Mix game journey

to answer Ashby - cuz top players can exploit and im sure he knows that but you gotta work into your game them 379Qds type hands as limp-4bet options!

i like this example cuz I can assure you it's printing in live PLO.

and in a previous post anticipating the release of plo gtow, i mentioned the same thing and i'll just add that the majority of population does not know wtf gto is - i can bet that majority of the pipulation has never heard of the Trump getting shot news. So, money is not becoming harder to make - just find the right games. Of course I can't speak the softness of the games decades ago, there are old school people telling me that people now are too studied and there's no edge in no limit holdem anymore. i'll be a bit cynical and just say that the people who are saying this aren't good enough and they're not skilled or qualified to beat the supposed bums anymore; and that's not disrespecting the old heads. In 10 years people are going to say that oh my God now everyone knows how to play PLO blah blah, come on.... hope my point is clear. Just like someone NBA people saying xxxx now cant play in the league in the 80s. gimme a break.

OK, if I'm going to play heads up with Phil Galfond or Zefa Poker or JNandez, i need to be theory sound (hence i will be simming gtowplo a lot in the coming weeks) - but in reality as a professional player, your money comes from the general population

wow i think i found something i need to work on for a while at least during the weeks that my gf is away. Maybe she'll come back n help me out.

3more day 1flights of $530 main event on coin and day2of $55minimain on june 1st are the ones i need to play. Might be it.

You've said a lot of crazy things this last week.

I'm guessing it's because you're max late reg'ing pkos.

This makes it sound like you are just now discovering push/fold charts. Those have been around for many decades.
"But I node locked..."
No, you didn't. And if you did it was a waste of time because p/f spots are all linear. If a person/the meta is calling too light, you shove tighter and vise versa. Again, decades old stuff.

No. That's super duper illegal and would be instantly found out and open the casino up to massive fines and likely lawsuits.

Also it's pretty funny because those machines used to be 100.2 or 100.3% under 10 years ago and now they are 99.8%. Everything sucks.

First off, stop backing people/giving people money. You're a mark. You're going to get rolled. Again.

Secondly, why don't you have a bank account/debit card? Wouldn't you life be way easier with that?

Updates on this? I'm guessing another rolling. Also, why do you need someone to help you with crypto?

Super braindead take. First off, "just find the right games" means that the money IS becoming harder to make so you just start out contradicting yourself.

Today, you can make money if you grind/study hard and game select really well. 10 years ago you could make more money with less study and a smaller, more general amount of game selection (play in this room/site, stay away from that room/site). 20 years ago anyone with an IQ above 80 and the ability to roughly memorize a starting hand chart was printing in nearly every game in every room on every site, at every stake.

Yes, there are shitregs who could sleepwalk into a decent yearly salary who now can't beat the games. Their opinion is dumb because they were never that great at the game to begin with and never did the work to keep up. But that doesn't mean that the games haven't gotten tougher or that there is less money to make and it's harder to make it.

TX eh....I would say make as much while you are unknown. TX big games (even though public) are notorious for boxing out someone who is a "pro." To be fair the majority of good action is underground anyway.

But I node locked!!!
I never studied push fold charts; I've looked at them before but this time I dived very deep into it. If you assume oppo plays GTO, I don't feel comfortable play GTO against it - so I like to design my own p/f charts in various spots. And yes, if person calls light, we shove tighter. But how much tigher? I disagree with a lot of GTO ranges, so I created my own.

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How can you find out if they are rigging the VP machines though? They can list the same payout but mess with the gears inside the machine and we'll never know.

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Man mark me like I am Pirlo!
It's so easy to loan - if I think you are a good gambler I am more than happy to loan - but look at the stress it causes.
When I was close to flunking out of school back in 2020, I closed my wells fargo. Then two years ago, I opened BOA so I have a bank account but I didn't order a debit/credit card since I didn't have an address in cali and when I was in Vegas I bounced hotels. I can have one delivered to my apartment right now but it seems such a hassle. You obviously know that changing shirts and pants had been a challenge/hassle for me although now my gf buys 10 of the same white t-shirts for me and I can rotate them around appearing the same, I like that. anyway, I feel ok w putting the money in my friend's bank account and we update our balance regularly.

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No update. four days already. I give the person the benefit of the doubt. It's not nice to get ghosted. I need help with crypto because I am inexperienced.

