I want to jump up and shout hooray.

I have been so worried about ranges and how my hand plays against someones' range, I've been worried about my EV against a certain range, worried about what they think of me and my range. I've worried about a lot of things. Too many things. Poker is an easy game. It's not hard, not complex. It's very simple you see?

I feel like I'm starting to develop a truly winning "thought process" involving how I play my hands and approach The Game in general. It's still a game and it can be simplified; maybe not solved, but simplified.

Most of my continuously evolving outlook on this game consists of dealing with the inconsistencies of the game. Trying to find a way to filter through the sticky, nasty, gunky spots and make the best play. Taking an approach that allows us to look a little deeper; delve a little further into our possibilities and how they pan out on paper. I am not saying that this alone will make me a world beater (as that will depend on MY ABILITIES and nothing else) but I'm developing a rock solid foundation for my entire poker game.

Every time the action is to you, it's your opportunity to make the perfect play. -Phil Galfond accrediting another poker player.

This quote is awesome,

The sad part is: I am going to be needing to very diligently implement my new intellectual findings. I really want a crisp, clean way of playing this game. I want to put the work in, I want to become the best player I am capable of becoming. I have the drive to win.

Along with that, I want to be in pots. Too many people on the forums, playing micros, trying to move up etc. are getting stuck into this mindset that there are WAAAAAY more standard spots than there really are. We start blaming too many of our mistakes on variance and coolers. This causes us to stop blaming ourselves.

Yes coolers exist. Yes there is variance. Yes you're gonna lose $ when you play really well or even perfectly sometimes. Not just sometimes, a bunch of times. i want to be the guy that navigates through the thin value spots. The spots where I get to weigh my pot equity and my fold equity. Get to decide what "the situation" calls for and implement whatever plan I come up with that feels best.

I also am not gonna make it pleasant to be at the table with me. I don't want to make it pleasant. I don't care who you are, I don't want you thinking it's gonna be fun being to my right. I don't want you thinking it's gonna be OK to open in the CO light. Or that it's OK to try and steal the blinds when I'm in them all the time.

I don't want you to have an easy time playing in pots with me either. I want to discourage, frustrate, tilt, felt, bamboozle, confuse, fluster, beat on, pound and psychologically murder you. If you're just gonna let me 3bet you or bluff you and fold to you when "I" feel like it, you might as well change tables.

I'm not arrogant, this doesn't mean I think I'm better than you at poker. It doesn't mean I think I'm smarter than you. It means I want you to HATE playing against me and I want you to make mistakes. I want to take it to a high intensity, extreme, don't mess with me status.

I want people to literally "think twice" when they see that I can be involved in the hand. This is going to put people in leveling wars that I don't even need to be a part of, I can just implement my game plan and let you spaz out whenever you plan on it. Just sit back, do what I do and watch you adjust poorly while I readjust to your poor adjustments w/out you even realizing it.

I want to be the guy playing AS MANY pots in position I can. Playing EVERY POT i can profitably play with the fish. Fry the fish, stack the fish. Exploit the fishes' massive leaks before other players do. Figure out the quickest and best way to take someones' money. I want to put myself in the best possible position to do this,

I want to EXPLOIT.

I want to make the perfect play

Make the play that causes my opponent to make the imperfect play.

I want to play poker...

I'm definitely learning a lot very quickly. Although I don't have a strong grasp on some things, I am very confident with my decisions while playing (most of the time). I have put myself in intricate, thin, but SOOO awesome of spots. Played well throughout those spots and I'm getting way better at playing OOP. It's something that I have struggled with and I am getting MUCH better at it. Watch out!

I am fine with jumping back into 25nl sometime this week. It's gonna be awesome, and I hope to crush the shit outta 25nl w/out moving back to 10nl too much. I want to get these 75k hands done and over with.

We'll see where that takes me, I'll be updating throughout the week.

Today... A friend of mine's Daughter is having a B-Day party. She's just a baby, but it should be fun to go hang around a bunch of friends in a relaxing, friendly environment.

I also want to congratulate paymy22ition for winning his free 10 hours of coaching. When I noticed he won, I checked out his blog and some posts. It's cool that you get this HUGE BOOST from nutedawg.

So to all you donks, have a good one an ttyl.

I have had a headache for 3 days now, the few days before that went shitty. On a downswing of approx 20 buyins. So I sucked it up for 8k hands, whatever.

My brain has hurt too much to even give a f*ck about poker right now. This headache thing is killing me, so I may be dead by the end of the week.

Poker news, didn't feel as enthused about blogging because my results were poor. I will try to break this habit, because being in the blog routine really seemed to help out my game for some reason. Gave me a bit of a structure to my game. Play, go over hands and blog about it. I was all up and gitty about doing it when I was winning, now I need to do it while I'm losing.

