The 10k challenge with 3nduranc3 [9-max ante on GG] - twitch.tv/pokermaniax

We had a 2nd day of bad run, still playing around 95%, and then yesterday, finally got a + session once again. It was an interesting experience, to have a bad run on NL2, this should never affect our playstyle, strategy, approach to poker. We have to endure every sutiation caused by variance. What does help us in this? Learining, improving ourself and sticking to the beliefs we have in our self.

New graph here:

NL2 - 19%

Short mindstorm about GTO

I can barely imagine that you haven’t bumped into ‘GTO’ when you play poker actively these days.
So what is this GTO and why do I always see this coming towards me? Do I have to love it or hate it? Do I have to understand it?
Let’s just put it this way, lets assume GTO is 50 cent (yes the rapper), and he is just coming against you rapping:

Hate It or Love It, the underdog's on top
And I'm gon' shine, homie, until my heart stop
Go 'head envy me, I'm POKER's M.V.P
And I ain't going nowhere, so you can get to know me

And whatever you do, you can avoid GTO, you can hate it, but if you don’t really start to understand it, you will never be a winning poker player in the long run.
But why is that? I have very good intuition, I just made 10 BB/100 on NL200 in 100k hands without GTO! The whole GTO is bullshit!
Let’s start clearing up some things, and get rid of some scam shit, before we advance just one step even talking about GTO.

Is there a better strategy then GTO?

NO! There is simply never going to be any better strategy for poker. If someone is explaining you, that exploitative play is better, run away! He/she clearly does not understand the principles of game theory and what this means in poker. GTO cannot be exploited. However, you are not a machine, and you will never be able to play GTO perfectly.

You will understand this by definition:

GTO – Game Theory Optimal in poker means, that you will take the best mathematical decision in every situation, based on ALL of the available information that you have in the spot, taking all possible strategies into consideration.

This would mean that you play a perfectly sized bet on the flop, and when the “Exploitative” Player raises by 140%, you still have another GTO response to that action. But I can tell you, people who think attacking with aggression is the key, they will most likely see a fold too often, or just simply bump into some better hand time to time, and they will not be able to fold, and end up losing in the long run, thus making -EV decisions or favoring EV decisions, that are not the best in the situation (we will talk about EV next time).

Take the following points with you today:

1. This is of course impossible to implement as a human being, we just thrive to come as close as possible to this. To do this we set up boundaries, we are simplifying situations, so that we can understand them and implement them into our game.

2. We are humans. We make mistakes (except Russians playing with RTA, they don’t make mistakes KEKW), and these are the spots which makes us vulnerable against GTO. GTO is not about winning always, or showboating with great hands, explaining yourself you are the best player in the world because you won a tournament, or a big hand with K8o. It would only explain you that you are great, when you played more then a million hands, losing as minimum -EV as possible. Poker is not 1 tournament, not 1 hand. It takes patience, dedication, thus endurance.

3. If two players would play perfect GTO against each other, that means, they will never ever earn money on playing each other in the long run. This means one thing! If 2 players play 100% GTO against each other, who wins? The poker platform! And this is because of RAKE. So let’s just destroy one of the most ancient bullshit:

“The poker platform is cheating!”

Why is this just a myth? Because if you lose and never play again on the site, the poker platform loses the rake, meaning he would bite his own hand. The poker platforms biggest interest is to keep you playing on his site, and pay him more than what you would ever imagine. You are not even feeling it, because you only pay when you win (not talking about SnGs). 😊

What is EV, what are solvers and how do they come together with GTO? Find out in the next short mindstorms I write.

Good post! One thing that can confuse some players is that playing GTO is not equal to the solution GTO solvers offer. Yes, GTO solvers do play GTO based on the information they have BUT if there is any other information that can not be placed on the solver you need to adapt that yourself. Only then you can play as close to GTO as possible. For some people that is the definition of playing "exploitative" but they are actually just playing GTO.

Originally posted by Smushed
Short mindstorm about GTO

An excellent article! Thanks for posting it.

The big problem I have with solvers, and GTO strategies is that they're often presented in charts like this:[1]

There is no way I'll ever be able to remember the specifics of each hand — in this case Q9o.
If you look at the main chart it appears that Q9o is raised only rarely — but not 0%, yet QTo and Q8o both should be raised slightly more often. Who says? Who can remember such things?

Even if some combo is "Raise 50%, Call 50%" how do you decide what to do this particular time?
I've even done this with AA and KK where if the two cards were "black" (ie a spade and a club) I would just flat.

Often for marginal hands, I make the decision based on my observations of what other players are doing — but as soon as you do that, you're being exploitive.

[1] I just grabbed that chart at random — I have no notion of what situation they were trying to solve.

