Ha yeah exactly. I just kept running the same sims over and over but with small changes to squeeze out an extra fraction of a big blind. It wasn't so much the extra profit I was after though, it was knowing that I'd done everything I could to get the best solution. I felt that if I wasn't getting the best possible solution to my problem, then once I moved on to more advanced problems, this could result in bigger inaccuracies, and therefore an even bigger waste of time. Right now though I feel like there are more important things to work on.

Link plz.
Reminds me of this great blog post by Ross.
http://rosstraining.com/blog/2013/02/06/win-the-day/

Just search for The Mental Game of Poker or Jared Tendler on iTunes and the podcasts are all there. The episode I was referring to, I think, was episode 1 with Leatherass as a guest.

I used to laugh at all these motivational speakers and books etc, just thinking "it's obvious that you need to work hard to do well". The problem was I was never actually working hard. And neither are 99% of people who read/listen/watch that kinda stuff. It's only when you start actually working to do the stuff they say that you realise that a) you're nowhere near fulfilling your potential, b) there's so much more you can do, c) you're wasting so much of your time and d) you're misusing the rest of it. I know I'm still not working as hard as I could, but I'm working on getting there.

16th December - How I got a little bit better today:

Watched a live play vid by Zaza on Leggo. Other that that I didn't really do much as I hadn't played all weekend so wanted to get some sessions in, especially as the tables were so good, probably from the milestone promo that's going on atm.

You also discussed a pokerhand with someone on Skype and talked about adjusting 3 bet ranges in NLHU.

Discussing is improving

This is true. I actually got some interesting things from the NLHU discussion that will be transferable to my play when starting tables. Every little bit helps.

17th December - How I got a little bit better today:

Watched a video on DC regarding constructing preflop ranges. It was a little on the basic side for me and I already knew a lot of it, but I pick up a few interesting hints and there's no harm in going back over stuff you know.

I've realised recently that a problem I have with my play is that I don't have a default strategy for most spots. While I generally will play similar ranges in the same spot, because I don't have that set default, there must be an amount of inherent randomness in my play. While some of this randomness is actually me deviating from the norm to exploit a particular opponent's tendencies, I think even that is somewhat random. Something I need to do is work on specific spots and develop a default strategy that is as optimal as possible. Once I know what my default is, only then can I effectively start to alter that strategy to exploit my opponents.

I think the obvious and probably easiest place to start will be a BBvSB strategy, so I will try and do some work there over the rest of this week.

This is pretty much exactly what I have started to work on. Be interested to see how you're going about it?

I like the idea of coming up with a strategy for a specific spot but I kinda disagree about BB v SB being the easiest place to start. I think when ranges are so wide that there's a lot more variables than say....LP v EP where we'll be up against tighter ranges and decisions will generally be easier etc.

I used to think this also, but I think it's incorrect.

First of all, LPvEP we have the issue of having other players call behind us, or squeeze us. This is not insignificant and will have pretty complex implications for our range.

The next issue is that tighter ranges mean that there is more margin for error around the fringes. For a tight range, every time we misjudge a hand in that range, either by leaving it out, or including it erroneously, we affect the range as a whole and all the EV calculations by quite a lot. Conversely, when we work with say a 50% range, misjudging a few hands around the fringes at the bottom of the range won't have that much of an effect on our calculations.

Lastly, it's extremely easy to work out our minimum defence frequency in a BvB situation. This becomes exponentially (FU Cang!) harder to do the earlier the position we're in because that defense frequency is shared by every position still to act.

tldr

18th December - How I got a little bit better today:

Well I had my plan of devising the best possible preflop defence range for a BvB spot. I had this grand plan of using crEV to get an accurate idea of EV for each possible decision with each possible hand. After messing around for a couple of hours I realised that this was going to be way complicated than I thought because postflop is an absolute minefield so I could only solve for toy games (ie 3bet-or-fold, call-or-fold). So while I didn't come up with anything amazingly useful, I did still learn a few things. Taking it through it some friends also helped me get my thoughts in order about it.

I also got a trial of NoteCaddy today which I managed to get set up with the help of Husker (thanks!). It looks pretty useful but the amount of work needed to set it up properly is pretty huge so I think I'm going to buy the NoteCaddy-Edge package to save me the time and effort.

Just played my first session where I logged and rated my play, tilt etc. after in a journal. Hopefully the start of something positive in my off table work.

So Thanks Ron. You are dragging a few of us along behind you.

^^ This ^^

That's great guys. Every little bit you do helps, and paying attention to the mental game as much as the technical game is incredibly important. Glad I could provide some motivation

Fwiw here's a screenshot of what my session log looks like:



19th December - How I got a little bit better today:

I bought NoteCaddy and the NoteCaddy-Edge package in the morning and spent a little bit of time setting it up and working it out. I decided I needed more room for my HUD (adding the NC badges and will also want to add some more stats) so spent a bit of time altering my layout to provide me with bigger tables.

