METAGAME
Posted by sauloCosta10
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sauloCosta10
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Poker Journals
METAGAME
I was 21 years old when I decided to go all-in with poker as a career. I was almost finishing my computer engineering degree at the most prestigious university in my country, one of the top 100 in the world.
I was a 10nl fishreg when I did that. I can vividly remember how I felt when I realized that in that month, October 2015, I had won 30 buy-ins at 10nl zoom on pokerstars, while having a full time job from 9 to 5. "If this is what I can accomplish in these circumstances, imagine what I could achieve in the future" was kind of what I was thinking to myself. Somehow in my bones I felt like poker was an unavoidable opportunity.
Since then, life kinda entered 1.5x speed mode. Shit, even 2x speed wouldn't be an overstatement:
At 21 years old, I was a student at uni;
At 22 years old, I was a microstakes grinder;
At 23 years old, I was married to the love of my life and living from the game;
At 24 years old, I was a midstakes winner, starting to coach other players;
At 25 years old, I was a husband, grinder, poker coach and entrepreneur;
At 26 years old, I was a husband, father, grinder, poker coach and entrepreneur;
At 27 years old, I was a husband, father of 2 children, owner of a multi million dollar poker business, and high stakes regular.
Looking back at this very recent history, it's pretty crazy how the events just kept piling up. And they were not just minor events, everytime it was something that changed my life in some significant way.
And that was amazing for me. I love challenges. I live for the next challenge, almost literally. All these events forced me to grow; to mature; to become a better person. I'm glad and happy that all these wonderful things have happened in my life.
Now, at 28 years old, seems like I'm living a unique chapter of my life. After these very busy years, which sort of 'simply happened', I feel like I can deliberately pick something to keep me busy, rather than attending to a demand from all my life changing events.
One thing I'm very interested at in this new phase of my life is on other people.
Ever since I can remember, I've always been someone extremely independent, activity oriented and individualist. Most of my time was spent pursuing things I found interesting and relevant - or necessary - by myself, in my room or my office. I've always had friends and a normal social life, so it wasn't about having people around. My genetics and my circumstances just seemed to always push me in a direction of mostly self-centered activities.
Poker was the pinnacle of that phenomena. For years, my most frequent company was the solver :D second place would probably be spreadsheets. What tipped the balance a bit to the other side was my business. I had no choice other than to interact with multiple people; I was forced to learn how to manage a team; had to learn how to deal with the desires, opinions and visions of a completely different person than me, that happens to be my business partner (shoutout to @zinhao) ; amongst many other things.
At this point in my life, I'm a bit tired of the solver and spreadsheet grind. I still do it because I must stay sharp to teach my students, but I'm pretty good at that already. Modesty aside, If I'm not the best NLHE coach in the world, I must be there at the top. Obviously I can't know that objectively, but I'm proud of how much I know and how much value I'm able to generate to my students. My company success - even though achieved through a multitude of skills of many different people other than myself - atests to that claim.
It's time for a new challenge.
And It turns out that the stars have aligned in a way to produce a very pertinent timing for me to pursue this new challenge. What I want at the moment is to interact with people; learn about human behaviour; understand what motivates people to do what they do; improve my capacity to transmit my ideas and knowledge; become a better communicator.
Such activites are perfectly aligned with one of my most important roles in my company right now - to be the head of Marketing. The timing was made even more perfect given how we are rebranding at the moment. BrPC leaves the scene and opens up space for "METAGAME".
Then I was thinking (and studying): what makes up good marketing? So many strategies out there in this digital world nowadays. Eventually, I decided to go with a very simple one, containing only 2 elements:
1) Generate value to your community;
2) Show your work;
My goal with this thread is to make it the most informative cash game thread of all time. The amount of information and insights I will post here will be unprecedent.
I will also use it for what a Poker Journal is about: to log a goal or one's progress. Except that this time, I won't focus solely on myself. I will show students progress, my company progress as a whole, what we have to offer to the poker industry, and why not some of my own in the mean time.
I also want it to be a public space where you can ask any question whatsoever. And I will answer every single one of them.
I could have done this elsewhere, but Run it Once feels like my home. This is where my journey began. I want to keep writing it here!
Let's get started!
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What great words!
You already know my admiration for you, for how you see the game, for how you face your coaches from a technical level that few have.
Without being biased by belonging to Metagame, I think that both you and Zinhao or Tirelli can awaken "monsters" in poker. It is demonstrated with examples of players who had a Before and After of your and their individual coachings.
Within Metagame one aspires to have that privilege, among the many others we have.
Without going any further, I invite people to watch the videos of Saulo in RIO, which were my initial kick to want to be and belong to the team.
Very happy to see you opening up this thread my friend! It's a pleasure to be able to call myself a friend and a business partner of such an amazing human being.
For those who don't know, Saulo was my first and only coach in 2018, later I was the first student of BrPC (now Metagame), then the first coach inside the team besides Saulo and Zinhao. Then last year I came up with the idea of making a Microstakes division of Metagame, and being the head coach and CEO of that branch of the company, which was and still is an amazing experience for me.
Then this year Saulo and Zinhao saw the need for more associates inside the company, and they decided to offer me, Luis Tirelli and Leonardo Soares to be a part of it. All of us bought a percentage of the company and are now owners of Metagame as well.
It's just so crazy what simply making the decision to get coached by you back in 2018 could do to my life man... I was a breakeven nl25 player, now I play highstakes and I'm a partner in such and amazing company. And whats insane is that we have much more of these type of extraordinary cases inside the team...
Anyways, I'm looking forward to what you'll write here, as I always do with anything you decide to share. Let's crush!!
It is indeed crazy man...maybe we would have never met if I didnt make that maisEV post. Im very happy to have you in my life!
