Originally posted by IvicaIliev77
Owning souls at NL25, time to move up my friend!
Thanks, I hope to take some shots at NL50 in the near future if the variance continues to be kind, we'll see. I have a tight BRM 
Originally posted by seranpoker
Your blog is quite an inspiration :). You have a penchant for writing my friend.
Thanks, man! I'm glad you like it. It's really an honor to hear that you find my blog inspirational! See you around
This week was full of experimenting and that’s how it went:
Hands: 8,543
Won: -$169.49
Rakeback: +$10
Cash bonus: +$75
Total: -$84.49
Bankroll: $1659.91
A buddy convinced me that I’m ready to take shots at NL50, so this graph is the result that. I suppose that it went pretty well comparing to my previous shot-taking on higher limits. After getting hold of frustration, that often comes with playing higher stakes, and reigning in my game, I feel like NL50 is not that bad and I will continue mixing NL25 and NL50 tables for the time being and see where it takes me.
At first playing NL50 opened a whole can of worms in my mental game and showed me that I still need to work a lot on different aspects of tilt. But on the other hand, I don’t often toss coin flips for 100 bucks, so I think it’s a natural reaction, and something I would become numb to as the time goes on.
Overall I feel that I gained a lot of valuable information on how to beat this limit and what aspects of my game need improving. The difference between NL25 and NL50 is the biggest I felt so far between the limits and it offers a great challenge, so I will continue my shot-taking, gathering information and improving my game.
Originally posted by IvicaIliev77
In before 6bb+/100 on NL50 graph posting!!!
hahaha, me too!
This week I continued mixing NL25 and NL50 and for the time being NL50 doesn’t want to budge:
Hands: 10.522
Won: -$74.68
Stellar reward: +$50
Total: -$25.68
Bankroll: $1635.23
This was quite a swingy week but overall I feel like I’m getting used to NL50 and now it seems a bit more manageable. It still is more aggressive and reg-infested but not as much as I thought earlier. So I feel like I have to continue playing solid poker and study a lot and in time this limit will give way and let me continue my poker journey.
Apart from studying, this week I was reading some books that are not necessarily educational in the direct sense, but in my opinion still very useful for aspiring poker players. First one was recommended by a famous PLO coach in one of his videos and is called “With Winning in Mind” by Lanny Bassham. Interestingly enough this book is written by Olympic gold medalist and covers his mental struggles on his way to become the best among the toughest competition. The PLO coach said that it was one of the two most influential books in his poker career and it can greatly benefit a poker player’s mental game. After reading through about half of it I can firmly attest to that.
The second book caught my attention after the recent Andy Beal appearance on the high-stakes poker scene. And obviously it is “The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King” by Mitchel Craig. I always knew and followed all the famous live pros who are more like poker ambassadors, but I never knew that they were involved in something that big, which skyrocketed their success even further. It is very entertaining and fascinating to read what goes behind the minds of great poker players and what made them so great. There is one common trend about all of them – from the very start they didn’t care about money, they were there to gamble and win, they were fascinated with the game. It is easy to look at them and consider them lucky or just fortunate enough to be where they are now. But in the same way it is very easy to ignore all the hard work and struggles they went through before they hit the spotlight. The most inspiring story for me so far, which I never knew before this book, is that of Jennifer Harman. I always admired her for being one of the toughest women live pros out there, and she deserves a lot of respect for how determined she is and how much hard work she put in to get there. Throughout her ascent to where she is now she was driven by a single goal – beating the highest and toughest games available at the time. And after busting her roll several time in higher games and having to rebuild from scratch just to take another shot, she managed to become one of the best. There is a nice quote from Doyle in the book, which sums it up nicely: “It takes kind of a sick person to play the way we do. I’m convinced we’re all compulsive gamblers. We just find a way to win.” I would definitely recommend this book for those who want some insight into live high-stakes poker.
Jen is cool and seems like a true shark grinder.
Stop posting loosing graphs.
Next graph on 6bb+/100 on NL50!
P.S. Be careful with Jen crush, I told your GF to check the latest blog update ♦
Originally posted by IvicaIliev77
Stop posting loosing graphs.
Next graph on 6bb+/100 on NL50!
Why would I spoil all the fun No pain, no gain!
Originally posted by IvicaIliev77
P.S. Be careful with Jen crush, I told your GF to check the latest blog update ♦
Just don't tell Jen I have a GF 
Here are the results of this week:
Hands: 7.573
Won: -$175.09
Bankroll: $1460.14
It was another losing week at NL50, which also affected my play at NL25. I have spent some time reviewing my play for the last couple of weeks and found leaks that crept into my game and which I wasn’t aware of. So I will leave NL50 for a while, continue playing NL25 and rebuild my roll for another shot. Now I have a clear picture of what parts of my game deteriorate first under the pressure of variance and higher stakes, so I will be working hard on those areas, and try to drill them into a state of Unconscious Competence. It always nice to have a plan.
