[Closed] Dendra's Mind Thoughtulations

hahaha... ♦ thanks dendra. we are honored.

btw tnx for explaining the NL50 comment. curious cat is satisfied...

Thanks for your reply mate, I was playing at Mansion and I decided to jump off the Ipoker ship for now. For three reasons, firstly I wanted Rakeback, secondly, their NL4 traffic is tiny and thirdly, I think they have a lot of problems to iron out in their software yet. It seems even more strange to me that different skins are at different points in the update.

I think I will play there in future, when I reach NL10, I have even still left $100 or so there. But once I reach $200 there I will move it to Bet365 to take advantage of a great bonus with PS, also get 3SP per raked $1 instead of 2 at Mansion. But for now I am getting 0 SP, because FT isn't tracked, but i need the rakeback to get my bankroll boosted I think.

Excellent - started writing a post and fell asleep, so errrm - let's see where I stopped and more importantly, wrap it up with the second half of post I failed to write last night >>>>>

Nothing tastes like Nutella after a zero-profit session, mmm. Anyway, today I played a quick session in a tired state and the results were obvious: -$180. It took two missed big draws, 1 half-stack failed bluff, 1 full stack failed bluff and 1 misread AA hand.

The AA hand was interesting, sorta...I raise 3BB, guy calls, flop T82, I bet 2/3 pot, he calls, turn 6, I bet 2/3 pot, he calls, river 9...Now I don't put him on a straight, for some reason I thought he had KK and was worried I might have AA, or he might have a strong top pair - also JJ,QQ is possible.

So I bet again, guy shoves for like few BB more, which I obviously call and he shows me 97...Now since we were both deep stacked, I had no idea how the hell he managed to call me with that hand but okay, life goes on, I should've check-folded river but I decided losing half a stack more on that hand was justified by the high possibility of him not having a straight there (sets and 2pairs were totally out of my mind for his hand range).

The only reason I bet river 2/3 pot again was because I thought he had KK and wouldnt bet it but also wouldnt fold, so I wanted to make him suffer with a strong overpair - and obviously my plan backfired because it had one tiny flaw - him not having KK.

I had an interesting day today (damn it rhymes) and mostly because of two interesting chit chats. I'll write about the first chat here and the second one I'll put as a separate chapter of this post and I'll explain why in a word.

Chat with Friend1 led to an interesting conclusion which entirely went to his credit, as it was his idea so I'm writing it here just because it was interesting So basically, he sais there are two kinds of tilt - when you're winning and when you're losing.

Now this is what we came up with - let's say there is a balanced line in your game, if you go +/- from that line, you deviate from your balanced play. So if you're losing, you might make donkey calls, think less about hands, etc. And when you're winning, you might play more hands, chase draws since "you're running so good so why not chase this draw as well", etc.

The thing is - you deviate that way from your usual play. Just because others caught a card doesnt mean you should donk-play the same hand(s) they did. Accordingly, just because you're running good, you shouldn't play wider range of cards because you're thinking with so much luck tonight, you'll probably hit a hand with those cards, too.

So just think about it, next time you're winning, worry about alterations in your play as well. Try to keep your decisions balanced at all time. I know I failed in doing so the other day. I was winning money so fast and so easy I honestly thought PokerStars was pulling a prank on me and in any moment some clown will pop up on screen and say "Gotcha! This was all just a dream!". Since I was winning so many pots, I didn't care if I lose a stack with TPTK vs some guy, cuz it didn't ruin my hot run - stupid me

Mind Thoughtulations - Chapter 5: Setting boundaries based on skill

The second chat was with Friend2 who is currently playing on Full Tilt Poker (he started with $22-24, got up to $53-56 and atm sits at $41-ish so I'm happy with his progress and I'm guessing he is happy with himself too as he is finally moving up and feels good about his play :P)

Somewhere during our sweat session, I came to this conclusion: NL BSS is tough, it puts you in lots of tricky spots. That is why you start the strategy with basic hands, go broke only with nuts and rest of the times simply raise+cbet to win the pot, if you meet aggression - you fold! Is this the correct play? No, there will be many times a player will try to take away a pot from you because the flop came 9 high and he knows you're probably on AJ-AQ-AK. However, on NL2 most players don't do tricks on you and more importantly, your skill level is still not high enough to figure out what to do, should you call and steal the pot on turn, should you re-raise right there?

There are several things you need to pay attention to and recognize before you can expand your play and start bluffing people more than with a simple cbet. (below I will write about these things, all scenarios are based on you being the preflop aggressor)

- What did the flop bring?

Scenario 1: Paired flop JJ2, 886 and such

Ok, in this scenario players can often lead into you oop or raise you in position. What are they trying to do? They try to represent flopped trip jacks or in the case of T high, 9 high and such flops, they try to push you off your AJ/AQ/AK. In the case of paired Jacks flop, if you raise them, you'll either get them to fold or go crazy because they'll think - omg I flopped trip jacks and this guy has AA, let's go all-in right now!!!! - and naturally you fold at that point and lose "minimum" for a whole lot of information. You folded the hand, but you learned that they don't slowplay flopped trips - very important and useful thing to know

Ok on the 8 high flop, the problem is, some players will go broke with overpairs like TT, JJ, so it's a lot harder to re-bluff people on such boards as they have a wider range of hands they will go broke with. Luckily, board is not the only thing giving you information (as I'll write here all the things I can think of that help you define a player's hand range)

Another interesting note - let's say flop comes KK2. In this case, players will often believe their pocket pairs like 66-99 are good but they will more often call you down than raise such cards - however, if they raise on such a flop, don't exclude these smaller pocket pairs which are stronger than that smallest card on the board - aka if flop is KK7, now he must have 88-99-TT and such, etc. etc. (obviously some people will play smaller pairs on such flops as well, but that's why you got notes on people to write down such things :P)

Scenario 2: T high flop or smaller

Flop comes Ten high, 9 high, 8 high, etc. You bet and the guy raises you - now what does this mean? He puts you on AJ/AQ/AK and wants to take the pot down right there. It is very unlikely that you've caught a pair on such a low cards board if you raised preflop. If the guy just calls your raise to his bet/or raise, you have to put him on a medium pair or top pair, if turn comes A, K,Q, possibly J too - fire strong again, problem is - now he knows that even if you were bluffing him on flop, now you could've easily caught a better pair.

It is more likely he will fold if A or K comes than Q or J (my rough guess from personal experience). Also, take into consideration that such a card could've actually helped him and not you. So if he calls - shut it down on the river, he must be on two pair, like Q7 on 732Q board. Second problem is - some people are just too blind to let go any pair, so you'll pretty much bluff your money into a wall which won't budge - the good thing is, you'll be able to take a note on that player and know in the future not to bluff him and instead bet him strong and take away his money whenever he hits a pair he can't let go.

- I know you. Do you know me?

Believe it or not, other players can also take notice of how you play. If you raise+cbet often, they will start calling you and bet into you on flop, or bluff-raise you, or float and steal the pot on turn/river scare card. You can either run away from these guys, take a seat in position on them, dodge pots with them or..........you can play poker with them.

What to do with such guys? There are 2 things. First, they might bluff you on flop like 6 high and such. If you bet, villain raises - you go re-raise him. Now I usually try to make it between 2x his raise to 3x, to save some money since usually 3x his raise is quite costly. If he shoves - fold. Only if you know he is an ultimate donkey shoving AJ air on flop, you might wanna call him with AK high and such.

Second and bigger problem are "the floating people". Basically, these guys call you down disregarding the board texture and the moment you check - they bluff you! What to do against these guys? The answer is simple - fire, fire, fire. You will need three barrels to take these guys down. I don't suggest doing this often, maybe once or twice max in a session. You just don't want to get in such a messy situation more than once in a single 2-3h session or whatever

- Table Dynamics

When you play a session, there is a certain pace for each table. I can't really explain but let's just say the speed of reaction of players, position in which they like to limp, where they like to raise, etc., when do they call your limps, when do they call your raises - there are lots of preflop variations to this.

