[Closed] Poker Brothers, We're BACK - A double tale: SSS + SH

hmmm...another blog Ill be watching...

Life is cheap here too, dollars are a nice incentive

04/03/2009

Greetings,

So this is what has been decided: I'll be posting my updates here on Tuesdays and my brother will post his on Sundays. Sorry if the update posts are still very simple now, I'll get the hang of it with time and start bringing more interesting stuff on.

Somehow I couldn't figure out how to add my graphic picture to this post, so for now I'll just write the details down.

Update from 01/03 to 03/03 (today)
As I have already mentioned, I've been on a downswing since Jan 26th, 23K hands, 20 stacks down. On the 27th of February I recovered 6 stacks in 400 hands and only played again on the 1st of March.
Here are the details of this week.

I can only hope this means the downswing is at an end. I see light at the end of the tunnel after all! 10 more stacks to recover before I'm breaking even in NL25 (after an entire month!)

Lessons learned:
I have learned a very simple lesson recently, pretty obvious, but very useful regarding table selection. Give preference to high "plr/flop %" rather than to high "avg pot"! After all it was not Poker Stars that was filled with tight players, but I was choosing the tables poorly. Lesson learned.

Goals of the Week:

- Play a minimum of 7.000 hands. OK
- Not to curse or say anything negative at bad-beats or big losses, however bad they may be. (this is much harder than it might seem).Failed once on Sunday (read next update for details).
- Read or re-read at least 3 articles (any topic and any level) from the strategy session, post comments here, if any. OK
- Visit both the English and the Portuguese community SSS Sample Hands Forum **daily** and comment as many hands as possible. OK
- Once to thoroughly review the hands played during the week - apart from regular quick reviews after sessions when there is time and disposition. OK

Goals of March (more will be added during the month)

- Play a minimum of 30.000 hands
- Achieve enough self control not to say **or think** anything negative **at all** anymore at bad-beats or big losses, but rather to think: "This is the nature of fortune, it lies within the bounds of possibility and outside my own power." (Keeping in mind that it is essential to always review the hand and check whether it was trully a bad beat or simply lack of competence.)

I'll also be posting a recommendation to someone else's blog every week.

Blog recommendation of this week:

Gerv's Galaxy: SSS NL100

His was the first blog I got to know and he is a very frequent poster and a hand judge in SSS. There are plenty of interesting hand samples in his blog and general tips, this one in particular is very useful to all poker players regarding PC's security.

That's it for today, I'll be off to bed now. Peace to all of you.

Hello everybody. Hope you've all had a nice week. I said I'd post this on Sundya, but PS was under maintenance and I couldn't do it. So I'm doing it today

Like I said in my first post, I started playing in Cake Poker this week. I had heard there were lots of fish there. That is indeed true, but I found many regulars as well. Even the regulars are kind of fishy though, which is good, as I can get good reads on them

I have a topic I'd like to speak about this week, as I have given a lot of thought about it: position and Multiple Barrels.

Poker just keeps throwing on my face the word POSITION. Its importance keeps growing in my mind. Playing IP and OOP just makes a huge difference. HUGE! Being OOP just puts you in shitty spots all the time. You're always in a weird spot when you hit the flop and your opp calls your c-bet. You never know where you stand. You have to keep betting for value and usually for protection. And your opp might be holding his monster, enjoying the sight of you hanging yourself. When you're the one IP, villain's strength is always pretty clear though. He can't rely on you for putting money in the pot, as he can't be sure whether or not you will take this initiative or check behind. By the turn maximum, he'll start giving clear signs of his strength. Of course this is just one small example of why position is important. One really has to be careful when playing OOP. I absolutely hate calling pre-flop. But I have started doing it a lot more often from the blinds, because I've been getting into shitty spots all the time. The raising range from the blinds has to be the tightest possible. I'm thinking something like [AQ, JJ+] for my game. I'd like to know other player's raising range from the blinds. So if you wanna post here what range you use, It'd be very interesing for us to make a comparison. Of course this range is for when there are limpers in the hand. An open raising range from the SB has got to be a lot wider, as it essentially becomes a HU match.

