I am trying to Poker, I Suck!

Feeling Normal Again
Today was the first day that I felt normal in a while. I don't know what was going on, but i slept 12 hours last night, and woke up in a much better mood. I think I just needed a super good sleep. and a few days of good exercise.

I ran like ass at the tables. 5BI down in the last 4k hands. I honestly need to improve on somethings but I don't think my play was so different from that 30k hands where I was crushing. Honestly I started working more bluff raises in my game and I would find myself getting scared of doing it because it felt like they would never fold, but when I got a set they would fold, so it's variance.

I might have just been running extremely good, but I think a few bad call downs can really crush the winrate. I am not sure if it is just the way I am running, but I feel like if I don't play perfect I will end up with a losing session. This just sounds like variance. There is no way I was playing perfect in October/November etc. If I was just running super good for my NL5 30k hands, oh well. If not, oh well. I know I fold too much, but Weasel seemed convinced by my stats that I should be a winning player at NL10.

Honestly I am just back into the mindset where I am curious about poker again and not afraid anymore. Back to my mentally that I am interested in poker again, and I am not trying to win. This mentality that I am going to need to be successful. That last week was kind of weird.

I have this month off and I was so focused on getting back to NL10, was over tired or over stressed from that shitty job, and just too invested into poker. I just felt like weird zombie ChowChow, and I woke up today and feel completely different. Back to not caring about results so much. I just want to LEARN again.

I sent weasel those hands that I posted, and he was looking at all the hands larger than 20bb pots and the graph was pretty brutal. He asked to use it for a strategy video, so it works out for me. I get free coaching, and everyone can see what happens when you go: zombie bad mindset result orientated crappy play boi.

Things that are on my mind about my game

Multiway Pots
I think I managed to fix a big leak in my MW pot game from one of weasels videos. I had a miss understanding at some point and I think I managed to fix it. When I was leading as a bluff I was leading for 1/3 pot and it just didn't seem to work. I reviewed some of his videos and I saw he was leading for half pot. I noticed I was getting a lot more folds with this. I am going to review the video and focus on the type of hands. I also think I just had a mental block about it for a while, when I had big hands and sets everyone folded when I would lead, so that is a sign that I should be leading.

Turn Probes/Delayed C-Betting with the river follow up in 3bet pots
It's an auto profit line that weasel generally talks about, but I felt like I was having a hard time on pulling the trigger on bluffing the river when the pot is bigger. From weasels DB analysis it works, but when I see someone calling be down with 3rd pair I start to get a frustrated. I just was too results orientated about it. I feel like when my range reading improves I should be able to refine it more. I think my brain thinks it doesn't work so well because it works 40% of the time, but it only needs to work 33%. Stuff like paired cards really confuses me here.

Check-Raising/Raising Flops
I honestly still feel shakey about it. I am never sure if I should be firing a 3rd barrel jam on certain cards etc. I think I just need to do my homework on this and think about good cards to be working this with, because in general if I am check raising with a nut flush draw or a nut draw I am usually always firing on the turn. Stuff like paired cards I fire too, because if I had a set I would be doing it. I think there is a miss-understanding at this point. Some more refinement.

Folding too much
This just looks like a general problem from my stats all over the place. I don't think it is costing me a lot of money at NL5 to be honest, so I am not going to focus on it too much.

Improvement Plan
Not going to play more than 1k hands in a session (otherwise I go zombie werido mode)
Reviewing material on MW pots to make sure I know what types of hands to be leading with. ~1-2 days.
Back to Check-Raising/Flop Raising Material to make sure I am not missing something obvious (I am really dumb. It happens a lot)

Let's improve boi's.

Did some Statistical analysis
I ran some filters where I lead in multiway pots, and it seems to be making money over all. The bluffing hands don't seem to be getting the folds I am looking for, but I was doing it wrong for quite a while, so I am going to blame it on that. I feel like they might be losing money for the over all hand, but not from the flop. The redline for it at NL10 just had a huge downswing, but otherwise it should be fine. I need to review the videos and get a better idea on what types of hands I should be doing this with, so I am not really concerned about that.

The check raising lines seem to be fine as well, and are making money, but i reviewed a bunch that did not work, so I really need to be focusing more on check raising vs EP when the board doesn't crush their range. There is some sort of auto pilot going on there.

