fkn luv it.

Q How many hands do you play an hour?

I've got this whole live/online dynamic comparison thing going on just now, not just meta-game, but variance, bankroll, the whole shebang. Which is why your thread is great because you are like commentating the whole thing (it's a little fkn vicarious tbh )

There seem to be other regs on here with similar thoughts too.

Anyway, interested in volume by handcount over the period.

Also moar hands plse...I feel the need to express my emerging talent.

Yo sorry dude, forgot to post on those hands in your thread. Providing I don't forget again, I'll do that straight after gym!

Volume wise I don't actually know. Casino I'd imagine to be maybe 20 hands per hour, the homegames 30-35, there's that much of a polarity between the two. I've not actually counted each hour but that's my estimate going off what most people think live poker is. So I've played maybe 8-10k hands so far?

I am moving to QLD for 12 months Dec 2018. Are there games near Hope Island or Robina?

If you're Robina way, there's Jupiter's Cas on the coast. And also a few GC homegames that are decent apparently.

I recently tracked the preflop raising rate in my 1/3 NL casino game. I did ten 1 hour random samples, mostly concentrating on any table I would consider "typical" for my game. Admittedly lol sample size, but I ended up counting an average of 30.4 hands an hour. This is a game that has a shuffle machine, although it is sometimes slowed down somewhat as dealers (instead of chip runners) are often forced to give players their BIs.

My guess has always been that the more hands an hour the worst the game is (as multiple poor players aren't calling down multiple streets with poor holdings, more preflop raise-and-take-its, no one spewing money on multiple streets, etc.).

GcluelesshandsperhournoobG

Hadn't thought of it that way before! But yeah, maybe my cas is more like 24-30 then. All the shuffle machines are broken and the dealers are too lazy to hand shuffle so we wait for the machine to finish. So ****ty.

Daily Update - Tuesday 19/09

Hours Played: 8.1
Profit: $150

Notes: Ran pretty terribly all day today. Got AK in pre vs 77, ran it 3 times lost them all... Got K9 in vs KQ on K689 and lost 2 of 3, had to fold AK pre vs a short stack cold 4 (was right vs KK), didn't play ANY big pots and didn't win ANY big hands. Actually there was one hand...

Hand 1

Few limpers, hero isos AKo from BB to $28, only 2nd limper calls.
Flop $65: TT4r
Check, check
Turn $65: 4cc
Hero checks, V bets $35, hero calls.
River $135: 5ccc
Hero checks, V jams for $120-170ish...

Notes: This guy was limping every hand, stuck a bit and visibly trying to force spots. I don't think he necessarily jams river with a flush so I'm not too worried about the BDFD and that sizing also rules out 4x. So it's basically Tx or we win. Sure sometimes he'll have it, but I think he bets Tx a decent chunk OTF. But just the sheer number of bullsht combos he'll rock up with otr is too high. We call and he mucks.

But yeah, overall super frustrating day and most of it spent 5 handed. One guy playing 100% of hands and opening maybe 70% made it very difficult for me to defend optimally when my overall strategy requires me to overfold - when I did defend vs him, and I'd make a pair, he'd always turn or river 2 pair and I'd be boned. NOT a good session. Borderline entitlement tilt because this is a lineup I should be printing money in.

Tomorrow (today since it's 5:30am) I'll be enjoying the day off. Will get some sleep now then get up and smash some breakfast somewhere. Then I might have a nap. Then I might do some reading or write on my blog or brainstorm some ideas for an internet business.

Internet Business

Just on that quickly, I won't get into too much detail rn because I'm tired af... Obv poker is great and I'll play it for the rest of my life if I can, but with its volatility and whatnot, if I can diversify income streams so that I'm less reliant on poker income, I can have a little more peace of mind when the going gets tough.

If I was going to spend time on a job or something to earn me money outside of poker, it'd have to function in much the same way as poker - in that I can do it on my schedule, I have the flexibility, etc, not reliant on anyone else. Internet business is perfect for that and would enable me to maintain the current lifestyle I have. I know a lot about internet marketing but I'm not 100% sure what route I'd like to go or even with what idea - affiliate marketing seems nice, as does running a blog, but written content just seems like it's on the way out. I have a couple ideas and a few bits and pieces/notes I've been taking down but hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to cement a few more things in my mind and be able to share them with you.

That's all for now folks, will update prob sometime tomorrow or after my game Thursday for the weekly review.

I'd play 1/3 and up my hours. Less swings, less variance. I grind a ton tho.

Just picked this thread up and read through everything. Good ****ing luck, man. Will definitely be following.

