I agree its a weird one. Seems like most of his value hands would have c-bet except maybe KQhh. I think he would bet sets and top pairs more often than check them on that flop. I assume you were c/r on the flop?

Bigger on the turn and fold the river. His line doesn't make a lot of sense but when a "winning lag" does something weird its normally for value.

Today:

1st session: woke up, ate, chilled a little, and played a session where I got killed. Tilt was triggered by a few hands where I called down biggish bets with almost/enough equity and missed my draws. Got 87 vs Qd8s5s, villain cbets a lot, I raise, villain calls, turn is 7h, and villain c/r, I go ai, thinking his range is AA-KK/AQ vs 55. He had QQ for top set. GG me. Got AK<KK BvB(but I should have 3bet folded vill was a nit). I think mostly the spew was the AK hand. Was tilting like a mofo after the AK hand. When I thought about quitting, I thought I couldn't take the pain of (booking) a losing session like that(so I wanted to keep playing), but then I thought that if I'm in that bad of a mental state, I can't play poker so I quit.

2nd session: Ate, took time off, played 1000 hands. Spewed once when I c/r a turn gut-shot vs villain that increased his bet-size on the turn. meh. Can't seem to ever win any big pots anymore. $+

Philosophy:
I've been thinking about suffering, and alleviating it, and why it happens (as related to poker). It all relates in to expectations, but our expectations aren't attached to reality in any meaningful sense.
You cannot adjust reality by expectations, no matter how much you rage. Whether it's never flopping sets/getting coolered constantly for a time. You just get more upset which is NEVER anything but detrimental. To happiness and to quality of life and to poker bankroll.

Practical:

Something I realized from listening to tommy angelo's series is that movies create a kind of mindfulness/meditation because you are focused in the moment for a decent period of time.

After my 3rd session tonight where I was steaming, I watched a tv show for 41min, and by the end of it realized that I was completely ready to play poker again. However I had self excluded for 12 hrs bc of tilt, so no poker tonight.

It'd probably be good to figure out exactly how much time it takes to de-tilt and then schedule my meditation length for that long. Till then however I will be watching lots of tv.

Well I'd feel really presumptuous giving you any poker advice since I'm chipping away at $25 rush, but since you mentioned watching TV or movies as an anti-tilt measure, I personally think one of the best things to watch is stand up comedy. It's something you can even have on while playing, as it doesn't usually require visual attention to enjoy. But even after a bad beat it's hard not to laugh if you have some good comedy. Quick list of comics I like: Steven Wright, Mitch Hedburg, Sam Kinisson, Louie C.K., Jim Norton, Daniel Tosh, Jimmy Carr. There's obviously more but that's just off the top of my head and if there's someone in that list you haven't seen maybe check them out.

mental game is an incredibly huge part of winning. it's ridiculous. it's really tough to work through but it's possible.

Good tip on the stand-up comedy.

1st session: played pretty quickly after waking up and analyzing some hands. Worst hand of the session: I opened J6o from SB against a folder. He called, I cbet 997ss, on the turn 5s, bet & got min-raised(I had J of spades+gutshot). Anyway 8h on river giving me the straight and I bet/called a raise quickly kinda worried about 89. still $+ session

I think that I'm going to start two habits:
1) sitting up and breathing when I get raised
2) On the river to try and only press call at a certain spot using most of my time-bank.

Here is kind of a tricky hand. Villian is a complete newbie fish. like 40/20 over 20 hands.

So I think I'm ahead enough of his turn betting range to c/c turn(stuff like A high's/JT/22-77/Random floats. But can I call river?

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

BTN: $142.00
Hero (SB): $496.70
BB: $473.05
UTG: $346.35
UTG+1: $247.10
UTG+2: $225.55
MP1: $80.00
MP2: $269.15
CO: $78.00

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is SB with 8 9
7 folds, Hero raises to $4, BB calls $2

Flop: ($8.00) Q 3 9 (2 players)
Hero bets $5, BB calls $5

Turn: ($18.00) 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $18, Hero calls $18

River: ($54.00) 4 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $54, Hero ?

Session 3ish: I'm almost playing a lot better. Getting good 3betting in. Thinking about my blinds steals against fish(cbettable hands, etc). Except I keep running into the nuts on the river and snapcalling. ugh.

