feed from marshall28 blog 2008-10-02T13:20:18+01:00 fc 1.7.2 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net marshall28

It's been like two months since I've blogged. Not much was happening. A lot of boredom, saving money, grinding micro stakes--- Which I happen to be very bad at. I did discover the main problem I was having, and am finally back in the driver's seat as it pertains to my poker career, that problem was PRIDE. : [ Even after four months in the red, I was still so hellbent on the idea that I was so much better than the fools at 50 and 100nl and even 200nl that I could play 37/33 - 33/28 and own their souls. God, I make so many mistakes. The other issue was I became so complacent with my attitude and general gameplan that I just started opening a bunch of hands, c-betting every flop, then giving up when called or raised, or double barreling when I had a good hand. I tried to win every pot and stack anyone I was in a hand with at any time. Wow as if it's a wonder I struggled through the first 6 months of this year. I think a lot of the delusional confidence and pride came from the fact that I was still coaching a friend who was struggling at 400/600nl. We had a lot of discussions about game theory, evaluating hand ranges, perceptions of ranges, and hand reading. Immediately after that he started killing the games. In just one sweating session I ended up making him like 6k in 3 hours at 600nl. I dunno, he had a ton of confidence in me, enough to pay me to help him, so it kept reverbing in my mind that I should just do what I was teaching him. This just doesn't work at micro stakes. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Micro stakes isn't real poker. There is almost zero psychology to it. So anyways, FINALLY I swallowed my pride and just screwed down to a 18/15 game at 50nl and 8 tabled it up. Ended up being able to move up in like a week and a half because I was winning something ridiculous like 15bb/100. So I moved to 100nl. Was there for about 3 weeks to a month, 8 tabling playing 20/17 for the most part, other than certain occasions where I would 4 table and play a bit looser. And now I'm up to 200nl, been there for about a week, up something like 4800, playing my old 25/20 game. I still don't even think I'm playing that well, not as well as I'm capable of, that's for damn sure. I guess one of the biggest things I learned through this recent forge upwards is that to beat the micro games, all you really have to do is NOT SPEW and avoid marginal spots. LOL, avoiding marginal spots is basically the antithesis of my normal game, maybe why I struggled so much. When I stopped playing that crazy laggy game and just tightened down, the results were basically instant and immediate. It's amazing how easy it became. I suppose anyone could just chalk it up to running hot or whatever, but at this point there's no way I can prove to anyone that even if I keep winning for over 100k hand stretch that it's nothing more than a heater. LOL I think I've decided that basically everyone is result oriented at their core. If in general you don't win, you suck. If you won for even a HUGE sample you suck, it gets to be to the point that it's so ridiculous that people who once respected my game decided to tell me how terrible I am and how I just got lucky. ANYWAYS enough ranting about that, I just think it's interesting how people respond, it also says a lot about a person who thinks something crazy like that. Anyways, in the spirit of continuing to swallow my pride, I've hired myself a coach, one who's been extremely successful w/ other players, so I'm very looking forward to that, beginning in August after WSOP. At some point in the future, after I can show a longer period of success, I'd really like to get back to coaching microstakes myself. I have always enjoyed doing it even moreso than playing. Hopefully that's something that I can re-materialize a little bit down the road, maybe when I am back at 2/4. And lastly, in addition, I've developed an excel spreadsheet outlining the money I owe to credit cards and others, showing how I'm going to pay it back, as well as begin saving 20% of my cashout every month. At this point I have no other choice but to be responsible. [img]http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/4351567469ffc08325c1e9dd78ef0c23.jpg[/img] Thanks for reading, and GL, Marshall28