I'm not sure what you mean by this? There also isn't a 1/3 in Brisbane. The point is to diversify income. I should be fine to play 2/5+ for a good while, the issue is the long Breakeven streaks.

Cheers bruh! <3

WRT diversifying your income, it's going to be difficult just starting out. You'd have to put in capital for a domain, capital for a product or service, payment processors, taxes, etc. I don't know what your current BR or life roll situation is, but just starting out you probably don't have enough of it to diversify.

When my girlfriend and I talked, we talked about how I knew this wasn't the end goal. Eventually, I would look into purchasing a couple of homes and put them up for rent. Or even open a business of some kind. The rent income is steady income that still gives you freedom. I know here in states, you can purchase some ****ty houses for $20-30k. Do that, put in about $5k in upgrades and renovations, and you can probably rent it out for $600/month. Not to mention you'll be able to sell for maybe $50k.

You could also look into some poker coaching?

Actually, domain and hosting is extreeeemely cheap per annum. I'm currently paying something like $1-$2 per week for my host and a bunch of domains. The benefit of internet business, depending on what your product is and how you plan to profit, is that quite often it can be done with very little overheads. I'll write a bit more about this later tonight, but I have an idea for an online philosophy forum. The only expenses would be domain and hosting. The monetization potential is endless and revenue would very quickly pay for the hosting and costs.

If you run a blog for instance and sell advertising or do affiliate marketing, it's once again practically overhead-less. That's ideal because if it fails, you don't lose much capital wise.

Real estate is a gold mine and you should definitely look at going that route if you can, for sure.

Re poker coaching and whatnot, it's something I've thought about doing but feel as though I'll be able to make more out of it later down the track. If in 5 years, I've logged 10,000 hours and have had a successful/fruitful career as a pro, I'll write a book on how I did it. I have a passion for writing and know I'd be able to make a very good product. I know exactly how I'd market it and sell it online as well. But I can't do that right now because I'm only 300/10,000 hours into this venture. Sure, I could offer coaching for an hourly, but the idea of doing something non-poker related is a real breath of fresh air.

Just this evening, I strolled down to a local bookshop and purchased "7 Day Startup" by Dan Norris. Just a few hours later I've almost finished it and digested a lot of it. Some really cool concepts in there. What I've found most useful is the concept of MVP (minimal viable product) and his incessant reverberation of the idea that you neeeeeed to launch quickly and get real data from real paying customers. That's when the learning starts.

Of course, I'm going to pretty much ignore the advice to dive right in. This side-business thing is just an idea that I'm entertaining at the moment while my main focus is on poker. To launch a successful internet business requires your full dedication to that task and a LOT of hustle. So for the time being, I'm happy just planning things and generating ideas and cementing the product in my mind, while my effort is focused on poker.

At some stage, however, I DO want to get the ball rolling on this project because diversifying income is something I probably SHOULD do sooner rather than later. But how will I find the time to commit 100% to launching this business venture while I'm playing 40 hours of poker a week? It's not something I can just spend an hour or two on every other day - not initially at least. So this got me thinking... Getting the 40 hours of volume in per week is ESSENTIAL. I want to look back on my first year and be able to say, yup, I played 2,000 hours of quality poker. That's 50 weeks of 40 hours work, two weeks off for RnR. For one of those weeks off, I'd like to go to Melbourne in January during the Aussie Millions and play mostly cash and maybe a couple 1k liveaments. No doubt during that week in Melbourne, I'll be able to get 40 hours of cash in anyway. At least. So this leaves me with 2 weeks spare up my sleeve to dedicate to this side-project internet business if I wanted to. Ideally, I'd like a full month to reeeeeaally put some work into this thing. Like a full month of 12+ hour days just GRIIIINDING, living off coffee. So I need to find an extra 2 weeks or 80 hours of poker volume by the end of my first full year to enable me to schedule a full month off poker to focus on diversifying income.

Of course, after the full month of side-project focus, it'd be back to the 40 hour poker grind but also incorporating 1-2 hours a day on maintaining the business. Effectively, I need to get my 2,000 hours of poker volume in during 48 weeks instead of 50 if I want to do this. This is only an extra 2 hours playing per week which should be fairly achievable if we keep our head down and work hard from here on out. I basically need to be hitting 180-190 hours a month between now and August next year if I want to take a month off to have an intensive business grind marathon month.

It's definitely possible and I don't know when yet I'll want to schedule this month off. Assuming everything's on track, probably after I get back from Melbourne would be best (so I'm not going to Melb after a month of not playing, i.e. being rusty) - also is very results-dependent. If I'm way under EV for the year or if unexpected financial happenings arise, then I might just have to put it off indefinitely.

