Poker Squared - NL2 and NL5....apparently...:)

POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SESSION Friday 3.8.2012

Hey there everyone:)

I had to cut the todays session prior to its regular ending (Around 50 hands). If you look at the graph, I´m sure you will understand. Luck was definitelly not with me today. I got into a few questionable spots. I believe I did the right thing in there, but evaluation is needed.

Red line is kinda cool...not going straight down. I like it pretty much. Blue didn´t like me today:D Well...mostly this is variation. It is only 600 hands and I cannot expect that every session or even WEEK to be be profitable.

What I´m also very happy about is that I´m still keeping myself in straight thinking. I´m not raging or any of this stupid stuff. Of course when you are unlucky then it will tilt you. You may not even notice. I have to confess that I had some very creative ideas today but I think that mostly I saw them in time and clicked the fold button:)

However, I´ve got to admit that I will miss those 9,30 dollars very much as I´ve been building myself up nearly 20 dollars for two weeks and then i will lose half of that in one day:(

Normally I use this kind of "stop loss" mechanism which is 5BI at maximum, then quit. So I decided to switch it on for today.
But enough of this. Many more intersetning days to come in front of us all:)

EVALUATION HAND 1

Yurao

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POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SESSION Saturday 4.8.2012

Hi there guys:)

Another very strange session coming up:D I guess that none of my session are actually standard-.-
Today I played lots of hands because cards were coming but I was cooled very often again. There was no blue spot won exactly like yesterday. I will put some hands on the forum for review. My general impression right now is that it wasn´t so bad but I did not got paid a lot of times also.

Anyway, tommorrow I will post some weekly review again. But the graph won´t be nice:/

Check out the hands and the Graph.
(Seriously - what happened to red?? ) I noticed that lots of times my blue line sucks the red line goes nicely straight or rockets up. Why is that? Due to the nature of the bad blue hands, I don´t think that I´m ruining it myself by too big aggression or something.

EVALUATION HAND 1

EVALUATION HAND 2

EVALUATION HAND 3

POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SESSION Monday 6.8.2012

Hey there m8s!

There are many things I would like to say, but no time for that:) I´m kind of late in my schedule, I owe you the weekly review and Sunday Session. Well...Review will be ready tommorrow as I had coaching today with Schnitzelfish. (And it is starting to get really interesting, I honestly think that this coaching will yield more results that I could have hoped..). Anyway Sunday Session will not be available because I didn´t play any...or I did but...well... I will tell you everything in tommorrow post, so keep an eye on the blog as I think I will be posting lots of content tommorrow. Wel...lots...you know..more than usual:D

Soooo todays session. I entered the session kinda sleepy because I´ve eaten just before that which I don´t usually do. Then I took two oranges to refresh myself and then went to play. I woke up gradually and quite fast as I also went through some posted hands on the forum to get myself the feel of the game..you know, breathe some poker air:)

The session then went very smoothly I was focusing a lot. I think I played my B game at maximum. I know i can do better but overally I was keeping up nicely with the game. Also the winnings also cheer you up...you know after last week and a bit heavier loses (more on that tommorrow, but don´t expect any drunk funny poker-ish stuff:D Its not so bad.).

................oh man...guys I´ve got so much to tell you but I just don´t have time to do so today so i will not even post hands today. BUT I PROMISE TO DO IT RIGHT AFTER I GET BACK FROM WORK. REALLY. I PROMISE. You can hold me 100% accountable for that. And then troll me if I don´t
All right - its done:)

P.S.: I hope that I will write tommorrow everything I´m about to say...oh man...my head will explode ...I know it:D

EVALUATION HAND 1

EVALUATION HAND 2

POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: RANDOM THOUGHTS:)

Hey there guys,

I promised to write a bit more content today. Well....asi I said - i forgot something thats for sure://

But lets begin.

First of all I would like to thank you guys for rating my blog with the highest possible grade - 10/10. There were two people who did that and It given me those 5 thumbs up symbols. This means a lot to me!! Thank you very much!!!!!