1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net marshall28

Bad Money Management So basically what I'm going to write about here is how bad money management can destroy your bottom line as well as make your life stressful beyond belief. Because I habitually keep extensive records it's actually going to be easy to show what bad money management and bad bankroll management will do. Okay so lets backtrack to Dec 8th, 2007. My bankroll was 31,522. Just before I was planning on leaving for Bellagio 5 diamond. I had felt a little burnt out on poker and thought that I was making a ton of money but none of it was going to anything worthwhile. This prompted me to think "I have all this money, what should I do with it? First things first ... 30,000$ is not a lot of money. It's actually a pretty standard bankroll for a 2/4 or 3/6 player. Nothing more. This obviously wasn't all the money I had. I had ~10k in equity from the old Lexus I was driving around, as well as about 5k$ in the bank, and another 5k$ on a different site. I was doing pretty good. So between December 14-December 27 I withdrew 27k$ and took 3k$ to stake a friend. Between these dates I was on a huge heater, I made 20k in the two week span. This is what made me believe this was going to be the norm and that I could basically afford whatever I wanted. So I went and bought a Porsche.... Put 20k down, got a loan to finance the other 25k$ it was worth. I figured I could throw 5 grand a month at it no problem if I wanted. LOL I actually thought that I could do no wrong and that poker was easy. After doing all this, I ran my roll back up to about 20k. Thinking that the 3/6 games were too easy for me at this point I went on and moved up to 1knl. Wow was this ever a bad idea. I proceeded to lose 5 or so buy ins. Some were bad beats, others appeared to be coolers ... in my eyes I was playing well and the game seemed very beatable. So I kept playing. LOL? ... I proceeded to lose another 10 buy ins there and finally quit when I had about 5k left in my BR. Though I took this straight to 2/4 to try to start rebuilding. WOW I deserve an award for like worst bankroll management ever. Eventually I went completely broke on that account. I remember staring at it and it saying something like 3 cents. Fast forward, you can go to the thread that says 22 hour session in my blog that points to how I rebuilt my roll up to 12k the next day (yeah from zero). So "OBVIOUSLY" my initial assumptions were correct since it proves that those games are easy for me and I should be playing at least 2/4. I hope anybody else reading this realizes how clueless I was. So anyways, after having such financial success over such a short period of time, I felt entitlted to continue that. I stayed up at at least 2/4 and basically refused to move down because I "KNEW" I could beat those games. I refused to look at any of the signs written in bold print "ITS POSSIBLE, YOU CAN RUN BAD". So I had this 12k to start off the new year. I knew taxes were around the corner in April, but didn't think too much of them, just figuring that I was going to be able to duplicate the results I had from September to December of 2007. So I lost 13k$ at those games in January ... But that was OK because I knew I could beat those games, so I moved my 5k roll off of the other site back on to PS, and made roughly 2100$ in coaching, staking deals, and rakeback, so I figured I was fine and things were going to turn around....Eventually. This is when I started to play really bad, and when I began to get a terrible reputation, if I didn't already have one. The downswing affected how I played so much that it turned me into scared money. I lost about 10k in February, but again, made about 2500 from coaching/staking/profit sharing deals so I kept on trying to beat the games that I obviously was -ev in. Now around March, I still knew that taxes were around the corner, but I had my Lexus to sell to pay for those. I obviously underestimated the amount of taxes I had to pay, because the Lexus only sold for 7k and taxes ended up being 15k. So I had to borrow money, now I was in debt because I thought the games were too easy to beat and that I had a huge edge completely oblivious to how poorly I was playing. So from the start of this little entry, it took three months for me to go from feeling on top of the world to feeling in the gutter. Why? Bad bankroll management. So I kept thinking about my 400$ ---> 12k$ run in one night, and kept trying to duplicate it. I made plans to move into an apartment with a friend in Tempe, and also was still committed to paying 500$ a month on the Porsche. Between March and up until now I've run my bankroll up to at least 5k (from nothing) and back down to nothing, and back up to 5k ... let me count how many times.....4 times? ... The bankroll management I was using was 15 buy ins up to the next level, drop if I have 20 buy ins for the one below it. I kept thinking eventually it will click and all my problems would be solved. It never happened. Today is May 20th and my BR has 600$ in it. I moved back home with my parents to try to save money and rebuild. Since I've been here I've built from 500$ up to $2700 and back down to where I am now. I feel like a Neilly ... except worse. Now I have to come up with about 2k$ a month in order to pay for all my previous commitments, and use anything extra to pay back my debtors. I've put so much pressure on myself to succeed that I think it's the main reason I haven't. Poker should be fun, it hasn't been fun for me in months. : [ If I didn't have blinders on and saw the signs from the start, I would still be comfortable, even after losing the 15k at 1knl and buying the Porsche. Luckily my move in date isn't until July 1st, and we made a deal where the first month of rent is free, so the 2k a month doesn't start until August 1st. I have one more shot at this to do it the right way or else I have to quit, sell my car, sell my watch, my laptop, and find a real job. Wow, how could so much bad stuff happen in such a short period of time? I guess the title of this entry answers the question.

