Stack off! My poker goals, vision and improvement

Originally posted by AthleticAZ

Long(er) term goals:
Month 1 - 3: IP as PFR focus work (starts at December 1st);
Month 1 - 3: OOP (UTG) as PFR focus work (starts at mid December);
Month 2-3: OOP (SB) as PFR focus work (starts at January 1st);
Month 4: Focus work on BB defense.

I need to adjust my plan and put BB defense in 2nd spot. That way I feel like I can get my winrate up significantly more than in other positions.

BTN play getting better

In last month I was able to improve my winrate in BTN unopened by +10bb/100 hands. Mostly 25NL.

EDIT: Used to be some graphs.

seen you in the pool, good work ethic glgl

Thanks, Tomaloc!

Yeah, must work and make it a habit in order to be winning. It has happened before that I tend to slip into an illusion that I'm a good player if I just play and ignore refreshing poker skills. Which, of course, is not true. I'm not a good poker player, yet (understanding it with every hour I spend learning). ♦

Good luck at the tables!

Hi AthleticAZ,

great blog. Keep up the good work.
How much time to spend a day with poker (playing and lerning)?
I will follows this one to take some things i can implement in my learning stuff....

So keep up crushing and blogging.

Slainte
Talisker

Thanks, Talisker74!

I spend 6 hours on average playing poker every day. On a good day (and/or Friday, Saturday, Sunday - because of people drinking while gambling) I play around 8-9 hours.
Learning - every day around 1 hour of planed stuff and may be less than 1 hour of filtering through database stuff.

Since brain can not keep all the learnt information, there is no need to overload on learning multiple spots. So, I focus work on most common spots only. That shouldn't take much time. Sometimes 30 min a day of focused work might be enough. F.e., BTN, RFI = True, Faced preflop 3bet = false, Saw flop = true. Then have a plan for few hand groups like: 2p+, TP Q+ kicker, TP J-9 kicker, TP 8-2 kicker, 2nd pair, FD/SD, 3rd pair or less. Know your shit! Then check if you do stuff according to your strategy.

I work on game less if I have to work. Sometimes I cheat (and learn some stuff at work) and play afterwards for 6 hours (with breaks).

Good luck at the tables!

Checking on weekly goals: DEC 1st - 7th
- Played hands: 40 k (played 29k, though working week and felt crushed at evenings. I don't play, when tired. I'm not tilting often. There is also a mistake in goal. Should be 30k as it accounts for overall 120k hands/month. Going to edit my first post.)
- Focus work - Training BTN opens and 3-bets: 30 min/day (5 days out of 7.)
- Equity drill: 45 hands/day (got to 32 hands per day. Got better at equity guessing by 1-2 points. Around 4.5% -> 3.5%. Need to work harder. Don't be a lazy c**t!)
- General lines: daily (refreshing before first few sessions - did it)
- Post 2 hands: weekly (posted 1 hand. I think, I'll start posting hands on other sites. Maybe there are players who really know how to reply with a solid poker logic, not "I'd call here. I'd fold here." Only upside is that I practice narrowing down hand ranges and finding tipping points for a call or a fluff, etc. )
- Comment on 7-8 hands: weekly (commented on 3 hands. Need to find a better material. Most people put worthless hands that don't need that much attention anyways (too infrequent spots like stupid cooler hands, etc.) , so I'd just waste my time).

Additional work that I did:
I reviewed my pre-flop ranges for RFI, defenses vs 3bets, attacks vs RFI.
Created table where I compare between lines when RFI:
- Overall IP vs OOP (CO,SB) vs OOP (UTG, MP);
- 3bet lines BTN vs CO and BTN vs MP/UTG (by hand values, sizings, etc.)

That was fun. I'll keep reviewing this as it puts into perspective, what I'm supposed to do in general.

Weekly goals: DEC 8th - 14th
- Played hands: 30 k
- Focus work - Training BTN opens and 3-bets: 30 min/day
- Equity drill: 45 hands/day (plus reviewing biggest equity mistakes beforehand)
- General lines: daily (refreshing before first few sessions, just review those tables I made)
- Post 2 hands: weekly
- Comment on 7-8 hands: weekly (look harder for good hands - high frequency spots)

If you don't fail with posting weekly like most do, this might be one of the best examples of how it should be done. It is extremly refreshing to see someone doing it the right way, thank you for inspiration. Now don't be a p***y with equity drills this week, it's understandable you can't plan due to tiredness sometimes but you can do eq. drills even when tired! Best

Thanks, pizdunar!

I agree. I also decided that I'll do equity drills first thing in the day before any other poker interactions.

