I've been given and asked to do a review of D2's three new 6max E-books (there are three other HU books available), which are based around using CardRunnersEV software to analyse common poker situations. Of course no exact spot in poker is 'common', and so the books go into depth on how differing the important conditions in each spot lead us to different 'balanced exploitative' lines with different hands by which we maximise our EV.
The three 6max books are titled:
What The Float (OOP floats on flop and turn on a low board)
What The 3Bet (Playing a wet board IP in a 3bet pot)
What The Board (Playing a bad flop for the preflop raiser)
Each of the books are similar in structure, and begin by outlining a poker scenario, and then delving straight into the analysis of the situation from one or both the players' point of view.
For example, 'What The 3bet' begins with a scenario whereby we as the CO 3bet black AA and have UTG flat the 3bet OOP with a tightish range. The flop comes 876hhh, we (initially) continuation bet and face a check raise. How best to play this situation under various possible conditions?
So the book begins analysing the EV of calling or shoving VS the flop check raise depending on UTG's preflop range and postflop strategy, whilst also investigating the initial decision to bet the flop rather than check.
The analysis is done in straightforward steps illustrated with stoves and a plethora of EV graphs. The EV graphs (prevalent throughout the three books) I actually found particularly interesting, analysing the EV of certain lines depending on one or two variables. As an example below, we can see the EV of us shoving over the check raise in the aforementioned situation depending on our opponent's propensity to check raise his flushdraws from 0 to 100 (we can see that the EV of shoving black Aces here goes from being utterly bad to merely very bad).
So from that point on, we move onto exploring the EV of simply calling the checkraise. We then look at the option of not betting at all. A host of different factors then come into play; can we assume UTG will always jam the turn? how do things change if UTG is flatting much looser OOP? If we decide that in a vacuum AA should check, we then go onto explore how CO might balance the rest of his range.
Each book is summarised well, interpreting the results of the models that have been built to analyse the situation.
A running theme of my reading the books was being constantly shocked by my bad intuitive estimates of the EV of a situation (this will likely not shock many of you). I'll stay on the same example to avoid giving the whole book away........ but I can picture most video producers playing the AA at best by betting the flop, calling a check raise, and then getting in on a blank turn. This would likely pass without comment and we'd all go on our merry way believing the play to at least be +EV if not completely optimal. This line (at the point of deciding to bet) actually loses us money ranging from a little to a lot depending on various factors. The hands have actually been really well chosen to challenge typical 2p2/ Leggo/ CR assumptions on how to play various situations.
But what is the purpose of the books? Well D2 will probably chime in, but for me the main purpose doesn't seem to simply be 'hey this is how you play AA on 876hhh and I'll prove it to you' (though the spots themselves are pretty useful) but rather demonstrate to and inspire the reader on how to build our own models for our own situations.
To this end, at least for me, the books have been pretty successful. Since reading them, I've had the confidence to explore one hand in my latest vid using CREV as well as a ton of others. To take an example, I modelled cbetting AK oop on KT5ss and facing a raise and found that, given typical assumptions (plenty of bluffs), flatting OOP there is not going to good for us even though it's by far the most common play in this spot and we have clear flop vacuum pot odds to do so (actually on this note, realising just how much relying on pot odds prior to the river is often not good is illustrated well).
So from there we look at our initial decision to bet, whether 3betting accomplishes better, and how does this affect the rest of our range? Analysis skills I simply didn't possess prior to reading these books.
---
I think the pedigree of the author is pretty important for any poker book, I don't buy that theory books can be written by non winning players because 'they're good coaches but they tilt' or whatever. So in case anyone doesn't know D2 he's had very sick results simply by doing 1000s of the type of analysis found in these books. I find that quite inspiring, the success coming as it does not from simple innate 'lazy' talent but rather a ton of hard work. I mean, I've worked hard in the past, but what these books give the reader is a decent and proven mode of direction for that work beyond 'I checked my DB, losing with pocket 3s on the button, must start folding them'.
We, as professionals laugh at fish for their lack of reasoned thinking thinking. Believing they always lose with QQ, etc.... but we are similarly guilty when we rely on our instincts rather than actually proving the EV of a situation with models such as these.