My biggest weak point is the Big blind. Winrate is getting crushed, so this is my focus. I am going to work a lot on adding in more calls into my BB range. Winrate in BB is like -45bb/100 rn, so going to focus on having a solid plan as a defender, and working out certain boards better. I am probably folding too much on the turn as well.

I bet you a few BIs I am not defending my checking ranges OOP for check calling, but I think the BB defence is the biggest concern atm.

I might be missing a lot of auto profit spots as well.

Time to work some boards, and come up with some better defined ranges.

a good way to defend your checking ranges is to just cbet less. ♦

overall i also struggle a bit with this, but identifying which hands are not worth 3 streets of bets and checking at some point helps, also against micros population generally speaking it's good to overfold/be exploitable in some spots (but not flop xc). i'd guess you are already doing that though

Figuring out what happened?!
I have been posting a lot lately but I think it is a good exercise to figure out what the crap is going on. And Documenting it will be great for me, and anyone reading. If you look at my NL5 graph from before and after the shot it does something funny.

The graph completely changes for a significant sample. The red line gets steeper and the blue line stops waving. So I am not sure if this is because I stopped thinking about ranges, or if I started doing to badly and just folded way too much. I am really not sure what changed to be completely honest. My guess is that I am not value betting thinly enough anymore.

My advice would be that don't look too much on red and blue line over this small sample. It might be an indication that there is something wrong, but not necessarily. And to confirm this you should analyze your gameplay and database.

Good looking stats and graph is a by-product of good play. If you start changing your strategy just to manufacture better stats, you might be doing it wrong.

Originally posted by la55i
My advice would be that don't look too much on red and blue line over this small sample. It might be an indication that there is something wrong, but not necessarily. And to confirm this you should analyze your gameplay and database.

Good looking stats and graph is a by-product of good play. If you start changing your strategy just to manufacture better stats, you might be doing it wrong.

Yeah fair enough. I am just trying to figure out if some things have changed in how I am thinking, and where to look. It might have just been running bad. I am not going to make crazy call downs, but try and look for spots when I am playing where I may be too much of a nit. Some of my stats are objectively bad, so I can work on them, but just trying to work on hand reading I think will fix a lot of this.

That graph doesn't include the NL10 shots if we include that it's a much larger sample of being a losing player etc.

I basically am getting my large pots looked at by Weasel, so I just have to wait for that video to figure out if I am doing anything wrong.

It might just be run bad, but I can take this as a time to be a better player. I would do think I am folding to much to cbets, so I just am looking at certain types of hands I can add into my calling range that can make good hands by the river.

Effectively what I did is looked at the types of hands weasel said to call with and just did that, but there are certain boards that just miss my range and I don't have a lot of pairs, for example, so I am looking at what hands would be good to add in against a linear raising range.

There is a fair amount of "Fuck it I don't care anymore" hands in there too, which I then I tend to overcompensate by tightening up too much.

I tend to go through this a lot when I learn new things where I start to over analyize, but I am actually having a decent amount of fun looking at ways to improve. I usually get an ah-hah moment around here.

Anyway I think running bad is a part of it to be honest. I can remember the last time I 3bet someone with AA and stacked them.

Focused improvement
Instead of just running random boards and looking at what kinds of different hands to defend, I decided to be a little more systematic about it. I am going to look at a broader set of boards and look at them in general, then look at the TYPE of hands I am calling with, this appears to be much easier than just slowly ingraining it over time. Going to go through a certain set of boards and then use those and a more specific set of guidlines than what is in his videos, but will still give a much better idea. I found the way I was doing it before was just running the board, going okay, then doing another one. It wasn't very focused, and kind of random, so I am making a ciriculum for myself. There will be slight differences, but if you look back in my blog to where I talk about approximations this is exactly what I am going for.

Posting a whole bunch today, but I am excited about where I am going with this.

Hi Chowchow12,

great blog. Hope you will start crushing the Limits soon.
I guess you should focus on trouble spots to find out your biggest leaks and work on them step by step.
(My actual list with leaks has got >20 topics, and that are just the big leaks)
Do you know this picture to work on some boards?
You can maybe post your thoughts on working on it, maybe some other people will give you some nice comments and help.