Originally posted by ColorFlusher
Good post! One thing that can confuse some players is that playing GTO is not equal to the solution GTO solvers offer. Yes, GTO solvers do play GTO based on the information they have BUT if there is any other information that can not be placed on the solver you need to adapt that yourself. Only then you can play as close to GTO as possible. For some people that is the definition of playing "exploitative" but they are actually just playing GTO.

Thank you for the compliments, I appriciate it. And yes you are exactly right! This is something I would discuss in the next mindstorms how solvers and EV are related. And it is exactly the point you spot out there. They are models that had fixed inputs already, thus, you still have to adjust these models with all the incoming information.

Originally posted by VorpalF2F

Originally posted by Smushed
Short mindstorm about GTO

An excellent article! Thanks for posting it.

The big problem I have with solvers, and GTO strategies is that they're often presented in charts like this:[1]

There is no way I'll ever be able to remember the specifics of each hand — in this case Q9o.

Thank a lot Vorpal!

I just woke up today to see GTOWIzard's Instagram, I can advise all to follow it, since sometimes it has very interesting, and I must say hard to understand "Daily doses of GTO". This morning they had a great post on 20% block bet (in a simplified QQ-KK-AA situation), which also explains why you take a range bet, or in your case, with what to raise to get the maximum EV.

Post:
AKQ Game Block-bet

This means you dont really have to remember all %-as as a human, but you should be aware of, if you expand your range slightly by a move, it will increase you overall EV for the higher cards, because a balanced range is harder to predict.

BTW this looks like PIO but can't really decide the action. since it is an OOP decision. Is it preflop SB vs BU?

Well I think this is just about definition of terms. I think most people when using GTO term refer to the perfect play situation where neither can win in long run. Which is of course already simplificated with limited bet sizes or limited time on simulation.

Exploitative is then just change of strategy based on specific reads on opponent from that baseline strategy. In reality that baseline is approximation of what one think is GTO or already strategy that is taking player pool tendencies into account.

But in the end studying this is ultimately about understanding of underlying concepts. Referring to what Vorpal said above. It's really not about remembering what certain combo is supposed to do or at what frequency but more about overall strategy. Like if we have rough idea in spot what our range should do and what affects most about how each hand goes into different action nodes it's on good route. Then we have solid base to change that strategy based on opponent assumed strategy.

Randomising decision with rng generator or such is then usable when we have understanding that certain type of hand should sometimes take different actions. Issue with human mind is that we are easily skewed to take certain action much too often if not using randomisation.

Like in Omaha with ton more combos there is no talk about exact combos but hand categories. I think same kind of thinking can be also applied into holdem. As that support more idea of learning concepts than trying to memorize exact combos.

Well yesterdays stream was just awful, had continous streaming problems. I decided to find a solution for this once and for all. I just found that the 50 Mbps connection is just simply not enough for streaming without having buffer problems, since after testing only 2 Mbps of upload speed can be realized. This is, altough better then nothing, an optimal upload speed of 5-6 Mbps would be advised. Now I upgraded simply to 1000 Mbps, meaning up to 1k download and 50 Mbps upload speed. Of course you have to hate this prefix UPTO. It needs some time to take effect, but I hope soon I will be able to stream with maximum capacity. The modem and my Laptop can all handle 1k Mbps, thats also quite important.

See you on the next stream!

It's also lot about settings. Like FPS for poker doesn't really need to be higher than 10.

Up til now I've avoided having an Instagram account.
I might have to change that

Originally posted by ghaleon
It's also lot about settings. Like FPS for poker doesn't really need to be higher than 10.

Well the stream went perfectly after the upgrade, the upload speed for OBS is just purely at 3.4-3.5 now. 0 dropped frames. This is truly amazing, however it seems that the 3.5kbps is a treshhold there, does this need to be adjusted?

My next steps will be getting a camera and green background probably, so I can lie about being on a sandy beach.

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Up til now I've avoided having an Instagram account.
I might have to change that

Well so far, I have an account and I am just thinking for weeks, what to even put up as content, as a poker player. Just simply not really getting any good ideas. Instagram is always good, takes away another 20 mins of your life daily, lol.

Hey all!

Yesterday we had a really great stream! Gave away 20$, making it all together 30$-s in giveaways during the challenge. So 20$ still to go until my starting bankroll is donated to you guys! With an average 7.1 viewers and 50 unique viewers we also have a new record! We are getting close to achieve Affiliate Status with Twitch! I am very happy to see that the stream is actually getting better all the time. We had a great session and hit the new top once again, of course still running under EV 4ever:

NL2 - 31%

Be sure to stick around today and tomorrow! Sunday is study session, where I will show you how to get along with GTO Wizard, how to study, analyze, etc. and we will also talk about how to get started on a poker journey to become successful, well at least about what is working for me.

See you on stream at 20:00!

Twitcherino

Hey all! Big milestone for me on the weekend! Hit Twitch affiliate.

