Backhanded compliments are the best

Well, I was wrong Great development in the thread from super degen life to full time crusher, really inspiring!

But we would still like a once a month degen/hooker/crystal story

Pretty good results for someone who had never beaten higher than 10nl online previously.

NO sober coach does not like this hand for several reasons sorry Meale


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Can't be that bad! Guy folded trips AND a straight!

thanks for that.

Thank you mate, this was brilliant.

Hello, my friend.

That's a incredible thread. Your work is amazing! Congratulations, mate.

Thank you, my friend.

I like this

I like you.

All good things must come to an end - why I'm ending this blog and a few thoughts on mental game stuff I've been dealing with...

On Monthly PGC Updates

If I'm being completely honest with myself, having a PGC pretty actively for the past 5 years has been about seeking the approval and validation of other people, which I'm realising now does nothing useful for me and is actually somewhat of a mental game leak for me. Back when I was playing micros, it was never about proving to myself that I could move up stakes, but it was about proving this to others. And now that I've come a fair way since those days, I still see this whole endeavour as a means to somehow 'earn respect within the poker community' I guess you could put it; which, when I say it out loud, is super ******ed because 2+2 nowadays is like the ******ed down syndrome cousin of the poker community at large.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that in my opinion, posting a winnings graph at the end of each month is somewhat of a toxic behaviour. If I have a really good month, I post the graph pleased that I'm somehow bolstering my image within the community as a good poker player. Everyone wants to be seen as a good poker player. If I posted a losing graph at the end of this month, I would somehow feel as though my image takes a beating somewhat. Now obviously this is very immature thinking and it's silly really, but I feel as though this is the paradigm that's operating on a subconscious level at the moment whether I want to admit it or not.

This is especially magnified at the moment since I've moved from 200nl to 1knl within a couple months, and at this point in time it's as though I have a chip on my shoulder to prove to people that I'm not just a fish on a heater and that I actually belong at this level.

On Graphs & Winrates

Right now I see databases as a somehow sacred asset; with every hundred thousand hands you collect, your sample becomes more meaningful and your winrate more indicative of the truth. If you can post a 1 million hand graph at 500nl+ with a winrate of 5bb/100 or higher, this graph seems like a golden ticket to earning the respect of the poker community. A guy could register on 2+2 today and with zero posts could throw down a graph like this and immediately become seen as an authority within this industry.

A great example of this is ishter with his big sample and big winrate. If you're someone who has a sample like this, you could immediately begin charging hundreds of dollars an hour for coaching, I imagine you'd have people lining up to learn from you, and securing a staking deal if necessary would be extremely easy.

But the reality is that the only good thing about possessing a graph like this is if you're interested in coaching others or seeking a staking arrangement. That's literally it. You need this information to prove that you're an authority if you want to coach others or if you decided you wanted to shot a big live game or something and wanted backing.

So I'll admit keeping your hands backed up and safe is good, for one reason, and that's if one day you want to pursue either of those avenues. BUT for the large majority of us, we're not looking to coach and we've no need for a staking arrangement, and yet we're so very attached to these graphs. For me, and maybe for you too, when I share a graph, it's the same as before, it's about me seeking the approval of my peers. It's as though I've got something to prove. Which I really resent about myself.

I would really love to get to a point where I could delete all of my hands regularly. I think it would be liberating to delete my database today and with it lose all of my lifetime winnings information, lose all of my sweet graphs, lose my winrate, and just not care about any of this. Because at the end of the day, having any of this doesn't influence whether you're playing good poker and improving. What people think of you doesn't have any baring on whether you're playing good poker and improving. And to me the only thing that should be considered sacred is that you're playing good poker and improving.

On The Swings & Importance of Fluidity in BRM

I think enlightenment in terms of mental game is being able to play without a care in the world for the dollar amounts. If you can play a session, lose $2k, feel EXACTLY the same as you would if you won $2k. Maybe this is an impossible ideal but it's something I think if we aspire to, and the closer to it we get, the happier we'll be as players.