Some additional goals to think about:
- Keep longest sessions in between 45-50 min. This is not a rocket science. I get tired and 50 min mark is THE SPOT, where things go south;
- Keep morning sessions less than 20 min (brain just can not do stuff. Don't know why, though.) unless I had practiced for 90ish minutes;
- Try using "Game Log" more often and set a session goal.

Game Log - for those, who have questions. That is an Excel file, where I write:
- a session goal (like: concentrate on pre-flop ranges, concentrate on c-bet OOP, etc.);
- session grade from 1 to 10 (based on achieved session goal)
- session length;
- notes (like: after eating couldn't play, felt sleepy/tired, after midnight starting to tilt - tired, etc.);
/After a while I get a feel for when I can play A-game more than not. Also, that wat I got to the fact that session longer than 50 minutes is just a bad habit./

Nice job man! I'd like to know how many tables you can play at NL25 to get 30k hands a week.
Your graphs are very good!

Originally posted by zetozinho
Nice job man! I'd like to know how many tables you can play at NL25 to get 30k hands a week.
Your graphs are very good!

Hey, zetozinho!

At some point I'll have to post my ugly graphs too. ♦
~ 80 % of the time I play 4 tables. This is when I feel most comfortable and just go to work.
~17% of the time I play 3 tables. This is when I need to have reminders in front of me (desktop space).
~3% of the time I play 2 tables. Sometimes to warm-up, sometimes to test if my brain can still operate, sometimes to do training (concentration on ranges and thinking deeper what do I do with my all range in a spot, etc.

The more I play, the more I get to know myself as a player. There is this thing that started to notice a month ago. Whenever session goes to an end and I'm getting tired, I look at the clock and notice that is 45-50 min (I have a timer for sessions). I get to do some small mistakes, but that's okay. Main importance is that I don't play longer than 10 minutes whiled being tired.

Earlier I used to plan my session lengths, but that's just foolish. There is no point in playing planned 40 minutes if after 20 min trouble starts and I'm kind of forced to play.

This happened today in just 50 minutes @25NL ZOOM.

Nice graph, and Nice blog. Bookmarked

Checking on weekly goals: DEC 8th - 14th
- Played hands: 30 k (played 27k, there was one day where I didn't play, so it makes sense. Monthly goal is still 120k hands. I think, it's still possible.)
- Focus work - Training BTN opens and 3-bets: 30 min/day (I did almost nothing with this as there were higher priorities. But I checked on results and for the most part I'm doing well.)
- Equity drill: 45 hands/day (Something like that. My in-game equity approximations are getting OKish. I have biggest equity guessing mistakes saved in a folder. I have to reread those.)
- General lines: daily (Pre-session, OK, did it)
- Post 2 hands: weekly (posted 2 hands, I think. )
- Comment on 7-8 hands: weekly (commented on some hands.)

Weekly goals: DEC 15th - 21st
- Played hands: 30 k
- Focus work - Training BTN opens and 3-bets: 30 min/day
- Equity drill: 45 hands/day (plus reviewing biggest equity mistakes beforehand)
- General lines: daily (refreshing before first few sessions, just review those tables I made)
- Post 2 hands: weekly
- Comment on 7-8 hands: weekly
- Additional: UTG RFI, lines and opponent's exploitation: Daily (as long as needed)

Notes: Additional focus work for next week. UTG RFI, lines and opponent's exploitation.
I took a couple of shots at 50NL, but had to get back to 25NL. Bankroll covers everything, got around ~60BI for 50NL. Problem is that I have broken my UTG game and need to fix it first (so I get in those games more confident). I'll most likely take a shot some time at Week 4 (Christmas week).

[EDIT] Graphs: After Week 4

Originally posted by deralte71
Nice graph, and Nice blog. Bookmarked

Thanks! Keep on crushing, bro!

HEM EV line stuff here:
https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=130904

In short: Turn it off, it's not relevant.

Hello luckbox, nice blog etc

Originally posted by AthleticAZ
In short: Turn it off, it's not relevant.

I. Can. Only. Agree.

People are crazy with that whereas it's stupid. A friend of mine wrote a clear and detailed summary of the reasons why it wasn't relevant years ago on the french forum but the community mostly ignored it we were so frustrated by that lol.

Hey to you, too, MyFloXyBabY!

For me the basic EV formula explained everything and I got that "aha" moment. Good stuff!
Sometimes, when there are hard stretches at my poker variance I tend to visit Poker Variance Calculator

Well EV line is ok information imo but one just has to know its limitations and what it really represent. It doesnt take all luck into account obviously but its still closer to what result should have been in long run compared to actual results.