Was great playing with you last night and having a bit of chat and banter at the table.
For all the moaning I've been doing recently about the MTT schedule, Sky has some great characters and a fantastic community and (in spite of not being able to win tournaments on the site anymore) this keeps me coming back for more.
Thanks for the Jared Tendler YouTube link- a lot of it resonated with me (which was both alarming but expected) and I think just having these issues laid out in front of me and dissected in simple terms will help me address them going forward, so thanks again. To be fair, @Duesenberg had recommended the book to me before and I know that a lot of players have mentioned it on the forum and swear by its content but I couldn't be bothered getting it ordered... I know, I know, three mouse clicks and it's on your doorstep two days later... maybe I was shielding myself from uncovering the true extent of my mental game problems
Now, I'm not sure how you will feel about what I'm about to say next (to be honest I'm not sure how I feel about it and it may not apply to you at all, our situations may be totally different) but... ...do you think there could be a link between our current downswings and our increasing levels of poker study/strategy acquisition? I know this might sound counterintuitive but is there a possibility that our games are currently in a transitional state as we acquire knowledge, integrate it into our games and attempt to apply it at the tables correctly and effectively?
Here is a hand from last nights Mega Stack to illustrate the point:
Player
Action
Cards
Amount
Pot
Balance
MADPATDOTC
Small blind
2000.00
2000.00
207872.75
Moobs66
Big blind
4000.00
6000.00
52168.00
Your hole cards
K
Q
onepara26
Fold
JRH2424
Fold
MynaFrett
Raise
8000.00
14000.00
128635.75
Duesenberg
Fold
MADPATDOTC
Fold
Moobs66
Call
4000.00
18000.00
48168.00
Flop
7
7
10
Moobs66
Check
MynaFrett
Check
Turn
Q
Moobs66
Bet
13500.00
31500.00
34668.00
MynaFrett
Call
13500.00
45000.00
115135.75
River
6
Moobs66
Bet
22500.00
67500.00
12168.00
MynaFrett
Call
22500.00
90000.00
92635.75
Moobs66
Show
K
J
MynaFrett
Show
K
Q
MynaFrett
Win
Two Pairs, Queens and 7s
90000.00
182635.75
I was very close to folding here and this was my thought process: I block KJ, I don't block flushes, 98 gets there and he can still just have all the 7x, although I still have top pair strong kicker my hand strength is now relatively weak on this river and I will have stronger hands than this as played... I will actually have few weaker made hands that get to river but I will have some AK,AJ,KJ... I am smack bang in the middle of my range in terms of hand strength but I should still only be beating bluffs and given the blocking and unblocking effects of my exact holding this probably should be a fold...
I feel this river spot highlights what a complex game poker can be but it also shows how easy it is to potentially over think things and maybe misapply concepts or place more value in their significance than is warranted.
In my more naïve state (last year, when I was consistently making final tables and winning some tournaments) the game seemed much simpler. I was unaware of a lot of concepts and therefore there was no danger of me misunderstanding them, misapplying them or overusing them... ...one thing that has killed me since I discovered it is bluffing with nut blockers- attempting to apply some (debatably higher level) concepts in the games I'm playing is not big, it's not clever, it is actually the exact opposite of those things but I have been doing this stuff for months and doing it far too often and it has only recently dawned on me. I realise now that it had led to me being far too aggressive in spots that wouldn't have even occurred to me previously. Punting off again and again in tournaments trying to get people off hands because I can represent x and I have x blocker and then just thinking that was a good line, that should have worked, I will have the nuts there so often as played, they made a bad call...
Another one for me has been iso jamming over limps (and limp-calls) way too light and attempting to get away with it too often even though a lot of Sky players' favourite adjustment is to limp trap 1010+, AJs+ when they see someone doing this a few times (and, of course, some players still just open-limp their whole range anyway). I used to only do this for value and it never really occurred to me to jam suited wheel aces, K10s+, and small pocket pairs in these spots... it just added so much variance to my game because I started to push it too far and just ended up getting caught too often and not getting there.
Another thing has been hero calling rivers because they only represent the nuts and they have x bluffs and I have to have some calls here and I'm close to the top of my range and I block this combo or that combo... when the reality is, in these games, that they don't have the bluffs frequently enough (or ever in some cases) and I can even fold hands as strong as the second nuts in these spots and I'm not getting exploited. Here's an example from 10nl last night to illustrate this point too:
I don't know. It's just a theory. We should both be getting consistently better at the game but our results would suggest otherwise. Perhaps it is a number of factors though and maybe variance is still just a large part of it and maybe our cases have nothing in common at all...
