This is more of a study update. Poker, work, and coding are my life now.

For those who care, but don't wanna read a text wall that's mostly just mental masturbation for my own sake: fixing mental game, discovering leaks, studying hands, gonna grind micro tourneys online, wanna train my preflop game by designing a simple program in Python. Let's go bois.

I had a much better idea of what I was going to write before I got here, and now I lost my train of thought, so let's see. . .

Right. Bankroll, and plans. I find that I'm doing much better in micro tournament poker than cash games. In fact, I went to 5nl and made absolutely stupid plays, punting off about 14 bucks in spots where I didn't need to lose, then binked a 27-person sitngo for 12 bucks. I've almost punted off another 50 bucks online now. I must be absolutely terrible if I can't not just not hold my own on Bovada, one of the softest player pools around, but punt off 10 buyins in just a day or two.

What exactly is leading to this success, I can't say. I'm wagering there's a couple main reasons. First, is I tend to be more cautious in tournaments, leading me to be more tight passive early-on. This leads to me getting in the money. Second, I find spots where I can get it in good, and people are willing to call me lighter than they probably should. Many people at the micros seem to go all-in with a pretty wide range, despite, or perhaps because of, being short-stacked. I can't say for certain, but this is what I've observed so far.

I've been learning about ICM recently, and in fact was able to find myself in a couple spots already where I made a call lighter than I would normally against short stacks because ICM considerations made them profitable. Fortunately, they worked out in both cases.

But, I'm not a nit or rock either. I tend to dislike that style of play, not just cause it's boring, but because in a tournament you have to open your range up wider in a lot of scenarios, and get in there to play. Now, sometimes you're going to be card dead, and being card dead is no excuse to make unprofitable plays, so don't be dumb. But, it pays to find spots where you can get away with representing a strong hand, as obvious as this sounds to anyone who's been playing poker awhile. If you just try and get in the money all the time, you won't lose much, and you won't win much either.

That's another thing - looking back at my notes from when I first started playing, and hell even my first posts in here, I can't believe how arrogant I was. I'm afraid to deposit 600 dollars online (more on that in a sec), but thought nothing of withdrawing that much from the ATM, and plopping it all on the table in one, slow-paced live game. It's even funnier how often I would call people fish, when I was clearly one of the biggest punters at the table. I mean, there would be some genuinely terrible players there, far worse than me, but that's not the point.

My ego and insecurities seemed to be getting in the way of making rational decisions. I also used poker as escapism (the dream of making it big and becoming a 1/3 crusher through practice kept me away from my house and took my mind off my crummy job and bleak future in IT). Insulting other people at the table in my head made me feel better about myself. If I was a bit smarter, I'd realize that, even though I can play an okay game after 12 hours, it'd be better to just rack up and leave after 10 or 12, instead of 16, 17, or 18 hours. But I never did, because I wanted to get unstuck, because I hated telling my parents that I lost. They're obviously not going to listen to me if I tell them it's variance when I lose my week's paycheck three times in a row.

And that'd probably be a lie - I'm probably a significant losing player in cash games at even the lowest stakes, something that really bothers me. I know what I said about insulting people, but a lot of these people know next to nothing about poker, so the fact that I can't beat them is sad. It's like, I can tell you what the correct thing to do is if you asked me outside of the poker game. I would say, if I RFI EP, then get 3-bet and call with JJ, then c-bet the flop on a dry board only to get raised all-in, I'd almost certainly tell you that's a clear fold. My opponent is heavily representing an overpair, and sometimes even a set if they're 3-betting loose enough, which no 5nl is ever doing.

But I did make that call, and ran into AA. What a shocker, right?

This segues into the next point, my big leaks:

1.) Paying people off for their nutted hands. I don't know why, but I usually find it hard to fold solid hands when the board gets scary. If I had folded literally every time I was ever raised in a 1/3 live game, I would actually be up well over 1k. Hell, if I just folded every time I was raised like an extra 10 or 20 bucks on the river, this would have saved me a couple hundred. For some reason, I keep thinking that people think like me, that I would bluff difficult spots like that. I fail to see their confidence, the tells, the fact that they only seem to do this with the nuts. The in-the-moment pressure keeps me blind to what I could rationally figure out (I hope!) pretty quickly. Fixing this leak alone would be HUGE for me.

