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The last couple of days have been pretty damn harsh. Ended up getting some hellish sickness that really took me out. Very fatigued and overall a very unhappy person. Of course this was all done right when other stressful things were going down, which made for a slower recovery. But today I woke up feeling much better, and expect to be 100% by Tuesday, if not tomorrow. So fingers crossed that happens =)
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Ended up running a Tank on Saturday, which I felt was kind of rough given my coughing fits. Ended up running it waaaaay longer than I had meant to (went 2.5hrs for a 1.5hr session)…I really do need to get better at that. Not sure if I am going to release the session for the reason that it was too much imo. But we shall see. I might run another one in the same vein, being that we only ended up getting through about 1/2 the hands I had gotten for it. But I liked that we got into so much detail. We talked about compartmentalization and also ran a bunch of hypotheticals. Certainly kept me on my toes which makes time fly.
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In my sickness I also decided to finish up, or I suppose start and finish, the 5th season of Weeds. Not sure if y’all watch that show…but it was a badass season. I for some odd reason just realized that I could watch Netflix on my laptop, so I have been loading up on TV and movies to relax. Also got all caught up on Spartacus and have been looking for a new show to get lost in. Suggestions?
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This week is shaping up to be pretty damn busy. Have 8 scheduled hours before the rest start piling in. Also have 4 videos due in April for Stox. This will be my last month on Stox due this being the last month of Stox. Not thrilled about it all, but hopefully it all works out for the best. I hopefully end up over on CardRunners, which would be cool as hell…but we shall see and I have a conversation lined up this week to find out what happens in the upcoming month or so. I think I am going to do 2 leakfinder videos (doing reviews of another player’s session. I have 2 reeeeeeally good sessions to work with), 1 very complex video on frameworks and compartmentalization, and then 1 video that is open. I’ll figure it out when I get there I suppose. A lot more work that I had planned for my customary month off…but I’ll get it done =)
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And that will be enough from me tonight. Hope all is well!
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I ended up losing my iPhone this week. Was out throwing discs (my new record at 54 over 18) and the damn thing must have jumped out of my pocket. Because I am in Vegas I assumed that it was probably sold for meth within 30minutes, so I bought a new one ASAP. Totally stressed about it because I didn’t want sensitive information from students being leaked, so I had to change every password possible. *Sigh* O well, at least I am back in business, just sucks losing a day of work because I am an idiot. And of course it is the first time I have ever lost, or even damaged, a cell phone in the 8years I have been using one…
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Past that, everything is going well. Got some good writing over the weekend. And I believe I am on the calendar for Stox in April, so I have some videos to put together. I think I am finally going to do the frameworks/compartmentalization video, and then possibly one on smallball/longball. Not totally sure one way or the other, I suppose it will all matter on what I feel like when I wake up in the morning, lol. I also had a video get released on Stox on Monday which is getting received well. Never thought people would enjoy the DB stuff so much, but I’m glad people enjoy it.
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I also randomly came down with some sort of sickness which has been kicking my ass. Couple that with the fact that my apartment had no hot water today, I have been pissypants all day. I am hoping the hot water is back on tomorrow, otherwise I am going to go on lifetilt. I always work better when I am clean shaven, and I can’t shave with cold water. Yes, I am odd like that.
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Also, for those interested, I will be running a Tank session this Saturday at 4p EST (I tried to make another Euro Friendly time). The topic will be postflop play. I will create probably 25-30 hands that will focus on things like CB-ing, postflop play in 3bet pots, VB-ing, CR-ing, optimal line creation, etc. If you are interested, just shoot me an email and I will give you all the information you need. And with that, I am going to pass out and hopefully wake up in a much better mood/physical state. Hope all is well!
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This is my third podcast. In this one I talk about what poker is to me, and focus heavily on the analytical brain. I talk about the frameworks that I use, and some of the simplification techniques I use in real-time to handle the abundant information. I also talk a little bit about tilt and how to combat it in a very simple way.
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Click here to listen to it now (might take a few seconds to load up)
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Click here to download it and listen to it later
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Enjoy!
