Why you dont cbet top pair in first hand?? J4

Thanks man!

Man, I really, really don't know. Khabib does seem to be on another level completely on the ground, and he's looked great on the feet last few fights aswel, but Conor's takedown defense is also pretty excellent and the power in his hands is obv just ridiculous. Just checked betfair, looks like the boys have it 60/40 Khabib, I expect cash to fly in on Conor as the fight draws closer so I've just put a little something on Khabib at 1.66.. really though I can't pick them at this stage. But god damn I am hyped for that one I'm a big fan of everything by BBJScout on youtube, anything I say on MMA is pretty much learned from him, check him out if you're into the tactics and stuff of it all.

Till v Woodley also extremely interesting fight imo, having a little perty perty for my birthday that night so we'll see whether I'm in any shape to watch it at 5am or w/e lol. (Open invitation to any 2p2 non-weirdos in Edinburgh )

This was a little weird actually - I had kinda felt like it hadn't been going that well results wise, but I caught up on a bunch of accounting a while ago (changing accounting systems and it'd become a little bit of a mess) and we've actually been doing way better than I expected. Added a few really strong prospects over the last few months, and tbh most importantly I just really enjoy it - it's interesting to talk to guys about spots/populations etc, kinda functions like study for me, and I take a huge amount of joy from seeing guys put in the work required and make it up through the stakes.

The change from d7sarmy to bitb-cash has also been really good - I'd basically been doing no promotional stuff aside from the coaching thread here on 2p2, now we have a social media manager helping me make video content for instagram, which has actually led to finding 2 of our last 3 additions. Also had the opportunity to coach the main bitb MTT stable on some range construction stuff recently ahead of WCOOP which was cool. Watched a couple of their MTT strat videos and realised I knew/know basically nothing about how ICM worked, good to know if I ever make an FT I won't be spewing equity around quite as hard as before

Cheers mang!

Thanks dude, see you at the tables!

Lololol. This video has been online for probably like 2.5yrs, surfaces on different sites from time to time, prolly get a message about it like every 6 months on average. We were on our way to amsterdam for king's day, playing thrice (think there's details in bena's thread for those who don't know what that is). Good times!

I've just left the short open since I took it out on July 1st. I get an email/account summary thing every day which shows my borrowing charge, it varies (actually gone down a little recently) but yeah, something like $6/day now.

I actually embarrassed myself pretty hard trying to buy jan2020 200 puts maybe a month ago - had read about options in Nassim Taleb's books (actually been re-reading all his stuff last couple months, absolutely love his views tbh). As I understand it you buy a piece of paper that gives you the right (but not the obligation) to sell 100 shares at a given price (here $200) on a given date (here 31st Jan 2020). You make cash if the price is below $200 (so e.g. if Tesla was fully bankrupt, the piece of paper would be worth $20k) and lose the cost of the option if it's not. Seemed simple enough to me, can't trade them online through IG so I phoned them up, planning to buy 1k worth (think it was 35 contracts or something at like $30 each at the time)... guy was talking some absolute nonsense about how many dollars per point and how I'd need $60k for margin... in the end I couldn't really understand the risks I was signing up for so bailed, felt like the horrible noob I am

As for the position itself, I've added a little using my profit so far as margin, I'm now short 250 shares (was 300 for a brief time..) but will need to close some if price rises significantly, which it could still obviously do. I'm pretty excited about the market opening tomorrow, Elon backtracked on the whole 'going private' thing late Friday night, so anyone hoping the Saudi's would buy their shares at $420 doesn't have that hope to hold on to anymore. They are going to have lawsuits/SEC investigations coming out their ears, would be surprised if they can show a profitable q3 after all this drama - paying fees to lawyers, investment bankers etc and still showing a heavy loss on every car they sell, while their rivals eat up market share... IDK, obv I'm biased here but I literally can't understand how there's any buyers above $200 at this point. Don't even care that I'm so obviously a whale in these games, it's my favourite telenovella and I enjoy the hell out of the ride

