2026 From Online Cash Games to Live

:gl::gl:

good luck!

Thanks to you two. I take it and will need it.

I was wondering where I should start studying. The two requirement, in that order, first useful second long term motivation. Small min cashes very quickly at the beginning of the journey are helpful to keep motivation. Makes burning money much slower. On the opposite stands playing three hours and then lose at the bubble right after late reg closes. Which is very bad for the motivation. Tournaments have stages. Most of them when will end by being small stack followed by a push phase. If staying alive long enough. This can be artificially generated by late reg. By my reasoning I should start to learn what to do with 20bb and then continue with having even less chips.

Finally back from my long trip. One halt in between was in one of the two most expensive cities in the world. Looks really nice and the streets are much wider compared to other old cities. The building are only four maybe ocassionally five stories high. Which enforces the feeling of having graciouse space.

And this is what you get for exactly $11.

It's already over an hour later than I aimed for. The reason for that is, I already have broken my own guide line from the first post. Played around with a open source solver. I have no useful insights besides that it takes too much time. I have to stick to the material I have.

Speaking of material. Spend 120 minutes to get a broad overview of that. To be able to make notes and highlights much easier. At least now I have a markdown file to build up on. Tracking time for this BRC is something I will try to keep up doing.

My first study goal:

Will convert this into digital flashcards. The difficult part will be actually practise these flashcards.

Little bit earlier but New Year isn't an ordinary day.

Maybe every other week a closer look at the bankroll.

Played 3 tournaments:
Entry Fee: 19.40
Bounty: 10.00
Rake: 3.60

Cash: 9.70
Bounty rewards: 25.00
=> 1201.70
Played 1:46

Continued studying the range above. How to continue if after me is some action.

Biggest blunder was a AT hand. Felt self-commited after continuing with top pair. Shouldn't have entered at all.

Three tables was great to play. Listened some music. After there was one tournament left I started watching youtube. I guess I will continue to try to enter tournaments between 1 hour and 30 minutes left of late reg. Seems a reasonable stack left to play without push/fold to start.

The poker software really looks clean and neat. Did improve a lot since the last time I played.

Between now and next session I will watch one course video.

Played on 3/6 days. The three days I didn't play were continous which is bad.
Did play once without blogging.

Registered in a tournament I would have picked when I fully read which kind it was.

Did have a look at anki (90 minutes send) and decided I would need to write something myself to study. I don't want to grade myself. Works for words but not this.

Begin to repeat the mistakes from the past. Want to work on tools instead of the product. Even Franklin sharpened his axe only four four hours. Or would have because it all was hypothetical.

Made myself a rule in whichn order I study a new range.

Summary:
6 Tournaments
- $31.30
$1168.70
1 week

And now it's take off time!

Will convert this into digital flashcards. The difficult part will be actually practise these flashcards.

But how? I decided to use my spredsheet software to generate these cards.

First sheet, first simple formula to not type in all by hand.

=IF((COLUMN()) > (ROW());$A2&B$1&"s";IF((COLUMN()) < (ROW());B$1&$A2&"o";B$1&$A2))

Then next sheet for the strategy, sprinkle a little bit of conditional formatting to visualize it for myself.
A simple modulo and integer division to get each field.

=INDIRECT(ADDRESS(QUOTIENT(S2;13)+2;MOD(S2;13)+2))

Add column()-2 for the id and lookup() for the back site.

Depending on your locale setting replace ; with a ,.

Now I have a good template to make pretty quickly a table that can be used to create flash cards.

A little bit more garnish and I would be able to study multiple tables in one deck.
I would say a successful proof of concept.

Dara O'Kearney in his article You are not studying heads-up enough writes that because payouts are skewed top heavy the impact of studying HU is much bigger than on low tier cashes. In addition to that the comperative advantage you get is even bigger.

He also writes How often you study heads-up is difficult to answer, but you certainly should study it often, even if it is only a small amount of your overall study.

As long as your retrival rate is good you can increase times between active recalls slowly but steady.

Unfortunately I planned the opposite. Study what I was facing. I did copy for each hand I played my stacksize in bb. Made two lists. One containing all hands the other only the last hand. Both sorted by stacksize. Then grouped and for the first list I got following:

My conclusion is that I now should study playing with 40BB. Which makes me happy because I began at 30BB. Granted, small sample size but still I claim I won enough 30BB pots to end up with a 40BB stack.

