BeJamin

A decent start to the month. Not much to say really except that I need to continue to study as much as I play. I'm still a leaky ship in a lot of ways but I'm slowly learning and improving. The biggest thing for me is maintaining my focus, I'm pretty terrible at playing long sessions. A little more volume and a few less mistakes would go a long way ! Grindy grind LP!

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Well graphs are always fun, it's been a good start to 2015. I'm still just trying as hard as I can to make sure I take the time to study as much as I play. Despite what Lemon wrote in his blog, I think it's an important aspect of the game . I guess the difference between us is that I'm not constantly trying to re-write the rules of the game as he might describe it. One thing I've noticed over my time playing is that it can be very difficult to find out if any one particular thing you are doing is working. Sample size is challenging and variance is huge. The best you can hope for is to correctly apply concepts you know to be theoretically correct and then wait for a couple 100k hands to go by to see if it turned out how you thought, but heck, that's actually pretty fun to do.

In terms of other stuff I'm doing I've gained a little bit lately from work/thesis/poker and not being quite as active as I want so I'm stepping up my gym routine to take off those 20 pounds and get back to normal. If anyone hasn't done it I find Hot Yoga to be absolutely phenomenal. A great thing to add into your standard routine of lifting/HIIT cardio sprints. I'm trying to find the optimal balance but my life is very time limited so we'll see!

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Cheers to a good 2015 for all LP

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Well, what can I say to sum it all up... Poker in 2014 was very up and down for me. I decided to start playing again sometime in midsummer and the made the choice of going full boar for the first time ever. The experience has been eye-opening to say the least and I have gained a whole new level of respect for players beating NL200/PLO200+ on a consistent basis. It takes a certain type of a person and a lot of work ethic to do that. Luckily for me, I learned that I probably am the type of person who can get there eventually if I want it bad enough.

Perhaps my biggest error in judgement this year apart from posting boring hands and whining - sorry LP - was obsessing too much over volume and results. In the short-term of poker it's really difficult to find much meaning in your actual results. It's even more foolish when you start to use things like EV, which isn't now and hasn't ever been calculated properly. Street-by-street would be very useful, but for some reason nobody has ever built that despite how easy it seems it would be to do. Maybe it has something to do with increasing the load times for databases who knows.

I'm less concerned with volume now and more focused on studying. I made the decision a few weeks ago to study my game as much as I play the game and it's made a huge difference for me. Mentally it feels better, I feel more productive and I'm enjoying poker more and more. I'm also recognizing a whole shit-ton of spots where I'm quite simply lighting money on fire for no reason. It doesn't mean $50 being tossed in spew-fest style, although once and a while that does happen, it's more the $5-15 I put into a pot where I either don't have much hope of winning or it didn't functionally help me do anything than build my opponents stack. My biggest goal in 2015 is to become as close to a zero mistake player as I can. Play Perfect, as our Starcraft heroes would say.

I've spent an awful lot of the last six months just figuring out how to learn this crazy PLO game. There are so many intricacies and so many different lines of thought out there sometimes it's hard to piece them together. The good thing is I think I've finally figured it out. I know how to learn and how to analyze what's happening in the hands I'm playing and I'm using the right analytical lens to think things through. The result is the last few weeks have left me feeling much better about my game and confident coming into 2015. Below is a summary of my results so far.

Also, a big shout-out to my coach who has been an excellent support both mentally and skill-wise. He's going to make me a crusher in this game as long as I'm willing to put the work in, I have no doubt of that.



Summary of Results:
CGs: -620
VPPs:60K
FPPs: 140K = $2,240 (In $1600 bonuses, when SN is achieved)
Stellar Rewards: $700
Total: +$2320

Goals for 2015
Get to 100PLO in the first six months, get to 200PLO by year end
Continue to use my philosophy of studying as much as I play
Whine dramatically less in hand history posts
Post interesting hands
Talk more poker with good PLO players and build up that network a bit, we're all in it together vs. Pokerstars rake anyway

Edit: Also, shout-out to JoeIngram1 for being an awesome mentor and a genuinely cool human being. Pretty big tip to give me the heads up about the 2p2 conversation and the study of Zoom PLO50 and how few players are beating the rake there. And even though I've now moved away from Zoom for now, I still believe it's beatable, just not when you're making the mistakes I had been. My worthless EV stat is also pretty ugly in that game.

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