Punk´s not tilt

Hi,

so I recently switched from nit style to lag style, trying to open my game a lot and be really tought to play again. The reason for that was, that one day I was sitting in table with one 90/50 villain and I had him on my left hand, and I realized how damn tought is playing something like him especially oop - he was calling every bet, he was fireing everytime someone checked to him, dont fold single blind etc ... obv I think that this is exploitable, but I found myself and others on the table in many very hard situations with him postflop, because he wasnt spewy and could recognize when we weak tighters actually had a hand and just folded and continued next hand with collecting our money bb after bb.

His succes was definitely in fact, that he could take others from their comfort playing zone, he was attacking every pot and maintained others in permanent pressure, he was not folding to cbets so he forced people to start playing tricky against him by checking made hand on the flop (and get outdrawed and still pay him off with tptk because he is such a fish obv), double barreling in situations where they was not used to etc etc - simply, he could made them tilting and playing really bad check/call/guess poker against him.

This really impressed me, and next session I started to play like a maniac running 50/50 first 20 hands on my tables and them slowly "tighten" up to consistent 31/28 with ton of 3betting and I found it really working great. People started tilt agains me and did a fancy plays with bottom pairs and shipping A2o preflop etc. Poker is entertainment for me again, because with a lot of action, situations and gameflow, I really started thinking about my decisions and started making some crazy lines, 1/4 pot bets and overbets etc etc to make head of my opponents explode and take them out from their standart plays. I found that most of "regs" like 16/13 are quite exploitable and most of the time they play superstandard lines and basically shows you theirs hole cards. In the other hand I found myself do a lot of spewy moves in the heat of battle and I will have to work on it in the future because it really hurts my winrate.

It is obv small sample, maybe I won few more flips and floped few more nut str8 than is usual, but still there must be somethink what I am doing right, because this is my biggest heater ever. With 1600 in my BR Iam going to try NL50 today, probably take a 6bi shot and then go back to NL20, hope that I wont play scare money and be able to crush this limit too.

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Hi,

I put this in the my March goals :

- play another 5k lag on NL20 hands and reevaluate

because I am trying to play some good lag style like 30/27 instead of being a nit and I ran quite well first 2k hands. I feel that I am really crushing some guys here and because I have 1400usd already in my account, I am thinking about taking a shot on NL50 because players will be the same here, but rake is lower and monies better. So my question is - should I stick to my plan at any costs and keep playing NL20 for next two days, or planing is for newbies and I should try to crush NL50 ? :D




Poll: What should Joker do ?
(Vote): Keep playing NL20 - plan is important !
(Vote): Cmon, take a 4bis shot on NL50 because you will win more money !

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Hi,

I am here to do an summary of my first month of br rebuilding and my poker resurrection. There are my goals for February from the beginning of the month :

- win 3x BI on NL2, NL4, NL10, NL20 and be a winner on NL50 --- fail
- play at least 30k hands --- succes
- dont tilt --- fail
- finish all of my school stuff --- 60% succes
- stop drinking, start grinding :D --- succes

I started this month full of poker energy and poker enthusiams, I started grinding lowest stakes as a warm up and I ran pretty good at NL2 and NL4 but then I have some problems with winning 3bi on NL10 and obviously threw my plan to the bin and skip this point and started tilting NL20 and some NL10 HU and after first week I was down about 200usd and hopeless again.

Then I deleted my tilted PT3 database and started a new one, because I was not able to live with proof of my stupidity in my HDD and that is the reason why my graph is only from 18 days After this epic fail I started play a little bit better. I experimented with nit mass tabling 6-14 tables of NL20 instead of my usual 4tables and have reasonable results because players down here are obv very bad and will pay your aces almost everytime and dont care that you folded 40 previous hands. Than I took shot to NL50 where I had a really nice heater first two sessions, but after this I hit a big downsving when I lost every flip, ran KK into AA etc etc and this tilted me a little bit ... so I went back to NL20 and didnt play well in the rest of the month. I ended the month something like - 250usd from playing, but thank to rakeback I am up 100usd and I will propably buy a copy of PT3 and Eyepoker from this profit.

Here is my graph + results :



I played whole month like absolute nit running something like 13/12 most of the time, and I have to admit, that this was not poker what I enjoy and I am not really good in it. Maybe it is a good way how to play 9 table of NL20/NL50 and make some profit, but I really want to be good at this game and try to get to the really high stakes one day, so I realized that I have to try crush my tables and become a really tought to play again instead of waiting for AA and bet bet bet, so I tried way more lagy style, even more lagy I was used to play on NL200 before (20/18) and hureeeeei it seems to be working - I play more pots with a fishes and they give me a lot of action on my big hands even when I play only 3-4 tables which is nice. In the other hand I did some pretty bad calls when overestimated my image and I really have to work on this lag style, so I will play another 5k hands of NL20 with these stats and after than hopefully try NL50.

LAG day :



March goals :

- play another 5k lag hands and reevaluate
- play 30k hands again
- stop tilting obv
- try to improve my game, dont be result or money orinted, try to crush my tables instead of nobrainer masstable grinding

Thats it

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Hi,

I decided to restart my poker career after busting my whole BR. And because I want to take it really seriously I will start my blog here on liquidpoker, hoping it will help me to stay focused and become a part of community :D

Briefly abou my poker life till now - I started playing freerols 2 years ago after watching James Bond : Casino Royale, because I was just fascinated by this game and really wanted to know atl least rules etc. Because I used to play a bit of some other kinds of hazard games (shits like roulette and spins - I really wasnt so clever these days :D, it made me no problem to ship some real money (actually not much, like 20-50 usd per week) to the pokerroom and then absolutely busted it playing NL100 with 1BI etc. Fortunately I really hate when I am loosing in whatever I do, so I started learning some basic strategy stuff and played sngs, tours, cash all together with a bit of succes because I made my BR to 500usd in april 2008. Then I discovered cardrunners and it literally changed my life, because I started watching videos, think more about my game etc. and switched entirely to 6max cash games. I was doing quite good and I moved up from NL25 with 500usd br to NL200 with 8k usd BR in 5 months and was feeling like I just discovered the gold mine :D But then I took a shot at NL400 ...

... and lost close to 5BI on tilt first two sessions and got crazy. I was thinking like this : "OMG WTF I LOST 2k FROM MY 8k BR I HAVE TO CASHOUT SOMETHING TILL I WILL LOST IT ALL" So i did cashout half of my BR with intention to buy some sweet stuff, enjoy the money and work on my game on NL100. It was terrible mistake. I was not able to beat NL100 again. I overestimated my skills everytime I was playing and was sure that I deserve all money on the table, because I AM THE BEST, BIG BALLA WHO PLAYED NL400 AND WILL CRUSH EVERY GAME SOON OF COURSE :D Than every bad beat, unluck, my mistake or just common variance threw me on super tilt, when no matter what stakes I was actually playing I lost 2+ BI every session and was really narky on poker and whole life :D After few weeks of misery, when I tried every anti-tilt and tryingtostayfocused ideas with poor results, I decided to cashout rest of my money to save my nerves and think about something else ...

... but roughly after two months I realized, that I love this game even more than money you can make by playing it (and as student I like the money really much, trust me) and ask my poker playfellow "dratek" ("Drateks" is his nick on lp, he started roughly in the same time as I did - only few months before - and now he is a stable winner at NL200 and taking a shots at NL400, respect to him) to stack me for NL25 and he insta shipped me 700usd for what I want to thank him here. It was on 1st of January when I started playing againg ...

... but nothing changed! I still was a monster tilted monkey and automatically thought that I am the best player on these microstakes tables so they have to give me their money as fast as possible because I want to move up and make some serious cash. Epic fail again - I changed 700 to 300 usd maybe in one week on NL20 ...

... but I dont give up, I will try to fight with it again and now I want to take it really seriously. What definitely change my view on poker, was one answer to "how to stop tilt?" question here on lp. I cant find it again now, but I will reproduce it for you - it was somethink like :


"Everytime when you are sitting on the table and you actually realize that you clearly missplayed some situation, stop your session"


This really hits me hard. I realized that there are nothing like predestined winners. Variance Is bitch and she can slap you in your face very hard and alone make your live living hell when you are running under expectations for 50k hands. There are no predestinated winners also because no-one is clearly better than every single one other player. Your hyper agressive game can be sucesfull agains 99/100 players, but you will not benefit from it in situation when you got tilted agains huge calling station who calls your amazing A high bluff with bottom pair because he thought he has a flush and than you donate him another two BI in monkey iwantmymoneyback tilt, which erase your hard gained winnings from the majority of players. And it is not only about loosing dozens of BI´s in one day. We work really hard to beat others and rake to make something like 5PTBB/100 profit in long term, which is imo very good result everyvhere higher than NL50, but is still only 10 BB per 100 hands! Lets assume that it will take 1 hour to play 100 hands on 6max table, and during this hour you will make two smaller/light-tilted mistakes (call our draw agains odds with no implied odds, run unreal bluff agains calling station in small pot etc.) which each cost us 10BB. These two mistakes can easilly turn our 5PTBB/100 profit from the table to loosing -5PTBB/100. So you should be really concentrated to every decision you make on the table, because it can have a huge impact on your overall winrate. But this may be not end. From my experiece, everytime I made some stupid decision (like calling 8BB to 22BB pot on the river, when I am pretty sure that he has me beat, but given history, actual state of my mind, his nick, weird bet sizing or whatever I finally persuade myself to call, than insta muck my hand and delude myself that he could be bluffing and I had to find out for only 8BB) the next one is coming, will occur really soon but unfortunatelly will cost me much more BB´s. Small mistake will in the end finishes in loosing one or two BI´s. In my opinion this happens because in this point I lost responsibility to my money - I did a clearly bad decision because of that I lost my money, but I say to myself : "Nevermind, it was not too much" and I continue playing ? This is crazy and spewy, because I only allow myself to loose more money with this actual state of mind (and it will happen sooo often). So what I really need to do is start following posted quote. Try to dont tilt and spew ever. Play my best as long as possible and when I saw first indication of tilt/bad play caused by aggro oponent, lucky fish, tideness or whatever just quit the session and come back later with new enthusiasm and clear head. If I will be able to stop my session in the begging of loosing, it will be so easier to come back in 30-60 minutes and play without presure, than lost 4BI´s first session and than try to grind it back whole day no matter what. I will try it ... hope it will work for me :D Secondly I have to stop thinkink about me as skilled player, be humble and hope that the results will come. I am pretty sure that for lot of you this is something you already managed and I say nothing new. Sorry wasting your time then :D

I am quite suprised that you read it all till here :D ... excuse me please for my bad english - this is definitely longest and hardest what I have ever write in english and it took me hour and half of my life so I hope it was readable.

Finally I want to set some of my February goals and overall BR management. Actually dont think it will be interesting for you, but I hope that if I make them public, It will force me to keep them at least a little bit.

I have 1200usd right now so I will start on NL50 and proceed in harmony with this BR management :

NL10 - from 150usd
NL20 - from 400usd - back to NL10 at 300usd
NL50 - from 1000usd - back to NL20 at 850usd
NL100 - from 2300usd - back to NL50 at 2000usd
NL200 - from 5000usd - back to NL100 at 4400usd

Before I start playing NL50 now, I also want to take little "warm-up" ... so I will have to win 3 BI on NL2, NL4, NL10 and NL20 before I actually try NL50. I hope it will be good practise for executing quoted rule and will force me to play solid ABC poker which is crucial on these stakes (I hope I wont stay at NL4 whole month trying to win 12usd).

So actual February goals are :

- win 3x BI on NL2, NL4, NL10, NL20 and be a winner on NL50
- play at least 30k hands
- dont tilt
- finish all of my school stuff
- stop drinking, start grinding :D

If you really read it till here, you deserve this picture. First time we saw it with one my friend we couldnt stop laughting for 15 minutes :D

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