Most difficult decision ever

Ya, and it's not about poker. I have been talking to the gf. She just doesn't understand gambling and she thinks it's completely immoral. I think I might have to choose between her or poker. I hope my time bank doesn't run out. I'm so stressed.

Rollercoaster

It seems pretty common to drop up to 4BIs and climb back up slowly these days. Just for instance, I dropped a bunch of BIs early session but still managed to climbed back up to being down half a BI. I can't complain about that result.

I'm pretty proud of my play, very solid for most part. I made some mistakes but probably marginal anyways. It feels good to run a 2k hand session and not fall apart. I guess I'm up today for our Pay It Forward session. I don't think I had a winning session when I ran it with the guys. I mean I never had a really bad session but it's usually pretty much break even. I hope to run good tonight. My 200nl move up is near.

Blast from the Past

I decided to look at some of my old blog HH. All I have to say is "eeeeeeeeEEEWWWW". It's amazing how much one learns within a couple months. I just wonder how I was ever a winning player in those stakes. I guess as bad as I was, there are much worse players.

I'm kind of in a life tilt. Well not tilt, but more like in a really tough spot. It involves my gf and poker. She doesn't really know anything about my "hobby" and I doubt she approves of it. The question is what is my play here? I have thought of many possibilities, and obviously the problem exists now because the decision made in the past is just not tell her. But now being backed up in a corner, I think there are only a couple plays possible for me. Ignoring the problem is only going to get worse in the future. And telling her, I might lose her. I feel like I have to choose between the two in the end. I think I'm stacked.

I am a wimp

I played like 250hands and quickly went up 2BIs, then decided to stop. It's mostly because I'm not in a comfortable environment to play. My mom always give me trouble with playing while she's roaming around. Lately she hasn't been saying much but it's a distraction, so that's why my play hours are usually semi weird.

I guess since the results are just flushing in, I feel very confident about my play. A few adjustments can make a huge difference, but to realize what needs to be adjusted is the toughest part.

On another note, I was railing Josh last night. It's interesting seeing another person playing. Railing is almost as good as playing yourself honestly, other than not fattening your own wallet. But as far as poker intelligence wallet, I'm definitely stacking up. Josh might not know it, but I learned a lot from his play. He's a great live player and I feel that experience give him an edge. Though his online results are marginal at best, I feel with a few adjustments, he can do really really well. Overall, it was fun seeing him turn quads like 4 sets in a row.

I want my share of quads too! He's a luck leecher.. :)

Tilt! ...almost

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1130834

We hate seeing bad beats, but ya know I don't usually get annoyed by suckouts too much. But it's just these days I've been faced with these so much, it's just sickening. I almost even jinx myself when I see my money go in and he has like 8% chance to suck out. I feel my like "luck" confidence is shot.

Anyways, today still ended up 2.5BIs ahead. So no complains.

Table Selection

During our long session with Brian and the guys, something just clicked. I think I figured out what I have been doing wrong. I exercise pretty tight table selection anyways, but the problem was that I always crowd myself against the regulars. I'm not sure how much edge I have against them, but I know it's not huge. With my new LAG style, I've been doing better against those regulars but still the money doesn't usually come easy.

Basically something I really neglected these days are the easy money coming from the short stacks. Sure, it's not as rewarding to win less than 100bb stacks, but it's extremely easy money. I played like a 700 hands session, it was literally free money. I got sucked out like 3 or 4 times, but I still came out 2BIs ahead. Also if he sucks you out, it's very likely the money stays on the table so you can take back what you lost later.

I guess something with the online mentality makes you think of stack sizes differently. It is like 50bb stacks are not real money, I want the juicy 100bb+! Also as a beginner, I remember people teaching me to sit in with the big stacks because of implied odds of certain hands(SC, low - mid PP). Well I understand those implied odds now and I can break the rules, I just need to manipulate it against shorter stacks.

Finish with Today

I came out with decent results today, came out with 2.5BIs up. I am realizing I am very weak on river value betting with marginal hands. This is probably because I'm uncertain what hand villian has and with hands like TPTK, I just haven't been given max value. I notice in the past week or two that there have been spots I should missed a river value bet. The thing is that river value bet is the most important street to value bet, if you miss enough of them. You'll be easily down/break even for the session. So in short, I need to work on my hand reading abilities and hopefully get more river value bets in.

