General Strategy Blog

I feel as though I've gotten very very stale at the moment. My mental game has been pretty good; I don't care about beats, coolers, or even mistakes. I quit when I'm a little tilted very easily, have a decent warmup routine, have my narrative present a lot and am decent at trusting my instinct. Strategy wise though, I feel in a bit of a slump.

There's part of me that feels it's a bad idea to have a 'general strategy', and that if we're truly present in each and every hand then the correct decision will come to us. Nevertheless, some decisions within poker are almost preprogrammed. I mean, it's certainly a good thing that these pre-programs exist, so as to free up mental space for other and bigger decisions, but sometimes this programming needs freshening up.

I feel at the moment as if I'm 'worked out' and not really surprising anybody. In addition, I've become very conscious of how poor my late position game has been, particularly BTN-BB where ranges are exceedingly wide. This situation is basically a HU situation and feels very unique from almost every other situation at 6max, but compared to HU we're at the disadvantage of not getting into a rhythm of playing the same guy, seeing how often he folds/ CRs/ calls one street to fold the next, etc. Occasionally I feel I have some strong ideas on the subject, but overall I don't think I'm doing as amazing there as I perhaps could be.

So I'm going to go over some areas of my game and get some thoughts down.

Late position, BTN-BB

What my instincts really want in this spot is a unique strategy, probably one considered quintessentially 'bad' in a game theory sense but which nevertheless has people confused a lot. At the moment, I sorta make it up as I go along. I'll cbet air sometimes, check it others, cbet top pair sometimes, check it others, cbet 2nd pair on a wet board sometimes, check it others yada yada. This leads to a rather split range whereby I'm not wholly confident in whichever option I choose because my range in that spot is not as strong as it could be.

To elaborate on what I'm talking about, I always feel like I want to choose a general strategy and load my whole range into it. For example, say I want to raise flops, then I feel it's best to be raising tons of stuff; sets on dry boards, top pairs, gutshots, overpairs, overcards etc. In BTN-BB, my heart wants me to be doing something like checking back 100%, or cbetting small a lot then 2xing turn, etc.

I can't really see anything that works as an 'all in one' strategy other than planning to check back the flop a lot, including top pairs and nutted hands. I think this probably has the most merit...... it means I can happily post oak bluff certain runouts, delay cbet, call turn and river leads, etc. Yeah. I like this.

STOP PRESS

After speaking to a very good player, I've decided to instead go the other way. This was in fact the way I was preaching to Stefan earlier, and that is just to be very aggressive but also super thin with value bets. I think the main reason swinging me the other way is the fact that in villain's shoes in the BB, I'd much rather face a passive btn than a fucking mental one. As the dude I was speaking to said, the trick is not to wuss out of value bets........ people generally want their value bets to be good a huge proportion of the time (same with bluffs) but some value bets should be made even if you feel you're only good say like 40-45% when called. Example might be A6 on 652 QK etc, it's just gotta be trebled.

So yeah, give up total airballs a lot, then 2 and 3 barrel a lot of stuff. I feel I've gotten much better at certain types of bluffs lately......... the kind of higher level bluff that doesn't work 100% but is more credible with a certain level of player.

Calls OOP/ Reverse Equity Spots

Caught myself playing this hand earlier today:

$2.50/$5 Zoom No Limit Holdem • 6 Players • PokerStars

Generated by weaktight.com.

UTG	hamanof	$901.16
UTG+1	visjeatwater	$769.24
CO	mustanggino	$447.50
BTN	TeamLeader29	$508.99
SB	RUNITSRANN	$599.61
BB	hero	$601.39

• Pre-Flop ($7.50, 6 players)Hero is BB
• 

1 fold, visjeatwater raises to $12.50, 3 folds, hero calls $7.50

• Flop ($27.50, 2 players)
• 

hero checks, visjeatwater bets $18.64, hero calls $18.64

• Turn ($64.78, 2 players)
• 

hero checks, visjeatwater bets $45.87, hero folds

• Final Pot: $64.78

• visjeatwater wins $107.85 (net +$30.84)
• hero lost $31.14

and as soon as I called flop I had a sudden realisation that I'd be doing far too much of this, calling OOP in horrendously bad positions. Often it's decent to CC more playable stuff when you know exactly what cards are getting barrelled, when you can pick up on betsizes etc, but in a spot like this we should be talking about either a preflop fold, flop CR, or flop fold. Really used to pride myself in not getting myself into such spots, but it's definitely crept back in. So I'm going to be really big on that from now on...... flop CR in the above spot doesn't rep a ton, but it's still going to get a lot of raw folds from most, or a float with Ax that then checks down. CC flop just makes everything so easy for our opponent, and overall I'm probably going to look to getting my flop CR back to around 20%.

Flatting 3bets and raising flop

A while ago, I started to minraise a ton in 3bet pots and it just raped the fuck out of all the meh regs. People just play very ABC to it, flat AKhi oop, 3bet small with overpairs and tptks, cap their range in obv spots and leave themselves open to a PSR bluff, etc. I think I stopped doing it as I felt I repped less, but basically I feel we need an aggro strategy in 3bet pots, as call call call might protect a bluffcatcher and value range, but doesn't leave a ton of room open for bluffs. When we go call call shove we get looked up a decent amount, etc. So yeah, I'm not going to 4bet anything so have all strong hands in my range, and look to do very well postflop.

Other Stuff

I'm going to stick with my general strategy of being very very solid preflop at 100bbs, and then 3bet like a 20% range or something IP when deeper. People play extremely straightforwardly deep at Zoom, and if anyone doubts this they should go play the regular Stars deep ante tables for a bit where the dynamic is somewhere near the moon and cold 4bets 5bets 7bets, postflop moves and light stackoffs happen seemingly every other hand. Checked out my results by stack depth the other day, over a very decent sample my winrate at stacks of 100-125bbs was only 1.3bb/100, while my winrate at deeper stackdepths (though about 1/3 as many hands) was much better. I have the pic actually:

So basically I do a lot better when deep, where the PF lagness is exponentially more effective. At 100bbs, the change to a more solid style is a recent one and one I'm happy with when there's so much less room to maneovere and really apply pressure postflop.

So yeah that's it for now. Hopefully this gets me back on track. Just need to not lose sight of the mental side, but I'll leave that for another blog.

Blog saver:

Major mental reset

How do?! Feels like it's been a while........... but suppose I only really blog when I'm failing in some aspect and feel the need to write it down and turn it around.

I've been doing pretty well since April 1 (until this month) when I resolved to just become a 100% devotee of mental game of poker. May as well throw the results out there, if only to help me regain a bit of confidence after a chastening few days!

The first 4 months above, I was super hot on all mental game issues. Yesterday I engaged in some brutally honest introspection, and it struck home to me just how bad my mental game has gotten in the last 4 months.

Having 'good mental game' doesn't just mean 'being calm' or 'not tilting'. Just being calm, or not tilting, is impossible without addressing the fundamental beliefs and core values that are at the heart of all tilt.

I realise that I've kinda gotten away with it in the past 4 months........ though not exactly I guess, as at present it's 4 months breaking even. During this time I've been paying 'lip service' to the mental game, telling myself and others that I have it, whilst not doing anything day to day in order to maintain it and correct erroneous thoughts.

I'll give a few examples....... say I sit down to play and I don't feel 100% right about it. Maybe there's something nagging at me from real life, maybe I'm slightly light headed and a bit hungry. Currently, I'd probably give playing a shot anyway, because there's no core belief stopping from me from doing so.

When mental game is good though, I walk away from the computer and have the complete belief that I'm actually earning money by doing so. This isn't tricking my mind or anything close to it, it's 100% truth. Money lost is money lost, and money not lost through good mental game is as good as money won. So your month ends up being more like heater heater heater heater, actually legit downswing, heater heater heater and you end the month up 40BIs instead of the 10 you would've won.

Think about how a typical month goes if you're a winner. Something like, heater heater heater, downswing, downswing, heater heater, downswing. Well, I'm a big believer that 'variance' (in the sense that all variables such as player ability and mental state stay the same) is overstated, and the variance in your months comes largely from the variance in how you play and the difference in your mental state. I had so very very few losing sessions in those first 4 months, simply because I 'knew' I was going to lose before I even started, and felt a real buzz in walking away and going for a run instead.

This obviously also goes for being tilted mid session. Bit annoyed about something? Then boom, quit and you've just earned yourself a ton. And you don't even have to sit and grind to earn it! You can load up the wire, and you're sitting watching and printing the reciprocal dollars that every other reg is burning in the same spot.

To further prove my point about variance being overstated, when was the last time you played tilted and actually won? (from the point of being tilted). What I realised last night is that I've probably played like 400 tilted sessions in my life....... and I can't remember winning, literally, any of them! If variance was such a factor, then you should get away with being tilted from time to time and still come out 4 BIs up or whatever. Just never happens. Ever.

