Foreign Legion Soldier justmillion

Great goals! GL, Hero!

Originally posted by UnknownF
Great goals! GL, Hero!

Thanks a lot, wish you the best of luck too! Will be checking out your blog soon

Just arrived from university. Today I finally matriculated for aeronautical engineering master. To be honest: I never thought I could make it when I started my studies. Now I am on my way to become a professional in "rocket-science" (although I "just" concentrate on civil aircraft).

OK but this is no real-life blog, this is all about poker. The real-life success just gave me a huge boost. I do have to finish some work for university and from 8pm on I will take the momentum to the tables. Here we go

I wasn´t able to finish my work at 8pm It took almost 2 more hours. I started my session at 10pm when my phone started to vibrate constantly. Right after answering all messages my girlfriend phoned me. As you can see - this is a clear lack of work ethic. For future sessions I should switch off anything that potentially could steal my focus from playing. The positive thing is: I played almost 555 hands without watching some kind of video or stuff.

This leads to a first couple of precise tasks for better work ethic:
- Plan sessions (Time, Food, Water/Tea/Champagne)
- Create an environment which supports my focus on ONE thing (poker)

Talking about my performance at the tables I noticed one important thing: The silence around me actually forces me to concentrate on poker more in depth. At first this feels really awkward and even a little disgusting, but after some time I feel more and more comfortable and interested. This awkward and somewhat disgusting feeling is connected with my believe to actually have no shot at winning vs other regs I think. Or in other words: It is a result of my fear to lose and feel pain. What´s the solution? Does anyone know this feeling? Jared Tendler advices the concept of "injecting logic" when tilt arises, but tbh it feels like the root of my problem is hidden deep inside of me. I will talk to my therapist the next days because it makes me really sick

Ok first technical topic I noticed having problems with is cbetting. I urgently have to work on this since it may potentially boost my winrate enormously and builds the framework for all gameplans.

Here are 2 hands with typical cbetting situations:

Hand1: Villain 42/14, no history, short sample

SB: $26.96
BB: $27.65
UTG: $19.19
MP: $22.25
Hero (CO): $25.60
BTN: $26.07

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is CO with Q K
2 folds, Hero raises to $0.75, BTN calls $0.75, 2 folds

Flop: ($1.85) 5 5 4 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($1.85) 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $1

BTNs range for flatting is very wide and cbetting makes no real sense in my opinion. Typical spot in which anything worse than K high folds and against his calling range I am either flipping or drawing to 3-6 outs. But what´s my plan on the turn? I feel like turning my hand face up and therefore get extremely exploitable. Against fish this is no real problem but thinking of regs..

Hand 2: Villain 15/9, no history, short sample

BB: $26.16
UTG: $47.02
CO: $22.50
Hero (BTN): $27.18
SB: $25.45

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BTN with 8 A
2 folds, Hero raises to $0.60, 1 fold, BB calls $0.35

Flop: ($1.30) 2 J J (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($1.30) 7 (2 players)
BB bets $0.82

Villain seemed like a typical grinder-nit. Just generating volume playing a standard game with quite unflexible ranges. Without further reads, I think ch/folding K high seems fine since villain´s range in this spot consists of AX and PPs. Sure some suited connectors and worse broadways are in as well. There is no way I can get called by worse and no way he folds better hands. At least I doubt he folds AX on JJ2 given the fact my range is perceived to be super wide on the button. On the turn my hand is face up again...

What´s a good strategy for those situations including plans for blank turns?

I hope to get some useful comments, hopefully this isn´t too tl;dr

See you soon and gl at the tables

from your hand comments it seems to me like you are thinking purely in a "bet for value" or "bet as bluff" mindset.
in Easy Game they mention a third cool reason - "capitalization of dead money".

so if you bet KsQ in 554ss and your opponent folds a worse hand that's great, he folds a decent equity share + some more subjective reasons like playability oop etc, same goes for A8 hand
if you get called you then you can still hit a pair or turn your hand into a bluff in favourable runouts etc

i would just bet both hands and "reevaluate turn".
as played imo KQ hand is just a fold, A8 is probably a fold too (specially since he is tight) or you can call T fold R, i guess you have some more reasonable hands to defend T+R with.

Originally posted by JustMillion
At first this feels really awkward and even a little disgusting, but after some time I feel more and more comfortable and interested.

