time to do stuff I’ve not been doing for a while, and of course, some time to reflect on my play.

I’ve always played a loose aggressive style of poker. So much so that almost everyone who’ve played with me has tagged me accordingly, and generally employ passive tactics against me in the hopes that I will bluff the pot (which I generally do!), and pay them off. Of course, when I run good and make my hands, people pay me off handsomely, but more often than not, it’s the other way around. Why? Simply because I’m a poor player, and generally make poor calls and bad decisions, some of them so obvious that when I look back, I wonder why I make them.

The LAG (Loose AGressive) play-style is a viable one in poker, but it takes a lot more skill to play successfully. In fact, it’s not just skill that matters but discipline, and proper bankroll management. I lack all three. Poker is not about gambling. I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it again. Problem is, most poker players gamble, and that’s the bottom-line. The profitable ones don’t. I’ve recently read an article that said, playing poker is like being a fund manager. You “invest” in profitable situations, and avoid the high risk decisions that may involve significant losses. You avoid risking your capital (bankroll).

To play poker successfully, one should know one’s capabilities. Like a fund manager, a skilled one with foresight would make investments that would seem risky to his peers less adept than himself, while the less skilled would typically invest in rock solid, profitable ventures. Similarly in poker, skilled players may opt to play the LAG style, simply because they can manage the risks better, while their less adept counterparts just play TAG (Tight AGressive). I belong to the latter group.

What this means, is that upon reflection, I’ve not the skill required to play the style that I play now. That said, I will attempt to stick to the TAG style of play from now on, at least for a couple of months, to see if it makes a difference. Let’s see how long I stick to this resolution!

On and Off

Just finished a very mixed session of poker. Mixed in that I played both online and offline, both using the same strategies (at least initially for the offline play) and ended up with extremely different results, the strategy used being BSS. I made a significant loss in the live games, while enjoying a significant profit in the online counterpart.

Lesson learnt (that I realized much earlier, but apparently needed a refresher); Online poker and live poker are extremely, and I mean extremely different. Maybe it’s just because of my personality; a little hot tempered, and very impatient. These are two traits that are very bad for a poker player, simply because they are the exact formula for tilt. Suck-outs and bad play make me lose my temper, the latter being targeted at myself. Bad hands or flops, slow dealing and lengthy hands make me impatient. And together, both make me lose due to tilt plays.

My live game losses were only due to two major hands, both of which could be avoided. I was not getting any hands for about 3 orbits, and finally caught KJo, but was in early position. The BSS dictates that this hand should be folded, but I had gotten impatient after getting no hands, and decided to limp to see the flop. As usual, another 5 limpers called behind and the blinds checked. The flop came KQ6, two clubs, and small blind checks. Big blind over-bets the pot and action was on me. I frequently play with Big Blind, who’s a regular in the live games I play, and he has a tendency to play draws very strongly. I decide to raise with my Kings, and 3 bet him for 3.5 times his raise. Everyone else folded, and Big Blind says he’s all in.

I made several significant mistakes here. First of all, I failed to observe his stack, the remnant of which was smaller than my raise if he called. Secondly, his position as Big Blind gives me almost no information on his hand, him having checked, and thus could be holding almost any two cards, including K6 or Q6, both of which have me crushed. I then compounded both errors by thinking I was committed to the pot by calling the all-in, forgetting that in previous encounters, he hardly ever moves all in with a weak hand. I lost 3/4ths of my stack to Q6.

The second loss was when I had AQs in middle position. I raised and the guy to my immediate left raised 3x my initial raise. He’s generally a loose player, playing almost any two suited cards from any position but only aggressive when he does have a hand. I should have folded the AQs, being out of position and likely dominated, but once again, I have had very few hands, and the earlier bad play I made was making me impatient to win a big pot. I called. The flop came 554, two diamonds, which gave me 2 overs and a flush draw. I decided to play this slowly to gain more information, and checked. He bet half the pot, and I decided to 3 bet him to see if he had a pair or was simply betting with AK. He went all-in, and I snap-called, a huge mistake. The pot was barely giving me 1 to 1 odds, and I was 50/50 at best against a pair under Q, and a huge underdog with any other higher pair that he would make that move with. He had Jacks, which held up to take my entire stack.

Rebuilt my stack somewhat later on when I loosened up and played more hands, but made money on good plays and reads. The last hand of the day was an extreme cooler hand where I had straddled, and the guy on my left double straddled. I caught Kings, but the guy on my left had Aces and I lost a large pot (though not as large as it could have been).

Heading home feeling very frustrated, but aware of my mistakes, I decided to continue grinding it out online. I profited 4 buy-ins in 2 hours, playing 21 tables of NL50 using BSS, and that was even though I encountered 3 huge cooler hands which involved set over sets. That’s a BB/100 of about 10 for this session alone!

Fact is, BSS doesn’t work with live games. Playing too tightly gives you no action when you have monsters, and makes you lose a lot on beats, suck-outs and bad plays. Online games differ simply because you see so many more hands online, up to several hundred times more in my case, and thus, you make a decent profit just by winning blinds alone. Live games are so slow that you barely see 25 hands per hour, and you typically need to make money in that 25 hands or you’re just wasting a lot of time. You’d be better off waiting tables to make a living. This means that you have to loosen up, play more aggressively and read more accurately. This also leads me to believe that a profitable live game player is very much more skilled than his online counterpart, since it requires looser play (high margin for error) and accurate reads.

I learnt many lessons today. Seems like everyday I play poker brings new lessons to learn, some really expensive ones. I guess the key is not to have to learn the lesson twice.