Orca206
116 points
9/4/24 Beating 50NL Day #9
CFP Progress:
I have signed the CFP contract as of this morning. Hopefully, I'm getting started with the materials sometime today. Let's go!
edit: I haven't received any next steps after signing the contract just yet. Hopefully I'm granted access to the materials tomorrow. From there, I'll probably spend at least a day or two doing a deep dive into the materials to figure out what parts of my strategy need to change. After I do that, I'll also need to come up with a learning plan for how I'm going to both a) study all the new material efficiently in an organized manner and b) incorporate it all into my game systematically.
Add me on Discord:
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Mental Game Development
Health Management
Readiness:
Sleep:
I cannot blame the wife for this one. My body simply hasn't gotten used to the new sleep schedule yet. It can take a week or two to install a new circadian rhythm. For now, I just have to push through some of the tiredness. I'm not used to having limited energy. It doesn't really affect the quantity of my output, but I can tell how drastically it effects my efficiency. There have been a few times where I just stared at the computer screen for a full minute before finally remembering what I was doing. Optimize your sleep, folks. I cannot overstate how much better every single aspect of life gets when you are consistently well-rested.
Weight:
Another new yearly low of 214.6lbs/97.3kg! I have not been less than 200lbs/~90kg since I started bodybuilding seriously over 5 years ago. In the long run, my goal is to get down to something like 175lbs/80kg. I haven't been that light in close to ten years.
Health Habits:
Meditation: 9/9, 100%
Gym: 7/9, 78%
No Caffeine: 9/9, 100%
Steps: 10,963, there we go :)
Mental Game Content
1) Playing the Nose Bleeds | Sergey "MunEZ_StaRR" Nikiforov by Mechanics of Poker
I find it remarkable how many of the tops guys are truly humble, but I suppose online poker isn't generally a game that helps to cultivate big egos at the top. Unlike most games, and most sports, even the best players suffer through long, traumatic downswings. We all lose big pots every single day. We all lose to bad players every single day.
I was glad to hear Sergey say that his personal experience is that the players who are at the top of the game are also people who are excelling in all areas of life: self-care, psychology, relationships, health, philosophy, etc. A lot of people assume that, once they get money, they'll use those new resources to "fix" all their other problems. In reality, many of the issues that people have with motivation, work ethic, tilt, and so on and so forth are actually rooted in the "other problems". When you eat well, sleep well, and actively do things to cultivate happiness, your energy and enthusiasm for working will reach new all-time highs. Don't take my word for it (or even Sergey's). Just try it and see. Again, I find it very validating that a player of Sergey's caliber believes in maximizing yourself as an individual in order to maximize your game on the table. My whole approach to life is based around that central idea: the better you are as a person overall, the better you'll be at whatever you choose to do in life.
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Poker Strategy Development
With my poker life still in a state of flux as I prepare to transition to a new site, new hours, and new strategy content through Nacho's CFP, I haven't played in several days now. Today, I ended up spending the entire day building out custom solutions that I can use for training in the future:
I stuck as closely to the plan I outlined in my last post as I thought I could. During the actual work, I found that some of my simplifications didn't quite work and there were better ways to group the configurations. In places where I thought strategy was very similar between spots (eg UTG/HJ vs BB in SRP), I simply took an average of both ranges and created one spot where two used to be. This vastly reduces the complexity of the game and vastly increases the efficiency of study.
I averaged the ranges by "hand" in excel and then imported them back into GTOW as so:
Overall, I now have a drill set-up for every spot that I felt was strategically unique enough to warrant individual attention. As per my plan from my last post, all of these training settings that I created are AI-solved to have massively reduced game trees with only one flop sizing, two turn sizings, and two river sizings (plus jam, so technically 3 on the river).
Tomorrow's Plan
I plan to begin going through each spot, texture by texture, ASAP. Now that everything is built out, which literally took me ~12 hours to do today, the only thing I have left to do is figure out how to incorporate the new CFP materials into the plan from my last post. Ideally, I'll have access when I wake up tomorrow and I can begin the process immediately. If not, the plan for tomorrow is to finally do that research on Ignition's rake back/new member deals and then get my bank roll moved over there.
I want to get back to playing ASAP, but I feel this short little break is necessary considering I'm recalibrating my entire life schedule as well as my strategy.
It is a fun and interesting time in my poker journey. I'm greatly looking forward to each day.
Good luck at the tables!
Have a good one everyone,
~Orca
Sept. 5, 2024 | 7:06 a.m.
Poker Strategy Development
After my interview, I spent the entire day today working out how I was going to go about creating a more systematic plan for strategy development. At some point, I went down a rabbit hole and got lost down there. I think my efforts bore serious fruits, though. I now have a very clear road map for how I'm going to build a maximally simplified strategy piece-by-piece.
Maximal Simplification Strategy Iteration #1:
Game Tree Simplifications (all sizings auto-selected by GTOW AI for max EV):
1) Flop
i) One C-Bet Size
a) Simplify to range bet on boards where cbet% > 75%
b) Simplify to range check on boards where cbet% < 25%
ii) One Raise Size
iii) One Donk Size
a) Simplify to 0% unless donk% > 25%
2) Turn
i) Maximum of Two Sizes
ii) One Raise Size
iii) One Donk Size
a) Simplify to 0% unless donk% > 25%
3) River (might simplify this further after more experimentation)
i) Maximum of Three Sizes
ii) Two Raise Sizes
iii) One Donk Size
a) Simplify to 0% unless donk% > 25%
Positional Simplifications:
1) SRP:
i) BTN vs BB
ii) UTG/HJ/CO vs BB (use average RFI range of all 3 positions)
iii) UTG/HJ/CO vs BTN (use average RFI range of all 3 positions)
iv) SB vs BB
v) All Others: 3Bet or Fold
2) 3Bet Pots:
i) SB vs IP (SB 3bet range vs avg 3bet call range of UTG/HJ/CO/BTN)
ii) BB vs IP (BB 3bet range vs avg 3bet call range of UTG/HJ/CO/BTN)
iii) IP PFR vs EP (avg of HJ/CO/BTN 3bet range vs avg 3bet call range of UTG/HJ/CO)
iv) SB vs BB
v) Play Same Strategies Above in Positionally Equivalent Squeeze Pots
3) 4Bet Pots
i) OOP PFR (avg of UTG/HJ/CO 4bet range vs avg of HJ/CO/BTN 4bet call range)
ii) IP PFR (avg of UTG/HJ/CO/BTN 4bet range vs avg of SB/BB 4bet call range)
iii) SB vs BB
iv) Play Same Strategies Above with Positionally Equivalent Cold 4Bet Pots
14 Days of Study Per Positionally Simplified Spot:
1) A High Flops as PFR
2) A High Flops as PFC
3) K High Flops as PFR
4) K High Flops as PFC
5) Q High Flops as PFR
6) Q High Flops as PFC
7) J High Flops as PFR
8) J High Flops as PFC
9) T High Flops as PFR
10) T High Flops as PFC
11) 9 High and Below Flops as PFR
12) 9 High and Below Flops as PFC
13) Random Flop as PFR (full play simulation)
14) Random Flop as PFC (full play simulation)
200 Post-Flop Hands Per Day of Study by Texture:
1) Rainbow, 40 Hands
2) Two-Tone, 50 Hands
3) Monotone, 10 Hands
4) Paired, 20 Hands
5) Disconnected, 20 Hands
6) Semi-Connected, 50 Hands
7) Three Straight, 10 hands
Maximum Simplification Strategy Summary:
1) Simplify Game Tree with GTOW AI
2) Combine Configurations into Strategically Similar Groupings
3) Categorize All Flops
4) Study Each Flop Category one by one in each Positional Grouping one by one
5) When complete, create a new iteration with slightly less simplification
6) Repeat ad infinitum
Study Plan Going Forward
My plan is to combine the materials in the CFP, particularly all the data that can be used to create exploits, with the above GTO groundwork.
I know some people will think that I'm going too far with the simplifications here and that may be the case. After all, I very well know that the ranges for UTG vs. SB in 3bet pots are significantly different to the ones for BTN vs. SB. There are going to be a lot more offsuit broadways, more QT/QJs + JTs, more Axs, and the same pocket pairs but at higher frequencies.
However, the range construction is more or less very, very similar. I already make these simplifications in my head in game anyway. Once I get through the first iteration of this, which will take over a year if you just do the simple math (14 days * 11 spots = 154 days of study), I can break this stuff down even further. For the most part though, this really doesn't matter as much as you think on most textures.
Sure, KJx is played very different SB vs BTN compared to UTG vs SB in 3bet pots because you're supposed to have tons of KJo as the SB and BTN is supposed to call none. Again though, in game, you don't know the exact ranges that you're up against and these strategic differences that assume clairvoyance don't always hold up anyway. What does hold up is the general range construction in these spots. The overarching strategy is remarkably similar for all the spots I grouped.
Again, in the future, I'll get much more granular with my strategy. If I started with the maximum level of complexity, I would never get through this process in any kind of a reasonable time period. After all, technically, there are 15 unique spots in SRPs alone:
UTG vs HJ,CO,BTN,SB,BB
HJ vs CO,BTN,SB,BB
CO vs BTN,SB,BB
BTN vs SB,BB
SB vs BB
You then have to multiply this number by 2 to get 30 because you have to study both sides of the spot: offense and defense. If I went through each spot individually, and allowed for a cold calling range in each one, I'd have spent six months on single-raised pots alone.
Some day? Sure. For now, that's not necessary. For now, all I need is a consistent, repeatable framework that eliminates blunders on the flop and turn. River play will always be more complicated and that is where data from the CFP is going to become one of my biggest edges. Knowing which lines are underbluffed/overbluffed or underdefended/overdefended significantly simplifies river decision making. Instead of twisting your brain into a pretzel considering all the blocker implications of each spot, you just memorize the fact that fish under bluff b/b/b lines and you fold everything that doesn't beat value.
We all want to believe we're soooo smart and we can do better than simplification... can we, though? Can we really? The human mind is incredibly feeble when it comes to memorization when we compare to a computer. The simpler we can make every decision point, without sacrificing massive amounts of EV, the better we can actually execute. In reality, until you get to the absolute highest levels of poker, you can be a winning player just by not making major unforced errors. That's my goal for now. No more blunders. Super simple, but rock solid play.
This plan is something I can believe in. I'm sure I will edit and make adjustments along the way, but I now have something far more solid to work through than just looking through the GTOW Analyzer and picking a spot I think I'm leaking in. I will still do database analysis to look for leaks, but, again, now I have systematic, organized blueprint for learning every single node of a simplified game tree. That has immeasurable value if you just stick to the plan and learn all of it.
And that's exactly what I'm going to do!
GTOW Trainer Session
I executed the first phase of my learning plan today. I created an average of the 2.5bb RFI ranges for UTG, HJ, and CO and then I played this aggregate range against a BB defend (also using an aggregate of BB defense range vs. all three positions).
The biggest thing that immediately jumped out to me was just how often GTOW AI picked b40 as the single best size on these boards. I never use b40 in my strategy. I very, very often use b33 on A high boards, but there weren't really any boards that preferred b33/b25 which I found very surprising. I was under the impression that you have a major equity advantage on many of these boards that is best pushed with a small sizing, but that's just not the case when you're up against a tighter BB defense range (as is the case when you size up preflop). In fact, outside of the usual suspects that preferred some overbetting (AKx type boards), the MAIN size was b40. I'll have to get used to that.
That's why I created this plan, though. I want to systematically go through every single spot and improve my understanding layer by layer. I now have a trackable, measurable way to do that. I'm very excited to get work on more spots tomorrow.
Things for Tomorrow
I was planning to do this tonight, but tomorrow I'm going to figure out what the best rake back / new member bonus is for Ignition players and make sure that I max that out with my deposit. From there, I'm moving my entire bank roll to Ignition. I may need to take a few dozen hands at 2/5NL to get used to the new interface and all of that. It's best to iron out any kinks before jumping straight into 50NL, I'd think.
All that said, hopefully I receive the CFP contract tomorrow. If so, I'll end up spending a real big chunk of the day just reading through the new member materials. Like I said, my playing and study routine is going to be really thrown off here for a minute, but that's just the nature of the beast when you make a bunch of drastic changes all at once.
I will still find a way to get the most from each day. I'll be back grinding harder than ever in no time. Trust me.
Have a good one everyone! Good luck at the tables.
~Orca
Sept. 4, 2024 | 4:41 a.m.
9/3/24 Beating 50NL Day #8
Interview with Nacho's CFP
After having a talk with Tom, the team manager over at Nacho's CFP, we both decided that I am a good fit for the CFP and vis versa. I am just awaiting the contract now, but I'll be an official member of the CFP within the next day or two.
Add me on Discord:
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Mental Game Development
Health Management
Readiness:
Sleep:
My wife is a teacher and the school year has begun again. This is presenting a big issue initially here. I am an extremely light sleeper and, currently, when she gets up for work, it is waking me up. We're going to try a few small adjustments to see if I can find a way to stay asleep. Namely, I'm going to wear ear plugs and she's going to keep the things she needs to get ready in the morning outside of the bedroom. If that's still waking me up, I am going to either have to reset my playing time back to something even earlier than what it is was initially (not going to happen) or I'm going to have to start going to bed at 6:30am. If I have to go for the latter approach, I'll just move my session reviews after my playing instead of first thing in the morning. I'm not keen on that idea, but needs must. I want to make sure I leave no stone unturned in terms of optimizing my chances to make it to high stakes as soon as possible.
I will 100% be taking a nap today after my interview for the CFP.
Weight:
We went out for Italian food last night so no surprises here.
Health Habits
Meditation: 8/8, 100%
Gym: 6/8, 75%
No Caffeine: 8/8, 100%
Steps: 9809
Mental Game Content
From 50z to 5KNL in 2.5 Years | Josef "Sunni_92" Schusteritsch
I am continuing to listen to these podcasts from the guys at the Mechanics of Poker to try and gain a better sense of what makes someone on online high stakes crusher. Really, two things keep jumping out at me.
First of all, and this is blatantly obvious, everyone works really hard. Josef, during the time he was progressing the fastest, was putting in 60-70 hours per week on poker. Depending on what you count as "working on poker", I'm in the same region so I know I'm on the right track.
I typically spend 2 hours on my session reviews, 30 minutes watching a RIO video, 2 hours on the GTOW Trainer playing 200 hands, and 4.5 hours playing if you include my warm-up. I then usually spend ~2 hours per day writing in here and ~2 hours listening to podcasts/mental game videos while I do various chores. That's 9 hours per day of hardcore study/play, 2 hours of written reflection on the day, and 2 hours of passive content absorption. I guess that's 13 hours if you add it all up. If we don't count listening to podcasts, and we only count the part of this journal where I'm reviewing hands (which I think is fair), I'm putting in almost exactly 10 hours per day. Considering I have averaged about 2 days off per month in the last 8 months, I am putting in something like 280 hours per month of active learning. I don't think I can realistically do any more than I do. I don't think working any harder is possible, but I'm always open to the possibility that I'm missing something.
Second, all of these guys study with far more precision than I do. Josef mentions how he and his study partner would spend an entire week just on K high flops. They'd run the sims, put together aggregate reports, simplify the game tree as much as possible, study it and then drill each node of the game tree for an entire day. They would spend 2 hours in a day just drilling cbetting on K high flops. The next day, they'd drill for 2 hours just defending cbets on K high flops. The next day, they'd spend the whole day just on turn strategy on K high flops. That's so much more detailed than what I'm doing.
I need to be more systematic in my approach. This is what I did when I started poker... I got a GTOW subscription. I created spreadsheets based on GTOW aggregate reports that broke down flop strategy for every spot in the entire game, and then I would drill one single specific spot until I got an 80%+ GTOW Score on that spot. Then I would move to the next spot. For example, UTG vs CO in SRP. If I could get 80%+ across a 20 hand sample, I'd move to UTG vs BTN. I did this for every single configuration in the game: all SRP spots, all 3bet spots, all squeeze spots, all 4bet spots, and all cold 4bet spots. It took me almost a month of drilling 8+ hours a day to accomplish this. If I'm being honest, sometimes it was more like 12 hours a day. When I was done, I felt like I had begun to forget some of the stuff I did at the beginning. So I just repeated the whole process again. The second time, it only took me about a week to go through every spot. I felt ready to play at that point.
Here's what some of those documents looked like:
That kind of systematic learning is how I went from not even knowing the rules to beating 2NL for 50+ buy-ins in my first two weeks of playing. That kind of rigorous study is how I've built the base of technical skill I have now.
Why am I not doing that anymore? It doesn't make sense. I need to systematize my learning approach again. I see the value in the broader learning style that I've been using, but, to reach the highest levels, you need to drill down into specific spots until you know them reflexively. Then you just move on to the next spot. You do this until you've done the whole game tree.
It's so obvious to me how these guys become some of the best players in the world. I can see the roadmap in my head. The blueprint is right there. I was already on the right track from the beginning. I've strayed a bit, though. I need to organize my study and attack things piece by piece.
The goal should be to systemify the ENTIRE game tree at the lowest level of complexity possible. Once you do that, start plugging leaks based on your database. Once you plug the biggest leaks, repeat the process and considering adding a layer of complexity compared to what you did the first time. Maybe you range bet less often and develop more complex flop strategies. Maybe you add an additional sizing on the turn or river. The specifics don't really matter. Just make it a little more complex in the spots that would be the most beneficial in terms of EV. When you do this, you'll create new leaks. Plug them. Repeat. Over and over and over. Do this for 5, 10, 20+ years. This is the guaranteed route to being the best player you're personally capable of becoming.
It's very, very clear to me now. I know what to do with 100% certainty. It's actually a very simple and straight forward process. It just requires a lot of work. That's fine with me. I like working.
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Going Forward
I don't have any session review to do today because I did it yesterday. I am going to try and take a "nap", but hopefully it ends up more like a second sleep. After that, I'll be back to do my usual GTOW Trainer work. As soon as I get into the CFP, I'll be canceling my elite membership here at RIO. I will have way too much content within the CFP to study to make use of the videos here. However, I will not stop journaling here of course! The blog will live on. I won't be able to share any of the materials from the CFP, but I can still discuss my hand histories, what my studies are focusing on, and what type of drilling I did (Anki vs GTOW Trainer etc).
Goodbye ACR
Tom highly recommended switching most of my volume over to Ignition because it is significantly softer than ACR. I am going to start that process when I wake up. Sadly, I don't think I'll be playing on ACR anymore so I may have to update the title here. Additionally, going forward, Ignition has a four table limit so it looks like my mass multi-tabling days are over, lol.
Excited For The Future
There's a lot of changes coming up here as I am also still trying to integrate this new schedule as well. I think my usual routine might be thrown off for a few days, but I'm going to do my best to settle in as quickly as possible and get back to MAXIMUM GRIND as soon as I can. I am very excited for the future and I have one audacious goal that I will declare publicly (just this once) now that I have joined the CFP.
My goal is to be playing 500NL by the end of my first contract.
Good luck at the tables everyone!
~Orca
Sept. 3, 2024 | 4:01 p.m.
Good News: Interview with Nacho's Tomorrow
We've finally been able to reschedule my interview with the team manager over at Nacho's CFP. I am scheduled to interview tomorrow at 10:30am my time. I am very excited. I think I can say, without any arrogance, that I am a fantastic candidate for any CFP. I am a very new player with tons of room for improvement, I already play and study full-time, I don't remove money from my bank roll to pay for living expenses, and I am very coachable. The only negative mark on my chances to join is that I am a 50NL player. Outside of not already being an established low/mid stakes player, I think I theoretically have every other quality that someone is looking for in a CFP candidate. We'll see what happens! I like my chances.
Bad News: Taking the Day Off
With my schedule so out of whack today, with my brain feeling like absolute garbage with the weird, disjointed sleep, and with my wife requesting a dinner out for the holiday, I'm going to pass on playing tonight. I'm going to do as much of my usual study routine as possible, but we'll be back at it tomorrow. Considering I have an interview tomorrow, and that will eat most of my session review time, I think this is just fine. I am never happy about missing a day to play because I legitimately love playing, but the occasional day off is good for you, anyway.
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9/2/24 GTOW Analyzer Review
Obviously, a much lower score than usual and there is one big reason why:
This happened because I was nine-tabling and my time bank got to zero on this particular table. I was half a second away from clicking call. It was that close. Talk about a gut punch. That's a potential stack right there. It really is.
I managed to finish reviewing all of my hands in about 1h45m which is fantastic. I didn't skip a single post-flop pot. That means the culprit in the length of my session reviews is... my tendency to write way, way too much. Let's see if I can be better, lol.
The theme of the day was...
Flush Draw Boards in 3/4Bet Pots
Hand #1: KJsh on Flush Complete Board
I am not supposed to value bet KJ on this turn. The threshold for value is KQ. Even then, you're looking at extremely low barreling frequencies because IP has more flush draws and sets on this texture. Once I get raised, I am supposed to jam:
Once I get shoved on, I have a profitable bluff-catch:
Hand #2: TPTK vs Set on FD Board
So, as played, I am not supposed to 3Bet shove the flop here:
The reason for this, as I now think I understand it, is because I am blocking the weakest part of his value range that takes this action. When I do 3 bet shove here, I'm mainly looking to have KK+ so that I unblock all the AQ combos. When I block some of them, I now make it more likely that I'm up against a range consisting purely of nut flush draws, nut flush draw bluffs, and sets. In other words, I am either behind or up against a range with significant equity against me.
This is especially true because of the sizings that we used. When I use 50% cbet on the flop, rather than 33%, and Villain responds with 55% XR instead of 35% XR, the XR range becomes significantly stronger.
This jam only loses -0.4 EV so it isn't some egregious error, but there's a better chance to get all the money in against weaker holdings if I wait to jam the turn here. If another diamond fails to come on the turn, I have much better equity to jam. If a diamond does come on the turn, I have successfully pot controlled to some degree.
In the end, it's tough to get off TPTK when your opponent flops a set in a 3Bet pot. Still, I think my heuristics need work here.
Hand #3: AQo on AKJfd in 4BP Pot
Here's the issue with this one... GTOW operates on the assumption that Villain only has AKo in their range 1% of the time. The other 99% of the time it is supposed to jam preflop. The only flush draws in Villain's range, because the As is on the board, are KTss and KQss. I block KQss.
Here's the solver's jamming range:
The biggest part of the composition here is AQs and that's why I have to call in solver land. However, in the real world, I'm not entirely sure how clear cut of a decision this really is. How often is a real villain jamming worse than two pair here? Are they really turning AQ/AT into semi-bluffs? When I block most/all of the realistic flush draws and I'm heavily blocking the worst hand that gets shoved at frequency (AQs) is this really a call? AQs only has an EV of ~13 for Villain when shoved here in an all-in pot. That's not really "value". Value here is AK and above. I have a bluff-catcher with outs to the nuts so I don't think I can fold, but this is a spot where I could've considered getting really nitty against the right opponent. Even though GTOW likes my blockers, I think they're actually terrible. I don't know if I could've caught that in game, but it is something to think about now.
Hand #4: AKo Bluff River-Jam on Missed FD Board
I'm out of time to go deep on these, but this one is pretty bad. I have a tendency to assume that flush draw boards are the most overbluffed boards in 3Bet Pots because it isn't that hard for anyone to turn a missed flush into a bluff. This pot was against a fish. As I've said multiple times in here, when a fish triple barrels, you better have a damn good read if you're going to respond with more aggression yourself. Those lines are heavily underbluffed probably regardless of texture when it comes to fish. I obviously ran into top set here, but I don't think it is a good bluff regardless.
Hand #5: AQo on JTx FD Board
Weird things happen on these JTx boards especially when there is a flush draw present. There is way more jamming than you'd ever think there should be. In fact, I'm supposed to lead jam the turn after I fail to 3Bet jam the flop (which I am supposed to do the majority of the time with my holding).
