For those that don't know, I've had a decent amount of turmoil recently. My house that I bought ended up costing a ton more, and withdrawing my bankroll down to an infinitesimal amount preceded a small downswing that left me with next to nothing online.
From $2k I ran up to $3.5k, down to $1k, up to $7k, and I'm currently at $5.3k with a few bad sessions behind me. The last session I played, I had that dreaded 'forgot everything about how to play poker' feeling, so I basically just want to re-affirm some basic technical stuff.
Preflop: I've been going 2x from all positions. This has a couple of important effects; firstly people flat much wider (especially from the blinds), 3bet smaller, and when I do get 3bet I only lose 2bbs rather than 2.5 or 3 (a pretty big difference). I've been 3betting much more from the blinds, but I've definitely noticed a decent increase in the amount of 4betting I've faced. My fold to 4bet stat is an expoitable 63%, and although I've always shied away from it I think I need to start throwing in some lighter 3bet/5bet jams from LP and NOT get carried away with doing so to the point of spewing.
I think I'm starting to loathe 4betting again. I think especially IP I'm just going to flat 100% of the time, at least for the next few sessions. Min raising hands like 96s leads to 3bets to like 6x, which need to be flatted, but at the same time I'm pretty concerned at the overall weakness of my flatting range. Although, maybe I shouldn't be............ the fact that the 3bet is small to begin with means I can get away with more fit or folding without trying to force things the 11th time in a session I flat 86s and it flops JT5r, for example. Anyway, yeah, I'm gonna flat everything and see how it goes. OOP I'll keep with the small 4bet of probably like a 10% range of suited broadways + Axs or something
Flop: Tough to generalise, but I think at 200nl just cbetting IP an exploitable amount is good, while OOP take more tricky check/ bet / bet lines with my whole range. Yeah, I mean this is the kind of thing that has been making my mind go blank. So many contradictory things go through my head when I raise from BTN and flop comes J83ss. His range is wide, my range is wide, he knows my range is wide, does he realise how wide his own range is flatting a minraise? Yada yada.
Ok I'll update this later, typing about stuff has definitely helped enough for now. I think I need to start defining my 'sessions' as starting with 15 minutes talking hands on skype or something. Really important warmup so I don't dive in, have a blank mind, lose confidence and start spewing.
Here goes..........
Monday 19 November 2012
Wednesday 31 October 2012
Time to grinddddddd
I was gonna title this blog 'grind of my life' or similar, but it sounded more like a euphemism for me having a terminal disease or something. This is basically just a self pep talk blog. Cliffs, after this I am fucking DONE with withdrawing money from pokersites.
Two mediocre months in a row, September 'cos I definitely ran bad, October 'cos I was sick bored of 200nl Zoom and my play reflected that. Nevertheless, I got my bankroll to a respectful SSNL level, and now I have to withdraw virtually all of it to finish this house. $10k is coming out, leaving me with a roll most would consider small for 50nl! Luckily I feel super pumped and super on fire to annihilate 200nl Zoom in November. No more sulking that I'm not playing higher, no more feeling sorry for myself, no more giving the regs too little respect or too much. I'm just going to work hard, concentrate, make a ton of notes, play a ton of hands, and do well.
I've been playing without a HUD the past week or so. It's really helped me get back in the mindset of what's important in poker. Getting in the habit of relying on the HUD is a killer. In November I'm going to play sometimes with it, sometimes without it. I feel like I'm able to bring it back for now to get general reads on unknowns, but as soon as I feel I'm getting lazy and overusing it it's going to go out the window again.
Play goals (you've all heard these before):
Two mediocre months in a row, September 'cos I definitely ran bad, October 'cos I was sick bored of 200nl Zoom and my play reflected that. Nevertheless, I got my bankroll to a respectful SSNL level, and now I have to withdraw virtually all of it to finish this house. $10k is coming out, leaving me with a roll most would consider small for 50nl! Luckily I feel super pumped and super on fire to annihilate 200nl Zoom in November. No more sulking that I'm not playing higher, no more feeling sorry for myself, no more giving the regs too little respect or too much. I'm just going to work hard, concentrate, make a ton of notes, play a ton of hands, and do well.
I've been playing without a HUD the past week or so. It's really helped me get back in the mindset of what's important in poker. Getting in the habit of relying on the HUD is a killer. In November I'm going to play sometimes with it, sometimes without it. I feel like I'm able to bring it back for now to get general reads on unknowns, but as soon as I feel I'm getting lazy and overusing it it's going to go out the window again.
Play goals (you've all heard these before):
- Take time on decisions
- Be crazy aggro IP, be a nit OOP (in general)
- Board texture/ psychology approach (what is he thinking, what does he expect us to do?)
- Always click button corresponding to instinct. Especially on river folds!
- Attack weak ranges/ fold to strong ranges.
- Reverse tilt when we lose.
3 minutes to midnight and I'm excited about playing for the first time in a while. Gogogogogogogogooooooo.
Wednesday 17 October 2012
Session Review Blog
In my haste to say how bad everyone at 200nl is, I should probably have mentioned that I'm not winning at it. My hourly this month is -$1.74. I've never been good at playing lots of hands and doing well, and I think I need a few good shorter and thinking sessions to get me on the right track.
So I'm going to play a 45 minute session now and then review all the med+ sized pots.
Goals for the session:
So I'm going to play a 45 minute session now and then review all the med+ sized pots.
Goals for the session:
- Attack weak ranges, not strong ones
- Time on close decisions
- Listen to and obey instinct
- Be aggro IP
_________________________________________________________________________________
Most contentious hand was this one. Established that turn should be a turbo fold, these check shoves virtually always are.........
Played well and happy though. I realise I've just been fighting back VS strong ranges way too much, leading to a spiral of despair and losing and loss of confidence and timidity eventually replaced by swinging too far the other way and bluffing more stacks in 16% UTG raises. Important to remember to quanitify our edge often as preflop VS postflop. If someone is too tight, then they allow us more stealing opportunities and hence our edge there is preflop. When someone is too wide, we flat or 3bet and abuse their weak range postflop. What we should not do is flat VS a wide range and then be too timid postflop, or 3bet bluff tight ranges with any regularity........ and if we do then don't go mental post.
Most contentious hand was this one. Established that turn should be a turbo fold, these check shoves virtually always are.........
$1/$2 No Limit Holdem • 6 Players • PokerStars
Generated by weaktight.com.
| UTG | RobertFripp2 | $204 | |
| UTG+1 | Eleon0re | $213.74 | |
| CO | HV71_forever | $234.24 | |
| BTN | hero | $248.20 | |
| SB | ohh_yeah751 | $200 | |
| BB | Lur3mus | $204.95 | |
- Pre-Flop ($3, 6 players)Hero is BTN
3 folds, hero raises to $4.50, ohh_yeah751 raises to $16, 1 fold, hero raises to $28, ohh_yeah751 calls $12
- Flop ($58, 2 players)
-
ohh_yeah751 checks, hero bets $15, ohh_yeah751 calls $15
- Turn ($88, 2 players)
ohh_yeah751 checks, hero bets $32, ohh_yeah751 goes all-in $157
- Final Pot: $152
Tuesday 16 October 2012
Random Words Blog
I just feel like I have a lot of thoughts in my head at the moment and need somewhere to write them. I'm playing 200nl at the moment and it's boring me to death. So much so that I'm not playing anywhere near my A game...... this attitude has to change of course, but in the meantime there's little fun when people play so completely straightforwardly. And badly, of course, most notably in river spots where they have like zero bluffs but snap bet 3/4 of the pot anyway. Everyone also has absurd bet sizing and raise sizing tells, basically just completely unbalanced in every spot.
My gameplan has basically been to avoid variance preflop, play crazy in position, be a nit out of position, apply gazillions of pressure to capped and otherwise weak ranges by overbetting, being aware enough not to value bet when I have no bluffs and not to bluff when I have no value, and just trying to soul read hands as early in the hand as possible.
My house still needs another $10k of work doing to it. The builders are coming back in 13 days, and in those 13 days I need to play 60k hands and win at 2bb/100 to be able to finish the house and still have a (at a stretch) roll to play 200nl and grrrrind my way to higher stakes that I know I'm capable of playing and winning well at.
This equates to around 60 hours of play between today and the 29th October. I set a timer on my desktop to count down the time, and after a whole day's play it looks like this:
It's 10 minutes to midnight and I apparently have to play another 3 hours 46 minutes. I'm tired. 9 hours tomorrow then!
My gameplan has basically been to avoid variance preflop, play crazy in position, be a nit out of position, apply gazillions of pressure to capped and otherwise weak ranges by overbetting, being aware enough not to value bet when I have no bluffs and not to bluff when I have no value, and just trying to soul read hands as early in the hand as possible.
My house still needs another $10k of work doing to it. The builders are coming back in 13 days, and in those 13 days I need to play 60k hands and win at 2bb/100 to be able to finish the house and still have a (at a stretch) roll to play 200nl and grrrrind my way to higher stakes that I know I'm capable of playing and winning well at.
This equates to around 60 hours of play between today and the 29th October. I set a timer on my desktop to count down the time, and after a whole day's play it looks like this:
It's 10 minutes to midnight and I apparently have to play another 3 hours 46 minutes. I'm tired. 9 hours tomorrow then!
Monday 1 October 2012
Clearing Mind Blog
I haven't played or done too well in the past few days. I took a few days off to play footy, watch footy, get drunk and eat Thai food, and coming back to poker it's clear that some leaks have crept in. For one thing, my VPIP and PFR have shot up and I don't really know why which can't be an amazing thing.
So for this blog I'm just gonna think out loud and work out what I need to concentrate on going forward.
Comparing the stats over the past 3 calendar months doesn't yield too much difference. I'm opening much wider on the button, but arguably this is better (jump from 39% to 51% which is still on the lowish side). If I were to pick up on one leak just purely looking at the stats it would be the amount of cold calling VS 3betting I'm doing from each position, particularly CO and MP but also BTN.
So the spots are probably those like, UTG+1 opens and I flat A5s in co. Or 87s and the like. This is probably in fact where my extra raw VPIP has come from, just too many loose calls in positions where I expect to get credit postflop (this is no doubt a remnant of playing 500nl) but where I'm just facing too many BTN and blinds squeezes along with confusing auto cbets in spots where I'm thinking 'I look strong here, he's not cbetting *nothing*' but in fact many probably are and just confusing me. Actually on that note it's crazy how little respect my flop raises IP have been getting. Just crazy flop 3bets and turn barrels with nothing......
So anyway- Leak #1 - I'm being too loose with my cold calls in MP and CO.
Leak 2 is quite a big one and needs addressing ASAP. It's one of execution, namely I'm not clicking the button that my mind is telling me to click! This is basically the first leak to creep in when I lose a bit of confidence........ quick example.
http://weaktight.com/5069084 - flop and turn are OK vs this guy, CRs all the time in spots where he doesn't rep a lot, and the turn call is me saying 'ok you think this turn is scurry'. River call though drove me wild cos it was obviously a super snap fold for reasons I had ages to formulate in my head. In a nutshell, we have spades a lot. The way villain views this spot is 'the times he doesnt have spades he is folding, the times he does have spades he is calling'. What this means is that villain is without doubt utterly unbalanced and will bluff small, and value bet big.
I actually had 30 seconds to think of this spot before he bet, which obv only added to my certainty that we should fold should the bet be big. Then it comes and I'm lacking a bit of confidence and I call because maybe he's tricking us. Dan, no1 is actually tricking you at 200nl, they're just doing *exactly* what you think they're going to do. (Sorry if speaking in the 3rd person makes me a wanker.)
I'll start listing these things as goals rather than leaks (more positive, Jared would probably say).
Goal # 1- Be tighter with cold calls in MP and CO.
Goal # 2 - Take your time, and click the right button.
That'll do for now. No doubt some more leaks will become apparent if I don't start winning. That sounds silly, but there's a part of me that doesn't really believe that much in variance. I kinda feel playing well = making money, and the variance associated with people's winrates over time is simply down to them not playing very well during those stretches, and the fact that people are simply unable to maintain a high winrate consistently. The corollary of what I'm saying is that I think those people with long term winrates of say 3bb probably have an A game expected bb/100 of more like 10 but are simply unable to sustain it because of things like loss of confidence/ leaks creeping in etc. So yeah, if I start playing well then I'll start winning probably. That could all be bollocks obviously, but at least one other good player shares this view with me.
bye !
So for this blog I'm just gonna think out loud and work out what I need to concentrate on going forward.
Comparing the stats over the past 3 calendar months doesn't yield too much difference. I'm opening much wider on the button, but arguably this is better (jump from 39% to 51% which is still on the lowish side). If I were to pick up on one leak just purely looking at the stats it would be the amount of cold calling VS 3betting I'm doing from each position, particularly CO and MP but also BTN.
