thank you

2nd in the 109 turbo, and 15th in the 33 10k

and 6th in the 109 12k (forgot to mention above)

Forgot to mention--this past Sunday I felt I was at a pretty low level mentally by the end of my session, so I made it a priority to actively work on my "mental game" (never really liked that term, but it is apt) since then. In the past, I used to tilt money away, which took me some time to resolve, though I eventually did, completely. Despite that, I found a new mental issue (as is pretty apparent a few pages back)--namely, completely rending my own mind based on results and runouts. I've always been ridiculously hard on myself (intentionally), but doing so in regard to things I cannot control (vs. doing so in regard to me having imperfections in my play) doesn't make sense and isn't constructive. I did feel as though my sanity was slipping at some points.

It's a work still in progress. The trend in PG&C is to be very hopeful and optimistic with these sorts of things, which is nice, but the truth here is that I am completely unsure as to whether or not I will resolve this issue. I did resolve the money tilt issue however many months ago, so there is a precedent for success here, but it is impossible to say with certainty what will happen.

I've sequestered myself from all poker contacts I used to speak to, something I will revert when (if) I feel as though my mind is back to being acceptable (the judge here being myself).

Strategy wise, I have been working hard, as I always have. I do feel as though I'm markedly superior to the version of myself that existed ("exists," depending on your view of physics, but I digress) 1 month ago. I hope that I can say this for almost every month I play NLHE tournaments.

On a more direct note, there is a good chance I will be selling action to the GSPO3 high stakes events (though if I have a good stretch of results from now until 10/17/2015, I will likely keep all of myself). I will keep this thread updated in regard to that matter, and eventually make the proper selling thread(s) when (if) the time comes.

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I do believe that if one must be unbalanced in terms of being too hard on oneself vs. being too easy on oneself, it is far better to be unbalanced toward the former condition. I think that when one is too easy on oneself, and not hyper critical of every play one makes instead, one can easily slip into a state of complete complacency in regard to one's game, which to me is the ultimate failure as a player. That being said, certain psychological makeups will take "being hard on oneself" to its utter extremities, and the end result can be indistinguishable from pure insanity.

subbed here funny man

good luck I like your insights

got decent stacks in a lot of tournaments, chip leader of the $55 15k with 57 runners remaining (P142)

busted the 215 50k in the 2nd or 3rd hand to balance myself out

chip leader in 55 15k 16 remain

decent stack in 200k, 109 6max, 44 30k

edit: out of 55 15k, AJo<QTo then AQo<TT for the bust

busted $44 30k JJ<ATo at 4 tables remaining

min cashed the 200k QQ<AKo (open ended straight flush draw on flop, no dice turn/river)

12/15 in 109 6max currently

P16 in 109 6max (7 remaining)

edit: forget that, bubbled final table

ended the session up 400 dollars or so, but definitely feel a bit like i'm dreaming given the 100% brick rate on the various deep runs I made today. it can't be said enough, to get these top 3 finishes in MTTs, a huge amount of sustained rungood is necessary, and the vast majority of the time it just won't pan out. everyone will have far more 10th-18th finishes than 1st-3rd finishes. this is obvious, but important to remember

despite this, I'm human, and today was provided a whole lot of teasing that has left me a bit disappointed

I began playing some HU SNGs again this week, and it was extremely refreshing. the people I figure are the "regs" in the 52.50s-105s are still (in my opinion) weak as a whole...it made me wonder if these games and heads up cash aren't my true calling (not that HU cash has a whole lot of long term potential given the way things are with that game type)

aside from one pretty damn light calldown early on in today's session, I felt razor sharp in terms of the level of my play. this seems to be my guiding light as I grind out all these tournaments, a complete obsession toward trying to propel my game closer and closer toward perfection (which, of course, can never be attained...hence its supreme usefulness as a goal).

added to that as of 1-2 weeks ago is an obsession toward making myself immune to being phased by results...I thought it was as simple as never making a single complaint publicly about a suckout ever again, but the mind can still harbour filth even whilst adhering to this requirement. If I even think to myself for a moment these complaints, I've still failed mentally, and I'm still devoting mental energy to something that doesn't warrant any thought

i am aware both this and the last post lack much structure/predetermined form--they are just my thoughts written exactly as they come to me, in whatever order they choose to do so in

edit: drinking a beer and watching the chip leader of the 200k open shove his BTN into a 30bb SB and a 35bb BB ugh (this is with 11 runners left)

edit 2: turns out it was 99, called by the BB's QQ, with 99 taking down the pot after a 9 high rainbow flop peels off. sick game MTTs are, the QQ fellow must be rapidly looking for a cliff with some particularly jagged rocks beneath

oh, and one final thing

today's grinding music

calming, moving piece

did some modeling today. was interested in examining the nature of the random variables defined as {combined weekday daily profit}, {" weekday weekly "}, and {" weekday monthly "} upon their convergence. the way the variance simulator does this is by Monte Carlo simulations (that is, generating randomly generated draws from the theoretical probability distribution by using user-inputted parameters [versus just graphing the actual probability distribution of this random variable, which we cannot do given we don't know the function itself]). Note that 25,000 random draws have been taken, which in practice is more than enough to force the empirical graph to be almost indistinguishable from the true convergence graph.

Each of the rows corresponds to a tournament I play on my most recently updated daily schedule (they don't have titles, but should be obvious which ones are which to the bovada grinders). I drew field size/places paid from memory of what they typically are, and for the ones I drew a blank on I simply copied what they were in today's iteration of the specific tournament. ROI percentages were estimates from talking to other grinders/my own projections of what my theoretical ROI is in each field.

