Poker Concepts

So i came across this post on reddit and i thought it was a fascinating read:
https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueofleg...s_last_season/
For anyone who doesn't know what League of Legends is, its basically a MOBA (massive online battle arena) strategy game, similar to games like DOTA or Heroes of the storm. If you're still clueless then it doesn't matter too much for the context of this post.
If you don't know much about high level league or were into other moba games like dota, to explain who Dopa/Apdo (the author of the original post) is, he is a korean league of legends player who was considered a top 2 player in the world for many years although he never played professionally for a competitive team. He was essentially a god of the ranked solo ladder (soloq) and made most of his money through elo-boosting (ranking up low rank accounts to higher ranks), which is against ToS and lead to him receiving many bans. For this reason there was always this air of mystery surrounding him for just how good he could be. He was the league of legends enigma.
This article will explain more about him, much better than i can, if you're interested in understanding about him.

So Apdo stated that at the end of this season he will retire from league of legends to do his korean military service. And what the post is about is him divulging some of his secrets about the way that he thinks about and approaches the game, and how he was able to stay at such a high level for so many years.
Although he admits his physical mechanics may not be the best in the world, the way he views the game allows him to stay at the top, and the way he views the game is through concepts.
Now to understand concepts i will c&p a section from the post, for any non moba players, just replace the word 'League' with 'Poker' and i think it will apply very similarly:

"Every player has their own way of playing League. No one ‘just’ plays the game. Each player views the game in a different way. Their understanding of the game then builds into their world view, which dictates how they play the game, or what they do as they play. The way I look at the game of League of Legends is very unique. I have built a world of my own.
...
To understand the way I view the game, you need to understand what a ‘concept’ is. So what are concepts? They are the fundamentals of the game. There are things in the game that give you huge advantages as long as you know about them. Those are concepts. If you know about them, you know them, and if you don’t, you don’t. Most people who play league of legends have little to no knowledge regarding concepts. If you want to a skilled League player, you have to know lots of concepts. That’s all there is to it."

He then goes on to give a couple examples of some concepts. Then at the end talks about how to find 'Concepts' for yourself. Basically he says whenever he get destroyed in a game he will watch back that game to figure out why it happened, and often he will study his opponents who are finding success on certain picks/builds, and tries to apply them to his own game. And he believe that since he was constantly learning new concepts, this allowed him to maintain his edge over players with similar or better mechanical skill.

Translating from league to poker
As you maybe able to guess i believe there is a lot from this post that can be applied to poker. Especially when poker doesn't really rely on mechanics, it is far more cerebral.
A while ago i spoke about making a post about 'poker rules' as a form of learning, i think 'poker concepts' is a far better term. And a poker concept and be so many things, from a theoretical concept, to an exploitative concept.
I guess its important for me to outline what i would consider a concept in poker. A big criticism i have of a lot of coaching in poker is when its like 'I would do X move with Y hand on Z board with V positions', and whilst you could argue this is 'once concept', its far too specific and its not really applicable in game, as there are too many variables to be able to learn all of these. So what i'd consider a concept is something a little more broad, like a rule, that can be applied in a range of situations.
Example:
When playing IP(hero)vsBB, 40bbs+, on flops with lots of gutshots/open-enders, but no completed draws, we can often use bigger cbet sizings (e.g Q97, KT6, AK4). The reason for this is if we bet small, we make it far too easy for all his gutshots to call, and whilst on the flop we may have a strong range advantage, on a lot of turns our strong hands (e.g TPTK) will now lose some of its EV because a lot of villains weaker flop hands have now improved to beat us, so we can't put as much money in. Whereas when we bet big, a lot of these weak hands like gutshots will be put in a tough spot and likely have to fold, meaning on these turns our strong TPTK will retain its EV since villain will no longer have these weak flop hands in his range, and will likely have top pairs/2nd pairs instead, which we can continue to collect max value from.
This might not explained perfectly, but hopefully you get the point of how a concept is constructed, there's the idea itself, and then maybe a more detailed explanation of that idea.