Villain is supposed to have zero AK in their range here. Because of that, I can treat AQo as the nut no-pair holding. I have backdoor equity with the flush card, the gut shot, and overs. If all the draws miss, I should still win the pot. You see this type of thing sometimes with AKo, too. I just missed it here.
However, as played, that river bet is not a thing. If I am going to take that line, I need to shove. Again though, it's just not really a thing. All the draws miss. I'm ahead of all of them with the nut no pair. Even when I jam, villain isn't supposed to fold a single Jx holding. There's no point in jamming into a range where they basically never fold anything that you lose to and you can beat the rest just by checking.
This is a bonafide blunder.
Hand #6: 88 on J77
I don't even really know what to say about this one. First of all, defending the XR is +0.47 EV. This pot was played against a major fish. They probably don't have a balanced XR range and defending 2nd pair probably isn't necessary to begin with. I think, in practice, this is a -EV defend even it is just a small loss.
Once the fish checks back, I stab 20% because sometimes these players do spam in a XR with nonsense. Once I get the min-raise, I think it is absolutely time to get out. I literally just have no idea why I called here. Was I just mad that I was going to lose the pot to the fish? Did I just automatically press call because there was a flush draw there?
Calling the jam is absolutely inexcusable and a disastrous blunder. Again, why did I call? I can't even tell you what my rationale was. I don't think I was even thinking. I was just click buttons and trusting nothing but my feelings because I was playing a fish. This is an insane way to play.
I consider this a clear-cut case of tilt. I made emotional decisions here -- not rational ones. What the hell am I doing here?
TAKEAWAY: I must improve on FD Boards!
Every single one of these lost stacks was on a flush draw board. There IS a big leak happening here. I'm going to spend the next ~1000 hands drilling 3Bet pots with flops that bring a flush draw. These spots are common and I must be better here.
Hopefully, you can also see why I think I'm the one getting in my own way of beating 50NL right now. I'm just not playing well enough. It isn't because regs are taking me into nodes that I don't understand or have no experience with; it is because I'm making bad, emotionally driven plays against fish. This could've, and should've, been a winning session if not for the egregious bluffs and call downs I made versus fish. I am not playing tight enough vs. fish.
That's all for today, folks. I still spent too long on this write-up so, in the future, I am going to have to cut it down even further. I'll get better.
See You Tomorrow!
I don't know that I'll get anything else done tonight in terms of poker study. I'll be back tomorrow with an update on how the interview goes.
Good luck at the tables!
~Orca
Sept. 2, 2024 | 11:22 p.m.
Beating 50NL Day #7
Mental Game Development
Health Management
Readiness
Sleep
My wife, bless her soul, left all her "wake up for work alarms" on today even though it is a holiday in the states. She is one of those people who can sleep through anything, at any time, and in any conditions. I am the exact opposite. I wake up from almost nothing. After she hit snooze for about the 5th time (she sets multiple alarms because she ignores them all... lol), I was not able to go back to sleep. I got up, wrote the above post, walked my dogs, did my morning routine, and then went back to bed. This was after staying up way too late last night contemplating why I wasn't beating 50NL. The net result is that my beautiful new schedule is good and well screwed for today. I still want to play today so I'm going to get through at least my session review and I may have to skip most other things. However, at 1:30pm, I'm just now starting a process I usually start first thing in the morning. Wish me luck.
Weight
215.1lbs/97.6kg is a new low for the year!
Health Habits
Meditation: 7/7, 100%
Gym: 5/7, 71%
No Caffeine: 7/7%, 100%
Steps: 6,663*
*My activity borders too close to sedentary when I don't go to the gym each day. This is another reason why controlling my session review length is going to be critical. Anything less than 5,000 steps per day is considered sedentary. 10,000 is usually held up as the universal standard for a good level of baseline activity to maintain optimal health. However, studies actually show a continued reduction in all-cause mortality all the way up past 20,000 steps per day. It turns out that, for a species that evolved to walk/run miles and miles each day, activity is really good for us.
Mental Game Content
1) AlanFPoker Podcast EP 3, ft. Patrick Gerritsen aka FreeNachos
Considering that I am still hoping to join the FreeNacho's CFP at some point, I thought it would be a good idea to give this podcast a listen and try to gain some insights into the mind of Nacho.
I think what struck me about this interview the most is the commonalities to the study approach that Matt Marinelli used. I suppose that should be no surprise considering that they are both PokerDetox alumni. That said, to me, this makes it very clear that the best way to learn poker is in a super structured, scientific manner. You need to plan every aspect of your learning.
You need to know how to use Pio, Hand2Note, PT4/HM3 and GTOW. You need to know how to do MDA on the pools you play in. I sort of know how to use GTOW and that is it. I will not make it to the top without learning how to use these tools maximally. Keeping in mind that I made it to 50NL without even using a HUD, I think I have massive room for improvement if I can find someone to teach me an organized process for using these tools in an efficient manner. Of course, I can eventually learn all of this stuff on my own, but I think it would take significantly longer. I can't help but shake the feeling that my current study process is just garbage compared to what the top people are doing.
I'll be back later with another post below detailing the results of my session review.
Good luck at the tables everyone!
~Orca
Sept. 2, 2024 | 7 p.m.
The New Game Plan for Beating 50NL
1) Six Table Maximum
This is the one I hate the most, but I also think it is the single most important change.
How do you reduce the amount of careless mistakes you make? You take a little more care with each decision. What's the simplest way to put more care into each decision? You put a little more time into each decision. What's the simplest way to get more time for each of your poker decisions? Hack the platform and increase your time bank, obviously. No, no, no, lol. You decrease your number of tables. Both Indifference and Live_your_dreams85 have warned me multiple times that when I start trying to beat the learning curve of 50NL, it would help to reduce the amount of tables. I didn't listen, of course, but now I am going to. As you move into higher stakes, there likely will never be 8+ tables going anyway. I might as well start preparing myself for the eventual 2-4 table sessions that are coming my in the future.
I've been very stubborn about reducing the number of tables because, if we're being honest, playing fewer tables isn't as fun and it eliminates my chances of placing well in the rake race each week. We're not here to maximize fun. We're here to win. And rake back shouldn't even be a consideration when you're learning a new stake. Pumping in massive volume is something you can do when you're a proven winner with a big edge. Right now, even with the small sample, there's a very, very low probability I'm a winning 50NL player given the fact I'm losing at 10bb/100 through 11k hands. There's no sense in me further reducing any edge I have by playing too many tables.
Going forward, I will play a maximum of six tables.
2) Optimize Time Selection
I don't know when the optimal time to play is, but consider this my commitment towards figuring it out.
I have good reason to believe that the games are better the later at night that you play... up to a point. For one, when I start in the early evening, around 5-6PM EST, that means American recreationals on the west coast are still at work (2-3PM their time). My basic underlying assumption is that most recreations get off of work around 5PM. They probably can't get to their computer to start playing until 6-630PM. By starting any earlier than 6-630PM EST, I'm also probably cutting out most of the east coast American recreationals, too. That's a big no-no. Let's be honest: Americans are the softest group of players as a whole. We have some amazing regs, but we have the most recreationals because we have a very large recreational poker culture here. If you want to win, you want to play against American recreationals. That means building your work schedule around their leisure time. Their leisure time can't possibly start earlier than roughly 6PM.
In the latter half of my sessions, the average amount of tables going jumps from 5-6 to 8-10. Sunday is a bit of a weird exception, I think, but I spent the first hour of this session playing only four tables, mostly with regs, because there simply wasn't any other tables going. I had to sit tables myself to get them started. That's a very, very bad sign. Well, it is actually a good sign that you shouldn't be playing at that time. If there aren't enough tables going without me having to start my own, and thus risk playing heads up versus regs, I need to pick a better time to play. This seems obvious.
In the early part of my poker journey, before I started posting on RIO, I was not as disciplined with my playing times. However, in doing that, I was able to establish a few trends. Now, granted, this was back at 5NL, and it is possible all stakes are different, but a group of players seem to drop out around 1130PM-1230PM EST. From roughly 12AM to 3-3:30AM, you have a completely different group of fish and regs. There are less Europeans, particularly less eastern Europeans and far more south americans especially Brazilians. What I THINK is happening is that the east coast American recreationals start going to bed around midnight for the most part. West coast recreationals keep playing until around midnight their time (~3AM or so) and then the games usually just break down completely some time between 3-4AM.
If what I'm saying is accurate, and I do think there is at least some truth to it, the absolute best window to play is roughly 9PM-12AM EST as this is going to maximize my time against the largest number of recreational American players across the entire country. Because these times certainly aren't precise, if I'm wanting to stick to my usual four hour sessions, I think the best window is likely 8:30-9:00PM EST to 12:30-1:00AM.
I personally operate best with something like a 10PM to 6AM sleep window. Therefore, the early I can play and still have very good games, the better that is going to work for me. I think I will begin with the 8:30PM start time and only push it past 9PM if I collect enough data to suggest there is a sizable difference in the amount of players in the pool once the clock ticks past 9PM. Like I said, there's good reasons to assume that most American recreationals on the west coast of the country can't/won't start playing until after 6PM their time (9PM my time). It's also important to remember that California, just by itself, would probably be something like a Top 5 poker economy in the entire world if the state legalized and regulated poker. Making sure you have access to some of the recreationals in the west coast pool is quite important. As a brief note to self: please move back to the west coast ASAP, lol.
Going forward, I will play from 8:30PM to 12:30AM with an eye towards moving that window even later if I notice a dramatic shift in the quality of the games / amount of players in the pool at 9PM+.
3) Optimize Table Selection
There are at least two regulars in 50NL who purely bum hunt. They're completely unabashed and unashamed about how they do it. I mean, they literally instantly sit out as soon as the big fish leaves any table. They won't play a single hand vs. regs when they don't have to. In fact, they both sit in the lobby and don't play ANY tables unless there is one bonafide fish on a table. If there isn't at least one person VPIPing at 35%+, they don't sit. In the sample I have on them, they both 3B about 15% (to isolate fish in big pots more often) and they both win at about 20bb/100 (in ~1K hands each, but still). Those aren't coincidences. I can learn something here.
While the competitor in me finds this kind of disgusting, and more than a little shameful, the reality is that this an exercise in self-discipline. Do you want to battle or do you want to win and move up the stakes? The answer for me is both. I want to compete. I love to compete... but taking care of my family comes first. If I'm going to turn this into a viable profession, I need to start making real money as soon as possible. With real money comes access to better coaching opportunities, better access to, and training for, software, the ability to upgrade my equipment, the ability to move across the country (or to a different country) that optimizes my playing times, taxes, etc. There will be plenty of time to reg-war at high stakes where there is no other choice.
Outside of pride and ego, I don't see any good reason why I shouldn't be table selecting in a similar manner. Why should I play a table that doesn't have even one fish? What's the point?
Consider these results from Onklebs (a 500z crusher who was winning at over 10bb/100 there back in the day):
If Onklebs, a 500z crusher, is only beating other regs for ~1bb/100, and yet has a 10bb+/100 win rate overall, what do you think is happening for the rest of us mere mortals at tables with 5 regs? I don't think we need to open the solver to answer that question, right?
Going forward, I will not play any table without at least one fish present.
4) No More Starting Tables
Whenever there haven't been 8+ tables going, I typically start my own. In the past, this has worked out great because none of the regs at the stakes I've been playing study heads up very seriously. I have at least studied opening ranges and most of them clearly haven't. I tend to have an edge. Even better than that, starting my own tables has often led to me getting ~50 hands one-on-one against some of the super fish that like to be the first one to sit at a table. There is a unique brand of fish that purposely tries to just play heads up. They'll even sit out when other players start joining.
This no longer works at 50NL. The main reason is the two regs that I mentioned before. If I get a table going, and a fish joins, they IMMEDIATELY join the table. I don't get more than 1-3 hands against the super fish. If a reg starts playing me, they join and immediately sit out. The net effect is that I just have a heads up battle going against a reg until other people join the table.
I don't study heads up. I don't know if I have an edge against these regs heads up. What I do know, FOR SURE, is that having a heads up table going is really distracting when you're playing six max. The ranges are different so you're mentally toggling back and forth between opening like 90%+ hands and the normal six max ranges. Not only that, but you have to a make a decision every few seconds because you're involved in every single hand on that table. Each heads up table takes up a significant amount of mental bandwidth all for a situation where I have some undefinable, perhaps non-existent, edge.
This is going to stop. If I have to start my own tables just to get 4-6 quality ones going, I'm playing at the wrong time of day. The solution is to do a better job of time selecting. The solution is not playing heads up versus regs.
Going forward, I will not start a single tables nor play a single hand of heads up.
5) Strict Time Limits for Session Reviews
This may seem somewhat tangential but I don't think it is. Unless I can be more consistent with my schedule, it will be impossible to be so precise with my time window for playing.
In my current schedule, the main variable that often throws me off for the day is the length of my session reviews. Because I review every single pot that makes it to post-flop, and then I sometimes write about 5-10 hands per session, the reviews have been lasting anywhere from 3-5 hours. That's just way too long.
To limit the amount of time I spend on this activity, I am going to give myself a strict structure moving forward. I will spend 1 hour looking through the biggest pots I lost in order. If I happen to make it through all post-flop losses, great. If not, I'll end up missing out on some of the smallest pots only. When the alarm goes off for one hour, I will move on to reviewing the biggest pots I won in order. Same deal here. When the alarm goes off for one hour, I am done even if I haven't made it through all of them yet.
After that, I will give myself 30 minutes, and no more, to do a write-up on the main theme of the session. Not two themes, not three themes, not 9 random different hands, but one main theme. If I can't write about it in 30 minutes, I'm taking too long. I'm not writing articles here. I'm trying to learn and absorb takeaways.
There's a difference between writing to learn and writing so that other people have something nice to read. Even though it is just a habit of mine to try and write as well as I am capable of, I need to let go of that a bit and focus on writing to learn. That's what a journal is for: consolidating thoughts and learning.
Going forward, I will spend no more than 2.5 hours on session reviews to ensure I can maintain playing at extremely precise times.
Summary of New SOP for 50NL Sessions
1) Six Tables Maximum
2) Play from 8:30PM to 12:30AM instead of 6:00PM to 10:00PM
3) Only Play Tables with 1+ Fish
4) Never Start A Table
5) No Heads Up
New Proposed Schedule
With this new schedule, I'll be able to go to the gym with my wife which means we will get more time together each day instead of less. That makes it a win-win.
Be back later with the usual stuff.
Good luck at the tables,
~Orca
Sept. 2, 2024 | 1:09 p.m.
You've been right about the difficulty of all the stakes so far. There is definitely a noticeable jump in difficulty at 50NL. The regs are a little bit better, the recreationals are a lot better, and there's way, way less recreationals in general. Recreationals don't just give away stacks as easily as they do at lower stakes. That's been the biggest difference so far, I think.
Sept. 2, 2024 | 4:52 a.m.
9/1/24 Beating 50NL Day #5
It's a new day, folks! Let's kick some ass at the tables today.
Add me on Discord:
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Mental Game Development
Health Management
Readiness:
New low for RHR and new high for HRV! Good signs.
Sleep:
Still getting to bed too late here. When I'm running behind on any given day, I really need to go straight to bed after dinner instead of watching an episode of something on Netflix.
Bodyweight:
The vacation weight is finally fully off.
Habits:
Meditation: 6/6, 100%
Gym: 4/6, 66%
No Caffeine: 6/6, 100%
Steps: 9391
Mental Game Content
1) How to Make Millions Playing Online Cash-Games by Mechanics of Poker
Taking a short break from the RIO mental game videos to watch a podcast recommended to me by a friend. I think this still very much qualifies as mental game content because the entire interview is about trying to deconstruct what helped Matt Marinelli make it to high stakes both in terms of technical development and mindset.
Two things strike me about Matt's interview here.
First, his mindset was always completely different to other players. He wanted to be the best. Having that intention from the very beginning, created an internal expectation to work like he was someone who was trying to be the best. Unlike a lot of people who say crazy, outlandish things to get attention, or to try and "manifest" or whatever (lol), Matt stating that he was going to be the best was less of a display of arrogance and more of a promise with regards to the extent that he was going to work. He said he was going to be the best player Detox ever had, and later that he wanted to be the Michael Jordan of poker, not because he thought he was more talented than everyone else; he said those things because he knew he was going to work harder than everyone else; he said those things because he knew he had the work ethic that could one day produce results like that. It was a promise to himself to maximize his work. I like that a lot.
Second, his learning process is just so deliberate. It makes my process look like a joke. As I've been saying all along, I've been relying on a shotgun, effort-heavy process that isn't at all efficient. Matt uses Hand2Note and a stat checking algorithm to identify leaks. He then creates flop subset solutions in Pio where he can take aggregate reports to get precise numbers for frequency and precise range construction. When he's weak in a spot, he drills VERY specific spots like BTN vs BB facing 50% cbet.
Right now, my study and training is just so much more general than this. I don't have a good way to identify leaks. I just upload things to GTOW Analyzer and try to get a sense of where I'm messing up. I don't do any database analysis. All of these things are why I really want to join a CFP. I need more structure to my study. I need an organized approach. I am willing to put in ungodly, practically inhuman hours. I mean, I already do. However, I know I could be getting MUCH more from the time I'm spending.
Last, but certainly not least, I found this interview incredibly encouraging and inspiring. There is not one thing Matt did that I am not willing to do or trying to do myself. I was able to recognize all the same things that he did before I had anyone specifically showing me. I knew, intuitively, that my study process was weak and disorganized. I already knew that I needed a more systematic approach to strategy development that heavily focused on simplifications where ever possible. I already knew that I needed to systemify the entire game to the greatest degree that my feeble human mind is capable of. Based on Matt's mindset, and the success it has led to, it leads me to believe that my outsized self-belief is an asset. I'm just as competitive as Matt is. I'm just as competitive as anyone is. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to FULLY maximize my potential as a poker player. I just need a little guidance on how to make the quality of my process as high as my work ethic is.
I feel more confident than ever that I am going to make it far in this game. I know what the price of greatness is and I'm willing to pay it. I'm going to pay it.
We'll see what happens.
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Poker Strategy Development
GTOW Analyzer Review
As I thought, going through today's review, there were very few hands that I felt I needed to do a deeper dive on. As always, there were a few key mistakes that ended up being quite costly, but, overall, I made much better decisions in this session. Still, I can be much better and I might need to be much better in order to beat 50NL. Beating 50NL on ACR might require outplaying all the other regs consistently and that is no easy task. I sometimes wonder if there is a single reg at 50NL who has less experience playing Poker than I do. I think that's unlikely. Overcoming that experience deficit with pure technical knowledge is extremely difficult and a tall order. Better get to work then, eh?
Today's GTOW Analyzer score was driven down a little bit by the following hand:
Bluff-Catching River Raise-Jam with QQ on AK Board in 3BP
I will fully admit... this was an intuitive play. The Villain in question was an extremely loose reg who was 3 betting a lot and not folding to 3 bets. Even in the small sample, I had them profiled as a maniac.
70 VPIP, 45 3B%
I would never normally make a deviation this large, but I did here for two main reasons: 1) those stats are completely out of line and Villain was playing quite crazy in all the pots they were involved in besides this one and 2) in my experience, the broken betting lines are more often bluffed by recreational villains. They are much less likely to bluff a triple barrel.
Still, this was really sketchy on my pot. Luckily, this time, I was right and it was the biggest pot I won in the entire session. Still, the solver gave me a nice -30 EV grade for the river call.
In a very rare occurrence for me, I made two significant preflop errors that essentially cost me two stacks:
Calling 3 Way Preflop Jam with TT
I raise from the CO, fish calls on the BTN, and a tight reg raises from the BB.
According to Wizard, I am supposed to raise the squeeze here 75% of the time with TT. The issue is that this is a non-standard spot because we have a massive fish who is short stacking on the button. By raising, I force the fish to jam/fold. I make it more likely that they get out of the pot. I don't think that is wise. I think I should just be calling here in this particular situation to encourage the fish to stay in.
I do raise, though, the fish calls and goes all in, and then BB jams as well. Now, I'm putting the fish on most pocket pairs, but they can always show up with absolute nonsense in these spots. Because of that, I decided to ignore the existence of the fish at this point and just use the same range that I would normally use if the button had just folded. Even if I lose to the fish, I still win overall if I beat the reg. If you just consider the reg's likely range, TT is a +3.4 EV call:
Unfortunately, the reg turns over JJ and the fish has... T8 suited taking away one of my outs.
I think my mistake here is in just pretending the fish doesn't exist in this pot. I don't think you can do that. Even if their hand ends up being inconsequential, the reg has to have a stronger range than normal to jam into two players. Additionally, this is a tighter reg who only 3 bets 8% of the time. Most regs in this pool are more like 9-11%.
If we look at the Wizard range that the reg in the BB is supposed to jam once button calls my 4bet, it's way stronger than if button folds:
Here's what it looks like if button folds:
Is a reg with an 8% 3 bet frequency finding 5 bet jams with KQs, AJs, and even some slivers of KJs. No way. Let's be real: no freaking way. That means TT isn't +3 EV to begin with. Against the stronger range above, TT is -0.63 EV and indifferent:
When you combine everything all together, I just think this was a bad decision and a -EV call. Realistically, I didn't have time to consider all of this in game, of course. However, that's why I do these reviews. I can do the work OFF the table so that I can make fast decision that is correct next time. In similar spots in the future, I don't think I'd call indifferent holdings against a tighter than usual reg. That means, in practice, my calling threshold is QQ and not TT.
Calling 3x 4bet with AQo against Loose Villain
Whenever you introduce a new tool, there are going to be growing pains. This is a spot where I would never normally call AQo playing 150bb deep against a 3x 4-bet (even though the 4bet is supposed to be a little bigger, actually). However, I convinced myself to do so when seeing Villain's HUD stats:
Obviously, this isn't some massive sample, but it is already enough to know the following: 1) the statistical likelihood that they are playing too many hands is extremely high, 2) the likelihood that they are 3betting too many hands is very high, 3) they are limping regularly, and 4) all combined, we're likely dealing with a fish who doesn't change their ranges when playing 150bb deep. Am I that far off the mark here? I don't think so?
I'm not going to get into the actual post-flop play in this hand because I don't think it is that important. Villain ultimately had AKs and this kind of domination scenario is why you see AQo drop out of the 4bet calling range when playing deep. The reverse-implied odds are not in your favor at all.
Now, would I make the same decision in the future? I think that's hard to say. This is less of deviation, I think, than my QQ call which started off today's review. So is this a mistake after all? I'm indifferent. Pun intended.
Pure Fold a Fullhouse OTR in SRP!?
My biggest issue here is that I snap called on the river without even thinking here. Do I actually beat ANY value? Can villain get to this point with 33? Does Villain ever shove AK here? Are there are bluffs that make any sense? I should have at least THOUGHT about these questions.
I'm up against a tight reg in this hand. I've played many hands with them and I feel comfortable with that read. The HUD stats back it up, but this read goes beyond the HUD stats.
VPIP 21, 3B% 6. Like, I said, they're a tight reg.
Back to my initial questions... Villain is out of position here and they're supposed to develop a mixed strategy with their entire range. They even check AA at some frequency.
The check doesn't necessarily cap their range. Nevertheless, population tends to build improperly balanced checking ranges that are too weak. I stab very small with 77 looking to attack the auto-fold region of Villain's range:
This is a low-er frequency play but I am supposed to take this line about 20% of the time. Villain calls and the turn brings a yahtzee card: 7d. My hand is extremely well-protected here, but we still need to build the pot. We'd like to extract the maximum value here without picking a size that villain will overfold to. With the flush coming on board, and the board already paired, I usually go b75 here:
So far, so good. The river is a blank 3. Now, I'm looking to extract maximum value from any Ax holdings that have made it to this point. I go with b150 and the solver agrees:
One small problem... we get shoved on. Now the important part actually begins: what is villain's shoving range?
