Goldfish to Great White
04-11-2019
, 06:35 AM
Hello, I'm a 20 year old Computer Science student from the UK looking to improve my game.
Background:
As of yet I've only played 8.5k hands and done badly (net loss of $50) so I'm very much a fish, or maybe even a fish egg. For this reason I was reluctant to post this thread here as most threads here are very profitable, and mine will most likely be the opposite.
The Goal:
The goal of this challenge is quite simple; Become a winning 2NL player.
I'm a broke student right now so current bankroll is going to be $65 and as mentioned I'll be playing 6max 2NL.
In order to achieve this goal I have created this thread to maintain some kind of schedule and accountability to my learning. Also, I've aware that being a part of some kind of poker community where you can discuss hands and general play is a very useful tool for improving so hopefully I can use this to that end as well.
Study Plan:
In terms of studying, I like to read a lot and this will most likely be my preliminary approach to studying poker theory. I've nearly finished reading The Grinder's Manual (TGM) by Peter Clarke and all of my knowledge from poker derives from this book. My plan after finishing TGM is to move on to The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler in order to work on my tilt tendencies early. Despite the low amount of hands, I definitely remember getting tilted and that affected my play quite a lot so that's something I'm going to be working on.
Rounding up my reading list I'll be moving on to No-Limit Hold 'em For Advanced Players by Matthew Janda.
Aside from reading these books I'm going to create a designated timeslot after each session to look back on my hands and try to study them as that's something I've neglected since starting and I see a lot of value in that. Maybe I'll post some here if I'm not too embarrassed to show how much of a fish I am.
The Approach
As I'm at university (and approaching exam season), I'll be balancing that as well as poker, but I'm hoping to get in at least 4-5 hours of poker a day. In terms of play:study ratio I'm not too sure yet what that will look like, but considering I'm feeling quite theory deficient, it may be at around 50:50 until I feel comfortable with the basics.
I'm also not too sure if I want to go by volume/day or hand/day, this is something I'll experiment with.
In terms of my approach to this thread, I'm going to update as often as I can for two reasons:
'Lifetime' Graph:
I know, 8.5k hands is hardly anything but I always like seeing graphs in PG&C threads. Also, it serves to affirm how much of a fish I am, so there's that.
Thanks.
Background:
As of yet I've only played 8.5k hands and done badly (net loss of $50) so I'm very much a fish, or maybe even a fish egg. For this reason I was reluctant to post this thread here as most threads here are very profitable, and mine will most likely be the opposite.
The Goal:
The goal of this challenge is quite simple; Become a winning 2NL player.
I'm a broke student right now so current bankroll is going to be $65 and as mentioned I'll be playing 6max 2NL.
In order to achieve this goal I have created this thread to maintain some kind of schedule and accountability to my learning. Also, I've aware that being a part of some kind of poker community where you can discuss hands and general play is a very useful tool for improving so hopefully I can use this to that end as well.
Study Plan:
In terms of studying, I like to read a lot and this will most likely be my preliminary approach to studying poker theory. I've nearly finished reading The Grinder's Manual (TGM) by Peter Clarke and all of my knowledge from poker derives from this book. My plan after finishing TGM is to move on to The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler in order to work on my tilt tendencies early. Despite the low amount of hands, I definitely remember getting tilted and that affected my play quite a lot so that's something I'm going to be working on.
Rounding up my reading list I'll be moving on to No-Limit Hold 'em For Advanced Players by Matthew Janda.
Aside from reading these books I'm going to create a designated timeslot after each session to look back on my hands and try to study them as that's something I've neglected since starting and I see a lot of value in that. Maybe I'll post some here if I'm not too embarrassed to show how much of a fish I am.
The Approach
As I'm at university (and approaching exam season), I'll be balancing that as well as poker, but I'm hoping to get in at least 4-5 hours of poker a day. In terms of play:study ratio I'm not too sure yet what that will look like, but considering I'm feeling quite theory deficient, it may be at around 50:50 until I feel comfortable with the basics.
I'm also not too sure if I want to go by volume/day or hand/day, this is something I'll experiment with.