There I was at the gym today, about 11am, doing my workout. I was doing an exercise for the shoulders, and gotta say...that shit was tough. I was getting exhausted pretty quickly. My whole body felt kinda weak, and I knew something was off. Maybe it was because I only got 5 hours of sleep during the night.
After I finished my third set, I started feeling like maybe I should quit and go home.
Its very rare for me to even consider doing that, because I love working out, and generally don't consider quitting as an option when I clearly have more to do. There were still about 3 or 4 exercises left, so definitely not close to being done.
As I was about to get up and leave, I glanced over the machine I was using for my exercise and there was a sticker note at the top that said: "Don't stop when you are tired. Stop when you are done".
So simple... Yet so effective. It was all that I needed.
I finished that exercise and started the next. I am still a beginner at the gym, and one of the things I have been practicing is trying to guess how many reps I have left in the tank before hitting failure in that set.
As Im pushing through the reps, I hit 12 and in my mind I thought: "I think I can do 3 more". I kept pushing, trying to focus my attention on the muscles I was contracting. I ended up hitting 21 reps in that set.
Today was one of the most intense workouts I have ever done in my life. When I got home, after completing my full training, I was proud that I didn't quit. I was extremely fatigued, but immensely satisfied.
I want to take 2 lessons from this seemingly incredibly mundane episode.
The first one is that, sometimes, a small encouragement goes a long way. Maybe you know someone who is struggling right now. Maybe you are struggling yourself. Sometimes we are so tired that quitting feels like a good option. I remember how I felt after breaking even for 6 months straight at 50nl...I was hopeless. Questioned my own intellectual capacity for the first time in my life.
When my oldest boy and I play videogames together, sometimes he fails repeatedly and gets frustrated. He leans over to me and says: "I can't do it daddy. You go". Then he tries to handle me the controller. By now he already knows what's coming...I look him in the eye and say: "You are my son. You can do anything". Suddenly his energy transforms. 9 out of 10 times he gets the job done.
If you are tired, take some rest. If resting is not an option, then fucking push through it. There is no other way to say it. If you still feel like you can't do it, then maybe all you need is a little encouragement from the world. From a friend, a family member, someone who inspires you. Maybe even yourself. Or a sticker note.
Here is my encouragement to you: yes poker is tough. But you can do it.
Which leads to the second lesson: the only reason I can confidently say you can do it without even knowing who you are or what you are currently struggling with is because I know how much all of us are blind to our true limits. We underestimate our capacities and our ability to change and adapt. We do that all the time, not just when we are pushing reps in the gym.
We do that when we think we don't belong to a new limit. We think we are not good enough yet. We do it when we think the current downswing is evidence of our incompetence. We do it when we fear the future of poker and the uncertainty that comes with it. "What will I do with my life if shit happens?"
The truth is, you will figure it out. We always do. We just forget all the times that we did it.
If you are currently struggling in poker, and feel like you could use some help, some guidance, some tips, just send me a message. Maybe thats all that you need.
pokerBoi I think being optimistic, resilient and overall having a growth mindset is certainly key to success and longevity in poker (and in life). It's just that sometimes things go wrong for so long that we stop believing...when that happens, external stimuli can be very helpful.
Resilience and overcoming. Inspiring! Lucky us.
Yeah I think you nailed in the end here. Success is essentially not giving up for a sufficient amount of time. One thing that helped me in my career was that I "burned bridges". There was no other option for me other than making poker work. I was providing for me and my fiancee, and I had sacrificed years of university to pursue that goal.
People would be amazed to realize what they are capable of when they simply don't have (or refuse to consider) any other option.
I know all the leaks you have in your game.
I know all the leaks Linus has in his game.
Don't believe me? Then after reading this post, go to your tracker of choice and check your stats. I am 100% sure that you:
I could go on here. The list would be BIG.
Solvers have been in the market since 2016 (2015 maybe?), and yet 6 years later people still seem to struggle to realize where they are deviating from equillibrium. Thats the easiest thing in the world to know.
Yet people pay hundreds of dollars to private coaches and poker training platforms/softwares to tell them the most obvious things.
Knowing your leaks isn't going to get you anywhere, unfortunately (sadface). If all your poker coach can do for you is show you where you are playing differently from a computer, then you should find a better use of your money.
What matters is what you do with that information.
A good poker coach should be able to take the information about your leaks, and do the following:
1) Assess whether those deviations truly are "leaks".
Notice how I implicitly assumed above that a deviation from equillibrium was a leak. And you didn't even notice. It's simply incorrect to make that inference without context. You could be deviating from equillibirum in a way that naturally exploits the imbalances of the people you play against. In such context, this deviation is not net negative, it is net positive.
2) Build a strategy to correct them.
If those leaks are really costing your money, the job of a good poker coach is to build a strategy for you to eliminate them. The same way you build a strategy to play BTN vs BB, your coach should build a strategy to improve your understanding of BTN vs BB.
What this means is, he needs to create a plan. A plan is a set of actions that aim to achieve a certain goal.
Your coach needs to be able to understand who you are, what are your strenghts and weaknesses, so that he knows which training method better suits your characteristics; he needs to know what your schedule and routine look like, so that he knows how much time and effort you can effectively put into training; he needs to have a high and precise understanding of which specific knowledge is required to expand your capacity as a player towards the end goal, so that his plan is coherent and comprehensive; he needs to figure out what is the best way to communicate knowledge to you, based on all the information above: is it better to provide tiny amounts slowly, or larger amounts quickly?
Then he makes a plan. This plan will be unique to you, because your coach is coaching you, not a robot or generalized poker player.
3) Walk you through the strategy
You didn't build the strategy, so you don't know exactly how it works or how to do it right. Your coach should walk you through it then, showing you how to execute his plan towards the end goal. This means, metaphorically or literally, taking you by the hand and saying: this is how you do this, and this is the reason why you do it.
Then after he's covered all that, he is about 33% done. He covered the technical part.