Now sometimes, you'll notice a difference in this pace, a guy will call you and it will just feel different. For example, yesterday, I raised preflop UTG and a guy limped in MP, for some reason I instantly knew - "Ok this guy will try to take the pot away from me on the flop." - the flop came xxx, I bet, he raises, I 3bet him - he folds. It was instant reaction from me, I just knew he was up to something.

As I said above, it's hard for me to explain it because I haven't analysed it yet or given it much thought. But as I said, try to keep an eye on table dynamics and you'll start noticing moves that are "out of the box", weird lines people usually don't take and it means they're up to something

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Back to the topic of setting the boundaries based on your skills. Let's say you have J9 and flop top pair Jacks. Do you want to lead into a 3way pot here? When I started playing poker, I set myself a certain borderline I stick to. Let's say if I have a pair with Ten kicker or better - I will bet it. If I have a smaller kicker, I'll check and fold to any aggression.

Is this the correct play? No, it obviously isn't. But given my skill level, it caused me more trouble to actually play such marginal hands than to "underplay" them. What I want to say here is that you should play the hands you feel comfortable with and the hands that will mostly win you pots+you'll know better where you are at throughout the hand.

You simply want to avoid tricky spots in which you won't know what to do. Keep your game simple and gradually expand it as your skills improve. You don't need to play "perfect" poker to beat NL2, nor NL5 etc. etc. You can have lots of these "leaks" in your play but they won't bring as much damage to your profit as it would if you played "all hands you should have played".

So start letting go hands and you'll start playing them naturally, they'll just start coming into your hand range. Nobody sais that's best choice, hell, who sais TAG is even correct way to play poker? Maybe LAG is 10 times superior but it takes 10 times more brains to play it properly, so you simply stick to TAG...Hope this was sorta useful/clear - not sure if I put it nicely so that it's all understandable and meaningful

Anyway, I have to go now, so see you later folks

Now that I see my post (not that it's shocking to me, it's just that I wish to apologize for it), I must say I am completely shocked at how long my post turned out to be so I have to apologize for that.

I have been absent for a while, so you might as well count this post as all the posts that I didn't write during the past "few" weeks or whatever If you are masochists - enjoy reading it. If you are vengeful passing by readers looking for brief and interesting blogs - please move on as I don't wish to temper with your vengeance
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Yep, seems I'm back, the return of the donkey - not sure how many times I've "returned" by now, but it seems I'm like a boomerang - every time I come back to this blog, I just fly away back to the outer universe of my life, far away from the poker tables.

So anyway - I'll use this post to summarize latest happenings and what not.

Hit and run to win 3 bases

I played baseball once, a fun game, especially running around the bases and doing home runs Obviously, this has nothing to do with my poker story, but the title of this chapter had "bases" in it, so I figured throwing in a random irrelevant story for the sake of doing what I do best - talking nonsense and making long forum posts.

Back to the topic: I had some rough sessions on Titan Poker, dropped down to NL10 with like super small bankroll of $100 or something. I decided to stop my losing streak by playing small sessions on PokerStars, PartyPoker and Titan Poker - the plan was to hit and run, make a modest winning session and move to the next platform.

I ran into three problems:

Story 1: The invisible wall of Titan Poker

After dropping down from NL20 to NL10, I wanted to work my way up slowly, but it seemed that Titan Poker gods just didn't think I should have more than $120-130 on my bankroll there. No matter how much I played, it just felt like I was stuck in the mud, not moving anywhere.

Eventually, I realized I needed money so I cashed it all out, used some bonuses and cashed out those as well.

It was kind of liberating - playing on Titan Poker was like being a slave to bonuses and titan points, my game plan was not fully on earning money. I had a huge comfort zone of knowing I can earn points with relative ease and every time I lost a pot - I didn't feel like it was a pure loss because I knew I also gained points and that is probably one of the worst attitudes a poker player can have.

I also noticed that back on NL20 I wasn't losing money just because of bad luck or some horrible bluffs, I was "leaking" money in small pots, losing tons of small battles - as most of my focus was switched to big hands in which I'd go up (or down) by €15-20+, and yes - "if it weren't for luck", I could play profitably by focusing entirely on big pots and putting my money in with the best hand, but if you don't have a cushion for your losses, your bluffs fail and you start running into 2-4 outers, you'll find yourself in trouble.

I needed to change my game but I lacked the determination and focus for it, so I dropped the whole Titan Poker thing and packed my bags.

Story 2: Alice in PartyPoker-land

On PartyPoker, I did the forbidden thing - I played with my salary (I find it easier to receive cash there and transfer to visa than to receive cash in a bank, it's just too much of a hassle).

Anyway...that money I generally don't touch, however, for some reason I wanted to try out some action on PartyPoker - and yep, of all the poker rooms, I found PartyPoker to be the weirdest and worst place of all.

Titan Poker is a nit fest when it comes to activity at the tables, but sure it's fine. Full Tilt Poker is very simplistic, people play their cards, literally, hand by hand, end of story. PokerStars is the most balanced, it has nits, donks, everything. But PartyPoker is just yuck, disgustingly tight players and their bets are so weird.

I felt completely lost there, like every situation in which I'd usually bet on stars or ftp, on PartyPoker it produced weird reactions from players. Whenever I'd check, they'd do some weird huge overbets at weird spots, it just didn't suit me.

So I decided to stop playing NL BSS (tried some nl10 then 4 and eventually 2, which bored me to death with its nitty players), and I and went for some HU SnGs. A tilt if you wish to call it that way.

I soon came to realize variance there is not fun and it seems that I just dislike, very much dislike playing with "fake money" - aka chips. If I'd have to pick between HU and FR SnGs, I'd obviously go for HU as I think skill counts more there but in general, I'll dodge anything involving chips for the most of my poker "career" - including tournaments. (I find tournaments to be too dependent on luck, real poker is played in cash games, everything else is like playing lottery - think even Laak said something along those lines :))

On the topic of HU, If I ever switch to it, it'll definitely be cash game, not SnG format. Anyway, back to the story - overall, my adventure into HU SnGs didn't end up well obviously and I decided to draw the line and just stop playing, cash out and return the lost money by grinding on PokerStars.

Story 3: Time to go shoot for the PokerStars

I returned to playing on PokerStars with what was left of my bankroll after staking people. With roughly $90 on my account, I grinded up to $150 or something and realized I was feeling comfortable playing NL10 with that bankroll on Titan Poker, so why not try the same on PokerStars?

It felt good, I quickly went into berserk mode, playing as many tables as possible, earlier during this stage I had to have some tables opened with less than full buy-in, but I wanted to have maximum amount of tables to get as many premium hands as possible and win money with them

- in general, I dislike doing this because BSS is more efficient the larger your stack is and not to forget, if people see you aren't rebuying to max buy-in on tables, they will figure out you're playing on a stretched bankroll/nearly broke and could do some weird plays you just don't want to have to waste your time adapting to.

Back to the story...I'm not sure at how much money I ended up, probably $230+. I cashed out most of it because I needed to pay my rent and what not, and decided to just stop playing poker for now - because I needed to clear my head and didn't feel like playing until I do that (my NL10 sessions were swingy, often running +/- back and forth, ending up with a small profit).

- Shooting for the PokerStars, Part 2

After a while, I realized I needed to wake up and start doing something. With my chaotic mind, I pretty much reduced my work time to zero and with no more steady and reliable income from work, I gave a look at my PokerStars icon on desktop and it gave me a smile.

Was/is my head clear? No. Will I play poker? I have to.

I figured it's doable "going pro" by starting with NL2 24tables. This way I don't need to use my head and I can earn enough money to cover rent and minimum food requirements. It has been roughly a week since I've "officially gone pro", obviously I didn't tell it to my parents - well I did tell my dad that I will have to throw in extra poker hours to earn money along with the usual working hours.

It was kind of a scary thought, what if I fail? There is no room for error, my parents have their own expenses at the moment and I need to pay my rent regularly, so if I fail, it's like the failure of failures, no redemption, no second run, no nothing, game over - back to hometown and living with my parents.

