Hello guys. I wanted to open a forum to share what's going on in my poker life in the new year.

If I have to talk about myself briefly, I am 31 years old. I am married. I love poker. My goal is to make me and my wife happier with my love of poker. I've been playing poker for many years. I quit my job 2 years ago and since then my only livelihood has been poker.

Last year was incredible for me. I signed a contract with Pokerdetox. I convinced my wife and myself that everything would be incredible. I encountered this in my first 1.5 months.

Biggest swing of my life

(All the hands from GGPoker high rake game)

It was really hard. Because i never experience any winning day for 1.5 month when i face with that downswing. The more difficult part is that this happens right at the time of getting used to the new training site. I saw this as an opportunity for myself. If I could handle this, I was sure I would be stronger. I was very lucky because the people around me trusted me more than I did. Great things have happened with their support.

2021 NL200 Graph

In that graph i paid 19500$ Rake and get 8775$ back which is around 4bb/100 rakeback.I shot NL500 4-5 times but it didn't go well.

I didn't renew my contract this year and decided to start all over again on my own. Because I think my other missing part for me is bankroll management. I'm not very good at managing my own money, as I've had salaried jobs for years. I want to train myself more for the ups and downs of poker. My goal this year is to start playing NL500 by aggressively managing the bankroll.

I have never been a money-oriented person at any stage of my life. Even making money still doesn't motivate me much. But in poker there is no better value than money to measure my hard work in the long run. That's why I want to set my 2022 goal as earning 75K$. I know that I will work harder than anyone around me while trying to achieve this goal.

My bankroll is 40 Buyin for NL200. I will start with agressive shot to NL200 with 5 buyin. If all goes well i can stay in that limit. If not i will drop down to NL100 to build my NL200 bankroll again. I hope it will be a good year for all of us.

"I saw this as an opportunity for myself."

GREAT attitude....... GOOD LUCK! Im Rooting 4 U

come to beşiktaş.. gl gl

Discipline beats intelligence. Imagine how far you can get being intelligent as well as disciplined. Good luck with the blog

The Impact of Other Results on Us

How many times have you seen graphics on a poker training site and felt bad?

This has happened to me so much that I can't explain. Especially when everything goes bad, people start to question themselves. When you question yourself and see the results shared by other players, you start to feel even worse. Because people begin to ask themselves. Why am I in this state when these people are getting these results?

But there is something we forgot. Poker is very different from other sports. In other sports, good and bad players can be separated very easily. It takes a really long time to comment on two players in poker. Why? Because there is a concept called variance. That's why you hear from most poker players that short-term results don't make any sense.

What if I told you it's very difficult to compare two players even in the long run?

Player 1 he saw a graphic of one of the students of an educational site on the Internet. He thought how great it would be to take lessons from this site. He also thought about what a bad player he was. Because the results are not like the students on this site.



He has been playing poker for 1 year and has played a total of 500K hands of NL50. Pokertracker shows he is 2bb/100 winner. He wants to improve himself. Because he also wants to be 7.4bb/100 winner. What is the problem here?

Even in 500K hands he can't be sure about his true win rate.

He can be 5bb/100 winner : Probability of running below observed win rate (2.00 BB/100) over 500000 hands with a true win rate of 5.00 BB/100 1.6947%

He can be 4bb/100 winner : Probability of running below observed win rate (2.00 BB/100) over 500000 hands with a true win rate of 4.00 BB/100 7.8650%

He can be 3bb/100 winner : Probability of running below observed win rate (2.00 BB/100) over 500000 hands with a true win rate of 3.00 BB/100 23.9750%

Poker study sites or CFP s usually share the good results of players. That means this player can be in a very big upswing. I don’t want to write it again and again but we can give one extreme example.

Probability of running at or above observed win rate (7.40 BB/100) over 35000 hands with a true win rate of -1.00 BB/100 5.8034%

Our player maybe started to learn and play good poker in the last 100K hands but he hit a very hard downswing. In this case he can double his win rate compared to 2bb/100 in new 100K hands.

Our player can be in a high rake environment which can affect the graph. Let's compare 2 players that have very different winrates.



Player Green: Played with 5bb/100 and gets %20 rakeback. Which means 1.48 bb/100 rakeback. Total win rate will be 6.48 bb/100.

Player Blue: Played with 2bb/100 and gets %50 rakeback. Which means 5 bb/100 rakeback. Total win rate will be 7 bb/100.

