No doubt Janda's brain alone is responsible for 10x shifts in poker theory. I don't attack the legend with my glib throwaway, I've just repeatedly tried to read the whole thing and failed. It did seem dated but I might give it a thumb next week as a refresh.

Good shout. Very honourable mentions to Jarretman ('help me'), Ginge poker, Guerilla Poker and some of Alvin's stuff. All superior educators to the old school crew imo.


RE GM: I struggle with anyone who charges £40 for a book they haven't even proof-read tbh. I personally find Clarke's writing/teaching style a bit lazy and self important. Different strokes of course. But when I last scanned through it there seemed to be whole sections that are completely out of date in the modern micros game too (e.g. polar 3bet ranges).

Overnight Monster? hmm, the jury is still out.

You are correct. One has to accept Alvin for Alvin's sake. And I 100% understand how not liking the content creator on a personal level can make it nigh on impossible to sit down and study from them at length. Plus, the idea that this course produces 'overnight' monsters is an absolute joke. Maybe an already professional level player would fly through it, but I got it probably too early. But then I tend to enjoy more challenging videos that take me 20 watches to understand. And the videos are, frankly, the best bang for buck I've seen yet, and undoubtedly helped me hone down where the low hanging fruit lives in GTO. I'm just nowhere near applying the overall strategy correctly yet because there's so much to take in, and thus in no position to judge or makes claims on the overall effectiveness. Will update as I go along.

I don't personally regret buying (though I know people who have), and note, you probably have to buy Overnight Monster AND Bluff Barbarian to get the full package. Another anomaly some people might find a bit off-putting.

Hello 2+1+1!

Chief procrastinator here

Usual excuses from me play-wise; on the one hand I still can't dabble (much, about an hr/day atm)...yet, but... (but yet??) on the other having access to medical marijuana makes that all kinda, oh ok then. So my mental health is splendid. And the food detox is now up to it's sixth week on schedule. Which is all I really care about right now.

*Enjoying meditating much more as I detox. Feel bad for being so negative about it now. It's very good to have a little soul ritual every day even if it's superficial. Bottom line: would've been so much more practical to teach me these techniques in school rather than all that bowing to the irrelevant sky pixie.

My new thing: daily brain bath and practice the art of not giving a fcuk, as if it's a skill rather than a desirable drug state

_______________

💪

So, anyway, twiddling my 2+2 thumbs while I can't play, I have invested some energy inventing a marvellous poker gym! Which I will now present here to you here in pictorial form.

All very much a work in progress, feel free to critique, make suggestions or cringe. But we're up to 5 'machines' so far and I think that's about right. What are they? Basically, little dedicated warm-ups/mini games to run through quickly before the long grind. Mental flexes of brain matter I would consider to be the more important poker muscles to consistently train.

Each 'machine' is a fully interactive program coded in html I can open in my browser all at once or even as individual .exe files on my pc. So it's not a big deal to activate it all. Which is nice.



This is the main checklist. The order is randomised on every startup, once a day, and the simple aim is to mark off each item in the list. Each machine's 'task' should take about 5 minutes, so it's not nothing. You will be tested you lazy bastard.

these are the machines!


RANGE TESTER



Simple premise, pick a range then try and map it out precisely on the range board from memory. Click the check button to find out how pitifully wrong you were. Currently patched with the major squeeze ranges because I realised I didn't know any. One a day keeps the sheet waffling away - is the plan.



10 BAD HANDS



No actual machine for this. Just a case of picking 10 random old bad hands from database to run through in real-time. Did you play it right this time? Have a little star. Get three little stars on the same hand then demote that fcuker to the digital inferno of the recycle bin

I have 125 bad hands right now. Not bad for me, ironically.



POT ODDS TRAINER and ALPHA TRAINER



These are my favourites. little drill sergeants. Pick your skill level and whether you want to practice in BB or $$$ (any limit).






The programs fire out a random pot and bet size (calibrated to reflect reality), from which you have to guess the correct % in pot odds or alpha like this:



Simple. Almost addictive after a steep learning curve. I'm already finding these exercises very useful in game tbh, perhaps it is my most underdeveloped poker muscle?