It's not that hard when you come to think of it, you just need to focus and play, play, play. I figured if I have problems, I'll just play 10+ hours per day and grind that money till my fingers bleed. Fortunately, things have been going well and despite this fact, I decided to play a few longer sessions (one was 6h straight or something).

Why to play longer sessions? To improve my stamina. I was sloooow, I couldn't follow action on all the tables - 1st I thought my mouse was slow, I checked its speed and saw it was on 100% (death adder, a killer mouse, no1 personally and I just loooove speed). Back when I started multitabling, that speed slider was on 60%, so yeah - that part obviously wasn't the issue

I would time out whenever I needed to focus more on some hands, I constantly had like minimum time to react and I really don't know - did PokerStars reduce the time for actions on speed tables?

When I played before, I could play maximum tables, write notes and fight with some random donkeys on 1 or 2 tables, debating over hands and steaming off in chat. Now, I didn't have time to even write notes, it took tremendous effort to write every time I wanted to.

- burn donkey, burn

The situation has improved now, think yesterday I had my first flaming session - flaming a player/starting a flaming war on a table and playing normally in general on all the tables.

I like doing that sometimes when a guy sucks out on me, I just start throwing all sorts of insults so that the guy thinks I'm on a tilt and thinks I'll make a move on him - so he actually tilts his game and I adjust to it, while he thinks he is one step ahead of me and will catch me doing some dumb stuff in following hands because "I'm steaming".

Is this a nice thing to do? No, but is it nice to chase poor players around the tables to take away their money? No. Poker is not a nice game and for example, I don't mind Ziigmund acting the way he does in online poker.

It's a very sensitive subject, saying what's right or wrong thing to do, "poker etiquette" and such. I might as well dedicate a single post to it some day, but not today

- evolution of notes

Anyway, I still have problems writing down notes, sometimes I just don't have time to do it - so I've started to cut down the length of my notes, I'll give you a brief description of some of the changes I've made:

basically my notes always start with a hand (like KTs), followed by actions the players do on all streets or the ones I find important to mention and so on.

Old note:
K3s 3bets preflop, check-double raises flop, bet-raises turn, bet-raises river

New note:
K3s 3b pf, c/dr flop, b/r t+r

So you can say I am making progress in development of my notes. I think I'll actually dedicate one post just to notes in near future. - if I remember correctly, I talked earlier in this blog about the important things you should pay attention to and what you should take note of, well I guess it's time to update that

- Clear mind, happy bankroll

I am currently playing poker in a funny way. I'd say 80% of my brain is used to think about life, ask questions, look for answers, define truth and search for it, find inner peace, attach purpose to emptiness, god knows how many things I have in my head while playing a poker session.

Only thing I use my head for which is related to poker is quite simple - What cards do I hold, what is my position, how much do I bet, what cards are on the board, how much money does the other guy have.

Questions such as - how big of a bet will he call, what hand does he have, is he trying to make a move on me, etc. - all these things I just do subconsciously (lol, can't believe I spelt this word correctly from the first try, I was sure I'd mess up some letter, funny thing I didn't )

I just somehow go with the flow, I feel what happens around me and act accordingly. I very rarely need to wake up from this state anyway, because what do you need to do on micro stakes? Not like there is any meta game going on, you just value bet till they pay you off.

Things of importance on NL2

Ok, while playing NL2 again, I've compared my older self with the new self and saw some of the mistakes I made earlier, so I'll write here about few of the ones I considered more important (in translation: the ones I actually remember thinking about :P)

Rule 1: If a player makes a huge bet - FOLD. I dislike using capital letters but in this case, I simply must. Never ever think they are playing with you, making a huge bluff or whatever. They always, always have a super strong made hand.

Players here just don't feel comfortable putting a lot of money into bluffs, so if they bet - don't think "hey, this smells funny, something isn't right here, lemme call him and see why he made this weird overbet".

I made that dumb call too often when I started on NL2, because overthinking the hand leads to your own demise. Don't do it, just keep it simple and fold.

Rule 2: If a player has a strong made hand like a set - don't be afraid to whack that bet button and if you're let's say on the river, pot is $0.70 and you've both got $4 left - shove it all in, he will call you even if it was the end of the world, he simply can't let go of his hand.

So it is very important that you recognize these strong hands, whenever you sense your opponent holds a hand he won't let go - abuse it and make him suffer

Rule 3: Don't feel sad if players fold to your bets - that doesn't mean you should bet less (like reduce the size of continuation bets, etc.), just keep on value betting your hands strong and such, eventually, the other guy will hit a hand he will pay you off with.

If they have a hand, they'll call, if not, they won't - it's simple as that. What made me feel good about this mindset was an interview with Eli Elezra or someone (can be found on FTP Academy). I'm not sure if I mentioned it earlier in my blog here, but basically he hit quads against Sammy Farha and decided to bet from the flop - following the principle I mentioned above, if he wants, Farha will call, if not - oh well.

In most cases slowplaying will be a waste of time - how often will your opponent hit a pair on later streets? How many times will he suck out on you? Basically, you should slowplay only sometimes, it can also depend on your opponents (i.e. if you know they like to bluff you and such).

Adios for the night

Ok, I'm tired as hell, I'll cross my fingers that this text resembles something and actually was readable + has some sort of use in it (even though I guess it's mostly just me rambling nonsense). Anyway, thank you, whoever you are, if you took time to read this - I know I wouldn't, I'm that lazy I barely find the energy to read what I just said

Which reminds me - I'm still stubborn, I'm still not using stats and don't intend to change that, I'm still lazy to watch PS.com videos, read articles, read hand discussions and so on.

However, I did quickly browse through "Move it up to the sky" or something blog, jumping through the first and last page Figured checking out Part 2 of the video that is related to that blog and yeah...I need something goofy to make things interesting (can't remember having any serious sweat session in poker, I just always have to make fun of something and talk rubbish), TwiceT is awesome and kind of goofy, but still - I just couldn't watch that video and learn something from it, my ego is just too big to allow me to learn from others now, not now that I have my own view on my game and the things I should improve.

Only time I would come and ask for help or look for it is if I have no other option in my visibility range. However, I did watch Hasenbraten's Introductory videos, related to unibet and CakePoker. I'm thinking of giving CakePoker a try (no stats platform ). The videos were kind of stretched and slow, but he has a strange voice which kinda keeps my ears awake so it suits me well during a poker session.

In general, I like to open a HSP/PAD episode and play it in the background during my poker sessions, listening to elezra/durrr/etc. talking in the background has a soothing effect on me, especially Elezra seems to always be calm while playing so I kinda feed on that calmness in a way, I guess

Hmm and yeah, I watched ge5sterne's video today while playing as well. He actually talked about some useful stuff but I obviously half-listened to it so I have no idea what he was talking about, it just sounded good and listening to good stuff makes me play good

So yeah, I'm probably the weirdest guy when it comes to extracting value from all the great videos around here It just depends on my mood, I obviously play 1/100000 times with ps.com videos in the background as I'm too lazy to browse for some video, 100% of the time I play with HSP/PAD/etc. in the background if there are new episodes (another guy I found soothing to listen to is luckexpress10, he is also probably my favourite poker player in terms of mindset and approach to poker in general and such).

Other times I play while listening to tupac or some other artist in the background - latest song I had rolling during my sessions was "The morning after dark", just loved the Timbaland's voice in that song and Soshy has a damn silky voice - in one part of the song she sais her name, "Soshy" and it just sounds damn sexy and filled with pride, just sweet - music to my ears, food for my soul, energy for my poker sessions.

