5000th Post AMA: Poker, Life, and Balance

I think I did one of these before, though I view my life a bit differently now, so maybe my answers will be different and/or I can provide more value to those interested.

Quick background on me and poker to get the ball rolling:

I've been playing poker for a few years now for a living and admittedly I've struggled to maintain good balance in my life. I have been on the extreme end of obsessing over getting better at poker, literally spending something like 7-10 hours a day every day on study and playing, to taking months off barely playing 20 hours a week, ignoring study, and essentially just being a degenerate drifting along.

My current state is relatively balanced, though not anywhere close to perfect. Working on getting there though. I am consciously seeking to improve the health of my poker game, fitness level, and social life. Things are coming together. Feel free to share stories about poker and life in this thread, I'd love to read them. I think we can all relate to being out of balance, and whether it was by luck or choice, I'm sure we've experience periods of good balance where we've felt content.

Fire away.

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

I have been on the extreme end of obsessing over getting better at poker, literally spending something like 7-10 hours a day every day on study and playing, to taking months off barely playing 20 hours a week, ignoring study, and essentially just being a degenerate drifting along.

This sounds pretty balanced to me. Is there any bit of ADD or OCD in you? Because this sounds like my sense of balance.

Does it bother you that your own personal balance is on a longer time-scale than other people's?

What stakes / volume are you playing?

What was the easiest thing to learn about poker that you picked up in the past 6 months?

What do you like on a pizza?

If you were to go back all the way to the start knowing absolutely nothing about poker how would you set about learning how to play knowing what you now know?

Dude you had the sickest run through the micros. You were at $10nl when I first met you on IRC and within what seemed like a week or two you were at $200nl.

No questions, just nh gg

Have you ever been stabbed on Christmas?

thanks for doing this. and apologies if this post is awfully convoluted - sometimes i'm not sure exactly what i'm trying to ask.

- i've heard good players before talk about having a "vacuum game" or strategy to employ at the very early stages of playing vs someone. i have my own assumptions about what this means and when to use it, but i'm starting to think they're wrong. how would you define a "vacuum game"? of what use is one?

- i've not played regularly for a while but i still think about poker strategy a lot. i'm starting to think that when i last played 50-100nl 6m regularly (while ago now) i put myself in awful spots and ultimately frustrated myself out of playing at all by trying to adopt far too exploitative a strategy. failied to consider the fact i was possibly being exploited - 3bet/4b bluffing and CBetting far too much - thinking i was "pwning" people or something. you're playing high enough stakes where i assume (?) you need to be constantly aware of balance. by this i don't necessarily mean the GTO "perfectly balanced" sense of the word, but at least being aware of your whole range, why that's your range, and what the EV of that range is versus your assessments of opponents' strategies. do you think players should always be conscious of their whole strategy, or the "balance" (again, not necessarily aiming for GTO strategy) of their ranges, even at the micros where we'll quite often simply be looking to play close to a maximum exploitative strategy?

- do you/have you ever used any of the EV calculation software out there? can you speak on the pros/cons of doing so?

- without knowing any individual leaks or tendencies, what form of poker study do you think would be most beneficial for a breakeven/marginal winner at say 25-50nl?

thanks again

i've edited this to try to make it more legible

I read through your old operation threads about a week ago and it seems like you really struggled with 'autopilot' alot whilst coming up.

It's probably something that never totally goes away, but do you have any general tips or specific techniques you use to improve focus and mental presence during sessions?

Ironic I logged on today since I haven't been on in a LOOONG time other than yesterday for the first time. You and I literally came to FTR at the same time, along with Dranger. It was always fun watching how you plowed through the mircros. Damn good job sir and I'm glad to see you've continued your journey.

are you going for SNE this year? I opened up your blog but it hasn't been updated since mid-Feb

Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

This sounds pretty balanced to me. Is there any bit of ADD or OCD in you? Because this sounds like my sense of balance.

