bedofour 2017: NL200-NL600

Originally posted by BrokesoBroke
Also I don't like it when people blame sites for being more fishy or less fishy since most games don't run unless there's a fish anyway. Just keep working on your game!

hey,
thanks!

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i haven't played that much recently; i was ill for a while, lazy for a while, but still i put in like 4-5 h/day on avg. i'm not watching results; i think i run fine though, especially thanks to organ donors*. i hate the mistakes that i make, sometimes i just do a completely braindead spew; sometimes i miss a piece of information and i do something a bit -ev. This game is sick in a sense that a lot of mistakes which are like -3 usd in EV can actually end up -100 usd and i feel like i've done something horrible. And the next day i do the same -ev decision, end up winning +50 and i don't even realise it was a mistake.

i also hate that i wanna have a big wininng month; not really because of that winnings but for the opportunity to brag about it in my blog; so that others see how great i am lol. fk that. i've found out that watching your poker results is a bit like reading newspaper/facebook when you play football. of course, sometimes it makes you feel good for a while and it boosts your confidence a bit... but when it's something negative, it can stay in your head for a long long time and it simply affects you, even when you tell yourself you can handle it.

i wanna start reading more again, i've been neglecting that and i miss it. i hope i'll be able to substitute fifa for books again. i'm also trying out one math book, even though it's only light popular math. i wanna find out what's my actual relationship to math and whether there is a possibility that i'll wanna study it again sometime in the future. i surely wanna be focused on poker, but it's not bad to try to find out what do i wanna do after poker. also sometimes i'm thinking about the people that throw their money away in this game and that i'm probably not doing the most selfless job in the world and that i probably don't wanna do this for the next 15 years. but whatever, it's nothing new, i've already found a way how to resolve these things for my self in the past.

btw the volume in july isn't going to be the greatest in the end, i've got some RL stuff going on - mainly i'm going for a 5 day biketrip to hungary with friends - that could be awesome.

i've also marked a couple of supposedly interesting hands, but it turned out that they aren't that interesting at all. i should try to get better at marking interesting spots, so that my blog aren't only my weird reflections, but also some action.

* - for all the donors only one great example
PokerStars - $1 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players

BTN: $163.00 (VPIP: 50.00, PFR: 50.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 2)
SB: $108.55 (VPIP: 43.33, PFR: 1.67, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 62)
Hero (BB): $236.57
UTG: $688.24 (VPIP: 50.00, PFR: 50.00, 3Bet Preflop: 40.00, Hands: 12)
MP: $105.13 (VPIP: 16.57, PFR: 6.51, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 173)
CO: $294.35 (VPIP: 22.94, PFR: 16.85, 3Bet Preflop: 7.50, Hands: 287)

SB posts SB $0.50, Hero posts BB $1.00

Pre Flop: (pot: $1.50) Hero has 6♣ 3♣

UTG raises to $3.00, fold, CO calls $3.00, BTN calls $3.00, fold, Hero calls $2.00

Flop: ($12.50, 4 players) 3♠ 6♥ T♦
Hero checks, UTG bets $11.88, fold, BTN calls $11.88, Hero raises to $33.33, UTG raises to $685.24 and is all-in, fold, Hero calls $200.24 and is all-in

Hero shows 6♣ 3♣ (Two Pair, Sixes and Threes)
UTG shows A♠ K♦ (High Card, Ace)
Hero wins $489.02

july was a good month, i didn't work that hard, but i wanna enjoy the summer a bit. maybe in august i'll play a bit more, i have almost no travel plans so far. i'm still fighting with result orientation; i have to stay away from watching results under any circumstances. it's a shame when i watch them and think all the time how much have i won/lost/ whether i'll get back to BE for today etc. When i don't worry about it, it frees a big part of my brain RAM and i can think about strategy etc more. i'm happy for 4 evbb/100; it's more important than actual results both from longterm viewpoint and my ego viewpoint.

