Day cooldown

Happy with my play and mental game today. I've tracked all my thoughts again, and it's helping develop my awareness as I play. I'm able to shine light on lots of thoughts that would previously go unnoticed, except by my unconscious, which would take those thoughts; believe in them 100% and send me on megatilt.

Looking at them, there seems to be quite a few 'anxiety' based ones, like panicking about a big bluff. The logic that needs injecting in those spots is something like 'you've made the best decision possible, so be very happy whatever happens'.

A few cockiness ones too, I've rode a bit of a heater today and I've felt the odd pang of wanting to 5bet 75s really deep just for the hell of it, that kind of thing. Luckily I haven't acted on any of those though, as I've been aware enough to immediately inject the logic of 'money won or lost is an illusion, cockiness will soon send your play on nosedive'.

Technically, I'm having a lot of success with big OOP bluffs. I really feel 200nl is still really 'trend' based at the moment, and today I felt on top of a lot of the trends. I've also really been happy with my reverse equity play. This has come a whole lot easier when I look at each decision along the lines of 'how exactly is this going to play out on various turns and rivers', similar to a CREV sim actually. This also aids decision making on the next street, so for example if I'm calling 77 on 844dd OOP, I know that on cards 8 and down he's going to check down his bluffs, whereas cards 9 or higher I'm going to be faced with a decision, and that decision is likely to be fold. So when the cards come on the turn, I'm not ruing my earlier decision.

So yeah, more of the same tomorrow please!

Day Cooldown

I'd rate my efforts today probably 7/10, certainly 'satisfactory', but with lots of room for improvement. I was able to resist checking results for a long time, but having a low bankroll and losing a few pots meant the itch was too strong. This will undoubtedly go away once my bankroll increases slightly, but in the meantime I simply have to not energise the urge to check by actually doing so, rather I just notice the urge, face it, and let it go.

I kept a real time record of all my thoughts today which has trained my awareness decently. One thing I'm trying to improve on is noticing positive variance as well as negative, so I don't have such a naturally lopsided view of how poker 'treats' me.

I have though, really felt like I've made progress on turning around the mental oil tanker, and reconditioning it to be bothered about only the result of how we played rather than anything to do with money. Money won or lost is an illusion etc.

I've tried out a few more technical lines today too, specifically upping the aggression OOP after our opponent checks the flop and caps his range. I think most people are loathe to do a lot there facing a turn bomb and river overbet, that type of thing. Similarly 3bet pots, when we can overbet the turn when the PSR allows, etc.

I did make several mistakes today, but they're fine and part and parcel of a good winrate. Some I'm able to learn from, specifically raising strong draws in spots where 200nl regs are just going to jam for protection, whereas 500nl regs you can get away with it more. A better line is often to call the bet OOP, and then lead small if we miss.

Probably went against my instinct a few times today. Again, nothing major, but something to improve upon for tomorrow.

Conclusion

I came to the conclusion today that as of late I have not been a theoretical winning player in the Zoom 200nl games. Saying this does hurt me a little, but I have to face up to it. I'm not running bad, therefore, I am playing bad. I also don't currently feel my edge at all, and have been going through the motions trying to sorta improve and grind but ultimately spending days at a time swinging 10BIs one way and then the next.

I always have a ton of concepts floating around my mind. As long time readers of this blog will know, I tend to focus on a few at a time, get it 'sorted' and then move on. What tends to happen though, is that whatever leak I fix eventually creeps back in. For example, say I want to focus on 'being sharp on finding spots to attack weak ranges', then sure I'll do that for a few sessions and be like ok that's done. And then, something like 'started snap clicking buttons' creeps in, so I'll concentrate on that, and before long I'm back to playing passively again and no longer picking on and attacking weak ranges. So as I whack one leak, another resurfaces. (See diagram).

So basically, when I learn these new skills or modes or whatever, I'm not sufficiently learning them to UC or IC level.

I have a decent plan for getting better though. Diagram below.

Basically, this pyramid shows the effectiveness of each mode of learning. I don't know exactly where 'writing an essay on the subject' fits into the pyramid, but intuatively it's going to be somewhere between 'practice doing' and 'teach others'.

So I've made a new 'technical concepts' blog. Each post is just going to be a concept that I write about to death, with HH examples etc. My hope is that by writing this, and continually returning to it, I will start to really cement some of these concepts into my unconscious competence and my intangiable competence.

I've really lost track of who reads this blog, and I don't really know if anyone still does, so if anyone wants to read the new one please just get me on skype and I'll make it so.

List of concepts thus far is as so:

flopzilla flop
my range in their eyes
reverse equity/ how it will play out
quick barrels ip are weaker?
quick river timing oop value?
snap flop assumptions
handreading/ assumptions
timing
snapshot of the payer
our range
CRing and abrreling different turns
4betting ranges ip, diff
stabbing ip
cbetting ip vs oop
assumptions
planning a hand

And I have some prioritized........ first is going to be about reverse equity.