AKhh in the last hand, why not 4bet pre against that kinda guy?

He spews more postflop than preflop.

BTW guys, I don't think this falls foul of the 2p2 advertising policy because I don't get paid for this, but I had a free podcast published last week on the reasons we might want to bet SDV hands which aren't strong enough to value bet: http://www.grinderschool.com/phpBB3/...p?f=27&t=10301

Dear lolnits,

This is why you need to stop being lolnits.

partypoker - $1 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BTN): $244.29
SB: $196.64 (VPIP: 16.53, PFR: 12.00, 3Bet Preflop: 4.58, Hands: 2,965)
BB: $158.49 (VPIP: 32.34, PFR: 16.50, 3Bet Preflop: 4.41, Hands: 307)
UTG: $97.22 (VPIP: 39.71, PFR: 7.35, 3Bet Preflop: 2.94, Hands: 68)
MP: $30.66 (VPIP: 30.71, PFR: 16.14, 3Bet Preflop: 1.03, Hands: 257)
CO: $124.06 (VPIP: 21.22, PFR: 16.70, 3Bet Preflop: 10.85, Hands: 583)

SB posts SB $0.50, BB posts BB $1.00

Pre Flop: (pot: $1.50) Hero has A J

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $2.00, SB raises to $10.00, fold, Hero calls $8.00

Flop: ($21.00, 2 players) 5 T 2
SB checks, Hero bets $6.65, SB calls $6.65

Turn: ($34.30, 2 players) A
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($34.30, 2 players) Q
SB bets $16.29, fold

Okay, so, month in review. I think I failed in all my goals but had a pretty productive month nevertheless.

[ ] 80k hands - got in 53k hands, which I'm reasonably happy with because I feel they were high quality and I also did a bunch of coaching
[ ] Look at, and write about (think about effective bucketing/extrapolation/differences caused by changing various parameters of the subgame) at least one spot a day in Pio - didn't write about spots because early on I realised that starting off, I'd be much better off using the time I spend in Pio comparing a bunch of different boards in similar spots to be able to better spot general trends. Thus, while I haven't written about thirty spots, I have been writing down my findings and have produced about 6k words with screenshots of conclusions, and I think I've improved my game more this month than any month in the past year, possibly longer.
[ ] Send off at least 5 TC applications - basically ignored this one, sent off one and had an interview
[ ] Read at least four books (currently got The Black Swan and The Biggest Game in Town on the go at the moment but the latter is most definitely my 'toilet reading' book, I probably want to get on with The Jungles of Randomness, Only Half of Me: British and Muslim - The Conflict Within and State Building next) - I got through three - The Black Swan (will post my review below), The Biggest Game in Town (meh), and I'm about 90% of the way through Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (which is some of the best literature I've read in a long, long time). I'm about halfway through a new toilet book, 'Bigger Deal' (this is trash so far, haven't read Big Deal but I don't think I'll bother), and about 10% of the way through JAG Griffith's The Politics of the Judiciary which is okay but out of date so far, so hopefully he'll get on to some more theoretical points soon.
[ ] Get at least halfway through MIT's microeconomics module - decided to start learning Spanish instead. Duolingo reckons I'm 30% fluent but I'm really not. I'm about 15% fluent in French and I have an A Level in that, whereas my Spanish is still sub-GCSE standard.

And of course, the graph for the month, which has been pretty good results-wise despite running pretty poorly for the first half - also made about $700 in RB:



Goals for March:

[ ] 70k hands
[ ] Get coherent strategies for most flops in SB vs BTN 3bet pots and UTG/MP vs an IP cold call (influenced by the recent Juan Copani video in the latter)
[ ] Use EV aggregation to develop better preflop ranges instead of just copying better players than me in my study groups insofar as I can
[ ] Make 3 lecture videos for GrinderSchool (finishing off talking about the indifference principle, talking about how to use basic principles of statistics to interpret HUDs, and start a guide to uNL series)
[ ] 4 TC applications
[ ] Read a political book I'm strongly likely to disagree with (going for either State Building or Atlas Shrugged)

Also, here's my review for The Black Swan - tl;dr: it's good but the fellating it sometimes gets around here isn't entirely justified.