---
The price of the books is as follows:
6max:
What the Board: $80
What the 3bet: $50
What the Float: $60
6max Bundle for all 3: $169
HU:
What the Defend: $60
What the Checkraise: $40
What the River: $15
How much the books are value for money really depends on your situation. In my opinion though the bulk of the range will be good value to excellent value. To take two extremes, if you're already an expert in CREV but play SSNL, then the value of simply having the situations analysed might not quite make it worth it. On the other extreme if you don't know CREV but you want to learn AND you're willing to work hard AND really want some direction with your work then the books are priced ludicrously cheaply. Most of you will fall somewhere in the middle and as such the books are well priced.
A review wouldn't be a review without some criticisms........ but I'm honestly struggling. I suppose I would've liked some more generalities on the 'method' of using these simulations in order to improve. So for example, is it simply that we do 1000s of these until we intuitively know the EV of tons of situations? Maybe a section on 'tips for producing your own CREV simulations' or something.
I'm nit picking though. I really enjoyed the books, feel very stretched by them, and serve as a superb reference in building my own models. They've inspired me to improve, and showcased a clear method by which to do so. I've you're also so inclined to improve using proper tools and analysis,...
It's been a while since my last blog post, and I'm going to save a full update for a couple of weeks when I'll do a review of the year. This blog is just to announce that if you think it would benefit you, I'm giving out hours of coaching, for free. I haven't been mad on coaching before, I think because the money doesn't excite me. The catch to get this free coaching though does excite me!
So what is the catch? Well hardly anything..... I just want you to watch a film/ documentary about the realities of the treatment of animals in today's society. This film can be found at www.earthlings.com and you can watch it for free.
So first come first served basis, and I'll be looking to do one every couple of days starting ASAP. I just need you to demonstrate to me that you have watched it by answering a few questions about it. Comment or PM me......
I haven't really done a life blog thing before. I kinda feel like I'll regret not having written a diary at some point in my life. I actually tried but it's been so long since I used a pen my wrist muscles seem to have died or something and it really hurts! (This is not a joke). So this seems as good a place as any.
I'll talk first about my trip to London the other week. I played some live £2-£5 and got absolutely crushed for £2k! I couldn't forsee the tornado of crazy bluffs that were about to hit me though. Some hands:
I raise A9ss in CO, fishy SB flats with 145bbs, BB young reg squeezes. I have 300bbs and he covers, I flat and the SB comes along. Flop KQ8 all hearts, checks through. Turn Ao........ SB checks, BB checks, I should maybe bet this but don't. Unsure. Anyway, river is a brick, 2o or something. The fishy SB now picks up his chips and throws them all in the middle. All in, £650 into £300 or something. BB thinks for 10 seconds and calls. Bleh, I fold. BB wins with A3dd. T.I.L.T.
An old guy sits down. Seems about 70, friends with everyone there. Sits with £2k.........
A young dude raises UTG, I 3bet with AJhh. The old guy is in the SB and cold calls. UTG comes along.
Flop J54r. Checks to me and I bet £105 into the £240. Old guy wakes up and check raises to £400. Hmm......... kinda top of my range, live players are bad, he could have some depolarised KJ or something or TT trying to see where he's at. Fuck knows basically! I call. Turn is a 9. He ships in all his money, effectively £1200 into £1200 or something.
I um and ah. He reps sets. But he's OLD. Isn't the first rule of live poker that old guys are nits? Not in the mood to run into what seems the most obvious set of 55 in the world for a million big blind pot, I fold. He fistpump shows 33 as a bluff. WTF.
At first I was like 'so terrible', but to be fair, if he knows what he's doing and does that to every new youngish player who sits down he's going to make a lot of money. I text my mate Mat who plays a lot of EPTs etc and a lot of live. He says 'UK live poker is pretty wired'. He might have meant weird, but I like the term wired better. People throwing in money all over the place, check raising rivers, turning 2nd pairs into bluffs, everything. It makes things more interesting obviously, and hopefully I can go back and just start clicking call whenever it seems obvious to, kinda FTP 2008 or whatever. But alas anyway.
