Some interesting hands from this week

1) Checking AhAd in a 4-bet pot MP vs CO on 769hh]
The guys is unknown. I checked because I think he is gonna perceive me as very weak and might go crazy. And I was right I guess lol

2) Going for max value vs fish]
Can I fold the river here getting 16% pot odds?

3) Shoving trips and getting the bad news]
I never put him on AK after he bet/calls the flop so I shoved the turn pretty confident. Is there any other way to play this hand?

4) QQ facing 3-bet shove 100 bbs deep]
I don't love my call but I just couldn't find the fold button. Should I? I simply don't know what he is doing

5) Don't like folding overpair to fish]
Should I? I'm not super happy when he shoves but he might show up with 77 here or some other weird combo

6) Triple barrel bluff gone wrong]
I was really surprised when he check/shoved the river. I think flushes check/raise the turn most of the time, and I also block lots of them with the Ac. I think flop and turn are standard, but what about river? Ingame I felt like a pretty profitable river barrel but when he shoved I was like "WTF??"

7) Triple barrel bluff become balue bet]
Plan was to overbet most brick rivers, and also on Kx or 8x. I just have so many bluffs and value bets on the turn that I feel like I should use a pretty big sizing. Also I block the nuts and the 2 remaining 9s are probably outs too. By the river he has a pretty tough spot with all the hands he gets there basically so I feel pretty good about it

8) Triple barrel bluff...again]
I think flop and turn are pretty standard. I don't see any Ax combos in his range, also I block 89 and his 2p combos from the flop are now weak "single" pairs, so I go for it OTR. Good?

9) QQ 3-bet pot vs fish and SB cold caller]
OTF I don't like calling to let SB realize his equity for such a good price. And I'm hardly ever beat here. So plan is to raise and iso the fish. When SB shoves, can I fold?

10) What if the turn wasn't an Ace and villain shoved?]
The turn made the hand really easy to play but what if it was a brick and villain shoved? Should I expect him to have enough bluffs to justify a call?

Life and the pursuit of happines

Right now, as I'm making this post, I'm watching 15 little girls dance ballet in the social project I lead in my neighborhood. I'm christian, and one of the most important aspects of Christianity is that we shouldn't live for ourselves, and only be worried about our objectives and interests. We should put the interest of others at the same level as ours.

Since I became a christian this thought kept coming back in my mind: how can I do something useful for other people? Thats when I came up with the idea of creating a social project to unite and offer, for free, any useful knowledge or skill that can be taught to someone. So today, we are offering math classes, english classes, ballet, writing classes, guitar classes, and we are building a public library so that people can get into the magic world of books without having to pay for it;

I'm the "teacher" of the english and math classes. I'm also responsable for organizing everything related to the project. Every saturday, from 9 AM to 5 PM, our time and energy is being used to help other learn and grow, not only as student, but as people. I would really like to live in a world in which people are more concerned about each other. So I think it is my job to inspire people to do the same.

I find real happines when I'm useful in someone else's life. It's great the feeling of teaching something to someone, and unfortunely, its such an underrated profession, at least in my country. Salaries are low, students don't recognize the value of their teachers, and the years go by with less and less teachers getting graduated. I really hope that changes someday.

What makes you happy? I used to think it was soccer (I almost became a professional soccer player); I used to think it was poker; I used to think it was something I did for myself. Right now I realize that the thing that makes me the happiest is to help someone grow, as a student, as a person, as someone who deserves to be happy as well.

Next week I'm gonna be on the country side, in a farm where people with drug addiction are recovering themselves from the consequences of drug abuse. I've been there twice already. Those people have literally no one that cares for them. They struggle to get out of the addiction because love is our biggest motivation. And they lack love, even for themselves. We hope that our presence (I'm gonna go there with 15 other young people, between 18 and 24) there helps them to feel loved.

What can you do, right now, to make someone else happy? Even if it is soemone from your family or friend. Actually, those are the people we fail the most on making happy. What can you do to be useful for any other person? Do it. But do it now. You won't regret it!

Hand 1) Slowplay is possible on the flop but I wouldn't do it without the Ah. So wp.

Hand 2) Raise bigger OTF, rest is fine.

Hand 3) Be careful with your value to bluffratio on the flop. I find such checkraises really hard to balance that's why I don't really have a raising range in 3bet pots OOP. I think you miss value by check/raising because he will only continue if he has some piece of the board. If u had check/called there is a good chance you will get bets from hands that have virtually no equity. But turn is a cooler as played unlucky.

Hand 4) Wp, just a cooler.

Hand 5) Wp, again a cooler.

Hand 6) 1st and 2nd barrel are fine but 3rd barrel is spew. Just check behind.

Hand 7) Don't think this turnbet will generate enough folds but it's close. River your sizing too high, just go 85% pot unless you play your missed FDs with the same size, then it's fine I guess although from a highly exploitative standpoint you will get much more calls if you bet in the 80-95% pot range.

Hand 8) This river bluff is good from an exploitative standpoint because since there are 2 Aces on the board it's less likely villain has one. Your hand selection is also good you are really bottom of range, just wp!

Hand 9) wp unlucky!

Hand 10) If the turn isn't an A he will still only have 5,70$ left in a 9$ pot so definately not folding on a blank!... can maybe consider to fold on 8,9,Q or K, as played good overbet on the river.

Gl saulio subbed up for adventure
Gogogigig

The Power of Habits and the Lack of Discipline

As someone who is trying to become a pro poker player, I've discovered how difficult it is to be the boss of yourself, and cultivate a good set of habits in order to keep discipline. Poker carries with itself an illusion of extreme freedom and we might get frustrated when we realize that things aren't exacly how they looked like at first.

Of course being a poker player offers you much more freedom than a regular 9 to 17 job will do. Thats kind of obvious, specially if you are a cash game player. But what I'm trying to say is that begginers might think poker is easy money, and that pros can work whenever they want, and travel a lot, and have fun with their lives.

Poker is all about working hard, and having discipline. You will fail on being a poker player if you lack discipline. You gotta put in the work, study a lot, play a lot, take care of your body and mind, and many other related things. At first, it was difficult for me to understand that, despite I was playing poker, I had to create a well defined routine for me to follow everyday, otherwise I would fall into laziness and therefore I would not improve as fast as I could or not improve at all.

And discipline is something that few people have. People in general are lazy and not commited. Its hard for most people to dedicate their time to that one thing, and most importantly, not let anything else be in the middle of the commitment they made with a certain task. That's why now I have a complete daily schedule for myself. From 8AM to 11PM, I have pre-defined tasks that I have to conclude, and I can't move to next one until I have finished the current.

The best way to learn discipline is to introduce habits. We have a lot of habits in life. Take a shower at a certain time, have breakfast at a certain time, brush the teeth at a certain time, and so on. All we gotta do is to introduce new habits in our routines, so that a certain task becomes as usual as doing any other common thing in that day. The good thing about habits is that, although they are hard to keep in the begginning, they become automatic after a short period of time. So if you are trying to introduce a new habit in your routine, give it your best at the first few days or weeks. After that, your brain will take care of it by itself.

If you want to succeed at poker, you must have your own routine and set of habits. Do what fits better for you, but do it! Make sure you include tasks that improve your overall mind and body health, like physical exercises and a good read by the end of the day, for example. And also don't forget to separate some time to have fun with friends and family. Poker can, and most of the time will be, very stressful, and if you don't do anything about it, or if you don't take time to rest your mind and have some fun, not only will you suffer, but every one else next to you, because you will become a pretty bad company to have around.

The lie people have been telling about the red line

Some time ago, while I was researching on the said topic, I read multiple times something like this: "Don't worry about your red line, as long as green line is up, you are fine". Thats the single biggest lie I've ever seen someone tell to another poker player. And for a good amount of time I believed in it. I was crushing 2NL and 5NL with a poor rediline, but never tried to improve it, because my green line was fine, since the blue line was pretty good.