So the spots are probably those like, UTG+1 opens and I flat A5s in co. Or 87s and the like. This is probably in fact where my extra raw VPIP has come from, just too many loose calls in positions where I expect to get credit postflop (this is no doubt a remnant of playing 500nl) but where I'm just facing too many BTN and blinds squeezes along with confusing auto cbets in spots where I'm thinking 'I look strong here, he's not cbetting *nothing*' but in fact many probably are and just confusing me. Actually on that note it's crazy how little respect my flop raises IP have been getting. Just crazy flop 3bets and turn barrels with nothing......
So anyway- Leak #1 - I'm being too loose with my cold calls in MP and CO.
Leak 2 is quite a big one and needs addressing ASAP. It's one of execution, namely I'm not clicking the button that my mind is telling me to click! This is basically the first leak to creep in when I lose a bit of confidence........ quick example.
http://weaktight.com/5069084 - flop and turn are OK vs this guy, CRs all the time in spots where he doesn't rep a lot, and the turn call is me saying 'ok you think this turn is scurry'. River call though drove me wild cos it was obviously a super snap fold for reasons I had ages to formulate in my head. In a nutshell, we have spades a lot. The way villain views this spot is 'the times he doesnt have spades he is folding, the times he does have spades he is calling'. What this means is that villain is without doubt utterly unbalanced and will bluff small, and value bet big.
I actually had 30 seconds to think of this spot before he bet, which obv only added to my certainty that we should fold should the bet be big. Then it comes and I'm lacking a bit of confidence and I call because maybe he's tricking us. Dan, no1 is actually tricking you at 200nl, they're just doing *exactly* what you think they're going to do. (Sorry if speaking in the 3rd person makes me a wanker.)
I'll start listing these things as goals rather than leaks (more positive, Jared would probably say).
Goal # 1- Be tighter with cold calls in MP and CO.
Goal # 2 - Take your time, and click the right button.
That'll do for now. No doubt some more leaks will become apparent if I don't start winning. That sounds silly, but there's a part of me that doesn't really believe that much in variance. I kinda feel playing well = making money, and the variance associated with people's winrates over time is simply down to them not playing very well during those stretches, and the fact that people are simply unable to maintain a high winrate consistently. The corollary of what I'm saying is that I think those people with long term winrates of say 3bb probably have an A game expected bb/100 of more like 10 but are simply unable to sustain it because of things like loss of confidence/ leaks creeping in etc. So yeah, if I start playing well then I'll start winning probably. That could all be bollocks obviously, but at least one other good player shares this view with me.
bye !
Tuesday 18 September 2012
Doooomswitched
Not a pretty graph this month, ha. Believe it or not until the last bit I and the first bit I played good, but yeah probably 15BIs lost due to runbad and 11 more due to playing bad. Those $500 stacks add up you know, and in between withdrawing to pay for a half built house I've lost the roll to play 500nl for now, even with the extremely aggro bankroll management I was employing.
I can't wait for the fucking day I don't have any outgoings, no this that or fucking other meaning I have $18k months and find myself broke as fuck 19 days later. Money stress definitely contributed heavily to the downswing, and sometimes I wish I was just staked or something so I could chill the fuck out and win money.
Anyway, 11 more days of this month and I'm definitely going to be playing at least 5k hands per day of 200nl. This is 55k hands, and I'd snap take winning around $5k over that sample.
Techical stuff: I think I've been way too passive of late, I've gotten a strong feel the past 2 days that people are just folding to me. Obviously this could be variance, but basically my 18/14 stats and opting out of the PF wars is going to cost me some value with big hands. This is fine, but where I'm not adjusting is just putting people on one pair hands and going 3 streets a lot with bluffs. I played a session of 200nl prior to this blog and did this much better. Essentially, there's no excuse for my WWSF to be lower than 50 when I have such tight PF stats, and if people aren't hero calling or are making biggish turn folds with top pairs on wet boards etc then I just have to work out who those people are and abuse them more.
Important not to get too caught up in over-arching strategy thoughts though as it can cause overadjustment. Overadjusting leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to bad bluffs, bad bluffs lead to suffering. But yeah I think it's time I started using my tightish image a little more.
Other technical stuff........... I've learned a ton from the skype group I'm in at the moment; Adam, Jude, Zaza amongst others. Probably the main thing is a newfound ability to make biggish folds. Adam is particularly good at this........ and this improves me tons in spots like...... we have AK in a 3bet pot, King hi or Ace hi board, they check shove turn. Previously never folding, now its like 'ok they put us on AK and are check shoving anyway' leads to some very logical folds depending on villain obv.
Anyway, that's it. 200nl grind for a while and so long as I'm patient the money and stress free life will come eventually. weeee
Thursday 13 September 2012
Sanity Blog
Had a day of yesterday and got drunk again, weee. Aim of today is to clear my head and start playing poker good again. My mind does feel a little clearer today, I've looked at lots of other people's hands and actually had opinions on them. I'm going to start off playing a 15 minute 200nl session and reviewing it here. Then hopefully a sweat from dodgeball, make some leggo lites that Matt needs and then do the narration for a vid thats out on Monday (I recorded the footage when I was killing it so no worries there).
So yeah, update to follow in 15 minutes. Goals:
Relax!
Time on decisions.
Trust instincts.
Don't get frustrated.
Try to get a feel for each player.
____________________________________-----------------------------___________________
Lost money but played ok and felt good.
http://weaktight.com/5005478 - I never do this. I did it today 'cos he opens 80% here and is relatively 4bet happy. Luckily I remembered why I never do it.......... basically I'm a level behind here, his level and that of the 'good' 200nl regs is to know they open super wide and therefore not have super unbalanced 4bet bluffing ranges when they know people are going to be 5bet jamming as a bluff often enough. The level I should be on is 3bet fold playable postflop hands VS him a ton. Doing this I also avoid all variance, weeee.
Is about the only interesting hand actually. Plan today is to eat well, shower, and play a much longer session and see how it goes.
So yeah, update to follow in 15 minutes. Goals:
Relax!
Time on decisions.
Trust instincts.
Don't get frustrated.
Try to get a feel for each player.
____________________________________-----------------------------___________________
Lost money but played ok and felt good.
http://weaktight.com/5005478 - I never do this. I did it today 'cos he opens 80% here and is relatively 4bet happy. Luckily I remembered why I never do it.......... basically I'm a level behind here, his level and that of the 'good' 200nl regs is to know they open super wide and therefore not have super unbalanced 4bet bluffing ranges when they know people are going to be 5bet jamming as a bluff often enough. The level I should be on is 3bet fold playable postflop hands VS him a ton. Doing this I also avoid all variance, weeee.
Is about the only interesting hand actually. Plan today is to eat well, shower, and play a much longer session and see how it goes.
Monday 10 September 2012
Food for thought blog
Vegan food, obv.
I've had that 'minds gone blank, what is poker?' feeling today........ you know where you look at your cards and your opponent and see a flop and you know it's rainbow but then you have no idea what to do with this information. Or maybe you can consciously recall some elements of poker strategy but none of it seems to translate into a coherent plan or feed into any instinctive decision making.
Lack of talking about poker/ writing about poker/ making vids about poker likely has much to do with it. Leggo have been after me for a vid for ages now and tomorrow I'm going to do it. I also need to keep this much more updated with random strategy stuff to keep me in practice.
I did feel much more in tune the last session to be fair though. I've become aware of players adjusting to my constant flop raises..... FlyingSmile, KHK and some others have high raw cbet numbers but just CF every flop. Obviously my own adjustment has to be to lower my own raising frequencies VS those players specifically, and arguably I could look to flat wider PF. PFs boring though, not going to talk about it much.
Actually now I'm on PF, 3betting just doesn't seem to work at 2-5 Zoom. Well maybe it does, but it involves a lot of 3bet/5betting, and having the 5bet bluff strategy in place is bad for lots of reasons. What is still making me much happier is just flatting everything strong and then being annoying as possible postflop with flop and turn raises and overbets and underbets and whatever tools are at my disposal to rob people of money.
I've been finding lots of spots to use the turn PSR against people, often shortstackers but also 100bbs where the pot gets big. The kind of PSR I'm talking about is where the pot is $150 or something and villain has $250 behind. Depending on what result we're looking for, we can bet $48 and make it look like we're after max FE for the river and probably just be lightish for value, or we can go $108 and villain hates life cos it's just like we're never bet folding but with a weakish top pair or 2nd pair hand the $100 overlay that goes in only when they're behind makes life hell for them and depending on their level people find folds a lot.
Anyway I just wrote this to get some of my thoughts on paper and get back into the swing of strategy blogging and hopefully make my mind tick over a bit.
dan
I've had that 'minds gone blank, what is poker?' feeling today........ you know where you look at your cards and your opponent and see a flop and you know it's rainbow but then you have no idea what to do with this information. Or maybe you can consciously recall some elements of poker strategy but none of it seems to translate into a coherent plan or feed into any instinctive decision making.
Lack of talking about poker/ writing about poker/ making vids about poker likely has much to do with it. Leggo have been after me for a vid for ages now and tomorrow I'm going to do it. I also need to keep this much more updated with random strategy stuff to keep me in practice.
I did feel much more in tune the last session to be fair though. I've become aware of players adjusting to my constant flop raises..... FlyingSmile, KHK and some others have high raw cbet numbers but just CF every flop. Obviously my own adjustment has to be to lower my own raising frequencies VS those players specifically, and arguably I could look to flat wider PF. PFs boring though, not going to talk about it much.
Actually now I'm on PF, 3betting just doesn't seem to work at 2-5 Zoom. Well maybe it does, but it involves a lot of 3bet/5betting, and having the 5bet bluff strategy in place is bad for lots of reasons. What is still making me much happier is just flatting everything strong and then being annoying as possible postflop with flop and turn raises and overbets and underbets and whatever tools are at my disposal to rob people of money.
I've been finding lots of spots to use the turn PSR against people, often shortstackers but also 100bbs where the pot gets big. The kind of PSR I'm talking about is where the pot is $150 or something and villain has $250 behind. Depending on what result we're looking for, we can bet $48 and make it look like we're after max FE for the river and probably just be lightish for value, or we can go $108 and villain hates life cos it's just like we're never bet folding but with a weakish top pair or 2nd pair hand the $100 overlay that goes in only when they're behind makes life hell for them and depending on their level people find folds a lot.
Anyway I just wrote this to get some of my thoughts on paper and get back into the swing of strategy blogging and hopefully make my mind tick over a bit.
dan
Quick goals blog
................
Been struggling the past 3 days or so, I've been feeling terrible (physically), lethargic, energyless, unable to concentrate etc. Along with a few other symptoms I feel like there's definitely something wrong, but on the other hand I realised that with all my life upheaval my diet's been really bad of late. So starting tonight I'm sorting that out........ it'll be at least a week before I notice the difference though.
In the meantime, I've cured today's lack of energy by having a double strength coffee and a shower. I'm actually ready to kill someone, so a few session goals to help me do that.
1) Understand the player, look at this stats and tendencies and get a picture for how he thinks. Put myself in his shoes, see what he is seeing and what exactly he's going to do with this information.
2) Trust instincts always, this means instincts >> what is standard/ acceptable. If it means, for example, folding an overpair on the flop in a 3bet pot then so be it, my instincts are 99.99% accurate!
3) Time on decisions.
4) If downswing variance happens, so be it, expect it and be happy :-)
dan
Been struggling the past 3 days or so, I've been feeling terrible (physically), lethargic, energyless, unable to concentrate etc. Along with a few other symptoms I feel like there's definitely something wrong, but on the other hand I realised that with all my life upheaval my diet's been really bad of late. So starting tonight I'm sorting that out........ it'll be at least a week before I notice the difference though.
In the meantime, I've cured today's lack of energy by having a double strength coffee and a shower. I'm actually ready to kill someone, so a few session goals to help me do that.
1) Understand the player, look at this stats and tendencies and get a picture for how he thinks. Put myself in his shoes, see what he is seeing and what exactly he's going to do with this information.
2) Trust instincts always, this means instincts >> what is standard/ acceptable. If it means, for example, folding an overpair on the flop in a 3bet pot then so be it, my instincts are 99.99% accurate!
3) Time on decisions.
4) If downswing variance happens, so be it, expect it and be happy :-)
dan
Tuesday 4 September 2012
Bad start, getting back on track
I started September with a biggish losing day at 500nl, basically played as well as I have been doing but ran bad. Since then I've been moving house and busy/ stressed with that and other stuff.
I'm supposed to have a Leggo vid out, I still haven't done it. I tried today but my brain just wasn't there, too clouded by thoughts of removal men and deposit signatures and British Gas. I tried anyway and lost 5 more BIs at 200nl in around 45 minutes............ my brain felt completely clouded and I couldn't get inside anyone's head, and got owned by 1 or 2 braindead obvious 200nl moves and felt stupid. Check overshoving flop to rep a draw with top set, calling river with a capped range VS Elusivejack when he knows I'm always calling after I check turn to cap range, etc. Easy to get one step ahead of people with a clear mind, but if it's slightly clouded then that extra level is missing and I'm a high variance break even player........
