GiantBuddha's Wellathon (ask me anything)

Welcome to CC!
I am quite impressed with your answer on coaching, seems well thought it, logical & intelligent!

How long did you play poker before you became a consistent winner?

Was there a moment that really changed things for you? Like a certain piece of information or play that just clicked in your mind that was a turning point for you?

How often do you play live?

Do you prefer live or online play?

Which is more profitable for you, live or online?

Do you have any problems switching (if you do this) between live & online play?

StormRaven said:

Welcome to CC!
I am quite impressed with your answer on coaching, seems well thought it, logical & intelligent!

Click to expand...

Thanks Storm.

How long did you play poker before you became a consistent winner? I've been a solid winner since the first real session I ever played (in 1998). I basically decided I wanted to be a pro from day 1, and never looked back (although I did look sideways a few times at various other careers). I did have a rough stretch as a marginally winning rakeback grinder in 2007 when I tried to go from 4 tables LHE to 12-24 tables of NL. In January 2008, I turned my game around and started progressing properly again.

Was there a moment that really changed things for you? Like a certain piece of information or play that just clicked in your mind that was a turning point for you? The three biggest poker revelations I had, in order, were:

1) Game selection is the single most important thing to do properly in poker. Your edge comes from the difference between your skill and your opponent's skill. You can improve your skill. This is hard (but worthwhile). You can find opponents who play worse than you do. This is easy.

2) People have a range, not a hand. From live play, I always tried to put someone on a specific hand, and I was pretty good at doing it. There is so much more information available when you're single tabling in the flesh. But online we have to put people on ranges. This makes poker so much different.

3) There is nothing to be afraid of. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. So you made a play that looks stupid? Who cares? A bad calldown (or a deceptively good one), a crazy bluff (or a deceptively sane one), a whacky value-bet (or an...uh... un-whack one?). You have to hold yourself responsible for your table actions, but who really cares if you called down with J-high and looked at quads? If you thought it was the right play at the time, then it was the right play for you to make.

How often do you play live? I played three days in Vegas last year at the Bellagio. So not often. I'd like to play more, but there aren't many good options nearby.

Do you prefer live or online play? I actually prefer live play. I enjoy talking to people while playing, and I enjoy the feel of cards and chips, building a big pyramid, etc.

Which is more profitable for you, live or online? Online, and that's why I play more online than live. If I had an infinite bankroll and a teleporter, I'd probably play all live poker. But I have neither. Playing 400+ hands per hour of $10/20 is more profitable than playing 40 hands per hour of $50/100. And it requires a smaller bankroll.

Do you have any problems switching (if you do this) between live & online play? No. I fall back into live play very easily. It may take an hour or so to get comfortable, but I wouldn't say it's difficult. It takes a little while to get back to online speed, too. But that's true even after just a few days off.

GiantBuddha said:

3) There is nothing to be afraid of. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. So you made a play that looks stupid? Who cares? A bad calldown (or a deceptively good one), a crazy bluff (or a deceptively sane one), a whacky value-bet (or an...uh... un-whack one?). You have to hold yourself responsible for your table actions, but who really cares if you called down with J-high and looked at quads? If you thought it was the right play at the time, then it was the right play for you to make.

Click to expand...

This one resonates very strongly for me. I think it is the one I am currently working through.

Welcome to CC. It's a great place IMO. I am glad to pros with positive mindset such as your self getting involved here.

GiantBuddha said:

Thanks kryptonite. I have my days fairly well structured, although it's a bit flexible. My basic day looks like this:

3 PM - Wake up, stretch, run on the plaza, eat breakfast
4 PM - Study Poker - retool my game
5 PM - Poker Session (snack at 6 PM while still playing)
9 PM - Eat dinner, relax
10 PM - Poker Session (snack at 1 AM while still playing)
2 AM - Session Review
3 AM - Record Video blog & Hand of the Day for DTB
4 AM - Upload vids, post on forum, relax, snack
7 AM - Sleep

The two 4 hour poker sessions will expand to 5 hours each by Saturday, and I'll try to maintain that for a while. Hopefully I'll get up to two 6 hour sessions on most days by the end of it all. It depends on how much faster I get at video blogging. So far all of the peripheral things like the vids have been taking more time that I expected.

