NL100, Nutrition and Self-Improvement: Road to MSNL!

If I may suggest some things from mine perspective and mine improvements.
How I get bigger red line?

1. 3bet *while I was at nl5 and lower there doesnt make a lot of sense to 3bet bluff optimal bc optimal is your leak there. So there I 3beted less as bluffs more as value.
2.call 3bet when you are inital raiser. There are guys that 3bet 5 and less. You dont need to call vs them. Only like AQs and AK+, QQ range. There are however guys that 3bet 12, 16 etc... There I def wider.
3. After I started using poker snowie mine red line improved. At least give it a try 1 month and practice... See maybe you get similar result.
4. Habit is everything. If you dont have it, make it. Doesnt need to be big. Just small at start. But do a decesion, and make a plan. 1 hour every day from 7-8 pm I play poker. 1 educational video is mininmum to watch to improve mine game for every week. 1 time every week I go throo DB and sort hands from that week with looses and go throo each hand and think where you think your mistake is, if you dont know, or you think you know, still, post most tricky hands for someone to give you advice. even there is no more Hand review part still someone will give you good advice I am sure.
5. Drink water, eat, do your wc stuff etc... dont sit if you are not prepared. For mine preparation, do 10 pushups or something to get your blood pumping up... etc.
6. Dont go hard on yourself. We all do mistakes. have a braking point of your game is to bad. just sit out, come next day.
7. Gl, hf.

Thank you for your response

1. Yeah, I should be 3betting more.
2. I have a fold to 3bet of 46%, so I feel that the problem doesn't lie there. Though I feel that people push me away from the pot quite often, I may be defending enough preflop but getting exploited postflop, and this is far worse for my redline.
3. I will watch the PokerSnowie video after I'm done with the redline series
4. I need to have more structure in my life indeed, I will start by having a fixed waking-up time and do things around that.
5. Have you tried the warm-up routines offered in TMGP? I feel that this would be good. I've always been too lazy to do that consistently though.
6. I've been too nice to myself without taking the responsibility of what was happening to me, I'm not going to insult myself everyday though I should kick myself in the butt
7. Thank you, you too!

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I just finished to read Allen Carr's easyway to stop smoking:

It's the 3rd time I read it, and now I understood why I had started to smoke again. It's probably because I thought it would be easy to quit again, and around smokers I ended up being like "meh, fuck it, I'll stop soon again". How smart! I'm 24/7 with smokers, my neighbor/best friend is a smoker and I just gave up the nice life of a non-smoker and started again over a month ago. I will not let that happen to me again, and every time my friend smokes it reminds me of how fortunate I am.

--

Edit: Next book I'm reading will be "The War of Art", I read it 2 years ago and right after that had my best month despite moving down when I had just turned pro. It changed my mindset completely. After that, I ended up having problems IRL and didn't manage to stick with that mindset, but it's still time to change that!

So here is my homework regarding the red-line rampage series:

Spoiler

1) Myth and realities

I feel that my biggest problems are calling too many weak hands preflop (vs a raise, a 3bet, or even a 4bet) and ending up folding them after the flop. Or maybe I'm not playing aggressively enough. I should be 3betting more as well.

2)Printing money preflop

Using w34z3l's methods to find out the strongest hands I'm folding I saw that vs a CO open I was folding stuff like AA/AK and other premiums. So it means that I timeout too often and that I should either play less tables and/or avoid distractions. Maybe it's a good idea to go from 6 to 4 tables for a while, during the learning process, and of course no more YouTube/forums/Skype while playing.

That being said I saw that I regularly fold hands like AT on the button vs a CO open, these kind of hands can clearly go into my 3betting range. I will also 3bet more offsuit broadways and call the suited ones. The reasons behind this are:

a) When I call I'll play without initiative so hands that have more playability are better
b) I run the risk of getting a call from SB and/or BB, and a hand like KJs plays better in a MW than KJo
c) I open the spot for a squeeze, I prefer to hold QJs than QJo if it goes SB folds, BB squeezes, CO calls, Hero...

Filters: Hero is BT, 1 Raiser on the CO, all pairs, all suited broadways, A9s, most broadways.

So I clearly need to pay more attention to the tables, folding hands like AA/AK/QQ is not really acceptable. Moreover, if I'm folding AA preflop I'm certainly making similar mistakes after the flop, and on top of folding strong hands I must be too passive whenever I read forums/talk on Skype and look at my hand strength, I'm probably thinking "oh well, he bets and I have a weak hand. I fold".