Slainte Talisker

Originally posted by Talisker74
Hi Chowchow12,

great blog. Hope you will start crushing the Limits soon.
I guess you should focus on trouble spots to find out your biggest leaks and work on them step by step.
(My actual list with leaks has got >20 topics, and that are just the big leaks)
Do you know this picture to work on some boards?
You can maybe post your thoughts on working on it, maybe some other people will give you some nice comments and help.

Slainte Talisker

Hey, thanks for the image. That is actually helpful for picking out some boards to check.

Study progress
I have gone through and picked my range on a lot of different boarded. (About 14 boards). The points where I am not calling enough appear to be from folding out too many pocket pairs, and back door straights. I am trying to get a nice combination of straight draws and flush draws in my continuing range.

The biggest difference I have noticed is a shift in mindset, from: "Do I call with this hand? To what is the plan for this hand?" Is this hand good enough to float with and try and get to show down? Or is this a good hand to float with and lead turn, probe river, raise/check raise turn" It's also interesting trying to figure out what cards I would do what with.

I am not doing it perfectly, for example I floated the flop with 22, because I just didn't have much for the range, and use it to probe the river. I think there are a lot better hands to do this with, but then again the board ran out kind of weird so I could be making bottom/2nd bottom pair fold, and stop him from being able to bluff me OTR. Something like A plus overs might be better because it had a few more outs.

The game tree is so vast and complicated. I feel like just realizing the options now had upped my skill potential. I use the word potential because in these early stages there is a lot to overlook and screw up. It is going to take time to internalize everything. Thinking about villain type, the range the villain has on a board, and how my hand looks to villain makes it easy to screw up. I also think that some of these lines might get jacked a decent amount at NL5, but looking at certain places to bluff. I have started asking myself "How would I play a set here? Call the dry flop and raise a drawy turn? Should be doing that with some of my better floats that turned some equity for the river."

The addition of being more aggressive, and looking to jack the pot from villain has been running pretty good for me today. That being said I am only one tabling and only played about 400 hands today, so it's all run good at this point. We will see how much the improvement begins to take hold in the coming weeks. I want to run more boards with some drier textures that might not be in my range ( I should probably pick a similar type hand for every board in the image that was posted tbh) and then look at my continuing range. Then work out what the plan will be for each type of hands certain turn cards, and see how much combos are doing what. Ideally I want every continuing card to have some kind of purpose for certain turns. This will help me have a plan for everything and that will really help keep my confident.

Another thing I am forcing myself to so is slow down and think for a second. I have a tendency to go to fast and make a bunch of mistakes. Been some where between 1 tabling and two tabling, but eventually it will naturally bump back up. I watched this video on handreading and it talked a lot about asking yourself questions about what hands they would do their acton with at every point. I found I would sometimes be like LOL I HAVE X LETS CLICK A BUTTON, but stopping to think hey what hands would call here? Just forcing yourself to ask this question really helps if thinks get weird down the road. I am not great at it yet, but it's helping.

At some point tomorrow I am going to try and stream line a set of questions to ask myself at each point in the game. Right now my thought process can be a bit all over the place.

I talked about this in a earlier blog post with Starcraft players using a macro cycle to work their game, and I think as a poker player we should use something similar so we make less mistakes.

Alright I am super tired and I am sure everyone who attempted to read my dribble above has given up. Good night everyone!

Got the Video back from Weasel

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOOLOL. Major signs of auto pilot imo. I folded AK with a K on the flop to a turn raise with someone that had 30bb left. I would endlessly just mash the half pot button for value. NOT ENOUGH VALUE.

I don't want to read into things TOOOO much, but I have a feeling there is a link between this and the fear monkey on my back. "What is I get check raised?, better bet half, so I don't lose so much." probably is peering around in the back of my head. I am probably just scared to lose. It would explain why I want to leave after I win a stack or something.

Okay so it is time to work out some kind of thought process checklist when I play. Move back to one table for a few days to get it a reflex. Then just bet bigger for the value.

