Swann97: New beginnings (MTTs)
10-26-2022
, 09:49 PM
Been a while
Just going to stroll in as if i haven't not posted for the last 6 months
I think I just felt very little reason/motivation to post, but i was in a poker twitch chat last week and someone asked me when i was going to post again, so i guess i should fulfil the will of the people 
I guess to update the past 6 months or so, i went to a couple live stops, finally got my first live cashes which is nice, and means i finally got a hendon mob page. I was focusing mainly on the online grind though, which for most of the year hadn't been going too great, then recently i've gone on a really brutal downswing, it's certainly top 2 in my career in terms of $ amount, but this time i am selfrolled. It definitely doesn't feel as bad emotionally as the last one, since the period of time has been nowhere near as long [yet (pls end soon lol)], so i realise it's just kind of a natural occurrence given the stakes i am playing (almost $100 ABI at peak). The ways you run bad and downswing are very different with small fields compared to big, since in big fields you just brick everything and make 0 deep runs for long periods of time, whilst with smaller fields i still make a lot of FTs but i always get the most brutal beats consistently to finish 9th-5th when there's a good chunk of money up top. So obviously this downswing has pretty much decimated my YTD results, which means unless Nov/Dec this year are absolutely bonkers, i'll have worse results than the year prior, which is really disappointing, as i always want to improve year to year. And sure variance hasn't exactly been on my side throughout this year, and you certainly get good years and bad years, but also i'm not completely delusional, and the amount of effort i've put in has been equally disappointing, like my volume has been okay, and the amount of study i've done has been okay, but for the long term goals i set myself, 'okay' just isn't good enough really.
Working on my game
During this downswing i started to be a bit more introspective about my game and some of the issues i have (since obviously everyone thinks their a sick player when on an upswing). And 1 issue i've always had is pretty much everything to do with 3bets; constructing 3bet ranges pre, defending vs 3bets, playing 3bet pots, the lot. What really got the ball rolling on this is when someone i knew sent me a really cool excel sheet, where you could plug in your hud stats, and see what areas of your game are being played sub-optimally. And whilst i can be quite critical of stats reviews, oftentimes because people don't actually know what the benefit of improving a certain stat is (they just do it because the correct figure is x), so someone might see that optimal BTN RFI at 40bbs is around 50%. So for someone whos RFI is currently 40%, this might be good to increase, because especially if you have edge you're going to benefit from playing more hands especially in position, matched with at lower stakes people don't really punish these wide opens from the blinds. But if someones RFI is already 60%, is it really an improvement to go down to 50%, given everything we've said before? Sounds like 60% might actually be better given what we know, but someone might no longer do it because a perfect computer vs a perfect computer does 50%. So i just think it's important to know why you should do something, and to think a little outside the box.
Anyway back to topic,
So red indicates too low, and green too high. I kind of already knew i had these issues with my game, and whilst i tried to address them, i never tended to make much progress in these areas. Then i saw these stats.
These are my actual stats, as for the steal %, these we're well off the mark, both should be in the region of 17.5%. I'd never really looked at these kind of stats, and this i think clears up where my lack of 3bets comes from, as this will make up for a large portion of it. So for preflop 3betting i realised i should improve on my BTNvsCO, then SB+BBvsHJ-BTN, as these are the spots that will come up most frequently, but also where we do the most 3betting, as 3betting from all other positions doesn't tend to be super high, and i don't think i'm too far off already in those areas.
And sure you can weigh up the up/downsides of some of these stats, like the fact that population doesn't tend to RFI enough from LP, but they also overfold to 3bets. They don't 3bet enough vs steals, but i should also have pretty good edge, even in 3bet pots. So its about weighing those things up, and i think there's enough merit in wanting to increase my 3b% in these areas. At the least though i've tried to also clean up on my defending vs 3bet ranges from LP, especially for when i'm playing vs regs. As in my games, i think you'll get ****ing steamrolled playing 60%+ F3b from LP.
Especially when you play higher stakes, lots of regs have like 10-12% 3bet, so it's really important to be good at 3bet pots. And for a long time, postflop in 3bet pots, i felt like i had no idea what to do, and was often very lost and making big mistakes. So i essentially overhauled my 3bet pot game, running a tonne of sims, really getting to grasps what sizings i should be using and how thin i can go for value as 3bettor, but also defending ranges as caller, and also learned a few other interesting mechanics just by running and assessing a bunch of sims. And now having a better understanding of how ranges interact in a lot of spots, i feel more comfortable playing 3bet pots.