Also with the start of new month I decided to increase my volume and try to go for Platinum on PokerStars. I have never grinded that much and never got more than 3,5 k VPPs per month, so I feel this would be a nice challenge for the near future, along with studying and improving my game. I am not excluding the possibility of going for Supernova this year, so I really need to step up my volume and start putting in more hands. It feels like a long journey, but I think it will be a hell lot of fun.
Although poker can often feel like a race, it’s not. It is, rather, a feat of endurance. It is more about lasting the longest than it is about being the swiftest. So make sure you last. Take your time. Build up slowly, check your footing at every step, and treat the mountain with respect.
Qureshi, Haseeb. How to Be a Poker Player: The Philosophy of Poker.
Although poker can often feel like a race, it’s not. It is, rather, a feat of endurance. It is more about lasting the longest than it is about being the swiftest. So make sure you last. Take your time. Build up slowly, check your footing at every step, and treat the mountain with respect.
Qureshi, Haseeb. How to Be a Poker Player: The Philosophy of Poker.
So succcintly put, isnt it? Sometimes these revelations hit you so hard that you would want to start treating those as sanctions to your actions.
This week things didn’t go very well:
Hands: 6,707
Won: -$162.61 (+ some mixed games losses)
Rakeback: +$75
Total: -$87.61
Bankroll: $1372.53
The week started promising, but it went downhill in the end. It was a crazy week overall and I blame the results on playing tired after working and doing a lot of sports training, and also playing more tables to put in more volume, so I will try to step back a bit and approach my sessions more thoughtfully and only play when well-rested.
The good news is that after analyzing my DB for the last couple of weeks I found a sneaky leak in my BB play that could have potentially cost me around 1bb/100. When I find a leak in my game that I didn’t know about, it for some reason feels like Christmas to me.
Regarding the volume, it is funny that when I try to increase it, everything’s comes in the way and it decreases even further. So this week I will try to play more systematically and see if I can play a bit more hands, maybe at the expense of some study hours.
Another losing week and crappy volume as a result:
Hands: 5,874
Won: -$89.99
Bankroll: $1282.54
It was another of those weeks when nothing seemed to go right. Getting pounded at the tables really takes away motivation to grind long sessions, so I guess this is not the best month for trying to achieve Platinum on Stars. Oh, well, I’ll try it next time.
Meanwhile there were all kinds of wrong happening in holdem, I spent some time more intensely studying mixed formats. I got myself the recent Mixed Games book from Ken Lo and it exceeded all my expectations. This is exactly the kind of book I wanted on Mixed Games. The author breaks down every format to simple concepts and complements it with interesting mathematical stats and simulations, which I haven’t seen before for a couple of games. I'm very excited about all this new material to study and hopefully it will help me improve my mixed formats and crush some games!
As for holdem, this week I'm planning to do an intensive DB analysis and search for bad plays and deviations from my gameplan, which I’m sure there will be plenty of, given the negative tendency of past couple of weeks, but overall I hope that swingy holdem will soon turn around and things will look prettier. Poker can be a daunting thing sometimes, but in the end it all comes to how much do you really love the game, and how much are you willing to endure, because even though things might not look the best right now, all you can do is continue improving your game and enjoy the ride. It will be better.
And here are some thoughts about variance for all of you who are going through rough times:
As successful as you think the greatest players are, part of their greatness comes from the fact that they have braved downswings deeper than almost anyone else. It is a statistical certainty that the longer you play poker, the more likely you will face a downswing of truly titanic proportions.
We are naturally inclined to think of ourselves as poker players in terms of what we’re like when things are going well and we are successful . But how you face those downswings is just as big, if not bigger, a part, of your true capability as a poker player. I say again, how you face your downswings is a vital part of your skill as a poker player.
Being a great poker player isn’t just about capitalizing on upswings, nice graphs, taking shots and moving up. A huge part of the journey of a poker player is how you brave your downswings . It is gritting your teeth, taking punishment, again and again, day after day, and holding fast. Being a great player when you’re winning is not enough.
You must know that it is always possible a storm of variance will hit you, a storm so large, so powerful, so destructive that you will not survive it, so ruthless that it will break you. And someday, if you keep playing poker , you will face that downswing , and it will be one bigger, deeper, and longer than you ever thought possible. This is a statistical certainty. No amount of playing good, or praying, or good karma will protect you from it. It is only a matter of time and chance. The question , then, is this. How strong are you, really? How big of a storm will you be able to weather?
Qureshi, Haseeb. How to Be a Poker Player: The Philosophy of Poker.
Hands: 1,941
Won: -$150.99
Bankroll: $1131.55
This week I mostly took a break from poker and played very little but still managed to show some crappy results. I have a real trouble putting in volume when running bad, which I guess is a mental game problem that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. So in the next couple of weeks I will try to look into this issue, re-read some Tendler and other mental game stuff, and hopefully return on track with grinding a decent volume.
