Nicky Learning to Suck Less at Poker

Well, the idea is just not incorporating too much at once.
No need to "fully" understand the concept, but having a reasonable understanding of it is definitely necessary.

The exact details, rate of learning, and comfort zone will differ from person to person of course. Usually effective learning meaning getting just a bit outside of your comfort zone with new stuff, and repeating the process once that zone expands.

I just tried something a bit new to me a few times in a short session. Right now I have pokersnowie calling me an idiot on some of the hands... Which is probably correct But at least I have just 1 or 2 new things to look at, not dozens mixed up

Hi friends,

Week 4 is in the books, and I feel great about it. I made some really big changes to how I play and not only am I getting better results, but I'm feeling much better about playing.

Here's this weeks results:

I played a few rounds at a couple other sites, but almost all on this one. Not sure if it's possible to make a cumulative graph of all of them, so this is what I got.

Goals From Last Week
I didn't make any goals last week, so I incorporated what I learned in lemon's coaching from this post as well as other improvements I'll talk about in the next section.

Struggles
I'm struggling with doing pot-odds and thinking in ranges on-the fly. I can sit down with a calculator after my session and work things out, but it seems like I get draws so infrequently that it's hard to practice. If there is any game or tool out there that I could sit down with to practice that anyone has found helpful, or really any advice in this regard, please share.

Improvements
Tons of improvement. After having such a rough time last week, I talked to some really good poker pros I know. There are a ton around here, some of the best in the world, in bangkok. They gave me a lot of tips, suggestions for stuff to read, etc. One even came here and read my posts and made some suggestions from that. Really awesome guys.

So here's what I did:

• Eliminated distractions
  Man, I really didn't realize how important this is. After I memorized the beginners strategy, I was basically just on autopilot. There's really nothing in there that requires you pay attention to anything but your cards and the cards on the board, so I ended up chatting on my phone, reading reddit, watching tv, messing around on fb, etc while I was playing. This week I got rid of all that. Everything goes off when I start playing. Phone on silent, shut down skype, close browser, tv off, etc. I have trouble enough focusing without any of that stuff distracting me
• Paying attention to the other players
  After watching lemon's coaching last week, I started doing what he does with taking notes on other players, checking how they bet pre-flop, 3bet, and post-flop. I also started labeling players according to how they play. I have labels for loose/passive, nits, loose/aggressive, and regulars. Holy shit what a difference it makes when you're actually watching in detail how other people play! There were several people who would see 50%+ flops and c-bet 2 very specific values if they had nothing or had something. People who would call all the way down to showdown every time if they had any pair, but raise if they had top pair or better, every single time. And as soon as I would see this stuff I'd be able to know exactly what to do against them. Really fun.

  Such a huge difference from last week where I had no real response if players were being really aggressive with 3-betting and I had no idea what to do. Now, as long as I figure out what general style they're playing, I have an appropriate response and feel much more in control of the situation. Loving it.

• Warming up with lower stakes
  Spent 15-20 mins playing nl2 most times before jumping into nl5. Not sure how much this helped, really, but it gets the ball rolling I guess. I'll keep doing it.
• Sit out and rebuy with 100bb at another table if I get far above 150bb
  Lemon suggested I do this after losing a few huge stacks last week. Biggest loss in a hand was 65bb this week, so can't complain. Was a bit annoying cause the site I play at makes you re-buy with the same amount you left with if you close the table, so you have to open several sometimes to get one with a 100bb buy-in and then close the previous ones. Not sure what logical sense it makes to even have that rule when it's only mildly annoying to avoid.

Goals for the coming week
Man my schedule this next week is pretty packed, but I'm going to do my best to do an hour of reading every day. Also, post hands for review. I was pretty good about it this week, and the feedback has been really helpful now that I understand the game more. I'll probably come up with some more after tonight's coaching.

Results

Week 4
Hands Played: 3056
Profit: $33.55
Bankroll: $142.77

Another solid week. Stuck to my gameplan, did lots of learning, an ok amount of playing, and won some money!

edit: figured out how to combine multiple sites in hm2 using an alias, here's this weeks results from both sites

Goals from last week

• Hour of study every day
  definitely beat this one. I think i did more studying than playing this week. some of the articles on here are really long and require quite a bit of re-reading to fully understand and take notes. definitely felt it was worth the time spent, and i was able to incorporate some of the stuff that made a ton of sense into my play right away.
• Post hands for review
  Did some of this and got good feedback.

Struggles
Can't really say I struggled with much. There were a few sessions where I got stuck in front of really loose aggressive players which irritated me for some reason. Need to learn more about how to play in that situation. Everyone is exploitable. Getting upset about how someone plays instead of thinking about it logically and using it as an opportunity to learn how to beat them is a mistake!

Only large pot that I lost this week was this one:

Pretty dumb call, but I could only laugh when I saw their cards and realized I was drawing absolutely dead.