---

Another example......... you know when fish in a casino go on about how AK always loses for them, and you sorta do an internal eye roll at their stupidity. Well, this is in fact a mental leak. A really obvious and easily understood mental leak, but a mental leak nonetheless.

Now, when on top of my mental game back in June, other poker players in my Skype groups would come out with the pro-equivalent stuff like 'OTBaron runs so hot constantly', or talk about their own short term wins and losses, or post bad beats or coolers........ and I can remember doing the exact same internal eye roll as I would do for a casino fish. Probably more pronounced in fact, cos this shit is coming from actual professional poker players........ who don't seem to understand that bad beats happen and will happen again, and will very likely clump together in twos or threes from time to time.

That kind of chat is very common in skype groups, and hasn't gone away. Have I been having that same reaction to it though? The answer is no. I've become absorbed in it again, and maybe even posted my own hard luck stories. I don't believe doing so is compatible with not giving a fuck when your AA loses to JJ pf the 2nd time in a session. When mental game is good, then mental leaks in others and how they're going to affect them are instantly noticeable. My plan is to get back to that.

---

So yeah, I need to turn around this mental oil tanker, keep reminding myself and affirming this stuff until my unconscious brain actually believes all this stuff again. I'm very close to it now actually just from writing this blog.

Next step is to play a very short session and grade myself only on the quality of the play, not the $ won. (Which I've been obsessed with for the past 3-4 months). Think about mental issues before and after, and slowly build up my session time until I'm playing really well again.

That's all. If Dodgy is reading this, then let's arrange something to do with watching some of the Ashes together!

Bye, Dan

Mental Stuff for the Day

I'm up and ready to get my mental brain in gear and play some good sessions. Being mentally aware though, I'm aware of my thoughts, and I can recognise some faint areas of tilt to do with money lost recently etc. Injecting logic would typically say that 'no money has been lost, only invested in your edge', but it doesn't feel like that given a lot of it was likely spewed off with poor mental game.

So instead I think the logic is more along the lines of 'that particular downswing wave was always going to happen, the apparent free will that makes it seem that you caused it is an illusion as you were so mentally poor, and literally the only thing you can ever control is the present moment'.

I can still tell though that if I were to lose money today in this frame of mind, I'm going to be tilted by it. Kinda weird, it's like my brain is locked and won't come loose. I guess I need to do a bit of a mental warmup, perhaps watch some of the leggo vid of mine that just went up or read some old mental blogs.

Part of the skill of 'the mental game', is that if I'm not feeling it still in a little while, then I at least need to not play until the issues are resolved.

Actually, writing is perhaps helping. Getting sad at money lost is clearly crazy, and indeed I can almost feel myself loling at it now I think about it.

I'm going to go through some forum hands, watch a bit of a vid, and then play a session where I record my thoughts in a mental hand history again.

A Mental Hand History

This might not actually be a mental hand history. I don't know exactly what they are............ I do know though that keeping a log of my mental state in that session was extremely eye opening and useful. Because I was so focussed on the mental game, I was able to pick up when my mind drifted pretty quickly. Anyway, here it is in chronological order.....

Black screen- felt alright, just a wave! - This was about the fact that 20 seconds into my session my screen crashed, went all black while I heard all my tables timing out. I was in a 3bet pot with an AK hand and I was able to be aware of simmering feelings of annoyance, but shining the light on them made them seem pretty lol and thus go away. I was just like, oh man this is just part of the wave of poker, stuff like this happens to everyone! Smiley face!

Distracted by holiday - Felt my mind wandering to Nic going on holiday to France, and the chances of me going. Lol'd at myself for having such a wandering mind and was able to get my mind back focussed.

Maybe shoulda bet river with JJ, aware of some mistake tilt - Certainly aware of some mistake tilt where I underbet turn on a Queen hi board with JJ and shoulda vbet river IP VS TT. This time lasted a little longer than the other times, but injecting logic 'mistakes happen, and it's not a big one anyway' helped me get over it fairly quick.

KQs hand, he cc cc flushdraw, some tilt based on outcome lol - Some dude went CC CC as the PFR on 876ss with KQs and rivered a flush VS my flopped straight. Initial annoyance at the outcome quickly faded though when I became aware of it, and injected logic that this was basically a well played hand by me and perhaps even him.

Felt mind wander slightly about dude who cc down - as above, wasn't annoyed by it at this time but was definitely still considering the hand. Injected logic whereby I mentally filed the hand so as not to think about it any more.

Had good mental game facing a CR with tt on 764 or whatever, folded - I cbet and got CRd ep-bb with TT on 764, and was real happy that I was relaxed enough to come up with an immediate answer and not get annoyed. 'annoyed', lol. What is there to get annoyed about? This is poker, difficult situations happen. What I shoulda done to be even better would have been to see this as an amazing opportunity. Looking back now I can see that it was one, and I think I made a good decision. Basically, some people would have 88 99 55 here to make it easier to play, but this guy wasn't the type and so felt like a fairly easy fold of either being crushed or like not too far ahead.


Mind wandered to Sauce vid, caught it tho! - mind started thinking of Sauce's run it once vid. Not anything useful, was just like 'man why did Sauce need to have his face on it at the start?'. Good mental game resulted in me catching it tho and getting it back to poker.


Felt really good with k6s hand-  just a hard to play hand, but was so tuned in and relaxed that I played it really well and pulled off a decent creative bluff in a bit pot

Mind wandered to holiday lol - caught it tho!


had good mental fortitude to lead in the AK hand - basically CCd AKdd and turned a flush, and didn't just auto check turn but lead turn and won all the money cos he spaz jammed. Again, just happy to be so relaxed and tuned in.

Found mind wandering when winning a lot, felt like had to call it a session - was aware of winners tilt, and afraid to lose money back. Definite mental weakness, but not one I'm going to be super bad on myself on when the alternative is sometimes to play on when tilted and lose. Ideally of course, I'd notice the said tilt and get my mind back on the present.

Felt like checking results, decided against and felt good about it - certainly won a few BIs in the session, and tempted to check results as I have been doing for a while now. Resisted though, 'cos 'anything won or lost in the short term is just an illusion' and thus only negative things can come of knowing short term results.

Right that's it, that was fun. Definitely an amazing exercise if ever you feel you have tilt problems, just helps with becoming aware of them, and with awareness should come the death of them, or something. Going to play another session now and be all about the mental game again.

Mental Update

I'm here to talk about how my mental game has been TERRIBLE of late. Well, the past month and a half anyway.

As an aside, my writing has 'gone' atrocious as well. I swear to god I used to be pretty fluent and could write in a way that didn't sound all disjointed and, well, written by a 9 year old trying too hard.

Anyway, back to my terrible mental game, evidence of which I can see right at this moment as I rush to finish this blog so I can get back to playing with a mental fish's outlook and probably lose a ton more money.

If I was asked to describe the nub of my mental problems at the moment, I'd say I don't exactly feel 'relaxed' as I'm playing. I can certainly convince myself I feel relaxed, but I find my brain constantly taking itself off on a journey away from poker, or at least the things that are important. My mind will slightly drift, I find I've 3bet KJo oop to a good player deep. Flop comes J94ss and I check call a 3/4 bet. Uh oh, and then typically spend the next 2 streets berating myself for auto pilot 3betting it in the first place.

Certainly all my problems could be solved by being more 'present' in the Eckhart Tolle sense, but until I've mastered that art I certainly need to learn to deal with my thoughts in the way that Jared Tendler would advise in the more mainstream way of dealing with tilt.

Actually on that, I guess I don't need to become amazing at the Eckhart stuff (by the way, if anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about, read 'A New Earth' by Eckhart Tolle, it's the key to happiness (promise)), rather I suppose just 'noticing' my tilt thoughts as they occur goes a long way towards solving the problem.

Just had a read through some old mental game blogs; this one http://grogheadflowanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/april-results-going-forward.html I think is really good and helpful, and illustrates the kind of mindset I need to work to achieve again.

I suppose, (sorta a lightbulb moment) that the main aim of this blog, and the key to playing well consistently, is to make the mental game and the nuances of it 'THE MAIN THING' when going about my day to day poker business. My thoughts have certainly strayed before into thinking things like; the technical aspect of my game is letting me down, or like oh I'm not winning 'cos I'm not being aggressive enough or I'm not calling enough or I'm forgetting to do XYZ. The truth is, now that I'm a bit calmer, that if my mental game is spot on then I'm going to be at least a small winner in any 2-5 game.