the biketrip was awesome, we put in 460km in 5 days, spent 2 nights at balaton lake and 2 nights somewhere in the fields. it's a bit different to going alone; i had to get used to waiting for someone, helping someone with the backpack etc... but in the end it was great and my hometown feels a bit boring now (once again). i'm even thinking what it'd be like to travel like this for a year or so - i've got the money for it... it's probably not exactly what i want right now, but it's very nice to know how much you can experience for a small amount of money.

i've come to a conclusion that i finally have to face the reality and get used to the fact that i can't play football anymore. it starts to bother me that i try to run from it, because it affects other parts of my life, leaves some issues unresolved and leads to my bad decisions. it will be super tough since atm all i need is one person telling me how well i played and that it's a pity what happened to me etc and i'm out for half a day... i don't know how to overcome it yet, but i'll start working on it.

let's crush in august

Finally i've bought pio, it's awesome how it makes me think much more and makes me love analyzing. I don't know all the features yet, but i try to work a lot mainly with locking opponent's strategies according to population tendencies. Even if didn't get anything out of it, the joy of thinking about poker and playing around with the solver would be def +ev.

Recently i feel quite self-confident, i feel like i've learned to find a lot of surprising spots with lots of fold eq that many regs don't exploit enough (or i just run well). I'm wondering how do these top crushers manage to have such a great redline and i'm trying hard to find at least 10% of those important spots.

A few interesting/borderline/spewy HHs:
1) sometimes i cbet the flop, but mostly check. i feel like the fish misses this board so often, so i wanted to be a bit tricky. on the turn, i'm always lost when somebody minbets IP, it's as if he adds another street to the game and i have no idea what to do. the river is sweet obv, but i don't know what would be my plan on a blank, which leads me to calling turn probably?
partypoker - $1 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: $109.63 (VPIP: 56.52, PFR: 28.26, 3Bet Preflop: 11.76, Hands: 48)
BB: $106.63 (VPIP: 28.02, PFR: 18.73, 3Bet Preflop: 6.64, Hands: 6,799)
UTG: $70.72 (VPIP: 59.26, PFR: 3.70, 3Bet Preflop: 6.25, Hands: 27)
Hero (CO): $103.57
BTN: $98.50 (VPIP: 27.15, PFR: 18.69, 3Bet Preflop: 7.05, Hands: 745)

SB posts SB $0.50, BB posts BB $1.00

Pre Flop: (pot: $1.50) Hero has 7♥ 7♦

UTG calls $1.00, Hero raises to $4.44, BTN calls $4.44, fold, fold, UTG calls $3.44

Flop: ($14.82, 3 players) 3♣ K♣ 7♠
UTG checks, Hero checks, BTN bets $7.04, fold, Hero raises to $21.00, BTN calls $13.96

Turn: ($56.82, 2 players) 8♣
Hero checks, BTN bets $1.00, Hero raises to $21.00, BTN calls $20.00

River: ($98.82, 2 players) 8♠
Hero bets $57.13 and is all-in, BTN calls $52.06 and is all-in

2) villain basically unknown. i didn't want to check F/T with such a vulnerable hand; i think in theory these lines oop are pretty bad, but in practice they work fine. i had wanted to x/c OTR, but i realized there were not that many busted FDs without SD value, so i went for a mindfuck bet vs Tx mainly. he doesn't rep much by raising, maybe 4 combos of 76s/86s, so i hope he would show a random spew often enough. he turned 33 which kinda makes sense, but i'd generally expect a raise on F/T from T9+ very often.
PokerStars - $1 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: $133.96 (VPIP: 30.30, PFR: 24.24, 3Bet Preflop: 7.14, Hands: 34)
SB: $151.13 (VPIP: 21.46, PFR: 14.61, 3Bet Preflop: 4.26, Hands: 224)
BB: $107.62 (VPIP: 25.22, PFR: 21.49, 3Bet Preflop: 6.67, Hands: 466)
Hero (UTG): $154.09
MP: $101.68 (VPIP: 19.15, PFR: 16.17, 3Bet Preflop: 8.74, Hands: 244)
CO: $75.34 (VPIP: 16.19, PFR: 8.57, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 110)

