Road to 10bb/100

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In

I'm from Germany and live in Sremska Kamenica/Serbia, where do you live? If I may ask ;-)

GL

GL

Would it not be a better idea to maximize hourly as your main objective? Would you leave a table where you estimate your EV to be 5bb/100?

Ty guys

Cool. I live in Belgrade. You play poker form Kamenica?

Depends on the limit and how many tables I have. If its nl100 and I have lot of tables already its better to focus on higher EV tables there is also opportunity cost of having lot (esp low EV) tables, as you will miss when fish sits on new table and fish on nl500 is worth 5x then fish on nl100.

Lets review last weak goals
Ty guys

Cool. I live in Belgrade. You play poker form Kamenica?

Depends on the limit and how many tables I have. If its nl100 and I have lot of tables already its better to focus on higher EV tables there is also opportunity cost of having lot (esp low EV) tables, as you will miss when fish sits on new table and fish on nl500 is worth 5x then fish on nl100.

Lets review last weak goals
• Play 4–6 sessions of 6+ hours per week ✓ 4 sessions and 24h45min of playing

• Study 8–12 hours per week ✓ about 8h. I did some stuff about 3bet pots. I should work more on my theory and reg exploits.

• Take a cold shower every morning ✓ On one off day I did not do it. Its def a challenge, but it dose wake me up and I feel more motivated after small win.

• Go to the gym 4–5 times per week ✓ Ill keep this pace for this week, but I did have some neck and back pain, so maybe I ll have to back off a bit it this keeps going.

• Update this blog once a week ✓

• Make sure to rest enough before each session (I often play very tired, which probably costs me a lot of EV) ✗ This was by far the biggest fail. My sleep was all over the place. Pretty much every day sleep 5h wake up after that feeling like **** and then sleep 1h during the day. I felt weaker in the gym, more susceptible to till while playing and in general less sharp and more anxious and nervous. Sometimes it is difficult to assess whether these are symptoms of lack of sleep or whether they are precisely the causes of lack of sleep. This week I ll lower caffeine intake and maybe try to go in the gym earlier, see if that helps.

• No YouTube before finishing work (I’m pretty much addicted to it) ✗ In general I did fine 5/7 days. Lets make it at least 6 this week.

• No phone, Discord, etc. while playing ✗ couple of times games were so dead and i was so board i had to put something on second screen. There was also one crazy session in which I tilted super hard. I sit down and pretty much lost every hand for like 45min losing 1k or so, punching the table slamming monster energy at the wall. I dint get that tilted in like that in a year, there was definitely accumulated negative emotions, I felt nervous before I started the session. I didnt quit the session instead put some random NBA podcast turn on my phone trying to distract form negative emotions. In funny way this end up working in my favor, got really good nl500 table with super whale where I won all lost money back and 1k on top of that. Its good I didnt quit the session but i def had to turn off phone and yt.

One nice hand
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Yes, started again playing after a long break. Choice of pokersites isn't great nowadays in Serbia. I play on GG Poker and Red Star Poker, back in the day it was Stars only.

Yeah. I don't get why laws around poker laws are so restrictive while Serbia is prety much a paradise for sporte betting and slot companies. Makes no sense.

Nice results, gl mate

gl gl gl

Ty very much

ty ty ty

Very swingy week. I ran fairly bad for most of it, especially at 200, but managed to catch a few good 500 and 1k tables, so it ended up around breakeven.

• Play 4-6 sessions of 6+ hours per week v Played 5 sessions, around 27-28 hours total.
• Study 8-12 hours per week v Around 10 hours total. Worked on my 3-bet pot game - maybe I'll post my notes if someone's interested.
• Take a cold shower every morning v 6/7 days.
• Go to the gym 4-5 times per week v 5x.
• Update this blog once a week v
• Make sure to rest enough before each session (I often play very tired, which probably costs me a lot of EV) x Sleep this week was all over the place. I had a few nights of really good sleep - definitely felt much sharper at the tables on those days. I'm losing a lot of EV on these performance/mental game aspects. If I lose 3 or more big pots in a row, my focus starts drifting toward dumb thoughts like "I'm so unlucky!" or "How much do I need to win to breakeven this session?" I'm trying to stay aware of this and "delete" what happened in previous hands, focusing fully on the current hand no matter how small it is. There were also some stressful things outside of poker which, combined with the downswing, pretty much destroyed my sleep in the later part of the week.
• No YouTube before finishing work (I'm pretty much addicted to it) x Failed this pretty badly. As mentioned, there were some stressful things outside of poker, and I mostly used them as an excuse to fall back into bad habits - escaping from reality through YouTube/phone.
• No phone, Discord, etc. while playing x Similar to YouTube, but I don't think it hurts to have something playing in the background if the game is very slow. Otherwise, I tend to get bored and play too many hands.

