Hey man nice blog.

I'm re-reading some of your posts and in one of them you say there are a lot of people who "don't get it/sort of get it" when it comes to poker and then very few who actually "get it." One of them is Charlie Carrel.

Have you checked out his new website (it's in the beta stages atm) epiphanypoker.com?

I'm not really a fan of his from his twitter persona (although he seems rather harmless) but I think I could learn some thing's from him.

Charlie Carrel might be one of the most insufferable people in poker which is an impressive feat

Hey buddy, thx

I actually joined the Elite membership thing for $57 a few weeks back when I needed a distraction from some life tilt. For me, the idea behind it was to immerse myself in someone else's thought process who is far removed from the Detox and GTO-player logic, to get back to my roots and kick these mental squatters to the curb. I think it's helped a bit, and at minimum has helped my confidence thru osmosis bc if there's one thing we can say about Charlie, that dude is bursting w/ confidence. And it's only been accelerating the past few years, or maybe mutated is a better term, as he's grown that super niche audience which provides him w/ a cozy confirmation bubble at every turn regardless of how abrasive he is. I guess they don't mind? Or maybe they don't notice. This was def the most tedious part of the immersion experiment, but luckily he wasn't so extreme at the time he made the course videos as he is now. Still, I found myself needing to power thru a lot of moments and man am I glad I did bc I gained so much at a profoundly deep and personal level. Beyond just receiving the desired dose of (brain)-muscle confusion to help clean out the toxic ways I've been approaching the game, I got to see just how much he misses in-game due to his lack of theoretical knowledge. I now understand the value of those long dark 8 years I spent in the GTO dungeon hiding in shame from the world that knew me as a "crusher" (you must have me confused w/ someone else), desperately learning all I could about theory after the poker community's wave of solver idolization (and my not knowing better than to take their word for it) shattered every bit of belief I had in myself. I went from a place where I was exploding with confidence in every area of my life, to completely riddled with fear and doubt. It was an almost decade-long waking night terror where the scene looked perfectly calm on the outside but the plot of a horror-thriller movie played on the inside. I can't put fully into words how amazing it feels to able to look back on this period of my life with appreciation instead of resentment, thru a genuinely empowering lens knowing full well how much better I am as both a player and person for having gone thru it. I will forever be grateful to Charlie for sparking this aha moment of realization and giving me the gift of being able to reframe that period of my life once and for all.

Now that feelings of pride and accomplishment have replaced the shame and doubt, some truly fantastical goals and dreams have begun to take shape in my mind. I'm not ready to share them publicly yet, but when I am you'll be the first to know . It's just a matter of getting all my knowledge and skills to fit together in just the right places so that they can do their job and power my rocket ship to the moon. We. Are. Going. To. The. *****. MOON

For now, here's the bankroll update and my plans moving forward w/ the rest of April:




The plans are big. I won 2 seats to the Venom PKO (it's a ***** PKO yo!) which starts in a few weeks, and the roll is big enough now to buy into 630's on ACR w/out sattying (like the $750k this Sunday) . Sick. I changed the graph to show total profit instead of total bankroll so that cashouts won't skew it.

$36,212 profit + $5,000 starting roll - $3,072 cashout - $4,000 cashout
= $34,140 current bankroll.

Small win, but feels good to get it on ACR after a cold stretch. Took the past 3 days off bc I haven't felt that fun-puzzle-vibe towards playing, on account of the punts. I cannot stop punting in big spots . It's a miracle I'm still breaking even or winning. I play SO damn sharp in 99% of hands so I guess that's carried me, but then inevitably at least once per session in some crucial spot I just lose my mind and torch the tourney. Sometimes it snowballs into 2-3 more, usually when overstimulated via incorrect coffee/supplement dosage. On Sunday I even had FITS OF RAGE as a result of dosing wrong followed by true suicidal thoughts (I can't tolerate lion's mane in my coffee idk wtf all the hype is about I genuinely wished to die about 200x that day).