So if I asked how you'd go about becoming perfectly indifferent to the variance, how would we go about achieving this? The first thing I'd do is revisit my approach to bankroll management. I think BRM should be pretty intricate and if executed really well will go a long way to getting us to that nirvana point of indifference to variance.

The easy way to do it would be to just have a pretty nitty bankroll management approach, and then you can be pretty indifferent to swings knowing you have 40+ buyins for the limit or whatever. But for a professional I think this is a truly horrendous way to approach BRM. You want to be playing as high as possible (assuming your hourly at the stake above is higher than at the current one) but you also need to be responsible and not allow yourself to go broke. In addition to this you have to be able to withdraw money from your bankroll for living expenses from time to time. This is a lot to balance and I don't believe you can simply say "30 buyins for the limit, 5 BI shot allowance blah blah" like you used to see back in the old PGCs of guys trying to move up from 2NL through the ranks.

Here's my approach and why I think it's a really powerful framework. The key to this system is that you have to be willing to FREQUENTLY change stakes.

Right now I'm playing 500nl and 1knl primarily. Here's how I'd approach bankroll management:

At the $40k mark you're in $2kNL shottake mode. This means you get 3 buyins to "shot" 2knl. This doesn't mean you play 2knl exclusively because maybe you can't always get decent 2k tables up, but it basically means that the highest stake you can play is 2knl, and of course you can play lower still. Obviously just looking for wherever the decent games are. So once you have 40k, you're playing anything up to 2knl, obviously prioritizing 2knl games. When the bankroll gets to 50k that's the limit I'd keep on the site and anything above that you withdraw to your bank account immediately. This only applies to ignition/bodog since 2knl is the highest stake on the site, if you play on stars maybe you want to keep more money on there if you want to play higher stakes - and also you can feel a lot better about having >50k on stars compared to bodog from a security/safety point of view.

Anyway, so any winnings over 50k withdraw immediately. But where this gets complex is when you lose a bit. I said at 40k we're taking a 3 BI shot at 2k, which means when the BR hits 34k, you're no longer allowed to play 2knl and the highest stake you can play is 1knl. Again, you can always play lower but now the ceiling is 1k. This is also where we withdraw some money to the bank account. Depending on how much money you need is how much you withdraw here, but the minimum you withdraw is 2k and the maximum you withdraw is 4k. I like the idea of withdrawing money from the bankroll when you move down stakes because psychologically, even though you're losing, you get that feeling of security you receive when you receive money to your bank account. But also if you're on a really nasty downswing and losing lots of buyins, it's nice to save some of this $ from the incinerator of variance and yeah actually getting some money into the bank when losing lots is a nice feeling. If you're winning, you don't want to withdraw money because you want to move up stakes as aggressively as possible. And you still have access to the money if you need it for whatever reason/emergency. Right so say our 3BI 2knl shot fails, we're back to 34k and we withdraw 2k, leaving us with 32k to play 1knl with. I'd then play 1knl as primary stake down to 24k, if we hit that mark, again we do the 2-4k withdrawal, and our new ceiling limit is 500nl. So we're now at 22k, and we play that down to 10k. If we hit 10k we have a mandatory withdrawal of 2k, but no more than that, so we're left with an 8k bankroll which is 40 buyins for 200nl. If you somehow lose 40 buyins at 200nl then I simply cannot help you. Anyway, imagine we're now back at 200nl with an 8k bankroll, and we're on the regrind. We start adding 500nl back in once the BR hits 12k, we have a "4BI shot" which means if we get back to 10k, we withdraw 2k again and move back to 200nl. Now you're allowed to cheat here a bit. If you have plenty of money in the bank and withdrawing 2k from your bankroll isn't going to make any difference on how you feel about your overall finances, don't withdraw the 2k obviously, and instead you now have an 8BI 500nl shot. Again, moving back down to 200nl if BR hits 8k. Let's assume things go well, and we run the 12k up to 26k playing 500nl at which point we've got a 2BI shot at 1knl. Again we want to be using very frequent shots at higher games so that we can make the most money. If at 26k bankroll we lose 2k, we have to assess whether we're under financial pressure or not, if we feel as though having 2k in the bank to help with expenses would be at all beneficial, we withdraw the 2k, leaving us with 22k... If not, our 2BI shot becomes a 4BI shot. If we withdraw, we simply rinse and repeat, once we hit 26k we move up to 1knl and shot again. Once it hits 40k we shot 2knl and once we hit 50k, we're in auto withdraw mode.