I'll make a full post about my proposed business idea a little later on, just to see what peoples thoughts are.

Income Diversification - My Plan For The Future

I want to make one thing perfectly clear. Poker is and will be for the foreseeable future, my baby. I will play 40 hours a week every year for the foreseeable future and that is my priority. That said, it doesn't take a lot of brains to figure out the +EV thing to do, at some stage, is to diversify your income streams so that you're less reliant on one if sh*t hits the fan. For example, if my local casino upped the rake to 15% or put the rake cap up to $20, I don't think I could play there anymore. I don't see why they would do this, but it illustrates the volatility of poker - nothing is certain and it's completely in the hands of other people; not something I can control. Put simply, I don't want to be in the same shoes as those SNE/SN grinders who were breaking-even pre-rakeback and after Stars implements a change, suddenly, overnight, they're out of a job.

I've mentioned it before and I'll say it again. I'll never be an employee ever again. It genuinely strikes fear into my soul - the idea of having to be in a certain place at a certain time, and having your livelihood ultimately in the hands of someone else. So that's why it's important for me, when I diversify my income streams, to maintain the current lifestyle I have. I need to be able to work on my own schedule, to be able to do it from whatever city I want to, and to be able to work autonomously without someone breathing down my neck. Naturally, internet business seems like the obvious choice.

So what will my internet business be? How will I make income (preferably passive income) online? Well there are a couple of things that I value most about the internet business model and those are...

Low Overheads - It's extremely cheap to setup a website. A domain and hosting are extremely cheap. WordPress is free. MyBB is free. Drupal is free. The benefit of having a business that doesn't require a lot of capital initially and requires only a small amount of money to maintain is that if things don't work out, you've hardly lost much cash. And you've learnt a lot from the experience.

Scalability - I want a business model that can scale. Something that will produce results while it's still small, but once significant enough traffic is driven into the sales funnel, it scales up and earning potential is extremely high.

An Asset - I want this business to be an asset. Something I can sell in the future if I want to start a different venture.

Monthly Recurring Revenue - I want something that is consistent and predictable. I want to be able to say my business makes $x per month and has a projected growth rate of 10% MMR.

Passiveness - I don't want to have to work 50 hours a week on this thing. Initially, of course, I'm more than happy to grind and hustle and put in the long hours to get the ball rolling. But I want the business model set up in such a way that allows for autonomy. How difficult would it be for me to remove myself from the picture and things still run smoothly? If I were to spontaneously get on a flight to the Bahamas and go AWOL for a week, would things come crashing down? Can I outsource everything to create a perfectly passive income?

Passion - Is this something I'm passionate about? Am I able to do the dirty daily tasks and not get bored or tired? Is it something I enjoy?

Creativity - Does it support creativity? Does it enable me to develop something original, something that's not out there, something that genuinely adds value to peoples lives?

So for the past couple months, I've been thinking a bit about what sorts of things I could do eBusiness-wise that would satisfy these requirements. And I finally settled on an idea I'd like to pursue much more seriously.

Introducing ChatPhilosophy!

So for those who know me, apart from poker, my biggest passion in life is philosophy. I'm actually a current philosophy major (33% through my degree which is on the backburner) and have a blog at http://harveymeale.com on which I write about various topics, broadly philosophical in some nature. I'll go so far as to say philosophy is my ultimate passion in life. I love everything about it.

I also really like forums. I've been around forums for the past 10 years as a poster, moderator, administrator, and even chaired a large forum network (that would soon evaporate as the CEO died?). I know the ins and outs of pretty much every forum software and know a lot of the nuances that go into making and maintaining a great forum environment.

Naturally, when I started getting into philosophy, I was looking around for a forum on which I could join and post on to learn more about philosophy. Sadly, I didn't really find much - some reeeeally old inactive boards as sub-sections of other forums. Nothing really dedicated to philosophy. Which is kind of mind-boggling to me because it's such a huge field with a huge number of people world-wide who study the discipline. Everyone, I think, to an extent, gets around philosophy.

So the idea is to build an online philosophy forum. Like a 2+2 for philosophy. A community of budding philosophers, philosophy undergrads and postgrads alike, all with an interest in knowledge and truth. Discussions will run rampant from epistemology and metaphysics, to ethics and logic!

You might be thinking, that's great and all, but how on earth do you monetize a forum? How can I pull enough passive income out of this thing for it to really make a dent in my weekly expenses? Well, actually, there is a number of methods to use and below is a list of just a few I plan on implementing.

