Thanks!

11th November - How I got a little bit better today:

This morning I watched a vid on Leggo. I wanted to watch some hand review or live play vid to keep my learning varied and not just concentrate on cr-ev the whole time. Ended up watching a Flippity vid on playing OOP and it was only after I started watching it that I realised the vid was based around work he was doing in cr-ev. Oh well, it was still interesting, although I don't feel like I got a whole lot from it. Either it didn't really make any good points, or it was too complicated for me to follow - probably the latter. He was basically talking about how to avoid being exploited in a given situation, and of the need to think about to split your range. Maybe I need to watch it again and then do some work on my own based on the stuff he talks about.

Day review:

This morning's session was really good. I closed down my browser and played what I think was A-game poker - I need to completely shut down my browser and anything else before sessions in the future, it takes away the temptation to get distracted. This afternoon's session however started off pretty poorly. I got involved in a lot of pots that I shouldn't have, calling 3bets OOP, calling with weak draws without good odds etc. I got a grip though and managed to finish off the session much more in control.

12th November - How I got a little bit better today:

Didn't do too much today. Went on a long run in the morning and it was tougher than I expected so have been pretty tired since. I watched a bit of a Zaza vid off Leggo while having my lunch. It was just a live play vid so nothing amazing with regards to content, but a few interesting bits such as him talking about spots where it's fine to just give up on pots as long as you're picking the right spots and not being too weak-tight. The thing I most commonly get from watching live play vids is by following the action and looking for spots where I'd generally do something different and listening to their reasoning for doing what they did. If you would generally play most spots the same as them then I find it's good for confidence, and if not then you learn something.

Day review:

Only played one session of 800 hands. I wanted to play another session this evening but I'm feeling too tired out still so don't want to put in a session when I know I won't be playing my A-game.

I've ordered The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler so looking forward to getting that and giving it a read. I always used to pass over it despite great reviews because I thought it was just another crappy self-help book, but after hearing what a friend had to say about it today I figured I'd just get it ordered and see what the fuss is all about. I've come to realise over the last few months just how important the mental game is, and most of my improvements recently have been in that area. I feel improving my mental game has brought great improvements to my game overall, so anything else to help me along there will be great.

Independent events though.

gl mate!

Not if you learn from your strikes

Maybe a bit late for you Ron but The Mental Game of Poker is available on the audible.com website for purchase (in audio form).
You can sign up for an audible.com account through amazon (they own audible) and get one free download credit and therefore get this book for free.

Edit

- The Mental Game of Poker 2 is available too.

thanks!

Too right. I'm actively looking for those strikes and doing something about every one I find.

Thanks but yeah too late, it's just been dispatched today. I think I'm much better when reading anyway, with an audio book I'll likely find myself thinking about other stuff and not listening properly. With a real book it demands my whole attention, not to mention I can mark pages, write notes etc. It might be worth looking at the Audible thing though to see if there's anything else interesting that I can get for free that might help that I wouldn't otherwise buy.

Do you know anything about the 2nd book? Is it all new concepts or just an expansion/rehashing of the 1st?

13th November - How I got a little bit better today:

Spent half an hour this morning working in cr-ev. Not got very far into my little project yet, but getting some interesting results already. I cut my study time short this morning though because there was a server restart so wanted to be on the tables for a decent amount of time before it.

This might sound obvious to some, but I've finally got round to realising how distracting Skype and a browser are when you're playing. Took the step today to close them both down and focus 100% of my attention on my tables. I'm actually amazed at how much extra focus I seem to have. The only downside is that it seems to make my sessions more mentally tiring, but I'm sure as long as I keep them short and recognise when I'm fading then there won't be a problem.

Day review:

Three sessions of ~1k hands each. Full focus on each session and I believe A-game poker throughout. A very successful day

Ok that's fair reasoning. FWIW I tend to find the fewer combo (tighter range) spots quite difficult to 'solve' as often you find situations where calling every combo of some borderline hand leaves you calling massively too much and folding every combo leaves you folding massively too much. But I'm sure you'll find that out yourself before long hah.

I do 80%+ of my studying using CREV, basically I review hands till there's a spot I can't work out on my own, then I try to CREV it and hopefully gain some insight/understanding.

I remember some great photos you posted of hiking trips etc - do you still do much of that?

