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Another poker tale: From zero to hero Another poker tale: From zero to hero

07-17-2017 , 12:13 PM
FROM 0,25s (€) .es to 100s ($) .com

FOREWORD (Boring stuff)

Hi poker fellows, it's been a while since I wanted to start a challenge and talk about my ambitions in the poker world as well as my struggle and I thought that today might be a good day to start.

My name is Ivan (Spain) and I'm 25 years old. Until today I've been doing a lot of different stuff, from starting my own business here where I live (Ibiza) to travel around Europe as a "League of Legends coach", I know, it sounds weird, but it was a very cool thing to do, I got to work with some A class teams such as SK Gaming and Gambit Gaming, I met a lot of cool people and did a blog as well, you can check it out at coachmushy.blogspot.com (It's dead now, haha).



After I left the coaching world (February 2017) I've been playing poker in a serious way, as I said I like to try a lot of different stuff, and I loved it.

A friend of mine who has been a player for like 6 or 7 years introduced me to a school who accepted "newbies" with sort of potential in a modality called "Spin and Go" which is the Hyper Turbo 3max Sit&Go-like modality of PokerStars (I guess you know that).
This friend of mine said that I needed to be taught by a good school in order have more chances of being successful in poker so I took my shot and sent an application to that school, which's name is "SPIN LEGENDS" (SL from now on), it's a spanish school but has an english team that is as talented teaching as the spanish one, they're accepting new students by the way so if you're interested in knowing more just hit me!.

Now here we are, I've been playing poker for around 5 months and 3 since I joined SL and I will try as hard as I can to get to the top.


DIALY PLAN



I swear I'll try to follow this as strictly as I can.


GOALS (Chronologically)
  1. Move up to 10s (€)
    Right now I'm playing 5s, by the end of this month I want to be playing at 10s.
  2. Move up to 20s (€)
    And crush the level, I expect to make it to 20s by September, and crush it by October or so, hopefully.
  3. Move up to 15s ($) at the .com domain and crush it
    I hope to make it before christmas.
  4. Move up to 30s ($) at the .com domain and crush it
    It's a long shot, but if I could make it by early next year I'd be happy AF.


SIDE GOALS (Offtopic)
  • Move in with my GF
    As long as I'm making enough money out of poker, if I ever get to do it.



  • Get in shape
    I'm a fat f*ck so I plan to get in shape, healthy body, healthy mind, I suppose, haha.



  • Find a better place to live (out of Spain)
    I'd love to travel playing poker, I'm a bit tired of this "party island" (Ibiza) all day and all night, some of you might find it cool, but after 25 years it's really exhausting.

  • LAS VEGAS!
    Damn that's one of my oldest dreams, travel to Las Vegas with my friends, now that I want to play poker professionally (TRYING) it makes more sense to go there. If next summer I could go there for the WSOP event, that would be awesome.


0,25s / 1s / 2s (€) GRAPH



BLOG STRUCTURE

I will be mixing it up a bit, from cool hands that I think are interesting, to updates of my goals (side goals included), and stuff like that, I've also planned to make videos of live sessions, coaching sessions, etc if you guys can handle my ugly face moving and speaking, haha, however I'll try to keep this thing updated to a dialy basis, or at least 3-4 times a week.

Well that's all for my first blog entry.

Cheers!

Last edited by Mushy; 07-17-2017 at 12:30 PM.
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-17-2017 , 04:57 PM
Who was the worst player to coach?


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Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-17-2017 , 07:00 PM
Are we talking SK and Gambit when they are good? lol Good luck!
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-17-2017 , 07:42 PM
@abecede: Hmmm there was no "worse" but "hardest" maybe, there was a Korean jungler known as Dokgo, he was very shy and because of the language barrier it was hard for him to comunicate with me and the rest of the team.

@Kev1498: haha worked with SK when they were already out of LCS ... With Gambit I qualified for LCL and then I stopped working with them because they wanted me to move to Saint-Petersburg and I wasn't really up to that. Thanks!
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-18-2017 , 05:37 AM
Very proud to have people like you Ivan. We are pretty sure you will become the best of you soon. We will be close in order to support you, accelerating your climb to the highest levels.
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-18-2017 , 09:10 AM
@SpinLegends: Thanks good sir, let's go!
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-18-2017 , 10:35 AM
Well let's talk about 5s (€) and how I've been doing.