It reminded me of one simple habit from the cource of beating procrastination, which they suggested to get used to. It's just about focus. The thing is that you set up a time (1 minute at start) and start doing something you planned (start session in your case) WITHOUT thinking about starting. You just go and do it. Then, when the time will pass, you need to see how you feel: if it is still done - then close table, you already tryed, but if you feel comfortable (most likely in your case) - then continue playing, the hardest thing is already behind.
The same is with another plans - if you decide to jog each morning - then go out start walking, only after that allow yourself to find excuses.

And about contbeting thing. Nothing uncommon - just try to play a bit less tables than usual and make the goal to find as many opportunities to contibet as you can #1 priority.

Hey everybody, thanks a lot for your comments!

@Yulia: I bookmarked and noted the proposed 7-day training from Schnitzelfisch and will start through asap. Thanks for your post

@Tomaloc / all:

One thing about the capitalization of dead money theme..I´ve read Easy Game Vol.1 too (but tbh it rather was a somewhat superficial study). However, is there some kind of useful shortcut you guys use to identify spots in which betting for capitalization of dead money is a really useful option? I feel like this reason alone is extremely hazardious because it might lead to a ton of expensive mistakes on later streets. Bet - re-evaluate Lines sound awkward and dangerous to me because they by nature contain a ton of uncertainty (that´s my pov though). Isn´t it about having a concrete plan for the hand? How can re-evaluating be part of a consistent game-plan?

Don´t get me wrong, I don´t want to doubt this concept at all - it is all about developing a deeper understanding.

One hour ago I´ve quit my part-time job. Until mid of January I will solely concentrate on my therapy, university and poker. Hopefully I can put in a decent amount of volume, improve and move up / establish myself back at NL50. This should enable me to choose my future part-time job with more flexibility.

I will come up with a concrete work-plan at the latest tomorrow in the afternoon. For today I will head back to my studies until 8pm, then participate at the bootcamp coaching and finally try to put in 1-2 hours of concentrated grinding

Stay tuned and good luck to you all!

Originally posted by JustMillion
Talking about my performance at the tables I noticed one important thing: The silence around me actually forces me to concentrate on poker more in depth. At first this feels really awkward and even a little disgusting, but after some time I feel more and more comfortable and interested. This awkward and somewhat disgusting feeling is connected with my believe to actually have no shot at winning vs other regs I think. Or in other words: It is a result of my fear to lose and feel pain. What´s the solution? Does anyone know this feeling? Jared Tendler advices the concept of "injecting logic" when tilt arises, but tbh it feels like the root of my problem is hidden deep inside of me. I will talk to my therapist the next days because it makes me really sick

Hey JustMillion!

I'll be one of the coaches focusing on Tilt, A-game, and Mindset issues. And i have a ton of experience both personally and helping clients dig into and work on issues like these. Let's see if we can start make some sense out of it logically first.

So let me just ask some questions and well see where we end up.
If you think about the issue a bit more deeply. What do you think is the cause of this? I just want to see what you think about it.

Take 10 minutes and just really think it through and see if you can give any more details or have any new insights.

Cheers!

Originally posted by pleno1
Great blog. Keep up the good work, did you finish my video btw? Probably should turn off before the last hand

Thanks a lot, I will do my very best Few seconds ago I finished watching your video and as I already said above I like your approaches and the logic reasoning. You always sound certain and formulate plans that intuitively make sense. This is one of the main reasons why I participate. The last hand is really funny, true entertainment. Hopefully you produce more videos like this in the future.

Originally posted by ErikStenqvist
Hey JustMillion!

I'll be one of the coaches focusing on Tilt, A-game, and Mindset issues. And i have a ton of experience both personally and helping clients dig into and work on issues like these. Let's see if we can start make some sense out of it logically first. smile

So let me just ask some questions and well see where we end up.
If you think about the issue a bit more deeply. What do you think is the cause of this? I just want to see what you think about it.

Take 10 minutes and just really think it through and see if you can give any more details or have any new insights.

Cheers!

Hi Erik,

thanks for reading my blog!

here is what usually goes through my mind when thinking about poker or starting a new session. At the first moment I am either really motivated to play or simply feel like I need to play in order to seize time effectively. Whatever my motivation comes from, the root is making money - but that´s just superficial. My therapist and I revealed, that money used to be kind of an exchange currency for feelings and emotions between my parents and me when I was a child. When getting an A in maths it either was standard (they never expected anything less than that) or it was worth a short smile and a gratulation. No one never told me about being proud of me or stuff like that. When report cards came I got money for my achievements. As you can see I´ve always been used to work for money and nothing else because money ever has meant acceptance. Therefore money in a way correlates with self-esteem. The moment I win money I feel confident - the moment I lose money I feel like a (complete) failure. I´d like to dig even deeper: Subconciously my ultimate goal is to achieve a state of unlimited freedom that grants me to not have to worry about anything anymore whatsoever. The only way to at least achieve a part of this somewhat unlimited freedom is to possess almost endless ressources = being rich as hell. Therefore anything that includes earning money is like the wild jungle for me - failures might be deadly.