Anyway, was fun last night and I hope to bump into you at the tables more often... hopefully at a big final table next time... but hopefully you won't be on my immediate left with a huge stack if that happens
In my more naïve state (last year, when I was consistently making final tables and winning some tournaments) the game seemed much simpler. I was unaware of a lot of concepts and therefore there was no danger of me misunderstanding them, misapplying them or overusing them... ...one thing that has killed me since I discovered it is bluffing with nut blockers- attempting to apply some (debatably higher level) concepts in the games I'm playing is not big, it's not clever, it is actually the exact opposite of those things but I have been doing this stuff for months and doing it far too often and it has only recently dawned on me. I realise now that it had led to me being far too aggressive in spots that wouldn't have even occurred to me previously. Punting off again and again in tournaments trying to get people off hands because I can represent x and I have x blocker and then just thinking that was a good line, that should have worked, I will have the nuts there so often as played, they made a bad call...
Another one for me has been iso jamming over limps (and limp-calls) way too light and attempting to get away with it too often even though a lot of Sky players' favourite adjustment is to limp trap 1010+, AJs+ when they see someone doing this a few times (and, of course, some players still just open-limp their whole range anyway). I used to only do this for value and it never really occurred to me to jam suited wheel aces, K10s+, and small pocket pairs in these spots... it just added so much variance to my game because I started to push it too far and just ended up getting caught too often and not getting there.
Another thing has been hero calling rivers because they only represent the nuts and they have x bluffs and I have to have some calls here and I'm close to the top of my range and I block this combo or that combo... when the reality is, in these games, that they don't have the bluffs frequently enough (or ever in some cases) and I can even fold hands as strong as the second nuts in these spots and I'm not getting exploited. Here's an example from 10nl last night to illustrate this point too:
Player
Action
Cards
Amount
Pot
Balance
WUBBZY1401
Small blind
£0.05
£0.05
£10.85
Catalan10
Big blind
£0.10
£0.15
£10.55
Your hole cards
Q
Q
Eu2708
Fold
MynaFrett
Raise
£0.30
£0.45
£12.39
WUBBZY1401
Fold
Catalan10
Call
£0.20
£0.65
£10.35
Flop
J
2
8
Catalan10
Check
MynaFrett
Bet
£0.40
£1.05
£11.99
Catalan10
Call
£0.40
£1.45
£9.95
Turn
4
Catalan10
Check
MynaFrett
Bet
£0.90
£2.35
£11.09
Catalan10
Call
£0.90
£3.25
£9.05
River
Q
Catalan10
Bet
£3.25
£6.50
£5.80
MynaFrett
Call
£3.25
£9.75
£7.84
Catalan10
Show
10
9
MynaFrett
Show
Q
Q
Catalan10
Win
Straight to the Queen
£9.01
£14.81
Is it a hero call when you’re losing to precisely one hand?
Sometimes yes When that one hand is 16 combinations of hands and opponent shows up with nothing else at a high enough frequency to make calling with the second nuts profitable...
Sometimes yes When that one hand is 16 combinations of hands and opponent shows up with nothing else at a high enough frequency to make calling with the second nuts profitable...
It’s nl10 I think plenty of times there they are betting lower sets and 2 pair combos for what they think is value I think it’s just a snap and sigh and “next hand dealer” if they do show up with what they actually had
Sometimes yes When that one hand is 16 combinations of hands and opponent shows up with nothing else at a high enough frequency to make calling with the second nuts profitable...
It’s nl10 I think plenty of times there they are betting lower sets and 2 pair combos for what they think is value I think it’s just a snap and sigh and “next hand dealer” if they do show up with what they actually had
By snap, you mean snap jam yeah?
Like you say, its 10nl. Leaving so much value on the table by just flatting (unless you have very concrete reads its the straight and never anything else)
Even without concrete reads I don't think we set over set often enough in these spots as played to justify calling. I think calling in this spot as played is burning money long term and I think shoving is burning even more.
Even without concrete reads I don't think we set over set often enough in these spots as played to justify calling. I think calling in this spot as played is burning money long term and I think shoving is burning even more.