(Also, this is my most complicated computer program yet, i think, so a minor achievement for someone who's more than a little code/mathsphobic)


STRAT BOARD

Ok, i think it's probably ok to think I'm a little bit weird to have gone to all this trouble for what are basically warm up exercises. I did mention the drugs didn't i?



...the idea with the strat board here is to map out my entire strategy in a library of easily memorable memes. Each node can be clicked on to reveal it's meme like an advent calender. I find pictorial mnemonics are the most effective with me so I try and produce one for each major generic strategy node I think I've understood correctly enough to have a base-line strategy for. UTG v BB, RIVERS IP, FISH etc etc

Here are a couple of examples of what the memes look like:





Hopefully that's mostly gibberish to you guys, but it's quite meaningful to me. Prizes if anyone can correctly guesses what positions they are for. Although, bear in mind, i could never announce any winners, for obvious reasons.

The point of having the strat mapped out like this is that it makes me feel like I have a simple, accessible framework to follow and my only job is to remember it when required. Benefit being to not get too responsive to all the table machinations and variance.

It's very much a live document though and can be changed/added to as my core knowledge grows. I've discovered that i like trying to 'convert' poker strategy into different mediums like pictures because it forces you fill in the blanks (and is a fun exercise in itself, breaking up some of the drier aspects of poker theory).

For this exercise I just hit the random button and test myself to describe the meme prompted. In a way this simulates multi-table/random play but it's also just a memory test you could do with flashcards just as effectively. I do this three times for one 'rep'.

_____________________

And that completes today's circuit around the poker gym! Congratulations. Take/have a shower. You are now free to leave and expend nuclear fission levels of concentrated brain energy earning hyper inflationary fiat tokens from people who don't have your access to memes to insta-convert into highly speculative alt coins that will one day collectively destroy the planet. YAY

And they say drugs are bad.

OP, I remember you posted a hand a few weeks ago in the strategy forums, and you gave an analysis of that hand at a level better than most low stakes players could probably give. Several of us in the thread were really impressed considering you're grinding 2nl

You should be playing 10nl at the absolute minimum. Hell you could be doing well at 50 if not 100nl even. If I had the money I'd stake you myself. You're really wasting time playing for pennies when you're not that far from being able to make something approaching actual money

You were grinding 25nl on a soft site at the start of this thread? I would get your ass back on there and grind it off, because you're just squandering your potential here. All the theory stuff is cool but you already know a lot, putting in continuing to study isn't really going to help you any right now

100% agree with the above

No more 2nl!

Cmon op, no more 2nl. I'll stake you on stars if you want. PM of you want to discuss.

Gracias hombres, much appreciate the encouragement for sure.

I think it's basically out of my hands at the moment.

My major weakness is I can't play for any serious length of time. So, even if I was rolled higher, I still couldn't put in the hours. I'm basically a part-time player/learner.

So I have to get healthy enough to play for 5hr+/day to finally capitalise on my years of study. Which seems fair. In that sense, 2022 is my best run so far. Sugar free, booze free, nicotine free, harder-drug free and even clear-headed and actively improving my life in patches. Feel good mentally playing poker, but I still have angina-esque chest symptoms and occasional IBS flare-ups if I play 2hrs+. So it's not worth powering through right now. I just have to wait for these things to heal I reckon, given they are improving.

and then soon as the body says GO we'll be one energetic non-stoned Ewok is the plan. ����

You got this man!

Message me on discord if you want to discuss hands or shoot the **** sometime

So I've been recommending Sky Poker a bit in this thread, and I have been grinding it semi-regularly the whole time.

However, having just seen this on Reddit:





I think my time with this site is toast. And I officially withdraw any recommendations.

For months now I've been having total client crashes mid-hand that have cost me 100s/BB. After contacting support it was obvious they were more than clueless, but I put up with it because the games were good.

AFAIK they are now officially 'owned' by Pokerstars, although one can imagine it's still run by the same old team. Who, as any Sky reg will tell you, are notoriously ignorant of all the requests and complaints in the forums. The software has fairly obviously been undeveloped for as long as i've know it.

So, sadly (for my bank balance), I just can't play there any more. I've had suspicions about my BR for a while tbh, but never actually being able to catch them out (you can only screen record everything which is just too time-consuming) I thought it must be me. Now I realise it just can't be trusted in general and there's nothing I can do but move on.