As I wrote to you in PM - You're extremely heady. So am I and it's an unfortunate side effect of intelligence lol. AFAIK, you have more than enough money to handle losing BI's @ 5NL so you really need to just hit the reset button in your mind before you fall asleep one night, wake up, and just PLAY. Play with absolutely no recollection of your last session. Not even a thought or care about it. I would try that and just move forward from there with the confidence of knowing that you're absolutely GOING to be where you want to be eventually as long as you stay out of your head. You're making this harder than it has to be and I know all too well about that myself.

Originally posted by TakingAShot
As I wrote to you in PM - You're extremely heady. So am I and it's an unfortunate side effect of intelligence lol. AFAIK, you have more than enough money to handle losing BI's @ 5NL so you really need to just hit the reset button in your mind before you fall asleep one night, wake up, and just PLAY. Play with absolutely no recollection of your last session. Not even a thought or care about it. I would try that and just move forward from there with the confidence of knowing that you're absolutely GOING to be where you want to be eventually as long as you stay out of your head. You're making this harder than it has to be and I know all too well about that myself.

I think you're right imo. I was so focused on trying to win, and it was driving me a little crazy. I feel much better about everything now. I am not going to try to go pro, so I should be able to lower the pressure on myself, make mistakes, try things, and fuck up.

Five Questions to ask myself before making a decision
After watching Weasels hand history review of my pots > 20bb and from what I remember about hands I think I am just rushing to make my default decisions in a lot of spots, and not taking in nessicary information. There are just some hands where I am not thinking it through. In and effort to fix this I spent a good chunk of my studying yesterday trying to work out an efficient, set of questions to ask myself before I make a choice. This will slow me down and force me to not button click. Any sort of feedback is always welcome.

Questions
What is the action
What do we know about villian (Unknown, nit, reg)
What is the effective stack/SPR (I seem to miss this the most.)
How does this action change villan's range / What is villans range here
What options do we have.

I think if I know the answer to these questions I should be making better choices, and hopefully will derp less. Forcing myself to do this will slow me down, but once it is a reflex I think I will see a huge improvement in my hand reading and less robo-piloting.

Originally posted by Chowchow12

Originally posted by TakingAShot
Play with absolutely no recollection of your last session. Not even a thought or care about it. I would try that and just move forward from there with the confidence of knowing that you're absolutely GOING to be where you want to be eventually as long as you stay out of your head. You're making this harder than it has to be and I know all too well about that myself.

Questions
What is the action
What do we know about villian (Unknown, nit, reg)
What is the effective stack/SPR (I seem to miss this the most.)
How does this action change villan's range / What is villans range here
What options do we have.

I think if I know the answer to these questions I should be making better choices, and hopefully will derp less. Forcing myself to do this will slow me down, but once it is a reflex I think I will see a huge improvement in my hand reading and less robo-piloting.

Couple of really good discussion points here.

1. Play with absolutely no recollection of your last session.

In a way, yes. But only the results. You may have actually picked up good information from specific opponents or identified a leak in your own game.

Jared Tendler talks about residual layers in The Mental Game of Poker. If you can't clear those bad thoughts, they will build on top of each other in layers until you can take no more and you literally melt down.

This happened to me in 2013. It was 3 months before I could play again.

2. making better choices

That is exactly what poker is about. It is far more important to focus on the decisions you make in a hand rather than the ultimate result.

If your decision making is correct, the results will flow on as a consequence of those decisions.

I'm going to start digging into Jared's material. I've been told to do so for 3 years now and have always spent the time on something else. Maybe I'll start by listening to podcasts or reading his book before sessions. All in all - My mental game is better right now than it's ever been but I know that would not at all be the case at higher stakes. I still have miles to go in this department and will probably have to always maintain and work on this aspect of my game.

The fact that I made it up to and was winning at 10NL this fall and all of the heads up I've been playing since Thanksgiving, has left me with more confidence and freedom at the tables than I've ever had before. At the same time, my mental approach and goals is leaving me more balanced than ever before as well. In the short run, I see that emotions need to remain as absolutely stable as possible, regardless of results. The two shouldn't be connected at all.

Lucky Bink
I bought a piece of a Twitch streamer's action for a $162 Bounty Builder. She win the whole thing for 10k, and I turned $5 into $255. The money was form my poker BR, so the winnings are going to my poker BR. My Bankroll is like $540 now. Baaaasically won the lottery.

