Marshall28's blog

Okay so I figured I would post this first in my blog to see if I get any kind of decent response since I don't want to clutter the "main poker" threads unnecessarily if I don't have to...

I've thought a lot lately about what I want to do with my life, I considered travelling the world for a while, only to think about it and realize how much I hate traveling. Might be second to walking into oncoming traffic. I thought about going back to San Diego, but I have a bit of a troubled past there and think I want to just get away from it. So my best friend asked me to move back home (the east bay area) where we grew up to achieve basketball coaching greatness.

So my number one priority for a place to live is going to be one where I will meet a lot of people my age, specifically females, obv, and to be in this area close to where we will be coaching. What I'm looking for is if anyone here is from the east bay, and knows specifically the Walnut Creek/Concord/Pleasant Hill area, I'm hoping someone might know where the spots are to be for someone in their mid twenties.

I have a flight booked on the 8th to head up there and apartment hunt, but I have no idea where I should be looking other than a vague understanding that downtown WC might be a good spot.

Any ideas?

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AGHHHHH

I hate downswings.

I went on such a crazy heater on the 15th, came up 5k with basically no effort in 1500 hands. So I knew something was about to happen, knew I was due. It's been pretty sick some of the stuff that's happened to me.... Let's recap...

Earlier today, I was overset for 200bb against a fish in a 3b pot on Q52dd when I had 55, he led for pot, I raised obv, he shoved and I called. Usually I'd be very sad but I wasn't at all for the reason that I knew there's nothing I can do about it and it will happen occasionally, so whatever, I took a break. I came back on to try my luck on pokerstars. Within my first 50 hands I was stacked 3 times. Once all in preflop AA vs JJ, spiked J on river. Once KK vs AQo all in on 245r flop, he spiked A on river. Then one where I turned trips on AQQ4r in 3bet pot against very loose 3bettor who bet turn and shoved river w/ 44. So I stop lossed.

Let's see what else, turned straight gets all in vs rivered boat. Turned gutshot gets checkraised, so I flat to induce on the river on very innocuous board of 823r-4c. River brings seemingly harmless 4d, villain shoves, I call to see the 34.

QQvAA, QQvKK, KKvAA. Flopped Q high diamond flush vs naked Ad, 2d hits the river.

Oh, and yesterday, Ashman sits in on one of my 2/4 HU tables, and I just couldn't click the sit out button fast enough, so I was dealt a hand. I had AA so I figured I should probably play it. I obv get stacked this hand when he c/r 986dd flop, I peeled instead of raised since I had Ad, turn is 2d, he bets so I shove and he snaps it off w/ KTdd, I brick river.

Whatever, I've been hitting some very lucky cards in the earlier part of the month. I already had one 4k downswing on the 2nd so I guess there's no reason I can't pull out of this one. Just a bit drunk and a lot frustrated.

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Even though the day has ended bittersweet, I think I can say it's been a good one. I've discovered my new love... FTP deep 6max tables! I swear I love those things, it really allows me to open up my game and make certain plays/reads I'm just unable to make at the 100bb PS tables. I think I'm going to spend a lot of time playing those deep tables from here on out.

It's bittersweet because I was up 1200 after about 2k hands, then went to play one final session and went all the way down to -5.40 : [

Sick life

I ended up getting overset, then running kings into aces twice, and some dude 5b bluff shoved 56s into my AK and made trip 5's. Then obv I tilted at least 1-1.5 buy ins after all that happened one right after another.

Either way, playing these deep tables is the closest I've been to returning to my old form back when I was crushing a little over a year ago. My reads were super sharp and my ability to induce bluffs and light call downs/stack offs was impressive IMO.

Anyways, my month has been going very well so far, but I still have a lot of work to do. I think I posted that my goal was to make 50 buy ins at 1/2 and 40 at 2/4 or something like that. Let's see how close I am ....



Looks like I've made 58 buy ins at 1/2, that's definitely eclipsed that goal, though I haven't seemed to be fairing very well in the 2/4 games unfortunately. It seems to me that since I need to make another 15k by the end of the month that I should just stick w/ these 1/2 games, probably just the deep tables, and try to earn the extra 2/4 buy ins I need that way. This would mean I'd need to make an additional 75 buy ins at 1/2. I think it would take a minor miracle to put up those kinds of numbers since I'm just about half way through April, it's been pretty epic already and I'm just not sure I can do much better than I'm doing now. I think if I could make another 50 buy ins at 1/2 through the rest of April I could call that a success. It's very important I reach this goal of ~15k as quickly as possible though as I will be starting a new program come May 1st and would like to have all of my debts paid off before it starts.

