Think equity and improve your non-showdown statsby The Dean, August 31
One of the biggest leaks (perhaps the biggest) in losing and break even poker players cash games is having a poor non-showdown win total. Most decent online grinders do well at showdown because they usually have a playable hand. However it is the non-showdown winnings that often cause the problem and this highlights what has become known as the “red line”. This is the line in PokerTracker and Holdem Manager software that shows us how much money we are winning without going to a showdown.
As you play tougher opponents then your showdown winnings will decrease simply because better players will pay you off less when you have big hands and they will usually have big hands themselves when they stack off. This is why many players struggle to make money when they play higher levels. This is because their non-showdown winnings are wiping away their showdown winnings and so profits are not amassing.
There is really one big fundamental problem with why players have poor non-showdown winnings and it is basically because of placing money into the pot and then folding……it is that simple. If you win the showdown then you are not affected and if you fold pre-flop then you are not affected. So the lesson is clear and it is that when you decide to play a hand then you either want a lot of players to give you implied odds or you want to isolate and play the hand aggressively.
If you play better hands pre-flop and select hands with better equity then your non-showdown winnings will escalate and you will become a winning player. In full ring games for example then you really do not want to be playing poor hands because you will simply place yourself into too many tough spots post flop. Situations where you either have to run through multi-street bluffs or weakly give up is not very strong poker.
There are other areas as well in which we can improve our game but we need to start thinking about playing post flop when we play pre-flop. Unless you are receiving very good implied odds then you ideally should be looking to either fold more hands instead of limping or isolating against a single player. This alone will do wonders for your non-showdown winnings because you will be folding more of your junk, playing tighter and more playable ranges and getting yourself into fewer tricky spots post flop.
August - First month of full time playingby TianYuan, August 31
Didn't get many hands in today, I went with HerO to his GOMTV games instead, to support (he destroyed his up/down group 4-0 to get back to Code S), so I guess this concludes my first month of full time playing, even though I played some in June and July as well. Started at PLO25 and 50, played PLO100 for the last 1/3 of the month.
EDIT: Since I realize some people might not know this - I'm Liquid`Jinro / FrozenArbiter on TL, I've been playing SC2 professionally for the past two years and I retired recently and am playing poker again. August was the first full time poker month since...... probably late 2008 or early 2009 for me, and I didn't really touch the game at all during my time as an SC2 pro.
My volume increased a lot towards the later half of the month since I got my 30" monitor shipped to Korea and started playing some zoom as well (didn't really enjoy playing more than 4-6 tables on the smaller 23" I'd been using for SC2).
Approx. half the hands are from PLO100 (mostly zoom, decent bit of regular), the other half split between PLO25 deep, PLO50 deep and PLO50 HU (and various random hands like accidently joining Hi/Lo no limit tables and realizing on the river when you are about to hero call with your whatever hand that he just overbet the pot times two). Summary is up a bunch from PL025, down a bunch from PLO50 deep, up a bunch from PLO50 HU, up a bunch from PLO100
Got about 60k VPPs to go before I reach supernova - considering going for it in September, tho I'll be going to Japan for 3-4 days at some point. Will see! I think there shouldnt be too much difficulty in doing it even so.
So I finally played 10 000 hands at Zoom NL10. Roll still going up. I can't wait for NL25. As soon as I get 20bi I'm switching. I hear that NL25 is same as NL10 anyway. The regs at this game seem to reraise like insane. Especially BTN vs BB vs SB, kinda annoying but whatever. I'm pretty sure I'm just being paranoid and they're actually not rr as wide as I think. I broke even for 3000 hands which was very annoying. I forgot how titling the game could be some times.Let's see what the future brings.
hey everyone!
so after reading a bunch of blogs the last 3 years, decided to make one of my own.
I'm a mid-stakes PLO player from Israel playing exclusively on stars those days.
current stars VIP status : 300k vpp for the year , by playing part time.
mission is to get supernova elite in the next 4 month.
guess i hope this blog will help to achieve this (super hard) mission (for me, lazy ass student)
hey guys, I'm going to LAPT Panama Sept. 26th, any1 here is going too? I'm gonna make it a trip with my gf and from there we will go to NYC for a month. Anybody wanna meet up in panama or nyc?
In this blogpost:
1) Who am I?
2) Why start a blog
3) My poker journey & August results
1) Who am I?