So how do you discover or learn a concept? Well there's obviously many ways, through studying, you can learn concepts in videos, through running a sim and delving into why a solver does something, or running many sims and noticing patterns and finding out why that's the case. Studying another players game and seeing how they play certain scenarios, and applying moves they make to your own arsenal. Through networking and talking to other players where you can trade concepts that you've learned with one another. Playing the game as well, you can even put the new concepts you've learned into practice, and then you can adjust them based off what works and what doesn't. This is why at the start of a poker career its emphasised to play a lot of hands, and why most players come up from online, because playing lots of hands allows you to get a really good feel for the game and how certain board textures and hands play.
Learning a new concept isn't always that easy, or guaranteed. You may study for multiple hours and learn 0 new concepts, or you might study for 30 mins and learn multiple. I'm sure at the start of your career you learned far more concepts that you do now, because the more you know the harder it is to learn more new ones. But i think you should always strive to learn new concepts.

And that's the thing when you see a player who you think is not very good having a lot of success, they might just be an absolute sunrunner. But i find that even with players who have been around a very long time, through their experience they may have acquired concepts that work very well for them, that other players do not know about. So whilst i may know 100 very solid and modern concepts, they might have over 1000 concepts, but most of slightly lower quality, however collectively its more effective than my 100.

I have a friend who has a document where every new concept he learns, he writes it up, and over time this will amass to a huge list of concepts, which I think is a very effective learning tool, as you won't be able to remember everything you learn, so being able to go back to it and jog your memory seems like a really good idea. And something that i will likely start doing, and something i may even recommend.

Of course this post is technically an opinion, and just how i think its best to approach the game in terms of learning. And i'm sure that overtime i will make some adjustments to this philosophy. Hopefully this helps someone figure out some direction as to how they should approach things.

One of my favorite threads to read as an MTT player.
Thinking of starting my own PG&C in a while, is your strat discord still open for new entries?

Hey, thanks so much, it means a lot if you make a PG&C send it my way, i don't actually use 2p2 much but i'll try to keep track.
And yeah server is always open for new ppl to join https://discord.gg/as7d8vH gotta plug it for anyone else who comes across this

17/11/20 Session

Just wanted to flex this big bink, i think this is my biggest bink this year
A nice bankroll booster! Came out of nowhere but v happy with the result, defo hard sunran today.

Song
Also been listening the a tonne of The Kid LAROI, mad how hes only 17

Congrats! Really nice score!

Worth contacting them. I still see the promotion in emails from them and in the client.

2 x FT = £190 in tokens.

http://www.grosvenorcasinos.com/poke...60&bid=9401937

Thanks mate!
Yeah i've contacted them about this. So far its been a bit difficult, but hopefully i can get this sorted, since the tickets certainly are pretty nice.

CnC Poker
https://cncpoker.com/
So i signed up with cnc poker, which is a coaching program that's recently launched about a week ago. And the coaching sessions so far have been really top notch. And its genuinely got me thinking about the game a lot more productively in the way that i approach learning, and about where my EV comes from. And its overall just got me really excited to learn and improve.

Probably worth saying that they haven't asked me to plug them, and i don't expect gain anything from it. The reason i'm doing it is because i genuinely believe in what they're doing. A lot of guys coaches there came from the bitb system, and as i said before this is where i learned most of what i know about poker, and i look up to these guys a lot. So to be back in an environment with these guys is really nice, as i feel like i often struggle to find really high quality coaching content, and i know that this is how i'm going to improve the most.

So yeah i'd really recommend signing up for anyone who's serious about improving in MTTs. Its only been running a week and already i'm approaching the game very differently.

November Review

Obviously gonna flex the SS graph because is looks clean. But its obviously a bit skewed from my actual results given other sites that it doesn't track. Plus its a bit inaccurate with some sites.

So profit per site was like (roughly):
Ipoker +£600 after rakeback
Unibet -£500
Sky +£300
GG +£2700
Overall = +£3150

I played around 450 games

So results wise it was actually pretty solid. But didn't really feel like a great month. Probably mainly because my entire months profit is just 1 bink. And since that bink i got really smashed in a lot of sessions, which i haven't really had since starting to selfroll again. My buyins would be like 500/day, and i was losing 350-450 per day quite regularly, which i'm just not super used to yet especially being my own money or whatnot. Its not really a problem, it's just getting used to it.