Dry Nonweekend Sessions

My session yesterday came out 4BIs down and today completely break even. Though cards have been dry and I know I did make some mistakes. If I didn't make them today, I probably be up half a BI and probably lost 1.5less BIs yesterday. But overall, I think my performance is decent. I played very solid game, just not getting paid very much. Probably as I make less and less mistakes and make better decisions, I'll be a bigger winner in this stake. Oh well, I'm not in a hurry. I'm still going to keep grinding more hands, not for profits but for experience.

This hand made my session!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1112147

I felt I was like 95% confident what hand he had based on timings. So I instant called the river. The guy must have been stunned. Haha. I probably look like an idiot if he rivered a huge hand. But I guess this is what I mean by going with my read.

Starcraft 2!!

http://www.starcraft2.com/

Some of you might know I used to play sc:bw competitive, so I'm excited about the game. I don't think I will ever play another game competitively again but hey, it's still exciting to see the sequel of one of my favorite games. Everything released so far looks so phat. :D

A Thought

There's something I wanted to note about some changes in my game mentality. This is definitely resulted from playing more and more hands. I played probably like 4k hands just today. I really felt like I'm in the zone, all I'm doing is making decisions. Results were helpful to assure my reads, overall they didn't affect me very much now. You make a decision, you mess up, you move on. Even though at the beginning of a session, I might lose a couple BIs from suckout/mistake/cooler or whatever. I have the confidence that given enough hands, I can bring this to a winning session. I no longer really care if I lose a BI anymore. Sometimes if I feel someone don't have it, I'm going to push my stack to bluff. As long as I feel it's +ev and in a long run will make me money. I'll limit these fancy plays but I'm not afraid to pull it off if I'm confident(this is rare but it happens more often now after working with Pawel and Brian).

Again, I am anxious to get more hands in. There is no better learning tool than getting tons of hands in and reevaluating your game. Though I really need to study for my CS final on Monday.

Timing Tells

People ask me about timing tells a lot. I'll just give a scenario of what happened to me tonight. It probably isn't the best example because his line should have even told me what he had. But timing tells clearly puts him in a range of hands that beats me. It was definitely a mistake made by me, but it shows how big timing tells are.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?1110654

Given all the info that I was given, I *should* have made the right decision. Even though this could be marginal, it really isn't. If given even more time, I think I should have gotten away and I wasn't thinking clearly.

Anyways, Villian was 39/25/3 stats on the button. I haven't 3bet him very much. I had AK in the bb. Standard 3bet a button raiser. Villian instant called my 3bet. This already told me he didn't have a great hand, but a hand he probably is willing to try to get lucky on.

I made a pretty big cbet on the flop, again he INSTANT called me. At the time I wasn't sure what he had that he could instant called me. But this screams that he doesn't have a huge hand that he wants to raise me against my perceived OP. So his range is probably 55, flush draw, sometimes a weak OP.

Now the turn completes a draw, he INSTANT checked to me. That should have screamed strength, he doesn't want me to know he hit. I obviously couldn't really continue with this hand.

River comes one of my 2 card outs that puts me in RIO situation. But villian tanked it for like 4 or 5 seconds then made a huge raise. Now if I was rational, I should have known he had a flush or at least 55. So I beat absolutely nothing in his range. It was clearly a mistake to call. Also his last timing tell to tank then raise big tells me he has a huge hand, he will never have a worse hand here.

Anyways, I was very disappointed at my river call. But at least I could post this and shows what villian has(though it's pretty obvious).


****


Today overall, I did pretty decent. I made a couple BIs for this late session. Fridays are just ridiculously juicy. So many PL games were running, so many fish. Well today put me up for the week, been struggling the whole week swinging up and down.

Swinging Breaking Even!

It seems I just keep swing up and down within 5 BIs nonstop. Did almost 3k hands today, ended up breaking dead even though I was down like 2 or 3 BIs. I need to cross this line. I'll probably do another session later tonight. Maybe..

Patience my friend!