1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net marshall28

Entry #5 - Perceived Ranges This article is going to be a bit long, but I think worthwhile if you stick with it to the end because the insight I gained might help you to understand the inner workings of the game a little bit better, just as it has me. Okay so, I've never been big on the mathematical side of poker, I mean, I can do the rudimentary calculations, but I've always relied on my psychological skills in order to beat the game. I think this is a big reason why I'm capable of high winrates versus thinking/adjusting players, yet tend to have so much trouble killing fish. So as an addendum to my recent post about my entire run up to 1knl being pure luck, I'm going to add that I ran very well over that period in time, but I've recently discovered a lot of the reason behind my success. That's what I am going to share in this article. Anybody who frequents this blog knows that I play a crazy lag style, always trying to play big pots and always attempting to push my opponents off hands when mine is second best, or induce a bluff or calldown when I have the goods. That's basically what I did, and when you play a lot of big pots over a relatively short sample size (100k hands) your variance is going to be huge which is going to account for high (or low) winrates. So I was just approached by a past student of mine who is struggling to beat the mid stakes games, he came to me with something along the lines of: I have taken the entire month of May off from work and want to focus purely on my poker game, what do you think I should do and is there any kind of deal you can offer me? I thought about this for a little bit, and of course since I've coached him before, I already knew what some of his specific weaknesses were. But I also knew that he had been through the standard 'sweat and ask questions' style of coaching many times by many other players. This obviously hasn't gotten him to the point he wants to be. So what I ended up suggesting was a month long course, in this course, the majority of focus would be on discussion and application of the specific concepts necessary to beat the games he plays in. What I told him I'd do is come up with a syllabus (yep, homework assignments included) that covered the most pertinent topics, and we'd spend roughly 20 hours over the course of the month discussing these concepts, as well as reviewing the sessions he plays during this time to make sure he is understanding and applying these concepts correctly. Obviously since I have never done anything like this before, I had to first figure out exactly how to structure this so that we would be covering the basics first and gradually progress to more advanced concepts. I've spent about six hours already preparing this, and I'll list here the topics we will be discussing in the structure that I came up with (so if anybody actually takes a look at it and thinks there might be something important I'm missing or that I've possibly structured it incorrectly please feel free to lend me your advice: Hand ranges and game theory: Focusing on G-bucks, as well as comparing that mathematical approach to poker with Pooruser's article on Singularity, which takes the focus off the math and into a psychological approach. Hand Reading; A. Importance of position B. Reading board texture C. Knowing your opponent D. Evaluating villains hand range (I decided to leave out 3rd and 4th level range evaluations since I thought that aspect might be better covered at a later point) Psychological fundamentals: A. Balancing your range B. metagame C. Bet Sizing/Bet Timing (tells) D. Multi-level thinking/Leveling For the last week he said he wanted to talk somewhat about Live play since he plays in live deepstacked games regularly, so I thought a good way to finish it off would be to cover... Live play; and Deepstacked play So from here I had to start scouring the internet, I've probably read close to 80 articles trying to pick out the best ones that illustrate these concepts. Most of what I found was garbage, generally a lot of what was posted on 2p2..... ironically (I'm hilarious aren't I?). But by wading through a lot of this muck, I actually came across quite a few VERY good articles that helped me personally to understand my own game and why I have struggled so much this year. So anyways, late in 2007 during my huge upswing, I was constantly labeled by the better players in the game as a lag/station. I always knew I was a calling station, but my reasoning at the time seemed to be "Well, I've come this far, how can I let it go now, besides -- I'm not about to be bullied or pushed over by anyone." Now, based on my image, being a calling station was actually good, but not for the reasons I elicited above. What I have learned by going through all of these articles about the way I approached the game has everything to do with perceived hand ranges. So here's how you have to think about it... The wider your perceived range preflop, necessarily, the worse your range will be by the time you get to the river. Conversely, the stronger (tighter) your perceived hand range is, it will necessarily have to be considered stronger by the time you get to the river. You can even take this a step further (or deeper if you wish) and presume that your perceived range is going to begin being assessed by your preflop action, but more importantly the position from which you acted, meaning position ends up being the most important thing in evaluating a hand range (Of course we are able to gather more information on later streets but that's a different and longer discussion). So, getting to the point (finally I know), any thinking opponent is going to realize what I'm doing, and by betting and inflating the pot attempting to constantly push them out, they are forced to adjust in one of three ways, one to get run over, two to tighten up preflop and hope I don't notice him waiting for a hand, or three being to call me down and play back at me with a looser range, which would necessitate that his perceived range will also be weaker by the river THUS making my light call downs in the end generally positive expected value. ---Assuming I'm playing well and reading villain well, AND villain isn't TalentedTom or JonnyCosmo who own me and read my soul. Anyways, hope this was insightful, because it was for me, GL, Marshall