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I never lived through the 90s poker and 2000s poker so I don't know how supposedly easy it was. You are old enough to know and I believe you, but I hear this way too much and I doubt it. Kind of a Mandela effect thing. "20 years ago anyone with an IQ above 80 and the ability to roughly memorize a starting hand chart was printing in nearly every game in every room on every site, at every stake." <--- I can't imagine this statement being true. I know there's a bit exaggeration, but honestly....

Also "finding the right games" doesn't mean "poker is tougher" - it DOES, if we are basing it on the logic that any competent player can beat any game - but since I see it as: a professional poker player back in the 90s still had to avoid playing in lineups w equally good or better players in order to make a living, I get to the conclusion that playing in the right games is the key. Now you can say I have no clue what it's like back in the day, esp in the US, which is valid; I just don't have the experience to back it up.

Ye, thanks.

30k confiscated on coin, 5k was profit. happened a week ago. security team has been shameful to talk to. patrick leonard confusing. no intention to keep dealing with anything coin related.

might leave poker honestly, we'll see.

i dont even know how to categorize such a loss of 25k. it's crypto rug pull i guess.

adam greenlee also took 6k of my crypto on top of 12k he still owes and back to sacramento.

prociak just no update with the 2k.

this kid from sac slowly paying the 8k debt, currently at 2 which is good.

i had to owe ted 10k during all this Coin fiasco too - settling with him once i'm back in town.

Find a way to bounce back i guess.

Gambling, am i right.

Seriously, listen to the advice people have been generously giving you in here. Stick to in person live casino poker cash games and tournaments, and absolutely nothing else.

I'm listening to a chinese rapper called pharoah and he's talking about him grinding in the city i am from - shanghai; and the lyrics reminds me of this web developer i met playing Legends of Three Kingdoms chinese online card game. He was moving for jobs during Covid and i was getting to the endpoint for my project in physics which years later still remained the same progress. Altho i dont anymore project this romantic fantasy as much on my childhood and the time i spent in school in china - i dont think the same way that pre 2022ish Jimmy thought about many things. I have had about a month to reflect what I want to do and obv in the grand scheme of things, it's a short duration; and in a blink of eye another 4 years woulda passed and we are in summer 2030 and i probably have a 7 figure roll - only time will tell.

Anyway, I listen to this rap, quite emotional, but woulda hit me lot more prior - and my gf's shop getting closed by government in oregon and she had to keep paying rent and stuff for the closing spot - stuff happens, but i am hopeful. It's a reality check getting money confiscated on Coin and I email security every day but they just don't respond; obv i know 99.99999% it's gone-gone. These things happen everywhere every second. I made a purchase return at a ghetto bestbuy at maryland drive and without telling me they mail a $1700 check to my home address on my bestbuy account but we dont mails there; i call the general bestbuy line but it seems the check is missing rn - stuff piles on.

I don't even get a chance to talk about these things with Ted forrest cuz he's unconscious and in hospital and I can't visit. Spring valley hospital on rainbow is going to call his wife and his wife will call me. he reads 2+2 quite a bit and he's asked me for a link to this thread i never sent to him idk whether he's found on his own or not. I remember the last thing Ted texted me, about a week ago, was - "a lot of blackswan events are happening to you right now and you are not even 30. Trust me, it will get worse." how fxxking encouraging.

Adam responded which is good, he basically acknowledged the 18k owe and idk how long it takes for him to pay. But i told him straightup, albeit in text, that im not going to forgive him but i dont want him turning into a chino. I need to learn to be hard sometimes. The reality is that situations will come up in the future that i probably need to float ppl big big numbers and i want to still have that courage to loan money to strangers because i think it's a virtue for a successful gambler - altho maybe be careful with some of the tourney bums.

I don't have this desire to play anything right now - i played a bit 10/20 plo at aria; im glad i won but games are bad, altho better than offseason - i played a bit 20 mix at paris, it's quite unbearable. I haven't played 80 this month, lots of japanese players taking over. I have urges to go play 3-600 at Bell but it's not financially responsible. I go to wsop and walk around the tourney area say hi to a couple players at the table and dip - it's kinda fun.

I read up on biology stuff that I've always been interested in, thx to AI. my windows laptop broke after my mac broke; i got some new sports games on Steam but it's not as fun. I'm getting a PSP-1000 from Japan and I really like those old games. I told Minshan Zheng before, that I want a gameboy cuz my kid will savor the quality of retro games. There are so many games i like on the old playstation portable.