I had a shit run of cards. But I wanted to be persistent, so I decided to stay in those tables I was struggling at. After a couple hours of struggling, I somehow came up ahead on almost all the tables. The swings were huge though, I probably swing at least 1BI up and down on each table. Anyways, in the end, the results are good. I officially got out of the hole from yesterday's downswing. Hopefully I'm going to keep climbing instead of falling and climbing back up again.

Been working a lot on timing tells, and I am trying to trust my reads and making plays based on reads. I had some decent successes, though I'm still pretty wimpy to throw my stack in there if I think someone has air. That's probably a good thing though!

Crummy Decisions

I hate making mistakes. That's one thing I hate about FT, the timebank is so short that sometimes you just got to make a decision completely based on your gut feelings because you can't think through the whole process fast enough.

I really need to focus into making the best decision as possible. I think that's why I'm getting really crappy results. I can't expect to run well through good cards all the time. If my mistakes offset the times I run well, I'll just continue to be a break even player. I think the best thing for me is to play more and more hands, hopefully at the very least keep breaking even. Experience is a huge asset. I need to keep this up!

Today's Update

This week has been swingy for me. I have been doing a bunch of experiments with table images and playing lag. Well obviously the experiment went south when I dropped like 7BIs earlier. It wasn't a big deal because I was card dead and I made some marginal calls. When you got a shit image, your big hands don't hit, you will inevitably spew. I didn't lose many stack vs stacks, but I lost a lot of 40bb sized pots. Those add up!

After the session with Brian, we watched him play 200nl. It's always a pleasure watching him play and him explaining his thought processes. He ran really poorly for like 4/5 of the session, he probably went down like 3 BIs over 800 hands, but some miracle happened and he came back being up 1BI by the end of the session. He was very insistent about stacking the bad players, and he kept at it until he did. The cards were not in his control but he knew he will take their stacks given enough hands. After his session, I was pumped to start my own session. I used some of the things I learned from his session and try them out. These included timing tells, how handle certain types of situations and etc.. They were awesome, especially timing tells. I'm going to work on that a lot. After the session, I made around 3BIs, so only down 4 for the day. It's not so bad I guess.

These swings are just killing me, it's always up and down. I like to get past the 5k mark for my BR sometime soon but swings are just not letting me. Oh ya, it helps to hit a set once in a while!

TAG vs LAG

I got frustrated today(semi tilt) and really hated how I never get paid off because I was playing so straight forward and tight. So I decided to just go crazy, like 23/19/4 at the end of the session. I no longer worried if my TPTK is bad because with my image, I had to felt that hand every time. People were getting frustrated with me, and honestly I really wasn't playing all that crazy. I just 3bet a ton more and raise a ton of marginal hands in LP. This is the style I played in very tight games, and I haven't done it since 25nl honestly. But it's amazing how people just pay you off and call with marginal hands. I felt my image on each table changing from "tight" to "crazy loose". I didn't let anybody limp on my blinds, I don't care what hand I have, I'm raising that shit up. I 3bet a lot of LP raiser trying to steal. And in LP position, I'm raising probably 25% of hands. As I saw my image went to shit, I pitched a lot of marginal hands and played like a nit. People just don't believe that I got a good hand, and of course they pay me off.

This style has never been this effective in 25nl. I can feel the table dynamics changing and people were 3betting me light with hands that they wouldn't before. Pretty crazy stuff. But I have to admit, it is not an easy style. You need to make a lot of marginal calls. So your swings are going to uphill but people are definitely much more willing to pay you off when you got the goods.

I mean I'm not going to pitch my TAG style, but in certain tables I am definitely going to open up a lot. If the table is full of maniacs, playing LAG is going to kill you. You are going to need to selective and choose your style wisely. I have to honestly say I never pushed my LAG style as loose as I did today, I was certainly spewing on some hands but once people gave me absolutely no credit, I tightened up like a nit. I probably swing 3BIs back and forth a lot, but still came out with a decent winrate. I did get suck out a couple times, and lost most races. So I can't complain about the results.

Okay session

I just finished a decent session. Not much action today, I still made about 1 BI. Can't complain at all. It's hard to play against some crazy players when you don't hit your hands. Also you are forced to be in high variance situations, if they hit a big hand on your pretty good hand, you are going in. It sucks, but still over a long run, it's definitely profitable.