Improvements
Didn't get upset at all while playing this week. It was really fun and I was excited when I had free time to play. I think it'll be hard to list all the things I learned this week, but I read a lot of the articles in the no-limit section on post-flop play. There were a lot of really eye-opening things in there about playing draws and fold-equity, which made me pay more attention to my draws, and play strong draws more aggressively.

Goals for next week
Learn more! At least an hour of learning per day. I'd like to get into a proper session review, but the article here on hand review requires some steep pre-requisite reading, so I'm working my way up to that. Gotta make sure I have my basics covered. If I keep playing well and I'm able to put in enough time, I might get close to moving up to NL10 which is pretty exciting.

Fun hand of the week

I posted this one for hand review and was told that I played it fairly well, so I'll post it again here with the results.

Overall Results
Finally was able to combine my graphs from all the sites ive played poker since I started

Week 5
Hands Played: 3111
Profit: $42.44
Bankroll: $185.21

Hi guys, not much to report this week. Very little time due to some work stuff. I'll post my graphs:

Week:

All-time:

Overall I'm up a few bucks because of some bonuses. This week likely going to have little time for playing, but we'll see what I can put in. Still did some learning when I had time, so that's good.

Week 6
Hands Played: 1240
Profit: $10.67
Bankroll: $195.88

Yo, yo. Managed to get an ok amount of playtime in this week, even though I was busy as hell. Had a slight downswing but played my ass off on the last day for a pretty large win. Overall I'm at my highest bankroll yet and getting close to 25 buy-ins for NL10, so I'm excited about that!

Also, in last night's lem0n coaching, I set up a skype group for pokerstrategy micros players who have been following the coaching and trying to improve. Feel free to send me a friend request here for my skype if you want to get added.

Week:

Overall:

Goals from last week

Didn't really make any, but I did manage to play more than expected and ended up winning a decent amount, so I'm happy about that.

I did a good chunk of learning as well, going over the articles and videos on The Average Range and The Funnel Principle.

Last week I asked lem0n what I should do to start thinking in ranges, and he suggested those. I definitely understand the theory behind them, but found it impossible to apply it during live play just because it's a lot to think about in the 15 seconds or so that you have to act. Last night I asked him again what to do about this and he suggested I go over it at my own pace when I'm reviewing hands after playing, which I'll start doing this week.

I also made charts using the average pre-flop ranges articles, and the admins said it's ok for me to post here for you to use:

Nit

Tag

Lag

Maniac

Calling Station

It might look a little confusing at first since I combined all the calling/pfr/3bet into 1 chart for each player type, and excel only allows gradients for filling, but it works. I'm sure there are other tools besides excel that can do this better.

Struggles
Didn't struggle with much this week other than finding time to play.

Improvements
Fixed HM2! That shit was lagging so bad, like 3-5 seconds lag just to open player notes. Upgraded postgres to latest stable version 64bet and now it flies. I have no idea how they can continue to ship their product on the old pgsql version with that much performance hit. Was totally unusable before.

Goals for coming week

• Get to 25 buyins for NL10 and start transitioning up. Almost there. Should hit it this week if I play well.
• LEARN a lot. Do hand reviews myself using the funnel principle and my average range charts to see what I could have done better.
• Play 4000 hands. I should have plenty of time this week.

Week 7
Hands Played: 2355
Profit: $38.81
Bankroll: $234.69

Hey guys, really late here after tonight's lem0n coaching so I'll try to do a more detailed update tomorrow (if anyone's even still reading this haha)

Week 8
Hands Played: 3921
Profit: $4.98
Bankroll: $239.67

low volume, holidays and all that. starting nl10 as soon as I hit $250br
happy new year everyone

Week 9
Hands Played: 1416
Profit: $8.61
Bankroll: $248.28

I'm starting NL10 soon also. On which sites do you play?

Originally posted by la55i
I'm starting NL10 soon also. On which sites do you play?

Hey man, guess we're going around the same pace. I have accounts at Stars, Fulltilt, and Netbet. I'm only being tracked by Netbet and Fulltilt on pokerstrategy though, so basically I play up enough to keep gold status and then switch to pokerstars at the end of the month since I like the software and volume there much more. Really haven't had much time to play this month so I'm probably just going to squeak by and get gold for next month or maybe miss it by a tiny margin.

Full tilt I like the software, but at the times I play sometimes there are only 2 tables open at my stakes. Netbet (ipoker) has more people playing but I really hate the ipoker software, so ugly.

Definitely open to suggestions for new sites to try, especially if they're tracked here. Some people told me unibet was good but can't use a hud, and I'm not sure I'd like playing without the hud. Maybe it's a crutch that I don't need as a relative newbie, but a lot of how I play is based on the stats I see there, and I feel like it helps me understand the game better.