So I decided to update my Vision statement and also my habit board a little bit so check out the front page. Just take a look at the "last edit" date because I´m going to update it either after todays session or tommorrow and you may miss it because it won´t be there. (Depending when I end, cause I will be playing sweat session today with one of my friends)

I had second coaching with Schnitzelfisch yesterday. I have to say that this coaching got very interesting. We spoke about lots of different stuff. What I liked the most was that Schnitzelfisch asked me about my ultimate goal - becoming the coach. It seems that he wants to help me prepare even further to the future. This is really cool because I expected that we will go only through my stabilization as regular poker player and that would be it so I´m definitelly happy that we even spoke about this a bit.
He recommended me the very famous book "Mental game of Poker" by Jared Tendler. I´m sure most of you are familiar with it. I don´t know where I will order it yet but I think I will just go for eBay and I will get it shipped from Germany (English version ofc).

Then we covered learning. Well that was really awesome. He told me about how to ascend from passive learning to much more active learning and shown me the benefits of being active student.
By active I mean that he recommended me to get a notebook and write down every questionable spot I like (like all the hands i put on the forum), write my comments under it and then Gervs comments from the forum. Then I can compare those, I will memorize solution much better and most importantly I will have "book" of my leaks that I can go through before the session.

This was also very important because I was always thinking like - Ok so I will get replies on the evaluation forum. How do I know if I apply them? I thought that it will just - happen in time. Well....maybe but that would e incredibly long. By reading through my leakbook, I can always choose one or two leaks just BEFORE the session and then focus the whole session on giving this leak more time on the tables and knowingly work on it.
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY AWESOME! I know...maybe it sounds natural to understand but I just needed someone to tell me. So for me - a win.

I totally embraced this idea and created the notebook right away. I plan to read some articles or look at some videos and make notes as well. i think this is actually one of the most powerful tools that I decided to use.

Now - why there wasn´t any Sunday session. Well...I know that it will sound like I´m talking out from playing but - i had a really bad headache. I have them sometimes, so it was nothing special. I was just thinking - man, don´t talk yourself out of it, your head may hurt but this just insn´t an excuse. So I started to play, but after 150 hands I was sure that it isn´t just an excuse. The colors were flowing around the monitor, I couldn´t focus on the numbers let alone cards...man I had to quit 1 BI lighter...all red spots. Thats why I didn´t created the weekly review also.

I know that this will again sound bad:/ but I also decided no to make weekly review. There was lesser hands than expected and I fell nearly 5 BI down. I think it will be more productive to clp two weeks together because there isn´t much value in those weekly reviews. I will start to do 2 weeks review and then bigger Monthly review. I think it will be best to set the dates simply at 14th and last day of the month. It will be easy for me to grasp it like this. So - please expect the next review around 14th.

Another thing. When I first contacted coaches (Gerv and Schnitzelfisch) it was time where I reconsidered my play quite a lot. That is why I didn´t prepared any video for review with Gerv. I wanted to put up some volume, post some hands and after that I will start recording videos which I will then use with Gerv. However I got to say that I ´m not decided yet how to do it. If I play stacked as usual, i would have to put away every table so that it will be clearly seen in the video and it will slow me down considerably. OR I can simply play like...6 table tiled. However if I do this then I will be probably playing differently then when I play stacked and I would like to . But I´m sure I will figure this out very soon. I plan to record around 7 videos and then choose which one will be evaluated with Gerv.

So thank you all for following my blog! It means a lot to me!

Yurao

POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SESSION Tuesday 7.8.2012

Whats up everyone??

Whoa what a session today. The graph doesnt say much but i experienced one of the most fishy days today:) Nearly all my tables were composed of 20+ VPIP players. Beautiful. However, the cards didn´t come so I couldn´t play too much. One stadrad spot KK vs AA lose, then win in the same way. At the end of the session I got to some spots so I won at least some money.

