Oh boy. The swings are so much more painful at high buy-ins. Down about £215 on the last few days.
Friday was a disaster but I at least managed to almost breakeven on the Main after piling £60 into it. Pretty upset not to cash it after spending most of the mid-stages in the top ten after a huge and very lucky three-way all in where my jacks turned a straight to beat two pair. But it was GG when I jammed 99 for 20bb and got called by TT with about 100 left. Can't do much about that. Happy with my performance, gutted to not be cashing.
There was one fun moment where I accidentally 2x overbet the pot for about 1/3 of my stack on a monotone flop where I had K-high, none of the right suit. Never been so relieved to get a fold.
Have been trying to be honest with myself about what's going wrong the last few days and I sincerely believe it's primarily variance. I haven't once felt outmatched in these 22/33 Mains. I've made some goofy plays here and there but for the most part I'm playing better than I ever have right now.
One interesting thing that happens is I get a little intimidated on tables with known good regs and tighten up a fair bit, especially postflop, and I think that's a bit of an overreaction. It's hard to say how I'm doing against good regs since I haven't historically seen them very often and make most of my money against much worse players.
On a more positive note, I've been getting some brilliant results on Party Poker this week, which is supposed to be one of the tougher fields. I've been playing a bunch of $5/$11 Powerfest MTTs and Bounty Hunters and booking decent cashes and a final table. Sharkscope doesn't show my real name results but I think I'm probably now showing an all-time profit there after punting off 20 quid here and there for the last couple of years.
Apropos of nothing, I'm one year off smoking today. Genuinely one of my proudest achievements after many failed attempts in the last 16-odd years. I have no desire to smoke anymore with exactly one exception: right after I've cleaned off a Domino's. Don't know why but it makes me want a cigarette more than anything and it always has.
Can't say things are so rosy in poker land. The downswing continues on Sky. I skipped the majority of my bigger buy-ins tonight hoping to get some smaller, easy wins to get me in the mood for tomorrow. It didn't really pan out. I did final table a £5 BH this afternoon and I ran deep in the Mini for a little better than a min cash but ended up a few quid down on the day after a failed flutter on the £22 Mega BH.
What's been good for my confidence is doing very well in the tournaments I'm playing on Unibet and Party Poker. It was another smashing day on that front. If I can keep that up tomorrow I'm going to be able to donate a nice bit of dosh.
Looking forward to the challenge tomorrow. I put it long sessions yesterday and today and have held up well. Will be incredibly disappointed if I don't come away with some winnings to donate but I'm quietly confident. Thanks to the generosity of others I've already raised over 150 quid so it will be a success no matter what.
Thought I'd have a little look at my exit hand from last night's £22 Mega Stack Bounty Hunter. I finished 4th, which I'm really happy with, but I fudged my exit hand. Not going into too much depth here since I'd have to boot into Windows to get Flopzilla up and I'm in the middle of some stuff in OSX.
Here's the hand:
Player
Action
Cards
Amount
Pot
Balance
Lee_Boy
Small blind
5000.00
5000.00
240114.24
NOSTRI
Big blind
10000.00
15000.00
316697.72
Your hole cards
K
J
chipjet
Raise
30000.00
45000.00
376255.14
Mccriver
Fold
Lee_Boy
Fold
NOSTRI
Call
20000.00
65000.00
296697.72
Flop
A
10
Q
NOSTRI
Check
chipjet
Bet
32500.00
97500.00
343755.14
NOSTRI
Call
32500.00
130000.00
264197.72
Turn
10
NOSTRI
Check
chipjet
Bet
65000.00
195000.00
278755.14
NOSTRI
Raise
180000.00
375000.00
84197.72
chipjet
All-in
278755.14
653755.14
0.00
NOSTRI
All-in
84197.72
737952.86
0.00
chipjet
Unmatched bet
79557.42
658395.44
79557.42
NOSTRI
Show
K
J
chipjet
Show
10
Q
River
J
chipjet
Win
Full House, 10s and Queens
658395.44
737952.86
I'm starting this hand with 31bb, facing a 3x open from a CO with 40bb.
Not much to say about villain here. I don't know him and he only has 34 games on Sharkscope, so no point reading much into his ability rating of 81. It seems like a reasonable assumption that he's one of many recreational players using their lockdown time to play some online poker but best not to lean too hard on that.
The sizing is a bit odd. I think most people are using 2-2.5x sizing these days but I know some people still like their 3x. In general, this player's sizing was all over the place so I don't think I can say much about his likely holdings based on it. He did seem to be mostly using a 3x size from the CO and BTN but there was at least one occasion where he went 4x, so it's possible he's using a larger sizing with some hands. He was also min-raising limps from the big blind and at one point mysteriously 1.75x'd from the SB. I'm more inclined to say this player is just clicking buttons than giving him credit for having a particular strategy with his sizings.