How‘s it going mate? How do you study?

Ty BS

For theory I mostly use GTO Wizard. First I want to know the defend thresholds, same for value, and what the bluff selections should look like. After that I sometimes look at smaller details like blockers and merge betting. I also started using Range Builder, which seems to be more effective than drills.

Games were not great last week. I also felt unmotivated and bored while playing too often. This is probably partly due to lack of sleep and being tired, so I will reduce workouts this week and set no study goals. The plan is to have peak performance while playing.
If any of you guys have advice on how to achieve this please let me know.

Last week goals
• Play 4-6 sessions of 6+ hours per week - DONE
• Study 8-12 hours per week - DONE
• Take a cold shower every morning - 5/7, I will count this as DONE
• Go to the gym 4-5 times per week - DONE
• Update this blog once a week - DONE
• Make sure to rest enough before each session - FAILED. I did sleep better when not drinking Monster during the session, so at least some progress there.
• No YouTube before finishing work (I'm pretty much addicted to it) - FAILED. I'm a bit embarrassed how difficult this is for me. This will be one of my priorities for the next few weeks.
• No phone, Discord, etc. while playing - FAILED. Similar to YouTube.

Next week goals
• Play 4-6 sessions of 6+ hours per week
• Make sure to rest enough before each session
• No YouTube before finishing work
• No phone, Discord, etc. while playing

I won't set any study or workout goals this week, but I enjoy doing those anyway, so if I stop wasting time on my phone, some of that time will naturally go to the gym and studying.

Was optimizing myself quite a lot in these regards:

- no coffee or energy drinks min 8hrs before going to sleep

- avoid beer, wine, sliva and loza before sleeping.....that part I fail the most, but sleep-quality is way better without that stuff

- no big meals in the evening, best is to not eat at all in the evening, but if you can't without then high protein/low fat is way to go

- go to bed always at the same time and also get up every day at the same time

- find the correct volume of sleep which suits you most. For me works 6.5hrs the best. Sleeping more or less equals to not peak-performance the next day.

- start the day with a healthy breakfast and a small walk of 15-20min. If it's hard for you to do this no matter how the weather is......get a dog 😉

- no screens (computer, phone or tablet) in the first 1hr of the day

Ty FR-Nit. I definitely took some of your advice and saw some positive changes. I already have a dog (he requires more than a 20 min walk :/)

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I did not have time to update last week, but for the most part I felt good and played well. I played 5 sessions per week during the last two weeks since the previous update, and I also started studying a lot. My plan is to focus on river spots for the next 4-6 months. I think there is a lot of edge to be gained over other regs and fish in these situations. Even after studying just one spot in depth, I already noticed how badly the pool plays many river nodes.

Lets look at last week's goals:

Last week goals
• Play 4-6 sessions of 6+ hours per week - DONE
• Make sure to rest enough before each session - DONE. Not true for every session, and there is a huge difference between being well-rested and being semi-tired. I find that even taking a short nap before a session can make a big difference.
• No YouTube before finishing work - SEMI DONE. Better than previous weeks, but still far from perfect. When I minimize phone usage, my productivity goes up a lot. If I get bored, instead of killing time with random scrolling, I either study, go to the gym, clean the room, or do something productive.
• No phone, Discord, etc. while playing - DONE. There were 2 sessions where I got sloppy with this, so still room for improvement.

I will keep the goals for next week more or less the same, just adding a study goal. I wanted to post results so far, but H2N is not working for some reason. Maybe next update.

Next week goals
• Play 4-6 sessions of 6+ hours per week
• Make sure to rest enough before each session; add a nap before session if needed
• No YouTube before finishing work (this one is a MUST)
• No phone, Discord, etc. while playing
• 10+ hours of studying river spots

For YouTube, try to first set yourself a restriction period instead of a goal? Like, starting with just a week. Otherwise you'll feel miserable likely for a few days, then break into your natural habits, go on YouTube, fall into spontaneous recovery and spend the whole night there. Smaller steps are easier to achieve for start.

It's like dieting. Everybody can lose 10 pounds fairly easily by going on a strict diet for two weeks. It's the 'strict dieting until I reach my goal' that's wild, because then the proposition is actually 'setting insane boundaries, that go against my preferred behavior, for months (or years)' ; and then failure becomes a harsh deal, because it implied a lot of pain and time.

Believe you, nice boy! At us in Germany you'd call him "altdeutscher Schäferhund" as he has longer fur than the standard. Nice dogs, really like them and obv doing a short walk around the block isn't enough to get that big head tired ;-) I had/have a Labrador which sadly passed recently and a crossbred. The good thing about dogs is - beside a lot of other things - that you are forced to go for a walk, no matter how the weather is.

