New Challenge: Movin' On Up

[trystero 0]

this guy's weird. he has very nitty stats, 16/15, over 150 hands, but he punted me a ~180bb stack earlier in the session. I didn't know what to make of his range at all, looks like either nothing (gutshot draw really) or a set? it's just such a weird way for him to play AK. I didn't feel comfortable raising turn/river when we were so deep. I should probably raise turn, but I think that when he does continue there it's with a gross raise (I see him folding the majority of the time of course)Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (8 handed) - Full Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.comUTG ($28.88)UTG+1 ($68.02)MP1 ($53.67)MP2 ($25)Hero (CO) ($90.59)Button ($28.84)SB ($53.18)BB ($35.47)Preflop: Hero is CO with Q , A 1 fold, UTG+1 bets $0.85, 2 folds, Hero calls $0.85, 3 foldsFlop: ($2.05) Q , 2 , A (2 players)UTG+1 bets $1, Hero raises to $3, UTG+1 calls $2Turn: ($8.05) 6 (2 players)UTG+1 bets $3.75, Hero calls $3.75River: ($15.55) 5 (2 players)UTG+1 bets $11.75, Hero calls $11.75

[trystero 0]

this made me laugh only because it happened within 3 hands. just like old days, playing with these guys. my minraise pf is weird, I know, but I was trying to get the BB involved w/out giving him just the $3 to callFull Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (7 handed) - Full Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.comBB ($27.88)UTG ($23.48)MP1 ($15.46)MP2 ($18.51)CO ($8.75)Hero (Button) ($25)SB ($27.80)Preflop: Hero is Button with A , A 1 fold, MP1 calls $0.25, 1 fold, CO calls $0.25, Hero bets $1.25, 1 fold, BB calls $1, MP1 raises to $4.25, 1 fold, Hero raises to $7.25, 1 fold, MP1 raises to $15.46 (All-In), Hero calls $8.21Flop: ($32.52) K , 10 , J (2 players, 1 all-in)Turn: ($32.52) J (2 players, 1 all-in)River: ($32.52) 9 (2 players, 1 all-in)Total pot: $32.52 | Rake: $1.62Results:Hero had A , A (two pair, Aces and Jacks).MP1 had A , K (two pair, Kings and Jacks).Outcome: Hero won $30.90Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (8 handed) - Full Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.comSB ($26.63)BB ($23.48)UTG+1 ($18.51)MP1 ($8.75)Hero (MP2) ($40.44)CO ($10)Button ($27.70)Preflop: Hero is MP2 with 5 , 5 2 folds, Hero bets $1, 2 folds, SB calls $0.90, 1 foldFlop: ($2.50) K , 8 , 5 (2 players)SB bets $2.50, Hero calls $2.50Turn: ($7.50) 6 (2 players)SB bets $7.50, Hero raises to $30, SB calls $15.63 (All-In)River: ($53.76) 6 (2 players, 1 all-in)Total pot: $53.76 | Rake: $2.68Results:SB had J , K (two pair, Kings and sixes).Hero had 5 , 5 (full house, fives over sixes).Outcome: Hero won $51.08

[KingJames 11]

epic call down!Converting hands till the cows come homeFull Tilt Pot Limit Omaha $0.02/$0.05 - 2 playersBB call me Kate22: $5.84 Button Hero: $8.07 Preflop: ($0.07) Hero is Button with (2 players)Hero raises to $0.15, call me Kate22 raises to $0.45, Hero raises to $1.30, call me Kate22 calls $0.85Flop: ($2.62) (2 players)call me Kate22 checks, Hero bets $1.25, call me Kate22 calls $1.25Turn: ($5.12) (2 players)call me Kate22 checks, Hero bets $1.40, call me Kate22 calls $1.40River: ($7.92) (2 players)call me Kate22 checks, Hero bets $4.12, and is all in, call me Kate22 calls $1.89, and is all incall me Kate22 mucked Hero showed , and won ($11.18) with a full house, Aces full of KingsHero won $11.18(Rake: $0.50)

[KingJames 11]

So shocked it wasn't KKXX btw

[CobaltBlue 662]

Did you use the new custom buttons on ftp for getting the 2.5x open?