Hello, my name is Oleg. Facebook. I am 23. I live in Tallinn, Estonia. I am interested in almost everything. I take online courses from US/UK universities. I have BS degree in Power Engineering. I also dance folklore dance.
2) Why start a blog?
I’m looking for poker friends. It would be nice to travel to other countries and play poker.
I also want to improve my game and move to mid stakes.
3) My poker journey & August results:
I started playing poker in December of 2010. I had 10$ and I moved from limit to limit pretty quickly reaching nl100-nl200 in June 2011. Looking back it’s probably 80% luckboxing and 20% skill.
When FTP crashed and I had to rebuild my roll from 1k$. :/ Luck turned against me and I weren’t that good so it proved quite hard. On the sidenote, at this time I got a habit of checking poker news. I wonder why.
I started posting hands to LP at the end of 2011. They immidiately recognized my amazing talent and treated my plays with a lot of kind words. (Sarcasm)
I owe to LP realization that in reality I suck. But I still have energy to play and hopefully improve. (I have found latter quite hard.)
I play mix of NL 100/200.
Read marshall's blog (well more like tl;dr and scrolled down to be honest ), and then clicked the tyson link below. After the video there was some other links with random interviews and stuff.
This one was pretty bizarre.
Mike Tyson is like a legit enigma or something. Can Rainkhan or some sports genius explain to me what's with Mike Tyson. Sometimes he seems borderline eloquent and insightful...
and then he says stuff like I'll fuck you till you love me faggot.
I hereby vote Mike Tyson #1 interesting celebrity of the last century.
Random thoughts and ramblings // Jealousyby MARSHALL28, August 26
So I guess I'm keeping a blog both here and on cardrunners now. Some things I post here that I don't post there and vice versa, some things I post in both, I felt this one would be okay for both. You guys always respond with a lot more brutal honesty which I like and this is one of my more personal posts.
So a few nights ago I went out with a couple of friends for one of their birthday's to a bar a few miles down the road. We were drinking and just hanging out for a while until one of their other friends showed up. I had met this dude one time before and he acted pretty much like dick to me, but I'm the type of person to just let things slide and give the other person the benefit of the doubt, probably they were having a bad day, or maybe they misinterpreted something I did or said. It's not like I have a lot of stress in my life, but I know a lot of other people do, so I just try to let it slide.
One thing about me though and I've always said this/felt like this. It's not any of my business whether or not people like me, but it is my business if they disrespect me. So I ignored the comment from him the previous night, but this time I meet him, he sits across from me at the table and he doesn't say anything specific to me, but his mannerisms and body language all point towards being disrespectful to me. Not only that, but he starts trying to like test me, by trying to shake my hand multiple times, then holding on to it longer and stronger to see if I'm going to let him control me or whatever. It was my good friend's birthday so I definitely was trying to do everything I could to not make a scene and to avoid getting into it with this guy.
He gets closer, and starts talking right into my ear, he starts getting louder. What is he talking about? I really wasn't even listening, but it had something to do with the fact that I had just moved into the apartment he had wanted and that he was pissed at me because I had it and he didn't. Clearly this dude is about as petty as it gets. I walk away, I go to the bathroom, I walk around expecting the guy to leave, he doesn't and maybe 15 minutes go by, I hope things have calmed down by now so I go and sit at the table again. He's changed seats and is next to my buddy and the seat next to his girl is open so I take that one.
Immediately he gets out of his chair and starts putting his hands on me being real loud about how that seat is taken. I make a very clear gesture with my head turning to look where he's putting his hands making sure he realizes I know what's going on, I then look him directly in the eye, "Listen very carefully," I exhale, "You don't know me. If you did, I guarantee you wouldn't be talking to me like this." All of a sudden he backs away and begins apologizing multiple times. No longer will he make eye contact and starts talking about how he didn't mean what he was saying and that he was just jealous.
I am kinda surprised how many people allow jealousy to control them and drive them to act in certain ways. Personally, I can't even remember ever feeling jealous of anyone about anything for any reason. It feels to me more like a deficiency in a character trait. Like what does it really mean to be jealous? Basically, I assume, it's a feeling you get when there's something you want that someone else has. Upon deeper examination, the next question you should ask yourself is, why aren't you able to obtain that thing? And if the answer is anything other than 'it's not what I REALLY wanted' I guess that's what triggers these feelings in people.