1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net marshall28

So I said I was going to write my next post about problems associated with tilt, and the downward spiral it's capable of throwing you into. It did it to me, and I'm sure it can and does happen to others on occasion. My two blog posts on flopturnriver.com really sell the points I'm about to make, particularly the 1st one. Before I link you to it though, I want you to understand my mental state at the time I wrote it... Despite playing over 200k hands in 2 months of losing poker at micro stakes, I still believed that I was a good player who just ran bad -- wow super delusional, right? The purpose of the post (in my mind) was to educate other micro stake grinders on how to beat the games. I was going to do this for every level I "conquered" until I reached 400nl again. Now here's the link to it, but before going off to read it, theres a few things I want to point out... (you really don't even need to read it as I'm going to explain my mistakes below). http://www.flopturnriver.com/blogs/the-beginning-313#comments Basically what I did was make assumptions about all of the players at the limit, in general. Not targeting any specific player, just taking each 'type' of hand (i.e. drawing hand, top pair/med strength hand, monster) and explaining how best to exploit your 25nl opponents. I essentially created a series of false assumptions about how to play based on what I observed from playing a few thousand hands. Poker is all about making information based assumptions regarding how particular players play, then using that knowledge to extract value at certain times, and push them out of pots at others. What I did is completely backwards. I made assumptions about all players (based on information I received from a few) and used the same set of guidelines to combat all players at that limit. This is such a bad idea and caused me to struggle for so long, I talk about that in my 2nd post at FTR. Now, at the bottom in the comments section, I received some advice from a player who had read this post, it was the best advice I could have gotten at the time, but because of my huge ego and unwillingness to accept the fact that my ideas were wrong, I tore him down. What a fool I was. The advice he gave me is exactly what I repeated in the above paragraph. I was making false assumptions about how to play against an entire pool of players based on my experience with very few of them. This is how tilt and ego affected me. After realizing all of this, I made a second post, which pretty much outlined the mistakes I made in the first. Here is a link to that post, which I think is actually a pretty good read and describes a lot of the things I wanted to talk about regarding my own experiences with running bad and tilting.... http://www.flopturnriver.com/blogs/how-i-screwed-up-again-349 I recommend reading it, because I think I explain well how my internal state and mindset was affected by my bad run--in other words, how my tilt was induced. I'm actually just going to post it here since I think it outlines a lot of things many people have difficulty putting into words--one of the one things I consider myself fairly good at. "Okay so, my first post on these forums was probably about the worst stuff I’ve written since the inception of my blog. I haven’t really even written that much, only four actual articles. I haven’t been writing much over the last two months basically because of how rough of a run I’ve had, I’ve gone through emotional hoola hoops after becoming embarrassingly arrogant during my heater between September through the end of December—then being extremely humbled after running terribly and basically losing every dollar I had made from poker. It’s an important lesson I think to realize what this game does to people. The ups and the downs of it. Obviously the more emotionally indifferent you are, the easier it will be for you, but some of us just aren’t wired like that I guess. I only hope to work to be at that point eventually sometime in the future. I really want to emphasize exactly what this 2 month bad run -20k$ swing did to my internal state and