Hands tommorrow again:( I´m going to sleep with my GF. She gets sad when I´m sitting by my computer typing every day till night. I guess I need to shift the start of the session like...one hour earlier...seriously.

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POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SESSION Wednesday 8.8.2012

Hey Pokerstrategy!

SESSION RATING: ( X X X)

FOCUS AND ENERGY: 7
TABLE SELECTION:6
GAME AWARNESS:8

Todays session was pretty slow because I was fine tuning my HUD. Its still not perfect. I of course tried to tune it prior but you know...as you play, more and more ideas comes to your mind. The reason why I was tuning my HUD was because I switched from HEM to PokerTracker 4. Since the program looks interesting, I will probably write something like a review of how I feel and play with it.

Anyway I had hard time table selecting as I ran into a bit tighter tables than I would like. Also I played a bit less tables today than usual (8-9 instead of 12-15) mainly because of the HUD.

Hands will be posted later because of the same reasons as yesterday. But today it is better. We went away with my GF in the afternoon and then I was messing with PT4 so I started to play late. HOWEVER. I´m tired of the fact that I start to play late so I decided to start making the habit of playing from 6:10PM at MAX!

Yurao

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POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SESSION Thursday 9.8.2012

SESSION RATING: ( X X X X X X )

FOCUS: 3
ENERGY: 8
TABLE SELECTION:4
GAME AWARNESS:4

Hey guys..all right, today was the worst session I ever had. I got my mindset f***ed up in the beggining and then I just couldn´t hop on.

It started like this. I opened Camtasia cause I wanted to record the session for review and perhaps coaching with Gerv. Camtasia was slowing down the computer significantly but ... nothing unbearable. It was just a nuisance. However after around 250 hands I noticed that my HUD is screwed up. It was only on some tables but like 60% of them. The stats were not for correct people so I marked wrong a few players, changed markings on few players because of this and then I realized that it iwas actually messed up. I started to panic because there was one interesting spot that I was trying to write down to all the players in it (4 of them).

Well this moved me so much that I was not sure in any spot till the end of the session.

To get even better, this session was all wraped up. I was losing money where I should win them and winning money where I should lose them.

This moved me even more as the session progressed and then I realized that I was not even opening new tables because I had no time for it (somehow...). So I decided to reset completely. I closed all the tables except for two very juicy greenish tables. And started opening again. However tables were nice from the start and then the green players quickly disappeared and in my moved state I was not able to replace them accordingly and I ended up lots of times sitting on very strange tables that were mixed up from totaly nits to totally fish. I was just flowing on the wave of situations and my mindset slowly resigned totally.

This is the first time where I actually felt even some rage tilt. Just a little but that is a very big red warning for me.

But let´s be positive. I started to exercise according to the 5BX chart today. Man...I looked at the first chart and told myself - what? Only 2 of each excercise for today and tommorrow? But I started there. OOOOOOH MAAAAAAN.....My fitness is so horrible that I felt exhausted even by doing THIS SMALL STUFF!!!!! DAFUQ??? I´m so happy that I started, because how can I play properly when I feel like a slob? (Don´t get me wrong I´m not fat or anything..quite oppossite in fact, but this was horrible:) I also decided to speed up the swimming that I want to start.... I want to learn to swim correctly with breathing out under water and stuff. I need to increase my oxygen intake and get my heart pumping. no wonder that I feel so unenergic across the day. Starting to eat fruit helped me very much but the exercising will help me even further.

So...I´m looking forward to the days that are ahead of me. Everyone runs sometime to a really bad day...so what..:) I will get myself together and tommorrow will be a big return:) By that I mean nothing else then playing calm and focused again.

