GL and Vamooo

04/13/2018

Hey guys, first update!
Today I played very well in the morning (almost only my A game), just one clear mistake (hope I made no clear mistake at all), I was playing right now and I wasn't focused, just bluffed an unecessary spot and -60bb to my winrate, I can't stress enough how I hate myself when I do that, but anyway, I stopped playing and start to write here, maybe I'll play again today, maybe not.
800 hands today so far.

my mourning mistake villain is a total donk, 45/9 fish, losing in all ways possible, so I betted the river for value because I believe this fish in specific pays me with worst, but when he clicks back river is obvious I'm losing, so unecessary -15bb to my winrate

bad bluff OTR just bluffed because villain was folding a lot, but I have no blockers and I block hands that would fold to my river bet (KT and KT).

what to do OTR? do you guys usually turn this hands into bluffs in those spots?

*missclick fold to $0.05 in the second hand... lol

How's the internet situation in Brazil for playing online poker? Is it fast and stable? Thx. Brazil seems a very fun country. I once met a Brazilian Italian girl at Uni, she's breathtakingly attractive and yet down to earth.
I think nl100 is quite achievable ... keep working man. GL & HF.

Best of luck man! Subbed.

4/15/2018 - first week

Hey guys! I played just a little on saturday and played today the whole afternoon. Had a great weekend with my girlfriend, it was her birthday and we went to a very nice hotel for the weekend (the best of the city lol), it was super cool! It was my first time in a steam room, and man, that thing is awesome! I can't stay for too long because I start to feel like there isnt enough air in the room (yeah, I'm a little claustrophobic), but the afterwards sensation is awesome.
Played a total of 2265 hands this couple of days, I'm feeling a lot focused most of the time. But today for example my first 200hands were played without focus, so I stopped and made my little ritual (shower + coffee withouy sugar, always), came back again and played very well! Made a couple of mistakes today tho, I'm trying much harder to make no mistakes (ofc this won't happen, but I'm getting better than ever).
Started the week playing very bad, some spews and bad hero calls, but since I started the blog I'm much better, I commited myself to post every clear mistake tha would embarasse me in this blog, so the chance of me repeating a tilty mistake (or a lack of focus mistake) is much lower.

weekly graph

hands:

bluff OTR?

stupid hand - I was paying attention in a difficult spot on another table and made some stupid mistakes in this hand (WTF mini4bet?? lol)

maybe a mistake

Don't 3b your KK and you'll be punished haha

4/16 and 4/17/2018

Yesterday was a busy day from things outside poker, had classes on my university + group reunion + public transportation were about 8 hours of my day, but I still managed to play about 1k hands in the morning (studied poker about 1h30 too)
Today was a good day, woke up 7am for my class, got back home 10:30 am and played poker + discussed hands since than (with a lunch break and a after lunch 30min chill) till 3:00 pm, after that I had a thing, then had class from 6pm till 8pm, got back from class, went to the gym, and now I'm writing this. Played 1,6k hands today, volume isnt my main focus right now, so that's fine. Managed to think about hands a lot today, but I still think I should be studying harder, like, constructing ranges for 3 different scenarios per day + my daily HH reviews that I usually do. I watch a coaching video everyday, so it is at leas 1hr to 1:30h of watching videos thinking about the game.
Allright, that's it for today. gl us!

4/18/2018

Nice day today, but I played about 300hands unfocused in the late morning... I think it was because I was hungry and was only playing 2 zoom tables, so it was hard to focus. When this happens again I'll (a) eat some peanut or/and (b) play 3 zoom tables, with 3 tables I force myself to be focused (this really works for me). Anyways, went to the university in the afternoon, made a very good presentation, came back home, eat, shower and played. Just finished reviewing hands now. 1700 hands today.

2nd week!

Hey guys, its been a good week, I started playing 3 tables in the middle of the week because, besides the morning, I would find myself very distracted playing just 2 zoom tables, and when I add 1 more, I get more focused. I usually listen to a lot of different things while I'm playin, usually I listen to the same things for 4 days for ex, and then change the type of music, or sounds(bineural waves for ex). I started listening to trance when I'm playing and that music just gets me hyper focused lol, idk why, it's the only eletronic music gender that I like, it's so accelerated + 3 tables zoom, just gets my brain in the right mood.
Anyways, still made a lot of mistakes, a lot of spews, and etc... But I'm definitely making less of them, I just can't help myself to get super frustrated when I spew 50bb, I just get so upset with myself when I make a bluff or a call OTR that I know will be bad most times, and sometimes I still do it, but I'm making them much less as the time goes on.
Went to the gym 3x this week and made aerobics all the 3 times, I fell so good after the aerobics, and its so good to the brain that I can't just let myself stop doing them. I will make my best efforts to go to the gym 3x again this week.
That's all folks! GL us!

currency graph

BB graph

best music style for grind this week lol

APRIL 2018

Hey guys, tough month, but I'm playing much better than when I started, so I'm much more confident about my game than before, lets see how things go! Played nl50z in the beggining than drop down to nl25z.