So in short the minimum $ in bankroll you need for any given stake to be the highest game you play is as follows,

2knl = 40k
1knl = 26k
500nl = 12k
200nl = 8k

The reason I think this approach is really powerful in our endeavour to become completely indifferent to the swings of variance is that we can never go broke. If we start with 40k, we'd need to lose 97 buyins straight to bust this bankroll AND over the course of doing that we'd have at least withdrawn $6k for for expenses. If you're a professional poker player who takes the game seriously and works hard on improving constantly, as far as I'm concerned it's literally impossible to lose 97 buyins straight. You just need to be willing to take a slice of humble pie from time to time and be happy playing 200nl just the same as playing 2knl. For some people, playing 200nl after having played 2knl might be really tough but I think being able to move up and down through stakes aggressively and play your A-game regardless of what game you're playing is a truly invaluable skill to have. All you have to do is remember that even if you're playing 200nl exclusively, you're still making very good money per hour and you're comfortably earning more than your weekly expenses, again making it pretty impossible to go broke.

I think one of the big hurdles to becoming perfectly indifferent to the money is that in the back of our minds, we know that there's always a tiiiiiiny chance we could go busto gambling for a living. But when you have a bankroll management approach like this that does the following three things,
A) allows you to shot high stakes aggressively to maximise earnings
B) withdraw regularly to pay for living expenses
C) prevents you from going broke,
then it shouldn't matter what stakes you're playing, how big the pot you just won or lost is, because you know that your framework is super solid and that you're going to be fine no matter what.

I think our best chance of becoming perfectly indifferent is doing as much as possible to quash that ever so slight existential fear that gambling for a living could result in us going broke. What other things can we do to remove any shred of doubt that things go horribly wrong if the worst case scenario happened? Well we already know we have a super bullet proof BRM strategy and that our hourly, regardless of what stakes we're playing will be such that we can comfortably pay the bills, but I think the final thing to help us become perfectly at peace with this career is to know that we're working harder on improving than the average reg at our level.

If you're not working on your game, everyone knows you fall behind and eventually, if you never worked on your game, you would become a losing player and you would go broke. So the obvious solution is to place priority on working hard to improve, and doing so at a rate that is greater than the mean. For me personally, I'm confident that what I'm doing to improve at poker (studying every single day and doing weekly coaching sessions) is definitely a lot more than what the average reg is doing. The result is that I'm getting better faster than everyone else which leads to a higher winrate and more winnings/security as a result. If you're not doing much to improve at poker and are just playing, then you are falling behind and this causes doubt.

The End & my mission to become indifferent to variance

It's been somewhat of an obsession lately for me, this notion of becoming perfectly indifferent to the dollar values of pots, sessions, months, etc. I don't know that I'll ever get there, but I'd like to work towards that ideal. And I know that having a PGC and being results oriented once a month when I post graphs is certainly moving in the opposite direction. So I will be discontinuing updating this thread from today onwards. I'll still be on 2+2 a bunch and following other PGCs, but I won't have one of my own. Perhaps I'll update this once again at the end of the year to conclude things and square everything off.