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I meant to write up a post on St. Patrick’s Day but ended up passing out a little early. I have been very tired the last week or so (not fully sure why), and passing out relatively early. O well. St. Patrick’s Day was really solid. Woke up at 1p, got in a record-game of disc golf (56 finally!), then went out and got some Irish food. Enjoyed some live Irish music because it had been awhile, and got the urge to go get my new tattoo. By far my most expensive tattoo, but I am very happy with it thus far. The swelling is still a lil prevelant, thus why the circle’s lines a lil blurry, but it happens:
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The writing means “Luck Box” in Irish Gaelic. Yes, I got luck box tattooed on me for life, lol. It is a great reminder that, although I have had some hardships, I am an incredibly lucky individual. I am blessed physically and mentally, and would be an idiot to not acknowledge that. And I liked the Celtic circle design. I’m hoping the circles look more crsip once the swelling is fully down…and if not, I will go get it touched up. However, I will say this tattoo felt the best. I honestly didn’t feel any pain and it was really relaxing. I suppose it is only a matter of time until I get my left arm done to even everything out, lol.
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Everything else this week has been really good. Had a relatively light work week (took Wednesday off), and will only have had like 8hrs of coaching (plus a 6hr protege wee) by the time it is all said and done. Will spend most of tomorrow getting some writing done as well. I might even start making some videos as I wanted to put a new video on 2p2 at some point soon. Probably will do a video at 10NL or something just having some fun and banging around. I also started formulating another article to write tying poker and economics…so I could talk about marginal returns and basic economic principals that work well. We shall see though…time is always an odd thing.
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And on that note…I’m off to sleep. Hope all is well!
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Finally got my video done this afternoon. It only took me 3 different DB’s to finally get something I could work with. I ended up doing another DB Drilldown for this video, but focused on preflop leaks and how to patch them. The leaks turned out to be the standard “trouble facing a 3B” and “restealing”…but there was also an isolation leak (sizing, range, and plan). I think the video turned out pretty well. I had to redo all the audio today, and also spent 7hrs doing the graphics/editing, but I am happy with the end product, hopefully viewers will be too =)
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Feels good to be done with it. I have no more videos due this month, and just have students, writing, and grinding to attend to. Coaching has been going very well. Had another 15hrs of coaching last week, and this is my lightest week in quite some time (only 6hrs officially scheduled). I might run a Tank later this week due to finally have some extra time to not only run one, but also prep one (I make new HH’s for each Tank I run, and it takes quite a bit of time to create/plan/structure, etc). I will post here if I decide to run something.
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Had a really good weekend. Got a few games of disc golf in, and since the wind has been dying down, I am throwing much better. Everything has been in the 58-60 range, and eventhough I duffed a shot for record game, I am still loving it. So nice to get out of the house, enjoy the nice weather, and get a few miles of exercise in the process. Decided to go out for my friend’s birthday on Saturday. We were supposed to go the Common concert over at HAZE, but due to a shoe issue (no names will be named), we ended up over at Blondies playing pong all night. Still good stuff, and finally got to meet the “other Seth”…who was a very cool kid.
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I am totally exhausted, so I am going to go pass out for about 15hrs. First day I don’t ‘have’ to be up before noon in what feels like forever, so I am going to enjoy it. Hope all is well!
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So this week kind of escaped me. I meant to write a blog post the other night, but got insanely tired. Tonight is no different, but I’ve been thinking about this the last few days and wanted to get this out. I want to write about the improvement cycle. Regardless of where you are in your poker career, you are focused on improving. If you are not, you are fucking up. If you honestly think you have mastered this game, then you should probably quit. I mean that 100%.

Poker is a game where improvement is always possible. Anything that is subjective in nature will allow for infinite learning, assuming the level of subjectivity isn’t finite. For instance, if you were going to learn geometry, your learning graph would look nothing like a poker learning graph. Geometry is finite, there is no subjectivity. Everything is provable and nothing changes. Poker isn’t like that. Yes, there are certain truths in poker (reasons why we bet, hand strengths, underlying math, etc), but the rest of the game is subjective as all hell. “How is he going to react if I bet this turn card?” “Is he an elastic or inelastic caller?” “Is 2pair really good against his calling range?”. The answers are subjective, there are a huge number of unknowns, and thus our information and answers become massively imperfect.
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Now, as you continue improving and learning in poker, your answers/plays become closer and closer to perfect. But, as any poker player will tell you, there are some issues with the learning process. For instance, often times I will have a student and we will find an issue in their game. Let’s just take “facing a 3b” as a basic example. We will look through their hands and DB, and find out that they are folding to too many 3bets. So much so, that they are exploitable (say their FoldV3B = 80%). We will talk about ways to fix this leak, which is usually done by opening stronger, flatting some hands that they were folding before, or 4betting some hands that they were folding before. We will discuss some strategies, the hour will end, and we won’t see eachother for a few days.
