Just a really quick update.

So last night I fell asleep at about 9pm and woke before 1am. It's really annoying and I don't know why the **** bodyclock is being such a spazzy bitch. I even put some delta-wave sleep music on and tried to get back to bed, but just lay there with a completely active mind.

Decided to eventually get up and go for a run at 4am. The streets were completely dead which was nice as it allowed me to run in the road where the surface is much more even than on the pavements. Pretty sure I saw more drunk people than cars haha.
Really pushed myself hard and as I came to the finish I felt like I was gona be smashing my record for the 2.65ml route, but quite disappointed when I got to the stopwatch to find it read 00:24:52, about 33secs slower than my post-xmas record.
O well, I guess it was still a really good run because I truly exerted myself. Maybe with it being so cold (around 2*C) it makes the run harder than when it's not freezing!?

The plan for next week is to run the route three more times and if I can have three sub-25min runs without stopping, then I will finally promote myself to a new 3ml+ route.


The next two days I'm away from poker but on Sunday there's no football so I'm planning on having a big day. I think I will do a couple of ICM reviews and then aim for an 8hr+ session, which is a rare thing for me on Sundays. Definitely sumat to look forward to!

Shelly.

Pretty confident you're mixing up cause and effect here. I think it's highly likely there's a connection between regularly exercising in the middle of the night and the sleep issues you're having. It's most likely destroying your natural circadian rhythm, so that even on the nights when you're not doing it, your body is hesitant to go into sleep mode in case you decide to make it lift weights or go running. You're trying so hard to make the most of your time that you're trying to override your body's natural processes.

If you can't sleep, you should be doing something that puts you in a restful, relaxed state where your heart rate is low. Something repetitive like ironing, folding clothes, or just watching a mediocre movie that doesn't require much thought. If you give up on sleep and go do something that raises your heart rate, it'll be at least another hour or two before you're able to fully fall asleep, which if it's already 4am is going to mess up your day. If you relax and stop thinking so hard about getting to sleep, you might be 20 minutes away from drifting off. Maybe your body is just about to metabolise that last bit of caffeine or sugar, but you're not giving it the chance. Seems like you're trying to use all these devices and tricks to feel better, get yourself to sleep or fix your sleep pattern (pretty sure you got ripped off buying a depression-curing desk lamp... ), but just like in poker, there's no one secret that will fix everything.

Also, good for you for quitting weed. If it was that much of a part of your life, frankly I'm not particularly surprised you ended up depressed.

In general it looks like you're making some really good progress, so keep it up. But for your own sake, chill the f*** out.

i before mid night ironing sessions become +EV for me

GL subbed

I've found some videos over the last few days on youtube of girls talking/whispering. It makes me sound like a rapist but they're actually awesome for getting chilled and nodding off to.
Autonomous sensory meridian response is the name of the effect that the videos are meant to induce. It's basically that pleasurable tingling sensation you get through your body sometimes, maybe when someone whispers into your ear or brushes up against you. It's hard to define and measure though because some people won't get this sensation, and people who do get it for different reasons.


Ye this was actually nearly 5 years ago when I realised I needed to quit. It's been at least 2 or 3 since I last got stoned.


Haha thankyou, and ye I'm working on being able to chill out. Easier said than done though of course.


Midnight ironing would be -ev for me considering I haven't learnt how to iron haha...eek.



Ty sir!



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This is the update from yesterday as I was shattered and couldn't be arsed writing it at the end of my session.



Health & Fitness

So on Saturday morning I just did a single circuit of 8 reps of my strength routine. As there was no football yday I used it as a recovery day.


Sesh

Decided to give studytime a miss and just jump straight into the session. I'd felt ok in the morning despite having been really pissed the night before, but not long into my session I got really tired and had a rediculous urge to sleep, so I drank a fair amount of coffee to see out my sesh as I had to stay up to play that world-record tourny. Obv can't let a free lottery ticket go to waste. (ended up coming just outside top 1000 AJ < A5 blehh)
Actually ended up feeling slightly drugged up whilst playing the wr game. It was a good feeling though so I'm thinking there must've been a rush of dopamine going on up there!



Graph is slightly inaccurate as PT4 misses a few rebuys. Ran deep in a few 3rs and took a 5th which was disappointing. The FT was really aggro and my rep was pretty tight, hence why this aggro guy only flatted ATo. This hand was the killer.


Actually got exploited a few times in the sesh by spazzing into the nuts v donk-bets. I guess that must be a move that is starting to do the rounds amongst decent players so I'll make some notes and keep my eyes peeled!



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So the plan for today is to do a full ICM-reviem of the deepest 3r from yday and then get a good few hours of grind in. It's paramount that I work-hard to get myself back to the sort of form that I was beginning to produce before I went off the rails.

Shelly.