Music is my drug in a way, I've been feeding on its beauty for quite a while now. Anyway, back to the topic - so whenever I have a poker show to watch, I like to play it in the background during my poker sessions. If I don't have anything to watch, I play in silence and just think about life to fill the silence gap in my room, third option is me playing focused with winamp playing in the background

Btw I am a very liberal guy when it comes to music, I like to give everyone a chance and I've given a chance to everything from rap to punk rock. Some things I avoid - such as jazz, it's just killing me for some reason, utterly boring Maybe when I grow older I'll grow fond of it

Ok, now I'm seriously out for the night, adios and buenos noces

P.S. Damn I'm such a lier - I forgot to mention one thing. I'll try to come up with a new title for this blog, something general, I've moved up to NL10 with my current bankroll now but I doubt I'll be moving any further up in the next 1 or 2 months, so nothing interesting in there - I already thought about modifying my title to something general earlier but yeah, I can be lazy at times

In general, my mindset has changed a bit now that I need to make a steady income via poker so we'll see what title I come up with, I obviously still have hunger for higher limits and I intend to give NL50 another shot at some point during this summer but we'll see about that. I have so many things I wish to work on and improve but for that, I need to build up my bankroll and separate a part of cash which I can "sacrifice" for knowledge

A small update to whomever it may concern and/or for the sake of keeping track of my poker adventure.

Basically, I simply had to write something in my blog the other day for one reason - to survive its "curse". Whenever I write an update, I somehow simply have to have a horrible day, one way or another

So anyway, as you might've guessed, I did have a horrible day, well actually it was night time. With a devastating loss, my blog-curse has officially been survived, so I can move on to living a normal poker life without the gods of blogs punishing me for writing essays and killing your eyes with 'em.

Errrm, so yeah, in general, I decided to just grind NL2 as action on NL5-10 is so nitty you can bang your head against the wall to amuse yourself. Table selection and playing at optimal times during the day would obviously be a wise choice - but yeah, that would take some effort and I'd also need to adjust my notes so that I can easily see how many nits are at the tables.

I am crazy enough to stick a note on every player's forehead, but the amount of thinking needed on NL2 kinda gets my vote since I don't see myself focusing on poker while playing poker any time soon (and with my current bankroll I don't have that much slack for tricky spots on NL10, so I'd need to focus and follow action more carefully if I wanted to play there, at least at the moment)

Anyway, speaking of NL2 - I wanted to try something different, so I went for 6-max tables. Playing pretty much any 2 cards from any position, which was kinda fun I played 9 tables because I wanted to play in as many pots as I want to, keep track of players more intensely, etc.

This is also something that I feel will help me improve my performance in live cash game because if I ever find suckers to play a cash game, it won't be 9-10 player but probably 5-6 max. Most of the time home games are SnG but yeah, hope some day a cash game will arise I might pay a visit to some casino but we'll see, for now my only interest in live games is pure fun of it and nothing more - ok profit doesn't hurt.

Speaking of profit - I watched Vhallee ze Noob play an NL10 session on FTP. Amazingly he was pretty much doing well - if you don't count some weird moves, for example:

Vali holds JJ, flop comes J44, flush draw. He bets and sais - I bet now to protect against draws. And I'm like wtf dude, protecting your full house against a flush draw, impressive skillz!!!

Ok, jokes aside - he didn't see he flopped a full house

Besides the weird "protection bet", I think Daniel Negreanu would crucify him for his hatred towards suited connectors - I guess Romanian players just have something against coloured cards, they prefer to hold faces, jacks, kings, rarely queens (go figure why :P).

Either way, mr. vali got me interested into Holdem Manager. Primary reason why I disliked it was because I didn't find graph display option in trial version and now I saw it has cool graph and lots of neat stuff - so I tossed the coin and said, Okay Dendra, it's time to download a poker software.

I'm currently in the process of importing hands (why else would I be here writing a blog update at this hour :P) and can't wait to see the monstrosity of
my graph(s) for the past few months.

I think it's one of the things I missed a lot in my sessions, because it would motivate me to see those green lines, I could also check my stats and some more details which would help me adjust my game and yeah, seems I'm finally back to that business.

Doubt I'll be updating this blog with graphs for the time being, it feels kinda dumb to switch down to NL2-related stuff such as that - it's like "climbing a hill, taking a picture at the top and then doing it again and taking another picture" - like, okay, we get it, you climbed the hill, no need to repeat the story all over again

If for god knows what reason someone shows interest, I can throw in a monthly graph. As for hands, it's as dumb as the graphs, nothing ingenious to talk about. I know there are loads of players just starting to play poker, so it could prove useful to pluck out some situations and analyse them - sorta make this blog an NL2 shrine for the time being.

I'll see how this whole poker thing in general goes, I intend to stick to grinding NL2 for the life expenses, store extra money to deposit somewhere else and attack higher stakes/or try out NL10 250BB tables on stars, since those I liked a lot. Maybe even work on my SH play and move up the limits in that direction - I have no idea, tomorrow I may decide to start playing SnGs and you'll go w00t, you're one messed up dude when it comes to making plans and sticking to them - but that's me, I start with plan A, end up with Z-31.

-on the topic of SnGs - I played one $3 SnG on PartyPoker - it was payback time, I wanted to win one of those just to get my revenge for all the lost money in the very first days of my poker "career" I finished 2nd, not exactly first, but still with a smile on my face

Three $6 HU SnGs followed up, 2-1 score in those. I still hate them, since they are so much luck dependent - I watched an SnG HU video by Trailer or someone - and yeah, he was like: "OK, I tried to play well, this works on $500 sngs, but here on these stakes people are too dumb to play poker with them so I just wait for cards and hope to get lucky" - doh, talk about poker

Ok enough of mindless spamming. Btw with Holdem Manager installed, I'll also consider configuring HUD - just for the basic info such as vpip, pfr, 3b, fold to 3bet, went to showdown and such, nothing spectacular

P.S. Decided to change the blog's title. Nothing special but oh well, think I'll stick to this one for this summer at least ♦ When I find something to "thoughtulate" about, I'll continue that "series", probably soon

i'm pretty sure you will be the only pro in NL2 crazy man.

i am almost afraid for you when u talk about it. srsly i think u need to improve some mindset issues.

Originally posted by DendraIt's a very sensitive subject, saying what's right or wrong thing to do, "poker etiquette" and such. I might as well dedicate a single post to it some day, but not today

Etiquette is a seemingly undiscussed subject when it comes to poker. I used to play bridge, a game not unlike poker at all. In bridge if you did stuff like tank before making a decision, you could get penalised extremely heavily. I remember once doing it by accident - I was thinking about what to discard when actually i could have followed suit - this caused the player to my right to play differently, and subsequently lost a trick he shouldn't have. Immediately the tournament director got called and we ended up with a much worse result than we should have.

I don't think it'll ever be enforceable online because you can never tell whether someone is tanking or just not focused on the particular table. But I much prefer it this way - I'd rather be able to do everything at my disposal, within the bounds of the game, to win.

when it comes to war, there is no gentlemen!

- indeed, poker is a war. I hate people who carry battles outside of the ring - I mean, what happens at the poker table, stays at the poker table.

There are no strict rules how to behave in poker, obviously you want to take away people's money by any means necessary. There are some rules that were enforced recently - like players have to take care of their hygiene when playing in a tournament (there was some guy who smelt horribly which obviously made it impossible to play next to him if you've got a functional nose). You obviously can't wave a pistol at your opponent and ask him - do you really feel like cracking aces today, do you, do you punk?

The issue is when it comes to moral values and generally stuff that is under unwritten rules, honour, respect, fairness, etc. But if poker was a fair game, then it wouldn't be such a profitable game to play

On that topic - look at football for example, how pathetic has it become? Players falling like flies, faking injuries, cheating in any way possible. They hit a guy and then start waving - "wtf, me, hit him? nooooo dude seriously, I didn't even touch him!"

Look at Henry, he scored a goal with his hand, like whole world knows it and he knows it, and he is a hero! There is no honour among thieves and our society has gone down as low as it can get - if Henry had any moral values, he would go to the judge himself and say - man, I did use my hand, it's not the good thing for my team but it's the RIGHT thing to do.

What is right and what is wrong? In the modern times it has become painfully obvious that people need higher guidance to determine what is good and what is bad. They just cant act good on their own. Churches, for that matter, are useful, even though I think on the level of corruption and immorality, Catholic church is way below poker - the list of their sins is so long that one may say Vatican is the real Sin City and not Las Vegas - last pope was probably one of the rare good fellas in that organization, kind hearted enough to accept some of the facts and at least apologize.