Hands:

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=201943

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=201944

POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SESSION Friday 10.8.2012

SESSION RATING: ( X X )

FOCUS: 8
ENERGY: 9
TABLE SELECTION: 8
GAME AWARNESS: 7

Hi there everyone,

Today I played a sweat session with my friend. It was really cool. I was speaking the whole session and I got to say that it helped me to be focused a lot. I also felt very fresh and energic today which helped me a lot also. However, even though I table selected as much as I could, I was still sticking to around 4 tables because there were alyways reasons to close the ones that are opened. In the second half of the session I managed to open enought tables to get the game flowing.

Overall I think that today was one of the better days considering my mindset.

However, there is something that I´m not sure of. This is the second time when I started to play the session sooner than normal and I had really big trouble getting the right tables. I´m not sure if that was only a coincidence and I will not pay too much attention to it for now but if it keeps going like this for some time I will be forced to start playing poker again around 19:00 to feel comfortable. To save the later time I will simply start posting sessions the next day (which would enable me to start working on poker again around 18:00) and I will simply go sleeping when I turn off the tables. Everyone will be happy:) But not for now. Well....maybe I will consider this because in the afternoon I´m much more like reading stuff and digging into stuff (but I don´t have to). Then in the evening I´m more into playing but I always feel kinda lazy to get the hands on the forum and so on. I also have problems playing bigger deals of hands overtime because I feel the need to stop and start doing "paperwork" even when I feel that I can play succesfully. So maybe I can use this "paperwork" as a form of pre-warm up. Hmmm....this is actually what I would do anyway for my warm up. All right way to go.

I will post hands from today tommorrow and THEN I will play my session. So tommorrow there will be no session review because I will post it the next day. I understand that it is good to post it when it is fresh. However, I will try to use again the benefit of having a little bit distanced opinion.

HANDS:

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?postid=1147045#post1147045

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=202208

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Nice to see a mass multitabler ;D

May i inform u of a pattern in ur sessions?

Ever noticed that u had a good session, if the session the day before:
Last hand before quit is a +AI

Ever noticed that u had a bad session, if the session the day before:
Last hand before quit i a -AI.

Im just saying it COULD be a subconscious bluff pattern.

Also i see ur sessions is NEVER around same amount of hands. Maybe it could have something to do with the subconscious phase of leaving tables with a winner feeling, or a looser feeling.

Good luck

Originally posted by martinemem
Nice to see a mass multitabler ;D

May i inform u of a pattern in ur sessions?

Ever noticed that u had a good session, if the session the day before:
Last hand before quit is a +AI

Ever noticed that u had a bad session, if the session the day before:
Last hand before quit i a -AI.

Im just saying it COULD be a subconscious bluff pattern.

Also i see ur sessions is NEVER around same amount of hands. Maybe it could have something to do with the subconscious phase of leaving tables with a winner feeling, or a looser feeling.

Good luck

Hi there buddy!!

I assume that you are multitabler too, which is awesome to see:)

Anyway, of course you can inform me about anything:) I don´t mind positive or negative feedback. That is the way to get better after all:)

So, thank you. I never picked up on such pattern. Maybe I will take a look at it for a while. You know, how it behaves. I didn´t picked up on such pattern yet.

About my session length - well it may not seem like it but I´ve got a daily minimum of hands to play. I can play anything over it if I feel like it but I on´t have to. currently it is sitting around 650
However, I can assure you that I´m keeping a very tight eye on positive or negative tilting e.g. winning or losing and closing sessions because of that.
Thats why I always leave session mostly because of time reasons. Not because of win/loss. There was a session few days ago where I lost AI in the very last hand so it may look like that, but it was actually a coincidence, because I´m leaving tables when the blind would have reached me and it was my AKs and I lost somehow..not sure against what it was..:)

But!! It is true, that I´ve got a psychologcal leak because when I decide to leave the session and then I wait for blinds so that I can close the tables, I´M SOMETIMES PLAYING MONEY SCARED! And that is a definite leak that should be adressed...

Thanks!!

