Taking the next step: The evolution of a Grinder.

Here is my last month. I really haven't been playing too much different, but obviously playing a lot less. I have been trying not to get down big(2+BIs) early in my sessions. It seems to be paying off, but I could just be on a nice little run. The thing to note here is my W$SD, it hasn't been above 50% for this long since May.

Jager,

Been following your blog for a long time now and I'm happy to see you posting a strong winrate over a good hand sample. go you!

This is this week, my best week ever...

good work man.

How close are you to the porsche? lol. nice job.

wow was that all at 200NL? hope this week is at least close to a repeat (i will keep trying to help :P )

Originally Posted by Vi-Zer0Skill

wow was that all at 200NL? hope this week is at least close to a repeat (i will keep trying to help :P )

Yes all 200nl. Maybe on my way there again, but I have a lot of family Xmas stuff Sat and Sun. We'll see how it goes...

Another nice week...



Again this is all 200nl

what is that 50 buyins in 30k hands, gg.

I feel now that the evolution is complete or at least this evolution as I am sure there are many more evolutions to come. I no longer feel as though I am grinding it out on every table. Since I started this thread in July, I have had a roller coaster ride. Going from the big downswing, to learning how to improve, to actually improving, to feel as though I have now matured as a player. I would like to thank all those who gave solid input, and helped me on my way.

Looking back to how I played the first 6 months of the year, it is easy to see why I had only a marginal winrate. I was just not a strong enough postflop player at that stage. My game was based around what I thought was a good preflop game(and it was), which provided me with the opportunity to cash in postflop. I was really playing 2 different games at that time, one pre and one post flop. These 2 games did not go very well together. I also think that I got by because I ran pretty hot over this time.

As June rolled along and I started to become way over rolled, I took a bad shot at 400nl. Looking back I was clearly not ready, as I really hadn't worked on my game since January. I was still playing the same old game which made me a marginal winner at 200nl player. After my shot I moved down, only to run horribly. This run continued for about 300k hands, just like I ran good for the first 300k hands of the year at 200nl. The difference was that this time I was working hard everyday on my game. I must have filtered and re filtered PT looking for anything I could improve. I ran hundreds of EV calcs, some with several levels, and checked hundreds of ranges on PStove. This work started to pay off as I seen my W$WSF start to rise from 39.5 to 42, but I still wasn't showing any more profit. Then as mid October came in, I started to run better. For the next 4 weeks I had a nice stretch where I ran over 6 ptbb/100 while posting a very nice 44% W$WSF.

At the end of November I made one more minor adjustment preflop, and after a week or 2 adjustment period, I have seen my game take off. I am currently running at ~9 ptbb/100 for the last 3 weeks with a W$WSF over 46%. I am not sure this is sustainable, but it sure feels like it. My sample is a rather small 35k hands, but I am up 60 BI's and I had a bad tilty couple days this week where I flat out gave away $1500+(like stacking off with 22 preflop vs a 18/15 Tag). I will post my results for the rest of the month here, with a new Ops thread coming for January.

This week, I played a lot from Wed-Sun again all 200nl.

I read almost all of this thread and almost quit poker.

I'm going to stop playing poker and hide in my basement until the apocalypse comes, or until virgins rain down from the skies...

Wow...

so you're doing a lot better now?

Originally Posted by Massimo

so you're doing a lot better now?

Well I'm running at 5ptbb/100 since like Dec 3. I had a 90 BI month in Dec., all at 1/2. This month has been a little rough. I've had a couple nice downswings, one was 22 BI's and I have only had 2 winning weekends out of 4. It is real hard to put up big #'s when you are running bad when the tables get softer.

I just reread this whole thread, looking for some insight and some strat that helped you get to where you are. I am a bit confused, you went from having some serious bad downswings and losing sessions to winning in the last month or two? If I take all the losing that you talked about and added it up, you would owe about 150 BI's to someone, WTF happened? What did you change? Where and when did all this changing happen? What are you doing different other than showing better stats? Where was the " Taking the next step: Evolution"?

Well I started this thread because I wasn't satisfied ebing only a 2.o winner. I had several good months to start the year, but I felt like I was just grinding away. So immediatedly after starting this thread, I went on a 45 BI downer followed by a long BE stretch, then another ~30 BI downer, all from the end of June to the end of July. During this 'bad run', I really stopped being complacent with my game, and started to try all kinds of stuff to get better.

The biggest thing that caught my eye, almost right away, was after downloading pokerEV, it seemed almost impossible to get a winrate over 3 playing an abc/standard TAG game. I would run sample after sample through, and I could never get my sklansky bucks(red) line to show that if I played near perfect I would have a 3+ winrate. Until this time I was playing a 21/17/3 style, but my W$WSF was at 39.5%.

After tinkering for 1000s of hands, I started to get better. For August my W$WSF was over 42%, and I had started playing a 21/18/3 game.

What I tried to improve was:
1. Started to play better in the blinds
2. Stopped autopiloting
3. Cut down a little on my tables, from 8-10 to 6-8.
4. Started taking better notes on the regs.(I noted anything unusual and any 3bet stuff)
5. I really started looking at flop textures vs a villains range.

From mid July on I had really started to experiment with scenarios. I figured out that I couldn't just play abc TAG anymore if I wanted one of those big winrates you hear about. I stopped trying to become unexploitable, and started trying to exploit anything. After I would try something out, I would try and figure out how to beat myself.

My Self Improvement process using scenarios
1. Run a manual EV calc on it, to see if it could be profitable.
2. Check as many ranges with Poker Stove that I could think of.
3. Figure out how to expoilt myself, or find the counter to my experimental strategy.
4. Then find a way to exploit the most common 'counter startegies'.

This kept me far ahead of any thinking player or reg, because I already knew what they would try, BEFORE they tried it. This made a lot of my adjustments feel natural. I had already run all the EV calcs for both my strat, their counter strat, and my re-counter strat. A lot of these scenarios where simple stuff, like 3 betting, flop raising, blind play, floating etc. I really had stopped taking lines where if do this...and villain does this...then I have no idea??? This had kinda limited my play, but I really started to play much better postflop.

I had solid months in Aug and Sept, then didn't play a lot in Oct or Nov(like 25k total hands), but still had winning months. I continued to progress some and regress some, but my W$WSF kept improving to around 44%. I really started to get a much better feel for what I was focusing on, but I sometimes over focused one thing and started to leak a little here and there. I continued to run scenarios, and get better but I was still running about 2-2.5 ptbb/100.

At the end of Nov, everything started coming into place. I had run dozens of scenarios and felt like I wasn't really limited anymore. I talked to a friend of mine and he told me I was on the right track, as he had just taken a few weeks before me. He showed me his graph where he had been killing Stars 200nl for almost 14 ptbb/100 over like 25k hands. Our stats where very close, as we had been playing a similar game, but I was still winning only marginally especially compared to him. This gave me a ton of confidence in what I was doing and where I was headed. December was by far my best month at 90 BI's(18k) running over 7.5 ptbb/100. I have hit a minor snag here in Jan, but I still pulled 45 BI's running at ~3 ptbb/100, and like I said the weekends have been terrible and I am still fighting some of my basic leaks. I also need to clean up some of my mental leaks, but I got a couple new books so maybe they will help.

So in summary it really has been a slow evolution over the last few months. I didn't really have any aha moments or sudden improvements, but I slowly 'equipped' myself with a ton of knowledge about applicable in game theory and adjustments.