In my younger days, I did a fair amount of writing (general school work, journalism courses, speeches for oratory competitions, etc). While I was good at proof-reading/correcting the work of others, I never felt the same about my own. It was all too easy for me to gloss over mistakes or tell myself Eh, whatever, it's probably fine when revision was needed.

The reason I share that anecdote is because I find a lot of poker players have the same difficulty in being able to diagnose their own weaknesses. Perhaps it's out of ego, but it's so easy to convince yourself that a play you made was acceptable. Sometimes that's done with a simple shrug. Eh, whatever, it's probably fine. Is it? Why shrug when there are so many ways to look deeper? Ask friends, post on 2+2, use an ICM program. Speaking of which, people often justify suboptimal play by fiddling with that very ICM program. They'll change around various things until achieving the desired result but by then what's the point? Here's an example.



According to ICMizer's default ranges, this is a call. But it assumes villain is on ATC and he's a random. Could he be ATC? Sure, I guess. But if we take out the offsuit trash and drop him to only top 90%, QTss is now a fold. It's very easy to plug this hand into ICMizer, hit the nash equilibrium button, and move on when the program affirms your call/fold. But that's not going to help you improve.

Revisiting my point about writing, I find it helpful to remove myself/emotion from the equation by reviewing hands from others at the table. The most common spot is when a regular does something I'd never dream of doing, like shoving a hand I would fold or making a super thin call. I'll save the hand, review it in ICMizer, and try to answer two questions:

1) Was this a good play?
2) If not, how/why could he think it was a good play?

Occasionally the answer to #2 is "he sucks" but most of the time I can start to see what encouraged the regular to make that error.

Can't believe it took me this long to stumble across this thread.

Subbed, really enjoying the first few pages and the blog is awesome.

GLGL!!

That's some awesome insight. Thank you for sharing and taking the time to go into that much detail. Your anecdote actually hits close to home and the crossover/application to poker makes a ton of sense. Really appreciate it.

Going back to your setup, I didn't see a HUD on the screenshot you posted. Do you use one while playing or did you just remove it for the pic? Curious if playing as many tables as you do in the hypers whether there's much value in real time. Obviously collecting the stats is valuable, but curious more about live.

No HUD (hence the location) but I do take a fair amount of notes on regs and their particular tendencies

I don't think he uses one or not much at all. He's pretty much the last person I know who does not use one besides HU High NL guys like Durr/jungle.

Hence

We have similar goals for hours in May (I wanted 200), any chance u wanna do a motivational bet for hrs played? $100 sidebet on overall results and then also loser has to pay like $10/hr they lose by or something like that? Up for anything of the sort if you're interested

Thus far I'm at 8.2 hours for the month so behind pace; although I'm playing a long long day tomorrow

For hours played? You might crush me with SCOOP/etc and I'm taking a few days off to play live MTTs/help Darren get settled here...

Yeah I'm down. Let's do $10/hr you lose by (although if we both get to 200 hrs it's a push).

Ya ill be taking a couple days off too, moving some day hopefully next week to a house north of Rosa.

And sounds good, booked. bol sir!

I'd like to add one Ollie's pizza to the bet if that's alright, payable only when we're both in Rosa

Booked on that end too! Glgl

I might have accidentally angled you by playing some HU Hypers last night. But I'm okay with it, pizzas are serious business.

Also, this happened. Was playing a Russian reg and he kept sitting out so I stole his blinds. He obviously didn't approve.



Btw, note that I used my HUD for the first time in...ever.

I laughed so hard when I saw chatlog

Update after first week, Jdwag?

I'm at:

Oh and your boy told me I was a joke. :shrug:

33.7 hours, my boy's probably a joke too

hittin dat heat too, hope you're still heating it up!

Too bad you're not a mod or something, you could re-open your old thread

Would be good to hear a jdawg update! Maybe just a "things are going well, am not busto, crushing actually." then you can just close the thread again

He's got a sweet new house and looks like he made $5k preRB in the last week, bustoaments unlikely

lol if u think im not still in 6figs of MU

!!

I love you sir.

Love you too.

Probably taking most of tomorrow off, have to sweat a 'Who can hold their breath the longest prop bet,' grab communal dinner with a few poker players, and then get turbo drunk.



Oh and it's my diet cheat day, so that means a lot of eating.



Monthly graph so far.

Came across an article today in my local newspaper that basically encourages readers to oppose online gambling. Submitted a response but it's unlikely my words ever get published, so I wanted to share it here.

Original Article can be found here or in the first spoiler below.



My Response

hero itt