Basically what I'm maybe saying is, that any technical improvement will only yield fractions of bb/100 in the long term, whereas mental game improvement is actually hugely beneficial, probably at a guess a difference of around 10bb/100 and that's not exaggeration. I'm not even talking about huge tilt monkey vs Zen master, more like average reg who doesn't pay attention to it and when tilted loses at 4bb/100 VS the same reg who works on his mental game and suddenly in the same situation manages to still have an expected winrate of 6bb/100.

So yeahhhhhhhhh, I'm all about the mental game from now on. Technical stuff will come to me in game when I'm super mentally zoned in.

I love writing blogs, I could never have unearthed these thoughts without writing them down. Mad eh?

I just realised something else....... I've got a big (internal, I don't generally smile to myself) smile on at the moment at this realisation. Basically, a lot Eckhart Tolle's teachings are about how noticing things within yourself makes them die and disappear. So like, once you notice your ego in certain situations, the sheer ridiculousness of it becomes apparent to you and thus it falls away and you become more present.

What writing this stuff down has done is much the same effect on me. Just the thought about getting upset about losing a flip, getting coolered, making the odd mistake is (I've just realised) just so SO ridiculous that I can feel it dying away even as I write this. Poker should be seen as basically a wave that your ride, and the skill is in riding the bad waves as well as the smooth ones. In fact, riding the bad ones is way more important than riding the good ones, and as such each 'bad' situation is an amazing opportunity (one that happens with the same frequency to ALL your opponents) to make a quality long term decision unaffected by mental noise or anguish or loathing of the past or fear of the future.

So that's my goal right now, to get to a place where I see a bad situation as an AMAZING opportunity. Can you imagine the mental power in actually thinking that way? And the best thing is, it's not a delusion, rather; the standard way most people think is the delusion.

I'm one tabling the shootout WCOOP at the moment, but after that I'm going to play a session and record all my mental thoughts about it here in the comments, or maybe the next blog I dunno.

Edit: Making a new blog entry having played the session

Thanks for reading........ woooo this is exciting!

Update/ Getting back into it/ Getting back intensity

Can't remember when my last update was, but likely since I last wrote anything I had another good month in July, $18k or some such + rb. Since then I've felt EXTREMELY poker lazy. I had a 5-10 session at the start of the month, got slowrolled by Average Greg for $3k pot, and if I'm honest wasn't in a good mental place to deal with it. Dropped $5k that day, then somehow ground back up in a couple of swingy 5-10 sessions to be up $1k or something this month.

Spot the errors in the above paragraph........ virtually all of it! Especially mentioning monetary amounts........... ESPECIALLY in a period as short as a day. I suppose I'm doing it to illustrate a larger point though, namely that I've had really poor mental and thus technical game all of August so far.

I haven't 'wasted' the time. I've got very drunk very often, played a ton of golf and snooker (aspiring snooker pro is my new part time obsession) and watched tons of cricket. The cricket matches I've been watching last for 8 hours per day, and 5 days. There's been 4 such matches so far, with 6 left between now and January. So that's taken 20 days of my life thus far, with like 30 yet to lose, never mind all the one-day matches in between.

So yeah, in between snooker, golf, footy 5 x per week, girlfriend, dogs, parents; poker has taken a back seat. The times I have played have been meh and sorta just been going through the motions. What I'm here to put down in paper though is that I don't think it's really possible (for me) to do poker part time. It has to be the main thing, with other stuff coming second, and with almost equal time devoted to hand reviews, reg reviews and mental reviews.

I think pre-session reviews of previous sessions are really important. They keep you on top of any mistakes that might be creeping in, but more importantly feed into your unconscious specific things about regs and how they play/ think, and then gets you thinking how this impacts other parts of their game. I really doubt there's much of an edge at all in playing a standard 'one size fits most' style at 2-5, especially when it's not late at night. The edges for me come in the little details that swing huge pots our way, and these details are only accessible through being extremely attentive either pre or post session, and in being relaxed enough in-game to be able to access our unconscious and thus these reads and thus give us the correct answer.

Anyway, this has gotten me back in the correct mindset I think. Time to play, take time on decisions, have fun, relax, be aware of the forms of tilt, and then review review review.

Goals Update

My mental game has somewhat slacked this month, both in terms of motivation and application when playing. I've been feeling EXTREMELY lazy, like I always do when I've been on a good run. Lots of life stuff is clicking into place though so hopefully now I can start applying myself some more.

On the mental side when I am playing, I've been too results oriented. This leads to all sorts of well documented complications, and I need to break this habit right now and get back on evaluating sessions based on quality of play.

A few technical things, and then I'll set some mental goals. I don't cbet very much these days, but 33 is still too low. Granted there are plenty of situations to check and win the pot later, but without a super clear idea for doing so I need to just be pretty unbalanced and go for the cbet. My 4bet stat is incredibly low through slowplaying PF, but people won't realise the 2nd part and simply think low 4bet = strong 4bet, so I need to start throwing in more 4bet bluffs. Finally, I'm probably being too loose with a few blind flats at 100bbs, things like 96s 3way I should only be flatting with a good reason..... fish involved and what not. In the BB, I should really up my 3betting to include loads of polarised stuff, K3s and the like. Finally, I'm probably folding a little too much to barrels when I should just apply GTO to a lot of spots where I'm unsure and be happy about it.

So yeah, cbet a bit more, 4bet a bit more, 3bet the BB a bit more have the mentality of winning pots, slightly tighter when calling PF. GTO calls when unsure.

Mentally, I need to remember to relax...... easier said than done, but a good way is to make sure that I take several seconds over most decisions, breathe a few times, make sure I'm taking in every detail, and then finally talk through the hand in my head like I would do in a video and apply all the 'snap' handreading stuff. I also need to trust my instinct virtually always, especially when I'm super relaxed.

So, mental goals, take time over decisions, relax, do the snap handread, trust instinct 100%.

I'm going to just play a short 20 minute session to grade myself on, review the hands, and hopefully get back onto a crushy path.

June Results, recap, going forward

I had a fairly ridiculous June by almost anyone's standards, moving to 2-5 and pretty much running hotter than I ever thought possible. Plus hopefully I played ok too, mental game was certainly good.

I've posted it hopefully not for ego massaging or anything, but certainly to give me confidence because I've started July somewhat slow after a failed 5-10 shot.

I lasted posted a $10k month last August, and I wrote in my blog at the time 'now to do it again'. Unfortunately I didn't do much about it, and withdraw my roll to finish building my house. This time, I hope I can really press on and at least start to record 'decent' (whatever that means, anything is decent, it's fucking online poker!) months regularly.

I'm probably not still in an amazing financial or mental place to endure a 2-5 downswing, so my plan is to play 1-2 during the day when 2-5 is less soft, and then grind a ton of 2-5 after about 11pm UK time. Quality is >>>>> quantity, and I've discovered that quitting or not starting when slightly off at least B game is a super solid skill (and one apparently Ivey is sick good at).

So going forward, need to review my technical and mental goals regularly, always do session warmups, and keep up with skype activity on reviewing hands etc to keep sharp.

Played a funny hand VS Joinmystack from Leggo today, haha

$2.50/$5 Zoom No Limit Holdem • 6 Players • PokerStars

Generated by weaktight.com.

UTG	KorTopPlayer	$2,390.78
UTG+1	DuTTiFruTTi9	$1,176.11
CO	skow73	$1,014.50
BTN	Aligatorri	$248.73
SB	Dr.Action	$500
BB	hero	$550.99

• Pre-Flop ($7.50, 6 players)Hero is BB
• 

1 fold, DuTTiFruTTi9 raises to $12.50, 3 folds, hero calls $7.50

• Flop ($27.50, 2 players)
• 

hero checks, DuTTiFruTTi9 bets $18.11, hero calls $18.11

• Turn ($63.72, 2 players)
• 

hero bets $47.50, DuTTiFruTTi9 calls $47.50

• River ($158.72, 2 players)
• 

hero checks, DuTTiFruTTi9 bets $65, hero calls $65

• Final Pot: $288.72

• hero shows a pair of Sevens - Queen+Jack kicker
• 

• DuTTiFruTTi9 shows a pair of Sevens
• 

• hero wins $285.92 (net +$142.81)
• DuTTiFruTTi9 lost $143.11

DAN

Back to real life.....

By real life I mean back to cash games. I've been playing a ton of SCOOPS 'cos I got excited by them, but despite a few deep runs I didn't bink anything. I'm still going to play the odd like $27 to keep my cash sessions going, but in general that's my MTT habit over and done with until I have like $20k in my roll at least.

The cash games I have been playing, I've been playing poorly in. This is perhaps to be expected when I've been soaking up so much tournament information, but my mental game has also slipped. I've been paying lip service to the mental game, but there's a ton of evidence that my mindset has slipped back heavily towards pre-MGOP days.