Now, at first glance, you might say, oh, look, Villain is shoving AK for value so we HAVE to call 77, right? Wrong! Villains is BLUFFING with AKcc, T7cc, KTcc, and a variety of other holdings that specifically block ATcc. That's how hard it is to find bluffs on this board. You have to turn AKcc into a bluff...
Look closely at the EVs. The bottom of Villain's value shoving range is TT. It doesn't even shove 77.
In fact, my particular holding is nearly a PURE FOLD:
The other 77 are better calls because they block A7cc.
So... here I am again faced with the same mistake that I make at least once in every single session: I've overvalued absolute hand strength without clearly thinking through relative hand strength on a given texture.
When you have the lowest possible full house on a given texture, and it isn't possible for villain to have the same full house because you block it with a pocket pair, you don't tie or beat ANY of the value shoving range in these spots. That means, despite having a full house, you just have a bluff-catcher.
Blockers are going to be more important when deciding to bluff-catch. On this board, it is better to call with an Ace, especially the Ac, than it is to call with the worst full house. You block more nutted hands with the Ac. 77 without a club doesn't block anything and doesn't beat any value. In the end, I could've saved a good 40bb here.
That's poker, folks. It gets messy when you get into the weeds.
Final takeaway for me? NO SNAP DECISIONS IN ALL-IN SPOTS! Never, ever! Just use the full clock even when you don't think you need to. You might realize you've missed something.
That's all for today! There were 1-2 more hands that I wanted to write about, but I'm out of time. I need to get on with the rest of my routine.
RIO Video Study
BTN vs CO 3bet Pots: Theory and Practice vs Francesco Lacriola
As IP Aggressor:
1) CO doesn’t have a ton of Kx in their range because KQo isn’t a pure call. Most Kxs 4bet. You’ll often just push your entire range for b33
2) J and T high are fantastic for IP because they are 3 betting AJo/ATo and KJo. Sometimes even KTo.
3) Low, 3 straight boards are often just range checks, eg 654 or 876
4) Paired boards will bet ~50% pot for close to range. The larger sizing makes it more difficult to float back door hands with overs
GTOW Trainer Session
Yesterday I drilled "connected" flops in 3 bet pots, but today I went way more specific and focused on three straight boards specifically.
I did 20 hands of each possible 3 straight in randomized 3 bet configurations.
Here is the short version of the notes I took for each one:
AKQ: mostly b33 with range
KQJ: mostly b20, lots and lots of checking, favors caller in a lot of spots
QJT: mostly b20, high frequency bet, some b75 range with BB, push AK advantage
JT9: mostly b20, tons of checking
T98: b33 from BB/SB vs BTN, mostly range check vs. early positions and as early positions, OOP develops big leading range from early positions vs early positions
987: late position vs late position b33, otherwise range check. OOP caller leads almost 100% in most cases
876: mostly range check, high leading % from OOP caller
765: b50/b75 for low frequencies, still medium-high leading from OOP caller, high frequency b20 when checked to as IP caller
654: b50/b75 for low-medium frequencies, less leading from OOP caller in early positions
543: medium frequency b50/b75, way less leading from OOP caller, b33 when checked to for stab
432: medium frequency b50/b75, almost no leading from OOP caller
Today, I am feeling pretty run down so I'm opting to go for a pre-session nap rather than a gym session. I wish I had time for both, but I just don't. Not today, anyway. I woke up a little too late and took a little too long on my session review (as per usual).
I'll be back with today's session results later tonight.
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ACR 50NL Session #5 Results
-225bb in 2546 hands
Frustration is starting to set in for me now.
I know I have the technical skills to beat this stake. The other regs are not better than me by any means. However, as has been a problem for me throughout my time playing poker, I have lapses where I make blunders in big spots. 99.9% of the time, I play extremely well, but it all gets off-set by 2-3 hands per session where I completely punt or make a horrible bluff-catch. I do this every single session.
At previous stakes, it wasn't really a problem because there were enough fish who would just gift you multiple stacks per session. That RARELY happens now. Almost every single stack needs to be earned the hard way. Even the fish are significantly better.
I need to have a serious think about why it is that I continue to have these lapses. Sometimes it appears to be a mental game issue. When I'm not winning, I have a tendency to start calling down too loosely to try and get in the black. Doing this against an aggressive reg is one thing, but you absolutely cannot do it against fish and that is usually where I start making mistakes. When a fish shows aggression across multiple streets, they are going to be heavily biased towards value. Most players don't balance those lines well and fish don't even try. They might not even know what that means.
The other problem, if I'm being honest, is that I play a lot of tables. In this session, I made an absolutely horrific blunder due to the amount of tables I was playing (nine). What was the blunder? Nothing technical. I timed out and autofolded after someone had 4 bet me when I was holding AA... That's right. I autofolded AA to a 4bet. Beautiful stuff. That kind of thing just can't happen. It just can't. At this level, my edge isn't big enough to withstand these kinds of mistakes.
Right now, to move forward, to beat 50NL on ACR, it isn't my A-Game that needs to improve... It isn't the front end of my technical range of abilities. It is my C-Game or F-Game or whatever you want to call it. I am the type of player who makes a ton of terrific plays but then also occasionally makes abject blunders that someone at my level shouldn't be making. Maybe this is just my overall lack of poker experience biting me in the ass. It's hard to say. I do wonder how many other players at 50NL are in their first year of playing. I'm guessing there aren't a whole lot of other ones besides me.
Beyond all of that, tonight, I confirmed, without doubt, that the games are much softer as you get closer to midnight and beyond. That is when the American West Coast recreationals join the tables. The games are so much better when they're playing that it is almost hard to believe. I'll have to talk with my wife and also seriously think about whether or not it is worth it to change my daily schedule to stay up later. I really don't want to have to do that, but winning is more important.
Again, I am also keeping Ignition in mind. Every single American player who has played in both pools says that Ignition is significantly softer. I know for a fact that some CFPs make their American players play solely on Ignition for that reason. Geofenced pools are softer. It is just a fact. ACR is a global pool and global pools are harder.
I am frustrated and a bit angry... only at myself, of course, but it is there. I don't put in 70+ hour weeks into this only to throw it all away with whimsical blunders. I have to be better than that. My perception at the table is that if I can just remove the stupid mistakes I'm making, I'm a winning player as is without any further skill improvements and I WILL keep improving. The fastest way forward is to get rid of the blunders.
I'm talking in circles now so that's enough. But, hey, that's why I have a journal. Sometimes the most useful part is just venting and organizing your thoughts into something written.
I WILL get this figured out. Tomorrow, I will sit down and write a point-by-point plan to make sure I am doing everything in my power to maximize my chances of beating 50NL.
Here's my results at 50NL so far:
-1183bb in 11701 hands
Bah humbug.
Good luck at the tables everyone!
~Orca
Sept. 2, 2024 | 3:53 a.m.
8/31/24 Beating 50NL Day #5
Add me on Discord:
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Mental Game Development
Health Management:
Readiness:
Sleep:
One quick note: I don't always put a ton of stock in the sleep readings on these devices whether it is Whoop, Oura, Fitbit, Apple Watch, etc. For example, it thinks I took 47 minutes to fall asleep but, really, I watched an episode of the new Terminator anime on Netflix before going to bed. Because I was relaxed in a dark room, it thinks I was trying to sleep. I woke up to go to the bathroom about two hours before I got up and it just isn't counting any of the time after that as sleep. It seems to think I was just in bed awake and I certainly wasn't, lol. Nevertheless, I still think it is useful to roughly track bed times and waking times. The sleep scores aren't perfect, but they aren't completely useless either. You just can't take them as gospel.
Weight:
Vacation weight is almost off.
Health Habits:
Meditation: 5/5, 100%
Gym: 4/5, 80%
No Caffeine: 5/5, 100%
Mental Game Content
1) MEDDING by Tommy Angelo
One of the most important aspects of meditation that Tommy highlights is intention. You can get into something similar to a meditative state when you exercise, but medding is only medding when you intend to do an activity with complete, non-judgmental awareness. In that sense, it is not the same thing as being in the "zone" (which we can often achieve with exercise or other performance-based activities). When performing, the heightened state you can achieve is driven towards performing well. When "medding", the heightened state of awareness is driven towards nothing; the heightened state of non-judgmental awareness itself is the entire point.
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Poker Strategy Development
GTOW Analyzer Review
A little bit more mistakes than usual here!
In effort to keep this review from getting ridiculously long, I am going to focus on just a few hands where I feel I made bad river decisions versus fish. I have already looked at some other hands in great depth with a buddy yesterday and I did the same for a few more on my own this morning. Most of the river mistakes I made against regs were close decisions or spots where I made somewhat unavoidable mistakes because I got into a node I didn't know well. Those don't really bother me as much as making hero calls against fish.
The following spots against these fish, however, were 100% avoidable and just a matter of pressing the fold button for the most part.
AA vs Lead-Jam on 4 Straight, Flush Complete Board
First of all, I'm not supposed to b75 with this particular combo on the turn:
The reason for this is entirely due to blockers. My particular combo blocks two different AQs combinations that are at the top of villain's calling range and a big part of their range in general (UTG is supposed to call AQs pure against a HJ 3bet in many sims). When I do b75, I start making AQs and KQs indifferent. b50, on the other hand, remains a pure call for these holdings. As best as I can tell, that's the reason we don't go for b75 here. Is this consequential in game vs. a real human? Probably not. I don't think humans are folding KQ to either b50 or b75 here. That said, the blockers are probably worth thinking about to some extent in these spots because you're going to get way more folds than you actually want with my particular holding when you polarize the turn.
Regardless, that's not the part of this hand that even matters. The river brings a 4 straight and completes the flush. Villain lead jams. Fish don't do this with bluffs. Fish do this because they are afraid of value. I'm not saying you'll NEVER see a bluff here, but it is a spot you can safely exploitatively fold. In fact, it's not even a call at equilibrium unless you have the club:
Even the solver doesn't have bluffs here. The solver jams their entire range and the only hand that isn't top pair or better is A5hh. That's the only "bluff". The solver is "bluffing" AQ and KQ on this runout. There aren't any bluffing candidates so it just shoves everything. You cannot call here. Even if you have a club, versus a fish, you cannot call here.
What happened here is very simple. I had an emotional reaction to my AA getting cracked and I called. It is nothing more than that. You just have to lay it down in this spot. There's nothing else to be done. It happens. It sucks, but it happens. You have to fold. Compared to optimizing your flop c-bet strategy, this is the stuff that really kills your win rate. You have to learn to fold in the right spots.
KK vs Range-Limping Fish
Before digging any further into this hand, it is important to note that, after the fact, I was able to see with PT4 that this particular player had a VPIP of 48 and a PFR of 2. In other words, they're limping range. It's hard to discount anything here... even AA. I made the mistake of assuming they're limping a capped range. They weren't.
I'm not going to go into great detail here in terms of looking at solves because it is pointless. What I do want to point out is the general mistake I made here vs. a fish. While every fish is different, the preferred line to take here is bet/bet/bet. You want to triple barrel with medium b50/b75 sizings for value. Many of these fish, who play 50% of their hands, are going to have trouble letting go of any pair. That's why they play so many hands. They want to see a flop. They want to see if they hit a flop. When they finally hit one, even if it is just middle pair, they're not going to be able to let go against medium sizings. They certainly never let go of a queen here. After all, you could be bluffing, right? What's another 15-20bb to see a show down?
Now, when you get raised, or face this huge b150, you just fold. It's that simple. Don't pay the fish off. They generally are not sophisticated enough to have any kind of a remotely balanced river-raise line. So, again, you just bet/bet/bet and fold to river aggression. More times than not, you get paid way more than you should with top pair against these players. When they actually hit a nutted hand once in a blue moon, you fold to the river raise, say "nice hand", and encourage them to stay at the table with your vibes, lol. There's nothing more to it than that. I have no business bluff-catching a 48 vpip, 2 pfr, and 0 3b player (yes, that's seriously their stats). I won't make this mistake again in the future now that I have a basic HUD.
Straight Flush over Straight Flush...
My perception of villain at the time was they were extremely loose and playing way too many hands. I thought they were a bit of a maniac. Now, I have the HUD data to prove that:
VPIP 51 / PFR 32 / 3B 16.
Anyway, this type of villain, in my opinion, is never bluffing here. It's too hard to have bluffs here for an average fish. Not only that, but they open, at 100% frequency, everything from ATo to T9o. This particular villain probably defends even wider than that given their stats. There are many, many potential Th holdings in range. They have almost all of them, really.
The absolute best case scenario is that they have something like Ah... but I have Ah so they can't have that.
Even at equilibrium, where the solver is bluffing random combos like JTo without a heart at full frequency, A5hh is nearly a PURE FOLD!
Here's the fundamental error I'm making in almost all of these examples... I'm overvaluing absolute hand strength on textures where huge chunks of villain's range are simply better hands. You might think... how can you ever fold a straight flush? Well, this is the one scenario where it isn't that crazy. You have a 4 straight, 4 flush board and Villain has every combination of offsuit Tx in their range. A call can be forgiven here to some extent, but you just cannot jam.
Takeaway: FOLD TO FISH' RIVER AGGRESSION!
To drive home my point about how important this aspect of poker is to your win rate, in just these three hands, had I found river folds, folds that aren't THAT hard to find, I would've saved 68bb + 42bb + 59bb = 169bb. This goes from a +3.5 buy-in win to 5+ buy-in win. That's really, really significant, folks.
If I could give any one piece of advice for getting out of the micros, it would be about this topic: learn to overfold in big river spots especially when your absolute hand strength is high but your relative hand strength isn't. There is a human bias towards wanting to call down AA because it was such a strong holding on the flop. It's hard to let go of a big win that you were already counting on in your head... but you have to do it. It makes a huge, huge difference to win rate.
That's all for today's review! I'm going to take a short break and then it will be time for more studying.
RIO Video Study
Training Fast and Slow by Max Lacerda
I'll reference a comment I made on the actual video here as my notes:
I use a somewhat similar study method, but my approach, up until now,
has involved more "brute force". I've been doing something like
playing 200 hands with specific textures or configurations and then I
allow the heuristics to form naturally.For example, I'll do 200 post-flop hands as OOP 3bettor on paired
boards. As I'm playing the trainer, I develop heuristics in real time
and then I'm able to check them as more and more situations come up.
I've found that that helps me tease out the nuances... eventually.I do pause occasionally to do a deeper study when something confuses
me, but I really like how you're doing it more frequently here
especially with regards to changing subtle details of the texture to
double-check if your heuristic is valid. Like I said, the method I've
been using has been a bit more of a brute force approach that relies
on lots and lots of reps. It isn't as efficient as this process.Very cool vid. I learned something about learning which is even more
valuable than learning something about poker.
GTOW Trainer Session
Today, I went for 200 post-flop hands on connected textures. I'm slowly but surely working my way through thousands upon thousands of reps in a variety of 3 bet pot spots. I really believe 3bet pots are where some of the largest amount of edge can be gained vs. regs. The biggest edge you can gain, overall, is to learn to exploit fish and then properly table select, but we do occasionally have to play regs in order to sit at tables which have fish. We all hunt the fish together after all.
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Results of ACR 50NL Session #4
-321bb in 2687 hands
I won't know until I take a deeper look tomorrow, but I feel I actually played quite well in this session. I think it was my best session at 50NL. I'd be surprised to see a ton of blunders in the analyzer tomorrow.
It took me about an hour to get the hang of using the HUD, but, after that, it made a big difference and I felt it helped a lot. I was able to identify fish significantly faster and this made all the difference to my ability to select tables without taking up a lot of mental bandwidth.
The biggest problem I'm facing with 50NL right now is the lack of fish. Right now, on average, the ratio is 5 regs to 1 fish per table. There were many tables that were 6 regs. Of course, I left all of those as soon as they formed. At 25NL, the ratio was more like 3-4 fish to 2-3 regs. It is hard to undersell exactly how much harder it is to win when there's only one fish at the table. For the duration of the session, there were only a couple of occasions where a table had two fish. I was never at a table with three. Not once.
I really, really don't want to do it, because it messes up my whole life including the time I usually spend with my wife, but I'll have to seriously consider experimenting with playing different times of day. I think, in particular, playing significantly later at night might be the ticket. I have full faith that I can beat 50NL, but reg-battling just isn't an efficient way to do that. If you're awesome, maybe you win 1bb/100 against regs. If you're THE best reg, maybe you win more like 3bb/100 vs. the other regs. Maybe. If you're just a decent a reg, it isn't that hard to win 10-20bb+/100 vs. your average fish. Table selection is that important. It's hard to game select properly when there aren't enough fish. You can't select something that isn't there.
I know a lot of people say ACR is one of the harder sites to play on for US players -- especially compared to Ignition (though that is infested with bots). Nevertheless, I have to keep all options open here. My goal is to move up the stakes as quickly as possible. I don't get style points or extra earnings for picking the route with the most regs.
In actual good news, so long as I am able to stick at 50NL, I will be able to attain ACR's "Colonel" rank with another 8-9 50NL sessions. This will up my rake back multiplier from 2 to 2.5. The final effect of this is that I'll be able to easily win $250 in rake back per week going forward. That will go a LONG, LONG way towards keeping this shot at 50NL going for as long as I can make it go.
Anyways, enough babbling. That's all from me for today, folks.
Here are my results at 50NL so far:
-973bb in 9215 hands
Man, those numbers boil my blood. I can't wait to have a crack at studying and getting better tomorrow...
Good luck at the tables everyone!
~Orca
Sept. 1, 2024 | 2:55 a.m.
I use a somewhat similar study method, but my approach, up until now, has involved more "brute force". I've been doing something like playing 200 hands with specific textures or configurations and then I allow the heuristics to form naturally.
For example, I'll do 200 post-flop hands as OOP 3bettor on paired boards. As I'm playing the trainer, I develop heuristics in real time and then I'm able to check them as more and more situations come up. I've found that that helps me tease out the nuances... eventually.
I do pause occasionally to do a deeper study when something confuses me, but I really like how you're doing it more frequently here especially with regards to changing subtle details of the texture to double-check if your heuristic is valid. Like I said, the method I've been using has been a bit more of a brute force approach that relies on lots and lots of reps. It isn't as efficient as this process.
Very cool vid. I learned something about learning which is even more valuable than learning something about poker.
Aug. 31, 2024 | 6:05 p.m.
Taking the Day off... Sort Of
GTOW remained down all day. I was completely thrown off of my normal routine. I wasn't able to review any of yesterday's hands in the analyzer. I didn't get any practice reps on the trainer. I didn't want to go into a session at 50NL feeling off of my game. Last time I did that, I lost 6 buy-ins in one session. Instead, I watched another RIO video and spent extra time with the wife. Also, trying to review 6000 hands in one day tomorrow would've been a disaster.
Luckily, I was still able to review hands with Indifference so I still got a few hours of quality study in today. With his help, I built a basic HUD that I will begin using in the next session:
(yes, I am testing the HUD at 2NL, lol)
The white box is my RNG, rep is the number of hands I have on villain, green is VPIP, blue is PFR, and yellow is 3B%. This is enough information to identify fish substantially faster. In particular, having this data would've greatly changed my strategy on one of the hands we looked at. The villain in question had a VPIP of 50% and PFR of 2%. In other words, they limp their entire range. I isolated this villain and didn't give them any credit for premium holdings and that turned out to be a mistake. Even having this much information, I think I can avoid some costly preflop mistakes with AKo as well as significantly alter my post-flop game against players who are playing way too wide. It is a good start and I think it should increase my edge almost instantly.
Anyways, that's all for me today, folks.
Good luck at the tables!
~Orca
Aug. 31, 2024 | 2:27 a.m.
8/30/24 Beating 50NL Day #4
Add me on Discord:
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Mental Game Development
Health Management
Readiness:
Sleep:
After a reading like this, I'm considering a pre-session nap absolutely mandatory (edit: nap taken). Further, I need to work on being in bed no later than 11pm. I've been going to sleep closer to midnight since returning from vacation and my body doesn't adjust by waking up later. I just wake up at 7:00am-7:30am regardless. The tiredness hits about midday during my RIO video study sessions.
This is all very predictable and controllable on my end. I need to be more efficient in my transitions between tasks. That is where I lose the most time each day. Oh, and, it obviously doesn't help when I do a 5 hour session review, lol. I need to keep those to absolutely no more than 3 hours and 2.5 is preferable.
Weight:
Habit Tracker:
Meditation: 4/4, 100%
Gym: 3/4, 75%
No Caffeine: 4/4, 100%
Yesterday's Steps: 6342
I didn't get to the gym yesterday because I spent such an absurdly long time on the session review yesterday. I'm not going to do that again today. I've really got to keep those shorter.
I have no idea what I want to do in terms of a goal for steps right now. 10,000 is usually the universal standard for maintaining good health, but I don't think that's feasible without adding another dog walk to my day and I'm not sure if I'm concerned enough about the current number to do that. I'll have to think about it. For now, I'll just track it here. It is insanely easy to be sedentary as a poker player and that is something I want to avoid at all costs to whatever extent possible.
Mental Game Content
1) Exploiting Variance by Francesco Lacriola
The two biggest takeaways from this video are a) you cannot fully separate the mental side of the game from the strategy side of the game and b) the best way to deal with variance is to increase your understanding of poker. With regards to the former, the better your strategy is, the less you're going to lose. The less you lose, the less you're going to have to deal with major down swings. With regards to the latter, the more you understand range vs. range interaction, the less you're going to be surprised when you run into the top of your opponent's range. The more you understand probability, the less it is going to impact you when you run into the top of your opponent's range repeatedly in the same session or stretch of sessions. When the weather man predicts that there is an 40% chance of rain, you don't get mad when it rains. When your opponent has 40% equity in a pot, and they realize that equity and win, you shouldn't get mad either. That was always a fairly likely outcome. You still take that kind of edge any time you can get it.
Here's the bottomline: the deeper your understanding of the game, the less often your expectations are going to get violated. The less often your expectations get violated, the less often you get angry, sad, demoralized, or have any kind of emotional reaction whatsoever. Most tilt problems ultimately come down to an insufficient understanding of poker math combined with an inability, or unwillingness, to accept things for what they are. The former is solved by study and the latter is solved with progressive desensitization (aka experience). You can probably speed this process along with meditation and some study of Eastern philosophy but that probably isn't even necessary in the long run. Study and play until it doesn't hurt anymore.
2) The Mental Aspect of Downswings by Mathias Maasberg
I think the biggest takeaway from this video is that you need to do everything in your power to avoid slipping into negativity and negative expectation when you play. Variance calculators often underestimate the extent and duration of downswings and this is very likely due to the fact that human psychology isn't built to withstand extended losing streaks. Our psychology is heavily biased towards short-term results because, evolutionarily, this did a better job of keeping us alive.
In a poker context, this bias can start painting your decision making in such a way where you start avoiding all marginally profitable spots because you're now expecting to lose. You can even start avoiding solidly profitable spots because you're anticipating constantly running into the top of your opponent's range. Altering your play style in this fundamental, but nonobvious way do a lot to extend and deepen downswings. This can be avoided by, as cliche as it is, staying positive -- or at least as free of negativity as possible. Each decision needs to, insomuch as it is possible, stand on its own merits and not be too heavily influenced by how you're feeling in the moment. Poker is a game of risk. When you start losing your appetite for risk, you'll begin to lose in the long run. There is no way to play profitable poker without exposure to variance. We must stay positive or at least emotionally neutral.
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Poker Strategy Development
GTOW Analyzer Session Review
Not started yet. GTOW has been down all day.
RIO Video Study Session
Is it Worth Calling 3 Barrels Without the Nuts? by thejericho2
1) IP facing 3 Barrels vs regs, 50 instances, 14 bluffs, 36 value hands at 500z
2) IP facing 3 barrels vs fish, 8 instances, 2 bluffs, 6 value hands at 500z
3) OOP facing 3 barrels vs regs, 16 instances, 4 bluffs, 12 value hands at 500z
4) OOP facing 3 barrels vs fish, 2 instances, 1 bluff, 1 value
5) Overall: 66 instances, 18 bluffs, 48 value, 27% bluffs when facing triple barrel in 3BP at 500z
Lesson: If you’re not sure, just fold. This is 500z. These ratios will be even worse at 50NL.
