Shakals Vision (MTT project)

Hey guys,

My name is Tobi. I'm a 24 year old Pokerbeginner. I'm german, so please forgive me for my english mistakes. I understand everything, but writing and speaking are not my greatest strengths

Why I'm here?
I daily look at some learn videos about and around Poker. Yesterday i find a Video from Aarnimesta about MTTs. I like the Video and i instant get some symphathie for Pokerimania. Yes there are german communities too, but they are so big and massive, and i like it a bit more familiar. This is one Point, why i would love to join your community. Another one is the different countries we live in. With you i can improve my english skills and learn about people from other parts of the World. This sounds more interesting to me, than always hang out with german guys.

What I'm reaching for?

I play poker since february 2014. But in the same period of time i wrote my final Thesis for my study. For 1 month now, i'm Bachelor of Arts in Design. In the last Month i really really though about, what i want to do with my life. I like design, i liked my study, but i don't like a 9-to-5 Job. I don't want to sit in a advertising agency and throw my creativity away for a guy, who has no interest in me and my life. I always wanted to work for my self. And i think Poker is a very good way to start. In the last half year, i take a very big part of my spare time to learn about and playing Poker. And i'm fascinated. I think Poker can have so many benefits for me and my life thats is really worth taking a shoot at it. I have free time now at least till July next year and this time i want to put everything i can into Poker and see what i can reach.
People always say you should set you crazy goals. Sure, you have to break it down, so that your brain is not getting frustrated, but my crazy big goal for now: Winning an EPT-Bracelet! I know it sounds a bit far off, and can take years or a life time, but i want to show you that i want to be really in to it!

What I'm searching for?

In the last half year i made every mistake a beginner can make. I grind up a bit at NL2. Not badly: In 3 weeks i went from 20 $ to 65 $. But then i got impatient. I went to Zoom Tables. Want to make money faster. I get broke. Not really broke but back to 25$. I was pissed of. My goal was to safe time, not to loose time.
Than again i had a run at the Zooms and went up to 50$ again. So i thought i can beat them easily…yeah, went down to 22$ again. No i learned the lesson. No Zoom for me! I needed a break from Cashgame and started SNG's.
The first 2 days, i run pretty good, made it from 30$ to 45$. And i like it more then cashgames. I is fun to see players get knocked out, blinds getting higher, ante is kicking in, step up the letters and "win". The feeling was better for me than only get 2$ from a guy i beat up in one hand. So i stayed with the SNGs. But luck went down. Not so dramatic, but lets say break even a ahort time.
For the last month now i like constantly playing MTT's (taking me closer to my EPT-goal ). Same things i like in SNG, but even a bit more funny for me. And now i know this is the format i want to succeed in. I'm running okay now at the 0,25$ MTT's (45-90 men). I constantly make some money, but there are problems to be solved.

Problems:

1. I'm not a good grinder
- I like learning Poker. I read at least 3 Books about it in the last 2 Months. I'm very often watching Videos and make very many notes. So i think i have a good basic knowledge, but i'm not really in grinding mood. When i play, i play 4-5 hours. Way to less.

2. Playing Alone
- Let me say, i'm a very social guy. I like going out meeting friends and do something together. I don't like sitting alone 8 hours in front of my computer, without social interaction at any time.

3. Scared Money/Result orientated
What shall i say. I don't like to loose money. I don't ship when i should, because i'm scared to get out of the Tournamet. I'm to timid at to many points, for the main point because i don't know if it is correct to put the money in the middle.

My Goals:

1. Finding Someone
I want to find somebody, who wants to improve his pokerskills in the next time pretty fast. Or i would like to join some study groups. Making Skypegroups to play and analyse together, so it is not so lonely while playing

2. Preflopplay
The next Step is to improve my "Push and Fold" game.I know enough and i have to overcome the fear. I searched and made Charts for correct shove and Reasteal situations. They should help me to overcome the fear of making Incorrect shoves.

3. Play more
I have to grind more. I know i can play more Tables at the same time (i play 4 at the moment). I have to focus more on my goals and I have to accept swings and loosing session and jeah…come over the fear. When i manage this, i think i can be a winning player at the micro MTTs.