So far, 50 days trying to beat this level but I can't quite make it, a few days ago I had a HUD review with a SL coach and I've located my most expensive leaks (like calling down too much!), trying to fix them right now. I still have 14 days left to go and move up to 10s.

Honestly it's a bit frustrating to make changes in your game without being sure if those changes are affecting positively to my overall strategy, however, I feel that sooner or later I'll be just there.

Here's the graph of my last 2300ish spins in 5s.

Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-18-2017 , 08:07 PM
Hello guys, I wanted to bring you a hand I struggled with, it's about one of my biggest leaks, calling down too much, about herocalling, check it out and tell me your toughts!.



Let's analyze it street by street, so you kinda understand why did I think calling was a good move.

- PREFLOP
Here I'm basically limping all my middling hands because I don't think they're good enough to open, and facing a 3bet would be a shame because they're strong hands to play and I'd have to fold.

- FLOP
I get TP - decent kicker and I think betting here is the best line to take, there're a lot of hands that would call me down when behind such as OESDs, FDs, 7x, 3x, worse 8x, etc, so I don't like checking behind here.

- TURN
With this ace I know many would check, it's "scary" because it's an overcard to my pair, but if I do check my hand looks weak and vulnerable to bluffs that might be hard to call down with 1 or potentially 2 overcards to my pair, plus my range has more Ax than his; that's so because most of his Ax would ROL pre facing a limp from SB, however, the villain still has some Ax in his range that would probably check-raise unless he has AX of diamonds.

- RIVER
Here is where the struggle comes, the villain decides to overbet-shove x2 times the pot size and leaves me with a tough decission to make.

Let's try to think about his value hands and his bluff hands.

VALUE

AX: As I said, most of his AX would probably raise for protection against all the draws that are open, the last thing you want to do with your top pair is to give free cards to all the speculative hands that might be betting cheap in such a wet board. Therefore I discard AX playing this way, even if he had AX of diamonds, the most logical play would be check-call depending on size.

Two pair: This type of hand would most likely have raised at some point, the board is very coordinated which makes every card that comes out dangerous. I expect a two pair to be protecting his strong holding while it remains strong, so I discard this type of hand aswell.

Straight: It could make perfect sense that the villain holds something like T9, would call me down twice, would arguably raise me at some point as well since it has no SD value, but just calling makes sense aswell, however, I don't think T9 would donk-shove with a completed FD, so the idea of him holding this type of hand doesn't seem accurate from my point of view, plus I'm blocking a T, so it's less likely.

Flush: This is what makes more sense to me, but which hearts would he pick that can call down the flop bet, and keep paying until the donk-shove river?.

The following image shows the hands he might have preflop after a expected fish range.



And below we can see the hands he MIGHT have called down a bet flop with.



So approximately 36 combos might have gotten to the river and could be value-shoving.

Let's now think about his bluffs that bricked river and would want to use the FD to steal.



Around 93 combos of hands might have missed river, which represents a 72% of his possible hands with that sequence.

Going back to his bet size, approximately he's betting 20BB into 10BB, making a pot of 50BB if I decided to pay 20BB, which means that I need him to have around 40% bluffs (me winning 40% of the times I call) to make this call profitable, and from what I've been testing he has around 70% bluffs.

Now will he be bluffing with all his missed combos?, he might or might not, would he donk-shove all his flushes?, well that's more likely, but since I can't get inside his head I can't really say.

What do you guys think?

Cheers!
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-21-2017 , 02:49 PM
Hello guys, I wanted to give those who're reading my BS something in return in this blog entry so I'm going to share my study method and the reasons why I use it.

Studying is not the thing we're used to see in schools; sticking your face to a book until you can repeat what it says without looking at it. Studying is, for what I like to believe, absorbing usefull informaiton and keep it in our brain for future use, so the two main pillars of studying are absorbing information, and keeping this information for future use, we can agree on that I guess.

However, tho studying is very close to the learning concept, everyone learns in very different ways, and studying has to adapt to those learning styles so the information we study sticks to our brain easily.

