Inner struggle (now Zoom)

Sorry for a delay, I forgot my password when I tried to use this SideKick application. So I had to reset it and had some troubles after that for some reason! Anyway, I've been playing a lot as well, so now I'm going to review my results briefly.

Originally posted by promys
This is also part of problem which you should overcome...So I just want to advice you in such situations put opponent on some hand range. Only after that decide how often you can win.

Thanks again, bro, I got your point. As I said I try to think in ranges all the time, but sometimes I'm just too focused on bluff part of them.

What's a "gatshort" by the way? ♠_wink:

OK, let's go back to results. I'm not going to post hands today, although I had some interesting situations. But still the main idea of this blog is analysing and fixing my "three big mistakes". So, at first, here's graph:

I played ~10k hands with reasonable stats, 23/19 etc, nothing special. Well, I would say WTSD was pretty high 30.7%, but since W$SD is around 52.5% I think it's OK, I just ran pretty good.

OK, well, the point is I'm up like 5 buy-ins, so winrate is 5bb/100. And my session analysis notes says I made mistakes for 25 buy-ins total. And this has pretty sick impact on my winrate, because even if eliminate like one half or one third of those mistakes I recognized - it would triple up my winnings. Yeah, and of course I'm almost b/e by EV.

Well, all of this might be kinda obvious for a good player, but I just need to write it down and think it through, because I'm not a good player, I'm just trying to become one.

I didn't count it exactly, but made just a rough estimations, and it looks like most of the loses still came from my trade-mark "river bluff-catch check/call" move. I made less "river bluff" and "river bluff-catch bet/call" mistakes, which is already a good sign... For example, I filtered river calls, c/c and b/c hands, there are ~80 of those, and it looks much better than the last time I checked.

OK, so for the next 10k hands I'm gonna try to focus my attention on that specific spot again - river calls. What bothers me the most is that I do understand all this stuff while I'm not playing. But for some reason I still unable to stop myself from making those mistakes when I am playing.

And one last thing I wanted to share. It's about this "grinder vs learner" idea, everyone is probably familiar with. Couple of days ago I finally fully realized the difference, I let go the idea of making money from poker completely. I mean I came to conclusion that I don't have enough skills to think about it this way. How am I suppose to win money if I can't win in the game? So first things first. I'm going to stick with my new deep-bankroll-managment so I don't have to worry about the money I have left behind. And I'm going to work on getting rid of mistakes.

Had a stressful week and my game suffered a lot as well as my confidence. Played more than 11k hands, at some point I was down for almost 19 BIs (4 below EV), and most of it were mistakes I've been trying to avoid. I felt that I lost my game completely, needed a break.

Couple of days ago I met a new friend/coach, and he helped me a lot, gave me some directions to move. After that I had played little better, won back half of what I've lost. Well, here's the graph:

Today they finally launched Zoom-tables at PokerStars, so I decided to give it a shot. I've played a little at NL5 and NL10 with 50bb stack, so far so good, so I'm going to play for a couple of days and we'll see what's gonna happen.

Hi everyone! Sorry, its been a while since I talked to myself here

Anyways, I went to play Zoom for almost a week. It went good at first, but then I struggled a little, then I guess I made some correct adjustments and I feel Im doing OK now.

While doing this I also ended up with PokerTracker 4 beta, because HM2 stopped to even import Zoom hands for some reason after the last update, not mentioning the HUD. So I'm with PT4 right now and you know what? I like it a lot so far! It's really good looking, fast and... it's just a good piece of software. I'm thinking to buy it when it's released... Well, anyways, it has HUD for Zoom, but I wasn't using it at NL10 at all.

I played a little at NL5 but quickly moved to NL10. I'm playing 1/2 stack, so I'm gonna use 1 BI = 50bb later on. I played ~10k hands at FR tables, but basically broke even by EV (and 4 BIs under EV for real money). It's really nitty game and I almost never saw a 3bet/push with AK/QQ+. They just cold call or limp in, then going crazy post-flop. With AK on Axx safe boards they just call down etc. I couldn't figure it out, and was getting mad when this slowplays happened, so I quit FR and switched completely to 6max games. After like 22k hands my EV finally met my green line and with winrate 6bb/100 I made like 27 BIs of profit. Here's what the graph looks like:

I also got some bonuses so with BR over 600$ I'm going to take a shot at NL25 tables. And I also got HUD, Im going to try to use it, we'll see how it goes...