Does it bother you that your own personal balance is on a longer time-scale than other people's?

What stakes / volume are you playing?

What was the easiest thing to learn about poker that you picked up in the past 6 months?

What do you like on a pizza?

def have add and probably some mild ocd. not sure on the magnitude of each though. i constantly shift from one task to the next.

what do you mean by my personal balance being on a longer time scale?

im playing 2/4-5/10 mostly, volume is very low lately because ive been spending a lot of time working on things off table.

this is a good question. i will default to pepperoni and cheese because its just so damn classic and thats what i started eating as a kid. but i like all dressed, sometimes just mushrooms, other times all meat: bacon ham etc. though lately ive been avoiding pork. one thing i wont eat on pizza is fish. i was in france a couple years ago and was at a restaurant where the waiters couldnt speak english. i ordered a pizza for lunch. the description of the toppings were in french. the order and place on the menu made it appear to be just pepperoni and cheese with a few spices. though one of those spices my friend couldnt make out the meaning of, and we had no smart phones on us or anything to google, so i winged it and ordered up. im not sure if i ordered fish with pizza on it or pizza with fish but it was the smelliest, nastiest fish pizza ever and i could barely eat the crust alone without wanting to vomit. /story

last q: no idea. hardest is probably just listening to people who are clearly right and doing what they say the first time. i guess ignorance is my method of testing peoples theories.

Originally Posted by ImSavy

If you were to go back all the way to the start knowing absolutely nothing about poker how would you set about learning how to play knowing what you now know?

join a forum way sooner, ideally this one, and listen to everything spoonitnow says.

Originally Posted by Luco

Dude you had the sickest run through the micros. You were at $10nl when I first met you on IRC and within what seemed like a week or two you were at $200nl.

No questions, just nh gg

thx

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Have you ever been stabbed on Christmas?

have you ever called someone out on not paying you back $4?

Originally Posted by rpm

thanks for doing this. and apologies if this post is awfully convoluted - sometimes i'm not sure exactly what i'm trying to ask.

- i've heard good players before talk about having a "vacuum game" or strategy to employ at the very early stages of playing vs someone. i have my own assumptions about what this means and when to use it, but i'm starting to think they're wrong. how would you define a "vacuum game"? of what use is one?

- i've not played regularly for a while but i still think about poker strategy a lot. i'm starting to think that when i last played 50-100nl 6m regularly (while ago now) i put myself in awful spots and ultimately frustrated myself out of playing at all by trying to adopt far too exploitative a strategy. failied to consider the fact i was possibly being exploited - 3bet/4b bluffing and CBetting far too much - thinking i was "pwning" people or something. you're playing high enough stakes where i assume (?) you need to be constantly aware of balance. by this i don't necessarily mean the GTO "perfectly balanced" sense of the word, but at least being aware of your whole range, why that's your range, and what the EV of that range is versus your assessments of opponents' strategies. do you think players should always be conscious of their whole strategy, or the "balance" (again, not necessarily aiming for GTO strategy) of their ranges, even at the micros where we'll quite often simply be looking to play close to a maximum exploitative strategy?

- do you/have you ever used any of the EV calculation software out there? can you speak on the pros/cons of doing so?

- without knowing any individual leaks or tendencies, what form of poker study do you think would be most beneficial for a breakeven/marginal winner at say 25-50nl?

thanks again

i've edited this to try to make it more legible

i don't consider myself one of the best at being a master of game theory and poker but ill give this a shot.

basically id define in a vaccuum game or strategy as a maximizing exploitation strategy. i.e you're going to be really exploitable yourself at times with this, but taking that max +EV play in a vaccuum will make you the most money - one time. the reason I say one time is because if you make some plays that exploit your opponents with 100% frequency they will catch on and adjust to you.