So I moved back down to 10nl for a few K hands. I want to refigure my game out and even fix some more fundamentals. I have no restrictions, when I feel confident enough to move back up i will do so. I crush the games in swimming fashion.

I basically got fancy play syndrome, played too loose OOP and thought I was the fuckin tom dwan of uNL. Well, apparently I am not the durrrr of uNL and I need to take a step back and think while i play. IDK what caused me to blow up and let the poker world shit on me. Maybe it's runbad, maybe not. But i'm gonna find that out at 10nl and not 25nl.

Other than that, I've also been writing about my game. Just how I want to play in each spot and what ranges I want to open. Just everything I can write about my game. Maybe I'll put a passage from my "poker theorem" in here one of these days.

Aside from all that, I'm out. Toodles niggas

So over the last few days, I've been running pretty awesome. Just kidding, it's been the opposite of awesome. The anti-awesome, the pits, my run bad I've been waiting for lol. Anyway, I've been up and down over the last few days but essentially break even.

I was running a few buyins +EV this month, but the last few days have changed that. I'm running 9 buyins -EV or so as of right now this month. So I guess I'm suppose to be up more technically, but it really doesn't matter. The best thing about this 3-4k hands of run bad, is that I have avoided tilting throughout the majority of it. I have lost to back door flushes with sets, AA v TT type shit, even got beat when I got it in vs a worse flush draw on the turn and neither of us had paired up. Well, he did on the river. But I really hasn't frustrated me lately, I haven't been doing anything special either. Just being apathetic about losing in standard spots.

Now I understand that EV essentially doesn't exist. It's really all about making the correct decision at a particular moment, using the information available to lead you. That's all it is, efficiently and consistently doing the right thing. The fact that I'm minus EV only really means to me that I'm getting my money in good more often than not, that's all. It has nothing to do with floating, continuation betting, position, it really has nothing to do with poker.

So I actually prefer seeing my EV line higher than my results, it gives me the feeling that I'm doing nothing wrong when getting it in. I'm getting it in ahead most of the time. If I was running above expectation, this would mean to me that I've got it in bad a few times too many and had to suck out. So I don't mind running -EV so much, makes me feel like I'm playing "the spots where I GET IT IN" very well and I expect to profit there.

But don't pay too much attention to that line, it only has to do with the spots where you are both allin and there are cards to come. Relax and focus on playing the game of poker.

So anyway, results. My graph looks very pretty. I like it and I think it's sexy. I had a few friends sweat me and told me that I should probably tighten up. My stat line looks like this (vpip/pfr/3b%) 27/22/6... and I really think that I do need to tighten up. But there are certain spots where I need to tighten up. This is something I've considered, but I don't plan on tightening up my overall game by any means.

I wanted to tighten up in spots. Spots where I'm probably not profitable and I can profit by playing more of a value range. Anyway, I looked at my positional stats and W$WSF to see if I'm playing more profitable in some spots than others. I don't like to play OOP but I just do it more than I should. I play too light from the SB.

Ex: I will still play extremely loose from the button. I currently am playing 42/37 with a W$WSF of 55.82%. This really is a HUGE motivator to tighten up to almost the nutz UTG and play way tighter in the CO as well. Just looking to play most of my pots in position when I'm opening from now on.

This is just another way for you guys to analyze your own game. See where you are having a hard time and just tighten up. I completely suck OOP right now, so I'm just not gonna avoid it. Check your positional stats sometimes and look for areas that can use improvement.

That's all for now... I'm gonna go watch the new episode of High stakes poker.

So I didn't blog yesterday because I was hating poker and just didn't wanna think about it.

I only lost 4 buyins or something, so that's no big deal. But the reason I lost them is because I tilted them off. I'm not happy about the fact that I just got frustrated with a bunch of standard losses. They weren't even for stacks mostly, just getting check/raised and people 3bet the shit outta me. I was just getting frustrated over nothing, so I avoided blogging about it last night.

Today is a new day, and it's gonna be a bright, sun shiny one. I'm going to finally start reading this Tommy Angelow book. It's supposed to be pretty good,. It's title is Elements of Poker. Hopefully it will help me tilt less and I will start to become a winner at the game.

Because of last night, I'm break even over the last 4 or 5K hands. That's somewhat frustrating, but I'm not going to be moving up for another 65k hands or something. I just need to take a deep breathe, relax and learn how to play poker.

So for now, it's Thursday. The games are gonna be juicy sweet and I am going to start by reading at least 1 chapter from this book before I start my session. I read very quickly, but am not good at forcing myself to actually "read" a book. So requiring myself to read only 1 chapter a day will make it easy to pick the book up, and I expect myself to end up reading much more than 1 chapter everyday. The book is probably gonna be super interesting and I will just have a hard time putting it back down once I've started.