Yea, donk bets are kind of sexy right now, which is disappointing, because I had been using them for a while. Regs spazz against them too much (like you did) and it works out really well.

Ye I got so pwned yesterday haha, I think I def need to find some spots to use them. This is one of the hands, the guy wasn't a reg but he had aggro-yet-tidy stats. I'm actually not sure what else I could've done really.

I actually don't like his donk bet here, it worked, but I don't like it. I like them more on boards that hit villains range pretty well, but we have a super disguised hand.

So on a board like that, if the turn was a Ts, I would like a donk bet if we had KJ, or we had KT and it was an offsuit J. I like that a lot more, because people don't put you on weird straights.

yeah, in that example I'd just call and hope to keep it cheap. Not sure you can get that 24k called off and still be in good shape.

Interesting to hear that people are using the donk bet though, will look out for it.

Ye the more I look at it the worse I realise it is. Shoving achieves literally nothing other than folding out almost everything weaker and getting called by hands that are almost always stronger. It's like a higher level version of fish calling OOP then donk overbet-jamming bottom pair. At least if we flat and then call a river-jam there's bluffs in their range. Really poor by me.



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Health & Fitness

So I woke up at a non-******ed time after the first decent, unbroken nights sleep in a good while today. Setout on my run feeling quite positive. The goal for my three runs this week was to beat 25mins without stopping, on every run.
The bad news is I setoff too hard and ended up stopping for 3 short walks in the last 1.1ml. I'm not sure if it was solely the going out hard, or maybe the several days of excess that had preceded it, but I just didn't summon what it took to keep running without stopping.
The good news is I actually broke the record on the route, finishing in 00:24:26! I think without the walk breaks I would've actually beat 24mins so at least there's a positive to take from the workout. With that in mind I will see how the next two runs go before deciding whether to add distance next week or not.



Pre Sesh

Started off by clearing 10 note-hands. There's 41 left in the file so I'm gona up to 15-a-day from now until the end of the month to hopefully clear it, although there's a lot more notewrorthies in 3rs so maybe that won't be the case.

Did a very small amount of ICM FT-reviewing, but disappointed in myself because I just wasn't feeling it today and was being sloppy/rushed with my range construction.

Finished by clearing 5 saved-for-review hands.



Sesh

Bleh sesh. Played ok but ran like scum. Not much else to say really. Need to start pumping out some actual decent volume tho! Graph is almost accurate.





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Something that tilted/shamed me a bit today was a few hands I played (and lost) against guys with lots of stars showing. Basically it was regs who ****ing suck and clearly don't plug spots reguarly, yet when I searched them they'd made way more money than me in similar timeframes. It made me realise just how poorly I've spent my time over the last few years, and also how poorly I'm still spending a lot of my time. On the plus side it also reinforced my belief that there's still a hell of a lot of juice in the games yet!


Tomorrow I need to have a good productive day. No excuses!

Shelly.

Health & Fitness

Did a weights session this morning and with two big runs coming up, I decided that for this week I'm gona just do a single circuit of 8-reps on both my strength-workouts. Next week, hopefully I'll be adding distance to my run but I'll be taking it easier to help adjust to the added mileage so I'm intending to up my weights sessions to 2-circuits as a result. Looking to find some balance between the workouts, don't see any point in overexerting and doing more harm than good. Even just 1-circuit is knackering me out!


Pre Sesh

Started by clearing 15 note-hands. Actually finding that hands I saved from over a year ago aren't even noteworthy a lot of the time, so hopefully that will make finally clearing that file a little bit simpler!

Finished another poor amount of study by working through 18 saved-for-review hands.


Sesh

Disappointing sesh. Started off, made a few mistakes early on and just wasn't feeling it so decided to stop reggin. A few hours later I found myself 3-handed in a 3r with a massive-fish and a spewy-reg.

The fish has made a massive open/huge 3b literally about 8-hands in a row. I'd already limp/f sb and open/f sb in that time so decided complete was best chance at value as I was quite short and an open would've been redic-strong. Pretty gutted.

Ended up with a $150 or so winning day, although I think for the stakes I'm now playing it's probably classed as a small win. No point posting graph, volume is shocking.



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So ye, another wasted day. Kind of just looking forward to this month being over now. Thread is turning into a massive anti-climax with 1/6th of the year nearly over. I guess there's plenty of time to turn it around but I feel like I'm a bit tapped in the head and I'm just in an endless cycle of my own craziness. I guess that's why the CBT was such a good idea!

Shelly.

Enjoying th updates, positive momentum being created ITT! Th divide between months is meaningless, keep up th effort 1 day at a time

Thanks for the support man!



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Overslept a little today but even so was up before 10am so bodyclock is almost back to the awesome levels it was before I went off the rails. Sleeping nice and uninterrupted and feeling fresh in the daytime!