As for my monthly goals i think they went in the bin a bit. Stopped running since a lot of the fields around mine are like quagmires, so i just became lazy as i didn't like running in those fields.

Overall it was a pretty decent month. I'm still struggling a bit with some burnout as i really need a week off. But thats coming up in about 2 weeks, then i can properly reset.

Also i turned 23 the other day. Which is a bit weird to think about. I always prided myself on being a young up and coming poker player. And i use to get rly jealous of players who were my age getting more recognition and praise, but now i'm kind of reaching a point where i feel like that 'potential' needs to start really coming together, as i just want to prove myself and show that i can be a ***** beast. I'll have to keep working hard to get there though, and after a pretty tough year, i really think it's starting to come together. Just need to spin that roll and see where i can take it from here.

Whenever i go to bed i always have topics that i want to write about, but when it comes time to make a post i always forget what it is that i want to write about

Music
Started listening to Collistar, really sad to hear this guy quit music ;(

03/12/20 Session

So close :')

Equity nudging
First off i'll start by saying Pads made a really good youtube video on this topic and explains it very well. And what i'll write about will essentially just be adding a bit to that.
But would certainly recommend checking out Pads video on it:


Initial hand
So the hand i played that got this all started:

So villain is a reg.
Initial thoughts were that with 9 high it can't too bad to triple, and its tough for me to have bluffs here outside of Q9/K9. And didn't expect villain to connect with this river too much. Only setback is i do block J9/J8o which are the types of hands i'm trying to fold on river, even after i see his call. I think my sizings are fine though. Maybe with Kc9/Qc9 we can go for a jam (2x pot).

So decided to run a sim giving monker based ranges for IP and OOP. Yes OOP range is has 0 3b bluffs but i don't think it will effect results too much. Plus i think its super underbluffed in game so hey ho, probably defends even tighter than this.
Tree setup is a bit off too since SPR is actually deeper with missing SB, but ran it for normal 40bb eff pot. Overall just like to keep sizings simple, don't think i'll ever lose too much EV in game because of this.

IP range cbets 1/3, OOP response is as such:

I think this is quite an unrealistic response especially for the stakes i play. But i'll get into that in a bit.
Turn strat on 10:

So 2 things worth noting here is how overbet and 66 are main sizings. And seeing the overbet sizing used isn't a massive surprise to me given what i've seen in sims, as its somewhat of a static turn, doesn't complete any draws. And IP still wants to pile in money with strong Jx/overpairs etc. In game though i don't think this sizing is very necessary, which i'll explain when i show OOP response.
Also worth noting that 98hh doesn't bet, whilst Q9/K9 does, so its not to do with realising equity i don't think.
OOP response vs overbet:

So overbet is the sizing where all 4x/2x starts becoming indifferent. In game i think all 4x/2x (non clubs) will fold vs overbet, but will also fold vs 2/3. Also worth noting that Jx Txcc will still continue vs overbet. So in game using 2/3 sizing will probably be better. Then can just overbet value or whatnot, or just other bluffs.
Then the reason i think 98hh is a check back is because it blocks A9/A8hh, 99/88 (mix pre), K9/Q9/K8/Q9 (which folds vs overbet), so it blocks a bunch of the folds whilst it doesn't really block any calls. Whilst Q9/K9 blocks KT/QT/KQ which does call turn, so it blocks a lot more of the continuing range. I might be wrong here but i believe this is why.
I'm not going to show river range, but basically on A there's aren't a tonne of value jams (jam or check after either size on turn), mainly sets, flushes, KQ and AJ. Then the problem with a hand like 98 is that it blocks J9o/J8o which are the main hands you're trying to fold (same with 97s) so it might a kind of shitty bluff. And it just much rather bluff the K9/Q9 and Qxs/Kxs that barrel turn as these have much better blockers to KQ.