Sure I fell in love with poker, I remember dreaming of it every night back in the day. I watched it every day on television or pokertube and I was thinking about the game constantly in every second. I learned really fast and had decent results until the first downswing hit me. My motivation was blown away immediately and I basically quitted after not getting back on track after a few days. To be honest it took me almost half a year of concentrated thinking to accept that online poker wasn´t rigged After that I decided to give it another shot and decided to just play a really solid and rather defensive TAG style. Back then I was able to get away with playing 15/13 and still won on a decent clip at 50nl. This was in early 2009. But just a few months after I established myself at 50nl, the games got tougher. (This was when Stars introduced 40-100bb tables. Shortly after that Italy and France were banned from .com) As I already mentioned above, I grow extremely confident when winning / being successful. Back then I thought "this is just what I deserve, nothing more nothing less" (which obviously is huge bullsh*** and I am ashamed in a way) As you might expect my arrogant attitude in a way prevented me from learning and developing my game. This was when the LAG-style got more and more popular. My closest poker buddies adored this style of play - for me it simply appeared to be way too difficult, likely resulting in too much uncertainties (tough spots) and therefore it did not comply with what my philosophy ever has been: Keeping things just as simple as possible and therefore easy to control and analyze. To make things short, playing LAG and super aggro was just "cool" and not profitable in my eyes. But somehow everyone was opening up their ranges and everyone started 3betting and did not give any credit to cbets. What used to be 5 players to play cards with (and win money) turned into 5 aggressive, dangerours enemies that simply sucked at poker (because they were playing too loose in my opinion). Poker became war in a way. Now guess what happens when some aggressive opponent acts aggro vs me and finally even manages to win a big pot...1 door, 1 monitor, 1 phone, couples of mice (luckily no living mice but computer mice ), countless glasses and much more got broken in the past. I´ve ever been a tilt monkey. In a way I really can´t accept to get beaten by another reg or aggressive opponent - not as long as I don´t have enough evidence to prove that he is a sustainable winner. What this comes down to is the illusion that those guys are extremely lucky which means that I am extremely unlucky. Thus my "efforts", skill and so on does not get rewarded. Their (in my opinion) stupid and uncontrolled aggressive style of play though gets rewaded. If things would go "normal" they lost every single hand right?

I know this is probably going to be way too tl;dr but there is one more important thing I urgently want to mention: Poker ever has meant some sort of backup plan for my life. Actually some kind of a cool dream job. And for almost 1,5 years I managed to earn enough money to get me through university. Compared to other students I did not have to work in a grocery store or something like that and for me this in a way meant freedom. Guess what: I did not concentrate on my studies anymore, got bad grades and finally nearly busted out. This was when I met my girlfriend 5 years ago. From the first day on she had been live on stage when the monkey started to go on tilt and sometimes it really scared her. Bad poker days made me sick and depressive. When my university-carreer nearly went down in 2010 I solely blamed poker. I changed from energetical engineering to aeronautical engineering and decided to start a "new" life. I got a job at a grocery store and poker became a still somewhat fascinating and addictive hobby I fear. Deep inside I believe that poker in any given moment has the ability to turn my life from success to failure within a heartbeat. It has enough power to destroy me and the only reason ar (yes, you´re right) those blind aggressive idiots that simply got lucky the majority of the time.

Ok I simply wrote down what came to my mind. This is what I think my problems stem from. Since I handed in my bachelor thesis I am way more confident about playing because poker now does not have the power to destroy my life entirely. I finally realized, that most regs are somewhat solid and much more they are human beings like me. I learned to respect them. Further two friends of mine made it past the 100k mark and I am neither less talented nor less intelligent. They simply sticked to a plan they had, they worked hard and finally they do succeed on any given day. That is why I finally accepted that success in poker first and foremost comes from hard work, and I am no prodigy kid or whatever that deserves to win without investing one single second.

But nonetheless there is some kind of fear left.

Now 1,5 hours went by, I hope you guys are still awake Thanks for reading and much more thanks in advance for commenting. Hopefully this was not too tl;dr and maybe even a little interesting.

I am really tired today but I definetly feel like putting in an hour of grinding now, I mean it is friday and friday is high-day right

Stay tuned

Hi JustMillion,

I'll be helping you out in this Boot Camp with topics like procrastination, motivation, laziness, productivity, focus while playing, putting in more volume/studying, creating habits that stick, etc.

