Entek
14 points
Hi, my name is Mike and I've been playing poker for 18 years already. I never felt fully satisfied with this career and to be honest I never gave it my all, I've been kind of winging it most of the time. My strategy is mostly based on MDA (shoutout to the Howard brothers) and simplified protocols.
Here are my results from NL200+ since 2022:
For as long as I remember I've been experiencing a lot of anxiety in my life and I've been trying to mitigate it in different ways. My mental game has always been my biggest leak, especially since I started playing as a young teenager without really having established any emotional intelligence. Around 3 years ago a friend of mine told me about Internal Family Systems and at the same time I read that it was being used as one of the main psychotherapy modalities in the MDMA studies led by MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). At that time in my life I was going through a very difficult relationship and a lot of my emotional wounds were being triggered and I finally admitted to myself that I won't be able to deal with all of this on my own, so I decided to give IFS a try and I started seeing a therapist.
Since then I read most of the books on this subject, and I bored my friends and family to death with how great of a tool it is to deal with one's emotions and to heal trauma. Right now I'm in the middle of IFS level 1 training to become a practitioner myself so that I can guide other people through their inner worlds. I'd like to focus my attention on poker players cause I'm personally experienced with pretty much all the struggles they regularly go through and I already started practicing my therapeutical (or rather guiding) skills on a few players found on some poker discord channels.
I'm not planning to give up poker any time soon and I still want to try to get to high stakes at my own pace, but now that I found something that gives me a lot of satisfaction besides just some zeros on my account, I'd like to spend more and more of my time and energy on helping others on their path to healing and connecting with their true self.
I'd like to use this blog both as a poker journal to motivate myself to keep working on my game and as a way to spread the good word of IFS and the importance of psychological self-care in a life of a poker player. If I had a chance to give one piece of advice to my 18 year-old self (who struggled with a lot of emotional swings when playing poker and dealt with a lot of social anxiety), it would be: "Go to therapy ASAP, don't waste your time deluding yourself you'll be able to deal with everything on your own." Let me know if there's anything you'd like to know about IFS or psychedelics or maybe even how I use MDA to work on my game (although I think Nick and Patrick already have quite a lot of great content about this). I'm always happy to help :)
Thanks for being here!
Mike
June 19, 2023 | 10:36 p.m.
Don't these GG graphs show results before the rake is substracted?
April 23, 2023 | 5:36 p.m.
Hey Freenachos , how did you extract this range composition data in a certain node from Pio? I'm aware you can use Range Explorer in a single spot, but I'm wondering how to get range composition data from all textures on average like you showed on that circular graph in the post above? Is there a new function in Pio? I'd be really grateful for your help!
Mike
Jan. 19, 2023 | 1:20 p.m.
Thanks for your reply Freenachos ! Dojo looks pretty nice and would definitely improve the learning process in Pio of how the ranges interact - does it also let you node lock or you'd need to open Pio for that? I'm not yet very familiar with the GTO Trainer in Pio, it feels a bit "raw" and that's why I've been considering trying out Lucid as it seems to have a better work flow and gives you feedback in a nicer way. Would you say this was your experience with it?
Mike
Dec. 13, 2022 | 11:49 a.m.
Hey Freenachos ! Great blog :) I've been considering getting a GTO trainer or something to drill my mistakes in. I already have Pio 2.0 but I've seen people recommend Lucid and GTO Wizard. What's your take on that? What would you recommend going with? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
Mike
Dec. 11, 2022 | 12:55 p.m.
I'm one of these people who have never had a job outside of poker. I've been playing since I was 14 years old and I sometimes think about getting a normal job just for the life lessons I could learn from it (still the +EV mentality lol).
I've also been struggling mentally and started seeking help only last year. I HIGHLY recommend IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapy for those who want to work directly with their emotions without having to spend hours talking about the past etc. All of us have the ability to talk to all the different parts of our minds and help them heal. I guess this is my +EV part talking that wants to always find the most profitable option there is :) I still think talk therapy can be of huge benefit to many people but I can't stop recommending IFS enough. It's changing my inner relationships and teaches me how to take care of myself. Hope this helps!
April 26, 2021 | 12:48 p.m.
4/20 update
Hello everyone. I'm back with a short update as promised. I've had really good results at NL200 in the last 3 weeks and I continue to win at over 10bb/100 which feels great. I've been working on my gameplan and still have plenty of stuff to go over but I already see that it's paying off at the tables.
Since the title of this blog includes the word "exponential" I'll be more than happy to share with you an exponentially growing graph with my results in 2020.
I still hope to match Patrick's results from last year but I don't need to rush and I know that I should focus on increasing my skill level instead cause I don't have much control over how much money I win.
I've already noticed two types of tilt that come up quite regularly in my sessions which are entitlement tilt ("I have a high WR therefore I should win") and revenge tilt ("This guy 3bet me/won vs me again therefore my self-esteem drops and I have to do something to have a superior ego again!") and I'll definitely need to keep an eye on them. Also, I sometimes feel a bit anxious before playing and I believe the reason for it is that I fear losing my self-worthiness which I somehow connected to my poker results which is obviously silly. I think I'll go back to Elliot's course to try to resolve all of this.