In terms of my sizing overhaul, in SRP my strategy often revolves around b30 and b70, with some other sizings in niche spots, but in 3bet pots, its b25, b50 and some rips. Since i mainly studied 60bbs and below, b75 was never really used, but i might still use b30 and b70 if i'm 100bbs deep or so, it doesn't matter too too much, just for simplicity.
1 good thing about improving my 3bet pot game, is if i become really proficient in 3bet pots, it will encourage me to 3bet more, and call 3bets more, as i'll more often arrive in a node that i feel more comfortable in compared to my opponent.
Chess
I always have periods where i get interested in chess as a side hobby. It's so simple, but it's so tactical, and it's all about solving puzzles and outsmarting your opponent 1v1, it's similar to poker in some ways, but very different in others. Anyway i'm a complete chess fish (900-1k ELO, barely played though), and i always watch videos telling myself i want to be sick like those players, then play and realise i'm absolutely terrible and i should get back to poker Obviously i've been watching quite a bit of Magnus Carlsen and this guy is just a ****ing legend. 1 thing that's super interesting to observe, is chess is also very much in an era of playing heavy theory, analysing what stockfish (the chess solver) does, and using it to learn and apply to ones own game, with professionals often time preparing up to 20 moves of theory in advance for different opening scenarios. However what Magnus often does is early on he will make moves that are suboptimal in theory, but does it to drag his opponent into a part of the gametree that they are not as prepared for, and therefore not as comfortable in, giving himself an advantage in this situation.
Now this kind of exploit i think is very interesting and i spoke about in the past, i remember learning about this years ago when i first started learning poker, there was a Ben Sulsky video on RIO talking about the 2 forms of exploit, 1 is a direct exploit (e.g BTN overfolds vs 3bets, so from the blinds we 3bet more aggressively), the 2nd type being an exploit where we drag someone into a part of the gametree that they're not as comfortable in, and destroying them in that node (guess this, e.g BTN might not overfold to 3bets, but might overfold vs cbets in 3b pots, or just play them badly, so we 3bet more aggressively from the blinds to set up more 3bet pot scenarios where our edge is bigger).
Anyway i just found that comparison very interesting. Well done if you reached this far, i do actually do some 1 on 1 coaching for not that much compared to most people playing my stakes, so msg me on discord or here if you're interested and we can chat.
Just going to stroll in as if i haven't not posted for the last 6 months
I think I just felt very little reason/motivation to post, but i was in a poker twitch chat last week and someone asked me when i was going to post again, so i guess i should fulfil the will of the people I guess to update the past 6 months or so, i went to a couple live stops, finally got my first live cashes which is nice, and means i finally got a hendon mob page. I was focusing mainly on the online grind though, which for most of the year hadn't been going too great, then recently i've gone on a really brutal downswing, it's certainly top 2 in my career in terms of $ amount, but this time i am selfrolled. It definitely doesn't feel as bad emotionally as the last one, since the period of time has been nowhere near as long [yet (pls end soon lol)], so i realise it's just kind of a natural occurrence given the stakes i am playing (almost $100 ABI at peak). The ways you run bad and downswing are very different with small fields compared to big, since in big fields you just brick everything and make 0 deep runs for long periods of time, whilst with smaller fields i still make a lot of FTs but i always get the most brutal beats consistently to finish 9th-5th when there's a good chunk of money up top. So obviously this downswing has pretty much decimated my YTD results, which means unless Nov/Dec this year are absolutely bonkers, i'll have worse results than the year prior, which is really disappointing, as i always want to improve year to year. And sure variance hasn't exactly been on my side throughout this year, and you certainly get good years and bad years, but also i'm not completely delusional, and the amount of effort i've put in has been equally disappointing, like my volume has been okay, and the amount of study i've done has been okay, but for the long term goals i set myself, 'okay' just isn't good enough really.
Working on my game
During this downswing i started to be a bit more introspective about my game and some of the issues i have (since obviously everyone thinks their a sick player when on an upswing). And 1 issue i've always had is pretty much everything to do with 3bets; constructing 3bet ranges pre, defending vs 3bets, playing 3bet pots, the lot. What really got the ball rolling on this is when someone i knew sent me a really cool excel sheet, where you could plug in your hud stats, and see what areas of your game are being played sub-optimally. And whilst i can be quite critical of stats reviews, oftentimes because people don't actually know what the benefit of improving a certain stat is (they just do it because the correct figure is x), so someone might see that optimal BTN RFI at 40bbs is around 50%. So for someone whos RFI is currently 40%, this might be good to increase, because especially if you have edge you're going to benefit from playing more hands especially in position, matched with at lower stakes people don't really punish these wide opens from the blinds. But if someones RFI is already 60%, is it really an improvement to go down to 50%, given everything we've said before? Sounds like 60% might actually be better given what we know, but someone might no longer do it because a perfect computer vs a perfect computer does 50%. So i just think it's important to know why you should do something, and to think a little outside the box.