Could you please tell me:

1) What is your #1 issue in those areas
2) What did you try so far to resolve it?
3) What worked and what didn't?

Thank you,

-Primoz

Hi Primoz,

nice you found your way into my blog.

I will do my best to make it as short and precise as possible :

Procrastination
- #1 Issue: Fear of losing
- What have I done to resolve it: Nothing really...

Motivation
- #1 Issue: I feel like wasting time when playing poker instead of working for university stuff
- What have I done to resolve it: Divide my day into 2 parts: university (till 8pm)- poker (from 8pm); Read blogs from successful grinders
- What worked: Promotions that granted me immediate rewards such as rush week at FTP
- What didn´t: Daily planning (so far).

Focus while playing
- #1 Issue: Either I can only play when some kind of movie / documentation / tv-series shows simultaneously or I get bored after 15-20min
- What have I done to resolve it: Nothing really
- What worked: Smoking wheed, certain intrinsic motivations I can´t really remember.
- What didnt work: Forcing myself to just focus on one thing

Putting in more volume
- #1 Issue: Fear of losing, lack of motivation
- What have I done to resolve it? Set volume goals, make plans
- What worked: Promotions such as rush week with immediate rewards
- What didnt work? Volume goals, plans

Putting in more time studying
- #1 Issue: Laziness, supeficial studying
- What have I done to resolve it? Create longterm plans, bought interesting content such as books, video subscriptions
- What worked: Being on a heater (back in the days, today I am even more lazy when running good), being in a huge down (in the present)
- What didn´t work? Basically nothing really worked

Creating habits
- #1 Issue: Deep inside me I don´t believe I can achieve anything greather than what I already have now
- What have I done to resolve it? Longterm plans, blogging, shortterm planning but tbh I wasn´t really 100% in
- What worked? Nothing really, my habits never really changed
- What didn´t work? Basically nothing really worked

Hey Justmillion,

So from my perspective it seems like you have a ton of theoretical knowledge, you have worked with a therapist, and also made progress. When one looks at their approach to poker for example it's really easy to get lost in all the details and all the examples and so on. Great that you took all this time to write this post, it's a great exercise in and of itself.

When you look back at what you wrote and also this latest reply to Primoz post. What do you feel needs to change in your overall approach to poker?
What would be the most important thing to address first?

One thing at a time, slow and steady works best here.

Cheers!

Hi Erik,

thanks for the kind words and the time you put in too read the book above

Originally posted by ErikStenqvist
So from my perspective it seems like you have a ton of theoretical knowledge, you have worked with a therapist, and also made progress.

Yes this could be true, I acquired a lot of theoretical knowledge over the past 6 years both in betting-skills and mental-"skills". The downside: I almost always failed to apply what I learned. In retrospect I think that I always tried to accomplish 10 missions at the same time. Further, I never had a realistic big goal I was fighting for. Thus I always got the impression that any attempt to change something actually seemed to be senseless. This hurts and demoralizes pretty badly.

The work with my therapist isn´t over yet

Originally posted by ErikStenqvist

When one looks at their approach to poker for example it's really easy to get lost in all the details and all the examples and so on.[/quote]For me, this is entirely true and a big obstacle referring to studying. For example deep inside me I can´t believe discussing a single hand has any practical value because this particular situation most likely is unique and extremely player dependent. Therefore I always look out for "one-size-fits-all-solutions".

Originally posted by ErikStenqvist
What do you feel needs to change in your overall approach to poker?
What would be the most important thing to address first?

Most importantly I feel like I need to accept the fact that studying and improving really enables me to have success at higher stakes. There is no "justmillion may not win" kind of mindset. Thinking of higher limits there always used to be some kind of imaginary "wall" between 50nl and 100nl. I remembered that I felt like having no shot against the regs on 100nl even if I play optimally (sounds paradoxic I know). I believed they would do no mistakes at all and sometimes I even found myself thinking that they can see my cards. Thinking about higher games such as 200nl+ I really can´t believe there are ways to actually be +EV...

I didn´t expect the bootcamp to become a mindset overhauling type thing. But that´s totally fine and probably even the most important area to work on.

1. Further, I never had a realistic big goal I was fighting for. Thus I always got the impression that any attempt to change something actually seemed to be senseless. This hurts and demoralizes pretty badly.

2.For me, this is entirely true and a big obstacle referring to studying. For example deep inside me I can´t believe discussing a single hand has any practical value because this particular situation most likely is unique and extremely player dependent. Therefore I always look out for "one-size-fits-all-solutions".