so like, if some guy has a fold to 3bet of say 80% and he opens the button, in a vacuum you could 3bet 72o profitably. but if you do that, you're 3bet range is 100% of hands. so every single time this spot comes up if you try to exploit that 80% FT3B by 3betting every single trash hand, its so fucking obvious you're exploiting opponent. so a better strategy would be to compose a range that exploits your opponents high fold 3 bet w/o making it too obvious how weighted your range is in bluffs. so example, you might choose to defend 60% of your big blinds. call the middle 50% and 3bet the bottom 25 and top 25 % of that range, or you might choose to 3bet the bottom 30% and top 10%. or maybe flat the top 10%, 3bet the next 10%, then 3bet the bottom 30%. there's lots of different ways to structure your ranges in different spots. tendencies of villain and such will lead the way to figuring out what combination works best.

i think the biggest mistake ssnl-msnl players make is their ranges are so outta wack. like they'll 3bet 74o to exploit you if you fold to 3bets a lot, but they don't defend a hand like 75s, which is way better. it makes sense to just pass the 74, and doing so makes you wayyy harder to play against because if you just try and pick and choose your bluffs using 'timing', it becomes pretty easy to figure out after awhile when you're going to snap fold to a 4bet. so yeah, you should definitely be aware of what your range looks like in every spot because then you'll be able to figure out where you're being exploited or could be exploited and adjust if necessary. its not as important at micros and ssnl cuz of all the fish. but it becomes more and more necessary to know your range when you move up, so might as well start soon.

if you knew you were only going to play 1 hand vs the 80% fold to 3bet player and never see him again, you'd be correct to 3bet a range of 100% of hands. but if you're going to be playing thousands of hands, you need to structure your range in a way that makes the most money for you over time.

sorry that was a disorganized ramble, ill leave it at that and you can ask more specifics which ill try to answer but cant guarantee a response to.

oh and for EV software get CREV. I don't really know what the negatives are of it other than just being a pain in the ass to get used to and it can get a bit overwhelming. but its pretty sick for working out ranges and stuff. most beneficial thing for ssnl players is probably do analysis in a program like CREV. you can import hands youve played or create your own scenarios. its a pretty useful tool, but it is not for the impatient.

Originally Posted by mondayscool

I read through your old operation threads about a week ago and it seems like you really struggled with 'autopilot' alot whilst coming up.

It's probably something that never totally goes away, but do you have any general tips or specific techniques you use to improve focus and mental presence during sessions?

i think autopilot affects everyone, but to varrying degrees so i agree with you that it never totally goes away. with that said there are def ways to mitigate its impact on your game. less tables, more breaks, get into the habit of taking notes (which requires less tables being played) and so on.

as far as improving mental focus, i think just not doing something else that is super strenuous on your brain prior to poker sessions will help. you make a ton of decisions during a poker session so anything to avoid decision fatigue will probably push you in the right direction as far as avoiding autopilot. if you play like 6 hours a day though and study its hard for your brain not to feel tired out, so this is probably why those high stakes ballers who only play 2hours a day have such great results, and the average ssnl grinder is doing lots of dumb shit that they even acknowledge is dumb. but they have to grind a lot more to build their roll/pay their bills etc.

Originally Posted by bigspenda73

are you going for SNE this year? I opened up your blog but it hasn't been updated since mid-Feb

I am, though im a bit behind pace. mid-high stakes cap has gotten a lot tougher so ive been spending more time studying lately. if i get better to the point where i can raise my minimum stakes to 5/10, sne will be cake without even playing more than 6-8 tables. to get there though ive had to sacrifice some vpps. ive been going to the gym often also thinking of getting back into golf this summer as well which i need to balance into life.

speaking of golf, I have a question for you sir: I am wondering what sort of exercises I should add into the gym routine to improve flexibility and range of motion. my current program is basically just lifting to build some muscle, split routine 3-4x a week. im thinking maybe I could add in one day where I do a group of exercises that is specifically targeted to improving my golf swing. i realize thats a very general question, but any recommendations on what you feel are the best would be appreciated. from there i suppose i could work with a pro on my swing and get some feedback on what the weaknesses are.

fwiw ive always had a problem of being way too flat in my swing. ive done everything i could in the past to correct it (i used to spend all my time in the summer on golf until poker came along). so now im starting to think its a posture/alignment issue which is where the gym will help me see some gains. im open to suggestions on what exercises would help someone with that issue of too flat a swing.