VIP Membership Subscription - So this is essentially a usergroup on the site that requires either a one-off fee or a monthly payment. Anyone in this usergroup receives small perks, whether it's access to VIP-only subforums, a special userbar and/or badge, small forum-wide privileges, or even just the prestige that goes with being a VIP. In terms of pricing, it could even be something ridiculously cheap like $1.99 a month, up to $9.99 a month - it all depends on what value they get each month by subscribing and whether they'll pay for it. Sometimes, if people really enjoy using the site, they'll subscribe just as a courtesy or means of saying thanks for providing the service.

Donations - People are more than willing to donate to a forum or blog if they feel as though the value they get from it is fitting. But a little incentive is always nice, right? I'll use an "awards" plugin which shows small badges in the forum's postbit, next to your username whenever you make a post. In the below image, for instance, I've given myself the "Donator" award - when you hover over the image, it'll say "Donator". This lets everyone know you've earnt this award. There will be lots of different awards for accomplishing different tasks on the forum etc. Sort of like achievements.



Book Reviews & Amazon Affiliates - So any philosophy major knows there's a lot of reading involved in typical coursework. Naturally, most philosophy majors are book worms. My target demographic is philosophy majors. A cool idea I've come up with is a forum titled "The Library" which essentially contains a bunch of different book reviews etc. On each post, I'll include an Amazon Affiliate link so that users who read these reviews and decide they want to purchase the book can do so via my referral. If I can get 10 book reviews each getting some traffic each month, and of that traffic, some conversions, we should be able to make a decent buck through Amazon Affiliates without having to lift a finger. There's even a plugin you can use that converts plaintext on your site in specific subforums into affiliate links. So the plugin is essentially generating leads for you. Once again, it's a beautiful method because it is by far the most passive of them all.

Selling Advertisements - Once the forum community grows to a certain point, i.e. 20,000 pageviews per month, for example, we can sell banner ads. You might notice this is something 2+2 does a lot of. With ******* being so prolific nowadays, this isn't going to net us an insane income, but it's all hassle free and extremely passive if you get with the right network. Even if it's just $50 a month - it mightn't seem like much but that's a literally money for doing no work whatsoever. Same with the Amazon Affiliates.

Merchandise - This is an idea I'd not consider initially, but once the community has developed and is blossoming nicely. We could open up a merch shop on the site that sells clever/witty T-Shirts or mugs or whatever. Have users submit designs and get a dropshipping company to do all the work. Each print has www.chatphilosophy written on it in small text somewhere - this doubles as a means to generate organic traffic. Imagine how powerful it would be having an undergrad rock up to a metaphysics tutorial, which is essentially just a discussion group, wearing a shirt displaying a link to your site!? Priceless!

So as you can see, there's plenty of ways one can monetize a forum, especially if you've got enough traffic going to the site. If each of the above methods only makes a few dollars per month each initially, then all that's left to do is scale up. The beauty of this is that it's extremely passive. A forum community is essentially self-contained. If you promote good members and create a good staff team, they'll take care of everything and you'll only have to check in once every day or every other day to see how things are travelling. If you wanted to. This is something I'd want to spend time and effort on and nurture endlessly.

Traffic Generation

This is the hard part. Particularly with forums because initially, it's difficult to get people to join a discussion board when there's literally no discussion. I have a few ideas however that can help get the ball rolling. I imagine most of my traffic will come from uni campuses. I'll literally take fliers into uni and tell the philosophy majors/minors/anyone in lectures/tutorials I can find. There's a University of Queensland Student Philosophy Association that I'll contact and see if they'll help get on board. If there's one thing that's for sure, it's that philosophy students love to talk and love talking philosophy. It won't be difficult to get a few initial members on the site populating it with content.

The first hundred or so members will join a special "Pilot Program" where they're rewarded for helping get the show on the road. We can run promotions like, the first 20 posters to reach 100 posts will get a special "Pilot" badge on their profile. Small things like this that really encourages people to get involved. Even things like making it clear you're intending on appointing staff members shortly (forum moderators) can give people a goal to work towards. A lot of good things can come to someone who is well-established within a forum community.

I've also got a huge list of other forums and blogs and whatnot that I intend on recruiting potential users from. I'll infiltrate closed Facebook groups and ask people to join the forum. This is literally ALL about hustle. Getting your first 10, 20, 100, 1,000 members is ALL about hustling and putting in long hours every day. Soon enough, however, if you've created a community that people enjoy being a part of, they start doing some of the work for you. They tell their friends and you start generating a bit of organic traffic. You can set up referral promotions - anyone who refers 10 people to the forum gets a special referral badge on their profile. There's a lot you can do.