No wonder they don't let you track hands

Oh wow! This reminded me of a time I played in an home game, and after a while we discovered the pack of cards were made up from two different sets, so we ended up with 2 Kc If I recall correctly, and on top of the the joker card was there too lmao

Yikes, Joker high like a boss

I've never seen this before, although I haven't been playing that long so who knows. Apparently they did say something about the software using two decks (?!).

I'd be pretty livid if it cost me a tournie. Shambolic levels of software tilt

I don't recall seeing anything like this either.. And to state the obvious it shouldn't happen at all lol.. But I wonder how long this glitch has been present?

Sky poker was rigged all along

Imagine the repercussions of this. Imagine how happy you'd be if you were a bad reg and it turned out to be true that... YES, yes it WAS rigged after all. It's not that you're **** at poker. You just have superior luck awareness.

I knew it. <waves fist> I ****ing knew it.

Ok <red face> update on Sky: they posted on reddit that it was this fairly harmless visual thing after all. Just a glitch really with no significant impact. ..So sorry sorry. Sorry world. Sorry Sky. I retract the retraction of my support and will probably start playing on sky again. Apparently this is a ubiquitous problem with players not realising that they’ve disconnecte

omg, comrades, SOO CLOSE TO BEATING 2NLZ !!!

Shouldn't be long now (i say with zero disrespect, poker is hard)

Between now and the wild celebrations (ok, i guess there is a little bit of disrespect creeping in), here are some recent fun tiny-pot examples that paint me in an artificially good light


Don't bluff, don't limp, don't win

PokerStars - $0.02 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 100 BB
SB: 192.5 BB
Hero (BB): 199 BB
UTG: 143 BB
MP: 136 BB
CO: 9.5 BB <---- note

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has Q T

fold, fold, CO calls 1 BB, fold, fold, Hero checks

Flop: (2.5 BB, 2 players) K 7 6
Hero checks, CO checks

Turn: (2.5 BB, 2 players) 9
Hero bets 3 BB, CO calls 3 BB

River: (8.5 BB, 2 players) 7
Hero bets 12 BB, fold

Hero wins 8 BB



X-ing like X river boss from Xville

PokerStars - $0.02 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 87 BB
SB: 96.5 BB
BB: 57 BB
UTG: 169.5 BB
Hero (MP): 219 BB
CO: 131 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has K Q

UTG raises to 3 BB, Hero raises to 9 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, UTG calls 6 BB

Flop: (19.5 BB, 2 players) 5 Q T
UTG checks, Hero bets 6.5 BB, UTG calls 6.5 BB

Turn: (32.5 BB, 2 players) J
UTG checks, Hero checks

River: (32.5 BB, 2 players) J
UTG checks, Hero checks

UTG shows J 9 (Three of a Kind, Jacks)
(Pre 33%, Flop 21%, Turn 18%)
Hero mucks K Q (Two Pair, Queens and Jacks)
(Pre 67%, Flop 79%, Turn 82%)
UTG wins 31.5 BB



Passive is way Better (for my BR)

PokerStars - $0.02 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 120.5 BB
SB: 88 BB
Hero (BB): 108 BB
UTG: 104 BB
MP: 50 BB
CO: 97.5 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 6 6

fold, fold, fold, BTN raises to 3 BB, fold, Hero calls 2 BB

Flop: (6.5 BB, 2 players) 8 6 7
Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: (6.5 BB, 2 players) 5
Hero checks, BTN bets 3.5 BB, Hero calls 3.5 BB

River: (13.5 BB, 2 players) K
Hero checks, BTN bets 6.5 BB, Hero calls 6.5 BB

BTN shows 5 4 (Straight, Eight High)
(Pre 18%, Flop 64%, Turn 72%)
Hero mucks 6 6 (Three of a Kind, Sixes)
(Pre 82%, Flop 36%, Turn 28%)
BTN wins 25.5 BB


'No-one wins, one side just loses more slowly'

Just PM me in future yeah

Best analysis I've seen on this forum to be honest

^^^those last two posts were in response to about half a dozen porn bot spam posts that seemed to have invaded PG&C, and have subequently been removed by 2+2 without notification, in case you're wondering why I look like a berk

I have noticed this a lot since the refit. New guys seem quick to remove posts when it suits (fair enough in this case aye), but it often skewers the conversation because nobody knows editing is taking place or what's going on. meh

Ceres are you talking to yourself now?

