**two post previously on last page

Talent and style


In poker you have to stay true to your own style. The most harmful thing to my game has been watching Doug Polk videos during lay off and applying his approach to the game.
While it has worked wonders for him whenever I try to replicate that style I ignore my own reads and exploits and just don't execute it very well.

Similarly, whenever I watch to many Berri hands I end up punting a few stacks. Or when I spend too much time in the solver.

What works best for me is to not think and go with my intuition in spots. And then study a ton away from the tables because the added fundamental understanding greatly improves my intuitive understanding in game.

So I spend a ton of time studying GTO but never replicate it. My study partner has spent a similar amount of hours together with me in the solver yet not reaped the rewards at all because it did not compliment his style in the same way that it did mine.

Furthermore talent is an undeniably huge aspect in poker or any pursuit. There is an unquantifiable factor that is crucial to beating higher stakes.

The best players all have this. The best player I know personally plays all feel and intuition.

As important as study is you can not just GTO your way to the top.

That’s super interesting, thanks for sharing the solution. I would never have remotely considered checking turn when checked to twice in my super soft games. People aren’t checking the nuts twice like ever. (Even though they should.) I appreciate it. I’ll be checking the second nuts a lot more now.

Well, remember this is a 10/20 online game and so the "fish" are actually reg fish and probably winning at live plo. So in that game its a clear check and the ev gap of 5-10% of the pot is considered "large". It could very well be that in a soft live line up betting is better and your intuition for the spot is correct in that kind of game.

Thinking more about it now, 5-10% ev gap looks large in the solver but in actuality that is easily swayed by even slight deviations in our opponents strategy. It comes to show that it really comes down to your opponents tendencies. This is the great thing about discussing hhs with others. I wouldve considered my play good and not thought deeper about it but your comment prompted some deeper thought: it just really depends on the opponent.

Great things.

Have made my way over to main sites and am doing very well in reg heavy line ups at 10/20. I feel I have a generous edge in these games but of course we are rarely objective when it comes to assessing our own level of poker. But I'm at the very least holding my own. My health has continued to improve and I bang out 4h sessions without breaks with very few errors. In the morning I review all previous nights play for 2-3hrs and work on weak areas. What makes me feel confident is that I'm just getting started. Nothing can stop me now.

Health wise I've completely immersed myself in nature high in the mountains, away from civilization. As such all of my efforts from this blog are done while living out of my truck. I've tried less extreme measures but they have all failed miserably and what I'm doing now works miraculously. I sleep under the stars every night, breathe in pristine clear air 24/7, am out in nature 24/7. My diet is paleo based with lots of IF. I train with kettlebells 2-3x per week and climb to the top of the mountain on the other days and jump in the cold streams from the mountain afterwards. Everything about the environment is rejuvenating and strengthening.

Going forward the objective is to move it up to 25/50 and 50/100. This is largely the same pool and I don't think there is much skill jump. I've been waiting for momentum to make the jump.

Grinding in a truck in the middle of a Bulgarian forest? That’s certainly unique! Best of luck sir, both on the tables and the road back to pristine health.

Its pretty wicked. I hestitate to share because its bordering on tin foil hats. But **** it its my blog after all.

Analysing some errors:



Perhaps not the most interesting hand. What was noteworthy is that on the river, I feel like he has so many KK/QQ+ some kind of draw that I have massive fold equity against. On the other hand, since my hand is blocking all the folds its the worst bluff. Often when this kind of contradiction happens an error has been made on an earlier street, as is the case here.

Generally turn is the most complex street in plo5. If you play reasonable on the flop and you play the turn very good then the river combo's fall into place largely by themselves.

In this case, consdering we are up against a SB defend in a 3w flop scenario, his flop calling range is largely medium-strong hands. While fairly capped, that is not a range we want to barrel 1/3rd against with a bunch of equity as we might do in a hu situation. We want to polarise more here, taking a free card with our kind of hand and bombing more aggresively with Jx/J9/ some 9x that are unblocking folds.

On the river we can continue those that are again unblocking folds.

The error here is that we need to be extremely cautious about check raises on the turn on this texture. While I was aware of this dynamic I reasoned that my hand can actually continue vs a check raise and this deep we can start to bet some more nutted draws. While this reasoning is correct, the pair of QQs has some sd value and river playability in a check back pot that would go to waste facing a check raise and were still doing not so great vs a check raising range hence it is still better in our x back range.

To learn the most from this error we have to dissect where the thought process is incorrect. To do so we pull up this situation and hammer both positions combo's in trainer until we understand it. Then we repeat the exercise for 200bb deep isntead of 100 and learn the implications. Next we try to move the line a bit on the exact texture, for example changing it to a KT8 flop to understand better at what kind of texture we start to incorporate a more mergier strat.

Are you not playing on the apps anymore or just mixing?

Nice progress on your health, gl!

Terrific read, your curiosity for the game is equally palpable and insightful, thank you and best of luck on the tables and overcoming your health struggles

This is an awesome read. Keep it up, and massive GL!

Thanks guys really appreciate the kinds words

Mixing, still a lot of apps.


Update

Sucker punched by intense fatigue, have had to take some due rest, been sleeping the days away for a week now. Not too worrisome as I still feel better each week. My body still has a lot of rebuilding to do and I just have to be patient and not fight it.

I hope to work up to a consistent routine of 3hrs study in the morning, workout and then 4-6hrs play in the evening.

Once I get this routine down solid I would like to teach a few promising players.