There are ppl from Sac who are now in Vegas hitting me up to go play plo - im not rly enthusiastic about it - big reality check from Coin, and it kinda kills my obsession with pit as well - it's actually related to the confiscation on Coin - but that's a story for another day. It's nothing special, but I do believe i am special, so should everyone have that faith in themselves. To quote that kid from the movie 21 - Honestly, i dont even care, cuz no one in the world gives a 5h1t about the wsop poy, no one cares about your win rate in a 5/10 big bet game, no one cares about how arsenal played a great game vs psg in the CL final, no one cares about toni kroos's stinker before his FK vs sweden, no one cares about the button not being moved in that josh arieh heads up LHE tour i posted a while back.

it's 8AM i should head to bed but that made me think of this one player - Justin Houser. I play 8-16 with him for a long time; he may still do but he disappeared for a long time, he wasthe promoter for Zouk at RW but I think he kept losing at 8-16 and 1/3 nlh etc. He was apparently driving doordash for a long time to get by. He asked me for staking before but I had no faith in him winning at all. But case in point, no one is going to care about some "random" cash game player at low stakes - and you know what he has some criminal stuff he could be dead now for all i know. I texted him a long while back but apparently his phone was messed up idk. I think i need to understand that there is no beauty in these things. Growing up in china brainwashes us, me, into thinking that only through pain can we extract worth. You have to do this, you have to do that, you have to suffer. Heck no. idk, im so lucky in many aspects: winning my 20k bacc hand, although given back already; running well at my lowest point of 11k bankroll in cash games; never experiencing any bad beat in terms of losing hands in my poker journey. More to come - whether it's success or failure. be back mentally as well. i always say - 300 bets upswing. so 50k at 80-160. im very happy where im at, just watch.

Ted was the most impressive poker player in this book I once read called The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King. That is so cool you talk to him!

ye he's one of my closest friends in poker and that book is why i initially talked to him a couple years ago - i found him very down to earth and respectful from the outset. i would ask him stud questions and he would ask me triple draw strategies. the small effects he's had on me are not only thru gambling, but also via stories and discussions regarding drugs, women, police brutality, stock market, etc. Him and my dad are about the same age and Ted would sometimes start sentence by saying "as your old man"... There are also some bad stuff I heard about him cuz ppl see us being close and wonder if we take pieces of each other in cash games or tell me negative stories about Ted but at this point just hope he's doing well in the hospital. Oh in fact I have some good stuff i can dig up regarding the Matusow weight loss bet, but no one cares... so long ago.

Hope he does ok, he bought my action at a 1/2 mix because I was such a huge fish. The $100 bill he gave me back when I quit had hand written on it “money coming back to me supernaturally.”

He seemed like a nice enough dude but I don’t know any of his back story. We played big o late one night heads up and I said I was getting tired and he replied, “I’ll play any game you want.” 😃 A consummate pro.

great story

i saw David chip leading $500 mystery w 13 left and 400k for first but i didnt want to text him.

Then I get this text from him. So this is how i feel about Adam too - despite 18k - I think this is why I would never stop floating people.

Pretty happy now.

Hear me out though. The other option is to not loan out money to degenerate gamblers who don’t have the money to pay you back. Then you still have that money and don’t need to rely on them making an improbable deep run in a 20k player field just to be able to pay you back.

I would like to bet as much money as you'd like that you will not be paid back, in full, tomorrow

It seems like OP's main goal is to get people who he's watched play poker on his computer to talk to him/pretend to be his friend. The only way to get degen/scumbags to do that is to give them money. Until his objective changes, his results will be the same.

that's cynical. it's just too trusting ppl and it's case by case. Try to be open-minded.

This, 1,000%.

The poker subculture has normalized lots of irresponsible financial choices and degenerate gambling behaviors: lending money to casual acquaintances, buying a piece of a casual acquaintance in a tournament, sports betting, prop betting, gambling in the pits, taking a shot at bigger games in which you're either a fish or under-rolled or both, playing in tournaments or formats in which you have little or no experience, etc. These are all –EV choices.