Taking control of tilt

It can be very sutil, when you stop playing your best poker for example. Tilting is a choice, may be a very difficult choice not to do sometimes, but it is still a choice.

"Tilt is anytime you deviate from your best strategic decision based on emotion (good or bad)"

If anytime you are looking at your hand history, and you see a hand that doesn't make sense to you, that's tilt. If you are changing your normal range construction in a spot by any emotional reasons, you are tilting.
Every hand is a new puzzle, the fact that we just lost a buy in means nothing to the very next hand, if we don't see it that way, we'll start to set triggers that will cause tilt (revenge, need to get the money back, etc). Every hand must be seen as a new puzzle, and we can't let anything that happened previously to affect that approach. Always solving a new puzzle.

How tilt happens?

Trigger>>Emotion>>Action

Common tilt triggers:

• Facin continued aggression
• Playin vs. a weak or strong player
• Prolonged downswing - very normal to impact the way we play, if we are always seeing the top of villains range, we tend to analyze hands worst and by tilty biases
• Winning/losing a huge pot
• Making a mistake (my biggest one)
• Losing hands we "should" win - entitlement tilt
• Losing multiple pots in a row

Common emotions of tilt:

• Anger
• Frustration
• Fear
• Anxiety
• Excitement
• Shame
• Excessive ambition
• Envy - if someone you know is having much more success in poker than you for ex
• Excessive joy when winning and the opposite
• Hopeless

Now, looking at the list question yourself: what triggers me and after that, what emotions come off? Start building that in your mind, creating a picture of that happening and seeing how they are being created. Be aware of those things.
In a downswing a lot of people stop working, and it should be the contrary. The bad variance is giving you a opportunity to not be overconfident in your game and study harder than you would if you were in the positive side of variance, so embrace the opportunity, stop crying about how bad you run, and make something positive from that. It's much easier to tell yourself that you are being unluck than to tell that you are playing bad. We won't ever play perfectly, so the downswing give us the opportunity to get closer to the best we can be.

The root cause of tilt

A lot experiences offtable can bring tilt issues to the table, for exmple the fear of being bullied as a child can bring the fear of being bullied at the table, then you start to take actions based on emotions to combat that. The fear of failure or success can be a root cause of tilt too, if you were very sucessfull at school, you can have a hard time studying and dealing with downswings.
Think from where those emotions are coming from, why this one emotion is particularly difficult to you. What does making a mistake means to you as an individual? What does it says about you? Who would you used to be worried about to tell that you made a mistake as a child?
Really start to question what's going thru your unconscious, because often that's where we'll find very obvious and direct links to the emotions we are experiencing at the tables. Self exploration is where we'll find the freedom from tilt, rather than just a band-aid.
Start to take dontrol and be more aware of your emotions.

How do we stop the negative action from happening after the trigger went off?

The trigger gone off, we felt the emotion, how do we stop there? Force yourself to make a break right there, and to do that you'll need to be very aware of your emotions and your triggers.

inspired in a speak from Elliot Roe.

I'll see you ;)

The perfect poker (or life) mindset

Plan the day, time to get up, exercise, eating, etc. Warm up, set a goal for each session (can be a very simple one), these are very simple, they are easy to understand, and sometimes hard to apply, but I'll talk here about some other things.

Looking for everything you are doing on your life, and look at how those things are optimizing (or not) your poker life (be careful to understand what I mean by that). This doesnt mean lack of balance, but the exact opposite, try to see things in the "one life" perspective, not work life, personal life, free time life, etc. When you are in such a love with something, or have a deep burning desire to suceed in any area of your life, doing things that will optimize your performance won't be costly, the will be satisfying. Knowing that spending time with your girlfriend, for example, optimizes your mindset for when you are playing poker, BUT you don't stay with your girfriend because it optimizes your poker playing ability, it's just a good consequence that gets out of that, and see how those 2 things need to coexist to get a balanced approach in life.

I'm not an expert in poker mindset, I'm not even succesfull yet, but I have the total confidence that I'm going to suceed, and I'm going to do that in the best way possible, that is,
through a balanced approach. Seeing my life as a total rather than a lot of small pieces is what makes sense to me, ofc there are times that you'll be "unbalanced" by playing and studying a lot, but the balance comes from the clarity and the vision you have when making that decision, the clarity of why you are doing that, how much time you'll stay in this approach, and other things.