A lot of people seek coaching because they think they just need a strategy upgrade. Wrong. Sometimes that's the last thing they need. A good coach will know that.
A lot of times, they just need to feel confident about what they are doing. One of the most difficult tasks of being a coach is getting the student to believe. Very often, it doesn't matter whether what you are teaching is advanced or simple, realistic or fictional, based on data and evidence or personal experience. All that matters is how that knowledge attaches (or not) to the mind of the listener. This has nothing to do with the actual content of the message. It has everything to do with how the student perceives the content of the message.
A good coach is able to convey knowledge in a way that produces confidence in the student. And a coach can only do that if he understands who his student is and what he wants.
After covering all that, he is now about 66% done. He covered the technical part and the confidence part. The last third is about consistency.
The only thing that separates mediocre poker players from great poker players is consistency.
A great poker coach should be able to teach or inspire (or both) the ability of being consistent to his students. Consistency in strategy execution, consistency in studying methodology, consistency in volume played.
His teaching methodology should facilitate consistency, and the coach will achieve that by being consistent himself. He needs to be coherent and have great certainty about what he says. The worst thing for a student is a coach that says different things all the time, doesn't have a clear line of thought, and is insecure about his own knowledge.
The student needs to get out of the sessions with a very clear idea of what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Its only when a poker player knows exactly the what, the when and the how that he can be consistent. A coach will achieve that by constantly reinforcing the positive and desirable habits that are required to achieve consistency. And when I say constantly, I mean consistently. Get it?
Consistency also requires simplicity. Hard things don't get executed consistently because, you know...they are hard. A good coach should be able to make his teaching methodology simple, replicable and relatable. This makes his methodology sophisticated - and it promotes consistency.
If you have been considering investing on a coach or poker training, make sure you consider how these much of these 3 elements - strategy, confidence and consistency - you will be getting. If you focus only on one specific element, chances are you will either regret the investment or not get the return you expected.
Great post. Allot for me to chew on thanks.
Also really loving these mid-paragraph types of content - concise but have enough depth allowing me to think through and putting some practical actions to improve my game. Appreciate it.
I'm a fan to this thread for sure!
Thanks for sharing! The 21-27 yo progress sounds like a dream!
It does seem surreal when I look back and reflect on it. I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to live these experiences at such young age.
Indeed, admire that you had the courage to go all-in with poker without finishing your degree at such a young age. Guess it pays off massively! xD
Awesome post about coaching .
But how do you manage that at BRPC when you have probably 60+ Students at the same time ?
Do you have one Coach for every 6 Studnets ? and even than I assume it would be a fulltime Job especially when the student starts their journey
We currently have 160 students. Yes, it is a challenge.
One of the biggest challenges of any business is to figure out how to scale without losing quality and efficiency.
What we believe is that Methodology is the most fundamental part of coaching, and it is through a very solid and well planned teaching strategy that we deliver technical knowledge, confidence and consistency to the students.
Currently our methodology focuses on providing the students with the most important element for high level execution: heuristics. At the end of the day, the person with the more high quality heuristics will have an edge in poker. So, every week, we provide the students with 2 to 3 lectures about specific nodes of the game tree, where the goal is to deliver easily digestable heuristics to approach range construction for that node. With this approach student gets immediate gain in technical ability.
In this format, we provide pseudo-gto heuristics for flop and turn nodes, and exploitative heuristics for river nodes. The idea here is to provide confidence. With a fundamentally solid, low exploitability approach for earlier streets, students can have the confidence to be learning something that is applicable vs anyone, at any stakes. Then, the extra spiciness of learning and executing river exploits gives them the confidence of knowing they can actively increase their edge by punishing other people's mistakes in game.
Finally, we strive to achieve the maximum possible consistency with our Methodology by having a standardized format of lectures to be executed by the instructors, always at the same weekdays and same time of day. The standardized format reduces possibility of confusion and facilitates learning from different instructors. The schedule promotes discipline and routine. We then provide our own custom software where students can train the heuristics they learn in classes.
We believe this format succesfuly achieves our goals, and is one that scales well since a large number of people can attend the lectures.
That being said, we also know that individualized attention is important, so we have many perks that award the most hard working students:
This meritocratic system allows the students who are really hungry for improvement to get insane value, since even if they don't win any awards they get 3 to 5 hours of coaching every week (lectures are usually 1.5h in length).
This year I played 200/400 for the first time in my life. Safe to say this is quite big stakes for me, since the highest limit I can play comfortably is 10knl.
However, an opportunity came up and I said "why not?". There was a rec at the table, and rake is low, so I knew I would be +EV in that table. Proceeded to sell 30% of my action to a few of my friends, so ended up playing it like 28knl. Still, super high stakes.
Then this hand happened. It was against Taisto Janter, someone who I consider one of the best 6-max regs that plays 5knl+.
It was the first time in years that money affected my decision making in game. I tanked for the full 3 minutes I had in my time bank, because I entered enormous dissonance. I knew theoretically that this would be a call I had to make. He could show up with worse draws than this and I had equity vs his value range.
But it was a fucking 20 thousand dollar bet in a 4bet pot vs UTG. We were 10 minutes into the session. I quickly started looping through many rationalizations to justify the fold. "Surely he perceives my range as Kx heavy so no way he has bluffs here". "Surely GTO requires bluffing some Ax blockers that he is not gonna have".
I spent 3 minutes in agony until I timed out and folded. In reality, I had already folded unsconsciously way before my time bank ended. And the reason was not anything technical, it was simply how big the pot was. I wasn't prepared for it mentally. In the face of pressure, my risk aversion took the better of me.
Poker rewards the people with the highest tolerance for risk.
If you could only take one thing from this thread, I would encourage you to take this: learn to be comfortable in the face of risk.