Thats a pretty big lie because the red line shows which type of player you are. The biggest winners at any given stake are the aggressive ones. And I'm not sure about you guys, but I've never seen an aggressive player with a red line that drops faster than the speed of light.

The red line is what separates the good regs from the top regs. The red line is what separates the poker players that play at the level 2 (the ones who think of what you can have) from those who play at the level 3 (the ones who think what you think they can have). The red line is what separates the players who can hand read well from those who can make your hand reading skills not so great. But I'm not talking about a red line resulting from crazy monkey poker, where you just click the raise and bet button without thinking about your play. I'm not talking about maniac aggression, I'm talking about smart aggression. The one that manages to improve your red line without sacrificing your blue line. I'm not saying that if you win mostly from your red line you are a bad player. I'm just saying that I believe most of the value from poker comes from getting value out of the weaker players, and that is accomplished by the blue line.

And I've experienced that in practice. At NL2 and NL5 I had no problem with my redline because my blue line was straight up so there was nothing to worry about. At least it is what people say. But at NL10 I noticed a big difference on how the game plays. Look at those two graphs, from two different sessions from this month for example:

This graph looks nice because not only the showdown winnings are good, but mostly because the non showdown winnings are not so bad. Observe that showdown winnings account for 8 buy-ins and no showdown winnings sum up to -4 buy-ins, resulting in a profit of 4 buy-ins and a winrate of 9 bb/100 in the session, which is nice. Look at the next graph now...

This one has even bigger showdown winnings (10 buy-ins) but the red line drops faster than the previous one, resulting in a boring break even session. Thats not a coincidence. One's winrate should increase a lot with improvement on the red line.

So when I realized I was leaving money at the tables with my red line, I started studying what could cause it and how I could improve it. There are a lot of things you can do to improve your red line, and I will go through some of them briefly, but the most important indicator, in my humble opinion, of one's aggressiveness is the stat WWSF (won when saw the flop). It tells you the percentage of the pots you won, considering only those in which you saw the flop. It basically tells you how often you win a hand postflop. Not coincidentally, the good graph has a WWSF of 49%, while the bad one has a WWSF of 45%.

When a player has a high WWSF stat, together with a high W$SD stat, I have no doubt this player is a pretty big winner. If someone can take several pots postflop and still have the goods in showdown, it means that this player is aware of his opponents ranges and his own range, allowing him to: put pressure in the certain spots where villain will have a hard time realizing his equity; steal the pot when villain is weak and capped; attack board textures that favours his range, winning the pot more often; and still knows when to give up so that he doesn't end up getting caught.

For these reasons my main concern right now is to improve my red line in order to maximize my winrate. I've already set some targets in terms of strategy and I have some places to start, which I think are good ways to improve overall aggression, mainly postflop but also preflop:

• 3-bet a lot preflop. Most regs have a 3-bet percentage from 5% to 8%. My target is to get it up to 9%. This should help increase non showdown winnings a lot.

  • Steal wide from late position. Most people at NL10 have a fold SB and BB to steal stat higher than 65%. Thats huge and should be exploited. Right now I'm opening 60% OTB and 56% on the SB. Button looks good but SB should definitely increase up to 60% as well.

  • Increase c-betting frequency, specially in position. People underdefend in a variety of board textures and that should also be exploited. My current c-bet % is 55%. Target is to get it up to 60%, at least when IP.

  • Attack high c-bettors. This is a thing I have to work on. Most people c-bet like 70%+ and thats too exploitable. Versus those players we should check/raise a lot of flops when OOP and float them a lot, specially in position.

  • Attack checking ranges. People at NL10 have extremely unbalanced checking ranges. This should be exploited. That can be accomplished by many moves, like: delay c-bet the turn a lot when villain double checks vs hero; bet twice OOP with an uncapped range on good board textures for hero's range when villain skips flop c-bet; bet a lot vs missed c-bets BB vs SB and BN vs CO. Its important to be careful with this because we become highly exploited ourselves but I don't expect villains to realize this and fight back. Pay attention to those players who have low c-bet %. Their checking ranges are usually stronger, so they are harder to exploit and should be avoided.

  • Adjust versus players who don't fold to c-bets. Our red line can suffer vs this type of player because we often fire one or two barrels and give up, and villain simply doesn't fold. Versus this type of player, check/raising more flops and triple barreling more runouts are better strategies than betting once or twice.

  • Bluffcatch with reads and good blockers. I used to underestimate the capability of the NL10 field to bluff, but I can see now that they are bluffing in many spots where we should bluffcatch. Also, their 3-betting ranges aren't as tight as one might think, so we shouldn't be giving up too easily postflop, specially in position.

Thats what I'm gonna be working on in the near future. Hopefully I will be able to come back here with good news about my red line results. How is your redline? What do you do (or don't do) to keep it good, without dropping faster than the speed of light? Good luck out there, and lets get this red line at least a little bit up.

u deserve the 5th place saulo, it will be yours :)

The most +EV decision and the lack of information

Just wanted to share another thing that came up to my mind after today's session. As poker players, as we play more and more hands, more and more spots become automatic and you basically know exaclty what to do in a certain board texture in certain positions vs a certain type of player. You just know that an "AB" hand can get 2 streets of value on a XYZ board BU vs BB, with BU being a passive reg. You just know that check/calling "CD" hand on a QWE board SB vs BB is the highest EV play.

The problem arrives when we have to determine the highest EV play with few information about villain tendencies, or when it is a spot that we are not used to play, and therefore we just have to figure out ingame what should be the best move. Thats also the beauty of poker. If it was a game in which we could memorize what to do in every single spot, I don't think I would love it as much as I do. Poker favours the players who can think fast and solve problems in real time, with the information they have. Its like solving a math problem. Its not a coincidence that nerds do so well in this game.

There are, and there will always be I think, spots in which we don't know for sure what's the best play and we have to chose among one of the possible choices, using a set of assumptions that we think are close to reality. And here is the biggest problem: making assumptions that may not be true for a certain villain/spot. I often use a set of assumptions that are generally true for the player pool of the game I'm playing, and thats ok because most of the time I'll be corret, but its just a mistake to assume something that is not confirmed or that at least doesn't have strong arguments. Making incorrect adjustments, without the proper arguments/reads/reasons can hurt EV a lot.

We shouldn't be making exploitative adjustments when we can't confirm the assumptions that are behind them. When in doubt, with lack of information, we should highly consider being conservative, specially in spots where mistakes cost the most. Once I read something among those lines: the chips you save are worth the same value as the chips you gain. We should rely heavily on game theory when we can't get enough reasons to deviate from it.

On the other hand, its just a mistake to not use all the information and the set of assumptions already proven to be true. We should use every single piece of info we have on villain's tendencies, put it together with our theoreticall knowledge, and figure out which is the highest EV strategy/move vs our opponent. Not winning the most, or not losing the least, are big leaks that should not be part of our game. Maximizing EV should be our ultimate goal.

Lets crush those games.

Study, practice, review

I've decided to change my approach to the game. Instead of playing, reviewing and then picking a subject that I think I'm not good at to study, I'm gonna start doing the opposite: I'm gonna pick a subject that I find extremely important, regardless of my current performance in it, then I'm going to play with the intention of putting the stuff I studied in practice, and then I will review my sessions, trying to look for the spots I studied previously so I can check if I did (or did not) implement what I've studied.

So, starting tomorrow, I'll begin the following commitment:
3 hours of study
5 hours of practice
1 hour of review

I think this should improve my game overall in a more organized way. Let's see how it goes. Tomorrow's subject will be BB defense OOP - preflop ranges and postflop aggression. I have already built my BB defense ranges vs EP, MP, CO and BU, so I will revisit then and focus mainly on how I'm playing postflop. I think the lack of aggression in HU pots can be a serious leak and lead to a poor winrate on the BB.

Fighting variance and building mental endurance

Today I've reached 50k hands at NL10z this month. In terms of results, I feel awful. Not only because I'm losing but also because I'm running 17 buy-ins below all-in EV. 35 buy-ins overall this year. That's just really frustrating, and although I know variance is a big part of the game, it's still tough to face the down side of it and be cool about it.