I have no set meal plan, just the meal schedule - 3 PM, 6 PM, 9 PM, 1 AM, 4 AM. My girlfriend (whom I live with) helps with the food preparation.

My daily youtube video blogs are on my ZenMadman blog and on DTB.

Click to expand...

Very structured schedule GiantBuddha, is this your std schedule or it's been modified for the Grind-a-Thon?

Also, you mentioned you taught your girlfriend how to play poker; is she also a pro or recreational?

What type of adjustments did the two of you arrange to spend time together (asking because my SO plays @ the Wynn & there are times when I won't see him for 24 hrs+ so it's challenging to schedule 'dates')...for example, every Mon night = date night to go out to dinner &/or a movie or something? If there is a scheduled date night, is it negotiable (if there's a special game occurring...like FTOPS)?

The 3PM breakfast & 9PM dinner are meals the 2 of you share together (since it's not indicated that you're eating while playing)?

Thanks, interested in insight when/if both peeps play poker & how they manage their relationship around a job with non-traditional hrs.

I can see that you do a session review every day.

Do your session reviews have a particular format? If so how do you go about a post session review?

A very big welcome to CC and what an interesting Thread .

I apreciate it that u are shareing all you knowledge with us and i have already taken a lot from reading all of you responses

Good luck to ypu mate and a very good luck with your charity challange.

Lazmansa

PS:I have a very nice pasta recepie for you to try.

Lemon pasta for 2.

- 1 Lemon(squize all the juce out in a mixing bowl)
- Equal amount of extra virgin olive oil into the same bowl.
- 1 fresh chillie finaly chopped into the bowl.
- Beat it until it has combined.
- a big hand full of freshly grated parmesan into the bowl and mix in.
- freshly chpped tomato,( finaly chopped)

Boil spagetti pasta
Once pasta is cooked pore mixture into pasta and add tomatos and if you want some more cheese is up to u.

Hope u enjot.

Welcome to CardsChat! It's great to have you here, Paul!

cAPSLOCK said:

This one resonates very strongly for me. I think it is the one I am currently working through.

Welcome to CC. It's a great place IMO. I am glad to pros with positive mindset such as your self getting involved here.

Click to expand...

^^^You and me both Caps!!!

Very structured schedule GiantBuddha, is this your std schedule or it's been modified for the Grind-a-Thon? This is my Grind-a-Thon schedule. My weekend schedule will look like this after the Grindathon is over, but replacing the 2 hours of video filming with another 2 to 4 hours of poker. I'm expecting to stretch out my sessions throughout the Grindathon so that I'm playing 12 hour days by the end of it.

Also, you mentioned you taught your girlfriend how to play poker; is she also a pro or recreational? She's a winning recreational player. She beats up on the low-limit games, and could play professionally if she enjoyed the game enough, but she just doesn't put in the volume.

What type of adjustments did the two of you arrange to spend time together (asking because my SO plays @ the Wynn & there are times when I won't see him for 24 hrs+ so it's challenging to schedule 'dates')...for example, every Mon night = date night to go out to dinner &/or a movie or something? If there is a scheduled date night, is it negotiable (if there's a special game occurring...like FTOPS)? We try to schedule days off together, but we live together, so it's easy to take time together for granted. It's definitely important to schedule concurrent time off, but this is easier in theory than in practice.

The 3PM breakfast & 9PM dinner are meals the 2 of you share together (since it's not indicated that you're eating while playing)? Pretty much, except she doesn't always wake up as "early" as I do. So 9 PM is our main meal together.

