Just read the entire thread in 1 sitting, skipped over lots of randoms, but read every post by Awice. You definitely see a shift in his personality from the start of the thread, maybe for the better, maybe for the worst depending on how you look at it. Honestly, it seems like he lost sight of his goals slightly since the start of the thread, and can probably feel that himself looking at his volume. From reading this, Awice seems like a person that very much does things solely to prove to himself, not to prove to others, and nearing the end of this thread that sense of Awice seems to have reversed.

Dude, you don't give a **** about random people in threads, get back to grinding harder and back on track for your goals. No matter what anyone does, someone isn't going to like it. You seem like your starting to choose the crowd over yourself, its nice for us, and I love me some EV lines, but **** us. If the choice is between randoms and yourself, the choice seems obvious.

Anyways, I wanted to say that, and also say gl man! Inspiring.

^+1, i noticed the shift too.

Maybe just a coincidence but his overall attitude seems to have improved since not being all about the grind. Results have been better as well.

mar2+3


VPP 980,869
BR 121,160

Pathetic volume again, I don't really know. I think I gotta just legit force two 4 hour periods every day.

@JimbozGrapes
Haha, yeah def lost sight, the thing is, its all related. Like two nights ago I went to sleep I slept for 12h and woke up tired. That's not natural and its because I didn't exercise / eat correctly, etc. Then makes it a struggle to play. I attribute a lot of this "burnout" to not following correct health guidelines. Today I slept 4h and thought I slept 8 til I looked at the clock (I don't use any alarm I just sleep / wakeup when I feel like it, its just always been 8h exactly until somewhat recently.)

It's not that the bar got lower, there's always been no bar per se and that has allowed me to excel or do badly. Day 1 and day 2 etc I just legit regged every hour I was awake, and not regging wasn't an option. It wasn't like I was "aiming for 30k vpp" or aiming 50 or whatever, that first day I got ~59k vpp but I didn't even know I would until the end of the day.

Also obviously its better if I grind harder instead of less hard for purposes of this thread, so I don't see how even if I was "proving it to others" that it would be the reason to play less. If anything I care less about others now considering I am not chasing various records or whatever like I was before.

Do you have a year to date graph for us?

It's probably not, but when this started happening to me it was related to sleep apnoea. May be worth a check.

Another thing is like, my entire time in SNGs since Jan 1st 2012, I never was sure I could be the best player (or even good enough to beat HS); I was just waiting for me to plateau, plus every reg thought I suck, or I "try too hard" on the felt (whatever that means.) I had a goal of SNE and thats it.

For the longest time I would respect my opponents greatly, even bad regs, and respect their ability to adjust. I think that was the final thing that turned me into the best player, and only something that started recently.. playing every player individually. (Yes I think I am the best overall player in 6m hypers )

I think that I am one of the rare people that respect their opponent too much, I think players overall respect their opponent too little. Like I respect my opponent a 10 or 9.5 when I really should respect them about 8 (diff depending on the player) and most people respect their opponent around 5-7 and would never put any opponent above themselves. I know this seems abstract so I will elaborate what I mean with three different approaches to the game. (Edit: this mostly applies for reg on reg play, the games I play are generally 5 reg games so almost all of my play is vs regs. Obviously if you are playing non-regs it is different.)

Blind approach: Your opponent plays the pot and its your turn. If you play exactly what you think is nash, you are respecting them 10 -- basically its implied you think that no additional advantage can be gained long term and you just want the value of the game now. This is also suited for mass tabling and also requires less effort in some way. (You still need a lot of effort off the table to know what the nash is... not necessarily pushfold)

Dynamic approach: I exploit but always at the boundary and always in a GTO approach. It respects their ability to adjust but as long as they do not fix the underlying problem I show an advantage. Maybe to give a small example, if someone is say, opening utg 100% (dont want to give a real example sorry), then depending on how they play I can call more, 3b small more, jam more, cr flop more, donk more, etc. -- many ways to show an advantage, some of them more subtle. I don't just exploit in one vector. It's a bayesian type of approach where I am moving the boundary of my play in many different vectors and I don't know how they will readjust so I have protected myself already. If for example I think 3betting small shows the most profit in a vacuum with a ton of hands and I only do that, it could be very losing if they play back.

Exploitative approach: I think most good and even some great players just try to win the most $EV in a vacuum on that exact hand. This is obviously a good strategy (try to win the most money hurr durr) but some players are better at it than others. I know for some players I play with, it's mindblowing how little respect they show me (or I guess anyone). For me, I would always try to think, "why is a player playing this strategy." "What advantage can be gained from this strategy." But I think for most of my opponents they don't think like that. Any time someone plays a hand different from how they would, its automatically bad.

When I was a reg coming up I would always strongly consider if I was wrong about a situation. I see many of these "stubborn" regs (mostly at lower stakes, rare to find at highest stakes) make the same mistake over and over even in the face of strong adjustments. I was respecting their ability to not make a mistake over and over. But it gave them too much credit for studying the game, maybe I studied the game 100x as much as they did and so things seem easier and more obvious than they actually are. I attribute this idea of learning what my opponents do well as the main reason how I was learning the game so fast.

