Hey guys, your friend FazendeiroBH here, back with another PGC thread.

Well, a lot happened pokerwise this year, especially in these final 4 months of 2023. I decided to join the Poker Detox Training Camp, and have to say that, although the style/teachings are waaaaay more suited to anon than known pools, I got a lot from it and can definitely say it was the coaching which gave me the most, talking about knowledge per unit of time. Don´t want to turn this into an advertisement, or endorsement of any sort, as I´m not even getting paid to do it but in the interest of being transparent with what I was doing, here it is. Enough hehe

I know I really like this game, otherwise I wouldn´t keep playing and always coming back to it after more than 10 years, but I´m struggling with consistency, especially consistency of playing/volume. So, this new thread will be just another try to, by being accountable, actually put consistent hours for a relevant period, of 1 year. My goal isn´t even that high. As I play reg tables, and still play full ring as my main game, and as I play on stars and am limited to 4 tables, I just want to get at least 330k hands in one year, or 30k hands per month for 11 months. Nothing challenging for sure, I still think volume for the sake of volume is a bad approach, and yet, some reasonable volume IS necessary, otherwise we will never move up/achieve anything in any realistic timeframe.

Considering achievements, I think my goals are also very reasonable. I want to reach 100nl, using a slightly riskier approach of 30 BI BRM with 5 BI stop losses. I cashed out (bad decision I know) a lot of my roll, and am sitting right now with about 25 BIs for NL25, but I´m confident I am a winner at 25nl and, if the worse happens, I will just redeposit (and make the proper adjustments ofc to reflect that). Given that, assuming conservative winrates of 5 bb/100 for 25nl and 3 bb/100 for 50nl, in expectation, and no variance, 100nl should be achievable in 170.000 hands. Less, or more, depending on how good/bad I run (because you know, variance actually does exist LOL) and/or play, and depending on how accurate/deluded I am with my estimations.

I don´t really want to get any deeper in actual strategies, first to be fair with the PD guys, and also because my 2p2 and stars nicknames are the same With that said, just as I did on the other threads, I will talk about broad poker themes I enjoy talking, relevant themes, so that per se should hopefully make my thread interesting.

Gonna update the thread on the days I play. I´m still playing a few more sessions today, then I will post where I am right now, so we can get properly started.

Cheers

As promised, my graph:



And $ made/lost by limit:



Roll at $639.16. Let's goooooooooooooooooo

Nice results, good luck man

~700k - 1200k hands breakeven stretch must've been painful? How many months is that stretch?

@EpicWin tyty. It was painful. Was my moving up experience going from 5nl to 10nl, it affected me in so many ways I was putting low volume actually (still no table cap during most of the period, it came only in late 2019). So yes, almost 3 years of it, from mid 2017 til Covid in April, 2020.

Breaking even for what looks like almost 500k hands is super gnarly, especially at 5nl/10nl full ring where the avg standard deviation is generally going to be pretty low, but if you used to play an overly nitty and passive strategy then it doesn't entirely surprise me - it's tough to crack a solid winrate playing that kind of style, and if you have a 3bb/100 true winrate then you still have like a 20% chance of losing over 100k hands. So def seems like you ran super bad for a while, but it looks like your results have been much better over the past couple of years, and I'm sure it will only continue that way working with Poker Detox

If you can't redeposit, I personally would consider moving down to 10nl as your anchor stake and then mixing in some 25 if you can get a good table. If your true winrate is <5bb/100 then you're really going to be at the mercy of variance with a ~25bi roll

Best of luck OP

It was kinda interesting @whitemares. I came from very aggro to the point of spew to becoming a very big nit. The initial point of the downswing/be stretch was most likely runbad, but I was definitely playing really really bad after that and from the most part of that sample. One of the main AHA moments over that period was being called a nit after I posted my stats, by a very good friend from these forums (looks like hes not around here anymore though).