Its 10nl, feel free to chuck in all 2p combos and the odd single pair or slow played AA or KK alongside all the sets. Esp vs the type of player to c/c down and then donk pot on river (which suggests they ain't giving it much thought)
I can see why some people might not raise, but to even consider folding is beyond nitty and leaves so much money on the table long term.
Even without concrete reads I don't think we set over set often enough in these spots as played to justify calling. I think calling in this spot as played is burning money long term and I think shoving is burning even more.
I politely disagree I think folding the 2nd nuts at nl10 is burning money
Actually, this has been bugging me and I just want to go over the spot again in a bit more detail because I feel the point I was making may have been lost or not explained too well after all.
The gist of my point is that facing very specific lines in very specific spots we can put our opponent on the nuts so often that calling is losing money. Applying that to the hand I used as an example:
-if opponent check-raises flop, bets turn, bets river I'm calling down with the rivered set of Queens here.
-if opponent check-calls flop, check-raises turn and bets river I am putting him all in with the rivered set of Queens here.
I will still be shown the nuts sometimes facing both of the lines taken above but these are the lines where I will be more inclined to give him "all the two pairs" sets and slow played AA/KK.
-when opponent check-calls flop, check-calls turn then blasts out for POT on THIS river when the most obvious draw comes in I want to make an exploitive fold... and I would argue that it is more of a fold facing this line because it's 10nl (not less of a fold because it's 10nl)
Hi mate, as I say - fun game! At the end of the day I play poker recreationally and it is infinitely more fun getting some chat at the tables!
Jared Tendler is great isn't he. Previously I had thought of tilt as only for people who donk off stacks after bad beats and that kind of thing. So it's eye-opening to discover the different types that affect us.
On the subject of downswings and increased knowledge... Not sure if it's in that video or part 2 but did you get to the bit about the 4 stages of learning? Unconscious Incompetence Conscious Incompetence Conscious Competence Unconscious Competence
Not that you or I were 'incompetent' before, I hope (though I have uncovered all sorts of leaking plays I was making as 'standard' that I would now say are really bad), but I (easier to speak about myself rather than make assumptions about you) am in phase 2 at the moment, working towards phase 3. So as you say, a transition period.
There are a few reasons why I think this has caused my results to get worse. Not being self-centred in talking mostly about me - but some of these will apply to others as well and I don't want to make false assumptions about your learning
1) I've been deliberately trying to play in tough reggy games. Constructing polarised 3bet ranges from different positions and then testing it out on a table where everyone is limp/calling their full range and cold calling 3bets left right and centre is just a waste of time for practicing some things. Maybe I'm currently minus EV in these games, or running bad, but either way I'm learning a lot from it and picking up a lot of notes for exploitations vs regs.
2) Having a complete overhaul of my game is a fairly massive project and at the moment I've only focussed on preflop. Postflop I'm playing fairly standard ABC (which isn't going to win too much money) so that I can see the effect of preflop decisions more clearly, ie, not making a spew preflop and managing to get out of jail postflop and then thinking that preflop was a successful line in itself.
3) Your point about being able to apply knowledge correctly and effectively. Inevitably at first, we're going to misapply things that we've learned and it's going to burn money. Fact. All part of the leaning process I suppose! - Cue some lame metaphor like phoenix rising from the ashes - On a side note, I usually play 4-6 tables on Sky and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that when I do this I revert back to old autopilot ways and I'm not even applying any new things anyway! Playing 3 tables max for the last 2 sessions, which is painful, but gives chance to focus properly.
4) In order to find the max exploitative lines, I think you need to firstly work out what is optimal/balanced and be really comfortable with that and then work out how to manipulate that to find leaks in other players. The more you do that the more you notice things other players are doing, I think. But this means playing balanced against players where playing balanced is not going to be winning the most money, eg, having bluffing range against guy who's snapping rivers with Ace high ,etc. So in the meantime, again as part of the learning process, you're kind of sacrificing EV in order to make more in the long term.
5) Variance. Genuinely been months since AA last held up against another pair for me Except in £5.5 freezeouts - absolutely sun-running those - cannot lose an all-in! Good to be winning in the important ones...
These are just my opinions on this - may be a load of rubbish! Maybe I was just running really well before! Or maybe my old strategy of raising first in with a ludicrous number of hands from every position (30% MP, 80% BTN lol) and then cbetting 99% of flops was the way to go (disclaimer: it wasn't..!) Please do add any of your experiences to this - all interesting stuff! Were there any particular areas of mental game where you think you were/are struggling?
