2k post!

hey, I played pokers for like 3 years and won every year and most months, supported my family for a while and find myself reducing my volume lately.

ask me anything

how many 5 year olds could you beat in a fight?

a horse sized duck or fifty duck sized horses?

a seven every day or a 10 twice a month?

Why do u find ur volume reducing?

Do you want more kids?

Originally Posted by bikes

how many 5 year olds could you beat in a fight?

150-300

Originally Posted by bikes

a horse sized duck or fifty duck sized horses?

fifty little horses

Originally Posted by bikes

a seven every day or a 10 twice a month?

I'll take the sleven.


will answer serious questions later after sobriety

what do you do in life besides poker?

favorite strain?

favorite trailer park boys character?

Family Guy or South Park?

How many times a day do Fat and Kiwi give you e-blow jobs? and has this number dramatically decreased since kiwi became a nazi?

this is serious for me, cause i have some problem with self control.

how do you manage 40k-60k hands runs where you know you played good and you really did, but still you're losing or at best you're breaking even? i mean,mentally speaking,how do you manage these periods?

do you believe that NLHE will remain the most popular and widespread form of poker for the next 10, 20, 40 years? or do you think the tide will recede as it did with draw, stud, LHE etc?

Do you think there are legitimate reasons in poker to pass on some marginal +EV opportunities in order to reduce overall variance?

If yes, list some. If no, why not?

If you met someone who had no knowledge of poker with a sound mind, good discipline and above average intelligence. Who lacked direction/passion in there hobbies/career. Would you ever recommend they strive to become a amateur/professional poker player?

Originally Posted by Openside

Why do u find ur volume reducing?

It just kinda happened. Last year I paid the bills with poker for the first time, and it sorta transformed from a fun hobby that made some money on the side into a job. I just find my motivation to grind decreasing and my focus turning more towards my career. It wasn't even a conscious decision, just sorta happened. I put 2x more hands in dec 2010 than I have all of 2011

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Do you want more kids?

Hell no

Originally Posted by daviddem

what do you do in life besides poker

I work as a software developer and have a kid so that takes up most of my time, but I also find some time for guitar, snowboarding, jiu-jitsu

Originally Posted by philly and the phanatics

favorite strain?

favorite trailer park boys character?

Family Guy or South Park?

How many times a day do Fat and Kiwi give you e-blow jobs? and has this number dramatically decreased since kiwi became a nazi?

Jack herer

"fuck off I got work to do" -cyrus

south park

fat is loyal. kiwi is a renegade security officer.

Originally Posted by Razvan729

this is serious for me, cause i have some problem with self control.

how do you manage 40k-60k hands runs where you know you played good and you really did, but still you're losing or at best you're breaking even? i mean,mentally speaking,how do you manage these periods?

I'm more inclined to hold myself at least somewhat accountable for 50k+ BE runs. There's always bad play in there and if you don't believe that you're lying to yourself about your ability. Negative variance is going to contribute, but it almost always affects people's play as well.

I would sometimes remind myself that I can beat these games by looking at lifetime graphs. Dropping stakes, reducing tables, shorter sessions, studying more, more focus can also help rebuild confidence when you're on a sustained bad run, but you should really use it as motivation to study your ass off and become awesome at the game instead of wasting energy convincing yourself that you're the unluckiest player that's ever lived.

Originally Posted by chatzilla

If you met someone who had no knowledge of poker with a sound mind, good discipline and above average intelligence. Who lacked direction/passion in there hobbies/career. Would you ever recommend they strive to become a amateur/professional poker player?

rarely, but the people best suited to it are smart young guys with gambol in their blood and nothing to lose.

Originally Posted by daviddem

Do you think there are legitimate reasons in poker to pass on some marginal +EV opportunities in order to reduce overall variance?

If yes, list some. If no, why not?

As poker players we are taught to take every edge we can. That being said, some people with bad tilt issues could consider player a lower variance game if they start playing like crap everytime they tilt over dropping 2 BI in a session or something, but that's really just a band-aid over the gaping wound that is supertilt. The tilt must be dealt with at its root if this tiltmonkey ever wants to really succeed at the game.

Originally Posted by rpm

do you believe that NLHE will remain the most popular and widespread form of poker for the next 10, 20, 40 years? or do you think the tide will recede as it did with draw, stud, LHE etc?