Main takeaways so far are:

• Aggressive x/r as OOP
• IP 2/3 turn achieve same as overbet in terms of folds in game
• 98/97 shitty bluff as it blocks a lot of folds turn+river

Nodelock
So onto the spicy part
I think OOP response i unrealistic on flop vs a cbet. I think population doesn't find anywhere near enough raises for value and for bluffs.
So i nodelocked the OOP response to be like this:

Sure you could argue that population might have even less bluff raises. I don't think i balanced it enough and OOP was actually a bit too weak so IP could continue more. Also population probably folds a lot more KT/QTo type hands vs a cbet. But i don't think this effects the point i want to make too much.

Now one thing i wanted to point out is that this tighter range with x/r doesn't effect turn strategy for IP as much as i thought.
Non-nodelocked:

nodelocked:

Sure its a shade tighter, but not really much different. I imagine there'd be a bigger shift once OOP starts to overfold flop.
Also was interesting that this under x/r'ing on flop didn't effect OOP ev too much (losing around 5bb/100, which isn't massive). Maybe partly because IP is range betting anyway. However i noticed that IP makes up for this EV in a different part of the gametree. So the moment you've all been waiting for **drumroll**... donking turns! Or equity nudging.
So to look at overall donking strategy for OOP on
non-nodelocked:

nodelocked:

You can see that there's a significant amount and thats because OOP now has an extra 1-2% equity advantage on every turn now.
Top is non, and bottom is nodelocked:

And you can see that OOP has a pretty hefty equity advantage anyway and thats because CO range cbet, so once called, IP range has a lot of air whilst IP will usually have some part of the board as air just folds.
So it pretty much can start having leads on any card below a 9, even an 8 is meh, the reason for this is CO range consists of Txo/9xo, so it will connect with these turns surprisingly well.
So to give examples of a couple turns.
5:

So its blocks most of its pairs, especially Jx, and i think it uses the smaller sizing as this targets that air of QTo/KTo, A7o, but simultaneously its gets calls from a lot of worse hands like AQ/AK. And it just nudges that bit of equity. Then the bluffs are these middling flush draws like 96cc/T7cc that can't afford to x/c, so its far higher EV to donk and realise equity this way instead.
2:

Although OOP doesn't have much 2xo in its range, the function is very similar to 5d, just that its an even bigger brick, and is able to just push that equity again.
Whats interesting to note this time is IP response vs the block:

Whilst the calling range maybe similar, i do not think this amount of raising will be happening, KQo, Q9ss, J6 i don't think population will raise as its not very intuitive.
Takeaways

• Lead turns that don't connect with IP offsuit hands
• Population underraises vs donks in game
• Block sizing since we target weak airy range

So overall i think pushing equity can be a really effective strategy for a few reasons. I've been looking into ways to punish these range cbets from LP, and if you're not looking to x/r 25%+ on a lot of flops, i think pushing equity and donking a lot of turns can be another effective way of punishing these wide range range cbets. Also i think population will respond pretty badly vs leads, and play somewhat face up, so forcing your opponent into situations (or parts of the gametree) where they're going to make a lot of mistakes can be really effective.

Quick update
Was hoping to precede this update with a sick bink or something but last week didn't provide unfortunately

Basically just saying that i'm taking the whole of next week off. Going back to my hometown and will completely disconnect from poker, dont plan to check discord, skype or 2p2. I think i spoke a month ago about feeling a little burned out, so it'll be nice to finally get that week off. Excited to see my friends for the first time in 3 months, then when i return i'll hopefully be hungry to grind out the blowout (winter) series on stars, taking some shots and hopefully sunrun more than i have already.

My last week off was back in June before i switched to predominantly euro sites. I'm always happy to hard grind but i find after about 4 months that i start to get a little burned out, i start putting in 80-85% effort instead of 95%+. So future plans might be to take a week or more off every 4 months, but make sure its appropriately planned so i do something i really want to do in that time (e.g visit another country) and don't end up dabbling my mind in poker still, as i find the full disconnect really helps me a lot more with resetting than just an individual day off. Then when i return i can just beast it out again.

Also v excited for blowout series on stars, like i said i'm planning to take some shots at some 109s, plenty of 55s and hopefully a 215 (which i might sell for, i'm undecided). Will be the first proper series i've grinded on stars since SCOOP, as WCOOP i only did 22's and below.