The consistency of this pattern started to move me way off center to where I would easily slip into "trying to win money" mode instead of "learn the most and have fun" mode. Only the second one feels good and nourishes me with energy throughout the session. But three days ago when I won that 6-max tourney I think I turned a corner with this, hopefully for good, by seeing myself in the story of "I'm just in a punting phase of my journey to poker mastery" instead of "what the hell is wrong with me/when is this nonsense going to stop." Empoweringstories.com/sanity-saver.

I've observed that in other areas of my life, particularly my health journey and challenges w/ autoimmune, that when I finally pulled the trigger and committed to making the necessary changes the issue would usually get worse as its first order of business before it got any better or was eliminated completely - kinda like how a detox sucks but then you feel infinitely better afterwards. I don't see why this punting thing would be any different, so I'm just going to keep aligning myself with that empowering story and practice the fun/lighthearted perspective over and over again until it solidifies and I'm locked into it forever. Or at least until the next punt phase

if you are never punting you are not trying hard enough.

Even though punting hurts the most, it also gives you the biggest amount of growth if you learn from it.

But there are obv different kind of punts:

-if its tilt related its always bad for obv reasons

-but if it is in a spot where you just lack the experience or just dont know what the best play is than its totally fine because you will learn from it and next time that spot comes up you are prepeared. (sending 20-50x overbet on the river with the right combo is the most gto thing ever, sometimes its just the best play, having this in your weaponarsenal is important atleast against strong opponents)

Just watch Michael Addamo :P he even overdoes it to exploit the population.

LOVE this perspective and the wording of it. It's almost like the punts come from trying TOO hard, and that's the work behind calibrating. I used to run experiments in cash to mix things up and deepen my understanding of the game, things like 0% 3bet IP/OOP or limp all VPIPs, and the experiment that comes to mind to explore this situation in MTTs is to inject some passivity into my late stage tourney play, something like 20-25% more than it is now. But I have no idea how I'd implement that, and once the timebank gets low it's like all bets are off and the spazzes start to appear.

I think ditching GTOW at the end of the month when my sub is up will help me with this. I don't know why exactly, just feels right. I bought HRC tho, and I'd really like to mess around with it whenever I'm done feeling overwhelmed by it

First Venom PKO flight is tomorrow. I'm just gonna 1 table so there's no regrets. LESGO

The idea of adjusting your shove ranges to account for skill edge is a big topic in my mind right now. It's a easier to talk about dodging thin spots when you're at 20bb+ bc at that stack size you can better utilize your skill edge, and I wonder how this transforms onto decisions w/ a shorter stack. Since you can't do much at 10bb to leverage skill, there's actually an argument for shoving the full width of +EV spots since you either steal successfully and get closer to leveraging or you take an allin and double where you then have room to maneuver. But how do we value tournament life? ICM accounts for this a bit, but I don't feel that it addresses the question head on. I'm so lost here, would love to hear others' thoughts.

I think flciking 630 75ks on a 50k roll is a bit gambly.... gl in venom... feel free to pm to discuss br strat.

Any updates?

Bankroll $42000

We almost hit 50k profits before the downtick but it's to be expected when I'm buying into 600's and 1k's and playing many tables. This new ACR series is awesome, played three 630's and two 1050's yesterday with 4/5 being PKOs where I scooped a ton of bounties but eventually bubbled in brutal fashion. -$1700 yesterday is a big win for such a cold deck.

Overall update: I'm feeling good, but I have a lot of work to do. Had a coaching session with Tators/beezgamble about a week ago which was awesome on so many levels. I got exposure to how someone who's crushing thinks about the game and how to approach studying, and could see the huge gap I have in this area. Just bc I have slightly diff ideas about how to play in terms of solver vs street poker doesn't mean I get to sit on my ass in between sessions and hope for my play to magically improve over time. I had no consistent processes in place for improvement and I realize this was eating at me subconsciously during play. It's also the exact opposite of "doing more than your competition." My whole life has been a story of coasting along on my talent in something whether sports/school/poker and never doing the extra work like hitting the gym or studying, which eventually led to me getting surpassed by those who put in the work. Tator's level of immersion (and commitment) was really inspiring to witness and a major wake up call for me. It makes sense that someone putting in a ton of consistent off-table work can 20+ table, and it makes sense that someone like me can't (yet). Sure I've pulled off some successful 12+ table sessions the past few months but lately it's been a 60/40 where most of the time I find myself overwhelmed, not having fun, and occasionally screaming or scream crying due to the overstimulation in combo w/ being trapped in tourneys where each hand dealt is the start of a new panic attack.