Anyway, standard call with KJo.
Flop comes AcThQs and I have the nuts with a straight. Check to the PFR, he bets half pot and I call.
I hate that I didn't raise this. At the time I wanted to slow-play it since my hand is almost never getting worse on turn and river. I was also generally not trying to barrel too many chips off when there was a short stack on the table. But he's not that short and I have the nuts. Just can't justify it.
Turn is Td, he goes half pot again and I finally decide to raise. He jams, I sigh call.
I distinctly remember thinking the second I saw the turn card: Wouldn't it be funny if he had AT. Close!
I think raising at this point is probably fine but IMO I needed to fold to the jam.
What's he going to call with when I raise? AQ, I guess. AK, maybe, but I block that. I also block KT and JT and all his straight draws. That leaves a huge pile of full houses. I actually do want to look at this in Flopzilla and see what proportion of hands that can call a raise are full houses. I bet it's huge.
When he jams, I am basically not beating anything. His sets are now full houses or quads and a lot of his two pairs are also now full houses. He'd have to be suicidal to jam Ax and I don't think many players on final tables are suicidal.
As played, I think I need to just call the turn bet and try to find a fold on the river when he inevitably jams. Probably still would have called it off.
It seems obvious now but I couldn't find the fold in the moment.
Likely calling a raise on that flop. I think you are likely to go bust on that run-out, and I wouldn't beat yourself up about it. Once he shoves, you are getting 8-1 on your money. Got to call.
It would be an understatement to say that I'm looking forward to this. As much as I enjoyed UKOPS, and even had a few nice results, the majority of the tournaments were well above my buy-in limits and it was only with encouragement from Coach Melt that I had the confidence to have a go. Ultimately it was a bit of a bloodbath but it could have been a lot worse.
Mini UKOPS, though. I'm comfortably rolled for everything and I intend to play everything.
And? I think I will have a significant edge over the majority of the field.
I never would have made such a claim at the beginning of this year. Honestly, as a generally self-deprecating and unconfident person, I can't believe I'm saying it now. But my results speak for themselves and numbers, much like my hips, do not lie. I've turned several corners this year and put a lot of time and effort into getting better and I really think it's paying off.
So I've spent some time on Sharkscope this morning digging into my results, primarily to make sure I'm not kidding myself and secondarily as a confidence booster to get me in a good frame of mind. I've got a nice little downswing on my last 100 entries so there's a healthy dose of fragility tempering that confidence.
Mini UKOPS entries run from £2 to £11, so I filtered my results down to that, excluded satellites, and only included this year, since that's where I've made the most progress.
At these stakes, I've profited around £800 over 570 entries for a 23.6% ROI. That's already more than I made through the whole of 2019, where I only showed 11.6% ROI, so that's a nice start already.
I'm showing 34% ROI at £2 entries, 24% ROI at £5 entries, and a honking 47% ROI at £11 entries, albeit at a very small sample size of 41, since I only recently started playing those regularly. All significant improvements on 2019.
I've got 44 final table finishes and 4 outright wins, with my most frequent final table finish being 2nd. So I'm FTing slightly less than 8% of my entries and winning around 0.7%. I'm not sure where that "should" be but they're slightly worse than 2019's numbers and I'd like them to be higher. My most frequent FT finish in 2019 was joint 3rd, 4th and 5th, so that is a massive improvement.
I think it's fair to say that I should expect my overall results to be slightly dampened by the increased field sizes consequent to lockdown. A huge chunk of my volume this year has been during lockdown and therefore subject to markedly heightened variance. Given this caveat, I'm really happy with how everything is going.
So there we are. I'm heading into Mini UKOPS feeling more confident than I ever have in my poker ability. Fingers crossed for some run good. I'm still missing a big score this year and it would be marvellous to get there during UKOPS.
Blimey. So Mini UKOPS is over. Thought I'd do a little post-mortem here.
There's the profit graph for the series. As you can see, the first half went like an absolute dream and I got two of my biggest wins all year.
The second half was incredibly frustrating and demoralising. I don't mind losing when I'm playing badly, and there were absolutely some idiotic punts in there, but the last two days were mainly cooler after cooler after cooler. Nightmare. Feel like a tit being too upset about it though when many of the participants in the charity sidebet had much worse weeks.
On the upside, I kept my head throughout. I have typically found it really hard to persevere through downswings and coolers and often get incredibly tilted and just play badly but I managed to avoid that during UKOPS, save for the occasional flash of blinding range. For the most part I'm please with how my mental game has improved recently. I think a large part of that has been due to the coaching I've had from @chicknMelt. I'm more confident now that I'm playing reasonably well and taking logical lines, so when I do get owned it's easier to recognise that it's not my own stupidity that did me in.