1 thing i want to study when i get back though is monotone flops. Feel like i've spent a lot of time over-rating flushes, particularly weaker flushes.
A lot of spots where e.g BBvsCO 60bbs, in PIO we actually want to just x/c a lot of our weaker flushes on monotone boards (this might actually be off), but i think there's 2 reasons why calling is seen as higher EV.
1. If you stack off on the flop/turn with a weak flush, you are likely to just run into a better flush.
2. In spots where there's a lot of bad runouts (wet boards), at deeper SPRs we're not really incentivised to pile in money with a vulnerable hand (e.g AA on T98), since whilst we might have a small equ adv vs range, we dont want to bloat the pot and have a terrible turn come (e.g T98 J), this especially applies to OOP, but IP too. This is a difference i see between equ players and EV players.
Problem with all this is i am just speaking with confidence and not really showing any evidence/programs to back it, which is one of the less good ways to explain things But i really didnt want to delve into deep strategy stuff during my break, so this is just what i got off the top of my head. When i get back from my break i'll look into this more.
Also worth noting that we might play differently given that IP wont put in enough money for us. But this is a slight tangent that i can look into when i get back.

If you need me i'll probably still check discord DMs, just not any groups or stuff. I'll be back on Sunday.

Taking breaks is definitely a good idea, helps to recharge the batteries and make sure you maintain some motivation.

I'm currently on a month-long break and will be re-starting in the New Year.

Enjoy yourself and good luck with the grind when you come back!

GLGL mate, will definitely see you on the tables i imagine!

Merry Christmas + update

Merry Christmas guys! I know a lot of Europeans celebrate it on the 24th, whilst UK celebrates more on the 25th.

Also i know i said i'd only take a week off, but i extended it a little bit. I realised this year i had only taken about 2 weeks off before my previous break, so a 5 day break didn't really feel sufficient. So i took this week off as well and plan to start grinding again on the 26th December, when a lot of the winter series' start.

Been struggling to get into the swing of studying again. I feel like i need to organise some study sessions with good regs that i know, as that kind of forces me to study as i can't exactly bail on them last second.

Also i'm thinking of doing a daily update on this blog just to get it a bit more active again whilst all these series are going on, as i intend to play a lot. Even if that means just posting 1 screenshot of an FT, or just a tidbit of info about what i learned that day, or some general thoughts.

27/12/20 Session (Winter Series day 2)
Didn't post day 1 because not much happened so i couldn't be bothered



A pretty massive day overall which i'm really happy with!
Missed mincashing the 109 sunday 5 mil gtd on stars by not much. It overlayed but like 1.2 mil so mincash was 2.5x, so that mincash woulve almost been as big as my bink

Equity players vs EV players
Equ players vs EV players is something i've started to think about a lot over the past few months, and trying to shift my play as such. As pretty much all the best up and coming players are EV players, and usually the players who are falling off are Equ players.
Its quite hard to explain the difference between an EV and an Equ player in depth, the obvious answer is that EV players make the decision which yield the highest EV whilst equ players make equity oriented decisions.
A good example is if you look at HJvsBB 60bbs T98ss. Equity player will often bet big here, whilst EV player will more likely check.

Ran the sim after making prior comment, betting with spade and checking w/o seems good. (Fwiw vs x/r AA/KK w/o spade start to fold, dont think this EVER happens in game, will even see players run it, which is a disaster)
I don't really want to explain why right now, its just an example.

So i was thinking one thing i've noticed with equ players (i could be wrong here), is that their checking ranges are often really capped, mainly in these scenarios:

• On the flop as IP player (of course dependent on board), but middling boards are an easy example.
• Bet flop, X turn. I feel like i've been playing a lot of spots where people will bet all their top pairs on the turn (i deduct this when they bet the very weakest top pair) and very often many strong 2nd pairs, then always check back river. Ofc having hands to prove this would help, as this is more thought ramblings, but i find this far more common on flushdraw boards (they dont want to give away 'free card').

