I've nearly got past the tank/call one. I knew I was beat nearly always but as you so rightly point out, I was tanking but not analyzing and trying make sense of it all, I was just tanking because I was stuck in a brain fart. It's like time just stops for a few seconds and everything goes foggy, then ... call ... (doh).

On the rare occasion I do that stuff now I sit out straight away and not wait for the blinds; not that I'm liable to spew stacks off anymore or have to leave the game, just to settle down and to make sure I'm thinking clearly about playing better before I start again.

Actually, there's a simple word to sum it all up, discipline. It can be a tough word to master I know full well!

I just want to add. I hope you made a note for that player, so you can avoid it next time.

btw: what was his hand?

He had AK. I can't really take notes as on Unibet you can change your ID all the time and no stats or tracking programs. I noted it for the session I was in but yeah no other notes long term.

I thought I was past that tank brain fog thing as well but on Unibet I'm back on it. Odd really as I feel my mental game is in good shape but it obviously isn't as good as I think. I'm going to take a few days off I think. See how today goes at work and what my mood is but if I can't beat Unibet it might be time to take a lot longer off. So on that basis I need to be 100% to make sure I don't tilt and increase my risk of ruin.

I don't want to quit as for the first time the mental game tests I feel I'm winning. Perhaps the answer is to drop stakes. Back to NL4. I did say I wouldn't do that but better that then lose my roll now when it's actually making progress in the area I wanted to!

I think w34z3l made a very clear point about those not-so-obvious clear folds in your coaching session (I enjoyed it, especially tilt related part ). So yeah, you should just muck bluff-catchers in Unibet games. I strongly believe that if you mega nit up and play 15/12 and just value 3bet, you could achieve double digit win rate in fishy anon games. I saw a guy destroying Bovada Zone NL50 (anon speed variant) 15bb/100 playing 13/10 or so over sufficient sample - fuck math, fuck balance ftw!

Jajajajajaja I know he made a point on basically exactly that hand. For some reason the tone of that in my head sounded like a parent reminding me that the other parent had told me not to do it.

Now Tall Paul, I think your father did mention to you not to rush when you're zipping up after a peepee?

I dunno. Winning dull, like Mourinho. That or keep losing, trying to play the 'right way', like Arsenal. Lol possession lol 'tremendous spirit in ze squad'.

Lol Math, Lol Balance still my favourite ever 2+2 thread.

You have missed THIS - a wannabe baller bragging in OP about some thai hookers he banged, there were pictures of them holding full condom etc... Turned out every one of them were actually ladyboys.. Now the pictures are taken out though, but you can imagine his disappointment

Got to be a level right? Thats too whack job even for BBV.

Aids run on Unibet continues. Lost another 5BI. Fortunately I had moved down to NL4. Played super nitty and the only time I got my money in bad was AK vs A2s on A72 two tone in a 3bet pot. Lost every hand. I actually hit some cards tonight but they folded or outran me.

You know the sort of day. Iso a 3 limped pot with AK and everyone calls. Flop Q95 or 987. 3bet KK pre and flop comes A84. Open AQs, Cbet NFD and miss. Etc etc. One guy called me down with 52o on 872QA. I had T9 straight flush draw on the flop and missed but 5th pair now! Best hero call I've ever seen.

I was very nitty and too theoretically passive but that was the plan. It did not work tonight. My absolute fave was the guy who open jammed KK pre. I had AA. Called and he spiked a K. Next hand he open jams J8s. I have TT and call. You know the rest. Bad times.

The only thing I think I'm doing wrong though (aside from not winning the races) is not value betting correctly. Big bets seem to get a lot of credit and small bets basically none. Thats always the case to some extent but here its crazy. Everyone goes into family pots and then chases miracle run outs if the bets stay small. I haven't made a nutted hand in a while but I'm thinking about adjusting my bet sizes to try and exploit that. Not what I normally do though. I normally keep them consistent unless the guy is a div and I have the nuts in a single raised pot.

