Hey guys, I figured another post was due for a lot of reasons. I'm muted by self-opting out on global and cannot really smoothly communicate with anyone on here so I thought I'd make a post that hopefully gets circled around a little bit for those who want/care.
First and foremost, we need to talk about the RTA thing.
The absolute first thing I should do is apologize...again. I was in the wrong. Of course part of it was a severe misguiding by someone I looked up to as he was my sort of gateway to starting to get into poker seriously. But, I should've been able to avoid the situation altogether...you'd be correct in that.
But, I ask you take a step back with me for a moment. I used the software and only barely used it for a couple of months nearly FIVE years ago at this point. (Very often I wouldn't bother or would just impulsively say "screw that that doesn't makes sense to me" and would do the opposite it recommended. Most importantly, this is long in the past.
I'm asking for some sort of sympathy and a very baseline level of forgiveness and to be blunt, shutting up about it. All I ask for most of you is to just stop talking about it in chat. There are still times where a handful of people (I'm not going to put names and start witch hunting) are literally educating fish about what I did years ago, what it is, and that I'm "probably cheating right now" and telling people to close the table entirely. It's still absurd. There are also simple needles like "oh spork make sure you check the solver here" "spork what size does solver use here"
If you are saying these under the belief that I find it amusing and can chuckle about it, I just don't. I very much am trying to shut out a notable mistake from my past and move on and people really like shoving it back in my face. Just imagine an inverse scenario where you're the one who made a choice years ago that you notably regret and people constantly throw it back at you years later. Not a good time.
Can we please just stop? I'm by no means trying to make friends. You can dislike me all you want for that decision I made and how I've acted to people in chats, that's fine and I would do the same to be honest. But can we just stop talking about it in chats, crashing games, even telling players they shouldn't play when I haven't looked at RTA software in years? It's getting old.
Secondly, mental
I'm going to be completely honest here. My mental for years has been a complete disaster and mental health problems escalating to levels I'm not going to elaborate on but you can use your imagination.
I'm not looking for sympathy on this, but to explain why I "keep getting smoked" has something to do with the neverending cycle with me of:
1) Crush 6-max relentlessly for 15-20bb/100 via Ignition, Global, BetOnline when my mental "needs" to be good or I go broke.
2) Get overly comfortable when back at hs thinking I don't have to try anymore
3) Inevitably start downswinging
4) Go play 100/200, 200/400, or in a somewhat recent case, 300/600, all times with maybe 2 or 3 buyins to my name max.
5) Obviously this doesn't go well when imploding
6) Go "Ah, well that was ******ed, time to go back to step 1 and fill my screen with 200plo tables until I'm rolled 6 figs again in 3mo and able to play T/20
It's really brutal, and has been a massive toll on my mental because I know with full confidence (without trying to sound like an ego prick) that my raw skill in a vacuum is 99.5%+ percentile in my pools but often I end up blasting/not realizing that potential due to my spiraling mental. And someone who is 80th percentile in raw ability like your average game selecting very tight reg who is very consistent and realizes his ability in full almost always is better than my situation where I can be 99th percentile in raw skill but decide to implode and play like a 30th percentile or even lower. I know my raw skill is of that level due to my work with my top hs crusher reg coach in 2021 and expansion of that on my own in 2022. But none of it matters if I "death spiral" To be honest, writing this makes me feel like a "who cares" but at least this has me feel like I'm speaking to someone.
Regarding CTB and these "HU matches"
Firstly, they're barely matches.
Second of all, you're all welcome to have a favorite but if it's because you are still upset and pitchforking at me due to the rta thing from the first topic, let's just chill shall we?
Thirdly, for everyone saying he "crushed" me, not that I care that much but we are about breakeven. When we first started again I had a great start because this was before my most recent 200/400 episode that of course went poorly because who is playing well when they have maybe 2.5buyins to that game to their name? After that implosion I went and played him because I know barring mental I am crushing him. The issue is my mental just hit a new floor after the 200/400 and managed to play like someone who just lost 80%+ of his net worth playing 200/400.
I fully intend to play him again with a healthy amount of buyin stop loss after I take another 3 months to roll through plo200 up to plo2k until I have well in the 6 figure range...again.
I know with full confidence I'm beating him if I'm not losing the mental.
Regarding him in general, I think he's very good at some things and very weak at others.
What he's very good at comes from his experience, allegedly he was one of the first SNE's back in the day. (Supernova Elites) That's not nothing, playing for a long time, possibly 10s of millions of hands has its' perks.
I believe his strengths come in the form of:
- I saved tons of hands of his that I knew 100% or close to were blunders/mistakes in theory and were nowhere near accurate. HOWEVER, I then simply asked myself "does this work well vs a population of bad midstakes american regs and fish?" The answer was yes nearly every time. He has very very very good intuition on how to autopilot crush a pool of non-developed players.
Edit: No, I will not share any of these reads publicly. I believe sharing detailed info about a player publicly is very bad etiquette. I dislike the guy for still bringing up rta, egoing me in chat, following me around to tables...but I'm not going to post the large sample of saved hands, the solutions that show how much of a mistake they are, show what the consistent themes are, and how to properly stop getting your ass kicked by him. I think that would be incredibly rude. This is also a good example in my opinion of "yea I'm not a huge fan of the guy for reasons a,b,c but I'm not going to further escalate
- Endurance: This comes with time and gets easier when your thought process is minimal/autopiloted but mostly with time and making yourself play more.
I believe his weakness comes in the form of:
- Accuracy: Like stated above, he's making heaps of theoretical mistakes that take a solid amount of knowledge and awareness to not only spot, but properly know how not to fall victim to and THEN punish it. The beauty about how he plays is only truly strong, capable players are beating him.
This may be ironic coming from me, but I also think he's walking on thin ice with his confidence and ego to play anyone and everyone. That being said, so few people on global will punish it because global has been notoriously weak. What he does is brilliant as long as he's careful enough to know when he's beat. (Which in this pool is surprisingly rare)
My approach is going to be to repair my mental, keep on this new gym habit, focus entirely on my self-care and forgiving myself. Past that, keeping up with the same training I've always done and I know I will cruise through every 6max stake until I'm rolled for hs again. After a bit of hu prep work during that time I will be setting aside a healthy amount to use as a comfortable stop loss to play him HU 2k until he is wiped, pays a degree of respect and quits, or I hit the stop loss. I know I'm winning lots with the right prep and most importantly repairing my mental to stop imploding randomly.
I hope I can try to get at least a handful of people to bury the hatchet, even if you still choose to not like me.
Lastly, I invite anyone to add me on discord to either get your last bit of flaming out, ask me anything, or really anything to be honest. I am even willing to briefly preview how I train for those still skeptical that I'm RTA-ing. I can demonstrate strong accuracy with very fast decisions in training.
My discord: Spork#1337
Last edited by TheSpork; 11-19-2022 at 05:56 PM.