Like, at my mental peak, I used to literally roll my eyes when someone posted a cooler or bad beat. I'd think like, wow what a mental fish, this shit just happens sometimes and you should expect it. Being in several skype groups full of poker players though, the whole culture of money lost today/ money won today/ coolers/ bad beats is hard to resist and I've been pulled back into it. I think I thought that maybe this would be fine, and I could still keep level headed, but I've since realised you really can't have it both ways.

I went on a pure heater the last 7 weeks or so, but by the end winning came so easy that I definitely started to indulge in checking my graph numerous times per day. Then it was at the end of every session, and then of course mid session. And then finally like 2 mins into the session. Craziness.

Mistake tilt has been fairly prominent lately....... but that's also because I've been making too many mistakes. I basically neglected the technical side of my game, getting plans sorted prior to session etc, having good defaults always to fall back on. Again, similar to the 3rd paragraph, I found myself sucked into other peoples' strategy conversations/ ideas and found myself implementing too many changes at one to my game. Adult learning model shows that the brain can only really manage 2 maximum before freaking out and losing a lot of higher level brain function. So for example, I tried implement a 25% cbet strategy, but without properly understanding everything that will mean for turns rivers yada yada. At the same time, I was experimenting with cold calling more IP, and flatting more 3bets OOP, whilst also deciding that I should raise more flops. Obviously with all this stuff outside the level of unconscious competency, it's a recipe for disaster.

So it's important that any changes I make to my game, I am aware of them prior to my session and aware that there is only 1 of them at any time.

I think it would be benefical for me to get down here my basic game in common spots, so when I feel my mind going blank I have something concrete to revert to that I take as my standard. Obviously can't sum up poker in a few paragraphs, but here goes anyway.

Preflop: Open at least 15% EP MP all the time, but open much wider with fish in the blinds. CO open a standard range, but much wider when BTN doesn't cold call a lot. BTN just decide based on the blinds. 4bet KTo QTo ATo KJo etc IP around 100bbs, but more playable things like q8s when deeper. 4bet playable stuff OOP 100bbs, KJs etc. When deep, lower our 4bet OOP bluff range slightly, and if dude is a constant deep 3bettor then ensure we open tighter. 3bet a lot from the SB.

As the cold caller, I think I have this learned to UC level, but basically I'm relatively tight to 3x except where fish are concerned or behind, fairly loose to 2x, and I just have to make sure I don't leak a ton calling 3x in CO with like 22 and squeezy blinds behind.

Preflop facing 3bets, I think have learned decently well to UC level.

Flop: Late position as caller we're just calling a few with any pair a lot. IP as the PFR we're just looking to cbet a lot, whilst OOP we'll cbet and barrel away if they cold call a lot, but CC a lot of our range if tighter.

Turn, in general just always barrel equity as a default, and don't overthink it too much.

Mindset: We need to be constantly taking a snap handread of the situation....... called in the SB so more weighted to pairs, woulda CRd a flopped set on this board facing a turn CR, sizing indicates he doesn't want to be shipped on etc. Basically, hand reading! Have a game theory like approach in spots where we're unsure, but otherwise play completely exploitably and trust instinct and handreading.

Notes:

I've decided to move back to PT notes, and start making a ton more of them. I've stolen one my friend's note template, and as a rule of every session I'm going to end my session by going through the hands and making all kinds of notes.

To track my mental progess, I've also made a spreadsheet to track my sessions. Obviously not the $$$, but a record of my mindset, how I'd grade my mental approach, any notes, and a tick as to whether or not I've gone through the session and made appropriate notes.

Good reset blog! Now to shower and play a session

Quick Scoop and Cash Technical Blog

Trying to introduce a little more aggression into my 200nl game isn't going too well, I feel. It's also had the effect that I feared, of meaning that other leaks creep in. It's like as soon as I start moving away from playing super solid, all of a sudden I can't make folds either, and so on and so on. Failure to trust my instincts with regard to folds has been a creeping problem, and I need to basically go with my instincts and analysis first, and then look at whether the hand falls into a GTO call or not.

Playing the $100 scoop and $11 scoop tonight, I haven't really written about tournaments much as I sorta assume they just take care of themselves, but there's definitely areas I need to improve. Again, folds. Chips lost in tournaments are worth more than money won, and that's without even considering chip utility etc. I feel like most of my bustouts or big pots have been somewhat avoidable given how bad people are. There's always going to be obvious spots to accumulate chips, but dodging the bustouts is the real skill for a cash player transitioning. In cash it's like, who cares if I call down this CR and barrel off with tptk for 30bbs, reload time. In a tournament, we can't just dip into our pocket and pull out some more, they're gone. I realise this is very Captain Obvious, but it needs writing to get my mind clear.

So yeah I think my tourny mental game could probably have been improved. Potential bustouts dodged need to feel like fistpumps the same way I've learned to do in cash. Structures are pretty good so I'm just going to look to get in plenty of cheap pots, rack up chips, and view it as a success if I don't bust or lose a load of chips in spots that may seem cash ABC but in a tourny are more likely folds.

Technical + Mental Update

My mental game definitely went off the boil in the past week. I realised this when I was again checking results, and talking about results, and planning my results. Total nonsense, so today I'm focussing on getting back into the correct mindset.

Technically, I *could* just cruise along the way I have been doing, and play well, but the lack of anything knew to learn was knocking my motivation. This is covered in MGOP1 as a common reason for lack of effort and motivation, so to that end I need to incorporate new conscious competencies to supplement all the unconscious competencies. I feel I can play pretty much on autopilot at the moment, but yeah I need to improve stuff, so........

To that end I'm looking at a few things; namely getting looser PF, and getting my WWSF up postflop. Winning pots with the standard bet bet bet line isn't a problem for me, I think I play those spots well, but where I am lacking is in the spots such as flop goes check check and I'm OOP....... I basically just auto cede pots too much when the flop checks through and I need to be aware that many of those are there for the taking.

In terms of PF looseness, I just need to start looking at spots where regs behind are tight to cold calls and simply open much wider. So, 83s in MP, with 2% co cold call and 3% btn cold call, probably becomes an open.

So yeah, those are my two things to work on at the moment. I need to make sure that incorporating these doesn't lead to other leaks, like for example I start getting too loose in reverse equity spots.

Mental Clearup

I've had a few days of not-mental-greatness, and just need to write some stuff out to clear mind and reset it. I've had some mental leaks creep in, or at least noticed symptoms of mental leaks. For example, indulging in checking my monthly results so far, and my bankroll. This can seem fine at the time, but then leads to trouble when you lose a few BIs. Basically, you can't have it both ways, you can't be all 'oh yippe my BRs up to $10k' and then not be tilted at losing a few stacks.

So I need to back to mental basics. There's 14 working days of the month left, and that equals around 60-70k hands. I can't control the amount of money I win or lose in that sample, but I can make sure that I'm making 5/bb decisions in every spot. I've definitely got disengaged from the mindset of 'every spot is just another chance to make a 5/bb decision'. Being without this mindset leads to entitlement when the board runs out bad, and frustration at mistakes and runbad. I also really need to remember that mistakes, runbad, bad boards etc all form part of a decent winrate, and therefore that doesn't mean such a winrate is unattainable when a marginal river call goes wrong, or AA << KK 3 times in a session.

Money lost- this has been mildly tilting me for sure. If I've been down on the day, it's been annoying me. But until such a time as month end, money won or lost is an illusion. Nothing is won or lost until such time as we elect to check results, and if we must be mindful of money 'down', then simply view it as an investment in our edge which will eventually be back with interest so long as we put in enough good quality hands.

I have a few life things faintly preying on my mind too, so today I have to make a Leggo vid or 2, open letters, respond to letters etc. Apparently the games have been really good like 2am onwards, so hopefully by then I'll be super pysched with mental A game. Until then, shoring up my F game to be more of a B game has been a good start.

Update, Hands + Mental Stuff

I've had a good mental start to 200nl in May. I'm still waiting for a proper downswing to really test me, but hopefully these won't be as frequent now that I'm more skilled at nipping mental leaks in the bud.

A line from Sauce's vid really stuck with me, he said something to the effect of 'I think a large part of my edge at these 500nl games will be in my execution, ie I know what my strategy is and therefore all I have to do is execute it without any second guessing'. Second guessing everything has been a huge problem for me in the past I think; I'd spot patterns where there are none (fooled by randomness), then I'd 'expect' marginal calls and bluffs to work 100% of the time, so that when they didn't my strategy swung completely the other way 'NO MORE BLUFFS, NO MORE MARGINAL CALLS EVER'. Just so so mentally weak basically, whereas now I feel like I make these marginal calls and bluffs and whatever else and fully realise they won't work the whole time, and don't need to, and I just get on with implementing my strategy.