I'm pretty excited about this new program, basically the way it works is I will be getting staked, plus be given unlimited coaching by two very successful 10/20 players in return for somewhere between 50-60% of my earnings over the course of the stake. The money isn't really important to me at all, but what is important is the possibility of being able to learn from great players, and being able to play higher stakes against better competition without risk of ruin. Obviously the better the players are that I play against, the quicker I will become better myself, I always dreamed of being one of the toughest to play in any game at any stakes, so I expect to definitely get closer to this goal by way of this program.

Anyways, that's it I guess, GL.

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So a friend was asking me if I was headed to the WSOP this summer, I had to tell him I couldn't go because I can't afford it. Which is true. He asked, well didn't you make like >20k last month? Yeah but my problems are like way worse. So he said "well you should just sell your car, duh," and I thought that seemed obvious, although it's actually gotten to the point that the value of the car has dropped so much that even if I were to sell it (which I have been actively trying to do) I would only get a couple grand out of it (after paying back what I still owe on it). A couple grand is no where near what I need to fix my situation.

I guess the point of this post is to finally make it clear exactly how poor of a choice it was to buy this car and how important it is not to make capricious financial decisions. Particularly as a reminder to myself to make sure I don't repeat my own mistakes, plus I'm sure there's something to learn here for anybody young just coming into a decent amount of money.

November 2007 I was 5 months out of college and had just recently turned pro playing 2/4 w/ about 40k bankroll. During the first 2 weeks of December, I logged about +15k at 2/4 and 3/6 then had a huge score at 3/6 over the course of 3 1 hour sessions I came up another 10k.

When I was first coming up I didn't really cash out much at all, I really only had the goal to just make it as high as I could and desired to be one of the best. I didn't actually even think about cashing out money nor did I spend much on anything. Though at some point, somebody had gotten it into my head that I should reward myself and buy myself something. So I did a lot of thinking as to what it was I actually wanted.

I really couldn't think of anything except the fact that when I was really young I always looked at dudes driving these lambo's, ferraris, porsche's, and I had always dreamed of doing that myself. The way I looked at it was, if the car is 45k and I put down 20, I'm making ~10k a month as a conservative estimate--hell, I probably could pay off the remaining 25k in 5 months easy.

This was the way that I looked at it. The way it is flawed is that I assumed I couldn't lose in poker, I also assumed that the hot streak I was on was standard and would continue in the same trend. These are assumptions I'll never ever make again. I didn't have any money saved in the bank and didn't save any money to pay taxes despite my Dad's warnings. Ugh, I just feel dumber and dumber as I look back on this.

So the last few days of December, the downswing I was due for hit, I went and played 5/10 and dropped 18 buy ins in one session, obviously nice stop loss I used there. I then continued to downswing through February and lost maybe another 15k.

So now I'm in a grip of debt living with my parents trying to save money to go back to leading a normal life. It's really awful living here but I don't even want to leave until I've taken care of my debts.

I always thought I was making the right choices for my life, I went to university, got a 4 year degree (the only one of my high school friends who actually has gotten one), I was making good money, had a long-term girlfriend, started going to grad school to get an MBA... At some point between finishing undergrad and buying this car everything just fell apart. GF left since I chose to play poker before spending time with her. I dropped out of grad school, made a couple super degen moves (like dropping 18k in one session, and buying 45k car), and ensuingly built up a ton of debt.

LOL so, what things am I gonna do differently this time around? I'm going to ensure I have enough money to pay for 6 months worth of living expenses ahead of time. I'm going to pay off all debts before leaving my parents house, and I'm going to continue working 50 hours a week to ensure it happens. I'm going to stay vigilant in keeping my game sharp and not ignore the obvious need to continue to improve as I thought last time around that I was so good that I didn't need to improve anymore. I'm going to save a percentage of all earnings on a monthly basis, and I'm not going to take on any more financial responsibilities other than the necessities like rent.

I think I can follow this plan, hopefully it works and I can get back on track, because life sucks when I have to rely on others, though I am thankful I have my parents to fall back on during a time like this.

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I know this is going to seem ridiculous and very stupid to a lot of people but I just don't care. I need to gripe about this and vent about it because it's literally driving me up the wall. I CAN'T BEAT FISH!