Some lowlights from the last week were getting AA in vs QQ and losing to quads, and in another hand flopping a full house with AA and once again losing to quads. There's also the post above, where I lost a four-way all in with the nut flush to, yep, quads. Lots of quads out there in the last week. But I said my swear words and moved on like a big boy.
Can't think of much else to say about it. Thought it was a great series and I had a lot of fun playing it. Can't argue with £430 in profit either, and it dug me out of a ridiculous downswing.
Capped off the week with a decent finish in the £22 Mega Stack last night too. Was nice to finish on a high note after yet another rubbish Mini UKOPS performance.
Night off now and back to the usual schedule. Sticking to the plan of playing 11s and 22s more regularly and phasing out a lot of my smaller buy-ins, as well as taking shots at main events when I qualify. I'm skipping the smaller satellites and getting stuck right in to the semi satellites, which has been a pretty good strategy so far.
Have had an absolutely miserable month or so. Even with a few nice results during Mini UKOPS, it's generally been all doom and gloom overall. The best way I know to counteract that is with study, so I've been working my way through the Raise Your Edge Tournament Masterclass.
I can't really decide what I think of the course. It's full of useful information and it's structured fairly well overall but the individual lessons are all over the place and not delivered in a style I get on with very well. For almost $1,000, I expect a lot more of a well-rounded product. Persevering for now but considering Run It Once's MTT course, which is a tenth of the price and seems much better presented.
Also had a coaching session with Melty where we went through a replay of two MTTs he won. Final tables/heads up are by far the weakest parts of my game right now, so that was time very well spent.
Managed to book two final tables and a win last night, which is always nice to see after four days of intense studying. Posting a few hands from the MTT I won, an £11 BH. One for fun and one where I'm uncertain about the line I took.
Here's the fun one:
Player
Action
Cards
Amount
Pot
Balance
hector45
Small blind
800.00
800.00
21430.00
jack100
Big blind
1600.00
2400.00
52510.00
Your hole cards
Q
J
LmfaoAllin
Fold
NOSTRI
Raise
3200.00
5600.00
23560.00
hector45
Call
2400.00
8000.00
19030.00
jack100
Raise
6400.00
14400.00
46110.00
NOSTRI
Call
4800.00
19200.00
18760.00
hector45
Call
4800.00
24000.00
14230.00
Flop
8
4
7
hector45
All-in
14230.00
38230.00
0.00
jack100
Call
14230.00
52460.00
31880.00
NOSTRI
All-in
18760.00
71220.00
0.00
jack100
Call
4530.00
75750.00
27350.00
hector45
Show
9
9
jack100
Show
2
A
NOSTRI
Show
Q
J
Turn
J
River
6
NOSTRI
Win
Pair of Jacks
75750.00
75750.00
Not sure what's going on with the preflop sizings here. The HH says the BB min-raised but I had to call 1.5x? Am I being a moron or does that not add up? I remember it being a min-3bet. Who knows.
Anyway. Good argument for open-jamming QJs with 16bb, I think, but we're 4-handed here and there were only 8 or 9 left in the tournament, so we're well ITM. There was one big stack who was on my table and everyone else fairly even. Made sense to play it more cautiously. HRC is telling me this is slightly more profitable as an open than a jam in chipEV, and very profitable to flat the 3b, so I'm happy enough with that.
Flop a flush draw and get an all in and a call ahead of me. Wasn't really sure what to make of that but we can't be that far behind with a flush draw so I just said f*ck it and put it in.
Got incredibly lucky here and I don't think I've ever been so happy to miss a flush draw. Such immense skill to turn the J and fade the hearts.
Not sure about this one. We're heads up here, fairly even stacks after trading chips for a little while. Felt really dirty after this and I almost feel like I owe @LmfaoAllin an apology.
Player
Action
Cards
Amount
Pot
Balance
NOSTRI
Small blind
2000.00
2000.00
120113.74
LmfaoAllin
Big blind
4000.00
6000.00
137886.26
Your hole cards
5
6
NOSTRI
Raise
6000.00
12000.00
114113.74
LmfaoAllin
Raise
18755.00
30755.00
119131.26
NOSTRI
Call
14755.00
45510.00
99358.74
Flop
4
7
Q
LmfaoAllin
Bet
16000.00
61510.00
103131.26
NOSTRI
All-in
99358.74
160868.74
0.00
LmfaoAllin
Call
83358.74
244227.48
19772.52
NOSTRI
Show
5
6
LmfaoAllin
Show
10
10
Turn
8
River
2
NOSTRI
Win
Straight to the 8
244227.48
244227.48
I'm really bad at heads up and don't know my ranges very well so more or less follow the charts preflop and adjust where it makes sense. The charts said raise/call with 65s. So far so good.