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When our next session starts I will say “So, we talked about fixing that leak last time, how has it been going since?” They will show me their DB and they will now have a FoldV3B stat of 40%, a 4B of 5%, and a CallV3B of 55%. They by all means fixed the leak of being exploitable when facing a 3bet. However, they are now most likely calling 3bets too much. And then we would discuss fixing that and coming up with something that works for them. In doing this, we went from one extreme (folding too much) to another (folding too little most likely). This is standard. And then the next session they would show me a FoldV3B of 60%, a 4B of 10%, and a CallV3B of 30%…constantly getting closer and closer to something that works for them.

The point with this example was not to talk about how to react facing a 3bet. The point is to talk about what happened in the learning process. The student learned something that needed to change, they did so…but overadjusted. They then fixed it, readjusted, and kept doing so until they found something that worked for them. This is how learning in poker works. You keep experimenting with certain things until they work in a given strategy. Sometimes overadjusting, sometimes underadjusting, but all the while getting closer and closer to “perfection”.
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Now, the issue in poker is that perfection is impossible. Even if you found a “perfect” strategy for today’s games, that in noway means it would be perfect tomorrow. Because of that (and most of it stems to an ever-changing player pool, knowledge increase, and other variable conditions), all we can do is hover as close to the perfection level while playing and learning. And this is true for players of all levels and calibers. For instance, I am still learning and improving my game. I have recently been working on a different strategy in my postflop-3b game when I 3bet. The first few sessions I tried it I adjusted one way (CB-ing 50%), I had X result. The next few sessions I tried CBing 100%, and I had Y result. The next few sessions I tried 75% and had Z result. X wasn’t a good result, Y was getting me murdered, but Z got me in the ballpark of static success. So I adjusted, readjusted, and kept adjusting until I found something that worked in a given strategy for myself.
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Does this mean the answer I came to will work tomorrow? Most certainly not. In fact, as the games continue to mature, you will be constantly getting pushed further away from the perfection line. You must constantly be one step ahead of the game, riding the wave of information, and implementing strategies that are as close to optimal as possible. I’m sure this entire post was rambly, but I’m exhausted. The big point is don’t beat yourself up over not getting pure mastery. As far as you need to be concerned, there is no such thing in such a subjective game. Constantly work at staying as close to perfection as possible, while acknowledging that you will never be perfect. And the games will always be changing, so learn how to process information in a singular and global sense as quickly as possible to get to optimal/near-optimal answers as rapidly as possible.
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Sorry for the ramble. Hopefully it motivates at least one person though =)
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I’m not sure wtf that sickness thing was all about. It seemed to just be a quick 12hr bug thing, and I felt fine when I woke up. Thank goodness, because this is not the week I would want to be sick. I have the megawall today (the wall = 3 students back to back to back, the megawall = 4 students all lined up back to back), and being sick for megawalls is the worst experience ever, lol. I only had two students today, got my errands done, and then took addy and worked right though, which was necessary.
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I got some more writing done, which felt good. I also decided I was going to start making some little tools that people can use. Not sure if I will give them away for free (maybe one or two as a teaser =) ), but I wanted to create some visual tools that automatically show you the $ev of a play with some basic information. In making these, besides strengthening my dynamic stat skills, I am seeing some extra spots in my game I can tweak. Mostly in the betsizing department, but that is also because I am doing more thought on elastic v inelastic ranges. I always knew my years of econ in college would come to be useful!

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Also spent like 2hrs today with my proteges going over one of their DBs. I had one protege do the entire analysis, and it went awesomely. You just learn so much doing these DB analyses, everything from correlation to standard leaks to line evaluation. It’s amazing how much I learn from every single DB I go through, regardless of style or sample size. And speaking of the proteges, they all seem to be on the right track. Everyone is doing the upwards green line which is all anyone can ask for. I am so excited to see where they are at in even 3 months.
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Past that, nothing really of note. I have just been cranking writing whenever I can focus. Though a lot of it has been detail patching, reread, patch, rinse/repeat. I am very proud of everything I have done so far, especially with the pace and structuring. So hopefully all works out with it. I need to get to sleep and crash for a few hours before it is time for work. I will leave you with a video I found from the chat thread today…siiiiiiiiiick individual for sure.

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Not totally sure why. I had some hawaiian food for lunch and have been feeling shitty ever since. I hope it’s not food poisoning again…I can’t handle more of that nonsense. Body is pretty achy so I laid down and watched a movie (“Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”) to relax, and sadly I’m not feeling much better. So I just wanted to write a quick blog post so I didn’t go a ton of days without an update.