mindset regarding the game. It’s actually portrayed in living color in the previous post. I can’t even believe that I thought what I was writing at the time was actually good, but running bad for such a long period of time made me think that that was the way to play winning poker. I’ve only just come to the realization in the last few days, and regained SOME of my winning mindset, but at least I’m making progress right? What I ended up doing was attempting to categorize the average player at 25nl, then went about explaining how each type of hand should be played against them. THIS HAS TO BE LIKE THE WORST WAY TO PLAY MICRO STAKES, DO NOT FOLLOW THAT ADVICE!!! Since I had that epiphany about how I was screwing up, I’ve been beating 25nl for 12bb/100 over the last 6800 hands playing 30/22/3. For the two months prior to this, I played 10,400 hands and was losing at a rate of -6.8bb/100. So what was it that made the difference? It was a number of things, but I’m going to get to that in a minute. First I want to apologize again to Rondavu who actually gave me the best advice I could have received. I was in such a terrible place mentally that I completely berated him and purposefully tried to make him look bad. I’m embarrassed for what I did, and that’s how I screwed up again, hopefully stating this here will rectify it. Anyways, basically what he was saying was right. I was making false assumptions based on the way I was running. The reason that we play bad when we run bad has to do with a number of factors. (1) When we are losing, our opponents realize it, and perceive us to be the loser at the table, the guy that can get run over and pushed around. Basically, it kills our image. (2) A lot of 6max poker has to do with our ability to gauge the frequency with which people are dealt hands, and the frequency with which people make strong hands on the flop. When these frequencies of our opponents playing back at us increase to an extent much higher than we perceive them to be likely, we start to make mistakes. (How can they have a hand EVERY TIME?) –This type of thinking. We sometimes even start to believe that they do have a hand every time. (3) We begin to believe that we can’t make hands, and if we do make them, they are going to get sucked out on. This problem extremely limits our options because we are now confined to being forced to make a hand AND for the hand to hold up in order to make money. For example, we won’t be thinking about situations where we might be able to make a profitable play, we are too focused on trying to make a hand and get it to hold up–It kind of makes us play in a very formulaic and extremely straightforward/easily-readable way. When you have all these factors working against you, it’s near impossible to play good poker. Your opponents are going to have you leveled, or you are going to end up leveling yourself. This is what happened to me, I leveled myself. Some poster here has it in his quote that says “ISF - You can only own yourself at 25nl” or something like that. This is dead on, and it’s what I did. So anyways, I was going to get to exactly what I changed that allowed me to start winning again confidently at a good winrate…. I stopped running completely awful for one. (I wasn’t running as bad as I was tilting, but once I stopped the tilting, the bad run lessened it’s effects on me. Obviously this isn’t of any use to you if you are struggling at this limit, but I am getting there. Once I stopped running so badly and tilting, I regained my confidence, it actually happened while I was doing a coaching session, and explaining exactly how I go about analyzing a hand street by street. Beginning with preflop, and putting all of the pieces together in order to determine the range of villains most likely holdings, and then explaining the action I take depending on the strength I perceive of that range in relation to my perceived range. This probably isn’t helping either if you are inexperienced. To put it as simply as I can, all I have been doing is being patient, waiting for decent cards, and playing them in good position. I stopped generalizing my opponents and trying to adjust my