The problems with Catholic church started probably from the very first translations of the ancient texts, but yeah, that's why church is one thing and religion another (not that there aint good priests but in general, just because they live by the book and don't abuse it, doesn't mean they're living a good life - the blame is still on the church for enforcing false beliefs and making them pretty pink in the way they want it to be so it suits them)

Either way, belief in god or whatever is good, because people are obviously incapable of doing things right if they know they ain't gonna get punished. If Henry was a hardcore believer, thinking he'd burn in Hell if he didn't tell the truth about that goal, would France advance in the qualifications?

It's not about truth or lies, it doesn't matter at all if Hell exists, as long as there is that seed of doubt - if it's strong enough, it will affect people's actions.

I've seen and learned enough about Cath. church through these 20-something years of my life to conclude - quest for truth is irrelevant, people need something to believe in, to guide them and if church takes "rake" for helping people see some sort of distinction between good and bad - oh well, it's a rare treat to see pure good in this world; buddhism for that matter is miles above, as any thought process entire catholic priesthood (god bless exceptions, generally, there ain't many of those) had over the course of its existence is not in-depth as thoughts of a single man, let's say sogyal rinpoche for the sake of an example - read Tibetan book of living and dying and you'll pretty much see my point.

On the point of books - Bible is an awesome book, but as I said, if the church spent less time adjusting it to its needs, church's whole concept, perspective, etc. would be a lot, a lot better - but that wouldn't bring money nor power to the church and why oh would you establish a "non-profitable" organization which has no influence on politics - they wanted it all, both money and power, and they got it - some of it was obviously lost, but the question is, how much more can you purge a human from false beliefs when even in their falsehood, they are often that sole star offering guidance.

It's a topic of its own, and I gave up discussing it long time ago because proving a point or chasing the truth can pretty much only do harm - at least for now. So let's get back to the topic of poker - btw if anyone got offended by some of the above thoughts, I apologize, sorta, as those were raw thoughts, I didn't quite refine my words - if somebody wishes to pull out his/her sword and duke it out over that subject, I have to warn you I've waged that war many times before and I have lots of aces up my sleeve to prove my point(s), which as I said is utterly irrelevant as truth is neglected in modern society

So errrm, where was I, ah yes>>>

- hehe purple, don't worry - that's typical me. I just need to recollect myself and push back up again. If by mindset you refer to my lack of discipline, laziness to focus more on poker, improve my game, learn from others and blabla, what not, ye, it would be healthier for me but my ways are rarely healthy

Basically it's the way my story usually goes, the real crisis was when I was down to $22 or so on my first NL BSS attempt - this, I don't feel worried about I can put in as much volume as I want to and on NL2 that can sum up to hefty salary for Croatian standards. Once I sort out things outside the poker realm, my poker game will also improve, so at the moment I can't really work around the problems from within the game. I mean I could, I just don't prioritize poker in my head at the moment.

I've worked a lot on my tilts and spotting differences in my play based on bad beats or whatever, now I need to work on my game to think a lot more about opponent's hand range. It's just one of those things that come with practice and that's all there is to it.

When multitabling, I generally don't have time to go into details, I just follow patterns and do minor variations if I sense something suspicious. Besides trying to figure out my opponet's way of thinking entirely, I need to also work a lot more on calculating the right odds I need to call something.

I hate math and in general I always followed a certain feel rather than logic or whatever - and in time I intend to base my game on that feel more than anything else. However, I still need to work out the basics of some calculations, see what are my chances to win with x hand against y hand. For example, I know I have x outs against my opponent and I don't think about my winning chance percentages - I just look at the pot size, how much did my opponent bet and what are our stack sizes to see how much money can I get if I do hit. If I like how many outs I have and everything, I'll call or whatever.

In translation, I should start using poker equilator more often - it's funny because I don't use it for myself but I use it to check questionable hands when watching others. Example, Vhallee had a hand which he decided to fold and I was like, nooo I'd always make that call, you got so many outs - and even against the tightest range of his opponent, it turned out he had 57% chances to win - so, lol, even better than I thought -and he thought he had like 30% or something, fish

In that hand I didn't know my chances would be that good, I just knew I had oesd outs, set outs and even my pair could still be in the lead - so in my head, that looks pretty strong to call even pot size bets if the pot aint too big (depends on our stack sizes obviously). That's pretty much how I work - in time I just start doing right things without ever learning them by heart or reading through books or whatever, once you improve your game, it just comes naturally and you make good decisions.

Obviously, I am years away from playing good poker with that approach, but as I said - I'm in no hurry Since life is a rushy thing, I sadly will have to speed up my progress and learn from as many sources as possible/I am willing to.

Anyway - I dislike HEM graph, PT3 is so much better, well I like it a lot more. It could be I still haven't found where to set it up correctly, like how to filter graph via date and not just limit,etc. Hmm, in general the filter for anything in HEM sux for me as it doesn't filter stuff that PT3 does.

Seems I'll have to switch to PT3 after all

-Edit: found the option to arrange by dates, but still, PT3 looks nicer

Ok I gotta run now, probably play some games in the evening, my sessions on average have like 1-2k hands I guess, it's actually quite funny - my 9tabling 6-max session lasted bit longer and I stopped at like 1.7k hands (let's say) and it's also the amount I often stop at when 24-tabling FR, so it seems my sessions aren't based on hours but on hands played

I shall explore this matter more soon

nice long post there.
at the end of the day, it is very much a personal thing, do you want to beat somebody in an honorable fashion? or you wouldn't mind resorting to less honorable means to succeed? for me, victory is of utmost importance. if situation dictates that i'm incapable of winning through the most repsectable fashion, then i will not be less inclined to turn to the darker side.
drogba can dive all day, and win crucial penalties that turns him into a player of great importance to the team. he may seem as a scum, but if he is rewarded with a greater paycheck, and continuously help his country people, e.g. building hospitals, with the extra money, would he have won over all the critics of his character? not all but i would believe most would.

just blabbering under heavy influence of your long text

I was 16-tabling and I didn't see I flopped a FH, noob. I told you that afterwards as well, so don't take my stuff out of context. I know some Croatians that can break your hands in the refrigerator for $12 or less. Don't mess with me, I'm mentally unstable.

Intro: Oh, dear god, I need to write intros for a post, how sick can variance in my posts get - you might get a one line post or a book, ok chances are you'll need to read this blog more than once to run into a one-line post but that's poker, errm that's Dendra's blog

Anyway - 1st block of blabberingish text is not poker-related sorta, while the next block is about all the great things I have discovered recently and am too lazy to analyse thoroughly so I'll just list 'em probably

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Superyo - you're a funny guy "just blabbering under the heavy influence of your long text" haha

ye, I agree it is a logical thing to do, why not dive and eventually earn a penalty for your team - that's the issue with our society, we dug our own grave with money and power (two things created by our sick minds :)) we want it and that's what we look up to. forget about moral values, spirituality, forget about everything - if you've got money, you've got respect and with that you feel powerful so there you have it.

it is the easy road to take, it is also easy to get fooled by people saying - it's hard work put into "this and that" to make me rich as I am...problem is, how many people can get on such a high "psychological" level for the people to recognize their greatness, admire it, respect it or whatever on the same level as they do a rich guy? -and the best part being that for such people it is not about respect nor power nor anything, just enlightenment.

by the way - "psychological", I mean mentally, spiritually, I can't think of a specific word to describe that level because it is not something acquired by our brain, it's actually hard to talk about it, even more when I still haven't really figured out things for myself and if it's possible to put them into words, god forbid write about such things in general.

anyway, what I'm trying to say is that we are a society of "taking", money, materialistic stuff, etc. and consequently we can find it perfectly right to cheat - end justifies the means, right?