SB posts SB $0.50, BB posts BB $1.00

Pre Flop: (pot: $1.50) Hero has J♠ J♥

Hero raises to $3.00, fold, CO calls $3.00, BTN calls $3.00, fold, BB calls $2.00

Flop: ($12.50, 4 players) T♠ 6♠ 3♦
BB checks, Hero bets $5.94, fold, BTN calls $5.94, fold

Turn: ($24.38, 2 players) 9♣
Hero bets $11.58, BTN calls $11.58

River: ($47.54, 2 players) 6♦
Hero bets $10.50, BTN raises to $54.74, Hero calls $44.24

3) here vs reg i kinda like my sizing, maybe somebody thinks otherwise? maybe even more OTR? it's a nice example on why i don't overbet bluff OTR vs worse regs in spots where it makes sense theoretically.

PokerStars - $1 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: $95.50 (VPIP: 16.32, PFR: 10.65, 3Bet Preflop: 6.67, Hands: 390)
SB: $180.80 (VPIP: 19.14, PFR: 16.02, 3Bet Preflop: 8.04, Hands: 265)
Hero (BB): $247.09
UTG: $338.81 (VPIP: 28.14, PFR: 21.76, 3Bet Preflop: 9.95, Hands: 537)
MP: $79.51 (VPIP: 17.02, PFR: 10.64, 3Bet Preflop: 4.76, Hands: 47)
CO: $136.74 (VPIP: 19.93, PFR: 15.80, 3Bet Preflop: 4.95, Hands: 845)

SB posts SB $0.50, Hero posts BB $1.00

Pre Flop: (pot: $1.50) Hero has T♥ 2♥

fold, fold, fold, fold, SB raises to $3.00, Hero calls $2.00

Flop: ($6.00, 2 players) T♠ 9♥ 5♠
SB checks, Hero bets $1.88, SB calls $1.88

Turn: ($9.76, 2 players) 2♦
SB checks, Hero bets $12.50, SB calls $12.50

River: ($34.76, 2 players) T♣
SB checks, Hero bets $46.00, SB calls $46.00

Hero shows T♥ 2♥ (Full House, Tens full of Twos)
SB mucks 9♣ J♠ (Two Pair, Tens and Nines)

just a quick update... I've been grinding for 2 weeks straight and i'm starting too feel quite tired, not loving the game as much etc. Today + tomorrow i will put in a couple more hours and then i'm taking 3-4 days off and visiting a music festival. I would need some kind of a challenge and a bit of adrenaline for these periods, but in poker it's always associated with aggro BRM and higher variance and i don't exactly want that. The period when i was close to stepping down to nl50 was really tough.

dunno, i feel like i should just fk everything and go travelling or whatever; just to have new awesome experiences.... but i guess it's possible to have these things as well as a poker career; i just had a longer grinding stretch and i'm a bit tired, that's all.

thanks to all the readers

so the weekend is behind us, i can even remember some parts! as usual, i've lost my wallet and mobile phone, but this time somebody also brought it back to me, so it's 10/10 points i guess.

let's see how i manage to return to normal life and when will this boring feeling go away (if it will).

by the way i still feel like i'm running quite well, hopefully it continues; i'm slowly getting back into the grind mode.

Originally posted by bedofour

Haha this video.. I was hovering with the mouse over the play button and thinking what clown-video you posted...
Anyways, GL with not having to move down to NL50!
Btw, if you want to make sure you gonna stay motivated & productive and have an overview about your progress, why not join our https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=325001&goto=firstnew ?

CU,SvenBe

Originally posted by SvenBe
Anyways, GL with not having to move down to NL50!
Btw, if you want to make sure you gonna stay motivated & productive and have an overview about your progress, why not join our https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=325001&goto=firstnew ?

Thanks. I'm actually really safe at nl100 atm thanks to recent good results. I hope i will start to add some nl200 in autumn.