In this specific scenario, I wasn't comfortable with the risk because of the stakes. But even when you are playing stakes that are comfortable to your bankroll, you will find resistance to accept the risk that comes along with the strategy you are supposed to play.
Overbetting air, calling down marginal hands, check raise bluffing. Either you learn to embrace volatility or you will never go past a mediocre player. It's as simple as that.
Inside METAGAME, students gain access to a tool I developed called "Grind Simulator". I essentially tried to replicate the grinding experience into a training environment. So in this tool, yuo open how many tables you want and play a session just like you would on pokerstars or gg poker, with table graphics, sounds, and everything, except you play vs bots.
I will tell you one thing about the difference between bots and humans: every human seems like a fucking nit next to a bot.
There are plays the solver makes that even midstakes winning regs would call spewy. Don't be that guy. Next time you mark an opponent as bad, or too aggressive, or spewy, consider that he might have something you don't have: an appetite for risk.
Maybe you have what it takes intellectually to make sense of what good poker looks like. But maybe whats holding you back is your low tolerance to risk.
Get your bankroll management straight. Then spew some stacks. Thank me later
Hi Saulo.
I remember watching you say that one of the biggest improvements on your game was when you learned to fold (NL50 to100 maybe?). Clearly scared money and overaversion to risk will harm the player, but how to find balance on being that tad and controlled spewy but not a maniac? To let some pots go but not let them slip through your fingers?
I think first you need to get comfortable with calling down - and all the high risk plays. This is mostly a mental thing. You can achieve this by exposing yourself to your fear - make the call when your mind wants you to fold.
Then you should learn which spots you don't need to calldown. This is a technical thing. You can achieve it by studying population tendencies and identifying underbluffed spots.
This way you will be emotionally prepared to invest in all spots, and can then rationally exclude the ones that won't bring any winrate.
Hope that helps KKillerss
Awesome to see you blogging again here Saulo. And great first posts, will follow your journey for sure and looking forward what follows in this one.
And all the best for the rebranding process of your company and for you as a person.
Thanks mate!
THE SECRET TO WINNING POKER
When I was moving up in stakes in the beginning of my career, I used to watch lots of Run It Once videos. There was one particular coach I enjoyed a lot, and he was very popular at the time. I would watch all of his live play videos, take notes, ask questions, and overall try to imitate his style very closely.
This one time in one of his videos he posted a beautiful 200z graph, over a million hands with 5bb/100 winrate. I was fascinated by that graph. I had no results to show for myself when I saw that (was breaking even at 50z), and that graph was all that I wanted for myself.
That made me become even more obsessed with that coach. I had to figure out what he was doing, what exactly made it possible for him to win so much. When I was watching his videos, I would never get the impression that he was executing something I had no idea of, which would intrigue me even further.
Eventually I figured watching videos was not enough. I had to know his stats. I had to figure out his secret. I had to see for myself how he played his ranges in a more in depth way, one that live play videos can't cover. It was around that time I discovered there was some HH mining sites that would sell hundreds of thousands of hands for a few hundred dollars. So I went into the first one that I could find on google and bought all the hands they had available on this coach. It turned out to be around 400k hands.
I imported that batch in my HM2, which took considerable amount of time given the slow import speeds and my poor notebook specs. After a few hours of building up anxiety and excitement, I selected his screen name in the tracker and started going over the stats.
What I saw generated a mix of disbelief and disappointment. I remember feeling experiencing severe dissonance. How was it possible for someome with these stats to crush so hard the stakes of my dreams? It didn't make any sense to me. Something was off. Winning poker was supposed to be aggressive, and this guy was printing 5bb/100 in a zoom pool with 45wwsf and a -10bb/100 redline. Even I had better stats!
I figured there was something in there I was still not knowledgeable enough to absorb. I was blind to the secret. Of course! I thought. If the secret was something so obvious that it would be evident in the stats, then it wouldn't be much of a secret, right?
A few months passed and I was still a breakeven reg. My desperation for results was growing exponentially. I had quit university to pursue poker, and after climbing a few stakes in the micros zoom pools, I was breaking even for months straight at 50nl.
Coincidentally or not, a new CFP program launched in the market as my desperation hit peak levels. I had no experience with those, but I was willing to try anything. Everything. And for my great surprise, the player I had been studying for the past several months would be one of the coaches in the program. This was enough for me to immediatelly send my application, and after a few conversations we agreed on a deal.
The few months that followed were probably the most tilting and disappointing of my poker career. I was, again, super excited and anxious to finally have access to the mind of a crusher, and I would use every opportunity that I could to discover what in the actual fuck allowed this guy to crush so hard in a way that seemed almost effortless in his live play videos. I was really close now. I could ask questions directly, and he would have incentive to teach me everything he knew, now that he had equity on my winnings.
I remember getting mildly tilted everytime I would hear or read him reply a HH review question with some kind of variation of "that was std, wp" and alike. I watched every single live play video they provided to students, I asked for feedback in my doubts, I had 1v1 sessions. I did everything that I could, but I couldn't find any secrets. One of the most tilting moments of that contract was when I had a 1v1 session with one of the coaches and he told me "You play very well, I have no idea why you are not winning".
I had spent all this time and energy trying to find the answer, and the more I dug, the more it seemed to be far from reach.
Not surprisingly, I quit that deal and went back to trying to figure out things on my own. Ironically, a year and a half after later I was able to produce a very similar graph to the one that got me into the secret quest, and it coincidentally happened after I stopped looking for it.
As a coach, I have witnessed students chase the secret countless times. In a staking company, this effect is magnified when lower stakes players see a teammate crushing a higher stake. They immediatelly become references for the rest, and everyone wants to know what they did, how they did, what's their routine, what's their thinking process.
If you have ever felt that way, or thought that there must be something that "the guys up there" know that you don't, and that they execute some hidden techniques that they keep for themselves, please allow me to help you: quit that shit immediatelly.
