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Hi Elliot/anyone who wants to reply :) I have 2 questions:

I am considering this course, because the approach to work on the subconscious speaks to me, and actually I feel that it could help me outside poker. Phil's testimonial regarding the "Too Smart to Try" really spoke to me, and I was in a similar similar situation in childhood, albeit with less success during my adult life, and now even though I quit playing poker for a living, I am preventing myself from trying to get a job that would significantly improve my quality of life. Could this course theoretically help in other areas too/could I apply some of its principles to other things?

What is the opinion of this course of people a) don't have an affiliate link at the end of their review and b) never had any coaching from you? I feel that a) is asking for biased reviews and with b), it's hard for your clients to judge the value of your course if they had 1:1 coaching with you, which has to be considerably more valuable than a course that you created partly to have passive income, and that is by design not an individual approach (even if its value is real).

Well then he may have QJss/QTss as well, but KJs/KTs too, depending on how degenerate/tilted he is. It's honestly a guessing game and it depends what you think he does with QQ-88, or hands like JdJs that block some of your natural bluffs, I don't have a strong opinion, but I agree with your thinking process

Yes, so basically because I am constantly changing my game and trying to play better my sample will never be big enough; this sample of 8k hands when cc is true was from a total sample of 115k hands~~ that's one of the reasons I would like to find other resources to think about it than my DB, because I'm limited by the sample size. We can even argue that calling in BB has nothing to do with calling any other position so my sample is even smaller

Regarding 1. playing one stake below (NL16 Zoom), but this field does not respect my 4bets from UTG, I've seen guys 5b AI QQ, call AJs, could be variance or my opponents having bad reads against me though. It's 5 handed so it's more HJ/MP than UTG, relatively speaking.

You have a point for 2., people could call because pot odds and they don't want their redline to go down 55 BBs in one hand or could be tilted etc. but I think it's a bad call vs field because I don't see many bluffs here (but it could be that people still make a bad call vs field although the field does not bluff enough)

You also get ATss/AJss/AQss/AJdd/ATdd to fold (most likely), let's assume he plays every AK/AA/KK/KQs like this (that's very pessimistic), you lose to 6/3/1/2 combos, so that's 11 combos that are never folding, your bluff needs to work 11.5/39*100 = 29% of the time, so I think it's reasonable.

If he's calling you with QsQd/Ax/99 that would be quite out of line and I would make a note of this.

I have been wanting to meditate for like 10 years I think, I just ordered "Dailyness" from Tommy Angelo and I would like to get into the habit of meditating daily.

Went back to playing Zoom games, it's very convenient and because you get a new table for every new hand I don't get as annoyed and it gets less personal.

Maybe the book of Peter here would help: https://www.runitonce.com/books/, the problem is that while I would agree with what he says (I read the free sample), I don't know how in reality I would manage to stay rational while playing poker.

Journaling isn't something I thought of doing (and I also have no idea how to approach it), and regarding coaching, well I think I'll get a coach when I try to move up to NL50 or NL100, right now it would be too expensive, I think NL16 is beatable, as well as NL25. Of course there's a chance that I am overconfident and don't realize that other regs are crushing me, if that's the case I will find it out quickly and get a coach sooner (and get coaching from my salary money and not the bankroll money)

I also should commit more to poker, i.e. spend more time on it in general, and be more selective with my non-work / non-poker activities. Paying back my loans or even part of it would be a huge win for me, and it's worth the sacrifice. (I would be sacrificing video games and dating mostly)

I wish you all the best Jeff, thank you for reading my posts and helping me.

23:35 - You have 44 BT vs EP open, SB has 50bb: why don't you call here? You will play much better than EP, and can get a lot from SB if you hit a set. Would it change something if there was a rec in the blinds with 100+ BBs?

Well yes, but I intend to be the guy that plays a lot (not really 50k hands but like 30k hands a month, which is a lot for a guy with a 9-5 life).

I don't find poker as amusing as when I started in 2008 for sure, but I would still rather do that than a minimum wage job (and I need the extra income). It's not like I am choosing between poker and travelling for instance

Thanks for the reply :)

Whats changed now? It is hard to change yourself or something, so if you quit before how you will deal with same problems now?

What changed is my life, I now have an OK-job, my net-worth is increasing every month (read: I can pay back my loans, net-worth is still negative). I also had hoped that not playing this game for a living combined with a 4 years break would make things easier. In a way, that is the case, for instance I am not thinking about suicide because of this game. When I used to play for a living I was having thoughts like "I really should have killed myself when I contemplating that idea during my depression because it was absolutely not worth getting over it just to have this shit life". Now, it's nowhere near as extreme, but I still have the issues described in the OP.

You start crushing and eventually you paid your loans (maybe took 1-2 years). Hows it feel?

Well that would be incredible, it would feel fantastic and it change my life for sure. I would certainly continue playing after that because making ~30k euros a year would help a lot in general, or for future projects.