Anyway, this week was good. I've been trying some new stuff into my game, like adjusting my 4bet range, as it still is pretty tight. I've also been playing around with multiple barrels. I learnt that you should never multiple barrel OOP. I lost several dollars before really learning this though =P But oh well, the important thing is that I learnt it. I think you only truly learn things when you experience them, so I'm happy in seeing my dollars going to my opp, in order to aqcuire some wisdom.

Wisdom is something very different than knowledge. I've read pretty much all the BSS articles of PS. I have the knowledge, but not the wisdom. "Knowledge is knowing it, wisdom is doing it." I once heard a wise man say. In order to acquire wisdom, you often have to experience something on your own. Just reading it or hearing it doesn't suffice. Of course I already knew that multiple barreling OOP is usually not a good move. However I had to do it and experience the pain in my own BR in order to get the wisdom. I don't mean to say that whenever I read in an article: "Don't go broke with 72." I will have to go broke with 72 at least a couple of times before learning that I shouldn't do it. I don't have to experience everything. I don't have to eat shit to know it tastes shitty or to throw myself off a building to know that I don't fly. Does any of this make sense? Sometimes I feel like I can't express myself well enough

I questioned myself for a long time: "How much of my winnings should I withdraw on a monthly basis?" I finally got an answer to it. I developed a system. Before I describe it to you, let me say that I have named my bankroll. It is called Big Joe. So whenever I say Big Joe, I'm speaking about my Bankroll.

Here's how it works: I'll set a goal of hands I have to play every month. I have set 30k hands for march for example. When the month ends. The profit I made from my goal number of hands will go to Big Joe. Whatever profit exceeds my goal is mine to keep and I can do whatever I want with it, I can even give it to Big Joe if I want to. Example of March: My goal is 30k hands. Say I finish the month with 35k and a winrate of 5BB/100.
30k*5/100 = 1500BB for Big Joe. 5k*5BB/100 = 250BB for me. I think it's a nice system and I'm happy with it.

Now let me tell you how my week went:

I had been doing pretty well until Friday. I was 7BI up, but Friday brought me down a bit =/ Still positive though, so that's good.

The rakeback system in Cake Poker deducts the bonus I released from the total rake produced. So my rakeback is: (Rake - bonus released)*0,33.
Therefore, this week: (253 - 90)*0,33 = $53

I have a goal for next week: explore multiple barrels. I realised that sometimes I'm too afraid of it. But multiple barrels are so fucking profitable if you know the right time to do them. So I'm gonna try and learn the right times to do it =D

Now I'd like to share with you a goal that I have to reach until july. I'm gonna have some car expenses this semester. The total expenses are gonna amount to something like $800 - $1000. I wanna be able to pay that with poker money, following my withdraw systrem described above. That will give poker a lot of credit with my parents, as they still disbelieve in it. I think I'll be able to do it.

Enough of writing, I wrote too much I think. Sorry

Cheers to you all.
Good DISCIPLINE at the tables, not luck ♦

See you next sunday

Hi.. Felipe.. i didn't know u had a poker playing brother^^
good luck and looking forward to seeing you often..^

Yeah, he does, it's me! ♦

@Caltabiano:

1st: Luckily we SSSers don't have to worry half as much as you about position, we'll be AI before you can blink twice with 77+ in the blinds (no raises before obviously, we are aggressive but not stupid). Of course that keeps Variance as an intimate friend.

2nd: I absolutely love the Big Joe idea, and might feel compelled to name my own bankroll as well. How about "Fat Bob"? haha.

Pics of Brazilian Chicks please! ♥

Never éver knew you 2 guys were brothers =O!

Good luck & have fun

11/03/2009

Greetings,

Things were looking real good at the beginning of the week, I managed to recover 10 stacks and be back at break even point, but lost 16 stacks on the last 3 days and got back to negative. I've been negative for 45 days, 33K hand. Some times this is pretty hard to take. During the session on Sunday, the suckouts were so amazing that I have to write them down:

Still I finished that session only 3 BI down, so I was happy. But then the losses continued for the next 2 days (another 12 BI down) and my psychological got affected. But I put myself together - and I thank my brother for his moral and technical support - and here I am, posting the results and keeping the work going.