Cheers man

I guess when you get a borderline spot like that then maybe you just have to choose the top x% of your range to call with to keep your frequencies correct, even though there may not be much difference EV-wise between the top and bottom of the range you could potentially call with.

I guess a simple example that comes up in fr quite a bit is having Ax on an A high board and being 3-barreled into by a reasonably tight player. You feel he's hardly ever bluffing, but you can't just fold every time. So maybe you call AQ because it's the top of your range and fold AJ and below, just to make it so that you're not folding every single time.

I'm going to start doing this. I regularly tag hands during a session but rarely look through them properly, mainly because of a lack of understanding of how to analyse them properly. I think cr-ev will help a ton in this respect.

Yeah I get out in the hills quite a bit. I do a bit of walking still, but I started fell-running this year too and fell in love with it. Most of the stuff I do is locally in Bowland or The Lakes. You're from Scotland right? It's one of my aims next year to get up to the Highlands and do some walking/running. Not many photos but I log everything I do in my thread in the h&f forum: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/85...tains-1372189/

Last night I looked at my results for the first time in two weeks. I knew I'd been going well, but to find I was up 35bi in 25k hands was pretty awesome. My red line is better than it ever has been over any sustained period also.

No, I haven't even finished the first one yet



PS - Congrats on graph, long may it continue

Great graph, nice work. Is this all in 50NL or have some 100NL hands been thrown in?

All 50nl apart from about 25 hands at 100nl when I followed a whale and won about $80 from him.

I like the fact you can go two weeks without checking your results.

Its effect on my mental game has been incredible. Every session is a fresh start, I don't know or care what happened the previous session, yesterday, last week or whatever, I just get on and play. So glad I started doing this.

14th November - How I got a little bit better today:

Took d7o1d1s0's advice and analysed a hand from yesterday in cr-ev. I took the following hand and tried to determine whether I should bet or just give up on the flop....



In play I just checked the flop and gave up on the turn to a bet from the original raiser. I felt a bit weak tight but thought it was fine. After analysing the hand in cr-ev it seems like a bet on the flop is actually going to be profitable. I made some simplifications and assumptions (ie shove every non- turn and get called by anything that called flop, Villain shoves heart turns 100% and I fold etc) but I'm pretty sure it was an accurate enough analysis.

If I get chance I'm going to also run the analysis on this hand to see if I can call the river (I'm thinking not)....



Edit: Just ran this one, and as I thought even though he's pretty loose and aggro, far too much of his range has got there on the river. I'd have to be really stretching his aggression to be able to make a call there.

I would almost always CB with the AA hand. If they don't have a heart they are almost always folding, and if you get a call you can still easily get away from the hand. I guess you have to worry about a bare A hearts raising you and putting you in a tough spot, but most of the time people aren't flopping flushes.

KQ is a easy fold...just to much aggression to call with TPGK with that crazy wet board.
Obviously player dependent, but there is just such a small percentage of bluffs happening on the river in that hand.

GL PokerRon! I like your blogs format and we should all we striving to get better each day. It is easy to just go from session to session without studying and reviewing hands, so thanks for showing me it is possible hehe

At the time I thought that the board just hits their combined ranges too much. I'm OOP with virtually no equity if behind and I'm going to find a lot of turns tricky to play. It does look though like a bet is indeed the best option and turns shouldn't actually be too trick to play (shove or c/f depending on if a comes).

Yeah I totally agree, I already knew that before running the sim, but it's good to check these things out just to bolster your confidence and make sure your thinking in the simpler spots is still on track.

Thanks. What games do you play?

I am playing on American sites unfortunately

Currently playing $25 NL and taking shots at $50 NL 6max cash games. Last nights shot went well, so if the trend continues hopefully will be leaving $25 behind me soon

Heh, I was just thinking that most goals and challenges thread are a worthless read, when I stumbled on this one. Really love it, I will probably start a similar one of my own as I need the motivation.

Probably won't be able to help much in the discussion as I play lower stakes, but will definitely follow and chime in every now and then. GL!

This is one of the worst imo, too much strat. Booooooring.

I think Pita would much rather you posted pictures of his precious little Miss Lia Ron

Gl with that, hope it goes well.

Glad you could take something from it. Imo 99% of players could and should work a ton harder on their games. Let me know if you start a thread.