What you can expect from me:

So, if you have managed to read till here..thank you
How i said i would love to be a part of this community. What i can offer you is some mental training.
I made a 9 Week NLP(Neuro-lingiustic-programming) training. And know a bunch about finding and setting goals, deconstruct limiting beliefs, making positive anchor to feel better, overcome fears (jeah, this one i should do with my self in the next time!). So when somebody is interested, i can wrote some articles or make some Skype session about this topic.

Now i will end here

Hope to here form you guys.

 

Thank you for the nice welcome

Yesterday i saw an other pretty nice coaching from Aarnimesta, i know i made the right decision to come here

@ xxIxx. I would be happy if you ask around

Rewiev Yesterday:

Overall a pretty good Day. I played 5-6 tables. At the beginning i run well, at the middelstage i get suckt out pretty hard and get very tilted at some point. I lose AA against K6, QQ against 99, AK against K8 ..etc. Overall i loose 9 out of 12 flips and 5 out of 8 dominated Hands. So i run out of motivation, but at my last 3 tournaments, suddently it swing up. Made one first place at a 90 men, one 3 place at a 45 men. Aaaand...one 10 place at a 90 men...because my KK get busted by A4 :silent: . But it was okay, i made a +4$ run

Problems:
I have no HUD! I played my first weeks of poker with a HUD, than my 30day trial runs out. Now i play since than without one. I liked it. For a beginner i think it is good playing without HUD and look up your opponents. But yesterday with 6 Tables (and i want to at more, at the moment i can overlook everything without stress) - and after i saw in Aarnimestas coaching how useful it is to see if your opponent is very loose or tight if you want to ship - i think i need a Hud for more tables.

Now the problem begins. I have a Macbook. Nothing really useful works on it. Pokercopilot is a nice software, but it costs 75€. Way to much. I have Virtualbox and Windows 7. But the last time i used to play with VB my Pokerstartsscreen started to bling every time a Hand was dealt. So got a bit of a problem here. Will try if it gets better. If not, i have a problem. No time to safe Money for Pokercopilot

 

Tried this. Pokertracker doesn't like my macbook. The first time he made some "Can'Trunning-error". A friend with good informatics skills help out. After we fixed it...at the tables no HUD shows up. Tried everything "normal" and don't find any specific answers in the Net. So if i choose Pokertracker for mac i have to get in a discussion with the customer service.

 

@Aarnimetsa:

I tried Pokertracker for Mac on Mac. Like i said, first a problem with installing and after that no HUD showed up. Now my free Trial is long time over. I have to buy it, if i want to try again....BUT I managed to reinstall Pokertracker on VirtualBox (Windows) today. And is works, but not so well. After I switch tables in a MTT or with more Tables open my HUD freez after some time. So today i had to reopen PT at least 4 times. Also Pokertracker seems to collect Hands from other Tables, when i observe them (last 2 Tables of the tournament). And then i get a notice that its not allowed to observe more Hands from other players and the HUD freez again.
Somebody can help?

@Neo:

Thank you for the welcome You're german right?
I looked in your Blog too and saw you are trying to make your HUD more perfect for you. Maybe you can show me some things, like "how to get these NASH-Charts in your HUD for Heads UP?". I saw them in the Video on sunday

Poker:

Yesterday_
Yesterday i had a lack of discipline and went out with friends. The wether was pretty nice here in germany and i decided its more worth spending some times with friends in the sun before the summer is over again.
At a earlier point in my life in even sometimes these days i have thoughts like:
"ah..should i go out with friends..i wanted to play poker".
And then when i decided to go out i have these thoughts:
" Ah, why i'm i here. We are lying at the sun, nobody do anything productive"
It was difficult to come over it, till i learned to decide me, and stay with it. When i choose the go out option, then i should focus on my friends (or what else i do) and don't be with my thoughts at Poker (or what else i have to do ). It was hard for me at the beginning to come over these thoughts, but going with my decisions and sometimes meditating helped me out

Today_
Like i said i made my Pokertracker HUD and started running with it. Now i have the problem, that Virutalbox + Pockerstars + Pockertacker are too much for my little Macbook. With 6 tables it is very very laggi, and there is no way to open more Tables. That is a really big Problem. It seems that i have no other choice than buy me Pockertracker for mac. But till i can afford this is have to life with 6 tables.