In The Black Swan, former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb makes an important point - too often are human models, economic models in particular (but extending to certain scalable social factors), formulated on the assumption of the non-existence of unobserved outliers, therefore being based on an erroneous Gaussian probability distribution. This is due to the fallacy of taking lack of disconfirmation to be equal to confirmation, hence the title (of course, it being a common point of logic that the fact that all swans one has observed are white does not mean there are no black swans).

It is somewhat unfortunate, therefore, that the method of presentation is of variable quality. At times, Taleb's discussion is lucid, and almost repetitive, but at others, he spends sufficiently long discussing variations on the same theme that the distinctions between those variations becomes obscure, and it is therefore difficult to follow his meaning. Certainly, if one had spent more than a couple of weeks between reading chapters, it would probably be necessary to start again from the beginning.

That should not dissuade the casual reader. Throughout, Taleb's disdain for many economists, statisticians, and philosophers is made abundantly clear, and apart from three chapters in the final part which are expressly stated to be more technical and unnecessary for those who are less mathematically inclined (this is perhaps an overstatement - nothing in those chapters should be beyond anyone with at least some post-secondary mathematics), if anything, he errs too much on the side of caution with technicality, at times failing to give the reader credit for understanding basic tenets of probability (especially the distinction between observed and true probabilities).

Ultimately, while some have overstated the importance of this book to 21st century life, it is well worth a read for any inquisitive mind, especially those who operate in any field where there tend to be a few 'superstar' performers.


Finally, albums of the month (read: 2016 albums I've listened to this month, not necessarily released this month), in no particular order:

Pop. 1280 - Paradise



Really cool mashup of a variety of styles - one can hear synth punk, post-punk, noise rock and just a lil industrial in this album. Unfortunately, my favourite tracks ('In Silico' and 'Kingdom Come') aren't on Youtube, but this is a decent one anyway.

Savages - Adore Life



Could've been more than it is, but this is good post-punk.

Angel Sword - Rebels Beyond the Pale



The best heavy metal album of the year so far. Think early 80s Scandi stuff (Heavy Load, Gotham City especially) with a bit of Angel Witch and a healthy dose of late 70s Priest too.

Eucharist - Endarkenment EP



Black metal has mostly been a let-down so far this year, but leave it to Australians on Iron Bonehead to make some absolutely destructive stuff. By far the most extreme thing of these albums of the month.

Gehennah - Too Loud to Live, Too Drunk to Die



One of my most anticipated albums this year, and fortunately it doesn't disappoint. After the sad passing of Lemmy earlier this year, it's good that people are still making excellent music with a strong Motorhead influence.


This has been a long update, so cheers for reading guys.

Well done, keep working!

Good stuff mate loving the upswing just at the right time to end the month. So are you happy you left stars?

Yes and no. It's a pain in the arse not being able to put in proper sessions at 2am because there aren't enough people in the pool, but on the other hand games are definitely softer. Ideally I'd have money on Stars as well for those 2am sessions, but **** loyalty-inducing VIP programs (though I think there's only like 5% difference between bronze and plat star RB now?), and I suspect I could just open both my sites and mix zoom + reg tables to get a decent amount of volume in.

Never really understood guys who come onto forums full of regs and say "X site is so soft". Doesn't make sense to me. At best it achieves absolutely nothing, but at worst it attracts more skilled players into your games.

Rakeback on Stars is still pretty reasonable. It's not like the cut affects you massively unless you were SNE (which you weren't). Those changes were good for the game regardless. Ike, Ansky and DD said that Stars gave 'compelling reasons' in their meeting that the ecosystem needed to be changed.

Because I don't necessarily care about games getting a bit tougher if it helps them reach critical mass. But also, I feel that the sites I play on are already known to be at least a little softer than Stars. The people who play on Stars aren't on Stars because they think it's soft haha.