3) Blind Efficiency

So this is interesting. I guess preflop I'm fine-ish, I could be 3 betting more and probably cold call less. It's not perfect but very good compared to the post-flop leaks I have. I have a WWSF of 41%, and the Hero in the video had 42,6 and w34z3l said in was very low! He said as well that the "flop raise cbet" should be around 20% and I have 5.8%. Basically I'm sticky and annoying preflop but that doesn't really matter as I'm relatively easy to play against after the flop, I'm folding too much and not raising enough.

BB vs SB play: I believe my winrate is decent there, I defend over 50% of my hands and make -19bb/100. It may even mean that I should defend wider, because if I fold I lose -100bb/100, though if I call and lose -80bb/100 with weak hands it's still very profitable. But I'm exploitable vs cbets, basically some villain could 3 barrel ATC and I'm folding enough on every street to make it profitable for him. My W$WSF is <40 as well, which is very low.

BB vs SB

And now the BB vs BT play. I lose more, I'm tighter, but I fold even more on the flop and river. My W$WSF is even lower. I forgot to add it to the screenshot but my "flop raise cbet" is 5.85% here. I guess again I could be 3betting more but the main problem seems to be after the flop. But how can I put my opponent in tough spots when :

a) His range is stronger
b) I don't have initiative (thus a capped range)
c) I'm OOP? (BB vs BT play)

BB vs BT

Hopefully I will have answers in the "Question Time" video. There might be other problems as well.

I'm thinking that I could be CC'ing too much, w34z3l says 11-13% CC is standard and I'm at 17.6%, which is about 50% more.

CC% per position

Now let's see when I have CC=true. My MP and CO CC feels too high, how could I flat a 12.3% range vs UTG with 4 players left to act? Sure, sometimes I flat AA/KK but I'm still left with a bunch of relatively weak hands.

CC is true

As we can see, I have a very low W$WSF, and I fold a lot to cbets. I decided to run the same filter, and I just removed JJ+:

CC is true, excluding JJ+

Aha! So I guess that's good news. Last year I lost money in every position except BT when I was cold calling TT-/AK-. I mean that it's good news in the sense that I have found something to work on. I need to reduce the hand range with which I cold call preflop, and I will automatically lose less money and have a better redline, simply be folding. It will also help me focus on my other tables and I won't fold the ATo OTB vs CO open anymore :D, so it's a win/win/win situation!

4) Multi-way pots

I feel I play decent in MW pots, vs PFR at least. I may not cbet often enough, for example he said he'd cbet the A3hh on the Q84h board BT vs SB+BB, saying we have BD draws, but that feels super loose to me. Maybe we get a ton of credit on our 2nd barrel as well, not like HU play, I'll experiment cbetting more flops.

Hero is PFR in single raised pots 3-way

Though when PFR and facing a 3bet I have a very low winrate, I'm at -278bb/100 OTB, which means that I lost more with hands compared to a call, given that my standard is to open 2.5x. So it's back to calling too much 3bets with weak hands and being pushed out of the pot.

Bonus) Question Time

Well it was good though nothing that really answered my questions, I should have started to work on my game earlier!

5) Free Money

Wow... I just checked my graphs with the first filter of the video (IP and villain checks twice to us and we check back twice) and I'm losing a lot of money when it goes xx flop and turn. Though when I bet I make a lot more. It's quite crazy.

It gets checked twice to me and I check back

And...

It gets checked twice to me and I bet turn

So this is a big thing!

And when it goes xx flop and I'm OOP:

• I made 142BI out of 3500 hands when I bet, that's roughly 40BI per 1k hands or 400bb/100 winrate.
• I made 21BI out of 5.8k hands, so 36,6bb/100.

So this is some big discovery. I guess all this time I was afraid to face balanced villains, like, it became quite standard to check back hands like A2 on Axx, or that they won't fold the JJ on Q9xx vs 2 barrels, and that if they call 2 barrels I will run vs KK/Q2/etc. I will experiment with that during the next few weeks.

May you do well! You just got a new follower.

I stopped smoking a few years ago now (3 I think) because I felt responsible for my other half breathing in my poisons. It helped having a mrs gadget to feel responsible for. I just stopped without aids but whatever helps is good.

As to your game, I would never consider giving advice but I do wish you well and will watch your game grow, this could well be interesting.

Have fun and keep us updated please!

Mal.

Originally posted by gadget51
I stopped smoking a few years ago now (3 I think) because I felt responsible for my other half breathing in my poisons. It helped having a mrs gadget to feel responsible for. I just stopped without aids but whatever helps is good.

As to your game, I would never consider giving advice but I do wish you well and will watch your game grow, this could well be interesting.

Have fun and keep us updated please!