Who knows...humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future so I won't even bother adding to the plethora of stabs in the dark about what the future holds.

I will say that I don't think NLHE is going away anytime soon, and any trend towards a new dominant game will occur more gradually than abruptly.

Originally Posted by d0zer

As poker players we are taught to take every edge we can. That being said, some people with bad tilt issues could consider player a lower variance game if they start playing like crap everytime they tilt over dropping 2 BI in a session or something, but that's really just a band-aid over the gaping wound that is supertilt. The tilt must be dealt with at its root if this tiltmonkey ever wants to really succeed at the game.

Take a look at this post. If you had only time to put in 120k hands a year, and your goal for this year was to move up from, say, 5NL to 10NL, would this not be a valid reason to choose to play the lower winrate/lower variance option for a better chance to achieve your goal within this timeframe?

Originally Posted by daviddem

Take a look at this post. If you had only time to put in 120k hands a year, and your goal for this year was to move up from, say, 5NL to 10NL, would this not be a valid reason to choose to play the lower winrate/lower variance option for a better chance to achieve your goal within this timeframe?

I don't know anything about shitty goals like taking an entire year to move from 5NL to 10NL over 120k hands. Microstakes are already so low variance with all the weaktight regs and fish by the bucketful so if you can't handle that variance just quit poker already.

Lol.

Will we meet for beers this summer at Lemonfest II?

also did my lemonfest invite get lost in the mail ?

also would you rather get head or bang out a girl? (ldo it depends but throw me a bone here (no homo) and jus answer the f question)

since when have you ever had a 50k break even stretch? thats what i want to know.

Originally Posted by d0zer

I don't know anything about shitty goals like taking an entire year to move from 5NL to 10NL over 120k hands. Microstakes are already so low variance with all the weaktight regs and fish by the bucketful so if you can't handle that variance just quit poker already.

Apologies for stinking up your 2000th post with my shitty example.

Enjoy the 2005th.

How in the cornbread hell did you convince your wife that you could make money at pokers while on Pat leave?

Was the poker money absolutely necessary to live on while on Pat leave or could you just get by eating beans and using cloth diapers if you didn't have it?

Did wife constantly ask you how it was going or did she leave you alone?

How much do I bet/fold?

Originally Posted by daviddem

Apologies for stinking up your 2000th post with my shitty example.

Enjoy the 2005th.

It's a fine example of bad goals people set. I've always taken issue with monetary goals because it's just not something you have tons of control over so you're setting yourself up for failure. As a beginning player, the only thing you should be focused on is learning how to play well. You won't have a refined enough EV eye to even know when spots are slightly +EV, your main focus should be distinguishing between clearly +EV and -EV spots.

Just get better, play disciplined poker and money will come. Don't waste mental energy thinking about "after x hands, I want to have won y money so I can move up to stake z". Just play and move up when you feel like you've comfortably beat a stake. Playing scared because you're afraid of not hitting some arbitrary goal is a disaster for both your immediate results and your growth as a player.

Lemonfest was canceled. I'll try to convince lemon to have one this year, but it's gunna be tough now that he has a kid.

philly: bone fosho

I've had at least 2 100k BE stretches under my belt, I think the last one was 2009 when I went from playing 100NL FR to 200NL 6m. miracle I broke even instead of massively losing imo.

Originally Posted by Sasquach991

How in the cornbread hell did you convince your wife that you could make money at pokers while on Pat leave?

Was the poker money absolutely necessary to live on while on Pat leave or could you just get by eating beans and using cloth diapers if you didn't have it?

Did wife constantly ask you how it was going or did she leave you alone?

Wife got confidence in my ability to beat the games when money routinely came in over a couple years. I also had the ability to go back to work if I absolutely had to, and I often had a buffer of a few paychecks. which wasn't enough but w/e gambol. The money was absolutely necessary and it did make downswongs more stressful for me which she hated cuz it would affect my mood.

She wouldn't ask me too much. If I had a bad session, she could usually tell by my demeanor and then would just say "bad session eh?". "yeah". and that was usually the end of it. I rarely provided specifics.

Originally Posted by Sasquach991

How much do I bet/fold?