I just try to see my life as a whole, for example, I want to suceed at poker, working out helps me at it, but it also helps me with my health, with my self esteem, and with a lot of other things. I try to see every action of my life in that way, it's ONE life at the end of the day, if you are doing things that doesn't make sense with who you truly are (this concept is a little shady because we're changing all the time, but I think you get the point) why are you doing those things? Have the vision, if you don't have vision, clarity, and understanding of why you are doing an action repeatedly, start to question yourself and take one of the two routes:

1 - you found out why you are doing that, so you'll continue to do
that and try to see how you can try to make it better
2 - you found out that what you were doing don't make sense according with who you are and who you want to be, so you begin to stop doing those things

I think this post is kinda of over simplified, but maybe you get the point, I'm writing this for myself too (actually more to myself than to this blog, but I really hope that at least one person gets something valuable from this), I have to remind myself every of the search for balance, and understand what balance truly is.

Poker is a part of me right now, as much as all the other things that go on in my life, and if it isn't part of me 3 years from now, I don't care, it's the natural process of life. Seek for what truly matters in your life right now and see how to balance those things out, cut out the bullshit, and get to a higher level of life.

Hey guys, decided to start to post again here, I'm thinking about making daily posts to keep myself accountable, I've already played and studied a lot during the period that I stopped posting here, but I think that posting daily toughts will be helpfull.
To resume, I've been trying to move up to nl50z and ran very bad, having to move up and down a ton, even tho beating nl25z. The focus now is not to make money but move up in stakes. My mental game was awful during some downswings and ofc this counted for losing more at 50z than I should.

Anyways, this is my overall graph since 1st of May in $
BB graph

21/8/2018

Daily graph

Study: 1.5 hours, focused on rewatching one of my coach's video and HH review from yesterday hands

Felt a little bit tilted today's afternoon after losing a ton of pots, running bad overall, but I don't think it affected my game, I'll take a look at my hands tommorow and figure out if I really played them well.
Overall great day today, classes + study poker + study uni stuff + gym, made some high intensity aerobics today, feels so good after I finish the work out, really reccomend it.

22/8/2018

Daily graph

Study: 1.5 hours. Focused on BB defense vs cbet IP OTF, rewatched one of my old recordings of a coaching session that was focused on this spot. Today I'm going to study this spot more, there is a lot of room to improve, and a lot of things that are counterintuitive.

Played live today (been playing live a little bit this month, and it's going really well for the stakes I'm playing), just want to get my mind off the same old same old of online poker a little bit, but online is still my priority. Ran bad today, but whatever, I can think of one mistake that I've made, but not much else. Went to the gym and got my workout + aerobics done.

23/8/2018

Daily graph

Study: 2 hours, focused on BB vs BTN defense vs a specific cbet size, now my mind is much clearer about hwo to play the boards and hands OTF, ofc there is much more to learn but I found that I changed how I looked at this spot

Nice day today, woke up 6:30 am to go to uni, studied in the morning and played a little bit, went to the gym in the afternoon, had class from 6 to 8pm, and grinded from 9pm to midnight more or less. At the low point on the graph my mindset was fine, just focusing on making good decisions, I'm glad that my redline stayed more or less stable, that's a good sign.

Allright, since I hate when people start blogs and just leave them behind I decided to make a small update here, I'm currently palying nl50zoom and 100reg. Here is my graph since I last posted (wich I believe was in August):

Currency graph

Graph in BB
(posted 2 currency graphs because uploaded images are usually bad)

Will continue to play, this month my goal is to make 90k hands and study 2h/day 5 days a week lets see if I can achieve it!

GL everyone!

Great results Lagasaurus! Hope you will continue to update this blog more frequently.

Week 1

Week one is over, unfortunately I'm not hitting my volume goals, I need to make 3k hands/day, and now my amount is something close to 2,5k/day, it's not far away but I'll need to push myself a little to hit the 90k hand mark at the end of the month, I'm currently playing 3zoom +3reg or 2zoom+4reg, it's not a lot but I htink it's the best scenario to keep my A game.

On the other hand studying have been great, I for sure have passed a little on the 10h/week of study that I set for myself, so I'm very happy with that.

Allright, thats a resume of my week, I'll post the results only at the end of the month.

Great progress man, very impressive!

nice bro! Just subbed. Shed us more light of what's going on. Cheers!

Thanks guys, I'll update more often

Hey guys! I won't be able to make the 90k hands for the month for a few reasons:
- this month has only 28 days, and I calculated 3k hands and a little by day
- I'll be travelling for 2 days
- The carnival is coming here in Brazil and I got a lot of shows to do with my rock bands (we play in an event called carnarock lol), so rehersal + practicing + hanging out with the band takes a lot of time

Anyways, I'm very happy with my performance so far in this month, and I'll keep putting the volume I'm able to put with my best game quality.

Anyways, GL!

Hey guys, just started a new blog, in there you'll understand why. GL all!

NEW BLOG