Those 2z fish really got to ya huh..

Think I got a micro fever Draws

I'm 3betting $0.81 stacks in my nightmares

See? I aint imagining it after all




Mods?

...mods???

.............................mods?

The funniest thing about this is that there is a profanity filter on the forum. You'd have thought there was some way for this to get picked up automatically (although maybe it's a lot more complex than I imagine). But yeah, the site does seem to have gone downhill since the takeover in that respect. The like buttons are nice, but they might have some work to do on their priorities.

Haha, good ****ing point pjj

Bonjour 2+2

Thought I'd try and get this up and going again.

Been too ill and unmotivated to put in serious hours but I never stop doing something most days. Gonna get this train to 25nlz if it kills me.

First, i will update the poker, then I'll waffle a bit about my life in case anyone's interested.


Poker:

Fine. Here's my final 2nlz graph before I moved up at 50BIs



Many winning sessions were untracked for various reasons. Plus rakeback i guess. But I got to my 20BI for 5nlz target and moving up was smooth. Made some good notes about the fishies. Glad i dropped down in the end because so much of this was poor, arrogant 'i know gto' play.


5nlz so far.



I'll take a weird -EV heater for sure.

Plan's simply to get 20BIs for 10nlz and move up. But i see all of this as a side-effect of my education really. Think I need to spend a while at 10nlz to build up a 50BI bankroll and sticking to it no matter what as bankroll pracitce if nothing else. This is what I need to learn how to do consistently if I'm ever going to go pro so it may as well be at a stake I should be winning at. NO MORE SPENDING BANKROLL CERES

I was trying to get my volume up but I'm back to downsizing tables and concentrating amap on every hand again. I love this system though. Study in the day; apply at night.

Making no commitments to do anything - all that matters to me right now is fixing me physical health, for thence the spice can flow again mother.

Skippable health stuff:

On the health front, things are looking much more promising for me right now. Still a bit useless and taking things one day at a time. But... the big news is this: for years i thought I had an eating disorder (a form of compulsive eating) and this was the cause of all my woe, but I've recently been learning about a new analysis that reclassifies many eating disorders as 'food addictions' instead.

That won't sound much to most people, but for me it's profound. Mainly because the way we treat these two things is very different. An eating disorder (anorexia, bulimia, compulsive eating etc) is treated primarily as a psychological process: i.e. you're malfunctioning because of some kind of psychological event or issue. Whereas with food addiction we recognise that no, actually, the issue is much more biological in nature and therefore the treatment should reflect that.

Every doctor, dietician, practically the entire online eating disorder community has been telling me for the last five years that the only solution to my problem is to practice balanced eating. That any restriction is bad and will only lead to more capitulation.

This approach hasn't been going well with me at all. I get triggered very easily by even very small amounts of my trigger foods.

Whereas this new, food addiction program is entirely the opposite! With food addiction we recognise that there ARE, indeed, some foods that are so chemically addictive for some people (for me sugar/processed carbs) that the only solution and chance to lead a normal life is total abstinence.

.............

Think of it like this: you wouldn't tell a junkie or a coke addict that they have to learn how to have a little bit of heroin or crack in the morning would we? Or a cigarette smoker to practice having one Marlboro for breakfast and then that's it. You've got to balance your nicotine intake mate! Jesus. For an addict, this is often the absolutely last thing you want to say.

So, as you can imagine, this is somewhat of a relief to hear anyway. I'd already realised the medical take was wrong or incomplete but it's one thing to realise this and still feel alone and quite another to hear it from a new community who not only recognise the issue but offer tailored solutions too. It clarifies my treatment program going forward at last. Plus I've been at least fleetingly addicted to just about every addictive drug my whole life and beaten them all - I'm quite GOOD at beating addictions you might say - so i do have some tools to apply to this situation. This reframing feels like my best hope yet tbh because it feels real.

Always nice to feel validated/might not be as insane as i feared.

Ok, that's my rant. Will keep informed as I go. If any of this rings true for anyone hmu and I'll give you links.

GL out there all