I talked to weasel about it and he just told me don't worry about NL5 and move to NL10. 30BI shot guys.

I haven;t been playing as much as I should be. Lots of studying. My Dad was in town for the last two days, so I was hanging out with him a lot. I can feel myself start to get sick. Blah. I will play some hands tonight. Probably will just fire up NL10 and not let it build up in my mind. I don't know. The video I watched from Weasel taught me a lot about how inconsistant I can be. That stuff is important. So I am going to spend the next few sessions on slowing down and asking myself those four questions until it is habit. This way I will always make sure I have all the correct decisions.

Hi try out to free your mind from every negative thoughts before you start a session.
Think of crushing the session before playing to get to a nice flow.
And try out just to play ABC poker...
meaning use the basics.
Stick to your ranges.
bet for value and nut-draws and overfold vs. agression
that should be good for beating nl5

Slainte
Talisker

Shipped a 180 man SNG
$1 180 man SNG. Shipped the whole thing, won $50. Pretty crazy. I have been watching all these MTT players on Twitch and it looked so fun, so and it paid off. BR is getting bigger now. NL10 seems to be going pretty well. Had lots of computer issues yesterday, but got them all sorted out.

In terms of studying I think I figured out where I was over folding BB vs BU. I am really going to focus on my pre-flop as I got lazy with being too dependent on having weasel's ranges in front of me. I really should have done this a while ago. I have noticed that it has leaked into thinking about villian's ranges. I miss stuff, and don't really have a model for villian's range and range reduction.

Jared Tendler talks about residual layers in The Mental Game of Poker. If you can't clear those bad thoughts, they will build on top of each other in layers until you can take no more and you literally melt down

I don't know how I missed this, but this is exactly what happened to me those few weeks ago. I just felt permatilted and I remember I was just clicking buttons. I was so tilted about having to drop back down to NL5 that I was just trying to grind out hands to shoot nl10. I didn't care about poker, I just cared about nl10 and broke even. Weasel's video kind of confirmed this for me. Auto piloting the bet size (not betting big for value) and missing by not noticing stack depths and stuff probably added up enough over the course of a day where I should have been up 1 or 2 BI and I just derped away. . I was also not confident in some autoprofit spots and I kind of just didn't follow through. It wasn't until I looked for myself in the stats and saw they were making money was I got confident in them.

Perfecting Pre-flop
As of today I am going to work in pre-flop for the rest of the year. I was just using weasels ranges, but I could never ask myself the question "What kind of hands would I call with here?" because I was just reading it off an excel sheet. So this should help a lot with hand reading. I have said it over and over again that I think hand reading is the true fundamental skill of poker. My mistake is not seeing the importance of the preflop.

I think this is a good lesson. In learning poker we can eventually see how we grossly underestimated certain concepts and it isn't until we get smarter we see the light. Pre-flop is kind of boring and so I think it isn't given enough attention.

At this point I still think it is good to get a general game plan in the beginning and then go through each section adding a layer of depth and specificity each time. But I think it is especially important to have your pre-flop down in order to think in ranges properly post flop.

I think the difference is playing against fish because of large calling ranges, but a VPIP/PRF/3bet of 40/10/2 doesn't have much variance in their pre-flop range. I think the general overview helps you defeat them, and just a simple game plan. Knowing their tendencies allows you to exploit them. (Auto profit spots etc.) This is why most beginner courses are structured the way they are. I think it isn't a bad approach, but I think some of the concepts do not have enough weight on them.

I really think one of them is planning your hand. I think a lot of videos on this say: "You must plan your hand! It's important! Here is an example!" - Fin. But really we need to look at all the types of hands we can have and then come up with rough plans for them for certain turns and rivers. An example is backdoor draws: We want to use the best ones that can make a 5 card hand by the river, to bet the flop with. Ac3c on Kc7h2d is an example. An example of a backdoor draw I think is okay to put in our check/fold range is a backdoor gutshot, and if we turn the cards that give us a gutshot we have a bluffing hand with backdoor equity, same thing with weaker backdoor flushes, we only want to play a small pot if they hit anyway, and by checking back the flop we have reduced the number of streets and effectivly the size of the pot. (Overbetting with our hands we plan to c/r on the flop is probably the execption here).

