i've been thinking about starting this thread for a while now, and all the recent threads about "lazy v unmotivated", sick of poker, blah blah blah has finally motivated me to pull the trigger.




ground rules:

- be constructive
- any topic is ok (poker, life, school ,etc.)
- post less than serious comments here: forum/viewtopic.php?p=252230

lol

it's interesting to me that your nlhe experience is similar to your lhe experience -- that is, you ran really hot at first, and then you tanked. i wonder why this is.

i think it could be a few things (possibly multiple reasons):

1) you played well at first in both games, and then started playing less skillfully for some reason.
2) once you gained enough confidence to beat the respective games, you developed a sense of entitlement (i.e., they should just give me their money) that caused you to play suboptimally.
3) you did not adequately adjust to your opponents as well as they adjusted to you.



i'll touch on more of these below.

sense of entitlement

i've seen this happen to a lot of good players -- they start beating the crap out of a game, they can spot opponents' mistakes a mile away, and then...

they start taking winning for granted.

they start thinking that the donks should just xfer the $$ directly to their accounts instead of actually playing for it. this leads to things like loose passive play, fps, etc.


possible solutions:

- review your sessions and justify every play you make. make sure that villains' ranges are accurate AGAINST YOU -- that is, assume that villains will play you differently than other "regulars". keep a poker diary and have other players you respect review your evaluations of your play.

- gain confidence in yourself as a person while remaining humble as a poker player (see life issues comments that i'll make below)

adjusting

i've mentioned a lot of this elsewhere, but i'll mention it here again for the sake of being thorough:

i think it is very likely that your opponents have made more and better adjustments to you than you have made to them.

specifically, at both lhe and nlhe, you were quickly playing at stakes that contain plenty of players who are either full-time pros or serious part-timers (as best as i can tell). these are the people who will review the play of all regulars, can put people on ranges, make notes, and play well based on their reads. i don't really hear of you doing any of this (i could be wrong).


suggestions:

- review all of your sessions, take notes (esp. regarding hand ranges vs you and known leaks), adjust accordingly.

- use pt and a hud to get better reads on players and adjust accordingly. note that you can do either the previous suggestion or this one, but both would probably be better (esp. for infrequent players).

- constantly review your notes/assumptions about the "good" players, and adjust to their adjustments as needed.

fwiw, i want to pre-emptively admit that i could be WAY off on any number of matters here, but i'm just giving my comments based on what i've read/heard/seen.

also, i'm breaking my posts into chunks so that they're easier to comment on (should anyone care to comment... lolololol).

life issues

this is a big one:

- as jus mentioned, you sometimes seem to overvalue your intelligence.
- you seem to have an interesting duality of a big ego and low self-esteem.
- you seem to lack maturity.
- you have a questionable work ethic.

intelligence

are you really smart? most likely. does it matter? not if you don't apply your intelligence towards constructive action. the road is littered with smart people who get thrashed by folks with mediocre intelligence who work hard.

one of my housemates was a grad student at MIT, and she told me that one of her professors told her that the "dirty little secret" of MIT was that only about 1/3 of the students were really smart... the rest just worked really hard. i have found this to be true of many "high achieving" fields/schools. even more interesting was the hierarchy that developed from this phenomenon:

- typically at the top were a combination of the smart/hard-working people and the social/hard-working people.

- next came the big pack of hard-working people of non-exceptional intelligence.

- the bottom was largely filled with smart people and "exceptions" (e.g., legacies, children of rich donators, etc.). the smart people were there often because they lacked a good work-ethic, were bored, were "too good" to work hard, lacked focus, etc.


anyway, i think you're going to find that a lot of smart people have migrated to poker (esp. at higher stakes). it's easy money for smart people who work hard. as such, your intelligence is not really that unusual, and you'll need to add a solid work ethic if you want to reap the rewards of your intelligence. interestingly, i think if you get serious about working at poker (e.g., like sbrugby), then i imagine you will have a bright and lucrative future. as it stands, you'll peter principle out at an income level that does not provide you with the lifestyle you seem to want.


suggestions

- view your intelligence as a tool -- it is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

ego and self-esteem... and maturity

ok, maybe this is more about low self-esteem than big ego (that largely seems covered in the intelligence post).

some observations:

- you seem to have a strong desire to be a "balla"
- in poker you seem to want to be the guy who makes the sick calls
- you let one or more of the k-girls mess with your head
- you don't seem to be confident in how you are or what you're doing


my comments:

balla

most people i know who are "balla" don't really try to be. that is, they usually got there through hard work and (sometimes) by being smart. often times it's just selective "intelligence" (i.e., it wouldn't really transfer to another domain). a lot of assclowns may be making sick money in poker right now, and they may not be as smart as you, and they may not even work harder than you. maybe they just have the right recipe for success now. anyway, the smart, hard-working people will end up taking most of the assclowns' money and will be the "new ballas".