Lessons learned:

Poker has lately been a psychological battle for me. It's hard to keep up motivation when you can't taste success for so long. Still, I must look at the positive side of this. I'm being forced to review my game a lot, and that's very important because there are still many leaks to be fixed. Besides, a poker player who isn't able to bear losses will never be successful, so I'll consider this a test of strengthand keep it up.
Lesson learned.

Goals for next Week:

- Play a minimum of 7.000 hands.
- Read/watch or re-read at least 3 articles/videos (any topic and any level) from the strategy session, post comments here, if any.
- Watch Ingol's Intermediate coaching on Sunday.
- Not to curse or say anything negative at bad-beats or big losses, however bad they may be. (this is much harder than it might seem)
- Visit both the English and the Portuguese community SSS Sample Hands Forum **daily** and comment as many hands as possible.
- Review at least all losing hands in every session.

Goals of March (more will be added during the month)

- Play a minimum of 30.000 hands
- Achieve enough self control not to say **or think** anything negative **at all** anymore at bad-beats or big losses, but rather to think: "This is the nature of fortune, it lies within the bounds of possibility and outside my own power." (Keeping in mind that it is essential to always review the hand and check whether it was trully a bad beat or simply lack of competence.)

Blog recommendation of this week:

I had chosen a blog with a great story to post here today, but it vanished! The owner has this other blog Rhinoneil: SSS NL100). But his first blog had a very interesting story about his experience in televised poker tournments, I wonder what happend to it... Anyway, I'll come up witha nother suggestion next week.

That's it for today. Peace to all of you.

Originally posted by Gerv
Pics of Brazilian Chicks please! ♥

Here: http://www.terra.com.br/thegirl/ . It's in portuguese but I think you can find your way through it. It's safe and it isn't porn, there are beautiful women there.

Have fun

Luckily we BSSers don't have to worry SO MUCH about variance. ♦ But just keep it up brother, Fortune knows what it does. Keep revising your game and just make sure you're playing right. Time shall make everything right. Or rather, everything IS already right, eh?
Like Ingol once said: "Poker is a hard way to easy money." So just maintain your strength and don't let Fortune's tests take anything out of you

14/03/2009

Hello everyone,

Thanks again for the moral support, brother :), and yeah it's been a very difficult way to easy money, haha.

So, I will post another update today, sooner than was planned, because today marks an end to my first NL25 experience. After nearly 50 days of losses I have reached the peak of it, record losses: -$150 (30BI) in 6 days, 5K hands. My NL 25 bankroll is officially busted. Now $60 are left, 30BI for NL10.

And let me say that I have reviewed every single one of my sessions hand by hand, I have evaluated and posted hands daily in the forum, I have read and re-read many articles and seen videos. Of course there were leaks in my game, but they were few and accounted for max 5% of my losses. The great majority of hands are standard play, no possible confusion to it, and the badbeats are amazing. During the worst sessions I would write them down on a notebook, to help keep my mind focused and aware that I was playing correctly. Here were the worst AI badbeats in today's session (some are not so amazing, but when you get them all together, it becomes quite incredible):

AA lost to 57s - Straight
KK lost to AQ - TP
AJ lost to A7 - pair 7
AQ lost to KT - 2pair
AA lost to 99 - set
AK lost to QT - TP
QQ lost to KT - Straight

Today was the second day this week that AA KK were -EV.

So here is the graph for my NL25 experience:

35.000 hands
-$157 (-630bb), -1,89bb/100h

The psychological experience during all this has been quite interesting. It is amazing how one's perspective can change during such moments and it becomes clear why setting a stop-loss limit for sessions is of utmost importance.

Right now I feel at little at loss about everything. It seems so much effort of study and so many hours of work have been in vain. Truth is, at the moment, my faith is gone. But I think pessimistic attitude is completely useless and so is complaining about fate. Therefore I will keep a positive mind-set as best I can. If the unbelievable has happened, then it was a mistake not to believe it could happen. I will take a good night of sleep and make new plans with a fresh mind tomorrow.