Yup. They're handy. I have 2.5x, Pot, and Max.

5 at Rush, nicely done

Last year in non-Rush NL, my winrate was 13bb/100 over 110k hands.

Yeah, but 340k hands at Rush. That's like, what, a few hours worth of playing??

I only average ~1k hands per hour at Rush.

[trystero 0]

So shocked it wasn't KKXX btw

he had a flush dude

[trystero 0]

Last year in non-Rush NL, my winrate was 13bb/100 over 110k hands.

teach me /this wizardry

[KingJames 11]

trystero: you are wasting your poker skill playing 80bb 6maxjames: okay, I'll try nitring deep just for youtrystero: games don't really run so you need to start tables**I got crushed HU by a reg-fish and loses 3bi in 100 hands and the dude quits as soon as I win two very small pots**

[trystero 0]

James you spew monkey

[KingJames 11]

James you spew monkey

banned

[fighter 4]

I read a book called "moonwalking with einstein" by joshua foer. While the book tended to drag on in chapters 3-7 , It did have a very good section on practice.

When I first set out to train my memory, the prospect of learning theseelaborate techniques seemed preposterously daunting. But AndersEricsson and I struck a deal. I would give him the meticulous records of allmy training, which would be useful data for his research on expertise. Inreturn Tres and Katy, his graduate students, would analyze that data insearch of ways I could perform better. After the memory championship, Ihad promised to return to Tallahassee for a couple days of follow-uptesting so they could get a journal article out of the whole enterprise.Ericsson has studied the process of skill acquisition from dozens ofdifferent angles in almost as many different fields, and if there were anygeneral secrets to becoming an expert, he was the person most likely toreveal them. What I already knew from talking with him extensively, andfrom reading almost every book and paper he’d written, was that in domainafter domain, he’d found a common set of techniques that the mostaccomplished individuals tend to employ in the process of becoming anexpert—general principles of expertise acquisition. Those principles wouldbe my secret weapon.Over the next several months, while I toiled away with PAO in myparents’ basement, Ericsson kept close tabs on my development. I kepthim apprised of my evolving thoughts about the impending competition,which I noticed had gradually begun to shift from innocent curiosity tozealous competitiveness. When I’d get stuck, I’d call Ericsson up foradvice, and he’d inevitably send me scurrying for some journal article thathe promised would help me understand my shortcomings. At one point, afew months into my training, my memory stopped improving. No matterhow much I practiced, I couldn’t memorize a deck of playing cards anyfaster. I was stuck in a rut, and I couldn’t figure out why. “My card timeshave hit a plateau,” I lamented to him.“I would recommend you check out the literature on speed typing,” hereplied.When people first learn to use a keyboard, they improve very quicklyfrom sloppy single-finger pecking to careful two-handed typing, untileventually the fingers move so effortlessly across the keys that the wholeprocess becomes unconscious and the fingers seem to take on a mind oftheir own. At this point, most people’s typing skills stop progressing. Theyreach a plateau. If you think about it, it’s a strange phenomenon. After all,we’ve always been told that practice makes perfect, and many people sitbehind a keyboard for at least several hours a day in essence practicingtheir typing. Why don’t they just keep getting better and better?In the 1960s, the psychologists Paul Fitts and Michael Posner attemptedto answer this question by describing the three stages that anyone goesthrough when acquiring a new skill. During the first phase, known as the“cognitive stage,” you’re intellectualizing the task and discovering newstrategies to accomplish it more proficiently. During the second“associative stage,” you’re concentrating less, making fewer major errors,and generally becoming more efficient. Finally you reach what Fitts calledthe “autonomous stage,” when you figure that you’ve gotten as good as youneed to get at the task and you’re basically running on autopilot. Duringthat autonomous stage, you lose conscious control over what you’re doing.Most of the time that’s a good thing. Your mind has one less thing to worryabout. In fact, the autonomous stage seems to be one of those handyfeatures that evolution worked out for our benefit. The less you have tofocus on the repetitive tasks of everyday life, the more you can concentrateon the stuff that really matters, the stuff that you haven’t seen before. Andso, once we’re just good enough at typing, we move it to the back of ourmind’s filing cabinet and stop paying it any attention. You can actually seethis shift take place in fMRI scans of people learning new skills. As a taskbecomes automated, the parts of the brain involved in