scourrge

Dan Quinn Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure I follow - you're saying that you have looked at Automator/AppleScript and it's not feasible? I don't really get that since as far as I understand it, those two tools can cover the same use cases as AHK.

If it's more that you don't think it's worth the time and resources to do, I can kind of see that. But as a user, I'd gladly be willing to pay slightly more for it, or a one time payment for it. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

I noticed that when I get to late turn actions and all river actions, I'm prompted to download an AHK file to automatically put information into Monker as appropriate. I have Monker so I thought, great! This is awesome!

However, I'm on a Mac, so I can't use autohotkey. It seems weird to me that the combination of two products that both function on Mac (Vision through browser and native Monker application) won't work together like that. =/

If I'm missing something obvious, please enlighten me! Otherwise, I'd love to see a Mac-friendly alternative to autohotkey like Automator or AppleScript that allows me to automate adding outputs to Monker.

Inb4 the advice is "get a real computer" lol.

Fwiw I tried using this site about a week ago, and the very first feature I tried to use did not work. I tried to enter goals and whenever I tried to save, nothing happened. Hope it was a fluke - will def give it another try soon.

Just posting in here to express my interest as well. As someone who does a LOT of theoretical thinking about anonymous and quasi-anonymous play and how it affects the game, I'd be really excited to see some videos of the pros dealing with and adjusting to these conditions.

At some point you'll figure out that failure has nothing to do with individual sessions. In fact, failure doesn't even have anything to do with winning or losing in the long-term, but that's a philosophical debate for another time...

One huge issue you seem to maintain is that you let the swings of an individual session REALLY influence how you feel, how you play, and how you manage your BR. I'm not saying I'm a perfect example, because I still have plenty of my own mental game issues, and definitely am sometimes affected by (very) short-term swings. But indulge me for a minute here.

I play 1/2 NL, both live and online. I only rate to win in about 50-55% of my sessions. Yet I'm a winner in the games (because I rate to win more when I have a winning session than I rate to lose when I have a losing session). Notice that up to 50% of the time, I will have a losing session. 

Things this doesn't mean:
- This doesn't mean I'm a bad player.
- This doesn't mean I played bad during any individual session.
- This doesn't mean I'm failing as a player.

What it does mean: I'd better get used to losing, and frequently. Can you imagine if every time I felt like I was having a losing session, I jumped up and played 5/10? Feeling like a failure? I'd jump up there and do everything wrong. Even if I don't jump up, odds are I'll be playing worse.

I don't have a cure, but consider this band-aid: There are many, MANY winning players who will lose in a quarter or more of their sessions. Losing in a session doesn't mean shit. Making bad plays in a session, this we can monitor. This we SHOULD monitor.

Cliffs:
- Variance is a thing
- No seriously, you won't always win (even if you are the love-child of Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan)
- IT DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE FAILING

Quick point about sleep that you probably won't enjoy hearing...

Sleep debt accumulates over about a 2-week period. If you have good sleep habits normally, you will be pretty resilient and can bounce back from one or two late nights so long as you go back to your good schedule. But if you have a bad schedule to begin with, you won't notice benefits from one or two "good nights" of sleep. It takes at least a week of persistently sleeping a good amount of time (personally for me) to start noticing the benefits, and you need to keep it up if you want it to continue.

Again, probably not what you wanted to hear, but oh well. :)

It was so bad that RIO auto-deleted it.

Oh and fwiw, the fact that we flop middle set and not bottom set is important here imo. Bottom set would be muuuuuch closer. Because it's like a 6-combo swing in terms of what we beat and what beats us.

This thread looks like it will be shaping up to be something great. Weirdly enough, I had the urge to listen to "Miss You" late last night - no particular reason, I was mostly vid-hopping on YouTube. So I was particularly surprised to see your lyric quote! Excellent choice, btw.

I can relate really strongly to having a downswing make me question myself - not my plays as much as my confidence in my overall ability, which is silly. As you say, variance is the crazy ex-gf, and we gotta get used to her.

I'm also starting to pick up PLO a bit, so I'll be very interested to hear your take on the most micro of the micro stakes.

Play good and run good!

I hate to say it, but at 50nl Bovada 6max, I don't think we need to worry as much about making calls based on being at the top of our range. I snap-call here too, but for a different reason.

I think a lot of villains at Bovada are going to extremely overplay both perceived value hands (AT, AJ), and air. While I think it's unlikely he has tons of air, there just aren't enough combos that beat us for me to find a fold here. It's unlikely he gets to the river with TT, and I discount AA somewhat because I think it checks the flop a reasonably high % of the time. I haven't played there in a while, so you'd probably be a better judge of how likely it is he gets to the river with KQ with this line, but I certainly don't give him even close to every combo. I'm thinking KQhh definitely gets there (though it may barrel), but other than that I'm mostly discounting KQ.

Again, you're probably the best judge of his approximate range here. The only other real read here is that his river x/r is basically a massive bomb. In-game I puke-call.

