Soff

ryancarter Thank you! It sounds interesting! I have a thing for the scent of lemons as well. I have planted a few lemon trees here :) I didn't even know their scent can be stress relieving. Or I do feel that but did not expect it to be more generally "true". Looked it up just now. I'll try the pepparmint. I like how trying to find a hack in a poker routine, can impact the rest life as well. Have a nice day!

Maybe it seems completely uninteresting right now but I have a good feeling about this project. If anyone wants to do it with me, feel free to contact me at any time. The project outline is in the first post.

I plan to update 1-2 times a week in the future and see this as a longterm thing.

A very cool thing happened here. I did a hypnosis to recall dreams before I went to sleep last night and then recalled 2,5 dreams in the morning :) (I usually don’t recall my dreams nowadays. Hence the attempt to change that.)

I recently read that when we process smells in the nose it goes through the ”olfactory bulb” which has direct links to the memory and emotion functions; the amygdala and the hippocampus.

Should I work some kind of nice scent into my poker warmup - maybe the function of the yogi tea...

Today I had some processed food and sugar which is quite unusual for me. I get a stomach ache from that (maybe a blessing in this world) I felt frustrated and almost angry as it came on. What can we call that. Stomach tilt.

So I did some exercise, took that shower, prepared that tea, smelled it, did a confidence booster from Elliot that I bought years ago. Then I started my session and the feeling was quite nice. It wasn’t the poker it was actually having that whole loop to feel good and calm down the whole system. Anyone who has a stomach problem knows how that and stress really goes both ways. One gives the other.

I never did all of these things in such an orderly way after each other.

For studying I was reviewing preflop strategies vs different player types. And some standard preflop ranges. I'm on the preflop train right now.

Yesterday I did my first 100 hands and it felt good. I did the whole warmup routine before.

I have definitely used poker to disconnect from my emotions at painful times, almost like a meditation. I think I now have some messed up pathways in my brain with what is connected to what. So doing enjoyable things before the session and always doing those things. Why did I not do this before??? I want to RE-WIRE my brain.

I just trick my brain into feeling relaxed and good and then I toss a small poker session in there, ”btw just do this little thing also while you’re at it”.

So first session done. 100 hands. Feeling: Good/Excited/Content. No pain yet, but I'm ready for it.

Hey Elliot!

Thank you! I appreciate you!

I have done a lot of hypnosis and meditation for other areas of my life but never really did a routine for poker. Poker has been my wild wild west so to speak. So now I will give it a fair shot and I actually feel that intuition/excitement that I usually get when something goes right.

You will definitely see me in the A-game masterclass in the future :)

I play no limit holdem cash games :)

@JCJordypants: TY. I will check that out.

Keep editing my posts. They will soon shrink to nothing. If I see a white space I tend to fill that, even if it's a napkin in a coffee shop. So no wonder we can't keep all of that right.

Today i only played 200 hands roughly. Yesterday I surrendered to playing very very little and focusing on fulfilling my hand analysis commitments. I am posting over skype and I also found someone more advanced who were posting hands in a blog form somewhere else. So I read through those.

Since I stopped thinking about linearly taking in massive amounts of information, and having the constant feeling of being behind. I have started to become more creatively active with commenting and posting hands. Not here though since i don't have a routine for that. Can i post stuff here in this journal or should everything go into the hand analysis sections? That I wonder.

@ SemiFreddo: Ty :)

I don't know how it is going atm with this project. Last week was very crazy with everything non-poker related. So I will make a quick post as to not disappear here before I dive into my week.

Except for my very horrible zoom result, and I made it worse by getting some new start hand charts and wanted to learn them in a quick way. I thought that maybe it was just a fluke my bad result because it's so different from the results at the normal tables. I realise though, that it's more likely that my normal table results are the fluke since i actually have a smaller sample size there. I also think that the format of zoom does not fit my brain, because I thrive on doing calm things being quite intense myself. It's like having coffee when you already feel quite restless.

So here is how it has been going on NL2 and NL5 so far. This week me and my study friend will be starting to focus on just one thing at a time. I like this approach, especially since we both kind of have an overall clue but we need to fix all the details.

I am way too passive IP, my cbet IP stats are low, I always seem to find a reason to check behind so I hope I can fix that. Also bluffing the river is something I've been lazy with. Thinking I have SDV with Ahigh when it's very probable both that I'm beat and the hand that beats me can't call a bigger sized bet. So these two topics are my point of focus this week.