I can deposit, and while I´m definitely not sure and never will be, I´m confident I'm improving as time, and the hands, pass by, and my true winrate right now is most likely >= 5 bb/100 at 25nl. My winrate over the whole training camp experience, about 60k hands total (yeah, not that much) was close to 8 evbb/100.

tyty

Cheers

Volume quite low, I’m traveling this week. As soon as I settle down, I’ll update the thread.

I was thinking a little bit about an YouTube video I’ve watched where this high profile coach made a rant about variance in poker.

He’s completely right in saying variance is huge, way bigger than we can understand. But is it right to say anything can happen in a relatively big sample? Well, yes and no. Yes, anything can happen. But the way normal distributions work, winrates closer to the average are more likely to happen than outliers. This is math, and it is obvious.

Which leads to the 2nd and most important point. If anyone presents me a 100k graph winning at 10 bb/100, it is way more likely that this guy is, let’s say, at least a 7 bb/100 true winner, than a breakeven or loser.

So we are perfectly justified to keep demanding results and graphs for coaches we don’t fully know and trust.

Well, I´m a bit late, but finally settled in my place, holidays are over so I'll resume the plan. No, I won´t let this thread die as I did with the 100s of threads I had before



Running well.

Changes, changes and changes.

I am not playing well lately, mostly due to an inability to focus on the important things. And the most important thing in my opinion is that, to reach full benefit, every possible step of the poker day should be very deliberate. The study, and the play. The whole point of the "10,000 hours to master" thing is that those hours should be quality ones. Obviously.

In order to ensure that I am doing things well, I will make a sub-challenge inside this thread of getting 100k hands exclusively at 25nl aiming for at least 8 evbb/100. 10+ would be inspirational, and there are guys achieving it (and one freak doing it at 50nl). This is achievable with focus focus focus, A-game most of the time while both improving the A and the C games along the way (inchworm). Won´t look at results before the 100k but be advised I always fail on this one.

It will start tomorrow, gonna use today as a training day.

Big dose of scepticism about Peter Clarke, these last few years I lost almost any respect I had for the guy seriously. With that said, I like that he is willing to put his reputation on the line, and is not afraid of showing confidence in his own abilities (for everyone to see). He still has to complete it, but if he does, regardless of succeeding or failing, the respect will be back.

No one can tell you how to approach the game and your journey, but I would advise against trying to achieve a specific WR over a set # of hands.

As long as you are moving up incrementally or somewhat incrementally as your BR allows, then you should be fine.

glgl

My goal is more like an attempt to do a OTB-like thread, than any misjudgment regarding monetary goals or whatever. Aiming for a winrate without having the possibility (I hope ) of looking at my results before the 100k hand mark, should force me to play better.

Btw, I would love to be able to reverse engineer failures, and to reverse engineer my C-game, bad plays etc, but I don´t know how. I know a few relevant symptoms of bad play and tilt though. Inability to keep focus. Irresistible need to do other things, surf the web, 2p2, my phone. Losing the action in a hand I am playing. Getting angry. I got all-in AA vs KK, then I wish a K comes because I´m on a downswing and the poker gods hate me etc. So, logic says that, if I never play under those states, if I always stop playing when I see any of these signs coming, my average quality of play per session should improve.

Some self assessment pre-session should be mandatory also. If I´m tired, if I´m falling asleep, if I have too much irl stuff over my head, why should I play? Not playing under those states also should improve quality. Again, just logic.

One thing I don´t want to do is to change the time of day I play. I know nights are better. I also know I´m diurnal and my game deteriorates after sunset This one might be an EV sacrifice, as the softness of the game should compensate fairly well, and then some more, my mental state. Problem is, I will get tired. Tiredness accumulates. I won´t be doing what I want to do at the times I feel fitter to do it. I won´t be happy. This will surely enough cause my game quality to drop over time. So yes, this should make things a bit more challenging, but hopefully, I will manage it. Still gonna play some hands during the fun times, just not base the entire daily grind on it.

Cheers

Since the beginning of the thread:



Closing.

Tomorrow, the real game begins