3 times I've asked you to clarify one if your suggestions, and 3 times you've ignored it, preferring to nitpick people's replies. It's very clear you are not remotely interested in 'genuine discussion about these drills' and are only interested in throwing mud at the original poster.

I have made useful genuine suggestions to Homey eg that he should produce spreadsheets for the various equities. This is how I learn these things and Homey did say he'd be very interested in what others do. I have taken him at face value. There are various ways of grouping the equities and these are not difficult to think up yourself. Equity against range within flop texture versus holding is one. Tbh you should be able to think that up that sort of thing for yourself.

Yes, the use of spreadsheets for drills B, C, and G is a good idea. It's extremely important for tracking your progress and reviewing later on. As I mentioned before but didn't articulate clearly, in each drill you first want to answer/estimate yourself, then compare it with the actual result. This is where the feedback/correction/learning takes place. Spreadsheets are almost required for this. I should have emphasized that before in my OP. I'm interested in hearing if anyone has specific ideas for spreadsheet templates (happy to pass along mine to anyone via p.m.) for the bolded sections below. For B, I just have columns for listing the board texture, our hand, the situation, the width or strength of villain's range, our equity estimate, our equity actual. For C, there are auto-calculating formulas entered in. I don't have this for G, but instead just typically summarize my key findings/conclusions on a notecard.

given how easy thinking of these groupings is, you should have no difficulty listing more (and preferably in a format that isn't just word soup) or at least you wouldn't if you were even remotely interested in helping anyone. but, you're not, all you want to do is take potshots at OP.

the only reason you brought up the 'OP invited genuine discussion' angle is because your earlier attacks were removed from the thread, and you transparently hope this new angle will prevent that from happening again.

were that not the case, you would have replied to my earlier questions, and not waited until you had to defend yourself from accusations of having a personal vendetta against OP.

given your 'genuine discussion' angle is clearly bogus, i would like to see your posts removed from this thread as per post 41 ITT, since they are just obvious harrassment, with no real value that i can see.

The point I am trying to get at is that if you stick them in a decent order then you won't have to remember them all you will just need to remember where the significant jumps in equity occur.

Great thread until the arguments began. I was inspired until the random nitpicking posts flourished.

I've received a couple pm's mentioning that the auto-calculating formulas aren't working in Excel. The documents I linked above are for OpenOffice's version of excel. If you have problems in Excel, you can try copy-pasting this formula into cell A2, then copy-paste that into cells A3 through A20 for the "EV Bet or Raise" document:

=B2*C2+G2*D2*(C2+F2)-G2*(1-D2)*E2

Also make sure the cell for "1-FE" has the formula "1-B2" or "1-C2" entered in each cell.

For the "EV Call" document, here is the EV formula for cells A2 through A20:
=E2*(D2+B2)-(1-E2)*B2

Gold!! Thx man.

Great post. I'm not sure how to filter HEM to "Saw Showdown= True" though?

How would you recommend modifying these exercises for live play

i'm like 1/4 the way through this post and WOW - ****ing incredible! Thank you.

itwassuited64 :

I was inspired to come up with a few practice exercises as well. dunno if they are more what you are looking for but here goes :

I'm going to attempt to think of some other practice type games toadd to this list.

1 - hyper intensive analysis of brief sessions
Going over literally every decision you or anyone makes and thinking about anything that could influence it. Should they raise? What hands should they raise there? You called, what are the merits to call as opposed to folding, etc. etc. but in excessive analytic detail.
2 - single table & single table other games
Most of us get bored playing just one table so we fire up a few more. But what if we occupied our minds by focusing on what's going on @ that table? Get inside the minds of our opponents. Presume their strategies. Likewise playing poker games aside from hold'em can open your mind to new possibilities on how to understand it.
3 - go & sit down with strangers in coffee shops
Poker is a people game. Especially if your people skills are lacking, you should develop them. This will not only greatly help your social life but can help your game a lot as well. Practice reading people in social situations. Understand how emotions motivate action. Learn about psychology by interacting with others. Learn to manipulate people. Study body language.

I am looking for live play such as at the casino. I find it hard to stay concentrating while I am playing and find myself just not thinking at all and end up making less than optimal decisions

iirc OP said A B C & G are the most important drills?

B, C and G can all be done just the same for live games as for online as far as i can see?

