Last week, I tried to figure out the most effective ways to learn poker. My goal was to identify the most efficient learning strategies and to design an optimal way of studying. I aimed to implement the 20/80 rule, focusing on the 20% of activities that would yield 80% of the results.I haven't figured out the perfect approach yet, But I have developed my plan and I will follow it for now.
I believe it's a good idea for me to play all my volume from Friday to Sunday and dedicate the rest of the week to studying
Thats how the process will look like:
Choose subject(work on common spots and leaks first)
Watch coaching videos about it
Study spots with tools: Equilab, Flopzilla, Solver etc.
Play and use learned things in practice, mark hands for later review
Session review
Bonus:
-Watch other players play and explain
-Hands review with other players
-Read Books about mindset
Also coaching is usefull but need bigger bankroll for that
Done with this week.
High volume with a lot of bad beats made me tilt and I didnt play my best game. Gotta play shorter sessions and not forget to workout before I start playing.
results so far:
I will take 10nl shot at $200
"The more your opponent folds, the more your red line goes up"
So mine is at the right place I guess
Weekly Goals check:
at least 10k hands: ✔️
at least 45k of running: ✔️
People tend to say “he calls too much”. But what defines “too much”? It’s literally GTO. If you dont know whats optimal you just guessing
in order to exploit we need a baseline. Telling someone to play exploitatively means nothing if they don’t have a reference point as to what the optimal solution is supposed to be
This armor analogy is a great way of thinking about GTO vs exploitative.
Basically, regardless of level, the "less GTO" you are, the more "vulnerable" you are to exploit. At micros, they are not aware and as such, you aren't risking anything "taking off GTO armor". It's like wearing a bulletproof vest in a pillow fight with a 3 year old. The offensive side of the coin, though, is taking maximum advantage of how opponents deviate from GTO. The worse they are, the easier it is to make money off them without even knowing a thing about GTO. However, knowing GTO fundamentals enables you to maximally exploit them (as well as to exploit the less obviously exploitable opponents).
So it's good to know GTO but cant take it fully seriously at the micro stakes.
Here's an example of what is optimal preflop range but using it against 2-5nl playerpool would be stupid. When they 4bet it's usually top 2% of the range so we can exploit em by folding most of our hands.
BB range vs BTN 4bet
TT+ 100% shove, calling bunch of suited connectors with low frequency etc.
Bankroll: $400 (+ $200)
+$75 on cash and about $125 in Mtts
Lately, I had a break. After having a 13 BI downswing from being coolered by fish every single hand, I was pissed off and thought I was done. Worked on my mindset a bit and went back to grind last week.
cash graph:
Spoiler:
Most of my profits came from MTTs. I won a $20 freeroll on another site and started multiplying it. Had a few cashes in the MicroMillions on PokerStars too
The hand I Busted with in micromillions(Thought I will ship it) when there was about 30 left.:
7 players post ante of 0.12 BB, Hero posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB
Pre Flop:(pot: 2.34 BB)Hero has T T
fold, fold, MP raises to 2 BB, fold, fold, Hero raises to 27.57 BB and is all-in, fold, MP calls 25.57 BB
Flop:(56.97 BB, 2 players) Q 7 K
Turn:(56.97 BB, 2 players) 5
River:(56.97 BB, 2 players) 9
Spoiler:
Hero shows T T (One Pair, Tens)
(Pre 57%, Flop 11%, Turn 5%) MP shows K A (One Pair, Kings)
(Pre 43%, Flop 89%, Turn 95%) MP wins 56.97 BB
Funny thing, I thought this was a huge blunder in theory, but solver does the same. Pay jumps were small anyway.
In real life, I think a 3-bet fold might be better because at this stage, people play scared. I'll only get called by better hands or, at best, a flip. So, shoving didn’t really make sense. Could be wrong though, I'm noob in mtts.
Freeroll where the field was about 1k people, and only 20 USDT for first place—LOL. Played it for hours, so it kinda felt like a waste of time. But it felt good to win my first tourney ever. I was running 10 km while playing on the phone ahaha.
AA pre-flop, sets, flopped straights, doesn’t matter, everything gets cracked. I need to check the hand history and see how much of it was just coolers and how much was me playing like a donk. Probably a lot of spots where I should've made a tight fold, but I was tilted and snap-called without thinking
Last time I checked, my win rate was 16bb/100. But let's be real, on the bigger sample that's probably about as realistic as winning the lottery while getting struck by lightning. So, I put 8bb and 10bb into a poker variance calculator to see the chances of losing with those samples. I was breakeven but close to losing
10bb/100
8bb/100
If we go down to 7 and 6bb/100, the values are similar, so it's not entirely tragic
If my true win rate were 16bb/100, there's a tiny chance of losing, so I guess it's very unlikely that’s my true win rate. Guess I’ll have to let go of that dream