What would be cool and productive though is if any of you have anything to add or ideas to share regarding becoming perfectly indifferent to the money/variance of poker. As I've said, I believe it all comes down to knowing on an existential level that when you've just lost 10 buyins in a few hours, that whatever happens, whether you lose another 10 buyins or not, you will not go broke, you will not become homeless, and that you'll always be able to support yourself as someone who plays this game for a living. Below are the different pillars I feel constitute this deep feeling of security we need to accomplish this goal.

Bankroll Management
Forward Trajectory
Volume

If you perform adequately in these three areas, I truly believe it's possible to become perfectly indifferent to variance. I've already discussed the importance of having a nuanced bankroll management approach as well as the 'forward trajectory' notion which is that of us needing to constantly be improving and improving at a rate that is greater than the average reg. If you can do those two things, then the only other thing you need is volume. if you play 1 hour of poker a month, you WILL eventually go broke, regardless of what your hourly is. Really the volume part is almost negligible as for most people, the bare minimum isn't a lot.

Imagine you have $1k a week in expenses. So you need to earn let's say $1.2k a week minimum to feel as though you're at least not moving backwards... all you have to do is calculate the volume required based on your hourly. If your hourly playing 500nl+ is $100/hour, you only need to put in 12 hours at a minimum. Which isn't a lot. But if you happen to be playing 200nl primarily, volume actually becomes the bottleneck because you probably have to play closer to 25 hours a week minimum to satisfy this area. Which still isn't a lot, but it just means you can't slack off like crazy.

Anyways, I realise this has been a long and bizarre and tangential post. Kudos if you read it all and I'd appreciate any thoughts on variance indifference if you'd like to chime in!

I'll add a 4th pillar actually,

Focus/Quality of Play

It is possible to go broke if you're playing your Z game constantly, making tons of horrendous mistakes, and tilting and punting off stacks. So if we place a priority on playing A-game and A-game exclusively, then we can avoid this pitfall.

These are the things I do to make sure I'm playing my highest quality poker every time I play a session,
- never play longer than 2.5 hours straight. Studies have shown you cannot focus with maximum intensity on a task for more than 90 minutes, so if you're grinding for 4 hours straight you're not going to be playing your best at the end of that session.
- don't have anything open to distract you while playing. No Facebook, no 2+2, I don't even allow myself to listen to lectures or podcasts while playing because I notice when there is words to focus on, I am distracted. So I only allow myself to listen to music while playing and that's it.
- 4 tables max. This will vary a bit from person to person but for me I cannot focus maximally on more than 4 tables and so that's the most I'll play at once. I believe most cash players play at least 1-3 tables too many.

If you do these few things, your focus on every spot is as high as it could possibly be, and you'll almost certainly be playing your A-game constsantly. Yes you'll still make mistakes, but you'll make a lot less than someone 8 tabling while watching NBA highlights on YouTube. Gtd.

^^ This is good stuff, and all the better because I know a fair bit of the journey that got you to this point, so I can give it a context. Should I ever go back to cash (and play live) both of which might happen in 2020, I'm going to give this post a good deal of thought.

GL OMD (AKA FB54)

PS I agree and recognise what you say about PGC, but there are some upsides (eg quality feedback/critique when it happens).

I agree with the sentiment, but I'd be a bit more realistic WR to variance. I think I have somewhere 5-6evbb this year and lost 40 bis at 200nl at one stage, a fair bit below EV but not out of the realms of possibility for sure.

+1. moved back to stars and for zoom tables only, in 70k hands:

30bi+ at 25nl
30bi- at 50nl
25bi+ at 100nl.

I imagine a lot of regs are going on 40bi downers at 200nl.

Damn meale, now that's a great post! It's obvious your'e on a good path with this stuff. Now it's mostly just about showing up consistently and executing (especially during the inevitable future tough times). I completely agree with your overall sentiment. It's not often I see something all layed out like that which resonates with me so much.

