Recreational donk taking his baby steps into becoming a logical poker player - Starting at 2n
08-15-2020
, 02:18 PM
TL;DR at bottom
My Background:
Hello everyone! I’m a 24 year old from Ireland that has been interested in poker since I was a young teenager. The extent of my poker career is playing the odd SNG or tournament on my phone after work while I’m watching tv and also cleaning up in home games with my friends on the weekend SNG. Unfortunately I don’t have any tournament binks or wins to speak of since my online volume was super low.
I’m someone analytically inclined that loves to problem-solve and analyse. Professionally I work in digital marketing with a company that focuses a lot on data and evidence-based approaches to digital marketing.
Outside of poker and my job, I like training Brazililan Jiu Jitsu, watching football, reading and all the other stuff young people like.
The Inspiration For This Thread:
I recently came across a blog post on a site called Forever Jobless where the author (someone that was involved with Bluefire) explores business opportunities and entrepreneurship through the lense of EV. From my background with poker, I was familiar with EV as a concept, I just never integrated it into my play. Also, as someone who is naturally a bit too risk averse, having the EV metaphor used to highlight how much potential opportunities I could be missing out on by being overly cautious, this really connected with me.
After finishing the article, I realised that if I want to be successful in business and life, I need to get more competent and confident with analysing and managing risk from a fundamentally sound position. What better way to develop these skills than through poker? I certainly think having poker as a vehicle is better than taking my superficial understanding of EV and going ahead and wasting all my savings on stupid business decisions.
So, I am going to start off at 2nl full-ring without monetary goals but rather to use this blog to focus on goals around improving my problem-solving skills, my understanding of risk, my ability to identify profitable situations and to condition myself to be okay with whatever risk I have taken once a decision has been made, win or lose. (That last one is something I’m particularly bad at. My process so far in many areas of life has been Gather Data --- Analyse Indefinitely --- Become Overwhelmed --- Procrastinate --- Wallow in self-pity).
I never had a clear goal for a particular career, and still don’t, so I also need to get a lot better with goal management especially when I don’t have any concrete ambitions.
Since this is already very long, I won’t outline in detail yet the metrics that I will be using for measuring my progress. As I haven’t approached poker this way before, I’m still not sure what metrics are best for measuring progress when I’m taking a learning-foused approach rather than a ‘make sh*t loads of money’ approach. Since I work full-time, I will likely favour a time-based measurement method. Also, with my lack of understanding in areas such as EV, ranges, equity, pot odds and a solid poker thought-process, I think I’m going to have to spend a lot of time studying at first. Even when I do, my volume will be pretty abysmal since I will be 1 tabling until I have a lot of the above concepts understood more intimately.
My expectations are that I will enjoy the learning side and not being attached to the money side. I am also cautious that I don’t fall back into the habit of studying too much initially when I should be playing hands.
Just to keep things a bit light and to use this as a more general blog, I may also add in more non-poker goals at some point to consolidate my journaling and goal progressions.
Some questions I have for anyone who may be reading this:
1. What are some good learning resources for reference material for things like fundamentals of EV, range and other mathematical concepts? Will a paid option be necessary? (I have an account on PokerStrategy and have read many of their articles in the past which I liked the format of).
2. How do people track their progress to be able to generate the graphs everyone posts?
Some Context for How I'll be Starting:
Starting on 2nl
Will have a bankroll of about $30 to start - Can add more when/if necessary.
Will be 1 tabling to start
Will likely start with a 50:50 split of learning
laying.
Will track hours played/studied as main metric
May look at secondary metrics like ‘no. of concepts covered/month’ but at this point I’m not sure.
General Ambitions to start:
Improve my problem-solving skills
Become a skilled manager of risk and finder of +EV real world opportunities.
Make a little extra cash on the side (hopefully as a byproduct of becoming a decent player)
Have fun on the journey.
Thanks to any of you folks that made it through that long-winded reckless bast*rd of a post lol
TL;DR
Recreational player - Starting at 2nl playing 1 table at a time - Focused on learning and sharpening my skills rather than becoming rich.