In the study sessions I will review spots from the previous nights play as well as focus on some fundamental spots:
- 1 srp hu, explore various lines
- 1 3bp hu
- 1 200bb 4b pot
- focus in SRP on turn check raise and river follow up

I focus on one texture for a week, for example starting with two tone middling straights. The repeated study of this texture under various different scenarios I hope will lead to a deeper intuitive understanding of how these boards work so that in game I can without thinking see how a players profile would affect those lines.

I study by opening the spot in visions, and really take my time for each combo. How does this hand do in all follow up lines after betting or checking the flop? Vs what parts of the range is a certain line preferred? How would certain player tendencies affect this? How would my overall range balance be affected if I move to exploit a tendency?

Then when I see the result the mixed frequency will usually indicate a balance between these factors. If there is a surprising result that is a prompt to dig deeper. Exploring opponents response range and onward is helpful in figuring out why.

Hi Crimson I respect your analysis, couple of questions comments.

With JJ/99 in hand are you down betting 30% on turn ?

Obv comments about unblocking folds are relevant, but conversely you said yourself sb is full of broadway pairs and a lot of marginal draws, we block the 9 and have no 8 or Ks Js, I feel like in this spot I’m probably going 1/2 on turn and bombing river. This could be a massive leak for me but just wanted to discuss.

As played after betting 30% on turn I’m more inclined to check back with a J or overpair but with our specific hand I want to blast off because I’m just not winning at SD.

Do you think this hand is just always a give up as played?

You’re not wrong. As played it’s certainly reasonable to bomb the river. However if we do that we are quite unbalanced on the river and way over bluffing as we have many such hands which means opponent could call any sd value hand and crush us. I don’t like to put myself in that position at 2k+ hence I’d rather accept that I misplayed the turn and give up.

But in a midstakes game I think firing the river could be totally fine.

It’s not a bad line but again; you end up with way too many bluffs on the river this way. So you look at this combo on the turn and you can say, by checking I keep all weaker draws in that I do well against on the river and since I don’t three barrel this combo that works better.

Again, it is not necessarily bad to way overbluff a spot so long as you are very thoughtful about it. Perhaps this is just my philosophy for now and with a deeper understanding of this spot and the pool I could deviate more aggressively in the future.

About sizing down the value hands, as you might guess I feel the same way about that. Not something I would do against any decent opponent because the extra ev gain is not worth the imbalance. But vs a fish particularly with 99 I don’t mind sizing small.

What does this entail? Are you starting paid coaching? If so you'd bring a lot of value.

may i ask where do you play?

Yeah thats the idea once I get my routine and volume going. Maybe in the new year.

zachary... not CrazyZachary is it by any chance?

Apps and coin.

Update

Poker

Physical recovery is still dictating my poker. I played a few days of very strong poker, made some really good adjustments vs another very strong player who’s stream I have been watching. I was able to verify later on his stream that all the adjustments were good/lucky in that particular case.

I would love to share some breakdowns of hands but at this point it’s a lot of player/pool specific adjustments that I don’t feel comfortable sharing as my opponents might also read this blog.

Then I get KOd by coma sleep for days on end. Discipline is useless in combatting this: anytime I try to get up and play regardless I just play like a total fish, one such attempt a few days ago let to me straight up donating a stack which I felt horrible about. The only answer here is patience. It’s a long road.

Training is going good.

Todays workout was 1h of steep climbing followed by
3x12x32kg one arm kb cleans
8x48, 12x40 one arm kb row
3x12 rev lunge up to 32+large band

I repeat a variation to this every other day. 1h of cardio followed by 3-4 heavy compounds with kbs. I immerse myself in 4-5* water afterwards for a few mins.

Feel fairly strong when I do this. Just tired a lot.

Patience is the next phase. Play some softer line ups, study multi-way spots theory. Get my grind environment ready to hit it hard when my body and energy levels are ready.

Have you ever found your game has deteriorated in a basic way? Like Cbet % drops like a rock, 3bet % skyrockets or something over a reasonable sample.

Yes, mostly just over adjusting to a couple of awful regs and then it filters down.

Yeah that makes sense.

Do you study a specific spot multiple times over the course of a month? Or do you just go through it once and remember what you learned?

Examples of inspiration and bullshitters.

I love poker and have an enormous respect for those that pursue and perform greatness. I have an equal disdain for bullshittors that pretend to be good players so they can sell crappy content to beginners.

An example of a great player in the making is Portemillos blog. Natural aggression, nuanced perspective on situation, critical of his own play evidenced by a lot of thoughtful reflection.

Some examples of bullshittors:

Jnandez. I played a few hands with him last week at 10/20 on coin. He is the weakest regular I have ever played with at 10/20 and I highly doubt is profitable even at 2/5 without strict game selection. The problem here is that he markets himself as a HS PLO player. All the content on his site is from 0.5/1 and 1/2 players.

Luke Johnson/Clanty
A good example of someone that markets himself as a strong player and probably genuinly believes that. If you look more closely at his poker it is random aggression and fancy looking bluffs that are massively ev-. Little self reflection and all ego; claimed a few years ago to be +ev in nl10k vs the line up: Stefan, Munez, Davy, Nacho. Lmfao. Does not beat 10/20 online.

Hope this helps you choose what content to consume.

Jnandez isn't regarded as a top reg by most decent PLO regs from what I know. But he definitely crushes live poker where he's living now, and is a good businessman so gotta give props for that.