I've moved my desk to my parents where I'm staying at the moment, so I'm basically just now trying to achieve the mental state I've had the past 3 months or so where I've played excellently and won almost every day I've played. Playing for a full hour seemed beyond me today, so I'm going to take it slow......... have a shower in a sec, and then simply try to play a perfect 15 mins before reviewing the hands here. I'll do it in this blog so check back if you've only read this part............. dan
********* Hands Added *********
I played 500nl for 20 minutes, and felt OK-ish. Weirdly, all my colour notes have disappeared, as have all my Stars settings. I'm kinda glad about the colour notes though, as blanket having everyone blue as 'reg' did not help my brain automatically differentiate between them. Playing hands, I realised I really should have a better feel by now of more of the regs. I'll only get that feel by analysing more hands and writing down my thoughts on the hand and the player.
Hand 1: http://weaktight.com/4974989 - raising flop has been my standard for a month or so, but the sudden realisation that I don't actually know anything about this guy put the brakes on it. He could just be the type to snap 3bet get in QQ for example.......... and this cbet size made me think that in general it's not a bet fold, and I'd basically be left with raise folding it........ I should also expect several streets if I take this call line. Betsizes are cool to read, they so often give away the intention on the next street. Example, we have TT on J62ss and UTG+1 cbets $28 into $30 to our BTN flat, you know he's betting the next street too and we can make big flop folds or turn folds because of it.
This flop size actually got me close to that, but there's enough gray area + potential for us to bluff to still make flop a clear call. Turn As is obviously interesting, especially when he checks it. I feel like someone decent always has something like AJ/ set/ small flush here, while someone worse has the transparent QQ KK QJ KJ JT. In that sense, this hand is probably a decent indicator that villain is not terrific, though the board did change a ton on the river.
Anyway, turn, I obviously bet everything I continue with here these days 1/3 pot. I've talked about all the ins and outs before, but the jist is that it keeps my range wide and people play terribly to it. An element of soul reading their reaction to it is vital though. The CC in this spot weakens his range a decent amount, assuming villain not good. He probably couldn't resist CR a flush/ set/ 2 pair to this size.............
River, a 4flush and often an autobluff. Problem is he has ~ 6 certain high spade combos, and probably closer to 12. Taking his range as a whole though, way more than 50% of his range contains no spade. I think in his shoes it looks obvious that he should have a lot of spades though, and therefore he probably doesn't expect me to bluff or turn stuff into a bluff. I therefore bet a big amount that could make Qs or Js lay down, sorta on the level of 'its an obvious bluffcatcher spot, I bet huge, therefore I have value cos every reg always does in this spot'. He folded relatively quickly, which makes me think his turn peel was on the splashy/ bad side. Yes I bet $38 there, but I'm obv doing that with a plan and him CC something like QQ KK Jx without a spade is just calling turn to get owned on the river a lot.
Anyway I'm sticking a 'calls splashily to fold later on' note on him for now.
^ oh btw I think PF is too splashy. Maybe. Hmm, maybe not, PF is overrated anyway we can just bluff people a lot.
Hand 2: http://weaktight.com/4975054 I don't know what good regs have when they do this. I do think though that calling to lead the next street needs some exploration, if only for the simple reason it's non standard and people are bound to play badly to it in one way or another. Qfullof8s did this to me the other day and bluffed me I think off tptk..........
Those two were the only interesting hands really. Going to eat and then play another ~ 30 minute 500nl session for review.
I'm supposed to have a Leggo vid out, I still haven't done it. I tried today but my brain just wasn't there, too clouded by thoughts of removal men and deposit signatures and British Gas. I tried anyway and lost 5 more BIs at 200nl in around 45 minutes............ my brain felt completely clouded and I couldn't get inside anyone's head, and got owned by 1 or 2 braindead obvious 200nl moves and felt stupid. Check overshoving flop to rep a draw with top set, calling river with a capped range VS Elusivejack when he knows I'm always calling after I check turn to cap range, etc. Easy to get one step ahead of people with a clear mind, but if it's slightly clouded then that extra level is missing and I'm a high variance break even player........
I've moved my desk to my parents where I'm staying at the moment, so I'm basically just now trying to achieve the mental state I've had the past 3 months or so where I've played excellently and won almost every day I've played. Playing for a full hour seemed beyond me today, so I'm going to take it slow......... have a shower in a sec, and then simply try to play a perfect 15 mins before reviewing the hands here. I'll do it in this blog so check back if you've only read this part............. dan
********* Hands Added *********
I played 500nl for 20 minutes, and felt OK-ish. Weirdly, all my colour notes have disappeared, as have all my Stars settings. I'm kinda glad about the colour notes though, as blanket having everyone blue as 'reg' did not help my brain automatically differentiate between them. Playing hands, I realised I really should have a better feel by now of more of the regs. I'll only get that feel by analysing more hands and writing down my thoughts on the hand and the player.
Hand 1: http://weaktight.com/4974989 - raising flop has been my standard for a month or so, but the sudden realisation that I don't actually know anything about this guy put the brakes on it. He could just be the type to snap 3bet get in QQ for example.......... and this cbet size made me think that in general it's not a bet fold, and I'd basically be left with raise folding it........ I should also expect several streets if I take this call line. Betsizes are cool to read, they so often give away the intention on the next street. Example, we have TT on J62ss and UTG+1 cbets $28 into $30 to our BTN flat, you know he's betting the next street too and we can make big flop folds or turn folds because of it.
This flop size actually got me close to that, but there's enough gray area + potential for us to bluff to still make flop a clear call. Turn As is obviously interesting, especially when he checks it. I feel like someone decent always has something like AJ/ set/ small flush here, while someone worse has the transparent QQ KK QJ KJ JT. In that sense, this hand is probably a decent indicator that villain is not terrific, though the board did change a ton on the river.
Anyway, turn, I obviously bet everything I continue with here these days 1/3 pot. I've talked about all the ins and outs before, but the jist is that it keeps my range wide and people play terribly to it. An element of soul reading their reaction to it is vital though. The CC in this spot weakens his range a decent amount, assuming villain not good. He probably couldn't resist CR a flush/ set/ 2 pair to this size.............
River, a 4flush and often an autobluff. Problem is he has ~ 6 certain high spade combos, and probably closer to 12. Taking his range as a whole though, way more than 50% of his range contains no spade. I think in his shoes it looks obvious that he should have a lot of spades though, and therefore he probably doesn't expect me to bluff or turn stuff into a bluff. I therefore bet a big amount that could make Qs or Js lay down, sorta on the level of 'its an obvious bluffcatcher spot, I bet huge, therefore I have value cos every reg always does in this spot'. He folded relatively quickly, which makes me think his turn peel was on the splashy/ bad side. Yes I bet $38 there, but I'm obv doing that with a plan and him CC something like QQ KK Jx without a spade is just calling turn to get owned on the river a lot.
Anyway I'm sticking a 'calls splashily to fold later on' note on him for now.
^ oh btw I think PF is too splashy. Maybe. Hmm, maybe not, PF is overrated anyway we can just bluff people a lot.
Hand 2: http://weaktight.com/4975054 I don't know what good regs have when they do this. I do think though that calling to lead the next street needs some exploration, if only for the simple reason it's non standard and people are bound to play badly to it in one way or another. Qfullof8s did this to me the other day and bluffed me I think off tptk..........
Those two were the only interesting hands really. Going to eat and then play another ~ 30 minute 500nl session for review.
Friday 31 August 2012
Good Month!
Played good, ran good. Comes at a good time as I need almost every penny to do my new house up. Just got to make sure I do it again now, no resting on laurels!
Friday 3 August 2012
500nl Session 1 Review
Hand 1: http://weaktight.com/4892334 - squeezing is the absolute nuts at zoom in general, way better than a simple 3bet. Probably something about the sizing making it worse for 4bet bluffing, or the perception that with a depolarised squeezing range we'd have more hands to 5bet re-jam, I don't know. All I know is it gets a ton of folds. Here flop has to be a bet for reasons of not capping our range and getting outplayed, turn is probably more non-standard though. I've almost taken checking the turn IP out of my game completely, instead preferring to bet 1/3 with everything. This has a lot of advantages.......... you get way thinner value than you thought possible, caps ranges for river bluffs, induce spazzes, stops us getting outplayed on the river by villain leading strong and probably turning stuff into bluffs, and occasionally we get super cheap folds.
Villain above is Soda4l, not got many hands on him but potentially he's capable of big leverage folds, or liable to make bad flop peels..........
Hand 2: http://weaktight.com/4892346 - it's strange to me how it's become pervasive that we shouldn't raise flops in position very much. Seems like a lot of the cool mid-high stakes guys say that 'for our range' we're better off calling in spots like these so as to 'rep more'. For me, I think it goes against the principle of being aggressive wherever possible, particularly when people play so bad to it OOP (I'm not excluding myself from that, it's just a fact that facing a raise OOP with say 77 on Q82r you're ahead very often but nothing you can do). On dryer boards, yes we initially only represent sets, but then it just seems like if people are thinking that then the answer is not to become more passive but rather raise more depolarised, tpt2k etc.
In this spot, at 200nl, they just fold. It seems at 500nl they know you rep nothing, rebluff, and then fold. Small turn bet in this instance to keep range wide and stop us losing on the river.
Villain above is komorolo22, so clearly the type to recognise lines that rep little, but who then makes very level 1 adjustments himself to it such as 3betting a dry board. Probably the type to call down 3 streets flopped middle pair on a turn overcard, etc.
Hand 3: http://weaktight.com/4892352 - similar sort of read on villain rutenij1 then to hand 2, namely that he sees we rep very little and it's an obvious CR spot, but then takes a terrible level 1 line to combat it by 3betting and repping nothing himself when a flat would easily win him the pot. I had to bluff river for the times he picked up 9x which seemed quite likely.
Hand 4: http://weaktight.com/4892356 - another reps very little one, he's made the kind of bluff that I've been making at 200nl that usually just gets snap folds,so I can see me dimadu are on a similar level here. He's seen a board that I miss but that I'll be cbetting often, raised 1n done to get a ton of raw folds, but then had the discipline to give up.
Hand 5: http://weaktight.com/4892363 - hand VS kid_canada6 , not sure I can find a fold after I underbet turn on a board with 2 flushdraws.......... don't know enough about this guy though, from reputation he's an extreme bumhunter and maybe not the type to ever be bluffing here on the river or turning pairs into bluffs. I'll have to pay more attention....... interesting he just flatted the flop though, he'd be much better checkraising this and all broadways GSs in my opinion.
Hand 6: http://weaktight.com/4892370 - initially in retrospect thought this was ambitious after he cbets into 2 people, but he's going to be cbetting any pair, I block 64, and his flop flat shows weakness. I imagine I got bluffed sometimes on the turn by a flushdraw. Villain is tomsOn and again I'll have to keep an eye on him.
Villain above is Soda4l, not got many hands on him but potentially he's capable of big leverage folds, or liable to make bad flop peels..........
Hand 2: http://weaktight.com/4892346 - it's strange to me how it's become pervasive that we shouldn't raise flops in position very much. Seems like a lot of the cool mid-high stakes guys say that 'for our range' we're better off calling in spots like these so as to 'rep more'. For me, I think it goes against the principle of being aggressive wherever possible, particularly when people play so bad to it OOP (I'm not excluding myself from that, it's just a fact that facing a raise OOP with say 77 on Q82r you're ahead very often but nothing you can do). On dryer boards, yes we initially only represent sets, but then it just seems like if people are thinking that then the answer is not to become more passive but rather raise more depolarised, tpt2k etc.
In this spot, at 200nl, they just fold. It seems at 500nl they know you rep nothing, rebluff, and then fold. Small turn bet in this instance to keep range wide and stop us losing on the river.
Villain above is komorolo22, so clearly the type to recognise lines that rep little, but who then makes very level 1 adjustments himself to it such as 3betting a dry board. Probably the type to call down 3 streets flopped middle pair on a turn overcard, etc.
Hand 3: http://weaktight.com/4892352 - similar sort of read on villain rutenij1 then to hand 2, namely that he sees we rep very little and it's an obvious CR spot, but then takes a terrible level 1 line to combat it by 3betting and repping nothing himself when a flat would easily win him the pot. I had to bluff river for the times he picked up 9x which seemed quite likely.
Hand 4: http://weaktight.com/4892356 - another reps very little one, he's made the kind of bluff that I've been making at 200nl that usually just gets snap folds,so I can see me dimadu are on a similar level here. He's seen a board that I miss but that I'll be cbetting often, raised 1n done to get a ton of raw folds, but then had the discipline to give up.
Hand 5: http://weaktight.com/4892363 - hand VS kid_canada6 , not sure I can find a fold after I underbet turn on a board with 2 flushdraws.......... don't know enough about this guy though, from reputation he's an extreme bumhunter and maybe not the type to ever be bluffing here on the river or turning pairs into bluffs. I'll have to pay more attention....... interesting he just flatted the flop though, he'd be much better checkraising this and all broadways GSs in my opinion.
