New thread. Had a lot of threads before, that you can check in my profile if you want. I was always losing motivation and quit updating and playing, sometimes due to run bad but mostly due to run bad + monster raging tilt. This time it was different.

One of my first goals in the last thread was to read TMGoP and see if the book would bring a few insights into how to deal with this problem. I´m proud to announce that since reading it I implemented a lot of strategies from the book and also mine, and I´m tilt free. I stopped updating but kept playing and studying.

My routine of studying is mostly watching videos from RIO and playing long sessions against pokersnowie where I strive to keep myself on the extra terrestrial level. I know snowie has problems, but I think it´s a nice tool to improve my understanding of the game in a practical way.

I will be very happy if I can manage to end this year playing and winning any limit higher than 10nl. Btw, becoming a poker pro is not my goal anymore, for obvious reasons, but also because it´s not the kind of life that I want. I´m just stubborn as **** and can´t accept that 5nl is the higher that I can beat.

And that´s it. A few updated graphs:

2nl:


5nl:


10nl (shame on me):


Want to play 5nl until the end of this month and then move up to 10nl one more time.

VAMOOOOOOO

Wow, the fact that you've played so many hands on NL2z shows that you love the game Watching RIO and playing vs snowie is a good strategy that will lead you to beating NL10-25 in a short amount of time, if you spend a couple hours a day to do that. GLGL

Yeah, indeed I love this game . tytyty

UPDATE 1



Not a great start. Played a very big session for my own standards, felt I was on my C or even D game during at least 30% of this session, and even after that, decided to continue playing. Why? 1) Got a big stack (250 BBs) in a table with 3 recs (one of them even got my "I love you" tag, and he was also with a big stack during almost one hour). Coudn´t quit, even knowing that my brain wasn´t working properly. 2) Decided that getting an upgrade to the blue chest was a good idea.

Most of my biggest mistakes were calling down rivers too lightly. Other than that, losses were due to a few coolers here and there, and one AA<KK.

The plan for tomorrow is just have a normal day, grind pokersnowie and watch at least one video from RIO. Then, play a little bit and that´s it.

Cheers!

Thought a little bit here, and decided that I won’t see my results (and update the thread) until the end of this month. More than playing too much, seeing my graph while playing (a big mental leak by itself imo) was the reason for the poor quality of play.

I’ll be back, don’t worry. Cheers!

Good luck man

Good luck. Looking at the graph/results while playing is something I do all the time as well. I know I shouldn't, but I just can't help myself, and I'm sure it's led to some bad play. Or at least some frustration. If I have the will-power, I'll try not to look at the graph over the next week lol and see if there is any improvement in my mindset.

Gl

UPDATE 2



Well, guess I looked into my results today, so shame on me. I was trying to review my HHs without looking into the trailing bar with the results, but it was impossible. Doing daily reviews is really important imo, so if that means I have to keep looking into the results after playing, I´ll pay that price.

I didn´t look into it while playing, which is way more important, so I´m not a big sinner.

Played a more sane volume today. 1500-2000 hands, while 6-tabling normal tables, is fairly easy and can be done without having to sit in front of a screen for many hours.

@Pedro Henrique, @PokerPhilosopher, @DownWithTheSucknes, ty guys, and gl to you too .

Cheers!

GL! Tagging hands as you play and then reviewing them after the session or the next day is really important!

I set up some tags like 'mistake' for when I think I made a mistake, 'range' for when I'm not sure if I should be flatting, 3 betting or folding pre and then check the hand and position in the RYE range viewer( https://gyazo.com/96a7158d77bc6d7eebab53d06caaca56) , 'review postflop' for generally looking into my play postflop and 'thin value' for hands where I'm unsure if I can go for thin value on the river versus Villain's range.

I also bought the mental game of poker but haven't read that much of it! Any chapters you can especially recommend?

I think the chapter where he lay the foundations, especially the inchworm and the process model, was really good. Gave me new insights into how I should be approaching the game in order to improve. Also, chapter 5. Since most of my tilt issues were related to perfectionism and not accepting doing mistakes, the part about mistake tilt helped a lot. Finally, chapter 7, motivation.

Thank you, GL to you too!

Thanks, I'll read those chapters during my next study session

UPDATE 3



Another monster session. I´m trying hard to keep the blue chest on, since it seems better thah the red one but today things were slower, even considering I timed it right to play with that boost thing on. So, this led me to play more than 3k hands. No problem!

Had some atrocious beats today, but then slowly climbed from the bottom of the hole. Still losing, but it could have been worse.