It seems I have a phobia with failure. This game is all about ups and downs. You really can never know if you are doing the right things because results does not give you accurate long term answer. I guess the biggest fear I have now is playing really solid game but still go on a really bad downswing. I'm not sure how I'll react, though I'm not too worried until it comes. When I do get into a huge downswing, I hope I will be more emotionally prepared. Other than a "stop loss", any other advice to combat this? I think I need to play with like 1000BIs. :)

Before Work Session

Well in short, I down'ed 3.5 BIs. But I played pretty solid game. Just was completely card dead. When I did hit and play for max value, I get some ridiculous runner runner that worked in villian's favor. *sigh* I know I know, we all had sessions like this happened before. But overall I really played solid and just nothing came for me, which hurts me.

Oh ya, what is up with my 3betting and cbet getting called over and over? If only I really had big PP each time.. :( Oh well, can't complain because I ran really well in the past week.

Money Values vs Odds

There has always been a leak in my game that probably isn't a leak but it's a high variance break even play. This doesn't become a problem until I become deep stacked. For the past few days, I have been forced to play with 200bb stacks over and over. This type of poker is very very profitable because many many fish are very bad at playing deep stacked. They will make a lot of loose calls and plays because they got the money to blow. And every time you win a pot from them, it values probably up to 30bb+. Over a short period of time, you win a lot of money from them while you will rarely win that sized pot from a 100bb stack player.

So what exactly was my "leak"? Basically I would allow myself to draw due to implied odds because the stacks are sooo deep and play huge pots with marginal hands. But every time I don't hit or I lose a pot or don't get paid off, it costs me a hefty penny. So over time, I will lose my deep stack very very fast. Hence this is a problem I feel a lot of players are struggling with, they just cannot play long sessions because they will break even playing like so.

Also, one good advice is to remember that drawing for a river card is almost rarely profitable. Your implied odds is much smaller because you normally have to pay a lot more on the turn than the flop to see a card. This had to be a big leak of mine, I call a lot of turn bets justifying implied odds and sometimes pot odds. The truth is that, rarely will you get paid off if you hit unless you can put villian on a hand he is never folding even if you hit.

In addition, implied odds has to matter a lot whether or not you are in position. If you are OOP, implied odds is rarely there because you almost never know where you stand in the hand. When you do hit, you aren't going to be paid off often enough. I always wondered why I would lose a lot of medium sized pot yet winning very few of the same sized pots. Well, this is partially the reason. Knowing when to continue past the turn is a HUGE skill in this game.

Anyways, that's it for today. I ran pretty well this afternoon, made about 1.5 BI over a small sample. I got my $150 10 Billionth hand deposit bonus set up on PS, that'll be cool. It sucks I got work tonight and tomorrow night. I usually don't work Sundays but you got to work on Mother's day when you work at a restaurant. :(

Weekend Craze

Just finished another session, came out 3 more BIs ahead. I played really good poker. I'm surprised how well I handle deep stack game and picking off other deep stacks. I'm not boasting but my read is dead on and I manipulate villians to find out where my hand stands. Of course I did have a lot of good cards today, but the rewards only come when you make good plays on worse hands.

I should really go out less on Friday nights and play more poker.. Oh well, if only the gf understands. :(

100nl in a Nutshell

Everybody should move up to 100nl because it's so soft. Look:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1086129

Seriously, what the hell was he thinking? Last hand of the session? Genius..

Anyways, I finished this session pretty solidly. Fridays are just so crazy. So many crazy fish swimming around. Variance is like off the roof though and I had to make so many marginal calls. Though somehow my timing is pretty on tonight. I can't complain being almost 2 BIs up. If I don't need to work on some stuff, I probably would keep playing.

I love luckboxing...

This could swing either way, but it feels good while it lasts. I ran well today. The highlight pot is this pot that's worth 400bb. I played it kind of odd, but I was trying to use some metagame to manipulate the villian. Apparently it wasn't necessary.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1082140

But still, without this pot, I would still be up 1.5bi. So today's session ran well, being up 3.5bis. Even though my winrate hasn't recovered completely from my downswing, through rakeback and fpp bonus, my roll already surpassed where I was at the beginning of the month. It is slow progress but learning is expensive.