Hand 6: http://weaktight.com/4892370 - initially in retrospect thought this was ambitious after he cbets into 2 people, but he's going to be cbetting any pair, I block 64, and his flop flat shows weakness. I imagine I got bluffed sometimes on the turn by a flushdraw. Villain is tomsOn and again I'll have to keep an eye on him.
Thursday 2 August 2012
500nl
I was feeling a bit fed up with 200nl today. Stange, as it's not like I have a stellar winrate there and can say I've solved it, but I just feel sorta 'not stretched' there if you know what I mean. The player pool is so big it's hard to get real insight into how individuals play, and I'm almost just left with a set of rules that the average 200nl player adheres to. Something like; never rebluffs, always fires 2 and not 3, river bets are polarised, yada yada. I dunno, I just didn't feel inspired to grind another month where a really good effort might net me $8k + bonuses.
So I decided to play 500nl with some caveats. Actually before I continue the big reason for moving to 500nl is that the rake in bb/100 is 80% higher at 200nl than 500nl, so even with a much worse winrate I'd be doing better.
I was speaking to Adam001 and Jude today, and they were discussing 500nl opponents. What struck me is how they described players in terms of 'He's the type of player to do xyz' and 'He's got good psychology and thinks about poker in terms of this and that'. Because neither use HUDs, they're much more able to holistically consider a player's tendencies and approach to poker, as opposed to '3bets wide from CO, folds a lot to 4bets', ie the raw numbers stuff. I think the difference between the two modes of thinking is the difference between grinding out a small winrate while making no big 'numbers' mistakes, and owning people's souls.
That last sentence might need backing up a little. Well, when I was successful I used very little HUD, and my analysis on opponents was exactly along the same lines as theirs. Example paragraphs from my 2009 blog:
'Don't Reward The Nit: 3/10 - A new one this, it's something I used to concentrate on and need to get back. Essentially, I make money off nits by a) stealing pots and their blinds, and b) not ever paying them off. They don't have to be pf nits, some nits play like 24/21.... but essentially postflop they're just weak weak scared types. Yellodawg on Cereus is the High Priest of these types of player, and I need to stop things like this...'
'Hero wins $832.50 ( won +$417.50 )
GOGATORS86 lost -$415
Maybe a standard call dunno, but seemed really tough at the time as he'd been losing several pots, and I thought he'd be on the level where he 'knew' that I'd think he'd start bluffing. I give too much or too little credit obviously...'
So I decided to play 500nl with some caveats. Actually before I continue the big reason for moving to 500nl is that the rake in bb/100 is 80% higher at 200nl than 500nl, so even with a much worse winrate I'd be doing better.
I was speaking to Adam001 and Jude today, and they were discussing 500nl opponents. What struck me is how they described players in terms of 'He's the type of player to do xyz' and 'He's got good psychology and thinks about poker in terms of this and that'. Because neither use HUDs, they're much more able to holistically consider a player's tendencies and approach to poker, as opposed to '3bets wide from CO, folds a lot to 4bets', ie the raw numbers stuff. I think the difference between the two modes of thinking is the difference between grinding out a small winrate while making no big 'numbers' mistakes, and owning people's souls.
That last sentence might need backing up a little. Well, when I was successful I used very little HUD, and my analysis on opponents was exactly along the same lines as theirs. Example paragraphs from my 2009 blog:
'Don't Reward The Nit: 3/10 - A new one this, it's something I used to concentrate on and need to get back. Essentially, I make money off nits by a) stealing pots and their blinds, and b) not ever paying them off. They don't have to be pf nits, some nits play like 24/21.... but essentially postflop they're just weak weak scared types. Yellodawg on Cereus is the High Priest of these types of player, and I need to stop things like this...'
'Hero wins $832.50 ( won +$417.50 )
GOGATORS86 lost -$415
Maybe a standard call dunno, but seemed really tough at the time as he'd been losing several pots, and I thought he'd be on the level where he 'knew' that I'd think he'd start bluffing. I give too much or too little credit obviously...'
So nothing major here obviously, I could trawl through and find better examples but it shows my thinking was geared towards a lot more towards more intangible things than raw vacuum-ous numbers. So with a smaller player pool, I feel I can start reviewing hands every session with the express intention of getting to know the regs there very well and get inside their heads more.
First session was interesting anyway, will review all the hands shortly, and am considering setting up a separate 'regs' blog that I can start working on right away................
Wednesday 1 August 2012
July, Going Forward, Flopzilla Hand
July is the in the bag. As you can see I suffered some all in pain....... but 23 BIs is not a story remotely worth telling, these things happen. The graph is interesting, lost my head for first 10k hands and was stuck $6k, and that was before I started running bad in all-in pots. So the turnaround has been a $12k one and I'm feeling quite confident.
Playing with flopzilla has just opened my eyes to how little people hit boards in certain spots, and the vacuum-ish nature of Zoom has helped in that I've just been attacking every spot where, for example, someone has less than top pair very often. My non-showdown winnings are $3k in the past 17k hands and I feel this means I'm doing something right.
Where some leaks have crept in is pure overconfidence. Extremely light peels preflop, OOP to a 4bet with j8s for example that are just unnecessary and going to be punished without playing perfectly. And although I rate my postflop game the highest it's been for a while at the moment, I obviously play far from perfectly when I flop top pair in such scenarios.
So goal last few days has been to really concentrate on being super solid PF, but then still being a monkey post. I have a list of 8 goals on my desktop which I can't be bothered to copy and paste. Oh ok then I will.........
Success in August!
1) Play 1 hour max.
2) Solid PF, yes you are good postflop, but small PF mistakes lead to huge post mistakes.
3) Board texture/ Non SD approach to poker
4) Expectations- Expect there to be variance including sometimes from bad play! If we go down a few BIs, take a small break.
5) Hugely important that there's no blowouts, quit early if not feeling it.
6) Avoid big reverse equity spots.
7) PF VS Postflop edge!
8) Water, vitamins, no caffeine
I'm trying to Flopzilla analyse a hand after every session as well, even a small pathetic one like this:
$1/$2 No Limit Holdem • 6 Players • PokerStars
Generated by weaktight.com.
| UTG | hero | $224.74 | |
| UTG+1 | madhatterrrr | $204 | |
| CO | HoldemKy5 | $278.80 | |
| BTN | Starw!nd | $173.39 | |
| SB | Golfdish | $571.91 | |
| BB | NCSU2012 | $324.86 | |
- Pre-Flop ($3, 6 players)Hero is UTG
hero raises to $4.50, 2 folds, Starw!nd calls $4.50, 2 folds
- Flop ($12, 2 players)
-
hero bets $8.59
- Final Pot: $12
I basically am not certain whether villain continues enough on this board to make this a bad 1n done cbet. The board looks scary at first glance, but then people tend to play suited cards and it's >> 3/4 likely that those are not going to be spades. Villain flats 8% on the button, but extrapolating that it'll be tighter VS UTG I've decided to give him ~ 6%, excluding obvious nutted hands.
Hmm, pretty emphatic! He's not folding 78% of the time, meaning I'm burning money.
Weakening the flatting range though makes it ok.........
So VS a more standard/ loose/ bad flatting range including all PPs then we show a profit in a vacuum cbetting here. Should've put KQo in actually so more like 48%, so not great but ok. Moral of the story, give up a lot on boards with high cards to tight cold callers.
dan
Monday 23 July 2012
Flopzilla Blog 1
I bought Flopzilla lately and have been messing around with it. Can't believe it's taken me this long actually, it's actually superbly useful and I'm going to use this as the basis for my 'outside playing time' work until I learn to use CREV better (I'll do that when wtflop.com finally opens). By the wtflop.com is being run by D2themfi and is basically offering training in crEV and using it to get better.
So anyway, Flopzilla. I'll start posting more detailed simulations etc on here, but for now here's stuff I've realised/ learned/ had cemented.
1) People miss unconnected boards a lot! Sounds obvious, but I think probably I've been way too concerned with how a board hits my perceived range over how a board just misses theirs. Example,
say we flat OTB VS a tight 15.8% UTG range. 2 flops, one is 652cc, another is k62cc. We're assuming villain cbets 100% because most simply do on these boards from these positions. We're assuming that if we play back villain will attempt to re-play back with any gutshot +.
In the past, I'd probably be more likely to play back on the 652 than the k62. Reason is I can 'rep more' yada yada, but honestly I think at 200nl, and (Zoom 200nl in particular where everything is played so much more in a vacuum) the fact that the 652cc allows him to play back 53% of the time and and the K62cc 37% of the time is worth so much more.
Sticking with the k62cc board, the 37% assumes that villain folds 77-QQ on the flop. If he flats TT-QQ and folds the rest, his overall fold is around 50%, but then given only ~ 20% of his continuing range after the flop is a flushdraw or set that won't fold 3flushes, we can still expect a lot of folds on future streets.
2) Flatting 3bets, middling suited connectors and 1 gappers connect more than I realised.
Say we raise these hands from CO, 13% SB 3bet us. I've been folding of late probably a lot more than I should. Maybe I've ran insanely badly at connecting, but when I flat 86s I feel like I'm burning money 'cos the flop is always QQJr or whatever. Instinctively, I only need at least 1 pair or a GS to play back, and this is saying I get it 56% of the time. Importantly, on many of the the kind of boards where I make a GS+, our opponent can only continue between 36% and 46% of the time. So in a vaccum VS a wide cbettor a strategy of flatting OESD+ and raising the weaker parts of our range should be printing money even without our equity.
Anyway, sure I've made a lot of mistakes, but I do think if I keep looking at this stuff and writing about it then something will go in. Like, we all know that our pocket pairs make sets ~ 1 in 8.5 times. We know QQ is a very slight favourite over AK preflop. It's probably inexcusable that I don't know, for example, on exactly what % of flops I can continue if I flat 87s in the BB. I want to get to that stage basically..............
So anyway, Flopzilla. I'll start posting more detailed simulations etc on here, but for now here's stuff I've realised/ learned/ had cemented.
1) People miss unconnected boards a lot! Sounds obvious, but I think probably I've been way too concerned with how a board hits my perceived range over how a board just misses theirs. Example,
say we flat OTB VS a tight 15.8% UTG range. 2 flops, one is 652cc, another is k62cc. We're assuming villain cbets 100% because most simply do on these boards from these positions. We're assuming that if we play back villain will attempt to re-play back with any gutshot +.
In the past, I'd probably be more likely to play back on the 652 than the k62. Reason is I can 'rep more' yada yada, but honestly I think at 200nl, and (Zoom 200nl in particular where everything is played so much more in a vacuum) the fact that the 652cc allows him to play back 53% of the time and and the K62cc 37% of the time is worth so much more.
Sticking with the k62cc board, the 37% assumes that villain folds 77-QQ on the flop. If he flats TT-QQ and folds the rest, his overall fold is around 50%, but then given only ~ 20% of his continuing range after the flop is a flushdraw or set that won't fold 3flushes, we can still expect a lot of folds on future streets.
2) Flatting 3bets, middling suited connectors and 1 gappers connect more than I realised.
Say we raise these hands from CO, 13% SB 3bet us. I've been folding of late probably a lot more than I should. Maybe I've ran insanely badly at connecting, but when I flat 86s I feel like I'm burning money 'cos the flop is always QQJr or whatever. Instinctively, I only need at least 1 pair or a GS to play back, and this is saying I get it 56% of the time. Importantly, on many of the the kind of boards where I make a GS+, our opponent can only continue between 36% and 46% of the time. So in a vaccum VS a wide cbettor a strategy of flatting OESD+ and raising the weaker parts of our range should be printing money even without our equity.
Anyway, sure I've made a lot of mistakes, but I do think if I keep looking at this stuff and writing about it then something will go in. Like, we all know that our pocket pairs make sets ~ 1 in 8.5 times. We know QQ is a very slight favourite over AK preflop. It's probably inexcusable that I don't know, for example, on exactly what % of flops I can continue if I flat 87s in the BB. I want to get to that stage basically..............
Tuesday 26 June 2012
Session Review........ (3, is it?)
I've spent the last 3 days winning ~$6k at 200nl, which is a nice shot in the arm. Nicely coincided with changing virtually everything about my game, thus giving me the illusion that the sickest heater in recent memory is actually a feat of enormous skill. No matter, confidence is back, now I just need to keep control of that beast and put it to good use.