I have the same problem with poker sites. I totally hate iPoker software and the traffic is not so good either. Unibet isn't for me since I want to use a hud. Stars is clearly the best site imo.

Happy holidays everyone! Been pretty busy with holiday related stuff. Took a shot at NL10 and lost a few stacks, so I'm back to NL5 for the time being to learn some more and move up again when I'm a little better prepared.

I've also been streaming every time I play on twitch at http://www.twitch.tv/cakestv which is pretty cool as well. I've been getting some good feedback and tips from the guys who stop by to watch. Up to 19 followers already so if you ever feel like stopping by to rail me as I try not to lose, I'd love that.

I'll get back to posting my long-winded updates next week after I've settled from all the holiday partying and plowed through some work that needs to get done, but for now, here's this weeks results:

Week 10
Hands Played: 3172
Profit: -$18.83
Bankroll: $229.45

I decided to do the goals challenge, especially since I'm already quite goal oriented in life and have been posting goals on here regularly.

I think the requirement to post updates twice a week is a little steep, but I'll manage.

Goals:

Poker Related - Stream poker on twitch twice a week
The poker streaming has been really fun so far, and the live chat is really helpful. Even though I don't get more than a few viewers at a time, they give some great feedback. I think that streaming at least twice a week will build a decent following and keep me motivated to learn and move up.

Non-Poker Related - Lift 4 times per week
If you check my instagram, you'll see that i'm a bit into fitness. Over the last few months, though, I've been slacking and gotten quite a bit smaller. If I can manage to hit the gym 4 times per week from now until the end of Feb, I'm going to make some great progress.

We can count this post as my first update of the week. Already streamed twice this week on twitch and hit the gym 2 times. Should probably squeeze out two more of each before the week is over.

Hi nickycakes,

Good luck with your challenge. I'd like to attend to your twitch streamings. Please, let me know when you do them.

Looks very good Nick! I also hit the gym every evening after work. The essence here I think is that we always should do things that makes us happy. Look forward to things you are going to do.

Thanks for the implied message that NL10 is a bit tougher compared to NL2 & NL5. I read btw a book, which was very useful to me (it is example-driven): 'Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'em' by Ed Miller, Sunny Mehta and Matt Flynn. They focus from 2NL to 200NL and say that basically all these stakes are low limit and could be applied. My skills increased much during this book and they also say literally 'If you finish this book having never once said to yourself, "Wow, I would never have played the hand like that!' then we haven't done our jobs'. I think it's worth the shot

Good luck at the tables!

Originally posted by Macqas
Hi nickycakes,

Good luck with your challenge. I'd like to attend to your twitch streamings. Please, let me know when you do them.

Best way is to make an account on twitch and click the follow button on my stream page. Then you can get email notifications whenever I start streaming. My schedule is not going to be regular just due to work and social stuff which come before hobbies, but I'll be streaming whenever I play.

Originally posted by Hesticus
Looks very good Nick! I also hit the gym every evening after work. The essence here I think is that we always should do things that makes us happy. Look forward to things you are going to do.

Man, I grew up always hearing stuff like "do what you love" and "find a job that you love so it doesn't feel like work" etc. I really don't like lifting, but I love the results. I don't love the work I do but I love the money. My life would be way less awesome if I only did stuff that I enjoyed all the time.

Thanks for the implied message that NL10 is a bit tougher compared to NL2 & NL5. I read btw a book, which was very useful to me (it is example-driven): 'Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'em' by Ed Miller, Sunny Mehta and Matt Flynn. They focus from 2NL to 200NL and say that basically all these stakes are low limit and could be applied. My skills increased much during this book and they also say literally 'If you finish this book having never once said to yourself, "Wow, I would never have played the hand like that!' then we haven't done our jobs'. I think it's worth the shot

Good luck at the tables!

another book recommendation from hesticus. keep 'em comin.

Week 11
Hands Played: 1106
Profit: $12.51
Bankroll: $241.96

Really not much time to play this past week, but streamed like 4 times I think and made it to the gym 4 times, so my goals are met for the week at least and I made some money. Probably take another more conservative shot at NL10 once I'm back up to 250 br.

One thing that has definitely been lacking lately is learning. Just haven't had much time and when I get it I just sit down and play instead of spending time doing some learning. I don't think I'll make much progress that way so I'm going to have to dedicate more time to it.

Friday update since I need to do this twice a week for the goals challenge:

Streamed twice this week already and gym 2 times. Have a good weekend bros.

Week 12
Hands Played: 543
Profit: $2.72
Bankroll: $244.68

Very low volume this week due to work and social stuff going on. Need like 30 hour days haha.

Goals update: Managed to stream twice and hit the gym 4 times this week. Really crazy how fast you see results when you're consistent with lifting.

Have a good week bros

Inter-week goals post: gym 3 times this week so far and streamed twice.