Mal.

Yeah one time I quit for over 1 year because I had a new Mrs. Swish and I completely changed my habits and it was quite easy. The issue is when you start to have problems with your Mrs., and then I started smoking again... though I have a sister 8 years younger and one time she told me 'I only smoke when I'm angry or stressed, a bit like you'. I don't know how she ended up having this idea about my smoking habits because it's never been something I said but anyway, it made me realize that if I do something, it seems more acceptable for my siblings and I don't want to give them incentives to smoke.

Originally posted by naujukkel
May you do well! You just got a new follower.

Thank you

I just watched the 3rd part and I found a bunch of interesting stuff about my game (it's all in the post above). I'm getting closer and closer to the real problem. Basically my preflop game should be more aggressive (less calls, more 3bets) and I should raise more flops and fold less as the cold-caller. So I need to:

• Take a closer look at the winrate I have with the hands I CC with in every position, but particularly MP/CO/BT
• 3bet more MP/CO/BT
• Find ways to be less of a "victim" postflop

How will I do that?

• Spend time with HM2
• Build default 3betting ranges
• Watch videos about cold calling and playing vs PFR (I take any suggestions :))

For now I'll continue the video series, maybe I'll find answers in the Question Time anyway

I have never worked on my game for so long, it feels good to discover new things quite frequently (there is a bunch of sick discoveries in my 2nd post ITT-thank you w34z3l!) I built some CC/3bet ranges for MP/CO/BT, I'll see how it goes for a bit. It's mostly to have a guideline, as I was cold calling very loose vs UTG/MP, so I want to stay within a reasonable range of hands.

Tomorrow I will watch ~4 hours of videos of a French coach about defending the blinds by calling and 3 betting, he seems to be quite good, playing Zoom500 on P*.com and stuff.

After this it will be time to grind!

Things I need to focus on next time I play:

• Check the ranges I have built before calling/3betting until it becomes automatic
• Pay attention to spots where I'm OOP and it goes xx flop, or when I'm IP and it's checked to me once or twice flop or turn
• Only play poker when I play poker. Music is fine and I can use Spotify with a playlist, but folding hands like AA preflop (happened to me 6 times since the 1st of Jan 2014), missing stabs postflop etc. is not acceptable.

I will work on creating a warm-up routine as well, using TMGP.

The last few sessions went ridiculously well.

Negative redline winnings, I made a few mistakes for sure, some hands I could have folded earlier in the hand, I called turns because "hey he may be bluffing and it's bad for my redline if I fold now... oops, he bets again, now I have to fold for sure" some adjustments have to be made :D. Though last year I was at -13bb/100 in NSD (despite having 4bb/100 greenline) so it's already a huge improvement. Only 2k hands for this months because of two reasons:

-I was on Unibet before
-I didn't play a lot on the tracked site. It feels as if I'm scared to play, scared to have a bad session that will ruin my mood. I'm happy I made 10BI in 2k hands, winrate is so good it's unsustainable, redline is good. If I play I run the risk of having a bad session and it will affect me. I know it's all non-sense, I should play, I'm a pro, I should set quality goals and not variance-related goals (even the redline can be affected during a session). I really need to tackle this issue because this is not new.

I finished to re-read "The War of Art":

It's still decent, though sometimes tough to apply as a poker player. The author is Christian and he makes sure to remind the reader quite often of his religion. I'm not Christian, and it's a little annoying because it's beyond the point, the author could be Muslim, atheist, Jewish etc. I wouldn't care because the purpose of the book is to win our inner battles with creativity and to a certain extent every job that requires discipline such as being self-employed.

That being said, Pressfield has some good points, I will write a few here as well as a few quotes:

"It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance." [Resistance is basically the name the author gives to the force that makes us procrastinate]

"Resistance [...] makes us less than we are and were bron to be."

He says that the fear never goes away, and that mastering the fear means we have conquered Resistance. Resistance makes us sabotage our lives and we spend it saying "I'll do it tomorrow" so that we don't have to say "I'll never do it". He quoted Socrates: "The truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastering".
The pro [as opposed to the amateur] concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like. [This one really fits poker]

"I'm keenly aware of the principle of priority, which states (a) you must know the difference between what's important and urgent, and (b) you must do what's important first. What's important is the work. That's the game I have to suit up for. That's the field on which I have to leave everything I've got."