In the following link you can learn more about the learning styles http://www.learningrx.com/types-of-l...styles-faq.htm and in this other link you can test yourself to find out which one fits you better http://www.whatismylearningstyle.com...le-test-1.html

All this said, after we figure out how we learn, lets get to the "how we keep" the information we learned.

You might think that once you study something, it's going to stay there forever and if someone asks you about the topic you studied 1 year ago you'll remember everything, but no, in fact you only remember a very small percentage of what you learned just 1 week ago if you don't refresh that information. Jared Tendler mentioned in many of his books the importance of reviewing the topics you studied often or you might (and will) forget them therefore make some mistakes that you had solved time ago.

So what's the solution to this?, because study something and forget like 90% of the content 1 week ago is really time consuming and unefficient, this concept is called the "curve of forgetting" https://uwaterloo.ca/campus-wellness/curve-forgetting and the only solution is to review the topic you studied, however, if you do that with all the poker material you might have, you would be studying forever, well I've got you covered guys, the solution is a software called ANKI.

https://apps.ankiweb.net/

Yep, this free flash card software will really help you when it comes to studying and reviewing old content, this is how it works.

Here's the first thing you'll see when you install it.



First off you have to organize how you want to store your information, this information is split in decks, and in every deck there're "flash reverse cards" that you're going to use to study.

Let's see an example of how could you divide each block of information, a very simple way.



This way you have flash cards for every position you play from, you could be more precise and, for example, create 2 diferent decks for HU pots and MW pots from every position, that's up to you.

After you've decided how you want your study material to be organized, it's time to fill those decks with cards. It's as well very simple.

You just have click on "ADD" on the top-center of the software main window, select the deck you want this card to be in on the right drop-down menu, and write down the a question in the upper white box and an answer on the one below, like this.



You can add images and other media as well to make very buffed flash cards that really test your knowledge.



Let me show you how an example of a poker-themed card would look like.

This is what you first see when you're studying.



Then you try to answer your own question, and after you did, you check if you did well or not.



Depending on how good you did, you select the down below option that fits better the level if difficulty when answering the question and the software will shuffle the card to show it again to you in X days.



It might sound a bit stupid, if you made the question, and wrote the answer, it's obvious that you know both the question and the correct answer, but when you've created 1k flash cards, about 10 different topics, I assure you won't remember nearly 5% of them all.

This is my study method, I hope it helps someone. I find it very usefull and the more cards you create, the better this is, and another good thing about it is that you can share your decks with others, and others with you, this way you'll have a huge DB of different hands and situations to study different topics and never make mistakes you solved time ago.

A good thing to make this a bit more bearable is to mark hands you struggled with as you play, then discuss them with your mentor, friends, study group, post it in a forum or whatever to get a clear answer, and then make a flash card out of it, in just 1 month or 2 you'll have a pretty decent DB to study without having to read a book about it again, or read a full post of a pro, or watch 10 videos, just click on "STUDY" on the desired deck, and spend 10 minutes reviewing stuff you did yourself time ago.

Sorry for the longpost by the way.

TL;DR

Study is important guys.

Cheers!
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-21-2017 , 10:55 PM
What's up guys, wanted to make a quick blog entry just to share with you a motivational video I watch everytime I'm running bad or going through a downswing, it really has nothing to do with poker, but I think the speech is 10/10 and it really helped me from time to time when I watch it.

Hope it works for you as well, here it is!



Cheers!

Last edited by Bobo Fett; 07-24-2017 at 12:12 AM. Reason: Tags work fine. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=36622882&postcount=4
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-22-2017 , 01:58 AM
Man, inspiring and fun read

All i can say is this. And its both good and bad.

You can 100% make it, but you will 100% not make it unless you put in sick sick sick ammounts of hours.

So wish you the best of luck, and hope to see you putting in 8-10 hours a day. Or see this thread die with the dreams of other grinders who thought 4-6 hours per day was fine when the rest of the crushers put in 10+..

Again, best of luck. Have great faith in you.

Vamooo
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-22-2017 , 06:40 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mushy
Hello guys, I wanted to give those who're reading my BS something in return in this blog entry so I'm going to share my study method and the reasons why I use it.

Studying is not the thing we're used to see in schools; sticking your face to a book until you can repeat what it says without looking at it. Studying is, for what I like to believe, absorbing usefull informaiton and keep it in our brain for future use, so the two main pillars of studying are absorbing information, and keeping this information for future use, we can agree on that I guess.