The good side of this is that, even though I'm not winning and not moving up as fast as I thought I could, or at least as I thought I would, I'm putting everything I've been going through on into a different perspective. The learning perspective.

As I said in a previous post, I'm in no rush to win a lot of money, neither to use poker income to pay bills. So my main concern right now is to learn and grow as poker player, not only in terms of strategy, but in every single aspect of a poker career, like the mental game, routine and habits, off the table study and so on. Therefore, I'm actually glad I'm going through this downswing. If I had enjoyed the good end of variance I would have probably not improved on many aspects of the game, and I would be blind to my mistakes and flaws, since I would be winning. And when we are winning, everything seems perfect, and we don't feel the need to study and get better (most of the time, of course there are exceptions).

Everything I've been doing, every mistake at the tables, every bad beat, every hour spent studying, all of this I'm taking as a beautiful part of the learning process. Despite the fact I'm losing money, I'm improving and gettting better, and this is more valuable then short-term results. It's only a matter of time for variance to come to my side, and when that happens, I wanna be prepared to take the most out of it. I don't wanna be results oriented, and get said because of a losing session. I don't wanna be so concerned about my short-term results that I can't enjoy poker for what it is. I play this game mostly because I love it, not because it's potential to make money, but because of the incredible and fun game it is.

Putting things into a different perspective is the first step to build mental endurance. I'm not gonna take short-term results as a failure. They are a part of my learning process, and the time I've spent playing/studying was not useless, even if I didn't make any money. My main goal will always be to get better, and I think as long as keep this as my primary goal, money will be a consequence. Variance, you won't bring me down. Every monday is a new fresh start, and I'm gonna be there, doing my best.

Hey guys, lets talk some strategy here. As I said in a previous post, I would be studying BB defense OOP (EP, MP, CO or BU opens and we flat). I digged into my database and I found out that I'm playing pretty passive in these spots and that might be hurting my EV a lot. Here are some important numbers about this:

• Winrate BB defense vs EP (by calling only) = -112bb/100;
• Winrate BB defense vs MP (by calling only) = +13bb/100;
• Winrate BB defense vs CO (by calling only) = -9bb/100 (EV = -15bb/100);
• Winrate BB defense vs BU (by calling only) = -23bb/100 (EV = -15bb/100);
• Winrate BB defense overall OOP (by calling only) = -23bb/100

Apart from BB vs EP, which looks horrible and therefore I should be looking to improve it, I don't know how bad/good the other winrates are. The only thing I know is that folding is -100b/100, so BB vs EP worries me a lot. Can you guys give some insight about these numbers?

Hand sample is last 100k hands. I'll be posting some hands on the specific spots, starting with BB vs EP, which looks pretty bad. I feel like I play pretty passive on this specific spot, so I would really like some criticism.

BB defense vs EP

I made an alias in my DB and the average reg opens 15% EP. Base on that typical opening range and pot odds I built my flatting range which is 22-JJ, ATo-AQo, KJo-KQo, all suited broadways, 76s+ and A9s-J9s, and A5s-A2s with 50% frequency, since I 3-bet those sometimes. Is that reasonable? If you need some other stats from the average reg just ask. Look at the hands below:

1) Respecting triple barrels
I tend to respect triple barrels, so I'm tipically folding here. But now that I look at it, folding seems weak. Blocking the Qd is not ideal, but do you call here? Villain is a 27/22/10 over 114 hands. FCB/TCB/RCB = 83/40/50.

2) Can I expect enough bluffs to call turn?
Should I peel turn here? If so, what about river? XF on anything basically? Villain is unknown.

3) Confused about turn play
I got a little confused on this hand. Flop is pretty decent for my range, so I decided to go for the check/raise. But OTT I don't know if I should bet or check/call. It seems thin for value. What do you do? Do you check/raise this hand OTF in the first place?

4) Bluffcatching with top pair
The Ace is better for his range than mine I think, so I'm checking a lot OTT, specially my weak Ax like this one. OTR I think its a clear fold right? Problem is my range by the river gets weak since I'm betting most of my flushdraws OTT, as well as 2p+. How do you play your range on this type of spot?

5) To raise or not to raise
Should I have a raising range on this flop? I don't know, I feel like we both have the same amount of Jx. What about river? Ingame I thought his bet flop/check turn range was pretty weak, filled with give ups. Which combos you bluff OTR and why?

6) To raise or not to raise: 2
I feel like I played this hand pretty passively and should have raised at some point. I'm not sure though because OTF I can't rep many hands since the only 7x I have are 76s and 87s (A7s sometimes but I've been folding this combo lately on these positions). What do you think?

7) To raise or not to raise: 3
My hand can't call a bet OTT so I decided to turn it into a bluff to try to make him fold some overpairs. Obviously it didn't work out. Thoughts? What a good check/raise range OTT would look like? I don't have many 4x, maybe only A4s. I also have 55 and 66, and 78s.

8) Bluffing the river
I feel like villain's call is pretty bad, he does block some combos in my value range but I don't get to the river with many bluffs, probably only those KhQx and KxQh. Should I be bluffing this combo?

Overall I feel like I don't check/raise enough flops, and my bluffs OTR get called too often. How would you fix those two things?

Interesting hands from last week

1) Bluffcatch with QQ in squeeze pot
Flop I'm checking a lot, pretty good board for his range. He has all sets, some straights, 2pairs, while I don't. When he checks back flop I feel like his range becomes pretty capped. OTT he is betting flush draws, Jx, some other draws and some spazzes. River is a blank so I call. Good?

2) Bluffcatch with QQ 3-bet pot
Villain had nitty stats over a small sample so decided to just call pre. Flop and turn are standard. OTR I felt like his range was pretty weak so decided to use a very small sizing to maybe get called by AK or induce a bluff. When he raises I just can't see value in his range so I call. Good?

3) Overbetting the river with the nuts
I didn't barrel turn because I thought there was close to 0 fold equity. OTR I'm betting pretty polarized, since I'm not checking turn with Qx+, so I'm left with some flushes that I decided to check/call turn given the lack of fold equity and some give ups like AcX. Intuitively I think I have way more bluffs than value so I went for the overbet. What do you think?

4) Check/call check/shove line 3-bet pot
I like to put in some checks with my overpairs that don't need protection in 3-bet pots to balance my AK and give ups. This hand fits well into said description, so I check/call flop. OTT I'm only losing to TT which are only 3 combos and I don't expect him to fold flush draws or Qx so decided to check/shove. Thoughts?

5) Check/shove river as a bluff in 3-bet pot
Flop and turn I think are standard. Maybe I could fold turn? Anyway, OTR I feel like he is capped at AQ, which is discounted because he probably bets some of those OTF. I block the nuts and 99 so tried to make him fold Qx or Jx. Villain tanked for 1 minute and called. Problem is that my value range with this line is pretty narrow, maybe only QQ and T8s, also discounted because I would bet my QQ most of the time OTF. What do you think?

6) QQ 4-bet pot
Flop is just a bet/fold right?

7) Betting range vs missed c-bet in 3-bet pots
I've noticed that I stab at a very low frequency in 3-bet pots vs missed c-bet. I think I should try to exploit that more since people's checking ranges are so unbalenced. Is that an okay hand to stab with? I don't think I have showdown value vs his range and there are some good turns for me. What would be a good stabing frequency on those spots?

8) Bet-bet-shove line as a bluff in 3-bet pot
I feel like I always pick the wrong spots to pull the triple barrel bluff in 3-bet pots and always end up getting called light. What do you think about this one? Obviously after this showdown I am never bluffing this guy anymore but what do you think in a vacuum?

9) Just a cooler right?
There is nothing I could do to get away from this I think. I only lose to KhTh and KcTc.

Do you want to review my session?
RiO thread. Looking forward to criticism.