I'd do a lot of band work on the shoulders, band pull-aparts, band dislocations, etc... you can find examples on youtube.

Hamstring mobility/strength is a big key too to maintaining posture. If you have flexible hammies already, then I'd throw in strengthening exercises like RDLs and other posterior chain movements. This one is my favorite - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o_lal2jpQc

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

have you ever called someone out on not paying you back $4?

I'm part psychic.

Plans for the future?

Thoughts on the state of games?

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

My current state is relatively balanced, though not anywhere close to perfect. Working on getting there though. I am consciously seeking to improve the health of my poker game, fitness level, and social life. Things are coming together. Feel free to share stories about poker and life in this thread, I'd love to read them. I think we can all relate to being out of balance, and whether it was by luck or choice, I'm sure we've experience periods of good balance where we've felt content.

I found my early twenties quite difficult mentally (not achieving as much as I wanted quickly enough, not understanding what the point in life was, not living up to some sort of media expectation, not shagging enough women,etc) and I think balance really does come easier with age, routine and a mentally stable woman. Having said that, some of the degen-ing will forever be some of the best times in my life and it's impossible to ever settle without getting it out of your system.

Anyway, enough of my bullshit:

- how do you keep study fresh? Is it just a case of revision now, or are you still learning from books, videos and your own ideas?

- what do you think you would be doing if you weren't playing poker? Will you ever do it?

- how important do you think it is to be creative as you move up the stakes?

- tits or ass?

Why don't you play werewolf?

how's investing going for you? what ratio of time do you allocate to poker vs investing (i think that's what you call it)?

Originally Posted by Hoopy

Plans for the future?

Thoughts on the state of games?

1-2 years: rent my house out and move to toronto at some point, rent a condo downtown there and finish degree (with a new major) not sure when exactly I plan on this one, may postpone further if some other opportunity comes along that outweighs it.

3-5 years: spend some time traveling around the world. Maybe live in a foreign country or two though I havent really thought about it seriously yet. Priorty would be asia/europe/australia and nz. I think I might put off south america till I'm older unless I have a lot of free time. I'll be paging FTRers from around the globe when I'm set to take off so stay tuned!

5-10+: settle down somewhere, maybe move out west and get a place with a nice view of the mountains on a lake, assuming I find a woman worth settling for. if things go well between years 1-5 im sure one who is super awesome quality will come my way. in the meantime I think im going to focus on myself mostly (self improvement etc). for those ladies on the forum , you must like to travel, be fairly active so we can take advantage of the mountains (hiking and climbing = winning), be open to having 1.5kids, but not until I'm 30+, and be athiest, or if not, never, ever bring up religion in my house. and no bibles allowed in house. except maybe in the guest bedroom . like cats and dogs, and preferably want a Burmese or Newfoundlander breed.

as for state of games: meh? I'll move to plan B C or D depending on where im at when I decide to hang up the mouse. There will always be money to be made in it though I believe, it'll just get a hell of a lot tougher is all.

Originally Posted by The Bean Counter

I found my early twenties quite difficult mentally (not achieving as much as I wanted quickly enough, not understanding what the point in life was, not living up to some sort of media expectation, not shagging enough women,etc) and I think balance really does come easier with age, routine and a mentally stable woman. Having said that, some of the degen-ing will forever be some of the best times in my life and it's impossible to ever settle without getting it out of your system.

Anyway, enough of my bullshit:

- how do you keep study fresh? Is it just a case of revision now, or are you still learning from books, videos and your own ideas?

- what do you think you would be doing if you weren't playing poker? Will you ever do it?

- how important do you think it is to be creative as you move up the stakes?