consciousreasoning become less active and other parts of the brain take over. Youcould call it the “OK plateau,” the point at which you decide you’re OK withhow good you are at something, turn on autopilot, and stop improving.We all reach OK plateaus in most things we do. We learn how to drivewhen we’re in our teens and then once we’re good enough to avoid ticketsand major accidents, we get only incrementally better. My father has beenplaying golf for forty years, and he’s still—though it will hurt him to read this—a duffer. In four decades his handicap hasn’t fallen even a point. Howcome? He reached an OK plateau.Psychologists used to think that OK plateaus marked the upper boundsof innate ability. In his 1869 book Hereditary Genius, Sir Francis Galtonargued that a person could only improve at physical and mental activitiesup until he reached a certain wall, which “he cannot by any education orexertion overpass.” According to this view, the best we can do is simplythe best we can do.But Ericsson and his fellow expert performance psychologists havefound over and over again that with the right kind of concerted effort, that’srarely the case. They believe that Galton’s wall often has much less to dowith our innate limits than simply with what we consider an acceptable levelof performance.What separates experts from the rest of us is that they tend to engage ina very directed, highly focused routine, which Ericsson has labeled“deliberate practice.” Having studied the best of the best in many differentfields, he has found that top achievers tend to follow the same generalpattern of development. They develop strategies for consciously keepingout of the autonomous stage while they practice by doing three things:focusing on their technique, staying goal-oriented, and getting constantand immediate feedback on their performance. In other words, they forcethemselves to stay in the “cognitive phase.”Amateur musicians, for example, are more likely to spend their practicetime playing music, whereas pros are more likely to work through tediousexercises or focus on specific, difficult parts of pieces. The best iceskaters spend more of their practice time trying jumps that they land lessoften, while lesser skaters work more on jumps they’ve already mastered.Deliberate practice, by its nature, must be hard.When you want to get good at something, how you spend your timepracticing is far more important than the amount of time you spend. In fact,in every domain of expertise that’s been rigorously examined, from chessto violin to basketball, studies have found that the number of years one hasbeen doing something correlates only weakly with level of performance. Mydad may consider putting into a tin cup in his basement a good form ofpractice, but unless he’s consciously challenging himself and monitoringhis performance—reviewing, responding, rethinking, rejiggering—it’snever going to make him appreciably better. Regular practice simply isn’tenough. To improve, we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from ourmistakes.The best way to get out of the autonomous stage and off the OK plateau,Ericsson has found, is to actually practice failing. One way to do that is toput yourself in the mind of someone far more competent at the task you’retrying to master, and try to figure out how that person works throughproblems. Benjamin Franklin was apparently an early practitioner of thistechnique. In his autobiography, he describes how he used to read essaysby the great thinkers and try to reconstruct the author’s argumentsaccording to Franklin’s own logic. He’d then open up the essay andcompare his reconstruction to the original words to see how his own chainof thinking stacked up against the master’s. The best chess players followa similar strategy. They will often spend several hours a day replaying thegames of grand masters one move at a time, trying to understand theexpert’s thinking at each step. Indeed, the single best predictor of anindividual’s chess skill is not the amount of chess he’s played againstopponents, but rather the amount of time he’s spent sitting alone workingthrough old games.The secret to improving at a skill is to retain some degree of consciouscontrol over it while practicing—to force oneself to stay out of autopilot.With typing, it’s relatively easy to get past the OK plateau. Psychologistshave discovered that the most efficient method is to force yourself to typefaster than feels comfortable, and to allow yourself to make mistakes. Inone noted experiment, typists were repeatedly flashed words 10 to 15percent faster than their fingers were able to translate them onto thekeyboard. At first they weren’t able to keep up, but over a period of daysthey figured out the obstacles that were slowing them down, and overcamethem, and then continued to type at the faster speed. By bringing typing outof the autonomous stage and back under their conscious control, they hadconquered the OK plateau.

