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Originally Posted by jc1418
AE the article was good and it came at the perfect time as the last 35k hands or so have been disgusting. I am beginning to realize that fundamentally solid poker along with a few tricks does the job especially at lower stakes which I play in. I remember my first good A high calldown for $300 when I was taking a shot at the next limit. At the time that was a very large pot for me in a monetary sense but was even bigger because it was my first shot at the next level and I thought to myself, I can play with these guys. I was beginning to look at the cards in a different light and feeling good about my game, then came a very humbling stretch of cards. Do you remember a hand or maybe bad run of luck that that you consider your most humlbing moment? How did you deal with it? Lately I've been thinking that the one of the measures of a good poker player is how many times he gets back up after being knocked down. I think Ansky once said that Matusow can play with the best when things are going his way, but goes to **** during a bad run, and in his opinion you're not any good if you can't handle the downs.
i won 75k at 5-10 and 3-6 hu in september, and then i lost 30k in october, but ran ~60k below all in equity. that humbled me.
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Recently I've cut my number of tables to 2-3 and stopped the preflop penis waving as I don't think there's much value in it at lower limits. It just sucks that when you seem to start figuring things out, the results aren't there, but I guess it just takes time with poker. Also I remember you claiming to play 5-10k hand sessions, but milestone #4 preaches against a 10k session to get unstuck. Do you feel like you're able to balance life with poker now that you've made it to the higher stakes? In my effort to move up limits I can't help but think about the game 24/7. But I also imagine that one day if I do make it, it will be alot easier to just walk away from the game for two reasons. 1) I'll have proved something to myself 2) the money is better so by walking away from the game I wouldn't feel as if I'm wasting time. Do these two points have anything to do with your ability to better balance your life now?
i haven't played a 10k hand session in like 4 months. despite the fact that they are 'bad' for you, they are part of the learning curve. i personally think you SHOULD do this at least a dozen times. it works out kinks, puts you in the zone, etc. in fact, during some of these half tilt induced sessions you will be playing the best poker of your life for hours at a time becuase you are so focused and in tune with poker and always going with your reads. conversely, this will be very high variance poker and sometimes lead to bigger losses.
being down 10 buy ins can do something amazing to a man's soul- that amazing thing is only sometimes positive.
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Sorry this got kind of long and a bit disorganized but I read your article so hopefully you'll make it through mine. Laslty, I realize that that alot of well respected SSNL posters really don't have a ****in clue. And some people that get berated by the forum actually provide the best advice. Did you just pick out a few posters that you respected and value their advice more highly, or was the master sticky and retro type stuff more valuable in terms of educating yourself? How important was it for you to find a friend or maybe a couple people to talk about the game?
I always enjoy your posts and learn alot from you, thanks.
obviously when you learn who is really good you can improve your game more. when i read a thread in hsnl, especially if it gets long, i will only read a select dozen or two posters that i recognize the name of, simply because too much stupid trolly advice gets there.
my friends were VERY important, unbelievably important. i've got a good poker friend named jimmie that i met two years ago. he's played cash, then tournaments, hu sngs, just about everything. he's a sick, sick player, getting much much better as of late with a lot of my advice, and had about a quarter of a mill december, which makes me very happy for him. he and i have a pact that we won't get jealous of each other, so we co-exsist easily. also, we're opposite personalities because he hates attention and i'm an attention whore.
talkingot other people like g-p (gabe, not tc), ansky, luckychewy on aim make me much better. it's not so much that we gab for hours about a certain strat (although that is the topic much more rarely nowadays, it was more prevelent at one time), it's that we send each other a hand once every three or four days or something, make a few comments about it, reassure each other of the standardness, etc. i like talking to players better than me, and i consider everyone i talk to to be better than me in at least some and almost always most facets of the game.