Had to dig pretty far back to find the hand you're talking about there bud lol! I like to check back the odd weak top pair in spots like this just so my range isn't completely without TP on turns. Betting obv fine too, guess check mighta been better vs this guy though

================================

Sooooooooooooooooo

Poker continues to be challenging... been adding a bunch of 200nl, especially full ring, but down 3.5k in the 1k hands of 600 I've played so yeah - getting worse before it gets better unfortunately However, staying stoic about it and focusing on what I can control - been wrestling with hand2note once more, got it working on stars and have a bunch of ideas for HUD improvements, also been messing around with solver/scripting stuff a fair bit to try and improve my study efficiency there. Volume has been ok all things considered, not going to hit my (ambitious) goal of 60k hands, will be more like 40k, but still trying to be a little bit more disciplined about table count so not going to beat myself up about that too much.

Had some interesting conversations with some guys who feel I'm sacrificing too much EV by moving down instead of redepositing and continuing to play basically only 400+. It's obviously a reasonable argument given the sample I have there and higher, but having a strict floor on the size of the downswing I can have is pretty nice emotionally, plus there's obviously some non-0 chance that there's something going on that I'm not conscious of, so yeah I've no problem eating some humble pie and regrinding at 200nl for a while. Was looking at the goals I set myself in the OP, at the start of the year I was hoping to play 50% of my hands above 1/2 and to date I've played something like 10%, so don't think it's too big a deal to lick my wounds for a little while.

Been getting a little distracted with programming stuff once again this month - it's a weird thing because it kinda feels like wasting time, but it's so interesting to think about what's achievable with enough resources, and I definitely learn a lot with it so I'm not too mad about spending time on it when poker isn't going great. Haven't mentioned this here yet, but I've actually signed up to start a software engineering undergrad in September. It's at Napier Uni, the campus is literally about 90s walk from my door and it starts off at 15 teaching hours per week (rising to 20h/week if I like it and continue to 2nd year). It's super broad and very practical in focus, which suits because quite often I'll have an idea for something that could be done way better using software, but not have any idea how to break the problem down, what technologies would be best to use, how much cash/time it would take etc etc. I've been self-teaching on and off for a good 2-3 years, it's now time to accept that I'm not being consistent enough with this approach, so shelling out some cash (2k/year) and committing to a course seems like a good option. Also, the course is obviously just during the daytime, so it shouldn't cut into poker hours tooo much. Plus I don't care at all about the degree itself, if there's some module I think is useless I'll be happy to scrape by/take a fail or whatever - I really just want to know how to do more stuff

Oh more practically - I found a nice little AHK script that hides windows from your desktop, really useful if you struggle to stop yourself checking results in game, can post it here if anyone wants.

Anyway, once again this update feels like an absurd wall of text, so will end it with some photos the sunrise in Bacalar (about 4 hours south of Playa Del Carmen by bus, took a trip last weekend).





Heading to Guadalajara on the 1st for 3 nights - will be really interesting to see a more legit/established Mexican city with near-0 gringos, looking forward to that. Then the long trip home on the 4th, hoping to stop in on the London boys for brunch between flights on the 5th and hear about ANOTHER epic Barcelona trip I missed

Gl out there gents,

<3 we missing you lad

Siq, you interested mostly in web dev stuff or more application dev ATM?

https://bitbcash.com/2018/09/13/13th-september-2018/

Will be x-posting blog stuff both here and on my new site from here I think.

... god damn just lost the OP properly formatted for 2p2... anyone help me out?

I'm a programming god, I swear

Sign me up!

***FREEROLL ALERT***

I will send $250 to the first person to access the video in this link without using the bitbcash.com url, on condition they explain to me how they did it and help me close the loop

https://bitbcash.com/lesson/test1/

I think I can explain you how to do it!
Change the privacy settings on you Vimeo account!

whats this?

This was a misunderstanding - the bounty remains unclaimed and is rising to $2,500

It's from the mental game course outline on my site - https://bitbcash.com/course/mental-game/

not figured out how to access the vimeo link as it's password protected, but videos still easy enough to download from the site

https://imgur.com/a/XZyZ1wi

Do I win

Oh ****... looks like you might have actually won lol My noob web-making arrogance correctly punished lmao. Will pm you for details in a second, well done sir!

