Reflecting on MTTs and Other Goals
01-31-2024
, 11:44 AM
Reviewing January and Looking Ahead to February
Quick overview of my goals for the year: I’m usually quite low energy and motivation during the winter months, so this year I’m aiming to work around that. Although I’ll be playing, studying and trying to be balanced outside of poker every month, my rough focus points look something like:
Jan-Mar: Health, wellbeing, getting myself in good shape for the following months.
April: Study heavy, preparing for the big series.
May-September: Smash volume.
October-Dec: Rest, recover, try not to let things go completely.
With that in mind, I spent the first week or so of this month not playing at all, trying to get my diet, sleep and routines in order, and studying a lot. Of course, it’s much easier to do all these things when not juggling MTT sessions, so I think this down period was very useful for me and I may do something similar in the coming months. I find it difficult to toggle between work time and down time, so having these clear periods of time off, then grind mode works well for me.
I use Whoop to track my health and lifestyle stats. The ‘Recovery’ score is a nice all-rounder to go by because I know what influences it – diet, habits like meditation or reading before bed etc – and so I can aim to make generally smart life decisions without feeling tied down to specific goals like ’10 mins breathwork in the morning’ or ‘meditating at X time’. If I’m making good decisions, it will be reflected in this score, and if not, I may have to up the level of discipline for some time. Overall, I had no red days, and many green ones, making this one of my most consistent months ever and a success on this front. The other metric, ‘Strain’ measures exertion. My average this month was 11.5 which isn’t bad considering it wasn’t my main target, but I’ll look to increase this a little in February.
Poker Results
GG: +$7162.02 over 213 Games
Other Sites: +$3277 over 298 Games
RB: $398.97
Total: $10,837.99
I’ve been playing mostly morning sessions during the week and more peaktime at the weekend, which makes it much easier to focus on a balanced healthy lifestyle. Ran pretty well this month putting together a tonne of good sessions rather than one bink. I think that I played well overall and I was happy that I pulled the trigger on various spots I had been studying. Sometimes it didn’t work out, sometimes it was even poorly executed, but at least by going for it I give myself a chance to elevate my game, confirming or learning during review after the game, but not getting stuck in playing ‘standard’ and plateauing for long periods, which has been an issue in the past.
Study wise I was focussing on finding hotspots from MP, exploitative tools I can use against population. This went well and my winrate increased, but I noticed my BB aggression frequencies lowering slightly since I took my focus off that. Next month I will split my focus between these two positions. I also realised that a lot of these exploitative lines are very sensitive to small changes in opposition strategy; I need to be on my A-game to be executing properly, and one thing I can do to avoid straying into punting territory is to check in with myself on break, and if my energy and concentration is low, play a little more ABC for that hour.
Quick overview of my goals for the year: I’m usually quite low energy and motivation during the winter months, so this year I’m aiming to work around that. Although I’ll be playing, studying and trying to be balanced outside of poker every month, my rough focus points look something like:
Jan-Mar: Health, wellbeing, getting myself in good shape for the following months.
April: Study heavy, preparing for the big series.
May-September: Smash volume.
October-Dec: Rest, recover, try not to let things go completely.
With that in mind, I spent the first week or so of this month not playing at all, trying to get my diet, sleep and routines in order, and studying a lot. Of course, it’s much easier to do all these things when not juggling MTT sessions, so I think this down period was very useful for me and I may do something similar in the coming months. I find it difficult to toggle between work time and down time, so having these clear periods of time off, then grind mode works well for me.
I use Whoop to track my health and lifestyle stats. The ‘Recovery’ score is a nice all-rounder to go by because I know what influences it – diet, habits like meditation or reading before bed etc – and so I can aim to make generally smart life decisions without feeling tied down to specific goals like ’10 mins breathwork in the morning’ or ‘meditating at X time’. If I’m making good decisions, it will be reflected in this score, and if not, I may have to up the level of discipline for some time. Overall, I had no red days, and many green ones, making this one of my most consistent months ever and a success on this front. The other metric, ‘Strain’ measures exertion. My average this month was 11.5 which isn’t bad considering it wasn’t my main target, but I’ll look to increase this a little in February.