As you can see, maybe he has better results, while he mentally affects himself badly because of why I don't have such a graph.

Our player can be a better player even if he has a bad win rate in the long run. So many players do not play poker for a job. So that means they will never be able to play that much to deal with the variance. Even if they play 250K hands with 2bb/100 expected win rate in a year which is not that low they will experience so much variance.

95% confidence interval he will be in [-2.00 BB/100, 6.00 BB/100]

Let’s imagine two friends playing exactly the same strategy and one of them hit -2bb /100 win rate when the other one hit 6bb /100 win rate. Can you imagine how different the two would feel?

One of them will perhaps see this as a career opportunity and quit their job. The other will think that poker is not the game for him and will stop playing poker.

What can happen if they play 500K hands.

95% confidence interval they will be in [-0.83 BB/100, 4.83 BB/100]

Hmm ok. What about 750K hands.

95% confidence interval they will be in [-0.31 BB/100, 4.31 BB/100]

Of course, I am aware that these are extreme examples. But is there any guarantee that you are not one of these extreme examples?

When I had 75 buyin swings, all the other players in my group were winning. When I examined their hands, I realized that they were not doing anything very different from me. In fact, I was sure that I was playing poker more accurately than most. But I couldn't understand why I was in this situation. Players better than me said there weren't too many bugs in my game. I thought they were doing this to keep my motivation high. But later I realized this. The results in poker are not what we think.

Even when we make these calculations and give examples, we are talking about a constant static situation. We are talking about the situations that the player will experience when he plays the whole set of hands with the same winrate. But poker is not like that. Some days we play 1 out of 10, some days we play 10 out of 10.

I want to share with you the biggest lesson I learned for myself last year. Do not compare your results with anyone in poker. Because making an accurate comparison is impossible in most cases. This will do you more harm than good.

Hey gl buddy! Are you playing zoom or regtables?

Its really depends on my mood. But graph i shared is mainly comes from reg tables.

Dealing with Big Downswing

75+ Swing Again

It's my second 75+ downswing after I decided to join Pokerdetox and play poker professionally. As a person who has experienced this twice and survived it once, I think that I am more experienced than most people. That's why I wanted to write something about this topic.

First of all, I have to say that it is not easy to deal with such big swings. Although it may seem like a great advantage to gain experience before, it does not change the things experienced at all. You still feel like you're never going to win again.

Most of the things on the internet about this subject are very true in theory to me, but they don't make any sense in practice. Because everyone's life outside of poker is very different. This is what really creates the pressure. It is not the pressure created by poker, but the total pressure that poker creates when combined with our normal life.

When I faced 75 buyin swing a year ago, I wandered around the house like a spirit for 2 months. I was in a formation that I had dreamed of. I was learning a new strategy. Other than me, people who learned this strategy were getting very good results. I told my wife that everything would get better now, but I had the biggest swing of my life. I was feeling like an idiot. The unhappiness of failing at a job I've spent day and night for 10 years was indescribable. But financially I was in the best shape of my life. No matter how big the swing I experienced was, it didn't affect me much financially because the stake was low.

Now the situations are different. This bad trend started a month before my contract expired. I suffered a great loss in the first month of playing with my own bankroll. The economy in my country is in very bad shape. Everything started to become very expensive. Most of my money was in bitcoin, and it also suffered a serious drop. So, financially, I feel a lot more pressure than before. But this time my advantage is that I know that I am a good poker player.

As you can see, both cases have their own differences. Although the same person has experienced both situations, their reactions are very different. Therefore, each downswing is unique although the size is the same. Therefore, the pain can be different each time. So don't try to be a robot. Instead, be more human and emotionally trust your decisions. If you can't trust your feelings, question yourself as a human being.

Besides, I think there are a few key differences that allow me to deal with downswing better than a lot of people. These are very difficult to write. Because it's stupid to say what you do well. Instead, other people should praise you. That's why I'd like to share my takeaways from what other people have said about me.

-I have the perfect wife. Therefore, I am always at peace at home.
-I don't have any bad habits that I'm addicted to. I consume cigarettes and alcohol as appropriate, and as soon as I realize that I have consumed too much, I set myself long-term limits.
-I exercise regularly.
-I try to apply everything I've learned to become a better version of myself.
-I love integrating even simple things that other people learn and don't apply to my life. For example, after spending 45 minutes in front of the computer, I learned that it is very useful to look at a panoramic image for at least 5 minutes. I'm doing everything I can to apply this knowledge to my poker life.
-I have a lot of respect for the opinions of better players than me. For example, my friend told me that I was making fewer mistakes when I had the swing last time. So I am responsible for the growth of this swing.
-I have great respect for the work I do and I make the people around me feel it.