In terms of my approach to this thread, I'm going to update as often as I can for two reasons:
- To track my progress
- To keep focused and curb tilt
'Lifetime' Graph:
I know, 8.5k hands is hardly anything but I always like seeing graphs in PG&C threads. Also, it serves to affirm how much of a fish I am, so there's that.
Thanks.
04-14-2019
, 07:14 PM
Managed to read some more of The Grinder's Manual but the vast majority of it (around 65% or so) I can't remember any of since I read it around 6 months ago and the notes I created whilst studying it aren't with me right now, really looking forward to being able to read those again and patch up a lot of plays that I am 'guessing' with right now. I'm hoping to finish the rest of TGM by the end of next week.
I've managed to get through about 1/4 of The Mental Game of Poker and I can really see now why it's mentioned so much, such a great book in terms of informing you on 'the mental game' and actually giving you tangible actions that you can take away and use. This is a lot lighter reading than TGM so I hope to also have finished this by next week as well as notes completed for it.
In terms of volume, I've not really had time and also been a bit reluctant to put in much volume right now until I get hold of the theory as I feel like I'm just risking BR when my theory is severely patchy to say the least. All in all, I managed to get just under 2k hands in the last few days and here are the results:
Overall I'm quite happy that it's positive and that I was able to control some tilt when going through negative spells.
In terms of study, hand studying is really something I'm going to ramp up going forward, I've bought Flopzilla and i'm going to use that to go through marked hands and really try to analyse my play. Aside from using flopzilla I'm going to record some of my sessions and try to analyse my play that way as I'm aware that I forget to mark a lot of hands for review and I'll hopefully catch some leaks that way. Also really looking to get into a study group as well in order to learn from other people and analyse other people's play, but I wouldn't even know where to begin to find a study group with people that are my (bad) level.
My next aim now is to reach 10k hands and then post in the Beginner stats thread to see if there are any obvious leaks that I can fix. I'll post here after that.
Goals:
- Finish TGM (& notes)
- Finish TMGOP 1 (& notes)
- 10k hands
- Post in stats thread, get leak advice
I've managed to get through about 1/4 of The Mental Game of Poker and I can really see now why it's mentioned so much, such a great book in terms of informing you on 'the mental game' and actually giving you tangible actions that you can take away and use. This is a lot lighter reading than TGM so I hope to also have finished this by next week as well as notes completed for it.
In terms of volume, I've not really had time and also been a bit reluctant to put in much volume right now until I get hold of the theory as I feel like I'm just risking BR when my theory is severely patchy to say the least. All in all, I managed to get just under 2k hands in the last few days and here are the results:
Overall I'm quite happy that it's positive and that I was able to control some tilt when going through negative spells.
In terms of study, hand studying is really something I'm going to ramp up going forward, I've bought Flopzilla and i'm going to use that to go through marked hands and really try to analyse my play. Aside from using flopzilla I'm going to record some of my sessions and try to analyse my play that way as I'm aware that I forget to mark a lot of hands for review and I'll hopefully catch some leaks that way. Also really looking to get into a study group as well in order to learn from other people and analyse other people's play, but I wouldn't even know where to begin to find a study group with people that are my (bad) level.
My next aim now is to reach 10k hands and then post in the Beginner stats thread to see if there are any obvious leaks that I can fix. I'll post here after that.
Goals:
- Finish TGM (& notes)
- Finish TMGOP 1 (& notes)
- 10k hands
- Post in stats thread, get leak advice
Last edited by kaw4; 04-14-2019 at 07:20 PM.
04-16-2019
, 06:19 AM
Managed to get 1k+ hands in yesterday which was good, but it was an absolutely terrible session.
-~50BB/100 which is extremely disheartening but there are silver linings to be seen here.
I realised that in all of my sessions where I go negative I am relentlessly chasing losses in the hope I can recoup some of the lost money. I didn't really think much of it until after the session when I googled it and realised it's quite a common gambling problem and can be a form of tilt. I need to review hands from the session but I still don't really feel like I was 'tilted' in the obvious case (e.g making outrageous plays, I felt like I still had my head), but I recognise that playing on a big losing streak (-500BB) cannot put you in a good mental space.
