Zamadhi108

As they say: “We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

George Leonard wrote a book on the topic of consistency: Mastery

In one of the chapters he talks about three types of non-masters: the dabbler, the obsessive, the hacker.

The Dabbler

The Dabbler approaches each new sport, career opportunity, or relationship with enormous enthusiasm. He or she loves the rituals involved in getting started, the spiffy equipment, the lingo, the shine of newness.

When he makes his first spurt of progress in a new sport, for example, the Dabbler is overjoyed. He demonstrates his form to family, friends, and people he meets on the street. He can't wait for the next lesson. The falloff from his first peak comes as a shock. The plateau that follows is unacceptable if not incomprehensible. His enthusiasm quickly wanes. He starts missing lessons. His mind fills up with rationalizations. This really isn't the right sport for him. It's too competitive, noncompetitive, aggressive, non-aggressive, boring, dangerous, whatever. He tells everyone that it just doesn't fulfill his unique needs. Starting another sport gives the Dabbler a chance to replay the scenario of starting up. Maybe he'll make it to the second plateau this time, maybe not. Then it's on to something else.

The same thing applies to a career. The Dabbler loves new jobs, new offices, new colleagues. He sees opportunities at every turn. He salivates over projected earnings. He delights in signs of progress, each of which he reports to his family and friends. Uh oh, there's that plateau again. Maybe this job isn't right for him after all. It's time to start looking around. The Dabbler has a long resume.

In love relationships (perhaps an unexpected place to look for the signs of mastery, but a good one), the Dabbler specializes in honeymoons. He revels in seduction and surrender, the telling of life stories, the display of love's tricks and trappings: the ego on parade. When the initial ardor starts to cool, he starts looking around. To stay on the path of mastery would mean changing himself. How much easier it is to jump into another bed and start the process all over again. The Dabbler might think of himself as an adventurer, a connoisseur of novelty, but he's probably closer to being what Carl Jung calls the puer aeternus, the eternal kid. Though partners change, he or she stays just the same

The Obsessive

The Obsessive is a bottom-line type of person, not one to settle for second best. He or she knows results are what count, and it doesn't matter how you get them, just so you get them fast. In fact, he wants to get the stroke just right during the very first lesson. He stays after class talking to the instructor. He asks what books and tapes he can buy to help him make progress faster. (He leans toward the listener when he talks. His energy is up front when he walks.)

The Obsessive starts out by making robust progress. His first spurt is just what he expected. But when he inevitably regresses and finds himself on a plateau, he simply won't accept it. He redoubles his effort. He pushes himself mercilessly. He refuses to accept his boss's and colleagues' counsel of moderation. He works all night at the office, he's tempted to take shortcuts for the sake of quick results.

American corporate managers by and large have joined the cult of the bottom line; their profile is often that of the Obsessive. They strive mightily to keep the profit curve angled upward, even if that means sacrificing research and development, long-term planning, patient product development, and plant investment.

In relationships, the Obsessive lives for the upward surge, the swelling background music, the trip to the stars. He's not like the Dabbler. When ardor cools, he doesn't look elsewhere. He tries to keep the starship going by every means at his command: extravagant gifts, erotic escalation, melodramatic rendezvous. He doesn't understand the necessity for periods of development on the plateau. The relationship becomes a rollercoaster ride, with stormy separations and passionate reconciliations. The inevitable breakup involves a great deal of pain for both partners, with very little in the way of learning or self-development to show for it.

Somehow, in whatever he is doing, the Obsessive manages for a while to keep making brief spurts of upward progress, followed by sharp declines—a jagged ride toward a sure fall. When the fall occurs, the Obsessive is likely to get hurt. And so are friends, colleagues, stockholders, and lovers.

The Hacker

The Hacker has a different attitude. After sort of getting the hang of a thing, he or she is willing to stay on the plateau indefinitely. He doesn't mind skipping stages essential to the development of mastery if he can just go out and hack around with fellow hackers. He's the physician or teacher who doesn't bother going to professional meetings, the tennis player who develops a solid forehand and figures he can make do with a ragged backhand. At work, he does only enough to get by, leaves on time or early, takes every break, talks instead of doing his job, and wonders why he doesn't get promoted.

The Hacker looks at marriage or living together not as an opportunity for learning and development, but as a comfortable refuge from the uncertainties of the outside world. He or she is willing to settle for static monogamy, an arrangement in which both partners
have clearly defined and unchanging roles, and in which marriage is primarily an economic and domestic institution. This traditional arrangement sometimes works well enough, but in today's world two partners are rarely willing to live indefinitely on an unchanging plateau.
When your tennis partner starts improving his or her game and you don't, the game eventually breaks up. The same thing applies to relationships.

The categories are obviously not quite this neat. You can be a Dabbler in love and a master in art. You can be on the path of mastery on your job and a Hacker on the golf course—or vice versa. Even in the same field, you can be sometimes on the path of mastery, sometimes an Obsessive, and so on. But the basic patterns tend to prevail, both reflecting and shaping your performance, your character, your destiny.

Good post as always. Perfectionism has costed me so much volume over the years...
Of course, on the other side there are the people who play 100k hands per month with minimal winrate and never improve. As always, BALANCE is the key word.

Saw this clip and found it inspiring: The Fastest Man On Two Hands

"No Excuses" taken to the next level!

You have achieved escape velocity!

GL!

Easiest subscribe of 2024! :)

GLHF!

I agree with everything you said.

For the vast majority of players (including myself) a simplified approach is certainly better. Personally, I aim to use 1 size per flop/turn node and 1 or 2 sizes per river.