Anyway back to topic,
So red indicates too low, and green too high. I kind of already knew i had these issues with my game, and whilst i tried to address them, i never tended to make much progress in these areas. Then i saw these stats. These are my actual stats, as for the steal %, these we're well off the mark, both should be in the region of 17.5%. I'd never really looked at these kind of stats, and this i think clears up where my lack of 3bets comes from, as this will make up for a large portion of it. So for preflop 3betting i realised i should improve on my BTNvsCO, then SB+BBvsHJ-BTN, as these are the spots that will come up most frequently, but also where we do the most 3betting, as 3betting from all other positions doesn't tend to be super high, and i don't think i'm too far off already in those areas.And sure you can weigh up the up/downsides of some of these stats, like the fact that population doesn't tend to RFI enough from LP, but they also overfold to 3bets. They don't 3bet enough vs steals, but i should also have pretty good edge, even in 3bet pots. So its about weighing those things up, and i think there's enough merit in wanting to increase my 3b% in these areas. At the least though i've tried to also clean up on my defending vs 3bet ranges from LP, especially for when i'm playing vs regs. As in my games, i think you'll get ****ing steamrolled playing 60%+ F3b from LP.
Especially when you play higher stakes, lots of regs have like 10-12% 3bet, so it's really important to be good at 3bet pots. And for a long time, postflop in 3bet pots, i felt like i had no idea what to do, and was often very lost and making big mistakes. So i essentially overhauled my 3bet pot game, running a tonne of sims, really getting to grasps what sizings i should be using and how thin i can go for value as 3bettor, but also defending ranges as caller, and also learned a few other interesting mechanics just by running and assessing a bunch of sims. And now having a better understanding of how ranges interact in a lot of spots, i feel more comfortable playing 3bet pots.
In terms of my sizing overhaul, in SRP my strategy often revolves around b30 and b70, with some other sizings in niche spots, but in 3bet pots, its b25, b50 and some rips. Since i mainly studied 60bbs and below, b75 was never really used, but i might still use b30 and b70 if i'm 100bbs deep or so, it doesn't matter too too much, just for simplicity.
1 good thing about improving my 3bet pot game, is if i become really proficient in 3bet pots, it will encourage me to 3bet more, and call 3bets more, as i'll more often arrive in a node that i feel more comfortable in compared to my opponent.
Chess
I always have periods where i get interested in chess as a side hobby. It's so simple, but it's so tactical, and it's all about solving puzzles and outsmarting your opponent 1v1, it's similar to poker in some ways, but very different in others. Anyway i'm a complete chess fish (900-1k ELO, barely played though), and i always watch videos telling myself i want to be sick like those players, then play and realise i'm absolutely terrible and i should get back to poker
Obviously i've been watching quite a bit of Magnus Carlsen and this guy is just a ****ing legend. 1 thing that's super interesting to observe, is chess is also very much in an era of playing heavy theory, analysing what stockfish (the chess solver) does, and using it to learn and apply to ones own game, with professionals often time preparing up to 20 moves of theory in advance for different opening scenarios. However what Magnus often does is early on he will make moves that are suboptimal in theory, but does it to drag his opponent into a part of the gametree that they are not as prepared for, and therefore not as comfortable in, giving himself an advantage in this situation.Now this kind of exploit i think is very interesting and i spoke about in the past, i remember learning about this years ago when i first started learning poker, there was a Ben Sulsky video on RIO talking about the 2 forms of exploit, 1 is a direct exploit (e.g BTN overfolds vs 3bets, so from the blinds we 3bet more aggressively), the 2nd type being an exploit where we drag someone into a part of the gametree that they're not as comfortable in, and destroying them in that node (guess this
, e.g BTN might not overfold to 3bets, but might overfold vs cbets in 3b pots, or just play them badly, so we 3bet more aggressively from the blinds to set up more 3bet pot scenarios where our edge is bigger).Anyway i just found that comparison very interesting. Well done if you reached this far, i do actually do some 1 on 1 coaching for not that much compared to most people playing my stakes, so msg me on discord or here if you're interested and we can chat.