I can't imagine how much money I've lost to fish in the last month. Yes, I'm aware I made 16k over the course of March, but the majority of it has come from taking a bunch of money off of regulars. I honestly feel that I have no edge on many fish. I check their BB/100 in PTR before playing them, and it seems to me that the higher their BB/100 is in the red, THE WORSE I DO AGAINST THEM. For example, take this guy I'm playing right now, cspro2k. He's -18BB/100 in PTR, however he's up 2 buy ins on me over the course of the last hour and a half. I'm on what's turned into an almost 5k downswing right now, and the majority of my losses have come against fish. All my big wins are against regulars, I take the most from them, and it makes sense to me why I win. I'm definitely not saying I own all regulars or anything like that because there are definitely many regulars much better than me. The issue is that when a fish starts to get up on me, I FEEL LIKE I CAN'T QUIT BECAUSE I THINK I HAVE THIS HUGE EDGE. If a regular gets up on me, I have no problem quitting immediately, I don't tilt when I start to lose to a reg because it's pretty easy for me to accept that on this given day he outplayed me, or he got a bit better run of cards. If a fish starts to beat me, I will lose MANY MANY buy ins. I'm prone to lose in upwards of 10 buy ins to any fish. It's happened multiple times this month, if you check my PTR DB and check who my worst enemies are, the majority of them are fish. I'm so sick of struggling with this and almost feel the need to strictly play against regs, at least I know I show a profit vs them. Also, my life is much easier when I play against strictly regs as I tilt much less and have lower stress levels in general. My stress levels BECOME SO HIGH when I'm trying to beat a fish and can't do it. I've been complaining about this for a long time and my friends just tell me it's variance or just make fun of me for not being able to do it telling me how easy it is. IT'S NOT EASY FOR ME, IT'S VERY VERY HARD and it's something I either have to improve at or just avoid.

So go ahead, flame and laugh away. It's the truth, I'm glad I got it off my chest regardless. Aside from venting, I should set some sort of goal here. I think what I'm going to do is work with a few of my coaches on just this aspect specifically for the month of April. If I am still feeling the same way about my play against the fish by the end of April, I'll decide to just completely avoid them and just play the regs, well, at least the ones who don't dodge me.

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So it looks like I've done pretty well for March. I made almost 60 buy ins at 100nl, and a little over 60 buy ins at 200nl. I've dabbled a bit in the 2/4 games and feel like I definitely have an edge in the games particularly since my coaches seem to believe the same thing, though I think I haven't run very well and have gotten the short end of the stick quite a bit. I think that in time this will even itself out and I will start to become a winner.

At the time of writing my previous entry, I was struggling to make the jump to 1/2 and cement myself as a solid player in those games. I think I've definitely accomplished that and my results back up that assessment.

One of the things I wanted to work on was my bet sizing in 3bet pots postflop. I feel like I've definitely improved from the point I was at about a month ago, and I think I will continue to improve in this area. I'm starting to notice things that I recall noticing the first time around when I started to feel like I was really increasing my skill to a high level. I've been watching a ton of videos and spending a bunch of money on coaching from multiple players trying to do everything I can to accelerate my learning curve and improve my game as quickly and drastically as possible. I feel like it's working and that I will continue to make big strides as I move forward.

One of the things I wanted to add was a stop loss. I am happy to say that I successfully used a 3 buy in stop loss for every session during March except for my very last most recent one. I lost 2k in my previous heads up session, and feel that part of the reason I screwed up in not quitting sooner was that I was playing heads up across 3 different stakes, .5/1 1/2 and 2/4. Had I noticed how much I was down or paid attention to how many buy ins it was, I believe I would have been able to recognize what was happening and stop sooner. Obviously it was a costly mistake and one I hope to not continue to make in the future, but I think that being able to look through my list of sessions and seeing not one (other than this last one) where I lost more than 3 buy ins is a VERY VERY big step for me. One I couldn't possibly have taken 6 months ago, which is just another sign that I'm headed in the right direction.

So last time I listed a few goals I wanted to achieve through the leak plugging article in HEM,
Beginning of March:

Currently calling 3bets 37% of the time
Goal - Get it under 30%

Currently folding to flop raises 36% of the time
Goal - Get it above 46%

Currently double barreling 50%
Goal - Get it under 45%

I've been playing a lot of heads up lately, which is actually the first time I've ever been successful playing heads up. Even in the past I have always been a lifetime loser until very recently I started killing it. The biggest difference in what I'm doing now compared to what I used to do when playing HU is that in HU bluffing frequencies tend to be high since nobody really ever has anything, and I always tried to use my 6max style to play HU, which really was not profitable because you are given a ton more credit in 6max for actually having what you're representing a lot of the time whereas in HU nobody really wants to give you credit for it. SO, because of the increased amount of HU I've been playing, I'm not quite sure if I have enough of a sample in 6max hands to determine if I've improved my game in any of these categories, but oh well, I guess I'll take a look anyways.....