Peace to all of you and keep your focus on work well done rather than on reward.

yeaaahhh sick blog keep dem updates coming

my boy felipe in da house!! GL brazilian brothers... can't wait to see u crushing highstakes soon just like the hac a di dang brothers

potential baby potential

Whats up worrrd. Thanks for the support. We'll surely meet up on the high stakes table one day

Hope everybody has had a nice week. Tomorrow the classes restart in my university. I'm a math student... or rather, I was a math student. I have decided to quit it this semester. Studying math requires a lot of dedication, which I'm not willing to invest right now. I wanna play poker and study music. "Do few things, but do them well."

Maybe I'll take up math again some day.

Of course my parents aren't happy with my decision to quit university and spend a lot of time playing poker. I wanna get some credit from them and therefore I'm seeting some goals for this semester. I'm kind of short on money and I'm gonna have quite a few expenses, especially with my car. I'm gonna pay these expenses with poker money, following the withdrawing system I mentioned in my previous post: I have to play a minimum number of hands per month just to feed Big Joe. The profit made from what I play that exceeds this minimum is mine and I can withdraw it. My current monthly minimum is 30k. So I'm gonna try to play some extra for the next couple of months to make some money. I don't usually play weekends, I only play on week days, but I'll try playing a few hands on the weekends from now on, starting today I'm pretty confident I'll be able to come up with the money to pay for these expenses that I'm having. In the end of every month, I'll post the current standing of my expenses.

Now here's how this week went.

The week was good. Not great, but good, financially speaking. I'm messing up with light 4-bets, multiple barrels and all that. The importance of position keeps growing in my mind and I feel that I am being able to understand everything better and better and this makes me feel good. I started never checking my daily winnings and instead I only check my weekly overall after my last session. This is really great, as it allows me to not be afected by micro-term variance. I advise this to everybody.

Here's a hand for your amusement:

http://cakepoker.com/en/HandHistory/Default.aspx?Hand=xczEx8TFxcPEzcTExcXGx4jNwcDEw80%3d

Peace everybody. Keep it real

Hey there Dandycal,

It really unfortunate to hear about your downswing on Stars at the moment as i am in the same position playing on Full Tilt at the moment - i am current $90 down over 10,000 hands and like you can only put a small percentage of that down to my own errors as i review my hands after nearly every session.

The majority of my losses have come from all in situations and just having the villian suck out on me. I too feel a little lost and faithless too by it all right now as well.

Keep your head up mate and hopefully we will both see the light at the end of the tunnel very soon.

Regards,
-Steve

@Caltabiano: You ought to reach high stakes soon so you can impress our parents AND support me during SSS' crazy variance ♦
I'm actually really glad you are moving up so well cause it's motivating for me. I wonder if we could deal witht he pressure of 2 simultaneous downswings..

Originally posted by TheBu11d0g
Hey there Dandycal,

It really unfortunate to hear about your downswing on Stars at the moment as i am in the same position playing on Full Tilt at the moment - i am current $90 down over 10,000 hands and like you can only put a small percentage of that down to my own errors as i review my hands after nearly every session.

The majority of my losses have come from all in situations and just having the villian suck out on me. I too feel a little lost and faithless too by it all right now as well.

Keep your head up mate and hopefully we will both see the light at the end of the tunnel very soon.

Regards,
-Steve

Hi Bulldog,

Thanks for the support. Yeah, this crazy variance sometimes is unbelievable, I'm nearly becoming supertitious with this thing.
I took a break from Poker Stars to "relax" and started working on the 2nd starting capital in Mansion, but that is also going terribly, -$40, though Mansion is an exception because it has been soooo tight. I read in your blog that you were playing Mansion some time ago and moved to FTP, I think you did well. Ipoker network, for the little I could see is too tight for SSS, I've also heard other players saying the same.

Anyway, I found this thread about downswings which was very helpful to me, to give me a notion of what other people have already experienced: Your biggest downswing playing SSS, check it out, it's worth it!

Keep up your study and peace! Luck will visit us sometime soon.