Month to study

So I ended up as one of the top 5 users here at RiO in April, which means free elite membership for the month of May. Awesome! For what I can see, there is a lot of good content here, so this will be a month full of studying. I was already studying three hours per day, everyday, but I was driving my own studies. Now that I have access to all this great content, I'll use the videos from here as my main way of studying. So starting today (02/05), I will do:

3 hours of studying a video from RIO
5 hours of grinding
1 hour of review

I'll use the new feature of this site, the learning paths, to study the following subjects, in no specific order: c-betting, 3-bet/squeeze pots, big blind play, small blind play, 4-bet pots. I might add some other subjects if I can succesfully improve on all of the subjects above. So there is a lot of work to do already! But I'm looking forward to this. New month, another fresh start. Everything in the past was worth experience and knowledge. Let's crush.

Confidence, perfectionism and motivation

Today I want to share something I read on facebook yesterday. As I've already said sometimes, I follow the former brazilian poker pro and now enterpreuner Gabriel Goffi (aka verve.oasis on PokerStars) in the social media, and its been great for me. He was the first brazilian to ever reach the high stakes PLO games, and made a fortune from those games for a few years.

But then he discovered his true passion. It wasn't poker. After years of playing the high stakes cash games he discovered that it's not enough to be one of the best in the game in terms of strategy and math. He discovered that to beat those games he had to maximize his performance by having the best habits in all parts of his life. His sleep, his nutrition, his study, his realtionships, and so on; all of that should be in maximum performance as well, in order to beat the best players in the world. Now he doesn't play poker anymore, but he spends his time helping people maximize their potential, by teaching them how to improve in every little detail of their lives. He created a concept, that he calls "High Stakes Lifestyle". It's awesome.

But I'm not here to talk about him or the things he's doing lately. I'm here to talk about something he posted on facebook yesterday. He quoted Steve Jobs for the following phrase:

"Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.
Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again."

Thats so powerful! Steve was probably a person way way above average but the concept remains. The world we live in was built by people that were no smarter than us. When we bring this to the poker world, it's even more fascinating because we can now understand that the big winners and pros out there are no different from us that are trying to move up the stakes. They were there once as well. They are not geniuses that can't be reached.

That changes your motivation. That changes your goals. That changes your confidence. You can be one of the best in the world in what you do. No matter your profession, you can actually become a reference in your area, and be the one people admire. It's only up to you. And that makes me want more every single day. I've always been a competitive person. But the ultimate goal shouldn't be "to be better than others", but to be better than you were yesterday. In his High Stakes Lifestyle concept, Goffi says that we should try to be 1% better each day. Improving little details, day by day, can turn us into people who maximize their potential in every aspect of life.

There are people that are fully satisfied with who they are and where they are, and there is no problem with that. If doing what you do now and being who you are makes you happy, thats fine. But I do believe we can always get better. We can always learn more. We can always perform better. And that motivation will keep pushing myself into the "enhanced me". In the poker world, in any other professional area, and also in any aspect of your life, the only responsable for your success (or failure) is yourself. Don't blame the others. Go there every day and do your best!

Time for results

The first week of May is gone. But first, lets talk about April. It was a pretty bad month overall. I didn't play my A-game in most sessions, failed to get to my volume goals and ran bad as well. The result is in the following picture:

Because of that horrible month, I started studying more since the last week of April. I watched some Elite videos and some other videos at twitch, and I realized I needed to put in practice a lot of things I already knew but I wans't being succesful in executing them. And I feel like I'm improving a lot. This first week of May can prove that:

I'm playing more aggressively, stealing wider preflop and winning more pots postflop. That can be seen in the change between my AF and WWSF stats from April and May, and also by the significant increase in my VPIP/PFR stats. That makes me really happy because my main focus of studying right now is to improve my redline, and I think those 4 stats are consequences of such improvement. I felt really great about my game this week, I was focused in almost all sessions and I was able to put in practice the things I've been studying, specially: my c-bet flop frequency, my RFI's from late position, my delayed c-bet frequency and my x/r flop frequency. I'm really statisfied with this week's results. The session I played today was the "grand finale" of the week:

That break even red line shows me that I'm improving and that the study I've been putting off the tables is totally worth it. I know Its not gonna be break even in a large sample but its definitely not dropping as fast as it was before, which is a great thing for me. Hopefully May will be awesome and I will be playing 25nl zoom by June (or even sooner, who knows).

Interesting hands from this week

1) Is there anything I could do differently?
Villain 4-bets 25% BU vs blinds in 900 hands, thats why I slowplayed preflop. What do you think?

2) Is there anything I could do differently? - part 2
Villain is unknown.

3) Is there anything I could do differently? - part 3
Villain is unkwnown. I thought I couldn't shove for value but I didn't want to check either so tried to go thin vs KJ.

4) Is there anything I could do differently? - part 4
Villain is unknown. Feel like its a relatively easy fold but I want to check if someone plays it differently.

1) Don't really like slowplay preflop because u will let him realize a lot of equity if you let him see a flop especially if he has Ax. Postflop u can't fold obv.

2) Just shove the flop... people bet like this usually with an overpair and they don't intend to fold to a raise but he could c/f turn if the flush comes.

3) U should go for check/call turn, check/decide river imo and if he checks back turn go for a decently sized 80% riverbet... this line will also be easy to balance because you will have a lot of giveups on the turn.

As played I agree with the riverfold however with that sizing you may induce some bluffraises.

4) Just fold the turn. He has all sets in his range maybe even 65s or A5s and if you bet into 5 people you make it very obvious that you have JJ or better so don't expect him to continue with 88-TT on the flop. Of course he should fold A5s or 65s to your bet but if he is fishy he may call with these hands and that means the turncard is really bad for you. Another reason to fold turn.

Volume and mind state

Hey, I'm curious about how many hands you guys put in every day, specially you who play zoom/zone and poker is your only activity during the day. I'm reaching 5k-6k on average each day + 2 hours of studying and I feel exhausted. Should I be worried about that? Maybe take a look into my diet and routine?

Second week, gone

Ok so a bit of results from this week. I just finished my last session. Overall I feel good about my results, but my performance could've definitely been better. Monday and tuesday were great, I ws focused and motivated and everything went well. But wednesday and thursday were really bad. I think I got overly confident about my game and played lazy and I let the distractions affect me, like RiO and facebook. Today I was more focused, but still way less than I should. I feel like my winrate drops a lot when I'm not paying attention to every spot. So I'm gonna try to avoid that as much as possible from now on.

This is the result of this week:

And the month so far:

Redline really dropped after the 20k mark, mainly because of autopilot. I'm still beating the limit for 8bb/100 in this sample so I feel confident that I'm improving. I'll probably take some shots at NL16z next week.

Things to improve
- Cut all disctractions, specially RIO and facebook during sessions;
- Exercise everyday in the morning (I'm really lazy in the morning);
- Always think about whats the best way possible to play a given hand;

Next week will be great. I can feel it! GL everyone

Moving Up

Okay, so the week is almost in the end. Later I'll post the results. Just came to say that I've moved up to NL16z and I plan never having to play NL10 again. I'm really looking forward to play my best at this new level. I just made my first session at it and I'll go to lunch now. In general, the pool seems a little bit more aggressive than NL10, specially in the blinds vs button. Also I've noticed that people bluff the river in spots where generally NL10 average reg wont, like firing three barrels SB vs BB with missed draws. There is still plenty of fish though, and a lot of russian regs that love to click the bet/raise button just for fun. Lets start trapping them and let them do the betting for us!

EDIT: first day of NL16z came to an end. I am pretty happy with how I played and I am excited for next week. It would be awesome to be properly rolled for NL25 by the end of the month so I'm gonna try to increase volume a little bit.

Third week, see ya

May is almost gone. Time goes really fast! This third week was both bad and good at the same time. The bad part was that I ended break even at NL10, but managed to win some flips so stayed in the green. The good thing is that my bankroll can now support playing NL16z, so I hope I don't ever need to play NL10 again. In terms of quality of play, I think I played my B-game most of the week, which is probably why I broke even. I did autopilot quite a bit, which destroys my winrate for the most part. I can't only complain, and today was really good. Made my first session at NL16z as you can see in the above post. Played well and focused, so now I'm really excited to grind this new limit next week.

