My Journey in Live Mid-High Stakes
07-24-2015
, 04:14 PM
07-24-2015
, 04:34 PM
07-24-2015
, 06:49 PM
️
07-27-2015
, 04:44 PM
07-27-2015
, 04:44 PM
07-28-2015
, 09:33 AM
Afraid you got nothing to offer 
Gawd I wish i took the entire month off after the first week given how fast things went downhill.
However I don't think I have it in me to ever just sit around though. I need to be doing something and not feel like I wasted time at the end of a day.
I'm also running extremely under EV so it feels like I can only put in even more volume to bring my hourly up.
However I don't think I have it in me to ever just sit around though. I need to be doing something and not feel like I wasted time at the end of a day.
I'm also running extremely under EV so it feels like I can only put in even more volume to bring my hourly up.
07-28-2015
, 11:40 AM
08-06-2015
, 02:56 AM
08-18-2015
, 11:34 PM
April, May, June, July
Wow, time went by fast! Can't believe I've had this thread for well over a year now.
Here is a summary of the last 4 months:
April: 56 hours (took the last 2 weeks off due to moving out/finishing up at work); winning month
May: 82 hours (played while traveling); had big downswing on the last weekend of the month, so I ended up winning so little that I pretty much broke even for the month
June: 176 hours (WSOP month and my first full time month!); up and down the whole month, ended winning a bit in the end
July: 170 hours (played longer sessions than June on average but over fewer days); even a bigger variance roller coaster than June, but booked a solid winnar in the end
So since my 4 losing months in a row (from September to December last year), I've booked 7 winning months in a row since then. I'm not on some kind of sick heater by all means, but things are definitely looking up since the worst of it.
These are some of the things that I've learned about myself and the game along the way:
Part time vs. Full time
Back when I was still working at the 9-5, I remember being vehemently told in a 2p2 discussion once that us "weekend warriors" have it easy, with the extra income and shorter hours at the table.
Now having experienced both sides, I can confidently say that they were wrong! I've never had less stress, had more free time, and been more rested.
A lot of people go straight from never holding a full time job to being a pro. I think having worked full time helps you being disciplined at poker when it comes to putting in the hours. I can say some "pros" take their job for granted. I talked to some guy who moved across the country to play professionally, and actually saw him at the casino like twice in a whole month. The way I see it, being pro is NOT a golden ticket to do more of nothing with your time, but rather more of everything else.
I think I can't be the kind of person who's happy with making an okay living and spending ALL of the rest of my time doing fun/relaxing (but unproductive) things. Not now anyways. I get that's not everyone.
Instead of binging on dime a dozen TV shows and being a couch potato, learn something new, useful, and/or interesting. Expand yourself and grow your mind. Look for ways out of poker in the future because this is not a growth industry.
This brings me to my next point.
Poker is hella boring
Let me first preface this by saying that I do spend a good amount of time discussing, learning, and improving on my game - and I know there is much left to be learned. I don't even really know how to play any other games!
But to me, as interesting as this game can get, it's all confined to a little box. Grinding is also boring. In the end you are just pressing buttons in a statistics game pushing pots back and forth with your opponents, with the expectation and hope that the pots coming are bigger than the pots going. There's no fun in it when you understand the mathematical mechanisms behind winning - there's absolutely no "thrill of the gambool" in it for me. Sure, a 9-5 job can be dreadful too, but hours grinding on a felt have WAY less future value than hours grinding in an office (in terms of future career prospects). Some people have no other choice, and some prefers it - which relates back to my previous point: don't limit yourself either way.
I read that a few people have expressed this sense of "emptiness" even after a winning session. I remember feeling really depressed once after I made over 1k in just a few hours of 2/5. I should have been ecstatic given how hard I've tried to come out of my downswing. I tried to understand where this could be coming from, and I couldn't, yet - but it's nice to know that i'm not alone. Maybe we are so desensitized to money that winning a lot of it may at first seem like a great thing.. but in the end, it's really nothing.
It's hard to find the motivation to pick up things to do outside of poker - because long sessions tend to turn people into zombies after. I try to keep up in small ways but sometimes it feels like i'm not doing enough. One of my biggest fear is the regret of wasting time. It's so easy to feel that way with poker when you aren't winning. I can't control variance but I want to be able to say at the end, even though the worst case scenario (wrt poker) may have happened, I still did all these productive things and grew as a person in these ways.
Getting better at this game
Anyway let's come back to earth and talk more poker.
My game is constantly morphing and sometimes I wonder if I sucked before. But I think that's ok because the understanding of poker is fluid. As long as you are doing *something* with your game then you shouldn't be looking at it ever the same even from month to month.
One thing I've gotten better at recently is actually playing much more exploitably. My coach has an online background so his approach to the game is very balanced in comparison to the other live-only coaches. I think that's important vs. regs/good pros who can quickly catches onto what you are doing. That was my main preoccupation when I first started getting coaching - it was hard to grasp at first but it let me beat some very reggy games (esp loved playing lagtards - probably up more life time vs. them than whales/fish). It even made the game easier because you already know what you are doing with different parts of your range in various spots.
