The grind commences from the micros

[xptboy]

GL xptboy. I don't know about you, but the 2 hour limit would be the toughest for me to abide by. Once I find a table with a couple of real fish, I find it really hard to get up. Oh, and make sure you have fun too.

Thx Jax, yeah, all the rules are somewhat hard to abide to at times tbh, I mean I feel like playing poker right now .

But the reason I made these rules is so that I follow them and so that I don't turn into a degenerate/addict who just spews and stuff. It will also teach me discipline as well as trying to make the most of each session, 2 things I think are really important at being a good poker player (and being successful in life i guess). And tbh I think I'll become a better player initially at least taking it slower and not trying to do too much too fast. I've found this to be true with any other thing in life such as schoolwork and bodybuilding/strength training, I'd rather study a couple hours a day than cram and have an allnighter the day before an exam and it's better to work out 2-3x a week consistently for months/years etc rather than burn yourself out working out everyday of the week for a couple months (as people say, it's a lifestyle change, not a ''crash diet'' or anything like that), etc, sure you may get C results doing stuff that way, but I'd rather get A results know what I'm saying?

Also at these micro stakes I'm currently playing at I really don't see how there would be a lack of fish at the tables, and I mean I'm only playing 2-4 tables at a time so if ever I see a table has no fish then it should be easy for me to sit out and join another one. I think right now my main goal is just getting in consistency on the tables, developing different plans of action, getting better at poker in general and learning how to play vs different villains, etc. And yeah of course to have fun!

[Penneywize]

Haven't played No Limit Hold'em in ages, and I didn't go over your reads and whatnot but here it is:

HAND 2: Why did you re-raise the flop here? You're overrepping your hand, highly unlikely to get value from worse (basically only flush draws), villain's calling range includes a majority of either better hands or flush draws. In a vacuum I see this being pretty bad.

Edit: As played I don't think I like the turn either; pick a line that maximizes value from worse hands while minimizing potential losses from better. Raising flop and shoving turn doesn't fit this criterion. In the event he has 2p / set etc you basically did all the betting for him, and you never had a chance to fold his hand out either.

[xptboy]

Haven't played No Limit Hold'em in ages, and I didn't go over your reads and whatnot but here it is:

HAND 2: Why did you re-raise the flop here? You're overrepping your hand, highly unlikely to get value from worse (basically only flush draws), villain's calling range includes a majority of either better hands or flush draws. In a vacuum I see this being pretty bad.

Edit: As played I don't think I like the turn either; pick a line that maximizes value from worse hands while minimizing potential losses from better. Raising flop and shoving turn doesn't fit this criterion. In the event he has 2p / set etc you basically did all the betting for him, and you never had a chance to fold his hand out either.

I reraised the flop because I think the only hands he could possibly raise with are a set/2P, bluffs, draws, or a weaker pair of some kind. My intention was to reraise fold the flop if he shoved. 2P is very unlikely as I got top pair and I doubt he had T9.

The fact he called my reraise makes me think he doesn't have a set/2p and he got a weaker pair or draw. He may or may not have a draw, perhaps he is passive and calls when he has a draw or perhaps he is a good player and shoves/folds on the flop with a draw. I decide at this point that if he got a set/2P he will deserve to stack me anyway and I got outplayed/unlucky as I don't see him slowplaying a set on this board. The last thing I want to do though is check to him and allow him to put in a very tight spot. I decide to shove the turn when it comes blank and hope he calls with worse.

Let's say I don't shove the turn then:
- with a worse T or worse pair, he will not bet anymore (but I could still get value from these if I shove because I think he will call with them since my line looks I'm either bluffing or got a set)
- with a draw he will either bluff or give up (if he shoves on the turn then what do I do?!?! honestly IDK...)
- with a set he shoves either on turn or river, but I can't put him on a set as I think he shoves on flop with a set or 2P
- Basically I shove the turn for value from worse T's and lower pairs (and maybe even draws if he's that bad) and to fold out any draws that may have called the flop reraise and if he turns up with a set then WP hand to him.

Yeah I know... I'm crazy! I really like these marginal decisions though mucho fun

I decided to post that hand because I realize it went against a lot of abc poker guidelines but nevertheless I still had a clear thought process during it and am still happy with how I played it. Just shows that I can make really inexplicable plays whilst still putting reason behind them (even if the reasoning is wrong)

[Weissr]

Thx Jax, yeah, all the rules are somewhat hard to abide to at times tbh, I mean I feel like playing poker right now .

But the reason I made these rules is so that I follow them and so that I don't turn into a degenerate/addict who just spews and stuff. It will also teach me discipline as well as trying to make the most of each session, 2 things I think are really important at being a good poker player (and being successful in life i guess). And tbh I think I'll become a better player initially at least taking it slower and not trying to do too much too fast. I've found this to be true with any other thing in life such as schoolwork and bodybuilding/strength training, I'd rather study a couple hours a day than cram and have an allnighter the day before an exam and it's better to work out 2-3x a week consistently for months/years etc rather than burn yourself out working out everyday of the week for a couple months (as people say, it's a lifestyle change, not a ''crash diet'' or anything like that), etc, sure you may get C results doing stuff that way, but I'd rather get A results know what I'm saying?

I like where your head's at here, I'm a definite procrastinator and these are things I need to work on myself. But yea, being a winning player and good table selection go hand and hand but as you said, the micro stakes are pretty much riddled with fish, so lucky trolling!