I'm working hard on my game, just real time performance isn't there. I even got my redline pretty much flat again. I fixed the leak I had, of not realizing that certain stats don't converge enough for me to use it. I fixed the leak of spewing a bit with 77-JJ. But crushing/winning seems to elude me. I sure hope I'm running bad, because if I'm not....

Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

SB: $180.50
BB: $398.15
Hero (UTG): $200.00
UTG+1: $839.10
UTG+2: $390.45
MP1: $289.20
MP2: $200.00
CO: $33.80
BTN: $352.80

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is UTG with 6 6
Hero raises to $5, 6 folds, SB calls $4, BB calls $3

Flop: ($15.00) 4 Q A (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $9, SB calls $9, BB calls $9

Turn: ($42.00) 6 (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $25, SB folds, BB calls $25

River: ($92.00) 5 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $42, BB raises to $100, Hero calls $58




Full Tilt Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

UTG: $302.30
UTG+1: $290.55
UTG+2: $193.00
Hero (MP1): $248.85
MP2: $469.30
CO: $233.00
BTN: $246.90
SB: $213.50
BB: $241.95

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is MP1 with J T
3 folds, Hero raises to $5, 1 fold, CO calls $5, 3 folds

Flop: ($13.00) 8 9 7 (2 players)
Hero bets $9, CO calls $9

Turn: ($31.00) 7 (2 players)
Hero bets $20, CO calls $20

River: ($71.00) 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $36, Hero calls $36

Today:

Played a bunch of MTT's alongside my cash games, unfortunately I lost a fair amount, and didn't really come close to final tables/or deep money. Played like $500 worth and dropped like $346. I had two cashes 31st/27th place respectively. I won $270 in cash games. Which was pretty good to have a winning day(at cash games). I have now found the easiest tournament in the world, so that's pretty cool, going to play it everyday and maybe just do the Sunday $215 with points to minimize variance.

It's really tough to self-evaluate play in a MTT. Playing good can end up running into strong hands at the wrong moment etc. So probably embracing the variance isn't in my best interests of the moment. I definitely made a few bad plays but overall with the adjustments I've worked on in my game, it seems like I should be winning soon again.

I'm still down about $2800 in cash games for the month .

I think I have to call it

When I first moved up to 200nl, I was crushing it, and it was awesome. Like printing money without spending almost any time at all. I've been chasing that feeling ever since, and had months of awesomeness and months of suffering.

200nl is like a bad girlfriend. You're addicted to the high times, but when you step back and really reevaluate you see you are going nowhere, you're just wasting time that could be spent more productively doing more than barely winning above break-even. Not to mention that at a lower level it's not absolutely necessary to be playing A game to be profitable.

So I need a goal at 100nl. $x or #hands.

Suggestions?

Today:

1st session: (2am) played like 1500 hands, +$210 at 100nl. Playing my A game is like printing money at 100nl. So definitely a good decision.

2nd session: (4pm)1k hands, +$170. Just played to 1k hands and called it.

3rd session: (5:30pm)brief break, then 370 hands,
Tilt triggered: Starting off a session, where I'm playing good but I just lose lots of pots draws miss & ppl turn/river better hands is a large trigger for tilt. This session: AK got shipped on pre/4 bet folded against a heavy 3bettor/chk/called a rivered two pair with AK on 233KQ. Next thing I know I'm chk-calling QQ on a AKK flop for a buyin and then getting 98o all-in pre vs AK BvB. Luckily I won that, and promptly quit.

Up $70 from session 2&3.

ugh.

final session tonight: -$240. making a bad four bet followed by some absolutely suspicious call downs and "re"-bluffs against opponent's value betting.

Making a failed 4 bet as a bluff always makes me feel like I'm getting outplayed/bluffed/outmaneuvered. This is horrible for my game.

I have classic tilt, it's always the same behaviors. Over and over.

And I just shipped 1st for +3600(net tournaments really a 4.7k score).

Which considering the awfulness at which I played cash games this month (-$2.7k ,

I'm really happy with being up like $1500 for the month.

nice job! What tourney are you talking about?

I'm gonna keep it secret till I see if I can win it a few more times :P

I've been thinking alot about balance and scheduling.

I got kinda sick of cash games this month. Running bad+playing bad will do that to you. I'm down like $1500 in aiev this month and with my normal style that's a lot. So I switched to tournaments for a few days. Which is interesting but very easy to burn out on.