I've yet to play in Vegas myself, and wouldn't have a big enough sample to discuss it even if I had anyway. But I'd suggest you do some research on which games are the softest in Vegas, as which casino you play at is going to have a significant effect on your earning potential. Also, I would try not to worry too much about comparing your hourly, and worry more about just playing solid/improving. 

I doubt you'll be able to make any formula that's particularly better tbh. The main reason is that how much you pay in rake is going to depend on how many pots you win, and how often the rake gets capped, the former probably being more important. I'm guessing based on the numbers that it's 5ish% rake capped at something??

I guess that it wouldn't be a terrible approximation to say that you know on average 50c (0.25bb) is being taken out of the pot, so you're risking the same amount (2bb) to win the normal amount (4bb) minus the average rake (0.25bb). So risking 2bb to win 3.75bb, or risking $4 to win $7.50. So you need 4/(4+7.5) = 34.78% equity vs. his range or so. Still close, but not an insignificant difference I suppose. Hope that helps!

Bovada is the safest site available to US players to my knowledge. On top of that, it has the softest play I have ever seen anywhere (excluding some live games). All the way up to at least 100nl (as high as I played as a reg over any reasonable volume), there are many players playing as badly as you could have expected pre 2011. Maybe even pre 2006.

While I realize that I'm only adding to the nonsense that is this thread, I'd just like to point out that this whole exchange has been one of the few negatives I've seen on RIO. And the lack of moderation of it only suggests to me that this is probably the "worst" that RIO gets, so good job us, I guess!!

In all seriousness though, guys, if people are colluding for the free membership, they're probably not even getting close to the full $99/month value, since look how little value they've gotten out of the forums!! Just saying, look what's here for free. If the best they can do is look at that and say, "hey, I can steal from this," then they've ignored the whole value of the forums, and I doubt they'll get much from their free membership. =)

P.S. Yes, this is still a real issue, as it prevents the best content-creators from being rewarded, but figured I'd add my 2 cents regardless. Carry on with the trolling, anti-trolling, and whatever else is happening in here.

Um, yeah, exactly though. You can't really equate 6x with KQ here. You might be thinking "these hands are equivalent," but really, you're going from saying "he doesn't have any value combos" to "he has 21 value combos and 17 of them beat us."

I care much less about his frequencies here than the board itself. I think this spot mostly sucks because we look like we have exactly what we have... The problem is that this is a pretty terrible board for him to barrel. No scare card ever hits. I feel like the only hands he can really be 3-barreling here are going to be things like 87 and hands that pick up diamond draws OTT. And as we've said, your hand looks like Qx a ton. So he should really EASILY be value-betting AQ and better here. I'm not sure why he can't value bet worse than a 6.

This is a gross spot, but I think vs. a GOOD opponent I'm folding. Vs. an AGGRO (but not particularly good) opponent, I'm calling down.

I made a post a long time ago (not on this forum, and doubt I can find it anyway) about how we're insanely good at deluding ourselves. Even otherwise intelligent, well-adjusted adult humans get really, REALLY good at telling themselves they didn't do anything wrong. Ie we have a losing session, and we chalk it up to variance. Also, the being intelligent part is kind of bad at times, because we're a lot better at justifying decisions (such as getting it in light) after the fact. We're really good at coming up with reasons - logically sound ones, I might add - for making a poor decision in-game.

Good job quitting when you realized something was up with your play.

In for awesomeness. I like the intro and I agree about being good "forum players" vs. actual players. This is something I struggle with personally. My execution sometimes suffers, even though I feel my thought process is spot on most of the time. I think this is a combination of A-game vs. C-game, having a lot of time vs. not having a lot of time, and (potentially) lots of pressure vs. no pressure.

On the forums, we're usually at our A-game, have a lot of time to think, and there's very little pressure. In-game, we may be anywhere from our A-game to F-game, we often have very little time to think, and sometimes feel pressured or at least stressed while playing - big pots and frustrating decisions in particular.

Looking forward to following this thread. GL!

In Wade's case I would say that BRM is much less about risk management than it is about comfort management: creating an environment where he doesn't feel the need to hop up limits when he loses a couple buyins, and conducive to forming habits such that it is a non-issue in the future.

To post a continuation both of my own thoughts from your previous thread, and to reiterate and expand on what people have said here:

I think that you should not necessarily be utilizing a static bankroll management strategy. I think a progressive one would be best for you. When I say progressive, I just mean that it changes as you move up in level (in this instance increasing as you move up).

Just a quick example. I think probably 20 buyins is plenty for 10nl, and might even be fine for 25nl, but I'd say that for you personally, you need more than that for 50nl, and probably even more for 100nl. If I were you, I'd probably make it something like:

10nl: 20 BI = $200
25nl: 30 BI = $750
50nl: 40 BI = $2,000
100nl: 50 BI = $5,000
200nl: 50+ BI = $10,000 absolute minimum
...

And so on. You get the idea. I'd also probably implement MUCH stricter shot-taking guidelines. For example, take a 5-BI shot when you reach each of those minimum amounts above. If you lose the 5 BI's, or have a tilt issue, immediately move back down until you are back at the X BI's. This is less to do with the actual numbers you choose, and more to do with creating an environment for yourself where discipline isn't difficult, but rather straightforward, and a habit that you are able to form as you go.