First: daily schedule (click)

the rightmost column is "1" for daily profit, "5" for weekly profit, and "20" for (4-week) monthly profit. Again, I am only modeling my daily schedule. This is to say I am omitting special tournaments (e.g. GSPO3) and, obviously, my meaty Sunday schedule. When I drop below 6 tables, and don't have a tournament I normally play coming up, I typically add something below $22 (which I normally omit) to fill the space up. This is also excluded from the model.

Results:

dist_daily


data_daily (click)

dist_weekly


data_weekly (click)

dist_monthly


data_monthly (click)

What intuitions can we draw from this? Roughly 2/3 of the time, I will lose money or make a very small amount on a given day. Weekly, this slims down to 2/5 of the time. Monthly, it is comforting to note that it slims to considerably less than 1/5 of the time.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zO-N_8Whes

Good work Zera. Numbers are really interesting to look at and very useful/informative. Thanks for posting the numbers here, I for one will be referring to them in the future.

I'm not sure about a couple of your ROI figures (is that 30% ROI in the 109 Turbo and 42.5% ROI in a 33 turbo?). In general if trying to ensure my BRM is sound in absence of historical data on ROIs I would shoot for the lower bound of expected ROI to generate the "worst case scenario" outlook on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

In general the figures seem pretty rosy all around for the risk-averse individuals among us -- is the chance of us losing money on a daily basis really only 58%?? Clearly AFS is the big factor here (as compared to variance outlooks for a site like 'Stars) but do you have any thoughts on those results? 20% chance of losing money in a month-long period sounds pretty nice to me .

+1. I wonder about such things constantly but hadn't put in the work to come to any conclusions. Thanks for posting.

Indeed they are (regarding ROI comment). I've just witnessed, over my time playing them regularly, so many absurdly awful plays/stack donations even in the 109 turbo that I was crafted my estimates liberally--from 100bb deep to 20bb deep, players here are making glaring errors/spews at a high frequency. I've also seen a large amount of pretty severe pushing/calling range errors at the final table of the 109 turbo, which is obviously a place where errors of that sort have magnified positive monetary implications for the individuals who aren't making said errors.

If reworking the numbers to provide more conservative projections, one should certainly bear this in mind.

Regarding the results, I agree that they are "better" than what I expected them to be. I do believe AFS is a very big factor here. Half of these 10 tournaments would be considered SNGs on Stars (if we figure 180-mans to be the upper bound on "SNG" vs. "MTT"). It's also important to remember that Sundays increase both our EV and variance by a lot (bigger fields, higher buyins, soft all around).

Final 7 of the $44 6max, P22...vamooo

almost a day saver

what other sites do you play on?

Just Bovada at the moment. I used to play on Carbon, where I grinded HU SNGs & MTTs, but don't play there anymore given the cashout situation. I just got my Windows desktop, so I will be getting on ACR soon to check out their MTT schedule.

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2 things:

1. Stars is now approved for operation in New Jersey. This is really good news. Jersey players will be limited to playing with other Jersey players (not ROW player pool), but it's a really important step toward building the future us US players want to see.

2. I think I need to invest in a better office chair, as my back really doesn't feel right. I've begun working out again, but I've never had this pain from working out in years past, so I'm thinking it's the long hours spent in my subpar chair as I grind.

If anyone has any recommendations, please share them. I'm looking for comfort first and foremost. I'd also prefer it to be all black and somewhat imposing, if possible.

I got the ikea markus based on ChicagoJoeys suggestion and it's pretty good. $199

kind of like ur musical tastes

+1, I got this chair a few months ago and it's a solid chair, not very expensive, and easy to put together.

Took yesterday and today off. Went to a bar with friends for some Oktoberfest celebration. To be honest, I don't understand what Oktoberfest is and never really have. It seems to me to just be a reason to imbibe liberally though, which is fine by me. Woke up today feeling on the border between life and death, and realized there was no chance I'd be playing a single hand.

Also recently came across my copy of Infinite Jest, and will be making an attempt to read it in the coming months. The position of my bookmark from two years ago indicates I didn't get far on my first try.

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Tomorrow is a big day. Playing the 540 Million on ACR, where I will be firing a second bullet if I bust reasonably early. It will be my first time playing MTTs with a username ("angel zera" if anyone cares to rail). Also the usual Bovada lineup as well. I've been playing my A+ game consistently during the past 2 weeks, just been hampered by a bit of runbad recently.

I'm going into tomorrow absolutely ravenous. My play will be razor sharp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UENb3lLSQho

-$2.65k in the past 7 days, the RNG and I seem to be mortal enemies

Standard PG&C modus operandi here is to say something like "I'll get 'em soon! " right?

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On a separate note, I think individual coaching is pretty often a sham in the poker world, so I've decided I want to provide some amount of it completely free of charge for some period of time.

I will review anyone's HHs from Bovada MTTs in the following format, given that I do not use PT4 nor do I use HM2: provide me a video of the HH playback, including only the hands you VP$P. I will record my verbal review over this video, pausing when necessary. I will then provide said video in this thread for all to have access to. If there's decent interest, I will likely choose the more "interesting" HHs to be the ones for review. You can contact me by PMing me to send me the video in whatever format is best (haven't figured this part out yet fully).

Until next time.

Final two tables of the $27.50 6max bounty, P6

third

quick update

been treading water a bit lately, making a few of the 109 final tables but busting 9-7th each time. been really satisfied with my play recently almost every day, which is very rare for me as I'm hyper critical of myself and my play

made the final 2 tables of the 500 high roller on monday


my friend made a GSPO3 sweat thread in MTTc
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61...hread-1565671/

give it some love if you're grinding the series. i'm pretty excited for it, and will be playing most everything. i'll probably begin selling pieces for the later events if I get crushed early on

GL to all