Previously I had thought of tilt as only for people who donk off stacks after bad beats and that kind of thing. So it's eye-opening to discover the different types that affect us.
Yes, this was what I thought tilt was... wrong
On the subject of downswings and increased knowledge... Not sure if it's in that video or part 2 but did you get to the bit about the 4 stages of learning?Not that you or I were 'incompetent' before, I hope (though I have uncovered all sorts of leaking plays I was making as 'standard' that I would now say are really bad), but I (easier to speak about myself rather than make assumptions about you) am in phase 2 at the moment, working towards phase 3. So as you say, a transition period.
This section was in the video but I hadn't reached that point when I wrote my first message to you and the part about transitional states... It makes sense. I'm in stage 2 striving for stage 3 also it seems. I think I may have been one step above incompetence when I started playing on Sky last year (but maybe only one baby step) and that was largely down to watching a lot of Twitch streams, Polker Hands with Doug Polk and hand analysis breakdowns from The Poker Guys. I feel this at least gave me a decent foundation to build on... or at least, I thought it had. Perhaps I thought I was building my house upon the rock (like a wise man) but I was actually building it upon the sand (like a foolish man) and as I attempted to add floors to the house (or levels of complexity to my game) the whole thing collapsed under its own weight and was washed into the sea... I'm in the process of seeing if anything is salvageable from the flotsam and jetsam.
One of the funny things about poker is that (unlike anything else I can think of really) it seems full of false dawns and confusion or delusion about ones ability and potential. If I relate it to my football career that never was (I played for Boston United and Lincoln City in my youth as well as county schools football for Lincolnshire) (and I'm sure you can relate it to being a musician) I never had any delusions about my ability- I always knew I was one of the better players in my age group in the area but that I probably wasn't good enough to make it professionally and that proved to be the case (whereas you probably knew you had the ability to be a professional musician)... When I started playing poker regularly in the evenings, however, (and backed up by a couple of early binks... Scott Seiver and Parker Talbot both have funny stories about how they binked a big score when they first started playing , both thought they were the dogs' proverbial. Parker then proceeded to lose it all back and more in the months that followed and had to start again. Scott realised pretty quickly after his score that he was, in fact, terrible and had gotten lucky and proceeded to get coaching... not that comparable given that their scores were in the tens of thousands and mine were for a few hundred quid... but it's kind of the same in theory anyway) I immediately thought I was good Then I realised I was terrible. Then I thought I was good again. Then I realised I was still terrible. Then I thought I was decent. Then I realised I probably wasn't decent. Now I honestly have no idea whether my current game is winning, losing or breakeven in some of the softest games in online poker It's one thing studying and talking a good game about hands in isolation away from the table, it's quite another to play hundreds of hands consistently well over the course of an evening...
1) I've been deliberately trying to play in tough reggy games... 2) Having a complete overhaul of my game is a fairly massive project... 3) Your point about being able to apply knowledge correctly and effectively... 4) In order to find the max exploitative lines, I think you need to firstly work out what is optimal/balanced...
This all seems great and it looks like you are going about things in the right way. I'm sure this approach will stand you in good stead in the long run but, as you say, perhaps at some cost in the short to medium term.
5) Variance. Genuinely been months since AA last held up against another pair for me...
Yep, I feel you on this one too. If you're consistently losing those key pots (or losing them more than your fair share in the short term) then short stacked MTT's can be brutal.
These are just my opinions on this - may be a load of rubbish...
Not at all. A quality, insightful post and a great read. Enjoyed it.
Were there any particular areas of mental game where you think you were/are struggling?...
Yes. Many I'll leave it here for now and maybe divulge some of that at a later date
I don't know. It's just a theory. We should both be getting consistently better at the game but our results would suggest otherwise. Perhaps it is a number of factors though and maybe variance is still just a large part of it and maybe our cases have nothing in common at all...
Anyway, was fun last night and I hope to bump into you at the tables more often... hopefully at a big final table next time... but hopefully you won't be on my immediate left with a huge stack if that happens
Run well.
Over what sample are you looking at? Often players work on a part of their game then get a result and assume it is because of specific work they have done. The game isn't that simple.