Some people are less risk-averse, and tend toward larger bankrolls naturally. Not very many people overdo it though, so I wouldn't really worry about that at all. And I think that you also tend to be less risk-averse to begin with, and that's part of why taking that leap where you chase losses has become a recurring theme. Hopefully by going back to a more rigid system, you will develop the habits that are necessary to prevent yourself from being forever broke. You know that the trend you've set is one where no matter how good you get, you will lose your BR. It is much - SO MUCH - more important that you develop BR discipline. In your case, I'd estimate it at approximately 99:1 importance as compared with developing your betting strategy. You're a strong thinker, and a strong player, but you won't be a strong winner until you can hold onto your money long enough to watch it grow.

As always, you know I'm with you all the way buddy, and if there's anything within reason that I can do to help, I will. 

I have no further wisdom to add that we haven't chatted about before, but I wanted to hop in and say good luck. Creating an environment that prevents you from hopping up levels is key for you.

And frankly I think a stricter BRM might be good. I'm sure Sonny had the best intentions when he said moving up to 200nl a bit at 2.5kish was okay, but I know you, and you know you... And I think we both know that if you've only got 12-15 BI's for a level, and suddenly lose 2 or 3 at once (which is no big deal when 4-tabling), that that's when you tend to start feeling it. Especially if it was a winning session before that and you feel like you've "lost ground."

Remember, money in your bankroll isn't really ever "earnings." It's your tool you use to win and your safety net to guard against variance. Losing a few buyins sometimes is part of the plan. Playing with enough buyins to be able to handle it is also part of the plan. Don't be distraught when following the plan. But don't forget the plan either.

Fwiw, I've found that in spots where people are making raises postflop (on Bovada), people have WAY more air than is reasonable. In this particular spot, it's just too hard for me to believe villain, and I'd be looking to probably flat here, since whatever air hands villain chooses to do this with are very unlikely to improve on the river, and will likely fold if we jam (although there's an argument for jamming since JJ probably won't fold).

If you're not downloading all your hands, converting them, and then going over them and looking through villain's hands in some key spots (in PT4 or similar), then I think you're making a big mistake. Again, when you look through spots where villains are raising, you'll find a much bigger % of air than I think you'd expect. I'm not saying to call down everywhere, but when villain makes a min-check-raise in a spot that doesn't make much sense, I'm not inclined to believe him.

Glad to see you trying to focus less on the monetary goals and more on playing solid poker. Keep it up!!

Villain is 77/8.... EXTREMELY loose passive. And the donks suggest a top pair or draw type hand. Obviously he's not calling with missed spades, but Qxss will, and 9x isn't folding if he's a 77/8. River seems like a very, very easy bet for value. And fwiw I'm prob going kinda big - like $4.50ish.

I don't really see how we can ever x/f this river. Basically the only things that get there are 65s (probably raises turn), 87s, and 8xss, of which there should only be a few combos. 87ss is blocked, and we have As.

I also don't understand why you bet flop so small and then bomb the turn? It's true that it's a little tough to get value, but vs. a fairly laggy opponent x/c seems okay. Bet/fold is also probably fine. X/f just seems to let a laggy player do what he would all the time, which is call and see us "give up," then bet.

Don't show results.

Raise a little bigger on the turn in my opinion, and I know this will sound results-oriented, but I can't really think of much that BTN can have aside from flushes on this river. It's unlikely he checks back sets on the flop, and even if he does, he's probably just putting in a 3bet on the turn since the board gets MUCH scarier/draw heavy. So really, his whole range when 3bets pre, checks back flop AND flats turn raise is basically flush draws. AKhh and AJhh are the most likely by far, but there might be small Axhh in his range as well.

I'm not grinding much more there anymore, but when I was I was mostly playing 6max zone, and then 6max regular once I was playing 50nl and 100nl. I did have some experience playing full ring there, but that was mostly at the lower limits. I found the greater hands/hour to be helpful when I could only 4-table and didn't even have zone available to me.

Your analysis seems fine. What site is this? Bovada? I only ask because you don't have a normal HH, and I've played a bit of volume at Bovada (relatively ofc, tough when you can only 4-table). For Bovada specifically, while the fact that he waits for the turn to jam does suggest strength, I'll just say that I've gone through my database before looking at raises at all points postflop, and there's an obscene percentage of air in spots I never would have expected it.

That being said, on any other site it's a snap fold, and probably still a fold here.

But what I'm saying is that you probably don't need the positional stats as often as you think you do. Many spots won't be very close and require that detail. Then for close spots you'd refer to them. Just a thought, but it also seems like you rely pretty heavily on your HUD, so I'm not sure if you'd like that.

Also, just try going through your stats and think about which ones are absolutely essential. Think about which ones you use the least. Change your HUD accordingly, if you want to. But otherwise I'm not sure why you want to make it smaller, unless it's just because it's in the way and bulky.