NL5,

NL2,

Ok, so I really don’t want to jinx myself by posting today’s session. But I have made a commitment to keep this journal so here it is. Obviously I ran quite good, but I am also getting better at maximizing value and pot controlling. But, yeah this was a very small session. Only played 2 tables also.

Today overall has been kind of intense in other respects. But at least I managed to go through some hands with my study friend and also got some input from my coach which was very helpful. The maths stuff I’m too tired for right now.

So I have officially censored this journal from misleading things so I don't send out the wrong frequency here.

@Quido
I can't give you my winrate because my sample size is very low, and i am kind of developing so i hope to move up before any longterm winrate is known. I have to go on the feeling for how i'm doing.

i think you should talk to somebody who is a solid zoom player for this question. But I can give you a hint that my winrate in zoom was negative over 17k hands unfortunately, which was enough of an indication for me to stop before I had some strategy input from somewhere. This was at NL5.

When it comes to poker clarity, this has nothing to do with anything, what kind of person you are or anything. It's like 2+2 is actually 4.

Here’s my graph for yesterday. When I lose with AA vs KK allin pre, I don’t feel bad at all because my biggest concern is my EV line right now.

I kept to my goal of less than 1000 hands. I try to think through my decisions.

Ty, i am all for blasting out tons of volume in general though. If it feels enjoyable :)

Yesterday went ok. I did stay faithful to not playing more than 1000 hands. Rather high quality play than max volume on this level. NL5 now but if it goes sour i will move down to NL2.

The reason for posting my session is to free myself from my past results. And starting fresh, and in my mind this is a great way of operating. It' s like carving them in stone and moving forward.

I think that we have a friendly Universe, overall. I mean i trust in it for myself as it is. And then there are things that don't make sense, but I don't see value in spending to much time dwelling on that.

I read a few weeks ago Einstein's further explanation of that statement. Which was the following.

"I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves."

"For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process.

"If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially ‘playing dice with the universe’, then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning."

"But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives."

I think that is quite relevant in today's world. And a little bit for poker as well ;)

So I am not starting with my habits yet. On monday :) Which is such a cliche. But I need some time to chill.

Today I have been thinking about my low 3-bet stat and how to find good reasons to 3-bet. Ingame I have been looking for reasons to not 3-bet atm. So I came up with the following:

• If we cold call on the BU instead of 3B we end up in a multiway pot quite often which is not so great.

• We can take the pot preflop which is good even if it's small.

• On NL2 maybe this is not so important, but we balance our 3-betting range so that people can't read us as good if they are observant.

• In SB, it's good to at least have the initiative since we are OOP.

• I am good enough to play postflop (I think) so the pot won't just live it's own life postflop like it used to when i knew nothing about anything. So I don't have to be afraid of what's happening next after I've shown this great sign of strength with my 3-bet.

Anybody can add to that? What is a good overall 3-bet percentage at the micros, is there one?

Yesterday i had J8s and a 4BI stack. A 6BI-stack 3-bet allin in a 4-way pot. I misclicked thinking for some reason that I was calling 8 cents, but it was 8 dollars. And I lost.

(The guy had 44, so I was surprised at my great equity preflop.)

And today I went to the museum of natural history in my hometown. I could not unzip my coat. And it was getting hotter and hotter in there. Felt like such a Seinfeld moment. It would not go off, so I tried to find some scissors (!). My confidence in that piece of clothing was gone anyway, and then i managed to get it off without unzipping somehow.

So, superstitious as I am I hesitated to play a session tonight...but for my state of karma it went ok. Even though it was very short.

Disclaimer: I understand that this is not my longterm winrate :)

Since I am on the subject. I can post my NL2 graph so far and also my NL5. I feel I have not played good since I started with cash games. I've been in a really weird kind of mood. Where I feel completely restless and irritated and almost tilting (which I never do usually). Today was the first day where I could relax.
NL2:

NL5:

ok, ty!

Had to edit my first comment, because I mixed you up with this guy chaps1988 for some reason. Haven't learn how to read who's writing what properly!

I think marking players in zoom is very key. Blind stealing is so extra important.

I'll do some kind of update at least once a week here.

I actually like zoom...i tend to get obsessed with solving things that beat me. But it requires a different strategy than regular tables it seems from my results in it. Do you play zoom?

The quiz is like a geeky puzzle where i have laminated some paper cards and have to connect odds/ outs and hand strength for example. And also how much equity do we need to call what bet. And similar for implied odds. Right now I have to think a little every time and i would like to be quicker.

Thank you for the welcome back :)