Gradually I realized that being completelt balanced all the time is unnecessary and excessive. This is true esp vs. bad players/nits/stations/people who aren't balanced in general. In a sense it's almost like reverting back to how I played before I got coaching (ie. very live-read dependent and not very good hah), but now I have a more indepth understanding of everything else. For example - I've recently made an extremely fishy move where I min check raised a set in a 3 bet pot where the pfr had an obvious overpair, so I can set the pot sizing up for a river shove. This was playing pretty face-up and took me a little out of my comfort zone - but for the most part live players are bad enough where you can exploit them with transparent lines.
Exploitative folds are also important. In some games people rarely fire a large river bluff, and rather give up than think, "geez I have no sdv, let me just fire a large polarized bet into their bluff catcher". I'm not just talking about nits. I have made calls before where I was wrong. Range-wise there could be bluffs that I beat, but if I had the read that they will 1) rarely bluff and 2) size it smaller if they did, then it should have been a fold. It's almost worth more to pay a lot of attention to bad players than to competent players because there is so much information you can get from them.
All these might sound like I'm telling you yesterday's news, but it's been a big switch for me when I've been obsessed with designing and protecting my range (not saying these arent important but now it's more comprehensive).
I've also started to use software for studying. Decision tree programs are kind of annoying to use for live games because you have to make so many assumptions about lollive players (aka wild monkeys with two napkins). Still, it's useful to see which hands you should be folding/raising/calling with given an opponent's range - and the answers can be pretty surprising/interesting.
Life in general
I've been on the road for the last 3.5 months staying in hotels/airbnb places. This was a dream that I started sketching at the beginning of this year and I'm proud to have made it into a reality. As much as working in depressing places/dealing with variance suck, i have to remind myself how many people my age would have killed for an opportunity to travel and work at your own leisure. It's a small silver lining when time gets tough.
I'm still learning to come to terms with variance. The cliffs are that I've literally ran the worst in big pots for my last 1000 hours. Just switch the equities around every time it's 80/20 or better. These all in spots where you have them crushed and they still give you action don't come around often, and when i'm constantly on the losing end it obv has a huge impact on my win rate. Oh and can't win my share of coinflips either. I think I'm okay with short term variance but it's hella depressing to think how much i'm down from those spots.
Oh and don't even get me started on how many people commenting on how good I run. I want to smack them. I just rebuy really quickly and always have chips to top off lol.
I think what has helped a bit is seeing how other winning/crushing players having extensive downswings/break even stretches. This is not schadenfreude at all - rather, it puts my problems into perspective and confirms that variance can get even the best.
Going forward, I plan on doing the same things as I'm currently doing - playing and traveling for at least a little longer, then see what happens.
Thanks for reading!
Wow, time went by fast! Can't believe I've had this thread for well over a year now.
Here is a summary of the last 4 months:
April: 56 hours (took the last 2 weeks off due to moving out/finishing up at work); winning month
May: 82 hours (played while traveling); had big downswing on the last weekend of the month, so I ended up winning so little that I pretty much broke even for the month
June: 176 hours (WSOP month and my first full time month!); up and down the whole month, ended winning a bit in the end
July: 170 hours (played longer sessions than June on average but over fewer days); even a bigger variance roller coaster than June, but booked a solid winnar in the end
So since my 4 losing months in a row (from September to December last year), I've booked 7 winning months in a row since then
. I'm not on some kind of sick heater by all means, but things are definitely looking up since the worst of it.These are some of the things that I've learned about myself and the game along the way:
Part time vs. Full time
Back when I was still working at the 9-5, I remember being vehemently told in a 2p2 discussion once that us "weekend warriors" have it easy, with the extra income and shorter hours at the table.
Now having experienced both sides, I can confidently say that they were wrong! I've never had less stress, had more free time, and been more rested.
A lot of people go straight from never holding a full time job to being a pro. I think having worked full time helps you being disciplined at poker when it comes to putting in the hours. I can say some "pros" take their job for granted. I talked to some guy who moved across the country to play professionally, and actually saw him at the casino like twice in a whole month. The way I see it, being pro is NOT a golden ticket to do more of nothing with your time, but rather more of everything else.
I think I can't be the kind of person who's happy with making an okay living and spending ALL of the rest of my time doing fun/relaxing (but unproductive) things. Not now anyways. I get that's not everyone.
Instead of binging on dime a dozen TV shows and being a couch potato, learn something new, useful, and/or interesting. Expand yourself and grow your mind. Look for ways out of poker in the future because this is not a growth industry.
This brings me to my next point.
Poker is hella boring
Let me first preface this by saying that I do spend a good amount of time discussing, learning, and improving on my game - and I know there is much left to be learned. I don't even really know how to play any other games!