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I'm lucky that i am running good atm. If a downswing came now, i wouldn't have the mental energy to fight and i wouldn't play at all probably. Obv it'd be ideal not to bother with results at all... But for now it's a solid achievement that i don't bother with ultra short-term results - whether i won 50bb or lost 30bb today - and that's maybe the most important part.

In the end i'm gonna live in Ljubljana this autumn and play outside of PS; hopefully other rooms will operate in Slovenia at least till the end of the year. I'll have to change my daily routine a bit and play more at night, because it's not that easy to find good tables outside of PS till like 4pm.

I still feel a bit lost; i don't really know what to do, what direction to choose nor how to find out what's best for me. But i suppose it's normal in my situation... For now i won't hurry anything and i will def ignore the tries of other people to get me into the cage of university-desk job-marriage. I don't have anything against such a life but for now i just don't want it; seems like others know better though.

Monthly volume will be a bit under average again, but i don't mind it at all; actually it's the other way around - i'm content that i'm able to constantly put in 100h+ months.

Steady grind, the volume in august won't be that bad in the end, i will get past 60k hands. I basically play only thanks to the habit, but the quality of my play is solid; i study a bit less and try to learn while playing a bit more. For example i've picked up many important population tendencies recently. In the beginning of the month i played around with pio a lot; now i'm waiting until i solve some preflop issues before i start running the numbers again. Honestly i should work on my game a bit more, i lack motivation a bit; but i guess it'll come when i need it.

I'm starting to dislike the asocial nature of this job; i'd like to get to know some new interesting people. I didn't really need that too much till now, but most of my friends are related to football and i should diversify in this field a bit.

For the first time in my life i have a grinder and good coffee beans at home. The quality of my life went up by at least 50%.

I'm looking forward to seeing the august results in 4 days. When i think about it, maybe i could even finally get into positive numbers at ubertough casual tables on party

taking into account that IRL this was one of the worst months in my life, the results are not too bad i guess... i'm rly rly lucky that this run came right now.

I still don't feel super awesome, but today after a long time i felt some kind of excitement that i missed. Excitement about anything, about an interesting pio result; about living abroad 1st time in my life and about all the things that i can experience with the freedom i have. It's still a weak feeling compared to the excitement that i used to have, but it's a good sign.

Sometimes i even enjoy playing the cards again, i finally started to do some more serious studying and i have many spots that i wanna go through in pio. Volume-wise september won't be exceptionally great again... Now i have to move all my stuff from one apartment to second one and in 2 weeks to 3rd one Ljubljana. It will take some time but i actually look forward to it a bit; i need a change. I'd like to travel somewhere as well, next week i will probably go on a 3-day biketrip and i also wanna do some hiking. Ofc in Slovenia i won't be sitting on a sofa all the time as well; i feel that looking for new experiences is the most important thing for me atm. And to my surprise, my doctor told me that i can ski without much trouble, so i look forward to the winter too.

I am running a bit worse now, a lot of coolers and so on... If i feel good, i will check my results on friday. If they're better, i will start adding some nl200 tables on weekends, since my BR is doing fine; right now it's around 14k.

Finally two random blogs that caught my attention:
Achieving higher balance by a RiO coach - kinda interesting stuff, albeit often hidden behind too many fancy words
My life as an island hermit by a semi-pro poker player, who sometimes lives alone on a small island

Yesterday i came back home after another trip, so there is still not that much poker in my life and i'm not thinking about nl200 much. And even if i play, i'm not running that well.

So i was on a bike for 3 days, crossing the south of Czech republic, known especially for wine. The landscape is really beautiful; i did like 330km, but i don't know the exact number, since i turned off my GPS & mobile phone on day 2 and went as i wanted to. It's fun to be all day alone with your thoughts; at first it's hard for the brain to accept it, but after a while you get used to it and even enjoy it. Even after i came back home, i just wanted to sit and think. Unfortunately, the only thing that i've found out is that, all in all, i'm completely screwed.

