I got a really great response to the coaching offer I made a couple of days ago. It's gratifying to put an offer out there and for people to demonstrate so much interest. Makes me feel all fuzzy, etc. A few people have committed to blocks of lessons and I am really confident that they won't be disappointed. I'll try to post my new students progress as we really get into it, so look out small stakes, you're about to get your shit rocked.

UPDATE: For prospective students, I now have the sample video that I promised ready for download. So if you are interested in some lessons, inquire within!

Hey Leggotes,
There has been so much discussion of coaching lately, I thought I'd go ahead and enter the fray. I think that everyone that says that the smaller stakes players can't afford the big name coaches are... ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! However, I think the conclusion of those people (that the elite coaches' rates are 'unfair') is patently wrong for a number of reasons. I don't really want to state them explicitly because I think it's already been done, and can be easily understood by familiarizing oneself to the concepts of "supply:demand" and "opportunity cost". Rather than dropping half of your bankroll in return for information you probably aren't ready for anyway, why not pay a fraction of the cost and seal up your biggest leaks? OK, hold on, back to that in a moment.

I have been working with Reid 'Shootaa' for more than a year now. I think he's an excellent teacher and I've recommended him to others on a half dozen other occasions. I can't tell you how much I've learned since then. I've gone from winning 1 bb/100 at nl200 to winning at least 4 times that at nl400 on Pokerstars 6 max. Of course, part of the credit must go to the poker peers that have been invaluable in allowing me to actualize poker knowledge on the table. But I'm not satisfied. I am hungry to achieve 8 bb/100, a figure that I believe represents a benchmark in personal poker development. I'm working as hard as I can to improve my game. I watch videos regularly, I experiment with poker stove, I occasionally 1 table (you really can't follow EVERY action from every player otherwise) I receive coaching on a semi-regular basis and I have a solid group of peers beating nl100-nl1k who I talk to on a daily basis. I'd like to think the information I have at my disposal is pretty darn up to date.

Basically, the reason that I'm making this post is that I'd like to pull some small stakers on up the ladder in the process. I think it would keep me thinking about the game from all kinds of perspectives, and keep me accountable to others in what is otherwise a relatively solitary sport. And for what its worth, I think my mind is considerably better off the table than it is while I'm in the heat of playing.

**** The important part****

For the time being, I'm going to ask for only $60/hour of private coaching (considerably less than my hourly during the hand sample represented by the below graph). I will also offer a set of five lessons for $250. This will include everything you get from an elite coach including my aim screen name and other contact info that you might need. I would encourage regular questions as I think this is how you can best drive home recently incorporated information while avoiding misapplication of concepts to the greatest extent possible. And yes, if somebody demonstrates in enough confidence in me that they are willing to pay for coaching, then I damn sure want to see that person improve as much as possible. If you need references, I would be happy to oblige, and I am also going to offer up a 'Leggo' style video of me playing and narrating my thoughts so interested parties can decide whether my skillz are worth your billz. I feel like I should rap this up with "FOR ONLY ONE EASY PAYMENT OF 19.95" or "BUT WAIT, IF YOU ACT NOW", but I'm going for honesty and equity! I am new to the coaching, so if there are questions or you are interested, ship me a message!

Paz y Amor,
Brandon

Brag: So I just bought this ballin 30 inch screen open box off of newegg for about 1k. It's a thing of beauty and inspires awe. I wish that they would put a baby in the picture for scale or something.

Beat: my desktop is a $350 dell inspiron that doesn't have the right connection (I believe it's called a DVI port). Even with an adapter, my graphics card, which I believe is about as technologically advanced as the colorful thing inside a kaleidescope wouldn't support a screen that big anyway.

Variance: Now I need to buy another fucking computer. I think that I should buy a laptop and just connect it to the screen and forego the desktop altogether so I can travel with the same machine I use to grind from my home spot. But I've been out the tech game for awhile, and I didn't know much about it to begin with as Wake Forest generously provided us with Lenovo powered Thinkpads that have just a bit more computing power than an abacus. What would people recommend? I think my price range is gonna be $1200-1800 give or take a bit maybe. Thoughts are appreciated!

What's up merry pranksters?