There is no secret. The difference between a 5knl reg and a 500nl reg is the same difference between a 500nl reg and 50nl reg. They all play the same game, and they all share a lot of the same heuristics and knowledge.
What sets them apart is that the higher limit guy does all the things the lower limit guy does a bit better. And he does it more consistently.
The era of solvers and complicated strategies has made people that are climbing the stakes believe that there must be some sick tricks inside the strategy of the crushers. But the underwhelming truth is that there isn't. They just don't overfold as often as you do, and they size their bets more appropriately than you are currently capable of.
Stop looking for the miracle that will turn you into a crusher and channel all your energy into becoming the most consistent professional you can possibly be. Someone that studies every day, in an efficient way, and then sets and achievies reasonable volume goals.
If you do that, naturally you will acquire more heuristics, and your existing heuristics will gradually increase in accuracy. That's all there is to it.
The only reason getting to high stakes is hard is because consistency is hard. Winning poker strategy is no kids math, but it also ain't rocket science. The real challenge is to keep learning, no matter what.
Hi Saulo, how much do you think things like professionalism (showing up everyday, putting in volume ecc) and mental game are important today compared to the strategic element?
I think professionalism is highly underrated while strategy is studied to a point that I don't understand. A lot of players prefers to study 100 hours and avoid playing at all, which to me doesn't make a lot of sense.
Definitely more than strategy itself. I've seen dozens of different playing styles achieve success throughout the years. But you can't really go too far without consistency, and a solid mental game is a requirement for achieving consistency. I've coached dozens of players that have good theoretical understanding, certainly more than enough to have an edge over the field, but when faced with stressful situations they couldn't keep up with their performance. And I'm not talking specifically about explicit tilt - a poor mental game can lead to worse decisions - on and off the tables - even if on the surface everything looks fine.
My favorite coach. Shoutout from Brazil. Looking forward to the next posts :)
thanks for sharing your thoughts and giving out free advice here. But, I would like to play the devils advocate and ask what makes your content or CFP better than other models within the same market? As a person who was prior a part of CFP, i thought the theory and materials could be achieved more or less by yourself if you put in the hard work. Does your group pride itself from being a tight nit core, because as ive seen majority of you guys are on RIO blogging section and are supportive of each other. Im just curious as to what seperates your group from the rest of the pack for the people interested in joining your CFP.
Thank you for your question TheLove_Below
I think the question is not really whether you "could" achieve this or that by yourself, but rather if you should attempt to do it by yourself.
I've done things by myself since I can remember in my life. I used this exact logic to:
- Rationalize about not attending college pre-course classes, cuz I could study for college exams by myself at home, reading the text books;
- Rationalize about not attending university classes, cuz guess what I could just read the books at home;
- Rationalize about quitting cfp deal and improving by myself by just grinding solver.
I've done this countless times in my life. And I've had success with it. Moved up from mediocre 10nl fishreg to solid 500z winner in 3 years (2016 - 2019), mostly through my own personal effort while barely exchanging ideas with anyone else.
I could argue that I'm an exception, and that most people won't find such success on their own, at least not so quickly. And that might be true, but I won't disagree with you that it's possible to achieve all that without anyone else's help. It is in fact possible.
But the key is not whether you can do it or not. Assuming that you can in fact do it, which is better - by yourself or with some help?
My claim is that its not even close. Mainly because you can accelerate the process by a factor of 2 or 3. If one can reach a level where its possible to make a lot of money playing online poker - and one can - then reaching such level as fast as possible can only be a better alternative than taking 2 or 3 times longer to get there. This benefit gets further magnified when you account for the fact that the poker industry has countless risks in the medium and short term.
I was trying to accelerate my learning and move up in stakes when I joined a cfp back in 2017. It didn't work out the way I wanted, so I quit. If my company was around at that time so that I could signup, then I would have been successful in my attempt.
To answer your question of what separates us from the rest, I can't give you an exact answer because I don't pay enough attention to our competitors to even know what they are or aren't doing. All of our time is devoted to bettering our own products and services.
What I can say is that we are a company made of extremely intelligent, hard working people of character. I believe thats exactly what all great companies are made of. When you put a bunch of those together, then great things happen.
Hello Saulo. What are your thoughts on watching videos as a tool for improving one's poker skills? I had something of an epiphany recently. I realised that I was wasting a lot of time watching training videos and streamers, as I was often being entertained by the content, but not actually learning useful information. I now believe that private coaching and solo study are the best ways to learn, with watching videos being a distant third. I am curious how the training material is delivered in your CFP. Is the majority of it delivered through videos, in a similar fashion to how content is delivered on sites such as RIO? Also, I am not sure if you are aware, but there are many coaches on RIO and other training sites who coach in CFPs or offer private coaching. It is somewhat widely accepted that many coaches will hold back and not share the most valuable information in videos on training sites such as RIO, as the information is too valuable to be shared in public. The truly transformative information, particularly info relating to MDA, is reserved for their CFP students or private students. This, for me, further reduces the value of training sites now. I think they were great once, but their usefulness has now been eclipsed by CFPs such as yours which specialise in MDA.
Very interesting take, I agree with this. I even think it is unethical for coaches to accept producing content to a training site like RIO or GTOwiz, but hold back crucial information without disclosing it to whoever hired them on the training site. They are paying to have you as a coach, but you don't disclose the truly relevant info. Pretty shady imo.
There's no conspiracies, nor magic pills in poker
Hey HodorIsKing! Thank you for the question!
Depends on the video :D If its a good video then its worth watching, and vice-versa. The best way to learn depends on your current level of ability. Solo study isn't really useful for a beginner for example, and watching videos is not so useful for a HS reg.
I get what you said about your personal experience, I do believe many people spend way too much time with passive learning methods. But there is no real objective answer to what is better - it depends on the context. If you are currently feeling better about doing solo study and private coaching, then absolutely go with that.
