Hi two plus two and internet:

I’ll be quick with the boring backstory: grew up on 2p2, reached adolescence playing single table tournaments, lost virginity to cash games, and got a divorce on Black Friday. I was already cheating on poker with grad school, so Black Friday divorce wasn’t life altering but I still felt it. Since then I’ve been grinding the 9-5, and trying to chase the poker dragon dream on the weekends.

Dreams, Goals, Aspirations:

• Now: sharpen my poker stick, review more HH’s with other people, learn PIO
• Now: mentally focus on what’s going right, exercise more, be healthier in general, no tilting
• Now/medium term: FIX MY ****ING REDLINE (WARNING: see below)
• Medium/long term: study more MMA, handicapping/sports betting in general, and the maths behind it
• Medium/long term: $50k in profit at $2/5 no limit hold them 6max, internet version.
• If I survive $50k at 2/5, take shots at $5/10, where they really respect my raises.
• Long term: take a month off 9-5 life and play the main event 2019 + lots of WSOP grind

Almost half way to $50k:


gla

hey looks good so far gl on your goals!

hand 1

Jumped into the MTT streets this past Sunday but couldn't get anything going. in this spot feel like I don't have as much FE as I'd like but I can't think of another way to play it, other than folding pre which i'm not good enough to pass 5-1 :O


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hand 2
villain is playing pretty passive pre flop, but generally has been cbetting with high frequency on lots of board types over this sample. I'm experimenting with defending the BB wider against <3x raises. To make that profitable, part of what I need to do is attack more spots post flop.

i think in a vacuum i'd just call here, and not plan to to C/R many non spade turns, unless i had a really strong read. i think i can probably widen my turn CR range, but also havent been C/R'ing flop that often.

anywho, seems fine to c/r 2 overs + FD. i was a bit lost what to do on the river.



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hand 3
small sample on villain but he's been reallly passive preflop. i dont remember how he got his stack or much about his postflop game. takeaway here is (i think) I missed my 3rd barrel. pretty good texture for one, he'll fold all his A+pair and 3x hands, and SOME of the time fold some K/x. maybe not fold better than KT, but he might make a hero fold with KQ.


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hand 4
in the last couple of years i started C/R'ing the river with higher frequency, in general it's a really underbluffed spot. I think this is a good spot to do it. it makes make him fold all of his thin value that we're behind like weak J/X and 8/X and 77-TT . 6x and a heart is definitely a large part of his range, but I don't think he value bets 6x that size on the river. he also never has 88/JJ+ here so i guess the term for that is 'capped'


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hand 5
speaking of spots to river check raise...just kidding i don't think this is a good one. i haven't had much success with river c/r on paired boards. i was kind of tilting this session, and wanted to fold the turn but rage made myself call down. because sometimes we're good here..sike. this is spew

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hand 6

this is another spot i to feel lost on, but that might just be in my head. against many opponents this is a clear fold. but when everything is anonymous i tend to rely heavily on what few numbers i have and/or what i've been able to observe. this villain was particularly loose (32/21/ vpr/pfr) but small sample.

my thought for calling the turn is just to let him keep bluffing. river i dont think 8x is really CR'ing the turn , so he's repping a few boats (which are hard to make if you weren't aware) and JJ+. we can probably discount JJ+ a little bit because of pre flop.



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hand 7

this hand is actuallly pretty interesting to me as i was thinking about how my approach to cbetting has evolved since i started pokers. early on i was happy to cbet 100% of my range, but slowly (very slowly) learned to think more deeply about what i was trying to accomplish with a cbet and how it relates to turn and river play. also, it's not so bad to check/fold the flop. given that last statement, we should probably be protecting our check/fold flop range against some villains.

i had a little bit of history with this guy where he had 3bet me a few times pre, so i can discount TT+ some. i had won a few pots off of him but can't remember specifics. but i thought he was reggish and might be going ham against a missed cbet from me. i was happy to calldown here.


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hand 8

from what i can remember this villlain was pretty sticky-tricky post flop. i remember going into the river thinking i was putting myself in a really ****ty spot with my bet/check/bet range. it's easy when i just missed a CR on the turn with a monster, but monsters are hard to come by. i don't think this is a great board to double barrel turn on, as any 5x is going to call, Ax is going to justify a call, and no pair is ever going to fold.

my river bet is might actually be more thin than it looks at first glance. it's a great spot for villain to raise because unless i was going to CR the turn, i've got at best 2 pair here, and villain has almost uncapped and endless nut hands.

I’ve been playing poker for around 12 years. For the first 8-10 years of my poker “career” I was a complete and total slave to tilt. I understood the game, the strategy, leveling, game theory and reading people quite well, but when it came to tilt, I remained completely unaware and at its mercy. For the first 5-6 years I wasn’t capable of identifying tilt in myself. Not able to identify it, it was basically impossible for me to beat it long term.