All the fun hands from the past two days...........
http://weaktight.com/4802690 - my strategy at the moment is to call down when people make no sense for the most part, and then adjust based on their showdown. There's just enough pure bad players around that the usual thing of 'rep nothing = something' I think applies less than I thought. Basically I'm not going to be upset if my instincts are screaming bluff, I make a light calldown, and they have top set. What is he doing, anyone?
http://weaktight.com/4802749 - the best way to get on top of a hand and one level ahead is simply to ask 'what does he expect me to do'. I'd have found a fold here in the past because it makes so little sense it surely means he has something. Looking at it from 'what does he expect' though, clearly he sees my range is wide, expects me to peel once with all Ax broadways and some random floats, and then fold turn on this betsize. If a different player took the same line it might be different conclusion I'd reach in terms of the 'what does he expect' but knowing this guy as an average to good 200nl reg I think my conclusions are sound. Annoying to stick in an overlay of money that when called we're behind, but he can have some random stuff to call worse enough here probably.
http://weaktight.com/4802697 - ramp up the aggression a bit.......... and people adjust by doing this.
http://weaktight.com/4802698 - I seem to be barreling 4 and 5bet pots most hands at the moment. Here he made a situationally good call, and I guess I'm unbalanced with my turn sizing in that nuts are certainly going smaller. Seems ridic to bet like $65 and call it off but I suppose it's just overall more effective sometimes.
http://weaktight.com/4802718 - villain is a fish. I'm really wedded to bluffing these small bets at the moment, like in 4bet pots where they bet 1/4 pot you just get such an absurd price on a small raise. Here this fish would jam anything good, so felt I could raise small, get some folds, but then find a way to make any flats fold on turn or river. K turn kinda interesting, not a pure protection jam as he turns a K with KT/ KQ as well as some suited Jx and 8x picking up diamonds.
http://weaktight.com/4802736 - thats a big fucking raise! This guy is far from the god of anything, and reps exactly nothing when he just flats my bets with stacks this deep. Don't get me wrong, VS someone better I'd assume they'd be more balanced with sets etc and it gets more difficult, but his raise size so polarises himself it even kinda blows out A3
http://weaktight.com/4802741 - similarish spot. The deciding factor on the call was that virtually all suited spades cbet the flop, Jxss being the thin exception...... while the backdoor flush coming in and my biggish river bet probably dissuades 6x from raising too.
http://weaktight.com/4802765 - fail VS a fish. A for effort though!
http://weaktight.com/4802767 - very ambitious from these positions.
dan
All the fun hands from the past two days...........
http://weaktight.com/4802690 - my strategy at the moment is to call down when people make no sense for the most part, and then adjust based on their showdown. There's just enough pure bad players around that the usual thing of 'rep nothing = something' I think applies less than I thought. Basically I'm not going to be upset if my instincts are screaming bluff, I make a light calldown, and they have top set. What is he doing, anyone?
http://weaktight.com/4802749 - the best way to get on top of a hand and one level ahead is simply to ask 'what does he expect me to do'. I'd have found a fold here in the past because it makes so little sense it surely means he has something. Looking at it from 'what does he expect' though, clearly he sees my range is wide, expects me to peel once with all Ax broadways and some random floats, and then fold turn on this betsize. If a different player took the same line it might be different conclusion I'd reach in terms of the 'what does he expect' but knowing this guy as an average to good 200nl reg I think my conclusions are sound. Annoying to stick in an overlay of money that when called we're behind, but he can have some random stuff to call worse enough here probably.
http://weaktight.com/4802697 - ramp up the aggression a bit.......... and people adjust by doing this.
http://weaktight.com/4802698 - I seem to be barreling 4 and 5bet pots most hands at the moment. Here he made a situationally good call, and I guess I'm unbalanced with my turn sizing in that nuts are certainly going smaller. Seems ridic to bet like $65 and call it off but I suppose it's just overall more effective sometimes.
http://weaktight.com/4802718 - villain is a fish. I'm really wedded to bluffing these small bets at the moment, like in 4bet pots where they bet 1/4 pot you just get such an absurd price on a small raise. Here this fish would jam anything good, so felt I could raise small, get some folds, but then find a way to make any flats fold on turn or river. K turn kinda interesting, not a pure protection jam as he turns a K with KT/ KQ as well as some suited Jx and 8x picking up diamonds.
http://weaktight.com/4802736 - thats a big fucking raise! This guy is far from the god of anything, and reps exactly nothing when he just flats my bets with stacks this deep. Don't get me wrong, VS someone better I'd assume they'd be more balanced with sets etc and it gets more difficult, but his raise size so polarises himself it even kinda blows out A3
http://weaktight.com/4802741 - similarish spot. The deciding factor on the call was that virtually all suited spades cbet the flop, Jxss being the thin exception...... while the backdoor flush coming in and my biggish river bet probably dissuades 6x from raising too.
http://weaktight.com/4802765 - fail VS a fish. A for effort though!
http://weaktight.com/4802767 - very ambitious from these positions.
dan
Monday 25 June 2012
Cool Hands
Evolution has almost become revolution the past week or so. I've gone from being afraid to get JJ in PF to having the attitude of '4bet, win tons of dead money, call it off, be behind sometimes whatever, at least encourage future spazzes through pure PF aggression'.
The result has been that, actually, I am winning a ton of dead money, while only now realising how many spaz shoves with A9o abound. So yeah I'm just 3betting loads more, unafraid to stick money in, seizing the initiative and uncapping my range postflop in the process.
Postflop I'm playing more....... dare I say it, Aejones-like. Splashing around a little more, going with my instincts, trying to ascertain the level of my opponent and getting one ahead of it. Poker's more interesting this way, but we'll see how it pans out in terms of results...... in the meantime it leads to more interesting hands.
http://weaktight.com/4797957 - this guy has a 4bet strategy similar to mine, in that he 4bets bluffs depolarised with playable hands. Like, all his range here is suited broadways so I was gonna snap river. His actual check might make that bad, but I don't strictly subscribe to that view. He thought for a while, so on another day I'm sure he sticks it in.
http://weaktight.com/4797961 - squeezing over a fish, really wide range, and I think he shoves QQ+ over this 4bet size. I don't fold anything out on the turn but the pot is too big to cc turn, too many horrible rivers and he probably doesn't bluff again anyway.
http://weaktight.com/4797967 - Irishman doesn't half own my soul. Not in any tangible way except he always folds when I have the nuts and always stations when I don't. I'm certain I'm balanced VS him, it's my no1 consideration in every pot I play with him but still he presses the right button. Superuser. Having said that I should probably go smaller and shove river with most of my range, rep a QQ that doesn't want to check, etc. PF was a little cool, I suppose. Up against a shorty Irishman is gonna 3bet very depolarised for value there and also have pure bluffs.
http://weaktight.com/4797973 - situationally punished by obsession with balance. This guy is just tricky, and with JJ KK AA I face a horrible turn spot. So I check KQ and hopefully he bluffs some hands, alas he had KK but there's a chance he finds a fold actually.
http://weaktight.com/4797983 - annoying spot, but alarm bells rang hard on the flop overcall....... I called flop because I felt the middle guy might raise to rep Jx himself. River flush left me not beating too many hands, if any.
http://weaktight.com/4797984 - I would probably have folded this a week ago
http://weaktight.com/4797989 - 98% sb open, 90% cbet, so I feel bluffing almost any cards would be mandatory. This way stops him 3bet shoving the flop or whatever. I honestly feel his range on the river is still ~ 98% but calling a hand that loses to some bluffs sucks.
http://weaktight.com/4797998 - another bluff.
With playing looser, it's more important than ever I don't play when not mentally 100%. If you have, say, 3betting AQo to 5bet it potentially in your gameplan, then with a little tiredness you can find any shit excuse to do so.
dan
The result has been that, actually, I am winning a ton of dead money, while only now realising how many spaz shoves with A9o abound. So yeah I'm just 3betting loads more, unafraid to stick money in, seizing the initiative and uncapping my range postflop in the process.
Postflop I'm playing more....... dare I say it, Aejones-like. Splashing around a little more, going with my instincts, trying to ascertain the level of my opponent and getting one ahead of it. Poker's more interesting this way, but we'll see how it pans out in terms of results...... in the meantime it leads to more interesting hands.
http://weaktight.com/4797957 - this guy has a 4bet strategy similar to mine, in that he 4bets bluffs depolarised with playable hands. Like, all his range here is suited broadways so I was gonna snap river. His actual check might make that bad, but I don't strictly subscribe to that view. He thought for a while, so on another day I'm sure he sticks it in.
http://weaktight.com/4797961 - squeezing over a fish, really wide range, and I think he shoves QQ+ over this 4bet size. I don't fold anything out on the turn but the pot is too big to cc turn, too many horrible rivers and he probably doesn't bluff again anyway.
http://weaktight.com/4797967 - Irishman doesn't half own my soul. Not in any tangible way except he always folds when I have the nuts and always stations when I don't. I'm certain I'm balanced VS him, it's my no1 consideration in every pot I play with him but still he presses the right button. Superuser. Having said that I should probably go smaller and shove river with most of my range, rep a QQ that doesn't want to check, etc. PF was a little cool, I suppose. Up against a shorty Irishman is gonna 3bet very depolarised for value there and also have pure bluffs.
http://weaktight.com/4797973 - situationally punished by obsession with balance. This guy is just tricky, and with JJ KK AA I face a horrible turn spot. So I check KQ and hopefully he bluffs some hands, alas he had KK but there's a chance he finds a fold actually.
http://weaktight.com/4797983 - annoying spot, but alarm bells rang hard on the flop overcall....... I called flop because I felt the middle guy might raise to rep Jx himself. River flush left me not beating too many hands, if any.
http://weaktight.com/4797984 - I would probably have folded this a week ago
http://weaktight.com/4797989 - 98% sb open, 90% cbet, so I feel bluffing almost any cards would be mandatory. This way stops him 3bet shoving the flop or whatever. I honestly feel his range on the river is still ~ 98% but calling a hand that loses to some bluffs sucks.
http://weaktight.com/4797998 - another bluff.
With playing looser, it's more important than ever I don't play when not mentally 100%. If you have, say, 3betting AQo to 5bet it potentially in your gameplan, then with a little tiredness you can find any shit excuse to do so.
dan
Saturday 23 June 2012
Session Review 1
Oops, well that didn't work out. Just one of those sessions I think, 30% WSD while playing 18/16 etc, but it's crazy how every losing session has to be 5BIs at the moment. To the hands........
http://weaktight.com/4791651 - wide 3bettor....... with value I think it's better to 4bet to a larger amount IP, just encourages more bluff shoves. Hate to fold after putting 19bbs in though, but I guess I can't have it both ways. Probably some strategy like: small 4bet with AA/KK, small with playable bluffs, bigger with unplayable bluffs and AK.
http://weaktight.com/4791654 - 40/34 fish. He'd opened tons, and I just weighted his weird limp towards slowplayed AA KK type stuff, especially as the hand played out. He was fishy enough to shove river for value VS those hands, and definitely all 2 pairs which are in his range if 65s is. Actually that last sentence I'm not certain of, which is a problem. I think this should've been a blocker bet spot, like bet 1/4 fold. $100 mistake or so.......
http://weaktight.com/4791659 - fish
http://weaktight.com/4791661 - terrible flop sizing on my part (and I actually thought it through, god knows how I got to this turn spot). On the plus side his turn range is weaker than if I'd bet bigger on the flop, but I shouldn't have placed myself in a spot where I'm jamming close to 1.6x where I doubt I'm particularly balanced. Probably am in his eyes though.
http://weaktight.com/4791668 - reg. 39% CO open range here, 4bet % of 20% so I'm sure this is fine. More importantly, it's better than flatting and folding most flops or turns and just increases my overall aggression which when people finally catch on how I've changed PF will have positive implications for getting value from bigger hands, etc.
http://weaktight.com/4791672 - opens 29% and doesnt fold to 3bets, a passive fish basically. 3bet is fine I think, isolating a fish VS an essential 29% flatting range just can't be bad. I shoulda folded turn to this size though, reverse equity all day and I need to be soul reading these spots better as well as not building massive pots where he's going to bet river a lot and we're forced to make folds or terri-calls.
Anyway, I was much happier with how I played and I just need to persevere and hopefully it'll turn around. Going to play another session now, big hands to follow.
Need a turnaround ?
I'm on a bit of a losing cycle, so I need to turn that around. Luckily, I have tried and tested methods for doing just that, hence the blog.
When I keep losing, it's usually because of some leak in my mental game. I've been trying to get in 5k hands a day this month, but that volume has come at the cost of not always (or not ever given the lack of sleep) playing my A game. My A game means I actually agonise over each decision, time on it, and then actually press the corresponding button. When I'm in the habit of not playing my A game, I often don't even notice.
Well, now I have noticed, and one of the best ways to get it back is to post every big hand, every session, here for evaluation. So, evaluate the hands, but also evaluate the technical and mental session goals, which are as follows:
Mental:
1) Play 1 hour max.
2) Time on every decision in a big pot, read through the mental goals before committing to a decision.
3) Have a narrative for every losing hand 'good that variance exists, yada yada'
4) Have a 'video' narrative in my head as I play.
Technical:
I've done a lot of technical work lately and made a fair few changes. I'll go through these another time, but suffice:
1) Be an animal on the front foot, a huge nit on the back foot.
2) Cbet way less OOP.
3) 3bet blinds a lot more.
4) Attack weak ranges, and escape from strong ones.
5) Stay exploito-balanced.
So I'm going to play an hour now and then review the hands. Probably, I need to drop my 5k hands a day goal and just concentrate on crushing. Possibly, my winrate playing only 2k of excellent hands a day is 2.5x better than the 3bb/100 goal I've set myself playing 5k hands. We'll see eventually..........