Oh my god! I decided to watch my brother play for a few minutes... and Jesus Christ... He can't stop having bad beats. I must've watched him for about 10mins or so. He played 4 hands and lost all of them.

Fisrt hand was a 66:34 situation. He held 77 vs Q3s. AI pre flop. The flop brought a 3. Turn blank, but obviously the river was another 3.

Second hand was a 80:20. AA vs TT. The flop just brought a T straight out.

Third hand was 3 way. I don't quite remember it, but my brother held a pocket pair and had something like 45% equity, meaning he was favourite in a 3 way pot. This one is very acceptable though, since he'll lose over half the time.

Fourth hand was KK vs JJ. Guess what the river was?

Anyway... Fortune is being really rough on him =/ But I'm sure you'll get through it brother Keep it up, eh?

Cheers

hey guys, nice blog. i play sss as well and i think we're all in the same boat. its also been really rough for me.
had 2 downswings in the recent weeks and i was also feeling really dejected about it all.
doing the same as you guys.
1. took a break
2. reread the articles
3. watched a few videos
4. went over all my hands which i lost
5. posted some hands in forum
6. tried to analyze other ppls hands

now recovering slowly. things will get better soon. luck supposedly evens out...
keep grinding!

Hey Purplefizz,

Thanks! I remember you from the Sample hands forum. Good to hear you are recovering, and I'll keep grinding, definitely!

18/03/2009 - The Downswing continues

Originally posted by caltabiano
Oh my god! I decided to watch my brother play for a few minutes... and Jesus Christ... He can't stop having bad beats. I must've watched him for about 10mins or so. He played 4 hands and lost all of them.

Fisrt hand was a 66:34 situation. He held 77 vs Q3s. AI pre flop. The flop brought a 3. Turn blank, but obviously the river was another 3.

Second hand was a 80:20. AA vs TT. The flop just brought a T straight out.

Third hand was 3 way. I don't quite remember it, but my brother held a pocket pair and had something like 45% equity, meaning he was favourite in a 3 way pot. This one is very acceptable though, since he'll lose over half the time.

Fourth hand was KK vs JJ. Guess what the river was?

Anyway... Fortune is being really rough on him =/ But I'm sure you'll get through it brother Keep it up, eh?

Cheers

Greetings,

Well, by my brother's post you can have an idea of how my week has been. My first NL10 session in Poker stars was very positive. But when I decide to work on releasing the 2nd SC on Mansion things didn't go so well. I have $8 left from the $50 + $20 (bonus I had already released. So I'm 30 Bi down on MAnsion. Added to the 30BI I lost in Pokerstars that is a total of 60BI negative. But that's only going to make my career more glorious.

After busting my Bankroll for NL25 on Stars and reviewing my plans I took a few decisions:
1 - I don't need a break from poker just because of this downswin, if I plan on becoming a pro I really need to get used to it.
2 - I still have about $30 + $90 bonus (now this is actually $10 + $80)left on Mansion from the 2nd capital. I shall try to release that on NL10 until April or bust it trying.
3 - Work with the TAF programme for extra $.
4 - Move down to NL10 in Poker Stars with the $60 that are left and grind my way back to NL25.
5 - Use the 5000 Poker Stars points to purchase a $50 bonus.
6 - Play the Silver Status VIP tourney (100 points BI) every week for more $.

The important thing is to take advantage of this situation as much as I can, and this is what I'll do.

I'm not going to distress you with my graphics or the like, so let's move on to the goals:

Goals of the Week:

Work
- Play a minimum of 7.000 hands SSS NL10 on either Stars or Mansion
- Try to release 2nd SC on Mansion, or die trying.
- Play saturday's Silverstar VIP tourney.
- Work on TAF daily

Study
- Visit SSS Sample Hands Forum **daily** and comment as many hands as possible.
- Review every single session of SSS.

Psychology
- Keep a positive and good humoured mind during badbeats.

Goals of March:

- Play a minimum of 30.000 hands SSS
- Play all weekly SilverStar VIP tourneys in Poker Stars
- Get as many people I can into my TAF programme.