A is the only one you'd have trouble with since you have don't have a library of HH's with showdowns large enough for you not to be able to remember them all, and plus you seem to want something you can do ingame to kill the dead time, so you could always do the old phil hellmuth thing of just trying to range every opponent in every hand? (personally i wouldn't announce my predictions to the table though, but ymmv)

all imho

yes, if you have iphone/ipod touch and the card room allows you to use it (most do) when you're not in a hand:

Drill B) Download the PokerSniper app, or PokerCruncher (both are like Stove). To kill the dead time, in any hand you're not involved in, you can estimate villain's range and then figure out what kind of equity the other guy has with different holdings

Drill C) There are spreadsheet apps for iphone/ipod touch with which you can create & save auto-calculating EV spreadsheets for the basic EV of a Call decisions, and the EV of a Bet/Raise All-in decisions (the fold equity formula). You can do this during the dead time as well. While you're observing the action, you could be asking yourself a ton of questions: If I were the guy on the button here, would it be +EV for me to shove a bare FD vs. MP's range. What about TPTK on this board? Then answer the questions. Tweak the variables. Play around with it.

Thanks a lot OP, great stuff

Great read thanks.

Sitting here in West Denmark, all alone, it is VERY helpfull to get diamant help like this :-)
Please find air for more gold.
Maxidane

Why do you subscribe to this stuff ? Practice makes perfect but the claims made, which you repeat in part, are not sustainable by the research . Some "elite" performers are lazy but talented and other people without much aptitude practice till the cows come home without it doing much good (they improve from incompetent to slightly less incompetent). Even the titles of the books are risible "The Genius In All Of Us" ? Do me a favour most people are genius at nothing and never will be. I don't understand why you have accepted all the hype uncritically. Can you please explain this ?

Do you have a single example of someone who has truly applied themselves to mastering something and who are just 'slightly less incompetent' afterwards? Or even just 'decent'?

I've been working on this one a lot lately.....

'A) The Hand-Reading Game
-filter your HEM database for “Saw Showdown = True”
-reply the hand street by street, and verbally articulate (or write down, or enter into Pokerstove) your estimate of villain's hand range on each street. Was the hand he actually showed down within the final narrowed range you gave him?
-keep score, track results. If the hand villain showed down was in the final range you assigned him, you're 1 for 1. If it was outside the range, you're 0 for 1. Do 10 hands every day, and over the course of each week, track improvement in your average score out of 10
-you can add HEM filters to work on your hand-reading in a specific situation, for example when you're facing a flop check-raise, or when a loose-passive c/c's 3 streets, or in 3bet pots, etc.'

I've filtered it for pots where I won or lost over 50bb and the villain wasn't a shortstacker. I actually can't believe how good my results have been when doing the exercise and it made me realise that I'm really not applying the knowledge I have at the tables correctly. Although I have started now.

Also, villains really do have flush draws far less than you expect

There are tens of thousands, if not millions of them, of them. You will find a lot of them on golf courses etc. Not everyone is Tiger Woods or Bobby Fischer. Thousands have tried and have fallen short. The ones who fall slightly short you hear about because they are the 1000th best golfer or the 1000th best chess player but those who had little aptitude in the first place will not be noticed. Use your loaf is there honestly any point in trying to become a concert pianist if you show no aptitude for playing the piano in the first place ? The people who wrote these books are just selling snake oil. The science shows that practice makes people better than they were. It does not say that it makes them better than those who were naturally gifted in the first place.

I'm just asking for one concrete example. Yes there are hundreds of thousands of people playing golf or a number of other activities badly, but that does not mean they have truly applied themselves. Even if they may think so themselves - there are tons of examples of people (there are some famous threads on this board) of people who claim to have "done everything" but who clearly haven't and who aren't willing to accept it themselves.

Same with golf - you'll find tons of people who claim they have done and tried everything but when you look into it, it turns out their just pig-headed and stubborn and/or unwilling to actually put in the time and work to learn and apply what they've been taught.

Excepting stuff like becoming a super-model or a world class singer, which is stuff you do need to be born with a certain look/talent for, I have yet to see a single example of someone not becoming at least very good in a field they have truly applied themselves to.

We're not talking about becoming a top concert pianist - your statement was that there are people who truly apply themselves to something and yet do not manage to become more than 'slightly less incompetent' at it.

You are just nit picking and bickering for the sake of it. Perhaps you should turn your criticism to the people who write books with ludicrous titles like like "The Genius In All Of Us". Generally speaking if people are not very good at something compared to others then they do not waste years on it. It's common sense to those of us who are not deluded.

I agree with your main point but disagree with the part above. There are many physical activities and sports that people may not be able to become good at as they just don't have, and will never be able to achieve, the physical attributes that are necessary. Obviously this doesn't apply to poker though.