Example of spotting silly patterns- having 3/3 4bets jammed on early in a session 'um ok 4bets don't work at 200nl I'll STOP doing it'. So ridiculously lol now I think about it.

In terms of technical stuff, not a whole lot to say really just 'cos I don't feel like I'm having a ton of problems. Touch wood. I seem to have found a decent image where people spaz to me decently often, especially taking lines like leading flop, or cc flop lead turn etc. Could all be variance though, I'll know in a greater sample.

Going back to execution, one thing I have improved on is in simply taking a snap read of the situation on the flop, and then going with my reads without any second guessing. For example:

http://weaktight.com/5781620 - By the river there's literally only 77 plays like this for value, maybe 3 combos of KTs are an outside possibility. In the past, had I lost this hand though I woulda retreated into my shell 'no more stupid mistakes' whereas now I've shed the expectations that such big calls should have a 100% expectation I'm able to not let it affect me the next time one comes up.

http://weaktight.com/5781617 - When you're really focussed and playing well, you just can't beat that feeling that comes over you when you know someone's bluffing. This is definitely a 'zone' call, a state of mind that Mental Game of Poker 2 is all about delivering with more regularity.

http://weaktight.com/5780190 - People are so lol.

Right, Stars is back up. Need to get them hands in. Have a nice day.

Mental, Technical Update

Played a couple of 200nl sessions last night, happy enough, though I did feel my mental bandwidth overstretched when I had a zoom tourney going at the same time. I think having a normal paced tourney would be fine though.

So nothing really to come out of it so far, I just need to get more hands in and I'll have more to report/ muse over soon enough.

April Results + Going Forward

A big part of the mental game is not reviewing monetary results too often, but once a month is fine and so I'm putting April into the bank. I won money, woo.

I *literally* had a ~$200 bankroll at the start of this month lol. I took a picture of me 2 tabling 100nl to mark the occasion. There's worse things can happen in life of course, but still pretty much a 'career' lowpoint!

Luckily runbad didn't completely wipe me out, and I likely ran above expectation the rest of the month.

Part of me wants to get a bigger sample at 100 to see how sustainable the 5.12 winrate is, as I'm not overly certain I'd win a 2.6bb at 200nl. A bigger part of me though feels totally unchallenged at 100...... and as I'm finding out from Mental Game of Poker 2 this can cause predictable mental problems with regard to motivation and playing in 'the zone'.

So I'm moving back to 200nl from now. I originally planed to give myself say 5 BIs, but in practice this just lets my brain know I'm playing on a 5BI bankroll and detracts from my A game, so I'm basically going to play there for as long as I'm playing well and am rolled.

I had a few mental problems playing 100 today, so before I start playing I need to write some mental game stuff out to reinforce the good mental habits when faced with challenging situations.

So let's go through a couple of them......

We get the money in good, and get sucked out on - this one isn't usually a big problem for me, 'cos I tend to only care about the EV line anyway, but still some 'logic' to inject will help me here. When it happens VS fish, then 'it's a good thing variance like this happens, otherwise fish would just stop playing!'. When it's VS a reg, then 'just because you got it in as a 90% favourite doesn't mean you win every time. It only means you win 9/10 times. This is one of those 1/10 times, even if they're grouped together'. The thought process above is basically the same for coolers.

We make a technical mistake - Mistake tilt used to be a bad one for me, I'd stew and stew and stew and be all like 'I'll never win at 5bb now'. Some logic though; 'some mistakes are already built into a healthy winrate.... your winrate only takes a big drop if you let it lead to more mistakes'. 'Thinking about the mistake now will only make more mistakes more likely, mark the hand, forget about it now, and review after the session'. Acknowledging that mistakes are often a precursor to learning something also helps me. Also of course, it might not actually have been a mistake.

Most importantly I think is being aware of, and expecting, mistakes to happen before they do happen. Most tilt is caused by surprise or entitlement, so we're cruising along nicely and then out of nowhere comes THE MISTAKE. We expected this sometimes though, it's fine, winrate still healthy, move on....

We make a mental mistake - in a way this can be harder to deal with than a technical mistake, 'cos it feels as if mental stuff is much more within our control. The odd slip will happen though, (a common one is not trusting my instinct on the river in a big pot) and again it's about expecting the occasional slip and not descending into self loathing and hatred at myself for it. Acknowledge the mistake, write it in the mental diary, and consider stopping the session if it seems like a symptom of lost concentration or something.

Winrate - I've talked about this before, but a huge part of my tilt in the past came from not intuatively understanding a good winrate and what it's made up of. So if I made a mistake it was all 'winrates out the window', or got sucked out on 'cant win at fucking 4bb now can I'. LOGIC - if everything went swimmingly, we'd win at 40bb/100. A winrate of 5bb/100 contains some bad play, suckouts, mistakes, and even very small amounts of mental tilt.

Other stuff- part of my problem on occasion has been that I'm still a little bit $ results oritented. I wasn't at first, but after a while and kept winning I thought well whats the harm in indulging and acknowledging my $ results. The problem is that you can't have it both ways, as soon as you say to yourself 'I'm up $800 for the day' then your brain has 'banked' that money and becomes loss averse, resulting in sub optimal play. So yeah, I need to focus heavily on results, but only the results of how well I played a session and how stable I was able to keep my mental game.

Trusting Instinct- This can be bad advice when on any sort of tilt, as the instinct is heavily coloured by loss aversion, need to increase variance, false pattern recognition, etc. When in the zone though, instinct is >>>> any reasoned logic, especially the sort of logic that comes from whatever is supposedly a GTO calling spot.

----------

Technical stuff - I need to keep up cbetting, especially IP, this has started to drop again and it's taking a heavy dent out of my WWSF. Also important that I keep up a spazzy image, and to this end I need to err on the spewy side of 3bets/ 4bets/ flop raises, floats etc, whilst not ever getting ridiculously spewy out of line. Image will take care of the rest. Mentally though, it's important to remember that the intense style of bluffing loads is an A game style...... if I'm a bit tired but looking to get the hands in, reverting to just a super solid style is what I need to do.

Right, that's it. I wanted to talk about tournaments because I played a load of them and I'm down $400 or so, but I'll talk about that next time.

Mental Game Update

Mental game has been good of late, though I may not have been fully tested with regard runbad. Still, I've had mistakes to contend with that I've been able to be ok with, and winners tilt to deal with too. One thing the past few days has been motivation........ I haven't read that chapter yet, but I've decided to have a pop at fixing it myself.

Basically, it's 11pm. I planned to play through the night, but I'm up for the day and ready to stop. Super poor mental game, and instead I need to realise that in fact until a suitable period of time (monthly at least) I haven't won anything. Plus, I should simply see the next 6 hours as a shift that needs putting in. Thinking like this, the MTT I'm entering in a few minutes now seems like something I want to really final table, instead of something to keep my session going an hour then bustout of.

Technical game has been good as well. I'm not particularly working on anything at conscious competency level at the moment, but I guess constantly keeping an aggro image whilst not getting spewy requries most of my thought. I think I'm quite sorta game theoryish in a lot of tough spots now which has freed up a lot of mental processing. For example, in this spot. Should I bluff river, or shouldn't I? Well it's close, and so I should bluff the rock bottom of my range and not bluff stronger hands than that....... hard to argue that 8hi on this board is about as rock bottom as it gets, so bluff it is. Bad example 'cos it worked, but I've had dozens of these spots lately, and when they don't work I'm just super fine with it 'cos, simply, they're not supposed to always work!

Playing $5 rebuy tonight to keep my sessions ticking over.

Mental Diary

Had some 'mistake tilt' creep in during my most recent session, and wasn't able to inject logic quick enough to be able to stop it causing me to make more mistakes. I then became aware of that mistake, and the mistakes spiralled......... that's why mistake tilt is the worst, it just cascades and things get worse and worse.

Mistakes are fine, and already built into a decent winrate. It's allowing mistakes to spiral that is the bigger mistake. That's what I need to recite to myself when making a mistake.

Actually in terms of the mistakes, they probably weren't actually bad mistakes; just running into the wrong hands and stuff. This hand for example, flop turn and river are all pretty much mandatory. The step up in stakes likely has something to do with it, my instinctive patience for the long game being tested through underolledness.

One other thing is worrying about the money lost........ it's really tough, but I need to remember that money is not won, or lost on a daily basis. It's simply an illusion........ at month end we can evaluate, but until then; even looking at your day's winnings gets you into terrible mental habits. I didn't win $900 yesterday, and I didn't lose $650 today. Understanding this and believing it is key to mental stability. I really need to get into this habit, so I won't be discussing $$$ results until month end from this point onwards.