Here is the month so far:

Strategy wise I am pretty happy with how my WWSF improved. It was on the lower side last month (45%) and after some studying it is at 48%. I still think there is a lot of room for improvement, and I can get it to 50% for sure. One way I think I can get this done is by improving my BB play. BB and BU are the two most important positions at NLHE, and since my BU play seems good enough for now, I will be giving my entire focus to my BB play. Winning more pots in the BB will definitely increase my winrate, and the WWSF stats as a consequence. I already did a little bit of studying my preflop ranges in the BB but after watching last Steve Paul's video I feel like I should do a ton more of work on this. I watched some Paul Atwal videos and the way he defends his BB is impressive and kind of strange at first because it seems incredibly loose. But I think its how the BB should be played nowadays, and I am pretty confident that his BB play is what makes him a very good player. So:

Next week goals
- Do 10 hours of BB play studying, including videos at RIO
- Play 30k hands at NL16z

It will be hard to do 2 hours of studying per day, plus 6 hours of grinding but I think I can do it cutting all distractions and, unfortunetely, spending less time with girlfriend. Kind of hard when she is my next door neighboor but lets try lol. Let's CRUSH

Adapting

First day of the week was really good. I watched Nick Howard's video on Calling from the BB and I constructed new defense ranges from the BB versus all positions. Definitely defending wider and more aggressively. I'm curious to see what impact this will have in my winrate. Thanks Daniel Rahman for the suggestion, really enjoyed the video.

Played 6k hands today, so if I keep it up I will be able to reach my 30k hands goal for the week. I ran like God today so I kind of feel bad for that, but last week I ran kind of bad so it compensated a bit.

I'm almost adapted to NL16z. The pool is way smaller than NL10, not only because its a higher limit but also because it has been recently created on Stars, and people don't seem to like the weird bet sizes. At Nl10 there were like 800 players everyday in the pool, while at NL16 there are 160 more or less. Its nice because you develop reads faster, and the meta game versus regs becomes more of a factor. For what I've seen in this 10k hands I played there, most regs are weak/tight. Some russians are maniacs and there are like 3 or 4 good regs. The rest is fish. I'm feeling confident and looking for more and more improvement. I feel like I'm still not c-betting enough so I'll probably get on that tomorrow, since I made already good progress on BB defense ranges today.

I'll follow Steve Paul's suggestion and look for air c-bets on my DB to see how that is going. I feel like I don't c-bet enough air, specially OOP, which makes my c-bet frequency drop a lot. And I do think I lose a lot of EV by doing that, because most regs are overfolding to c-bets.

I'm getting more excited each day because my BR is growing and, hopefully, in a few days I'll be able to take shots at NL25, which is my mid-term goal. Being a winning reg at NL25 will be a pretty good achievement for me because it will allow me to be financially independent from my parents and start a life on my own, alongisde my future wife. So now its time to do the hardest work of my life. I'll be extremely dedicated and disciplined in the next few weeks.

LET'S CRUSH

I'll follow Steve Paul's suggestion and look for air c-bets on my DB to see how that is going. I feel like I don't c-bet enough air, specially OOP, which makes my c-bet frequency drop a lot.

Why is a low c-bet frequency a problem? Watch some Tyler Forrester, maybe play with some GTO software and realize that you often should have a low frequency in those spots.

Gl

You simply have wrong understanding of ranges. With a range advantage sure, but otherwise: no no. You are losing too many pots that you should win, so maybe look at x/c frequencies OOP, or consider x/r more as the pfr etc. Filtering for high c-bet in sessions or high wwsf obviously has the bias that you likely run better during those sessions.

BR nit taking shots

I've always been a bankroll nit. Since NL2 I've been following a rule that I can only start taking shots at a higher stake with at least 40 BI. I decided to follow this rule so that I didn't have to ever deposit again, which I did like three times when I was clueless about the game and was mainly playing micro MTTs.

Today, after I reached 4k hands at NL16z I was feeling bored and I was not playing my best. I wasn't really focused and what started well (winning 4 buy-ins in 2k hands) was slowly going to end bad (break even). So I stopped, took a shower and looked at my BR. I realized I had 35 buy-ins for NL25. If I was not bored, I think I wouldn't consider taking a shot. But it sucks to play bored, and I could use some extra motivation and adrenaline. So I opened 10 reg tables of NL25.

I didn't want to go straight into the zoom pool, since it is probably significantly tougher than the ones I'm used to, and also because I don't want to lose confidence in my game right now, and every time I fail to take a shot my mind starts telling me that I suck. I know, its probably something I should work on, but today I chosed to simply avoid it. And I don't regret it.

The reg tables at NL25 are filled with fish, and a few aggressive regs. I noticed a lot more cold 4-betting than the stakes I played, and more 3-bets from the blinds. But still, very soft and easily beatable. Played 1.2k hands and won 1,5 BI. That said, my short term goal now will be to play NL25 reg tables until I reach 50 buy-ins (currently 37). Then, I will start adding some zoom tables. Seems like a lot of fun! I'll get back to NL16z if I lose 5 buy-ins.

LET'S CRUSH

Gratz. always nice when shot taking leads to a profit.

If your reasons for not playing zoom are because of skill gap perception and not BR reasons/just preferring to play reg tablles, i would recommend trying a few sessions. Think the jumps from nl10-nl25zoom are pretty small.

Updates

Ok so, time for some updates. First of all, the results of May:

4 bb/100 across all limits I played (NL5z to NL25z). Its an ok result, and although it started off much better than 4bb/100 I'm overall happy with last month. I improved im lots of areas of my game and was finally was able to move out from NL10 after two months at it running 40 buy-ins under EV + bad play + laziness.

Now I'm grinding NL16z. I did take some shots at NL25 reg tables and 1 little session at NL25z but it didn't go so well (lost 4 buy-ins), so I decided to stick with NL16 until I reach 50 BI for the next level. This will allow me to play more comfortably, without getting scared money and passing profitable bluffing spots. I'm actually going to focus on getting better now, so although its exciting to move up, I'm not concerned about that right now.

As I said previously, the NL16z pool is filled with fish, few aggressive regs and a good amount of weak/nitty regs. I'm pretty confident I can beat it for more than 8bb/100 (currently 5bb/100 over 30k hands). Not because of how bad players are, but actually because I'm improving a little bit every day.

Today I had a pretty nice "aha moment" while watching ishter11 live play videos here. I woke up at 8:30AM, had breakfast, took a shower and then watched 2 of his videos from 10 AM until 1 PM. Its amazing how he can crush these games with a simple strategy, based on fundamentals and basic concepts of exploitation. So I'm pretty excited to put the things I realized today into practice. I don't want to be too optimistic but I think these things will give a nice boost to my winrate.

If you are wondering "why didn't he say what these things are?". Well, top secret strategy bro! Kidding, its not. But I think its something you have to figure out for yourself, the same way I did. It has to make sense in your head, so you can start seeing things differently. Also, no one ever told me these things, so its probably too good to share indeed. But I'm pretty sure that anyone that puts enough time and effort into studying this game called poker can get to such conclusions. I can, however, give some general advices:

1) Study a lot. Most players only put volume, and although you still learn by just playing, your development can be massively accelerated if you start studying. I did that same mistake last year...I was working full time and played at nights while tired from an entire day of mental wear. Don't do that. If you don't have much time to focus on poker, I think spending your time studying will be the best thing for you.

2) Don't watch videos passively, but actively, specially if you are not a solid winning player yet. Active studying, like taking notes and doing calcs on your own will do much better for you than simply sitting in front of the computer and watching someone else play.