It's not a level, all confirmed.

Maybe you can make a video for Jon to review? If it's a bad run, what can you do, but maybe there are some spews.

Its hard to make a video for me on Unibet. I can't resize the tables to make them visible at the same time so would be popping up all the time. Without stats that makes keeping track of who is who really hard, which is probably part of the problem for me. I'm not going to grind on Unibet, I'm going to go back to Stars. The Rake Race didn't work out either because Unibet took an age to connect my account. I'll be playing there for a little bit just to clear a last bonus but then done. Then can get back to actually working on my game.

Not having results at all though is probably correlated with my mental game improvement but I think I need to be able to try and understand whats going on and develop my game and hard to do that on Unibet. If you already can play profitable poker get on there and autoprofit. My game is not in good shape at the moment it would appear.

Nice to read someone can put their ego away at micros and drop down, isn't it surprising that even winning players fail dismally at discipline so often. I can't pretend to be any sort of authority, but may I suggest you play less tables if volume isn't an issue, maybe just two. As far as Unibet is concerned and not being able to track properly, that was why I suggested minimum table numbers, you definitely need to be taking notes and marking short stacks and all that fun stuff on these sites. Watch for open raise size, cbet then chk turn etc etc., you know all this though I suspect but it may act as a reminder when things are going tits up.
Aslo, at micros against different opponents, especially unknown tables, you can exploit them to death with bet sizing so don't be shy of using that a lot.

Think MG has a good idea there, when it's not going well might just be the time to make that vid. I made the mistake of only sending the vid in when I had played well or ran well, which kinda defeats the object really. Just too embarrassed to send one in where I played so bad.

As you say though, if you're moving back to Stars and you're comfortable there, fair enough. But something to think about is that there must be some underlying issues because you seem well capable of beating Unibet from what I've read. Just a thought.

Sorry if it's too long a waffle post, I find it hard to use one word where 42 will do.


Run better.

What studying are you doing ATM Paul? Often people do this where they seem to run bad and play bad and try and grind out of it. One that is fairly depressing if you are aware you are losing and will fuck with your mental game even if you feel it is improving and two you probably play worse and worse in a bad run as you worry you are going to keep losing in spots or slowplay to much to try and make sure you win something.

Studying stats with weasel is great but not helpful for you right now. You need to work on things like range v range, learn which biard textures are best for your range and best for villain and use that to decide on how often you bluff/value bet.

You want to make more parts of your game reach a level of unconscious competence so you use less mind power in more spots and can use more of it in genuinely tough ones.

Yeah, I'm not really studying poker at the moment. I'm focussing my attention on mental game work and making some decent strides. I think I'm going to take a break from the game. I don't have the energy in my life right now for a hobby I have to study like mad at just to break even at NL2. I can just have a game of FIFA and read a book in the evening to unwind instead.

Motivation is not the highest for the game right now. Normally a break does me good. Then I'll have the fire to study. Do some work. Feel excited. Storm back to the tables. Normally though I lose straight when I come back. I guess overexcitement and a new studied, poorly understood concept.

I'm going to reflect on this for a few days and see where my head is at.

While I'm taking a break from Poker I'm not from running. This weekend my wife broke her half marathon time so I needed a PB today. Broke my 10km time in the middle of an hour long run. 49m 11s. Pretty happy with that. Still a long way to go to break 45m but progress being made. I'm not sure if will be possible to break the target times I've set but I'm working on it!

Awesome

Cheers bro. Had a first chat on Cookies Skype group as well. Range work is a long way past me now. I feel like my game pre flop, and based on villains range is ok, especially for NL4. But I don't really worry about my range I just play my cards.

Aye, playing your cards can just lead to sayyyyyy to large of a bluff to value ratio. Thoughts like "I'm going to bluff this because it has bdfd" is goodish buttttt we have a lot of similar hands, bdfd, fd, GS and then we think we have to slow play our big hands and all of a sudden when we get called we have soooooo many bluffs and no value hands

Yeah, I'll be working on it. Looking forward it. Hopefully can get teamviewer up and running as well.

