2019 - BALLZ TO THE WALL - Page 32 - Poker Blogs and Goals -- Two Plus Two Poker Forums

Games aren’t like they were before. If you shot take aggressively you will go broke. Play stakes you’re massively over rolled for. There’s no stress, there’s no emotional roller coasters. You play the same everyday up or down and it just becomes a matter of volume. You only move up when you’re over rolled for the next stake. Slow and steady wins with race.

Last edited by Maxeth; 10-12-2019 at 04:27 PM.

10-12-2019 , 05:51 PM

#777

Xenoblade

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Sep 2017 Posts: 4,085

no you wont go broke if you move down stakes when you experience negative variance while shot taking

that said what has helped me most to care less about variance is to have roughly 1 year worth of spending money in my bank account, this way online swongs become pretty much irrelevent and wont possibly affect my quality of life

10-13-2019 , 03:12 AM

#778

meale

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2013 Posts: 9,768

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Apex

Accidental bangings itt. Please don’t go.

DEFINITELY made a mistake with last night's banging...

There's like two more pages of that shite as well. Stay safe out there folks and don't drink too much!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maxeth

Games aren’t like they were before. If you shot take aggressively you will go broke.

How brain dead can you be? I literally just showed how you can't go broke by shotting aggressively. Did you not read anything?

Quote:

Play stakes you’re massively over rolled for. There’s no stress, there’s no emotional roller coasters. You play the same everyday up or down and it just becomes a matter of volume. You only move up when you’re over rolled for the next stake. Slow and steady wins with race.

This is horrible advice imo.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenoblade

I doubt most people could afford to do that but definitely having money in the bank makes things much much nicer. I guess having an extra 50k sitting in the bank is basically the same as having a portion of that in your bankroll, whether it physically is in the bank or bankroll, doesn't make a difference, just how you compartmentalise your finances mentally.

Mucking around with the variance calc also helps a lot for this variance indifference thing... If you know your rough winrate and how many hands an hour you can play, you can work out how long In terms of hours/days downswings will last, how big they'll be, and how much money in the bank you'll need for expenses that it becomes impossible to go broke.

10-13-2019 , 09:25 AM

#779

DonkeyFishFight

veteran

Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 3,061

Good last big post. (I don't regularly read any PGC but stumbled in here).

I would just add one thing to the database/graph discussion. As you say, it's good to keep your database if you need to demonstrate your results for future staking or coaching, yes. But it can also be useful if you move on from poker and need to take employment somewhere. Then your long term graph will likely be a significant part of your resume. Maybe not in every field, but on average I would certainly think so. Showing a steady climbing graph where you won $X is certainly more convincing and potentially impressive than just stating numbers and maybe not being able to back them up.

Best of luck going forward!

10-13-2019 , 10:59 AM

#780

meale

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2013 Posts: 9,768

Quote:

Originally Posted by DonkeyFishFight

Thanks!

I'm not sure employers necessarily care for winnings graphs or even realise poker is more than gambling/might not be fruitful explaining it to them in a job interview!

10-13-2019 , 11:04 AM

#781

isunkurbttlship

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 7,659

To be fair, a good way to show them that it is not just gambling would be to show a basically linear graph of millions of hands

10-13-2019 , 11:20 AM

#782

tgiggity

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Oct 2016 Posts: 5,782

Quote:

Originally Posted by isunkurbttlship

To be fair, a good way to show them that it is not just gambling would be to show a basically linear graph of millions of hands

I feel like most employers wouldn't have any idea how to interpret the graph. Even if you successfully explained the basics to them they probably wouldn't take you at your word that the graph is not manipulated in some way

It's kinda like if you showed a bunch of scorecards recording consistent under-par performances on PGA courses to prove you're a PGA-level golfer - sure you might be, or you might have just written some numbers on a piece of paper to look good.

10-13-2019 , 03:07 PM

#783

Parsons Grinder

veteran

Join Date: Aug 2014 Posts: 2,372

A friend of mine got a job in FX trading and said that a big part of his success in the interview was talking about poker.

10-13-2019 , 03:11 PM

#784

Xenoblade

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Sep 2017 Posts: 4,085

I can see how it would help for an FX trading job, but I can't think of many other positions where poker would prove useful in an interview

10-13-2019 , 03:22 PM

#785

PlasticElephant

Coach NLHE

Join Date: Jan 2013 Posts: 2,305

I got a decent consulting job with just poker and a degree on my resume. Made a 10 page pdf explaining, PIO analysis etc, along with graph of results.

Also on the previous topic I kind of believe that pokerdope is flawed fwiw.

10-13-2019 , 03:31 PM

#786

Xenoblade

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Sep 2017 Posts: 4,085

flawed in what way, the variance calculator u mean?

10-13-2019 , 04:07 PM

#787

doctor877

veteran

Join Date: May 2014 Posts: 3,062

Quote:

Originally Posted by PlasticElephant

Also on the previous topic I kind of believe that pokerdope is flawed fwiw.

How?

Also to OP, only considering the money you have on pokersites as your bankroll instead of your liquid networth seems not the smartest idea.

10-13-2019 , 05:12 PM

#788

Maxeth

banned

Join Date: Sep 2019 Posts: 135

Quote:

Originally Posted by meale

DEFINITELY made a mistake with last night's banging...

There's like two more pages of that shite as well. Stay safe out there folks and don't drink too much!