3) Don't try to simply immitate the pros. Think about why they do what they do, and if that makes sense. Then, try to apply it into your game. It might be the case, however, that another approach/strategy suits better the environment you are playing. Don't be afraid to try something else on your own. Imagine the days where there weren't any online poker schools out there. The top players had to figure out things for themselves. Although this is not necessary anymore, and I think you shouldn't try to learn anything by yourself with that much good content on the internet, practicing and understing things by yourself will be much more beneficial for your overall game than just mimicking the pros.

4) One of the topics from my "aha moment"
What really matter is how you play postflop. I spent a lot of time building and constructing preflop ranges and studying all sorts of scenarios. This is necessary and you should do that. But its not those ranges that will have the greatest impact on your winrate (unless you have constructed them really really poorly). What I mean by that is: there will be tight players that crush; there will be nit players that crush; there will be loose players that crush; and all those types of players might be very bad as well. Try to build "standard" preflop ranges and focus your attention on how you play postflop.

Thats it for today. I'm enjoying writing this blog and it will be nice to look at it in the future, so that I can remember every single step I took into my goals. I'll keep posting weekly results and interesting toughts/strategy talk. LET'S CRUSH

Food for thought

Hey guys. I'm not posting as often as I was last month because I'm spending more time studying than here at RiO forums. But some days ago I ran into this thread.

As someone who actively answers on almost all sections on this site I felt very naive while reading this thread and Mush's point of view on the subject. I've never decided to not share something specific (maybe once, recently, but it was just because I felt like it was unnecessary). Probably because I don't know anything too good to be shared anyways lol

But then I kept thinking...sharing info online is really a win/win situation as we often see it? I mean, we share our knowledge and we learn from the others sharing as well. But in a competitive industry such as poker, aren't we just making the games worse, since we are helping each other improve and therefore we are helping winrates to become smaller?

This thread came to me at the same time I was reading through the NLHE small stakes section and I started to recognize some "recreational" players I know from the pools I play posting hands there (no offense, I was once a recreational player as well). I mean, it is a fact that every day new regs are begginning to appear, which makes EV go down since players will be making less mistakes once they improve.

I dont have a solid opinion on this yet. I just thought it was something interesting to talk about. What I do know, however, is that my current improvement is not coming (mostly) from advice I read here. It mostly comes from a combination of things, the most important one being off the table work (watching videos, DB analysis, poker software and range construction exercises, etc). So I'm 100% with Ben when he says in the thread that "knowing stuff and executing at the table are a lot different". Although it might seem like you know how to play a spot because you asked/answered in the forums, actually playing the spot is something entirely different. I've found myself many times doing stuff I wouldn't tell anyone in the forums to do.

I have spent a lot of time reading and aswering HH's on this site. But I actually need to figure out if my time is better spent with something else. If neither my improvement nor the improvement of others will come from it, I think it has little use. I'm not by any means saying that discussing hand histories is something useless. I do think it can be very helpful, but only if you do it on a more deeper level, so that the analysis is not superficial. If you take Flopzilla and equilab, if you dedicate some time to think about your range and villains range and whats the most +EV decision given such ranges interaction with the board, its a pretty good exercise.

I might have sounde a bit contradictory, since I said that sharing info is probably not good for one's EV, but at the same time one's improvement (at least in my case) wont come from things being shared for free. As I said, I dont have an opinion about it, since I've never thought about the forums from this perspective. I'm a person who loves to share knowledge and teach people stuff, so posting and asking stuff here has always been something I enjoy. But if its not beneficial to anyone we should start rethinking that.

Brief update

So, I didnt update last week because I failed to put meaningful volume in. I was too busy planning my weekend with my girlfriend, because it was a special one: I got engaged! I'm pretty happy with how my relationship is going (been dating for almost 5 years) and its an extra boost in my motivation to work really hard in my game.

I'm doing a lot of work lately with flopzilla and CREV, doing some range construction exercises and basically trying my best to improve my non showdown winnings. Things are starting to make sense in my head now. I feel like I'm starting to understand this game we call poker. This week I started working really hard, 5 hours of studying in the morning and 8 hours of grinding in the afternoon. My volume will be lower because I'm playing less tables, but I think this a very +EV decision for me. As I saw someone posting in a random thread: "play half of volume with double winrate". Thats something I never thought about. I was trying too hard to put a lot of volume in, but what I really need right now is to be maximally focused and concentrad in every single spot.

These are the hands I played so far. I mix between NL10z, NL16z and NL25z. Obviously a small sample but I can see the results of changing a lot of thing in my game. Started doing a lot of things differently, and I feel like I'm in the right track. I'm gonna continue to study hard and play maximally focused. I'm feeling confident in my skills, but not confident enough to be lazy or arrogant. I know I can improve much more.

LET'S CRUSH

I got engaged!

congratulations!!!!

Updates

June is gone. Its terrifying how the months go so fast and we dont even realize. I can't complain though, it was a good month overall, specially in terms of learning. I improved a lot this month, probably more than the first 5 months of the year combined. I'm feeling pretty confident in my ablilities to beat the micros so my focus for July will be to put volume in instead of studying.

I studied a lot this past month so I'm gonna take a break from that for now and I'll try to implement everything I've been learning. A lot of things are still in the level of concious competence, which means I have to put mental effort into implementing then. I want to repeat those concepts until they reach the level of unconcious competence.

I've been pretty lazy with my work ethic. Waking up late, taking long pauses between sessions and etc, which has made my volume drop a lot (like half of what I'm used to). Fortunetely, I played with more than double the winrate. I defnitely need to be more disciplined, so I'll pay attention to that next week. I want to put at least 25k hands per week. That is the minimum I think I should reach having the entire day to grind.

I'm pretty happy with my overall results, specially my red line. It changed so much that I'm a completely different player right now than I was one month ago. Its awesome to be able to see how much I've improved the past few months. I have the hands filtered for after last monday because before that I played few hands and I was worried about other stuff than poker. Also, it was the first day I started applying most of the changes in my game. The hands are mostly from NL16z, with a bit of NL25z and NL10z. I started practicing the new concepts at NL10z. Once I was confident enough I came back to NL16z. And by the end, which was last two days, I jumped into the NL25z pool. I'm comfortably rolled for it now so it will be my primary game for now on.

I'm pretty excited for this month of July. I'm starting to get a little bit anxious because I set a goal for myself to be able to live from poker until the end of this year. Half of the year is gone and I'm kind of at the middle of my goal. Crushing NL50 should be enough to live from poker, and thats one stake above from what I play now. But its probably not an easy jump so I want to have enough time to play NL50 (3 months at least). This means I want to be rolled for NL50 as soon as possible. All that said, I'm going to set an ambitious goal for this month: winning 80 BI's at NL25 zoom. That should be enough to start taking shots at NL50. If I can play 100k hands (25k hands per week), this would mean having an 8 bb/100 winrate, which I think is doable at my A-game. Lets see how that goes. I'll try to update the thread more frequently along with some interesting hands to discuss.

I might start playing some MTTs on Sundays as well. I played a couple of those last days and I was shocked by the level of play of micro MTTs. It was very bizarre to see how bad the average player in those fields are, something I didnt realize when I was a fish one and a half year ago. That might accelerate things a bit, and its also very fun to play MTTs.

Thats it guys. LETS CRUSH THESE GAMES

July Mini-challenge - Day 0

As I said in the previous post, I want to be rolled for NL50 as soon as possible, so I have a monetary goal for this month of july: winning 80 BI at NL25 (or $2k). I'm confident I can do it, but if I dont make it, it wont be a problem, because I know its an ambitious goal.

For this, I'll be grinding at least 5k hands per day, playing 3 tables of zoom. I think 3 tables are better to focus, which makes me commit less mistakes, and also I play less in auto pilot mode because I can spend enough time thinking about the most +EV play. Since 3 tables of zoom is equal to 600 hands/hour, I'm gonna need to grind at between 9 and 10 hours (I'm counting the pauses). Easily doable as I have the entire day to grind.