So two months into the year and time for a review.

Run 1000km in 2016 [200km down, on track]
5km in under 22m [21m 31s in the bag. Complete]
10km in under 45m [PB now down to 48m 38s after new PB run last night]
Run my first organised race [April, with the wife. Pacing her for an hour run]

Continue my Poker progress.[Review video with @w34z3l ]

Be positive and stop attacking myself. [I feel like this is the big win, hardly any whining despite losing and running horrible]

So overall I feel like 2016 is going great so far. Despite the horrendous run on Unibet the level of play is so bad and there are enough bonuses that I'm back into profit there. Its insane soft there. If you run even halfway decent it should be easy. Just watch @Jon-PokerVIP 's video series, although he seems to be running like me.

Yesterday there was a couple of guys open jamming every hand, a guy who called 3 streets in a 3bet pot with pocket 4s (on K83J4 runout). He binked 2 outer on the river and didn't raise. All kinds of stuff.

One I just stared at afterwards, I open AQ 2x BTN and get min3bet to 3bb and then min cold 4bet to 4bb by the blinds. Flop comes KT4 no FD. SB min leads, 2nd guy min raises, I flat with two overs and GS as I have no idea what these min bets mean. Turn is a 6 brick and 1st guy min bets again and we all go to the river. River is a T. 1st guy pots, 2nd guy jams, I fold obviously and the 1st guy calls. They turn over AQo and 87o.

Hopefully I will better for this experience of playing crazy fishes when one pops up on my table on different settings. The only big downer was I joined there partly to get into the Rake Race, but they couldn't get their act together tagging me and so I missed out on what would have been $25 from the Top 500. I doubt I'll be doing it this month as I'll be leaving Unibet probably. Will keep playing there at the start of each month, as the bonus value for the first few £ of rake is huge, but most of my play is probs going to be back at Stars. I feel like I need to be able to do proper reviews of lines and spots which I can't do on Unibet very well.

I'm also beating Snowie for 8BI now I think, found my Flopzilla key and reset that up. Ready to go. Maybe 2016 will be the year I make some real progress. Maybe it won't. But I'm enjoying the process and at the end of the day that's all life is.

Fantastic running targets!! I have always liked the idea of being a good runner but never really stuck at it whenever I started up.

I keep having the same thing happen to me on Unibet. I found that I was finishing a session on there questioning whether I was just as bad (if not worse) than the poor players that the tables are made up of as I couldn't seem to get any kind of good run going at all.

I have since signed up to Betvictor to play on a soft site that I can track my play at the same time.

What do you mean by bonus value for the first few £ of rake each month on Unibet? (Sorry if that sounds like a stupid question but I have no clue what that is)

😃

No not stupid question at all. Unibet have a bizarre view on Rakeback compared to all other sites. Most places your rakeback % (whether that be cash, bonus, RB on an affiliate like VIP) goes up the more you rake so a Supernova not only makes more absolute rake but the % they earn of it is higher as well. If it doesn't it at least stays flat.

Unibet have decided to focus on rec players and the supergrinders who pay all their big money. Their belief is that pay the rec players more so they stay alive longer and encouraged. Middling players (say a NL10 or NL25 reg) will stay there for the high fish % and the high stakes guys will stick around for the good numbers they get at top levels.

What this means in practice is the first $ of rake you pay at Unibet you get insane reward %age. It then drops off very sharply to be way way worse than Stars or BV or whatever before climbing up later to be back to Supernova levels at very high rake levels.

Everyone at micro stakes should have an account on Unibet, and they should play a little bit on it each month to clear the bonuses. If you don't want the tickets or whatever you can convert to cash bonus just by asking on their 2+2 thread so no issues of don't want to play through a $5 PLO ticket. Its sick value and I will be taking advantage of that even if I don't play there full time.