Today I finally invested some money in a hobby I'm going to dive into. Recently I've started to experiment with freestyling and I really enjoy doing this so I decided to get myself a microphone. I've always had this little dream of releasing my own album, just for the pure fun of creating something by myself :) I'm also planning to buy a handpan but I have trouble choosing the scale. Here's one of my favorite songs played on this instrument:
Malte Marten - When the Wind Talks
This is it for today, thanks for reading. I wish you a happy 4/20!
Stay safe
April 20, 2020 | 2:54 p.m.
Awesome, congrats! That's what I'm striving for as well. Thanks for inspiration :)
Btw. how is HM3? Would you recommend it? I use H2N for pool analysis and sometimes HM2 to check how I'm doing in some specific spots.
April 16, 2020 | 11:43 a.m.
I have a similar BR management plan. GL in your journey!
April 15, 2020 | 4:40 p.m.
That's exactly my experience right now. I decided to get myself a mic today as lately I started rapping to myself for fun so I might as well record and play with it. I think so much about frequencies and numbers that I sometimes even dream about it lol. I need to schedule in more breaks. Hope you find something that you can enjoy doing during the quarantine. GL :)
April 12, 2020 | 10:21 p.m.
Also, when it comes to yoga, check out my favorite YT yoga teacher: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCahoXO8yh6mqJD9EiARHI7w
She has a really nice vibe and there are a couple of "challenges" on her channel that can ease your way into a regular daily yoga practice. Enjoy!
April 11, 2020 | 9:47 p.m.
I love this :) it reminds me of the best English teacher I ever had who always taught us phrases from popualr movies etc. Tbh I haven't really read the thread but I love the "phone in the shoe" thing :D
April 11, 2020 | 9:39 p.m.
Intro
Hi. I'm 29yo and I've been playing online poker since I was 14. I never had a "real" job, poker always kept me above the ground financially. However, I never made it to high stakes, I played up to 5/10 but it was like 10 years ago. I have to admit that mindset has always been my Achilles' heel and I also never really put much volume in. I think it's mainly due to my early exposure to relatively big money when I was a teenager which definitely spoiled me and made me feel like I don't need to work that much to maintain that easy lifestyle.
Thanks to the god of time - Chronos - I slowly matured mentally and started to take poker more seriously. I have always been very analytical and would consider myself a perfectionist (which is probably another reason for my low volume and mindset issues) and a couple of years ago I came across Nick Howard's videos and got really interested in his methodology of pure exploitation and decided to buy his Night Vision course. I really want to thank him, his brother Patrick and the entire Pokerdetox community for inspiring me in my own research.
I had to drop down in stakes last year but finally something clicked for me and I started to print at NL50 and now I'm taking shots at NL200. Regs are a little bit more aware of what's going on at the table but the fish are no different at all. I have a plan to move up as quickly as I can and hopefully crush 10/20 soon just like Patrick (love his blog), taking shots with a relatively small bankroll that I think my recent results allow me to do.
To be honest, this lockdown came at just the right time for me. I'm in the middle of creating a new upgraded gameplan which is going to take me a lot of hours to finish and now I don't have any excuses not to do it because my social life is basically gone :) Here's my graph in BBs for the year so far:
My plan for the coming weeks is to first of all focus on mental and physical hygiene (which in my case is the practice of meditation, gratitude, yoga and some light calisthenics), continue my research and gameplan development and play high quality poker at least 5 days a week.
I live by myself so I need to have some fun in these tough times of isolation. And since I'm a huge fan of psychedelics, I'll allow myslef one mini trip on a third of an acid hit before 4/20 when I'm going to celebrate these three weeks of hard work with a fat joint or two. I'm not sure how regularly I'll post here but you can definitely expect an update right before I light up that funny cigarette :)
Stay safe guys, cheers!
Hi, I decided to write a little update on what's currently going on in my life.
Almost a month ago I completed the IFS level 1 training. This is the first major step in my journey to become a psychedelic therapist. My dream is to play an active part in the psychedelic renaissance that's already taking place in the world and to be able to safely guide people towards healing and finding meaning. Australia just became the first country to legalize the therapeutic use of MDMA and psylocybin which is a very important milestone for the worldwide efforts to make these medicines more widely available. I myself am going to go through my first MDMA-assisted psychotherapy session in Portugal very soon and I'm super excited and curious about how it's going to unfold. I'll definitely update you on this once I feel my mind has settled :)
Recently I started seeing another poker player for IFS sessions and I'll probably want to add a few more some time in late August / early September just to practice a little before deciding to actually charge any money for it. I already get a lot of joy and satisfaction out of working with these guys and I really want to do more of it in the future.
My poker volume hasn't really changed much but I don't berate myself for it anymore as I've been feeling an increasingly higher sense of confidence and ease in going through life's motions. I just feel much more content and confident in the direction my life is taking me and I'm very happy with where I am now. I started playing NL500 and it's been going pretty well so far, games are good and I'm more and more satisfied with my overall gameplan, especially vs the fish profile. My friends and I have started to really gain traction with our simplified approach and it often makes playing poker feel so easy that it's even embarrassing. It's as if the holy grail of poker has been right there in front of us and only a few lucky ones are able to see it clearly.
I think I covered it all for today. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables!
Mike
July 22, 2023 | 3:10 p.m.