I need to to pay attention to my discipline, so this goal will help me with avoiding being lazy. I will grind 3 hours in the morning and 6 or more hours in the afternoon + night. I'll try to update the thread frequently with my progress and interesting hands to discuss. Probably not on a daily basis but probably like twice or three times a week.

Target: $2000,00
Progress: $0,00

LET'S CRUSH

saulio for president!!!! #fuckTrump

GL man :>

July Mini-challenge - Day 1

Day one of my challenge was ok. Played my B-game for the most part. I was getting easily distracted with WhatsApp and whatever, and ended up missing some +EV calls and bluffs. I'm getting used to the NL25 pool now. Its pretty similar to the NL16 pool, only a bit more 3-betting and some regs seem to be particularly sticky post flop. I feel like I ran pretty bad, specially in runouts of big pots. Also didnt reach my 5k volume goal because I had to pick up my fiancee from work. Ended up in the green so could be worse.

Graph

Biggest losses

Can't fold on this river, I guess. Sick hand

Pretty annoying spot too...

Thought shoving KK should never be a mistake

Nice turn bro

Feels good to lose both runs

Biggest wins

Nice turn me

PLEAAASE HOLD

AA always hold

Marked as good reg...good to my BR

Vs fish

Challenge

Target: $2000,00
Progress: $56,93

July Mini-challenge - Day 5 (theoretically)

Unfortunely I hit the day 5 of my challenge only theoretically, because I put almost no hands in on tuesday and wednesday. I was planning my fiancee's birthday party, so I was really busy doing a lot of stuff. I'll try to put some hands in on saturday and sunday to make it up for that. It wont still be enough I think, so next week I'll probably play 4 tables to increase volume a bit. Lets hope I win 8 BI this weekend so that I dont need to increase volume xD

I feel good about how I've been playing. I did spew off some stacks but also made several multi street bluffs vs regs and thin value bets vs fish (might be getting out of line with this though...just trying to get max value from them). Funny thing is that I get really creative when my confidence is high, so I've been trying different lines and sizings, which I think is very good, makes me harder to play against. I can see the importance of the mental game on this, because when my confidence is low, I tend to pass on many bluffing and thin value bet spots.

Graph

Interesting hands worth discussing

1) XR Flop as PFR OOP

I love the way I played this hand. Villain was stabbing a lot IP so I prefer to XR instead of betting. And OTT I think bet/calling is way better than bet/folding, specially after showdown xD

2) Flop play on 4-bet pot IP?

I was unsure how I wanted to play my range on this texture. His range is so condensed (TT-QQ, AK, AQs) that I think I need to check back all my AK, and therefore I need to check some strong hands to protect my range. Any thoughts on this? Assume my range is QQ+, AK, A2s-A5s, KQo. As played, when I check back I dont think I have any option other than calldown KK.

3) Getting all in vs fish

I've been blindly getting it in with TP vs fish. Should I ever fold KQ here? When fish raise we have to be careful but they spew so much that I dont think I can fold.

4) Bet-check-overbet line vs reg

Flop I am unsure if its a spot to bet whole range given that his range for calling EP vs 3-bet is pretty condensed and probably able to defend properly on this texture even vs a 1/3 PSB. I mean, almost all his suited broadways have 2 overs + BDFD + BDSD and the rest of his range are pocket pairs that are not folding flop. So should flop c-bet be polarized instead? Anyway, as played, I check turn to protect my range given that im giving up pretty often and also I think I get plenty of value by checking since he probably bets all his floats. I'm planning to call on any river basically, unless he goes huge. When he checks back he is pretty capped, and I like to put pressure in those spots. Also my range is polarized into QQ+ or air so I think bigger sizing makes more sense. I have 50% of QQ+ and some Tx like T9s (50% too). So I have roughly 11 value combos. For that sizing I need a value to bluff ratio of 1,78:1 or 0,56 bluffs for each value combo. 11 * 0,56 = 6 bluffs. Best bluffing candidate I think should be QJs (blocking QQ and JJ), but I dont know If I check those OTT, probably not. So next pick would be KJs (4 combos). Then I can use half of KQs as well.

5) Check-bet-overbet line

Flop Im giving up. Q high two tone board hits well his CC range from the BU. When he checks back and I turn a gutshot I'm betting to fold out his A high and to put pressure on his 66-JJ by the river. River is interesting because I can't bet thin for value anymore, since he has 88 and some other 8x in his range and he might fold 99-JJ given how scary the board looks. So I'm forced to bet polarized and he is put into a tough spot with his 99, TT, JJ. So I go pretty big again and he calls with TT. If he is calling all his bluffcatchers then I think I should adjust by just betting every 2p+ and bluffing some 8x blockers, like 6x-9x.

6) Nitty check OTR

My check was probably I mistake. The thing is that I think he has a lot of bigger flushes in his range (KThh, KJhh, KQhh, AQhh, AJhh, AThh) and he might fold his Kx to a river shove when the flush completes. I dont know if even in this scenario shoving wouldnt be best. Should check on CREV. What do you guys think? Does he ever call it off here with KQ? I have no reads on him

Challenge

Target: $2000
Progress: $304,27

Patience

Patience is everything in poker.

8 months ago I dropped out of college, both because I wasn't enjoying the career path my course was taking me to, and also because I was in love with poker and wanted to give it a shot.

I started the year of 2016 playing NL10 and I was pretty excited for the months to come. In my mind, I would grind some hundred thousand hands and by September I would be a winning NL100 reg. 4 months later (april) I was still playing NL10. I was really behind schedule from my first expectations.

But then I realized I needed to be patient. I shouldn't expect to dedicate a few months of my time and become an expert in something, specially when in the first few months I didnt do much studying. I should be honest with myself and wait for things to happen, instead of getting anxious and frustrated because things weren't going my way.

I see a lot of micro players in a hurry to move up and become pros. I was like that a few months ago. But now I understand that improvement is slow, although consistent. I read somewhere something along these lines: "poker takes a day to learn, but a lifetime to master". I want to master this game, and I know that it will take much more than 9 months. I've learned to be patient, and to study day by day with the mindset of getting better, not quickly moving up. I obviously want to move up, but I'm now much more honest with myself, and aware that in order to become one of the top regs in each limit I play I need to dedicate myself. It wont happen from a day to the next.

If you are playing micros, the first thing to do is to be humble and lower your expectations. The feeling of entitlement is dangerous, and can make you really frustrated when results dont match what you had in mind. Also, you will lose the desire and the pleasure of playing, because you are only focused on results. The key to success is to enjoy the path, not only the target itself. I love poker, but what I really love is to learn new things and to prove to myself that I'm capable of becoming one of the best at what I do. So now, griding and studying is a fascinating thing, because I can see myself evolving.

Patience is one of the secrets of happiness.

July Mini-challenge - Day 8

I will most likely fail this challenge. For lots of reasons I cant get to my daily volume goals. I either feel lazy, or tired, or not in the mood for playing. Whenever I try to force myself into playing, I get distracted with silly things and dont play my A-game. Does anyone have any tips on how to be able to grind everyday? I love the freedom poker gives and thats what atracted me the most when I discovered I could become a pro. But I feel like this freedom is both heaven and hell, since without discipline and work ethic you can easily become a very lazy person.

In terms of how I'm playing, I feel very good about it. I'm playing well, and I noticed that my "auto-pilot" game improved a lot. This means that some concepts are reaching the level of unconcious competence, which is great. My study group is also helping me to keep concepts fresh in my mind, and the constant poker discussion fixates the knowledge. For the next days I'll try to avoid every distraction and will try to force myself into playing more drastically.

Graph

Interesting hands

1) Getting raised with double gutter in 3BP
Does it make sense for villain to have a raising range on this turn? I almost called because I couldnt put him on value hands (flop slowplays maybe?) but I guess folding is best

2) Weak two pair on paired board
I almost folded river. I mean, does he value bet 9x enough so that I must call? His turn sizing is scary and unless he is betting flop into two players with air he dosnt have many bluffs.