For the West Wing/Latin fans amongst you, "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc"
There are quite fine margins at times and the work you do (assuming you apply things correctly) will help those margins but the results rarely are seen in the short term unless it is a massive leak you have plugged. You don't know if the results when you were getting good results was you running +ev. If you are incorrectly using theories it may be being detrimental to your game or it could just be you are adjusting to new parts of your game so making some short term mistakes. Make sure you analyse what you are doing correctly, have seen people be pretty results orientated when trying new things and say something didn't work because they run into the one hand that can call them.
Also, you need to make sure you are playing well against your specific opponent, is our opponent thinking at a level we are trying to play them on? No point getting mad when our opponent is thinking, wow I have the top pair I cant fold this and we are bluffing based on ranges we are expecting them to fold.
Finally, it could just be short term variance and you are trying to find reasons when there are none!
Freakily, haven't watched/thought about WW for around 10 years but was thinking about that scene yesterday - not in relation to poker or anything, just randomly. How odd Texas hat joke, CJ's tombstone, after therefore because of it, yeah? Such a great series!
Don't worry if you don't want to answer, Matt, but do you put aside time to work on your game these days or do you just approach it by playing the game/thinking about it? Obviously you've been a consistent big winner for a number of years, but during that time the game has evolved so I can't imagine your game has stayed the same even if you got it to a really high level in like 2013 or whenever!
Comments
Glgl to all today!
Was great playing with you last night and having a bit of chat and banter at the table.
For all the moaning I've been doing recently about the MTT schedule, Sky has some great characters and a fantastic community and (in spite of not being able to win tournaments on the site anymore) this keeps me coming back for more.
Thanks for the Jared Tendler YouTube link- a lot of it resonated with me (which was both alarming but expected) and I think just having these issues laid out in front of me and dissected in simple terms will help me address them going forward, so thanks again. To be fair, @Duesenberg had recommended the book to me before and I know that a lot of players have mentioned it on the forum and swear by its content but I couldn't be bothered getting it ordered... I know, I know, three mouse clicks and it's on your doorstep two days later... maybe I was shielding myself from uncovering the true extent of my mental game problems
Now, I'm not sure how you will feel about what I'm about to say next (to be honest I'm not sure how I feel about it and it may not apply to you at all, our situations may be totally different) but...
...do you think there could be a link between our current downswings and our increasing levels of poker study/strategy acquisition? I know this might sound counterintuitive but is there a possibility that our games are currently in a transitional state as we acquire knowledge, integrate it into our games and attempt to apply it at the tables correctly and effectively?
Here is a hand from last nights Mega Stack to illustrate the point:
I was very close to folding here and this was my thought process: I block KJ, I don't block flushes, 98 gets there and he can still just have all the 7x, although I still have top pair strong kicker my hand strength is now relatively weak on this river and I will have stronger hands than this as played... I will actually have few weaker made hands that get to river but I will have some AK,AJ,KJ... I am smack bang in the middle of my range in terms of hand strength but I should still only be beating bluffs and given the blocking and unblocking effects of my exact holding this probably should be a fold...
I feel this river spot highlights what a complex game poker can be but it also shows how easy it is to potentially over think things and maybe misapply concepts or place more value in their significance than is warranted.
...one thing that has killed me since I discovered it is bluffing with nut blockers- attempting to apply some (debatably higher level) concepts in the games I'm playing is not big, it's not clever, it is actually the exact opposite of those things but I have been doing this stuff for months and doing it far too often and it has only recently dawned on me. I realise now that it had led to me being far too aggressive in spots that wouldn't have even occurred to me previously. Punting off again and again in tournaments trying to get people off hands because I can represent x and I have x blocker and then just thinking that was a good line, that should have worked, I will have the nuts there so often as played, they made a bad call...
Another one for me has been iso jamming over limps (and limp-calls) way too light and attempting to get away with it too often even though a lot of Sky players' favourite adjustment is to limp trap 1010+, AJs+ when they see someone doing this a few times (and, of course, some players still just open-limp their whole range anyway). I used to only do this for value and it never really occurred to me to jam suited wheel aces, K10s+, and small pocket pairs in these spots... it just added so much variance to my game because I started to push it too far and just ended up getting caught too often and not getting there.
Another thing has been hero calling rivers because they only represent the nuts and they have x bluffs and I have to have some calls here and I'm close to the top of my range and I block this combo or that combo... when the reality is, in these games, that they don't have the bluffs frequently enough (or ever in some cases) and I can even fold hands as strong as the second nuts in these spots and I'm not getting exploited.