Playing itself:
I run pretty hot. I only played 7 Tourneys because of the HUD problem i have to solve while playing. But the HUD helped me out so much in close Situations.
- Made one 2nd place at a 90men.
- One 4th place in a 45 men.
- Two more times mincashing.

I made 5$ in 7 tourneys, nice

Pokertracker shows me a ITM of 53% and a ROI of 290% . Yeah...i'm sure....the ROI keep staying this way

So for the overall goal. I broke the 90$ mark for the first time . Only 9$ to go, to play the 0,50$ games
(I know, i can easily play them with 90$. But i'm a bit timid with my BRM and would love to have 200 Buy ins to go up the first time.)

 

I'm so thankful for your massiv and friendly comments

@Neo
I saw the second coaching video from you and Aarnimetsa. You mentioned you are from Ingolstadt. Very funny, i'm from Augsburg . Meet a guy in a finnish-community who lives 1 hour away from me.

About the Nash-Charts. Good idea to simple print it out and put it on my wall. My wall is so full of Charts at the moment, that i forget about the idea to simple put there another one Maybe i take a picture in the next days and show you how my workspace look like.

@Aarnimetsa

Windows is running completely under Virutal Box.
About the low on memory problem, i will see if i can find it out.
For the Pokertracker stop getting Hands problem, i sadly didn't find something on the internet. So, i can't say if the trial Version only can get Hands for 30 oder 60 min. But today i will try to get HEM2 running and show if it make the same problems.

After all, i decided that one of my future steps is clearly to buy me a new PC with windows. Because really all programs for Poker running much better on Windows. But if i do so, i have new questions:

1. Anybody know if i can buy me Pokertracker for mac and than use it for windows too? Or am i forced to buy it for windows and for mac?
2. Can i buy the small stakes version of the programs and than update them after a time for 30$ more? Or can i only buy than the complete product and have to buy another 99$ ?

About getting up to 0.50s. Yeah, It's a really good idea to only make one or two 0.5s-tables and the other 0.25. That will solve my problems of being to timid, because the fells so dangerous, I will try this in my session today .

@Dayah
A few month ago, I wrote a german article about getting things done. I'm also not the perfect candidate in the area of being focused all the time and "go for it, what ever it takes". But the knowledge about setting the right goals helped me a lot to go in the right direction. I will translate the article, add some new stuff, and post it here

About the Books. Jeah, the Books helped me lot about Equity-calculating in your Head. Knowledge about some close call or fold spots. Mostly i learned about math, your right. But now, i had a good felling about my basic decisions and can learn how to 4-bet the hell out of some guys

 

yeah.... i made a really big post and then i get automatically logged out of the site and now it's gone :/

So i make it short:

I got HEM2. Works very well, much better than PT and i like the interface and the HUd settings much more, too.

I played yesterday 6 Tables the hole session for the first time and it was easy to handle. Only some pc laggs getting on my nervs.

Overall i played 14 tables. At the first 10 i get busted unluckily. Run with KQ in QQ, with JJ in KK, with AJ in AQ etc. So i was a bit unhappy, but i open one 0,50, while i have said i i will do it. SO...now comes the funny part. At my last 4 tournaments i get one 4th place, one mincash and at the 0,50$ i....WON!!! . Nice start at the higher limit . I managed it someway to the FT and the only thing i thought about was..I win, I win, I win! Sometimes i get the feeling that my thoughts can influence the game . I broke the 100$ and reached my first long-term Pokergoal


Poker is treating my like a real casino. At first they take all your money, and then, when you are unhappy, they give you some gifts to stay and play further