Sincerely,

Yurao

POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SESSION Sunday 13.8.2012

SESSION RATING: ( X X X X X )

C-

FOCUS: 6
ENERGY: 4
TABLE SELECTION: 6
GAME AWARNESS: 6

HANDS:
https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=202637

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?postid=1148872#post1148872

Hey guys,

First of all - there was no Saturday session because is was out for the whole day and we returned in the night.

Yesterdays Session was pretty nuts. I lost two big pots right in a row right on the beginning and that ruined my whole session. I was still thinking about them even though I know that they were well played by me.

(The AK hand above is one of them) and the second was AA on the 775 rbw flop, where we got All In and the guy got 77 so...quads to beat://)

I was still not sure and stuff and so I was not too good at playing the whole session. I think that this may have been the result of my poor red play. I have to learn to control this as normally this is not so bad for me but two spots right away in the start of the session takes my motivation away, because you know that you´ve got a big chunk of money that you must win to be only break even for the whole session. I know that this is not the right.

You know its not that I will start to do semthing crazy. Much more it is manifestating itself as being incredibly tired of play, losing much focus (I folded KK and later AQ accidentally because of this.)

So I just played the quote and went away. There is no point in trying to catch up something. However it was not too bad to stop playing like around 300 hands or so.

POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SESSION Monday 13.8.2012

SESSION RATING: ( X )

A-

FOCUS:9
ENERGY:9
TABLE SELECTION:8
GAME AWARNESS:9

HANDS:

No hands today. The marked hands from yesterday were nothing too special to ask about, so I went deeper but no other strange spots were found. I guess I was pretty lucky then..

Hey there everyone!

Yesterdays session is the kind of session I want to play every time. I was sitting to play very energic, focused I was literally flying through all tables, table selecting very effectively and most of all, I was seeing everything I needed to see. That includes player stats, marking them correctly, doing notes. Everything just flew over.

I understand that it may seem that this comes from the fact that the session was a + one. No guys it does not. I was like that from the very beginning.

Now - how was that possible? Since I started to make physical notes of every hand I put on the forum I´m paying more attention to that. And yestrday I was looking on my notes and found out that there actually are some patterns in my hands!! I´m not saying that it means someting great but overally I felt very well that I start to see some leaks and that there will be much more of those. This was so positive for me that it immediatelly charged me with so much energy to play that it just felt awesome.

The red line does seem just too good so I think that it was just lucky.

Ok so that is it. Tommorrow I will post the 14 days review.
(Whole graph, stats and overall summary of what happened)

Sincerely,

Yurao

POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SHORT INFO

Hey guys,

just a quick note... I just got home today, so I don= t have time to perform the 14 days analysis. I know that sucks, but really I couldn´t. I went swimming and then we were invited to friends new apartment. So I will go and play my session now. Tommorrow I will post both sessions AND the review....oh boy...what a workload tommorrow://

Sincerely,

Yurao

POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SESSION Tuesday 14.8.2012

SESSION RATING: ( X X )

B+

FOCUS: 8
ENERGY: 9
TABLE SELECTION: 7
GAME AWARNESS: 7

Unfortunatelly I don´t remember how this session went. What happens to me every day this week is that I play very energic and that is very nice.

However, when I don´t have time to do the review in time, then I get way back in my schedule and it is very demotivating to catch up. So I decided to just cut it. I will only post session graphs for these two days. (This one and the next one). I will type more into the Weekly review (down below:) ).

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POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SESSION Wednesday 16.8.2012

SESSION RATING: ( X X )

B+

FOCUS: 8
ENERGY: 6
TABLE SELECTION: 9
GAME AWARNESS:8

Generally, this session was very nice from the table selection point of view as I was table selecting nearly all the time and that helped me keep myself "in the game" and don´t lose tempo over time.
I was a bit exhausted because I went swimming and I´m not good at it yet so it is very draining for me energy wise. But it helps to focus mindset. I don´t know how but it does and it feels good. So even though I was a bit tired, I was keeping my mind busy and I did not let it rest so that it will not lose focus. I think that this will be my goal for my next few sessions. To keep myself busy as much as I can so I won´t start hessitating and the focus will fade away.

POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: 14 DAYS REVIEW 1.8.2012 - 14.8.2012

Hey guys!

First, I would like to express my personal feelings of the past 14 days and then we will continue to bit more poker-ish stuff.

So...the 14 days have gone very quickly for me. I just tried to do what I could to keep myself playing and focus on habits and working on them.

The most important steps I did were:

1.) I started to excercise according to the 5BX charts.

2.) I started to go swimming.

3.) I finished my whiteboard and started to mark days when I play and when I do everything according to the plan.

4.) Taking notes of hands I post on the forum into my notebook.

5.) Rating my sessions and writing it down to my notebook.

6.) Starting my sessions with warmup - looking to my notebook and setting up leaks I will try to work on.

I´ve got to say that exercising and swimming will be very helpful in the long run. It is true that my physical constitution was worse then I thought. It can only help me.

Playing cards means a lot to me. When you really grasp the habit of doing something you will start doing anything else much more easier because you already know that you can really do it!! You realize that everything may be possible because you only have to break it for 2 weeks and then it starts to get automatic.

POKER:

As I look at past 14 days...it was a bit rollercoaster. You see I´ve lost nearly everyting I won twice. (The zero line represents 100USD bankroll) It may have been possible that I just wasn´t able to pass it. I don´t know.

What is interesting for me is the first half where the red line went in beautiful straight way. The blue was a bit lazy back then. In the second half, the lines start to get standard. Blue up, red down.

As you can also see the All In Equity line says - you should be break even.

I don´t recall doing any significant change to my play in the middle of the graph://

To summarize - I´m happy with the volume played and my sessions are getting better (feeling wise). Also my position winnings have much more sense now. I´m quite happy with my blind play.

I welcome any feedback that I can use to think it all through from 3rd person perspective!!!

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Yurao

Hey there,

How are you finding the 5bx? I'm up to chart 3, finding it very very tough now, which is good :).

Hope you start crushing soon and climbing up, sounds like your definitely putting in the hard work, so you deserve some progress.

I'm currently without broadband till the end of the month, quite useful because it gives me chance to re-read all the articles :p, something I've been lacking recently - studying.

Gl.

Originally posted by 3prswins
Hey there,

How are you finding the 5bx? I'm up to chart 3, finding it very very tough now, which is good :).

Hope you start crushing soon and climbing up, sounds like your definitely putting in the hard work, so you deserve some progress.

I'm currently without broadband till the end of the month, quite useful because it gives me chance to re-read all the articles :p, something I've been lacking recently - studying.

Gl.

Hi there!!

I find it totally amazing actually:) It is a great way to start exercising overall and it helps you maintain a basic stamina very well.

I´m currently on the first chart and I´m staying on one row for two days exactly as the 5BX chart says. And even though the chart gets harder over time I feel actually much better doing it than it was on previous levels.

Anyway, I think that combined with the swimming it is the best exercise possible for me. I don´t plan on working out too much. I just want to maintain fitness and stamina.

It is true however that someday I would like to start swimming butterfly for as long time as possible:)))))

Sincerely,

Yurao

Hi man, nice blog! Why dont you just play at ZOOM tables? You will play more hands!

POKER SQUARED BLOG POST: SESSION Thursday 17.8.2012

SESSION RATING: ( X X X X )

FOCUS: 6
ENERGY: 5
TABLE SELECTION: 8
GAME AWARNESS 7

Hey there guys!

The graph looks very grim but it was not so bad. Most spots where I get myself AI were EV+ and I just lost so not too big deal I think. However my overall success in sessions largely depends on my initial energy and focus. This is absolutelly clear pattern. When I sit by the computer and I feel that I don´t have strength it is clear that the session will be autopiloted and it will not get too good. I already did some steps to increase my energy and it helps. But it isn´t enough. Not yet. I´ve got to press on.

HANDS:

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=203286

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=203287