And of course I will be continuing studying some NL concepts, the one I’m concentrating at the moment is blind play vs every position in different situations pre and postflop, and also mixed games. Lately I’ve been studying the draw games, namely Badugi, Limit 2-7 TD and NL 2-7 SD, and to be honest they are a blast and they are giving me a much needed respite from fickle Hold’em. Being able to enjoy poker even when things are not looking great is very crucial to continue moving on, and for me mixed games provide that opportunity when Hold'em feels like a grind. It’s a pity that there isn’t too much traffic in those games, but even playing one table can be really fun and refreshing experience.
Hands: 4,597
Won: -$43.92
Bankroll: $1087.63
The only grinding I did this week was pretty much on the weekends. I took some days off poker in the beginning of the week and it proved to be very useful to my mindset and grind in general. I feel like my mind is starting to climb out of the funk of a downswing, which is more crucial to good poker, than winning itself.
I have a lot of new learning material to go through in the near future, so it’s time to get back on track and start putting the volume and study hours into Holdem. Time to start climbing that mountain again!
When you are facing a downswing, instead of thinking, “that’s not fair that poker chose me to face this downswing,” instead take on the frame that, “this downswing was inevitable. This downswing is part of my mountain. Eventually I would have to face a downswing of this exact proportion and length; it just happens to be right now.”
It is analogous to climbing a mountain and noticing that an upcoming segment is going to be especially difficult and time-consuming. Does a mountaineer curse and say “I don’t deserve this part of the mountain; this is unfair that the mountain did this to me”? Of course not. To a mountaineer, that is simply part of the mountain. It makes no sense to talk about climbing that mountain if you’re going to exclude its hardest parts.
Qureshi, Haseeb (2013-12-18). How to Be a Poker Player: The Philosophy of Poker.
..... my mind is starting to climb out of the funk of a downswing, which is more crucial to good poker, than winning itself....
Agreed.
A recording of my coaching session with double2 came out today!
If you're struggling vs 4-bets, or missing some opportunities to 3-barrel bluff, you should check it out.
Find and Repair: double2 with elpsycho
Recently I’ve been thinking about what is the most efficient way to learn poker. When reviewing hands I noticed that a lot of decisions come down to some specific tendencies. For example, should we bluff shove the river here? Are we playing NL25? Is our opponent capable to fold X hand here? Probably not, but on some higher stake he might. Or if a high stakes player tells his buddy, who plays much lower, about some sick line, he might often hear something like: “Yeah, cool, but that would never work at my stakes with all those donks around, lol”. And here comes a question. Are we learning to play poker, or the stake we play on? Maybe there is a reason why this player plays much lower than his friend. We grind our stakes and think that there is a magic strategy that we should learn and it will help us beat the games we play, and when we move up, we will start learning stuff appropriate for that stake, and so on. It can feel liberating for a lower stakes player to think that he doesn’t need to study all the advanced concepts until he moves up to some arbitrary X stake, he can just grind away and build a bankroll, because he has a good enough knowledge to beat a stake he’s playing on. A lot of players might think that all this fancy stuff is for the future, when they’ll be playing much higher.
But is this a right approach to learning poker? Or is it just another excuse to be lazy and postpone the learning that we all know needs to be done? Poker is poker. It doesn’t change throughout the stakes. The math and all the concepts stay the same. Given that, it doesn’t make sense why some people are trying to learn to play a stake, like it is some kind of a level in a video game. It seems more reasonable to learn poker as a whole, to dissect it into concepts and frequencies, to be aware how betsizings affect our decisions, etc. The relation between those things stays the same no matter what stakes we play. If our bet needs 40% fold-equity, it doesn’t matter whether we play NL2 or NL200. And if we are aware of those frequencies throughout our ranges and strategies in different spots, if we are consciously aware of how ranges interact with each other on different run outs, it is easy to adjust our strategy according to a player field we are playing against. If we notice that people are overfolding in some spots, we can start bluffing more, or if they are calling too much, we can valuebet more thinly. There is no magic strategy to beating a stake, it’s all poker. If we are playing with this approach on NL25, for example, our game might boil down to the same strategy that someone has learned as a “good strategy to beat NL25”, but who will have an easier time to move up the stakes?
By learning poker as a whole, we aren’t hindered by a necessity to learn how to play every stake separately. A high-skilled poker player can sit at every stake and know how to win. He doesn’t need someone to tell him that on that stake he shouldn’t barrel 3 streets, or that he should always fold to a raise in some spot. When you understand how poker works, all this stuff comes naturally. And you don’t need to re-learn your strategy every time you move up a stake. So why should one spend time trying to learn how to play on a specific stake, when it is so much better to spend it learning how to play poker.