End of March:

Goal: Call 3bets under 30% of the time
Currently: Calling 3bets 35% of the time

Note - 35% is definitely an improvement over 37%, though it seems to me I still have room to improve. I'm going to continue to set the point I'd like to be at at 30%

Goal: Fold to flop raises more than 46% of the time
Currently: Folding to flop raises 35% of the time.

Note - It looks like I'm headed in the wrong direction. I'm not quite sure how important this number is though since it's very evident to me that the 2/4 games have much much more flop raising than 1/2, and many regulars are willing to auto-stack off w/ tp3k, so I am a bit skeptical as to how important it is I am folding to these raises. I'm going to ignore it for the time being and come back to it at another point down the road when I have another sample.

Goal: Double barrel under 45% of the time
Currently: Double barreling 48% of the time

Note - I see another improvement, though not yet where HEM claims I should be.

The more I'm thinking about these things, the more it seems to me that they will fix themselves when my hand reading ability improves. I'm not currently able to take people off hands as often as I'd like and am missing value in many spots as well as not getting paid off enough times with my big hands. These are things that will improve as my thought process improves.

As far as goals for April, the biggest thing that I KNOW I have to work on is constructing ranges. When I'm attentive and focused and seeing things as they happen in the moment, I am able to construct my opponent's range very well and come up with the best response to the situation very often. I know I am capable of it, because when I go to help friends at micro stakes and they are asking me what to do in a certain situation, I can come up with a number of reasons for advocating whatever action I think hero should take and why. While I'm playing I really struggle to do this often and consistently. Anybody have any advice on how to improve my consistency here?

I've begun to contact coaches at the highest level I can reach. Trying to let them know of my circumstance and my long term goals, fishing a bit to see who is willing to put out an arm to give me a bit of a pull up in their direction. I've had two responses and both were so far positive, hopefully I can convince one of them to take me on. I am getting to the point in my life where if I don't actualize any of this perceived potential I believe I have, I'm going to lose any self confidence towards future endeavors. I don't think I could understate how badly I want to make it to a high level and what I'm willing to sacrifice to get there. I'm already living with my parents, studying 10 hours a week and playing 50. I'm going to continue this regimen through April.

Even though I've hit a bit of a downswing, where I was up 20k for the month, but now only up 16, I think I've had an extremely successful month and look forward to having another one even more successful.

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I have had these same two 20" Samsung 204B's for like 3 or so years and have a bunch of FPP's I figured I can spend on either two of the Samsung 245T's (24 inches) or one of the Samsung 305T (30 inches).

As far as what I need... I don't tend to ever play more than 8 tables though wouldn't mind adequate desktop space to do so without the tables being really small.


What do you guys use? What do you guys prefer?

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So, writing is actually one of my strengths and it's helped me through a lot of issues in the past. I had stopped doing it for awhile and feel like it's something I need to get back to for my own good.

Ego has gotten me into a lot of trouble and made me look very foolish many times. Now that I'm a little older and (I won't say a little wiser because that's obviously not true) maybe a little less retarded, I'm giving poker another serious shot.

So I started back up w/ something like 100$ on Feb 1st and took it to the 10nl tables. I played 120k hands in February and I feel like I actually accomplished something. After spending a ton of time just watching videos and trying to take away at least one piece of information from each one I watched. If I can't explain to myself one thing I learned after watching a video, I'd have to say I wasted my time. Luckily I didn't have to play the 10nl and 25nl tables for long because a good friend of mine, Mitch Edz/Ruggedman loaned me 1k to play .25/.5, I made enough to pay him back in about 3 days. I finished February pretty strong with a bankroll of 3870. I felt pretty proud of that since it's more than I've won in any month probably over about the last half year playing poker. I logged 203 hours of playing time last month so my hourly was about 20 bucks, it's pennies compared to what I've made in the past, but I can't really find a reason to complain.

So far this month I've played strictly .5/1 and 1/2, I've had a ton of success in .5/1 but have been playing very poorly in 1/2. Regardless, I'm still up 3011 (minus $750 coaching payment to Jamie217) for the month and feel as if I'm finally starting to build some momentum. I think Jamie is an excellent coach and he's really making me feel like very soon I'm going to start to crack the 1/2 games and begin beating them as well.