In terms of technical adjustment, I had a few hands where I gave 200nl regs wayyyyyyyy too much credit 'would he really 4bet massive ep-bb 100bbs deep and have a hand??' (yes), and that's just time spent at 100 and thinking a step up would matter, without remembering just how little people do still actually think at 200 a lot. I think a general gameplan should be to play pretty tight/ solid at 100bbs, then look to unleash bluffs and stuff when I get deeper. I've talked about this before, just need to actually put it into action.

I'll play a short 30 minute session now/ soon and review all the hands here to get back on track.

200nl Session Review

First session back went 'well'. I'm nowhere near where I want to be mentally yet though, 'cos my 'well' is still automatically derived from the fact that I won a couple of buyins. I played well too though, and felt mentally in a good place.... didn't pissed off when things went wrong (things going wrong is all built into the solid winrate, only getting mad at the mistakes and making more mistakes because of it leaves you with a breakeven winrate) and I just felt like I was executing a preplanned strategy a lot of the time rather than doing things off the hoof and making it up as I go along.

People played awfully against me this session, which I guess is a form of rungood, but it bodes well.

http://weaktight.com/5736923 - frequent 4bettor, and I with gameflow at a standstill (no recent 200 history) my 4betting and bluff frequencies need to slightly on the higher side to take advantage of the fact that no history usually = no spaz from opponent. 140bbs deep, nutted hand, can make a wheel, gotta be 4bet. His flatting range contains AQ AK etc, so I decided to throw this into my check not folding range. River is just like........ he can't have AK AQ AJ QQ JJ by this point and I'm just always ahead or splitting and so a bet is pretty mandatory both for vacuum and overall gameplan reasons. He snap calls, which I think I'm gonna label a station call really.

Actually one of the sickest changes I've recently made is having a 'calling station regs' note colour. I see a call like this, they go purple, and I don't do the kind of 'get em off top pair or trips or flush on a paired board' bluff on em ever again. Do people adjust? lol

http://weaktight.com/5736938 - another station call. He makes a sorta gto river call which I'm pretty sure is too lose for GTO even given positions.

http://weaktight.com/5736944 - no history, but he was on 4 tables and I was 3betting a huge whale. Cold 4betting so rife at 200 I basically have the nut bluff 'must jam' hand given how wide I'm definitely 3betting there.

http://weaktight.com/5736951 - certainly a couple of imbalances here on his part..... the small cbet, and then the flat OOP. I just certainly have the best hand on the turn, but he can't stand too much more heat and so I plump for the 1/3 where he might do something silly. Alas the snap flop call, snap turn cf. Flop raise is just part of what I was discussing in my last blog.

http://weaktight.com/5736957 - only note I had read 'weak weak weak weak' which I presume meant I could make him fold AA down. So lol imbalanced with his cbet size on this board.

http://weaktight.com/5736964 - excpected a very wide 4bet bluff range PF for the usual reasons...... couldn't see him just CF this board, and didn't wanna stab turn without jamming river, so was left with a 'bottom of range gotta bluff' on this river. Ace hi goes away, TT if he has it. Alas not this.

http://weaktight.com/5736969 - I stole this 'lead turn that hits us small' move from flippety, and he from Sauce. Doubtless it's misapplied here, I need more thought. Can't see this guy bluffing here really.........

Right, gonna play another. Just need to keep up the strong mental side.

Movin On Up

I feel in a good place at the moment to give myself 5 BIs back at 200nl. I've been playing well at 100, and my mental side has improved to the point that I know what to expect at 200, know the risks involved, and will have acceptance if it all goes pear shaped.

I need to do this properly though, so my first few sessions will be followed by some rigorous session reviews to talk over technical and maybe mental adjustments.

My cbetting has dropped a ton again, so need to keep an eye on that, especially IP. It's probably only a small mistake to cbet too much IP, and a small mistake to cbet too little OOP.

PF at 200, people are just run over less often, so I'm going to be 3betting a bit less and also flat some big pairs to raise flops and cultivate the spaz image that I think is so necessary at 200 down.

Review to follow........!

Mental / Technical Update

Had a good 2/3 days in terms of $$, but the fact that I even still see it in terms is a symptom of mental weakness. Yesterday I was down $900 at one point, and at the point of being down a ton I'm actually pretty mentally strong. I came back to be up a buyin for the day. Today I'm up 8 buyins or so, and that's where the mental weakness comes in for me.... at least in the past. Winners tilt- comes in different forms, but for me it's the 'don't wanna lose this money I've earned' side of things. I then become aware of this, overadjust, spew off money, etc.

So what needs to change is the unconscious perception of how I view money and results. Essentially, the money I won today is an illusion. I haven't earned anything yet, and if I lose, I haven't lost anything. Of course, you should set a reasonable timescale for when you can decide that you've won xyz, but this should be monthly at a minimum. All I've done today is play x mentally good hours, and this will contribute towards my realising my edge investment at the end of the month. My default (which I very nearly did) of saying 'up 7 BIs, day's works done! Straight to the pub' is a pretty big mistake in this context.

Technically, plenty of leaks have been learned to unconscious competency level (at least for now) so I've been able to play longer sessions with less tax on the brain. This makes room for new conscious competencies to focus on, and so what I'm doing at the moment is working on having a spewy image again. Basically just gone in fith gear, 4betting 90%, raising tons of flops, barreling wide, but then not going so far as  to any ridiuclous spew in big pots. Might be an illusion, but so many of the winning pots today seemed like a straight up reaction to my annoying people. People at 100 just overadjust, do the 'monkey see monkey do' thing, and just stack baddddly.

http://weaktight.com/5726453 - tarp

http://weaktight.com/5726455 - I have bluffs on the flop atm, not really the river tho

http://weaktight.com/5726458 - crushed when the money goes in, needs a lot of folds

http://weaktight.com/5726462 - bad stack

Yeah thing image is decently important. Even bad regs at 100 will make OKish folds VS people they perceive to be not capable of bluffing. I know this from experience........ and it doesn't have to be a long term thing of changing stats, people get pissed off in a single session...... managing this side of poker is probably the most enjoyable part of it for me.

Right, another session now.........

Start of day stuff

Start with mental stuff. Was just discussing all this mad stuff I need to spend tons of money on, and got me a little tilted and so I disengaged from the conversation. In the past I'd probably just kick off a quick session with a 'need to make money' mentality and spew off 9 BIs, but now at least I can do some stuff about it and get myself in a better mode.

Basically, I only have control over how well I play, and so worrying about external factors such as rungood is a huge waste of mental energy and counter productive. I feel like I'm slowly turning round the oil tanker in terms of how I view session decisions in relation to winrate..... just realising that making a big fold or even losing an unavoidable buyin, or even losing a buyin that was close, contributes to a 5bb winrate as much as winning large pots does.

I've also been grading myself every 10 minutes on my ability to have video narratives kick in on all the key pots. Having it there is very mentally intensive, so it's not like I need it for every PF decision or whatever, but once I have 10bbs invested into a pot then I need to start articulating the correct way forward as if being watched a few 100 people.

Technically, probably my biggest leak thus far is allowing reverse equity situations to build when I'm OOP. A couple of huge soul reads starting on the flop when he's always betting 3 streets, but marginal. I 3bet KK the other day, and CC down AQ8r VS a wide PF range where he'd only ever bet AQ or 88 3 streets for value. So 12 combos vs a wide PF range and a range where his air is stabbing flop a ton......... so maybe the soulread isn't that bad, but I guess at 100 just sorta *unnecessary* really. He had 88.

Other than that, quite happy. I've been cbetting more so my WWSF is pretty high again which can only be good.

Right, er that's it. Hopefully won't be long now till I'm free of this cursed limit. At least I have a house to my name tho!

6am Musings

It's 6am, I'm up ready to attack the day and get into a normal sleep pattern! Not really, I'm just about to go to bed obviously. Just thought I'd throw some quick notes down about stuff before I go to sleep. On a side note, anyone that says 'catch some zeds' needs shooting in the head.

A side effect of just playing more pot control VS fish and bad regs was that I noticed my wwsf for the past few days had sunk to an all time low of 42........ wtf! Checking my cbet stat, it had sunk to 33....... woah! So yeah, I'd gotten out the habit of cbetting and was ceding far too many pots. So I corrected that the last 2 sessions and had 50+ wwsf again.

Mental game was good today overall...... today was a decently hard test 'cos I definitely ran abysmally in about a million spots and previously it probably woulda spiralled. Finished $150 down on the day after being stuck $600.

I realised from reading Mental Game of Poker that my biggest tilt 'flavour' (or whatever) is Mistake Tilt. Basically making mistakes is the only proper form of tilt I actually experience. Bad beats (within reason) I'm fine with, coolers, fine. Mistakes though, I just myself getting angry at myself and for the next minute I'm much more prone to other mistakes.