Long fight, won but not by much

I did a pretty long session today. I was pretty card dead/action dead. But I still ended up like almost half a BI. I guess I can't complain too much. I reviewed my session, there was probably one spot I could have done better. The rest were marginal. Oh well. I hope to run better in the near future.

Another note, Josh is up next. I think I can learn a lot from him.

50nl = the cursez

So today, I'm down 3BIs on 50nl! 2 earlier today and 1 during our sweat. Grr. So I ended up being up only 18 for the day! Weird to think I'm a loser at 50nl now!

Just random a random post.

Anyways during the sweat session, I thought about my overall game. Calling 3bets w/ pp for set value in and out of position, etc.. etc..

Funny Thoughts

I remember playing in 25nl and I would complain, "geez if I make one mistake with a stack vs stack, I would be down or break even for the day". I remember the frustration. Now, I'm starting to realize that losing a couple medium sized pots in 100nl due to a mistake can have similar results. I'm sure any higher limits would be the same. The way you see the game is completely different from the "micro" stakes. This is good, I like the challenge. I feel I'm capable, the question is whether I can pull it out at the heat of the moment when I need to make the best decision.

Anyways, I'm glad I'm up for the day for almost a BI. Not too shabby when I only played very few hands.

Finished Solidly

I finished a very short session, though it takes no skills to hit 2x set over set. But without those hands, I still made a good profit. So I give myself the credit of playing solid. But I still need to focus very hard on hand reading and 3rd level thinking.

I'm sad that my FT 1st time $600 deposit bonus had been completely cleared! No more 50% rakeback for me.. :( My FT roll dropped down quite a bit since last week but the good news is that the balance between PS and FT roll have been restored! woohoo! go downswing! On another note, unless I run bad for the next couple days, I expect very soon that my roll will be close to where I was before I went on a downswing. I have a $285 fpp bonus and ~$100 FT rakeback coming in. That will help a lot.

I'm surprised relatively how positive I've been throughout this downswing. I hope I can keep this up.

Marginal Situations

I'm not going to blame bad cards, though I did get some bad cards at the beginning of the session(villians catching sets on the river). But overall, I played decent, I didn't leak much money. But I realize I need to work a lot harder into hand reading abilities and pay more attention to what villians are putting me on. So I'm dropping down tables to work on that. 4 tables is probably my biggest comfort zone, but until I feel like I can make better decisions, I'm not going to hop up to anything more than 4.

Considering all that, being only down 1BI is fine. I know I'm still making mistakes, therefore my winrates are going to be marginal for a while. I feel getting better > gaining more money.

Not too bad

So, I was down 15, now I worked my way up to only down 10. It's a good start. I am feeling confident about the stake. It just takes a lot more patience, I do have an edge over most players. I hope to "keep running good" quoting from Pawel's favorite line.

I realize there are just so much more to learn about the game, and some thought process that Pawel brought up during our sweat session were eye opening. Though I did donk off a BI calling some idiot overbetting the river because of him. Well let's call that lack of common sense, and it's my fault!

Thanks Smap and Verneer

So many people reached out their hands and tried to help me out. You know even though I'm doing so poorly, I feel encouraged and powered. I'm so thankful for all of those who messaged me and asked me what they could do to help. I'll remember that forever.


Anyways, I was railing Smap, he showed me some stuff on how to handle aggression and donk plays. I'm surprised how solid he has become. He'll get far for sure, as long as he doesn't bitch out and go insanely tilted. Then afterwards, Verneer sweat me on my play. He probably sweat me for one easy BI then he had to go. Afterwards, I continue playing. I won a huge pot 300bb+ pot, that helped a lot. So I was up around 3.5BIs, then this hand occurred. Maybe someone can comment on this hand for me.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1063178

Villian was pretty solid I think. Hasn't been too crazy, we have no history with each other. This is definitely a monster draw, I'm only behind to a set and slightly to an OP. Maybe I'm just making too many high variance play. I hid the results, but I'm just wondering if this is a good long term play or is it a spew.

15 and counting.

Weeee... I'm down to a 15BI downswing. One would think I'm just tilting it all. Perhaps I'm a big fish in this stake. Who knows?