Cliffs; Jan was sweet, Febtober blew, BW made a good video, Crapface82 snapped me out of a poker funk and now I'm running toasty hot.

I haven't updated the blog in awhile; the truth is that following a really great January showing, February shat on me. I just lost/broke even day in and day out, felt like I was running atrociously and, what was more unsettling was that my play was degenerating. My real frustration had once again stunted my poker growth and inhibited me from thinking clearly.

No, I am absolutely not a supporter of the 'Emotional Control' doctrine/dogma to the exclusion of the other important aspects of poker (game theory, statistics, psychology, BR management, forging solid professional relationships, etc etc etc). However, I think that Boywonder made a really great video recently which highlighted the relationship between frustration and gametime decisions. Getting my face pounded in on a daily basis was precluding me from thinking about ranges honestly, and I got this sense of paranoia that the tougher nl400-1000 regs were 'exploiting' me in every spot in which it was apparent that exploitation was possible. A big shoutout to my friend Crapface82 for repetitiously explaining that nobody is paying a bit of fucking attention and that they usually have what their line is telling you they have. I think I'm at a point where I can stop uber-leveling myself for a stack every session. Folding sucks, and not folding has been a big part of my mental development, but fuck man, sometimes you just gotta fold!

So I cut back my hours of playing, ratcheted up the studying hardcore and decided to build 9 tabling nl200 into my gameplan for the time being. I'm happy to say that I've made a toasty hot 19 bb/100 over 17.5k hands at those stakes. While my 'true' winrate (whatever that means) is undoubtedly less than half of that winrate, I feel like I'm playing well, and pwning bitches.

Today I decided that my BR was pretty safe and it was time to venture back into the nl400 games while the fish were biting. I was able to ship 3k during a 1000 hand session. Sweetness. I am going to keep playing nl200, play the nl400 games when they are good and keep everyone posted in the meantime.

Keep ballin hard ninjas,

Brandon

I either win or I don't, amirite?

I have a 107k chip stack with 4k players remaining. Average stack is 85k so shit isn't the least bit interesting yet, but I'm in the money, so I thought I'd poast. Anyway, if excitement ensues, I'll update. Otherwise I've got a worthy blog update in the works coming soon.

UPDATE: Well I went out near the 1k remaining mark. I had only 2/3 of an average stack (I thought the chip structure was LOL, but I suppose Stars wanted to clear out the small city that played that MTT and enjoy the half a million dollars they made off the entry fees). In any case, I ran AKo right into AA. So much for card removal. Mtt's sort of have disappointment built into them so I'm trying to be happy that I made $750 or so despite losing about 1.5k in cash to hilarious coolers all day. Well tomorrow is a new day!

More updates on the way, some funny stuff's been poppin lately.

What's up ninjas?

So I've been frustrated in a pretty epic way lately. I'm trying to keep things in context and recognize that my emotional attachment to the results is a negative thing. BIG UPS to StudentCaine for his excellent survey of emotional issues related to poker. I'm looking forward to cracking into the epic 8 part tilt series soon now that I checked out his shortcourse on poker and the brain. Such good stuff man.

But the fact remains that in the last two weeks I've gone from a few thousand +EV to distinctly -EV. It happened in a very short time and it correlated with getting coolered, failing to hit draws, losing every coinflip and traditional suckouts. I also have just been put in some vise like skull crushing situations in which I have probably played decently, but sub optimally. One example comes to mind;

I 3b OOP with AJhh to a cutoff minraise at nl600 and the flop comes A55r. I cbet villain calls. The turn comes Qo. I elect to check and the villain makes a PSB. River comes an inconsequential blank, I check and villain shoves. I expect villains value range to be exactly AQ and rarely 45/56s when he elects to call preflop and an extremely occasional QQ so I assume he often wants to barrel me off a chop, or just plain get me to fold something. I called and he flipped the AQ. It's just a tough fucking spot.

Running bad in so many ways, in turn, really knocked me off balance and caused me to make some rather senseless call downs in spots where my hand looked good superficially but was pretty crushed vs realistic ranges. Level 1 thinking (-)FTW, as it were. I've also played just mediocre in general, I think. It's easy to rip everyone's faces off when you're running hot, but it's so much harder to maintain the A game when running like AIDS riddled dog shit. Oh what a metaphor, my former professors would be proud.

