I like the way you work on your game! Correct or not, it'll sure help you get the hang of it easier! You'll become a crusher one day I have no doubt about that 
Glglgl!
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Thanks Samni! And gl to you to, and also: stay confident when things slow down for you! 
Well it's gonna be an all-nighter. I want to tweak my charts a bit. I want a different distribution of the calling-ranges which means I have to do everything again. But I'll do it because I still have confidence in them. When I played with them I never used one of the calling ranges and would like to have more options so yes I'll be up all night doing the dirty job. I hate this but let's get it over with so I can finally play with them a bit more.
So I played a bit with the charts this week. I have to shove more often than they suggest, which means I gave myself too much pot-equity. I just can't wait for the hands that are on the chart because I will lose my fold-equity.
But I did learn something from the charts. You can shove really wide from the SB and BTN because people will just fold so often that the blinds and antes you win make up a lot more then you will lose.
The charts showed you can shove really wide from the SB, still quite wide from the BTN, but after that you just don't have a whole lot of fold-equity anymore, so you need a better hand.
So I started to shove weaker hands especially from the SB, and I fold some more okay-looking-hands from the CO onwards.
That is going well so far. I'm up for the week, but played only 160 SNG's. Planning on playing a lot today.
Bankroll challenge week 3
Monday 10/10 - Sunday 16/10
SNG's played: 201, profit: +$127.27
MTT's played: 3, profit: -$11.00
Total profit: +$116.27
Bankroll: $334.66
Graph of last week's sng's:
All sng's until now:
The wave of poker
Luck, it's such a big part of poker. What is this thing we call luck, when it comes to poker? Probably most people will say something like being lucky is when you win a hand you don't deserve to win because the cards fall in your favour while the odds are against it. And being unlucky for most people is when you lose a hand because the cards fall in your opponents' favour, against all odds.
When we hold AA and the money goes in preflop, we say we are unlucky when we get sucked out by J9o for example right? Or any hand for that matter.
It is obvious that we remember bad luck better than good luck. I think this is because of our survival-instinct. In order to survive, we have to remember the bad experiences that happen to us so that we can avoid them in the future. I think from a survival standpoint it is more important to remember the bad things than the good.
Start reading here: Anyway,
what I'm trying to get at, i that this thing that we call luck is really intertwined with this game we play. You cannot seperate one from the other. Luck is in the very nature of poker. And we really need to understand that we can not chance that! We will be lucky and we will be unlucky. We will be unlucky so many times in a row it makes us sick of the game. And we will be lucky so many times in a row that we don't even recognize it as luck anymore, but just the normal way of the game, and we don't even do the little fistpump-yeah anymore. We can not chance this. And if we can not chance it, it means that we will have to accept it.
And we really shouldn't want to chance that. Because this luck is the very thing that makes weaker players come back to the games. If it was all skill, they would lose every time and the fun would be over soon. They would simply never play poker again after losing some amount of money. Luck is the thing that gives weaker players a chance to win. They know they can win. They have won before, and they know they will win again. And a lot of them don't know they are losing players.
So really guys and girls, we should be happy to give weaker players our money. Because this is why they are here now and will be here again tomorrow. I don't mean the fistpump-happy, but at least we should know this and completely accept that this is the prize we pay to win back more than that. I want to say that again: We should completely accept that all the losing is the prize to pay for the winning. We should calculate in the losing part. That is why we have bankrolls! We have bankrolls so that we can lose a big part of it, but still can continue playing and win it back and more. We calculate in the losing.
We should also calculate in the losing part in our expectations of our short term results. If a losing streak is what we have to go through, then a losing streak it is. If it is a winning streak, that's great man! But whatever it will be, we know that if we are winning players, we will make money in the long run. I think you should firmly believe that.