I want to stick to the challenge. But after revamping the reward program cash games, at least for me, might look interessting again. Should I try keeping this pure? Track them? Or cash in and out accordently as it never happend and keep silent? Mention them bur no results?

Jared Tendler: Why New Years resolutions fail

His reasoning is the Inchworm Concept: you must consistently focus on backend improvement. Or improve when you at your worst.

Mine right now is the moving the goalpost. Situations and circumstances change. Don't get trapped by the sunk const fallacy!

The plan in the first two weeks didn't work. At least I did a lot of physical exercise.
The plan in the third week didn't work and I didn't do any physical activity. Let's blame the weather. Still a less healthy week.
I need to change the order of my blocks again. Less sport than the first two weeks and more than last week.
On my old phone I have poker apps with a lifetime subscription maybe I should migrate them. I said I won't signup on any sites. But maybe I should freeload and use the daily free offers. Because it's not always posible to play a full tournament a session it might be beneficial to use the available partial time block to study.

Summary:
1 Tournament
- $11.00
$1157.70

Didn't fully arrive in 2024 yet. 7th of January was a Sunday and therefore Monday 22nd neither the first nor third Monday of the Week...
After pulling an all-nighter I finally tried to use the study app. Too many spots to count. Yes I literally wasn't able to because of my tiredness wasn't able to keep my eyes open and never was sure if I skipped a row after blinking. I picked BU vs BB 20bb. Something I learnt from PLO we always pick BU vs BB to study. Rarely something with a SB involved. Got 8 questions in before all my focus had to go towards not missing my stop or else I would arrived in fare-dodging-country. Last hand was a blunder. Now I need to get from the phone to my desktop the study histories and convert them into something like this:

APP: SRP BU vs BB 20BB

BU: 20 bb
BB (Hero): 20 bb

Pre-Flop: (1.5 bb) Hero is BB with 5♣:T♦:
(...) BU raises to 2 bb, Hero calls 1 bb

Flop: (5.5 bb) 9♣:T♣:A♦: (2 players)

Hero? [C] [B 35% pot] [B 70% pot]

BU bets 3.68 bb (67% pot)

Hero? [F] [Call] [Shove]

Turn: (12.86 bb) 3♥: (2 players)

Hero? [C] [B 30% pot] [Shove 111% pot]

BU shoves 14.32 bb (111% pot)

Hero? [F] [C]

The solution favours CALL by 2/3 while FOLD1/3.

Shouldn't be too dificult task... Unfortunately I can't change 3♥ in the app only look up the solution for other starting hands in this situation. Maybe I need to add this function myself as well! For that I would need the ranges from the app which I need to convert myself too. Let's forget that quickly.

Practised eight hands. That's better than the day before. I wanted to track the hours spend but it turned out that this is more difficult than anticipated. Requires yet another tool. Phone tracks how long I spend in the app which should be enough. 42 minutes this week so far. Which consist 90% of exploring the app again and copying the screen to post here.

Do androids dream of electric sheeps or canned emotions would be the title of this blog post if I would do a headline. Because I continued practising with the app. You can choose types of flops and I picked the well-loved straight flop.

What I didn't expect was, that the emotional response felt real and I hated the situation. Of course this turn!A little bit thin-skinned at the moment.

Simulation 30bb BB against BU
Hero is big blind A♥:6♠:
Flop 2♣:3♦:A♦:
Turn 8♦:
River 4♠:

And yes, of course in the simulation, villain had the K♦ suited. Calling down and folding to the push on the river. Feels such a weak line. Even when I won't be able to adapt that right away at least I learn that my opponent does know what he does.

vegan burger is cheaper, healthier and more tasty ♦

Originally posted by taavi1337
vegan burger is cheaper, healthier and more tasty

1) Can I live with taavi1337s Statement?
• Probably most vegan burger are more healthy than that burger on the picture
• Less processed beef burgers with fresh igredients are healthier than a vegan burger at the joint where the picture was taken

2) Mental Toll of Poker
• Most of us can agree that there is a big mental toll to pay playing poker
• Diet has an important roll on our hormone levels therefore pointing out a healthier option was valid objection
• cortision level (want to lower), dietary choice only: vegetables, whole grains, low fat high proteins
• serotonin (want to boost), dietary choice only: food rich in tryptophan which is easy to find in animal products

Couple of days ago I made the "flow chart" above. Still troubles to get into drill and start the circle. Right now I'm lying to myself. If only I would start playing cash games - at least then I would get in a few more minutes of real hands. Three more weeks I stay strong and then I might add cash games for practise. Maybe on the same site or making a firewall on another site.

