Day 4:
Another brutal day.
Just finished up the public private coaching... It was pretty tough. After about an hour my brain felt melted and i had a headache. I think I'm going to take tomorrow off poker, maybe read some articles... and review hands from today.
Day 5:
Another coaching coming up. I plan to focus really hard on fundamentals over the next couple weeks to improve my confidence.
I also want to get a lot better at discovering leaks in my play. Talking with other people often seems like one way to do this. Session reviews may help too, but only if I'm posting hands regularly.
I've found myself being dismissive of some advice which has not fit with my experiences, for instance stabbing flops in limped pots doesn't seem to work often enough much of the time, but my experience could be flawed even over significant samples. This and other similar disconnections are challenging to reconcile.
Originally posted by datsmahname
I've found myself being dismissive of some advice which has not fit with my experiences, for instance stabbing flops in limped pots doesn't seem to work often enough much of the time, but my experience could be flawed even over significant samples
I know the feeling. Against the loosest of opponents, or those that just don't fold before the river ever, I tend to play be more selective rather than just autobet limped pots, but it's not too often. Against those players a check every now and then gives your (future) autobet more strength.
Against normal players/weak players though, you have to bet - and sometimes you are able to get the fold through turn bluffs (and occasionally river bluffs :f_rolleyes:.
Have you filtered your db to give you some empirical evidence?
As for other spots (well, and this spot too!), try identifying them and posting in the FL strategy boards to get the pro view to go along with coaching discussions. The more reinforcement the better.
the sample i have is to small on both to conclude anything. only around 100 hands where i bet heads up from the BB. roughly the same amount where i checked. BB/100 runs very close in value.
overall, betting ~ 50% of the time in limped heads up pots is still +EV. About 8BB/100 if we adjust out the forced bet.
Day Off:
I think I learned a lot yesterday. We spent some time reviewing my sessions and discovered a trend. It looks like I'm making some predictable mistakes which I should be able to focus on and correct, specifically playing to weak in a few postflop situations.
We also came up with a different method for building up my BR, since it seems like 4 tabling may not be best without a very very large database on the player pool.
In any case, I'm a little spent lately, and its like things just aren't clicking. This should also improve over the coming weeks.
Day 1:
Over the next week I'm expecting to play less than usual but I'm going to keep studying a lot. Right now I just don't have the drive to grind, and I think I'll get that back once I've worked on some fundamentals.
Goals for this week:
[ ] Last 4 HU SNGs
[ ] 120 Strat points to retain gold status.
Day 3-6:
The weather has been nice and I haven't played much. I have however started playing far fewer tables and table selecting harder. Getting out on my bike seems to have cleared my head a bit too. All of these things have conspired to turn my first ever losing month into a slight profit. I feel quite good about my effort to refine my game by getting advice from several sources.
Mid Year Results
With bonuses i've nearly surpassed my 2010 results.
FL & NL MTTs here. clearly i play MTTs very rarely, but I am very interested to learn more about the mid to late tournament stages as they become less like cash games.
2011 Goals
IRL took nose dive in February. By the end of that month i had requested a layoff at work. 1 month later I moved. My priorities became a little more short term & my savings burned up fast.
1) Be a winning player at .5/1 FLHE & then 1/2.
(50k hands of 1+BB/100)
30k so far. 1.04 BB/1002) Save enough money for my trip to madagascar. Plan trip
(4.5K, get necessary shots, contact & check out options)
Failing here.3) Finish University
(1.5 credits? Talk to department)
Same^4) Develop a close relationship with someone you care about.
(1 cute/smart/no bs girl)
Same^5) Develop a solid reputation in my new work position (recently promoted).
nope6) Improve my self image: (get new clothing, maintain better hygiene, get in better shape).
I'd grade it at 75%. I rode 30K today. Doing this almost once a week.7) Teach my poker coach to speak english well.
(meetings 1-2 x/w, test 1/m, tvshows, movies)
This is going well.8) (to personal imo)
Same^9) Gain 10 pounds.
(eat better / more frequently)
Maybe a 65% here.10) Reward myself for my efforts on the above goals.
(what do you always enjoy doing? UFC, TV shows, Drinking good beer & wine, playing pool, watching good movies, enjoying a nice view)
This ones going well but its harder than it looks. If I work hard and have a ****ty day anyways its hard to remember to reward myself sometimes. Sometimes its exactly the other way around, but I'm getting better at that. Those tough days are when it matters most.
Originally posted by PostFlopMonster
Wow! You turned last month into profit! And overall you doing very well! Gratz!
Thanks PFM
I've been sleeping, or no. Drowsy for days. Something's on my mind and its difficult to focus. I can't say what.. but I can see it on the edge of my awareness like a glass pebble on a black background.
At first it seemed like a knot, the kind a deep tissue massage uncovers. I decided to relax, and just massage it. After a moment, I looked for the knot again but I couldn't focus and decided it were still there. An entertaining twist in deductive reasoning.
Later I realized with some discomfort that I was just lonely. I considered developing multiple personalities--not for the company, but to shoulder the burden. I've never heard of someone intentionally "making up their minds" but saw no reason why good things had to happen by accident. After some deliberation I fell sound asleep.
So I found a huge fish earlier today. Capped 3 streets with AJ... Then he left and jumped up from .5/1 to 2/4 and was table starting with some other fish...