play to how I think the average 25nl player might play. I was too worried about them when the biggest problem was I wasn’t worried about myself. It’s just solid poker is all it is. Say I raise 9Tcc in the CO, the BB cold calls, flop comes 5c7d8h. He checks, I bet, he calls. Turn is Kc. He checks, I bet, he folds pretty often. I focused on trying to get max value on each hand rather than trying to induce my opponent to bluff me. If I have TT open LP, am called in the blinds, flop is Jh5s4s. He checks I c-bet, he calls. Okay now let’s think about his range. He is probably not the type of player to raise on a draw, so a flush draw and 67 are parts of his range, maybe 50%. A jack is definitely a portion of his range, maybe 20%. The other 30% of his range will be comprised of A high hands, and pairs 99-66 (as well as 5x and 4x). So what I want to do is get as much value as I can from the % of hands I’m beating, while not losing too much to those that I’m behind. So this hand is going to play out like this very very often …. I bet flop, he flat calls, pretend the turn is innocuous, like a duece of clubs. I’d now estimate how likely it is he is on a draw and how likely he will call a turn bet w/ hands like 66-99. In most cases I’m going to opt to check behind since if I bet the turn it’s going to appear to villain that I am aiming for 3 streets of value, and if I get called his range is going to be weighted much heavier towards a J than those other holdings (of course unless we know villain to be a HUGE station, which a lot of players at 25nl are — in which case we’d probably want to try for 3 streets of value). But most of the time I’m probably going to c/b (CHECK BEHIND) the turn and call a bet on the river if he makes one, or bet myself maybe half pot if he checks to me. I know this advice is far from a magic pill, but that’s the point, there is no magic pill, it’s just learning and using basic fundamentals. Of course these things change the higher in stakes you move, so I had lost this part of my game for quite a while, I had my head in the clouds in theory, over-thinking things, trying to outplay my opponents. HUGE MISTAKES. Your opponents are bad enough that they will outplay themselves, you aren’t required to force them to do this, that’s why it’s supposed to be so easy. Just bet when your hands have good equity, and don’t try to make hero plays like big bluffs or big calls, those are what will cost you the most in the long run. And don’t slowplay. Slowplaying is basically a huge mistake here… When you have a bunch of opponents who call too much, why would you ever want to pass up on free money? I was idiotic to say you should slowplay your big hands in the last post. It was a result of never getting any action when I did make a big hand, and not focusing on getting max value. Every time I had a big hand I wanted to win a stack, this is a terrible mentality to have at these stakes. I know this is a bit preemptive here but I really don’t know what else to say about it. My goal now is to make 20 buy ins a level and slowly move back up in stakes. I’m only 6 or so buy ins from getting out of 25nl and moving up to 50. When my Rakeback kicks in in the middle of the month things should become much easier. I expect to be at 100nl by the end of the month, possibly even 200 if I run well. Anyways, thanks for reading and GL" As for my current situation, I'm doing much better now with a healthy winrate at 200nl --trying to break through up to 400, but have been hit with some bad beats and a few spews each time I try to take the leap back up, but I think if I continue to re-build my confidence by successively posting a solid winrate at 200nl I will eventually do it. Though I readily admit most of my big run in late December was initiated by a heater, there were still some good things I was doing--what my task is now, is to figure out what exactly were the good things, stick to those, and weed out the bad ones. Anyways, hope you enjoyed this--I think it's already a good thing since it helped just one person (me), but if it helps even just one more, then I think it will be a success. Thanks for reading and GL, Marshall