2.) Not understanding what a good bluffing spot is. I tend to bluff when a board looks especially dry (and I have a range advantage) or especially wet (and I have a nut advantage), then get called by one or two people, do the same on the turn, and am faced with a difficult spot on the river. They went check/call, check/call, and now what? I've been shafted more than once when I go for the triple barrel, yet as many times people will continue to the river with relative garbage, hoping for a vague chance to improve, and would have certainly folded to a third bet. This has cost me hundreds, and winning all these spots might have net me hundreds, or even 1k in profit.

3.) In live cash games, the idea is that people want to see the flop for as cheap as possible, but do want to see the flop. They'll continue with a lot of garbage, like Q4s, a hand whose sole purpose is to make a flush, even if you bet x3 or x4 the BB, cause they didn't drive all the way to the casino to fold, dagnabbit. This means you have to tighten up your range, to the point where you don't feel tempted to limp with any of your hands. Getting a hand that crushes your opponent's ranges, and building huge pots preflop, seems to be the best way to combat these bastards. Raising with T9s in the MP to have some hands with a nut advantage in your range is pointless when no one is paying attention to what cards you play. I haven't lost money in this manner, as I usually play a tight-ish range, but I have certainly missed out on profits.

4.) Did I mention paying people off? Turn and river bets are always the nuts. I've tried to figure out why I even did that, and usually it's because I'm bluffing, or do have a good hand, or whatever, and either it's so strong that I don't feel like I can fold it (completely untrue on a wet board obviously), or I think "they must think I'm bullshitting". No, they don't. They're not thinking about you or your cards much at all. They're mostly just thinking they have the nuts, and that's it. This is exactly how I won that one time where I just triple-barreled all the time, by folding whenever raised to. What happened there?

5.) Seriously, stop paying people off, this is your biggest leak, it cannot be stressed enough. It's a wonder you've done as well as you have in tourneys (I guess whatever I'm doing is working, but yeah).

According to Jlittle's bankroll bible, if you're playing in 100 to 200 person fields, you need a 105 buyin bankroll, thereabouts, assuming a 30% ROI. I do not have a 30% ROI. Being generous, I have 10%. I will be playing tourneys as small as 9 players, and as large as 500. (500+9)/2=254.5 being my average tourney size, so yeah, 105 buyins is about right. Given my ROI is 1/3 of what are shown in the stats, I will need to triple this to 315. I will be playing tourneys no larger than $3. This means my bankroll needs to be 315*3, or 945 dollars.

This is obviously very steep. Although I didn't have that much compunction getting $600 from the ATM to play a live game, despite being an obvious losing player in those games, depositing 450 into two different sites where the competition is stiff is nerve-wracking. If I'm getting creamed in 1/3 live and 5nl, I must be a giga fish just getting lucky in these tourneys. If I make this deposit, poker will have cost me like 3k total as a hobby, which is nuts to think about. Very depressing and anxiety-inducing to think I might just lose it all. What's to say I have the discipline to study, when I've been slacking on my workouts and diet just because the gym is closed? My workout routine I've had for two years, evaporating before my eyes. And that's not getting started on barely being able to get up in the morning. Why don't I just do what I'm supposed to?

Anyway, I guess this is the start of a new challenge: Fix my most obvious leaks, and start with a $300 deposit (200 and 100 split between ACR and Bovada respectively, since ACR has more tables to play at) with the idea that I have $945 in my bankroll, total, that I can deposit if need be. I don't really hope to grind this to anything, so much as I hope to not lose it over the course of 3000 tourneys entered (sounds like a good amount to play in a month to determine true ROI). If I don't lose it, I will consider it a success. The more important thing, though, is to take this time to put in volume and learn. Any time I play, I am going to put the most important hands of my biggest events, and put them through the solver, get advice on this forum, and study poker content, then get back at it. I will maybe consider getting a coach instead of pokercoaching.com, but I heard coaches are very, very expensive, so that luxury is not likely in the cards. I will also code that little preflop doodad for myself.