Health & Fitness

Todays run was a great success. I made a big effort to pace myself better than on Monday, but I was actually really tired and wanting to stop before even finishing the first mile. Mentally though I toughed it out and kept pushing myself. Maybe the desire to stop actually made me go faster because when I did reach the finish I found I'd broken a record for the 2.65ml route. 00:23:53!

Really quite ecstatic because it was such a tough run but I showed that I can summon the mental-toughness to keep going even on days where I don't feel strong. Another pleasing aspect was that the weather was slightly unfavourable. It was (comparatively) warm, about 10C, the sun was shining and there was a lot of wind. Obviously that doesn't sound too bad but my running gear is all black and made for Winter so with the sun shining on me I was quite hot very early in the run, and with the wind blowing there was a few moments where I felt like I wasn't even moving.

The goal for Friday is to replicate todays effort. The run on Monday wasn't good, but today was amazing so I'll set myself a goal to finish under 24mins on Friday. If I can do that then I'll finally promote myself to a new, longer route. Exciting times!



Pre Sesh

Started off by clearing 15 note-hands. Checked the main file and there's only 19 hands left so we should have it cleared before the month is out!

Did a small amount of ICM FT-reviewing. Feel like I picked up a bit of useful info, but also feeling really lazy and daunted with the ICM work of late. This is something that needs seriously addressing as this is where a huge amount of money is going to be made!



Sesh

So got my first bink tonight. Left feeling quite bitter because took a 4th to finish and lost a flip to basically have 75% of the chips 3-handed after flopping a set v a gssd. Wasn't to be. Graph is bangon accurate!



Happy with the volume. One thing I am noticing is that I'm getting quite emotional and angry at the other players when I lose. I think I'm suffering from a lack of confidence due to a greatly increased difficulty in the games. It is imperative that I start doing some hard-graft in the ICM department and it needs to start tomorrow!



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Today was a quite solid day but there's still lots of room for improvement. The plan for tomorrow is to work even harder by playing a similar sized sesh but with a lot more study beforehand.

Whilst I'm not completely there I do feel like I'm starting to find a good rhythm again so let's keep it up for the next two days and head into March on top-form!

Shelly.

Health & Fitness

So finished off my strength training for the week with a single-circuit of the routine. Felt a lot stronger than on Tuesday so hopefully will cope when it ups to 2 circuits next week. Hopefully I've preserved a good amount of energy for my big run tomorrow!



Pre Sesh

Started by clearing 15 note-hands. Tomorrow I will finally clear the file. It won't be too much of a job because I'm finding that the hands I was saving a year ago are almost always not even relevant. Not quite sure why I even saved a lot of them. :z

Worked through 18 review-hands and made notes on a few of them. I think doing this work is really important for peace-of-mind after sessions. I reckon that if I can keep a good routine going then I will be unrecognisably stronger in a few months!

Finished off with a solid FT review of the disappointing 4th. Procrastinated for a while beforehand but once I did get round to it I feel like I got some good use out of the work!


Found out that the hand that crippled me was actually terrible by both me and my opponent.


The way the game was flowing it was pretty clear he was setting up for an induce so there's no way I should be doing anything but folding as his range just isn't gona have enough r/f for a 3b-jam to be ok. However, it's also a terrible induce for him as there's no way I'm 3b-jamming wide enough for him to risk his comfortable 2nd place stack. It was basically just terrible by both of us and I'm sure that if I see two regs do this in the future while i'm sitting with one of the short-stacks I'll cum in my pants.



Sesh

Won a little but quite disappointed. Ran bad but also played subpar and most likely wasted a few good opportunities for a really good day. Graph is close to accurate.



Took a 2nd and a 4th in 8/180s and a 5th in a 3r. Pleased with the volume but disappointed with my perforamnce. I'm thinking that I maybe overloaded at a few points and it affected my balance, so that's something I'll be thinking about for my session tomorrow.



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I'll update again tomorrow night.

Cheers for reading, Shelly.

Icm wise i think he can only raise/fold here witch i think its terrible. i like your shove in terms that he can call 5 % of his range here due to icm.In fact u should be pushing much wider. gg anyway

It's hard to explain but the way the action had been going previously his opening range here is almost all r/c imo. I'll plug the hand again later but thinking about it I've actually got a feeling that this is worse by me than it is by him.

I looked at a spot similar to this recently from one of my games I played.

If villain open shove SB, you would fold (I hope).... so obvioulsy you require X% of FE for the shove to be profitable.

I do think the spot is close and very villain dependent. BUT, I also think you can definitely call for 1bb and set mine/take down some points on certain flops. You think folding>calling?

Also, What do you think is the best play for villain in this spot? I find that interesting and honestly don't know the answer!

If we think raise/folding is bad, do you prefer open shoving from villain (sure this must be +EV)?

