Originally posted by Kyyberi
Tide is not turning yet. I had my "Ghaleon encounter", as a new face came to the table and wanted to gamble. He potted everything preflop, and everything postflop. In the first 6 hands with him I went 4 times all-in, and everytime I had around 70% equity. He won all 4, and left the table with 500bb stack. I was left with Sklanskys. And I wondered, should I feel good or not.
What are "sklanskys"?
Is it a synonym for "Sklansky bucks"?
How do you calculate them?
Yes, as Sklansky introduced the idea of EV adjusted winnings. We should just focus on making +EV decisions, which I have been very good at. Variance just has been a bitch.
Yes, if you played your best and also outplayed the opponents EV-wise, there isn't more you could do. The only one thing you can do to improve your A-game is by watching videos of coaches; to increase the edge and winrate even more, but other than that, just maybe focusing on overall sports training and fitness.
There is one thing we all can do when running bad: post it to the forum! 
No one wants to read them, but it works as mental ventilation. Most of us don't have goor poker friends that could listen our whining, so we have to let it out somehow. And forum is a good option. And sometimes you get some sympathy. Like when Ghaleon posts about his adventures with button clickers and cold run, I nod my head and think "I know how that feels".
And I know very well that if EV line goes straight to upper right corner, it's all about volume to beat the variance.
Originally posted by Kyyberi
There is one thing we all can do when running bad: post it to the forum!
The ps forum is definitely a very interesting service, i remember how i so much loved blogging when launching the flhe career. As the years go by, im more towards social interactions, such as chatting with other members on forum.
This is how I run:
All-in on the flop, gutshot wins both runs for 450bb pot.
But the positive note is that the session was a bit profitable even after that. EV is skyhigh.
Bad run went away for one day. Project cabin graphs looks today like this:
Originally posted by Kyyberi
Bad run went away for one day. Project cabin graphs looks today like this:
now that looks a bit better!
Spot of the day:
Opponent is known aggro, who likes to attack any shown weakness. Might be tilting a bit as he seem a bit more aggro than usually.
Flop goes checked, on the turn he bets 3/4. I thought about raising, but the problem is that he is very sticky, and his calling range is wide to a raise and we can't raise as value. River is blankish, and I pondered between donk, c-call and c-fold. Out of those I think c-call is the best by far, as he would barrel his whole turn range here. If I fold, then it wouldn't make a lot of sense to call turn. If I donk, he only calls with better hands and never folds them, and never calls with worse. Which leads to a situation where I would lose my stack versus better hands and get 0 value from weaker ones. But the problem in calling is that his river potting range is not polarized. He could be doing it with 96xx type of hands (which doesn't make any sense but he does it). But as he has quite a lot of air in his range and I do block both straights AND I know he attacks flop check with double barrell a LOT, I make the hero call.
Originally posted by Kyyberi
Spot of the day:Spoiler
Opponent is known aggro, who likes to attack any shown weakness. Might be tilting a bit as he seem a bit more aggro than usually.
Flop goes checked, on the turn he bets 3/4. I thought about raising, but the problem is that he is very sticky, and his calling range is wide to a raise and we can't raise as value. River is blankish, and I pondered between donk, c-call and c-fold. Out of those I think c-call is the best by far, as he would barrel his whole turn range here. If I fold, then it wouldn't make a lot of sense to call turn. If I donk, he only calls with better hands and never folds them, and never calls with worse. Which leads to a situation where I would lose my stack versus better hands and get 0 value from weaker ones. But the problem in calling is that his river potting range is not polarized. He could be doing it with 96xx type of hands (which doesn't make any sense but he does it). But as he has quite a lot of air in his range and I do block both straights AND I know he attacks flop check with double barrell a LOT, I make the hero call.
Useful analysis. Check/calling and clear thinking can beat many big bet games, I believe.
Problem with this light hero call is that sometimes you run into better bluffing as well. Actually had similar spot recently where I blocked lot of sensible value combos but villain turned tptk into bluff.
Yeah, I realized later that I forgot to write that. Instead of his range having low 2 pairs, it could have QJxx. Although he is a player who would bet K quite always on the flop, and QJ quite often too.
There are few players in the pool who are really aggressive on the river and their big bet range is far from being polarized. It does make river decisions tricky. And one key to battle that is to think about it on the earlier streets. One option I have used is to shove turns with made hands, especially oop. That does increase all-ins and variance, as you can see from the graphs.
Rough week at the cabin, pokerwise. Overall winrate for 5,3K hands was 22bb/100, which sounds pretty nice. But the way things went, I don't feel that great. Those bad beats seem to come in streaks. As you can see in the graph, the green line dives few times for 8 to 12 buyins. Those are the streaks, where aggros and good customer just hit everything in every hand. In the end, I run over 14 buyins under EV for this week. Although it seems a bit weird to complain about running horribly while booking 22bb/100 winrate. 
It all comes down to goal-setting. Set lower goals and fill them and you are happy.
Originally posted by taavi1337
It all comes down to goal-setting. Set lower goals and fill them and you are happy.
π€£
That reminds me of the old joke: "If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards"
I would say that 5K hands was reasonable goal during vacation, and 30bb/100 is my long-term winrate on the site. So yes, that was the goal. But that's how EV graph can trick the mind, as now I know that I was "supposed" to win a lot more. But in the end, it could have been a lot worse easily, so I should be quite happy.
That's quite impressive already, the long-term +30bb/100. I have like +30bb/100 for the last 9000 hands, but that is on NL2. I totally get it, it really @#Β£%^ if we are short in money and then also run bad by accident at the same exact time:D is like when you push all-in on river but that stack is like 10% of all of your money, doesn't feel great if he has hit his 15% on the river.
You shouldn't play in games where one stack is 10% of your money. 
Originally posted by Kyyberi
You shouldn't play in games where one stack is 10% of your money.
Yes that's a nice goal 