On the flop I decided to just put him all in for around 25bb. Had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do here.
I'm obviously not folding. I'd just flat if I was deeper, but doing so here would have left me with just a little over pot back and just having to give up or bluff with much worse equity when I miss.
In my mind, jamming felt like the best option. He has plenty of hands that will call but probably more that should fold, and I still have buckets of equity when he does call.
Looking at it now, jamming turn probably would have been fine too.
Have had an absolutely miserable month or so. Even with a few nice results during Mini UKOPS, it's generally been all doom and gloom overall. The best way I know to counteract that is with study, so I've been working my way through the Raise Your Edge Tournament Masterclass.
I can't really decide what I think of the course. It's full of useful information and it's structured fairly well overall but the individual lessons are all over the place and not delivered in a style I get on with very well. For almost $1,000, I expect a lot more of a well-rounded product. Persevering for now but considering Run It Once's MTT course, which is a tenth of the price and seems much better presented.
Wow 1k for a course. Theres so many courses and training sites out there at the moment its hard to decide what to invest in. if you,ve paid so much for that tho i wouldn,t even look at any others for now and concentrate on that one. I,ve only paid for 1 course . That was $60 for a low stakes spin and Go course but i made sure i got my moneys worth by going over it time and time again. I,d be doing it even more if i,d paid 1k.
GL
PS Do you know of any threads on here or elsewhere where ppl review courses/Training programs/Software etc ? And what made you choose the raise your edge course as oppose to others?
Wow 1k for a course. Theres so many courses and training sites out there at the moment its hard to decide what to invest in. if you,ve paid so much for that tho i wouldn,t even look at any others for now and concentrate on that one. I,ve only paid for 1 course . That was $60 for a low stakes spin and Go course but i made sure i got my moneys worth by going over it time and time again. I,d be doing it even more if i,d paid 1k.
GL
PS Do you know of any threads on here or elsewhere where ppl review courses/Training programs/Software etc ? And what made you choose the raise your edge course as oppose to others?
I didn't pay that much for it, I'm piggy-backing off someone else's purchase. That's way outside my poker budget. $150 for RIO is more in my ballpark. But you're right, and I'm trying to get as much value from it as I can before investing in anything else.
I've never seen anyone on here talking about training sites or software. I'd suggest starting one if you're looking for views, or just googling it. There are plenty of reviews out there.
To answer your question, I'm using the RYE course because it's free to me. But I know it's well-regarded, and I have a lot of respect for bencb as a player having watched a lot of his Youtube stuff. Despite my criticism, it's well-structured and easily digestible. I think it's pretty good.
I've spent a lot more time on Pokercoaching.com, and I'd recommend it heartily over anything else for amateur-recreational players. Covers the basics very well, has some brilliant interactive features that are great for the learning process, and Jonathan Little is a great teacher. He mentioned in a recent Youtube video that he'd consulted with education experts on being a better teacher and it really shows when you compare him to people like bencb, who isn't nearly as good a tutor as he is a poker player.
Apologies if you've covered this before, but what is your study/play ratio? Even if you count attentively watching twitch streams as study, mine is probably 98/2 to playing, which is no good
Apologies if you've covered this before, but what is your study/play ratio? Even if you count attentively watching twitch streams as study, mine is probably 98/2 to playing, which is no good
Hard to say, and it varies a lot.
I have various Youtube subscriptions to poker stuff that I watch on an almost daily basis, things like Jonathan Little, Bencb, Finding Equilibrium, etc. I consider that more passive studying and I'm not making any notes or reviewing it, just hoping it goes in and stays in. It's not very effective as a study method IMO but it's probably doing some good.
I spend an hour or so most mornings after a session looking at spots from last night that I've bookmarked for review. More focused studying on things like RYE is on more of a when I feel like it basis but I'm trying to make a habit of starting each session with a bit of it. It's hard to find time for that in normal circumstances though, so lockdown has been a blessing in that regard.
I'd guess it's around 10-20% actual study, maybe as high as 30% if you include the passive stuff, on average. Slightly higher when I'm making an effort.
I feel like I'm on a bit of a Dunning-Kruger-like curve with it now where I studied a lot until I reached a point where I thought I was hot sh*t and practically stopped, then realised I was barely scratching the surface and started studying a lot again.