Now i want to just focus mainly on the 2nd part. Its probably a fine strategy, but it triggers me and i want to punish it. One of the first things that comes to mind is to x/r more aggressively as their betting range is weaker. Problem is though is that betting range still has all the strong hands. So best way to exploit overbetting from equ driven ranges is to attack the checking range really aggressively. Like if villain always bets top pairs+ on turn, if villain checks and river is a blank, surely we can just 2x pot and wtf is villain going to do? call down with weak 2nd pair, yeah sure.
To give another pio example. Same board as flop example, after 1/2 pot and call, 2h turn:

You can see AA checks, KT checks, 98/T8 check. The EVs between betting and checking for these hands and miniscule. But i imagine if these are bet then checking range is super capped and OOP just bombs a lot of rivers. I'll nodelock another time since its very late for me.

Maybe this is just brain splooge and i should certainly run some sims and whatnot to make sure this is sound logic. Just something that i've been thinking about recently.

Music

Big French the Kid fan ngl

Also hop into my disc server, will be getting active in it: https://discord.gg/as7d8vH

29/12/20 Session (Winter series day 3)

Always a bit gutting to get top 30-100 in these massive fields. Happy at how i played though, generally tried to keep up the aggression even when i felt quite deep in the tournament. Shame i didnt get more bounties but just lost those necessary all ins.
The whole session i actually felt like i was playing pretty loose and solid. There's no point studying if i just ***** out of all the spots that i know are profitable, its certainly something i'm working on and improving, since i feel like my poker knowledge is really good, just need to work on application.

Study Struggles
Struggling to get back into the habit of consistent study since taking my break. During a series where you're grinding a lot its certainly fine to study a bit less, but its more just getting back into the habit of doing a bit before every session to warm my mind up, then doing a quick cooldown by going over some hands after my sessions.

Song

Bit different to what i usually post, but gotta mix it up sometimes

30/12/20 Session (Winter series day 4)

Had this little bink at the end of my session, still down a bit on the day though.
Also made an FT on GG, and saw blind level go from bb14k to bb6k. Realise this is part of GGs new rollback thing:

Not sure how i feel about this.
Also played £110 on sky, thought it was PKO but it wasn't, probably wouldn't have registered if i noticed
Overall felt like i played pretty badly today, but i also ran pretty bad and felt like i didn't have many great spots. Can be sometimes hard to tell the difference between playing bad and just running bad.
Oh well, not playing tomorrow, but will be back on new years day!

01/01/21 (Winter Series day 5)
First off happy new year!
Secondly i got fkn smashed today so no binks to show
So here's a sick punt because i didn't realise that QJ was a straight, but i'll just pretend that i had blocker


December Summary

Unnecessary SS graph flex because results are a bit inaccurate.
I made about £3.3k in the end, which is solid considering the lower volume as i took like 10 days off.
Was actually a pretty bad month in terms of effort expended.

Now just need to do yearly review

MF DOOM
So one of my all time favourite artists MF DOOM passed away recently which makes me really sad (happened back in october but only reported yesterday). From 2013-2015 he was by far the artist i listened to the most. I bought Madvillainy on vinyl which i've had framed in my room for ages.

Its my favourite album from him. Its pretty well known as it seems to get really high praise from all music critics. And a lot of very famous rappers took inspiration from this guy over the years.
I even bought a some of the clothes that he released, which i've never done for any other artist.
Not many people i'd pay respects to publicly but having listened to his music so much he's probably had more influence on me than i think.
My favourite song from him.

2020 RECAP

If you look at the entire year it doesn't look great.

But if you just look at the last 6 months, its actually been really good. This also doesn't include unibet results, where i don't know exactly but i assume i made something in the region of £3-4k. Hopefully i can take this momentum from last 6 months into 2021.
Its worth noting that in mid September (just before 1k games) i actually "started again" spinning up from a 1k roll.
The first 6 months of the year were certainly pretty dark, it kind of felt like i was never going to get out of this downswing. But then when i shifted my schedule to smaller fields i started running a lot better and having a lot more success. Hard to say if those first 6 months were a "waste of time" because i'm sure the information i gathered from those months probably helped me in the following months a lot. Just wasn't running as pure. But i certainly felt like the progression really wasn't there during that time. The past 6 months i had a much better system for success set up.

