Update

I really feel like things are coming together at the moment. My friend Stefan gave me a massively important and helpful talk about his mental approach to poker which has really resonated with me. As always, it's about being in the moment in each and every decision and trusting your heart.

So flowing from that has come some important technical considerations that have been getting neglected. There's been so much poker thought coming out that I'm struggling to keep pace with it all. I'm just writing down quick notes and then planning to write it out more in-depth in this place and others.

I've been looking for an 'approach' for a while. And what that means is an overall approach to poker- something to fall back on when making a decision. Some people have the pure exploitative approach, they'll 3bet 95o if they think their opponent folds enough to 3bets. Others have an approach of implementing 'pseudo game theory', ie they religiously don't want to defend too little and always find a bluff even if their opponent never has a hand that will fold.

I keep playing around with GTORB, but still have more videos about it watch. This has re-energised what was once my main goal when playing poker, and that is simply to make less mistakes than our opponents. Mistakes can take many forms, but it's essentially anything that doesn't fair well VS the solid GTO (strategies that I'm attempting to implement). Obviously not actual GTO in virtually any hand- it's just too mad and complex- but what each GTO strategy has in common is that every hand is well supported by plenty of other hands that stop our opponent from doing anything to make a lot of money from us. Key to this is board coverage and range coverage, ie we should never get to the river with 'no bluffs' or have a river comes that completely destroys our range.

This approach does wonders for our mental game too, as well as giving a solid technical foundation which doesn't disappear the moment we go out of the zone.

Fear has been a big problem for me, but this approach takes that away. If we're playing Sauce, just make sure we're not doing anything terribly exploitable and what's he going to do? A lot of this does require a fair bit of ingame thought, but that's ok. For example, we get to the river with 45% bluffs and 55% value. We need to think to ourselves whether we're going to bet a normal size and lose some of our bluffs, or maybe bluff all our bluffs but go 5x pot. Which works best, and why is this? Typically in the above example if comes down to the capedness or otherwise of our opponent's range, and so VS a capped range we take the big betsize and VS the uncapped we go a more standard size.

4betting deep IP ranges, I was thinking about this today when I had AA in this spot. Basically we end up flatting a lot in a vacuum, but this hurts our range because it loses value with AA. I decided something like Q9s, J8s, and a smattering (red suits) of the 64s, 75s of the world, + AKo and occasionally something like 22-33. All giving us really good board coverage and virtually making sure we're making no mistakes postflop.

Anyway this is a ramble now, off to play and review.

LET'S DO THISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Man I've been coasting for fucking ages now. Coasting without coasting, if you know what I mean. I keep playing, and sorta thinking, and playing, and playing infinitely more. And heatering, then cooling down again, and thinking about other shit while I'm playing, and making the odd concession to 'stuff to think about' to give myself the illusion that I'm actually fully present in all this shit, and then getting mad, then playing some more, etc etc etc.

I'm fully mad now, but I think for the first time I can see it getting directed in the right way. I'm fucking raging to have spent the last 300k hands losing $16k or something, at the fact that I've showed not enough pride while playing, and at the fact that I'm fucking life broke. This shit is stopping, right now. (Well actually, 30 mins ago prior to my last session).

Intensity is the name of the game. Intensity not just in my concentration, but in the fact that 'poker' as a whole is a cycle of playing, analysing, improving, correcting. I am going to destroy every session that I play from now on, or else what is the fucking point?

I think what is basically happening within my pyshce atm is that I've come off these anti depressents, Cytalopram. They have weird side effects, but their main effect is dulling ur brain to feeling any pain whatsoever. When I first went on them, poker sorta improved, cos I was previously too highly strung and it really helped my tilt problems. Over time though, the inertia of the drug kicked its way into my play. Like, why bother trying to win or play well if you feel good anyway, right? Because of this, I sleep walked my way into Bustoville, which I'd never allowed to happen in 7 years as a professional. I usually have such a strong radar as to when I'm 'in trouble', usually when my BR hovers around the $10k mark.

BR today: $461- and debts to pay. Sure I have £60k equity in a house, but selling it is not a realistic option.