I'm not sure what the optimal ratio is. I've put a fair bit of thought into this as an Education student so I've tried to keep theories of learning (here's Kolb's for example, I wrote a paper on this and it's very interesting) into account with how I approach it. Ideally, we have a constant cycle of reflection and conceptualisation followed by experimentation and using that experience to inform future actions and reflection. Kolb's theory has these four elements on equal footing, and most of the influential theories do, but I don't think the precise ratios are too important as long as we keep that cycle going where we take some amount of time to think about what we've done/are doing and try to integrate new ideas and concepts. I think different people will find they need to dedicate different amounts of time to each stage of this process. I find that I absorb and integrate new concepts quite slowly, so I often feel I need to spend more time studying than other people do.
I've heard 80/20 as a possible optimal figure but as you say its completely different for everyone and indeed what level/ability they're already at
Good paper you linked, theories of learning are pretty interesting, but i wonder if you're ever able to actually pigeon hole everyone. For example I thought I was the type not to get reallllly into anything but enjoy lots of different things at an average interest, but over lockdown I've found myself diving deep into things I never thought I would be bothered with a few months ago
Hey Nozzer... methinks the tag team challenge, when it comes around, would be great with you and pj......I’ll pay @PKRPar to rig THAT draw
Absolutely not happening.
What is this tag team challenge? I've only heard PJ talk about it and I assumed it was more of his nonsense.
As PJ is the next forum moderator/administrator-his words , not mine!-....surely it's nailed on?
( from memory I think stayorgo is planning something either around pair or regional teams...or maybe i am getting confused by mistrPJ...that doesn't normally happen as he is so clear, normally?...)
I've heard 80/20 as a possible optimal figure but as you say its completely different for everyone and indeed what level/ability they're already at
Good paper you linked, theories of learning are pretty interesting, but i wonder if you're ever able to actually pigeon hole everyone. For example I thought I was the type not to get reallllly into anything but enjoy lots of different things at an average interest, but over lockdown I've found myself diving deep into things I never thought I would be bothered with a few months ago
Not sure how much sense this will make since it's a few years since I got into it but I'll have a go.
Most of these learning theories are decades-old but it is definitely still contested whether there can be such a thing as a universal theory of how people learn. I would say that Kolb isn't trying to pigeon-hole anyone as much as he's trying to explain and accomodate everyone's different approaches and preferences.
Most of us probably learned in school about learning modalities, where people are supposedly visual learners, or auditory learners, and so on. Those kinds of models have been reduced more or less to pseudoscience status now and don't hold much water in scholarly research, though they remain weirdly influential in our education system (largely because there are a lot of financial interests attached to them, I think). That's what I think of when you talk about pigeon-holing.
Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory isn't so much an attempt to pigeon-hole people as it as an attempt to describe the cognitive process in which learning takes place, and suggests ways to reinforce or strengthen that process. It's more of an epistemological view than a prescriptive framework. We can learn in whichever way most pleases us, but it will be most effective if we can satisfy the stages of his learning cycle.
The main takeaway from the theory, and what is missing in most people's halfhearted interest in whatever subject, is that learning should involve an experiential element where you attempt to apply the ideas you've learned in some manner. Whether I want to read about poker, listen to a podcast, or chat with a coach doesn't matter; it's the process of trying to use the information I've gained that converts information acquisition to actual learning or knowledge. If you've ever read something in a book and immediately forgotten it, that's why, in Kolb's view; no attempt to use that information in a concrete experience was made.
I think it's important here to make a distinction between acquiring information and truly learning about something. Reading a Wikipedia page on metal detecting or whatever isn't really learning, it's simple information acquisition and only one stage of the learning process.
Comments
Friday was a disaster but I at least managed to almost breakeven on the Main after piling £60 into it. Pretty upset not to cash it after spending most of the mid-stages in the top ten after a huge and very lucky three-way all in where my jacks turned a straight to beat two pair. But it was GG when I jammed 99 for 20bb and got called by TT with about 100 left. Can't do much about that. Happy with my performance, gutted to not be cashing.
There was one fun moment where I accidentally 2x overbet the pot for about 1/3 of my stack on a monotone flop where I had K-high, none of the right suit. Never been so relieved to get a fold.
Have been trying to be honest with myself about what's going wrong the last few days and I sincerely believe it's primarily variance. I haven't once felt outmatched in these 22/33 Mains. I've made some goofy plays here and there but for the most part I'm playing better than I ever have right now.
One interesting thing that happens is I get a little intimidated on tables with known good regs and tighten up a fair bit, especially postflop, and I think that's a bit of an overreaction. It's hard to say how I'm doing against good regs since I haven't historically seen them very often and make most of my money against much worse players.
On a more positive note, I've been getting some brilliant results on Party Poker this week, which is supposed to be one of the tougher fields. I've been playing a bunch of $5/$11 Powerfest MTTs and Bounty Hunters and booking decent cashes and a final table. Sharkscope doesn't show my real name results but I think I'm probably now showing an all-time profit there after punting off 20 quid here and there for the last couple of years.