let's take a look at the indian society (maybe I wrote about it before, I found myself talking bout this often lately): I read somewhere long ago, that their society was based on giving. the man with the most respect was the one who gave the most. when their kids liked a toy, they would take it from them and give to some other kid, teach them to trade items and what do we do? we learn our kids to get attached to items, they become spoiled brats and majority of the parents give into their child's demons, gimme this, gimme that, be a good mommy, and if our moral values are distorted and our self-awareness almost non-existent, how can we be good life teachers to our kids?

you can teach your kid how to earn money, you can teach him many things valued in our society, but the highest things we should strive for are pretty much lost in our society.

btw dont think that I'm talking about meditation here to calm yourself and god knows what - for example Hellmuth, he has a life coach who teaches him how to not tilt, while it is useful, it is more of a way to soothe the chaos in your mind, but you never really solve the problem unless you understand it - and that is the tricky part because it can't be taught

anyway...knowledge brings pain, that's nothing new, so the issue is why should you open your eyes, why strive for enlightenment when you can shut down, lock yourself in a box, live your life based on simple values, cherish simple things and never look beyond the horizon.

most of the thought processes we take are the product of our mind and we tangle up in it's confusion and it's something I haven't quite understood until now and funny enough, I just ran today into a quote from some fella who pretty much said what I just came to conclude some weeks ago:

"A mind that is full of light does not seek. It is only a dull, confused mind that is always seeking and hoping to find. What he finds is a result of it's own confusion."

Great words, you won't find Drogba saying anything like that - he'll more likely say something like "this is a disgrace, a f*ckin' disgrace!"

Basically our society has evolved into a money-making machine, how to get rich, how to do this, how to do that, but we are so far below those who focus on spiritual aspect of life, being self-aware and such. personally, I'd rather be poor and know myself and this world beyond flesh and bone rather than narrow myself down to something I'd feel comfortable and happy with - because the issue is, that our life is more of a theatre play in most cases, a show your mind puts up to make you a happy man, but if you go behind the stage, it will get scary and hard but if you find your way, you will eventually reach what I guess buddhists call nirvana.

I generally won't judge anyone for his choices in life, for that matter I could judge myself, on one side I wish to reveal some inner things which sorta contradicts with the concept of poker and values it is based on - for the sake of our society, I've decided to enslave myself for the next x years and do my bidding and dedicate later part of my life to taking the correct path. I consider myself evil for knowing I should be taking a different path and for now I'm really not sure how to balance both ways but I'll come up with something, perhaps I already have, I just need to get aware of it

Anyway, just to throw one more comment on judging others - decision on how we live cannot really be pressed unto others, you can direct people, help them find their way, which is also why I hate churches and such - because they force their own interpretations, thoughts, many things unto children.

Obviously if you stick it in their brains at such a young age, when they grow up it will be very hard for them to break those shackles and find their own way - I've seen so many "Christians" and I've seen their shackles broken and the problem is, many of them just weren't willing to accept that freedom. It is just something that comes in time and to those who are willing to take it. You can't rush a child to fight against Wladimir Klitschko in a boxing match - his body is not ready for such a challenge.

Consequently, you can't rush a child in ourselves into something it is not ready to grasp. Anyway, this is another subject, so I'll skip it all because this could really go in-depth

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Vali - you got your 5lines of glory in my blog, you don't need to thank me because it won't award you any extra lines - defending royal flush against quads though might earn you a spot

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Oh my, I am exhausted now, ok my eyes are exhausted (too much poker in the last 3 days - I had one 8k hands session, pretty much played like a freak).

What I wanted to write about is the importance of NL Heads-Up experience for your NL SH and FR games. If you haven't played any heads-up games - go do it ASAP (darn, caps lock, I just couldn't resist it, even though I hate ppl who caps lock write, makes 'em looks like idiots, in this case that would be me :P).

Why should you play nlhe hu? (things are not listed based on importance, but based on what I'm less lazy to start writing about)

1. Timing tells

In heads-up games every move you take as well as your hand strength becomes very sophisticated. So when playing heads-up, you will start noticing differences in players' play based on what hands they have.

How do they play a 2nd pair/How do they play bottom pair? Are they passive, do they block bet, do they try to represent something stronger, do they feel strong holding such a hand, etc.

When they have a draw, how long do they think? In my latest ring games, I have so far always known when my opponent had a flush with 4 same suited cards on the board based on the timing tell on the turn.

If they stopped and thought for x time, you just feel like they must have a card of same suit and for that one second, their brain was occupied by thinking - oh look, I have a flush draw, hmm, is it any good?

In heads-up games, these seconds mean a lot, it can be a slight variation which can tell you if he is thinking because he has a weak pair or because he is on a draw. Obviously you have to feel these things to make use of them - I mean you can't enter a FR table, see a guy thinking for 2seconds and conclude - ah he must be on a draw because it took him 2 seconds.

The guy could be multi-tabling, the guy could just take several seconds extra to think - actually, this is, right this moment now, this is the first time I actually really understand why it is important to know if your opponents are multitabling - because it can eliminate or include timing tells into your play more/less based on the situation. Obviously I was aware of such things before, but not until HU matches have I come to really feel it - and it's two very different things, knowing and feeling.

The timing tell helped me a lot to make calls with a 3rd pair on the board or value betting because I could tell based on reads that they didn't hit neither of the top cards.

2. Check/bet/raise/size

Dumb subtitle, but go ahead, make my day and shoot me, there are some shootout tournaments now on stars so might be a good opportunity - if I knew what that's about but if it's got "shoot" in its name then it has to involve shooting, right?

Anway - I've noticed that in FR games I have often overlooked a check by a player, or the differences in bet sizing, etc. I mean I knew if he bets this amount he is strong, if he bets this amount, he is weak.

However, by playing HU you will get a new level of awareness - basically you will be able to pinpoint villain's hand more precisely, you will be able to outplay him postflop because SH and FR games don't go that much into detail as HU games do.

I realized now that I've done checks on the turn countless times even though I could've bet and take the pot down right there - I just didn't care, I played pretty much like Hellmuth does in cash games - wait for a hand and play it, if you're bluffed, you know it and you fold, sometimes you fight back but you do it in the dark.

Issue is, you can get floated so many times, you can miss opportunities to bluff, etc. and when playing in FR game, you will try to avoid tough spots, select your hands carefully and you'll generally improve quite slowly your postflop skills.

FR will teach you how to fight through tough spots with good starting hands, while HU will teach you how to play mediocre hands, weak hands, etc., how to adapt to your opponent, just go a lot more in-depth than you ever would in a FR game - because why bother? wait for the nuts, get paid off and call it a night, it is simple as that

- Ok sorry guys I am just too dam tired to think now, I'll try to recollect the new experiences I've gained and write them down, there were so many things I've become more aware of lately that my mind will freak out - I just don't know where to begin learning, I just love this game, endless challenge - obviously anything involving numbers and calculations I'll leave for later (though I'll definitely befriend myself again with the Equilator; this I probably mentioned in my previous post but yeh, worth saying it again!)

So to wrap this one up - go play, heads-up and check out how your opponents play, how long do they think, etc. It is pretty much like putting yourself into a hyper-sensitive mode, you notice every little breeze around yourself, so once you go back to a SH or FR table, noticing tells on people is like noticing a hurricane blowing a hat off of your head.

P.S. On the topic of SnG HU, I've probably lost $150-170 in $5-$11 buy-in games and it was definitely the best investment poker-wise I have made thus far. I liked it so much that in fact I'll separate a part of my bankroll just to play heads-up games.

-because it lifts up my level of thinking so high that when I go to a FR table afterwards it feels like taking candy from a baby. So I think it's definitely a winning strategy to implement HU into your daily session routine. However, I am currently mixing up SH with FR because I forbid myself to play further SnG HU until I grind back what I've lost there.

Basically I like to play a quick SH session, it can be 100 hands, 700 hands, pulling off an "Ivey" in a way, quicky, go to FR, play there and call it a night.

