60+30 – Page 3 – PokerStrategy

Yersh · 2013-01-20T03:26:43Z

Hi. As you can understand from the title this blog have something to do with 90days video series from Raskolnikov. Well, yes. But actually I'm using it more as an excuse to start a blog. I was planning to make a small 60 days marathon before I watched the videos. 60 days, 90 days, I don't see any difference. The only goal of this 90 days will be to plug the biggest leak which stops me from being a good poker player. For now I simply can't play a lot(to be precise more than 4-5 hours total in 1 sleep cycle). The daily increase of the number of hours I play leads to huge variation in the quality of my game. This actually was quite a surprise for me. Earlier in my poker career I didn't need more than 5 hours of play a day cause I thought that was enough (5hours of play + 1-2 hours of work with hm,math,vods and other stuff). So the problem was recently found due to my switching from BSS to MSS. To prevent flame about what is the best I think BSS 6-9max player must know how to play both to make money against most of opponents he can encounter at the normal tables. Somewhere in the middle of 2012 I began to dissect my own game in all possible aspects (technical skills, management, psychology) to find why I stuck so hard. I found out that my strong side is in playing big pots, capitalizing by opponents big mistakes, or even provoking some. This was balanced by poor play in the smaller pots where I felt there is not much to gain and often played mindlessly by auto pressing the buttons. So I decided to switch for a little while for training purposes and began to play nl50 mss 6max. After a couple of weeks of playing mss the result was overwhelming - I was losing money and losing much more than I expected. And the fun part was I was making some stupid mistakes which I couldn’t understand. During the post session analysis was 100% clear what the right play would be (or would have been, not sure what is the right form; these past tense shifts in English language are tricky and English is not my native language). And the more hours I played per day the bigger the amount of mistakes per hour I made. More interesting observation was made during looking through my logs. I keep the daily log of my poker play since mid 2012 to summarize key elements of my condition, quality of my play, and other stuff that came to mind that could influence my play at the particular day. I found that even if I play only 4 hours a day, but planned like 7-8, I was making the same amount of mistakes as if I played the whole 7 hours. This type of phenomenon is not new to me, because I read about how brain works, basic psychology, a lot of stuff about working and productivity. So I again proved that knowing about some kind of usual mistakes doesn't guarantee that you will not make it (especially when you are not completely aware of some aspects of you own play like I was). So the goal is to achieve the quality of play where I do not make some stupid stuff while playing a lot. In my opinion such skill is the base of a successful poker player since it's address 2 major problems: stop making unnecessary mistakes and putting in volume in terms of played hands. BTW by playing I mean deliberate practice not mindless grinding to meat the daily goal. The goal is 200 hours per month(600hours total). This amount is possible, but at the same this definitely will not be easy. And this will be fun. he-he, I already feeling the pressure from this nice number of 200. I will write twice a day in the blog. Trying to describe what happens everyday more from "self-management as a poker player" point of view. In the morning(if you can call 4pm a morning :)) I will usually write answers and in the evening I will do an overview of the day. As I go I will try to describe stuff from more practical side. I only watched 1st Raskolnikov's video up to the homework part at 22nd minute it sounded a little bit theoretical like "think this way". I'm kinda get stuff done type of person. So I concentrate in day to day describing how I achieve some thinking patterns in practice, will analyze why I failed in something and what I plan to do fix it. P.S.#1 There no global goals here. because without completing this marathon any global goal essentially turns into a dream. I don't dream, it only distracts you. P.S.#2 This post looks like a report. Well, I learned English mostly by reading technical literature, instruction manuals and listening to lectures, so I always write in the similar manner.

Yersh

Joined: 31.12.2006