GiantBuddha's Wellathon (ask me anything)

You seem like a pretty calm and collected guy

What are your tips for dealing with tilt?

I've never had significant issues with tilt, so I might actually not be the best person to give advice on it. Since it's not something I've really had to overcome, I don't know exactly what people are going through.

What I can say, is that understanding why you should be winning in the long run (i.e. where your edge comes from), understanding how long the long run can be, and being properly bankrolled can help keep things in perspective. I think a lot of tilt comes from wanting to win now, and expecting to win now. That's not how poker works. All we can do is consistently make good decisions, and over time the money comes in.

Another common source of tilt is the belief that poker is some epic match of guts and wits. It's not. It's a strategy game where consistently making good decisions results in a paycheck. It's okay to get outplayed. Everyone does. Just learn from it. It's okay to make mistakes. Everyone does. Learn from it.

GiantBuddha said:

Hey chispa,

I don't actually have my stats from that level, but I can give you some guidelines. Are you playing full ring or 6-max? VPIP and PFR will vary heavily based on how many players you typically play with. But the following stat guidelines should apply to all LHE from 4 to 10 players:

WTSD: 35 to 45
ATSB (Steal): 40 to 50
FBBTS: 30 to 45
FSBTS: 70 to 85

These ranges are fairly wide, because a number of styles can be profitable. Numbers outside of those ranges are not necessarily incorrect, but they're less likely to result from a winning style. I say "result from" rather than "result in" because your stats come from your play, not the other way around. I'd recommend posting some hands when you're not sure rather than worrying too much about your stats. Shoot me a PM with a link if you'd like me to take a look at a hand.

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First off, thank you for all your honest answers throughout this thread. I think its great.

I was particularly interested in your response to chispa, as I'm also working my way up the FL limits. So what kind of VPIP/PFR stats do you recommend for a full ring table? How much do these change as you progress through the levels? I'm currently at $.50/$1 having started at $.10/$.20...and if things go as they currently are will have the BR for $1/$2 soon (I use a 500BB br to move up). I feel "fairly" confident my stats are within decent ranges, but I just find it difficult to find recommendations for what these stats should be for full ring limit. I find that I have all this information related to my HEM stats, but no real base to compare it to. Any advice or am I just making too big of a deal about this? Also, do you have any general advice for advancing through the limits?

Appreciate any time you have to answer my questions.

Firstly...

Congratulations. Hell of a grind that was eh? Can mess with the mind a bit when you dont see the light of day for that long id imagine. I admire that fact that you took the time to give back to charity using a profession in which you excel at. The impressive part imo was that you showed that you weren't just writing a check but altering your life for a significent time in order to help the less fortunate and for that very well done sir. It's never about the monetary amount when donating to charity, but the urge to help others and the ability to realize that no matter what most of us have, but to realize more and more everyday have much less than us.

My question to you will be this. Will you continue to stay here and post now that your challenge is done?

Am very sure people will be interested in hearing your feedback on strategy threads and hand analysis.

Once again well done bro. Welcome to Cardschat. Please stick around. Great players here and a very friendly atmosphere. Also may I say, there are very experienced great players here that frequent the higher stakes that could also give you advice/constructive criticism/feedback or a ego boost every now and then, that can highly contribute to a positive poker attitude on a regular basis.

Not speaking for Buddha here, but most coaches who get paid well to give strategy advice don't post a lot in hand analysis forums. Why buy the cow if the milk is free? They'll post in more general threads (like this one), but they're not going to be the most active poster giving out strategy advice unless its in Drag the Bar's forums or something.

And since this is a sort of well thread, I wouldn't mind Buddha responding to that

c9h13no3 said:

Not speaking for Buddha here, but most coaches who get paid well to give strategy advice don't post a lot in hand analysis forums. Why buy the cow if the milk is free? They'll post in more general threads (like this one), but they're not going to be the most active poster giving out strategy advice unless its in Drag the Bar's forums or something.