Hey but at least I had £2k to lose! I've been winning a lot at 200nl Zoom. I'll post a graph once I reach a milestone or whatever. 500nl is a work in progress, started terribly and I was doing that whole outlevelling thing for a few sessions that cost me. 'ah this is never a bluff, but then, this guy plays much higher, therefore is a bluff'. Try that logic on every scenario, and you end up making the polar opposite wrong decision on every street. Expensive stuff.
Anyway, some other stuff I've been doing in pictures:
Went camping on a stag do. I forgot a tent, obviously.
Went to Estonia on another stag do, this is me at the big match, the Tallin derby. Attendance........ 2600 or so.
Had lots of drinks with my girl.
Met lots of animals.
Walked these two a lot.
Spelled out my Dog's name using runkeeper. This took ages!
I've vids out next month. Yay. Hope everyone is well. Bye.
Firstly, may as well let the results themselves do the talking!
So... not brilliant, but not terrible either. Everything's relative of course. I wish I'd done better at 400nl, but I'll do better there over 2012. I actually feel I'm playing my best for years, but the absurdity of variance make proving this even to myself impossible. In 2010 and 2011 my total cash winnings were only around $45k in each, so I'm at least on course to do better.... we'll see.
For the past 10 days I've been playing Zoom. I like Zoom a lot. I hated Rush when it came out, but it dawned on me that the scepticism was derived from the same 'dinosaur' mentality that live pros had when internet poker first came about. This dinosaur mentality could also be seen when a lot of 2007 crushers would brag in 2009 that they 'dont use HUDs'.... a lot of them fell by the wayside. It's adapt or die in this world, and I think Zoom just has all the benefits and none of the drawbacks.
Here's my results. (I shifted to PT4 at start of Zoom and it kills HEM imo)
For the most part, it seems people are playing insanely badly. I feel should be winning a lot more, but I'll take this for now and am waiting on 200nl to come out before playing any more. In theory, regular $12k months should be insanely easy to achieve and I guess I'm just waiting now to see what can go wrong. Being able to just sit and play without all the waitlist hassle is just amazing.
On Nutisnho Coaching Rate
Whenever I see someone kick off about a price being 'too high' I cringe. Sorry for stating the obvious, but it's a market and no-one is forced to pay anything! Supply and demand make the world go round people. It seems as though since the financial crisis the western world in general is moving towards a moral standpoint whereby earning too much money or asking for too much money = bad person, and this scares me a little bit.
It's similar to the tendency to kick off at chief executives of private banks earning ~ £12m or whatever. If this kind of public opinion eventually makes its way into government policy making we end up with policies like ........ maximum wages as dictated by the state. Or tax earnings over £100k at 98%. Basically Communism. I'm not saying we're anywhere near Communism...... but I think in society at the moment we're looking at the thin end of the wedge and it's important that capitalism's supporters stand up for it at a time when the tide is seemingly against it. I could write about this all day, but you get the point.
Vid Idea
Don't know if anyone would be interested, but I want to set up a cash game home game on stars with leggo members, to record and make a vid out of. Stakes will be 50nl maybe or 100nl. I think there's a lot of win in such a video. Let me know if you'd be interested, it'd sorta double up as a leakfindy thing 'cos I'd comment on all hands I'm not involved in as well.
Twitter
Follow me! @Pawsnotwars . If I had more followers I might tweet about poker more. When I say followers, I don't mean media organisations or hooker bots. On that criteria I have far fewer than my reported 82.
Buying cool stuff for your girlfriend wife sister or mum
Go to www.tessies.co.uk. It belongs to my girlfriend and every girl bought something from there loves it, I promise. Check out the accessories section in particular! I've set up a leggo discount code too. Enter LEGGO for 10% off. Gogogogo.
On Leggo
Finally, speaking purely as a member, I want to point out that Leggo kills every other training site right now. The biggest names (more should have been made of getting Bond18 on board imo) mixed with solid, current winning players with experience in the games in which they make videos. You can ask them questions too and actually get an in depth response. Nutsinho coming back. And if you don't like something, Matt just fixes it. Keep renewing your memberships fools!
Firstly, I know I have some vid thread comments to answer, so Koerperkarle, Kitsune101 etc I will get to them, it's just that I tend to write proper essay answers rather than just write a few one liners, and that takes more time. Hopefully today.