Will do my next hh review only on sunday, with the hands of the weekend. That means no updating until sunday, and I (hopefully) won´t see my results until then.

GL everyone!

Crap, I haven't played in over 24 hours. I hope that means I don't go back to the red chest lol. Those ones do really suck.

UPDATE 4 - WEEKEND

I was going to play a little more but I´m tilting really hard atm, so better to quit playing. Games are very aggro on sundays, lots of 3betting, 4betting, raising cbets, raising rivers etc, as usual. Problem is, lots and lots of beats, bad runouts, coolers, so I have to say I coudn´t control myself and became frustrated towards the end of today´s session. Lost probably 2 bis unnecessarily now, 1 earlier today and 1 yesterday. Even had a note that read I should always play lower stakes on sundays, but think it´s too nitty to play 2nl with current br lol.

Graph:


Anyway, can´t change what just happened, just keep learning from the mistakes and try not to repeat them, keep studying the game, get better incrementally and never give up. Since it´s still early, I think I´m going to do some detilting with snowie and then watch a few interesting videos before bed.

Cheers!

Really? I always thought Sundays seemed better lol. I'll look at my PT4 database...


Yep, Sundays confirmed good hahaha


Maybe it's more a mindset thing now for you? If you're gonna play worse on Sundays because of that being in your head, then probably better to drop down for now. But I would suggest just trying to stick it out and keep playing the same stakes and just try to play simple solid poker on Sundays. Should turn around sooner or later, right?

UPDATE 5

Still running bad, it´s unbelievable. So many whales and I can´t do anything to enjoy the party.



Plan is to try (again) to not look into my results until the end of this month. I´m failing at this since I created this new thread, but I know it´s achievable because I have done this many times before successfully, and it worked pretty well. And it is really important in order to try to break this cycle and kill all the accumulated tilt that I have atm. So, no updates until March, 31.

Another trick that I have, which I´m not using currently due to my lack of discipline, is to cover the tables after any big decision. Obv I´ll see if I won or lost bc of the stack sizes, but not knowing exactly how I lost (or won) and just waiting a few seconds without seeing the table is one of the best ways I´ve found to avoid frustration.




Haha wp. Pretty sure it´s maybe something like 60% mental, and 40% leaks. Sundays have more aggressive villains, which leads to more variance. I´m running bad, so it creates frustration, that leads to more losses. Not dropping down atm, still have about 130 bis for 5nl. Would be way too nitty for my standards . And you´re right, it always turned to the right direction eventually. I should just keep working even harder on my technical game, and have the discipline to follow my mental game plan.




One final note here, my plan was to move up at the end of this month, but I don´t want to do it while on a downswing. I don´t need to make a new high obv, but at least I would like to be close to last high point before changing limits.

Cheers!

You're correct in that you should be focusing on making the right decisions, rather than focusing on the results of the hands. But, I think covering up the tables so that you don't see the results is not the right approach. It's very helpful to see what your opponents show up with in various situations. Especially during the heat of the moment when your brain processes small things like villain's time to act, etc. Builds up your intuitive senses. Or so I believe; guess I can't really say for sure. Anyway, that's my suggestion lol.

Yes, it´s important to be aware of what´s happening at the table, adjust villain´s range etc. And after 30 sec/1 min, depending on the villain, I look at the replayer. And there are the session review also, where I usually make most of my notes.

I think not tilting should bring a few bb/100 to my pathetic winrate, so it´s really important to have the discipline to follow this plan, since it really works (for me). Obv everyone´s brain is a little different, so what works for me won´t necessarily work for you or the other players.





I´m doing some adjustments to my game based on theorectical things that I´m learning, and I think they are working pretty well. Not drastic changes obv, as I really think adjustments should be made incrementally over many days to not overload ourselves too much, and to make sure that they are really being incorporated to our unconscious competence skills. Will post more details in the full update in the end of this month.

Cheers!

UPDATE 6

Well, almost succeded in not looking into my results until the end of this month. Nice surprise.



Also, got my first 1M hands this week. 1M hands at the nanostakes, 2nl to 10nl. Not a big accomplishment obv, it actually sounds pathetic, but hopefully the next 1 million will be better.

About the adjustments I made this week, they are nothing big or special. Just departed a little bit from the optimal style that I was trying to mimic from Snowie, and added a few exploits here and there vs opponents with obvious leaks. Just doing what I should have done from the start lol. I was already thinking about that, and watched a few very interesting videos, so decided to implement it finally. Can´t say for sure if they helped my results, but redline profile changed a little bit from negative to close to neutral. Which makes sense since a good portion of the pool are huge nits.