Poker Results
GG: +$7162.02 over 213 Games
Other Sites: +$3277 over 298 Games
RB: $398.97
Total: $10,837.99
I’ve been playing mostly morning sessions during the week and more peaktime at the weekend, which makes it much easier to focus on a balanced healthy lifestyle. Ran pretty well this month putting together a tonne of good sessions rather than one bink. I think that I played well overall and I was happy that I pulled the trigger on various spots I had been studying. Sometimes it didn’t work out, sometimes it was even poorly executed, but at least by going for it I give myself a chance to elevate my game, confirming or learning during review after the game, but not getting stuck in playing ‘standard’ and plateauing for long periods, which has been an issue in the past.
Study wise I was focussing on finding hotspots from MP, exploitative tools I can use against population. This went well and my winrate increased, but I noticed my BB aggression frequencies lowering slightly since I took my focus off that. Next month I will split my focus between these two positions. I also realised that a lot of these exploitative lines are very sensitive to small changes in opposition strategy; I need to be on my A-game to be executing properly, and one thing I can do to avoid straying into punting territory is to check in with myself on break, and if my energy and concentration is low, play a little more ABC for that hour.
02-29-2024
, 08:37 AM
Reviewing February and Looking Ahead to March
Play and Study
I noticed that I’d been lazily avoiding my PKO marked hands for months, so quickly decided to shift my study focus there for this month. This turned out to be a great decision as it became very apparent that I suck at PKOs and was butchering most spots – too tight when supposed to gamble, too loose at certain stages, completely misplaying my ranges preflop by not understanding the PKO implications. It wasn’t a super successful month results-wise, and it’s easy to feel that my play was poor at times. I felt I was sporadically autopiloting, not keeping up the aggression, and some of my hotspots were just not working. This is why it’s important to review with data, as having reviewed my stats for the month, my frequencies were actually pretty good, and my hotspots were doing fine. For example, I felt that XR from the BB was never working, everyone was playing back, but when I actually looked in Hand2Note, my air XRs were printing. My evbb/100 was 9.3 so although it felt bad at times, I think I actually played pretty decent.
Logistics and Life Balance
I’d give myself a ‘B’ here. Things didn’t completely derail but I lacked the complete discipline I had in January. One thing that worked well again was having a clear off-period and a clear grind-mode period throughout the month. I heard Pads on the Mechanics of Poker podcast talking about how he takes months off to focus on routines, study and health and then goes full blast during the series. I can do a mini version of this where I take a week out of the month to do this, and I like how it has worked this month and last. After grinding, I’m keen to study everything, and after studying hard, I’m keen to try everything out so it’s a productive cycle. My strain and recovery were both down this month too, although I was injured for parts of it. For the start of next month, I need an injection of discipline, so I’ll schedule everything out for the first week. Generally, I like more levels of freedom, but the schedule helps to get back on track.
Results
Other Sites: +1747 over 325 games
GG: -1292.42 over 198 games (GG Masters got me ☹)
Rakeback: 342.44
Total: 797.02
Some Hands from the Month
Instructive Hand
PKO playing vs short allin
Players should play flat only here as they want to get involved super wide for the bounty and protect their calling range. Since we are uncapped, players behind should also play heavy call, but as shown here I think people iso way too much in the spots, making trapping a good exploit (as well as theory approved)
Out of the Box Play
I was playing off-script here but my ideas in navigating this spot was:
- Pretty connected flop. My fold equity is reduced here and I didn’t really want to commit to a big triple barrel on a below average board with about 20 people left. If we see a checkback, our fold equity will increase. If he bets, we can happily continue.
- On the river brick, I felt that my fold equity with a bet wasn’t great.
- I know that recreationals will overbluff this spot, including with some merged hands that could simply check back (e.g they may ‘bluff’ A5 or similar). My idea was that by XR we collect a bet from pure bluffs and actually increase our fold equity on something like A5, 33 etc.
Does the data back me up?
- We see recreationals fold 37% to cbet in this line on the flop. However, on mid-connected like this, it drops to 30%.
- If flop goes check-check, the delay bet works 44% overall (vs 37%) and 47% (vs 30%) on this board texture, though samples are small when filtering for board texture.
- On the river, after X-X, B-C, the river barrel works 50% across all textures.