Without knowing anything about your game, I'm gunna go out on a limb and say with some degree of confidence that somewhere in the range of 50-90% of the time you bet/call, you should be bet/folding.

...but it's possible that I'm just projecting my leaks on you

Today, 04:20 AM Post subject: 2k post!

so so ldo

has being black hampered ur relationship with spoonitnow

if I see that hillbilly's name mentioned one more time in my well, so help my fuck...

^^^spoon can eat a dick

who do you think would win a series of hu matches me or you?

how awkward will clubbing in june be for you?

who do you think in order are the most powerful cool kid channel players?

2 6's or a 10?

what do you think is better for happiness? only having sex with 5's and below or having redic high standards to the point of only sleeping with 8's and higher.

Originally Posted by bikes

who do you think would win a series of hu matches me or you?

It'd be the biggest levelfest in the history of levelfests but you'd probably come out on top after you repeatedly 3b CiB any pair for value & snap off my bluff shoves. I will of course refuse to adjust, convincing myself that you're adjusting.

Originally Posted by bikes

how awkward will clubbing in june be for you?

highly variable on relative sobriety

Originally Posted by bikes

who do you think in order are the most powerful cool kid channel players?

renton, deanglow, zillar, mcat. I can't order them cuz I'm not powerful enough.

Originally Posted by bikes

2 6's or a 10?

what do you think is better for happiness? only having sex with 5's and below or having redic high standards to the point of only sleeping with 8's and higher.

I'll take the 10 now just because I think there's huge diminishing returns with each added participant so this is a clear case of quality over quantity.

I don't think either of your options directly relates to happiness -- there's too many other more important variables to consider. Being with someone you have a real connection with is infinitely more critical to your happiness than bangin' bitchez -- regardless of how hot or not they are.

quit adding variables to my questions and just answer them. less about how u feel about them or their personalities this is on looks alone

Most +ev study methods?

Why do alot of the FTR highstakes regs hang out in the IRC and help noobs?

pizza or pasta?

would you rather eat out a girl with herpes or eat a footlong turd sandwhich.

Originally Posted by unclesteve

Most +ev study methods?

Why do alot of the FTR highstakes regs hang out in the IRC and help noobs?

pizza or pasta?

re: studying, it depends a lot on the individual, but I think posting hands with your thought processes helps a lot, as well as sweats but only if you're thinking aloud and having your approach to the game critiqued.

Teaching others helps solidifies knowledge for you which can help you progress, but I suspect the motivation is often just boredom and ego. Iunno.

pizza but it's close. f'n love both.

Originally Posted by philly and the phanatics

would you rather eat out a girl with herpes or eat a footlong turd sandwhich.

had to think about this one, but I'll take the herpgash imo.

More exciting Olympics or World Cup?

Originally Posted by connorislost

More exciting Olympics or World Cup?

televised sports radio with the sound off

Do you have any background noise while grinding. Music T.V. Movies Web surfing (you tube & porn)?

How do you stay focused while grinding?

Originally Posted by connorislost

Do you have any background noise while grinding. Music T.V. Movies Web surfing (you tube & porn)?

I never have anything overtly distracting like TV or movies or youtube. These are all bad. Even some music I find too distracting. I find some forms of more ambient, atmospheric kind of music blends well in the background, but I eventually settled on classical. Bach mostly.

Jerking off while grinding is a disaster. There's only enough blood in the body to power one of those two organs and when you get in a tough spot on the tables it's an insta boner-killer.

Originally Posted by HoopyDude

How do you stay focused while grinding?

Sometimes I'd meditate before sessions, sometimes I'd pound caffeine. staying engaged by thinking hard about every spot, taking notes and fighting the auto-pilot sinking in can keep the focus longer, but inevitably it fades. When it does, you have to acknowledge that it's happened and take a break.

Originally Posted by unclesteve

Why do alot of the FTR highstakes regs hang out in the IRC and help noobs?

[ ] A lot of FTR highstakes regs hang out in IRC

Originally Posted by EasyPoker

[ ] A lot of FTR highstakes regs hang out in IRC

there's a few guys who play 5/10 with some regularity and bumhunt even higher stakes.

how do you improve detaching yourself emotionally from your results?