Secondly, after a good first month of the year, biggest month in around 15 months actually, I'm on a bit of a downswing this month. There's lots of runbad breakers that I preach, but one I've found most effective is to write a blog like this stating that I'm going to review all the big and otherwise interesting hands I'm about to play. So, to be continued ...............
So, session was a bit weird. There was a mental new (apparent) reg who was 3betting like 25% at 6max in most positions, 4betting a ton as well, both folding to 5bets and calling off ridic light. I got in 44 VS his AJ and lost, won JJ vs his TT, won AA vs his AJ, etc. Meant the session had weird gameplay as I essentially just had to nit it up and wait for top 6% of hands to 4bet call it off or 3bet/5bet.
So I'll just post the few interesting ones and some from yesterday:
$2/$4 No Limit Holdem
PokerStars
4 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
Hmm so this one, villain is a weak reg incapable of decent hand reading and fairly unaware of ranges. Balance wise I dislike the size of my river bet VS a decent player, with this betsize I'm repping a thin value bet where I think my aim should be to rep nuts or a fairly ambitious bluff (from these positions), where the fairly ambitious bluff with something like 32/a3/a2/76/86/87 makes up a decent part of my range. In terms of basic handreading, he'd probably raise Tx earlier on in the hand, but JJ (given deepness so afraid of 3betting) and Axs are outside possibilities.
$1/$2 No Limit Holdem
PokerStars
6 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
Turn: K ($34, 2 players)
BallBagGiver checks, grogheadflow bets $26, BallBagGiver raises to $64, grogheadflow goes all-in $217.28
Final Pot:$315.28
Villain is nitty PF 17/15, but has some postflop aggression. Not a huge winner. I can't give him KT from PF, and given positions and board texture I should probably take out around 70% of set combos after his flop flat.
$2/$4 No Limit Holdem
PokerStars
4 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
This guy, man he just 3bets a ton and barrels 3 streets a ton, way out of line and completely unbalanced. At least VS everyone else, VS me he just always has it, and not because he 3bets me any less than other guys PF. I think in times gone past I'd have just been like omg I need to stay away from this guy, but experience has given me the confidence that one of these days I'm going to flop at least a top pair and use my middle button clicking skills to finally win a hand. Turn was a real MUST. RESIST. URGE. TO. SHOVE, and in doing so resolving to call river whatever 3flush or 4 straight came along.
$2/$4 No Limit Holdem
PokerStars
6 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
Turn: Q ($158, 2 players)
UTG+1 checks, grogheadflow bets $84, UTG+goes all in
Final Pot:$242
Villain is clawviper on stars, a reg....... I seem to encounter these spots far more often than I should. For most people, turn is a mandatory bet to protect bluffs. Similar spots occur when we're OOP on a wet board say with JJ on T93ss and we turn Ko. Instinctively, I feel like I need to develop a different plan on these wettish turn scarecards with both bluffs and value. Essentially, our bluffs aren't working enough as although the turn is a 'scare' card, it's more scary for us than villain and he just has improvement potential or nutted hands too much of the time. At the same time, value is thin on the ground and if we ever make a mistake to a check shove (folding to JT in the hand example, or calling off with 6% equity) we're losing a lot of money.
So I feel like checking in these spots might be the way forward, and only bet a super polarised range of 2pair+s and weak draws. Hmm.
Anyway, only stuck $3k for the month now, and the month is young. Good luck to everyone.
God knows what new potential members coming to leggo and seeing the blog page right now would think, and so I figure this place could use a poker blog. I've been trying to attain 50 BIs on Stars to move back to 400nl, but what with withdrawals, runbad, and bad play arising (I think) from general staleness, I've lost patience and so I'm about to play a 6 table 400nl.
I was last there Novemeberish time I think, and the clinching hand knocking me back down was 200bbs going in PF my KK VS Aaron's AK. He got there on the river, I kicked my elephant, and later that week he posted a blog about how hot he was running!
So yeah anyway going to play for an hour, then edit this post with all big and interesting hands here for analysis. Yes I could write this afterwards but this stops me knocking it on the head should it all go wrong and I be in a terrible mood.