Its not appropriate for me to play with my BR at those stakes, but this maniac was leaking huge. So I followed along and played until the table started to fill up.
Hand #1
Poker Stars $2/$4 Limit Hold'em - 3 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter
Pre Flop: (1.5 SB) Hero is BB with 3 
3 
1 fold, SB raises, Hero 3-bets, SB caps!, Hero calls
Flop: (8 SB) K 5 9 
(2 players)
SB bets, Hero calls
Turn: (5 BB) 3 (2 players)
SB bets, Hero raises, SB 3-bets, Hero caps!, SB calls
River: (13 BB) A (2 players)
SB bets, Hero raises, SB 3-bets, Hero caps!, SB calls
Final Pot: 21 BB
SB mucks Q Q
Hero shows 3 3 (three of a kind, Threes)
Hero wins 20.75 BB
(Rake: $1.00)
Hand #2
Poker Stars $2/$4 Limit Hold'em - 3 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter
Pre Flop: (1.5 SB) Hero is SB with Q A
BTN raises, Hero 3-bets, 1 fold, BTN calls
Flop: (7 SB) 8 
7 A (2 players)
Hero bets, BTN raises, Hero 3-bets, BTN calls
Turn: (6.5 BB) 6 (2 players)
Hero bets, BTN calls
River: (8.5 BB) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets, BTN calls
Final Pot: 10.5 BB
BTN mucks 7 K
Hero shows Q A (two pair, Aces and Eights)
Hero wins 10.25 BB
(Rake: $1.00)
You may know by now that I have a general tendency of stating the obvious. So in this context its easy for me to say things like "Online poker rooms love players who deposit money."
For this reason, I suspect that poker rooms have not been to fond of me. Until today I had never deposited a single dime. I guess in a way this fact became a constraint based rule like "i will not deposit". I almost saw it as in competition with my goals or something. It also worked to reassure my mom who doesn't care much for this hobby.
Unfortunately William Hill won't let you withdraw until you've deposited and set up an account... and my goal to make money overran my silly little idealistic position. A slippery slope indeed, but not all heuristics are useful.
Why am i talking about this? There's a computational theory that constraint based systems never develop much complexity. Some parts of Stephan Wolfram's work using cellular automata directly support this idea.
However, reducing complexity isn't necessarily a bad thing. The following is a quote from page 152 of the Journal on Globalization Studies, November 2010. The article is entitled "Life's Meaning as a Global Problem of Modernity".
Sedov's Law, or the Law of hierarchical compensations. My general formulation is as follows: the increase in variety on the upper level of a hierarchical organization results from the restriction of variety on the lower levels, and inversely – increase in variety on the lower level, destroys the upper level of an organization.
Evgeniy Sedov is the theorist who came up with this notion. I don't know much about him and part of the reason is because I don't understand russian. The main reason is that I've found almost nothing about him available in English.
I think in a very general way this law finds support for the use of heuristics in systems where higher order complexity is important and its been quite entertaining for me to consider how this may or may not apply to my life and to my poker.
wow guess you're pulling out all the big words now ♦ you lost me at heuristic.
i also never wanted to deposit but obv had to for my first withdrawal. but after that, put your money in your ewallet and take advantage of the deposit bonuses out there. hopefully you never have to deposit again 
(and then you can also withdraw to your bank whatever you deposited to begin with )
Still working hard:
Its been a challenging month because I've been extremely tired and lethargic. My motivation to play hasn't been very high and as a result I had been logging very short sessions and very few hands. Even so, I've managed to spend plenty of time studying the game with my coach and other players. With some encouragement I have managed to double my # of hands played this last week or so.
Here's a look @ how my week has unfolded.
Sunday: Reviewed two sessions for the 2+2 community. Each month I sign up for a review, and this month I found a second player interested to do one. They usually take about an hour.
Monday: Session review via skype with pokerbob38, a solid 2+2er who I recently introduced to PokerStrategy. We spent a couple hours going over a session and considering the various situations that arose. This is pretty much a weekly event.
Today I attended the FL gold coaching, and after that taavi1337 & I reviewed each others live play.
Tomorrow I'm meeting my coach again, and I think theres a chance we'll be playing some live Heads Up matches.
After tomorrow I'll probably give my brain a rest and take a few days off poker.
Month-to-date results:
Originally posted by purplefizz
wow guess you're pulling out all the big words now ♦ you lost me at heuristic.i also never wanted to deposit but obv had to for my first withdrawal. but after that, put your money in your ewallet and take advantage of the deposit bonuses out there. hopefully you never have to deposit again
Yeah deposit bonuses can be very helpful since usually my rakeback isn't that great. Still, i'm kind of a sissy when it comes to grinding lots of hands 
Clearing large bonuses is not exactly my strength. WH gave me a 200% bonus on 20 USD (min deposit ftw) but collecting 2800 points in 2 months still seems like a lot!
I've been window shopping for items to make my appartment a lot more cozzy to live in as an incentive to play more. Maybe if i had some short/medium term goals on a nice peice of art work or something it'll help me.
Technically I just used money from another site to make my WH deposit, so I'm still not playing with money from my bank account... but yeah having an e-wallet will be really handy.
Thanks for the tips!