I'd decided to leave Stars before the changes were announced. However, the bolded is completely inaccurate and a cursory read of their statements in the NVG thread will reveal that to be the case. The ecosystem needed to be changed but these changes were negative for Stars grinders (given anyone playing full-time was at least supernova and Chrome was the only tier which benefited).

wp and gl for the next month

How could the changes be good for the game? I can't believe stars bull crap is actually working on people... It wasn't good for the game at all, it was awful... they screwed over so many people.

Need some advice here guys... if I were to buy a new processor just to better use pio, what sort of thing should I be looking at? I don't have a ton of money to drop so I'm not looking for super-top of the range stuff, just a substantial upgrade over an Intel i3-3110M (my understanding is this likely means AMD stuff is ruled out considering I'm not looking to build an entire new computer).

I used to run it fine on a desktop fairly old quad i5. Now I have a laptop quad i7 which should in theory be a bit slower I think, runs a btn bb spot in around 7 mins. Basic rule is you want a 'real' quad core afaik

I found i5 with 32GB Ram fine for PIO

http://imgur.com/c2YJl36

Not trying to derail thread but just wondering if I am ****ed for using PIO? I only have 8GB Ram on my I5....Is there anything I can do to upgrade it or do I need a entire new processor? my hard drive only shows 230GB bc it's a SSD. I have another TB on a reg HD.

subbed .. gl man

BTW is the 8GB RAM built in to the i5? I believe I have 32GB of regular RAM so not sure why that shows 8GB RAM unless its something different....could be wrong if I do have only 8GB ram then obv its easy fix. Can't believe that is all I put into it if that's the case!

BTW obv GL Joe You can buy the i5 I got for around $200 so it's not going to break the bank.

^i5 should be good enough for pio and your 8GB(yeah it's 8GB not 32GB) should be fine, it's easy to add another 8gb on top of it if you need it.
and your 256GB ssd is awesome for speeding things on in C drive.

DA, yeah your processor is way to slow, at least upgrade to a I5, depends on your motherboard and other stuff too, ie sometimes u can't just upgrade a single piece due to compatibility/other hardware being outdated etc

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I think the fact that I'm on integrated graphics means that I can't upgrade unless my new processor also has IG (I don't need a graphics card, my PC gaming consists of playing This War of Mine and Star Wars Battlefront II (the one from like 2004)).

Month has been kinda eh so far. Today's session was okay, got back to being a little bit up for the month, mostly due to this hand (believe it or not, I think both villains are regs #partypoker):

partypoker - $1 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: $99.00 (VPIP: 23.19, PFR: 13.41, 3Bet Preflop: 5.56, Hands: 286)
SB: $244.95 (VPIP: 25.76, PFR: 18.79, 3Bet Preflop: 6.50, Hands: 341)
BB: $183.25 (VPIP: 22.58, PFR: 16.13, 3Bet Preflop: 2.82, Hands: 187)
UTG: $66.70 (VPIP: 12.50, PFR: 6.25, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 16)
Hero (MP): $336.87
CO: $103.50 (VPIP: 21.58, PFR: 17.15, 3Bet Preflop: 8.92, Hands: 990)

SB posts SB $0.50, BB posts BB $1.00

Pre Flop: (pot: $1.50) Hero has A A

fold, Hero raises to $3.00, fold, fold, SB calls $2.50, BB raises to $10.00, Hero raises to $26.00, SB raises to $65.00, BB raises to $183.25 and is all-in, Hero raises to $336.87 and is all-in, fold

Flop: ($431.50, 2 players) 3 6 J

Turn: ($431.50, 2 players) 3

River: ($431.50, 2 players) 5



Taking exploitative lines vs fish helps too:

partypoker - $1 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: $61.38 (VPIP: 15.95, PFR: 12.07, 3Bet Preflop: 4.60, Hands: 235)
SB: $100.00 (VPIP: 21.97, PFR: 17.49, 3Bet Preflop: 6.41, Hands: 1,159)
BB: $49.14 (VPIP: 11.11, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 9)
UTG: $99.00 (VPIP: 25.00, PFR: 12.50, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 40)
Hero (MP): $102.00
CO: $159.51 (VPIP: 34.13, PFR: 20.63, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 130)