Interestingly, even solvers can benefit from simplified strategies when they are time-restricted.
GTOW benchmarked their new AI Solver and when restricted to 7 seconds per decision, the simplified strategy (one approximately optimal size per node) outperformed the complex 6-size strategy.

When I said that a complex strategy could be used like a "sword" I guess I was talking about like the top 99.9% players, who ALREADY have the basics down better than pretty much everyone else.

When some of the endbosses (like Stefan or BERRI SWEET in poker or Magnus Carlsen in chess) utilizes "complex/weird" strategies, I don't think they themselves experience it as "complex" -- I think they often play more by feel than thought, adapting moment to moment.

I tend to think of the endbosses in every human field like jazz musicians -- they are more well-versed in theory than most musicians, yet they are also the musicians who most often brake the "rules", because the intellectual theory is now too narrow to contain their intuitive understanding and spontaneous creativity.

Like Morpheus said to Neo: "I've seen an agent punch through a concrete wall; men have emptied entire clips at them and hit nothing but air; yet, their strength, and their speed, are still based in a world that is built on rules. Because of that, they will never be as strong, or as fast, as you can be."

Personally, I also seek simplicity, but I can also see the benefit of complexity.

Yes, a more complex strategy will cause us to make more mistakes... but that is not a problem if it also causes our opponents to make even bigger mistakes.
Think of Stefan, he uses a very complex strategy and makes lots of "mistakes" (compared to equilibrium), yet he crushes most opponents, because his strategy takes his opponents into unfamiliar territory and induces even bigger mistakes.
Magnus Carlsen sometimes does something similar in chess.

In my mind, a simplified strategy is like a shield -- it minimizes our own mistakes/exploitability.
A complex strategy is like a sword -- it makes ourselves more vulnerable, but also increases our own potential for attack.

One more thought: it may not work on higher stakes to just "play ones hand" or "play by feel", but it works very well on lower stakes. This means cold calling, using different sizes, etc.
If we put this strategy on a solver grid, it would look very complex, but in practice it is actually the easiest strategy (and on lower stakes, maybe the most profitable).

Very nice! Great content!

One thing: on the site, the videos "solver magic" and "mapping rivers" says "access denied".

Could you add a link to the videos, like you did in the "valuebetting" article?

According to one site...

Stats for the top 10 volume players at GG NL1k over the past 365 days:

• Only 2 out of 10 are winning pre-rb.
• Average hands: 518 054
• Average results: -$42 758
• Average bb/100: -0.8

For comparison:

Stats for the top 10 volume players at PS NL500-NL2k over the past 365 days:

• 10 out of 10 are winning pre-rb.
• Average hands: 195 641
• Average results: +$49 739
• Average bb/100: +3.3

I completely agree with the investment guy.

Putting a big portion of ones net worth into crypto is crazy (imho).
I would never put more than 5-10% into something that speculative.

A US/Global stock index fund is swingy enough as it is.

Another problem with bitcoin (like with gold) is that it is not an income-generating asset, like stock and bonds, which is why stock and bonds (in isolation) have been way been better investments than gold historically.

Gold (and potentially crypto) is a fine investment if you balance it with stock and bonds in an "all weather portfolio", where you get the benefit that the different assets are uncorrelated with each other ("when one zigs, the other zags"), and you can rebalance them periodically to increase your risk-adjusted returns.

But the simplest investment that is historically known to be highly EV+ over 10-20 years is indeed a low-cost US/global stock index fund.

Even Warren Buffett agrees: "A low-cost index fund is the most sensible equity investment for the great majority of investors. My mentor, Ben Graham, took this position many years ago, and everything I have seen since convinces me of its truth."

As the "Atomic Habits"-guy put it:

If you improve 1% per day, you will be 38x better in a year (1.01^365 = 38).
If you decay 1% per day, you will be 97% worse in a year (0.99^365 = 0.03).

Running bad when moving up is a law of nature. It can't be avoided.

Not the greatest resolution! :)

edit: fixed

Overbet bigger (shove?) with 54.

RunItTw1ce
It seems 33% is the only size we use on the turn according the solver.
Villain should have x/r a lot of non-Kx hands on the flop, which are now forced to fold even versus a small bet.

Simple MDF would tell us that villain "should" only fold 25% vs 1/3, but villain actually ends up folding 46% versus 1/3.

Meaning 1/3 gives a very good price on our bluffs, while at the same time allowing us to go for some thin value with Ax vs his 4x and pockets, and he can't really punish us with raises because we actually have all the nuts and he doesn't.

+1

Really enjoyed the format of the HU video where we got to hear your real-time thoughts and then also see the GTOW solutions.

Why raise J5s in CO?

Example:
If I open to 3bb in CO, you 3bet to 9bb OTB and I 4bet to 22bb you need to defend with at least ~40% or I will auto-profit.

Say you now are playing a jam or fold strategy vs my 4bet, jamming TT+, AQs+ and AKo (3.8%). That means you can 3bet 3.8/0.4 = 9.5% without folding too much vs my 4bets.
If you only jam JJ+ and AK (3% range) vs my 4bet you can 3bet 3/0.4 = 7.5% without folding too much vs 4bets.

If you wanna 3bet 12% you must be willing to defend 12*0.4 = 4.8% range

According to the "preflop advisor app" pokersnowie even folds T9s and 98s on the button vs a CO 3bb open. But pokersnowie loves Axs and 3bets almost all of them.

Q9s is good enough to call pre.
Something like A9o or K7s would be better hands to 4-bet with.

What about checking turn?

This video doesn't load for me, and I have tried several times.
All other videos on the site I have tried works fine.. Strange.

Understandable. It's still very good value for the money.