But all of this is a lot of hard work initially. And that's why if I were to give this thing a real crack, I'd like to take a full month off poker to really spend some long hours working at it. I'd enroll back into uni just so I could register into classes with like-minded people and refer them to my site. In my previous post, I make mention that I wouldn't want to sacrifice any poker-time to do this. It's important to me that I still hit 2,000 hours of volume in my first year. But I think I can still do this even if I take a full month off to get the ball rolling on this project. I still need to look a bit more into the logistics of all this and how exactly it'd work.

Anyway, props to anyone who read all of that lol. It was essentially just me rambling for my own sake. I like to compile my thoughts like this from time to time. If anyone has any ideas, questions, feedback, suggestions, etc re the whole internet business thing, please make yourself be heard!

Daily Update - Thursday 21/09

Hours Played: 9.2
Profit: -$480

Notes: Really gluggy day today. IDK. Same as last session, didn't win any big hands whatsoever, made some mistakes (which I'll speak more about later), and ran well under EV as well. Few setups as well. Two hands I love some feedback on!

Hand 1

2nd hand of the session.

Hero limps A6hh UTG, UTG+1 opens $15, folds to me, I call.
Flop $35: K66ss
Check, v bets $20, hero r to $60, call.
Turn $155: 3s
Hero checks, villain bets $100, call.
River: $355: 8o
Hero checks, villain jams for $240, hero ???

Hand 2

HJ limps, Hero iso KK in CO $21, SB & BB call, fold.
Flop $65: JJ3r
Check, BB leads $35, hero calls, fold.
Turn $135: 5
BB leads $80, hero calls
River $295: 8
BB jams $240ish, hero ???

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

Weekly Review - 15/09 - 21/09

Hours Played: 43.3
Profit: $1,559

Notes: Decent week all in all. Let's take a quick look at finances...

Groceries - $9.48
Cheat Meal(s) - $58.85
Coffee - $14.60
Household Items: $9.99
Books: $24.95
Other Income: +$78
Social: $0

Once again, bit of a blowout there re the cheat meals, but apart from that, not a bad week in terms of spendings. Will have $140 in the social rollover fund now - I IMAGINE I'll save that up for a couple more weeks but who knows. Love how I spent <$10 on food for the week! (groceries) and coffee was down too which is nice. The "other income" was some PPPoker profit I made. Played a freeroll the other night, $200 prize pool, $100 for first, $60 second, $40 for third. Was 28 runners, most of which sat out the entire tourny. Stupidly easy to do well in lol. I got sucked out on AJ < KJ 3 handed and ended up busting 3rd for $40. Not bad considering I was just mucking around on my phone in bed and raising every hand. Took that $40 to a 1/2 NLH table and played HU vs someone for a bit and ran it into $78 before deciding just to cash out lol.

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

GOALS FOR THE FORTHCOMING WEEK:

[ ] - STUDY MODULE 1
[ ] - Maintain good gym frequency
[ ] - 40-45 Hours volume
[ ] - Continue tracking spendings

I have no events on this week so getting in some good volume and focusing on poker will be important. I actually want to REALLY focus on poker this week (after probably my worst session tonight in quite a while, mistakes wise). "Study Module 1" I'm not 100% sure what it will entail yet, but it'll essentially be a proper study session where I do some analysis and some technical poker stuff to attempt to "improve" my game or rectify some of the issues I encountered tonight. I'll post more about this when I do it, I imagine that'll come on Monday or Tuesday or whenever my day off is.

It's currently 5:35am and I'm going to attempt to get some sleep. Hopefully get a game in tonight at 6-630pm - I'm pretty wired right now from that Red Bull so I imagine I'll sleep pretty ****tily which means I'll probably get up at like 5pm, play, and then gym after I finish like I did tonight.

Full Results & Giraffe: https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?...7C8876B842!334

I am not in love with the Forum idea because you have to hustle, hustle, hustle for much longer than 1 month.

I have read 7 Day Start up and it is much more about bringing a service to market w/in 7-Days, NOT securing a passive income stream after 7 Days.

I think it is generally accepted in the start-up world that at least 1-2 years is needed to grow a business to the point of passive income although of course there are outliers.

Forums in general are losing their share of eyeballs and the trend is downward and sooo many sites are losing advertizing revenue vs a few years ago and that trend is going south too.

I do not want to discourage you but just wanted to provide some input.

I love this thread and have subscribed.

Keep up the good work.

Would nit fold both hands on river.

H2 is a bit tougher of a fold for me though

think its really hard to fold either of these, would lean towards call on both but think theyre close.

Surely both these hands are quite "read dependent"? Give us the goods plse.