How brain dead can you be? I literally just showed how you can't go broke by shotting aggressively. Did you not read anything?

This is horrible advice imo.

I doubt most people could afford to do that but definitely having money in the bank makes things much much nicer. I guess having an extra 50k sitting in the bank is basically the same as having a portion of that in your bankroll, whether it physically is in the bank or bankroll, doesn't make a difference, just how you compartmentalise your finances mentally.

Mucking around with the variance calc also helps a lot for this variance indifference thing... If you know your rough winrate and how many hands an hour you can play, you can work out how long In terms of hours/days downswings will last, how big they'll be, and how much money in the bank you'll need for expenses that it becomes impossible to go broke.

The variance calculators and your post (that I read fyi) are missing pretty important inputs. It’s extremely difficult to play a 10bb/100 game when that person is on a 30BI downswing and 60BI below EV. We’re not robots, very few of us are capable to not care about results particularly when money is involved.

10-13-2019 , 06:34 PM

#789

meale

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2013 Posts: 9,768

Quote:

Originally Posted by doctor877

How?

Also to OP, only considering the money you have on pokersites as your bankroll instead of your liquid networth seems not the smartest idea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maxeth

My whole premise is that you play the 10bb/100 game always, I don't think if you're 4 tabling with intense focus maintaining your A-game while getting shafted is that difficult.

Regardless, if you're not playing at 10bb/100 due to variance, then just adjust the inputted winrate so it's lower to reflect what you believe it to be. 10bb/100 was the winrate I picked - which includes when you're running at -10bb/100 and at 50bb/100.

10-13-2019 , 11:37 PM

#790

Xenoblade

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Sep 2017 Posts: 4,085

I think you may be overestimating your winrate a little bit but time will tell

10-14-2019 , 02:30 AM

#791

92781243T

journeyman

Join Date: Oct 2019 Posts: 243

buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurn

10-14-2019 , 11:10 AM

#792

Maxeth

banned

Join Date: Sep 2019 Posts: 135

Quote:

Originally Posted by meale

I'm not only considering this, the post was just about the management of the pokersite bankroll and indifference to variance. I did also write a bit about how we need to withdraw from the bankroll. I'm not quite sure what point you're making, elaborate?

My whole premise is that you play the 10bb/100 game always, I don't think if you're 4 tabling with intense focus maintaining your A-game while getting shafted is that difficult.

Regardless, if you're not playing at 10bb/100 due to variance, then just adjust the inputted winrate so it's lower to reflect what you believe it to be. 10bb/100 was the winrate I picked - which includes when you're running at -10bb/100 and at 50bb/100.

You remind me of brokenstars

10-14-2019 , 04:29 PM

#793

Giovanni Dcs

journeyman

Join Date: Dec 2018 Posts: 373

Quote:

Originally Posted by meale

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!

Hey, mate.

That's gold. A lot of good information to digest here. Thank you for that.

I have to say it's a little sad to see your choice to slow down updates and your presence here, though. But I understand and respect your reasoning behind this choice, of course.

Just keep in mind that sincere reports of winning and cool players like you, even here in a forum as inactive as 2+2, are very important in keeping the spirits of players that are still trying to find a place in the sun. Poker is a tough game to understand, and it is very inspiring (to those players that are doing their best to get better) to see people who can do so well at this complex game.

Well, if you change your mind, we'll be very happy, hehehehe. :- )

Best regards, mate. GL!

10-14-2019 , 07:25 PM

#794

meale

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2013 Posts: 9,768

Quote:

Originally Posted by Giovanni Dcs

Thanks mate, will probably do an EOY update or something and I'll still be round. Cheers for the kind words.

10-15-2019 , 09:06 AM

#795

92781243T

journeyman

Join Date: Oct 2019 Posts: 243

Please do an EOY update at the end of each month

vgg results and progression

10-16-2019 , 01:50 AM

#796

Parsons Grinder

veteran

Join Date: Aug 2014 Posts: 2,372

Yeah, don't think of it as building your own ego etc, you've got us all hooked, you can't turn off the supply!

10-21-2019 , 10:27 AM

#797

Giovanni Dcs

journeyman

Join Date: Dec 2018 Posts: 373

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parsons Grinder

Yeah, don't think of it as building your own ego etc, you've got us all hooked, you can't turn off the supply!

I agree, you can't just do that! You have to be emotionally mature about our relationship now! Hehehehe.

11-15-2019 , 11:26 AM

#798

meale

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2013 Posts: 9,768

As usual, back at it with an end of year prop bet, this one looking pretty exciting! Follow the official PGC here if you're interested

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1.../#post55600377

11-20-2019 , 02:16 PM

#799

Giovanni Dcs

journeyman

Join Date: Dec 2018 Posts: 373

Quote:

Originally Posted by meale

As usual, back at it with an end of year prop bet, this one looking pretty exciting! Follow the official PGC here if you're interested

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1.../#post55600377

GL! I'm sure you can do it. It's funny how people really think that nl50z is unbeatable with 10bb/100 or more, even if it's played by a very good player.

Did you see that mynameiskarl was kind of interested in that as well?

In my microstakes world, there's also a guy who think it's impossible to have more than 10bb/100 @ znl5. I'm doing my part too in order to show this isn't true hehehehe.

GL!

Last edited by Giovanni Dcs; 11-20-2019 at 02:23 PM.