-- to be continued --
Ok I stopped after 40 minutes. I was up $500 and felt a bit tilted with some late hands. Not all these hands are exciting, I just saved them whenever there was something I thought a little interesting or I struggle with or any other thoughts:
$2/$4 No Limit Holdem
PokerStars
5 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
Stacks:
UTG No3putts ($406) CO Nahar ($158.90)
BTN Amoroso5 ($400)
SB n3kt ($584.30) BB grogheadflow ($422.90)
Pre-Flop: ($6, 5 players) grogheadflow is BB 9 9 1 fold, Nahar raises to $10, 2 folds, grogheadflow calls $6
Flop: A 3 8 ($22, 2 players)
grogheadflow checks, Nahar bets $12, grogheadflow calls $12
Turn: K ($46, 2 players)
grogheadflow checks, Nahar checks
River: 9 ($46, 2 players) grogheadflow bets $32, Nahar raises to $64, grogheadflow goes all-in $400.90, Nahar folds
Final Pot:$510.90
grogheadflow wins $508.90 (net +$86)
Nahar lost $86
OK I saved this just because I think it's a huge autopilot leak of mine to check nuts on the river a lot. I'm usually like weee protect my weak range in this spot, win more when he bets and I crai, etc. the truth is though to a bet check bet line, it's very rarely a bluff. It's more often weak value, from which I extract money through betting anyway. Ah, but what about when he calls your crai? Well, they don't call it very often. So yeah, bet because there's no bluffs to maximise from, you charge those weak hands that might check behind, you protect your 'cc flop, lead river as bluff' lines, and the gains made through the CR are small as it's rarely called by worse.
$2/$4 No Limit Holdem
PokerStars
6 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
Pre-Flop: ($6, 6 players) grogheadflow is BTN 10 10 3 folds, grogheadflow raises to $10, n3kt raises to $32, DuTTiFruTTi9 raises to $68, grogheadflow folds, n3kt folds
Final Pot:$110
DuTTiFruTTi9 wins $110 (net +$42)
grogheadflow lost $10
n3kt lost $32
Rather stuck here, which just shows what a sick play the small cold 4bet is given I'm at the top of my range for stealing in this spot. I *think* duti is leggo coach joinmystack so obviously a sicko. Problem- when I stove his range, I only need a few cold bluffs in his range to make this a call. But then NT3K might still be involved. Having said that, there's obviously quite a few bluffs in his range and I could probably call in terms of raw equity anyway. But then, how is my hand perceived exactly? And the playability element, overcards are going to come on the flop like always. Shove? Is terrible risk reward wise to the small 4bet. 4bet fold to $105? Maybe that's the one, if called then some playability, probably a ton of folds, and NT3K should fold JJ down and maybe AK. Hmmmm, I shrugged and folded.
$2/$4 No Limit Holdem
PokerStars
6 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
Not too many stats on this guy (which incidentally is extremely ironic, given this was the guy who started the 2p2 shitstorm about me using datamined HHs! but I digress). But yeah we all know this spot, and without more knowledge a bit of a guessing game. I guess I need crEV to tell me what to do. My thinking though is like, ok say he has bluffs half the time and value half the time, and then on the river he'll shove bluffs half the time and check the other half, then his river shoves are 3/4 value. His quick timing on the turn I think gives a clue that a river bet is also imminent, and his bluffs still have equity yada yada. Plus my perceived range smashes the queen high board. I think fold turn is best but I haven't done the analysis justice probably.
$2/$4 No Limit Holdem
PokerStars
6 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
Ok I've included this hand just because it started me thinking about 'the curve'. So much of what we do in poker we take for granted, but originally all our default plays were truly sick because they exploited the population as a whole in such a palpable way you could just sit there, click buttons and count the zeros.
Let's start with the cbet. One day, some math(s) sicko realised we only make a pair 1/3 times. In conjunction with the tendency for players to fold no pair on the flop as the PF caller, this fact made it profitable to make a flop bet with any 2 cards after raising PF and win the pot around 66% of the time on average. The original Mr Cbettor, aka Dan Harrington...
This is Ed Balls. He's a member of the opposition Labour Party front bench. Every Wednesday at Prime Minister's questions time, he sits opposite and does this flat-lining gesture all the while David Cameron speaks. It really winds him up and is quite funny.