Injecting logic such as 'mistakes are fine, they're part of learning and part of your solid winrate, the bigger mistake would be for this mistake to lead to worse mistakes' really helps. Also recognising that a ton of 'mistakes' aren't actually mistakes, like a thin value bet VS a fish on the river with 3rd pair and he just has top pair. Important to remember YOU'RE NOT GOOD 100% WHEN CALLED......... JUST MARGINALLY OVER 50% IS FINE.

I'm loving the game theory aspect of defending x% of my range atm...... just means I'm making tons of aggressive floats and raises....... you basically have to when defending 66% of your range on every street. I don't always do it, but in 100% cbet spots I'm defending at least the top 66% of my range and probably some more. It's really opened my eyes to, and quanitified, just how exploitable people are when they're clearly defending WAY less than 66% of their own range and we just get to auto profit on our bets. Example, I defended 66 on AA8 or something in a 3bet pot today...... I'd check down on blanks, but on the turn K to a weak barrel I double floated and jammed river. Hand history's here http://weaktight.com/5709088

Right m'off to bed. Plan for tomorrow is to have a haircut, realised today my last one was for my cousin's wedding...... last July.

Mental game improvement

Just a small thing, but after a couple of good sessions I was getting annihilated in the last one. The hands were all fine, I was in a good frame of mind and I've checked them and they're all standard coolers/ occasional thinnish shoves VS 50bbers.

Given all that, as I was waiting for the blinds to finish the session, it would've been very easy for me to call this river to 'prove' how bad I was running. His range is like JJ, and the fact I didn't call it after being stuck 4BIs shows a decent improvement imo.

Mental Fail

Well, only a very slight one, but a costly one. And it was very sorta circumstance-specific, ie it wouldn't have happened had the following two hands not happened consecutively and I had a second to inject logic and get over the tilt.

http://weaktight.com/5703255 - yeh, their calling range on the river is sets and trips, they're both calling either of these to a shove so gotta be a shove. Got coolered, whatever, these things happen and you still get to win at 5bb 'cos these are already factored in!

http://weaktight.com/5703262 - unfortunately the above hand hit showdown just as he bet this turn, and I was like 9% titlted and thought oh fuck it he can't have a flopped flush with this sizing and I look fos and he's never folding KK AA with a diamond etc. Bad logic, he's totally always cc KK or AA somewhere, and when I raise and he shoves I'm cruuuuuuuushed and probably don't have the odds at this point. So yeah I just basically needed an extra 7 seconds between hands and I would been fine here and gone call call and saved myself $100 or so. Oh well.

I'm just writing this to remind myself to take a very deep breath after any potential tilt hand and take extreme caution on any hand for the next minute or so.

The day is young anyway!

Good couple of days

Ran well for a couple of days and did well $ wise. As part of the mental game of poker stuff though I'm obviously trying to move away from evaluating success based on short term $ fluctuations, but I'm pleased with my in-game mental approach of late and also my approach to dealing with leaks and competencies and such.

I have this sticker on my desktop recording my current conscious competencies and unconscious competencies. I have a few ready to be 'promoted' to UC I think, leaving room for some more conscious competencies. Not too sure what they'll be yet though.

Dan

Musings

Decent consistency of late...... reading the mental game of poker every day has been a huge help, just to get me thinking in those terms really. I have a list of session goals that currently function as my 'conscious competencies', some of which are soon ready to be promoted to 'unconscious competencies' and thus making room for more conscious competencies to fill their place. Being aware of this stuff stops me having too many things to think about at once and overloading my brain and causing spew.

I think a big improvement has been, laughably, that I resolved to stop spewing to fish. Sounds insane, I would let them own my soul time and time again through not pot controlling, through 3x overbet river bluffs, through forgetting that my thin turn bet still means they might pot donk the river, etc. I think my competeitive instincts has been lacking VS them as well, like I hate to 'lose' to regs (where lose might mean not getting the maximum value or whatever in the 'poker' sense) but I haven't had the same killer instinct when it comes to fish. So yeah improving this has been a big help.

On the mental side, the constant reminder that every small decision contributes to winrate has kept my focus super solid too. Need to keep reminding myself of that though, it's not yet to the level of UC (unconscious competency).

Technically, I've been putting more into winding up regs with small amounts of aggression to enable them to spew. I think this is pretty important as I've discussed before. Basically have the image of a spewtard, but without actually doing a whole lot of spewing (maybe a ton of breakevenish flop minraises, turn donks, river minbets etc).

So yeah just wanted to write a blog while on a roll rather than after the usual 12 BI nightmare.

Pre Session Notes

Couple of good sessions, probably purely down to improved mental game rather than anything else. Sounds stupid, but it helps me hugely to remember that everything contributes to the winrate. Yeah this is obvious, but I'd get frustrated at losing virtually any pot 'cos I'd think 'damn, can't win at 5bb now, cos I got coolered'. Like sorta thinking that all the coolers and good pots and everything all add up to 5 bb/100, and anything taken off that means we win nothing. Whereas in reality all our winning spots add up to a gizzilion/100, and it's just minimising those downsides that leave us with a nice healthy winrate. Yeah, just helps me loads to think about it like this for some reason.

So yeah that's it, not too many interesting hands really. I've been doing lots of work on CREV on flatting 3bets..... like cos so many people auto cbet so many boards, but we have to defend 2/3 of our range to stop them having the auto profitable cbet. 2/3 of our range includes a lot of very aggressive floats and raises, so been fun to play about with those. I'll talk more about it sometime when I have it more figured out.

Did have to make this 'sigh lol 100' call today. He woulda bluffed me off 22 tho. http://weaktight.com/5679486

Is all

Session Review #1

Stopping and writing the last blog in that session was a really good move. I was stuck 2 BIs at the time because of this and this. The 87 I hate much less than the KJ........... KJ I was just sure he peeled ace hi on the turn again, but the shove is hugely bad just based on hand selection and positions and lol 100 really. As I said in the last blog, there's plenty of scope to be aggro at 100 but typically once the pot reaches a certain threshold people are going nowhere.

The 87 is like, he definitely only shoves Tx there, JJ+ gets 4bet preflop 100%, definitely isn't good enough to shove 99, etc. On the flipside, maybe I should just bluffcatch the 24 combos of JJ+ I always have there and fold the bottom of my range. Gotta make dems hero calls sometimes tho, so yeah I don't hate it, only the river really is close and he gets there with so much of his preflop calling range.

I have a definite leak of putting in too much money VS fish........ actually is crazy how bad I play vs them. Like the number of times I try a bet check overbet or something and get snapped by middle pair. Also stuff like this has to stop, I should just cc the flop and go from there rather than shovel money in without a decent plan to win the hand.

So current goals:

Be aggro in small and med pots, not spewy in big ones.
Don't spew VS fish.
Don't get it in too light CO-EP.

Mental Goals:
Video narrative on decisions
Realise that everything contributes to winrate, not just the winning pots. Folding the river well = winrate, losing the minimum = winrate. Good for mentality.

Session Goals

A couple of good sessions. Then started badly in this one and decided it was worth going over some general goals of play here, specifically pertaining to 100nl......

First of all, being perceived as a spaz is a must. Actually being a spaz though is a disaster. Very general point this, but the regs are weak enough to call way too wide on flop and fold lots of turns......... this goes for single raised pots and 3bet pots. If they're still there on the river though, time to shut up shop!

So yeah, no excuses for big river bluffs at this level. People's calling ranges are exceedingly wide in all spots, especially after a few 3bets and flop raises, and the way to exploit that is not to be jamming all in on the river with no pair a lot no matter how game theoretically correct it may seem.

Getting it in PF.......... facing a 3bet EP or MP vs BTN or blinds, we have to be really tight getting in PF. QQ is out, AK is out. Just flat them OOP.

In obvious bluff catcher spots facing a big bet, they have it. Well, not always, but certainly more than the maximum 66% of the time we need them to have it.

Session review to follow......

Session Review

Happy with how the session played out, particularly my thought process and the mental aspect. After doing some work on exploitation/ re-exploitation etc I was very mindful not to fold VS wide ranges. Like, folding even 40% VS a 25% opener and 66% cbettor VS our, say, 6% cc range is a big mistake, and should be more like fold 30%.

Similarly, spots where our opponents cold call too wide I've just been looking to barrel off and make virtually their whole range (after calling flop & turn) a bluffcatcher. If they call light, then easy adjustment but I think the starting point should be to attack very wide.

Also getting a bit more game theoryish with calls. This being  the near top of my range and playing VS a wide range = call VS an unknown rather than worry too much that bluffing rivers at 100 doesn't happen too much.

Probably one misake in a middle sized pot where I should've trusted my instinct and folded turn. But overall good, even though I didn't want to say that.