Maybe it's time to move down. Though I don't feel my confidence has been shakened. Actually I feel really good, maybe I'm insane. But I learned a lot from this experience. I do admit I made a lot of mistakes and marginal decisions. But I'm starting to understand what I need to do to beat this. I just need the cards and the right timing.

Took a small break and went at it again.

So I took a break and regained control, I decided I wanted to take stab at it again. I'm just the type of person really anxious to win and I don't like defeat.

I honestly felt I played the best poker I ever played, I can't think of a critical mistake I made over this 1k hand session. Yes, I still went down another 3BIs. I have no regrets. Though I'm starting to believe that perhaps I'm getting outplayed a lot, and my timing is really off.

I looked over the biggest hands lost in this session, there were a lot of suckouts. You know what? I am going to fight this thing and I will win. I'll tackle it again tomorrow and beat this monster down.

Ouch(*warning* bitching alert!)

I took a big hit today, I ended up down 6BIs in 100nl. It sucks, but I think it hurts my confidence more than anything else. I mean losing 6 BIs is usually no biggy for me, it has happened before many many times while climbing 50nl. But what really hurts is the timing. Also, I just feel when I hit big hands, I don't get action but when I hit marginal hands TPTK/OP, I get tons of action because I'm beat. Maybe this frustration cost me even more mistakes without my own knowing. I mean I know generally players in 100nl are better than 50nl players, so I get paid off a lot less. I honestly don't know what to expect now from the new stake, do I just fold every single TPTK or OP to aggression?

The solution seems to be "don't felt any hand other than the nuts", because apparently everybody is better at folding TPTK/OP than me. So basically I'm on the loser side because I fold less. I don't know if that's the fact, but I'm definitely losing more big pots than winning big pots. Maybe I just need to learn how to fold hands, apparently I don't know where the fold button is. Didn't I learn this like 4 months ago? What happened to me? Did I just luckbox the last 4 months? Damn, I feel like crap.

Today's Session

I guess I broke in the uneasiness of the new stake. I guess when you feel the stake is no longer much different than the lower stake, that's a very good sign. It was a swingy session, but I ended up making 1BI. Also, I got some fpp bonus cash coming in. I have to thank Josh(one of the other students) in reminding me all stakes are the same as long as you are rolled for it.

Aggression OOP is always something I have trouble with. I realize it's more of a problem OOP than in position. When I'm in position, I know pretty easily where I stand. But when I'm OOP, the playing field is very different. I'll think about that some more.

1st 100nl stab/2nd Session w/ Brian

I came out ahead, but I sucked out on one hand, turned T2P and got it in on the turn against a set. I 4 outter'ed my boat. I was not playing comfortable but I felt it was probably the best way to get my feet wet. Bet sizing is something I first need to get used to.

The second session was interesting. We joked around a lot more, and loosened up. We had pretty good discussions on some hands. It's very good to hear how others approach a certain situation. There are many ways to play one hand, and there are different plays for different situations. Knowing all the different ways is good.

After that I did a short session with Greg railing, he wanted to see how I play and he wanted to absorb a bit more. It was a short session, the result wasn't so great, I got into a few marginal spots and had the worse hand each time. I showed him how to nit it up. I usually don't do that as much as I did during that session because I rely on table dynamics and reads very often. And when I talk about concepts, I can't pay attention as much with reads. I feel that's my greatest strength, using reads to make the most profitable very low variance plays.

Anyways, I'll probably do a bit of 100nl tomorrow. I hope to play more comfortable, and much less nitty. It'll take some time.

100NL, but where's my confidence?

Fruity recently posted about "confident or lack of it". After today's session, I met my goal of 40BIs for 100nl. Now this is the problem, I feel at lost because 50nl is such a comfort zone for me. It's almost like going to work, it's always +ev figuratively speaking. Now I know I'm going to face a monster that defeated me half a month ago. I actually told myself that if my roll was deeper, I will feel better about it. Is that true? umm, I'm not sure.

I mean of course I'm not going to sit in 50nl forever, but Dan(Fruity)'s feelings are identical. I feel if I don't make a move up now, I will never do that. I mean do I need a BR of like 100BI to feel comfortable with a new limit? The fear is not about the money, it's the fear of failure. The monster I'm facing is not 100nl, it's actually my own weak self. I have done moveups before, why is it more difficult now? I think I have an answer to this question. It is because I've tasted success and I feel confident, I fear losing all of that. I know how it felt to have your confidence completely shot and you don't know what you are doing wrong.