- After they bet the river, there is no sample on them getting XR’d, but here is their betting composition:
Quite a lot of bluffs and also some mergy low pairs in there as expected. Overall, can’t necessarily confirm the play with data, but I like my thought process.
Punt of the Month
I’m not sure how big of a punt this is. Solver shoves very very low frequency on the river with this hand. However, it was a PKO, giving him better odds. Also, the breakeven bluff relies on him finding a lot of folds with two pair, hands like JT. He’s a good player so maybe he does, but I think usually if you’re relying on the opponent to hero fold it’s probably not a great idea to bluff, especially when covered in a PKO.
Play and Study
I noticed that I’d been lazily avoiding my PKO marked hands for months, so quickly decided to shift my study focus there for this month. This turned out to be a great decision as it became very apparent that I suck at PKOs and was butchering most spots – too tight when supposed to gamble, too loose at certain stages, completely misplaying my ranges preflop by not understanding the PKO implications. It wasn’t a super successful month results-wise, and it’s easy to feel that my play was poor at times. I felt I was sporadically autopiloting, not keeping up the aggression, and some of my hotspots were just not working. This is why it’s important to review with data, as having reviewed my stats for the month, my frequencies were actually pretty good, and my hotspots were doing fine. For example, I felt that XR from the BB was never working, everyone was playing back, but when I actually looked in Hand2Note, my air XRs were printing. My evbb/100 was 9.3 so although it felt bad at times, I think I actually played pretty decent.
Logistics and Life Balance
I’d give myself a ‘B’ here. Things didn’t completely derail but I lacked the complete discipline I had in January. One thing that worked well again was having a clear off-period and a clear grind-mode period throughout the month. I heard Pads on the Mechanics of Poker podcast talking about how he takes months off to focus on routines, study and health and then goes full blast during the series. I can do a mini version of this where I take a week out of the month to do this, and I like how it has worked this month and last. After grinding, I’m keen to study everything, and after studying hard, I’m keen to try everything out so it’s a productive cycle. My strain and recovery were both down this month too, although I was injured for parts of it. For the start of next month, I need an injection of discipline, so I’ll schedule everything out for the first week. Generally, I like more levels of freedom, but the schedule helps to get back on track.
Results
Other Sites: +1747 over 325 games
GG: -1292.42 over 198 games (GG Masters got me ☹)
Rakeback: 342.44
Total: 797.02
Some Hands from the Month
Instructive Hand
PKO playing vs short allin
Players should play flat only here as they want to get involved super wide for the bounty and protect their calling range. Since we are uncapped, players behind should also play heavy call, but as shown here I think people iso way too much in the spots, making trapping a good exploit (as well as theory approved)
Out of the Box Play
I was playing off-script here but my ideas in navigating this spot was:
- Pretty connected flop. My fold equity is reduced here and I didn’t really want to commit to a big triple barrel on a below average board with about 20 people left. If we see a checkback, our fold equity will increase. If he bets, we can happily continue.
- On the river brick, I felt that my fold equity with a bet wasn’t great.
- I know that recreationals will overbluff this spot, including with some merged hands that could simply check back (e.g they may ‘bluff’ A5 or similar). My idea was that by XR we collect a bet from pure bluffs and actually increase our fold equity on something like A5, 33 etc.
Does the data back me up?
- We see recreationals fold 37% to cbet in this line on the flop. However, on mid-connected like this, it drops to 30%.
- If flop goes check-check, the delay bet works 44% overall (vs 37%) and 47% (vs 30%) on this board texture, though samples are small when filtering for board texture.
- On the river, after X-X, B-C, the river barrel works 50% across all textures.
- After they bet the river, there is no sample on them getting XR’d, but here is their betting composition:
Quite a lot of bluffs and also some mergy low pairs in there as expected. Overall, can’t necessarily confirm the play with data, but I like my thought process.
Punt of the Month
I’m not sure how big of a punt this is. Solver shoves very very low frequency on the river with this hand. However, it was a PKO, giving him better odds. Also, the breakeven bluff relies on him finding a lot of folds with two pair, hands like JT. He’s a good player so maybe he does, but I think usually if you’re relying on the opponent to hero fold it’s probably not a great idea to bluff, especially when covered in a PKO.