I havn't checked my results in the last week, but even so I have a fair idea of whether I'm up or down for a sesh, and I hate the way this pervades my thought process and influences my decision making.

Originally Posted by d0zer

re: studying, it depends a lot on the individual, but I think posting hands with your thought processes helps a lot, as well as sweats but only if you're thinking aloud and having your approach to the game critiqued.

You seem very focused on getting input from other players, and some of their input may not be that valuable, the 2p2micro forum for example is filled with crap, and if your a newb it can be pretty hard to discern the crap from the legit strategy.

What do you think about guys who study HH after HH and review the other regs as their sole means of studying and improving?

ty for responses so far btw.

Originally Posted by unclesteve

do you detach yourself emotionally from your results?

I havn't checked my results in the last week, but even so I have a fair idea of whether I'm up or down for a sesh, and I hate the way this pervades my thought process and influences my decision making.

This is one of the hardest things to do as a poker player. Humans are hardwired to be results-oriented. To revel in our victories and suffer from our failures. These mechanisms are there much like pain receptors, to reinforce awesomeness and discourage the suck.

Poker fucks with all that because in the short term you can play like shit and win tons or play awesome and lose tons. Inexperienced poker players are notoriously bad at self-examination and routinely feel like they've played great after a winning session. Through experience, you can become more accurate at evaluating your quality of play, as long as you remain objective in your analysis.

I was eventually able to achieve this emotional detachment fairly well over the short term, though I never was able to be emotionally detached from sustained periods of downswongs. The longer a downswing lasted, the more emotionally fragile I became, and little things, like starting out a session down a few BI, would tilt me 100x more than normal, and then play would suffer and the downswing would extend itself.

The best state I could muster up is a state of objective presence. The only thing you're thinking about is the best play in a current situation. Emotionless analysis. You're not pissed off at some reg for 3betting you constantly, you're not thinking about some fish hitting a 2outer on the river, you're not thinking about getting even (or how much you're up), how the session is going, how the month is going, how your 120k hand path to 10NL is going -- you're just present, in the moment, analyzing the current hand with all the information you have at your disposal.

If I could have played like this twice as much as I actually managed to do, I'd have twice as much lifetime profits easily.

Originally Posted by unclesteve

You seem very focused on getting input from other players, and some of their input may not be that valuable, the 2p2micro forum for example is filled with crap, and if your a newb it can be pretty hard to discern the crap from the legit strategy.

What do you think about guys who study HH after HH and review the other regs as their sole means of studying and improving?

ty for responses so far btw.

Yeah as a noob you have to learn who to trust and that only comes with some experience. There's no shortage of bad poker advice out there, and as such you have to learn to weigh advice properly. When I ask for opinions on hands, there's a handful of people I really trust, and the rest I take with a grain of salt. I don't totally dismiss advice (except from a few people maybe), but I'm cautious about working in advice into my game from just anybody. As a noob you can look for consensus -- even though that too can be error-prone. It's better than nothing.

I read a few books and found them helpful. I'd recommend sklansky NL:T&P and professional no limit. I also watched many videos from a number of different sites. I'd recommend diversifying your approach to learning the game.

I think it's fine to study your opponents for the purposes of exploiting them, but if you're trying to learn the game by watching regs at your stake, you're going to pick up their bad habits. There's no shortage of bad regs and you shouldn't try to learn how to drive by watching asian women parallel parking a van.

my F3B is too high, like 80%, how do I start finding spots to start calling more 3bets?

Is this even a big problem at 50nl?

Is there anyone in the poker world who's success and path to highstakes you've admired and draw inspiration from? Examples plzzzzz

Does it dishearten you that the Carrot Man crushes your regular game?

Are you actually black?

Would you rather eat 200 live wasps or 20 live frogs?

Would you rather be 10 feet tall and have no penis or be 2 feet tall and have 10 penises?

ty carroters for knowing how to post in a well it makes my well reading experience so much more enjoyable.

What was the hardest thing for you about playing poker full time?

Originally Posted by unclesteve

my F3B is too high, like 80%, how do I start finding spots to start calling more 3bets?

Is this even a big problem at 50nl?