This makes up less then 1/25 of the entire work. Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports.I definitely think this relates to poker. I feel everyone in this thread is at the stage where you could play a table without too much thinking. If you want to improve though, you have to consistently fight going into autopilot and really focus on the decisions. Do the hard work of building ranges for opponents and looking for tenancies through our trackers. It is very easy to just watch some videos, read some forum hands, play some hands and think you are improving. Unless you are truly struggling and pushing yourself in this activities, then you are not going to see the results you would expect for the hours you are putting in.

[CobaltBlue 662]

teach me /this wizardry

Well, it's not magic. It's just Bodog.Also, excellent, excellent excerpt, fighter.

[babylondonks 5]

I'd 3bet pre

FYP

Originally opener was kind of nitty, and we haz position so I chose to not cold-4CO is 39/17 and this is his first 3b over like 40 handsotf, should we just jam to fold our over cards, i mean, if we flat, we can't fold the turn (even an A or K) based on the pot being like $17 and having $7 left right? Just stick it in on flop??Cows play poker with cow chipsFull Tilt No-Limit Hold'em $0.10/$0.25 - 6 playersBB: $5.60 UTG: $45.21 UTG+1: $25.00 CO: $15.14 Button: $22.77 (Hero)SB: $25.31 Preflop: ($0.35) Hero is Button with (6 players)UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to $1, CO raises to $2.50, Hero calls $2.50, 3 foldsFlop: ($6.35) (2 players)CO bets $5, Hero???

I'm not convinced that flatting pre here is the best action pre-flop, but if it is then we can't fold on the flop. The really tricky thing here is betsizing, if we jam the flop do you think he calls with AK/AQ? How about his bluffs? Do you think he bluffs the turn if we call the flop?

[KingJames 11]

[KingJames 11]

FYPI'm not convinced that flatting pre here is the best action pre-flop, but if it is then we can't fold on the flop. The really tricky thing here is betsizing, if we jam the flop do you think he calls with AK/AQ? How about his bluffs? Do you think he bluffs the turn if we call the flop?

yeah, i'm not sure that pre-flop is the best either. Those were just my pre-flop thoughts... I'm a huge freaking fish tho...I did ban trystero for an hour tho... made me feel better about not being able to win at the super duper easy nitring deep tables... hud miketrystero, hud

[trystero 0]

aren't you supposed to be out, you wrathful moderator

[KingJames 11]

aren't you supposed to be out, you wrathful moderator

it's early, brahleaving soon tho. thanks for being interested!

[trystero 0]

he signs off aim/closes fcp so we all think he's out big pimping, when we know he's just SSing

[KingJames 11]

he signs off aim/closes fcp so we all think he's out big pimping, when we know he's just SSing

short-stackers gonna short-stackand I should prob ban you for your attitude this evening. Just bc you're girlfriend is out and about doesn't mean you have be so mean this evening. gtfo, trolltbh tho, I think the 80bb stack thing is working quite well for me. But I dunno if I can beat 25nl. I think my plateu is the 10nl... guess I'm not working hard enough and need to put in more effort

[babylondonks 5]

FYP

short-stackers gonna short-stackand I should prob ban you for your attitude this evening. Just bc you're girlfriend is out and about doesn't mean you have be so mean this evening. gtfo, trolltbh tho, I think the 80bb stack thing is working quite well for me. But I dunno if I can beat 25nl. I think my plateu is the 10nl... guess I'm not working hard enough and need to put in more effort

I know of a couple of pretty good 100/200nl regs who buy in for 80bb. I never really understood their reasoning but it seems to work/be most comfortable for them, which is fine. Anyway I think getting it in with JJ is pretty much required once you flat pre, it's just a matter of whether you jam flop or call/call.And on the off chance that you're serious about 10nl being your plateau, I can promise you that it isn't. You are far too good to even entertain such thoughts.