- tits or ass?

Your bullshit seems like something I can relate to. I like it. Tell us more about your 20s!

I keep study fresh by obsessing over poker and wanting to study because I'm obsessed. I'm in that zone right now. I know what gets me out of it, so plan is to avoid that. I have a good mentor fortunately. I need to stay in this zone for as long as I can, and then my life plans will unfold with ease. I'm basically done with books on poker. I watch videos and do some random calculations on paper, and use CREV for playing around with game trees for diff spots that come up in my games.

If I werent playing poker...I would have learned a trade, then utilized my business education by starting up a property management company. I have plans to do the latter without learning a trade but it wont be until poker is done with, I just cant juggle two careers that need full time attention. im a bit of a perfectionist, which probably explains why im actually good at hardly anything (I can elaborate on this more if you like not sure if what I said makes sense but it makes sense to me). ill learn the trade if poker is no longer profitable enough for me and i need to make cash fast. going to school for 4+ years to get an entry level job that ill only handle for maybe 2 years tops and never run up the corporate ladder doesnt suit me, so im not going there. i would like to finish my degree though, but not for the purpose of becoming marketable to employers (which is why ill be changing my major from finance to entrepreneurship and learning a trade after)

I think just being 'solid' is more important (for micro/ssnl/most msnl games). I mean, creative can be like, oh hey look at this funny bet size im making with this hand, or look at this hand I called just to get to showdown so i could try and throw of villains perception of me etc etc. ok, that shit is important for meta game, but i think it comes up less often than people think. this is a good question, sorry I have a hard time answering it without spewing so many words w/o a concise answer. maybe if someone good like sauce is reading this he could give his 2c because he plays hu for cars and stuff. I guess its more important hu, because thats where meta game is really key. Like in HU you can be pretty sure most players at a decent level are paying attention to you so you need to consider making sub optimal plays for deception purposes to push your opponent towards making incorrect adjustments vs your true range. This game is really all about your range and how it is perceived.

Its close, but Im gonna lean towards ass.

Originally Posted by rong

Why don't you play werewolf?

I feel like it's just one more thing that would distract me from getting poker taken care of.

I mean, how many werewolf players play poker for a living? :P

Originally Posted by rpm

how's investing going for you? what ratio of time do you allocate to poker vs investing (i think that's what you call it)?

not spending any time learning about investing anymore, because I spent too much at one point which cut into poker. I have a pretty solid idea of what I want to do though once I'm ready to take action. I need my money liquid though for now. my house isn't really liquid at all so that's all I'm going to set aside for now. my investment philosophy is park it and leave it. some of my friends are doing the, oh im gonna buy into this... then they talk about selling 1-2 years later. fuck that. hold it forever. unless the product turns out to be spew after further review, im forgetting about it and treating it like a sunk cost until cash out day comes.

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

what do you mean by my personal balance being on a longer time scale?

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

I have been on the extreme end of obsessing over getting better at poker, literally spending something like 7-10 hours a day every day on study and playing, to taking months off barely playing 20 hours a week, ignoring study, and essentially just being a degenerate drifting along.

Spending 7 - 10 hours a day on your career is laughably common, right? I mean, most people work 8 hour days. IIRC, 8 is between 7 and 10.

Taking a long-ish vacation is dreamy, but you're still playing, just about 1/2 as much. So really, you just took a break from a full-time job to work a part-time job for a while. This sounds like a luxury that most people can't afford.

Finally, the only thing that sounds off about this is that your time frames are "months". If your "balance cycle" was on a shorter scale, like say 5 days of focus, 2 days of rest... instead of 5 months of focus, 2 months of rest... well, you get the point.

Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

Spending 7 - 10 hours a day on your career is laughably common, right? I mean, most people work 8 hour days. IIRC, 8 is between 7 and 10.

Taking a long-ish vacation is dreamy, but you're still playing, just about 1/2 as much. So really, you just took a break from a full-time job to work a part-time job for a while. This sounds like a luxury that most people can't afford.