Originally i had wanted to put in more kilometres and see more places, but after the first night i changed it a bit. I slept in a tent, apart from other stuff i had wanted to overcome my fear to sleep outside alone like this. When i finally found a suitable place and built the tent, the owner of the land visited me... Fortunately, he was really nice and it all ended up by him giving me a bottle of wine the following morning. Obviously i didn't want to carry the bottle in my backpack for the next two days and i also didn't have much water left, so i decided to drink it for breakfast with an awesome sunny view of neverending vineyards. And after such a great morning, i didn't rly feel like cycling, so i took it kinda light.

Btw i've also found out that i'm probably a bit retarded - today i visited my dentist and he had to drill one of my teeth; and i realised that i seriously like the pain to a certain degree. Both the adrenaline beforehand and the mind control during the pain... No, it's not really like i'm gonna have all my teeth drilled now, just for fun, but anyway; maybe i should visit the psychiatry too.

Originally posted by bedofour
Btw i've also found out that i'm probably a bit retarded - today i visited my dentist and he had to drill one of my teeth; and i realised that i seriously like the pain to a certain degree. Both the adrenaline beforehand and the mind control during the pain... No, it's not really like i'm gonna have all my teeth drilled now, just for fun, but anyway; maybe i should visit the psychiatry too.

Tell your girlfriend, have fun,
SvenBe

Following, GL bedofour!

Originally posted by SvenBe

Originally posted by bedofour
Btw i've also found out that i'm probably a bit retarded - today i visited my dentist and he had to drill one of my teeth; and i realised that i seriously like the pain to a certain degree. Both the adrenaline beforehand and the mind control during the pain... No, it's not really like i'm gonna have all my teeth drilled now, just for fun, but anyway; maybe i should visit the psychiatry too.

Tell your girlfriend, have fun,
SvenBe

LOL ♦

lol, thanks guys
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The recent week went by in a similiar fashion to the previous one. I spent 3 days in mountains; firstly i was with my GF & another friend for 2 days in the Tatras. The trek was above my expectations (and above the expectations of my joints too) and both physically and technically, it was quite hard. The prettiest mountain was this one:

(photo isn't mine)

And yesterday i went on another mountain with my dad by bike. Here i had expected a tough physical challenge and i was right; in the end i did the whole climb without a break and made the height difference of cca 1100m in about 1,5 hours. This time a photo would be useless as i couldn't see one metre ahead of me because of the thick fog.

Today i started to grind, i felt fine and saw that the nl200 pool seems not that hard, so i checked the results, whether i can afford to give it a shot.

I hadn't expected this, but i don't mind; so i will try to play some nl200 during the weekends. I try not to be money scared and play deep too, because i see lots of value there. I feel quite confident, i'm able to exploit population tendencies more and more, especially on the river, where i play completely explo. Sometimes i'm not even sure why i think a certain line is the best; i just intuitively know it's right. I don't mean any kind of supernatural instict; it's probably simply thanks to the number of hands i played - i kinda realised how some of the spots work. But it's a bit harder when moving up, because villains are a bit different and i'm not able to work with 2x higher numbers that fast yet.

A while ago i was once again thinking about how short our lives are and i got a funny idea: i will put my life on a millimetre paper, where one square represents one day of my life. To my horror i realised that even if i live for 90 years, i still have only around 2/3 of A4 paper; sick. And a quarter of that is already gone; i'd like to go 10 years back and quit football.

Book corner: finally i'm seriously reading. From the recent books i really liked 'Summer Light and Then Comes the Night' and for the first time i enjoyed one of Hemingway's books - The Sun Also Rises.

Ciao,
i still dont play much, it's been a week since i left home and since then i've been working on RL stuff + travelling. I spent a couple of days in Ljubljana; fortunately, we've got most of the things worked out already and yesterday we've finally moved into our apartment. In between me and my gf spent 4 days travelling, we visited Trieste and Pula. Both cities were nice, but we feel like we have too good reads about the Mediterrean already; we basically knew what was coming in advance; we should probably make some trips beyond Europe's borders finally.