Blog recommendation of this week: From the ruins of a previous expendenture

Here is a story of someone who also had a tough start with SSS and then switched to Sit'n Go. It seems now he is pretty well off. But that is not my case, I insist on SSS.

Image of the week:

Man, this one is beautiful.

Ok, so villain who was NOT favourite manages to hit trips on flop, then outdoes hims self with Queens full of Kings on turn and then outdoes himself once more with Kings full of Queens on river. I think Fortune is really trying to make a point here.

That's it guys. Good luck to everyone and peace!

On Fortune, Justice , Necessity and Karma.

Everything in life is subjected to Fortune, to numbers, to probability. From the weather conditions that might influence a crop or an ice-cream business to the particular events that lead a man to finding his loved one, for instance, all is subjected to favorable or unfavorable conditions. Of course man is not a complete slave to the circumstances, for he has the power to adapt himself and his course of action to better suit the environment and the circumstances, and he can also work to understand the ways of Fortune so as to develop better plans of action for whatever his objective is.

Fortune hasn’t got freedom to do whatever she pleases in this world, for she must answer to a higher principle which is Justice. Now, Fortune may cause a coin to flip tales 20 times in a row, but she will eventually have to bring those coin-flips closer to a 50-50 situation, because it is Just and Justice demands it.

Where does Karma come in this game? In very simple language, one could say that Karma is the active principle of Justice in the world, her Guardian so to speak. He must keep Justice’s principles within the cause-effect relationship of men’s actions. If Justice is Fortune’s Mother, then Karma would be her older brother, who watches over her and makes sure his mother’s will is carried out. Western science also understands these principles, though their approach is usually a much materialistic one: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction force.”- Isaac Newton’s Third Law.

Ancient traditions of wisdom from the East often stress the value of analogy: “As it is above, so is below”. Analogy is a great key for men to be able to understand the great laws of the universe. Plato, in the voice of Socrates, made extensive use of this mode of thinking in his philosophical dialogues. So why not comparing the materialistic approach to action and reaction and the more “spiritual” Karmic notion under the light of analogy?

- When punching the wall, an equal force will be generated in opposite direction. Or rather, you cannot punch the wall without being “punched back” by the wall.

- When a swimmer pushes the water with his hands and feet, an equal force will be generated in an opposite direction, thus pushing the swimmer forward. Otherwise, how could he swim at all?

- If this is so in the rough realm of matter, why wouldn’t it be so in the subtler realm of numbers and probabilities, and even of words and emotions? Will not rough and aggressive words that are spoken against someone cause an equal opposing force to be generated? By inflicting suffering or sadness upon another being, will not a man generate an equal opposing force which will strike him in return somehow at some point in time?

Fine, but what accounts for AAs having lost 80% of the times to TT+ when they are 80% favourite?

Let’s bring another ancient goddess to this, Necessity. One can only suppose that Necessity works with Karma under the principles of Justice. And Justice may say that AA must beat TT+ 80% of the times, but when will Necessity absolutely demand that Fortune evens the probabilities out? You might get a perfect 50-50 number after flipping a coin just twice, but who or what says that it can’t take 1000 coin-flips for that to get even near the Just 50-50.

So, the true motive for a temporary unequal distribution of equity will surely escape our limited comprehension, but the motive is there nonetheless. How can a man conceive of “random” circumstances or mere “chance” after thinking deeply about all this? Nothing is devoid of Purpose. Man is surrounded by the most intricate works of Nature, each one, from the tiniest imaginable thing to the largest existing being, is fulfilling its purpose and work. Where are not intelligible principles being manifested? If a man looks with attention, he will find it everywhere.

Now, there are 3 types of man: those who believe there are no Gods; those who believe there are Gods but that they care nothing about mankind; and those who believe that every step we take is followed closely by the Gods. But regardless of the type of man one might be, it is quite unreasonable to curse fate, to be angry at Fortune. Much more reasonable – and more profitable in every way – is for him to seek to understand the purpose and cause of what has come to be, as far as possible (for man’s mind can see but a little and understand even less of the great engine of life) and most of all to adapt himself as best he can to the circumstances that were given him.

So, more than luck, I wish Determination in work and Peace to all of you.