My step son is an internet entrepreneur in the true sense of the word. He left uni at 19 and immediately shipped out to China were he still is, 6 years later. He lived in some s***y places (and some not so s****ty) taught himself fluent Mandarin in about 9 months (spoken and written) has appeared a number of times on Chinese TV, secured about 2 million dollars investment (all of which has been invested in staff, wages and offices - he has none of it), survived a severe bout of Hepatitis and is still a long way from making any sort of serious money. He works about 60-80 hours a week, has had about 6 weeks holidays in 6 years and most of the time lives with the stress of not knowing if he can pay his next months wages bill. By the way, he is seriously fkn smart, intelligent and motivated.

The moral of the story...is pretty obvious I think. But if it isn't, since I left the military I've been involved in starting up and running three companies (successfully - they all still trade) and it is tough fkn grind, take it from me. Working for a company, assuming you can find a job you love doing, is a waaaayyy easier gig.

None of that is intended as discouragement...what is right for you, is right for you. I'm just telling it as I find it, because I'm really old (in fact I'm a dotard...I word I never heard of before today

Yeah, I don't want to be discouraging either, but I highly doubt there are too entrepreneurs starting their own company that don't put in an all consuming amount of stressful can-I-keep-my-company-afloat-so-I-don't-go-broke hours.

GgoodluckthoughG

I don't play nosebleeds, so whatever obviously, but I highly doubt calling EP raises HU OOP with speculative hands in heavily raked games is profitable.

GimoG

I think the A6s limp is good specifically in LLSNL bc

hand is likely to go 5+ ways to the flop, and you can make the nut flush when theres a good chance someone will have the lower flush. The deeper everyone is, the more profitable thisll be ofc

if its a really aggressive game with lots of Iso, 3bet, 4bet etc then it becomes terrible but 2/5 players should be pretty weak

Yeah, you're 100% right. I'm having second thoughts about the forum as well after posting more or less the same thing on Reddit. My main hesitation was that Facebook groups and Reddit have a monopoly over forums now. People just don't use forums like they did 10 years ago (imo).

You're 100% right also re 7 Day Startup being more product-focused and a forum, something that, by its very nature, requires a looooot of nurturing before you can see results. I'm going to sit on it for the time being and keep brainstorming other ideas, maybe something more product-oriented.

Interesting you should say that. There seems to be a lot of mixed thoughts re these two hands.

Interesting you say the opposite of telly. I'll reveal the results later in this post.

In the KK on JJx hand, villain is fairly "bad" in general. Loses a ton and takes some awkward lines. In A6s on 66x, villain is kinda hard to pin down in a few words. Host of the game, generally plays fairly straight forward postflop and will often take route of least resistance. Won't vbet thin.

Yeah that's crazy. I will definitely think long and hard about any business stuff before really committing to any of it. But FWIW, working for a company, even if it's 40 hour weeks imo is < EV of working for yourself 50-60 hours a week, on something like a startup that has huge potential to payoff big.

Ofc, and I would definitely do the same, which is why I'd want to take so much time off to make a big dint into the initial workload. More than happy to work 80 hour weeks for a month to get the ball rolling and if it means spending less time on poker thereafter, reducing poker hours to cater for more eBiz hours, then I'd be okay with that. But it's all verrry far off at the moment and we're really still just at the brainstorming period.

Eh, villain's raise isn't a "traditional" tight UTG raise, they actually raised with a worse suited ace than mine. We know the villain fairly well too and our hand has plenty of equity vs their range.

Lately I've been trying to reduce the hands I'm opening from UTG because they go multiway so often. However, I think suited aces is actually probably an okay hand to stick in that range because they play really well multiway post. Previously A2s-A9s for me has been reallllllllllllllly awkward from UTG on an 8-9 handed table. Mostly limping and hoping to play it multiway. More than happy to limp call if there's a few people in the pot because that's a pretty dream scenario for these hands really.

I might experiment a bit with opening all suited aces from UTG even 8-9 handed and then maybe just folding A2s-A9s from UTG when 10 handed. See how we go.

*Results Reveal*

Hand 2

HJ limps, Hero iso KK in CO $21, SB & BB call, fold.
Flop $65: JJ3r
Check, BB leads $35, hero calls, fold.
Turn $135: 5
BB leads $80, hero calls
River $295: 8
BB jams $240ish, hero ???

