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Message: [QUOTE="Aballinamion, post: 5457145, member: 289533"] [b]Chapter 2: know thyself[/b] Hi there professor John Anhalt, good morning, how do you do? I am reading a lot your book and it is very awesome. I recommend it to some friends of mine and they also loved it, great work. Today, I would like to open a little topic about the chapter 2: know thyself: "[I]You won't be able to play your best poker if you don't know your strengths and weaknesses. Just because a particular play works well for one player, doesn't mean it's going to consistently be the best option or line for you to take as a poker player. Make sure you understand what some of your strengths are, and do everything you can to utilize them every hand you play. Conversely, minimize areas that will play to your weaknesses. (...)[/I] [I](...) Here are some examples of common weaknesses and strengths for players. Go through this list and rank how you think you do in each area based on a score of 1 to 10, with 10 being the absolute best. You can then formulate a plan on how you'll improve in these areas if you deem them important to your overall game plan[/I]." [B]Polished Poker Vol 1 - Ace Poker Solutions, 2014 - All rights reserved. Pag. 11[/B] Well, you said here it is very important to really know ourselves before trying to know the villain or the field. It's an ancient Greek aphorism, completely valid today. You made an amazing chart of us to put on it a note that we believe it corresponds to our level. Let's see it. I will put the chart and the respectives scores that I believe I have: [B][U]Aspects of Poker[/U][/B] [B]Hand Reading (R)[/B] This aspect of the game I believe I do it fine. I would say my score here is 7 [B]Postflop Bluffing (R/A)[/B] Here I am a little bit weary. I play at the micros and I found a very hard time to bluff postflop. Most of my bluffs are preflop, then the flop and at maximum I am bluffing in the turn. I have no bluffs in the river, for many reasons. My score here is 4 [B]Anticipating Opponent Reactions (P)[/B] This is a very fun aspect of the game and I love it. Having statistics using HUD and notes of the player we can anticipate their actions and play better postflop. In spots that we could be raising or betting we just check or call because the opponent is going to read this move as a weak move, so we can explore this. I believe my score here is 6 [B]Light Value Betting (R/A)[/B] I have serious problems with light value betting, thin value bet, specially if I am at the river decision. Most of times I check rivers that I should be betting, but I get scared because players at the micros are really wild business. My score here is 3 [B]Tilt Control (P)[/B] One of the fundamentals of the game is to have emotional control, otherwise we can never have proper focus and decision making. I believe I got a whole better in tilt control. In the beginning I use to lose huge ammounts of EV because I was proud enough to admit that my body is weak. Now it is getting easier to get off the tables when I feel that heat in the back of my neck. My score here is 5, I have a lot to learn about this yet. [B]Calling Down Light (R) [/B] Another problem similar to the Light Value Betting. My score here is 3 [B]Bet Sizing (R)[/B] I like this aspect and I believe I am playing much better now that I really started to pay attention in every bet size, either preflop or postflop. I also began to change my bet sizings accordingly to the Villain and game. Most of players have a tendency to blow out the pot, and put a lot of chips in the middle with anything their hit. I see many players that when they are in the top of their range to make bigger preflop raises, bigger 3bet/4bet preflop making their readings much more soft. My score here is 6 [B]Proper Aggression (A)[/B] I am working a lot through a way to find the proper aggression at the micros. Because players are pretty much polarized either for value or for bluff (They overvalue their range or overbluff their range). Sometimes I play totally and completely passive against some players that will bet in the first sign of weakness (When I am in position and check flop, or when I call a C-bet flop oop, when I c-bet flop and check turn, etc) On the other side, sometimes I play like a wild maniac, opening more than 60% hands from the BTN, opening 100% range from the SB, 3betting light BB x BTN 25% of times and so on. I don't know if this is proper aggresion but my score, I guess it would be 6. [B]Capitalizing on Opponent Weaknesses (A) [/B] I love that. Notes help us more than statistics here, because if we know the player type and its tendencies preflop and postlfop, we might be able to capitalize and exploit a lot. My score is 6. [B]Inducing Bluffs (R)[/B] I am starting to feel good with this, making people believe that I have nothing when I have the nuts. The contrary is very hard at the micros (make them believe that we have the nuts when we have nothing), and I don't try very often, to say clearly, almost never. I lost so much value trying to bluff players at the micros that I got traumatized and now I am avoiding a lot to do so. Even players that I had a sample of over 2 K hands played, could not be bluffed, so I really gave up, because I play 2 K of hands with Villain X, I always go to the showdown with a very strong value hand or the nuts, even so, when I try to make a simple bluff in the turn or river it doesn't pass. Players are very, very sticky to theirs TPTK, TP2K, etc. On the opposite side of the street, I am finding much more comfortable and better to let players bluff me, and most of micro-stakes players never know when or how to bluff, they barely know when they have the nuts or a strong value hand and they bet reckless, regardless of the opponent of the board texture, so I started to let people bluff me a lot. My score here is 6 :elefant: This chart belongs to: [B]Polished Poker vol 1 (modified by my comments) - 2014, Ace Poker Solutions - All rights reserved. Pag. 11[/B] Well, I would like to know how can we use a HUD such as HM2 to observe these aspects of poker and improve our game. Because sometimes it is hard to judge ourselves: either we overvalue our skills or we undervalue them. I never know if I am being truly candid with myself. Thank you very much professor John Anhalt for your work! Regards; Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa [/QUOTE]

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