I had been going through the motions for a long time, auto-piloting through life basically, it was pretty ugly. As I've been spending more time away from the game and thinking about it, I've begun to learn a lot of things I either wasn't looking for or thought I was too good to notice. One of those things is that even the .5/1 games online now are tougher than the 2/4 and 3/6 games were when I was beating them 16 months ago. Even many of the fish play a lot better. Their preflop stacking ranges actually seem like really good, I seem to never get it in good against them preflop. Anybody else notice them starting to c/jam sets and other big hands on the flop? or am I the only idiot that calls them when they do that?

Position seems even more important today than before. I guess many many fewer people were positionally aware than are today. I remember being able to 3bet anything playable from just about any spot in position and be able to show a profit. Now I have to get a lot trickier, 3betting a completely polar range when in UTG+1 and CO. Re-stealing a ton more in sb and bb vs btn/co opens. Deepstack play is way tougher because so many people are much better able to use position and 3betting to make my life miserable.

I've also found that bet sizing postflop in 3bet pots seems to be sososo key and it's the one thing I really need to work on the most. I feel like I've improved my preflop ranges a ton and that I'm playing pretty solid preflop poker for the most part, but my postflop play definitely needs a ton of improvement, these spots are what I'm going to try to work to improve most this month.

I have always tracked all my sessions and kept records, I know HEM does this for me, but it's just become a habit and I like to be able to look through it. What I've done lately are a couple of checks to see what times I'm making the most money at, what times I'm losing the most, how much I've won or lost depending on the length of my sessions, and also how much I've lost from not using a 3 buy in stop loss. Here's what I've found:

February:
Between 10am-2pm +1784
Between 2pm-6pm +2615
Between 10pm-2am -1566
Between 2am-6am +149

So obviously I'm losing the most between 10pm-2am, I probably think that it's just short term variance that I am +149 from 2am-6am because I'm going to assume I'm playing just as badly as I am from 10-2, probably should be playing worse. Since then I've tried to cut down my sessions that go past 10pm, we'll see how I do in accomplishing this goal through March.

February:
1hour sessions -76
1.5-2hour sessions +1515
2.5-4hour sessions +2233
4.5+ hour sessions -2170

So obviously this tells me that the longer I'm playing the worse I'm doing. I think the fact that the 1 hour sessions are -76 has more to do with short term variance because I haven't played that many sessions that last just one hour. What I'd like to do for the rest of March is to try to have no sessions that go over 4 hours unless I'm up a lot, and if a session does go for 4 hours, I need to move my stop loss up to whatever my bankroll is at (i.e. If I've been playing 4 hours, I started with 5000 and now I'm at 6500 at 1/2, I need to reset my stop loss to 5900).

And so far in March, I've gone through and checked how much I've lost by not implementing a stop loss. Basically I went through each session that I lost more than 3 buy ins, and added whatever was additional on top of those 3 buy ins I lost into a total, and I found that I've lost $2163 on top of those sessions. So far for March I'm up 3011 over 86 hours which works out to a 35$ hourly rate, but the crazy thing is, if I add back in that $2163 my hourly almost doubles to 60$. It probably more than doubles since I will be playing fewer hours if I'm actually stop-loss'ing myself at 3 buy ins.

Using the stop loss is something I've never been able to do successfully in the past and it's something I really want to push myself to try to do. The motivation is obviously staring me in the face. I know that in the past I used to play so aggressively that I thought using any kind of stop-loss just didn't make sense because there were many sessions where I started down 3-4 buy ins in the first 20 minutes just because of losing a few flips or running a bluff that didn't work, and I figured my image would pay me back shortly. And it did a decent amount of the time, except for when I wouldn't ever stop, even at -8 or -10 buy ins. Like when I dropped 18 buy ins at 5/10 in like 2.5 hours... Then it also led to sessions where I'd be up 4k then down 6k then even then down 5k then finish up 2k or something like that. That began to happen to me more and more often just before I busted my roll, that's something I just can't allow to happen again and I've got to stay vigilant to avoid it.

One last thing I've done is go through the leak plugging articles that HEM offers. I found three places I felt I could improve:

Currently calling 3bets 37% of the time
Goal - Get it under 30%

Currently folding to flop raises 36% of the time
Goal - Get it above 46%

Currently double barreling 50%
Goal - Get it under 45%

I know this was super long winded, but I'm not writing this for anyone else to read anymore, the purpose is to keep myself on track and to verbalize the things I know I need to work on, because if I don't keep them fresh in my mind, they'll just disappear.

Peter

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