Will say negative thing now - you can have breakeven year in poker, how would you feel about that? Will quit of keep playing?

If I break even in 2021, I would probably quit. This would mean that I didn't even manage to reach NL50, in that case I don't see the point. If I would crush NL25 it would be incredibly unlikely to have a losing/break even year.

That being said, I don't know what to think of these answers. Did you have something specific in mind? What do you think I should understand from this?

Reading your post, I don't think I was clear at all, because I didn't mean to say that about recs. I honestly don't mind that much losing to recs, I don't think that this game is purely random. The 41/10 guys are consistently getting destroyed in my games, by me or other regs, sure occasionally one of them runs good but in general they're being eaten alive and losing their money quickly. It's also the type of profile that is not aggressive enough, meaning that their raising ranges (preflop or postflop) is in general value-oriented so you need to give them credit if they raise you turn for instance, despite the fact that they got turn with a very wide range. Maybe you are calling too much when they have a set?

I also think that there are regs that are consistently winning at mid-stakes, and that they got there thanks to skill, not luck.

The part I am unfortunately not 100% disagreeing is about rigged sites, and I am embarrassed to even admit it. PokerStars introduced their cashout feature for instance, which means that when my opponent cashes out, I play against the house. They reduced their rakeback to nothing for winning regs, introduced things that suck for regs, and I trust them less and less. They increased the rake of tournaments by a lot as well. I would not be surprised if they tweaked the RNG ever so slightly in favor of losing players, to keep them playing for longer, so that games run longer and there's more rake etc. Again, I am ashamed to have this thinking process, I didn't use to be like this.

It's unlike any other competitive venue that has ever existed.

I 100% agree with this though :)

I feel I need to find more on nuances of flop textures and their subsequent bet sizes

I do not possess such knowledge, I am full of leaks (in every street I fold too much vs cbet, fold too much vs probe/stabs, and I mean sometimes over 50%, also in 3bet pot), I have issues barreling turns (I cbet turns 41%), I play 33/23 in 6 max tables, I lose way over 10bb/100 at non-showdown, I defend my BB so wide that with some group of hands I have an over -100bb/100 lossrate.

Really, the only "GTO" knowledge I have comes from the FTGU course sold here, and it's very, very limited.

If you were a winning poker player a few years ago, you should still do fine at stakes like NL2, I recommend playing on top of studying. If you only study a) you run the risk of never playing because you can always study more and b) you won't put into practice what you have learned and as a consequence will forget a lot.

I read in a book recently an interesting analogy: someone could teach you how to bike, explain to you the physics involved in it very thoroughly, but it won't make you a good biker and chances are you'd fall the first time.

I also quit CGs in 2015 and started again this year, quickly bought the FTGU (which comes with an Essential membership) here and I play/beat NL10 very comfortably, I over 10bb/100 in over 50k hands NL5. You don't have to use solvers to beat the microstakes, and why should you aim to beat anything else after a long break? You can't really feel entitled to win, after all your competition has been learning for years to get better while you did nothing.

Obviously, the games are tougher, but if you're smart (and you say you are), study relevant materials (you are on the right website), you will improve very quickly

One small thing though. My population analysis has shown me that the earlier position people open the less likely they are to be folding to a 3bet.

I am exactly in this group, partly because I think I simply have more playable hands and also because the later I open, the more I open to steal exploitatively, if there are only tight players left to act I would be opening a lot but fold a lot to 3bets.

I tried 3bet or fold for the same reason but didn't find it to work out for me. By playing 3bet or fold I was denying my opponents a lot of mistake opportunities. A common one is where they cbet too often OOP. When we 3bet or fold we deny that opportunity

I would tend towards cold calling IP if there's a weak player left to act for instance, but if I am readless or there are high squeezers left to act then I think this strategy has a lot more merit.

Thanks for the answers!

Hi lIlCitanul,

thanks for the thorough reply.

I am sorry for no being clear in my initial post - I was trying to focus on 3bet or fold situations (hence why I brought up the SB episode where Peter advocates to 3bet or fold, and the situation where he described a "no calling range" spot for BT vs CO). I understood the differences and the why's of Merged and Polarized (with: Value 3bets | Calls | Bluff 3bets), I was trying to understand the logic behind constructing a "read-less" 3bet or fold range, vs unknown villains. I also think that at microstakes it makes sense to default towards 3bet or fold preflop because of the very high rake. That being said, your post was a very interesting read for me nonetheless.

I assume that it will depend on:
-How many players are left to act (vs EP we 3bet a different range from MP or BT)
-Who opens (from SB we 3bet a different range vs EP than vs BT)
-Our position (vs CO, we may 3bet less from SB than from BT, because we would be OOP - not sure about this, but it seems likely)

So basically, I would like to understand how the 3 points above affect a linear 3bet strategy, and be able to answer myself questions like "What should SB 3bet vs the 4 other positions?", "What should CO 3bet vs MP?", "What should BT 3bet vs EP?" etc. (and by 3bet I mean linear 3bet, no calling range).