Testing My Heuristics in 3bet Pots by Steven Paul
As Raiser:
1) Lower boards = bigger sizes, less than Q high mostly block, greater than J high mostly medium
2) OOP betting ranges are more equity driven (x/f air that might bet some IP)
3) Suits matter a lot more for weaker hands (especially OOP)
4) On low boards, biggest and smallest overpairs check the most
As Caller:
1) Call wider IP
2) Careful with underpairs OOP, easy to overcall
3) X/R more aggressively OOP, IP plays a little more passively
4) The bigger your opponent bets, the less you raise
In lieu of being able to do any trainer reps today, I settled for watching someone else do some trainer reps, lol.
Aug. 30, 2024 | 5:42 p.m.
RIO Video Study Session
1) Range Interaction in 3Bet Pots by Francesco Lacriola
I think the main takeaway from this video for me was to remember just how much our strategy changes versus tighter ranges. If you're playing against someone who folds 60% to 3Bet, your strategy will include far, far less cbetting than when you're playing someone who only folds 40% to cbet. Sometimes it isn't just about the positions involved in the hand, but rather the type of opponent can be more important. While each position should theoretically have its own thresholds in 3Bet pots, the threshold of the individual player can be so extreme as to overwhelm the typical positional ranges. Some players are looser from UTG than others are from the BTN.
GTOW Trainer
Today's GTOW Trainer work was 200 3Bet post-flop hands working exclusively with boards that pair on the flop. I mainly wanted to work on my frequencies in terms of when to check flop and check turn especially with made hands (overpairs in particular). I think my play can be a little too straight forward in these spots. I don't think I've been playing enough check-raises. I've got a much better idea of how often I should be making each kind of play now.
You'll most often trap AA because it is the least vulnerable, but everything from JJ-KK gets mixed in. Surprisingly, you'll often be very, very passive with TT depending on the exact positions because TT often suffers from domination issues versus other, better pocket pairs. As for turn traps, they're most commonly used to induce bluffs on flush draw boards. If you can get villain to bite, you just jam over the top more times than not.
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Results of ACR 50NL Session #3
+365bb in 2454 hands
Isn't it funny how we can become dissatisfied with a +3.5 buy-in session just because at one point we were up 6 buy-ins? I have not yet achieved a state of continuous Zen, apparently, lol.
Like I said after the disastrous first two sessions at 50NL, I belong at this stake. I am NOT getting outplayed. I am doing most of the outplaying. I can tell. If these MFers want to take my money and send me back to 25NL, I ain't gonna make it easy on 'em!
Besides me, there are two other regs that play almost every table. When the games broke down to just me and them, they both sat out every single time. That's how I know I'm not the spot. One of them tried to play heads up with me for about 50-100 hands and I won by quite a big margin. They didn't try again. Again, I am not the spot. The regs don't want to battle with me.
I BELONG AT 50NL. I say this to myself and for myself. I should have all the confidence in the world.
I just need to continue to be sharper in my river decisions. I gifted another 100-150bb to fish today in spots where I know they don't have enough bluffs. It is hard, and it sucks, but sometimes you have to make the disciplined lay down with your AA (or the like). I can't treat fish like regs. Unless I've profiled them as maniacs, I need to overfold to river aggression.
If I can continue to tighten up my river decisions, which means appropriate bluff-catching versus regs, and a general tendency towards overfolding big spots vs. fish, I will get my win rate where it needs to be to crush 50NL.
I think I had some slippage post-vacation. I'm now shaking off the rust. Now, I know everyone's usernames. Now, I know their play styles. Now, I'm winning against them. Now, I'm going to continue to win.
Now, I'm going to beat 50NL.
Here's my total results at 50NL thus far:
-646bb in 6471 hands
Good luck at the tables everyone!
~Orca
Aug. 30, 2024 | 2:36 a.m.
8/29/24 Beating 50NL Day #3
Add me on Discord:
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Mental Game Development
Health Management
Health Metrics:
I've finally gotten my replacement Oura ring in the mail so I can now start tracking key metrics like Heart Rate Variability (HRV), Resting Heart Rate (RHR), Sleep Quality, and steps.
Readiness:
Sleep:
Bodyweight:
Health Habits:
Meditation: Complete (3/3, 100%)
Gym: Incomplete, (2/3, 67%)
No Caffeine: 3/3, 100%
Mental Game Content
1) Understanding Variance by Stelios Serefidis
This was a good refresher on the math behind variance. I messed around on the PokerDope calculator just for fun and that is always an eye-opening exercise. Even a player with a 5bb/100 true win rate was in the middle of a 20+ buy-in down swing 34% of the time (across 100m hand simulation). They were in the middle of a 10+ buy-in down swing 57% of the time. They were in the middle of a 100,000 hand down swing 11% of the time. For a high volume online player, that's like once a year.
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Poker Strategy Development
I'm going to do something slightly different today: I am going to review each and every single pot where I got stacked... in-depth (insomuch as it deserves). I'm going to try and fairly judge whether or not I made a mistake in each spot.
Let's get the pointless ones out of the way here first:
#1 and #2: JJ Pre-flop All-Ins:
Standard. Without definitive HUD stats suggesting a very tight opponent, this kind of thing just happens. Sometimes they have AK and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they fold and sometimes they don't. These are +EV shoves according to GTOW 50NL solves and that's good enough for me.
Verdict: Good Play
#3: Top Two vs. River XR Shove
According to GTOW, my biggest mistake here is not shoving river myself:
GTOW is heavily discounting 87 for two reasons: 1) villain isn't supposed to defend 87o against the CO especially when they open to 2.5bb at 50NL (and even at 2.3bb it is only defended 3.5% of the time) and 2) they're supposed to raise all non-spade 87s on the turn to get the money in ahead of any potential flush draws. As such, on this board, value is built around two pair and you're shoving as "light" as A6.
However, when I b85, here's villain's shoving range:
A9 is still shoved for value. Again, I have to call... against a proper range. Does a weaker reg or recreational really shove less than a set here? I have my doubts. I have serious doubts, actually. That said, what can you really do here? Sometimes you run into the top of Villain's range.
Verdict: Acceptable Play
#4: 2nd Nut Flush on Paired Board
It is very important to note that this hand was played against a player who was short stacking and not autoreloading. Because of this, I had them pegged as a fish.
The first "mistake" in this hand is raising the flop 100%. I am only supposed to raise 50% when I do raise:
The EV difference here is 0.07 so I don't think this is really all that big of a deal. Villain re-raises me 50% and I call, which is standard:
The turn pairs the board and also completes my flush draw. Obviously, I have to worry about sets here as they have become full houses but strong Qx is still a realistic possibility. Villain checks behind.
I jam river with the 2nd nut flush draw and villain snap calls with 99. Owned by the supposed fish, I guess.
I am never supposed to jam the river here unless I have 99 or a 9 blocker:
The reason for this goes all the way back to the flop. Villain is not supposed to raise my 100% pot check-raise unless they have: a) nut flush draw (which I lose to), b) QQ or 99 (which I lose to), c) Qx + flush draw (which I beat), or d) 98s as a bluff (which is unlikely against 99.9% of the population). When the Qh hits on the turn, the only part of Villain's raising range that I'm beating are the 98s bluffs that a human player doesn't have in the first place. The Qx + flush draw hands aren't possible anymore. When I jam, I fold out all bluffs and isolate myself against a range that has me beat.
The ONLY way that this jam makes sense is if we feel confident putting a weaker reg on something like KQo or AQo. Checking makes more sense here because we give villain a chance to bluff and we do at least have a bluff catcher. That's all we have, though. And that was my mistake. I misranged Villain here. Trips actually isn't supposed to be in their range. The range that re-raises a 100% check-raise is VERY strong.
Verdict: Poor Play
#5: Overpair Jam on Paired Board in 3BP
While b75 is the standard play on the flop here, you are supposed to mix in some checks (and check-raises) with overpairs on these types of textures. You have to protect your checking range as the OOP 3 bettor. I rolled a check.
After the flop checks through, I overbet turn at 125% pot to make sure I have a good chance to shove river on a clean runout. Again, this is standard.
Here's the problem... I don't necessarily get a clean run out. The river pairs the board with top pair. After that turn overbet, the biggest part of villain's range is now Jx, flush draws, and other pairs:
My range just doesn't shove here:
With KK, I am trying to extract value from 8x, 4x, and pocket pairs. A shove isn't the best size to do that; b35/b60 is. When I shove, I'm going to fold out all bluffs and largely isolate myself against trips and better (Villain IS supposed to hero call 8x and some pocket pairs, though). With b35, I still give Villain the opportunity to bluff-raise and to make hero calls with hands like AK/AQ. The shove, in this specific scenario where the top card has paired, just isn't the best choice to maximize my value. My relative hand strength isn't high enough on this board given the line taken.
All that said, b35/b60 have an EV here of +40.13 while shoving is +39.79. When you're losing -0.34 EV in an all-in pot, it just can't be considered THAT big of a mistake. The sizing nuance here is awesome for increasing win rate in the long run, but this is still a highly profitable shove. This is by no means some kind of blunder.
Final Verdict: Acceptable Play
#6 Top Two Pair on a Paired Board in 3BP
Okay, so, on this one, the solver markers my b75 turn bet as a blunder. Do I think it is an egregious error? No, not really, but it is an error.
My range actually prefers b75:
My hand doesn't want to use b75 and instead opts for b50 because of how it affects Villain's calling range.
b50 keeps significantly more hands in the pot that we are ahead of:
Compared to b75:
With a made hand that has a bit of protection against some overcards and the flush draw, sizing down just a hair to extract value from a larger array of holdings makes sense. Nevertheless, I wouldn't consider this some kind of critical error like I said.
When we arrive at the river, my specific combo is never supposed to shove:
Similar to the last hand though, shoving here barely costs you any EV. The problem is that shoving makes a lot of Jx holdings indifferent. It causes other paired hands to pure fold. The b20 is called 100% by Jx and makes some of the weaker made hands indifferent. You just get value from a much wider range of hands.
vs b20:
vs shove:
When you do b20/b33 here, and then get shoved on, you're still supposed to call 100% of the time and the call is +~25-30 EV. So, again, the sizing nuance is quite interesting here to maximize win rate in the long run, but, with regards to this specific hand, I just ran into the top of villain's range again.
Final Verdict: Acceptable Play
#7 TPTK on Straight Complete Board, Blind vs Blind 3bet Pot
With this one, I REALLY wanted to check back the river. My opponent snap called both the flop and the turn. They weren't playing multiple tables. My spidey senses were tingling telling me that something was off here. I jammed anyway. I took the exact same line that the solver prefers to take here. Even with the theoretical timing tells, they've could easily had something like KQ. Some AQo holdings DO check here, but my specific holding has a fairly large difference between checking and shoving:
What can I say here? This was the right play, 100%
Final Verdict: Good Play
#8: Triple Barreling Bluff on Flush Complete Board
I looked at a variety of sims (150bb/100bb/AI solution with exact stacks) and they all agreed on the following two points: 1) you're not supposed to barrel that turn with KQ even when you hold the diamond especially with my combo that blocks backdoor flush floats and 2) if you do barrel the turn, you have to triple barrel and fire the river.
Turn:
River:
When I do check back turn, I am supposed to fold to a b20 stab. My hand is never supposed to see this river. Overall, this is a tough one to judge. The EV of the turn b75 is +1.85 and the check is +2.23. We're talking about a 50bb+ pot here. I think this is a clear mistake, but it's not a blunder by any means.
Final Verdict: Acceptable Play
#9: Punt of the Day? 88 in 4bet Pot
What can I say? This was pretty horrendous. So, first of all, my holding is just supposed to be folded on the flop right away:
The call is -0.18 EV, which isn't horrendous... but mistakes compound and can quickly spiral out of control.
The turn pairs the board with another A. I lead trying to rep an A. Villain calls.
That lead really isn't a thing:
Sure, there are some slivers of a 50% lead there, but that could easily just be an artifact of an imperfect solve. The only other low pocket pair with leads is 66. The EV loss is only -0.06, but, again, things are now spiraling.
The river brings a 5 which means there is now a 4 straight on the board. I shove. I could theoretically have A5 and A4 in my range here. More realistically, I am trying to get any pocket pairs below an A to fold with this shove. Villain snap calls with AKo. Successful punt is successful.
Surprisingly, when you come this far, you do shove 88 at least according to the solver:
A+ for effort, I guess? This was a very creative line to take, but the reality is that I need to just fold the flop here. When you play those low pocket pairs in 4 bet pots, and an A or a K hit on the flop, you're pretty screwed. Any kind of continue is going to be super low frequency unless you drill a set. I shouldn't have continued here.
Final Verdict: Very Poor Play
Okay, wow, that was one hell of a review. I gave that more time than I really had. After going through all of this, I feel better about yesterday's session. Realistically, that 88 hand is the only one that really bothers me in terms of just being an absolutely terrible hand. I punted off a stack there for no real reason. That certainly isn't any kind of line I've practiced or trained in the solver. Maybe it gets through if Villain doesn't have an A, but Villain did have an A.
I'm going to end this post here because I know the character limit is coming soon, lol. I'll be back with another post tonight detailing the rest of today's studies and how my session goes. Hopefully, I can start to right the ship and at least earn myself a few more cracks at 50NL. If not, it is what it is. I'll move back down and work back up. No sweat.
Have a good one everyone!
~Orca
Aug. 29, 2024 | 5:31 p.m.
8/28/24 Beating 50NL Day 2
Unfortunately, the team manager over at Nacho's CFP had a family emergency and we had to cancel the interview. The plan is to reschedule ASAP.
Add me on Discord:
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Mental Game Development
Health Management
Bodyweight: 219.3lbs / 99.5kg
Sleep: 6.5+1.5 hours (I will need a nap today; edit: took a 1.5hr nap in the afternoon)
Meditation, 20min: Complete -- 2/2 (100%)
Gym: Complete -- 2/2 (100%)
No Caffeine: 2/2 (100%)
Mental Game Content
1) Playing Your A-Game by Lucas Greenwood
One thing that Lucas said that I really liked was that he considers playing your A-Game to be about awareness. Playing your A-Game is when you notice little details about game flow, table dynamics, image, bet sizing, etc. that lead you to alter what you might normally do in a spot. The more you're catching onto this "hidden" information, the more you're playing your A-Game. In other words, the more present you are, the closer you are to your A-Game. That's all the more reason to continue to develop the skill of awareness in life and at the tables. Meditation pays dividends yet again.
2) Prepping to Play Perfectly by Tommy Angelo
One thing that strikes me about almost all good players is how tightly they control everything in the pre-, post-, and intra-session window. On his trips to Vegas, Tommy only played in casinos where he was staying so that during his breaks he could go to his room and meditate, exercise, or relax in exactly his preferred style. I've heard stories about how some guys will spend hours doing research on the perfect chair. No detail is considered unimportant. I had that same attitude as a lifter and, in the long term, I want to have the same attitude as a poker player. I don't think I'm quite at the point of spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a desk and a chair, or multiple high quality monitors, but I will certainly do so at some point.
3) Downswings by James Hudson
This was an interesting take on how to get "out" of a downswing.
I think it is important to remember that downswings, fundamentally, don't actually exist. They are an artifact of human perception that depends entirely on looking at results through an arbitrary time window. If you have lost money over the lifetime of your career, that's not a downswing; you're a losing player. If you're up money for the duration of your career, potentially across millions of hands, you're a winning player. If you select very specific pieces of that graph, they might show a downward trend. That doesn't have any bearing on future results whatsoever. Just like flipping heads 9 times in a row doesn't make tails any more likely on the 10th try, having poor results in the short-term doesn't mean you're more likely to have more poor results in the next session... unless you allow these short-term results to affect your emotional state and the way you play.
As such, the only thing you really need to do to "get out of a down swing" is to stabilize emotionally and play a winning strategy across a large sample. Both are easier said than done, but I think these are two aspects we should be working on constantly as poker players regardless of short-term results. We should always be studying and striving to increase our edge with regards to the quality of our actual poker strategy. Likewise, some kind of training to build your skill at managing emotions is going to pay larger dividends in the long run than any kind of quick-fix, confidence booster. Meditate, do the work to dismantle limiting beliefs, figure out your tilt triggers, and work towards resolution. I would leave the lucky rabbit feet to someone else, personally. I don't want my results, nor my confidence levels, left up to superstition.
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Poker Strategy Development
Morning-After Review
As I anticipated, I think I would've just been better off not playing last night. I think was just enough off of my A-game that I missed a few river spots for decent chunks of bb.
I'll take a look at some of them here:
Missed Gutshot Bluff on Flush Complete Board in SRP
While I don't think this hand is particularly interesting, I want to make note of it to remind myself that I don't need to get gun shy just because I'm at a new stake. I would normally take this bluff because it unblocks the original missed flush draw. The second flush draw that comes in, and then completes, should be less scary for me because villain has much less of it in his range than I do after the small flop c-bet and then turn check. In fact, as played, 70% of Villain's range has between 0-60% equity. There's A LOT that will fold to another bet. 40% of my range has 80-100% equity. I can leverage unblockers and the nut advantage here to place b85/b150 and have enormous fold equity.
Missed River Bluff in 3BP
Villain calls the flop b20 with a variety of double-broadway gutshots and low pocket pairs.
When we arrive to the river after the turn checks through, 50% of Villain's range has 0-25% equity:
Because of this, I missed a very profitable stabbing opportunity (theoretically). Most of those pairs and gutshots are just autofolds. In the future, I need to be more cognizant of spots like this where villain arrives to the river with a wide range full of hands that have mostly missed.
All that said, I don't mind the river check here too much because I think many villains underdefend the 20% flop cbet and they likely arrive to this river with way less low pocket pair holdings than the solver.
Bluff-Catching with 2nd Pair on Flush Complete Board in 3BP
Once Villain goes with the b85 on the river here, they're representing something that can beat a king because of how good the king is for my range. Either that or they have a king themselves and they're unaware of the range vs. range interaction here. Either way, AJ is a pure bluff-catcher.
So what bluffs does the solver have?
The solver mainly bluffs nut flush blockers and other 1 spade holdings. However, there is some 55 and 44 with spades in there as well as 54s of every suit besides spades. I think plenty of villains can find the nutflush blocker bluffs, but I don't think they often go with b85. I think they mainly go higher. Having to turn low pairs into a bluff here is never a good sign that a spot is overbluffed.
With both a straight (QT) and a flush completing here, I think this should be a pure fold on my end even though the solver has it as indifferent with 50NL solves:
This happened towards the beginning of the session and it is a spot that I don't think I would mess up if I was on my A-game. Hands like this are why I think I should've given myself one more day for the jet lag to clear.
Turned Set on 4 Straight Board in 3BP
I think everything through the flop is pretty standard here. My range greatly prefers to check the 3 straight turn, but my particularly holding does use b75 at a decent frequency here:
My b33 river bet is definitely ill-advised here. My range prefers to check or b10. If I want to try and extract a little more value from a Kx holding, b10 is definitely the way to go:
Once I face the river jam, I think I need to fold my set versus all but the best regulars. On these 4 straight boards, value is built around straights. I mean, duh? However, I distinctly remember considering whether or not sets could be shoved here. The answer is an emphatic no:
Villain's only real bluffs are Jx holdings that block the JT nuts. A4ss also bluff shoves because it blocks 54ss. Do real villains find those? The Jx blocker stuff? Maybe. A4? Probably not. However, when there's a close decision like this, in the solver, in real life, unless it is a spot that is easy to overbluff, and these 4 straight boards are NOT easy to overbluff (in my opinion), this should be an easy fold.
I could've saved myself quite a bit of money here with a b10 and then fold to the river shove. I don't have a problem with the thin value bet, but the sizing was off and left me more pot committed than I should've been. Even still, I should've been able to find a fold knowing how imbalanced villains tend to be when they raise over the top on the river.
Way Too Soft in Multiway Pots
I'm not going to analyze these in any depth. I just want to make a physical note, to go along with my mental note, that I've gotten a bit too soft in multiway pots. You still have to mix it up in those pots. Don't be afraid to raise and re-raise when you likely have the best hand currently. Don't assume every single person is trapping a very strong hand every single time. When many Villains use a medium sized bet, they're going to have a medium strength hand. Not all Villains are afraid to bet for thin value multiway. You have to be ready to call down with something other than nutted hands. You have to be ready to raise very strong hands that aren't the nuts. You're just playing way too soft in these spots.
That's all for now, folks. I'm going to try and go back to sleep before getting on with the rest of my study today.
RIO Video Study Session
Studying Complex Boards in 3 Bet Pots by Francesco Lacriola
1) Introduction
a) It isn’t realistic to try and replicate solver frequencies. It is much more productive to understand which reasons make EV shift
b) If we play readless, we can rely on population tendencies or try to approximate equilibrium
c) We have to think about how to maximize EV of our whole range, not single hand classes
d) What happens if we never cbet/check?
e) As the caller, what happens if we stab too often or too infrequently? What if we use a bigger size?
2) 763ss, SB vs CO 3BP
a) 3bettor: 83% check, can we simplify to range check
b) IP defender: stabbing 20% with huge frequency (60%+)
c) If the opponent stabs too much, we check range and start aggressively x/r
3) How often does villain stab against a check?
a) Way too much: check range, play aggressive x/r strategy
b) Approx equilibrium: it doesn’t matter very much
c) Less than equilibrium: cbet more often, won’t be able to x/r enough to get the value back
d) Preferred stabbing size: 20-25% (targeting A high and broadways), bigger sizes force IP to check way more often or to get punished more by x/r strategy
e) Against regs, this may not matter much, but a lot of EV can be gained against weaker regs and recs
4) Turn impact on flop checking ranges
a) A is mostly neutral as it hits both checking ranges
b) Flush tends to favor IP player and should be approached cautiously, the only exception is if villain is stabbing way too often on flop
c) Broadway and turn pairing cards can be delayed cbet aggressively
d) Blanks have to be approached in a polarized way and we have to be aware that all the Ace high and broadway still missed and their equity is still low against made hands
5) Delayed cbet strategy
a) Strongly linked to flop strategy; in general, we keep the same composition of range, but frequencies can shift drastically
b) Overcards and board pairs are best for the SB checking range; Ace is tricky and should be approached in a polarized way (how often does villain have AK?)
c) Overcards and ace highs that block FD > blocking backdoor FD > all other combos to maximize fold equity
d) Vs good flop strategy: high frequency of check on blanks (important to have delayed x/r lines) on bad turns and Ace
e) Vs overstabber: higher delayed cbet frequency on all runouts, but we also need to check some strong hands for delayed x/r
f) Vs understabber: range check on non overcard, non Ace turns – the only exception is if you’re up against loose passive players, you want to start building the pot
GTOW Trainer Session
Today, I looked at river spots in 3 bet pots from the perspective of the BTN. The line used to arrive to the river was check/b33/call, check/b75/call, check/???. I used a slightly different line when training BB vs BTN because block sizes aren't as common the flop from the BB (or at least shouldn't be).
50 Hands Each
UTG vs BTN: check/b33/call, check/b75/call, check / ???
HJ vs BTN: check/b33/call, check/b75/call, check / ???
CO vs BTN: check/b33/call, check/b75/call, check / ???
25 Hands Each:
SB vs BTN: b33/call, b75/call, jam / ???
SB vs BTN: b33/call, b75/call, check / ???
BB vs BTN: b50/call, b50/call, jam / ???
BB vs BTNL: b50/call, b50/call, check / ???
I'm off to the dog park with the hounds and then we get on with Session #2 at 50NL!
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8/28/24 ACR 50NL Session #2 Results
-432bb in 2714 hands
Well, I am absolutely not off to a good start here, am I?