3) Bet or check river?
This hand I wasnt sure If I could value jam river. After showdown I obviously can vs this guy!

4) C-betting range on 4-bet pot
This board smashes his 3-bet/call range preflop so I think I need to check here relatively often. Thoughts?

Challenge

Target: $2000
Progress: $409,41

I've just found this section and this blog, it's so cool! We are both trying to do pretty much the same and we are currently playing the same lvl, but I think you have me beat ;P. Gl and i'm definitely following this blog !

Poker Strategy

The following hand is from yesterday's session and I'm not sure if it was well or bad played. So I want you guys opinion. A person from my study group says his range by the river is very Qx and flush heavy, which is true but villain has also many missed draws and Jx. I put the hand in flopzilla to estimate how much fold equity I have on the river.

Triple barrel bluff in 3bp

Using my assumptions that he folds anything weaker than QT by the river (QTs-Q8s, any Jx and missed draws) I have 60% fold equity on the river, which would make my bluff good. The Ah blocker is pretty valueble as it blocks 8 to 10 combos of flushes. Thoughts??

Você parece ser bem dedicado, vai chegar rapido na nl100 :). Te espero por lá abração e gl.

Brought you some CandyCrush for your mini challenge!

Yoi can Doi it!!!

Amazing work! Read the whole post. You can notice the increase of understanding and progress in the game over time only by what you write. Don't even mind the graphs.

About your goals, motivation and confidence:

From a psychological perspective you should not have "result oriented goals" or a goal big enough that you can divide to many goals and the end result will be your "original goal". The harder the goal or the less you can control the outcome, the harder it is to maintain motivation and also resulting in losing confidence and ultimately losing concentration. Just stating the worst case scenario.

Because I just read the whole post, I can see a very clearly how its very hard for you to find motivation or energy to put in many hours. I don't necessarily its just a matter off putting in less hours. Of what I can see is, for the first time in this in this post, you have the most pressure on yourself. What has changed you might ask? (correct me if am wrong):

Your older goals where clearer, such as:
Becoming a winner at your stakes
Improving the red line
Being strict with your BR

These mentioned goals gave you the motivation and the desire to put in many hours. These goals where more defined and easy for the mind. So every time you work with these goals you see progress, even if the results don't go your way. Still you are making good improvements, and for that your mind rewards you with motivation(happy feelings).

However...

Your goals now are great but not defined enough for you.Your big goal now is to make enough money for 50NL and you also feel time pressure of some sort. This is very different from your earlier goals. You are doing yourself a disfavor when putting goals in form of earning money. Its very easy for the brain to base the result on your skills or ability, even though you know that is not the case always. There will be some sessions where you feel great and play your best many hours, but the result doesn't really match the performance. In terms of motivation it will be very hard to take away the good bits from that session, which would have kept you motivated and giving you a sense of accomplishments. So I would advice you to not view the BR-goal as your main goal, but rather as a result of accomplishing all other smaller goals.

a weird example of this but it will make a point:
If you want to do laundry and your "to-do list" state:
* Do laundry

Of course its not hard but to wash your clothes, but the point is its a process. So for the mind not to be lazy, and find some motivation in completing the task your list should more like this:
*take out the clothes
*sort them into different colors
*but them into the machine
*dry them
* fold them

On a bigger scale(as your goals) these will be very helpful to keep goals more handy and easy to work with on day-to-day basis. Eventually, resulting into increased motivation, confidence and concentration.

This was purely focused on the psychological part of the game. Not so much about poker. I really enjoyed your post and seeing how well you are doing. Me, being very interested in psychology, put some time on this to try help in any way a can. Hope it helps a bit.

update man ;) gl

I will discontinue posting on this thread. Recently I've been splitting my time between grinding and doing pio study. I also won copies of Nick Howard's pio course, so Im focusing on that. I feel like there is little value in posting here, since the kind of feedback I was getting wasn't being useful in a sense of motivating me to post more. It was just me sharing my thoughts, studies and results. I'm already doing that with both study groups I participate in through Skype, where people are much more interested in sharing what they are doing and how they are improving, so I see no need to keep posting here. There are some people in this community that in some way or another helped or are helping me to improve and achieve my goals, and I will make sure to say thank you to them when I get there. Good luck to you all, and I see you at the tables!

Wow you are quite committed and seem to be really improving. GJ. Btw don't let trolls get to you, imo you should continue updating this thread.

It was and enjoyable read, there's a good thing tho. Gaucan isn't posting since about 1 months, hopefully we got rid of him

It was and enjoyable read, there's a good thing tho. Gaucan isn't posting since about 1 months, hopefully we got rid of him

Wow you are quite committed and seem to be really improving. GJ. Btw don't let trolls get to you, imo you should continue updating this thread.

Guacan is not the reason why I stopped updating this thread. Its just that the forums are supposed to be a win-win situation, where you share and get input/insights. If you take a look here, you will see that it was mostly me sharing and little feedback. That doesn't seem like a win-win stuation to me. It was fun to write tho

Say his name three times and he will come back....
Twice now..
Gauce.......

Hi sauloCosta10 , sorry for the gravedigging...
I've found many ideas here both for my game and for my life that I want to post. I don't know whether you are going to reply to me since it's a 4+ yo thread, but I give it a try.
It was an astonishing read and I will read the other journals as well. I want to join your stable so I hope to work together in the (near)future.
Be aware that you might have some issue with the form on your CFP page because I've submitted a preliminary question using your site but I still got no answer.

Next week I'm gonna be on the country side, in a farm where people
with drug addiction are recovering themselves from the consequences of
drug abuse. I've been there twice already. Those people have literally
no one that cares for them. They struggle to get out of the addiction
because love is our biggest motivation. And they lack love, even for
themselves. We hope that our presence (I'm gonna go there with 15
other young people, between 18 and 24) there helps them to feel loved.

I totally understand that and I strongly admire people who help people out, for real.
Poverty is what touches me the most, very deeply. Probably this is related to the fact I grew up in a very poor family. Whenever I see a homeless, what it makes me hurt isn't related to money actually, is more about justice.
They beg for a possibility to change their lives for the better, not for money. But when you hit the rock bottom like as they did, it is very hard, if not impossible to climb up the ladder. They won't find a job first and firstmost, leaving them in a constant limbo, where every day is exactly the same as before.
This Xmas, I've decided to go with one of my friend who works for a local charity, to see part the darkest part of the degradation I don't see in the streets.
Geez, I'm in a very bad spot in my life, but as you said later in your journal, we can do whatever we want in our lives as long as we strive for it. We are lucky to have the privilege to do that

Poker is all about working hard, and having discipline. You will fail
on being a poker player if you lack discipline. You gotta put in the
work, study a lot, play a lot, take care of your body and mind, and
many other related things. At first, it was difficult for me to
understand that, despite I was playing poker, I had to create a well
defined routine for me to follow everyday, otherwise I would fall into
laziness and therefore I would not improve as fast as I could or not
improve at all. And discipline is something that few people have.
People in general are lazy and not commited. Its hard for most people
to dedicate their time to that one thing, and most importantly, not
let anything else be in the middle of the commitment they made with a
certain task. That's why now I have a complete daily schedule for
myself. From 8AM to 11PM, I have pre-defined tasks that I have to
conclude, and I can't move to next one until I have finished the
current.

I have a similar thing

May I ask you what's your morning routine right now? It is changed over the years?

How is your redline?

Very good for skiing

Ok, I play in very soft pool, but I'm too nitty. I feel I'm missing a lot of profit and time, that's why I want to join your CFP

I'll use the new feature of this site, the learning paths, to study
the following subjects, in no specific order: c-betting, 3-bet/squeeze
pots, big blind play, small blind play, 4-bet pots

Would you still recommend this to an aspiring player or just something else?

But the ultimate goal shouldn't be "to be better than others", but to
be better than you were yesterday

Ty for remind me Jordan Peterson's quote:
Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, Not to Who Someone Else is Today.
Unfortuntely, I've made progress so far. This is a huge hurdle for me