1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net marshall28

I dunno, I think it's somethin Dr. Dre or Ice Cube said, so it obviously can't be a bad title for this blog post. No matter what you wanna call it, it is what it is, and it doesn't matter how it gets taken by the community. "I know you are very dedicated and you study hard and I think you have what it takes to do very well in this game, but poker is much more ruthless then starcraft for example. No one gives a shit about you, they only care about themselves, and really theres no truer statement then that. Beleive me Marshall I KNOW how much it sucks to be down, and I have a good idea of how you feel, I know how much it sucks to be kicked when you are already down but its almost second natrue in this game.. The point I am trying to make thought, For every decision you make in life or in poker you should expect every possible outcome so theres no surprises and everything is anticipated." -- This was sent to me in a PM after one of my previous posts, and I didn't ask for permission to post it here so I'm going to leave the name anonymous. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. A lot. About poker, my life, my future, my goals. I wasn't doing any of this from the start of the year up until about mid March. The reason I wasn't thinking was because I was delusional. I think the anonymous comment above illustrates a pretty good example of how delusional, and needy (I'm about to get to this) I was. I created this blog after a HUGE heater. I believed it was because of my 'superior skill' but what really happened is that for four months, the planets aligned and everything I did worked, regardless if it was good play or bad play. I'm stubborn, and my stubborness is rooted in how strong my belief system is. Meaning, if I think something is true, you'd be hard pressed to convince me otherwise, many can attest to this, particularly my roommate. By playing hundreds of thousands of hands, I gained an elementary understanding of the game, nothing of the level to which I claimed and boasted in my previous posts. Thinking about the real reason I created this blog, it was an attempt to gain recognition and praise. I posed it as a means to help others, slyly concealing my neediness in regards to attention. Of course it wasn't all just a ploy, a few posts were sincere, but because my reasons were incongruent with the statements made, I suffered tremendously. A few of you were quick to figure this out, and what can I say but eat my words and admit you were right. However, a lot of good has ended up coming out of it. I understand now how petty and unfulfilling the need to be glorified or recognized is. It's immature and it really makes no difference what anyone thinks about myself or what I have to say, except myself. For this reason, I am going to re-continue to blog here. I went back and re-read a lot of the things I posted, as well as the responses I received, I was able to use these as a barometer in terms of gauging my own personal growth--which should be the real reason I blog in the first place--everything else should be taken with a grain of salt. So as of now, my new mission statement is this: I will write posts to document my struggles and successes in poker while continually outlining thoughts I have about the game, and how my life is affected by the game (and vice versa). I think this is plenty for now. In my next post, I intend to cover my brief stint blogging at flopturnriver.com, which illustrates extremely well the emotional affects and strain this game can put on anyone unprepared, and the completely ridiculous assumptions it had caused me and could cause anyone to make. I'll also outline where I'm at in my game right now and what steps/goals I need to take and set for the future. As always, thanks for reading, and GL, Marshall

1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net marshall28

Nevermind, I forgot this laptop is logged in as my roommate.

1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net marshall28

For those of you interested in continuing to read my blog, or those of you who get pleasure out of flaming me, I moved my blog to flopturnriver.com, so if you want to do either of those things, you can keep up with it by following this link... http://www.flopturnriver.com/blogs/author/Marshall28/ Basically what I'm doing is working my way up from the very bottom rung (25/50nl) and documenting the process, that's what the 1st post is about, real elementary stuff. Anyways, GL.

1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net marshall28

Okay so my last blog post was basically the result of extreme frustration. I don't even want a stake, I've said this before, it doesn't even make sense for me to get staked since I'd just be playing higher limits and sharing my winnings with someone. It's not like I'm broke or anything like that, lol ... I have a car that I'm in the process of selling for about 8k, plus I just cashed out $3500, so I have enough living money for pretty much the next 5 months. I was on a bunch of downers and was really frustrated that I had built up to 9k over the course of like 8 days from 600, then lost it all over the course of 10 hours. Obviously I have serious tilt issues, and a stop loss doesn't prevent me from stopping, the only thing I can do is to set a time for when my session will start and when it will end. A few wanted a story as to why I dropped so much so fast ... Here are a few reasons.... http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110179 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110184 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110185 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110189 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110215 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110191 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110195 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110197 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110198 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110202 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110206 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110208 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110211 http://www.pokerhand.org/?2110226 But I mean you get the point, even after reading just two or three ... I could definitely keep going for A WHILE but it's unnecessary. It's also true that for every two or three bad beats I took I probably gave up 1 buy in to tilt I'm sure, I can't deny that. Anyways, so now basically what I'm gonna do is play a game I call the 8 table 8 buy in rule game. Basically, what I'll do is sit down with my entire roll (400$) spread across the 8 tables, and play until I have 8 buy ins for the next level, then move up until I either hit 400nl or go bust. If I go bust, I'm gonna try to take some time off from poker and just not worry about it for a while because I've been driving myself crazy trying to rebuild a roll the past two weeks. It's really unhealthy. Then I'll either sell my watch which is worth about 6 grand or just wait until my rakeback comes in next month to start playing again. And lastly, I think I'm gonna move my blog from this site. There are so many big egos here and people that have flat out hate for me, it's too much negativity and I don't really want to be around that, so I'm going to move the blog somewhere else. It's not like I can post anything of real value anyways until I'm back up on my feet in poker, any insight I try to give right now is going to go by the wayside considering my own tilt issues at hand. But I got passed it before, and there's no reason I can't get passed it again. It should actually be a lot easier this time already knowing that I'm capable of it. I remember solving it by playing less tables and playing fewer hours. Obviously all of this contradicts the game I'm about to play, but I figure I might as well get it out of my system ... and who knows, it might work...that's how I turned 400$ into 12k in one session in late December, lol. Anyways, later, GL, and thank you.