• The drill right now would be
• training on the phone
• screenshot the results
• copy the screenshot to the cloud
• extract infos from screenshot on my pc
• evaluate

Little bit sad that making screenshot and copy it is hard to automate.

Summary:
3 Tournaments
+ $18.60
$1176.30

PROJECT 180°
the miss puzzle piece to SMART

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound

T was missing but set now. Within the next 180 days. Just took a load off my shoulders and now it takes another six months till I will find myself at the same situation as before. Time to improve everything and become more resilient as never before.

Today LemOn36 & Barry Carter released Satellite strategy (for cash game players). The goal for the next five days is to watch it and summarize segements of ten minutes.

Project 180°
Step 1: Improve my resilience by rebuilding my caffeine tolerance. Right now I can drink energy drinks like water (again). So I could drink actual water instead, maybe an occasioal tea, and save some bucks at the same time. Energy drinks and suger free soft drinks add up to between 600 and 1400 within 180 days. Do not misinterpret. It's not becoming abstinent. It's becoming receptive again for a time I will need a lot of caffeine.

task

• LemOn36 & Barry Carter Satellite strategy (for cash game players) - summarize segements of ten minutes (#3454238)

Very youtube-like opening. LemOn36 already posted some time stamps in the comments. It's focused on KKPoker satellites.
But what did I learn or got reminded in the first ten minutes?

• There are cases it's correct fold aces preflop. Not that big of a shocker, we can come up all with example very easily.
• You should register as late as possible. Because then you have less players to beat which gives you boost in the icm.
• The exeption is, when there is a winner-takes-all. Then you want to play as early as possible because there is no icm and plays just like a cash game.
• We should pay for the addon. It's a little bit like the prisoner's dilemma. The best would be no player opts to buy. But if no one does I should. And when someone else does I almost have to.
• target stack gets lower with the increase of number prizes of the equal value. Because stack sizes are not equally distributed and there are several big stacks.
• watch other table, an obvious one
• fold equity is more important in satellites

What does that mean for me?
If I want to win a tournament then I should register early and play it like a cash game.
If I want to min cash then late reg is the way to go.

I know min cashes are not enough to cover the buyins but it's always good to have a gameplan.

Small min cashes very quickly at the beginning of the journey are helpful to keep motivation. (...) This can be artificially generated by late reg.

I did come to the right conclusion last December without any simulations!

Project 180°
Step 2: Going outsite more often. At leasr two times a day I need to be outside for a longer period.

Good morning!

Day 1, got interrupted. Day 2, didn't care. Day 3, felt guilty. Day 4 to today, forgot and was distracted.

I still haven't the right mindset to play tournament. They don't run as frequent as I wish and therefore I really have to plan when to play. Need to quit what I do at that time and not add a quarter hour to "finish" an idea I have right now. Write down a short note and then play.

Nothing really exciting happend. Late reg, mostly push/fold. Should play looser. Would have two maybe three benefits.

• collect more often blinds
• have more chips when I do get a double up
• not the shortest stack and the chance to win bounties

Should put opponent on wider ranges to be able to play looser myself postflop.

Summary:
1 Tournament
+ $2.29
$1178.59

off topic preamble
Two weeks have passed since that workload got off my shoulders and I mostly spend time to calm down. (Re)watched the first few seasons of old tv show. Now one of the cast would get replaced by another character so for me there is a natural break to stop. I also did some coding exercises because I still want to create few projects. Everything is easy till you actually need to apply it. Also started a new diet. The goal is to eat conscious and mindful again. Not particular in a spiritual or lent way. To build again a good habit to draw from when back in stress situation. Still haven't solved the food prep riddle for a long poker session. Once I even was outside for six hours without headphones or anything. Was nice, I guess that is was what therapy looks like. But you are not here for my excuses and validation seeking statements you are here for my ridiculous poker plans.

Poker Plans till Next Reporting Date
I will play not tracked cash games. To get in a few repetitions instead of signing up at a training plan.
Play >=10 tournaments. To force myself to plan ahead.
Boring stuff... Because they a necessary as well

I packed my bag and in it I put
[ ] 10 minutes of watching a poker video

Project 180°
Step 3: Eat on a schedule
Step 4: wear head phones less often