No, not really. Videos on Rio are prerecorded and then edited to then be made available to the public. At Metagame coachings are all live - very little prerecorded content. Then we have a mix of a lecture format - coach prepares a presentation about a certain topic and delivers it to students, live - and small group coachings - coach sets a topic then interacts with students during the class.
We do have prerecorded content that is made available in our library, but its mostly tutorials about poker software, some mental game content, amongst others. The lectures and group coachings do get recorded and then added to the library so that people can rewatch them whenever they want. Class notes are also included to help follow/study the content of the class.
I'm with my friend PrankCallRiver on this one. Not sure how this became "widely accepted" as you said but I don't believe its true at all. People concerned about sharing information with the public aren't really looking for opportunitites to produce content to training platforms. Also, there is no real secret to be kept hidden anyway. There maybe is some stuff that regs aren't super excited to share with the public like most soft sites, or some specific exploit against an opponent they play regularly against. But none of those things impact the quality of content being produced.
Those are 2 totally different products/services. One doesn't replace the other, because people in different stages of their careers will have different needs. Getting high quality content/coaching is just one of the reasons people sign a contract with Metagame. Some people really need staking, others are feeling tired of pursuing things on their own and want a community, others come for the full package.
Also, we don't really specialise in MDA. We specialize in producing great poker players. Part of it is done by teaching how to exploit population tendencies. But thats probably about 20% of the work. You don't just suddenly become a crusher because you learned how to attack human imbalances. You are actually going to need LOTs of theoretical knowledge to execute exploits, not to mention the theoretical knowledge to play well in all the situations you don't want to exploit; then a solid mental game to avoid self sabotage and performance-destroying habits; a structured routine to allow for consistency; psychological support to grow as a person and handle your poker career when shit happens in your personal life, or you hit a 50bi downswing.
Strategy is just the tip of the iceberg of being a great poker player.
That being said, you definitely won't find better content on video platform sites than in Metagame, in this you are right. Not because content producers are holding any information, it's just that we have more of it, and with a higher quality. And I'm not even bragging, that's just a consequence of the model. Since we have equity on our player's winnings, we do everything we can so that they make more money. This then leads us to invest tons of money into content, research and tools every month. So its only natural that content inside our company will be better than elsewhere.
sauloCosta10 From your experience and also from your most successful players' experience: How do you balance (or try to balance) the necessity of having to spend 40 hrs per week dedicated to poker and other aspects of life like family and friends? How do you manage to raise children and remain fully committed to putting in the hours required to obtain success in poker and business?
Hey Entro789, thanks for your question.
I never had any issues of feeling like I'm not spending enough time with my family or anything. 40h of work per week is pretty normal amount I think, thats the bare minimum of what 99% of people do. When you work from home and don't have to commute it's even easier than most other work positions since you have more free time. I probably work around 45h a week and don't feel like I don't have time for life outside work.
The best thing about being a poker player/entrepreneur as well is that you can just instantly adjust priorities and your schedule. If something in my personal life needs attention, I can just cut hours from work to attend those demands. In fact I have done this a few times throughout the years, like the times where my kids were born, and also times where my health wasn't great or my relationship with my wife needed me to be more present.
The only struggle I have is not having enough time to do everything that I want to do work related. So many projects and ideas to implement. I always have to let some good ideas go. But scaling past 45h/week would mean sacrificing time with my family, and that's not something I'm willing to do.
So I'm actually in the opposite situation to the one you described. It would be better to ask "How do you manage to run a business when you have a family and kids and so many other responsibilities?", to which the answer is "I do what I can". So far, what I can do allowed us to grow from staking 2 players to 200 players in 3.5 years. So it's been good enough.
Interesting, we probably just don't share the same goals/priorities then. Your priorities are related to being a better family member, whereas mine are to reach my full potential as a poker player.
It depends on how you view it I guess. In number of hours, I spend twice as much time working compared to with my family during the week. For some people then this will mean I prioritize work. You mentioned 40h a week and I even work more than that.
However, I'm certainly more flexible with my working hours than with the time I allocate to be with my family. There are times when I need to get a project done in a deadline so I put a few extra hours in, but nothing crazy.
That being said, 45h/week is plenty! One can do a lot with that if one's productive. For someone hyper creative like me it may not be enough to do EVERYTHING but its still enough to accomplish a lot.
Don't know about your personal life, but if you are single and young I think working 60+h/week is very doable. I was working something like that before I had kids. But doable doesn't mean optimal. Over the years I've learned how resting/leisure time is actually quite productive (which I did not believe at all as teenager/young adult). By resting you make sure you can sustain consistent high performance for longer periods, preventing burnout and even health issues. If I was single and my only purpose in life was to get better in poker I would probably do a 54h work week (1 day off and 9h work days), so just an extra day (likely sunday) compared to what I'm doing right now.
sauloCosta10 Thank you for the answer. For context, I am young (24), I've been married for a year, and no kids yet. My goal is to put in 45hrs per week exclusively dedicated to studying and playing poker. No other major obligations yet. I achieve my goal around 75% of the time. I reach at least 40hrs 90% of the time. Sometimes I wish I put in even more hours given my ambitious goals, but I still need (and enjoy) to spend time with the wife, friends and do some other leisure activities. We are planning to have kids in 3 years maybe, and I am actually really scared of the impact that this will have on my career.
You mentioned 9hrs of poker per day for 6 days a week. I think it could be doable, but probably not sustainable. Let's say we are awake for 16hrs in a day, we spend 9hrs dedicated to poker, 1hr doing exercise, 2hr eating, 1:30hr figuring out normal life stuff, and 1:30 relaxing. Seems brutal but I would be willing to give it a shot.
2022 is ending! In these last 7 days of the year, let's share with one another what we learned in the last 12 months. Nothing better than spreading wisdom around the world!