1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net marshall28

ok so basically ive been dreading asking anyone for a stake since my downswing started. i haven't wanted to do it. i almost did w/ two different people but things ended up falling through, plus the fact that i've been driving myself nuts practically giving myself a heart attack w/ the type of hours i've been putting in lately and the results i've been getting based on that time spent. I know I can do it on my own, and it would just be a matter of time, but over the last two weeks i've put in 132 hours at the tables. This is probably part of the reason my results have been so incredibly swingy. Over the last few days my BR has been up to 7k and is now back down to 1k. I don't want to continue living like this for the next month or however long it takes for me to grind micro stakes, I go crazy grinding micro stakes, it's not real poker, so anyways.... Why would anyone want to stake me? .... well my winrate speaks for itself, as you can see here ... [img]http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/4347e46e136f8c2e23b46dbe76f36196.jpg[/img] This of course begs the question ... if my winrate is so high, why am I near broke? Basically, I took a shot at 1knl, ran bad, tilted a bit, and dropped the majority of my roll. That's all been documented in a previous post. I obviously have the bankroll management skills to build from ground zero and eventually get back to where I wanted to be ... at least playing the 2/4 games. I obviously have aspirations to play much higher, but for now I'd be real satisfied with a roll for 2/4. You can see by this graph that I am capable of good bankroll management... [img]http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/8d6adb32ce8adc6a307db129a0746cfb.jpg[/img] I think the fact that I have been putting in so many hours lately is part of what is causing the problem w/ maintaining a roll currently. While I was being disciplined and moving up in stakes, I played shorter sessions, and fewer sessions, i focused more on individual decisions rather than worrying about making as much as I possibly could to move up in stakes as fast as possible as I've been doing now. With a proper roll obviously I can do this. If anyone is interested in making some kind of deal please contact me through PM here or on AIM at TurboGTI2003.

1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net marshall28

So as my downswing continues, I was hoping I might put up some of the screen shots I got from Poker EV and PokerGrapher so that some kind soul who actually knows how to read the things might interpret them for me in lamen's terms. I took as many different screen shots as I could, hopefully somebody can help me out and explain to me what they mean. Thanks so much... [img]http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/de6f35228f57cd5649b5e3ac83e7cf0e.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/06f2e5e7b2c6e2c0df090e6f2527a79d.png[/img] [img]http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/c038f4415bff608c60ccea5a727b1cac.png[/img] [img]http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/2e2711de85e4b934d454d3fc26088c8e.png[/img] [img]http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/a23288aa31cd73680a4ecb22052150f8.png[/img] [img]http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/73f12465de61cd3e3076d5cd81e36ffc.png[/img] [img]http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/924943b1d809e0d3e9532154a7740e7c.png[/img] The only thing missing is roughly 10k hands I played on my laptop at the PCA where I dropped about 8 grand. I tried to have pokerstars e-mail me the hand histories, but for some reason poker tracker wasn't able to handle importing that many files at once, so I wasn't able to get them included. Anyways, I appreciate any responses as to the interpretation of these graphs.