SB posts SB $0.50, BB posts BB $1.00

Pre Flop: (pot: $1.50) Hero has 6 5

fold, Hero raises to $3.00, CO calls $3.00, fold, fold, fold

Flop: ($7.50, 2 players) 9 7 9
Hero bets $4.00, CO calls $4.00

Turn: ($15.50, 2 players) Q
Hero bets $10.00, CO raises to $22.36, Hero calls $12.36

River: ($60.22, 2 players) 8
Hero bets $20.00, CO calls $20.00




Not to mention other regs spazzing out when I hit rivers:

partypoker - $1 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: $100.00 (VPIP: 25.96, PFR: 19.30, 3Bet Preflop: 6.97, Hands: 3,851)
SB: $30.76 (VPIP: 22.08, PFR: 20.48, 3Bet Preflop: 9.98, Hands: 6,837)
BB: $116.41 (VPIP: 21.78, PFR: 13.86, 3Bet Preflop: 2.50, Hands: 101)
Hero (UTG): $247.15
MP: $100.00 (VPIP: 21.88, PFR: 17.41, 3Bet Preflop: 6.12, Hands: 1,072)
CO: $172.52 (VPIP: 35.90, PFR: 20.51, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 81)

SB posts SB $0.50, BB posts BB $1.00

Pre Flop: (pot: $1.50) Hero has J J

Hero raises to $3.00, MP raises to $9.00, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls $6.00

Flop: ($19.50, 2 players) 5 7 2
Hero checks, MP bets $10.50, Hero calls $10.50

Turn: ($40.50, 2 players) 2
Hero checks, MP bets $23.15, Hero calls $23.15

River: ($86.80, 2 players) J
Hero checks, MP bets $57.35 and is all-in, Hero calls $57.35



This kind of stuff vs fish isn't great though:

partypoker - $1 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: $100.00 (VPIP: 21.80, PFR: 17.26, 3Bet Preflop: 6.14, Hands: 1,211)
SB: $118.33 (VPIP: 35.10, PFR: 20.53, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 156)
BB: $163.37 (VPIP: 31.08, PFR: 15.54, 3Bet Preflop: 4.72, Hands: 498)
UTG: $140.65 (VPIP: 19.62, PFR: 12.66, 3Bet Preflop: 3.03, Hands: 158)
Hero (MP): $394.65
CO: $35.66 (VPIP: 16.88, PFR: 8.44, 3Bet Preflop: 7.44, Hands: 576)

SB posts SB $0.50, BB posts BB $1.00

Pre Flop: (pot: $1.50) Hero has A 4

fold, Hero raises to $3.00, fold, fold, SB calls $2.50, BB raises to $10.00, Hero calls $7.00, fold

Flop: ($23.00, 2 players) Q J 8
BB bets $10.92, Hero raises to $36.40, BB calls $25.48

Turn: ($95.80, 2 players) 5
BB checks, Hero bets $36.00, BB calls $36.00

River: ($167.80, 2 players) 8
BB checks, Hero bets $312.25 and is all-in, BB calls $80.97 and is all-in



gl

Are these party party regs making money or they just like donating? I never get how u can continously like to lose money.

How is partypoker compared to stars? I'm playing 25nlz atm and considering moving there the games are softer and I heard the rakeback is better.

probably true, software is so tilting though

i3-3110M is a mobile CPU afaik, are you talking about a laptop? You can't really upgrade a laptop in most cases. If not let me know what motherboard you got, the socket will determine what CPU you can upgrade to.

Games are softer, RB is slightly worse

yeah it's a laptop. Should be able to upgrade though, was able to easily remove the CPU when I upgraded the RAM.