American in America – Page 29

_Anonymous_ · 2012-02-05T12:13:34Z

Black Friday was brutal for most American poker players. I've spent the last four years thinking deeply about my game and trying to stay up-to-date with the evolution of poker. My results from 2010 and 2011 were consistent - something I would attribute to working hard on the emotional part of my game which I still struggle with: Around 300K of this was at 100NL, 260K at 200NL, 125K at 50NL, 100K at 25NL, and 95K at 10NL. As you can see, I played the whole micro-SSNL spectrum and felt comfortable grinding up a bankroll as was necessary. Poker was fun and something I was good at, but there was a question that I couldn't get out of my head ever since I started playing: Why do some players win and other don't in the long run? It was not luck and pretty quickly I realized it was not intelligence. Don't get me wrong - both luck and intelligence are necessary, but they aren't the final answer. This is a question that drove me much more than the money involved. To try to answer this question, I repeatedly moved down to the lowest limits and tried to claw my way back up. I reflected on how differently the limits play and what I felt was necessary to succeed in going from 10NL to 200NL and then being able to play there at a high level. Writing about the ideas I had helped me organize my thoughts, but it led to more questions than answers. There are some ideas which I believe to be critical to understand which are hard to articulate. Once you start exploring them, you realize their complexity. For example: "When should you c-bet?" I also coached a lot of different players in that period - always looking for why they were not reaching their goals. This led me to focus on the mental and emotional parts of learning. A common thread among most of my students was a constant feeling of anxiety and paranoia when they played. It's almost like as soon as they sat down to play there was a metaphorical hurricane of emotion in their mind. I imagined it to be something like this: The ideal of course would be more like this: In some ways, Black Friday was a relief. Before it, I felt constant pressure to play all the time. I felt that when I wasn't playing, I was losing money. Of course there were plenty of times where I played quite a bit AND lost money. I was very stressful. After Black Friday, that stress of always needing to play was gone - I simply was no longer able to do it. It was nice for the first month or two to have a forced break, but then the full reality started sinking in and now it's bad. Not being able to play allowed me to really focus on my writing and start spending more time with coaching. Coaching is another thing I thought about quite a bit. I believe that most micro stakes players need to do lots of individual study before they even begin thinking about getting a coach. That's not to say that a typical 5NL player cannot benefit from hiring an expert coach (of course they can), but most of the time the price of the coach outweights the value of the experience from the session. That's a whole other topic though. It seems like you guys at PokerStrategy have a good system in place that supports beginning players though - with the hands being reviewed by pros and lots of material (articles and videos) for beginners to explore. Having such resources in one place is critical for growth. So why am I writing this blog? I want my writing to serve as a reflection tool and get feedback on the fundamental question I highlighted above: Why do some players win and other don't? What can you do to be in the first camp and not the second? There is no quick and easy answer. The quick and easy answers ("Play tight, aggressive, and don't tilt!") are incomplete although they often have enough truth behind them to sound good. Well - this first blog post went a little long, but hopefully you got a sense of both me as a person and what I'm hoping to do here :)

roopopper

Joined: 31.12.2010

Posts: 4,134

27.02.2013, 00:49 0

Originally posted by GvozdenTM

lol thanks for the support doctorkgb fish biggrin Verneers book is full of superficial stat crap that we can all figure out in about ten minutes of owning holdem manager, why are we so naive when it comes to poker? I can honestly say its about as usefull as a chocolate fireguard frown

Dude!
Ur so far out of line..
I gathered from ur blasphemous post that u read the book, so i urge u to send me the book (in some sort of PDF format or something) trough Pm so i can read it and stand up for Veerner and defend hes honour because im sure its probably good stuff.

Damn thing is hard to find online somehow..

you have to buy the hard copy of his book as there is no ebook as far as I know......also I might add its a great read :f_biggrin:

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_Anonymous_ Topic starter

02.03.2013, 21:29 0

Originally posted by roopopper
Verneer your posts got really boring now you promoted and sold your book to us all.............meh

I know - I've been pretty overwhelmed with grinding + real life. Haven't been blogging much here or on CardRunners. I'm sorry to hear that you didn't find the book useful - most of the reviews I've gotten have been very positive so I would love to hear what you disliked about it (other than my discussion of HEM stats).