Thanks, interested in insight when/if both peeps play poker & how they manage their relationship around a job with non-traditional hrs. She does try to schedule her poker hours to occur during my sessions, which I think helps a good deal. Otherwise, we'd practically never talk, despite seeing each other all day long. Also, we get to complain about bad beats and brag about sexy river check/raises while we play.

Stu_Ungar said:

I can see that you do a session review every day.

Do your session reviews have a particular format? If so how do you go about a post session review?

Click to expand...

I demonstrate my session review process in my Sixth Star series at Drag the Bar, but I can sum it up here:

First I write in my poker journal how I felt about the session, how were the games? How was my focus, energy, creativity, etc?

Next I go through some to all of my marked hands from the session and decide if I like how I played them or not. If something is close or I don't have an immediate answer, then I open up Poker Stove, Flopzilla, or another program to calculate some equities, combos, EV of different lines, etc.

I mark the hands in Holdem Manager, but I used to just use a notepad.

Lazmansa said:

A very big welcome to CC and what an interesting Thread .

I apreciate it that u are shareing all you knowledge with us and i have already taken a lot from reading all of you responses

Good luck to ypu mate and a very good luck with your charity challange.

Lazmansa

PS:I have a very nice pasta recepie for you to try.

Lemon pasta for 2.

- 1 Lemon(squize all the juce out in a mixing bowl)
- Equal amount of extra virgin olive oil into the same bowl.
- 1 fresh chillie finaly chopped into the bowl.
- Beat it until it has combined.
- a big hand full of freshly grated parmesan into the bowl and mix in.
- freshly chpped tomato,( finaly chopped)

Boil spagetti pasta
Once pasta is cooked pore mixture into pasta and add tomatos and if you want some more cheese is up to u.

Hope u enjot.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Laz. I'll try that out, substituting soy parmesan, since I'm a vegan. I hope they start selling tapioca cheese in stores, because it's vastly superior to all the other imitation cheeses.

Welcome to CC nice thread if you where going to place these in order of importance to a player grinding micros where would you rank them and whats your reasoning-

Playing poker
Reading books
Watching vids
reviewing HHs
Posting hands on forums

Does this differ for sng play?

Also when you started did you have a circle of people on MSN/AIM that you discussed or sweated each others play?

Mr McCluskey said:

Welcome to CC nice thread if you where going to place these in order of importance to a player grinding micros where would you rank them and whats your reasoning-

Playing poker
Reading books
Watching vids
reviewing HHs
Posting hands on forums

Does this differ for sng play?

Click to expand...

The best thing to do is try all of them and see which you find the most helpful. You can read books to learn the basic concepts, then watch videos to see them applied. You're never going to improve without playing hands, but playing hands without studying at all rarely leads to a winning strategy. If you regularly post some hands to get feedback, then you'll get more out of the hands you play. There comes a point, however, when reviewing your own hands is going to be more useful to you than looking for someone else's opinion. But you need to know what you're looking for when reviewing your hands, so learning the fundamentals, and perhaps seeing a coach review his own hands in a video is important.

I don't see why any of this would not hold true for sit-n-goes, but I don't haven't played many.

Also when you started did you have a circle of people on MSN/AIM that you discussed or sweated each others play?

Click to expand...

I didn't really have any of that when I started. I did some of the hand swaps with other forum posters, and eventually I joined a study group with some like-minded players. I'm not a big fan of sweat sessions, but I think reviewing hands together, exchanging videos, etc. is excellent.

Pure curiosity, I've only heard a tiny bit about the mayfair - I assume the primary game was limit holdem, was it the only game? I understand that several of the regs there learned to be very good by playing regularly in that game - was it due to discussions of strategy among the players, or more simply because it was a regular game and the players could study each other consistently?

slycbnew said:

Pure curiosity, I've only heard a tiny bit about the mayfair - I assume the primary game was limit holdem, was it the only game? I understand that several of the regs there learned to be very good by playing regularly in that game - was it due to discussions of strategy among the players, or more simply because it was a regular game and the players could study each other consistently?