And since this is a sort of well thread, I wouldn't mind Buddha responding to that

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Fair enough points made in above quote.

ats777 said:

First off, thank you for all your honest answers throughout this thread. I think its great.

I was particularly interested in your response to chispa, as I'm also working my way up the FL limits. So what kind of VPIP/PFR stats do you recommend for a full ring table? How much do these change as you progress through the levels? I'm currently at $.50/$1 having started at $.10/$.20...and if things go as they currently are will have the BR for $1/$2 soon (I use a 500BB br to move up). I feel "fairly" confident my stats are within decent ranges, but I just find it difficult to find recommendations for what these stats should be for full ring limit. I find that I have all this information related to my HEM stats, but no real base to compare it to. Any advice or am I just making too big of a deal about this? Also, do you have any general advice for advancing through the limits?

Appreciate any time you have to answer my questions.

Click to expand...

Off the top of my head, anything between 15/10 and 20/15 is probably fine for Full Ring. You can play profitably with tighter or looser stats, but those are a decent ballpark for stats filtered 7 to 10 players.

The best piece of advice I can offer for moving through the limits is this:
Don't change anything just because you change limits. You're playing the same game against similar players. Only adjust once you see players around actually playing differently. Always keep learning, and focus on game selection. A good $1/2 game is softer than a bad $.50/1 game. So if you find the best table at the new limit, things shouldn't be that different. Also, try to think in bets rather than dollars. This helps keep variance in perspective.

pokerchild69 said:

Firstly...

Congratulations. Hell of a grind that was eh? Can mess with the mind a bit when you dont see the light of day for that long id imagine. I admire that fact that you took the time to give back to charity using a profession in which you excel at. The impressive part imo was that you showed that you weren't just writing a check but altering your life for a significent time in order to help the less fortunate and for that very well done sir. It's never about the monetary amount when donating to charity, but the urge to help others and the ability to realize that no matter what most of us have, but to realize more and more everyday have much less than us.

My question to you will be this. Will you continue to stay here and post now that your challenge is done?

Am very sure people will be interested in hearing your feedback on strategy threads and hand analysis.

Once again well done bro. Welcome to Cardschat. Please stick around. Great players here and a very friendly atmosphere. Also may I say, there are very experienced great players here that frequent the higher stakes that could also give you advice/constructive criticism/feedback or a ego boost every now and then, that can highly contribute to a positive poker attitude on a regular basis.

Click to expand...

c9h13no3 said:

Not speaking for Buddha here, but most coaches who get paid well to give strategy advice don't post a lot in hand analysis forums. Why buy the cow if the milk is free? They'll post in more general threads (like this one), but they're not going to be the most active poster giving out strategy advice unless its in Drag the Bar's forums or something.

And since this is a sort of well thread, I wouldn't mind Buddha responding to that

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It was a hell of a grind, and I must say I'm a little burnt out still. But I expect to be back to full on grind as soon as tomorrow. My forum response time has certainly been slowed by this as well.

I will continue posting on CC, although the majority of my strategy advice will be on DTB. I'm very impressed with the community here, but my responsibility to paying customers comes first. Still, if anyone has a strategy question, feel free to drop a link to it in this thread, or send me a PM. I'll do my best to contribute my $.02.

I don't totally agree with the milk/cow analogy, although some coaches may see it that way. The way I see it is that every coherent strategy post is a tiny advertisement for my coaching. It's like a free sample. Now, that's not my primary motivation for posting strategy, but I see it as a positive by product. The actual reason I post is quite simply that I enjoy posting. Every hand is like a puzzle, and I love puzzles.

The reason I post less than I used to (I have about 6k posts between various sites), is that it takes time. And I work a lot. I don't usually play as much poker as I did during my Grindathon, but I have a plethora of projects I'm working on: a book (or three), a band, another music project, martial arts, DTB coaching, private coaching, and somewhere in there I have to find time to play poker for a living, and maybe have a little fun, too.