Another change (not strategic, but still important) was adding a little structure to the grind, not grinding too many hours in the same session. I don´t think it´s good for my game to play more than 2 hours without any rest. So, fixed this one also.

Finally, I´m doing the HH review before the first session of the day, instead of doing it in the end. I´m focused not only in identifying the mistakes, but especially in formulating game plans for the particular spot in order to avoid doing the same mistake again and/or to extract the optimal ammount of value if it was a winning hand.

Tomorrow will play the last session of the month, then take the sunday off (I won´t play on sundays anymore btw), and monday, if results are still really good, will start to take shots at 10nl again.

Think I´ll be visiting a nice park that we have here in my city (if the weather is nice) this sunday. It´s close to my apartment building, about 5 km, so walking distance (despite being uphill), smaller than the main park and with less vegetation, but offers the best viewpoint of the entire city, and even some neighboring ones. Here are some pictures that I took the last time I went there. If the trail linking both parks is open, maybe I can visit both (it traverses the main mountain range, so probably will offer nice views also).





Cheers!

UPDATE 7

So, month is over for me. Won´t play tomorrow, as I said yesterday.

Today:


Since the beginning of this thread:


The plan for next week is:

Keep doing what I´m doing, as it seems to be working. I know it might sound results orientated, since I´m on a nice upswing atm, but I´m doing session reviews, studying and thinking about poker, doing the mental things, and I´m clearly playing better. I didn´t even know I was winning so many buy ins before yesterday, so yes, what I´m doing right now works just fine.

Not look at my results until saturday. Even friday is unacceptable, it has to be saturday after playing my last session.

Move up to 10NL. Since I will not be looking at results, I think I should play on the safe side. I want to play around 500 hands of 10NL daily on the softest times, and 1000+ of 5NL. This way, even if I hit a wall again, I´m safe and won´t need to spend weeks rebuilding. If I win at least 6 buy-ins at 10NL, I will play longer sessions. If I´m back to even at this stake, I move up full.

I will not do anything related to poker tomorrow, not even think about this game, so good luck to everyone that will hit the tables this sunday. Hope everyone crush the games tomorrow.

Cheers!

UPDATE 8

Well, coudn´t stay away from checking results, so time for a midweek update.



Didn´t follow the plan to the letter either. Ended up playing on sunday (only nl2, so the damage woudn´t be too big in case of a bad run and/or sunday tilt. Played even more nl10 then I planned to do, and mixed one nl16 table when the games were drying up yesterday night. Just a couple hands, the game was even worse than nl10. Today games were better at prime time, but still, not unbelievably good.

Played a very long session today, as I was looking to see if this increased rakeback challenge was achievable for me. It´s not, I would need 166 points/day for the next 9 days and playing nl10, I get only about 30. Masstabling or moving up to nl25/nl50 obv out of question, so I already gave up on this one.

If stars will implement a more permanent form of (good) rakeback for people who play bigger volume and at higher stakes, then things might change, but actually I´d prefer a lower rake instead of better rb for obvious reasons (that is, obvious to me), even knowing this will never happen. High rake and high rakeback for those who play huge volume will most likely only destroy game quality, like during SN/SNE times. It´s my opinion btw, I don´t particularly like to play in games full of nitty rb grinders even at nanostakes, but feel free to disagree

So, back to my plans, will play nl5 during the early morning, and nl10 during peak (prime) time. This way, I´m guaranteed to have the most +EV tables when playing higher, and increase my chances of success in sticking to nl10. After getting back to even at nl10, I might even make those nl16 shots a regular thing, but obv only if I´m really sure I am +EV in the available tables (which, btw, are very few, ppl don´t seem to like this limit very much). Maybe rake is higher there than at nl10/nl25? Or maybe recs don´t know the limit exists?? Idk, but always very few fr tables running.

Finally, happy with the more exploitative lines I´m taking, they seem to work. Nothing too complex, just using the good and old common sense against the most obvious leaks there to increase my winrates the most I can, hoping to have a less pathetic wr one day. And still using snowie bot-like lines vs unknowns and those without obvious leaks (at least for me).

I will not give up on my goal of not looking into results looooool, so next update hopefully will be only this weekend, also as originally planned

Cheers!

Good to see at least you're doing well lol. And don't worry about checking results. I think it's quite impossible to avoid doing that hahaha. At least for me. And also don't worry about having played on Sunday. Better to turn things around on Sundays sooner rather than later. Maybe.

Best of luck! I'm also trying to grind my way out of 2nl!

Haha maybe you´re right and I´m spending too much energy and focus on this. Yeah, hopefully I´ll be able to crush sundays, let´s see