=========================

Quick update on the volunteering thing for those of you who are interested- went bowling with the dude again today and he asked me to go with him to a boxing class! Actually so happy about that- this is a guy who was struggling to make eye contact with a stranger 6 months ago, today he was talking about if the class went well he could start going himself. Obv won't sound like a lot to most of the people ITT but I know that's a gigantic step for him, and honestly I'm pretty thrilled about it. For him to even imagine something he could do, with other people and plan out a route to doing that without anyone's help is incredible. He deserves a ton of credit for making such a positive step, it's at 6 o'clock on Tuesday i'll let you guys know how it goes.

thank you very much, glad to help

lol what ?

Ah ****, sorry cheeki I missed your PM. I'll message both of you and well figure something out. Should probably be more careful about posting bug bounties ITT, not trying to start drama

I also have a method to download the video that looks to be different than D_lf's, if the bug bounty is still live. I believe I can't PM you because this is a new account.

Nice to hear, lovely.

So, what's happening ? You sent me a PM, and I replied - still yet to receive a response

That's awesome and good on you man

Glgl on the tables, great read as always

Yo.

So.

Time to give the thread a NYE update. Feels like a looooong time since the last update, I guess there's nothing for it and we jump right in..

I had a pretty serious mental health relapse and was admitted to hospital on the 18th of September. This was the second time I've experienced what the doctors call a psychotic episode, the first being end of may/start of june 2017. That time, it was brought on by smoking a little too much weed and some fairly intense sleep deprivation, unfortunately this time it was au-natural (no drugs, had been sleeping/eating etc fine). Apparently a second episode is quite a lot more serious than a first (i.e. a big chunk of people are one and done, chance of most recent episode being the last decreases with each further episode..), it's pretty gutting because obviously after last year, maintaining my health was absolute top priority for this year, plus the medical people have made it clear that there's a decent shot this is just a part of my life I have to deal with moving forward..

I guess I should try and describe the experience of an episode, but honestly it's pretty difficult to express what it's like. Both times I've had a rising feeling that something wasn't quite right - I actually phoned my brother the afternoon of the 18th and told him I wasn't sure if everything was ok - I was thinking about taking some of my left over medication from the first time round, but I decided that since I was eating and sleeping, I was fine and I should just keep on keeping on. I went to uni for my second day of lectures, left my tutorial early on the afternoon, went home to get changed for the boxercise class with my volunteering pal.. I remember that on the bus to the class I was 100% sure something was going wrong - I phoned my brother again (who had left work early and was coming through) and I was telling him to be careful.. I was thinking a lot about like terrorist attack stuff, the bin lorry disaster in Glasgow and general car accidents and stuff... I felt sure that something really bad was going to happen to someone I cared about. Anyway, we kinda decided together that I should get off the bus and head home - I was gutted to do this, since I knew what a big step it was for my pal, but yeah.. I was at the bottom of Leith walk, like 50m walk from my house - when I set off I text my brother that I was fine, enjoying my walk in the sunshine, everything's good and I'll see him later on.

My memory of this is really pretty hazy, but by the time I got home I'd sent easily several hundred messages to a whole bunch of people (including my volunteering pal ).. some like accusing them of being in on something, some apologising for being crazy.. lots and lots telling people to be safe - not to gamble, not to drink or do drugs.. reading back on them, they're mostly just incoherent, but at the time it felt like nothing at all was coincidence - every single thing I saw was connected in some way to everything else. Even stuff like the colour of someone's eyes, or a random person's body language on the street. I was also pretty convinced that.. 'they'/ the man/ whoever.. could see my phone screen and that nothing was private. I also had this feeling like I could control my reality almost to a perfect extent - like if I wanted to see someone enough I could just make it happen. But yeah, I guess my over-riding feeling was the something bad was happening to the people I care about, that I might have the chance to stop it (this was different from the first time where I felt helpless).. all mixed in with the sense that my reality wasn't really as I was perceiving it/ wasn't to be taken too seriously.