This reminds me of this story about a young martial artist who had fought a mysterious strong fighter. The young man lost pitifully and wants to pursue more strength to defeat the fighter. So for many many years, he looked everywhere to try to find this fighter. He trained every single day and swore he would not rest until he defeats the fighter. Many years have passed, the young man accidentally ran into the mysterious fighter again. Without much effort, he defeated the fighter. He did not realize how strong he had become since the last time he fought the fighter. And in his mind, the fighter is always stronger than he, no matter how strong he has become.

When one has an unachievable goal, as long as he does not give up, he will keep trying to obtain more strength until the goal is obtained. If one does not have a "fighter" that he needs to defeat, he will stay weak for the rest of his life. I was a weaker player then, now I'm stronger, but I don't know if I'm strong enough yet. I won't know until I challenge him again.

Anyways, Good luck to me. :)

More hands

I played a lot of hands today. I probably played more than I usually do in 2-3 days. I kind of felt motivated after the session with Brian and the guys. I wanted to try some concepts out. There are two more things that stuck in my mind after the session which I didn't mention. One was that he mentioned switching gears a lot. I usually never play loose enough to be able to switch gears well enough, but it's something I thought about more.

The other was stressing to play solid mechanical poker. This one really struck me because I felt I was really trying to make things happen when I'm not supposed to. Like I just itch to 3bet someone who steals 40% of the time from sb/bb. I don't do this often, but I realize it's not even necessary and I should only do this like once in a great while. Sometimes, I make some fancy c/r flop play calling oop. Of course they work a good amount of times, but I'm not sure if they are really profitable. I can't really check my long term winrates on that. But I played grinding, mechanical poker tonight, I had really good results. I let people mess with me more than usual, but none of them are completely out of line. So worse case is that I get my pf raise/cbet picked off. When I have a hand, he's paying for it. But this is a really good advice: "just play good solid ABC poker". Low limits don't need any fancy and you gain immediate results. Also, it allows me to play longer sessions and slowly pick up some consistent winrates. When I make deviations with my plays, I end up getting into more variance situations than normal. This affects me more emotionally, which makes me play more loose or less solid than usual.

I worked on the two things I mentioned in the last post. I started paying more attention to timing tells and think about what each "tell" means. I'm amazing how much you can pick up. In addition to one's line, if you can remember his timing on each bet, it helps you narrow his hand even more! But this is difficult because I need to work on this type of memory associations.

I tried making more aggressive lines OOP w/ flopped TP. It really is pretty good, it makes river decisions much more easier. I mean sometimes you'll showdown with worse hand but you control the pot size. And I see a lot of people folding on the river. Sometimes a scare card comes on the turn, I bet it anyways, I get a fold very often. This is something I do sometimes, but I didn't beat it to death. I like this line a lot, I think I already gain a nice little winrate just by doing this now.

Anyways, I'm excited about all the things I'm picking up. Thanks again Brian!

1st Session

We just finished our first session tonight. To sum it up, Brian(Hookem148) played some tables of 50nl and we discussed on his play. We talked about a couple interesting topics.

The few interesting things that stick in my mind are:

-timing tells
-oop play

I honestly don't have much to comment about timing tells because it's definitely not a huge part of my game and I am not attentive to this at all. I'm basically starting from scratch with this, so it's interesting. I'll try to concentrate on this more, it'll probably take me months to master this.

OOP play is more of a brain twister for me. Because my OOP play is very passive, but Brian said he plays his flopped TP OOP pretty aggressively. I mean this makes sense why it works, but it's just very different from my normal play. I feel there are advantages with this, but I am the type of player that I want to understand why I'm making so and so play. Also, I'm sure you shouldn't make this line EVERY time. There has to be exceptions, but since this is a relatively different concept for me, I have to revisit many old situations and rethink them to play them most efficiently.

Overall, it is a helpful experience. It really makes you sit there and think about certain things. And the great thing is that you can just open your mouth and get your question answered.