My sense of this session was that I played incredibly well... in SRP. I was the best player at the table... in SRP. Seriously, I do NOT feel out of place in this pool at all.
In 3b/4b pots, I got destroyed. I think I got stacked over 10 times in this session. I think there was at least one all-out punt in there, at least one blunder where I shoved too light, and one ill-advised hero call.. The rest I think I made the right play and simply lost. I won't know for sure until tomorrow's analysis.
I've managed to halve my bank roll in two days here. I've got 5 more buy-ins of wiggle room before I'm going to move back down to 25NL and rebuild. That's what happens when you take a shot sometimes -- you miss. I am completely undeterred. I am not even remotely discouraged. Again, I felt like I belonged at the tables with the other regs. In fact, I consistently got the better of end of most exchanges.
I just need to be more precise with my river decision making. That is still the bottleneck. If I need to go down to 25NL and put in another month of study and grind before bumping back up, so be it. By then, I can put dozens of hours into studying big river spots.
Either way, regardless of what happens in the next few sessions, I am feeling very good about where my skill level is at. I think I'm minor improvements away from being able to crush at 50NL. It does NOT seem like I'm routinely getting outplayed.
No matter what, I will beat 50NL. I don't care if it is Shot #1 or Shot #10. It's just a matter of time until I break through and win consistently.
50NL Results so far:
-1011bb in 4017 hands
I'll be back tomorrow with the usual analysis and study!
Have a good one everyone!
~Orca
Aug. 29, 2024 | 2:31 a.m.
8/27/24 Beating 50NL Day 1
Okay, I'm not going to lie... I am still feeling a bit of out of sorts today. My normal morning routine took me more than two times as long as it normally does. This happens every time I take a vacation and I think it is common. It does not mean vacations are not worth it. The overall benefits in terms of recharging motivation and preventing burnout still outweigh the temporary setbacks of having to "restart" and any lost progress in the week that you miss.
Nevertheless, I do not quite feel back to 100% yet. The show must go on, though
Feel free to add me on Discord:
By the way, I just wanted to say a word of thanks to those of you who have reached out on Discord. I am quite happy to hear that there are more people than I thought who are enjoying the essays, err, "posts" that I write in here. Hearing that definitely encourages me to continue!
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Mental Game Development
Health Management
Health Metrics
Bodyweight: 220.5lbs/100kg (yikes, another typical vacation side effect)
Sleep (Mask Time): 8.9 hours (still catching up on the sleep debt I accrued traveling)
Health Habits
Meditation: Complete -- 1/1, 100%
Gym: Incomplete -- 1/1, 100%
No Caffeine: 1/1, 100%
I didn't do any working out or meditation on my vacation. I didn't have any caffeine, but I did have alcohol, lol. I got legitimately drunk for the first time in three years at the wedding and I was quickly reminded the next day why I don't do that anymore. Hangovers suck.
Anyways, I'm restarting my habit counter here because it seems a natural point to do so after a five day break from my usual routine and because I'm rededicating myself to getting into the gym every day starting today (mostly to do cardio; not weights).
Mental Game Content
1) The Grind by Serge Pouliot
One thing pointed in this video that I need to give some consideration to is how I structure my actual sessions. A lot of people seem to take extended breaks after 60-120 minutes. My sessions are four hours long. I typically get up for about one to two minutes to go to the bathroom every hour. I don't think I'd want to take a 10+ minute break too often because I'd lose all my table seats. When you're playing 6-8+ tables, it can actually take a good long while to get all your seats. However, and I've written this before, it is probably worth finding out how long I can sit out at tables before being booted. If it is something like 5 minutes, and I think it is, it is probably worth taking a 5 full minute break each hour. That way, I can get up, walk around, get a little blood flow, and maybe even do some breathing exercises to dissipate any tilt build up.
2) Cool Down by Chris Pimmer
Luckily, because I read Elliot Roe's A Game, I have had a cool down routine in place for the majority of the time I've been playing. However, the one thing I question about my cool down routine is whether or not I should do some meditation post-playing. Roe also suggests a guided cool down. I currently don't do anything like post-playing (I do pre). The reason I decided against it is because I already do a separate 20 minute meditation in the morning and a 15 minute guided meditation before playing. It seemed like overkill to be spending an hour a day on meditation. Maybe I'd benefit from dropping the morning session and doing a post play one instead. However, that will probably lead to me not meditating on any day that I don't play. I'm not sure that matters, but I'm going to keep chewing on this before making any changes.
Definitely food for thought.
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Poker Strategy Development
With only a 400 hand sample to analyze today, there just weren't enough hands to identify any overarching themes to the mistakes I made. I'm just going to go over a few hands that I wanted to look at in more detail.
K High Flush on Paired, 4 Flush Board
So, on the surface, my gut reaction would be that there's no way you can fold a K high flush draw to a 50% river check-raise, but is that actually true?
Here's the solver's check-raising range in a SRP as the BB:
The solver IS raising Q9 here... but not for value. It is doing it as a blocker-bluff. Q9 blocks both 99 and QQ which are in my range. The solver is also raising a few 9x hands as bluffs. The only hands it is truly raising for value are: 1) 33, 2) 99, and 3) nut flush draws.
Even against a perfectly balanced, solver range, K6dd is actually indifferent:
This is one of those river situations where it is VERY easy to just make a snap call based on absolute hand strength. However, when we consider that this is multiway, and thus ranges will be stronger, when we consider that top two pair has to be turned into a bluff to stay balanced, and when we consider that BB can defend with a mullion offsuit Ax combos here, this spot is actually a pretty clear fold as bizarre as that is.
I ultimately called thinking that my opponent could raise my river b75 with a Q high flush, but the solver never raises that thin here. Does a human? In multiway, I'm leaning towards no. Multiway pots tend to be played for more straight up than they should be. Again, as bizarre as it is, I don't think this is a profitable call.
Overpair on T High, Straight Complete Board
I feel pretty good about this fold even in retrospect. Not only does a straight complete on this board, but some villains will defend T9o at 100% frequency. 76s and all sets besides maybe TT are in villain's range here.
Look at what the solver's bluffing range looks like:
We're supposed to jam virtually every straight block in existence here including J7 and K2. There are TONS of pairs turned into jams like Q4 and 42. That still isn't enough bluffs so the solver jams AJo, too. There is NO WAY a human is finding that many unnatural bluffs. I can't see how this wouldn't be an underbluffed spot.
The worst value hand the solver jams is two pair so I have a pure bluff-catcher. Even in the solver, my QQ combo is indifferent here with 50NL solves:
This is the exact kind of hand that I'd probably have snap-called in the past due to absolute hand strength. Now, though, I consider this a quality lay down.
Middling Flush on 4 Straight Board
I don't think this hand is particularly interesting, but I do think I made a sizable river error here (no pun intended, lol). Time and time again, when you look at the solver, you're not making big bets on 4 straight boards (for the most part). In this case, there is also a flush completed. b150 isn't even mixed in until you have at least a Q high flush. With a 9 high flush, b150 is generally just going to isolate you against better flush draws.
To make matters worse, I'm blocking one of the main calling hands that I want Villain to have by holding a 6. Because of that, I should actually be sizing WAY further down and attempting to extract value from sets, two pair, and Ax. The best sizing for that is going to be b33-b50.
I just want to point this out because this isn't the first time I've bungled sizing on 4 straight boards. They're a little tricky to get right in terms of thin value betting. This one was made even trickier because of the completed flush.
Well, that's actually all for today's review. With only 400 hands to look over, there wasn't much to do.
I'm off to the gym. I'll be back later to review the rest of today's study work.
RIO Video Study
GTOW AI: Practicing 3bet Pots by Nuno Alvarez
It took me far too long to realize that this was actually a heads-up video, but, nevertheless, I watched it (little bit of sunk cost fallacy going on here, lol). This isn't my favorite type of video. I generally prefer theoretical videos that lay out concepts to play and explains even when they're against the trainer. That said, I do think it was interesting to hear a high level player go over how they're selecting bluffs and bluff catchers with blocker considerations in real time. That's something I need to get way better at.
GTOW Trainer Session
Today, I elected to just do 200 post-flop hands randomly selected from any 3 bet configuration. I'm still trying to focus on 3 bet pots with my study right now, but, after almost a week off, I kind of wanted some general training to make sure I didn't forget how to play poker entirely.
Luckily, I seem to not have forgotten everything yet, but my brain is absolutely not back in tip top shape yet. It is taking me way longer than usual to make decisions. I'm debating taking another day off of playing or at least taking a shorter session. I would just take a nap but it is already 5:30pm and I'd like to be able to fall asleep tonight without issue. We'll see. I'll probably just play as usual (and then regret not listening to the signs my body was giving me).
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ACR 50NL Session #1 Results
-588bb in 1303 hands
I decided before the session started that I would only play for two hours. The main reason for that is because I'm still catching back up after traveling. I woke up today at 10am and that automatically put me several hours behind my usual schedule. Additionally, I just wasn't feeling quite myself today. I want to get to bed particularly early and see if I can't get back up to feeling 95%+ tomorrow. Today I felt like I was operating at 80% or so.
With all that said, not exactly a fantastic debut at 50NL... lol. I'm not particularly worried about this session. I think I've been playing long enough to know the difference between playing poorly and running poorly and this was more of the latter than the former. However, as I thought, my brain was in a bit of a fog for the first 30-45 minutes of this session. I might've made a few questionable calldowns. I'll see tomorrow morning in my review.
If this session is any indication, 50NL is going to be much harder than 25NL. The main reason I say that is because there were a lot less bad players on the tables. I was playing eight tables, and I was seated on almost every table going, there was only 2-3 players limping across all eight tables. That's never a good sign. My best guess is that each table only had 1 fish. That makes things much, much harder especially if the regs are even a tiny bit better than previous stakes.
It is what it is! Just got to keep getting better.
One more thing... I am extremely pleased to have a -6 buy-in session where I feel almost zero negative emotions once logging out of ACR. I will never enjoy losing, but this just feels like another day at the office. I can barely find a trace of anger inside of me. I think this is a sign that the mental game work I have been doing is working. Now, we'll see what happens if this turns into a legitimate down swing instead of just a single bad session. For now, progression feels pretty good.
Interview with Nacho's CFP Tomorrow
As I mentioned earlier, I have an interview with the team manager over at Nacho's CFP tomorrow at noon my time. I'll post an update here as soon as I know whether or not I'm going to be joining the team.
That's all for now, folks.
Have a good one everyone!
~Orca
Aug. 28, 2024 | 1:54 a.m.
8/26/24 Beating 50NL Day 0
Back From Vacation
I have just returned from vacation this morning! After four long days of travel, wedding events, dancing, drinking, low/poor sleep, I decided to take another full day off when arriving home today. I'll be back at it playing my first 50NL session tomorrow.
Interview with CFP on Wednesday
I heard back from Nacho's CFP regarding my application on Sunday. The fact that I heard back seemingly means that there must have been at least some level of interest in my application even though I'm just a brand new 50NL player. I have an interview scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. If all goes well, perhaps I'll be a member of Nacho's CFP by the end of the week. Wish me luck with that.
Poker Study on Vacation
I did almost nothing with regards to working on Poker during my vacation. However, on the flight out, where I was by myself, I did manage to read Jared Tendler's The Mental Game of Poker (Part I). This was my third time going through it, but, this time, I actually read it and filled out the work sheets versus just listening to the audiobook version.
The Mental Game of Poker
While I do think some of these answers get pretty personal, I'm electing to post it anyway as evidence of the work I'm doing away from the table to improve my mental game. The answers are so long that I do not expect a single person to read them anyway, lol.
I also want to post this because I think the book is excellent. Tendler's work is definitely the single best resource that I've come across for improving your mental game thus far. There are concrete, actionable suggestions on how to improve your tilt and, more importantly, work towards long-term "resolution" where you actually remove specific tilt triggers. I highly recommend the Mental Game of Poker.
Mental Game of Poker Client Questionnaire
First, share a bit about yourself (education, interests, family, etc.)
I am a lifelong competitive athlete. In particular, I spent more than ten years training specifically for strength sports like bodybuilding and powerlifting. I went to the University of Washington to study Business Administration but I never finished my degree opting instead to start my own business in the fitness world. I’ve been self-employed my entire life. Poker is just the next step in a life that has been entirely self-directed and self-driven for as long as I can remember.
Briefly describe your poker history. How would you characterize your
progress? What game(s)/limit(s) do you play?
I started learning the rules of Poker in November of ‘23. I played my first real money hand at 2NL in March ‘24. As of August ‘24, I have graduated to 50NL. As far as I can tell, I am progressing at a rate that probably exceeds the norm and I credit that to the fact I have treated poker as a full time profession from Day 1.
What are your goals in Poker? Short and long-term.
In the short-term, my goal is to beat 50NL. I only need to take one step at a time. In the medium term, within 3-5 years, I’d like to reach high stakes online (1KNL+). In the next 10-20 years, I’d like to challenge the very best players in the world and see where I stand. Along the way towards striving for competitive greatness, my ultimate goal is to secure financial security for my family for multiple generations. First and foremost, I'm playing for money. However, as a competitor, winning is always going to be important to me.
What personal goals does Poker support?
My primary goal in life is self-actualization through mastery. Poker is the field in which I will attempt to achieve mastery and develop into the absolute best version of my self. Further, I cannot imagine a life without competition and Poker is my current arena of competition.
List and describe the problems in your mental game. List them in order
of importance to you or by severity. Give as much information as
possible including the triggers, signs, and what you believe are the
causes.
I stake far more on Poker than monetary success. My entire self-concept is staked on whatever I am attempting to master. For me, Poker is the crucible by which I determine my self-worth. Coming from a competitive sporting background where I had far more control over the results, staking so much on Poker can be problematic because variance is the primary determinant of short-term success.
I know I dedicate more to the game than most players can afford to do. I study and play for a combined 10+ hours a day, seven days a week. This leads to a deep-seated sense of entitlement. Somewhere, deep down, I believe I deserve to win more than most players do.
This is, of course, not how variance works, but that doesn’t always matter to me in the moment. With so much on the line with regards to my poker success, I encourage an intense degree of “hate losing” tilt. Even though I know it is irrational, there is a part of me that feels like a losing session is taking a piece of my self-worth. When I lose that piece to fish getting insanely lucky many times across a session, I can experience intense anger. I think this is because a part of my subconscious believes that I deserve to always win.
The larger problem in all of this is getting caught up in any short term results whatsoever. Unlike other sports, a winning session in poker means very little. It isn’t like winning a game. It’s more like winning a single play. Even bad teams score points regularly in all Mental Game of Poker Client Questionnaire
I have a tendency to forget that, if I’m going to stake so much of my identity and sense of self on poker, I can only do so in the extreme long-term. That’s the only time the sample size becomes meaningful enough to say anything. It doesn’t matter if I win or lose a single session. It doesn’t even matter if I eventually become one of the best players in the world. It only matters that, across the life of my career, I do everything in my power to become the best player that I can be.
Losing a single session has no reflection on my talent as a player nor does it reflect poorly on my work ethic. The short term doesn’t matter and I have to stop giving it significant weight. What I should give weight to is the quality of my process in the short term and whether I’m making satisfactory progress towards being a better player in the long run. I am succeeding spectacularly in both regards in my opinion. There’s no need to indulge negative emotions towards the short-term when I’m accomplishing what I’ve set out to accomplish in the long run… thus far.
This anger tends to manifest itself in outbursts. I have smashed things, thrown things, cussed out loud, and, in so doing, scared both my wife and my dogs on occasion. That’s unacceptable. Playing worse while tilting means absolutely nothing in comparison to potentially making what I love most in this world afraid of my behavior. I am sickened by even the thought of my loved ones being afraid of me because I lack the emotional maturity to regulate my anger. It’s completely unacceptable.
What have you tried to fix any of these issues? What level of success
have you had?
So far, I have read The Mental Game of Poker three times, I’ve implemented meditation, journaling, and I listen to at least 1-2 hours of mental game content per day. I have had a good degree of success with this approach so far, but I can’t say if the issue is completely resolved or not. The true litmus test will be how I react to my next terrible run of bad luck or losing. I don’t experience these issues while winning and I’ve been crushing lately. These issues mostly come up when I’m having a session where I lose at least 5 buy-ins (especially if I’m doing so in a very unlucky fashion). I’m hoping that filling out this questionnaire will reveal any missing pieces to my approach that I can add in to resolve this issue for ever.
Do factors outside of poker ever affect your play? If so, how? Does
poker ever negatively impact your life? If yes, how?
I would say that outside factors do not affect my play, but I have yet to experience something truly traumatic during my time playing poker. If I had a loved one in trouble, I don’t know I could play well through that. However, nothing short of a major life event affects me at the table (well, computer screen, lol).
The opposite is not true. When I have a particularly brutal session, I have allowed it to spill over into the rest of my evening including the time I have dedicated to spending with my wife. While I am generally quite good at getting over this negativity within an hour or so, we often only have 2-3 hours of time at the end of the night to relax. If I spend half of it mad about something that has nothing to do with her, it is extremely unfair to our relationship.
Why do you play poker? What motivates you to play, why do you love it,
and what do you get out of it?
I play Poker for two main reasons: 1) I want to make enough money to secure my family’s financial future and 2) I absolutely love the opportunity to pour my entire heart and soul into a competition. As a kid, Chess was my first true love. Poker is like a second chance to see what Chess could’ve been had I been as driven as a kid as I am now. All I’ve ever wanted in life was a chance to achieve some kind of competitive greatness. With poker, I think I’ve finally found something where my level of inherent talent might be somewhat close to matching my work ethic. It feels like I might’ve finally found my lane; it feels like I have an amazing opportunity to give everything I have to something that I’m well-suited for. I love the competition and I cherish the chance to find out just how good I can be. I play Poker because I think it provides a truly unique opportunity to achieve financial abundance and self-actualization simultaneously. If I can become the best version of myself through Poker, I’ll have achieved all of the most important goals and dreams I’ve ever had. I will stop at nothing to make those dreams a reality.
List your three to five biggest distractions while playing. Describe
why they are a problem.
My biggest distractions while playing are my wife, my dogs, and my phone. None of them are a big problem, though. While playing, I only allow family members to get through my DND and they have to call twice back to back. All other alerts are muted. My wife usually isn’t in the same room while I play, but I do occasionally have to remind her not to try and get my attention while I’m playing. My dogs occasionally come up and try to get my attention while I play, but this happens for five seconds no more than once or twice a session. I think it is cute and it doesn’t disrupt me enough to be a problem. Focus is not a big problem for me. I think I truly excel in the area of staying focused on the game while I play.
How do you decide when to play? Do you have set times, is it flexible, or is it random?
I play at set times for set durations. I try to time my play to the presence of fish in the pool. I set my hours precisely so that emotional decision making is never a factor in session duration. I found that I’ll exploit any flexility in schedule if I’m tilting. I’ll use that flexibility to convince myself to play longer when losing in order to try and finish on a win. Mostly, this just leads to C game play as sessions stretch into the 5-6+ hour zone. I stopped this entirely by using a strict 4 hour session duration.
Describe what you do before you play. How do you warmup, if you do?
I do a 15 minute guided meditation before every session using the Primed Mind App. After that, I play 50 hands against the solver trainer on four tables. I start joining real tables from there.
What is your average session length? How many sessions do you play per
day? How many hours do you play per month on average? Are any of these
shorter than your goals?
4 hours. 1 session per day. 120 hours per month. None are shorter than my goals. I mostly worry that I am not taking enough time off, actually.
What are the reasons you would quit a session prematurely?
I don’t quit early unless there’s a life emergency. I play the four hours I’m scheduled to play even if I’m tilting.
Describe your work ethic? Is procrastination or burnout ever a
problem?
I have burnt myself out in other endeavors in the past by working too hard and not taking enough breaks. This is a problem that I’m aware of and that is inherent in my personality. My mind can handle more than my body. I will push myself to the point of breaking if I am not careful. I more capable of overwork than underwork. I generally do not procrastinate.
Describe what you do away from the table to improve technically as a
player?
I important all of my hands into the GTO Wizard analyzer. I look at every single hand that made it to a flop in the analyzer to check for EV errors and to see if I took a very low frequency line. I try to find commonalities in the spots I am losing EV. From there, I’ll look for a RIO video on the topic I seem to be struggling with. After that, I’ll load up the GTO Trainer and practice 150-200 hands in that same spot.
Do you ever act without thinking in a negative way? If yes, why? What is the typical situation when this happens?
Yes! This is occasionally a large problem for me, but I have gotten much better. Sometimes I snap call river bets that deserve significantly more consideration before bluff-catching. I believe this is due to a lack of training in these spots.
I immediately make an emotional decision as to whether or not I think they have it, or based on my absolute hand strength in the worst cases, and I smash the call button without fully evaluating their range. This happens because I have not trained these river spots to the level of unconscious competence. I didn’t know what to think about to evaluate whether a call was a good decision so I just used emotion instead.
Once I realized I was doing this, I spent a full week training only bluff-catching river bets and I found that developing a process for evaluating each situation during training carried over to real game play. I didn’t have to rely on my gut instinct (which is now better than it was before the training). After seeing hundreds of river bets against the trainer, and having to think through all of them, I engrained the evaluation process through that training. I have been making way, way less snap decisions on the river.
Describe your mindset when you are playing your best.
My mind is empty, but extremely alert. I am hyper-focused on the details of every single table. I don’t waste cognitive resources on a running mental commentary. I am mostly observing and thinking only sporadically. It’s as if the correct answers just flow through me without effort. My arousal is actually quite high and there is even some anxiety. If I’m too comfortable with the situation, because things feel too easy, I relax and my focus wanes to some degree.
Do you ever get down about your ability as a player? Does it happen
after one bad session?
I only get down about my ability during sustained losing periods. One session generally isn’t enough to shake my confidence unless I can clearly tell I was outplayed by the majority of the pool. That just hasn’t happened much. I only had any shred of doubt in the middle of a 100 buy-in down swing at 5NL. In the end, it turned out I was playing unwinnably wide ranges. I fixed that and immediately crushed 5NL. If anything, I have more confidence than I should given my very short track record. I’ve only played 500k hands. I’ve just made it out of the micros. I don’t know how hard this is going to get yet. Still, I have deep, inner confidence that I will find a way to win no matter what. That never leaves me for longer than a thought or two. At my core, at my deepest level, I believe in myself. Doubt never penetrates too far beyond the surface.
How well do you typically handle pressure situations in poker or
elsewhere?
I absolutely thrive under competitive pressure. In the face of fight or flight, I always fight. For some reason, it brings out the best in me. I tend to drop all inhibitions and pretense. My focus narrows to only what will help me win. I train so hard and these moments allow my training to just take over completely.
When it comes to social pressure, there I don’t do as well. I always put my goals first, but I have a tendency to acquiesce to others when it won’t affect my goals. I dislike being put in high pressure social situations such as a situation where I have to pick sides on the spot, for example.
Do you have specific memories in Poker that still pop into your head
randomly? Bad beats, tournament bust outs, or others.
No. I don’t think about the past often. I definitely don’t think about specific bad hands in poker repeatedly. I don’t even do that with major life mistakes, really. Once I learn the lesson, I move on.
Does thinking about poker ever keep you up at night or prevent you
from enjoying your life? If so, what are you thinking about? Do you
get stuck on mistakes?
Poker doesn’t keep me up at night, but I generally do go to sleep thinking about it. I dream about hands on most nights. I am a very different kind of person. My biggest joy in life comes from putting forth maximum effort in a pursuit I’m committed to. I take vacations and engage in hobbies so that I’m fresh for work. It isn’t the other way around for me. I live to work. I love to work. Working on something is the main fuel to my fire. I absolutely love spending time with my wife and my dogs as well, but I experience that happiness very differently than what I experience while working. That kind of things brings joy, smiles and laughter to my life. It fills my world with light. Work fills my world with purpose. Work fills my world with intensity. Work gives me a feeling of being alive that is hard to match. The other things I love fill me with gratitude and peace. My loved ones are the most important thing in the world to me, but I couldn’t live well without meaningful work.