Anyway. I'm going to be going over my latest tournament win in-depth tomorrow over here on 2+2, getting feedback on my lines and hoping for some good advice, in addition to continuing to listen to Jlittle's stuff (hope that tournament masterclass comes out) and get to making that card deck so I can train myself for preflop situations. I'm sure there's some app for it, but I'd like to do it myself.

I'll be continuing my study journey. I don't wanna give up, if only to prove that I'm not stupid, and can become at least a little good at this. It's hard to admit you're a genuine loser.

3/29, 219 tourneys, -$245ish

It's been over a week, so time for an update.

I was testing the waters with 1.50 and 3 dollar sitngos and MTTs, and even did okay. Was up 70 dollars for awhile, but got break even again. Then, I got greedy looking at the big, juicy 10 and 15 dollar tourneys, and it went downhill from there because of course it did, that's exactly to be expected when you throw bankroll management out the window. The **** is wrong with me? What was I thinking? I had a plan laid out and everything, and I just ignored it? I was a cut below the competition, to say the least, and made many poor mistakes. I got in my emo mood again, got drunk, and punted off the remainder of my account in micro MTTs and Blitz 10nl.

Funny thing is, if I'd just stuck to 5 dollar and even the occasional 10 dollar sitngo, I wouldn't be in bad shape. I let my self-pity and sadness get to me too much. I've also been playing way more than I've been studying. I've been trying to compile a cheat sheet.

A number of other things in my life are falling by the wayside as well. Fitness and diet are still out of whack, as in my exercise is dog walks, and my diet is booze and oatmeal. This quarantine is messing with my head. As my family is sick (oh yeah, my family has COVID), it's up to me to take care of the dogs on my own. They're crazier and testier than usual, so my poker games and study are interrupted every few hours to do chores, or just listen to them whine for 20 to 30 minutes. I don't want to be lazy, obviously, but spending the first 3 or 4 hours of my day doing domestic chores, taking care of the dogs, and helping with a dinner I'm not going to eat is just annoying. I guess that makes me sound selfish, I should be more compassionate, but I get so frustrated with them sometimes, I wanna blow up.

Anyway. Poker.

I've gotten the Modern Theory of Poker by Micheal Acevedo. It's got a lot of great info in it, but my concern is that I'll spend so much time learning this cool stuff, and it will just fly over the punter's heads at micro-low stakes online. I distinct remember a hand in an MTT where I called an open EP raise from the late position, and the board ran out terrible for an EP raiser. Tons of draws and cards I could have. So, I tried to bluff raise the guy, despite not having much. The guy snap called. I gave up bluffing on the river, and the guy shows Kings. This man was absolutely willing to risk getting stacked on a board where the obvious straight, and even middle-pair trips got there just because he had pretty preflop cards. Which would be fantastic if I had good cards, but if I only played when I had good cards, I would blind and ante out eventually, and my tournament life would be entirely luck-based.

I don't think it would be any better at the higher stakes though, because while they might fall for my bluffs more often, they'd also just outplay me way more in general. Not much of a way to win if you can only win when you have the best cards.

Just gotta increase the amount of study versus playing. I was doing it where I would have a game going on in the background while I was studying, but that just quickly leads to me focusing on the game instead of on the book I'm reading, or whatever.

Also, according to Pokertracker, despite my total losses, I'm not doing bad in $5 9-max Regular-speed sitngos. Perhaps this is where I should focus my energy.

That's all for now. These were slightly below the results I expected, but that's what happens when you get in over your head with bigger tourneys than you should be buying into, then getting drunk when you're sad about it. I ought to read the Mental Game of Poker too, I don't want this to ever happen again. Gotta be disciplined. . . no buyin larger than $6. . .

Glad you are studying and playing - keep it up. Sorry to hear about your family, and I hope they recover quickly as most people do. Good for you for being there for them when they need you.