Move down.

I want to change my main goal because now i understand that agressive shot taking is not a good idea for me. So my main goal will be "After making enough money to survive, create 100 buyin poker bankroll for NL100."

February Update

It was a really tough month. At the beginning of this month, my picology was not quite in place. There are many reasons for this. But I think the most important thing is that I stayed away from Crossfit for 2 months due to the closure of my salon and then the covid.

Another reason is that there are not many people around me that I can talk poker to in a healthy way. Most people don't look at poker the way I do. They're too GTO-oriented as a strategy, and I don't like it. Or they don't take the game as seriously as I do. I don't have many friends who can properly review and warn my game when I play badly.

I haven't been in good shape financially for the last two months. That's why I decided to stop our lessons with my coach for a while. I didn't share the big swing I had with him. Because I didn't want him to feel obligated to help me. But he did me a huge favor and offered to analyze my game for free. Because we also have a strong friendship. From that moment on, things started to go very well.

After Coaching

We found that most of the mistakes I made in the game were caused by losing my focus during the game. We found that most of the mistakes I made in the game were caused by losing my focus during the game. I realized that this was due to the fact that I had taken a break from sports for a long time and played a lot of tables. I immediately took action and applied some of the things we agreed with my coach to my poker life.

1.I put my phone in "Do not disturb" mode during the session. It rings if there is an emergency and someone calls me twice within 15 minutes. Other than that, it's like my phone is completely off.
2.I only played poker when I could focus. When I didn't feel well, I finished the session no matter how good the table was.
3.I started using Self Hypno Threapy program.
4.I continued to go to Crossfit 4 times a week.
5.I started to take notes of my feelings and distractions during the session.

With the new month, I will start shot to NL100. My case for the NL100 is currently 88 buyin. And I'm thinking of withdrawing about 5 buyin.

My biggest goal in the new month is to play poker for 100 hours with the habits I have acquired this month.

Good luck to everyone at the tables.

February Stakes

February Graph

Best of luck for your Journey,

Your mindset and way of thinking sounds solid!

No doubt you will crush this.

Following and GL @ the tables

I'll follow your journey. Good luck!

You can post some hands every once in a while or discuss strategy. People might have some helpful insight.

Great job turning the tables around. I also made too many mistakes this month because of lack of focus. I will be taking your idea and make it a main goal for this month to stay focused and limit distractions while playing. No phone and maybe no music. I get distracted easily fumbling with the phone trying to find a good song to play. Very stupid and unprofessional. Anyways good luck!

Ty for your advice. My another problem i never get benefit from random poker talk. On the contrary, I was hurt more. Because when 9 out of 10 people thought differently from me, I thought I made a mistake somewhere and changed my game. So I may have lost months. That's why poker strategy is so hard to learn from a forum or video. Of course, we can add something to our strategy with some of the information we have acquired. But I don't have good experience in this matter. That's why I wanted this title to be more about the poker mentality. Because I think strategy should not be as complex as people think.

March Update

First of all, I couldn't reach my goal. My goal was to play poker for 100 hours. I was able to play 90 hours. Although I did not reach my goal, I am very happy. Because I tried to play poker only when I was fully focused on the table. Probably 90 hours played with high focus is better than 100 hours played with low focus.

Some days this month I tried to wake up without setting an alarm. Because of this, there were times when I woke up 1 hour later than my normal time. However, as my time in H2N was a bit too much, I didn't have much time to play.

I have snaping hip problem for about 1 year. I tried to fix this problem by stretching it without a plan, but it didn't work. My biggest goal in the new month is to stretch for 20-25 minutes a day, 6 days a week. No matter how actively I do sports, I have shortened both my hamstrings and hip flexors because I spend long periods of time sitting.If I don't take action on these, I think I will have bigger problems in my future life.

I continue to improve myself as a poker player. I think I'm starting to play most situations better than most players. I have problems especially with 3BP caller pots. I think this may have something to do with the high rake system of GGPoker. So this month I will focus on these situations.

Graph

Stakes