A cool thing about my session, it's made me think a lot about it actually. People give me no credit in 3bet pots. Twice yesterday, I cbet into a 3bet pot, got raised and I shoved over the top of the guy.

It wasn't the same guy and they weren't fish. Well, results would def seem like they were fish :). I bet/shoved 57s on a 68T board and got called by AJ no pair no draw. And KK on a J82hh board and got called by KQo. Idk, tell me if that doesn't blow your mind.

I'm off to juicy fish land to win some $$$... actually more like win some EV :) Y'all have a good one

So today started out like this... Guy in BB is 3betting like a beast, over a very decent sample(35% over 150ish hands). I open UTG with JJ, caller on BTN and he squoze from the BB. I snap 4bet pot (which is like 60bbs at this point) and he takes a sec and calls. Flop came K64 and he shoves. I have like 40bbs and call he shows A7o. And binks his A on the turn...

In my super swingy 2k hands today I ran 4.5 buyins -EV. I know this is a silly stat, but it's still a little disheartening. Luckily I ended the session up 1 buyin. You gotta be pretty lucky to get super unlucky and still be lucky enough to win. Think about it lol. But it was nice today, to just tough out the variance and get way less tilted than I normally would.

I still have not gotten to the gym in a couple days and I need to get down there. Poker has just been really fun lately and I have enjoyed putting in the volume. I broke my rule today as well. I played 5 tables for a little while, w/out the intention of closing one. I just had 5 juicy tables going but I think it hurt my overall game. Hopefully I will be able to resist the temptation of doing this in the future. Who knows?

Today's session
Cons: I called off 50bbs a few times light because I was slightly tilted.
Ran 4.5 buyins -EV

Pros; Was able to control my tilt and tear into 25nl.
Still had a winning session running 4.5-EV and being down 5-6 buyins at one point


I'm out y'all

So I've been pretty lazy when it comes to going to the gym lately. Kinda disappointing, but I have been focused on other things at the moment. I would like part of my daily routine to be working out during one of my poker breaks. I'm not in a rush to start on this, but I plan on working it into my daily routine very soon and making sure that I stick to it. I just want to find a way to hold myself accountable for showing up at the gym everyday.

Aside from that, I have still been crushing 25nl. I made some very sick plays against some regs today (atleast I thought they were sick) and won a couple free buyins. I'm gonna keep focusing on what makes the regs spazz out because I feel this is going to get me the most value without having to cooler them. I got stacks in pretty light today and had one guy literally drawing dead and another to 3 outs.

I have stuck with my rules so far, as well. No more than 4 tables, still table selecting and working on my overall thought process. I'm gonna jump into a Tommy Angelow book, I believe. He said, "My bankroll consists of my net worth... plus whatever I can borrow." I thought that was pretty funny and true for a lot of players. I'm not trying to get involved in fancy play syndrome or anything, 25nl for the most part is very str8 forward. But I do want to learn, and I don't mind picking good poker literature from good poker players.



Results wise: I'm crushing and I don't know if this is going to be sustainable but I sure as hell hope so. Everything is going swimmingly and I just can't wait for these 75k hands to be over with. Here is my shiz 6.7k into it:

Gonna prolly grind some more tonight...

So yesterday, I lost 4BI in my first session. This was a lot of neat hands. Like I got min4bet by a fish 200bbs deep, so I just 5bet to 100bbs with KK and he flatted OOP. i shoved the other 100bbs on the flop of QQJ and he had AQo. w/e. sh*t like that all day. A set v Flush draw 200bbs and he hit, whatever. it happens, and it happens a lot. I understand.


So I sat with these fish for awhile trying to "win my money back." After a couple hours i had only made like 1 1/2 buyins back. These guys had like 65vpip and were absolute stations. But I couldn't make hands, i got coolered, boards ran out bad and I just figured I should be taking their money a lot faster.

Your graph as a poker player will inevitably be a str8 line at some degree from the axis. This str8 line will be intersected at certain points based on your wins

Well I realized something guys. Your graph is going to simply be an incline all the way. A str8 line all the way to the top and your results are simply going to intersect that line. I'm in no hurry to take their money over the next hour or two. I'm eventually going to take all of their money and that's that. But... I'm only expected to with "so much" over a certain sample size.

Coming to this realization should help my game a lot. I do get tilted, and I get tilted very easily. It doesn't cause me to literally spew money, but it does affect whether or not I'm playing my A+ game.