OK, as for the idea of the blog... It looks like playing MSS solves my problems automatically, since most of the decisions are made on preflop and on the flop. I thought over my 3bet/stack off ranges pre-flop, still I'm playing pretty tight, like 22/19, with high 3bet ~10%. Postflop I usually cbet any good board and most of the time I take it down. I try not to bluff too much, since people rarely fold anything. So I cbet and shutdown. I am also raising and betting bigger for value to stack off on flop, because opps are eager to call off with wide range of draws, weak hands and any kind of crap. So it's all about equity estimation and making one correct early decision.

I made some other adjustments, all in all it seems to be working so far. Another good thing is that I usually run under EV, so it makes me feel more confident about decisions I make. So I'm looking forward to play some higher limits.

Good luck to everyone,
signing off.

This Zoom is a sick thing... 2 days at NL25, 12 hours, 12k hands played, 450$ profit made (it's ~35 BIs, ~14bb/100). I have to say variance was on my side this time, I'm like 150$ over EV, but still 10bb/100 is a good result. Not too many hands of course, but anyways, here's the graph, and it looks much better than NL10:

I'm not sure is this some kind of a huge heater for me or the game is that juicy so far, and I don't really care right now. I think I should seize this opportunity to build up my bankroll, so when it all stops I will be able to continue with some backup money behind. So with 40 BIs of NL50 I'm going to take a shot at it tomorrow.

As for Zoom... I think the key to beat this game is the initiative. Since there are almost no history, dynamics and meta-game, the one who takes the lead and raise/3bet/cbet/barrel - wins. Position is the second important element, although even restealing from SB/BB vs CO/BU and Cbetting is incredibly profitable. Skill and hand-strenght factors are the least important.

Hi all!

It's been a while... I was pretty busy playin Zoom all the time. I am playing for exactly two months now, and I've got 200k hands so far. So I wanted to make a stop and review my results.

So, here I am, after 200k Zoom hands. I begun with NL5/NL10, playing 50bb stacks for MSS. I moved to NL25 pretty quickly, and stayed there for a long time, like a month or so. I build up my bankroll a little, cashed out for the first time and took some shots at NL50. At first it went pretty bad, I ended up losing ~500$ total, but then I finally settled down and now Im playing mostly NL50 for couple of weeks. I already took some shots at NL100, but dropped back to get some more confidence and bankroll behind my back.

Anyways, total profit is 1300$ plus around 1000$ for rakeback and bonuses. Here's my graph and table of results:

The game is pretty bumpy, lots of action, I was forced to change my overall strategy a couple of times to adjust to it. And although in the long run seems like I am able to beat it, but still - swings sometimes are pretty large, up to 70-90 buy-ins. And break-even periods can be pretty long, up to 60-65k hands.

Here's my graph in bb's with some marks on it:

Anyways, it was a good experience for me and a good lesson how to be patient and accept poker as it is. I learned to stay calmed during these swings, learned not to force things to happen and let it work out itself. These days Im trying to fully grasp the idea of making correct decisions for the long run. I believe Zoom came at the right time for me so I was able to use it to learn so many things.

I plan to stay at NL50 till the end of the month, then we'll see what happens next. I would like to take some more shots at NL100. Game feels little different there, but I felt the same when I was moving from NL25 to NL50, so I believe it's just another psychological barrier. And also I've noticed that many regulars I've met at NL25/NL50 play there, so it can't be that bad

Good luck to all,
see you next time.

Interesting Blog... love when i see a graph with the red line above the blue one. You must be really aggressive!!