-"Ivey" stands for super-short sessions, as that's how he plays most of the time

Ok I'm really off for now. Seem I've managed to pull off a harakiri and kill myself with my own post - call me crazy cuz that's what I am

i would take that as a compliment!
i'm thankful that your thoughts are in texts, i dont think my ears can take it!
are you Buddhist?
i was told that i am a spiritual person, and i like talking and thinking about these stuffs, but i'm just too lazy to type my point of view because it would also be extremely long. but something that i would like to share is:

the world is just filled with misfortunes and injustices. but that is just how the world is made to be. can there be good if there is no bad? can there be happiness without sorrow? for me, i'm pretty much at peace with all these, and i hope u are!

I'm not a buddhist, I'm an atheist according to my parents. That's the formal version.

As for me as a person - I feel the most inclined to follow buddhism, though I never liked narrowing myself to one direction, more like following my interests and such.

I mean compare buddha with pope - what does pope do? Wave his hand and preach how heavy metal will send you to hell In general most religions are pretty much boxed in their own world, it's more like interpreting life rather than understanding it and I think buddhism is superior by far when it comes to spirituality and what not.

I'm too lazy+too occupied at the moment to focus more on buddhism but I definitely plan to buy some good books and learn more from them - though it's so damn hard to read their books because half of the things you don't fully understand until you come to realize it yourself and then see the words and then see the meaning or whatever behind them - until then, those are just words and your mind is trying to create an image of what they are describing - and it sadly can't go that way, "enlightenment" has to come from within and I frankly have no idea how it actually comes to happen.

I mean let's say you have a wise message you wish to understand, you try breaking through it from the front, you see the words and try to get inside, but you never really do,even if someone tells you their purpose/meaning/whatever, you still won't fully understand it until you see it from within.

I'm not sure if there is any guide how to view things from within, surpass your brain so to say, I intend to find that way and yes, in the end I'll probably realize some buddhist did it before me and I've got nothing new to write about as it's all been discovered before. It's just lots of things and going in higher levels and eventually it comes to the point where words melt down.

Besides buddhist texts, I'd love to read the original bible, like if someone had original texts and translated them as best as possible. Because this way, it's like multiple translations and every time you translate, a bit of the original message can be lost - and I simply don't think majority of people are competent enough to translate perfectly.

I mean in modern age there were countless corrections of the texts written in bible now and what does the church do - Blasphemy! Don't mess with our bible, you're trying to say we've been doing it all wrong for all these years and our life style was messed up? No way! We are right and you are wrong, go to hell, we can't kill you now because it's no longer medieval age but we sure as hell can call you a madman!

Even with all the dirty fingers which rewrote it, bible is still an excellent read. I just wish it had the pure hardcore thoughts in it, something like that tibetan book of living - it has stories in it, but in a subtle way. Bible is obviously a bit of a different book but anyway...

In general, if I had to specifically choose one religious view of this world, I'd go for buddhism as it is also the most believable to me. As for your thoughts on this world, how bad is needed so that good exists, otherwise there would be no good>

I believe it was the first buddha (or some other guy, I'm too lazy to check the story so I'll write it roughly) who 1st lived like a prince, literally, was one, and then went in the total opposite direction and gave up on everything, no food, no nothing. However, he eventually realized that both ways are wrong, the only right way is to go in the middle.

Now what does this mean in our world? There is no good, there is no bad, if we achieve the level of spirituality that allows us to be in the perfect middle, we no longer see things as good or bad, we just see them as they are. Same goes for purpose of life, or no purpose to it.

We keep asking ourselves the wrong questions when the ultimate "answer" is no answer, there is no black or white. I think that first buddha guy was asked a few questions, some of them like what is the meaning of life and blabla and remained silent to those questions. I don't comprehend it yet, only thing I recently came to realize is that some of the things I set as goals in life are not the purpose of my life, I may give my life for them, I may dedicate my entire life to them, but they are not my purpose of life.

I haven't really explored that yet, my mind was pretty much blown away so I won't even dabble into that direction for now as I need to focus on poker and earning money, shallow man I am

(btw, obviously I didn't notice that story about buddha giving no answer until recently and god knows how many things I'm missing around myself, but I know they will come in time and I don't stress myself about it)

Anyway, it's hard to make it my opinion, it's hard to say if it'll turn out right - I think the rule "bad exists for the sake of existence of good" is our mind following its logic and trying to rationalize, understand, etc. If we find something acceptable, we find peace but is it the ultimate truth, or however to call it.

I mean - a child may like presents and may think Santa Claus brings those presents, you could keep the child happy by saying ye ye it is santa, nothing will be wrong - I mean if all parents suddenly decided not to reveal the truth to their kids, would this world be any worse?

Would those kids be any worse as persons? I mean only thing here is that they have a piece of truth cut out from their lives. So how can we really fully grasp our lives and see the big picture, are we able to handle it?

I think our mind simply isn't capable of handling it, hence it comes to its peak, ultimate answer it can give you. Obviously all the thought processes come from the mind but I mean it is the rational part of us, if we clean our mind and let the truth come out itself instead of seeking it, we will see things that would crack our mind down.

There have been some things in the past few months that I've come to realize that were impossible to identify with mind, thoughts and such, eventually they came from within and I was like - doh, what a retard, it's so simple and clear from within, yet so devastating when you try to put the pieces of the puzzle together in your brain.

I don't know if buddhists think good and bad is necessary in this world, or something, in general I believe we are capable of going beyond good and bad and reaching that middle point where we simply are, and nothing more.

It is very hard and probably impossible to lift our level of spirituality, by that I mean entire human race. We are just too enslaved by what we know and have been doing for centuries. The few people who understand things don't pressure others with it and if some of them write excellent books, they'll mostly go unnoticed compared to some other books.

For example - compare Tibetan book of living to any book written by a celebrity, or any easy-to-read-and-understand book by some wannabe life coach? Majority of the people just won't notice the good books and even if you shove it in their faces, they'll be too afraid to open up: "omg, hell no, gimme beer, chicks, money, fast cars and a house with a pool, why should I go reading some book about some stupid monk talking nonsense - I mean just look at this first line in the book, it makes no sense to me at all! I liked Harry Potter a whole lot more and I think it had a way better message to it, ya know that's what books are about, a message - and this one ain't got one!"

In comparison, a new poker player comes, what does he do? Cry about luck. Now go try explaining to him it ain't luck, it's him being a fish. How will that go? How will he he react?

It will be impossible to make that person believe you until he understands it himself (sorry girls for using "he" all the time, I feel evil doing so but I just have to pick one and I go for "he" usually so don't shoot me, I respect both sexes equally, ok women are obviously better, which is why I have to balance it out and use a male pronoun in my texts)

I mean you can enforce it and say, just believe me and do as I say; it aint luck, you're a fish, end of story. If he trusts you, he will follow you blindly, but there will still be a part of him which will be like - nope, no way no how, I still think I'm right and this was just pure luck.

It can be very hard to make people understand such simple things, simple truths, so how the hell can you explain to a person something beyond meaning of life or beyond good and evil? It is just inexplicable, you have to track it down xxx levels below and help the person climb up his own way, or at least I think so, as I said, I intend to reach the top and find a way to make an "easy" guide to go from the point of being an oblivous sheep to being a local buddha who can levitate, shoot laser beams from his eyes, reincarnate, talk to squirrels and...what else can buddha do?

I swear when I last read this blog you weren't a moderator? or am I just seeing things?

Yes, I'm a moderator, vali pulled a prank on me and gave me the moderator-thingy icon because he was just offended by me having that Gold-rank membership icon - he said, honey you ain't the material for gold, you're a diamond, and since you suck in poker and we know you ain't gonna reach that rank any time soon, lemme give you this moderator rank.

And I was like - hell no, you ain't putting me in those shoes, I'm a renegade, a forum troll, a...anything opposite of a moderator, I don't even know how to punish people for misbehaving, I love doing it on forums, this just doesn't feel right.

And vali replied - sometimes you just cant trust your reads, your "feel" is wrong this time, you've got the right rank odds to accept my choice of giving you this rank, live with it.