I reviewed some hands from my sessions, getting a bit more in depth with one on crEV where I was interested in working out what my defence range should be against a flop raise. That was an interesting hand to go through because it got me thinking about my range as a whole and how that affects my frequencies. I need to find some similar spots and do the same thing.

I also chatted with some friends about some hands and some concepts (mainly on how to choose when to call and when to raise with a FD otf, as well as some other raising spots).

I'm not sure how much I'm going to get to do today. I need to go out to buy some more RAM for my computer this morning, then I'm going to meet my gf for a run at lunchtime. In the afternoon I'll probably just play and take the time to test out some of the new NoteCaddy stuff I'll be using.

I've gotta admit, this is something I've never quite got my head around. I always thought it was just standard to raise our draws but over the past years or so I've seen a lot of conflicting information but I've never quite worked out what the consesnus is on what to raise and what to call.

21st December - How I got a little bit better today:

Well I didn't play at all yesterday. I did have a chat with Husker about the 'when to raise' concept and putting all my thoughts down really helped to clear some stuff up in my head.

Today I just played one session, I didn't have much time to do anything else so didn't do any work on my game at all, although I did go through some of the NoteCaddy stuff that's new to me because there were some things that weren't making sense but are now cleared up.

8th January - How I got a little bit better over the last few weeks:

This thread's been a bit neglected since Christmas. I had a bit of a break from the tables, just getting a few sessions in when I could but I didn't really do any studying as I didn't have enough time.

Something I did do was to take advantage of my new layout (that I made on 19th Dec) and work on my HUD so that I've now got a few more useful stats on there and a bunch of the Notecaddy Edge badges. I'm starting to incorporate using the badges into my game, some of them are definitely useful, others not so much. Over the next few weeks I'm going to try and take out the ones that I don't find useful to free up space for the better ones. I also need to work on my pop-ups. The ones I currently have I designed a while ago and really like using them so I don't want to switch over to the NC-E ones, but I will look over them all and take ideas from them and incorporate them into my own pop-ups.

Also I got Applications of NLHE for Xmas. Started reading that yesterday and got through part 1. I'll continue to work that into my daily routine.

One last thing that I've been doing is creating a chart with all my goals for the year, how I plan to achieve them, why they matter and any problems that might stop me reaching them. I'm trying to be really in depth with it so it's taking a while to complete, but hopefully it'll really put me on the right track for future success if I know exactly what I'm aiming for and how I'm going to get there.

GL for the year.

Janda's book is great. I'm reading it through first but will revisit it in more depth straight away and play with constructing ranges.

9th January - How I got a little bit better today:

I started on chapter 2 of AoNLHE this morning but then decided to go back to chapter 1 and re-read it, making notes as I go along. That way when I've finished I'll have a full set of notes to refer to and I'm sure making notes as I read will help me digest the information better. I got chapter 1 finished and briefly read a bit of chapter 2, but I plan to go through that more thoroughly tomorrow. One of my short-term goals is to stick to reading this book almost every day until I'm done and get through it. I've embarked on a few things recently that I haven't seen through to the end, but I know that this one is well worth getting through so there's no reason I shouldn't be able to do it.

I've been making more of an effort to talk about hands over Skype too and have been doing a bit of that today which definitely helps, especially when discussion of a particular spot evolves into discussion of wider theory. I really need to stop doing it in the middle of a session though.

10th January - How I got a little bit better today:

Started re-reading through chapter two of Janda's book. Didn't get very far because I made a ton of notes on the first part of it, then used the info I had to create a spreadsheet of defence frequencies from all different positions, with all different betsizes etc.

Got pretty in depth talking about some preflop spots, especially this hand:



Opener 46/14 over 25 hands, no real info but obviously a fish

3bettor 13/11, 4% 3bet, seems fairly standard, seems to be aggro on the flop but more passive on later streets

I found it pretty hard to come to a conclusion about whether I should be calling there, and more importantly what my whole range should do. I ended up deciding that JJ is close and probably at the bottom of my calling range. There are too many unknowns to be sure though, such as how much value the fish will give, how wide the reg is isoing the fish etc. which makes it really hard to work out how to play the rest of my range. Ideas?

I've gotta admit I don't really know with this one. It would be so much easier to work out if we had opened and villain had 3bet us but there are a lot more variables in a spot like this.

Why is JJ at the bottom of your calling range vrs a 7bb 3 bet ?

It's a question of how I'm going to be able to play profitably postflop. JJ is probably about 50% at best vs the 3-bettor's range and it's going to be incredibly tough to realise that equity if you think about how the hand will play out.

I personally think the fact you're going to be facing multiple barrels often vs a tight 3better and you're cold calling OOP with someone left to act leans it towards a fold.

So what is your calling range in this spot then ?

good luck ron. this is the year!