Without putting too much pressure on myself, i've been doing this full time almost 3 years and i don't really have much to show for it. If the next year goes similar to last (6 really bad months + 6 really good months) i'll probably end up taking a step back from poker and diverting my life into a different direction. With the aspirations that i have, and the timeframe i gave myself to accomplish it, which was to be playing at a high level (~100-150ABI) with live stops by the time i'm 25 (im 23 now), i can't really afford to have another shitty 6 months in terms of progress. To put it simply i need to step the **** up. And although i feel like my knowledge of the game is at a higher level than my ABI, and i feel like i'm crushing the games i'm at whilst i spin up my roll, that could be more ego than anything, and i need to prove that i'm as good as i think i am, and keep working to improve.
I think i've said this before but i've been very fortunate in my career that i've seen players make so much progression and become beasts and seen the process and what it takes. As sometimes i don't think people truly appreciate how difficult it is to become a true beast and crush at higher stakes. There's a lot of people who run very far above EV who have no idea how hard it is, or whats about to hit them (me included at times). The temptation to namedrop is high, but its not 2010 anymore, the poker scene is too respectful, at least publicly I'm also a bit less spiteful than i used to be.

Goals

Coronavirus obviously wrecked quite a few of my goals, but thats fine.
Also some of my goals are a bit dated, like 7200 games because i initially planned to spam volume. But i realised that optimal for me is 400-500 games per month. Also a lot of inconsistency, definitely fell off towards the end of the year. June-Oct i was certainly in beast mode it felt like.
I'll have a think for 2021 goals over the next few days. I have an idea of some goals, but i need to go for goals that create a process, and can be consistently worked on over the course of months.

01/02/21 (Winter Series day 6)

Had 4th in this which was my best result of my day. Always feels a little bad though when you come into FT as 1/6.

Prizepools today though were actually massive.
€20 Sensei (€3k GTD) gets €5k prizepool on good day, got €7k today
€20r FoF (€10k GTD) gets €15k prizepool on good day, got €24k today
Like on ipoker every tourney was smashing its prizepool, a lot 2x the GTD.

I have a feeling due to covid (quite strict lockdowns across england)+post new year, there's going to be a lot of people playing this weekend. I'm expecting this to continue tomorrow.

Because of this tomorrow i think i'm going to take some pretty big shots. Already playing the $215 sunday 5mil on stars, as well as a $109, and a £110 on ipoker. But might flick in a €100 PKO and a couple other bigger games as i feel like it will be very soft/good games tomorrow and want to capitalise. This means that my buyins could potentially be £1k for the day. So although this may not be the best BRM, if i hard brick everything i know that it wont cripple my bankroll, and i'll still play the same games as i played today. And even so i'm always happy to move down stakes if needed. But considering i'm in a pretty good life position to take shots with bankroll, and i'm expecting the games to be particularly soft and juicy tomorrow, so it seems like the correct moment to pull the trigger.

03/01/21 Winter Series day 7
Just clocked i got the date the wrong way around yesterday

So yeah i finally got that 5 figure score The rail was nuts, really fun one!
After a year of all-in anxiety i was super calm on FT, it was really weird. I just felt like no matter what i'd be okay, i'm in a secure position no matter if i got 1st or 9th. I didn't put that pressure on myself like i did with some of those sunday million runs i had a year ago, where the money was really life changing.

Also cashed some of my shots.
Lost huge one quite deep in 100e pko, 2 outered on river
FT 50e PKO that i'd usually skip.
Also made day 2 of $215 sunday million that i have to play tomorrow. Structure is super lame, its day 2 and only bb1.6k (start stack 25k). But i got a decent stack so looking forward to it.
I made another small FT, and FT bubble. So overall i'd say it was a really successful day considering all the shots, and now my bankroll has over doubled.
Anyways onto tomorrow! Still got 2 weeks of this series to play out.

Nice bink bro congratz!!

Nice score, gl tomo and rest of the series!