Here's an example from 10nl last night to illustrate this point too:
Anyway, was fun last night and I hope to bump into you at the tables more often... hopefully at a big final table next time... but hopefully you won't be on my immediate left with a huge stack if that happens
Run well.
Yes was fun game!!
Interesting thoughts - got mental couple of days work-wise and want to reply to this properly later in the week
When that one hand is 16 combinations of hands and opponent shows up with nothing else at a high enough frequency to make calling with the second nuts profitable...
I think plenty of times there they are betting lower sets and 2 pair combos for what they think is value
I think it’s just a snap and sigh and “next hand dealer” if they do show up with what they actually had
Like you say, its 10nl. Leaving so much value on the table by just flatting (unless you have very concrete reads its the straight and never anything else)
I can see why some people might not raise, but to even consider folding is beyond nitty and leaves so much money on the table long term.
I think folding the 2nd nuts at nl10 is burning money
The gist of my point is that facing very specific lines in very specific spots we can put our opponent on the nuts so often that calling is losing money.
Applying that to the hand I used as an example:
-if opponent check-raises flop, bets turn, bets river I'm calling down with the rivered set of Queens here.
-if opponent check-calls flop, check-raises turn and bets river I am putting him all in with the rivered set of Queens here.
I will still be shown the nuts sometimes facing both of the lines taken above but these are the lines where I will be more inclined to give him "all the two pairs"
-when opponent check-calls flop, check-calls turn then blasts out for POT on THIS river when the most obvious draw comes in I want to make an exploitive fold... and I would argue that it is more of a fold facing this line because it's 10nl (not less of a fold because it's 10nl)
Jared Tendler is great isn't he. Previously I had thought of tilt as only for people who donk off stacks after bad beats and that kind of thing. So it's eye-opening to discover the different types that affect us.
On the subject of downswings and increased knowledge...
Not sure if it's in that video or part 2 but did you get to the bit about the 4 stages of learning?
Unconscious Incompetence
Conscious Incompetence
Conscious Competence
Unconscious Competence
Not that you or I were 'incompetent' before, I hope (though I have uncovered all sorts of leaking plays I was making as 'standard' that I would now say are really bad), but I (easier to speak about myself rather than make assumptions about you) am in phase 2 at the moment, working towards phase 3. So as you say, a transition period.
There are a few reasons why I think this has caused my results to get worse. Not being self-centred in talking mostly about me - but some of these will apply to others as well and I don't want to make false assumptions about your learning
1) I've been deliberately trying to play in tough reggy games. Constructing polarised 3bet ranges from different positions and then testing it out on a table where everyone is limp/calling their full range and cold calling 3bets left right and centre is just a waste of time for practicing some things. Maybe I'm currently minus EV in these games, or running bad, but either way I'm learning a lot from it and picking up a lot of notes for exploitations vs regs.
2) Having a complete overhaul of my game is a fairly massive project and at the moment I've only focussed on preflop. Postflop I'm playing fairly standard ABC (which isn't going to win too much money) so that I can see the effect of preflop decisions more clearly, ie, not making a spew preflop and managing to get out of jail postflop and then thinking that preflop was a successful line in itself.
3) Your point about being able to apply knowledge correctly and effectively. Inevitably at first, we're going to misapply things that we've learned and it's going to burn money. Fact. All part of the leaning process I suppose!
- Cue some lame metaphor like phoenix rising from the ashes
On a side note, I usually play 4-6 tables on Sky and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that when I do this I revert back to old autopilot ways and I'm not even applying any new things anyway! Playing 3 tables max for the last 2 sessions, which is painful, but gives chance to focus properly.
4) In order to find the max exploitative lines, I think you need to firstly work out what is optimal/balanced and be really comfortable with that and then work out how to manipulate that to find leaks in other players. The more you do that the more you notice things other players are doing, I think. But this means playing balanced against players where playing balanced is not going to be winning the most money, eg, having bluffing range against guy who's snapping rivers with Ace high ,etc. So in the meantime, again as part of the learning process, you're kind of sacrificing EV in order to make more in the long term.
5) Variance. Genuinely been months since AA last held up against another pair for me
These are just my opinions on this - may be a load of rubbish! Maybe I was just running really well before! Or maybe my old strategy of raising first in with a ludicrous number of hands from every position (30% MP, 80% BTN lol) and then cbetting 99% of flops was the way to go (disclaimer: it wasn't..!) Please do add any of your experiences to this - all interesting stuff! Were there any particular areas of mental game where you think you were/are struggling?