Well, if you look closely you will see that latter part of the graph (last ~50k hands) is different. I used to play NL10/NL25 very aggro, 3betting a lot, cbetting and barreling a lot etc. Then I felt it became less profitable and I adjusted a little, turned down the aggression and red line is now more or less flat.

Im not 100% sure what is better to be honest, it might be just me or game has changed for real. Or maybe regs at NL50 are just different. But at some point I felt that opponents begun to cope with my aggression much better than before. It's always better to go ahead and try out and see what suits you better. Especially with Zoom - one can get reasonable statistical volumes really quick to try out new strategy.

Good luck!

Hi DemonRax,

Nice blog. I'm playing NL5 Zoom too. I'm having same problem that efects my winrate, i'm calling my oponents raises to much. ♦. Good luck!

Hi, Pnnkaznk!

Yeah, well, looks like playing MSS helped me a lot with this problem, since it cost like twice less. I've played a little NL5 Zoom, can't say much, but I'm pretty sure you should put opponents on bluffs less often there, and you'll be fine

I would also remind you (as I do remind to myself all the time ) two things:
1) Poker isn't about winning as many pots as you can. It's about winning as many chips as you can.
2) Folding is always cheaper [mistake] than calling, therefore folding a lot will help to win more chips despite losing more pots.

Good luck crushing!

Hey! What about some music? Here's my YouTube channel, I've posted some old records and recent videos. Still have a lot more stuff to record, but not enough time for everything. I hope I will update soon with more interesting pieces. For now, check out if you can find something you like there, hope you enjoy it!
http://www.youtube.com/user/DemonRax47

I've been thinking about all this mental stuff, A-game, focus, etc. And came up with this kinda picture in my head. It might be pretty obvious, but I still want to share.

My statement is the following. We can break down our winrate to three components: luck, skill and mood. Let me explain this.

The top level is luck, not because it's the most important thing, but because it's the core. It's the cards being dealt by RNG. And we have no power to control it at all. So, we can put it this way: doesn't matter who sit in the current seat right now - professional player or an amateur - cards will still be dealt this way and no other way.

So we can assume we can draw some kind of "perfect" winrate line. The "seat" would have this winrate by making perfect decisions knowing all variables: own cards, community cards and cards of other players. Here it is on the graph, purple line:

Now, let's say a player sits down on that seat. He obviously can't play perfectly. At best he can play as good as his skill is at that moment. If he's one of the top pro's his winrate might be close to purple line (red line on the graph) and if he's newbie or a recreational player, he might not be good enough to handle the cards being dealt to. His winrate will look more like light green line.

Now, of course, we can affect on our skill component, but we can do it before we sat down to play. Sure, someone can pick up some tricks while playing, but it will be just a small fracture of his total skill. So we can assume that this red line is the best result we can get based on how much we worked on our game before current session.

OK, so far so good. Now the most important thing. This red line is our perfect line, an A-game line, and the only thing stops us from getting there is our mood. I'm talking about mood in general: actual mood, attitude towards poker/players/room/etc, tiredness, non-poker emotions, any form of tilt, lack of focus, stuff like that. Playing our C-game (or worse) because of all of that will bring our winrate to green line (or to blue line, if we're losing players). So the difference between winrate we could have and winrate we do have in short-term is the mood we sit down to play with.

Of course, there are other factors as well, like table selection, opponents' skill, rake, etc-etc, but I guess I made my point. Which is - all we can really do at the table is to stay calm and focused. Anything else we feel will only make things worse. Good mental state will allow us to play as pefrect as our skill is, which is the maximum we can ask for, right? Then, between sessions we work on technique and stuff. Someday, hopefully, we will move to the next level and control our luck, sure But so far all we can do is work on our skill before session and keep the good mood during the session.

Good luck!

So many times, it happens too fast
You trade your passion for glory
Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive

nahh, you don't have to fight for anything at all. - at the end you are fighting yourself.

nvm tho, so gogo Zoom blog ! ye ?

That's the point - you gotta fight yourself most of the time, specially in poker. Just a reminder to myself...

I hope I'll come back to the blog someday, currently I'm playing too much, don't have time to update.