You have the ability to magically make any of the issues in question 5
disappear. What it would be? Why?
I would stop having angry outbursts. My loved ones feeling safe and secure is more important than anything else. Poker doesn’t even matter compared to that. I don’t matter compared to that. Throwing a temper tantrum and scaring everyone around you is juvenile, unacceptable behavior. It also just doesn’t fit the image I have for myself. I am not someone who is out of control. I am not someone who lacks the discipline to regulate their emotions. It isn’t a good look and I hate it. I expect more from myself than to get so angry that I throw something across the room.
List or describe your mental strengths
I am focused, intense, and resilient. I do not quit or give up easily. I am resourceful and have a strong sense of self-belief. I expect myself to always find a way in the end. I want to win and I am a winner.
Do you take notes on your game after a session? If yes, describe.
Yes. I typically write out a few paragraphs in my poker blog/journal after each session detailing a few major process keys. I tend to track whether I had angry outbursts, whether I violated any of my personal rules like table limits or session duration, and whether or not I thought I played well outside of the final score for the session.
How much of your evaluation of your ability as a player is influenced
by results?
If I’m evaluating my ability as a player, results are quite important. A truly good player will have a massive edge at the stakes I play. I think long-term results are quite relevant to judging your quality as a player. I endeavor to weight short-term results as close to zero as possible. I don’t think I’m at the point where i have achieved pure objectivity regardless of whether or not I won the hand, the session, the month, etc. but that isn’t my primary measurement. I use things like the GTOW Analyzer to ensure I’m not making abject blunders. I review all my hands the next day to see if I used lines that are generally GTO approved. Still, I could stand to improve further with regards to letting short-term results influence my thinking even less.
Do you exercise?
Yes. I typically get to the gym twice a week these days but I go on walks out doors with my dogs for at least 45 minutes per day. I could stand to sacrifice a little study time to get my gym frequency back up to 4-5. I have let that slide using the rationale that I have a surplus of physical/health ability due to my many years of competitive strength sport. In retrospect, this reasoning is faulty. I exercise now mainly for the cognitive benefits and those are experienced only when exercise is done at relatively high frequencies. I will up my gym frequency going forward.
How much do you sleep per night? Is sleep ever an issue? If so,
describe. What do you generally notice about your play on days where
you sleep less?
I average 7.5 hours of sleep per night. I have struggled with insomnia for most of my life and I am prescribed a CPAP for sleep apnea. These days, I am a bit of a Nazi about my sleep routine and I mostly have it under control. Once in a blue moon, I’ll suffer a bout of insomnia or take longer than usual to fall asleep. My play doesn’t seem significantly worse BUT my emotional regulation IS. I will tilt far more easily and for far longer at lesser provocations when sleep deprived.
Do you eat or drink while playing?
Only water. I have a pre-session meal each time to ensure I don’t get hungry while playing. Usually, I eat a homemade burger with high quality ingredients from the store (not fast food junk).
Do you use cigarettes, alcohol or any other drugs while playing? If
so, do you think it has a negative impact on your game?
I never use alcohol or cigarettes. I have used caffeine while playing in the past but I find that it leads to a vicious cycle of fatigue. Caffeine is a legitimate performance booster in my eyes. However, it hurts my sleep quality. The next day, I’ll feel a little more tired than usual so I’ll take caffeine again. Then the cycle repeats… except I need higher and higher caffeine doses to get the same effects and the higher doses are even worse for my sleep. In the end, the negative chronic effects of caffeine outweigh the positive acutes ones at least for me.
Do you have any medical illnesses at this time? If so, how does it
affect the answers in question 5.
I don’t have any medical illnesses.
Do you have any psychological illnesses diagnosed by a doctor or
someone in the field?
No. I’m afraid I might score fairly high in narcissism and neuroticism if I’m being honest, though. I don’t think it is anything that comes even remotely close to clinical significance.
Estimate the total amount lost per month due to the issues you want to
address. Estimate the amount of time you play your A-Game.
The main issue I want to address isn’t about money. It’s worth more than that… it’s priceless. I don’t want to scare my loved ones. I mean, there is nothing more valuable than that. Money doesn’t come close to that.
I think I play my A-game only 80% of the time. My true A-game is characterized by an extraordinarily high level of intensity. I think I benefit from much higher levels of arousal than most poker players. Most players need to calm down, meditate, and ground themselves to avoid fear and anxiety taking over. If I get too relaxed, my focus wanes. I think I am the rare player who actually benefits from listening to Rocky montages before I play. I am driven by strong emotional content. When I’m reminded about how much I care about my goals, my focus heightens and the overwhelming desire to win guides me to a level where I value every single decision no matter how small. When I relax, I begin to autopilot more and I’m more likely to give up on pots where I’m not entirely sure what to do..
Key Personal Takeaways:
1) I must continue to deepen my understanding of variance especially with regards to how irrelevant a single session is in determining your quality as a player. You're never going to win every single session in poker. That's just not how the game works. Getting upset and feeling like you're now a lesser player when you lose a single poker session is no different than feeling like you're a loser if someone scores a single point on you in a basketball game. Basketball is not a game where you can realistically hold good opponents to zero points. Neither is poker. You're going to lose sometimes and this has nothing to do with whether or not you're a good player. It has nothing to do with how far you'll go in the game. It is a fairly meaningless, tiny sample.
2) I need to get back in the gym more often. I want to get into my best ever physical shape which I believe is possible. I don't mean that from the perspective of strength and muscle mass because that will never happen again. However, I do think I can get my RHR as low as it has ever been. I think I can get in the best cardio shape of my life. I think I can get the highest HRV I've ever had. I think I can get my cognitive function to the highest level it has ever been at, too. To do that, I need to stop treating exercise as something optional that I only do when I finish studying early. If I have to study a little less, so be it.
3) My biggest tilt issues are: a) angry outbursts and b) making decisions without thinking.
I think a) is primarily related to entitlement and not understanding variance at a deep enough level. I've gotten better, but there is more work to do. You are not entitled to constantly win just because you work hard. You will never get to a point where you win every session. That's variance; not an indictment against you as a player or your work ethic.
As for b), I think this mainly comes down to a lack of training. If I'm finding spots where I'm making bad, snap calls and snap decisions. I don't know these spots well enough. My default emotional reactions are feeding me incorrect answers which means I don't know the correct answers on the level of unconscious competence. These snap decisions are a GREAT sign that I need to study that spot more.
Overall, I found this to be a super helpful exercise and I am very glad I did it!
I will be back tomorrow with some real poker study and game play.
Have a good one everyone!
Orca
Aug. 26, 2024 | 7:24 p.m.
RIO Video Study Session
1) Check-Raising Low Textures in 3BP SB vs BTN by Josh Lessner
1) Low/Mid Connected
a) These boards will typically be better for IP as IP will hit lots of sets/straights/2p that OOP won’t have
b) OOP will have tons of whiffed overcard hands
c) IP will stab quite often to deny equity from OOP’s overcards
d) To make IP indifferent between betting and checking, OOP has to XR quite often even on seemingly dangerous textures
e) The XR strat consists of a small XR and a bigger geometric size
f) The small XR is centered around overpairs while the bigger XR is vulnerable Ops + top pair that XR flop and jam most most turns
g) The small XR is utilized on very wet textures and the money piles in on safe turns. For example, on 876fd there’s tons of turns that kill our flop value range. Most runouts are so dicey that even overpairs check/call until the a favorable runout is seen
2) Low, Dry Textures
a) Much simpler texture to navigate
b) Middling frequency cbet, using geometric XR size
3) Range Construction: What Makes A Quality Bluff Candidate?
a) Ideally something that turn equity often or unblocks folds
b) T8s on 952 unblocks lots of stabs, blocks TT/88, and turns equity on many, many cards
c) It seems VERY likely that people are underfloating XRs
d) At low SPRs, don’t forget how valuable a pair is
e) On really dry boards, don’t be afraid to get creative, AK on 833 without relevant suits. IP has to float tons of worse high card hands. Consider XR very aggressively to exploit overfolds
2) 3B Pots: In Position Barreling on Low Textures by Josh Lessner
OOP must develop a significant checking range on these boards. That means you’re going to play lots of check/bet/call lines. Knowing the general IP barreling strategy and the OOP defense against barreling is something that you’ll need often.
After the flop goes x/b/c, the majority of OOP will be high cards withs ome sort of backdoor equity or SDV. This means that: a) OOP will have an equity advantage as they will be x/c lots of dominating high cards with SDV and b) IP will have a polarity advantage as IP is betting lots of PP that are far ahead or air that is far behind. This polarity will drive IP barreling frequency up by a good margin.
Think about what turn cards are good each player. OOP will xc lots of AK/AQ type hands so the highest ranks will be better for OOP and OOP will typically donk quite a bit on A or K. Low cards will be better for IP as OOP doesn’t XC many hands with low cards. Make sure that you don’t stop betting just because an overcard to your pocket pair comes OTT (especially if it isn’t A/K/Q).
Range construction… the nice thing about barreling Ip on low boards is that most of your air has 6 outs to a pair that is probably good at SD. Think about Villain’s response. If you have a 6hi FD, does your perform better as a bet or a x? You might get jammed on. You might get called by dominating draws.
River play… if you river a pair after stab/barrel, on a low, dry board, you can often jam river for value. You’ll get a lot of Ax calls.
The focus of today's GTOW Trainer work will be exclusively 9 high and below boards. The scope of the training is a little broader than just specifically low boards SB vs BTN, but I think it should be extremely valuable nonetheless.
GTOW Trainer Session
200 Post-Flop Hands on 9 High and Below boards in 3 bet pots for today's training.
By the way, not that anyone really cares, but my scores are not actually this high on the trainer. I have the configuration setup so that if I get an answer "wrong" or if I "blunder", it pauses the session and allows me to pull up the range viewer to see what the correct strategy is. From there, I always use the "change my move" feature to see what the correct line should look and feel like. I get plenty of these wrong even if the screen shots never reflect it, lol.
With the way I structure these sessions, I don't want to sit and stare at 2 solves for 90 minutes. I'm trying to put in volume so that I can subconsciously build intuition for correct play. I do also consciously try to pay attention to frequencies, but training in this manner is what I've done the entire time I've played poker so far. I've always figured that, as a new player, getting a ton of reps seeing perfectly played hands will allow me to be able to intuit the types of moves I should be making in real game play on boards and in scenarios I've never seen.
I think this is why I'm often able to respond decently well to all the random moves that fish make. I don't only practice against 1-2 sizes. It's not going to throw me for a loop if someone uses an unusual size. I train against a GTO opponent that splits range into six sizes on most streets, lol. I can usually guess how to proceed without making massive mistakes because of the volume of GTOW trainer work I do.
Even though I do ton of solver work, I would actually say my game play style is intuitive first and foremost. I am a "feel" player, lol.
I realize that this style of play has a "hard cap" and that is why I am also trying to consciously work on developing correct frequencies. That said, even if I continue this level of output for twenty years, I may never "memorize" all common spots. You'll always have to rely on feel and intuition to some degree. It doesn't hurt to build up that skill.
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ACR 25NL Reg Tables Session #4
+305bb in 434 hands
Well, there it is! That was actually a bit anti-climatic. I waltzed straight into +3 buy-ins without breaking a sweat. I won one stack the hard way, but then I won an AKo vs QQ flip and followed that up by winning AKhh vs AKo about five minutes later. Can't be too mad about being one lucky SOB, can ya!?
I'm obviously way, way short of my standard 50k sample per stake. I'm not thrilled about that, but I'm going to challenge myself to move up anyway because I believe 25NL is one of the softest stakes on ACR. The reason I believe this is very simple. 25NL is divided into two pools: Blitz and Reg Tables. The best microstakes players on ACR, all of them, play Blitz. The game is magnitudes harder than any other microstake on ACR. Because all the good regs busy playing Blitz (wasting time?), I am sitting down at eight tables where, AT MOST, there is one decent reg besides me. That's it. There are weak regs who are barely better than the fish and then there are some of the fishiest fish you can imagine. I think I could just sit here and keep crushing this stake with great ease. I don't see the point.
I have the roll for 50NL. I'm up over $1500 now. That is 30 buy-ins. That is PLENTY to take a shot at 50NL. Why not? Really, why not? If it doesn't go well, I just move back down, crush this stake again, replenish the roll, and try again.
Coaching
Now that I'm a 50NL player, I'm going to apply for Nacho's CFP. I think it is the perfect fit for me and it is exactly what I am looking for in a coaching program. I am a systems-oriented thinker and the "game plan" they have has systematized the entire game tree.
More than that, my BIGGEST weakness as a player is using poker software correctly. Outside of decent skills with GTOW, I have no idea what I'm doing. I have no idea how to collect data and do MDA, I can barely use PT4 to track my results, lol. I don't use a HUD. Nacho's CFP focuses on all the areas that I am weakest in: MDA, exploitation, and systematic, simplification of the game tree.
Wish me luck with the application!
Final Thoughts Before Holiday/Vacation
I'm going to watch some Poker videos and read a Poker book in my down time on vacation (on the 5+ hour plane flights), but I don't anticipate having much to update the log with in the coming days. I'll make very brief posts, but I need to let go of poker for the next few days and enjoy the time with my wife. She was very worried about trying to figure out a way to get a computer set up for me to study and play, but I told her that I don't even want a computer there. The support is very, very much appreciated, but this time is going to be dedicated to her and relaxing and recharging.
Oh, I suppose I should post my "final" 25NL graph:
+2069bb in 8561 hands
17.59bb/100 all-in adjusted win rate
23.81bb/100 actual win rate
I obviously ran hot and had some good luck in this stretch, but, subjectively, I really felt like I was crushing this stake at a rate well beyond any other that I've ever played.
For all those who think that you can no longer grind your way out of the micros because "bots", rake, or because the games are just too hard, that's utter nonsense. Again, I'm living proof. My ambition is to keep pushing much, much further to fully prove the poker dream is alive and well.
Have a good one everyone!
~Orca
Aug. 21, 2024 | 10 p.m.
8/21/24 Beating 25NL Day #5
Add me on Discord:
Mental Game Development
Health Management
Health Metrics:
Bodyweight: 216.4lbs / 98.2kg
Sleep (Mask Time): 7.3 hours
Health Habits:
Meditation, 20min: Complete, (10/12, 83%)
Gym: Incomplete, (3/12, 25%)
No Caffeine: 3/3, 100%
Mental Game Content
1) Bankroll Matters by Tommy Angelo
I think there were a couple big takeaways from this video, but the first takeaway is that you need significantly less buy-ins to shot-take when you have a non-depleting bank roll. When people need to take money out in order to pay for things, this makes it significantly harder to move up in stakes. Luckily, my life is currently situated in a way where I shouldn't need to even consider this before reaching high stakes.
The other interesting idea was converting your bankroll into units of time once you reach a sufficiently high level. I do think this makes a good deal of sense. The more money you have, the more you stand to lose when you blow significant chunks of it. A multimillion dollar roll can potentially be shuttled into an investment account and you can live off of the interest for the rest of your life. There's probably no reason to risk 10-20% of your roll at any given time like I do every single time I play 8+ tables.
Additionally, unless you switch to live and find juicy games, there's only so high you can climb in stakes before edge evaporates into reg-battling nothingness anyway. Online poker income isn't infinitely scalable. There is a legitimate glass ceiling for most of us. Maybe if you're Linus things are different. However, assuming you won't be able to beat Linus (lol), at a certain point, it just makes sense to start shuttling poker income into investment classes with more room for growth like real estate.
Personally, I already own one investment property from other business ventures and my main financial goal with Poker is to fully pay off the mortgage on that property and acquire a few more. If I can do that within the next 5-10 years, I will almost certainly switch over to live poker and start playing for different reasons. If money was no longer a concern, I think I'd love to focus on major MTTs and going for titles, bracelets, POTY awards, etc.
However, for now, there's so far to go before that's even a far off dream that it isn't even worth thinking about. What is worth thinking about, at least some day, is when continuing to climb the stakes no longer becomes worth your time from the perspective of edge, variance, and increase in hourly. That point does exist... but it is probably quite deep into high stakes when you reach games that are exclusively reg battles.
2) How Poker Shapes our Character by Leszek Badurowicz
The single notion that I want to focus the most on from this video is the idea that you can be so hard working and so disciplined that it becomes a detriment to your progress. I know this to be true. Not only is overworking not worth it solely due to the damage it can cause to relationships and your psychological well-being, but burnout is a legitimate risk. I have pushed myself into burnout several times in my life. Each time, I needed multiples months of doing almost nothing to recover.
I've gotten significantly better at recognizing the signs, but, even now, I know I'm doing too much. At some point, I will need to institute at least one full day off per week. In Elliot Roe's A Game book, he says that most of his high stakes clients settle on 5.5 days per week with one full day off of everything, one day off of studying, and two full days off of playing. I think that sounds about right for sustainability.
I also recognize the need for a secondary hobby that provide an emotional boost when things are going particularly poor in your main pursuit. I will most likely turn to the thing I have always turned to: lifting weights. Right now, I train at my apartment's crappy hotel style gym. I can get the job done there, but nothing replaces lifting real weights at a real gym. Some day, and some day soon, I will get back to doing some real lifting (at a significantly reduced capacity and time expenditure). I will pursue some kind of physical goals again and I will use these pursuits as my secondary hobbies to balance out the poker obsession.
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Poker Strategy Development
The stats are the same as ever, but I did not play well in this session. I blundered repeatedly in high leverage situations. I may have won 9 buy-ins, but, in all honesty, I squandered away maybe half of my win rate in this session and that's just egregious.
The theme of the session was abject blundering.
We'll start with something I almost never commit...
A Big Preflop Error
My RNG on this one was literally 100. I could've sworn that there was a very small jamming range with 99 against a cold 4 bet in this spot, but there isn't. It is just an artifact of rounding.
Unfortunately for me, it was AA and not AK so gg and a full stack donated on a hand that is supposed to be indifferent between calling/folding not calling/jamming.
Missing HUGE Value with Ill-Timed Shoves
Here, I flop two pair on A high flush draw board in a BvB 3 bet pot. I get check-raised on the flop and immediately jam. Why? This makes no sense. I'm playing a good reg in this hand who is unlikely to stack off light with a middling Ax holding. I need to call AT LEAST one street here. Many runouts are entirely safe for me. If a scary card comes on the turn, I can react appropriately versus whatever size Villain chooses for the turn barrel. Villain used their entire time bank before ultimately folding. I definitely could've gotten at least one more full street of value here on a safe run out. Very likely, on a brick run out, they're giving up a stack with an Ax holding. This was horrible.
This one isn't AS bad, but it is still pretty damn bad. The turn here needs to be 75% in 150bb deep pots to maximize the value you extract from strong Kx and one diamond holdings. Then, on the river, the shove doesn't make a lot of sense because you're just folding out Kx that you want to extract value from and you're isolating yourself against flush draws and full houses. If you bet ~35% pot here (or 60% considering the b50 turn), you likely get a call from Kx and walk away with another 30bb. If you get shoved on, you hate life, but you make the call and hope it's a bluff or a worse flush draw. As played, I only got ~35bb out of this. Played properly, it should've been 60-70. That's a huge chunk of missed value.
This one is against a super fun player so I'm not as mad about it. I got my money in ahead and I correctly put them on a draw. That said, again, there are plenty of run outs that go in my favor here. B50 extracts another street of value and allows me to slow down on rivers that aren't favorable. Against this particular opponent, I don't think I made much of a mistake, but it is worth noting that I went on later in the session to make the two shoves above. That shows a pattern of incorrect thinking and NOT just a one-off decision against a fun player. That is the main reason I point this one out, also. I need to be FAR more judicious in properly selecting value shoves.
The Return of Hero Calling Recreationals
I actually blame this one, and maybe a few of the ones that will follow, on playing too many tables. I didn't take into full consideration that this hand is against the same super fun player from the TT hand above and that they had used an uncharacteristically small 3 bet (we all know what that means). You can't call river shoves against recreationals who use the tiny 3 bet unless you know they bluff or you have something that beats an overpair. I was perfectly fine to mine the flop and turn, especially with the prices Villain gave me, but that river call is horrible. Just horrible. I mean, that's not even a call at equilibrium against a proper 3 bet size. I realize there are missed flush draws and maybe a missed straight or two with this one, but, again, we all know that fun players are heavily weighted towards strong pocket pairs when they use tiny 3 bets. I know better than this.
The SAME fun player limps from the HJ, gets isolated to 3.4bb, and I raise to 12bb. HJ fun player calls. Reg folds. The flop comes down 643r. I check and the fun player b20s. I float and hit top pair.
Now, the fun player b50s and here is where I start making mistakes. I think I need to raise or shove this. I'm ranging this fun player almost exclusively on speculative hands like suited connectors, suited gappers, pocket pairs, and pocket pairs. They weren't the type of fun player that limps AA. Against that range, I want to get all the money in while I'm potentially ahead and they'll be willing to commit to their draw (just like they did with 55 on 7768fd). However, I do just make the call.
When the flush completes, and they still shove, I think I have to fold. In game, I thought they could play a worse Ax hand this way and I was obligated to call. The reality is, had I been playing less tables and thinking about it a little more, this was not the kind of player who was limping AJo and ATo. Those holdings are exceedingly unlikely. What's far more likely is that they've hit the jackpot with one of their speculative hands and they have something that can beat Ax. In the end, they had 33 and I was behind the whole time. That's not what matters, though. The thought process matters. That turn needs to get raised and, when it doesn't, I need to fold river.
In the end, I lost THREE STACKS to one of the biggest fish in the entire pool in the same session. Just brutal.
Another fun player, a different one this time, uses a min-raise 3 bet, calls my 3x 4 bet, and then open shoves a K high flop on a flush draw board. What's more likely: a) they have Kx or AA and are scared of the flush or b) they're shoving a flush? Fun players will often check-jam flush draws, but an open jam is a little more rare. This was the kind of fun player who was buying in for 40bb and playing really passively. Again, I had 9 tables going, when I know it should be a maximum of 8, and I didn't think through the player profile enough. I don't hate this call versus many fun players depending on their profile. THIS fun player was tight-passive. Not a great hero call.
Like I said, it's hard to think I played well when I made so many mistakes in high leverage spots. If you add everything up between these half dozen hands, there are a minimum of several buy-ins that I donated back to the pool for no good reason.
Calling the shove with 98, shoving with ATdd, and shoving the 87 are the ones that bother me the most. I think those are pure blunders with absolutely no real justification behind them. Just bad plays that I didn't think through properly.
I don't know how many times I need to learn this lesson, but, no matter how good the games are, do NOT give in to the temptation to play more than 8 tables. It really just takes one careless mistake in a 3bet/4bet pot to completely wipe away the extra bb you might gain from the additional ~300-350 hands that an extra table brings across a 4 hour session. Even if I'm winning at 5bb/100, hell 10bb/100, that's only an extra 15-30bb per table. If the extra table causes ONE mistake with a missed/improperly sized value bet, that extra win rate is erased. If it causes ONE bad river call down, the extra table IMMEDIATELY becomes a negative to the win rate which it CLEARLY was here.
I need to write this again and again so that my subconscious understands: you're not winning MORE when you play 9 tables, you're winning LESS. You're LOSING more! The pace-driven mistakes FAR outweigh the added table!!!
Stop that nonsense now!
Okay, rant over. Review over. I'll be back at some point tonight with the results of my last session before vacation. If I can somehow crack +3 buy-ins at any point in the session, I'm going to just stop right there and call it a win. I don't want to get my hopes up because we all know that variance is the main determinant for the results of any one given session, but it would be damn cool if luck went my way this time and I was able to scrape out the last 3 buy-ins needed for me to feel comfortable moving to 50NL.
I'll be back to share how it went later tonight!
