Lover of trading, tacos, 3D/AR/VR, cryptos, and most things Japanese

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” ~ Steve Jobs

It’s been a challenging week. I’ve had to deal with the disappointing court news and I also began my climb up the new chip stack mountain at FullTiltPoker.NET.

After spending some time at the Limit tables, I decided to do something I’ve generally been against: spending real money for virtual items. The madness of the low stakes tables was removing all the fun and challenge of playing, so I spent ten dollars and bought 1.5 million play chips so I could play in better games. This gave me a big enough bankroll to comfortably play 100/200 No Limit stakes, where the max buy in for the table is 20k. Stepping up in stakes meant stepping up my game, as I quickly learned when I started losing – I started out overplaying some idiot range hands and was down about 80k after a few sessions. Time for a break and some studying.

I started out by watching all of Daniel Negraneau’s Poker Academy videos.
This is a great series of lessons from one of the world’s top players. It had been a while since I’d read a poker book or watched lessons, and my game needed help. Sometimes just a basic refresher is good. After the Poker Academy lessons, I started looking for more specific training on the math and probabilities involved in hands and I found an excellent teacher in James “SplitSuit” Sweeney’s Poker Bank series. SplitSuit delves deep into the math and other topics like, “Should I fear the flush?”, “Can I fold getting sick pot odds?”, “Value betting postflop” and the like.

After spending several hours studying the vids I returned to playing the 100/200 tables with much better results. I tightened up my range, listened to my instincts better, and put in hours at the tables grinding away. I didn’t go for big wins, generally opting to avoid getting involved in big pots, and did my best to take and maintain the lead (control) when I got involved in a pot. I stopped playing a lot of OOP (Out Of Position) hands and opened up my range when I had position. Over the course of the week I worked my way up from 1.42m to 1.68m chips, making back all that I lost initially and turning a net profit of about 160k. Not bad for a week’s worth of work. 🙂

The Power of Positive Deviance

• A “positive deviant” is an individual who represents an exception to a social norm

• A community with a problem must discover it’s own positive deviants — people who have independently avoided the problem and thus hold clues to the solution

• This strategy works on many levels, situations, and industries

• Systems pass through four stages on the road to change:

  • prolonged equilibrium – system resists change, though deviants exist

  • invitation stage – chaos engulfs community, opening the door for change

  • self-organization – develops as members look inward for a solution

  • unintended consequences – unexpected solutions and results

– Richard Pascale
via @NickPassig