The reason I am writing all this is that lately, since I got in contact with some fellow poker players here (don't know any in real life), I could not help but notice there is a lot of complaining about bad beats and being unlucky. And I don't want to say you can never wine about that. But I think we shouldn't complain too much about our short-term poker results. We would not complain as much if we really accepted luck as being part of the game we all so love to play. If you complain about it without being exeptionally unlucky, it just means you haven't fully accepted luck as being part of the game. And I am not saying you should keep it inside and build up tension, but I am saying: accept it (for real), and there won't be any tension. There wouldn't be the need to vent as much.
And now comes what I'm really trying to get at:
I think hearing people complain comes with negative energy, or vibe. It's no fun neither to hear people complain. We are all subject to this luck thing and we all get those exeptional bad runs every once in a while - if we play long enough.
Luck is part of poker. If you want to ride the wave of poker, you should accept this completely. Don't ride the wave of poker and then complain it is so wavy.
Not saying do not complain, but saying eliminate the need to complain (as much).
Because I also think the opposite is true:
Hearing people talking positively comes with positive energy and vibe. We are influenced by what we hear and see, there is no escaping that.
Finally I just want to show a graph (which I am not proud of). It contains some tilty episodes and it really looks weak to me. Because I started well, but did not persevere.
Anyway, it is something like 275K cash game hands, and it is just to show that I have been through long unlucky runs too. Don't let the scale of the graph fool ya.
Not doing well
This week things didn't go to well pokerwise. I also lost some with mtt's. The wave of poker is going down for me right now. That's okay because I have the bankroll for it.
But I have this weakness sometimes that if I lose a lot that I get anxious to play. Probably because I am afraid of losing more. And I lose the confidence in my game. And then I go do other stuff. Which makes no sense because this wave can go up again anytime. On the other hand it does make sense because maybe without confidence you better not play. This is actually the first time I really see this problem clearly. It's time to do something about it.
I will come up with a routine I will do whenever I get anxious to play. Some simple steps like watch a vid and playback a SNG that I won, or whatever that builds up my confidence. Some simple action I can undertake instead of mindlesly do other stuff during pokertime.
That's why I didn't play a lot. But I will try to make up for it in the weekend. Maybe I can cut back my losses a bit, we'll see. At least I want to make some volume and ride this thing out.
Bankroll challenge week 4
Monday 17/10 - Sunday 23/10
SNG's played: 78, profit: -$48.01
MTT's played: 4, profit: -$7.89
Total profit: -46.11
Bankroll: $288.55
Graph of last week's sng's:
All sng's until now:
He Ka0s ,
dont let yourself get rolled over by one bad week.
Your overall giraffe still looks fine ....
How was it going this week? Do you have any interesting hads to share?
Hi Sven,
Yes overall still doing fine so no biggy. But man I don't really feel like playing anymore. I am once again filling my time with other things besides poker. I think I am going to take a break. I don't know for how long, I need to get the urges to play back. It's always like this with me. Start something, spend too much time with it and get bored with it after a few weeks or months.
Hopefully the poker juices get flowing again soon.
Shame you have ran out of gas, if you had been winning this would not have happened right? It is a tough gig this poker life but had seemed to put down some good foundations.
Anyway will follow and once you ship 3x 45mans back to back you will be a lot more motivated, however that is not going to happen if you don't play
Gl
Steve
Hi Ka0s,
Really enjoyed reading your blog and look forward to future updates π
Regards
Matt
There will always be ups and downs in poker no matter how good (or bad) you are. But if you really dont feel like playing and rather want to take a break, I think you should, and then try to get the motivation for poker back later - thats what worked for me and after my break for a long time ago, I havn't lost motivation anymore even when it has been going downhill
Hope you will get back stronger. GL mate 
One of the best books I have read and that has helped me a lot has been The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler. It's an amazing book and a must read for any serious poker player.
You mentioned how you need to come up with a routine when you feel you are scared of losing, well it has strategies for that very thing. If I remember correctly it outlines four emotions that are important to poker: anger, fear, confidence and motivation. It outlines ways of tracking those emotions within you and how to help keep those emotions in check to help avoid tilt.
I strongly recommend it.
Really cool blog! Hope you get back on the pokertrain soon, would enjoy some more blogging from you!