However, tho studying is very close to the learning concept, everyone learns in very different ways, and studying has to adapt to those learning styles so the information we study sticks to our brain easily.

In the following link you can learn more about the learning styles http://www.learningrx.com/types-of-l...styles-faq.htm and in this other link you can test yourself to find out which one fits you better http://www.whatismylearningstyle.com...le-test-1.html

All this said, after we figure out how we learn, lets get to the "how we keep" the information we learned.

You might think that once you study something, it's going to stay there forever and if someone asks you about the topic you studied 1 year ago you'll remember everything, but no, in fact you only remember a very small percentage of what you learned just 1 week ago if you don't refresh that information. Jared Tendler mentioned in many of his books the importance of reviewing the topics you studied often or you might (and will) forget them therefore make some mistakes that you had solved time ago.

So what's the solution to this?, because study something and forget like 90% of the content 1 week ago is really time consuming and unefficient, this concept is called the "curve of forgetting" https://uwaterloo.ca/campus-wellness/curve-forgetting and the only solution is to review the topic you studied, however, if you do that with all the poker material you might have, you would be studying forever, well I've got you covered guys, the solution is a software called ANKI.

https://apps.ankiweb.net/

Yep, this free flash card software will really help you when it comes to studying and reviewing old content, this is how it works.

Here's the first thing you'll see when you install it.



First off you have to organize how you want to store your information, this information is split in decks, and in every deck there're "flash reverse cards" that you're going to use to study.

Let's see an example of how could you divide each block of information, a very simple way.



This way you have flash cards for every position you play from, you could be more precise and, for example, create 2 diferent decks for HU pots and MW pots from every position, that's up to you.

After you've decided how you want your study material to be organized, it's time to fill those decks with cards. It's as well very simple.

You just have click on "ADD" on the top-center of the software main window, select the deck you want this card to be in on the right drop-down menu, and write down the a question in the upper white box and an answer on the one below, like this.



You can add images and other media as well to make very buffed flash cards that really test your knowledge.



Let me show you how an example of a poker-themed card would look like.

This is what you first see when you're studying.



Then you try to answer your own question, and after you did, you check if you did well or not.



Depending on how good you did, you select the down below option that fits better the level if difficulty when answering the question and the software will shuffle the card to show it again to you in X days.



It might sound a bit stupid, if you made the question, and wrote the answer, it's obvious that you know both the question and the correct answer, but when you've created 1k flash cards, about 10 different topics, I assure you won't remember nearly 5% of them all.

This is my study method, I hope it helps someone. I find it very usefull and the more cards you create, the better this is, and another good thing about it is that you can share your decks with others, and others with you, this way you'll have a huge DB of different hands and situations to study different topics and never make mistakes you solved time ago.

A good thing to make this a bit more bearable is to mark hands you struggled with as you play, then discuss them with your mentor, friends, study group, post it in a forum or whatever to get a clear answer, and then make a flash card out of it, in just 1 month or 2 you'll have a pretty decent DB to study without having to read a book about it again, or read a full post of a pro, or watch 10 videos, just click on "STUDY" on the desired deck, and spend 10 minutes reviewing stuff you did yourself time ago.

Sorry for the longpost by the way.

TL;DR

Study is important guys.

Cheers!
I really like the ANKI but I would be careful about what kind of a cards you create. Like the example you used with having 82s on T97 bord is not a good one. You want to play that particular situation in different ways against certain people.

However, for more straight up situation its perfect. I really really like it. Thanks for sharing that
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-22-2017 , 12:49 PM
@GeeTeeOhh: Thank you for the kind words, will do my best to keep it up!

@abecede: You're welcome buddy, and yeah, the right thing to do could vary depending of a lot of things so the more specific you are making a question and a answer, the better.
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-23-2017 , 08:30 PM
'Sup fellas!

It's been a hard week but I managed to do fine in the end, if I keep it up I might move up, maybe. Starting next monday I will play around 10h/day to make it to 10s, will post dialy here to keep you updated anyway.

About the live sesh vid, I had to set it to private because of things but I've planned on uploading a new one soon.

