pokercode and more pokercode

Last couple months have been all about Pokercode. More on that later in this post. 

• summer = good weather = no playing or very little playing

Very little grinding for me in the last 2 months. I was at a music festival for a week, and most summer days I've been enjoying being outside, hanging out with friends. I also had a lot of things piled up on the to-do list, and the list got so long that I needed to spend a couple days on those tasks.

• study

I'm really happy with my study routines these days. I designed a very good system for studying / analyzing hands and building sims for review. It's a mix of getting things done, reviewing alone and with a friend but also about outsourcing. There are multiple collaborations that I have going currently, and the way they work together is very powerful in my opinion. Without mentioning names and getting into details about the collaboration, it looks as follows:

a) Exchanging hand histories with 1 person - we review each others' HH from recent tournaments and make a printscreen of hands that we would've played differently and schedule a call to discuss those spots.

b) Comparing 2 databases with a player playing slightly higher stakes, but has a similar approach in terms of studying - a lot of solverwork - and finding leaks in our frequencies. Building a plan of what to work on in order to fix those leaks. We schedule a review session 1-2 times per week together - review hands that we played in this particular spot and discuss ideas.

c) Multiway 3-way spots - working closely with couple friends on multiway spots. Running 3-way sims, scheduling review sessions and solving complex gametrees on the server together. We are currently trying to study turns and rivers more often, as it feels like we have a decent understanding of flops mechanics already. I was doing a bunch of work on my own for 3-way, but I feel that working in a group is a bit better, because population deviates so much that in order to get good answers and build strategies, we have to brainstorm what playerpool is doing differently and how to adjust to it. 

d) Outsourcing - PKO spots to solve - I have a friend that I collab with and he solves PKO spots that I tagged for me.

e) Outsourcing - FT spots to solve - similar to PKO spots, he solves FT spots in HRC beta / GTO+ postflop ICM adjusted. Sometimes goes through the entire FT and tags hands to discuss with me on a later day. 

f) Deep work on my leaks which I do alone - working hard on my vs bet game currently, as I am not sure if I am playing vs turn and rivers bets correctly. So far, if I compare my calldowns to equilibrium I am mostly doing a good job, however some people say that it's still too much calling, as playerpool plays differently. I went deep in a rabbit hole in terms of how the population is playing on aggressive nodes last night and discovered quite a bit, that I can't share publicly unfortunately. What I can say though is that it's always important to question your assumptions, look at data, nodelock sims to see if and how you should be deviating. Our brains are tricky and our memory is rather selective one. Also, it's always important to verify everything, even if a lot of people say the same thing. Just to make sure you know.

g) Having a lot of fun drilling spots vs GTO. I use both GTOW and DTO, it really depends on how 'complex' the game I want to play is. Training vs solution is something that can discourage you from playing if you are not great theoretically, and something that can give you a massive confidence boost if you know what you are doing. I was playing very simple spots that show up often, like BVB, BB vs IP and IP vs BB and SB 3bet. The more you play the more addicted you are, so be careful. 

h) Preparing sessions for 1 on 1 coachings and for seminars. This can also count as a study routine, more like re-capping of what I already worked on in the past to be able to present this knowledge for a student or a group on zoom call. This game is so complex that you always discover something new!

g) Beer and review sessions - those are spontaneous evening/night sessions as I usually review my tagged hands alone, but sometimes we go through them in a group setting. I think it's very powerful to get opinions of others as I can be biased and also can misinterpret solver outputs on occasion.  

• ​seminars 

We are continuing with this project of course and I don't think we will stop at any point in the near future. We did some small improvements and changes lately in terms of handling admin and in terms of website/discord design.  The biggest change and cool news that I can share is that we hired a new coach - Empirical700, and he will be focusing on PKO content. He already did multiple sessions as a guest coach and community feedback was great, so we decided to let him do his sessions alone, as they are pure gold. I've been working with him for some time now and I really like his approach to poker and studying.  Welcome Sven!

• Pokercode community coach

I did a bunch of sessions as a guest coach with Simon and Curtis in the past as a community member. On top of that I did 2 trial sessions on my own in May and feedback was amazing. Because of good feedback and new content and value I can provide to the Pokercode team, I officially joined them in June as community coach. I'm very proud of that achievement, especially because I didn't apply for a position but was selected by representatives. More on that here: www.pokercode.com/blog/meet-mammoththegr8-pokercodes-newest-coach I will be doing 2 sessions per month for now and the main focus will be PKO and 3-way strategy in tournaments.

• Pokercode Grindhouse 3

I also got accepted for Grindhouse 3. I will be in the house in September and stay there for 10 days. Super excited of course! Fabi also got a seat, so LFG #teammammoth! If you are unfamiliar with Grindhouse project from Pokercode you can watch previous seasons on youtube. 
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-eP6yArJKCa9FQXw9LabZUdG2HpNiTJO
​www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-eP6yArJKCar7M9QCtN4X-_zR2gC-YKM
​Grindhouse 3 will probably be on youtube mid / late September 2022.
I will be in Vienna on 8 September, so if you would like to grab lunch or beer let me know.

Peace, 
​Mammoth
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