Weasel does a great job at explaining this. We keep ourselves to have options in our range here. But coming up with these kinds of plans requires studying lots of boards and knowing how hard our range hits a given board. Which comes back to knowing our preflop ranges. Knowing we don't have a lot of pairs means we need to check/call more of our backdoor draws and ace highs (unless we want to make an exploitative fold/over fold). So for studying this we need to run a lot of board analysis to know what kind of hands we need to have plans for given boards. I really didn't get this connection until now. It is kind of funny. I feel really silly about it.

NL10
It's funny I use a program that converts $$ to bb and I forgot I was playing on NL10. The player pool felt the same. I could swear the pool was more aggressive than this. LOL Variance. I really was making plays without caring about the short term result. Just knew this is a bluffing hand, and I have no reason to make an adjustment, so go for it. Going to take some time to figure out if the results are good or not. I have a decent amount of hands to check certain lines now. Really just need keep studying and playing a lot. I feel more comfortable with poker now where I am doing my own problem solving for certain situations. Eventually you just have to become your own coach.

Originally posted by Chowchow12
Perfecting Pre-flop
As of today I am going to work in pre-flop for the rest of the year. I was just using weasels ranges, but I could never ask myself the question "What kind of hands would I call with here?" because I was just reading it off an excel sheet. So this should help a lot with hand reading. I have said it over and over again that I think hand reading is the true fundamental skill of poker. My mistake is not seeing the importance of the preflop.

I think this is a good lesson. In learning poker we can eventually see how we grossly underestimated certain concepts and it isn't until we get smarter we see the light. Pre-flop is kind of boring and so I think it isn't given enough attention.

At this point I still think it is good to get a general game plan in the beginning and then go through each section adding a layer of depth and specificity each time. But I think it is especially important to have your pre-flop down in order to think in ranges properly post flop.

I think the difference is playing against fish because of large calling ranges, but a VPIP/PRF/3bet of 40/10/2 doesn't have much variance in their pre-flop range. I think the general overview helps you defeat them, and just a simple game plan. Knowing their tendencies allows you to exploit them. (Auto profit spots etc.) This is why most beginner courses are structured the way they are. I think it isn't a bad approach, but I think some of the concepts do not have enough weight on them.

I really think one of them is planning your hand. I think a lot of videos on this say: "You must plan your hand! It's important! Here is an example!" - Fin. But really we need to look at all the types of hands we can have and then come up with rough plans for them for certain turns and rivers. An example is backdoor draws: We want to use the best ones that can make a 5 card hand by the river, to bet the flop with. Ac3c on Kc7h2d is an example. An example of a backdoor draw I think is okay to put in our check/fold range is a backdoor gutshot, and if we turn the cards that give us a gutshot we have a bluffing hand with backdoor equity, same thing with weaker backdoor flushes, we only want to play a small pot if they hit anyway, and by checking back the flop we have reduced the number of streets and effectivly the size of the pot. (Overbetting with our hands we plan to c/r on the flop is probably the execption here).

Weasel does a great job at explaining this. We keep ourselves to have options in our range here. But coming up with these kinds of plans requires studying lots of boards and knowing how hard our range hits a given board. Which comes back to knowing our preflop ranges. Knowing we don't have a lot of pairs means we need to check/call more of our backdoor draws and ace highs (unless we want to make an exploitative fold/over fold). So for studying this we need to run a lot of board analysis to know what kind of hands we need to have plans for given boards. I really didn't get this connection until now. It is kind of funny. I feel really silly about it.

NL10
It's funny I use a program that converts $$ to bb and I forgot I was playing on NL10. The player pool felt the same. I could swear the pool was more aggressive than this.

Don't make judgments about the player pool - or really anything - based off of one session. However, yes...a lot of the 10NL players are absolutely no better than the 5NL players. At all because we're talking about $5 or $10 which is absolutely nothing to a lot of people. The thing is that @ 10NL, there are also better players scattered throughout the player pool, more collusion and the like, and overall there's no denying that the games are much harder. Still, as said, sure ...just like there are whales @ 100NL who just have disposable money and are drunk, you'll find the same thing in a $5 or $10 game. Don't just paint everyone with that brush until proven otherwise though or else you'll burn a lot of buyins. Especially if you're playing anonymous games.