Have a good one everyone,
~Orca
Aug. 21, 2024 | 3:22 p.m.
RIO Video Study Session
BB 3 Betting Strategies and Post Flop Play by Francesco Lacriola
1) The big blind closes the action and doesn’t have to worry about squeezes. This incentivizes a polarized range
2) Some of the range is a pure 3 bet and never folds to 4 bet. Other parts of the range have more dynamic response
3) The EV of medium strength hands increases if the opponent does not 4 bet enough and calls more dominated hands. The EV of medium strength hands decreases if the opponent folds a lot and 4 bets a more linear range
4) The EV of weaker holdings increases if the opponent overfolds, doesn’t 4bet enough and/or plays passively postflop allowing us to realize more equity and decreases if the opposite occurs
Choosing More Linear vs More Polarized 3bet from BB
1) A more linear range allows for a higher cbet frequency and a more aggressive cbet strategy
3 Betting Medium Strength Hands
1) Suited broadways, medium pairs, offsuit broadways
2) These hands can be played as pure flats or pure 3bets against different player profiles. Mix should only be played against competent opponents.
3) If an opponent overfolds preflop, you want to polarize more
4) If they are 4 betting a more linear range, you lose a lot of EV as well
5) Medium strength hands are a key part of more linear 3 betting ranges and give us more post flop playability
6) We don’t have to worry about overfolding to 4bets if we think villain doesn’t 4 bet enough and/or using too linear of a 4bet range
Post Flop cbetting Strategies
1) Range betting is much less common because of the polarity of the ranges
2) Most 9 high or lower boards don’t interact well with the 3betting range there we prefer a more polarized cbet strategy (98x is a little bit of an exception due to interaction with broadways)
3) Khigh boards are the best boards for the 3bettor
4) We need to be a bit cautious on A high boards because we don’t 3bet as many suited Ax combos as small blinds. Most of our weak off-suit aces are drawing dead to the better Aces in villain’s range
5) We can play more aggressively on rainbow boards versus flush boards
Evaluated Nut Advantages / Nut Asymmetries
1) Lower SPRs make it more comfortable to play for stacks even on boards where villain has an advantage in terms of sets like 97824
2) BB needs to be extremely cautious on boards which connect very well with offsuited broadway combos that are high frequency calls for the IP player and low frequency 3 bets. Double/Triple broadway boards are often bet very small sizes only
3) Monotone boards are extremely complex to play and cbetting strategies might vary a lot according to the top card. The stronger our pairs and overpairs, the more aggressive we can be
4) 3 straight boards force BB to check almost their entire range unless we have more offsuit straight combos on that texture than Villain does
Balancing Checking Range
1) When we check we give our opponent the option to check behind and realize equity
2) If they stab a linear range, we won’t have a lot of fold equity with marginal raises and check calls. Our stronger holdings will increase their EV against a linear stabbing range.
3) If our opponent over stabs when the flop goes check/check and you check the turn again, you might want to purposely have a stronger double check range
Key Takeaways
1) No point in 3 betting trash hands against players who don’t fold preflop, opt for a more linear 3 bet range
2) The exploit against tighter 3 bet ranges is to massively overfold preflop. This is something we always have to keep in mind when we face a BB 3 bet from any position. You need their HUD stats.
3) It is more important to understand the key principles about linearity and polarization than it is to memorization specific frequencies for each hand. Against certain player profiles, you likely want to use pure strategies in most cases. You only need to mix against competent regs
GTOW Trainer Session
Today I played 200 hands post-flop as the IP caller versus a BB 3 bet:
The biggest takeaway for me was just how much better I need to get at... BB play, lol. The solver balances the checking lines so beautifully across all three streets. To properly play BB in a 3 bet pot, you need A LOT of checking and a LOT of check raises. I'm playing way too straight forwardly. I've focused on not making complete blunders with the various hand classes thus far. Eventually, I need to actually drill into proper frequencies. I'm no where close to as good as I need to be in that regard yet.
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ACR 25NL Reg Table Session #3
+870bb in 2684 hands
I don't think I played my best here. The games were just very, very good today. I will not lie... I am super tempted to try and squeeze in one more session tomorrow night. My flight is Thursday morning. I have some preparation to do for the flight, but only like an hour of packing and preparing the apartment to be left alone for a few days. I have to take my dogs to the sitter as well. I only need 2.5 more buy-ins for 20+ here... It would be one hell of a start to the trip if I managed to get to 50NL right before I left..... Decisions, decisions, decisions, lol.
Here's my total results at 25NL so far:
+1733bb in 8127 hands
Alright, screw it. I'm going for it tomorrow! If I hit +270bb at any point in the session, I'll stop it early in the interest of saving time.
CAN'T WAIT!
Have a good one everyone!
~Orca
Aug. 21, 2024 | 2:03 a.m.
8/20/24 Beating 25NL Day #4
Add me on Discord:
Mental Game Development
Health Management
Health Metrics:
Bodyweight: 216.3lbs / 98.1kg
Sleep (Mask Time: 7.8 hours
Health Habits
Meditation, 20min: Complete, (9/11, 82%)
Gym*: Incomplete, (3/11, 27%)
No Caffeine: 2/2, 100%
*I have decided that when I get back from my vacation, I'm going to start resuming going to the gym every single day. Most days, I will just do a short cardio session, but I will also get some lifting done 2-3 times per week. I think prioritizing 45 minutes of studying over going to the gym each day that I don't manage my schedule absolutely perfectly is short-sighted. Being in excellent physical condition, especially from a cardio perspective, should have big carryover to sleep quality, sleep duration, cognitive efficiency, mood/affect, etc. It should be worth more to my win-rate long-term than an additional 45 minutes of study per day. Well, at least I think so, anyway. Either way, a shift towards a little more balance can only be a good thing in my case.
Mental Game Content
I am instituting a one paragraph limit for these write-ups going forward. As much as I absolutely love to wax poetic about self-development, as it is probably my single favorite topic in existence, this is one area I CAN afford to get back an extra 15-30 minutes of studying per day. I don't need to write a mini-essay for each video I watch.
1) Training for Poker like an Elite Athlete: Process by Bradley Chalupski
Ah, now you have someone speaking my language. Excellence in bodybuilding is all about building a process. The sport is 24/7/365. Even when you're not training, you're dieting. When you're not dieting, you need to minimize all stressors, both physical and mental, to maximize results. In the end, your ability will be measured when you take your talent times the quality of your process times the amount of time you've been engaged with that process.
This is why I'm so concerned with studying in the most efficient manner possible. This is why I'm so concerned with finding the best way to identify my weaknesses. This is why I'm so concerned with each 15-30 minute time slot in my schedule. If you can squeeze a 1% improvement in your rate of learning daily, with a small change to your process, that accrues massive differences across six months. In the end, this is why I'm strongly considering joining a CFP that has an entire system already built into it: you receive a ready-made, already optimized learning process.
Okay, that was two paragraphs. Sue me.
*2) Getting to High Stakes: A Step-by-Step Guide by Freenachos
I am strongly considering applying for Nacho's CFP. They generally only take students who have reached 50NL or higher so I'm not at the point where I can apply... yet. That said, I have read some of Nacho's blog and it is very inspiring. I want to do everything in my power to reach high stakes as well.
While it may not be some super scientifically accurate number, one exercise Nacho did in this video was he looked at the number of tables available at various stakes and then compared that to the tables open at 1KNL. The ratio was about 200:1. Again, it's not super scientific, but we can then estimate that roughly 0.5% of serious online players make it to playing high stakes. While that may not seem insurmountable, the odds of dying in a car crash, in the USA, are roughly 100:1 or 1%. Then again, the odds of becoming a professional American football player are roughly 1:250,000. I'll take those odds.
After all, why not me? I'm no dummy. I work very hard and I'm willing to make the necessary sacrifices. Why not me? Why not try? Why not go for it? Of course, I will try. I will go for it. I will do everything in my power to reach 1KNL and above.
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Poker Strategy Development
Session Review
This is just my baseline now: ~5% mistakes and ~-0.02 EV loss per move.
When I dug into the hands further, today was one of those days where I wouldn't say there was necessarily a theme. There were just a smattering of different kinds of mistakes mostly. I'm not sure how many of them need deep analysis, but most of them deserve a brief spotlight because they're the kind of errors where awareness is curative.
#1: Missed Counterfeited Two-Pair Full House Blocker Jams
This is a type of bluff that I recently learned about from Francesco Lacriola in an RIO video. The key to getting these bluffs through is that you should have the offsuit version of the possible boat in your range.
In the SB v BB SRP example, 95s blocks J9 and I have J9o in my range. Once the second J hits the board, any flush draws in my opponent's range are in huge trouble here. JTo and J9o are both holdings that I would raise from the SB in this situation. With good blockers, and a hand that likely no longer has a lot of showdown value, I can bluff all-in here. Villain ended up having a super weak draw and I won anyway, but that's pure luck. I shouldn't have missed this bluff.
The Q8ss example is also very, very similar and this time I paid the price for not recognizing the spot. I raise QJo pure from the HJ. I think most strategies do. In this case, Villain is a solid reg. They understand they no longer have a clear value bet when the second J hits. QJ is too big a part of my range. The check shows vulnerability here. I should've stuffed this because, again, I'm blocking the nuts and this is a good reg. This reg can make a fold here with a small flush. Would they have? Who knows? Wizard considers this a nearly -3 EV mistake. Ouch.
Clearly, I need to do a better job of being aware of these full house blocker bluffs. Again, the big keys are 1) if you're going to jam over the top of a raise, is villain the type of villain to value bet a straight/low flush on a paired board? 2) if yes, are there offsuit boats available or did you need to spike a set at some point to have a full house on this board, realistically? If both of those criteria are met, a bluff jam is a great option.
#2: Hero Calling River Raises
You want to know the one line where the average microstakes villain has even less bluffs than when they triple barrel the river for pot+ sizings? River raise lines. Very silly hero calls here on my end.
With the 86 holding, better two pairs are available. I'm only beating stone cold bluffs and this is a recreational player. Terrible waste of 30bb.
In the second example, I'm up against an unknown reg (they were 6 tabling, but I have no history with them). Calling with the Kh flush blocker isn't terrible. However, and I try not to put TOO much stock into these things, but Villain snap called my river overbet and then snap shoved my thin river value bet, too. If I want to bluff catch here, it's much less pricey to check back the river and then face something like 60-150% on the river versus having to face this jam. All things considered, I immediately regretted this call and not just because of the results. I thought I ignored timing tells and my intuition on this one.
#3: A Bunch of 3 Bet Pot Mistakes
Here, a recreational villain looks me up with 88 after I bluff shove AKo on a tripled runout. I've said this before, but I think these runouts are underfolded by population. Recreationals fall in love with absolute hand strength. After all, how can I fold a full house!?
When using a 50NL solve, Wizard uses the exact same flop and turn line that I do at high frequency. However, it checks back river and then bluff-catches a shove with 75% frequency here. The reason being is that Villain is supposed to float a variety of double-broadways with back door flushes or straights. When the Q comes, some of those turn a gut shot. AKo is ahead of all those potential bluffs. If Villain checks back a low pocket pair, you save your last 50bb.
I don't think this is an egregious punt. Checking here is +5 EV and the shove is +2 EV. Losing 3 EV in a single move is obvious really bad, but Villain is supposed to purefold this combo 88. This gets through enough to be profitable even in solver land. Again though, beyond the solver, I think the bigger mistake is expecting rec villains to fold full houses. If anything, I think, in the future, I'll shove thinner in these spots against recreationals knowing that they will have a hard time folding any pocket pair.
This doesn't require any commentary. You're just not floating any AQo holdings here without a diamond. This type of thing is super common across all 3 bet pot spots. No idea why I floated this. Just a terrible decision that I compounded when I led on the K turn.
Oh, look, another spot where I was supposed to triple barrel river with a missed flush. This is exactly what I trained for yesterday and I still missed it!
I've realized why these spots rarely come up in my solver training: my strategy often simplifies to using the b75 on turns where I want to polarize in 3 bet pots. However, the solver exclusively uses b50 here (and mixes b50/75 in many other flush scenarios) and, when you do use b50 on the turn, after a b33 cbet, it keeps many more paired holdings in Villain's range. They're supposed to call a ton of Tx to a b50 and fold almost all of it to b75 in this spot. So, if you b50 the turn, you still have enough fold equity to jam river. If you b75 the turn, and get a call, you're supposed to pure check. Equilibrium can be that sensitive.
I think the error here, on my part, is not sizing down to b50 when the turn brings a straight. That's a reasonable heuristic that I can implement. I still want to polarize, but, when the board is scarier for my top pairs, a smaller size is called for. The same thing happens when turns complete flush draws. While there are some occasions where b75 is used on a flush completing turn, you mostly size down to b33/50 even after a b20/b33 cbet. I think, in the future, sizing down on straight complete turns also makes sense.
It breaks my heart to make yet another error on a flush draw board after I went through 200 full hands on this exact topic yesterday, but here we are. This is a PURE check-raise. I have the nut flush draw, two different back door straights, AND an over.
Villain takes a very strange line when they jam river here. I wanted to call this so badly. Every instinct was telling me that they were trying to buy the pot. What does villain jam here for value? They could've trapped TT on the turn and are now hoping to extract value from Ax. AT makes a bit of sense as well. The solver calls any Ax holding 100% of the time here, but I don't think solutions are very valuable here because the solver also never jams.
Ultimately, I just didn't know what villain was doing here and I think there are better spots to make money than these situations where you're completely guessing and doing something that has never come up in your training. If I had to guess, though, I think this was a bluff.
More importantly than all that, I missed the PURE check-raise on the flop with the nut flush draw + additional back door equity. Can't let that happen.
Alright, that's all for today's review folks! I'm going to end this post here so that I don't run into character limits. I'll be back tonight with the results of the rest of my daily studies and my last 25NL session before vacation!
Have a good one everyone,
~Orca
Aug. 20, 2024 | 4:27 p.m.
Thanks! Oh, definitely. I would never be able to approach poker with the structure that I have now if i didn't already learn how to do that while I was bodybuilding.
Aug. 20, 2024 | 1:32 p.m.
I have only been playing Poker for five months. My initial goal was just to be able to beat 10NL in my first year. I chose that goal because I watched a video on YouTube that made the claim that if you can’t beat 10NL on your own in your first year, you probably don’t have the requisite talent to go very far in Poker. I didn't even know if that was true, but it seemed like a decent bench mark to help decide whether or not I was just wasting my time.
So far, I have been able to beat 2NL, 5NL, and 10NL for 20+ buy-ins each. After watching this video, my new goal is to beat 25NL as fast as possible, apply for Nacho’s CFP as soon as I hit 50NL, and then do everything within my power to reach high stakes.
One out of two-hundred isn’t that crazy... Why not me?
Aug. 20, 2024 | 3:01 a.m.
RIO Video Study Session
Checking Flushdraws in 3 Bet Pots by Krzysztof Slaski
1) Top No-Pair (AK/AQ)
2) Pair + FD
3) Combo Draw
4) No SDV
Lot of checking with the low suited Ax on turns
I think this video was created with the idea that you had already seen the single-raised pot version. I found it very difficult to follow. In general, I’m not a big fan of videos where someone just opens a Pio sim and briefly discusses a few things about each node before moving on. Most of the learning value in training videos comes from discussion about heuristics and larger concepts that can be applied to more than one situation.
I will say that I was surprised to see how much combo draws check in these spots. I think I’ll continue the exploration of the best way to play flush draws in 3 bet pots in today’s GTOW Training.
GTOW Trainer Session
I ended up doing 200 full hands where I held a flush draw in a 3 bet pot. You know how many triple-barrel missed-flush-bluff opportunities came up? Zero. Literally zero. So, lol, maybe that's not something I need to worry about too much. Regardless, focusing on a scenario this specific allows for really deep learning and I was able to put in a lot of quality work with regards to refining my flush draw strategies in 3 bet pots. I was able to come up with a variety of sizing heuristics for what to do when the flush hits on the turn, when it doesn't hit on the turn, and even when the flop goes check/check and you're OOP holding a flush draw. I'm really pleased with this trainer session. 200 full hands on a specific weakness is a fantastic amount for a single session.
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ACR 25NL Reg Table Session #2
+577bb in 2816 hands
Not bad. The players were better today -- especially toward the end of the session. I can't draw any conclusions off of two sessions, but was the trend on Sunday, too. I might benefit from getting my sessions started earlier at 25NL compared to what I was doing for 10NL (where the games were much better the closer to midnight you went). There's a wave of regs that log on around 8:30-9:00pm my time and my session finished at 10:07pm today. If I hustle through my day and wake-up a little earlier, I could easily start closer to 5pm instead of the 6:07pm start time I had today.
One important life note... On Thursday morning, I fly out of Boston and begin my trek all the way to my hometown of Seattle, Washington for my wife's brother's wedding. Tomorrow will be my last session before the vacation/holiday. I'll be away for four days. This will be the first day off that I've had from Poker in since December. I guess I am a bit overdue, eh? lol.
I don't have a lot to say today. I just want to beat the sh*t out of 25NL as fast as possible. I'm looking forward to the day that I can say I've graduated to "low stakes" from the micros. For anyone who says that it is no longer possible to grind through the micros... that's crap. I am living proof that it is very doable. I have only been playing poker for five months. I think it is fair to say I'm a winning microstakes player.
The recipe is simple... Stay off the Zoom tables, play tight preflop ranges that are properly adjusted for your rake structure, and the micros are very, very beatable. I don't even use a HUD. I've never studied any MDA and I haven't watched a single training video on population exploits. I'm still a freaking noob. This is doable, folks.
I know most people on Rio are well beyond the micros, but maybe someday someone will read this and it will serve as encouragement. If I can do it, so can you. So do it. DO IT.
Here's my progress through two sessions on the reg tables:
+854bb in 5443 hands
I'll be back tomorrow with more of the same. You know the drill!
Have a good one everyone,
~Orca
Aug. 20, 2024 | 2:22 a.m.
Congrats on reaching 25NL!
Aug. 19, 2024 | 5:42 p.m.
8/19/24 Beating 25NL Day #3
Add me on Discord:
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Mental Game Development
Health Management
Health Metrics:
Bodyweight: 215.8lbs / 97.8kg
Sleep (Mask Time): 7.6 hours
Health Habits
Meditation, 20min: Incomplete (8/10, 80%)
Gym: Incomplete (2/10, 20%)
No Caffeine: Incomplete (1/1, 100%)*
*Today is my first day going without caffeine. My goal, going forward, is to limit all substance use to days where I won't be playing that day or the next day because of the impact that almost all substances have on either sleep duration or sleep quality. I generally only partake a handful of times per year, anyway, but I think this is a good policy. Complete sobriety is not a goal of mine although I've accidentally finished entire years without drinking before. At this stage of my life, I'm married and I'm not out trying to meet women, I have zero tolerance and get horrible hangovers, and I'm just too old to tolerate feeling like shit, lol. Partying is something I left behind in my early 20s. Nevertheless, caffeine use has been more of an issue because it is, essentially, a performance-enhancing drug with considerable side effects. In the long run, because I'm such a sensitive sleeper, and because I play at night right before bed, it makes sense to stop using caffeine for an edge at the tables. I believe, for me, it takes more than it gives.
Mental Game Content
1) How to be a Better Poker Player by Sean LeFort
One point that Sean brings up that I had to acknowledge was that, in the long run, for balance purposes you cannot have all of your emotional eggs in one basket. I learned that the hard way when I was a hardcore lifter. If I had a bad session early on in my journey, which is much less common than in poker, but it can still happen a few times per month, it would ruin my entire day. When I got married, got pets, and allowed myself to care about some other hobbies (I used to be a season ticket holder to an NBA team before we moved a few years ago), this effect almost completely disappeared. When one area of my life was going poorly, the others never were and any carry over was minimized.
Right now, I still have my wife and my dogs, which always bring me joy, but I think I've gone too far in minimizing my lifting. At some point, the honeymoon phase with poker will end, I think. I won't have this burning desire to train and play for sixteen hours a day like I do right now. For now, it feels like, if there were 30 hours in a day, I'd use all six extra hours on poker. I invested nearly fifteen years of my life into lifting. At one point, I was squatting 600lbs/270kg for 5 reps, I could bench press 450lbs/205kg+, and I deadlifted over 700lbs/320kg. These are things that brought me immense pride when I accomplished them. I'll never do any of that again because I'm not willing to pay the price that comes with weighing 120kg and using PEDs. However, I think, at some point, I will set new physical goals. Maybe I will get back into martial arts which is something I did in my early 20s. Maybe I will do crossfit. I really have no idea, but I think, at some point, this trend of going to the gym only once or twice per week is going to end and I'll be back doing some sport 4-5 times per week.
On the surface, this may seem like it will hurt my poker development, but I know the opposite to be true. People mistakenly think that balance is all about putting an equal amount of energy and effort into all areas of life: health, wealth, happiness, etc... but what balance is really about, at least to me, is creating a sustainable ecosystem for maximum personal growth. For short periods, you can dramatically accelerate your progress in any one area by neglecting the rest of your life, but it just isn't sustainable. My current life balance ecosystem is not sustainable. I have too many eggs in the poker basket. I am okay with that for now because I understand it is temporary and won't last. At some point, I will drop from 70 hour poker weeks to 50 hour weeks and I have zero issue with it. I will drop down to playing 5-6 days per week and I'll have at least one full day off where I don't even study. For now, I'm going to ride this wave of enthusiasm for as long at lasts (and hopefully all the way out of the micros at the very least, lol).
2) 7 Characteristics of a Winning Poker Player by Leszek Badurowicz
This one was all about Carol Dweck's "growth mindset" concept. I actually read this book when it came out and, to some extent, the book gave voice and explanation to a transformation that I had all on my own.
If you're not familiar with the concept it is best encapsulated by the following discovery from Dweck's research: A) Children were divided into two groups and given math problems that were quite easy for their current level, B) One group of children was praised for being smart after having finished the problems and the other group was praised for being hard working, C) The group that was praised for being smart was averse to trying harder math problems while the group that was praised for being hard working were happy to continue trying harder and harder problems with some of them even finishing work well beyond their grade level.
The researchers end up concluding that the mechanism at play here was an underlying desire to be consistent with one's image of one's self. Smart children didn't want to risk their current perceived value and social standing by trying something and failing. After all, maybe they wouldn't be considered smart anymore if they couldn't solve the next set of problems. On the other hand, for children who saw themselves as hard working, it was only natural to continue to try new problems even if they were extremely hard. That's what hard working people do; they keep trying.
In the end, researchers realized that many people see qualities as fixed and immutable. You're either smart or you aren't. You're either talented or you aren't. Other people tend to see most qualities as trainable. They think intelligence can be developed. They think skill can be cultivated. It turns out that, almost across the board, people with the "growth mindset", who believe anything can be learned or developed, vastly outperform those with the opposite belief system. This is due to the simple facts that they are less afraid of making mistakes and don't see any problem with continuing to learn, study, and train in order to fix those mistakes.
Personally, I was that kid who was constantly told how smart they were. Believe it or not, I considered myself a very lazy individual until I reached adulthood. In a sense, I got very lucky. Competition made me realize that I was not lazy; I was just scared to try. I got lucky because I hated losing so much and my hatred of losing drove me to practice, study, and train compulsively at anything competitive that I took an interest in. However, I used to hide my efforts because I didn't want anyone to know how much I cared and how hard I was trying on my own time. I guess I wanted it to all seem effortless.
When I was about 5-6 years old, my uncle taught me to play Chess during a family reunion one summer. Within the weeks I was there, I eventually beat everyone in the family except two people: my uncle who taught me to play the game and his eldest son who was even a little better than him. I bothered and pestered them both to keep playing against me all day, every day. They'd occasionally relent to my annoyances and oblige. I was never able to win, though. I went home that summer and asked my Mom for several books on Chess and, when I learned of the existence of the software program Chessmaster, I begged for that, too. After doing enough chores to secure the goods (lol), I studied and played obsessively. I never lost to anyone in my family ever again. I had achieved a 1700 rating by the time I was 9 in online play, but, for whatever reason, I lost interest and stopped playing the game entirely for many years. Even now, I play less than once a year.