additionally, unless it's for endorsement purposes, i'd almost prefer people NOT know that i kick-ass. that way they don't see it coming when i take their money.


sick calls

i rarely know the backstory behind these, but you seem overly impressed when you see someone make a sick call, and you seem to want to be the guy who makes that sick call for a big score. a lot of poker is boring -- make a hand and collect from the donks. sick calls have their place, but usually (in my experience) they are based on some pretty reliable tells (physical, betting, or otherwise). furthermore, when you make a sick call with cards to come, getting sucked out on is not that uncommon.

i'm not really sure where i'm going with this, but you seem to have these "sick call" scenarios quite often (or at least you did), and i found them to be odd.


k-girls

i don't think i need to say much here, but you've got to get control of this situation. you can't play good poker (or really do much of anything, really) if you let typical hs/college social interaction influence your frame of mind so heavily.


comfort

this comment of mine may come across as being quite presumptuous since i really don't know you at all. that being said, i'm basing my comments on what i've seen here at btp, so work with me.

for one, it seems like you often try to acquire your identity via external sources. sometimes this is by buying branded items (e.g., vera wang bed), and other times this is by name-dropping (e.g., however you happened to be playing with in an mtt, cash game, at ts, etc.). who cares? i can see name-dropping when there's something else to it (e.g, the bed has a unique feature, the baseball player can play nlhe well, etc.), but these names don't add anything to you as a person.

second, you don't seem to be comfortable with what you're doing -- that is, you seem to know what your leaks and life weaknesses are, but you don't really do much about them. i don't know if this is just a lack of self-awareness, depression, or what.

regarding poker, all i see is you make some questionable claims about you playing theoretically optimal poker. i don't see much evidence to back this up. some reflective analysis (e.g., poker journal) would be enlightening.

interestingly, you seem to have fallen into the very trap that barry greenstein wrote about in his book -- you seem to have missed an opportunity to "grow" and "find yourself" in the relatively safe confines of a university setting.



suggestions:

- find a way to get back to school

- leave your ego at the door when you play poker

- let ballaness find you rather than you go looking for it

- find a living situation in which you can grow socially with relatively little "risk" (again, university fits the bill).

- surround yourself with more stable people

- learn about the stages of adult psychological development



as i write this, i realize that a lot of the stuff in the "self-esteem" category is related to maturity, so i'm just going to combine those two categories.

work ethic

not much to write here really. you don't put many hours in, and the quality of the time you do put in is questionable.

when i work, i'm always looking at ways that i can use my time to "add value". in poker, sometimes playing is not the way to add the most value.


possible solutions

- this is tough, but i think that going back to school and/or getting a part-time job would help with this.

misc

the stuff i forgot or couldn't find a place for:


- i obv think you need to get a job or go back to school so that you have a place to socialize and grow as a person.

- i somehow doubt that you play theoretically optimal poker. even if you did, i believe sklansky himself said that theoretically optimal poker is not always the most profitable if your opponents don't play optimally.

- i also think you need to analyze your opponents and/or use a hud... this just strikes me as painfully obvious.

- playing 9 tables is probably too many. if you had a hud and/or good reads, you might be able to get away with this -- that is, you pick your targets and play abc poker unless your hu versus one of your targets. given your style of play (much more villain-dependent than you seem to think, imho) and your lack of reads, i don't see how you can play 9-tables profitably. i think you could do it with some tweaks to your game specifically for 9-tabling, but i doubt that you currently make the appropriate adjustments (this is a guess, and i could be very wrong... i just haven't heard anything about your adjustments).

- i believe you're not as good at tournaments as you think you are.

- acknowledge your own psychology... you often talk about what "should be" without accepting what is (e.g., your state of mind when playing).

- become mentally tougher... you seem to be bothered by what i would consider relatively normal variance. i think the problem might be that some of your variance may be due to bad play (master of the obvious, but still...). quitting after losing 2 buy-ins is a step in the right direction, but i'm not sure that's the complete solution.

- try to find ways to create balance in your life. you seem to dismiss ideas like getting a part-time job (NV most recently, others in the past), but these are just possible ways to achieve balance and (perhaps) growth. you have to find what's right for you, but i'm not really sure you're even looking right now.

- not moving to vegas or la is smart -- wait until you're more mature.

- that being said, i think you'll find that there are a lot of interesting people who you can enjoy living life with in these places if/when you chose to go.

- every time you sit down at the poker table, know that you're sitting down prepared to the best of your ability to win and that you'll have to play your best to win (i.e., work hard and be disciplined). even donkeys get cards, but preparation, perseverance, and discipline are the tools that will put the money in your pocket in the long run.



i hope my comments come across the right way -- that is, helpful rather than pedantic. i think you're a very smart person with a lot of potential, and i really hope you succeed at poker and in life. right now you seem to be stuck in a rut, and i made this thread with the hope that it will jump-start an effort on your part to make constructive and positive changes to your life.

good luck!

wow. kuso would you do that for me too?