Ok review to follow
When I keep losing, it's usually because of some leak in my mental game. I've been trying to get in 5k hands a day this month, but that volume has come at the cost of not always (or not ever given the lack of sleep) playing my A game. My A game means I actually agonise over each decision, time on it, and then actually press the corresponding button. When I'm in the habit of not playing my A game, I often don't even notice.
Well, now I have noticed, and one of the best ways to get it back is to post every big hand, every session, here for evaluation. So, evaluate the hands, but also evaluate the technical and mental session goals, which are as follows:
Mental:
1) Play 1 hour max.
2) Time on every decision in a big pot, read through the mental goals before committing to a decision.
3) Have a narrative for every losing hand 'good that variance exists, yada yada'
4) Have a 'video' narrative in my head as I play.
Technical:
I've done a lot of technical work lately and made a fair few changes. I'll go through these another time, but suffice:
1) Be an animal on the front foot, a huge nit on the back foot.
2) Cbet way less OOP.
3) 3bet blinds a lot more.
4) Attack weak ranges, and escape from strong ones.
5) Stay exploito-balanced.
So I'm going to play an hour now and then review the hands. Probably, I need to drop my 5k hands a day goal and just concentrate on crushing. Possibly, my winrate playing only 2k of excellent hands a day is 2.5x better than the 3bb/100 goal I've set myself playing 5k hands. We'll see eventually..........
Ok review to follow
Saturday 26 May 2012
Getting back into good habits........
Update! I was sailing along nicely at 200nl Zoom. My BR hit $25k so I took a shot at 500nl zoom. I played terribad and lost ~$9k or something, but was basically completely overadjusting. I made back $6k of it, and then decided to go back to stars.fr to complete the $5k bonus I've had swimming around there for a while.
I won $2.5k really quick, but then ran and played bad and ended up stuck $3k on there or something. I lost patience with getting the bonus and ended up taking ~ $4k of it and took the rest as a 500 Euro tourny ticket that I'm going to play a week on Sunday.
So after withdrawals etc and the downswing my BR was around $17k. Decided to go back to Zoom 200nl for a month, hopefully cane it some more and look to have $30k in a month or so's time.
Now stars.fr plays quite differently to zoom stars.com, and some bad habits have crept in. Well, must have crept in, as I lost $2k today and my stats were completely different to the $17k or so I'd won on there so far.
A quick glace at the stats shows 18% CO 3bet. That should not be so high. Also cold calling way too much again....... I decided a while ago that cold calling sucks in general.
I also made some insane 'unbalanced' bluffs. By unbalanced, I mean that I didn't randomise the bluff based on anything and essentially my bluffing frequency in those spots was theoretically through the roof. Some spots are so bluffable you might say ok I'm bluffing top 75% of hands that missed, some spots seem unbluffable but you should still have some bluffs in there relative to how bad the bluff at first glance seems, preferably randomised again by your hole cards. Anyway, my frequencies were not very well randomised this session and I must sort that out.
General thoughts of balance and my ranges did not enter my head much at all and again this is inexcusable.
So anyway, getting into back into the habit of winning is something I have to do ASAP. So I'm going to play a session now with the aim of ironing out the above leaks, and probably looking to bank the win if I get decently ahead.
Goals:
Randomise correctly
Don't CC much
Balance VS good players, or in confusing spots
Hope everyone is well........ dan
I won $2.5k really quick, but then ran and played bad and ended up stuck $3k on there or something. I lost patience with getting the bonus and ended up taking ~ $4k of it and took the rest as a 500 Euro tourny ticket that I'm going to play a week on Sunday.
So after withdrawals etc and the downswing my BR was around $17k. Decided to go back to Zoom 200nl for a month, hopefully cane it some more and look to have $30k in a month or so's time.
Now stars.fr plays quite differently to zoom stars.com, and some bad habits have crept in. Well, must have crept in, as I lost $2k today and my stats were completely different to the $17k or so I'd won on there so far.
A quick glace at the stats shows 18% CO 3bet. That should not be so high. Also cold calling way too much again....... I decided a while ago that cold calling sucks in general.
I also made some insane 'unbalanced' bluffs. By unbalanced, I mean that I didn't randomise the bluff based on anything and essentially my bluffing frequency in those spots was theoretically through the roof. Some spots are so bluffable you might say ok I'm bluffing top 75% of hands that missed, some spots seem unbluffable but you should still have some bluffs in there relative to how bad the bluff at first glance seems, preferably randomised again by your hole cards. Anyway, my frequencies were not very well randomised this session and I must sort that out.
General thoughts of balance and my ranges did not enter my head much at all and again this is inexcusable.
So anyway, getting into back into the habit of winning is something I have to do ASAP. So I'm going to play a session now with the aim of ironing out the above leaks, and probably looking to bank the win if I get decently ahead.
Goals:
Randomise correctly
Don't CC much
Balance VS good players, or in confusing spots
Hope everyone is well........ dan
Friday 20 April 2012
Quick Update
I've been away for the last few days in London. Played a fair amount of live poker and lost £2k or something, alas. UK live players apparently play extremely weird, I've got some hugely tilting hands that I don't even want to talk about for fear of further tilt. Suffice to a say a 90 year old man ran a 300bb bluff on me and showed, and I also incorrectly folded top pair 9 kicker to a £500 overshove into £300, on a 3flush flop followed by a call from a reg....... I fold 3way annoyed and the reg wins with top pair 6 kicker!
I've got a bit of a 200nl Zoom sample now. Good start and hopefully sustainable, people are just playing so badly specifically VS me and my ranges. I won't go into too much detail even in this blog, but suffice to say I do a lot of things completely different to what is standard at the moment. Think I've slayed a lot of online poker 'sacred cows' but again I'll wait for a bigger sample.
After losing and spending so much, and some other life bills, I still feel quite poor. My BR stands at $9k, but with a couple of pending $5k bonuses on both .com and .fr. My months always go from about 20th-20th because of bills and stuff, and so basically my month starts now. A month of solid grinding, 6k hands per day, quitting when tired and nailing the mental game. Throw in a lot of technical discussion with whoever's on skype and this time next month I hope to have a lot of money.
GL all!
I've got a bit of a 200nl Zoom sample now. Good start and hopefully sustainable, people are just playing so badly specifically VS me and my ranges. I won't go into too much detail even in this blog, but suffice to say I do a lot of things completely different to what is standard at the moment. Think I've slayed a lot of online poker 'sacred cows' but again I'll wait for a bigger sample.
After losing and spending so much, and some other life bills, I still feel quite poor. My BR stands at $9k, but with a couple of pending $5k bonuses on both .com and .fr. My months always go from about 20th-20th because of bills and stuff, and so basically my month starts now. A month of solid grinding, 6k hands per day, quitting when tired and nailing the mental game. Throw in a lot of technical discussion with whoever's on skype and this time next month I hope to have a lot of money.
GL all!
Wednesday 4 April 2012
April Plan
I've had a torrid first few days of April. Playing 400nl Euro under-rolled is definitely out now, and I need to get my focus on winning a ton at 200nl Euro for the rest of the month. So back to blogging here regularly, as I always do better when reviewing each and every session.
I need to remember the keys to getting lots of money are: technical side, and mental side. The mental side is so complex, and comprises so many different things to me. Will to win, ability to quit when not feeling it, actual willingness to press the button corresponding to what I think I should press, concentration, and always having that narrative voice in my head that ensures I think through each hand. Ability to recognise frustration for the imposter that it is, etc.
In terms of technical side, I'm reasonably happy. I do very well whenever I remember to stay balanced. I think I 'know' how to play solid and do ok at 200nl. I need to improve VS better regs though, and I'm watching a vid a day and making notes starting today. Those notes will go into a separate blog.
So... it's 3:10pm at the moment. Plan for day:
Play 200nl session now.
4.30pm: Review it in blog.
5:00pm: Watch a vid.
6:00 Pick Nic up.
6:30 Make notes on vid.
7:00 Play another session
8:15 Review it in blog
8.45 Cinema
I need to remember the keys to getting lots of money are: technical side, and mental side. The mental side is so complex, and comprises so many different things to me. Will to win, ability to quit when not feeling it, actual willingness to press the button corresponding to what I think I should press, concentration, and always having that narrative voice in my head that ensures I think through each hand. Ability to recognise frustration for the imposter that it is, etc.
In terms of technical side, I'm reasonably happy. I do very well whenever I remember to stay balanced. I think I 'know' how to play solid and do ok at 200nl. I need to improve VS better regs though, and I'm watching a vid a day and making notes starting today. Those notes will go into a separate blog.
So... it's 3:10pm at the moment. Plan for day:
Play 200nl session now.
4.30pm: Review it in blog.
5:00pm: Watch a vid.
6:00 Pick Nic up.
6:30 Make notes on vid.
7:00 Play another session
8:15 Review it in blog
8.45 Cinema
Wednesday 21 March 2012
Zoom Blog
I think I'm a full convert to Zoom. I was very sceptical about Rush, until I realised my prejudice based on the same 'nobody likes change' attitude that characterised live pros' attitude to online poker when it first came about. Being able to sit down and play without hassle, and my current balancey approach to poker suit it well. I'm getting in 1400 hands per hour (it actually shoots way up if u try to go faster by folding quicker!). So far regs seem to be spewing like mentalists too.
Some sums........
1400 hands per hour. 4 hours per day. 31 days (yeh I don't have days off) = 173600 hands per month.
This is around 70k VPPs, which X 3.5 = around 250k FPPs per month which means $4k bonus + probably $1k of EV from the VPPs ladder thing.
So $5k bonus. And a winrate of 1BB/100 = $6920 in cash winnings. So $12k months, with a conservative win-rate.
What can go wrong? Well, we'll see. I'm dedicating the rest of this month to playing 4 hours per day as per the sums. There's 10 days left so that'll be 40k hands. Interesting to see what my winrate will be at the end of that. I think by dedicating myself now, I can address problems and iron out zoom-specific concerns before the 200nl version hits, and also not be behind any curve that might exist. So yeah, I'll post results at the end of this month....
Hope everyone is well.
Some sums........
1400 hands per hour. 4 hours per day. 31 days (yeh I don't have days off) = 173600 hands per month.
This is around 70k VPPs, which X 3.5 = around 250k FPPs per month which means $4k bonus + probably $1k of EV from the VPPs ladder thing.
So $5k bonus. And a winrate of 1BB/100 = $6920 in cash winnings. So $12k months, with a conservative win-rate.
What can go wrong? Well, we'll see. I'm dedicating the rest of this month to playing 4 hours per day as per the sums. There's 10 days left so that'll be 40k hands. Interesting to see what my winrate will be at the end of that. I think by dedicating myself now, I can address problems and iron out zoom-specific concerns before the 200nl version hits, and also not be behind any curve that might exist. So yeah, I'll post results at the end of this month....
Hope everyone is well.
Tuesday 13 March 2012
Technical Musings
I'm still self banned at max of 200nl for the month. 31k hands in I'm winning at EV 6.29bb, and actual 4.68. I'm happy enough, 2/3 of the month left I'll just keep plugging away on being 100% at the mental game, making technical adjustments, and see what happens.
A couple of technical things........
First of all I'm still wedded to flatting hardly anything, and 3betting almost 100% of my 'facing a raise' range, and then flatting any 4bet with probably 70% of it. I make the 3bets really small too, like $6 to $15 or sometimes $14, occasionally $16 depending on stacksize. Getting squeezed is a huge killer, as is playing without the initiative with a capped range without playing super sick IP and probably making a ton of moves. My BTN 3bet for the month is 14%, my CO 10%, and I'm winning handsomely on each. I'll wait for a decent sample and then post some results.
Facing 3bets when we're OOP.......... there's a lot more 3betting on stars.fr than stars.com, I think. A lot of 2009 FTP style regs. Without doubt the first adjustment to make here is to open much tighter, just no argument IMO. However, hands like QJs, KJs, JTs, KQo etc have been bugging me to death. When we make it $6 and they make it $18, then I've felt like they just had to be defended. Smallish sample, but it hasn't gone too well. Possibly need more discipline in not making postflop moves, but the fact that on a zillion flops we have to fold the best hand is pretty annoying, and indeed the whole reason I 3bet so much IP myself.
So, one thing I was doing for a while with a lot of success, (and weirdly, just plain forgot about) was making tiny 4bets OOP with a depolarised range. So we raise to $6, they make it $18, I make it $34-$36 with nuts and suited broadway type hands. It means we get a cheaper 4bet the times they jam, and means they flat the 4bet relatively often. Now playing a large pot, VS a player whose range is weak, with suited broadways and the iniative, is not a nightmare scenario for me. Other players have told me it's not a situation they love, but for me you can make a pair a lot, make a really small cbet other times, and have room to jam turns when we turn equity.
This seems kinda counter intuitive, because don't we 3bet depolarised ourselves because we love to flat 4bets IP? So, shouldn't we despise being flatted ourself? I think there's key differences in each scenario that make each situation good for us.