Tilt has undoubtedly persisted throughout 100% of my career on the virtual felt. And only recently have I begun to try and address it there. Looking back at the pre-Black Friday days, If I was beating a given game for 4ptbbs after tilt, I think I would have been beating that game for 16bbs without tilting. I’m convinced I’m only a little bit exaggerating there.

Years later, when I started playing live, I was much more in tune with myself and with tilt. Being away from poker really allowed me to reflect on myself and what I would have wanted to do differently with regards to well everything, but especially poker. I was more aware of my emotions, what each one felt like before, during, and after its peak. This was absolutely the first step for me to try and combat it.


One thing I tried experimenting with in live poker was a stop loss of 3 buyins. Every day I would have in cash 3x buyins for my standard game, and leave when that was depleted. The same went for having a tilty mindset. Since I could identify it, I began to try and work myself out of it before it began. I held myself to these rules for 95% of the sessions in that period of live poker, and really saw the results.

Since I started playing online again, I’ve tried to follow a similar strategy: 3 buyin stop loss, play for at least 1 hour of distraction-less poker (no phone, no web browsing, no messenger etc.), completely focused on the task at hand. This is really hard to do, especially since the phone has become so pervasive in life. I probably spend an hour or two on it throughout a given day (LEAK). Tilt-wise I’ve worked my way up to an hour of consistent tilt-less, objective mindset poker. So the last couple of sessions I’ve been trying to play for 2 hours. Well it’s like starting over from scratch. I forgot how painful poker can be when it lasts for 2 hours.


Here’s the last session in all it’s glory:




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hand9

This hand was towards the end of my session, and I could definitely feel the tilt. In general I saw a lot of weirdness from a few villains who had taggish stats. This was one of them.

Pre flop I really like a 3bet more than a call in a vacuum. However there was a big fish in the BB, and in general I think it’s always a good thing to play more hands with a fish. I don’t know if this is the right hand to be doing this with, since we end up bluffing with some to decent equity a lot more than we are value betting, against an opponent who’s likely calling down light.

Flop when it checks to me is a clear bet. We’ve got a ton of equity against two checks. Facing a c/r against a taggish villain who’s been mostly aggressive so far left me a little clueless. His sizing was kind of odd as well, giving me almost 3-1. At the time, the extent of my thinking was “**** him, and **** it, how bad can getting it in here be.?” LEAK and then to give myself the best chance at keeping his monkey bluffs in, let’s induce a shove with a tiny 3bet.

In hindsight I should probably be the one trying to get the other to fold, and not going for a value call with a pair + draw.



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hand 10

This was my second hand at the table. Pre I think is pretty standard. Flop and turn I think are also pretty standard. I think there’s a lot to say about bet sizing but I’m going to ignore it for now.

The river, however, should have given me some pause. It seems like a value bet most of the time, but because we’re readless, and literally everything got there except most K/x, which we block 2x, folding looks pretty attractive. In hindsight this seems like a great spot to consider check folding. I doubt we’re getting exploited here that often at this level (or maybe I’m not calling enough) idk. Shoving seems like it might be fine. I don’t hate it, but I’m not in love with it.



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hand 11

Here’s another one with some weirdness. I had been playing maybe 20-30 hands with this guy. He was playing tight aggro, on the tighter side. Nothing remarkable had transpired in that time, other than him 3betting other people a few times.

Pre and flop up to the c/r are completely standard. Against a C/R I don’t really have a clue what villain is doing this with. It’s hard for me to construct a range where I don’t end up saying well it looks like there’s a big % that’s just ????. Maybe one of the online instructional sites released a video on why C/R flop is a good thing to do. Whenever I’m confused I just end up pressing the call button. The flop is so dry and we’re BvB, I’m tempted to say calling the C/R is also 100% standard.

I don’t think there are too many turns i’m going to fold. Depending on my mood I might let it go on an A turn facing a big bet. But probably not. I was planning on folding the river but villain just couldn’t find the 3rd barrel. Villain may have been going for the good ole T A R P.



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hand 12

I remember this being another spot where tilt factored into my final decision. Villain was playing pretty ABC poker. They’re rarely bluffing this board. And, while my hand is technically better on the river than it was on the flop, I’m still smoked by his bet/bet/bet range.




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hand 13

RANT TIME I guess this is just the state of online poker today, but holy **** are there a lot of people that are scared of heads up poker. Like holy ****, words like coward and yellow bellied scoundrel come to mind. So many grimstarrs and what not out there. If sites somehow rewarded people who were willing to play short handed to start tables, I really think we’d see an end to this spineless behavior.

Anywho, the villain in this hand was one of the 10% of people who were willing to play heads up, so hats off to you mr/ms villain.

Thus far villain had been playing almost 100% of hands and was playing extremely sticky, calling almost all of my 3bets this session. They were definitely thinking about what they were doing, at least somewhat, as they didn’t seem like complete spew tards. They had been playing fairly weak/tight post flop when it came to me cbetting in 3bet pots.