I do actually think the optimal bankroll and shot taking stuff is even more nuanced than you put it. The main factors being: goals and values, current lifestyle/expenses/responsibility/stage in life, and self awareness of your personal mental game/mindset toughness. The last being the most important, because this stuff can compound and have a massive effect for years.

Btw, I've always loved music and lyrics too much to listen to normal songs during grinding. Always stuck to music with no lyrics. But recently have cut music out completely for over a month. I'd suggest experimenting and really paying attention to your performance with vs without music. Pretty confident with enough sample size anyone would realize any music hurts their overall win rate.

Wish I had more time to go in to all the other stuff you talked about, but I don't. But had to chime in and say that really was a great post man. Peace.

Great post man, solid advice

GG meale, good bye my friend.

If you are ever fiending for toxicity just head over to my thread. cheers pal.

damn man could you at least post your thai chick stories once in a while

The AA hand is a weird spot in part because we don’t have that many hands that will take this line that also don’t have a trivial river decision facing a raise. We shouldn’t have too many flop checks here to begin with. How many hands do we have that take this line? I wouldn’t put A9 in a check call range, AQ is going to check river, hands like ATdd and QQ have an easy decision against the raise, so we are basically down to AA/AK and maybe just AK with a diamond depending on how wide you peel flop here. I’m not sure which hand makes for a better call between the two.

Unless you have any exploits on the population here I guess just flip a coin and call if it lands on heads.

I also need to figure out how to become more immune to variance. The most useful thing I’ve done so far is to ask myself why the negative variance bothers me and explore the reasons for it and address those reasons.

Meale, I've really enjoyed this thread (and last year's) ... both the poker content and the life degenning.

Best of luck to you in poker and life!

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

It's been great following, don't disappear completely though, maybe the occasional non-poker story to let us know you're still alive!

Oh hey man, had no idea you were FB! Yeah you're 100% right, there's definitely a positive side to having a PGC but just feel as though it's getting smaller and smaller lately. Glad to see one of the OGs is still around!

Oh yeah it's definitely possible, especially if you're playing in tougher games. The below is for a 10bb winrate which is what I used as a baseline for the 40BI for 200nl reg tables on bovada.



Less than 1% ROR, but of course if people are planning on implementing something similar they absolutely have to adjust based on winrate/site/etc. I also don't play Zoom which makes a pretty big difference.

Yeah definitely for the Stars guys esp the ones playing Zoom.

Appreciate it man. There is a lot to think about wrt being a professional poker player in general indeed. I'm basing a lot of this off of what Nick Howard/Berkey said when they were talking about variance, it coming down to an existential dread of knowing that there's always a chance of going busto. And I'm trying to remove any ounce of this latent fear with this system.

What you say about music I think is definitely correct too. I tried it the other day actually, just no music whatsoever. I didn't really notice any improvement though. I think that having some sort of white noise might actually be beneficial but then there's a bell curve. Who knows.

<3

I'LL BE SURE TO DO THAT <3

Absolutely. I have no reservations about doing that but admittedly lately there's not been much noteworthy going on on that front. I did accidentally bang the most washed up hooker you could have ever imagined the other night, which I'm not proud of. Dire straits out here.

The AA hand is a classic example of what I mean when I say, in spots a lot of thoughts will race to the forefront of our mind and try buy our attention. There's two main thoughts here that you need to be able to prioritise and they are, "he basically doesn't rep anything, so call" and "he literally can never bluff here when we have all the strong hands, so fold". I discussed this with my coach and he said in this spot and in pretty much all spots we should default to prioritising the latter. People at this level also realise that when they xb the turn they can't rep anything and aren't ******ed enough to randomly start bluffing in light of that. They also xb nutted hands a lot OTT I've noticed.

<3 it's been good having you on board mate!!!

<3 I'll pop in occasionally. Maybe tonight I'll do up a write up about my first acid trip in Pattaya!

Accidental bangings itt. Please don’t go.