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_Anonymous_ Topic starter

02.03.2013, 21:57 0

Right now I'm working on a comprehensive guide to 6-max NLHE. One of the things that people have said they like are groups of hand histories which center around a single concept (like 3-bet pots, facing a check-raise, etc).

I've grinded close to 200K hands of 6-max NLHE at 100NL on Stars/FTP this year (after essentially 18 months of no poker) and want to break down each position by situations. For example, early position I break down into four specific categories:

1. Facing a single opponent who called out of the blinds.
2. Facing a single opponent who called in position.
3. Facing a 3-bet.
4. Facing a multi-way, single-raised pot.

I'll be happy to include pieces of my writing here as I develop it and would love to get some feedback on what you like/dislike.

Here is a sample: of Part 2: https://leanpub.com/verneerNLHE2_free

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_Anonymous_ Topic starter

02.03.2013, 21:59 0

I could just copy/paste the discussion into the blog, that that way you can download a PDR/ePub/Kindle version and read it on the go If you like the format, I'll probably make a short version of each issue available here and then use this blog for discussing any HH's or theory which I discuss.

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roopopper

Joined: 31.12.2010

Posts: 4,134

03.03.2013, 00:37 0

loool all of a sudden you start posting again..

What's up?...new book to promote? :f_biggrin:

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roopopper

Joined: 31.12.2010

Posts: 4,134

03.03.2013, 01:01 0

Originally posted by verneer

Originally posted by roopopper
Verneer your posts got really boring now you promoted and sold your book to us all.............meh

I know - I've been pretty overwhelmed with grinding + real life. Haven't been blogging much here or on CardRunners. I'm sorry to hear that you didn't find the book useful - most of the reviews I've gotten have been very positive so I would love to hear what you disliked about it (other than my discussion of HEM stats).

Honestly Verneer...you think we are that stupid at ps ? your book was mediocre at best

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Verre

Joined: 24.02.2009

Posts: 708

03.03.2013, 05:23 0

Holding a pretty solid grudge are we Roo?

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_Anonymous_

03.03.2013, 12:03 0

Hi Verneer, I've seen you on NL100 zoom yesterday evening :). My nickname is a bit like my nickname here :P.

Hope to play some interesting hands vs you :f_cool:

Spoiler

You're TheXC right?

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roopopper

Joined: 31.12.2010

Posts: 4,134

03.03.2013, 14:20 0

Originally posted by Verre
Holding a pretty solid grudge are we Roo?

Now that you mention it yes I am :f_biggrin:

It seems to me that ps gave Verneer a real boost to help him promote his book on here but as soon as the rush was over, we hardly heard anything from him?
Why is he now posting about poker again all of a sudden....new book on its way maybe ?

This is how it looks to me and verneer i'm sorry if I have you wrong on this and I will be the first to apologise.

What makes this worse for me is that I recently posted a link about a book two very active members of ps are writing...and was told I could be banned for posting it.
Yet when Verneer started posting around this forum (at the time of his book going on sale) ps made him a diamond member!

Roo

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doctorkgb

Joined: 01.04.2009

Posts: 1,263

03.03.2013, 15:47 0

I must agree with roopopper, not because of grumpiness, but rather because of the facts. Verneer came here at PS at the moment when he needed his book to be promoted, and left after job was done.
Now, when new book is about to be published, he is back.

Verneer, it is possible that you've been "pretty overwhelmed with grinding+ real life", but higly unlikely that was the main reason.

One thing I don't agree with you Roo, is regarding the book. I think that it's content is pretty solid and well organised in a manner that allows typical BE grinder tips how to work on his game, find his mistakes and learn to avoid them. Hands are followed by nice and reasonable explanations. Content is sorted in a naturall way so one can find easily what looking for.
However, I find Adobe digital format really bad. It is difficult to use it if you like to highlite during first read. It is possible to do, but not like in normal .pdf.

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_Anonymous_ Topic starter

03.03.2013, 16:33 0

Originally posted by doctorkgb
I must agree with roopopper, not because of grumpiness, but rather because of the facts. Verneer came here at PS at the moment when he needed his book to be promoted, and left after job was done.
Now, when new book is about to be published, he is back.