Pre and flop seem completely standard on this board texture. There’s some argument to be made for check calling or even raising on flop, but I wanted to balance all of the times i had been bluffing this session against this villain.

The turn is obv not a great card for us, and is one that my perceived range is slowing down on. That said, because of his huge range pre flop, the turn is almost a good card for us. I wanted to give him a chance to bluff, as i had check/folded turn in 3bet pot at least once so far, and it makes any river pretty easy to play.

Only a couple hands got there on the river, and my line looks really weak. I think bet/check/check line against a villain you expect to bluff often is pretty good. However, and I don’t think I was thinking about this at the time, we have the Ah which is a lot of his bluff range. There’s a good argument for a bet on this river because of that. I like my line in this hand, but what I’m taking away is that I shouldn’t be taking this line when I have the Ah.




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RECAP.

this session there was a lot of phone and internet browsing. that's a huge leak and immediately drops me down to my "B at best but mostly C game". I won't make 50k anytime soon with that kind of behavior. Fortunately I get another chance to try again at focused distraction-less poker!

Lol just saw this. Thanks man. Still a long way to go but definitely got a good start. Hopefully not just running hot (probably am a little)

Gl OP

United Aerospace Corporation?

Ty sir or madam.

Over the past month I've been reading through DGAF's 2k- a poker story (wtmfl;dr obv). If you haven't read it get started because you're missing out. It's one of the great poker/gambling/life threads on the internet. One central theme in that thread (at least as far as I have read) is variance. DGAF mentions the abyss and how if you play long enough you'll run worse than you ever thought possible.



It will make you think down is up, green is red, and that AK is a fold UTG. You'll become infatuated with variance. You'll obsesses over how "bad" or "good" you're running over a given time period and turn you into a lesser FGATORS26. This is totally natural, and very human.

Our little lizard monkey brains have a limited capacity to process information. Not to mention we weren't programmed to comprehend the amount of variance we're exposed to gambling and playing poker. It's hard for us to see the bigger and larger picture of an infinite sample. And to further complicate things, there's only so many hours in the day one can spend on the pokers.



I'd like to posit that focusing on how good or bad you're running is an absolute waste of information processing power, and ultimately debilitates win-rate. Everyone experiences variance but, like Keanu says: it's about how we react to the variance that matters. Our reaction is what we can control, we can't control the randomness.

How confident are you that you constructed the correct range in every spot for your session? How frequently is villain taking each range that you construct for them? How do they view you and (how) are they going to adjust to the lines you're taking? These are things we can control. Focus on these things, not the randomness. It's already hard as **** to do, so why waste what little resources and time that we have on variance?

I've tried to apply this to poker. When I sit down to play, I assume the role of a decision making machine bear decision destroyer. My goal isn't to win money, it's to make the best decision I possibly can in every hand and on every street with the information available. If I can do that, I've won and I'll never stop winning.

Here's an honest look at some progress:


since making this thread:



total:



Maybe a little bit of runbad these past 11k hands, but how the **** do i know what's a little and what's a lot? either way, lots of opportunities to flex the Keanu approach to variance.

I do think I'm better now than I was 11k hands ago. I definitely hit a patch of runbad, but for the most part don't think I let those hands impact others. In reviewing HH's I've focused on patching leaks, thinking about every possible situation, and looking for ways to exploit my opponents.

I've started sharing HH on this thread, and a few other random people.

I bought PIO and watched about 45 mins worth of useful video but that's about it.

I think I've done this for the most part. I'm down a few lbs and went running twice and climbing a few times over the last month or so.

Tilt wise I think I'm the best I've ever been. Plenty of chances to improve there
I'm only down like 2ish buyins in non-sd pots according to HEM. That seems like a win. I don't think I fully understand how red-line works, but still manage to win over this sample. maybe it has more to do with play style and the games you're in than anything else.



I ****ing love MMA. I think it's the most pure form of combat sport we have today. I know jack **** about it but I love watching it and researching the fighters. Learning the MMA part has been a ton of fun and everything is surprisingly well documented. For these 2 bets I just copied a blog I follow. I'm also starting to think about the process of handicapping and the benefits that come with that. No progress on the math side. I'm pretty lazy about it right now. Also, If I'm going to take this seriously, I need to start following lines early on to get better deals.

• NEW: Real estate investing I've inherited a share of a house with 2 close family members. I'm probably never going to live in the house, but it needs some significant renovations. We're all complete and total newbs when it comes to real estate and houses but we've agreed to all invest equally into its repairs. Ultimately we agree on renting it / selling it (someday), so we're currently scheduling a bunch of contractors etc to come look at it and get quotes/advice on what to do next. I know real estate can turn into a sink hole money wise but it seems like a solid investment given we didn't buy the house.