Have you started posting HHs in the forums yet?

Er, no. I was trying to figure out where exactly to focus my study energy, and settled on finishing the 30-day challenge on pokercoaching. But I'll do that too.

4/12, 315-ish Tourneys, -400


More losing cause I'm a fish-in-training, but I got a coach! Was skeptical at first, but hugely surprised at how much I learned from him. Shoutout to Grayson Nichols, excellent to work with.

Since my latest donkfest, which was mostly from 10nl 6-max cash games on ACR, I've decided to just deposit the rest of my bankroll. I actually was disciplined with my tourney buy-in, except a single $10 special event that was like, 100k gtd or something nuts like that, so I wasn't missing out. Naturally, I busted in about 2 seconds, which basically confirmed that I have no business in tourneys that size.

Was really sad for awhile and just stopped playing, wondering if I should just cut my losses, admit this poker thing was a huge waste of time and money, and that I'm no good for it, as I tried to scrounge out some random bonus on Bovada that had nutso rollover requirements, and got impatient and messed it up on one big gamble instead of just playing $1 BJ until I met the requirements. I sat there and was like 'tf am I doing, am I some kind of degenerate?'

Things have also been busy at home. But that's personal stuff. Fitness and diet are still poor, but improving again. Keeping in touch with friends despite the quarantine. Oh, and my job is closed till May, and I might not be able to come back to it again. Kinda puts the pressure on poker for me, but my parents think I need to get into coding, which I hate, but would be a real job that would get me real money obviously. Everything's kinda ****ed.

But. Poker.

I've split my roll between three sites instead of mostly playing on ACR, and we'll see what happens. I'm actually already noticing an improvement in my play thanks to Nichol's advice. I want to read/study more instead of play, which I actually have been doing for once, so go me I guess. Mains things are that I'm realizing I'm wayyy too passive, usually just check-calling instead of raising. I also tend to make big preflop mistakes that compound later, and don't nearly 3-bet enough. I also tend to call 3-bets with too wide a range, especially out of position. Finally, I tend to get into situations where I have a hand that's too good to fold, but not good enough to raise with, leaving my only option a donk.

What else? I wanna read more of the Modern Theory of Poker, but also go back to the classics like Theory of Poker Applied to No Limit.

If this last stab at things doesn't work, I will quit poker until I get a real job again. Not because I want to, but because I'll actually have to, what with the no-job and dwindling bank account and stock market chaos happening.

That's all I can think of. Wish me some luck, I could use all the help I can get here. Got a free ticket to a big event on Tuesday, so we'll see how that goes. Posted an HH on here and got mixed advice, so I'm gonna post some more and get more opinions.

Glad you are getting more help, studying, and that the family situation is stable. Posting HHs will help a lot - keep it up. Gogogo! Gl man. Rooting for you.

4/23, 600-ish tourneys, +37, -367 total

Been awhile, so time for an update. Spoiler alert, the big event didn't go well, but it was mostly due to variance, so I can't be too mad. My family was also unusually nice about it. When I told them I could win 40k, they were all excited. They even brought me dinner during it! It was a bit embarrassing to get such special treatment when I was doing so poorly.

My approach to poker thus far has basically been seeing whatever looks good that's available, and going with it. I am quickly learning that some games are better than others, even if they are similar stakes.

While it's great to enter a $5 tournament and actually get to the final table for that sweet prize (I will certainly continue doing so), I want these to make up a much smaller percentage of my game from now on. It's been discouraging to have been grinding almost non-stop for a while, only to see a little progress, yet also encouraging to know that, at this rate, my roi is set to be positive, at about 4% for the stakes I'm playing overall, with my prior losses easily explained by playing way higher stakes than I should have, and getting tilted. And I believe the reason for my turning around is as follows:

* Game selection. I am playing in more sitngos with low buy-ins, and 2nl cash games. I see that I can consistently beat these games, which makes me happy and not hate myself. I venture into other games that are higher stakes only if I know I can beat them. For example, on Bovada there are $10 27-person sitngos. I should have like 1k to play these games. But I've won one, and FT'd another 3 for like $220 total. Bovada/Ignition is pretty soft in general, allowing me to play at stakes I normally wouldn't because people can be idiots. . . not that I don't fall for their idiocy from time to time. Who's the bigger fish, the fish, or the one trying to bluff him?