However, I never applied that kind of effort to anything else until well into adulthood. I experienced abject humiliation if I wasn't immediately good at something. Because of this, I rarely tried anything new at all. It took me until my 20s to realize that I could tap into this work ethic at will. I just had to stop being so afraid of being perceived as not good at things. I couldn't understand how many other people were so unafraid of looking foolish.
It feels a bit strange to think back on it because, now, I'm oriented in the completely opposite way. I'll try anything. I have zero afraid to look stupid. I don't care if I'm bad at something initially. I have no problem with publicly journaling my failures in the microstakes. I've somehow developed the notion that I can learn anything if I find the right teaching resources. I no longer even think about whether or not I'm an intelligent individual. Yet, on the other hand, work ethic is the corner stone of my entire value system.
I consider any meager success I've had in life entirely the result of this mindset shift... You can do anything you set your mind to. There is ALWAYS a way to learn and get better. I firmly believe that I can achieve all my goals in poker so long as I am willing to put in the necessary work to grow and get better.
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Poker Strategy Development
Morning-After Review
Another typical session from the perspective of the analyzer.
As I dug into today's hands, there was a very, very obvious theme that jumped out at me and I'm going to spend my whole day studying it:
Misplaying Flush Draw/Flush Complete Boards
First, I want to cover a very, very basic mistake that requires no analysis... it's just a bad habit of mine:
Not Raising Nut Flush Draws Frequently Enough in SRPs:
Whether we're talking about check-raising or just continued aggression, I don't find these raises often enough. I had five opportunities like this in this session and I only took two of them. At equilibrium, you're supposed to raise many of these opportunities 50-80% of the time. 40% isn't enough. If I'm being honest, I think I actually do it more like 20-30% of the time. This is one of those cases where I think just writing about this, and pointing it out to myself, should be enough to help fix it. It's just a matter of reminding myself the frequency is supposed to be higher. And, to add to it all, microstakes villains play really poorly against b125-250 in my experience. Any time I can put them in those nodes, it is an advantage for me.
Now... let's move onto much bigger mistakes:
Misplaying Flush Draw Boards in 3 Bet Pots
#1a: Jamming a Missed Flush Draw?
In general, I need to develop a better understanding of when we are supposed to follow through on missed flush draws and jam the river. I know this almost never happens in SRPs because you generally have better bluff options. That's not always the case in 3/4 bet pots. Bluffs can be more limited and sometimes we need to use our missed flushes even though they're usually not ideal candidates because they block a lot of our opponents missed draws/bluffs as well.
If we look at Villain's calling range to the b75 cbet, we see that they actually have to float quite wide to meet MDF:
Villain needs to go as thin as AT/A9 with backdoor nut flush draws. They're even defending some KQ/KJ with backdoor flush draws. They're defending every single AKo. They're even defending AQo and low pocket pairs that unblock back door flush draw bluffs.
Once the second b50 barrel goes in, they're defending mostly made hands, flush draws, and gutshots (which make up 35% of the calling range):
Once we get to the river, my all-in bluffs are made up mostly of gutshots and missed flush draws:
Villain's folding range versus jam is made up of... mostly missed gutshots, flush draws, and pairs weaker than Jx:
This one is really tough for me. It seems like you're blocking huge chunks of the folding range when you hold AQdd. That said, I think this is just a unique spot without a lot of options to choose from because we started with a paired board. Any time the flop pairs the board, the continuing range for the defender becomes really narrow in the types of hands it has in it.
In game, I don't think I thought enough about the fact that I could still get a lot of folds from pairs below Jx. I had a hard time coming up with draws that Villains calls two big bets versus and then misses on the river. What I missed was the fact that villain is supposed to float many suited double broadway hands with back door flushes. Some of those turned gut shots. Those all fold to river aggression. If you get enough folds from pairs below Jx, the bluff is still profitable.
Of course, in this case, Villain was likely just clicking buttons with AQhh and this is evidenced by the fact they felt the need to "show" the bluff at the end of the hand, lol. Whenever someone does that, I tend to see it as a sign of a fish. "Look at me! I got a bluff through!". I usually translate that as: "I don't bluff often and this is a cool moment for me". It sure as hell will never tilt me, lol. I feel grateful for a free showdown I didn't have to pay for.
#1b: River Bluffing... a Different Missed Flush Draw?
This one is, in many ways, very similar to the last one. Normally, I don't think about triple-barreling my missed flushes. However, again, there's many missed straight draws and gutshots on this board: QJ, KJ, KQ, 77, 88, etc. And, again, you can still potentially fold out some pairs that decided to call the turn barrel: JJ, QQ, Tx, and MAYBE wheel Ax that block flush draws.
In any case, missed flush draws are certainly not auto checkbacks on the river in 3 bet pots. There's more thinking to be done. In spots where you might not have enough bluffs, or villain has a lot of missed straights/gutshots or vulnerable pairs, they still may make viable bluffs.
#3: Jamming a Straight on a Flush Complete Board
In the interest of saving time, I'm not going deep on this one because it isn't necessary. When the river completes the flush, and I jam, I'm just folding out holdings that I beat and isolating myself against flushes. Maaaaaybe I get a call from a set or two pair with a heart. The correct sizing here is something between b10 and b60. I don't want to isolate myself against the top of villain's range with a jam on this texture with this hand class. This is a type of mistake I should never be making at this stage of my development. I know better than to fall in love with absolute hand strength and jam just because.
#4: 4th and 20, Time to Punt
This was a failed exploitative play. In fact, I got counter-exploited... hard. In these spots, many microstakes villains check back AK/AQ type hands and always call the 20% float. They then usually overfold to the big turn barrel. Once villain CALLS my b75 turn barrel, they're extremely unlikely to have air anymore. In fact, overpair traps and heart flush draws are all very likely here.
When both a flush and a straight complete, I decide to jam thinking that, against a non-solver opponent, I have way more fold equity than I should. In solver land, 100% of the bluffs and value jams are based around flushes with the bluff region coming almost entirely from nut flush blocker holdings. My holding is never jammed. Value and bluffs are based around flushes on a flush complete board. Amazing, right?
I later realized this opponent was a reg. I wouldn't have played this this way had I known that during the hand. Nevertheless, even thinking I'm potentially up against a fish, I think this is a clear punt. Flushes are too big of a part of their range here when they call the huge turn bet. Ultimately, props to my opponent for looking me up with AAh. I hope they at least sweat the decision a little bit, lol.
That will be all for today's session review folks! I'll be back this evening with a follow-up post right below this one that will detail the results/takeaways from the rest of my daily studies and the results of tonight's session.
Have a good one!
~Orca
Aug. 19, 2024 | 5:13 p.m.
RIO Video Study
OOP 3 Bet Pots by Frankie Carson
1) SB vs BB differences
a) SB is more linear; BB is more polar
b) SB has a strong range and thus more equity on most boards
c) SB cbets more and uses a higher percentage of small bets
2) Sizings
a) Everything between 10%-Jam is used, but you can do well with small/big
b) General Heuristic: smaller sizes generally used on high card boards, bigger sizings on mid/low boards
c) Paired boards will bet small when there’s high cards and bigger when there’s mostly low/mid cards
d) Rainbow boards will be most frequently with preferred block sizing, two tone boards will introduce more checking and a little bit of the bigger bets, and monotone boards will be mostly checked with only small sizing used
3) Balanced Play
a) Many parts of range need protection or exposed to levered bets
b) Most people are not checking enough; their check back line is way too weak and they overfold to floats
c) Common protection hands: AA, sets (top set), AK/AQ fd
Today I'm going to focus on one of the hardest spots to play well: BB in 3 bet pots. I know for a fact that I am oversimplifying and playing a cbet % that is way too high in these spots. They're really, really tough to play. I'm going to put 60-90 minutes of trainer work in here on just this spot and see if I can't make some headway.
GTOW Trainer Session
I ended up doing almost 200 full hands as the BB in 3 bet pots against all other positions. Man, that's just a super complicated spot. Simplifying is very difficult without spending some time creating custom solves. The solver tends to want to use 2-4 sizings on most textures and the strategy is just too complex to be executed realistically. I walked away with a much better feeling for the spot, but I can't really say that I'm anywhere even remotely close to coming up with reliable, coherent heuristics. There's just way too much splitting of your range going on. I think, at some point, I'll need to use the AI feature to force solves with a MAXIMUM of two sizings to get a better feel for it. I think many of the textures can still do just fine with one sizing even if it costs some EV. The main thing is that the checking frequencies are just way higher than you think and there are way less range bet for 20-33% spots than there are from virtually any other position.
I'm going to take the hounds to the park and then get ready for my evening session. This time, we'll go for the reg tables!
ACR 25NL Session #1 Results
I'm counting this as session #1 because I don't believe the Zoom tables are comparable to reg tables.
+282bb in 2627 hands
I'm going to have to take back everything I said about 25NL being an incredible challenge compared to the previous stakes. Just like last time, I don't want to overreact to one session, and maybe the good regs don't play on Sundays, but, on the reg tables, there was absolutely no discernable difference in difficulty between this and 10NL. None. To be fair, @liveyourdreams85 did tell me this would be the case back when I first started 10NL a few weeks ago.
The stats won't show it, as I didn't win very big and I apparently ran well above EV, but I was in full control of this session from start to finish. I felt like I was the best player on every single table that I was on from start to finish. This was a VERY, VERY different feeling than what I had playing Zoom. 25z on ACR is a MUCH better pool than this. This basically had a lot of the same people that I saw at 10NL to be honest. I recognized many user names. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Again, I'm not going to get carried away over one session where I only won 3 buy-ins, but that's really not the point. You can tell how the game feels while you're the one on the table. I no longer have any doubts about whether I can beat this stake. When I played 25z, I could tell that I wasn't good enough to beat it for a substantial win rate yet. When I played 25NL reg tables, I had the opposite feeling.
My confidence couldn't be any higher right now. I am almost annoyed that I'm supposed to go on vacation/holiday at the end of the week, lol. The hunger and drive to keep grinding is overwhelming. I can't wait to get back to it tomorrow.
As always, I'll be back with hand histories and notes from my studies tomorrow.
Have a good one everyone!
~Orca
Aug. 19, 2024 | 2:26 a.m.
8/18/24 Beating 10NL Day #2
One brief note before anything else, I am not going to play the Zoom tables and anymore. A friend sharing this with me is the main reason why:
The only Zoom pools that run on ACR are 200NL and 25NL. There's no point in getting used to the Zoom tables when I'll just have to go back to the reg tables as soon as I'm done with 25NL anyway. Considering the massive differences in win rates, and the fact that I personally prefer, and am used to reg tables, I'm going back to the reg tables even if it costs me volume. As above: quality over quantity.
Zoom neutralizes some key edges in my opinion.
For one, it makes it supremely difficult to get a good read on many of the opponents you're playing against. Until you get a proper sample, which can take a long time, you don't know how someone is playing because you don't see them play any hands. You're always moving to the next table without seeing how the hand plays out. This is even harder for me because I don't currently use a HUD. I feel like, despite playing as many tables as I do, I'm very good at locking into which players are fish so that I can start targeting them. Despite not being a very sophisticated exploitative player, I do think I have intuitive sense of how to adjust to player types once I profile them. I couldn't get a single read on anyone while playing Zoom. It was too fast and the hands against each opponent were too infrequent.
Second, Zoom encourages everyone to have better preflop hand selection. Recreationals don't have to suffer through going card dead. They can just fold their junk and immediately get dealt a new hand. This removes the need for preflop discipline. Anything that makes the recreationals automatically play better is not good for our win rate.
Third, and I didn't even want to mention this at the risk of sounding like a whiny loser, but I do believe there is more RTA going on at Zoom tables. If for no other reason this is because the Zoom format lends itself well to just having GTO Wizard up while you're playing. If you're on reg tables, you can play four tables, get ~300 hands per hour or so, and sometimes be in 2-4 hands at once. On a single zoom table, you can play ~300 hands per hour and easily check every single decision in GTO Wizard on every single street because you only have one table up and you can use the full clock for every decision if necessary. I have heard many experienced players complaining that they believe RTA is a real problem on the ACR 200NL Zoom tables. I have no reason to doubt the opinions of far more experienced players than myself on this issue. Now, I'm not delusional and I am not saying I had a bad session yesterday because of cheating, lol. This is just another consideration that I felt I should admit is on my mind as an influencing factor for avoiding Zoom tables.
It is fine to make mistakes so long as you endeavor to learn from them. Playing Zoom, for me, I believe, was a mistake. I will not make that mistake again as I fancy myself as someone who can learn quickly from their mistakes.
Mental Game Development
Health Management
Health Metrics:
Bodyweight: 217.0lbs / 98.4kg (new low for the year!)
Sleep (Mask Time): 7.5 hours
Health Exercises
Meditation, 20min: Incomplete, (9/10, 90%)
Gym: Incomplete, (2/10, 20%)
Mental Game Content
1) How to be More Disciplined by Leszek Badurowicz
My favorite part of this video is the discussion about the marshmallow test. Many of you have surely heard about it by now. They put very young children (4-6 years old) in a room and put a marshmallow in front of them. They told them if they could wait until the researcher got back, they could have a second marshmallow. The vast majority of children failed. The interesting part of the study came when they followed up with the participants over the course of more than 40 years. The children who were able to resist temptation and delay gratification were more successful in virtually every single avenue of life. This shouldn't be surprising. If you are able to discipline yourself to favor long-term gains over short-term satisfaction, you'll eventually build a magnificent life.
What's more... the most successful children in the study used a particular strategy: they moved the marshmallow far away and tried to position themselves so they couldn't even see it. This is key in adult life as well. You have a problem eating too many chips? Throw all the chips in your house in the garbage. Stop buying them. You watch too much TV? Don't own a TV or at least use the parental control features on today's smart TV's that limit how much you can watch per day. If you're a social media addict, have someone set a password that you don't know that sets time limits on the ones you are most prone to wasting time on. Do you have trouble with doing something after spending a lot of energy throughout the day? Do it first thing when you wake up then (this is how I was able to get started with my gym habit and I now use it for meditation). Outsourcing your discipline or removing the need to be disciplined at all is often more effective than white-knuckle will power.
2) Finding Success at Poker by Lucas Greenwood
While this video discusses many aspects of Poker professionalism, the core message is about being a high character individual. Poker is an incredibly demanding profession. You need to be diligent about studying and playing despite having no boss to force you to work. You need to be able to regulate your emotions under fairly intense duress which is not something that comes naturally to most people. You have to be able to discipline yourself to stick to your bank roll plan. You have to honor your word to your backers and people who have put their trust in you. This all points to the same thing: self-development. I've long since learned in my other endeavors throughout my life that you don't achieve the level you want; you rise to the level that you already are. You want to be a better player? Be a better person, overall. Be healthier, be more emotionally stable, be more disciplined with study and play, clarify your goals with more precision, build a stronger social network that will support you and provide opportunities, and just do everything your power to be... better. It all matters. Everything matters. Being the best version of yourself is not just some cute, trite saying; it is core ingredient for all life success recipes.
In my opinion, character is all that really matters in this life. We don't do anything to earn being born smarter than others, more beautiful than others, stronger or faster than others, and we certainly don't earn lucky breaks like being born into countries where computers and the internet are common place... or, you know, surviving to adulthood or even being born at all. I try not to admire people just because they were born with tremendous gifts; I try to admire people who have consistently made good choices as they attempt to become the person that they're capable of being. Wealth is a byproduct of luck times character. I'd rather skip the luck part and just focus on character. The rest takes care of itself.
3) Success Factors by Julian Koplansky
One idea that I really liked from this video, and something that I have personally found to be true in my own life, is that your ability to tolerate workload is trainable. When I was a punk kid playing sports, I would read about guys like Kobe Bryant who would do 3-4 workouts per day and only sleep 4-6 hours per night. I thought that if you wanted to be truly great, like those people, you needed to work 16 hours a day like they seemingly did.
What I didn't understand is that they had built up to these regimes over years and years of training. You can't start at the end. You can't skip the development process. In my own weight lifting journey, I went from training three times per week for about 90 minutes at a time to eventually lifting six days a week for at least two hours a session. If I had tried that from the beginning, I would've just gone backwards from burnout and inadequate rest/recovery. My body and my mind weren't ready for that. In fact, if I hadn't already developed my ability to work long hours through entrepreneurship, I wouldn't be able to study as hard as I do at Poker. I don't come to this completely undeveloped in that regard. However, I am relatively undeveloped in my Poker attributes which is very exciting because it means I am only scratching the surface of my potential to grow as a poker player. I will continue to push myself to find out what my limitations truly are.
Oh, it is worth mentioning that Kobe Bryant eventually came to regret his training schedule. He felt that he was under-recovering and, in his last years, he pulled back significantly on the training load and slept more. That comes as absolutely zero surprise to me. Limits exist. They're generally higher than you think, but certain personality types can easily blow right by them. And they do it all the time. They then go through these funks of semi-depression and low motivation. They end up thinking there's something wrong with them and they just aren't a hard worker or a motivated person. Many of them are the hardest working people you'll ever know... they're just burnt out from inadequate rest.
Again, balance isn't just some cute concept that gets bandied about... if you actually want to do your best, you have to have your broader needs met to sustain the highest possible outputs. You NEED a social network, you NEED proper nutrition, you NEED enough sleep, you NEED relaxation, you NEED something that brings you a level of happiness and joy. If you push on through without these things, you'll get lapped by someone who tends to them properly. I know because I've been there. Sometimes "less" really is "more".
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Poker Strategy Development
On the surface, the analyzer sees this as just another typical day for me. When I dug a little deeper, yeah, that was still pretty much the case. Sometimes you lose.
That said, I did discover a few thematic errors and one of them has me very displeased with myself.
Error #1: Soft Play in SRP
I'm not going to post any examples of this because the theme isn't exactly concentrated to one type of error. Early in this session, I was just getting every single decision wrong in SRPs. In retrospect, upon viewing these hands in-depth, this was clearly just variance and not some massive jump in the skill level of the pool. However, I incorrectly interpreted it that way in the moment. Because of that, I massively decreased my cbet, turn stab, and and river bluff frequencies in SRPs. While this kind of thing doesn't have some profound impact on your win rate, it does add up because these spots are frequent. There's only one real lesson on this one: don't ever change your strategy in the moment unless you're quite sure the sample size is sufficient. This wasn't happening against a single opponent and it is just illogical to think that the pool is somehow that different than 10NL. I got in my own head and needlessly turned down my aggression factor for no good reason. I won't repeat that mistake.
Error #2: Misplaying AJx Boards Early Positions vs BB in SRP
I mean, these are just not frequent overbet boards. There is no nut advantage here. BB defends AJo and AJs mostly by flatting against early positions. One of these got me into big trouble and cost me half a stack.
Error #3: The Return of Terrible Hero Calls
This was my single biggest loss of the entire session: -150bb. I have to admit that I ultimately called here because the line just didn't make any sense. What 2x does a SB cold calling range have here? None -- if playing at equilibrium. SB also isn't supposed to defend 44 with a preflop call here. In fact, with 50NL rake, they're supposed to 3bet/fold 55, too. They're not supposed to have any hands that can beat ATx except JJ and A3 (and I block the only A3 that gets to the turn).
However, here's the problem with all of that: real humans don't play the correct ranges -- especially when they're flatting out of the SB. I flat in the SB, but I do it with the equilibrium ranges. Most people that flat in the SB at microstakes are fish and their range is potentially almost as wide as it is from the BB. With this shove, villain is repping AT LEAST 2x in my opinion. I should've just folded here due to the dubious blocker effects and the fact that I am not beating a real human's value range.
When looking at a 500NL solve (which has a 5-10% call frequency with 44 and 55 etc), the solver's all-in range here is way too insane for a human to mimic:
We see jams with pocker pairs below TT, there is a jam with A5, every single nut flush blocker holding is jamming, etc.
Here's the bottom line: I wasn't beating any potential value here and I'm blocking the most obvious category of bluffs which is missed nut flush draws. Sure, I also block the most likely combination of A3, but I can't just assume that Villain FOR SURE doesn't have 2x, 44, or 55 just because that's "not supposed to be" in their range.
I worked for a good week trying to take these calls out of my game at these stakes, but here we are. Always more work to do, I suppose.
I'm not going to comment so much on these ones, but, when you add everything up, I lost multiple buy-ins to big calls that are outright bad or at least questionable:
Error #5: Poorly Selected Bluffs
Alright, admittedly, maybe this isn't the best example. Villain min-raises my 2.5bb UTG open from the BB with J8o. Typically, I assume this is a fish trying to trap a premium hand because it usually is. I call with the pure intention to set mine with great implied odds. In this case, though, this particular player is actually using some kind polarized strategy.
The line is, of course, completely bizarre. Villain flops two pair. Checks flop. Bets 1bb on the turn after the turn counterfeits his two pair. The river brings him a full house and now he can only lose to 99. He bets 5bb. I raise huge because I'm mainly putting Villain on overpairs. I have a hand that can't beat anything and the double-paired board should be scary for any overpairs here. Villain tanks for his whole time bank and then calls (maybe slow rolling?). If you'd like to try to figure out what was going through their head, please be my guest, lol.
In this one, I think there is a problem with the credibility of my line. At the time, my thinking on the river was: a) I unblock the missed flush draws, b) I block the JT nuts, and c) it is very easy for me to have a variety of rivered Kx two pairs. However, I think blocking JT is completely irrelevant in this case because most humans are not checking back the flop with JT. If I've rivered Kx two pair, the sizing doesn't make sense as you're looking to target Ax holdings. You'd only raise 50% or so. I'm not repping anything except perhaps 77 and 77 shouldn't get to the river in this manner. It is very possible that I just ran into the top of Villain's range, but it is also very possible he jammed a bluff right over the top here because of how nonsensical my play was. In reality, I'm suppose to just fold turn here so, overall, this ends up being a 50bb mistake and that is a win rate killer.
I think that's all I really want to focus on for today. After reviewing my hands, I really felt like I deserved to lose yesterday. I didn't think it was pure variance, but rather legitimate poor play in the first half of the session (literally all these hands are from the first half of the session). Perhaps I got into my head a bit because I was moving up stakes and the session started off in the red. It's hard to say.
Nevertheless, I just didn't play my best. I am capable of making much better decisions than this. I expect to play much better now that the "jitters" about moving up are out of my system. In fact, I'm a little pissed off and I can't wait to get back into the ring and slug it out with the 25NL pool tonight.
Daily Review: 9/6/24
Day #2 in Nacho's CFP
Health Management:
Health Metrics:
Today (Monthly Average)
Total Sleep: 6h51m (6h54m) -- still struggling to adjust to the late nights
RHR: 69bpm (67bpm)
HRV: 15ms (17ms)
Bodyweight: 214.6lbs (216.4lbs)
Steps: 9088 (9062)
Health Habits:
Meditation: Complete, 2/2 (100%)
Gym: Complete, 2/2 (100%)
No Caffeine: Complete, 2/2 (100%)
Mental Game Development:
1) Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericcson (the academic who did the research on the "10,000hr Rule")
Time Spent: 2h35m
Poker Strategy Development
1) Consume CFP Content (reading, internalizing, and creating documents for the guidelines section)
Time Spent: 11h15m
Daily Thoughts
Solid day of work. I'm looking forward to finishing up my initial read through of the starting content for new recruits. That seems realistic.
I haven't spent a ton of time directly thinking about implementation yet, but I don't think I'm more than a week or two out from internalizing and playing with the new strategy. We'll see. Quality takes as long as it takes. I'll make sure I have the material memorized and mastered as quickly as I can manage.
Good luck at the tables everyone!
~Orca
Sept. 7, 2024 | 5:50 a.m.