The 0,50s:
It was...crazy. I only played one, but luckily till the end and with a lot of focus. The blinds are increasing so damn fast. People are shoving much more because they have to and calling much wider. Because they forced to they make more mistakes i think (or saw it yesterday at some spots). Also i think you have to play your stack different. With 4 tables left i only got 6-8BB and i didn't managed it to make my stack much bigger till the last 3-4people at the FT. Everytime i won an ALL-IN Hand and got 16BB the blinds went up and i was by 8 BB again . The "push and fold"-phase is much harder and longer.
Overall i felt like really playing poker

Next steps:

Short-term-goal: Add every session 0,5$ tables till i feel really comfortable with them and than drop the 0,25$
Long-term: Make 180-200$ and get up to 1$

 

Thank you for the grats

Yesterday was a curious day. I managed to play with a friend of mine. First time he played Onlinepoker, i like him really much, but let's say a complete Aggrofish .
At start of the session my HEM2 made problems. He still make Problems. He say that my trial version is over and i need a license (after one day). I made a research at their Forum and it seems to be a common problem and i have to write them and e-mail. So i tried to play with Pokertracker again. This time, PT run very well. It not stops collecting hands. So i get the idea that the overall problem is the second monitore. Everytime i put my laptop on a second Screen i have laggs. This is not the best thing to know, but i will see if i can solve this.

For the seesion:
My Session runs horrible. Everytime a better Hand wakes up behind me. I was underdog preflop. Hit the flop and he hit the turn or the river and i was out. I hate those "Happy on the flop" spots. They are playing with my feelings . I didn't get even 1 cent back. 14 Tourneys - no money. But, first loosing day in 7, it was okay.

After i got busted in all Tourneys i had a look how my friend was running. He got busted in 6 Tourneys as well and only had one left. It was an 1$ 45 men (he get a freeticket for those from Pockerstars). He lucked him to double up twice and have a nice big Stack with 30 People left. After i saw a big mistake from him i said i will help him to win this thing. And..we won

It was a really really nice lesson. We discuss about every hand we played. And i realise what kind of mistakes i made at the beginning and how much i know now. I was happy to see that i can say "i know something about poker" and can help others. Also it was nice to see how solid i can play a bigstack. Steeling blinds, making good oddcalls, increase the pressure. From 30 men to 1 we only at the last 5 men lost for a couple of minutes the Chiplead. So overall, it was not really a loosing session for me

PS: For my "Setting Goals" thread. I wrote new stuff yesterday, but the Forum doesn't show this, because i only edited the post and not made a new one. So everybody who is interested have to look up the post from time to time to see if something new is in there.

 

I'm glad you read it .Yeah..i thought a big post is better, because if a lot of people make comments then you have to search for the next post you want to read. But maybe i make one after another and afterwards but them together to one big. And like a said at the end of the last post you don't need to answer all the questions at once. I also answered one after another and take my time, even weeks to months to answer them and i'm still not at the end. I think their are pretty useful at the beginning of a new challenge, and if you are hitting some problems and loose your focus they can motivate you again

 

Yesterday i was working and at the evening i don't feel like playing 45-90men SnG's. They took so long and i wasn't in the mood, i wanted to play for fun. So i opened 888poker. I registered their a while ago and strated with the 2$ start cash. Played a bit cashgame and made 5,30$.. jeah . So i don't fell playing cashgame too. I searched a bit and find the 0,11 6-max hyperturbos. So i stared play 1 and then 2.... and after all i end up with 50?. Don't know exactly i didn't tracked me.

It was nice. Actionheavy and speeeeed. Really the opposite of the normal speed MTT's
And the player were awesome. The field was so soft. At one Table it fold my first Hand, looked away and after one Hand their were only 3 players left. I didn't have many luck. I think my ITM was about 60%, but i so often ended up second place because i get sucked out in the Heads up. Overall i made 2,30$ profit. So even for a not so nice run, with these field of players i made a very nice ROI.

So i will play them from time to time, when i don't feel like big field SNG's. Their are very interesting to learn push and fold better and analyze spots with ICM. But that is the only thing you can learn there. Postflop they push all in with every highpair they hit on the flop.

And @xxIxx i really need Heads Up advice. Do you have some nice material i can look through? Some videos or articles?