Is there anyone in the poker world who's success and path to highstakes you've admired and draw inspiration from? Examples plzzzzz

there's no reason you can't beat the games you're playing and a couple levels above with that F3B %, but as you move higher you're going to have to start picking on more and more regs. When you first open up, start by trying to pick out the regs who are going to play the most transparently & learn how to punish them.

I think FTR's own nutsinho has a kinda cool story of robusto.

Originally Posted by unclesteve

What was the hardest thing for you about playing poker full time?

downswinging and worrying about not paying the bills obv

Originally Posted by Carroters

Does it dishearten you that the Carrot Man crushes your regular game?

Are you actually black?

Would you rather eat 200 live wasps or 20 live frogs?

Would you rather be 10 feet tall and have no penis or be 2 feet tall and have 10 penises?

You play poker still?

The only person whiter than me is bankitdrew.

uhhhh...wasps?

10 penises obv

What's the most tilting question I could ask in this thread, for bikes I mean?

My note taking skills suck. I know it's partially caused by lack of discipline but I think that's due to not understanding which aspects of a villains tendencies I should be focusing on. What do you think are the most important things to focus on when taking notes?

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

What's the most tilting question I could ask in this thread, for bikes I mean?

probably some donkfish question, something about big boobs, or ultra-conservative BRM...

Originally Posted by supahaole

My note taking skills suck. I know it's partially caused by lack of discipline but I think that's due to not understanding which aspects of a villains tendencies I should be focusing on. What do you think are the most important things to focus on when taking notes?

I'd recommend taking notes on anything you see that's out of the ordinary, or anything bad that regs do. Don't waste your time noting that a 50/2 limped T2s UTG, you should assume they do. The majority of notes I tend to take on fish are stuff about weird postflop aggression without the nuts as I assume most fish are passive.

So most of my notes are on regs. If a reg overlimps like A9s behind one fish limper, or doesn't bet something for value he should have, take a note of that. Also stay away from really general notes, or opinionated notes and just write down how the hand went. Here's an example of a note I'll take on a reg:

Checked BU w/ QJ on Q45 2t in 3-way with fish. 1/2 pot T turn & checked 9 riv
(2t is my shortcut for two-tone)

See how much more descriptive this is than "sucks at value betting fish"?

Why do people say something like 984tt or 984 2t instead of just 984t like we do 984r? Similarly we could have 984m.

An ambitious player who has alot of time on their hands has blown through 10nl and 25nl in 50k hands, has just started grinding 50nl and feels it's a step up.

Is he better off studying his ass off and watching training vids or getting a coach?

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Why do people say something like 984tt or 984 2t instead of just 984t like we do 984r? Similarly we could have 984m.

If you're gunna nickel & dime the number of characters in my note, you should really have started with the word "checked"

Originally Posted by unclesteve

An ambitious player who has alot of time on their hands has blown through 10nl and 25nl in 50k hands, has just started grinding 50nl and feels it's a step up.

Is he better off studying his ass off and watching training vids or getting a coach?

I'd probably hold off on the coaching until your roll is larger and it's proportionally less, but there's no harm in doing both

what does this mean? §

why would you consider RIMJOB before GOOGLEJOB?

also, hai

Originally Posted by kickass

what does this mean? §

Section sign - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

you win yr awesome

Originally Posted by d0zer

I don't totally dismiss advice (except from a few people maybe)

I'll keep my question simple: am i one of these few people?

Originally Posted by surviva316

I'll keep my question simple: am i one of these few people?

Allowing bad laggggs to poison my brain with tales of money-hating spew has cost me way too much manies

Originally Posted by d0zer

Allowing bad laggggs to poison my brain with tales of money-hating spew has cost me way too much manies

..................

Originally Posted by bikes

..................

yeah I was talking about you, wanna fight about it?

Originally Posted by d0zer

yeah I was talking about you, wanna fight about it?

HU?

Originally Posted by bikes

HU?

*hits & runs the convo*

what are ur thoughts and predictions on legislation and legality of online gamblings?

Originally Posted by Imthenewfish

what are ur thoughts and predictions on legislation and legality of online gamblings?

He's Canadian bru

He may not give a damn

Originally Posted by EasyPoker

He's Canadian bru

He may not give a damn

one thing's for sure: they're not going to drop the min age to 14 or w/e newfish is.

I mean the government's gunna want their paws in there before long but the puritans will slow down that inevitability