Notes: On the flop, I'm thinking there's absolutely no way on earth he leads a J, it just seems so strange to do on a rainbow flop. Come the river, however, I'm trying to think a bit about what my range looks like. After calling flop and turn, it's pretty obvious my range is Jx and QQ+ right? Why on earth would he shove anything other than Jx or rivered 8s? I level myself into folding, regrettably. Villain later tells me he had TT and "didn't want to check to let me bet" or some bs like this. Obv TT is the one hand this villain can spazz out with. He also looked SUUUUUPER uncomfortable all throughout the hand. Like just the way he was sitting there after he bet and whatnot... On the river he jammed and someone was talking and he snap-acted like he was interested in the conversation but it was soooo obviously just him being extremely awkward and uncomfortable. He REEEAKED of uncomfortability. But then I level myself once again, surely he can be uncomfortable with a Jack here because it's a big pot etc. This combined with my propensity to abide by the principle of "if it's close, take the lower variance route", I decided to fold. If I just think about what hands he can have however, I really should be calling.

Hand 1

2nd hand of the session.

Hero limps A6hh UTG, UTG+1 opens $15, folds to me, I call.
Flop $35: K66ss
Check, v bets $20, hero r to $60, call.
Turn $155: 3s
Hero checks, villain bets $100, call.
River: $355: 8o
Hero checks, villain jams for $240, hero ???

Notes: I sigh call, villain shows A5 for the turned flush. This one should be a fold imo because villain tends not to value bet thinly postflop AT ALL. They really aren't the type of player to call a flop check raise with nothing either - so their range is like some Kx, some 6x, and a ****load of flush draws on the flop. Realistically, when villain snap bets $100 on the turn, we should consider folding. I know though I can donk jam river if the board pairs and will get paid off by a flush, so think calling there is more than fine. But river, definitely a fold. What leveled me into calling in the end was that the shove was fairly small in relation to the pot and I don't need to be right all the time. But realistically, this villain is only ever shoving the river with a flush or better. This was literally my second hand back playing after a couple days, and the second hand of the game, we have a weird meta where we're both super cocky to each other and I thought there was a chance she was just mucking about.

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

So I basically played both of those hands pretty poorly. What I did wrong, in the KK hand was handreading - I know based on my knowledge of poker that he's never leading flop with a J - that should have been enough for me to station down 3 streets. That COMBINED with me ignoring the glaringly obvious weakness/uncomfortability signs he was giving off. If you're donking thrice with Jx, you're probably not going to be too uncomfortable. It was fairly obvious he was bluffing - well, idk if he thought he was bluffing... Come the river it was a weird mergy thing I guess.

The A6s hand, my mistake was not adjusting exploitatively vs player type. I know this player won't value bet the river thin and also is verrrry unlikely to be on a stone bluff. Should have made a disciplined laydown - as hard as it is.

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

Daily Update - Friday 22/09

Hours Played: 6.8
Profit: $240

Notes: Another really bad session tonight. Too many mistakes. Plain and simple. Not at all happy with how I played. Let's look at some hands...

Hand 1

HJ (very loose) opens $15, CO calls, Hero calls A5hh on BTN.
Flop $50: 923dd
Villain bets $25, fold, hero calls.
*Immediately, our call is not amazing here. Villain has been opening well over 50% of hands, but when he cbets into two here, he's probably going to have something more often than not. I think calling with a gutshot and overcard isn't the worst thing in the world, but it's close.*
Turn $100: 2o
HJ checks, hero bets $40, villain calls.
*What the fk are we doing here? Our sizing is so bad, like villain basically only folds **** like AQ/AK here and he may not even cbet flop with it. We look like a draw so have very little fold equity.*
River $180: 2o
Check, hero bets $75, call. We lose vs J9o.
*River is just shockingly bad. He's never folding any pair here on this runout, maybe stationing some AK type hands if he still has them. This guy plays 500z on Party so knows to protect checking ranges fairly well and is a good player, although plays way too loose for live. We just need to be happy giving up more in this spot imo.*

Hand 2

EP opens $20, call, hero calls IP w/ AJhh.
*Preflop is good here, we have been squeezing and 3betting opener a fair bit so far and this hand is just not a 3bet vs his 4x range. Plus it's a total disaster if we get 4bet.*
Flop $65: J96r
Check, check, hero bets $35, villain raises $130, fold, hero calls.
*Already not in love with it. Villain is one of the best regs in the city. I felt as though folding top top here would just be too weak, so I called.*
Turn: Qo
V bets $200, we fold.
*I expect villain to have QT a verrry large amount of the time when he check raises flop. I'm good mates with him though and he told me after the hand he had 66 and that he plays QT the same way and that call flop and fold turn is good. Didn't really expect him to xr sets on a rainbow flop but w/e. WP by us both I guess... Maybe I can just fold to the flop xr since he's not just going to give up and I can't station down if he triples off...*