Here's this week's graph



Cheers!
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-26-2017 , 03:47 PM
Hi guys,

Last 2 days I've been busy AF, I've got a live session video on the way so tomorrow I'll be posting it.

I've raised my evchip from like 45 chipEV to around 55, I actually need to be at around 80 so I don't think that I can make it by the end of this month but I'll keep pushing!

Cheers!
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-28-2017 , 10:39 PM
As promised here's the mini-sesh I played, it took like forever to upload... anyway sorry for the delay.

Cheers!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWwSP3CZBDE

Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-29-2017 , 03:39 PM
This week I've changed my free day from Sunday to Saturday (today) and it's been a cool pool day with my GF. I'll be talking about my 30 days challenge tomorrow in a video.

Cheers!



Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-30-2017 , 01:06 AM
Looking happy and chilled, good luck for the month ahead. What's your best day $ and worst day $ since you started playing the spins? and what level was they at?
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-30-2017 , 11:02 AM
@Motorola: Thank you good sir. My worst day, uh I think I lost 150€ in 1 day (4 sesh) around 8 hours of play, running pretty bad, a bit above even in EV, it was a super ****ty day, ended up super tilted haha.
My best day I made like 700€ hitting a good multiplier and a pretty good run overall.
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
07-31-2017 , 10:55 PM
~~~ NO GAIN YES PAIN CHALLENGE ~~~ (Literally)

Sup' guys!,

I'm not gonna make it to 10s today, nor tomorrow, I've been improving, but not enough to move up so I have to keep working.

I tought about starting a challenge tomorrow, starting August 1st until August 31st.

So what's the deal?, what do I have to do?: 31 days at 90 cEV playing at least 50 spins per day.

And what's gonna happen if I don't make it?, for each day I don't post a graph showing 90 cEV I'll be suffering a punishment, pain is a great master, so I'll be using 1 wax strip everytime I don't hit 90 cEV in 50 spins and make a video of the punishment (everyday -.-) to share my shame with everyone so the pain is both physical and psychological. Plus, in the end, if my cEV by the end of August is not 90 cEV average, I... will... SHAVE MY BEARD!!!... you might think "Tss~, no big deal", but yo' dude when you're as ugly as I am it is a big deal to hide half your face with hair.

Move up fast or end up bald, either way you'll probably enjoy staying around!

Well that's all for this entry.

Cheers!

Last edited by Mushy; 07-31-2017 at 11:11 PM.
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
08-01-2017 , 02:32 PM
~~ CHALLENGE DAY 1 ~~

Sup' guys!

First day of the challenge and it looks like I'm safe for a not so huge margin, close enough tho haha



Let's see if I survive tomorrow aswell, my GF is wishing to see me fail, she's evil :/
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
08-02-2017 , 07:59 AM
~~ CHALLENGE DAY 2 ~~

Let's keep it up guys!, we hold another day, my hair is safe for now, yay!.

I played a few cheap MTT's as well and took one home!, today it's a good day indeed.



Well here's the graph of today's games, a bit better than yesterday's.



Cheers!
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
08-04-2017 , 01:41 AM
~~ CHALLENGE DAY 3 ~~

Sup' everyone, got exciting news for you all!, I guess :/

Despite all my suffering, all my effort, I failed to meet the expectations on day 3 of the challenge, I am sorry guys. Almost 17 hours trying to be a man, but I ended up being a p**sy.

I will be uploading the video of my punishment tomorrow and posting it here. May the force be with me.

Here's today's disappointing graph, enjoy

Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
08-04-2017 , 02:01 PM
~~ PUNISHMENT DAY 3 ~~

As promised, the punishment video. You can jump to 4:15 to skip all the foreword, just me trying to delay the unevitable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY_j5VTqjY8

Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote
08-04-2017 , 06:31 PM
~~ CHALLENGE DAY 4 ~~

Yo! yo!, today it's been a good day, after feeling true pain (lol) I knew I had to push harder to never feel that pain again, today's graph is good so I'm not going to have to suffer tomorrow!, Yay!



I played a few MTT's as well and did pretty good, I'm feeling lucky this days, let's keep up the hard work and maybe luck stays in my side!



Well that's all for today's entry, may the variance be with you brothers and sisters.

Cheers!
Another poker tale: From zero to hero Quote

      
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