You have adopted many of these bad habits—and you're in a relationship with a woman who thinks it's possible to make a living playing Baccarat. Talk about enabling each other. The more you and she play Baccarat, the sooner you will both be broke. Just let go of the $70K or whatever it is that you're down in the pits. You're never getting back to even, and if you do by some miracle get back to even, you won't stop. You'll keep playing, maybe making bigger and bigger bets, and eventually you will give it all back and then some.

You've made other questionable or irresponsible financial choices as well, like paying Davis $20K when it was clear months earlier that you had no desire or motivation to finish your degree; not having a checking account (WTF?); and paying cash for a computer when the return would have gone so much more smoothly with a credit card, and now you've lost $1,700 on the transaction.

Stop fantasizing about having a seven-figure bankroll in four years when you're making all these poor financial choices. David Peters can't pay his backers, and according to his son David Sklansky died busto, but somehow you're going to be different? I doubt it.

The way to make money in poker is to find a game you can beat and pound it. Period. End of story. All the rest is just pissing money away.

Copy. Well, stupid of me to leave Sacramento.

Interesting about the Japanese infiltrating the 80/160 mix. Ali said that on the 25K heads up there are poker schools specifically targeting vegas by sending students to play in the games.

A japanese wagyu beef restaurant owner has a mix game dojo - he rolls the best student from his class for a trip to bellagio. that constitutes a portion of the japanese players.
Then there are a couple tournament players who come play i'm sure the words go around.
The third component of the population consists of the japanese from this one discord/twitter group who share their 80-160 (probably other games as well) results privately and im sure i can dig up the twitter page.

This wagyu restaurant owner recently published a book on mix game - it's in japanese so i can't read. He told me he has an english version and would like to meet up w me in June when he's in Vegas and show me. Now this guy in particular, I have a vivid slip of memory in May 2023 about him - he came to RW with his suitcase, played in 3-600, went to Harry Reid to fly back - that was my first instant of feeling some aura from him. Fast forward to a couple months ago he was in town and we got into a badeucey hand. Some people do not chop blinds and I think Koji doesn't - so he raise in sb and i defend bb w 378r. 3-2. he bets i raise with K8 dugi and KT low. he calls. 2-pat. he checks and I check back. 2-0. river he checks and I check back to chop with his jack low and 3 card. Weird line I took.

But it's not just the Japanese players - there are a group of chinese players that come together and play, yesterday in the main game there were 4 chinese players at the table including me! - there's WeChat group for it etc. I am heavy anti China so I don't wanna comment too much on it - but if my words are to be trusted, the avg skill level of the Jap is levels above.

Regarding the mix game dojo - I have seen their test exam questions. Two takeaways - one is how important upcards are in stud games, a pip difference can make a hand from playable to unplayable. two is how balanced they are in triple draw variants. I have nightmares playing triple draw vs the Japanese! I have broken incorrectly so many times. And if there are any weakness I can attack, population-wise - I would say they call too much going into showdown. Forget about bluffing them, have to go for thin value much more often vs them.

I dont think Koji "targets" vegas, it's just where the games are at. I heard many places in Texas had been invaded by Euros at 5/10 plo, similar thing. There are probably different regulations in japan on "gambling" - i see single digit aged kids play mix games in APT settings so ye, I'm root hard for all them japanese.

I played with a few at the lower stakes MGF at Bellagio, I could immediately tell their strengths are in TD variants, they tend to play ultra tight or walk around during stud/omaha/drawmaha. One guy never played a TD variant without raising.

I just rage quit the 150-300 at Bell.
I think it's the second day today.

A couple games into the session and three hands passed before I realized we were playing stud hilo and not stud hi.
My mind isnt in this right now.

On the second hand, seat 2 brings in with a 2 and i folded 3(A5) two suits in the one hole with a bunch of big cards behind.

After I realized we were playing stud8, theres a hand:

2 brings in
6 folds another 6 folds, 4 completes 3 calls, paint folds, i call w (A6)A and paint folds and bringin folds.

i check A9 on fourth
47 bets, 3J calls, i call

3JJ leads on fifth, i raise w Ad9d8c
and 474 cold calls, jacks call as well.

on sixth 474 catches open trips and i catch the no good case 6d for aces up and fold to his bet.

Then i played an orbit of BigO and quit.

This is the second instance of such thing happening - i fold instead of play, that is. I've certainly played the wrong game many times.

i recall that in an 80 session last year i played badeucey while its 2-7 triple draw and folded 2347 on the button to a cutoff open.