This doesn't seem like it's anywhere close to true. Assuming you ran the numbers in ICMIZER, I'd like to see exactly what ranges you used, because if ICMIZER is telling you this isn't an easy shove then I would think your assumptions about his ranges are inaccurate. It is a pretty bad induce with AJ by him, but if he assumes you're ICM aware then it becomes a better play, because if he's good he would expect an ICM aware player to shove a really wide range here.

Basically the profitability of each player's play here depends on the other's awareness of their ranges, and I think you're really stretching it with your assumptions about his range for raising the SB. I mean, if he knew that you would ever think about folding 33 here then he could be opening a bunch of complete trash hands in the knowledge that you're not ICM-raping him anywhere near enough. It's just a levelling game, and I don't think it's very likely at all that you have enough info on him to judge the level he's on as accurately as you think. I may be wrong, but I am very curious as to how you did the numbers on this.

EDIT: Also calling >>>>>>>> folding, you're getting 4 to 1 in position.

+ 1

@ ShellysAshes

Do u understand everytime hes calling with AT here or wider than 5 % u are making money regardless of the outcome ? Or is it just that u afraid that he's got a monster and worry about that given game flow. Even if thats the case ther's no way he does not have a trash-stealing range here. Whats your stats ? vpip ,fold bb vs raise and 3bet ?

Didnt ran numbers but dont think thats true. Pretty sure you both lose in this spot if he raise/calls a suboptimal (too loose of a) range.

They both lose comparatively, because getting in flips in these spots redistributes tournament equity and $EV in a high variance fashion. But it's easy to look at this in the wrong way.

People are looking at it in terms of his raise/fold and raise/call frequencies being well-defined and planned out in advance, when in reality his decision to raise and his decision of whether or not to call are two separate things. Guess what? He risks 32k to win a little less than that preflop. If we fold around 53-54% of the time or more, his raise is profitable if he has no cards and always folds to a shove. You can't give someone credit for being ICM aware, while also not giving them credit for understanding this concept on some basic level.

It's also highly likely that he has a range of hands with which he's not sure whether he's calling or not in this spot. Is he raise/snapping A7o? KJs? 44? Does he have an open-shove range? These are questions we haven't answered yet. This is why I say Shelly is jumping to too many conclusions about his range - if he's ICM aware enough to only be entering this pot with hands he feels he can profitably raise/call, he's probably folding this SB 90% of the time or more, which is ridiculous in four-handed play.

The profitability of shoving 33 here (in ICM terms) comes from two things - a) the times we force him to fold better hands, and b) the times that he calls with a hand that doesn't have the 60-65% he's likely to need against our range to make it +$EV. Yes, when he does call with a hand that he shouldn't, it redistributes some of our equity and we lose in the short term, but that doesn't mean it was a bad play to put him in that position.

It's results-oriented to focus on the consequences of mistakes made by players we assume to be ICM-aware. It's the same as making a preflop shove with a hand that's profitable based on the assumed calling ranges of the players behind, only to find ourselves getting called by a hand much weaker than we expected to get called by. Do we re-evaluate the profitability of our preflop play based on that? Not necessarily. We couldn't have been expected to assume that players behind us would make mistakes. We just make a note that our assumption about calling ranges was wrong, and base our next play on a new assumption.

Ok so I'll post some more info on the spot.


Villain is a winning reg, although after searching a lot of mediocre regs recently and finding they've been making a solid living, I don't think that's good enough information to assume he is a good player.

He is being very aggressive, making a lot of opens/open-jams and 3b-jamming a lot. My feeling is that he's on the side of reckless and is quite often playing his cards rather than the situation, ie; 3b-jamming rag-aces as standard without having much thought for the individual situations.

I've been playing quite subdued on an aggressive table, looking for good opportunities to find profitable opens. The previous hand:


So immediately after he jams I've expressed frustration/tilt. Imo that should affect his range for opening the next hand. He made the min very quickly, almost asif he was excited. Obviously that could be him levelling, but my read is that he is on a lower thought-level to me and is making some rash-decisions without properly thinking about the situations. So it seems most likely that the excited open is going to be a solid-tell.



So the range I've constructed below is obviously a tight-open and a loose-call, but it also includes a lot of r/f hands that he would maybe be more likely to open-jam.





Given the reads I've outlined above I feel like this is a pretty fair assessment. However, I also have to bear in mind that I've described the player as reckless and lacking intuition for gameflow, so maybe he would open his standard range in this spot, and the fact I ran into an induce is just me being results-orientated?



Also, from his perspective. I would have to be jamming this wide:




For AJo to be worth +0.01%!





Obviously I could be completely confused with the ranges, but that's just my take on this spot.

This is a very important point and is something I've not been aware of until now.

That drop from 99 to 88 is huge, that really surprised me.