Checking my monthly graph today, I could see this gesture staring back at me. It didn't wind me up though! Checking my zillion leggo and private blogs, to my credit I can't find a single time I've whined about runbad. Every losing or breakeven stretch is an opportunity to improve.
At the risk of coming across all Donald Rumsfield, in poker knowledge there are known knowns, known unknowns, and then unknown unknowns. So correct 3betting strategy VS a 90% folder is a known known. Optimal strategy VS a reg minraising IP a lot is a known unknown. I like known unknowns, I can work on them and turn them into known knowns.
Of late, many more unknown unknowns have become known unknowns. So in English, I'm becoming so much more aware of how little I know about much more stuff!
Take this board:
Flop: ($17.40) 9 4 Q (2 Players)
18% UTG+1 raiser cbets this board. We're on the button. He cbets 65%, but higher on this board, and we believe it to be a semi depolarised range where 9x gets cbet, but QT, JJ and TT might check. What % of his range is:
Sets?
TPTK?
TPTK?
2nd pair?
3rd pair? (I'll group all ~77 type hands here)
OESD?
Overpair?
Air?
I honestly don't know. I can count combos OK in the moment, but counting combos wouldn't answer the above questions without counting all the relevant combos and doing some super fast maths. There just isn't enough time, and I feel like I should be able to give a very good instinctive answer based on work I've done when not playing. I bet Sauce knows, and I know a bot knows.
So by a very rough estimate, here's his cbetting range. 17.6% ......... I'm aware that i've taken the raw stove % and K9s is out but T9s should be in etc, but anyway.
So for a start, the above is actually new information for me. Did I know that typically on this board VS this range he has air ~ 40% of the time ? No I did not.
So, I might be thinking of a bluff raise. We don't rep a ton, but villain is on 16 tables and is slightly risk averse. Should I bluff raise? Should I keep firing if he flats? I'm going to assume for the sake of this that all nuts flats and he never 3bets.
Will fold to a raise: Air+3rd pair + 2nd pair = 57.96%
Will flat a raise and fold to future action: oesd + half of TPWK = 8.52%
Will flat a raise and call future streets: TPTK+half TPWK + overpair + sets = 33.52%
So obviously very inexact, but already I'm starting to get a better feel of this spot. As I've already said, I think Sauce probably knows this stuff. A bot knows this stuff. Someone like D2TheMFI knows this stuff. I don't know this stuff, I haven't looked at it enough. You probably don't know either.
So in summary, as edges are getting smaller I think the future for me getting better lies in getting this type of technical knowledge seared into my brain. All that crEV stuff that D2 has videos on really interests me. Of late I've been much better at adjusting individually to players ....... getting reads on certain ranges and then inferring weaker and stronger parts of said range based on these reads. To properly act on them though, I need all this stuff.
Yeh, so that's me going forward anyway. Time to get rich!
A thought stuck me the other day with regards that elusive thing called consistency. Hull City were playing, and we've been enjoying a pretty decent run of winning games playing a style of football where we pas the ball around in an eye pleasing fashion. At the level at which we play, the more common style is play much more direct. The direct style is one I supposed I'd describe as a 'levelling' style, ie you're never going to be the best team in the league playing it, but it does stop a lot of silly mistakes that make you the worst side in the league. If you don't have the players to take the higher variance route of passing the ball around, then knock it up to the big man up front and you can't go far wrong.
We lose two games on the bounce, and suddenly posters in forums are saying things like 'we need to stop fucking about with the ball so much, we need to learn when to hit it long' etc etc. This viewpoint is pervasive enough that there's bound to have been managers out there who've thought exactly the same thing and made drastic changes to a proven successful formula based on a few short term results. For me, I think the ability to learn not to completely overhaul things based on a small sample is something that only comes with experience.
Young football players are notoriously inconsistent. Being young, they start off like a house on fire. One or two bad performances though and confidence can be shot to pieces. During this time they'll be over analysing things, wondering if they've been 'found out', worried that maybe they were lucky to play so well in their first 11 or so games.
Experienced players have their tried and tested playing style. Someone like Frank Lampard is not going to change up after a few mediocre performances. He'll keep doing the same stuff and eventually things will turn around. He knows this.
I have been massively guilty of changing up all the time throughout my whole poker 'career'. A style that's given me a month of winning goes the window with 3 bad sessions.......
