FTR Group Sweat #3 - 1st March 2009 9pm GMT

Hey folks,

I´ve tackled my exams for now and have time again to get things rolling. You´re all invited to join us on Sunday, when we´re going to review hand histories together!

Keith said something, that he´d like to volunteer and have us watching his screen. Second option would be every participant puts together hands he had trouble with in the past and have the crowd berating him and discussing the hand.

I´m gonna host the skype convo and prepare some hands, Id appreciate if someone would be so kind to record our session. Sign up here and pm me ur Skype SN if you don´t want to make it public.

You can check timezones here

obviously , I'd like to be in it lol

What was the software necessary for this?

I would be happy to do the recording. XTR, you never mentioned what time this would be taking place.

Originally Posted by Illfavor

What was the software necessary for this?

Assuming everyone is using the same software as the first two sessions, skype for talking and mikogo for screen sharing/viewing.

lol time is in the topic title

Originally Posted by LuckySlevin

lol time is in the topic title

Haha. I even re-read the post like 10 times to make sure it wasn't in there so I didn't look stupid. Thanks for the heads up!

Another option might be to have someone record a session previously, and someone could play the session and pause at points that need discussing. To cut down on dead time, maybe instead of recording the session, the individual could get rid of any of the trivial hand histories (standard raises preflop where people folded, or standard folds preflop), and throw the rest of the hand histories into a replayer. From there we could proceed the same as before and pause at key points to discuss.

I think it would probably prove more beneficial than merely sweating someone because sweating someone in real time makes things confusing, and you have little time to discuss the key points before you have another hand.

Also, count me in for sitting in Sunday.

I think that it would be helpful if I outlined the idea that I proposed originally to XTR. I was playing 5NL and still being a relative newbie to playing cash tables , just playing one table and relatively tightly ,I thought that there would be little to discuss and that I might find it hard to concentrate on the table, and take part in the discussion.
I thought that it would be beneficial for all of us newbies , to do a session on what to do after you have completed a session at the tables,what to look at/for in the poker tracker stats/graphs to help work out both what we're doing right so we can keep doing it and what we're doing wrong so we can fix the leak. Most of the video's on the net concentrate on the play at the table with very little on analysing your own play to find leaks.
edit: beleive me ...there will be some howlers to be found.

While it's obviously important to know how to address those issues, I'm not really sure there needs to be a video to discuss how to effective incorporate HEM/PT into your study regime. That could be touched on in a thread/article of some sort.

Basically, look at important hands, do analysis on those hands and situations (not always biggest winner/loser). Learn what the standard stats are for your game, and use that "standard" to learn the mistakes of your opponents (ex. A standard vpip for FR being somewhere around 10-18%. Someone with 40%, is obv playing too many hands. So think on adjustments to exploit that). Study the hands of some of your most often seen regs. I'm not really sure what else could be touched on in a video as you describe.

I've had the idea also about doing a sweat (or a video) based on hands in a replayer only - or recording 5 hours of poker and taking out the twenty most interesting minutes of hands and then do a freeze-and-discuss coverage of them in the video. I do find that live play videos have a lot of really uninteresting spots in them. That'd be a great format for videos - and a good way to do a sweat session. Basically pick anyone's database open and replay some hands.

In a sense that's also what Keith proposed. A lot of people get all stat focused when they start thinking about HM or PT, but in reality the most valuable feature in both is the simple fact that the full hand histories are there (and the replayer makes a nice interface for discussion and review). We could look at some stats and see if there are any glaring errors, but when we look with a session review focus we may decide to look at our big winners and losers - that correlates almost one to one with making a video/sweat session with "the best bits" - the interesting hands that actually have something to discuss.

Having family over this weekend so not sure I'll be able to attend so don't book a slot for me. I'll shoot a message on Skype near the time if I'm available to check if there are any empty spots.

I agree erpel. I mean, I really like doing a session in that manner will prove most beneficial. It cuts down on dead-time, and allows more time for discussion. And if that is what Keith was proposing, then yeah I'm all for that. I just think if we maybe sweat someone who opens HEM and starts looking for hands, we are going to overlook a good portion of the smaller hands wanting to see how the big hands played out. So I think if we went that route it would be best for whoever to prepare the hands in advance (even hands were you are unsure if a cbet is correct, or if pot controling is correct etc.).

What if we came up with a few hands that we were unsure of, submitted them to keith, and then he could load them into PT/HEM and we could go through each one?

I agree completely. In session reviews by beginners there tends to be a focus on big pots whether they are won or lost, but those are sometimes the hands that plays most automatically. There are a lot of things to talk about in small pots and also with regards to whether to cbet, how much to cbet etc.

I completely agree that it would be best to pre-select a number of hands and have the session revolve around those. It's important here to be ready to present the hands during the session. By this I mean it's important to be mindful which reads and/or stats for the villain you want to be discussing. When you play at a table you have the HUD but when you review the session after you don't have the HUD on the replayer (I don't think). It's equally important that the sweatee/host/beneficiary shares his own thoughts first for each decision point as he goes through the hand.

I think perhaps the best way to do it is a mentoring approach (which it sounds like XTR is half-way employing) where the sweatee submits a couple of sessions to a mentor who quickly looks through the hands and picks out the interesting ones and leaves it up to the sweatee to prepare for the session. It's almost as if I'm proposing a double sweat session. First one that is one on one with a mentor type who decides what goes into the group session - and then the group session has about the same scope and depth as an instructional video, except in a workshop format where the sweatee is under the spotlight.

I do think that in terms of recording/replaying and structuring content I'm generally disappointed by many live play videos that I've seen here and there. Anyone who's done any video editing knows exactly how trivial it is to take some raw material and make it much more valuable by giving it some structure. The density of the content becomes much higher. I know a lot of the training sites have taken some strides and done completely theory based classroom/presentation videos, but to me he obvious best thing to do is a live play session with all the boring bits cut out and focusing on the interesting spots and covering them in a bit more detail than live play would allow.

bump

Just wondering who's signed up so far , and if there is anyone else who is attending except RML,XTR and Stacks who I haven't PM'd yet regarding hand histories.

here is the hand range thing i was talking about in the session got this is not mine and like it says it it helps feel free to drop some $$ to the man.

http://www.happyhunter.com/HandRangesV4.htm

I'd like to thank everyone who was able to participate last night for there comments . It was unfortunate for XTR that his screen lag meant that he was unable to see what was going on.

Originally Posted by inƒamous

here is the hand range thing i was talking about in the session got this is not mine and like it says it it helps feel free to drop some $$ to the man.

http://www.happyhunter.com/HandRangesV4.htm

This is actually pretty cool, thx for sharing

Hey sorry I couldn't really participate, I got pulled away for most of the session, but I was able to record everything. I'll try to get the video encoded to a more manageable size and uploaded tonight or tomorrow, and will obviously post the link when I'm done.

Originally Posted by RML604

Hey sorry I couldn't really participate, I got pulled away for most of the session, but I was able to record everything. I'll try to get the video encoded to a more manageable size and uploaded tonight or tomorrow, and will obviously post the link when I'm done.

Any luck with that video? Was the link posted?

Originally Posted by PlayToWin

Originally Posted by RML604

Hey sorry I couldn't really participate, I got pulled away for most of the session, but I was able to record everything. I'll try to get the video encoded to a more manageable size and uploaded tonight or tomorrow, and will obviously post the link when I'm done.

Any luck with that video? Was the link posted?

No sorry I went to do it and then I found out the trial on my video converter software was up, and then I just completely forgot about it. Thank you for the reminder though, I will get on it and post the link here.