Considering that my A game isn't even that strong right now, I need to make sure that whenever I'm playing I will be maximizing my profits. No reason to sit around, tilted, playing my C or D game with a bunch of fish and bad micro regs because I go from a slight/moderate winner in the games to a losing player. Since I'm not making those +EV moves as efficiently/consistently.

So I am going to be working on things that cause me to tilt. Why do I get tilted? How is my game affected when I'm tilted? and probably the most important: Why the fuck can't I just quit when I'm tilted or playing bad? It's time for me to realize that my goal at this point should not be to make money. I have no reason to use poker money for any monetary means. So I should be trying to learn and solidifying my fundamentals.

I'm not even going to consider 50nl for 75k more hands. Here's the skeleton of my current poker goals:

Login 75k hands at 25nl 6max.
4 table at all times, less tables if you feel but NO MORE than 4.
Being able to recognize when I am/ain't playin' my A game.
Only play when I'm absolutely on my A game, quitting when not.

This is pretty basic, but it's what I'm going to do. I think it's gonna take like 2 months to login all of these hands and it's gonna be tedious sometimes. But at the end of these hands, I will have very solid habits and definitely
will be ready for 50nl. I will also be ridiculously over rolled for 50nl if everything goes solid and I'm actually a winning player.

For those of you who read this crap pile, I'm off to grind a little and maybe take a poop. have a good one

I'm pretty new to Card Runners, I don't even know if it's a compound word yet lol.

I was posting hands in my blog yesterday and messed up the link on one of them. I tried and tried to fix it but it just redirected me to the Featured Blog List whenever I clicked on it. So I deleted it and am moving on. I have been posting more regularly on the forums and I enjoy going over responses and just checking out what other people have to say about poker

Also, if anyone has any input, questions or anything about anything: feel free to PM me. If you wanna ship me a HH or tell me I'm stupid for one of the hands I played. I don't care, I'm an open book.

I have also recently become a vegetarian. For about a month now I have been meat free and am enjoying it. I feel healthier, and I just enjoy learning new recipes and trying out new food. I made falafels for the first time and they were awesome. Pretty cake, just mash up some garbanzo beans and mix it with breadcrumbs, a diced onion and some various seasonings. Then you deep fry that sh*t, everything is good after it's deep fried.

I am working on my eating schedule being balanced too. I am a poor breakfast eater, I usually don't eat breakfast at all. I make some coffee and get to the grind. I think it's going to be important for me to start developing better eating habits when I wake up so I have more energy throughout the day to grind on. Along with that, it's gonna be important to eat breakfast so I have more energy during my workout as well. It just seems like breakfast truly is the most important meal of the day. It took me 23 years, but now I know.

Pokerwise, I'm rolled for 50nl right now but 25nl has been going well and I want to make sure I can sustain a decent winrate before moving up. I'm at like 20ptbb/100 or something like that right now. That's not going to be sustainable and I want a better idea of what my overall winrate is going to be, so I will donk around in the micros some more.
I also want to work on being less of a station and plugging a few more leaks. I'm confident that I could be a winner at 50nl at this time, I just want to be more prepared when I start aggressively taking shots at 50nl.

Alright guys, that's it for now. I might post some hands or something from my sesh tonight. TTYL

Yo,

My name is Tim, I'm from Oregon, I currently grind micros. I have been struggling with my fundamentals over the last two months as I am fairly new to online poker. I have logged less than 75k hands total, I think that's a pretty small amount of volume, considering I want to make this my career sometime in the future.

I grew up in a small town and poker has literally always been a part of my life. I learned to play at a very young age and became very familiar with 5 card draw/stud and 7 card stud. So I've had some success playing live in the past and learned a bunch of games, but poker has evolved.

So stepping into the games now, I feel like I'm still a 10nl loser but I have the intellectual tools to become a successful, winning player at the higher stakes. Maybe not 5/10, but certainly 1/2, 2/4... and that's my goal. So I have been taking my game very seriously and putting in a lot of volume at 10nl.

My first shot at 25nl went very poorly, I ran bad and tilted a lot. Along with the fact that I wasn't very strong post flop either. I'm sort of a station, and erratic at times. But those are things I have worked on and will continue to work on my game in the future.

But a few days ago, I felt confident enough to jump into the 25nl circle again and it's gone crushingly. I've ran pretty hot and played really well. Here are a few hands I lost/spewed today:

http://weaktight.com/2210744
I think it's okay to 4bet bluff here, and I don't mind the shove because his calling range should be like JJ+, AK maybe AQ. He's 3betting 11% over decent sample so whether he's balance or not that's what he will probably be calling me with. And i have about 35% against his range (haven't poker stoved it yet). It's a meh play and I probably wont make such high variance plays in the future, he was just very squeezy.

http://weaktight.com/2210751

just sucked

Here's my graph for my 4k hands at 25nl: