[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED] BEATING NL50

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failsafe United States. Oct 12 2008 22:56. Posts 1040

I have no idea what represents victory for other lp.nettians, but my first serious poker goal has been realized today. It almost goes without saying that I'm still quite bad, but it is probably STILL worth saying just to save time in the long run. Like with most things, the more I learn, the more I feel ignorant. I've nothing else to do, and so I'm typing up a time line of my poker learning experience. I'm curious how others learn, and of course I'd love if anyone interested in teaching/coaching were to take an interest in helping me. I also enjoy talking about poker and would really like to make some acquaintances both above and below my level. If anyone's interested PM me and here's a summary of my own poker =]

Time line
- [HIGH SCHOOL (~5+ years ago)] Some weekends of playing for fun

- [EARLY UNIVERSITY (3 years ago)] Two years wanting to play poker, putting some money on a site and getting frustrated within a couple weeks after a couple days of bad luck. This period leaves a LOT to be regretted. I had pretty much FREE unlimited access to Myth, Midian, ApocPLZ, and MezPLZ via AIM but never prioritized poker so while Myth left NL100, Midian left NL50, ApocPLZ left life for WoW, and Mez went from a 25k roll to winning like half a million in a month... I pretty much played 0 serious poker and never progressed at all. Obviously any practical person who's interested in poker would say that this is a sick waste of ultra valuable resources, and of course they'd be right. In an economic sense, I've forfeited like $200+/hr coaching, and probably even better as there's probably more understanding to gain from studying alongside other people who are learning than from being coached by someone who already knows. But on a completely subjective level I really regret not having an opportunity to get to know those four guys a lot better, especially Mez and Myth who seem like awesome people but whom I didn't get to know well at all.

- [THIS SUMMER] This 4th of July in China I had a weird experience where my friends and I decided to party quite hard. I inadvertently took a combination of E and Meth that left me awake for an extra twenty-four hours. After realizing, scared as hell, that I was losing most of my ties with reality (I took quite a bit too much because of a misunderstanding; language barrier, etc.), I ended up returning home and freezing myself out for a few hours to calm down. For whatever reason I decided to log on to lp.net little over a day rabidly studied pretty much every major/interesting hand discussion on lp. This is not a recommended way to understand poker, but for me it worked wonders. Before this experience I was absolutely horrible at poker. I was pretty much a robotic level zero or level one thinker who suffered from robotic play intermingled with a bunch of misconceptions. And worst of all I didn't understand the logic underlying poker, so I had no means of extricating myself aside from trying to piece together other people's strategies and plays into a misleading playbook.
Anyway, as I was reading, I began to understand poker in an entirely different sense. About nine months ago, Myth described poker to me as a game where the only thing required to win was a particular logic. This sounds completely cliche, but as I read some post by Rekrul in midstakes (probably the single informative post he made all year) and some mathematical analysis of a CTS blog that Myth had worked up, I began to see exactly what Myth meant by the logic comment (at the time he said it, the comment was bewildering and frustrating, so I remembered it). Consequently I began to see what was required in order to develop a logic for understanding poker and then the plays necessary to execute it.

- [MID-AUGUST] I got back in the states, and it was a heart-breaking experience. I've lived in semi-rural Alabama my whole life (worst place ever in my estimation), and my experience in Kunming was my first semi-long term living experience anywhere else. Needless to say China is QUITE different from what I was used to - Kunming is a VERY awesome place =] - and it was a soul-rape to come back. It was quite crushing how EMPTY everything here is. It's spatially empty because there's just SO MUCH SPACE and so many fewer people. But more so this place is absolutely void of the sense of bewilderment, interest, and purpose that I felt everywhere in China. Coming home was my most bittersweet experience, because I was resigning myself to one final year at a mediocre university where almost all other students and I have nothing in common; a town I've lived in my entire life that holds no interest for me; and an environment that I once felt so comfortable in and yet on returning, I felt so completely apart from. At the same time I was seeing my family and friends again, and it's easy to feel like there shouldn't be much more to life than that.

- [LATE AUGUST] I finally began playing poker. I ran hotter than the sun for a while, then about neutral and finally had another solar flare before plunging into a 20k hand doomswitch the likes of which I'd never imagined during my previous dabbling with the game. The doomswitch-period was exacerbated by some pain killers for a carpal tunnel surgery and an unhealthy urge to just build a BR by 18-tabling NL25 for rakeback and a marginal winrate. To end the doomswitch and the soulrape that was 18-tabling, I finally took about a week off and resolved to come back and 4-table NL50. Since then I've been playing 4-6 tables of NL50 on FTP thanks to Myth for helping me shift some money.

- [LATE-SEPTEMEBER] So 4-6 tables of NL50 is what I've done for the last few weeks, and it's been much better for my soul, not to mention my poker play. AND! I've achieved my first sincere poker goal =]

5+PTBB/100 over 10k hands

Graph

Of course I've had some help from new/previous poker contacts, and I feel like I should shout out to them for absolutely no reason at all. So thanks soyukkusenman, crownroyal, myth, k2o4, vegable and mayzerg, who i've just recently met

Anyone else who's interested in poker and wants to talk or review hands, my AIM is JeffH578 and my MSN is jeff.haynes@hotmail.com or PM me =]

Edit: Also a shoutout to XEMcontemplate (hope that's his LP.net name) who I've met via lp.net and would feel really bad to have neglected =]

0 votes

Last edit: 12/10/2008 23:20

fenner Australia. Oct 12 2008 23:13. Posts 2188

A+++++ would read again

kimseongchan United States. Oct 12 2008 23:15. Posts 2089

congrats yo, hope you continue to do well

Drakk Canada. Oct 12 2008 23:55. Posts 1199

gratz keep it up

Expect the worst, hope for the best

k2o4 United States. Oct 13 2008 00:00. Posts 4803

jeff take ur AIM/MSN outta ur blog unless you wanna be harassed by scammers =)

woot, glad to see ur winning! you can msg me about hands anytime, it's always fun talkin poker with ya

InnovativeYogis.com

vegable United States. Oct 13 2008 00:16. Posts 2453

sexy sexay

Stir fry Normandy

Exhilarate United States. Oct 13 2008 00:28. Posts 5453

small sample size imo, keep playing more hands, good job though

CrownRoyal United States. Oct 13 2008 02:58. Posts 11385

my biceps are affected by thc

WHAT IS THIS

Presti Poland. Oct 13 2008 04:18. Posts 55

whats your nickname on FTP ? (should i be afraid of you?)

lazymej Canada. Oct 13 2008 14:18. Posts 2897

gj keep it up