Why did I start this blog
The reason I started this blog is that I decided to accept the challenge proposed by Gordon (Raskolnikov) in his video series « Champions stand up one more time than the rest » video1 - video2 - video3
My poker career
During my time as student (many years ago ;)) I’ve played draw poker with friends, rather in an amateurish style. After the university, I forgot about poker, essentially because I had to much work, it was difficult to find people to play with and I didn’t feel confident enough to play poker in casinos.
My interest in poker woke up again with the internet poker and I started to familiarize myself with Texas Holdem. Actually, I prefer NL MTT tournaments, but I seldom have the 6 hours you need to complete those. Therefore, I also play a lot of 6-max NL cash games. Unfortunately, I’m much worse at cash games than at MTT and I loose in the first what I win in the latter.
My reasons to join
I’m stuck at NL 50 despite lots of reading. It’s the application during the game which causes problems to me.
I like Gordon's style with a more global approach to the game.
Hopefully this will allow me to fix the leaks.
My beliefs
I know that I can achieve what I really do want: Most of my failures were due to missing commitment: I thought that I wanted to achieve something, but in retrospect I’s clear that my position was not “I want X”, but rather “I would like to get X”.
I’m also convinced by the statement « Champions stand up one more time than the rest ».
I also agree with the statement that « live is too short to listen to others ». However, I’ve I a tendency to take that to an extreme by not asking enough others for help.
My goals
My goal is to beat NL50 within 90 days.
My new habits
Just one to start with: every day I’ll dedicate 1 hour to study poker. It might not be enough, but I prefer to be realistic and become used to work every day a bit on my game, rather than to spent 3 hours the first couple of days and then become undisciplined and leave out one day followed by several days and then stop. More time will not be realistic on long-term since usually I work about 10h/24 - 6d/7 (I'm a little workaholic ;)).
Working topics
- Equity analysis: either using the “Equity trainer” from Equillabs or just by trying out different hands on different boards against different ranges.
- Inventing scenarios: I’ll take one of my big loosing hand and play around with it making different scenarios.
- Opponent Analysis: I’ll start with my winning opponents to see what they do and what they don’t do.
- Leak analysis of my hands.
- Post hands.
- Look videos and summarize them.
My accountability partner
My brother