Finally, the only thing that sounds off about this is that your time frames are "months". If your "balance cycle" was on a shorter scale, like say 5 days of focus, 2 days of rest... instead of 5 months of focus, 2 months of rest... well, you get the point.

heh, well I was just stating an average for 7 days a week. I typically didn't go out on weekends other than to the movies or dinner with my gf at the time. now I get out quite often and am a lot happier with life. currently searching for the right balance that will help me get SNE w/o being unhappy. people say I grinded out of the micros really fast, but I probably spent just as much if not more time than others who went on to play ssnl+ maybe 7-10 hours a day is an understatement. if any of you guys want to move up fast, you gotta spend a solid 6 months only focusing on poker imo without too much break from that

I'm spending more time now on poker after my part time phase. I truly hated it looking back, it was just a hard rut to get out of because 'wah wah work' so anyone of a real profession works a lot harder and spends way more time on things though. im currently single so this is helping me devote more time to career, and I intend on staying there in the meantime unless lady gaga proposes to me. but first I'd have to have her play me hu4rolls.

regarding my time frame being months, you may really be on to something there... problem is I've got serious cabin fever from living by myself and living/working in the same building. So I need to get out for a few hours each day to keep sane. I never used to be like this, then I realized it was taking a toll on my health. I'd actually go a week without leaving the house other than to get food when I lived with my parents because I was so motivated to make a living at poker. now my motivations are shifting I think. I still want to do this for the next few years, but I don't want life to fly past me. and that's where my recent 'holy shit I gotta balance and I gotta do it now' mentality came from.

btw, how's the weather is St Louis?

If I may interject pretty sure we played/studied poker > 10hrs a day for the first few months of 2011. My best few months ever actually. We would literally play for 12hrs straight pretty much everyday just grinding and talking strat and talk about how incorrect it seemed like everyone was playing at the time. Come 2 years later everyone is pretty much doing everything we discussed and I feel like shit for not continuing to play and work on that shit since we were so far ahead of the curve theory wise.

So you've definitely played/studied > 10hrs a day(basically everyday) for at least a few months in your career. This I can confirm 100%.

Wish I had a poker buddy to start with and bash ideas around with. Must be fantastically helpful to constantly have two peoples perspective.

Originally Posted by ImSavy

Wish I had a poker buddy to start with and bash ideas around with. Must be fantastically helpful to constantly have two peoples perspective.

http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...inners-circle/

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

btw, how's the weather is St Louis?

Today they said it was going to snow all day. So of course, there was no snow. It has been ~34F (1C) for the past week or so. We got a nasty snowstorm last week, but it's mostly melted by now. Typical February.

*ahem* I mean it's a long way from the equatorial jungles of my home.

I see a lot of myself in your past, although with less fanatical devotion to poker. However, I found me a nice Hawaiian girl and taught her tha pokerz, so she gets that side of it. Hell, she's better than me HU and in MTT/SNG's at NLHE, and she's getting better at mixed games, with a solid foundation in 7-stud.... and she's currently bragging about leaving me for Vegas in 2 weeks. I hope she comes back!

Originally Posted by jyms

http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...inners-circle/

I see what you did there.

-.-

which is better: a crazy woman who is great in bed vs an awesome sane woman who is meh in bed?

You progressed through the stakes playing 100bb poker and then moved to cap a while back, do you ever think about switching back? or are the veeps too good at cap mid-stakes? what are your thoughts on mixing hypers with cap?

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

spending something like 7-10 hours a day every day on study and playing

good times?

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

taking months off barely playing 20 hours a week, ignoring study, and essentially just being a degenerate drifting along.

good times?

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

I am consciously seeking to improve the health of my poker game, fitness level, and social life.

how closely do you think these three things are linked? i've done a great job on the latter two, but a poor job on the former...

i used to have an ok grasp on poker relative to the state of the games, that's obviously no longer the case cos lol-results-don't-lie. What two things do you think players like me would most benefit from working on?