I'm playing nl100 & nl200 on different sites, obv i enjoy playing 200 more, but i gotta be careful, the BR is not infinite and i think the last few days were quite bad; we'll see when i check the results. atm i feel at least a bit motivated to play - it's still like everything is a bit boring to me, but at least i have a bit of the drive - to be really good at poker. I'm curious how will i cope with tableselection (surprisingly it's a even a bit fun so far) and what my results on reg tables will be.

After around 2 years i restored my fb account, so that i've got some connection to my friends & family at home. On the other hand oftentimes i don't really enjoy talking to people about usual things, the small-talk isn't really for me and i feel like there's so few people with whom i can skip the small-talk and discuss a bit more interesting stuff. And when it finally comes to it, i can rarely find somebody who can discuss rationally, doesn't get offended easily and can communicate in a normal way even if we don't agree. These things should be taught in school instead of infinite memorization of facts.

Hey there mate!

Just found your blog, read the last 2 pages, seems interesting. You're a bit of a "mindfuck", but I like that tbh Anyhow, I saw you're living in LJ now? You find it nice? I'm from Slovenia, live 15km outside LJ, so maybe we can see eachother sometime for a beer or something

Btw, I play NL100 on Bwin fast tables and NL100/NL200 on 888 snap tables, so we can also discuss some theory sometimes if you'd feel like it. Let me know, but anyhow, wish you all the best in your future journey, both poker- and life-wise

enjoy!

Originally posted by MJQuads
Hey there mate!

Just found your blog, read the last 2 pages, seems interesting. You're a bit of a "mindfuck", but I like that tbh Anyhow, I saw you're living in LJ now? You find it nice? I'm from Slovenia, live 15km outside LJ, so maybe we can see eachother sometime for a beer or something

Btw, I play NL100 on Bwin fast tables and NL100/NL200 on 888 snap tables, so we can also discuss some theory sometimes if you'd feel like it. Let me know, but anyhow, wish you all the best in your future journey, both poker- and life-wise

enjoy!

Hey,
yeah, i will be in LJ for the following 3 months probably. I really like it, we got an apartment close to the centre, so it's great. I especially love that everybody uses bikes for transportation. A beer would be great, add me on skype please (bedofour).

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The volume was poor, but it was expected; the following months should be way better volume-wise. Last 5k hands were quite bad, i lost ~20BIs, but whatever. Let's not pretend that after a couple of solid months, i will always win.

Running still quite bad; i play more nl100 than nl200 and i check cashier once in a while to see whether i shouldn't give up nl200 completely. Obv the tables at party got much worse because of gladiator promo + the anonymization of HHs didn't simplify things either. Whatever, i have to adjust. I'd like to put in sth like 55k hands (~150h), but i'm not gonna be too hard on myself. Firstly, i still feel kinda lost in life etc and secondly, the people around me have changed - sportsmen were substituted for students - so i will be testing my drinking form a bit. There is just a little problem with meeting so many new people for me - i think about their opinions about me all the time. The best way to ilustrate it is this article.

It's funny; i think that i'm really good at one thing and exceptionally bad in the other. I'm good at making life decisions based on what i really want - regarding whatever - school, career, relationships, values, life pseudophilosophy etc. But i'm rly awful when it comes to social skills - i cannot get to know new people easily, dance without thinking how do i look like; when i'm supposed to speak in front of a couple of people, i'm sweating as if i was running a marathon - the best moment was at my high school prom, where i collapsed after a couple of minutes of fighting with sweat. I'd really like to get better at this; i can make points why is this all so stupid in theory, but when a situation like that comes, i'm really bad at it (unless i'm rly drunk).

Regarding you social skills, may I give you one advice? You won' get better there as long as you do play poker excessivly.... Get a job, which forces you to talk and present to others..

Originally posted by cobby
Regarding you social skills, may I give you one advice? You won' get better there as long as you do play poker excessivly.... Get a job, which forces you to talk and present to others..

yeah, poker definitely doesnt help much in this, but usually i don't grind some sick volumes. i have the time to get better at this, i just need to figure it out.