Anyway, yeah by the time I got home I was super upset - upset like angry. I was pissed off about these bad things I was imagining happening, and drawing all sorts of absurd conclusions about stuff - I was storming around my flat, messaging people nonsense and just being super confused about who I was, what was going on, what was real etc. In a moment of clarity I phoned the police on myself - as it turned out at least 1 neighbour had already done so. I think it was just after that I smashed through my window - I felt like I needed to tell people what was going on, but couldn't use my phone, so I just started smashing my left elbow at my window till I broke through it (didn't fancy just opening it for some reason ), then was out on my 3rd floor window-ledge shouting **** at people in the street. Luckily I didn't hurt myself too badly, I was intially bleeding a fair bit but no lasting damage. But yeah so, when the police arrived (felt like extremely quickly) I was suspicious about whether they were who they said they were - my most vivid memory of the whole thing was two officers leaning through the top half of my door (which they'd put in) trying to get through to me, and me coming through with last night's sweet potato in my hand, half eating it half throwing it at them, giving them dog's abuse. In the end there were 6 units (including a dog) at the scene and they cordoned off my whole street. I fought with them tooth and nail, they ended up handcuffing my hands (and feet for a while), while I was telling them to go **** themselves and asking for them to set the dog on me. At the time I didn't give a **** if I lived or died, I felt like I had to fight off these people to stop something bad happening to my loved ones and I felt glad to do it. Pretty emotional remembering it all tbh, I was pretty sure I was going to die (as I was first time around). My brother arrived while they were removing me from my flat, and a police officer friend had also come straight to mine after seeing the weird messages, they really helped diffuse the situation.

Anyway, hospital was... intense. Though I'd been taken there handcuffed in a police van, I knew I was there voluntarily - so the first few days I basically spent distrusting everyone, not taking/faking taking the meds and trying to get out. Ended up damaging a fire escape and an internal door trying to forcibly leave, I also called the fire brigade at one point, before I was sectioned under the mental health act (which means I had to stay there for 2 weeks and accept treatment). In a strange way this was a relief - it was super surreal to have all the nurses/doctors plus my family agree I was there of my own free will, but not let me leave. I had my own room and en-suite in the hospital, which was such a blessing - apparently if I'd been admitted a couple years before I would've been in a dorm of 4 people... given how paranoid I felt, especially about other patients, that would not have gone well. I was holding on to most of my delusions at this point - I felt like there was some ****ery going on with a few of the nurses and the meds - my basic heuristic was to distrust anyone male, trust anyone female if they would speak openly about themselves. But yeah - the facilities and staff were pretty amazing, pretty tough job on a ward of 16 crazy adults As you might imagine I had some pretty weird encounters with other patients - I think in a perfect world you'd keep crazy people away from each other, though saying that actually there was a lot of real humanity on the ward and I had some super real conversations with some people about life and etc.

Anyway, I was on lorazepam/diazepam (anti-anxiety) for about a week, and I'll stay on quitiapine (anti-psychotic/sedative) for at least a year. Basically as soon as I'd calmed down, the staff started talking about discharge - in the end my sectioning got scrubbed after 9 or 10 days, I went and stayed with my Mum for a few weeks after that, I'm back in my own place now basically living my normal life after building it back up over the last couple months.

These meds seem to really suit me - first time around I was on olanzipine, it was so sedating I couldn't follow a conversation = basically couldn't do anything. I didn't want to see anyone because I could see I was terrible company, plus as I realised how much I'd ****ed my life up, I felt pretty depressed for a good few months. I could basically recognise that I'd gone from living a life that was very close to how I'd choose it to be, to being 28yo, living with my mum and being on anti-psychotics. I'd say feeling depressed in that spot is fairly justifiable, so idk how much the medication had to do with it, but on these new pills I feel pretty good while I'm awake, only problem is that I'm oversleeping pretty considerably (like 12h/day). Hopefully that continues, but it seems to me like everyone around me expects me to get low again (yes, that is as annoying as it seems ). I think because I was in Vienna first time around, I fell through the cracks in the healthcare system - I have a heap more medical support these days (I see a nurse every few weeks and a psychiatrist every couple months).