[trystero 0]

well, when you're just playing for 80 bbs, it's easy to view the game as fairly simplified. your skill edge can't materialize like it can at 200+ bbs.I don't know why you're so opposed to playing nitring. 6max sucks. high-level of aggression, especially at 100bbs, leads to more swings, leads to less confidence. if nothing else, 9-handed is a change of pace, and imo you'll be able to beat it for more than you would 6-max. you have the luxury of being able to play tighter if you so choose, and the player pool is worse. that may just be perception, or it may be the simple fact that you get three more seats, so you have a better chance of being up against fish.

[XXEddie 0]

A nice giggle during an otherwise bleh session.Certainly a nominee for best played QQFeral Cow Poker Hand ConverterHEM/Full Tilt NL Hold'em $0.05/$0.10 - 9 playersMP2 Hero: $10.22 HJ SupaTycoon: $10.00 CO Cris36: $11.74 Button TickmyTock: $9.30 SB sobassassin: $12.36 BB jimmycrkcorn: $4.11 UTG Subrr: $10.50 UTG+1 JandH: $4.44 MP texakan: $8.33 Preflop: ($0.15) Hero is MP2 with (9 players)2 folds, texakan calls $0.10, Hero raises to $0.30, 2 folds, TickmyTock calls $0.30, 2 folds, texakan calls $0.20Flop: ($1.05) :D (3 players)texakan checks, Hero bets $0.50, TickmyTock folds, texakan calls $0.50Turn: ($2.05) (2 players)texakan checks, Hero bets $0.80, texakan calls $0.80River: ($3.65) (2 players)texakan bets $1.00, Hero raises to $8.62, texakan calls $5.73Hero showed , texakan showed , Hero won $15.97

[XXEddie 0]

[x] beat postSeriously... getting AIDS and die in a fire. I could have lived with villain showing up with AK...but **** you on this one.Feral Cow Poker Hand ConverterHEM/Full Tilt NL Hold'em $0.05/$0.10 - 9 playersHJ Hobbitzis: $17.86 CO Hero: $19.65 Button Sapone_5: $2.58 SB A Witty Name: $14.13 BB bandrade: $11.30 UTG VASILIY22: $11.43 UTG+1 _JOKER_2203: $8.53 MP Beaver02: $11.37 MP2 Aquateca: $8.00 Preflop: ($0.15) Hero is CO with (9 players)4 folds, Hobbitzis calls $0.10, Hero calls $0.10, Sapone_5 calls $0.10, A Witty Name folds, bandrade checksFlop: ($0.45) (4 players)bandrade checks, Hobbitzis checks, Hero bets $0.30, Sapone_5 calls $0.30, bandrade folds, Hobbitzis raises to $1.65, Hero raises to $5.00, Sapone_5 calls $2.18, Hobbitzis raises to $17.76, Hero calls $12.76Turn: ($38.45) (3 players)River: ($38.45) (3 players)Hobbitzis won $29.08Hobbitzis won $7.37Forgot to show results. Hobbit McFag had AQoShort stack K7dd

[SuperJon 175]

Played live 200NL tonight.Had a fun hand where I took a c/c c/c c/r line on a Td6d6s5hAc board.

[KingJames 11]

played some 6max and won some monies but played really poorly... bluffed vs a huge nit, he snapped me off and I had 4highthen the very last hand I opened 55 and got 50bbs in on a 467 board vs a guy who had 87... it was 5 ways to the flop... I should just c/f prob...oh well... got my sunday iron man points done as I will be busy grinding hw tomorrow. Big paper and presentation Thursday and I want it done well in advance.