Update

I'm here to talk about a small downswing, and stuff to take out from it. The downswing was caused/ influenced by a few things, but least of all variance and most of all my attitude. In a word, complacency, which is absolutely scandalous really.

I think it all started when I was taking advice on how to improve my overall happiness........ essentially I tried to look at all things in a more positive light and take the good out of situations. I also had to stop beating myself up for misplayed sessions or whatever.

I think it's sound advice when applied to life, but it seems irreconcilable to me with striving for perfection in a discipline such as poker. Especially when being just short 'perfection' (meaning playing to the best of our ability) is increasingly the difference between winning a small amount and losing a ton. Reading my 2009 blogs brought home to me how much of a perfectionist I was at that time........ constant 4 figure winning sessions where I was going crazy at myself over a slightly misplayed hand.

These days, it's been more like 'oh lost 3 BIs at a table of the worst players on the internet, shouldn't have shoved that AJo PF I suppose, oh well Dan A for effort here's a nice pat on the back'. Surprise surprise, rinse repeat some other stupid time. Wonder why my winrate barely touches 1bb the last 200k hands.

Anyway, step 1 to improving means beating myself up a hell of a lot more than I have been doing. Or at least, have the implied threat of beating myself up in order to stop me being so ridiculous in the first place. In terms of overall happiness......... I need some separation basically, or maybe I'll just only be happy if doing well, which is fine by me.

Step 2 of my plan is play much less, and work much more. I just did an hour & half with Flippety from Leggo, looking at some stuff on CREV, and it's actually scary just how much better he thinks about poker than I do. (He also make me laugh, saying he always leaves tables when fish sit 'cos he finds it boring playing them- love that attitude).

My long term winrate over 900k hands is 1.9bb at 200nl Zoom, some 500 and some 100. Given decent sample graphs I've seen, I don't see any reason why I can't half the number of hands I play, but treble my winrate, through increased work and a better attitude. I can see soooooo much room for improvement that I'm also certain of it.

Some session reviews, and then a ton of CREV sims is the formula for improvement. As Flippety said, it's all about improving the maths/ combos/ game theory side to the level of unconscious competency. Just constantly doing the sims is what eventually feeds in your gametime brain and allows you to play better.

Step 3 of my plan is to delete Twitter (done), unsubscribe from the online Spectator magazine (not yet done) and save myself about 4 'leisure' reading hours in the day that I can spend instead reading mental game of poker, maths of poker, D2s books, Matt Janda's new book, or whatever.

Step 4 is to have some mental consistency. I often have these little relaunch episodes, and I crush for a while, but complacency is the worrrrrrrrrst thing for me. I'll analyse, crush, analyse, crush, then just play play play breakeven, lose 30BIs, come back here crying about it. I need to be massive on guarding against complacency and keeping the workrate up.

Step 5, already mentioned, but reading mental game of poker over and over and over. Just getting much better at it........ more and more top players I'm hearing from read it constantly..... even CTS who you would think is just like super level headed anyway has read it twice recently. I think my mindset in a ton of spots recently has been atrocious and it simply needs to improve.

The end.

Review Time

A couple of losing sessions in a row, so I need to play a session where I take my time over everything and then review here....... I usually find this a great way to nip downswings in the bud before they escalate into 25 BIs etc.

Review to follow.......session will be strictly 25 minutes long.


---

Bleh, not a good session! Looking through the hands, it's clear I could've saved *some* money, but I just simply didn't win over $25 in any particular hand. 'Not winning hands' can get endemic, which is why I've endeavoured to loosen up my image a ton through (potentially breakeven in a vacuum) flop raises, turn check raises, etc etc. Unfortunately, if the situations don't come up then they don't come up.

I certainly could've folded this river (although Sauce would not have done). One thing I need to learn to balance is that..... the mode of play whereby we make plenty of bluffs does not disqualify us from also making the same number of obvious folds that we did previously. It does enable us to get in the money lighter, but only in spots where we are the aggressor, ie we can suddenly treble tp3k for a value in a 3bet pot. Spots like the above, especially on the river are just *classic* ssnl folds all day.

So yeah, I'm all about being very hard on myself at the moment, but I think this session and the ones preceding it are simply about pure runbad in the 'not having good situations' sense. I'm going to endeavour to fold more rivers though, but just continue to do what I'm doing and grind through it.

I'll play another 60 minute session after a short break. Goals are to time on decisions, have a video narrative on medium-big decisions, and probably look to fold rivers more. Review to follow.

Session #3

$30 won on the session! EV of $215....... a sad last minute beat to destroy my dreams

http://weaktight.com/5608552

Was super happy with the session though, basically a textbook example of how I want to be playing, decent amount of 3betting, delayed bluffs, and flop raises but without venturing into spew.

Feel like I should walk my dogs. Hmm, really can't be bothered. Meh, actually the mental inner peace it gives me will probably help me. So yeah, gonna walk em.

Session #2

Lost $130 or so, but an ubercooler accounted for all that btn-sb QQ vs KK. Although, maybe it's not that much of a cooler, I need to start 4betting a ton there probably to be thrilled getting in even QQ at Zoom these days with the lack of dynamics. But meh, still a cooler, he was like 13% from that spot.

Lost with 33 on t32r A too a big pot, and then bottled calling the river here http://weaktight.com/5608414 . Yes it doesn't look like a call, but I had strong spidey senses on this guy, but my desire to play solid meant I folded......... I like the turn bet by the way in case anyone's wondering.

Basically a load of sorta unavoidable big pots totalled $230, and I lost only $130, and so kinda happy.

For session 3, plan is just more of the same, avoid making mistakes and keep looking for spots to apply pressure.

Session Review

Still struggling along at the moment. $7k under EV for the year, and then the confidence issues that result, have left me pretty poor. I NEED to write more of these blogs I think, I've been stuck in a bit of a grinder's rut 'get in dems hands' which isn't healthy. Well, it might be healthy for a while, like if you find a style that works and hammer it, but eventually things and regs change and some adjustment might be needed.

I think for a while at 200 I was hammering the 'fold everything, make the nuts' style, but I'm sure I'm not imagining things when I say lately I'm finding it a little difficult to get paid off. I think my image has probably just evolved to the point where every check raise gets a snap fold, every 4bet a snap fold. I basically haven't been very balanced, just relying on coolering people and then avoiding the re-coolers.

The other problem with this style is, that it's a bit 'card dependent' if you know what I mean. I don't sit down expecting to print money, I just hope I'll get some semi cooler situations and then make the big folds in reverse. Consequently WWSF has gone under 50 the last month, down to 45 or so. Red line (red herring a lot obv but still) winnings also plummeting at a large rate.

Where I'm going with this, is that I want to change my in-game outlook slightly to have more of a 'non showdown' mentality. This doesn't just mean start going crazy, but it does mean planning the hand with an eye on winning without showdown at some point. Playing one session like this felt much better, I was much more vigilant in looking for good situations rather than just going through the motions.

Thinking through the hand probably takes care of a few PF leaks as well, overcalling KQo in SB when the postflop situations are mostly pretty poor for us, etc.

http://weaktight.com/5607810 - important to pick my opponents better! But yeah, I think in the past I just try to show this down or something. Weak flop CB and weak turn bet though and it's just a good river bluff spot VS most when we bomb it.

So yeah, that's it for now. Just going to get more sessions in and keep reviewing and try to turn this around!

Mental Refresh

The year hasn't started well for me so far, but that will change. I can put it down to really poor mental game, and lack of technical *thinking* outside of sessions to keep me up to speed. I basically need to start writing here more..........

It's clear I've allowed a ton of leaks to creep into my mental game. For one, I'm no longer unrelentingly positive when playing. In an ideal world, bad beats are seen as heaven sent 'cos they keep fishes wanting to play. Bad play on my part is just to be expected sometimes, because nobody is perfect. Variance will happen as surely as it will rain, so expect it and don't be sad when it does happen.

Discipline has also been a problem........ I'm trying not to be too hard on myself but there's been too many big mistakes VS bad bad players. Something about playing VS genuinely good players concentrates my mind and mistakes are few and far between, but if we ever start jamming AJo to an aggro 4bettor at 1-2 then that guy has won..........

I don't know where this ramble is headed really. I just need to start analysing every session again here until I get back on the winning track. So, starting now.........

Technical Goals:
Be overly nitty on the back foot.
Read our hand in our opponent's eyes.
Get to *know* the players.
If we don't know the player, it's probably a fold.

Mental Goals:

Video narrative- really important that I learn this to unconscious competency level
Positive thoughts only
Take time on medium pot+ decisions- again, really important that this gets learned to unconscious competency level.


Ok so to get the ball rolling I'll start off with a 30 minute session and then grade my performances based on the above and then do a technical review as well