Anyway, this is not the frame of mind I want to go into Sunday with. I'm planning to play all day long for charity and donate any profit I make to St John Ambulance. (If you'd like to contribute, I have a JustGiving page where I'm accepting donations.) I'd like to be feeling positive and refreshed on Sunday morning. So, a fairly light, low stakes session this evening I think.
Best of luck on Sunday Nozzer.
Can't say things are so rosy in poker land. The downswing continues on Sky. I skipped the majority of my bigger buy-ins tonight hoping to get some smaller, easy wins to get me in the mood for tomorrow. It didn't really pan out. I did final table a £5 BH this afternoon and I ran deep in the Mini for a little better than a min cash but ended up a few quid down on the day after a failed flutter on the £22 Mega BH.
What's been good for my confidence is doing very well in the tournaments I'm playing on Unibet and Party Poker. It was another smashing day on that front. If I can keep that up tomorrow I'm going to be able to donate a nice bit of dosh.
Looking forward to the challenge tomorrow. I put it long sessions yesterday and today and have held up well. Will be incredibly disappointed if I don't come away with some winnings to donate but I'm quietly confident. Thanks to the generosity of others I've already raised over 150 quid so it will be a success no matter what.
Here's the hand:
Not much to say about villain here. I don't know him and he only has 34 games on Sharkscope, so no point reading much into his ability rating of 81. It seems like a reasonable assumption that he's one of many recreational players using their lockdown time to play some online poker but best not to lean too hard on that.
The sizing is a bit odd. I think most people are using 2-2.5x sizing these days but I know some people still like their 3x. In general, this player's sizing was all over the place so I don't think I can say much about his likely holdings based on it. He did seem to be mostly using a 3x size from the CO and BTN but there was at least one occasion where he went 4x, so it's possible he's using a larger sizing with some hands. He was also min-raising limps from the big blind and at one point mysteriously 1.75x'd from the SB. I'm more inclined to say this player is just clicking buttons than giving him credit for having a particular strategy with his sizings.
Anyway, standard call with KJo.
Flop comes AcThQs and I have the nuts with a straight. Check to the PFR, he bets half pot and I call.
I hate that I didn't raise this. At the time I wanted to slow-play it since my hand is almost never getting worse on turn and river. I was also generally not trying to barrel too many chips off when there was a short stack on the table. But he's not that short and I have the nuts. Just can't justify it.
Turn is Td, he goes half pot again and I finally decide to raise. He jams, I sigh call.
I distinctly remember thinking the second I saw the turn card: Wouldn't it be funny if he had AT. Close!
I think raising at this point is probably fine but IMO I needed to fold to the jam.
What's he going to call with when I raise? AQ, I guess. AK, maybe, but I block that. I also block KT and JT and all his straight draws. That leaves a huge pile of full houses. I actually do want to look at this in Flopzilla and see what proportion of hands that can call a raise are full houses. I bet it's huge.
When he jams, I am basically not beating anything. His sets are now full houses or quads and a lot of his two pairs are also now full houses. He'd have to be suicidal to jam Ax and I don't think many players on final tables are suicidal.
As played, I think I need to just call the turn bet and try to find a fold on the river when he inevitably jams. Probably still would have called it off.
It seems obvious now but I couldn't find the fold in the moment.
Roast my line? What would you have done here?
Likely calling a raise on that flop. I think you are likely to go bust on that run-out, and I wouldn't beat yourself up about it. Once he shoves, you are getting 8-1 on your money. Got to call.
It would be an understatement to say that I'm looking forward to this. As much as I enjoyed UKOPS, and even had a few nice results, the majority of the tournaments were well above my buy-in limits and it was only with encouragement from Coach Melt that I had the confidence to have a go. Ultimately it was a bit of a bloodbath but it could have been a lot worse.
Mini UKOPS, though. I'm comfortably rolled for everything and I intend to play everything.
And? I think I will have a significant edge over the majority of the field.
I never would have made such a claim at the beginning of this year. Honestly, as a generally self-deprecating and unconfident person, I can't believe I'm saying it now. But my results speak for themselves and numbers, much like my hips, do not lie. I've turned several corners this year and put a lot of time and effort into getting better and I really think it's paying off.
So I've spent some time on Sharkscope this morning digging into my results, primarily to make sure I'm not kidding myself and secondarily as a confidence booster to get me in a good frame of mind. I've got a nice little downswing on my last 100 entries so there's a healthy dose of fragility tempering that confidence.
Mini UKOPS entries run from £2 to £11, so I filtered my results down to that, excluded satellites, and only included this year, since that's where I've made the most progress.