The most obvious is that we are actually planning to 3bet/flat and actually planning for our 4bet to be flatted in the reverse situation. We tailor our hand range, choose our betsize, and select the appropriate player in the appropriate spot to actually induce it. We expect it, it's fine. From villain's point of view though they're playing a default style VS us and are forced to adjust with the hand already in progress.
A lot of them are 3betting a polarised range for example, and suddenly they face a tiny 4bet. 'Hmm, they say. I have 86s and little to no experience in playing 4bet pots IP, and no idea of my opponent's range, but he made it soooo small that I'll flat this one time.' We're at a postflop advantage.
And in the reverse example, again we're 3bet/flatting because we planned to do it. We have a range of suited broadways and slowplayed AA. We've picked on a guy who 4bets decently often, who has a wide initial opening range, and preferably someone who is clealy an inferior player to us. He doesn't have experience in playing 4bet pots OOP as the 4bettor. Again, I think the postflop advantage is clear.
And of course in both scenario we just get a ton of raw folds to our 3bet or 4bet. nom nom nom $$$$
I was going to write about backdoor aggression, but this is long enough so I'll save it. Any comments on the above very welcome from all..........
A couple of technical things........
First of all I'm still wedded to flatting hardly anything, and 3betting almost 100% of my 'facing a raise' range, and then flatting any 4bet with probably 70% of it. I make the 3bets really small too, like $6 to $15 or sometimes $14, occasionally $16 depending on stacksize. Getting squeezed is a huge killer, as is playing without the initiative with a capped range without playing super sick IP and probably making a ton of moves. My BTN 3bet for the month is 14%, my CO 10%, and I'm winning handsomely on each. I'll wait for a decent sample and then post some results.
Facing 3bets when we're OOP.......... there's a lot more 3betting on stars.fr than stars.com, I think. A lot of 2009 FTP style regs. Without doubt the first adjustment to make here is to open much tighter, just no argument IMO. However, hands like QJs, KJs, JTs, KQo etc have been bugging me to death. When we make it $6 and they make it $18, then I've felt like they just had to be defended. Smallish sample, but it hasn't gone too well. Possibly need more discipline in not making postflop moves, but the fact that on a zillion flops we have to fold the best hand is pretty annoying, and indeed the whole reason I 3bet so much IP myself.
So, one thing I was doing for a while with a lot of success, (and weirdly, just plain forgot about) was making tiny 4bets OOP with a depolarised range. So we raise to $6, they make it $18, I make it $34-$36 with nuts and suited broadway type hands. It means we get a cheaper 4bet the times they jam, and means they flat the 4bet relatively often. Now playing a large pot, VS a player whose range is weak, with suited broadways and the iniative, is not a nightmare scenario for me. Other players have told me it's not a situation they love, but for me you can make a pair a lot, make a really small cbet other times, and have room to jam turns when we turn equity.
This seems kinda counter intuitive, because don't we 3bet depolarised ourselves because we love to flat 4bets IP? So, shouldn't we despise being flatted ourself? I think there's key differences in each scenario that make each situation good for us.
The most obvious is that we are actually planning to 3bet/flat and actually planning for our 4bet to be flatted in the reverse situation. We tailor our hand range, choose our betsize, and select the appropriate player in the appropriate spot to actually induce it. We expect it, it's fine. From villain's point of view though they're playing a default style VS us and are forced to adjust with the hand already in progress.
A lot of them are 3betting a polarised range for example, and suddenly they face a tiny 4bet. 'Hmm, they say. I have 86s and little to no experience in playing 4bet pots IP, and no idea of my opponent's range, but he made it soooo small that I'll flat this one time.' We're at a postflop advantage.
And in the reverse example, again we're 3bet/flatting because we planned to do it. We have a range of suited broadways and slowplayed AA. We've picked on a guy who 4bets decently often, who has a wide initial opening range, and preferably someone who is clealy an inferior player to us. He doesn't have experience in playing 4bet pots OOP as the 4bettor. Again, I think the postflop advantage is clear.
And of course in both scenario we just get a ton of raw folds to our 3bet or 4bet. nom nom nom $$$$
I was going to write about backdoor aggression, but this is long enough so I'll save it. Any comments on the above very welcome from all..........
Friday 9 March 2012
March Update
Started well then had a rough few days. EV results are still fine, I'm self limited to 200nl for this month.... but I realised that I need to buck up my ideas. That emo blog I always end up writing, stressing concentration and stuff like that FROM NOW ON, well I usually have to be stuck $7k for the month before I write it. Then I win $6k back and pat myself on the back.
So I'm writing it now instead, I've gotten a little too pedestrian in my approach to poker. Often just sitting down and playing without thinking through my recent leaks, or my approach for today, or new conscious incompetencies that I need to think about, etc. So I need to start taking every session seriously again, starting with this one in a minute. I do think I'm playing ok for the most part, but if I get complacent I can feel it slipping away.
Wednesday 29 February 2012
February
Allowed myself a sneak peek at my results as I felt I'd ended the month strongly. $5k up from the bottom, and into +EV for the month so a happy finish to a nightmare 29 days. Head down now for March, take each day 1 at a time, play and play and play, talk to Dodgeball about hands, rinse repeat, hopefully win money. I unlock a ~ $5k .fr bonus end of this month if I get the hands in so with some semblance of a respectful month I'll have a decent roll for April.
Edit: shaved another $1k off it just before midnight.
http://weaktight.com/4428972 treble this? 18/16, no reads as I don't play stars. 15% open from this position.
Other interesting hands ..........
http://weaktight.com/4428982 I like this line sometimes, river 2nd nuts, CC. Gets stuff turned into bluffs, loses us less the times we bet call VS a flush, or stops us getting bluff shoved on.
http://weaktight.com/4428984 The fact that all regs have a river inflection point is my favourite realisation in years
http://weaktight.com/4428989 Arnoud Mattern is this guy. Wins a lot at tournys and .fr pro. He value bet AK hi to my AQ hi once in EPT London that I qualified for. He loses heavily at cash games. I've remembered how to bluff the last few days.
http://weaktight.com/4428990 same guy, another 'repping flush = not flush' one for Dodgy.
Hope everyone did well in Feb, and beyond.
Friday 24 February 2012
What Now?
Still no luck with regards results, both in the fact I'm still thinking about them, and that the reason I'm thinking about them is that they're so bad!
I don't think I'm playing 'bad', certainly not $11k bad for the month. But I'm starting to worry about my lack of reciprocal edge VS the regulars. Yes they do weird and for me somewhat bad things, but their badness serves to confuse me more than anything.
http://weaktight.com/4409541 - take this hand, I mean it's not great. Depends on things like does he vbet turn depolarised etc, but we're probably not folding AA in a 100bb 3bet pot too often. There's no edge to the hand though, certainly no reciprocal edge. I'd play t8s the same way in his shoes, and he'd certainly find some way to stack with AA postflop.
This is a long way of saying that I need to know and act more on my opponent's tendencies. Maybe VS some there is a way to fold AA in this hand. I'm playing well I think in a very generic GTO sorta sense, but I've lost sense of my individual opponents. Not just their vacuumous plays, but like the way they think about poker and how they think about me, from which I can extrapolate things like 'time to make an extremely non standard call/ fold' based on XYZ.
I was doing this for a few successful few months in September. Yes it probably coincided with a heater, but I can't just do on the way I am without making at least subtle changes and expect things to be different. 4 tables from now on, with a heavy focus on getting reads and thinking about ways to extrapolate and exploit people based on this stuff. #gameplan
I don't think I'm playing 'bad', certainly not $11k bad for the month. But I'm starting to worry about my lack of reciprocal edge VS the regulars. Yes they do weird and for me somewhat bad things, but their badness serves to confuse me more than anything.
http://weaktight.com/4409541 - take this hand, I mean it's not great. Depends on things like does he vbet turn depolarised etc, but we're probably not folding AA in a 100bb 3bet pot too often. There's no edge to the hand though, certainly no reciprocal edge. I'd play t8s the same way in his shoes, and he'd certainly find some way to stack with AA postflop.
This is a long way of saying that I need to know and act more on my opponent's tendencies. Maybe VS some there is a way to fold AA in this hand. I'm playing well I think in a very generic GTO sorta sense, but I've lost sense of my individual opponents. Not just their vacuumous plays, but like the way they think about poker and how they think about me, from which I can extrapolate things like 'time to make an extremely non standard call/ fold' based on XYZ.
I was doing this for a few successful few months in September. Yes it probably coincided with a heater, but I can't just do on the way I am without making at least subtle changes and expect things to be different. 4 tables from now on, with a heavy focus on getting reads and thinking about ways to extrapolate and exploit people based on this stuff. #gameplan
Wednesday 22 February 2012
Session 23
http://weaktight.com/4400432 - Villain 49/31 fish with river agg % of 63% over 8 samples. I was gong to CRAI flop, yes he doesn't bet fold anything worse but it's better than betting as we win a flop stab and if he jams over our bet it's kinda a sick spot given his PF range. I could maybe jam turn with so little behind, ie maybe should protect VS his air at this point. If he always bluffs river though probably not.
http://weaktight.com/4400443 - made at myself for this one, went against my flop instinct and called the raise. He reps nothing, and is capable of bluffs, but his raise size etc told me to fold. Blah.
http://weaktight.com/4400449 - this one happened before the above, and I did follow my instinct here. This guy is always 4betting AK VS me, and I was just sooooo sure he was bluffing on the flop that I just couldn't lie down. He flats 3bets 46% of the time and VS such a range there's not a lot of sets. If I commented on someone else doing this I would say bad, but meh in the moment was happy enough. Maybe I'm being results oriented though.
http://weaktight.com/4400462 - this hand also annoyed me. Sometimes, there's a good reason to do the same with value and air that goes beyond balance and is just good even in a vacuum. Here, barrelling air is bad as he can have Ax and Kx tons and our frequencies would be like mental. Barreling Kx though is also bad, he has less Kx and we look so strong that Ax potentially goes away, as do OOP floats like JT QJ etc. Blah.
Apart from that though was happy. I drank a monster drink which is very short termist of me but basically gets me super hyped up and concentrated for a session. Mental side was good, I lost this early hand http://weaktight.com/4400478 and usually I might start questioning my ability etc, but I went through the motions before cbetting and I'm just completely happy with the squeeze and the cbet (initial raiser reg who folds, caller tight passive fish who also folds). Slowly getting out of being results oriented, I hope, but the test will be when I go on a real bad stretch. Again though, we expect bad stretches, they happen, and our job in those times is to minimise our losses through good play.
I'm going to add some life chores here 'cos if I don't write em down somewhere I'll never get em done. Some things have just been screaming out to be done for weeks now........ tomorrow in between sessions I must:
send off car registration document
go to bank, pay in some cash
pay off parking ticket
clean out rabbits
I'll leave my goals at those for now. They should take me like an hour. For some reason everything just stops when I'm not winning. When I'm winning, house is clean, bills paid, dogs fed. When I'm not, everything goes dark, phone goes off, parents go un-seen. Would be nice to break that habit as part of my mental progression...................
http://weaktight.com/4400443 - made at myself for this one, went against my flop instinct and called the raise. He reps nothing, and is capable of bluffs, but his raise size etc told me to fold. Blah.
http://weaktight.com/4400449 - this one happened before the above, and I did follow my instinct here. This guy is always 4betting AK VS me, and I was just sooooo sure he was bluffing on the flop that I just couldn't lie down. He flats 3bets 46% of the time and VS such a range there's not a lot of sets. If I commented on someone else doing this I would say bad, but meh in the moment was happy enough. Maybe I'm being results oriented though.
http://weaktight.com/4400462 - this hand also annoyed me. Sometimes, there's a good reason to do the same with value and air that goes beyond balance and is just good even in a vacuum. Here, barrelling air is bad as he can have Ax and Kx tons and our frequencies would be like mental. Barreling Kx though is also bad, he has less Kx and we look so strong that Ax potentially goes away, as do OOP floats like JT QJ etc. Blah.
Apart from that though was happy. I drank a monster drink which is very short termist of me but basically gets me super hyped up and concentrated for a session. Mental side was good, I lost this early hand http://weaktight.com/4400478 and usually I might start questioning my ability etc, but I went through the motions before cbetting and I'm just completely happy with the squeeze and the cbet (initial raiser reg who folds, caller tight passive fish who also folds). Slowly getting out of being results oriented, I hope, but the test will be when I go on a real bad stretch. Again though, we expect bad stretches, they happen, and our job in those times is to minimise our losses through good play.
I'm going to add some life chores here 'cos if I don't write em down somewhere I'll never get em done. Some things have just been screaming out to be done for weeks now........ tomorrow in between sessions I must:
send off car registration document
go to bank, pay in some cash
pay off parking ticket
clean out rabbits
I'll leave my goals at those for now. They should take me like an hour. For some reason everything just stops when I'm not winning. When I'm winning, house is clean, bills paid, dogs fed. When I'm not, everything goes dark, phone goes off, parents go un-seen. Would be nice to break that habit as part of my mental progression...................