All the medical profession seem to love talking about potential diagnoses - for a while in the hospital they were throwing around some pretty scary terms, but now they seem to have settled on 'bi-polar with manic tendencies'. Basically in the lead up to both episodes I'd been what I'd consider to be smashing life - working hard, learning new things, making plans for the future, working out, feeling good. Given that, plus feeling depressed after the first episode, that's enough for them to settle on that term. My feeling is that all these terms are super -EV for patients. Most of them are big umbrella terms, where for example someone needs to exhibit 4 out of 10 symptoms to be categorised as X. That means two people who have none of the same symptoms could both be X - so it's super screwy. People are obviously crazy across a whole bunch of dimensions and in a bunch of different ways/magnitudes etc, I guess lumping them into groups helps the medical profession, but I don't know it really helps the individual.

So yeah, to me it is what it is - obviously this isn't how I'd have chosen to have my life go.. I believe in personal responsibility and I've no interest in playing the victim here, everyone keeps telling me this is just a thing that happens to some people but idk.. I know that if I'd trusted my instincts a little more, or had taken the possibility of a relapse seriously, I probably could've headed off this episode before it became as serious as it did. I also know that if you ran the situation 1,000 times, there are many in which someone (most frequently myself) get seriously hurt. Looking forward, I'll continue to focus on what I can control and do a good job of it. That means no drugs, not too much alcohol, never missing a dose of my meds, doing what I can to stay upbeat irl (exercise, meditation, cold therapy, seeing people, eating healthy etc) and being on the lookout for symptoms/being honest with medical people.

Been putting off making this post for some time, actually had some reservations about whether or not to tell the whole story, but you don't need to look far in the poker world to find guys who've had problems with their mental health, and I'd be a helluva hypocrite to bleat the 'openness and honesty' narrative if I kept this all from the public eye. So yeah, there it is, if you have any questions then hit me up and I'll answer honestly. Been typing forever so immawrapitup right here, will do another more general update including poker things at some point in the new year.

Happy new year to all you guys and gals up ITT, look after yourselves and here's to a happy, healthy 2019.

GL out there.

very brave of you to post all that don, wishing you well for the coming year and of course if you ever want to talk about anything you know where to reach me. our recent discussions have been way too poker related hopefully see you soon

Big props for typing all that out. Hope you get better!

Keep on reminding yourself that people close to you always want to help and be there for you so you dont end up secluding yourself.

lots of love dude, Iam a firm believer in that whatever happens needed to happen in order for you to learn a lesson, to keep keeping on like you say, what ever the lesson is. MEditation is great exercise for us to learn how to control our thoughts.
I think most of us who have suffered a "mental episode" can relate on having to learn how live with it. Recognizing the triggers and what can be done to overcome an episode. its obv easy to say that when you start to have this thoughts to not pay attention to them or w/e. it is doable, but sure enough an everyday grind.
have a solid an healthy year dude!! if you ever wanna make a trip to CR you have a place to stay and relax.

“Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Kudos for the post. I'm no mental health expert, but I'll share something with you anyway.

Being Ex-Military, and being a dinosaur compared to you guys, I've been a heavy drinker all my life, without ever really feeling in any way addicted (and I'm self-aware enough to know that's just not a case of denial).

Recently (very recently) I've discovered that life is better in every way without alcohol in it...nothing spiritual here...I'm a cynical atheist.

Life is just healthier (obviously) more productive (no more red wine/whiskey hangovers keeping me out the gym at 6 am), more convenient (no more taxis) and - biggest revelation of all - just as enjoyable and sociable.

Consider punting the booze in total fella...take it on as a challenge and it could be a win/win.

Big Love D7.

Do you currently have someone you see weekly like a counsellor/therapist? I have had two experiences I didn't get much out of but have had two that really helped. I would super recommend If its not something you are currently doing.

Hope to see you soon lad