We did a great study session on basics about GTO Wizard without delay, and then I did a 6 hours session, all just to come in 34th place out of 570 on The Venom Sattelite, where 20 got the 2500$ ticket. (Never gonna play it again, starts Sunday midnight lolz)

Well anyway, I was running hot and as usual under EV on NL2, advancing to 43% in the challange!
New Top!

Keep on watching to get the new updates on emoticons, channel points and so much more!

Thanks for your support so far!

Cheers!

Hello there!

I really had scarce time in the last week to update my blogs, but I don't think we just vanished from the challenge! I took a solid 2,5 weeks off to be enjoy family times in Hungary during Easter. Did conitnue to stream last week, and we are up up and away!

Currently on 62% of NL2 is completed. I really hope we keep on going up to soon jump on NL5.

Graph after session 34

I am building up a Discord community, starting to get myself into video editing and really trying to enhance viewer experience on Stream. A wild greenscreen order just arrived!! :banana::banana::roto2:

Emotewall is implemented, testing it once again on today's stream. Handed in some epic emotes I have been working on, waiting for approval from Twitch.

I am still a betch... have to update my Tasklist, it is starting to get old and rusty. Still have a lot of things to accomplish and develop. Also, have to carefully plan the summer time, I will be on holiday from June-September, and besides mmy family I would love to regular stream times!

Good luck at the tables! See you on Stream!

Bro, almost 4 months without a post. I actually got a feedback, that I should reconsider posting. And I felt also that I was skipping this. Just so comfortable not to produce content when you are a streamer. As I probably mentioned before, streaming itself costs you a hell lot of time, not just the process itself, but all the preparations and afterwork. Talking about making layouts, editing thumbnails, downloading and analyzing hand history stuff, trying to act like a pro in premiere pro and photoshop, try to start all social media platform and actually realizing that it is such a hard job... and if you don't do these, study, check ranges, listen to books, videos, podcasts. Never forget your family of course!

Okay, enough crying around and get back down to business.

We were in Hungary, had parent time with my son for 2 months, which got an extra 2 months in vacation. I wanted to stream, but had two options to do so. One had a weak internet, not suitable for streaming, the other had good internet, but having 40 degrees outside still led to unbearable circumstances in the room. So I ended up basically not really streaming. Losing a lot of valuable people who were usually around. This made me rather sad. But I not the kind of person that likes to give up just because we make a backstep. I really hope that everyone that was watching before eventually joins the stream again.

The break was however good, had a lot of time to sort out things at home, spend quality time with family and friends. My father is having Alzheimer's, which is also a big challenge for us, but unfortunately family already has experience in that. But every human is different, and we have all feelings, so there are mental issues for all of us that are super hard to handle without anger, pain, etc. I don't really want to make a connection to poker here, but I feel in many cases is very similar to tilting. You are angry, shout, hate life, could destroy something, throw a mouse or whatever poepl do when they are angry. It still won't change the fact that you are losing money, or someone. It will never help you however, so you have to control your feelings, think with a clear mind, accept what is happening and always focus on the next step which you could do to make it better. The big difference is that your poker knowledge and tilt handling can get better. Alzheimer's can only grow worse…

To top this we caught a bad illness on the last week and had to postpone our travel with one week back to Germany. All of us had a hard time, the virus got to all of us, and some were coughing for 4 weeks. When I felt finally better we packed our stuff and had back to our second home here.

As soon as we were back to Germany, I started to stream, but still had some challenging negative runs. A lot of coolers, but just kept saying it will be over. Meanwhile I listened to Mental game of Poker 2, that also helped me a lot. Did some extra study stream sessions also, to go back to basics. I want to go a bit more into detail with this.

I finally interpreted the goals I was setting into numbers, and SMART aims. Building a house, so gathering 250k$ to do so, in 3 years. Revert this back to limits, win rates, hands, days. This lead to an Excel sheet (you can check it out in Study Session 03 in the previous streams) which showed me that I should be playing 4k hands every day and that I am like 120 days and 500k hands behind the line… And there will be certainly days where I can't even play of course. At the moment I am trying to catch up, but it will take at least a year, if it is even possible. Why am I telling you about mistakes? Because in your poker career you will make a lot of them, and you have to address and correct them. I am doing the same. I am also a human being. Not a scammer, who only posts crushing graphs, and says to buy coaching from him or just stop a challenge when it is not going well. I hate that type. I still consider myself as a role model of a simple family guy, who is trying to make a good effort in poker besides his job, putting in hard work and sharing this with others, without expensive coaching, CFP whatever groups.

About the challenge: We are currently on NL5 and grinding it hard. 21% (so net 21 buyins) of the challenge is completed on this level, but we were in even -6% before.

I hope to see you all in chat, check out the graph there, and I will post more often!

See you LIVE tonight:

Twitch - 3nduranc3