I made a huge leap though around a month ago. I'd been playing for 7 or so days, doing the same things that I'd done the 4 weeks before that netted me a decent amount 4 tabling 200nl. Over these 7 days I broke even and basically nothing seemed to be going right.
For the first time though I just kept plugging away doing the exact same thing. I timed on my decisions, made notes, inferred reads, asked questions, planned some adjustments, and then pressed the corresponding button. Q another heater. After 3 years playing poker full time, I've finally made the jump in experience that tells me not to worry.
So after a breakeven start to December that's where I am again today. I just need to keep doing the right things, and I feel a million times stronger mentally for knowing that if I'm still breakeven in 7 days or so then that's absolutely fine.
I've more videos coming out. Hence the blogpost. So people know/ remember who I am !
I've been vegetarian probably around 2 years. I won't go into the reasons, I've personally found talking about them makes non-vegetarians dig their heels in and thus is counter productive to the whole cause. But it's the usual moral reasons anyway.
Now, going vegetarian I was obviously prepared to go without chicken curry, spaghetti bolognese etc, all my old favourites. I then discovered some foods containing meat that might make you raise an eyebrow. Any sort of jelly. Random sponge deserts. Guinness!
What I can't fathom is the breaking news that of all things, WEETABIX somehow manages to incorporate elements of animal corpse. Like, how??, why ?? It's literally one of the most tasteless things in the world, but.... piled high with sugar remained one of the few things I was able to eat and enjoy (never been big on actual vegetables). Now it's been taken away from me, because presumably no-one at Nestle has the wit or ingenuity to create soap bar shaped chunks of wheat without lazily throwing in some bits of animal. #Sigh.
On this subject, I didn't realise it for a long time, but going vegetarian dramatically affected my poker performance and results. Around a year ago I started to refer to it as 'light headedness', but that's a little inexact. It was basically a sort of disconnect from everything that was going on. Didn't affect my real life too much, (although I was very short of energy), but poker-wise it was an absolute disaster.
Couldn't process information, couldn't concentrate, had no 'feel' for anything.
It got to the point that I could literally only play my A-C game for the first 50 or so minutes immediately after waking up. After that, I had to sleep again before I could play. Occasionally of course I would get frustrated at putting in so little hands, play when light headed (Z game always), and drop 10 BIs. In the past year or so I got better at not playing when in this state, but the occasional relapses have been very costly.
Anyway, to cut a long story short I changed my diet and also found what I can only call a wonder vitamin. B12 is basically only found in meat, and is super important for converting food into energy, alertness and concentration. The past week I've started overdosing on it. Light headedness has gone !
This is very exciting for me, it means I'll actually be able to put in 2-3 meaningful and high performance sessions per day. Today I played 4500 hands, all of which I'd basically grade as A game.
So, we'll see how it goes........ poker results are basically 'technical knowledge' X 'performance'. For good or bad I rate my technical knowledge really highly, and it's been super frustrating for me not to be making very consistent 5 figures every month because of the 2nd part of that equation.......
Some of you may have noticed I've been making more videos lately. I keep trying to think of new ideas to keep the videos fresh. As well as the HU series with Bobbo, I've a directed learning video on SSNL SB 3betting that's uploaded and up sometime soon. If anyone has any ideas for creative or interesting videos then please let me know. For some reason I always feel a little guilty these days putting out a standard pause 'n record or live video.
One idea I've had is to do a leakfinder style thing, but with the leakfindee also in on the video talking. This way, it'd basically be a video of a coaching session. Then if people like it, I might start coaching again. I think interactivity in videos is important. Monologues are all well and good, but it's good to have another person there posing hypotheticals or asking questions or challenging what the producer is saying.
So, if any member up to say 100nl is interested in being the guinea pig for the above idea, then please get in touch explaining your background etc and I'll pick on the basis of that. Ideally fairly talky chatty speaky types.
Having booked a condo 5 minutes walk from the Rio for a whole month, I'm leaving this god forsaken desert after only 2 weeks. Thus, it will be empty for those dates in the blog title.
If anyone would like to stay for free, then first come first served u can have both the keys. Place has 3 bedrooms, a decent sized living room, shared swimming pool, and a malfunctioning aircon system.
9
10
10