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

my investment philosophy is park it and leave it. some of my friends are doing the, oh im gonna buy into this... then they talk about selling 1-2 years later. fuck that. hold it forever. unless the product turns out to be spew after further review, im forgetting about it and treating it like a sunk cost until cash out day comes.

i like this a lot.

Originally Posted by daven

i like this a lot.

This is an awful idea though, unless you really are constantly monitoring it from a completely objective point of view ( I doubt we ever are)

A 600% gain this year could lead to absolutely nothing in 201. Investments you have to monitor.

It'd be like (and I hope this holds true) you investing in someone who beat poker at a 55% level at the stake he played in 2008 if he played a million hands. But if he lost 3% on every year nad played a million hands every year up untill this point you'd lose have lost on your investment.

Originally Posted by daven

which is better: a crazy woman who is great in bed vs an awesome sane woman who is meh in bed?

Compromise on a semi-crazy woman who's semi-great in bed imo.

Originally Posted by d0zer

Compromise on a semi-crazy woman who's semi-great in bed imo.

I don't think women below the level of semi-crazy exist.

Originally Posted by daven

which is better: a crazy woman who is great in bed vs an awesome sane woman who is meh in bed?

Originally Posted by Icanhastreebet

I don't think women below the level of semi-crazy exist.

... or men, either, for that matter. Have you heard what some of them will eat on a pizza?*

Of course everyone is crazy. Just find someone who's crazy in a way that you find amusing, or at least non-threatening.


* Chicken & Bacon (w/ Onion, preferably) for me, please... or I might split a large pepperoni with m2m.

Originally Posted by daven

which is better: a crazy woman who is great in bed vs an awesome sane woman who is meh in bed?

short term: crazy, long term: sane. though im of the opinion all women have a degree of crazy in them because estrogen is quite the wild hormone. if you chose to get involved with bit of a crazy in any way, have an escape plan in place from the start, otherwise their manipulation tactics will fuck with you.

You progressed through the stakes playing 100bb poker and then moved to cap a while back, do you ever think about switching back? or are the veeps too good at cap mid-stakes? what are your thoughts on mixing hypers with cap?

I'm not really sure. I'm working on grinding as many VPPs as I can this year while also pushing myself to improve. I'm not sure on mixing hypers with cap because I haven't played them seriously but I'd say it would be a good idea if you want to go for something sick like 2x SNE. If I grow my bankroll large enough and feel skilled enough to play 10/20 as my minimum stake, I will then start working on deeper game play. I don't think I'll ever become a Sauce or anything, but I suppose it can't hurt to just aim high.

good times?

Yep, just not balanced.

good times?

Yep, just not balanced.

how closely do you think these three things are linked? i've done a great job on the latter two, but a poor job on the former...

I'm now of the opinion that if one area is falling behind the others, it will drag the others down if you don't take control.

i used to have an ok grasp on poker relative to the state of the games, that's obviously no longer the case cos lol-results-don't-lie. What two things do you think players like me would most benefit from working on?

watch the latest videos to find out what people seem to be talking about a lot. find spots you come to that you feel you could get a better feel for and play around with pokerstove or something for that spot, then talk about all that with other poker players.

i like this a lot.

.

Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

... or men, either, for that matter. Have you heard what some of them will eat on a pizza?*

Of course everyone is crazy.Just find someone who's crazy in a way that you find amusing, or at least non-threatening.


* Chicken & Bacon (w/ Onion, preferably) for me, please... or I might split a large pepperoni with m2m.

if you're ever in Toronto let's grab a pint and a pizza. same goes for any of ya'll, meeting FTRers is cool.

If you take the highway to Toronto oh oh oh oh.
Makes me want to go... really.

... <talking with my fiance' about this for about an hour>

I can't believe how seriously I'm taking this.

I'm thinking early May. How's that sound?