* Better postflop skills. I'm getting more reads on people/situations, and learning what to do. More than once, I've thought 'this guy is spazzing out, he probably has an overpair', then ignoring this notion, only to be shown exactly what I thought they had. I also used to call a lot from the BB with basically any hand that had potential, since I was already priced in. I neglected to account for stack size often, costing me hella chips. I've cut that out. I'm also getting better at HU play thanks to many FT experiences, getting tricky on me. I notice I tend to shine when I get to be loose-aggresive and **** with people, although there are as many times when I've been played the fool as well.

* Less ACR, more Bovada and Betonline. Ties into game selection, these sites are just plain better for a newb like moi. ACR is supposed to be soft these days, but I'm one of the reasons it's soft, haha. I pretty much just play dinky little MTTS on there, mostly just sitngos for tiny stakes, like those 1.50 on-demands and $3 9 and 6 max regular-speeds.

In terms of life, I'm back on adderall, and it works. I feel better when I'm on it, worse when I'm off it. Getting my sleep schedule back on track, diet and fitness are okay. Mental health is iffy, very anxious. The more I stay at home alone, the less I want to leave. Going back to work in May makes me very anxious.

Can't really afford more coaching because I'm poverty, so yeah. Stock market sucks because it keeps going up.

Looking to keep improving. I like all the new books I have. I recommend the Modern Theory of Poker, and Mastering Small Stakes by Jlittle.

Sounds like you're doing the right things! Keep up with the goals.

It's been awhile.



Can't say I'm proud. Basically, I kept losing, until I got 2nd in 2 tournies in one day. I thought, this is it, this is where we start winning. Nope. I kept entering $10 tournies like the ones I'd won in, and my money just kept disappearing. When the MGMNH reopened, a took a crack at live again. I won $338 in a live session, and then over $700 in a live tourney. Again, I thought that I was now good enough to beat live. Then I had my worst session ever, losing over $900.

When I complained about it to the discord I was on, they all mocked me because they knew I was lazy as **** and didn't really study enough. I was really hurt, cause they were right, and I feel like a loser.

I'd like to say this is where I turn things around and really do what I'm supposed to, but I've said that before. Time will tell if I continue to **** this up.

I'm back in school, and it's hard to discipline myself to get back into the school groove, especially with subjects I hate. Working remote at the same time, but my job has been great about accommodating. The goal is to finish all the pokercoaching.com quizzes by the end of next month, a goal I am laughably behind on. It's gonna be 80% quizzes and homework, 20% play, so basically I do study during the week while I work remote and attend online classes, then play on the weekends. I'm doing better at online cash, that's for sure. Stock market is also treating me well, we'll see what happens with WORK and if it really moons. Maybe it'll let me get the 6k I lost from poker back.

Let's keep grindin. God help me.

The job laid me off. The schoolwork is punishing. But - we're turning things around. FT'd a $22 PKO for over $400 in profits. Can consistently turn a little profit in micro sngs. 5 green sessions in a row is a record.

My time is 80/20 study play. Occasionally I cheat a little and play sngs or have a tourney in the background while I work. I'm not perfect in the slightest, very little time goes to improving my game relative to my other important activities, but I guess that's the way it should be. I yearn for the day I can wake up, study, walk the doges, work out, and just grind sitngos and micro mtts for 8-12 hours straight with minimal interruption, then seeing what I did wrong, and rinsing/repeating till I can make at least minimum wage from poker, turning things around until I've gotten all my monies back and then some.

Game's gotten better, partially thanks to pokercoaching.com quizzes. I hope to finish all 900 of them at some point. Thought I could do it in a month - lol. I've gotten 212 or something done.

Stock market's still going well, not getting those crazy WSB stories, but making a little moolah each week. It's looking good.