I need to treat myself like more of a noob, undershooting my max tables like I've never 12 tabled before and then gradually over the course of weeks or months allow my max to increase again, in a way that feels natural to my level of confidence. It's soooo hard for me to pass on fun tourneys but this is something I need to do if I'm going to improve or even just enjoy myself. Also, they're not so fun if I make them un-fun by overdoing it.

Another insight I got from the coaching session was when we looked at my hands a consistent theme was, in his most elegant phrasing, "you're dogshit." I think he told me I'm dogshit about 20-30x throughout the session, and omg I LOVED it. It's hard to explain exactly why this worked so well, but many things clicked into place. When I watch chess streams, Hikaru or Magnus will often say a phrase when they're considering diff lines "I could do this, but let's just play good solid chess." They have a center that they can return to which they know is "good and solid" and protects them from what I'd guess is fancy play syndrome in chess. My "dogshit" plays come out when I don't listen to that phrase. Hearing from a proven player the importance of simply doing what's solid helped me straighten out some things internally, and even if it didn't clean up all the dogshit it got me the pooper scooper + poop bags I'll need to do it myself. Unexpectedly, my play in cash games has been WAY better w/ this little "good solid poker" idea steering the ship. MTTs yest wasn't a great trial for this since I played too many tables and lost my mind so the next few tourney days will be a good indicator of how much this has helped overall.

Could say more but really wanna get playing/studying. gla

I disappeared long ago, and now I'm mostly just bored and don't know what to do if I'm being real. Glad to hear you're alive and well. Hit me up any time

what happened to all of the pokerstar regss. seems to be all went broke due to rake?

They probably move to gg.

How is it going now?

update please

he's dogshit, probably busto~

It turns out I wrote nothing particularly new when I wrote this:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=122

limon wrote the equivalent live strategy way before us:
https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comme..._source_poker/

Also:


FYP. Either that or he ran hot to a million. Or he has moved on to other things.

Thanks for this thread, luckyboob. It was nice while it lasted.

that might be my most controversial advice, people think im trolling, but its 100% true.

I know you guys are trolls, but I have to agree on how low OP is, talking **** about PD and making all his issues with the stable public in a negative, pretty disrespectful way, to then vanish from the forums, quit, go busto, whatever, is really really low on his part.

Low like the stakes you've been stuck at for years and years? Maybe if you put some effort into yourself instead of spending all day on 2+2 commenting your worthless 2cents advice you wouldn't be stuck at micros playing for 25 cents.

You are the definition of a bum.

Posters like you are why this forum is 95% garbage. OP put himself out there sharing struggles with addiction, etc. He is low because he shared a negative experience with a stable and quit posting?

No, bro you are low. Maybe he is struggling with real life at the moment or maybe he's crushing it. Some people have real life problems Fazendairo I know that's hard for you to comprehend. Not everyone spends all their free time updating 2+2 like bums like yourself. Maybe he is busto? It happens. OP has still accomplished way more than you ever have in poker nursing your <$500 bankroll stuck in micros for almost a decade now.

I don’t disagree with anything you said, and your answer, if anything, is a wake up call that is making me reevaluate my own mindset. I got in a negativity spiral that got significantly worse these last 10 days. So, I’ll be leaving the forums for a while. Sorry OP and anyone who might have gotten offended by my posts.

Cheers

Does that apply to your polpot persona too?

Yes. The Pol Pot thing might be the most childish thing I've done in a long while. (I´m ashamed to reveal I did similar trolling earlier in life). Thought I got it solved, but still feeling I´m the same mental game fish anyone who followed my earlier threads might have noticed.

Cheers

Hey man!

Thanks for your blog and posting your progress!

A quick question about your experience with poker detox: Overall, did you find it worthwhile?
(I've started playing 1 year ago and I'm winning at microstakes and live poker, and my current goal is to be a winning player at 100NL)
Also, what's your advice for someone like me? eg when studying or playing, what should I focus on, what should I avoid etc