Couldn't resist to upload pics ;-)

Good point. I'll think how to redefine golaes areoun yt.

Nit dog pics are always welcome 😃 Labs are great, they were on my short list when I was deciding what dog to get.

Last week was not very productive, only 2 sessions played. I had to update from Hand2Note 3 to Hand2Note 4, and it took a while before I managed to transfer my HUD to the new version. These are the results since I started the blog:
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I ran bad on NL200, constantly getting into set-up spots or not being able to get paid, but on the other hand I ran super well at 500 and 1k.

Last week goals review

• Play 4-6 sessions of 6+ hours per week - FAILED
• Make sure to rest enough before each session; add a nap before session if needed - DONE. This small nap sometimes really helps. I also slept better without drinking energy drinks while playing, which seems to improve my sleep overall.
• No YouTube before finishing work (this one is a MUST) - FAILED. I only worked 2 days last week, so I did not try too hard on days when I was free. I did manage not to turn on YT for one of the two working days. Let's push for at least 3 this week!
• No phone, Discord, etc. while playing - DONE
• 10+ hours of studying river spots - DONE

I feel like I have a cold, so this week I will just try to play 4-6 sessions without much studying until I get better.

This week goals
• Play 4-6 sessions of 6+ hours
• No YT before finishing work at least 3 days
• No phone, Discord, etc. while playing

Some hands vs fish on 1k from the last 2 nights:
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Physics doc? ****ing hell dude

I'm in. gl. nice 🐕

Ty, Ceres!

I didn’t update last week since I started to dive deeper into MDA, but the last two weeks were fairly productive.

Played 54h total and spent about 18h studying, mostly MDA. Results aren’t great unfortunately — the last two sessions were brutal and started to affect my game, so I ended up running bad and playing bad, which is a bad combo. Sometimes after learning new ideas my game takes a dip for a week or two, so my intensive MDA study probably played a small role in the “playing bad” part.

Plan for the next two weeks is to go over all the notes I’ve made until this stuff becomes a natural part of my game.

I’m planning to change my approach to table selection. I knew that almost all the money comes from the fish, but after analyzing the results of regs at my limit, I was still surprised by how much.

Here are some of the things I looked at:

In 1.3m hand sample of 51 regs. WR is -0.39bb/100 and they lost 9.9k in ev
-if there is a fish with VIPP of 40% or less WR is -3bb/100 on 429k hands lost 33.4k in this sample
-with fish VIPP of 40-50% WR is +1.7bb/100 on 284k hands 12.2k profit
-w fish VIPP 50-60% WR is 6.6bb/100 on 141k hands profit 12k and
-with fish VIPP60+ WR is 14bb/100 on 128k hand profit 40k
On sample of 1.3m hands almost all the money to be won was in just in those 128k hands playing with whales! and playing with semi-fish is net negative for most regs even if you are top reg on these tables you will have very very low WR due to high rake. Without any fish WR is -7.4bb/100 and they regs lost 38.2k reg battling.

Last week(s) goals
• Play 4-6 sessions of 6+ hours-played-DONE for last 2 weeks
• No YT before finishing work at least 3 days-DONE- 7/14 days
• No phone, Discord, etc. while playing-DONE

Goals for next week
1. Play 30h+
2. Study/reread notes 10h+
3. No YT before finishing work at least 4 days

.. and yet, someone (reg) has to be winning??

Like, I take your point (fish rule), but what % of those regs are just bad regs with massive leaks that someone with good MDA and skill couldn't just print (albeit more slowly) against anyway?

All the MDA i've seen up to 200nl suggests vast majority of regs are still hemorrhaging EV. I imagine a solid 5knl reg would still eat them alive.

It's simple math.

Rake takes 50-60bb every 100 hands from the table. If semi fish loses at -20bb/100 other 5 regs still lose 30-40bb. Lets say best reg wins at 5bb/100, that means other regs will lose 10bb/100 or more.

Yes regs at 200 are not super good and if you are world class, you can overcome rake and beat games without any selection, but why would you play 25 times lower stakes??

I feel like you could make this argument for any stakes tho. The best regs will always be incentivised to move up which leaves everyone battling against their own capability and rake to reach the top %. The majority sharing EV, losing or b/e: a.k.a. zero sum.

I guess I've always seen rake differently. For me it was just built in from the start. My primary concern is 'am I better than the field'? Will rake and strict table selection help me accrue extra EV? Sure, but the limit is the limit and the rake trap only improves as you move up, no?

For example, would this same analysis not also apply to lower limits? And yet you would happily and blindly sit @ 50nl table knowing that your game > good regs? Or are you saying that exclusively @ 200nl the skillset between regs is so close that few tables are per hour profitable? (this point i'm disputing, with zero personal proof tbf heh)