Verneer, it is possible that you've been "pretty overwhelmed with grinding+ real life", but higly unlikely that was the main reason.

The main reason I left was because I simply had nothing to talk about poker-related and was generally unhappy. I get depressed and experienced that a lot in 2012.

Playing on Lock Poker sucks and I was getting back into graduate school. I write about that on November 27th, 2012. My motivation for poker-related things was at a very low point. Lock was frustrating and I wasn't enjoying graduate school which was depressing. I tend to deal with depression by removing myself - from PS, 2+2, and CardRunners. I went through a long stretch of not making any content for CR either.

I posted again when I moved to Canada and started getting some hands under my belt. I also tend not to post much when my results are poor and I'm running badly.

But yes - I feel like I actually have something poker-related to talk about now so I made some posts. I've now played around 180K hands since coming up to Canada and feel much better about poker and happier in general.

It's true that I started posting on PS when my book first came out. Since I was an American, I never came into contact with PS before. I kept posting and even helped out some PS members on my own time.

As far as the Diamond status, I had nothing to do it with it. Didn't ask for it and just needed something to where I could post pictures in the blog. While I appreciated it, I felt a little embarrassed having it with such a low post count.

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_Anonymous_ Topic starter

03.03.2013, 16:47 0

Originally posted by Farmarchist
Hi Verneer, I've seen you on NL100 zoom yesterday evening :). My nickname is a bit like my nickname here :P.

Hope to play some interesting hands vs you

Spoiler

You're TheXC right?

Yep - that's me. I've been looking to do some live sweats with 100NL zoom players. Let me know if that's something you would be interested in. Poker has been more frustrating than fun lately.

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acetbfish

Joined: 11.03.2011

Posts: 804

03.03.2013, 17:11 0

Hey verneer, what happened with the guy who was down 160 buyins at Nl25 and you coached him for free? He stopped updating his block after a while.

Also, nice to see you back

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_Anonymous_ Topic starter

03.03.2013, 17:15 0

Originally posted by acetbfish
Hey verneer, what happened with the guy who was down 160 buyins at Nl25 and you coached him for free? He stopped updating his block after a while.

Also, nice to see you back

Was just thinking about him the other day. We fell out of touch. I would like to know what he's been up to though ...

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_Anonymous_ Topic starter

03.03.2013, 21:55 0

In the Sunday Million. First tourney I've played in a few years. Huge field - over 45K people atm.

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w34z3l

Coach

Joined: 03.08.2009

Posts: 13,366

03.03.2013, 22:04 0

Nice thread, I heard some good stuff about you + I'm sure I watched some of your vids on CR, but it must have been a while ago.

w34z3l's Cash Game Coaching!
w34z3l's Death Star HUD

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_Anonymous_ Topic starter

03.03.2013, 23:23 0

Originally posted by w34z3l
Nice thread, I heard some good stuff about you + I'm sure I watched some of your vids on CR, but it must have been a while ago.

ty! I'm sure it was a while ago

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_Anonymous_ Topic starter

04.03.2013, 16:27 0

Pretty bad day yesterday at the tables. I'm going to switch from zoom to regular tables for the week and work on reads and table selection. That's where most of my edge should come from anyhow, right?

I think as easy it is to start/end sessions when playing zoom, the downsides are just too big for me atm.

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jbpatzer

Joined: 23.11.2009

Posts: 6,972

04.03.2013, 23:11 0

Originally posted by verneer
Pretty bad day yesterday at the tables. I'm going to switch from zoom to regular tables for the week and work on reads and table selection. That's where most of my edge should come from anyhow, right?

I think as easy it is to start/end sessions when playing zoom, the downsides are just too big for me atm.

Sounds like you need to read a book that's full of tips on fast fold games. I wonder whether anybody's writing one..... :f_cool:

My Blog: Midlife crisis? What Midlife Crisis?

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_Anonymous_ Topic starter

05.03.2013, 01:21 0

Originally posted by jbpatzerI think as easy it is to start/end sessions when playing zoom, the downsides are just too big for me atm.

Sounds like you need to read a book that's full of tips on fast fold games. I wonder whether anybody's writing one..... :f_cool:

Can I get a preview?

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