Well, I have a few pages of notes like this, I want to do this for books I read so that I can sustain more information that if I were to read in my bed, and this way I can skim through my notes from time to time and see what I thought was relevant for me. What didn't help the last few days it that I was really tired. I believe that it's because of the food I was eating. I will try to diminish my carbs intake as much as possible this week (will be on some sort of vacation from Thursday so I will have limited control), and next week to a 30-days trial on a low-card high-fat diet. I had just started to read "How to Win and Influence People", but now I will go for "Grain Brain":

I've been constantly tired and out of focus the last few days (only played one hour sessions lately) despite not taking any gluten. Maybe the rice and potatoes (high carb foods) were bad for me? I feel hungry even though I'm full. I read that insulin can go nuts with high-carb foods and make you feel hungry even though you don't need food. Some studies say coffee can bother your insulin levels as well, some studies say it's BS, anyway, I guess it's worth quitting the coffee as well for a bit.

I will go through more books before deciding what to buy next. I just read a review of grain brain and it says the book is wrong. Then I read the rest of the site and found out that it's a guy promoting a vegan/high carb diet, so basically the opposite. Great. I just want to feel healthy! I was vegan for 7 full months and I quit because it was frustrating where I live, but it has quite a few ethical advantages for them and for humans (the animals industry is by far what pollutes the most our planet).

[...]

Okay I spent a while checking the internet and found a nice blog: http://www.docsopinion.com/ the dude seems well-qualified and has nothing to sell, so in a way he's probably more objective. I decided to buy Grain Brain anyway, and read it with a critical mind. At the end of the day diets agree on not drinking coke, going to Mac Donald's and eat processed food so I can already do all these things, and the rest will be adjustments, but I will still lower the carbs in March to see how it goes

I finished to read Brain Grain. I will implement as much as I can and see if there are any changes in April.

Monday meeting:

So I decided to do Monday Meetings with myself, it's an idea from The War of Art. I will write my weekly goals, I think it will help me have a better focus on my monthly/bigger goals.

[ ] Track the money I spend
[ ] Exercise at least twice
[ ] Fast for one day
[ ] Eat a low-carb diet
[ ] Play 30 hours
[ ] No Skype/distractions while playing
[ ] Get one supplement recommended by GB's author

Today's session was quite a disaster, I ended up at -270$ and -540$ in EV. I didn't play well, I started a new site that was quite tilting and with ridiculous default settings. I was tired and I was Skyping at the same time... I shoved a nut straight river and ran vs nut flush, I 3bet shove river, I hadn't seen the possible flush! I could have saved 80€ there. I will check the rest of the hands tomorrow.

Very nice blog you have here, enjoyed reading it

Originally posted by webhunky
Very nice blog you have here, enjoyed reading it

Thank you!

For my weekly goals I will add:

[ ] Avoid processed foods.
[ ] Start a diary in which I write thing I did today that were good and bad, what could have been better, and the one thing I could do to improve tomorrow.

Had some disgusting dried beef thing yesterday (something called 'Beef Jerky'), and I got quite sick after and today, so I'll fast today. It also means I need to have snacks ready to eat (hard-boiled eggs and avocados mainly, nuts could be nice but I could eat a few bags of them everyday, if I have nuts at home it would probably be finished very quickly).

Edit

I am sure when you worked with Erik he brought up mindfulness/meditation at some point. It helped myself a lot with my depression.

Also when I started to eat better I noticed a significant improvment how regular they are coming.

If you start a diary anyways you could add what you are gratful for which can be very small or things we take for granted.

Anyways great blog and looking forward to new posts

Edit

Wow it feels weird to read the above post again, poker puts me in such horrible a mental state... I partly feel like censoring my post but I will leave it here because that's part of my poker career and the day I will be over this I will have archives of what poker has been like for me.

After posting this last post I went running, 30 mins and 5km which is really high for my standards, especially given that I never regularly ran in my life, and it's been since high-school that I haven't done sports regularly. I felt incredibly better. Today I feel quite weak, so I will wait tomorrow before running. I think 30 mins is a good duration for sports, at least science says so. 3*30 mins is good to have a lot of benefits, such as preventing depression and feeling an overall gain of energy. I will try to do 30 mins every second day (meaning 3.5 times per week) for now, and slowly try to exercise everyday. I managed to run 30 minutes while it was 3 degrees Celsius outside, for you Fahrenheit people it's 37.2, so I'm quite happy about that. I will run if it's above freezing temperature and find something else if it's below freezing (gym or at home).

Exercising is really a thing that's missing in my life and it's time to change it. I'm really amazed by how happy it made me feel yesterday in just 30 short minutes despite feeling very very bad before. Basically, it has short term benefits and it also has long run benefits, so I'm going to force myself until I'm addicted to it, it should not take so long.