10-26-2022
, 11:09 PM
01-02-2023
, 11:42 PM
2022 Summary
According to my own calculations I ended the year up about £37.5k/$45k total (included action sold, and live play), having played about 5200 MTTs.
Honestly pretty disappointed with the results and how the year went as a whole. Whilst I did have a nice uptick towards the end to save the year somewhat, I definitely don't feel like I ran great, really lacked big scores which are kind of needed when playing higher ABI (biggest score wasn't even 100 ABI's), although to be fair big part of that is small field games.
Ultimately though if I ask myself did I give it 100%, the honest answer is no, and that's what hurts the most, knowing that I could've done quite a bit more, which could be the difference between a disappointing year and a very good one.
I've spoken about this before but I think a lot of regs just don't really know what it takes to get to the top, in terms of the dedication that you need to put into the game. I've been lucky with my experiences that I've witnessed people reach the very high stakes and become some of the best, and I saw the effort that they put in to get there. So I know what it takes, and for me it's just about executing it.
Now the years ended I can't change anything that's happened in the past, only what I do over the next year. And every year as an MTT pro I gain experience and learn a lot of lessons that I can carry into the next year, which I'll talk about with my goals for 2023.
2023 goals and thoughts
My 3 main goals for the year can be summed up as such:
As for the poker goal, this is very similar to the goal I set at the start of last year, but I'm going to take a different approach this year, with some of the lessons I learned from last year. Definitely think I've hit a bit of a wall at this 70-80 ABI level, but I think I can eventually break through, I'm confident in my skills, just need the roll and good game selection.
1 thing I still believe in is the necessity to have good routines and build up good habits, I think it's the key to achieving your goals whilst avoiding burnout, but this was something I greatly struggled with over the last year, but I'm hoping now that I've moved into a permanent residence my life no longer feels in limbo, and I feel like I can settle down and start working on improving my habits and routines (funnily my results since moving have been really good, probably just variance though).
The first thing I want to achieve is to increase my volume to play 6000 MTTs this year. I think volume is key when trying to spin a roll and make profit. I played about 5200 MTTs this year, averaging 433 games per month, just adding 2 extra sessions each month would bring this up to what I want (500/m). And I think this is easily doable given how much time I took off last year, as well as some other changes I'm going to be making.
Another change I'll be making is likely dropping most live stops. I actually really enjoy playing live, and whenever there is anything decent going on where I now live in Glasgow (and probably Edinburgh too) I'll probably play those. But all the expenses of travelling and hotels and food add up, and it essentially is really hard to make the poker profitable from an ROI perspective. And living out a hotel/airbnb for a week at a time, eating **** food, is just terrible for sustaining good habits. So given this I have to basically treat livestops as more a holiday and as a break from the online grind. The problem with this is when I take a break I want to spend time with my personal friends (who aren't involved with poker at all), and I want to completely disconnect from poker. At live stops I realise that when I'm not at the tables I'm basically somewhere where I don't want to be, and usually end up pretty miserable, and can leave me feeling pretty burned out and depressed overall. So in short, live stops aren't profitable enough to consider a 'work trip' and I don't want to be there enough to consider it a 'holiday'. And I think this is partly why I ended up taking long stretches away the grind overall.
Now this isn't really to do with the poker goal, but is certainly something I've felt and thought about a lot over the last year and wanted to talk about. I'll start by saying that I love to compete, and I love to focus on a specific thing and to spend a lot of time improving at said thing, that is what I love about poker, and it enables me to do those 2 things whilst earning money. Now I've networked a lot, and spoken to so many different people, especially over the last year or so, and this has sometimes left me feeling quite blackpilled (doomed/hopeless) about poker (maybe more people in poker) in general. It seems like oftentimes people are more interested in making friends and having a good time, or to boost their clout/social status, or just to try to make easy money. Like if you want to do those things, go for it, I don't care, it's just not what I'm here for. I want to become a really strong poker player, and have a strong team of players around me. I also enjoy helping others who sincerely have that same goal to get there too. If I make money or friends through my quest to my goal that's fine too, it's just not my first priority.
As for this blog, I doubt I'll be particularly active over the next year, I'm mainly just focusing on the day to day grind, and writing blog posts takes me a large amount of time that I'm not interesting in doing on a regular basis. But we'll see.
According to my own calculations I ended the year up about £37.5k/$45k total (included action sold, and live play), having played about 5200 MTTs.