[xptboy]

I like where your head's at here, I'm a definite procrastinator and these are things I need to work on myself. But yea, being a winning player and good table selection go hand and hand but as you said, the micro stakes are pretty much riddled with fish, so lucky trolling!

Right exactly and I'm glad you touched on that.

I kinda just want to go a bit further into detail on why I think this way and stuff. And I'm gonna bring up another example from strength training/bodybuilding (which I think I can pretty much associate everything to now in some way...), and I realize that you guys may be fed up of my comparisons between poker and life and bodybuilding and all that already. But tbh I can already see so many things in common (philosophically and mentally at least) between bodybuilding and poker.

I said i'd rather take things slow at first, well this is exactly the same in bodybuilding. When I first started working out, I heard different ways to do literally anything and I wanted to do it all so fast. It set my expectations too high.For example, in only the first few weeks of me working out, I'd hear
- work out 5x a week each muscle once a week
- fullbody 3x a week
- high reps, low weight
- low weight, high reps
- time under tension matters
- time under tension dont matter
- form for bench is like this... no its like this... no its like this...
- no cardio
- cardio
- 6+ meals a day
- only eat 6 hours a day, fast the rest
etc, etc, etc
it just isn't possible to properly process all that information and the reasoning behind all of that in a short time period. The 10,000 hour rule states that it takes 10,000 hours to master something, that translates into YEARS.

I mean, I got so much fucking information in and it was all controversial. Eventually i found myself with information and not knowing what to do when i went to the gym and this was because I was so obsessed with gathering as much knowledge on it too fast that I had no idea what to believe and what not to believe.

Eventually, I learnt that it's best to just get on a proven plan and stick to it, whether the plan bores you or not doesn't matter. All that matters is that you stick to it and that it works. If those 2 things happen, then eventually you will sort of ''naturally evolve'' and adjust your plan here and there. But it will take time as you go from novice, to beginner, to intermediate, to advanced, to elite, etc. At the start, you should really just stick to the basics and follow a general set of rules but after a while you'll notice some weakpoints and some errors in your plan that you need to fix. This is when you should make adjustments. This is what I did, I got on a proven workout routine that was meant to slowly improve your strength numbers over time and lo and behold, over time my numbers went up. At first they seemed like nothing. ''Oh I can bench 10 more lbs than 4 week ago...'' well a year later and I can bench 100 more lbs than before. You won't see the difference until the long run, and it's only now that I've started running into trouble adding weight to the bar, it's only now that I'm looking into adjusting a proven program slightly to my needs etc to focus on my sticking points and stuff.

So this is what I did when deciding to pick up poker as a serious hobby. I decided to create a plan that I could integrate easily and without stress into my current life. I view this plan as only the beginning and in a long time as I don't see myself improving or making progress or come to a sticking point in my game then I will adjust it slightly according to my needs as I inevitably start to see where I could use improvements with real personal experience proven by results, etc. But until then, I'll stick to it because I don't see how adding some hours here and there at playing or studying could help me improve any faster than what I already have set in stone. I just started playing poker again a couple days ago and I already want to play more than 2 hours a day, sometimes I'm just chilling in class and I day dream about poker lol, but I got a plan so I'm not going to just break it you know.

If I didn't have this plan, then IDK what I'd do, but I'd prolly be playing poker at random hours into the night and skipping social events, delaying work and other things in an attempt to ''become better faster'' and ''learn the game faster''. I may dabble in other games such as PLO or tournament play to become a ''more complete player''. I may watch hours of training videos a day to learn ''advanced plays and techniques''. But I mean when i think about this it won't get me anywhere. I'll just get a bunch of information shoved into my face and not know what to do with it, I'll hear about high stakes strategy and try to use that at microstakes and then see it doesn't work and then just get tilted, etc.

As you can see, I can get kind of OCD about things I enjoy sometimes (and this may be because I got an inherent competitive drive in me), I don't like to take things too casually, I tend to be an ''all or nothing'' guy but I need to realize that I can't expect immediate results in short time frames otherwise I'll always end up dissapointed (I've learnt this the hard way several times). That's why I need some rules to balance my life, I have some rules I follow for bodybuilding too so that I can easily incorporate into my life. Well, I can also tell you that I've learnt that for me at least, the thing that will yield the biggest results in anything is simply being disciplined and making sure I can maintain a habit over a prolonged period of time, otherwise I'll simply burn myself out, do things suboptimally and waste too much time on the things that barely matter. There's an 80/20 rule in life as well as in bodybuilding, I'm sure it will be true for poker too. It means, spend 80% of your energy on the 20% of things that actually matter.

EDIT: If I didn't feel like I had the discipline to stick to these rules I wouldn't have started playing poker again as I know it can be an extremely stressful and time consuming activity. Although if done right like I want to do, then I'm sure it can also be extremely fun and rewarding

And when I say rewarding I don't mean only monetarily, although I'm sure making some money from poker would be great. I think there's many other rewards to be had: A great hobby that makes you think, a hobby that will require you to train your mind to go through swings of good and bad luck (just like in life), a hobby that will get you to be more honest with yourself and be truthful to yourself, teach me even more discipline, etc.

I say this because I find strength training/bodybuilding to be more rewarding than simply getting bigger and stronger. It has allowed me to train my mind to not give up, it's taught me discipline, it's taught me to not be scared of heavy weights, it's taught me to be humble, it's taught me to leave ego at the door, it's added a lot of confidence to me through all this experience, not to mention the health benefits amongst many other things that have nothing to do directly with how strong/big I am getting over time.