I changed my diet for a low carb diet since last Sunday, and I must say that I feel better, at least my digestive system makes me feel less heavy, it feels that I lost some weight. Energy-wise it's not fantastic yet, but after close to a lifetime of bad habits I can't expect miracles in 5 days I guess, especially the day after I have ran 5km at my fastest pace ever ♦.

[/] Track the money I spend: Could have done it better. I will write directly on my phone how much I spent on some app, after each purchase. That will work better.
[x] Exercise at least twice: Did it twice : after I was incredibly tilted and today. It feels amazing. It's like a life-hack, I feel calmer at the tables, and I did it only twice!
[x] Fast for one day: Did it today. Had one coffee, a lot of tea and water only. Looking forward to tomorrow though :D. Oh, and I guess I should not exercise on days on which I don't eat, I only ran 3km today, I felt quite weak. Could be related to the fact that I only slept 4 hours last night.
[x] Eat a low-carb diet: Yeah I think I did that quite well. Could have been better, I had some cider one evening, that thing has a lot of sugar in it.
[ ] Play 30 hours: Not even close. HM says 19h20 minutes, though there is a bit more as I played tourneys but these don't really count.
[/] No Skype/distractions while playing: Better than usually. Can still make improvements. Not having the 30" anymore helped, I can't really browse forums since it would be over my tables.
[x] Get one supplement recommended by GB's author: Done. Some probiotics. I guess I will order the rest later online, but when I have more money.
[/] Avoid processed foods: Didn't have access to cooking plates, I got some prepared humus, and some bio snacks, so it's still OK.
[ ] Start a diary in which I write thing I did today that were good and bad, what could have been better, and the one thing I could do to improve tomorrow: Nope, try again!

I'm definitely playing better. I improved a lot since the series about the redline, I have a bigger edge, it makes the game more fun etc. I start to recognize more and more automatically the spots I was working on, all that feels good. I ran super hot as well, making 20BI in the last 3k hands isn't only because I played well unfortunately ;).

I feel good at the moment, but I ran really good and poker really affects my life and mood so I guess it's hard to say how it really is. I believe running helped anyway. I talked to a 5th year med student who told me I could have my tiredness/foggy brain as well because of poker given the stress that this game puts me in. It certainly plays a role, and I had thought about it as well, though I should still try to control what I can control (food and sport for example).

I'm overall happy with this week, I feel that I'm a better Swish29 than last week

See you tomorrow for the Monday Meeting!

Very interesting read! Good luck

Thanks

Monday Meeting:

I believe that some of my goals last week were too vague, so I think I should go more into details when necessary, that will help prevent me from failing :).

[ ] Track the money spent. How? By writing on my phone after each purchase.
[ ] Cook 3 new things (they don't have to be full meals, just 3 random things that I have never done before) and post the pics here. I can go check online for LCHF/Paleo recepies if needed.
[ ] Play 30 hours. I played a lot of small sessions last week. Part of the reason was that some days I wanted to book a win and keep on feeling happy. But that's not sustainable long term, playing less on good days and more on bad days doesn't make a lot of sense. I need to push myself and do 100 mins sessions when I play. 3*100 is 300, thus 5 hours, if I do this 6 times in a week I have my 30 hours :).
[ ] Exercise every second day from Tuesday.
[ ] Low-carbs diet
[ ] Avoid processed food (Unless it's organic. But no more BS that has conservatives and weird stuff in it)
[ ] Fast for one day, I won't be able to do that on Sunday because I want to play the 9M SM. On Saturday I should be running, so I'll do that on Friday.
[ ] No distractions while playing. Put AP mode on the phone as well.
[ ] Start a self-improvement diary
[ ] Pay the rent and internet bill (it's something I have to do online and I don't want to skip it)
[ ] Write an email to M.
[ ] Arrange the country change on Skrill
Edit: [ ] Not eat out unless it's part of a social activity: I should stop bleeding money on going for food alone.

Et voilà !

Edit: I already feel that I lost some weight, or at least my jelly-belly has suffered from last week, that's good motivation to continue. I felt really tired and woke up with a headache this morning, I don't know why. It could be because I slept 4 hours between Sat and Sun and had a long day, because of the fasting, or something else. I was incredibly thirsty as well. Writing this here so that I can try to guess better where it comes from next time it happens.

Do you play on 888 poker?
I had the same experience there: way too often the rivercard gave my opponent his hand. When he had for example only 2 or 4 outs on the turn.
That's why I stopped playing there.
And I recognize your feelings: you get so angry when this happens when people are calling on the turn with the wrong odds.

You can always loose on the river even if you have 80 or 90% on the turn.
But In other rooms this happens much less.