Hand 3

Hero opens KJdd EP to $20, same reg calls IP.
Flop $45: 9s8s8d
Hero cbets $20, call.
*This board is probably okay for both our ranges. We have more overpairs, but he knows I'll check them somewhat often. He probably has a decent chunk of 8x and a lot of middling pairs that aren't going to fold. I think though with a BDFD, two overs, and a BDSD, we PROBABLY have a cbet. I sized smaller to get him to fold a hand like AT/KQ... think he's less likely to float a hand like that on a board like this.*
Turn $105: 3d
Hero bets $60, call.
*We turn a flush draw here... don't REALLY want to barrel again but kind of have to on this turn?*
River $225: 4s
Check, villain bets $70, we fold.
*Front door flush gets in, we miss. Fairly happy to give up obv. Villain later told me he had KK here and was hoping a particular villain spazzed pre but didn't. He said I could have exploited his sizing on the river - and realistically, we can rep the nut flush very well, but once again, path of lowest variance. Not too unhappy with this hand.*

Hand 4

HJ opens $15, Hero calls OTB w KJss, SB squeezes to $50, fold, hero calls.
*Not an amazing call pre but we have position, he's made it quite small really, and it's like $500 effective, so can't be terrible.*
Flop $120: Q6Tcc
Villain bets $80, hero calls.
*Ugh, like best possible flop for us really but don't like calling this sizing. I guess it's possible that he cbets AK this size and then gives up? Or a bad turn comes and we can bluff him off? I don't REALLY wanna raise GII here, so I guess we peel and pray to the poker gods?*
Turn $280: 8c
Villain checks... *I think since we've come this far, we just have to go for it. It's a really good turn for our range and we probably have some fold equity. I have about $300-$350 left I think and...* Hero jams $300-$350, villain snapcalls, shows red KK... Whooops.
River ~$930: 9c
We apologise and scoop the pot.
Notes: Felt really bad in hindsight to get snapcalled there on the turn. Felt as though I played it really badly but looking back, I don't think it's that butchered at all. We SHOULD have some fold equity there on the turn IMO, pre is fine too imo since his sizing was way too small.

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

Thought about hitting up the casino after tonight's Penthouse game broke after 6.8 hours. I decided against it because A) wanted to go to the gym, B) I have a breakfast date at 9am (5 hours from now gg me lol), and C) I really truly despise the casino.

I really want to do some work on my game. Feel as though I've made a couple costly mistakes in the past few sessions and I don't know what to do to rectify them. The two hands I posted the other day (KK on JJx and A6 on 66x) have been really bothering me. If I'd played those two hands better, my results would be a lot better and that bothers me.

I'm not sure what I can do rn at 4am to improve my game but I want to do something. Think I'll download ANLH 2 or MGOP 2 and have a read just so I feel like I'm doing something.

Tomorrow's session needs to be better. Penthouse will probably get a game up and we need to bring it. I want to focus on the following things for my next session.

[ ] - Flop Cbetting - my cbet success has been pretty low of late. What is villain's range on the flop, are they likely to float, can we viably take a xc line? What sizing do I want to use.
[ ] - Slow things down and really think about ranges. When fast-paced villains act quickly, throwing chips around, snap betting and snap calling in SRPs, it establishes a really quick pace for the hand. You feel as though if you slow down and think, you're giving off weakness and so act fast too. But this is bad because it inhibits our ability to think as thoroughly as we should.
[ ] - Live tells. If it's glaringly obvious, don't ignore it this time. I was MUCH better at this tonight than I was yesterday.

That's it. If I can do those things well, maintain full focus, I'll be happy.

That's all for now folks, thanks for stopping by and commenting on the hands, I really really appreciate it. Will update in maybe 12 hours.

+1000 and that's why I like to play it this way, to a T.

RE: Axs in EP/MP, my default had been to open limp it for many of the reasons stated above, and in a passive preflop / payoffy postflop kinda game I think that is optimal. But my game has become a lot more aggressive preflop and a lot less payoffy postflop, so I'm not convinced it's profitable anymore at these tables, which is why I now open fold it (really only playing it now in LP). Table dependent, of course.

Still not convinced that calling a raise HU OOP in a raked game is going to be profitable unless your opponent is just like super horrendous. If our limped pot (or very multiway raised pot) doesn't materialize, I think we should be dumping it to the raise.

GimoG

I think a concept you need to understand is wealth and how it grows.

Think of wealth as having a solid poker game.

And a business that takes off is like winning a tournament.

Wealth generates more wealth upon itself (like having a solid poker game generates more money over time).

Whereas successful ideas/businesses like starbucks are in large part fortunate variance (winning a tournament).

Goal #1 should be to have consistent cashflow. As this occurs you purchase more assets that enlarge your cashflow balloon (stocks, rental properties, etc). This can start out very small, the goal is to start building as early as possible, as it grows on itself and builds exponentially.