Click to expand...

The Mayfair had mostly Limit Holdem and Stud. The LHE was mid-stakes, and the Stud was mid to high stakes. There was $5/10 HOE (Holdem, Omaha8, Stud8) Rotation game every night, give or take, as well. And on Monday nights there was a $5/10 NL with a 100bb min and 1,000bb max buy-in.

The mid-stakes LHE games was by far the toughest that I played in there. Sometimes it was awesome, but there were a handful of very solid players (by 1999 standards, anyway). There was not a large amount of strategy discussion at the tables, but the games were player dealt with two decks, so you got a lot more hands per hour than at a casino.

Week One Review

48.5 hours
18,253 hands
29,382 VPP

At the end of one week, I'm a little behind pace for my prop bet, but I feel confident that I'll pick up the pace over the next three weeks. It's actually been pretty fun just focusing on poker like this. I've probably spent about 20 hours studying, reviewing, and making videos, and another 10 posting on the forums.

The videos and forum posting is a little distracting, but it helps keep me motivated. Along with the pledges, it helps me feel accountable for putting in the hours.

I did a little backlog reading of your blog, but may have browsed myself past the answer to this question: Did you stock up food for the whole period or is someone doing grocery shopping for you?

F Paulsson said:

I did a little backlog reading of your blog, but may have browsed myself past the answer to this question: Did you stock up food for the whole period or is someone doing grocery shopping for you?

Click to expand...

I did stock up on food, but I live with my girlfriend and she's allowed to leave the building, so she's doing most of the shopping. I could actually get away without leaving my floor, since I can order groceries to my door. Maybe I'll do a 1 week prop bet like that at some point.

I will send you a pm at DTB when I get a chance (in Vegas right now) - but my pledge was going to be $1 for every 1000 hands. I meant to get it to you sooner but been so busy. You can add it in if you see this before the pm there.

Great to have you here on the CC forum, sharing your experience with us.

Very cool on many levels. GL during your journey.

dakota-xx said:

I will send you a pm at DTB when I get a chance (in Vegas right now) - but my pledge was going to be $1 for every 1000 hands. I meant to get it to you sooner but been so busy. You can add it in if you see this before the pm there.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your pledge! I'll add it to my list, which I'll post below and update as they come in:

Per Hour: $8.25

Mon: $2
Mateel: $2
Brent: $1.5
Phillip: $1
Pat: $1
Alison: $.75

Per 1,000 Hands: $5.75

Brian: $2
Shawn: $1.25
Dakota: $1
LastDitch: $1
kmaldona: $.30
TheCanoe: $.20

Flat Rate:

Fredrick: $100

I think I've raised about $600 so far, and am on pace for around $2,400. It makes it easier to put the hours in and grind out the hands knowing that every hour I work earns money for some good causes. So thanks again for everyone who's pledged, and everyone who's voiced their support. It keeps me going on tough days.

Posting to Subscribe. Very generous of you.

Quick update:

4 days to go. My latest video blog demonstrates the dangers of playing too much online poker: YouTube- Day 24: GiantBuddha's Grab-Bag Giveaway Grindathon

24 days down
171 hours played
63,478 hands
105,856 VPP
$1,986 donations earned:

Per Hour: $8.25

• Mon: $2
• Mateel: $2
• Brent: $1.5
• Phillip: $1
• Pat: $1
• Alison: $.75

Per 1,000 Hands: $6.75

• Brian: $2
• Shawn: $1.25
• Dakota: $1
• LastDitch: $1
• Rhodora: $1
• kmaldona: $.30
• TheCanoe: $.20

Flat Rate: $150

• Fredrick: $100
• Scott: $20
• Mark: $30

Oops... didn't mean to embed the video. I'm not sure if that's allowed. I think I just posted the link and it automatically embedded it? Pretty cool feature if that's the case.

That's the case indeed. It's allowed.