So yeah, I'm off Cytalopram, and because I'm no longer 'depressed' I've had shit tons of energy flowing thru me. I've been unleashing this at football, reverting to the super aggressive style of my youth that I thought had left me forever. Now, smashing people and winning games is nice, but I've struggled to take that energy and do anything with it at poker. I've just felt too 'mad', getting tilted at stupid things like mistakes and bad river cards.

http://grogheadflow.blogspot.co.uk/ was my orignal analysis blog, and re-reading it is fun. The hands are mostly lol by today's standards of play, but you can see the intensity is there and the will to win and improve.

My eye has left the ball, without me realising it. I honestly think that in my mind the past 6 months I've felt more like a pro footballer. Just, at the equivalent level of 2nl. Well fuck that, poker won't be around forever and I still have an amazing opportunity to rape this game for the next few years. Football, drinking, seeing my parents, worrying about life, can all take a backseat now while I direct all this energy into the cycle of eat sleep rape repeat. (Rape has the sub-sections I listed above).

I just played a 30 minutes 100nl session, and had two notepad files open, one for 'strategy thoughts' and one that functions as a 'thought and logic dump', allowing me to lose those rando thoughts that come in and disrupt my ability to implement effectively.

Here's the raw dump of the latter:

Put urself in their shoes, they actually fear us! We can fuck them up once inside their heads

Losing a hand, mistake? there are no mistakes, only points of interest, review the hand later

Instinct- don't worry about remembering to trust it lol, just relaxing and doing it is enough

Thinking ahead
Money won or lost is an illusion, physical symptoms can arise tho like adrenalin. That's all they are.

CR river fail, went against instinct.

Mistake tilt? Or just physical feelings. Again, there are no mistakes. We can learn from trusting our instinct more

mistakes from our opponents, noticing them?

confidence at some decisions, like river calls

checking money, what does it mean?

video a day?
making moves without thinking of range, overly concerned with proteciton when it might lead to me getting raped

money

can I get over the past? seems i focus on it a lot

complacency?


And here's the strat thoughts:

30 mins session then review

Pot river in obv bluffcatch spot
Remember our range at all times
Small bets with range advantage
Sizing, using our own sizing on dynamic turns to communicate what we want
PSR, reading ahead
what if the board isn't getting barreled that often?
when cbetting ip, plan ahead the cards to barrel
bluffs on 3flush runouts
deep pots, overbetting becomes a really massive weapon no?
maybe we should just look to be solid, then crush when deep
'what he would do'
OOP as pfr, we just not arsed about giving up a lot right? especially cos we minraise
inflection points
unplayable hands, a9s etc? just shit, right? yeh cos they lose a lot of straight potential
checking a lot OOP

So there's so much to think and talk about. Where to start?

Well first of all, I've been sub consciously having 'fear' without me realising it. The fear has been one of an inferiority complex, even at 100nl, and then rather than addressing that I've tried to 'prove' I'm not afraid by doing stupid things, lol.

I wrote this blog on fear at the start of the year http://grogheadflowanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/stuff-and-stuff.html.

It's got lots of really good stuff in it actually, and making me realise just how little shit I've been applying of late.

So yeah, how to fix fear? Well, you just inject logic, they're actually more likely to be afraid of us. We're the 500nl regular, we know poker better than they do, we know our own ranges and their ranges better than they do, they have every reason to be afraid! Just reminding ourselves of that is very powerful.

Technically, there's so much stuff I'm not applying. I haven't been handreading well, transitioning ranges from street to street. Simialrly, I haven't considered my own range enough...... and I should do so not as a defensive tactic but rather to ensure I'm putting maximum pressure on at all times. Betting 1/2 on the river for value is properly stupid when, had I considered our range, we end up with infinite bluffs and one or two combos of value. Similarly, I'm going to be missing bluff spots where our range can be handread as infinitely strong. Also on this subject, it means I'm probably giving sizing and PSR tells away by not thinking about my whole range on earlier streets.

One thing I'm very clear about in poker is that taking on too much is a recipe for disaster. Although I have lots of stuff to think about, I have to concentrate on one or two things, and I think handreading, being aware of our range, and planning ahead are going to be those things for now. Mentally, trust instinct kidda!

Goals for next session:

Handread opponents
Handread ourselves
Plan ahead
Trust instinct

I'll grade myself at these, even if it is a bit sad ha.