For each comment sharing something learned in 2022, I will reply with a piece of knowledge or wisdom I've acquired over the years, both poker related and off poker
I will start:
In one of my sessions with my psychologist, he wold me a story about a friend of his, who has worked at some position in the Brazilian Federal government for the past several decades, despite all the comes and goes of our internal politics. Parties come, parties go, politicians come, politicians go, but he is always there. Always gets offered a position, and always an important and respectable one.
One time, my psychologist asked him: how is that possible? How do you manage to get offered a job by the opposition when they take over power in the elections?
To this, the man answered: "I invest when prices are low".
That phrase stuck with me. It's impossible to forget.
Later he explained: "When people in power get replaced, and with them all their staff and workers they depend on, I offer them my help and assistance. I make sure to do whatever I can to make that transition better for them. Since politics are cyclical, eventually they return to positions of power, which is when they remember me and want me around them".
There are many ways to interpret this, but the way I like to view it is: reciprocity is one of the strongest human feelings. In fact, we probably wouldn't be here without it. The capacity to reciprocate is essential to forming social bonds, and we are nothing without our social bonds.
Leverage reciprocity whenever you can. Don't concern yourself with whether someone can give you something in return right now. Help them. Do your best. This may not pay off immediatelly, nor its gonna pay off 100% of the time. But enough people will remember. And when they do, the payment comes with interest.
Form bonds that perpetuate in time through reciprocity. These bonds pay lots of dividends :D
I have learned that I was not as good at poker as I thought I was, and there was some wishful thinking going on. When I came to that realization, I was already a professional player for a year, and was playing NL1K after quickly climbing up the stakes from NL5. I was aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and I also knew that most people think they are better at poker than they actually are. And yet, my monkey brain convinced me that I was "different than them" somehow.
But then, at some point my confidence took a hit. I used to play 4 tables at one poker site and 1-2 tables of ACR. Mostly at NL1k. I was still making decent money and life was good, but when I decided to dissect my results a bit further, I realized that it was statistically highly likely that I was either breaking even or losing at the tougher ACR field. I had a -6.12bb/100 win rate over 46k hands at NL1k at that site. Those were absolutely terrible results. According to primedope, even if I was truly a break even player, there would be a 90% chance that my results would have been better than the ones I was getting. It was time to be humble, keep working on my game, and stop playing on this site for the time being. Notice that I said stop playing on this site, instead of moving down stakes. Because I was till making decent money with a nice win rate at the other site I was playing (and wisely putting most of my volume at). Sure, I was probably experiencing negative variance/card distribution on ACR, and a positive one on that other site. But the whole situation was an eye-opener to me.
In face of that scenario, I came to the realization illustrated on the first paragraph. Even though I was probably a good poker player, I was not as good as I thought. Dealing with that was tough at first, but after a couple days of ruminating over the punch I received, I was able to absorb it. I still was (and still am) on the very early stages of my career, and I know damn well that mastery takes time + deliberate practice + consistency. I was able to recognize and be proud of the progress I had made so far, while still knowing that it is just the beginning and that the journey towards mastery continues.
Nice stuff mate, thanks for sharing!
You are super young and you reached high limits very fast, so what happened to you and then how you felt about it was mostly a consequence of your inexperience.
This for example. I 100% get how you must have felt or are still feeling about this. I have gone through smaller swings and felt awful at times. But it is a relatively standard downswing of 30 buyins. If you simulate a 4bb winning player in primedope over the course of a year (~500k hands), you will see that such player will be in the middle of a 30+ buyin downswing about 25% of the time. Thats a lot. 3 months of every year will be spent recovering from a loss of 30 buyins or more.
This can be quite misleading, so be careful. Imagine you play a 50k hand stretch where you win 25 buyins in the first 25k hands and then you lose 30 buyins in the next 25k hands. Overall you lost 5 buy ins, so you ran at -1bb/100, which is a better stretch than the -6bb one you experienced, so primedope won't count it in the probability you mentioned. But in this one, you had an even worse downswing (30bi vs 28).
What I can share that relates to what you wrote is this:
Learn to completely dettach yourself from short term results. This will do wonders for your mental game, confidence and capacity to be consistent. The focus should be 100% on improving and performing, no matter how good you are.
Some practical things that can help immensely with this:
1 - Build a life roll of at least 12 months of expenses. This will not only give you financial safety when you run bad, but it will make you less likely to care about a losing month here and there.
2 - Build a solid bankroll of at least 100 buy ins for your main stake. In the 3 months of the year where you will experience a 30 buy in downswing, you will still have 70bi to continue playing. Thats comfortable enough so that you will feel no anxiety when your BR temporarily decreases.
3 - Stop checking results. Once a month would be the maximum I would advise, but even longer would be better. With time, since you are not checking results, your mind will learn to focus on the process, not on short term winnings which are mostly a consequence of variance.
These tips are like the common sense tips about health. Everyone knows they should exercise and eat well to be healthy. But very few people do it. These are things every poker player knows are important, but few actually do it.
If you can build the discipline to do them, you instantly rise to the top 5% of regs in your pool. Most mistakes people make at the poker table only happen because they care too much about the money. Doing these 3 things will make you not care at all about the money you win or lose playing poker. When that happens, you are ready to crush.
Thanks Saulo. Yea, I definitely feel like I am too atached to short-term results. I will work on changing that. However, I must say that the situation only affected my confidence because that was all the sampel I had. It was not a case of sampling bias.
But I really appreciate the tips. Also really enjoyng the blog. GL for you in 2023
Im glad you are enjoying it mate, thanks for participating!
Nice blog Saulo! If I asked you: what are the first 5 things I should look for studying with pio or hand2note? Enjoy the holidays!