So going forward I'm just going to try to study my balls off, continue to work on emotional control and get TOO good and turn this ship back in the right direction.

Also, I'll be listening to this song before and during literally every session. It makes me want to crack skulls and break balls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ibu9Ei6n4

"Bitch IMMA PICK THE WORLD UP AND DROP IT ON YOUR FUCKIN HEAD!"

Poker has gone pretty G-bux +, but - $ for about the last weak. It's been really frustrating but I'm trying to just get toooo much better and grind through it in the meantime. In any case, I decided to take the day off completely to let my head clear. You might say, today was an interesting day, if not for the lack of anything individually unbelievable, but for the aggregate of strange or unlikely things that happened throughout the day. But I'm about to fall asleep where I sit so I'm going to give an outline for the notables and I'll elaborate on it tomorrow.

-- Woke up to snowfall, started drinking in the middle of the day at frat
-- Smoked.
-- Had a snowball fight at my buddies' frat
-- May have grazed Denzel Washington's son with a snowball.
-- Trekked through a blizzard from hood West Philly into Center City with my ski gear for some urban x-country
-- Smoked more
-- pretended to be Jehova's witnesses
-- Got Drunk at a local bar
-- Was told by attractive older woman that she 'wanted to push me down the stairs', then proceeded to hit on me for twenty minutes by the end of which she was giving me 25 second hugs. Unbeknownst to me, her fiance is literally 6 feet away at a barstool.
-- spent an hour at 3:00 AM walking a wasted veteran, and fellow North Carolinian, to the VA hospital near where I live.

Thread bonus video! I don't think I'm missing anything, but who knows? It was a long fucking day.


I think this classic tune from the band who was the envy of Kurt Cobain captures my mood upon recounting the events of the day.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfcW_cPDCHo

Can someone please explain how to beat Nanonoko? Because apparently this doesn't work.

PokerStars Game #39460606051: Hold'em No Limit ($5/$10 USD) - 2010/02/08 23:53:39 ET
Table 'Figneria III' 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: Jamie217 ($1010 in chips)
Seat 2: FastEddie267 ($1187 in chips)
Seat 3: jdepa01fcp ($990 in chips)
Seat 4: nanonoko ($2377 in chips)
Seat 5: skyler101 ($562 in chips)
Seat 6: CrabClaws ($593 in chips)
jdepa01fcp: posts small blind $5
nanonoko: posts big blind $10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to CrabClaws [Ah Ad]
skyler101: raises $20 to $30
CrabClaws: calls $30
Jamie217: folds
FastEddie267: folds
jdepa01fcp: folds
nanonoko: raises $80 to $110
skyler101: calls $80
CrabClaws: raises $483 to $593 and is all-in
nanonoko: calls $483
skyler101: folds
*** FLOP *** [Jh Ts Ks]
*** TURN *** [Jh Ts Ks] [6h]
*** RIVER *** [Jh Ts Ks 6h] [6c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
nanonoko: shows [Kd Kc] (a full house, Kings full of Sixes)
CrabClaws: shows [Ah Ad] (two pair, Aces and Sixes)
nanonoko collected $1298 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $1301 | Rake $3
Board [Jh Ts Ks 6h 6c]
Seat 1: Jamie217 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: FastEddie267 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: jdepa01fcp (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: nanonoko (big blind) showed [Kd Kc] and won ($1298) with a full house, Kings full of Sixes
Seat 5: skyler101 folded before Flop
Seat 6: CrabClaws showed [Ah Ad] and lost with two pair, Aces and Sixes

Was having a good day and then he outdraw and coolered me for about another grand. I literally have never won a pot against him. That's all, time to anti tilt somehow.

Today was just one of those days. I couldn't get ANY momentum and the day was pretty much just a snore/bore fest punctuated by me getting shit on. I lost about 2k, I ran about $600 under EV but, mostly I just got coolered and made some questionable plays.