Session 22
I think it's session 22. I'm starting to lose count. Only a short one this time as I had footy training. Then 2 of us turned up. So I could've gone and watched Hull City, but just could not be arsed.
Played well in the session. Only worrying about playing well through the hour is becoming a habit. I played this hand early on:
http://weaktight.com/4399885 - BTN huge fish, SB a reg! Jesus at some of these regs.
http://weaktight.com/4399906 - same reg as above. Just posted this 'cos we like to see 4bet pots and how they play out don't we. I'd call turn too 'cos we have Ax a ton and he's never bluffing river. He snap checked turn and river which is a decent timing tell.
http://weaktight.com/4399889 _ really couldn't decide on a raise size here. I assume we do have to raise. Turn leader is a fish, other guy is a solid reg. Oh I guess the flop checks up for debate too. I thought the binking equity >> any FE I had.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?6328296 - weaktight just stopped working. Villain is solid 19/16, 20% open in this spot. I think my lack of value is compensated by my lack of bluffs. Raise size I decided to go small, VS a good player I think this is correct.
http://weaktight.com/4399917 - passive fish. please don't pot the river like that when you're so passive and I have top 2. Just don't do that, k?
Played well in the session. Only worrying about playing well through the hour is becoming a habit. I played this hand early on:
http://weaktight.com/4399885 - BTN huge fish, SB a reg! Jesus at some of these regs.
http://weaktight.com/4399906 - same reg as above. Just posted this 'cos we like to see 4bet pots and how they play out don't we. I'd call turn too 'cos we have Ax a ton and he's never bluffing river. He snap checked turn and river which is a decent timing tell.
http://weaktight.com/4399889 _ really couldn't decide on a raise size here. I assume we do have to raise. Turn leader is a fish, other guy is a solid reg. Oh I guess the flop checks up for debate too. I thought the binking equity >> any FE I had.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?6328296 - weaktight just stopped working. Villain is solid 19/16, 20% open in this spot. I think my lack of value is compensated by my lack of bluffs. Raise size I decided to go small, VS a good player I think this is correct.
http://weaktight.com/4399917 - passive fish. please don't pot the river like that when you're so passive and I have top 2. Just don't do that, k?
Session 21
I'm clearly still being pretty results oriented in how I rate my sessions. Mentally, I lost a few BIs early on to ridic coolers and a bad beat, but went through my mental motions and hopefully recovered quite quickly. Results didn't enter my head at least. There's a few tenuous hands in there though, tenuous in the sense they're debatable.
http://weaktight.com/4398946 - kinda torn to bet turn or not. I had one yesterday with JJ in a similar spot with a highish PSR where I ended up just losing the maximum to KK. This reg is terrible btw. Basically, by betting I lose $400 to sets and JJ etc where I might only lose $100 to a check turn call river line.
http://weaktight.com/4398952 - same reg. This was the guy who double barrel shoved Q9cc in a 4bet pot btw. River ...... hmm.
http://weaktight.com/4398956 - same reg. At this point probably quite pissed off at me. River inflection points etc, and I feel he could have JJ, KK, AA here? Or a worse T ever? He opens 35% bvb, cbets 90%/ flop and 75% turn.....
http://weaktight.com/4399006 - same reg again. Felt like folding turn, but I think we rep Tx too well and as already stated he cbets too much.
So 8/10 this session. Still had thoughts of monetary amounts and stuff, but that will go with time. Pleased to play well after early setbacks.
So goal of session 22 ......... play well!
http://weaktight.com/4398946 - kinda torn to bet turn or not. I had one yesterday with JJ in a similar spot with a highish PSR where I ended up just losing the maximum to KK. This reg is terrible btw. Basically, by betting I lose $400 to sets and JJ etc where I might only lose $100 to a check turn call river line.
http://weaktight.com/4398952 - same reg. This was the guy who double barrel shoved Q9cc in a 4bet pot btw. River ...... hmm.
http://weaktight.com/4398956 - same reg. At this point probably quite pissed off at me. River inflection points etc, and I feel he could have JJ, KK, AA here? Or a worse T ever? He opens 35% bvb, cbets 90%/ flop and 75% turn.....
http://weaktight.com/4399006 - same reg again. Felt like folding turn, but I think we rep Tx too well and as already stated he cbets too much.
So 8/10 this session. Still had thoughts of monetary amounts and stuff, but that will go with time. Pleased to play well after early setbacks.
So goal of session 22 ......... play well!
Tuesday 21 February 2012
Session 20
Funny it's still my ingrained habit to want to talk about results. Forgetting about results is all fine btw, unless you wake up broke one day. I've turned off 2-4 Euro from my filters until I'm sure I have a lot of money.
So happy with all hands, except this one!
Sigh plan was to check raise fold river. I rehearsed it, said it to myself, and then he shipped. Blah now ok I can fold this easily enough, but this reg is like the worst suspicious, bad, overplayery reg in the universe. I have to CR, but it's not one of those check raises where if you knew he was gonna 3bet you woulda check raised anyway. But now he does 3bet ......... and I don't know if he's capable of bluffing or whatever or anything. Two made straights...... blah, I think technically and mentally this hand is a fail. Stick to plan unless new information shows itself. Suddenly getting suspicious does not count as new information!
http://weaktight.com/4397871 - a fish and a reg. Strong ranges flop and turn, and I didn't want to bet get it in here I'm pretty crushed and giving up that much equity sucks. River might be optimistic, or it might be sick. I don't think either of them have a K or a T, and would probably lead a J situationally. I rep Jx pretty well too.
http://weaktight.com/4397875 - terrid reg. I would never have folded this a fortnight ago. Now I wake go to bed dreaming of inflection points.
http://weaktight.com/4397879- multitably fish. wide range for raising, flatting, and peeling flops. River is a function of his call with worse VS potential bluffs, and I suppose throw in the times he doesn't vbet some random K on the river and I save money. Maybe rainbow flop I should ship river, but still so many missed oesds and GSs.......
Overall, the session was a 7/10 mentally. Couldn't keep my beady eyes off some flips that occured. Technically, it's hard to say obviously, cos if mental is 10/10 then technical should be 10/10 'cos I wouldn't know if I'd done anything wrong. Technically anyway I'll go 7/10, but woulda been 10/10 had I been able to check raise fold that JJ.........
So happy with all hands, except this one!
$2/$4 No Limit Holdem • 4 Players • PokerStars
Generated by weaktight.com.
| CO | NLAJ10sA | $1,373.36 | |
| BTN | Mike Oak 420 | $849.44 | |
| SB | lefou322 | $408.31 | |
| BB | grogheadflow | $565 | |
- Pre-Flop ($6, 4 players)Hero is BB
NLAJ10sA raises to $12, 2 folds, grogheadflow calls $8
- Flop ($26, 2 players)
-
grogheadflow checks, NLAJ10sA bets $18, grogheadflow calls $18
- Turn ($62, 2 players)
grogheadflow checks, NLAJ10sA bets $36, grogheadflow calls $36
- River ($134, 2 players)
grogheadflow checks, NLAJ10sA bets $66, grogheadflow raises to $199, NLAJ10sA goes all-in $1,307.36, grogheadflow calls $300
- Final Pot: $1,132
- grogheadflow shows
- NLAJ10sA shows
- NLAJ10sA wins $2,746.22 (net +$1,372.86)
- grogheadflow lost $565
Sigh plan was to check raise fold river. I rehearsed it, said it to myself, and then he shipped. Blah now ok I can fold this easily enough, but this reg is like the worst suspicious, bad, overplayery reg in the universe. I have to CR, but it's not one of those check raises where if you knew he was gonna 3bet you woulda check raised anyway. But now he does 3bet ......... and I don't know if he's capable of bluffing or whatever or anything. Two made straights...... blah, I think technically and mentally this hand is a fail. Stick to plan unless new information shows itself. Suddenly getting suspicious does not count as new information!
http://weaktight.com/4397871 - a fish and a reg. Strong ranges flop and turn, and I didn't want to bet get it in here I'm pretty crushed and giving up that much equity sucks. River might be optimistic, or it might be sick. I don't think either of them have a K or a T, and would probably lead a J situationally. I rep Jx pretty well too.
http://weaktight.com/4397875 - terrid reg. I would never have folded this a fortnight ago. Now I wake go to bed dreaming of inflection points.
http://weaktight.com/4397879- multitably fish. wide range for raising, flatting, and peeling flops. River is a function of his call with worse VS potential bluffs, and I suppose throw in the times he doesn't vbet some random K on the river and I save money. Maybe rainbow flop I should ship river, but still so many missed oesds and GSs.......
Overall, the session was a 7/10 mentally. Couldn't keep my beady eyes off some flips that occured. Technically, it's hard to say obviously, cos if mental is 10/10 then technical should be 10/10 'cos I wouldn't know if I'd done anything wrong. Technically anyway I'll go 7/10, but woulda been 10/10 had I been able to check raise fold that JJ.........
Mental Game Blog
I'm doing extremely badly on the mental game front right now. Dodgy, you don't know how lucky you are with regards being a natural at this, you really don't. There's a ton of stuff goes through my brain every session that is completely irrelevant to anything important. Some of the stuff I want to eradicate are actual symptoms of underlying mental silliness, while other stuff seems harmless on the surface but actually ends up being the cause of these symptoms.
I need to focus much more on this, regularly, even when I think I'm doing ok, as it takes constant work. With the book now, I have a direction in being able to deal with it.
I'm going to make a list of all my current harmful symptoms, then try to identify the root causes.
In Game Symptoms
I need to focus much more on this, regularly, even when I think I'm doing ok, as it takes constant work. With the book now, I have a direction in being able to deal with it.
I'm going to make a list of all my current harmful symptoms, then try to identify the root causes.
In Game Symptoms
- Increasing variance towards end of sessions if I'm down, or down a lot from peak
- Stewing over a bad beat for a minute or two afterwards, during which time I hit autopilot mode and also increase variance.
- Mind drifts sometimes
Well that's enough symtpoms for now. The above are the two most harmful. I'll cover other ones in future.
Let's take the first symptom of increasing variance. It's quite clear to me now that this is caused by undue importance attached to short term results. Jesus none of this is ground breaking stuff obviously, but given that it's so obvious it's just amazing I don't implement all of it given I aspire to be a professional.
Thinking about it now, I'm sure it's enormously beneficial to like never check your results. Maybe once a quarter or something. It has to be a sliding scale, where like checking every week = reasonably harmful, checking every day = very harmful, and checking every session or in practice midway through sessions = extremely harmful..... especially when you suffer from the urge to increase variance when losing as much as I do.
From now on, I'm seeing this $$$ results urge for what it is, a huge mental leak that needs to be ignored.
Moving onto my mind drifting, I have to start seeing this as a major trigger to deterioration in quality of play. Triggers are good, if we do something about them. We don't mind triggers, we can identify triggers, and take appropriate steps to combat them.
In the long term, I have to resolve my underlying mental problems. This can take time however, and is a longer term goal based on my working and re-working through the mental game book. In the short term, there are steps I need to get in the habit (unconscious competence) of taking when I recognise the problems.
So my mind drifting should be a trigger for me to take the following steps:
1) Recognition- hmm my mind is drifting, or I'm thinking about results
2) Deep breath
3) Injecting logic- a phrase or statement to say to myself, possibly out loud, which helps to get my head on straight. 'I need to concentrate, my perceived edge when not fully thinking is only an illusion'
4) Strategic reminder- a few technical keys to my poker game. So at the moment, this will be 'stay solid PF, don't cold call, time on decisions'. I also need a reminder of my thought process in hands, so.......
What is his PF range %? How often does he flat/ fold/ or 4bet? Which option of flat/3bet/ or fold is best for my hand? Postflop, what is his range? What is the board texture? What is my perceived range? What are this opponent's postflop tendencies? How can I appear balanced to this opponent?
5) Repeat as necessary
6) Quitting
Erm, so yeah I'm not posting results any more. In fact I'm not checking them for like ages and ages. Maybe this time next month, maybe. The very urge to check them though is destructive, and if I start needing to check them in 3 weeks time or something this could end up being a huge distraction. Consider the prop altered in case anyone was gonna claim my $!
I'm still posting a review of every session though. Commenting on quality of play is fine. I will be talking about the mental side of the session more often. The dream is to train myself to get happy with a day's work based solely on the quality of my play and my mental quality. This feels a long way off right now, but I know the first step is to concentrate hard on achieving it and then it eventually becomes habit.
I browse forums every day, and quite often feel sort of sorry for people that their technical game is just so bad! Things like people posting mid-month graphs though doesn't jump out at me. I'm sure there are some Buddahs out there feeling sort of sorry for me every time I say I won x y z amount. I want to reach that stage! $$$$$$$ results are bad, ignore them, and concentrate on the result that is the quality of your daily play. (again, ground breaking stuff this). Seriously though, the ground breaking part will actually be implementing it.
Session review to follow, two parts TECHNICAL & MENTAL
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