In short - yes, I'm a moderator, one of the most active ones around these forums and yes I'm taking things seriously and yes I hope nobody too serious will read this because I'm obviously on drugs and talking nonsense

you seem to have voice-to-text software? please share!

what i mean by there can only be good if there is bad is that if only there is a bad, we can discern bad from good. if there is no bad, how can we call this good? it is like a scale(relativity). bad - good. if theres no bad, then the scale becomes good - better, and then what is 'good' in this scale is actually bad and what is 'better' is actually good.
well, the question is, why do you want to be in the middle? i'm okay with the existance of negatives as long as i'm on the positive side! why do i want to miss out on good feelings like happiness? so that i can be filled with emotional indifference like Buddha?

cough, you mean those programs which read things for you? not any but I can see how it's painful to read through long posts, luckily I have sorta improved over the years as I generally listened to critics and worked on separating stuff in more paragraphs and such to make it somewhat easier to read.

Obviously I still like to write messed up sentences and often 10km long but that I won't change, more like can't rather than won't

anyway..regarding your post, I guess that is the thing that differentiates us from buddha or whoever. I mean he can laugh, he is not inhuman, he has not lost his happiness, he has not taken anything from his life.

Maybe it's just too of an individual thing, I mean why bother going beyond good and bad when you feel perfectly fine as you are now. Maybe that is it, finding balance on whatever level you feel comfortable. Who knows how many levels there are.

Lowest level obviously being someone being happy just because he has a fancy car. If he is unhappy, he buys a house, if he is still unhappy he buys women. If he is still unhappy he turns to drugs to make him happy. If he is still unhappy he commits suicide because he figures this whole life is just pointless and there is nothing that can make him happy.

This is one storyline, so what is it that we are doing here. We are obviously a part of some cycle, maybe the world would be a better place if we followed the perfect middle line, but how are we capable/willing to do so?

I mean same can be said for the way we treat our planet, just look at it - we're killing ourselves and everything around us, a virus or however we were called in Matrix (great movie, 1st part obviously, some great thoughts in it :P).

By this I mean - we are aware of that level, we can understand how actions we do now affect our surroundings and change future of our children. But do we know how we affect future lives, ourselves, if let's say we can reincarnate.

What if buddhism is right? Will we ever reach that highest level or keep reincarnating until we learn the lesson, if we ever do...

It is hard to analyse such things, I personally haven't thought about it. This is just following a thought as it goes. Maybe in a month I'll come back to this blog to refine some of my thoughts, but for now this is all I can give from inside myself

A short irrelevant update I've read some other guy's blog about 24-tabling NL5 SH and he has like 12/10 stats. People (including myself) were surprised at how tight his play was, but...after trying out some NL5 myself - I can safely conclude that action on NL5-10 is so disgusting, you just might as well sit like a granny and wait for a hand and value bet to hell.

There were some hands where I probably made obvious bluffs and other guy held onto his ace high with pants down, praying I didn't hit anything on the board. However, there were also hands with like everything you can imagine on the board and guys calling down with flopped bottom pairs+mediocre kicker.

My initial thought was like, damn, this guy just made a sick call on the river, how the heck...Obviously, a few hands later I hit a solid hand, bet again, get called again and see that it's actually just donkey calling station mode all over the place.

Action is so nitty that it just seems less stressful to me to play on NL2 and get free money rather than wage wars with nits on NL5-10 (NL5 being far worse and "nittier" than NL10).

I haven't really tried that much NL10 SH yet, so I'll build up to $300 or so my roll and give it a go to see how it looks like. If I dislike it, I'll keep pumping NL2 and move onto NL10 250BB tables with antes or something like that.

By the way, inspired by our new coach (I keep forgetting his name and I keep being lazy to check it out), I decided to play some Stud. It was a freaky 2-3hands session with imba profit I played like Stud on $0.4/$0.8, 1st hand got random K94 something crap so dropped it and then I got my miracle hand - I had like 55x and ended up in a pot vs guy that I saw held 77.

On the last card I got to what I wanted, trip fives. I figured with my noob-stud-skills the other guy doesn't have trip 7 and lady luck proved me right, donating me some chips along the way. It was maybe half a dollar profit but hell yeah, much better than that one time I tried to play Omaha Hi/Lo tournament and lost pretty much every hand I played

By the way, I'm almost seriously contemplating using HUD in my sessions. My old nemesis from earlier days of this blog has donated me his HUD setup since I was too lazy to figure out some basic starting values I should use.

By this I mean - what VPIP percentage should be coloured red, blue, etc. I'll see later today how it all looks like and then with experience adjust the stats to my own preference.

I'm still sceptical about stats, as you probably noticed - I'm not that much into numbers, stats and mathematical stuff, I'm a wordz man Consequently my notes resemble essays

However, there are two leaks to my notes - 1. They give me an idea about a player, but don't go into detail as much as stats, and I also need more memory used to remember each player in the back of my brain to know - aha, that guy I played with the other day, he did this and that, and blabla. Notes are also a lot based on the given time when events occur, whereas stats get updated as you play your opponents.

2. Stats add themselves to all of your opponents, whereas notes are added manually. So when playing many new players, you lose a lot of your focus on making notes which could just as easily be seen through stats.

Another big worry I had was that I would lose the "feel" for the game which I intend to work on and upgrade the most over time. By this I mean - stats can tell you a guy will do this and that, based on stats, you make the call because you know it will be profitable in the long run;

But the issue is that what matters is what happens now - I don't care if I'll win money in the long run, I "feel" the other guy has the nuts and I'm paying him off, so even though mathematically I may make a bad fold, in that specific hand I make a good decision.

There was an interview with Carlos Mortensen's friend recently - and he said, all the online kids are fundamentally sound, they know all these numbers and stuff, but what makes Carlos great is that he reads the game well and that's what matters, the hand you are in now.

Just when I thought my logic was justified - because of the fact that numbers make mistakes and you will often make bad calls where you are far behind - in reality, our "feel" can also be wrong, so in the long run - you have to be a damn flawless "feel" player to outclass stats in terms of efficiency.

Consequently I think for online poker you simply need to focus more on numbers, stats and such, whereas in live poker you should be able to pick up a lot more to "feel" the hand better and make better decisions based on that.

I have mixed feelings about this whole topic, I'll first try to set up my HUD, try it out and once I get accustomed to it, I'll see how much does it take away from other aspects of the game and how to balance it all - because I have a feeling that with stats you become like a blind man with a stick, without it, you're lost!!!! And I don't want to be that guy who follows the stick, I want to be the guy who roams wild and free, living la vida loca, errrm - erase the last sentence, I drank too much milk this morning, it's obviously making me go moo crazy.

Ok see you guys later - btw "cram" made two great videos on Stats, I watched the first part yesterday, I lost focus somewhere at half of it, so I'll rewatch it (he talks so slow at some points so it's killing me) and then check out part 2 as well - I said they're both great because it's painfully obvious they're useful+good and what not, especially to stats-fish like me

Another thing I'll definitely find time+will to do is to watch old Hasenbraten's NL BSS videos because they are great, I think I'll get a lot more value from them now that I kind of see more things clearly - in fact, I may return to those videos multiple times throughout my early poker days because that's how I work, I learn new things from same source over and over again until I drain it all - btw "early days" is first 2 years for me, because that's how much it takes for me to get things going - it was also my plan to cover basics of poker in 2 years and I'm counting my time in doing so since Februrary last year when I joined ps.com (curse you Vali for making me an addicted gambler - oh damn, I gave him another line in my blog, now he'll start feelin' like a celebrity, so I better stop doing it 'cuz he just hates publicity, he is a shy, private person who doesn't like being in the spotlight and such)

from one words man to another words man, I also struggle with the numbers. I think the thing to do with stats is to introduce yourself slowly to them.

Don't try to work with three rows of numbers to begin with. If you only had two stats, vpip and pfr, you would still already be significantly ahead of a no-stats game, in my opinion.

many of the top pros - the durrrrs of this world - say they don't play with stats. That's all very well when you're playing mind games at nl 1k and beyond (where psychology and individual reads are hugely important, I suspect) but that doesn't help you when you're trying to play 24 tables and need to be able to identify the fish and the nits quickly.

keep up with the beautifully written blog.
Tim