- At these stakes, I've profited around £800 over 570 entries for a 23.6% ROI. That's already more than I made through the whole of 2019, where I only showed 11.6% ROI, so that's a nice start already.
- I'm showing 34% ROI at £2 entries, 24% ROI at £5 entries, and a honking 47% ROI at £11 entries, albeit at a very small sample size of 41, since I only recently started playing those regularly. All significant improvements on 2019.
- I've got 44 final table finishes and 4 outright wins, with my most frequent final table finish being 2nd. So I'm FTing slightly less than 8% of my entries and winning around 0.7%. I'm not sure where that "should" be but they're slightly worse than 2019's numbers and I'd like them to be higher. My most frequent FT finish in 2019 was joint 3rd, 4th and 5th, so that is a massive improvement.
I think it's fair to say that I should expect my overall results to be slightly dampened by the increased field sizes consequent to lockdown. A huge chunk of my volume this year has been during lockdown and therefore subject to markedly heightened variance. Given this caveat, I'm really happy with how everything is going.So there we are. I'm heading into Mini UKOPS feeling more confident than I ever have in my poker ability. Fingers crossed for some run good. I'm still missing a big score this year and it would be marvellous to get there during UKOPS.
Gosh, what should I do!
Lose to quads.
Mini UKOPS off to a very cool start.
There's the profit graph for the series. As you can see, the first half went like an absolute dream and I got two of my biggest wins all year.
The second half was incredibly frustrating and demoralising. I don't mind losing when I'm playing badly, and there were absolutely some idiotic punts in there, but the last two days were mainly cooler after cooler after cooler. Nightmare. Feel like a tit being too upset about it though when many of the participants in the charity sidebet had much worse weeks.
On the upside, I kept my head throughout. I have typically found it really hard to persevere through downswings and coolers and often get incredibly tilted and just play badly but I managed to avoid that during UKOPS, save for the occasional flash of blinding range. For the most part I'm please with how my mental game has improved recently. I think a large part of that has been due to the coaching I've had from @chicknMelt. I'm more confident now that I'm playing reasonably well and taking logical lines, so when I do get owned it's easier to recognise that it's not my own stupidity that did me in.
Some lowlights from the last week were getting AA in vs QQ and losing to quads, and in another hand flopping a full house with AA and once again losing to quads. There's also the post above, where I lost a four-way all in with the nut flush to, yep, quads. Lots of quads out there in the last week. But I said my swear words and moved on like a big boy.
Can't think of much else to say about it. Thought it was a great series and I had a lot of fun playing it. Can't argue with £430 in profit either, and it dug me out of a ridiculous downswing.
Capped off the week with a decent finish in the £22 Mega Stack last night too. Was nice to finish on a high note after yet another rubbish Mini UKOPS performance.
Night off now and back to the usual schedule. Sticking to the plan of playing 11s and 22s more regularly and phasing out a lot of my smaller buy-ins, as well as taking shots at main events when I qualify. I'm skipping the smaller satellites and getting stuck right in to the semi satellites, which has been a pretty good strategy so far.
I can't really decide what I think of the course. It's full of useful information and it's structured fairly well overall but the individual lessons are all over the place and not delivered in a style I get on with very well. For almost $1,000, I expect a lot more of a well-rounded product. Persevering for now but considering Run It Once's MTT course, which is a tenth of the price and seems much better presented.
Also had a coaching session with Melty where we went through a replay of two MTTs he won. Final tables/heads up are by far the weakest parts of my game right now, so that was time very well spent.
Managed to book two final tables and a win last night, which is always nice to see after four days of intense studying. Posting a few hands from the MTT I won, an £11 BH. One for fun and one where I'm uncertain about the line I took.
Here's the fun one:
Anyway. Good argument for open-jamming QJs with 16bb, I think, but we're 4-handed here and there were only 8 or 9 left in the tournament, so we're well ITM. There was one big stack who was on my table and everyone else fairly even. Made sense to play it more cautiously. HRC is telling me this is slightly more profitable as an open than a jam in chipEV, and very profitable to flat the 3b, so I'm happy enough with that.
Flop a flush draw and get an all in and a call ahead of me. Wasn't really sure what to make of that but we can't be that far behind with a flush draw so I just said f*ck it and put it in.
Got incredibly lucky here and I don't think I've ever been so happy to miss a flush draw. Such immense skill to turn the J and fade the hearts.
On the flop I decided to just put him all in for around 25bb. Had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do here.
I'm obviously not folding. I'd just flat if I was deeper, but doing so here would have left me with just a little over pot back and just having to give up or bluff with much worse equity when I miss.
In my mind, jamming felt like the best option. He has plenty of hands that will call but probably more that should fold, and I still have buckets of equity when he does call.
Looking at it now, jamming turn probably would have been fine too.