Honestly pretty disappointed with the results and how the year went as a whole. Whilst I did have a nice uptick towards the end to save the year somewhat, I definitely don't feel like I ran great, really lacked big scores which are kind of needed when playing higher ABI (biggest score wasn't even 100 ABI's), although to be fair big part of that is small field games.
Ultimately though if I ask myself did I give it 100%, the honest answer is no, and that's what hurts the most, knowing that I could've done quite a bit more, which could be the difference between a disappointing year and a very good one.
I've spoken about this before but I think a lot of regs just don't really know what it takes to get to the top, in terms of the dedication that you need to put into the game. I've been lucky with my experiences that I've witnessed people reach the very high stakes and become some of the best, and I saw the effort that they put in to get there. So I know what it takes, and for me it's just about executing it.
Now the years ended I can't change anything that's happened in the past, only what I do over the next year. And every year as an MTT pro I gain experience and learn a lot of lessons that I can carry into the next year, which I'll talk about with my goals for 2023.
2023 goals and thoughts
My 3 main goals for the year can be summed up as such:
- Become the strongest reg in the Euro/GBP online pools, and start to transition away to higher games ($120-$150 ABI)
- Get into good physical shape, to a noticeable extent
- Learn Spanish to a basic/intermediate conversational level
As for the poker goal, this is very similar to the goal I set at the start of last year, but I'm going to take a different approach this year, with some of the lessons I learned from last year. Definitely think I've hit a bit of a wall at this 70-80 ABI level, but I think I can eventually break through, I'm confident in my skills, just need the roll and good game selection.
1 thing I still believe in is the necessity to have good routines and build up good habits, I think it's the key to achieving your goals whilst avoiding burnout, but this was something I greatly struggled with over the last year, but I'm hoping now that I've moved into a permanent residence my life no longer feels in limbo, and I feel like I can settle down and start working on improving my habits and routines (funnily my results since moving have been really good, probably just variance though).
The first thing I want to achieve is to increase my volume to play 6000 MTTs this year. I think volume is key when trying to spin a roll and make profit. I played about 5200 MTTs this year, averaging 433 games per month, just adding 2 extra sessions each month would bring this up to what I want (500/m). And I think this is easily doable given how much time I took off last year, as well as some other changes I'm going to be making.
Another change I'll be making is likely dropping most live stops. I actually really enjoy playing live, and whenever there is anything decent going on where I now live in Glasgow (and probably Edinburgh too) I'll probably play those. But all the expenses of travelling and hotels and food add up, and it essentially is really hard to make the poker profitable from an ROI perspective. And living out a hotel/airbnb for a week at a time, eating **** food, is just terrible for sustaining good habits. So given this I have to basically treat livestops as more a holiday and as a break from the online grind. The problem with this is when I take a break I want to spend time with my personal friends (who aren't involved with poker at all), and I want to completely disconnect from poker. At live stops I realise that when I'm not at the tables I'm basically somewhere where I don't want to be, and usually end up pretty miserable, and can leave me feeling pretty burned out and depressed overall. So in short, live stops aren't profitable enough to consider a 'work trip' and I don't want to be there enough to consider it a 'holiday'. And I think this is partly why I ended up taking long stretches away the grind overall.
Now this isn't really to do with the poker goal, but is certainly something I've felt and thought about a lot over the last year and wanted to talk about. I'll start by saying that I love to compete, and I love to focus on a specific thing and to spend a lot of time improving at said thing, that is what I love about poker, and it enables me to do those 2 things whilst earning money. Now I've networked a lot, and spoken to so many different people, especially over the last year or so, and this has sometimes left me feeling quite blackpilled (doomed/hopeless) about poker (maybe more people in poker) in general. It seems like oftentimes people are more interested in making friends and having a good time, or to boost their clout/social status, or just to try to make easy money. Like if you want to do those things, go for it, I don't care, it's just not what I'm here for. I want to become a really strong poker player, and have a strong team of players around me. I also enjoy helping others who sincerely have that same goal to get there too. If I make money or friends through my quest to my goal that's fine too, it's just not my first priority.
As for this blog, I doubt I'll be particularly active over the next year, I'm mainly just focusing on the day to day grind, and writing blog posts takes me a large amount of time that I'm not interesting in doing on a regular basis. But we'll see.
05-27-2024
, 05:57 AM
05-27-2024
, 09:41 AM
05-28-2024
, 01:40 PM
06-03-2024
, 04:33 PM
06-04-2024
, 06:59 AM
06-04-2024
, 10:36 PM