This is a limitation of the mind though, like, what makes me able to obtain things that other people want? I believe I am worthy of them, I think outside the box about how to get it, I control my emotions and don't let them get in the way of obtaining it. From when I was very young my Mom always taught me "never let them see you sweat". I guess it's a lesson I took very strongly to heart because I mask my emotions extremely well--I know I've had some outbursts in online forums due to a bad mental response to certain drugs, but if you know me IRL it's very hard to get any kind of read on me or to ever know when I'm being serious or joking.
Are there things that I would like to have that I see other people have? Absolutely. Maybe this is just the way I experience jealousy and it's different for me than most people, but for me it's like, I ask myself the question, why don't I have that thing? Then I figure out what is it that's allowed that person to achieve that success, and if I feel like I want it, I set out to do whatever it is that other person does. If the things he had to do to attain that goal are outside of all the steps I feel I'd want to bother to take, then I just let it go and realize--it's not worth the trouble, and things are good enough for me that I don't really need to go through all that, and after coming to that conclusion, it just doesn't affect me. I notice even people who have it so much better than me often are jealous of me. It's kinda strange.
It's so hard for me to relate to people like that. Personally, I'm extremely introspective and contemplative of the world around me. If that's combined with a fairly insightful brain, I feel like almost always you are going to come across a person who has quite a depressive nature. I find all the time people I come across feel jealous of me, the thing is though ... I'm probably one of the more miserable people I know.
Personally, if I had to feel jealous of all the people around me who had a bigger place, a nicer car, a bigger bank account, a better looking girlfriend; I'd go insane and be frustrated all day long. It just makes me wonder, if I feel so miserable, how bad must some of these other people have it? Whenever I think about this stuff, it makes me think about celebrities. I feel like celebrities must have it really rough. Enough money to buy anything they want, idolized by many generally for no good particular reason, recognized everywhere they go. On the surface it seems like it would be awesome, but really, I think they are likely to be even more miserable than most of us 'normal' people. Why else do so many of them turn to drugs? I guess those are the types of people I feel I can relate to the most, celebrities.
Maybe that's part of why I am the way I am, because really, it's not like I don't know that there are things I do that incite these feelings of jealousy in the people around me. A lot of it is on purpose. Maybe I do it because I have deeper issues and in order to satisfy those needs I manipulate others to feel that way about me so that I can feel better about myself. I don't know, I'm just sort of thinking out loud as I type now, I guess you are getting a little peak into my mind and the way it works. Even if what I just said is true (which I have no idea if it is or if it isn't), I feel that anyone who would allow me to manipulate them like that is obviously a much weaker person by nature. The more weak minded a person is, the worse off they must be in life. Constantly controlled by the will of others, unable to let themselves be heard. Forced to be the way their "friends" or society tells them to. I can't imagine anything worse than that--there are some things I can understand why people would want to be that way, but this is not one of them; I don't think anyone who is like that is happy. It's weird I guess because in general I'm very introverted and keep to myself a lot, but at the same time, I have a lot of alpha/dominant traits. I'm definitely very glad for these things because even though they clearly are the cause of a lot of my internal struggles, without that ability to lead I'd feel completely lost. I guess this means that the more control I'm able to exert over my surroundings the more respect I receive from others, and the better I generally feel. This is something I must keep reminding myself.
I guess one of the lessons I should try to be taking from this is that achieving "things" is less about actually obtaining the success and more about the journey you take to get there and what type of person you become over the course of those journeys. Character isn't really built from succeeding, it's built from failing--this is definitely one of the reasons you see so many "hot shot" young poker players--and also why you see a lot of these known HS pros turn to cheating. They think they are "better" than everybody else, they think they are above common rules of society, just because they are good at some game that involves money. I was guilty of feeling like that maybe 3-4 years ago. I mean, I never turned to the point of cheating. When I struggled, I got help from a few friends, people who I will always remain loyal to and will pay back 10x over if I can. There aren't too many people in the world who are just genuine about helping another when in a bind, so I always remember those who have helped me and they are the types of friends I want to keep for life. I'm having a lot more success now, so in retrospect I'd say that was a good thing that I did have to do quite a bit of struggling before reaching the point I'm at. It's definitely made me a better person. Hasn't done anything really to make me a happy one though.
"When we die the money we can't keep/
But we probably spend it all because the pain ain't cheap"
I recently got back to poker playing a really really small volume just to keep my mind sharp and in the game. Trying to get 50 hands/day cause I work 6days a week now.