Nice score mate. Been following this thread a while. Well deserved.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

Thanks boyssss <3

That Sunday mil run was a bit dead, mincashed it but didn't get much further

05/01/20 Winter Series day 8
**** all happened so going to just pretend that this day didn't happen

06/01/20 Winter Series day 9
Had quite a few deep runs, biggest 2 results here

3rd here

4th
Also got 5th on a smaller FT, and FT bubbled a bigger tourney, then had another deep run, so multiple 100+ cashes, which certainly adds up.

Was selling for a 215 PKO tomorrow, and there seemed to be a lot of demand. Usually i don't like selling since i'm just selfish and the thought of losing 50% of a massive score makes me kind of uneasy. So the main reason i'll sell is to reduce variance on a game i'm unsure of entering (bigger buyin), or just a small swap with a friend for fun.
Theres a $500 $5mil GTD on Sunday, i'm strongly considering selling 40%. As i really want to play this event, but at the same time its a bit of a bankroll punt which i'm not super interested in doing.

Also theres a couple longer form things i want to write up about. But its the last thing i want to do after a long session, but i'm sure i'll get around to it at some point

Music
I feel like in Grime there were a lot of criminally underrated artists from Birmingham, probably because of their accent, but they could shut down the set far better than any London artist imo

07/01/21 Winter Series day 10
Just clocked in the last post i put year at 2020, not used to it being 2021 yet.

This 2nd place was very out of left field, session overall was looking a bit grim.
I busted by 215 shottake without having many good spots, felt like i was playing very passive but could certainly just be card distribution. I ran really card dead for like an hour, then got sucked out on, so didn't have a chance really.

Thoughts on my play and where i'm at
So i've decided that i'm not going to play the $530 on Sunday and i'll just press on with my usual schedule/stakes for now, and steadily add more higher stakes games and strip out the lower stakes ones. Then maybe by SCOOP i'll shot take some higher stakes stuff. So the reason for this is I genuinely believe for almost every individual MTT i play in my schedule that i'm a top 5% player in that field. For this upcoming $530 i do not believe i am going to be a top 5% player in the field. If theres 10k players (whats needed to hit GTD), i'd need to be top 500. Considering that all the best high stakes players will hop into this tournament and midstakes players, its possible that i won't even be top 20% in this field. So given that my ROI might not even be that high, that the variance is massive, and it will take a lot of my focus away from other tables (given the big buyin), and i just don't think its really that worth it.

And i guess i'll touch a bit more on why i don't think im top X% in this pool. So this might come off as a bit weird given the success that i've been having recently, but i really don't think i'm that insane of a player, i think i'm very far from being a sicko, and over the last 6 months i've been a sunrunner. I just don't think i'm a particularly tough player to play against, but i'm generally pretty in-line and don't make noticeable massive mistakes, i'm just a bit passive overall (i think its good to be OOL sometimes). And i still think i'm one of the best players in the games i play, and you can be a solid ABC reg and make $40k/year happily. But i'm not interested in that, i want to be better than that. I think i'm solid, and my knowledge is very good, but to become a top player its going to require a lot more work and better application of knowledge, because in these higher stakes games, if i play in-line and generally more passive like i think i do, i will get torn to shreds, it'll happen slowly over time and i wont even realise it. My playstyle doesn't really get punished in the games i play currently because there's a lot of fish and the regs suck, so usually i just get donated chips, but as i move up there will be less fish and the regs will be tougher. So i need to be much much better to really push my edge, and i think i'm set up to do this, it will just take time. I'll hopefully use the time between the end of winter series and the start of SCOOP to get back in the lab and start progressing to this point.

And i'm not saying this so people tell me that they i'm good to give me an ego boost. This is just genuinely how i see things. I think the progress i've made over the last 6 months has been really good, but i've still got a long way to go.

Only read the last couple pages of this thread. Need to go back and read the whole thing soon as I'm also trying to be an MTT crusher and you put lots of good stuff out there.

I think it's normal to doubt your skills and in your mind think you're not really at the level that the results say you are. I think it happens to just about everyone in every field. At times I think everyone feels something like an imposter. Those 'sickos' above you probably feel the same a lot of the time. They might be better than you, but I don't think they're so far off as you think, and if you put in the work I'm sure you can get to their level, doubts and all.