I'm just kind of rambling, but basically burnout is something I need to be careful to avoid, yesterday I satted into two $216 majors, and unfortunately they were 6 hours apart which makes for a long day even if you don't go deep/cash.

In retrospect this was a mistake. I was angry and frustrated and because of it made some mistakes that cost me chips.

And now I'm feeling burned out because of yesterday and the run bad, and want to take the rest of the month off.

Which isn't such a bad idea, but since I need iron-man I gotta get 200pts/day.

So I think I will do that.

Why dont you play NL100 until break the month even? That would take you off monkey tilt and would rebuild your confidence to play your A-game longer ...

I now have a 5 BI rule at the stakes I play (micro NL10 at the moment) after a monkey tilt cost me 17 buy ins. If I spew 5 BI from my peak I go to NL5 till I grind those 5 BI. If I loose another 5 at NL I start as low as NL2 where I pretty much crush the opposition for more than 20 bb/100 ...

Ferdinand

PS: Now you can say "STFU micro grinder fish!!"

I have actually moved down semi-permanently to nl100. I spent/wasted alot of time having a good month followed by a bad month cycle at 200nl. Edges are small at the higher and assessing where your edge is maximal is definitely a poker related skill that I hadn't really used much in my poker career to date.

so why are you at nl10?

Im at 10NL because I only started in March and so far I only have roughly $700 dollars on my bankroll (made from $50 first deposit). I only have about 220K hands played (Im an amateur who plays after work and on weekends which is bad cause most of the time I play a bit tired) and Im trying to slowly grind it out to middle stakes 8 tabling 6 max. Im in the process of developing my game and table selection. Leak Buster tells me I still have to deal with 5 leaks on my game so until I get those addressed I might hang out in the micros for some more time (altough is nice to see that over the course of these months my game went from a 7/10 to a 9/10 according to Leak Buster).

I also experienced a lot of the mental problems you are describing and beeing able to focus after a long day at work is a challenge in itself. I dream of the day I can say that I can make a living out of poker. That day is not here yet so I just keep grinding and keep working ...

Best of luck to you too and hang in there,

Ferdinand

eight tabling six max is pretty killer. that's a ton of hands/per hour/tables. I'd imagine it's tough to figure out the autopilot mistakes you are making without a lot of post game analysis/deliberate in game application playing those kind of tables/hr.

just dropping in to say gl, OP--seems like you're committed to improving your weaknesses and being as self-aware as possible, which will yield only good things

Been doing some leak-finding:

Interesting pokerstove calculation: against 3 combo's of sets and EVERY single suited spade cards on 2d4s5s AA has 51% equity.

Im am making those analisys and Im having a bad time with NL10. I tend to spew too much on overpairs. And it has a lot to do with the agressiveness that is nothing like NL2 or NL5. Since I cant value bet my good spots a lot of the times (the guys just seem to pay me only when Im beat) in order to gamble a bit on big premium hands, my winrate gets cut to virtually zero ...

What also happens is that I get floated like there is no tomorrow and the only guys I seem to catch are the busted draw bluffers. The HEM helps me a bit telling me the guys with wider ranges so I dont give a lot of credit to them ...

Maybe I will take your advice and cut my tables to 4 and see what happens ...

Im currently playing on stars. What site do you play on? I heard Bodog and Bwin are way softer. Have you tried those?

Ferdinand

PS: You seem like a nice guy to talk poker with

Against a set possibility:

ie: villain has a set or has a over-pair that is lower than yours:

An over-pair with a gut-shot needs one over-pair to break even for a stack-off.

An over-pair without anything else needs two over-pairs to be +ev stack-off.

We are talking 100bb stacks ?

How do you usually play an overpair postflop ? Passively versus agressive villains and agressive folding to aggression by passive villains?Thats the line I usually take ... Is this completely wrong ? (I usually spew against the agressive ones cause I just cant fold the godamnthings)...
Ferdinand

I'm not quite sure I understand. Can you explain the difference in aggressiveness between nl10 and nl5?

The overwhelmingly biggest mistake microstakes players make is calling too much.

The best way to exploit this is by bet/folding (betting and folding to a raise on a street) with pretty much all your one pair (TP type) hands without a read that your opponent is raising worse for value.

Anytime you hear higher stakes players talking about how they could train a monkey to beat x microstake/nanostake limit. That's why. It's because you could do just that and be a solid winner up to ~50nl.