Jan1-now graph

GL man

good post

Any chance we can get to see one with EV and rakeback?

EV sry don't really wanna show, you can guess by reading the thread

RB you can guess, I'm at basically 1x sne right now, so +130k from rb or whatever sne is worth

Sick inspirational thread, I'm grinding hypers on merge and this thread is the tits

Thanks for the update, I really enjoy this thread.
Your post about different approaches shows what a high level of thinking you have with the game and shows the attention to detail your putting into observing your opponents play & tendencies - very impressive alongside the level of volume you put in.

Must feel nice to have the first SNE pretty much wrapped up just 2 months into the year. 5x SNE should be a realistic goal still or maybe more (i guess 8x would be impossible now), but I think if you wanted to carry on with this then 5x would be a great achievement and you would still be set to earn well over 500k.

Whatever happens ill enjoy reading about it!
GL sir

I have always been of the mindset that telling yourself you know nothing > telling yourself you know everything. Confidence is good, but when playing a puzzle that literally changes every piece you place, your delusional to think you know everything about the game and will fail because of it. From any of your posts about anything, you clearly are very good at putting yourself in the shoes of others, respecting and understanding their way of doing things, and doing things your own way if you think its better. It's actually really interesting to me seeing other people still argue with you after you said they had legit reason to think the way they do, but you still want to think our own way. A great poker mind! Its a good thing you think you are the best player, but still respect every opponents game and try to understand why what they do might be better/worse then what you do. Of course, everyone's game could be completely different, and some people protect ranges a different way because of their game, so what might be good for one person in a certain spot might not be right for another. I hope you succeed at doing whatever you want .

Hey Alex, I've enjoyed the thread so far. Good luck achieving your goals!
One question I have is whether your statement about being the best player refers to pre-rb roi per game, or to having the highest post-rb hourly (not judging, just curious). What sort of pre-rb roi per game do you think is attainable at average lineups at the 300s/500s right now?

Another possibility is that many of the naysayers from early on in this thread were right: your initial goals were unrealistic. Not saying they were impossible or unachievable, moreso unhealthy and suboptimal from a 'whole of life' viewpoint. (I have lurked this thread until now, so this is not an 'I told you so' post).

Playing the number of tables you do, at the stakes you do, is an extremely stressful activity. Locking yourself in to spend a large amount of each and every day doing so, with a realistic risk of losing your BR, amps this stress up much further. Stress-hormones have a negative impact on physical and mental health. I have the utmost admiration your poker capabilities, work-ethic and intelligence. Nonetheless I feel that you might be overlooking the possibility that rather than some failure to meet dietary/exercise parameters, this could just be your (human) subconscious letting your (superhuman[not hating, but you have a very high opinion of your own capabilities]) conscious know that you need to back off.

Congratulations on making SNE

Same!

How many pieces of info do you have in your HUD?

Grats on SNE

Good question and grats on the (first) SNE!

Been reading this one for a while, finally started an account here.
Grats for SNE.

Okay so a while ago I got 1m vpp, woohoo.

Took the entire yesterday off, went to cafe boulud for lunch (which is quickly becoming my new favorite restaurant for a number of reasons), went to shoto as well, had like a dozen drinks.

mar 4-6


This includes this morning session I played for like 2 hours and lost 11k kind of annoying should try to get back in it today.

BR 137.8
VPP 1007.2

Replying to questions now

Thanks

The game changes all the time, obviously higher stakes is tougher than lower stakes, its hard to say. Also I don't really want to talk about what I think is possible at what stake or how many 100s and 200s are included in the graphs vs how many 300s and 500s. I think 0% is very good and anything extra is gravy.

I basically reject this conclusion. Confidence also comes from competence and if I took myself a year from now and travelled back in time to Jan 1st of this year, things might be totally different. The reason for the rocky start is because I was starting with relatively no experience, relatively no roll, etc.

I think ultimately 8x was realistic and even 12x (if I needed to or I would die) is actually possible. I take responsibility for myself. If I don't make 8x its because I either pussied out or found something better. But its not because its unrealistic. Playing 8 hours a day is not unrealistic in the long run. It is harder for other regs because as being a reg usually entails playing in a stake where you are challenged and moving up consistently. Take Quadcharzs for example which is the absolute best player at 100 and below stakes basically. How does his results completely eclipse other players? It's because hes not stressed and hes very comfortable.

I also make another comparison to the 4 minute mile. No one could break the 4 minute mark, and then as soon as one person did, many people did on the same year. It was just a mental barrier. If SNE was 2m points instead of 1m you would see a lot more 2m pts players. If SNE was 0.5m points instead of 1m you would see a lot less 1m pts players. Not long ago, no one thought getting 4x SNE was possible. Now everyone accepts it as a foregone conclusion. Part of the reason is because of people like MO, me, frics, mrgreenie that ran fast enough and showed not only was it possible but relatively easy.

Right now I am just under 6x pace but I could imagine a push happening mid year to get back up to 7x and even 8x pace. I may set a challenge for myself. 8x is still on the table even with all the breaks that have been happening.


About the same amount as most people with a HUD, can't say more sry.