But to me, as interesting as this game can get, it's all confined to a little box. Grinding is also boring. In the end you are just pressing buttons in a statistics game pushing pots back and forth with your opponents, with the expectation and hope that the pots coming are bigger than the pots going. There's no fun in it when you understand the mathematical mechanisms behind winning - there's absolutely no "thrill of the gambool" in it for me. Sure, a 9-5 job can be dreadful too, but hours grinding on a felt have WAY less future value than hours grinding in an office (in terms of future career prospects). Some people have no other choice, and some prefers it - which relates back to my previous point: don't limit yourself either way.
I read that a few people have expressed this sense of "emptiness" even after a winning session. I remember feeling really depressed once after I made over 1k in just a few hours of 2/5. I should have been ecstatic given how hard I've tried to come out of my downswing. I tried to understand where this could be coming from, and I couldn't, yet - but it's nice to know that i'm not alone. Maybe we are so desensitized to money that winning a lot of it may at first seem like a great thing.. but in the end, it's really nothing.
It's hard to find the motivation to pick up things to do outside of poker - because long sessions tend to turn people into zombies after. I try to keep up in small ways but sometimes it feels like i'm not doing enough. One of my biggest fear is the regret of wasting time. It's so easy to feel that way with poker when you aren't winning. I can't control variance but I want to be able to say at the end, even though the worst case scenario (wrt poker) may have happened, I still did all these productive things and grew as a person in these ways.
Getting better at this game
Anyway let's come back to earth and talk more poker.
My game is constantly morphing and sometimes I wonder if I sucked before. But I think that's ok because the understanding of poker is fluid. As long as you are doing *something* with your game then you shouldn't be looking at it ever the same even from month to month.
One thing I've gotten better at recently is actually playing much more exploitably. My coach has an online background so his approach to the game is very balanced in comparison to the other live-only coaches. I think that's important vs. regs/good pros who can quickly catches onto what you are doing. That was my main preoccupation when I first started getting coaching - it was hard to grasp at first but it let me beat some very reggy games (esp loved playing lagtards - probably up more life time vs. them than whales/fish). It even made the game easier because you already know what you are doing with different parts of your range in various spots.
Gradually I realized that being completelt balanced all the time is unnecessary and excessive. This is true esp vs. bad players/nits/stations/people who aren't balanced in general. In a sense it's almost like reverting back to how I played before I got coaching (ie. very live-read dependent and not very good hah), but now I have a more indepth understanding of everything else. For example - I've recently made an extremely fishy move where I min check raised a set in a 3 bet pot where the pfr had an obvious overpair, so I can set the pot sizing up for a river shove. This was playing pretty face-up and took me a little out of my comfort zone - but for the most part live players are bad enough where you can exploit them with transparent lines.
Exploitative folds are also important. In some games people rarely fire a large river bluff, and rather give up than think, "geez I have no sdv, let me just fire a large polarized bet into their bluff catcher". I'm not just talking about nits. I have made calls before where I was wrong. Range-wise there could be bluffs that I beat, but if I had the read that they will 1) rarely bluff and 2) size it smaller if they did, then it should have been a fold. It's almost worth more to pay a lot of attention to bad players than to competent players because there is so much information you can get from them.
All these might sound like I'm telling you yesterday's news, but it's been a big switch for me when I've been obsessed with designing and protecting my range (not saying these arent important but now it's more comprehensive).
I've also started to use software for studying. Decision tree programs are kind of annoying to use for live games because you have to make so many assumptions about lollive players (aka wild monkeys with two napkins). Still, it's useful to see which hands you should be folding/raising/calling with given an opponent's range - and the answers can be pretty surprising/interesting.
Life in general
I've been on the road for the last 3.5 months staying in hotels/airbnb places. This was a dream that I started sketching at the beginning of this year and I'm proud to have made it into a reality. As much as working in depressing places/dealing with variance suck, i have to remind myself how many people my age would have killed for an opportunity to travel and work at your own leisure. It's a small silver lining when time gets tough.
I'm still learning to come to terms with variance. The cliffs are that I've literally ran the worst in big pots for my last 1000 hours. Just switch the equities around every time it's 80/20 or better. These all in spots where you have them crushed and they still give you action don't come around often, and when i'm constantly on the losing end it obv has a huge impact on my win rate. Oh and can't win my share of coinflips either. I think I'm okay with short term variance but it's hella depressing to think how much i'm down from those spots.
Oh and don't even get me started on how many people commenting on how good I run. I want to smack them. I just rebuy really quickly and always have chips to top off lol.
I think what has helped a bit is seeing how other winning/crushing players having extensive downswings/break even stretches. This is not schadenfreude at all - rather, it puts my problems into perspective and confirms that variance can get even the best.
Going forward, I plan on doing the same things as I'm currently doing - playing and traveling for at least a little longer, then see what happens.
Thanks for reading!
Last edited by Snowball2; 08-18-2015 at 11:40 PM.
08-19-2015
, 02:04 AM
08-19-2015
, 04:47 AM
08-19-2015
, 10:27 AM
08-19-2015
, 04:25 PM