3.I didn´t expect the bootcamp to become a mindset overhauling type thing. But that´s totally fine and probably even the most important area to work on.

1. I would highly recommend the book "The War of Art" - Steven Pressfield.

2. Write down your top 3 poker strategy leaks on paper and pick the biggest one. Spend one week on plugging that leak, mark hands, study it with friends etc. Make that the goals for the next week. Discuss it here in the thread. If you don't know which they are then find out. Ask a coach or another player. Just get started

3. yeah working on mindset is awesome once you start to see the changes but you need to build the momentum of studying and improving first. You have to overcome the initial resistance and get the ball rolling and then you find your groove. not before.

So action-steps to get started:

• Get the book. Read it, it's short.
  
• Find your leaks, pick one. Don't focus on anything else until that leak is gone or almost gone.
  

i think this is a great way to start. I have had difficulty with procrastination very much like yours and i still have to fight it every day. it's always there, you just have to be ready for it every day!

What do you think?

Hi Erik,

thanks a lot for your the quick "first aid". Besides my therapist I actually never have had a person I really trusted that gave me a trustworthy step-by-step introduction to solving my problems. I´ve read the summary of the book you suggested and I will definetly order it within the next 12 hours.

Your take on point 3 reminded me of a piece of theoretical knowledge I already acquired years ago...a solid wall might quite easily stop a train that is starting to move but when the train reaches its maximum speed most solid walls will vanish like hot butter. It is so damn easy to forget or ignore important things that require considerable effort

Thanks a lot sir, I highly appreciate the time you put in for me

Originally posted by JustMillion
Hi Primoz,

nice you found your way into my blog.

I will do my best to make it as short and precise as possible :

Procrastination
- #1 Issue: Fear of losing
- What have I done to resolve it: Nothing really...

Motivation
- #1 Issue: I feel like wasting time when playing poker instead of working for university stuff
- What have I done to resolve it: Divide my day into 2 parts: university (till 8pm)- poker (from 8pm); Read blogs from successful grinders
- What worked: Promotions that granted me immediate rewards such as rush week at FTP
- What didn´t: Daily planning (so far).

Focus while playing
- #1 Issue: Either I can only play when some kind of movie / documentation / tv-series shows simultaneously or I get bored after 15-20min
- What have I done to resolve it: Nothing really
- What worked: Smoking wheed, certain intrinsic motivations I can´t really remember.
- What didnt work: Forcing myself to just focus on one thing

Putting in more volume
- #1 Issue: Fear of losing, lack of motivation
- What have I done to resolve it? Set volume goals, make plans
- What worked: Promotions such as rush week with immediate rewards
- What didnt work? Volume goals, plans

Putting in more time studying
- #1 Issue: Laziness, supeficial studying
- What have I done to resolve it? Create longterm plans, bought interesting content such as books, video subscriptions
- What worked: Being on a heater (back in the days, today I am even more lazy when running good), being in a huge down (in the present)
- What didn´t work? Basically nothing really worked

Creating habits
- #1 Issue: Deep inside me I don´t believe I can achieve anything greather than what I already have now
- What have I done to resolve it? Longterm plans, blogging, shortterm planning but tbh I wasn´t really 100% in
- What worked? Nothing really, my habits never really changed
- What didn´t work? Basically nothing really worked

Hi JustMillion,

Thank you for the very extensive reply. Let's just focus on one thing first:

I think there's a connection between some of the things (you can't play unless there's something fun, you don't study much...).

The issue for you might be that you aren't making poker grinding and studying exciting and fun enough for yourself.

Please take some time and brainstorm 3 ways in which you could make studying / grinding more fun for yourself .

Originally posted by JustMillion
Hi Erik,

thanks a lot for your the quick "first aid". Besides my therapist I actually never have had a person I really trusted that gave me a trustworthy step-by-step introduction to solving my problems. I´ve read the summary of the book you suggested and I will definetly order it within the next 12 hours.

Your take on point 3 reminded me of a piece of theoretical knowledge I already acquired years ago...a solid wall might quite easily stop a train that is starting to move but when the train reaches its maximum speed most solid walls will vanish like hot butter. It is so damn easy to forget or ignore important things that require considerable effort

Thanks a lot sir, I highly appreciate the time you put in for me

Thanks for the kind words

We all need a reminder from time to time when we get caught up in ourselves too much, or a wake up! Hehe.

Glad I could help. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask. You can just pm me if i miss any follow ups, would be awesome with some updates.

Cheers!