How would you play this one?
I've never seen anyone on here talking about training sites or software. I'd suggest starting one if you're looking for views, or just googling it. There are plenty of reviews out there.
To answer your question, I'm using the RYE course because it's free to me. But I know it's well-regarded, and I have a lot of respect for bencb as a player having watched a lot of his Youtube stuff. Despite my criticism, it's well-structured and easily digestible. I think it's pretty good.
I've spent a lot more time on Pokercoaching.com, and I'd recommend it heartily over anything else for amateur-recreational players. Covers the basics very well, has some brilliant interactive features that are great for the learning process, and Jonathan Little is a great teacher. He mentioned in a recent Youtube video that he'd consulted with education experts on being a better teacher and it really shows when you compare him to people like bencb, who isn't nearly as good a tutor as he is a poker player.
What is this tag team challenge? I've only heard PJ talk about it and I assumed it was more of his nonsense.
I have various Youtube subscriptions to poker stuff that I watch on an almost daily basis, things like Jonathan Little, Bencb, Finding Equilibrium, etc. I consider that more passive studying and I'm not making any notes or reviewing it, just hoping it goes in and stays in. It's not very effective as a study method IMO but it's probably doing some good.
I spend an hour or so most mornings after a session looking at spots from last night that I've bookmarked for review. More focused studying on things like RYE is on more of a when I feel like it basis but I'm trying to make a habit of starting each session with a bit of it. It's hard to find time for that in normal circumstances though, so lockdown has been a blessing in that regard.
I'd guess it's around 10-20% actual study, maybe as high as 30% if you include the passive stuff, on average. Slightly higher when I'm making an effort.
I feel like I'm on a bit of a Dunning-Kruger-like curve with it now where I studied a lot until I reached a point where I thought I was hot sh*t and practically stopped, then realised I was barely scratching the surface and started studying a lot again.
I'm not sure what the optimal ratio is. I've put a fair bit of thought into this as an Education student so I've tried to keep theories of learning (here's Kolb's for example, I wrote a paper on this and it's very interesting) into account with how I approach it. Ideally, we have a constant cycle of reflection and conceptualisation followed by experimentation and using that experience to inform future actions and reflection. Kolb's theory has these four elements on equal footing, and most of the influential theories do, but I don't think the precise ratios are too important as long as we keep that cycle going where we take some amount of time to think about what we've done/are doing and try to integrate new ideas and concepts. I think different people will find they need to dedicate different amounts of time to each stage of this process. I find that I absorb and integrate new concepts quite slowly, so I often feel I need to spend more time studying than other people do.
I've heard 80/20 as a possible optimal figure but as you say its completely different for everyone and indeed what level/ability they're already at
Good paper you linked, theories of learning are pretty interesting, but i wonder if you're ever able to actually pigeon hole everyone. For example I thought I was the type not to get reallllly into anything but enjoy lots of different things at an average interest, but over lockdown I've found myself diving deep into things I never thought I would be bothered with a few months ago
( from memory I think stayorgo is planning something either around pair or regional teams...or maybe i am getting confused by mistrPJ...that doesn't normally happen as he is so clear, normally?...)
Most of these learning theories are decades-old but it is definitely still contested whether there can be such a thing as a universal theory of how people learn. I would say that Kolb isn't trying to pigeon-hole anyone as much as he's trying to explain and accomodate everyone's different approaches and preferences.
Most of us probably learned in school about learning modalities, where people are supposedly visual learners, or auditory learners, and so on. Those kinds of models have been reduced more or less to pseudoscience status now and don't hold much water in scholarly research, though they remain weirdly influential in our education system (largely because there are a lot of financial interests attached to them, I think). That's what I think of when you talk about pigeon-holing.
Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory isn't so much an attempt to pigeon-hole people as it as an attempt to describe the cognitive process in which learning takes place, and suggests ways to reinforce or strengthen that process. It's more of an epistemological view than a prescriptive framework. We can learn in whichever way most pleases us, but it will be most effective if we can satisfy the stages of his learning cycle.
The main takeaway from the theory, and what is missing in most people's halfhearted interest in whatever subject, is that learning should involve an experiential element where you attempt to apply the ideas you've learned in some manner. Whether I want to read about poker, listen to a podcast, or chat with a coach doesn't matter; it's the process of trying to use the information I've gained that converts information acquisition to actual learning or knowledge. If you've ever read something in a book and immediately forgotten it, that's why, in Kolb's view; no attempt to use that information in a concrete experience was made.
I think it's important here to make a distinction between acquiring information and truly learning about something. Reading a Wikipedia page on metal detecting or whatever isn't really learning, it's simple information acquisition and only one stage of the learning process.
@NOSTRI
Check your PM's please.