Previously I had thought of tilt as only for people who donk off stacks after bad beats and that kind of thing. So it's eye-opening to discover the different types that affect us.
Yes, this was what I thought tilt was... wrong
On the subject of downswings and increased knowledge...
Not sure if it's in that video or part 2 but did you get to the bit about the 4 stages of learning? Not that you or I were 'incompetent' before, I hope (though I have uncovered all sorts of leaking plays I was making as 'standard' that I would now say are really bad), but I (easier to speak about myself rather than make assumptions about you) am in phase 2 at the moment, working towards phase 3. So as you say, a transition period.
This section was in the video but I hadn't reached that point when I wrote my first message to you and the part about transitional states...
It makes sense. I'm in stage 2 striving for stage 3 also it seems. I think I may have been one step above incompetence when I started playing on Sky last year (but maybe only one baby step) and that was largely down to watching a lot of Twitch streams, Polker Hands
I feel this at least gave me a decent foundation to build on... or at least, I thought it had. Perhaps I thought I was building my house upon the rock (like a wise man) but I was actually building it upon the sand (like a foolish man) and as I attempted to add floors to the house (or levels of complexity to my game) the whole thing collapsed under its own weight and was washed into the sea...
I'm in the process of seeing if anything is salvageable from the flotsam and jetsam.
One of the funny things about poker is that (unlike anything else I can think of really) it seems full of false dawns and confusion or delusion about ones ability and potential. If I relate it to my football career that never was (I played for Boston United and Lincoln City in my youth as well as county schools football for Lincolnshire) (and I'm sure you can relate it to being a musician) I never had any delusions about my ability- I always knew I was one of the better players in my age group in the area but that I probably wasn't good enough to make it professionally and that proved to be the case (whereas you probably knew you had the ability to be a professional musician)...
When I started playing poker regularly in the evenings, however, (and backed up by a couple of early binks... Scott Seiver and Parker Talbot both have funny stories about how they binked a big score when they first started playing , both thought they were the dogs' proverbial. Parker then proceeded to lose it all back and more in the months that followed and had to start again. Scott realised pretty quickly after his score that he was, in fact, terrible and had gotten lucky and proceeded to get coaching... not that comparable given that their scores were in the tens of thousands and mine were for a few hundred quid... but it's kind of the same in theory anyway) I immediately thought I was good
1) I've been deliberately trying to play in tough reggy games...
2) Having a complete overhaul of my game is a fairly massive project...
3) Your point about being able to apply knowledge correctly and effectively...
4) In order to find the max exploitative lines, I think you need to firstly work out what is optimal/balanced...
This all seems great and it looks like you are going about things in the right way. I'm sure this approach will stand you in good stead in the long run but, as you say, perhaps at some cost in the short to medium term.
5) Variance. Genuinely been months since AA last held up against another pair for me...
Yep, I feel you on this one too. If you're consistently losing those key pots (or losing them more than your fair share in the short term) then short stacked MTT's can be brutal.
These are just my opinions on this - may be a load of rubbish...
Not at all. A quality, insightful post and a great read. Enjoyed it.
Were there any particular areas of mental game where you think you were/are struggling?...
Yes. Many
Take it easy.
For the West Wing/Latin fans amongst you, "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc"
There are quite fine margins at times and the work you do (assuming you apply things correctly) will help those margins but the results rarely are seen in the short term unless it is a massive leak you have plugged. You don't know if the results when you were getting good results was you running +ev. If you are incorrectly using theories it may be being detrimental to your game or it could just be you are adjusting to new parts of your game so making some short term mistakes. Make sure you analyse what you are doing correctly, have seen people be pretty results orientated when trying new things and say something didn't work because they run into the one hand that can call them.
Also, you need to make sure you are playing well against your specific opponent, is our opponent thinking at a level we are trying to play them on? No point getting mad when our opponent is thinking, wow I have the top pair I cant fold this and we are bluffing based on ranges we are expecting them to fold.
Finally, it could just be short term variance and you are trying to find reasons when there are none!
Such a great series!
Don't worry if you don't want to answer, Matt, but do you put aside time to work on your game these days or do you just approach it by playing the game/thinking about it? Obviously you've been a consistent big winner for a number of years, but during that time the game has evolved so I can't imagine your game has stayed the same even if you got it to a really high level in like 2013 or whenever!