Trying to play as solid as possible, less/to no FPS and it feels like I finally got used to 6max. I was a fullring player for a long time, and I feel like I was playing a 6-max style on full-ring tables which lead me to play too loose which lead to a lot of spew.
I've been running good and it's been working so far.
If I feel like I'm getting bored and going on facebook, raising too wide, and FPS-ing it up, I just quit since I set a super duper small volume for myself.
Liquid Poker has been really helpful as well, people are commenting on my hand history for .02/.04 which is basically charity work for a lot of members and I really appreciate that.
So it's been four months since I purchased the Honda Fit. I've been keeping a pretty close eye on the various costs associated with car ownership lately, and I have been experimenting with hypermiling a little bit.
For those of you that are unfamiliar, hypermiling is the practice of driving your car above and beyond the EPA estimates using certain techniques, and sometimes going as far as modifying your vehicle to achieve ultimate gas savings. Now, I'm not going as far as buying any type of gadget to put on the car to help me effectively monitor my instantaneous MPG (yet); nor am I turning off the engine on long slopes to achieve infinite MPG for that stretch of road. But I am, and have been, changing the way that I approach driving as a whole. These small changes that anyone can do have bumped up my average MPG since ownership to 36mpg versus an EPA estimate 29mpg.
I've traveled 4,392 miles on 121.99 gallons of gas for an average price per gallon of 3.447 for a total spent on gas of $420.50. So if I traveled 7 Miles less per gallon I would have needed 29.46 more gallons of gas to achieve that same distance traveled. That's an additional $101.55 or 24% more. And that's only over the course of 4 months. The projected savings of continuing to drive this way for the next 8 months would be a savings of $304.65 per year doing something that is pretty easy and makes driving more fun imo. Also, I expect over a full 12 months my savings would be higher given that I've still been blasting the A/C during the summer heat. But I'll ignore that fact until I have the results next year.
Now 300 bucks a year doesn't seem like much, but think of it as saving 25% every year on something the average American household spends $1500-$2000 on every year. So if you want to save some money on something you probably do a lot of I'll throw in some basic tips.
Avoid Idling and fast acceleration
Idling at a stoplight is one of the worst things for strong MPG numbers. You are sitting there, burning up fuel and not moving; seems pretty obvious and yet I know for a fact there are people who gun it from the light just to sit and wait idling at the next one 200 yards away. Idling burns between $0.50 and $2 per hour. By comparison, acceleration burns $15 per hour. So avoid that as often as you can. Also, the breakeven point on turning off your engine is 9-10seconds. So if there's ever a time where you know you are going to be stopped for more than 10 seconds it's technically +ev to turn your engine off.
For acceleration, it's the most efficient to be in the highest gear and at the lowest RPMs. So if you have no one behind you, you can save a lot of money by accelerating from a stop in the highest gear you can start in, and then get to 5th/6th as soon as possible.
Look Ahead, get nitty with neutral
This is important for safety in driving anyways, but if you see a light or traffic up ahead, or your exit is coming up soon go ahead and pop it into neutral. While you're coasting in neutral you are getting up to 200 MPG depending on your speed. Take advantage of this fact. Try and remember this rhyme that I read somewhere about hypermiling: "If you have to brake, you've made a mistake." Think of pressing the brake pedal as cash flying out of your exhaust pipe and then you'll have the right mindset. Also, going beyond neutral, if you are going down a hill but know you will have to stop soon, you should leave your car in gear, as your engine will cut the fuel supply and you will not be using any gas. That will actually save you more than neutral, but you will not coast as far, so you have to use your discretion on when to coast in neutral, and when to keep it in gear.
Maintain Momentum
A lot of these ideas tie into each other, and this one's no different. If you coast as much as possible, you will maintain your momentum, thus reducing the amount you need to accelerate. It's a very similar concept to racing. In fact, if you think about hypermiling as efficiency-racing within the speed limits, it makes it more fun to do. You are driving as efficiently as you can and chuckling as people are unknowingly dumping money all over the road.
Well this post turned out longer than I was planning, but I guess it's fine. Consensus, ME LIKEY THE FIT, and compared to my last car which was chilling at ~20mpg I am crushing.
-wh00 out
ps: we still havent gotten rid of our SUV. The current plan is to save up to buy a 10k or equivalent car (maybe used prius) off of craigslist when the money won't affect the roll too heavily. Currently downswinging a little so who knows when that will be. Hopefully by Christmas.
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), and then clicked the tyson link below. After the video there was some other links with random interviews and stuff.
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