Thanks Pinzo! Don't think I will get 5 of each but here it is:
For solver work, in no particular order:
1 - Toy games. Spend time playing around with simple models, doing calculations by hand and then seeing the solutions. There are many very interesting toy games in Mathematics of Poker for reference.
2 - Equity distributions. Whenever browsing sims, make sure to always look at the equity distribution graph for both players and try to understand why such distribution matchup is supposed to be played like in the solution strategy.
3 - EVs. Spend time trying to estimate the EVs of different hand classes with different strategic options. When browsing sims, make sure to take a look at the EVs of all the different hands. Most people just browse sims and look at strategy, which is very inefficient work in my opinion. By looking at EVs you will be able to develop a better intuition of why certain plays are optimal and will become better at deviating from GTO as well.
4 - Aggregated reports. Having a good idea of how your whole range wants to play a certain node will prevent many mistakes in combo execution. Always study from the macro to the micro.
5 - Node locking. A must use tool to become a good exploitative player. Play with different assumptions and see how solver adjusts. Then lock the adjustment and unlock the initial assumption to get a feel for how your opponent can counter-exploit your initial exploit.
For H2N Work:
1 - Develop a badass HUD. H2N HUD is the most flexible and complete of all trackers. Not using H2N's HUD is a huge mistake imo.
2 - Use Range Research to build statistics on specific player profiles. There are infinite possibilities here.
Hope that helps!
Sick post Salo! Do you think H2N is worth it for NL50-100 player who can only play about 100k hands a year. I find it hard to justify the 240 a year when i owen PT4. My games are quite soft I would estimate i can win about 6k a year. Poker is part time for me.
Probably not worth the investment when you devote so little time/energy to the game. Also H2N has a steep learning curve in the beginning, so I would imagine you wouldn't benefit much from it.
Great blog, nice to see you back in RIO.
Thanks demo
hi saulo nice to see you doing so well mate vwp. We have come a long way from the cfp we both were in (max from australia here :)
all the best in 2023
Hey mate! Long time indeed, almost 6 years. How is poker going for you? All the best to you too!
January Goals
Alright, let's talk some poker.
My goal for January is to play 20k hands. Might seem like a low volume but it's actually quite challenging for me to achieve this considering I can allocate only about 2 hours to the grind in a normal workday.
That being said, it will be fun to put some hands in, as I played very little in the end of last year. I've got some new ideas for strategies to implement, so I'm excited to test them out.
I'll be playing anything from 500 to 5k, 6-max and HU, whatever runs and seems decent. HU is more for fun because there is rarely any fish. It's just a format I enjoy a lot.
Here are some hands from the last few days:
Shit happens
Reminder for myself to stop being a nit and just jam river instead
lol bodog/ignition is something else. The good old thin value merge bluff
Reminder for self that this fold is good
But this call is not
fun hands! going well, took a long hiatus but back playing. I would most likely put in volume against you and your players, i play exclusively ignition 500-2k. All the best this year and ill keep following
Oh how I wish I had access to 1k+ on ignition...losing access to those games was certainly the biggest bad beat of my career.
Hope the deck treats you well in your return! glgl
do you manage to play NL 500 with the same "intensity" as you would play 5k? For me it is always challenging to be as focused playing the lowest stakes that I play. If so, any advice on how to achieve that?
Same intensity is impossible imo. I think it's natural to be more focused on a stake that is more challenging. The way I keep 500 fun and engaging for me is to use it as a place to test things and be creative. I use every hand as an opportunity to try something I haven't yet explored or proved to be good, so this makes grinding it way more entertaining rather than just doing it for the money. If you find yourself constantly bored when grinding your lowest stakes, this should help a lot.
hey saulo, thanks a lot for doing this blog, helps a lot.
questions:
1. when you were grinding fulltime, what was your pre-session routine like and did you set any session goals?
2. and how did you manage your time for studying and playing when you had a fulltime job?
My pleasure PeteDrexel!
1 - I was never very disciplined with warmup tbh. I did use drills as a warmup for some time, which I liked. I would also listen to Elliot Roe's mp3 warmup in some occasions, and that was pretty good. But if I would have to guess, I would say I did a warmup in about 10% or less of my sessions throughout the years. About sessions goals, thats something I like a have used a lot, particularly to implement new strategies or attempt to fix a leak. Definitely recommend doing it
2 - What I tried to do during those times was to leave for work as early as possible so that I could get home as early as possible. I was a software developer in a startup so there was a lot of flexibility about that. I would usually get up at 6, leave at 6h30, get there 7h30 then go back home around 16h, get home 16h45. As soon as I got home I would eat something then fire some 10nlz tables. I was able to grind around 4h a day doing this schedule. Granted I didn't study much or did anything else at all for that matter lol it would just be work, poker and a few times a week I'd go see my girlfriend. I was playing about 30-40k hands of zoom while working during those times.
are you talking about his primed mind app? if not, do you mind sharing the link for where to download/purchase the mp3? i could really use it
edit: nvm, i was able to find where to buy his mp3 products
I just read your CFP tiers why do you not do individual coaching until people are playing 1K+? Most of your competitors do at least one 1 on 1 coaching per month.
Sup everyone! 3 months since my last post, but it was for a good reason.
I decided to take the idea of this thread to the next level so I'm starting a brand new Youtube Channel! First video has just been published.
I'll be posting 2 videos per week and my goal is to generate as much value as I possibly can. The channel will have a heavy focus on educaitonal content, with the occasional entertainment.
Would appreciate if you could give the first video a look and give me some feedback on it! Thanks guys
Wow congrats on the youtube channel, video quality looks great at first glance. Subbed!
Sick progress brother. I am subscribing to you!
Released another video on the Youtube Channel!
This time a Play & Explain session at $200 Zoom. Hope you enjoy!
Been enjoying your youtube content!
+1
Really enjoyed the format of the HU video where we got to hear your real-time thoughts and then also see the GTOW solutions.
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