To combat this I'm going to start setting a stop loss for each session, I simply can't lose anywhere near 500BB in a session again, it's just reckless and it's how I lost my first deposit of $50 months ago. I need to work out what kind of stop limit I'm going to go for as I tend to start sessions off anyway, at the moment I'm leaning towards a 100-150BB stop loss.
I'm also hoping that TMGOP will cover this and offer some actions to work towards this.
Another salient point on reflection of this losing session has been the fact that I'm mostly playing post-flop without any theory to back up my actions. I've forgotten almost 60% of The Grinder's Manual and considering that is the poker theory I know, it doesn't bode well for my post-flop play. From cbetting to check raising to donking to calling flop bets, and everything post flop I can't remember any of it and so I am playing without any of this knowledge which is a big mistake.
To combat this today I'm going to spend a lot of hours going through the missing parts in my game by re-reading and making notes on the parts of The Grinder's Manual.
Also, looking at my graph there is a massive discrepancy between money won with showdown/without showdown and not in a good way. This should be down to my post-flop decisions and knowing when to fold, etc. because my opening ranges should be pretty standard and therefore the hands I'm getting to the flop as preflop raiser should also be fairly standard, it's just all of the decisions that come after the flop end up in me having the worst hand at showdown, resulting in a -$45 difference between money won without showdown/with showdown.
Another thing I've been debating after yesterday's session is whether I should take some time out of actually playing and just getting my theory down but I think that would be a mistake considering my big weakness right now is post-flop and sure, I'm missing a lot of theory but playing experience is key for post-flop play and as long as I stick to my stop-loss the benefits of playing more hands outweighs the little amount I'll be losing.
-~50BB/100 which is extremely disheartening but there are silver linings to be seen here.
I realised that in all of my sessions where I go negative I am relentlessly chasing losses in the hope I can recoup some of the lost money. I didn't really think much of it until after the session when I googled it and realised it's quite a common gambling problem and can be a form of tilt. I need to review hands from the session but I still don't really feel like I was 'tilted' in the obvious case (e.g making outrageous plays, I felt like I still had my head), but I recognise that playing on a big losing streak (-500BB) cannot put you in a good mental space.
To combat this I'm going to start setting a stop loss for each session, I simply can't lose anywhere near 500BB in a session again, it's just reckless and it's how I lost my first deposit of $50 months ago. I need to work out what kind of stop limit I'm going to go for as I tend to start sessions off anyway, at the moment I'm leaning towards a 100-150BB stop loss.
I'm also hoping that TMGOP will cover this and offer some actions to work towards this.
Another salient point on reflection of this losing session has been the fact that I'm mostly playing post-flop without any theory to back up my actions. I've forgotten almost 60% of The Grinder's Manual and considering that is the poker theory I know, it doesn't bode well for my post-flop play. From cbetting to check raising to donking to calling flop bets, and everything post flop I can't remember any of it and so I am playing without any of this knowledge which is a big mistake.
To combat this today I'm going to spend a lot of hours going through the missing parts in my game by re-reading and making notes on the parts of The Grinder's Manual.
Also, looking at my graph there is a massive discrepancy between money won with showdown/without showdown and not in a good way. This should be down to my post-flop decisions and knowing when to fold, etc. because my opening ranges should be pretty standard and therefore the hands I'm getting to the flop as preflop raiser should also be fairly standard, it's just all of the decisions that come after the flop end up in me having the worst hand at showdown, resulting in a -$45 difference between money won without showdown/with showdown.
Another thing I've been debating after yesterday's session is whether I should take some time out of actually playing and just getting my theory down but I think that would be a mistake considering my big weakness right now is post-flop and sure, I'm missing a lot of theory but playing experience is key for post-flop play and as long as I stick to my stop-loss the benefits of playing more hands outweighs the little amount I'll be losing.
Last edited by kaw4; 04-16-2019 at 06:42 AM.