My Background:
Hello everyone! I’m a 24 year old from Ireland that has been interested in poker since I was a young teenager. The extent of my poker career is playing the odd SNG or tournament on my phone after work while I’m watching tv and also cleaning up in home games with my friends on the weekend SNG. Unfortunately I don’t have any tournament binks or wins to speak of since my online volume was super low.
I’m someone analytically inclined that loves to problem-solve and analyse. Professionally I work in digital marketing with a company that focuses a lot on data and evidence-based approaches to digital marketing.
Outside of poker and my job, I like training Brazililan Jiu Jitsu, watching football, reading and all the other stuff young people like.
The Inspiration For This Thread:
I recently came across a blog post on a site called Forever Jobless where the author (someone that was involved with Bluefire) explores business opportunities and entrepreneurship through the lense of EV. From my background with poker, I was familiar with EV as a concept, I just never integrated it into my play. Also, as someone who is naturally a bit too risk averse, having the EV metaphor used to highlight how much potential opportunities I could be missing out on by being overly cautious, this really connected with me.
After finishing the article, I realised that if I want to be successful in business and life, I need to get more competent and confident with analysing and managing risk from a fundamentally sound position. What better way to develop these skills than through poker? I certainly think having poker as a vehicle is better than taking my superficial understanding of EV and going ahead and wasting all my savings on stupid business decisions.
So, I am going to start off at 2nl full-ring without monetary goals but rather to use this blog to focus on goals around improving my problem-solving skills, my understanding of risk, my ability to identify profitable situations and to condition myself to be okay with whatever risk I have taken once a decision has been made, win or lose. (That last one is something I’m particularly bad at. My process so far in many areas of life has been Gather Data --- Analyse Indefinitely --- Become Overwhelmed --- Procrastinate --- Wallow in self-pity).
I never had a clear goal for a particular career, and still don’t, so I also need to get a lot better with goal management especially when I don’t have any concrete ambitions.
Since this is already very long, I won’t outline in detail yet the metrics that I will be using for measuring my progress. As I haven’t approached poker this way before, I’m still not sure what metrics are best for measuring progress when I’m taking a learning-foused approach rather than a ‘make sh*t loads of money’ approach. Since I work full-time, I will likely favour a time-based measurement method. Also, with my lack of understanding in areas such as EV, ranges, equity, pot odds and a solid poker thought-process, I think I’m going to have to spend a lot of time studying at first. Even when I do, my volume will be pretty abysmal since I will be 1 tabling until I have a lot of the above concepts understood more intimately.
My expectations are that I will enjoy the learning side and not being attached to the money side. I am also cautious that I don’t fall back into the habit of studying too much initially when I should be playing hands.
Just to keep things a bit light and to use this as a more general blog, I may also add in more non-poker goals at some point to consolidate my journaling and goal progressions.
Some questions I have for anyone who may be reading this:
1. What are some good learning resources for reference material for things like fundamentals of EV, range and other mathematical concepts? Will a paid option be necessary? (I have an account on PokerStrategy and have read many of their articles in the past which I liked the format of).
2. How do people track their progress to be able to generate the graphs everyone posts?
Some Context for How I'll be Starting:
Starting on 2nl
Will have a bankroll of about $30 to start - Can add more when/if necessary.
Will be 1 tabling to start
Will likely start with a 50:50 split of learning
laying.Will track hours played/studied as main metric
May look at secondary metrics like ‘no. of concepts covered/month’ but at this point I’m not sure.
General Ambitions to start:
Improve my problem-solving skills
Become a skilled manager of risk and finder of +EV real world opportunities.
Make a little extra cash on the side (hopefully as a byproduct of becoming a decent player)
Have fun on the journey.
Thanks to any of you folks that made it through that long-winded reckless bast*rd of a post lol
TL;DR
Recreational player - Starting at 2nl playing 1 table at a time - Focused on learning and sharpening my skills rather than becoming rich.
