Alright NL10 lets do this.
When I had to move back down I ran really good at NL5 in a mater of a few days I built my BR back up to take a shot again. My NL 10 graph is the same as above, but you can see my new NL5 graph here:
I am going to be a lot more strict about shooting NL10 this time. My BR is currently $303 and I am going to take a 5BI shot, so I will move back down if I hit $253, and we will do this again. And keep doing it, and improving until the MO$@#$@ING shot goes through.
I had a downswing session with Weasel and looking at my shitty played hands when I moved up was an eye opener. My mindset is was really F@#$ed me. The downswing was made worse from personal mindset issues, and some strategic errors. I never felt like I wanted to smash the computer, but I was making some pretty bad calls etc. I also identified I am not playing postflop much differently based on position, so that is my new focus for the next few weeks. Looser in the blinds, tighter from EP (villian dependent of course). Also not caalling Jams with stuff like QQ from EP.
On the bright side weasel looked at my overall stats and said he noticed a good improvement in my numbers, and they look better than a lot of regs at NL10, so we are improving and that is all that matters.
This downswing was probably the best thing that happened to me to improve my game. I have a much better feel for how cruel the game can be, and get let nervous. I remember that feeling of not wanted to have to move back down, and got desperate. It is a feeling that can cause someone to bust their roll and quit poker forever. I think it is important that I realize I am capable of falling into these traps, and I must be very disciplined to avoid it.
If you are reading this I have learned the following: HAVING TO MOVE DOWN DOES NOT MEAN WE ARE MOVING BACKWARDS. WE CAN STILL IMPROVE OUR POKER SKILL, WE ARE POKER PLAYERS, NOT DEFINED BY THE LIMIT WE PLAY ON, WE NOT NOT NLX PLAYERS, JUST PLAYERS. Smart BRM, good mindset, and a hunger to improve is how you beat the game. It's similar to Jiu jitsu, people do it to win, not to improve. Improvement will bring winning as a byproduct, but it doesn't necessarily work the other way around. If you just focus on winning you can develop bad habits and tilt issues.
In my limited experience, my ideal road map for a new beginner would be to learn the general ideas, or general strategy. It can be rules of thumb in the beginning, learn them until you don't make mistakes at NL2 or whatever. Then start with an area that happens all the time, Cbetting for example, and focus on modifying or deepening your knowledge for ~2 weeks for that area. Start with a lot of off table work, construct the ranges for different boards until you get a better idea of how it works. Then start doing it at the tables. You ONLY mark you success in play if you made the adjustments, them correctly. Point it out when you do it at the table, count how many times it was good and bad, then review off table. When you aren't making mistakes for a few sessions in a row you can move onto something else. But when you return to cbetting be more spefic, so maybe cbetting OOP, then the next time cbetting IP, then Cbetting OOP against EP, so you cycle through the different areas and as you revisit it you dig deeper and deeper, but not moving on until you are happy with the improvement. This approach is good imo because you get the most out of it. In the beginning our WR will increase by getting a more general understanding. Learning what good hands are to cbetting oop is going to help your winrate than something super specific like playing You get diminishing returns in skill the deeper you go, so we want to study in a way that maximizes our skill improvement rate EV. Breaking things down into small chunks and getting really good at them before we move on is a good way to retain the concepts. It's a waste of time if we forget them right away. I also think you should limit yourself from moving up until you hit the BR that supports it and you reach some sort of study goal you set for yourself.
The past few weeks I studied flop raising, which hands do I want to raise flops with, then once I caught on I moved on hands I can only raise when IP, for example. Now I don't really have to think to hard about candidates for doing it. You don't want to auto pilot, because sometimes a hand is a candidate but there is a reason to not do it, but you want to know the default play instantly.
This is a long entry, and I was typing really fast, so I don't expect many to read it, as it is probably full of typos and crappy grammar. Interesting week never the less. Going to go try and not burn my five NL10 buy ins now.
I guess weazel suggested something around 70%?