As per usual, nanonoko had QT vs my KQ on QT4 my cutoff vs his BB and i called his cr and barrels on blanks. I expect him to have AJ/KJ/J9/same hand/theoretically QJ at least part of the time. Compared to the combos of TT (which he 3b sometimes/44 (which I'm not positive he can even have) and AQ/QT, his value range seems smallish, but he ALWAYS seems to have it. Idk, he tilts me hard, and he's taken about 5-7 BI off me in exactly these kinds of spots. So maybe I'll just start folding 1 pair like a pussy? Idk, gonna research the hem in any case.

I also have to hold myself accountable. I played really mediocre poker today and it's just not acceptable. Playing less than my A game is never part of my gameplan and I really need to continue to strive to make the difficult calls and particularly the difficult folds (god I fucking hate check folding) in certain spots.

This is a hand in which I think I burned lots of dollars. ]

PokerStars Game #39252265816: Hold'em No Limit ($2/$4 USD) - 2010/02/04 23:55:20 ET
Table 'Tolosa II' 6-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: messier111 ($459 in chips)
Seat 2: iLeftFTP ($432.30 in chips)
Seat 3: mak10 ($416 in chips)
Seat 4: CrabClaws ($487.10 in chips)
Seat 5: #1 Mathlete ($973.20 in chips)
Seat 6: Shaitan87 ($436.20 in chips)
CrabClaws: posts small blind $2
#1 Mathlete: posts big blind $4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to CrabClaws [As Jd]
Shaitan87: folds
messier111: folds
iLeftFTP: raises $8 to $12
mak10: folds
CrabClaws: calls $10
#1 Mathlete: folds
*** FLOP *** [Jh 8d 5c]
CrabClaws: checks
iLeftFTP: bets $20
CrabClaws: raises $52 to $72
iLeftFTP: calls $52
*** TURN *** [Jh 8d 5c] [8h]
CrabClaws: bets $112
iLeftFTP: calls $112
*** RIVER *** [Jh 8d 5c 8h] [9h]
CrabClaws: bets $291.10 and is all-in
iLeftFTP: calls $236.30 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($54.80) returned to CrabClaws
*** SHOW DOWN ***
CrabClaws: shows [As Jd] (two pair, Jacks and Eights)
iLeftFTP: shows [Ks Kd] (two pair, Kings and Eights)
iLeftFTP collected $865.60 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $868.60 | Rake $3
Board [Jh 8d 5c 8h 9h]
Seat 1: messier111 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: iLeftFTP showed [Ks Kd] and won ($865.60) with two pair, Kings and Eights
Seat 3: mak10 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: CrabClaws (small blind) showed [As Jd] and lost with two pair, Jacks and Eights
Seat 5: #1 Mathlete (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 6: Shaitan87 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

I think the flop is good. He's going to call with the entire portion of his value cbet range which includes probably TT/99 and certainly all the worse jacks. The turn is good-ish for me, because it makes sets less likely, good people don't cr bare 8x here and all of my 9T/67/QT etc etc remain in. He can continue to call with worse jacks, and other worse pairs and if he picks up extra equity I think there is a good chance he foolhardily shoves. The river blows for obvious reasons as the range that I can get value from is probably now folding. It sucks that if I check I'm telling him in no uncertain terms that I have no better than 1 pair, but sometimes you just gotta toss up the white flag. This is certainly one of those times.

Props to Klink for dispelling my inclination to check call against a thinking player. I think there are scenario's where it would be awesome, but this is not one of them.

I'm also still working on the art of letting bad things happen and coping with big number losing days. Starting with a few beers. Good luck friends.

Brandon

I'm pretty happy with how things are progressing. I have started to make a habit out of just playing 4 tables which is cool for a a few reasons. Since there is no overlap (I need a bigger monitor) I am able to watch all the actions. Additionally, with only four tables, I feel like I can really afford to take the time to think about ranges deeply and carefully consider all 3 of my options at all times. On the down side, I just played a session where I didn't flop better than a pair or start with a hand better than TT for about an hour. Jebus that's boring. close to tilt inducing .

But I think my mental game is progressing a lot faster now that I'm playing in the tougher nl600 games and no longer autopiloting ( at least to the extent that I can manage not to). Winning around 3.75 pt bb at nl400 over around 25k hands give or take and have been running well at nl600 so far shipping a half dozen BI in only a few thousand hands (although I'm down in EV there demonstrating what a relatively worthless statistic it is).

NO DOOMSWITCH 1 time!