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Things are going pretty damn well. Ended up doing 12hrs of coaching this week, and have another 9 already lined up for next week. Besides that I have been hustling to get more and more writing done. I am about 20 pages (single spaced + no images) through right now. I went on a huge bender the other day of writing (or trying to) and ended up spending 3hrs creating spreadsheets, creating $ev equations, and all the other things that nerds do. It’s amazing what all of this writing is doing for my overall understanding of certain things I have never considered before in detail. And this…this is why I love teaching =)

Also went out the other day to buy a new computer chair due to all the writing. My wrists were starting to kill because my desk is an awkward height, and I was using a folding chair which was a pinch too short. Got a nice $100 chair but the dumbasses put two left arms in the box so I have to spend the next hour driving around and calling to get it switched out. *sigh*. Finally got all set up and am now loving it. Which reminds me…I cannot wait to get a full office set up (going to wait till I am staying in a location for more than 6months)…It will be the best tax write off ever.
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Everything else has been sauce. Got out the last few days to throw the discs and I finally started scoring better (wind was slighter). Did a 59 the other day, a 63 today, and am starting to get a stronger shortgame. I am feeling really restless and cannot wait to get back east. I am probably going to go out at some point next month and just relax for a little bit. I have a reunion of college friends around that time, and might just spend a week or so out there as well. I am blessed that I can work from anywhere, and I just need a scenery change. O well, it happens. Hopefully all is well guys…I’m off to sleep and hopefully not wake up to puking.
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This is always my issue with having ADD. Having deadlines and structure is supposed to be the nuts for ADD kids. We desire structure and clear goals to strive for. However, deadlines seem to be the death of me. I have been writing, or at least trying to, a ton the last few days. Of the 16 hours spent in front of my word files, I have been productive for maybe 4 of them. Maybe it is because I haven’t had a hardcore deadline in quite some time that I have forgotten how to deal with them…but it’s tweaking me out. I need to figure out a way to work through this, lol.

And because of that, I am going back to the doc tomorrow to get another bottle of ADD killer. Fingers crossed I can find some days in the next week or so to take it (I won’t take it past 3p because I cannot sleep if I do). I am pretty proud of myself regardless though. So far I have almost a third of my writing started. Albeit, I have written a lot of this stuff before (for various projects), so a lot of this is detailing, patching, and structuring. I am happy with my work thus far, I just wish my time was spent with less “floating” and had more focusing.
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So enough bitching from me, everything has been pretty good this week. Have been getting out every single day to toss the discs. Sadly, this is the worst time of year in Vegas with regards to wind (change of the seasons = more wind) and it has been hellish playing lately. On Monday I tossed my driver into a backyard in a gated community…tax write off =) Ended up playing the rest of the course out with a putter, which was total LOLs. It cracked me up that I actually played fairly well with it, but still hilarious. Ended up tossing a 78 the other day, a 72, and today I was on pace for a 67 but had to leave early for a session. Also ended up tossing my new driver into a backyard today, but decided to jump the fence and grab it back (I did NOT want to have to get yet another disc this week, lol). Damn wind.
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In case you have not seen this thread, I started a thread on 2p2 about winrates. It turned into a cool thread full of discussion of live v online, WR expectations, and a little bit of stylistic difference. Now, if you listened to my last podcast you know where I stand on all of this, but it’s still cool to see how certain people view the variance in the game among other things. I also wanted to centralize the winrate stuff as I was tired of deleting new threads called “what can I expect for a winrate at 8NL playing 4.5 tables in a thunderstorm?”. I epitomize the “if something bothers you then change it” mindset, lol.
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Alright, that is enough rambling from me tonight. Just wanted to get something written (and this made for a perfect distraction from writing other things =) ). Hope all is well
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I will use this page to link to all of my podcasts. The goal is to do one a month or so, if not a couple per month. The focus of these podcasts will be to discusss the backend of playing poker, things like mental preservation and tilt control…and the other is to talk about some poker strategy. Lots of these podcasts will be multi-layered, meaning that if you dig deep, there will be lots of gems laid out for those willing to find them. Hopefully you enjoy, and if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to drop them =)
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February 16 – Podcast 1 – My Poker Journey Thus Far
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February 25 – Podcast 2 – Thoughts on Current Games and Styles
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March 23 – Podcast 3 – The Poker Brain
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