So I'll certainly keep posting here on CC, but it'll be a bit touch and go, due to everything else going on.

wow just read this entire thread , I think I seen it before but thought it was just one of those fun ask me anything threads . very impressed with your efforts and your life in general . THANK YOU SIR

GiantBuddha said:

Off the top of my head, anything between 15/10 and 20/15 is probably fine for Full Ring. You can play profitably with tighter or looser stats, but those are a decent ballpark for stats filtered 7 to 10 players.

The best piece of advice I can offer for moving through the limits is this:
Don't change anything just because you change limits. You're playing the same game against similar players. Only adjust once you see players around actually playing differently. Always keep learning, and focus on game selection. A good $1/2 game is softer than a bad $.50/1 game. So if you find the best table at the new limit, things shouldn't be that different. Also, try to think in bets rather than dollars. This helps keep variance in perspective.

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Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. I'm sure you're quite busy and I'm asking for free advice, but I really appreciate you taking the time to answer. Hopefully there will be a time where I can give back as much as you have.

Paul, you mentioned in a DTB vid that you're writing a book(s) on LHE, sounded really interesting - is that something we'll be seeing sometime this fall-ish? Sorry if you mentioned this in this thread already, I didn't go back to check...

slycbnew said:

Paul, you mentioned in a DTB vid that you're writing a book(s) on LHE, sounded really interesting - is that something we'll be seeing sometime this fall-ish? Sorry if you mentioned this in this thread already, I didn't go back to check...

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I am working on a pair of LHE books, the first of which may be available as soon as the fall. I actually have a book that I'm working very hard on getting completed before that, which may have a broader appeal that a straight up strategy book. I'll have more information on this once the process is a little further along. Needless to say, I'm very excited about getting my book(s) published. There's still a lot of work left to do, though.

GiantBuddha said:

What I can say, is that understanding why you should be winning in the long run (i.e. where your edge comes from), understanding how long the long run can be, and being properly bankrolled can help keep things in perspective. I think a lot of tilt comes from wanting to win now, and expecting to win now. That's not how poker works. All we can do is consistently make good decisions, and over time the money comes in.

Another common source of tilt is the belief that poker is some epic match of guts and wits. It's not. It's a strategy game where consistently making good decisions results in a paycheck. It's okay to get outplayed. Everyone does. Just learn from it. It's okay to make mistakes. Everyone does. Learn from it.

Click to expand...

Thank you sooo much for this. Great advice, and congrats on your accomplishment.

What is the "state" of LHE midstakes games? A coach on another forum has suggested that it's very good atm - if you agree, to what do you attribute that?

Part of my curiosity is based in my perception that good winrates at limit games are smaller than NL/PL, implying that to make the equiv overall winrate, you'd have to play at least midstakes to make any reasonable money or to increase tables dramatically (the coach I'm referring to, though, apparently single tables).

relpraggy said:

Thank you sooo much for this. Great advice, and congrats on your accomplishment.

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No problem, and thanks. Also, don't get mad at yourself for tilting, thus causing you to tilt more. You can create a bad feedback cycle this way. Accept that you're going to tilt from time to time, and work on reducing it until it eventually approaches zero.

slycbnew said:

What is the "state" of LHE midstakes games? A coach on another forum has suggested that it's very good atm - if you agree, to what do you attribute that?

Part of my curiosity is based in my perception that good winrates at limit games are smaller than NL/PL, implying that to make the equiv overall winrate, you'd have to play at least midstakes to make any reasonable money or to increase tables dramatically (the coach I'm referring to, though, apparently single tables).

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I curious which coach single tables LHE. It really depends on what you mean by "reasonable" money. You can make $100+/hr playing $5/10 and $10/20. You can make $20 to $30/hr at small stakes, which sounds reasonable to me. That's $50k/yr off a pretty small bankroll.

Midstakes LHE games are fine, although I wouldn't describe them as perpetually awesome. If you game select well, you can find good games. If you don't, you're likely to be stuck with some tables full of regulars, which isn't great with the high rake. In LHE, a higher percentage of our earn tends to be from rakeback. I don't see any legitimate reason to separate those earnings from table winnings, though. It all spends the same.

pm'ing you

Just read your bio.. pretty sweet that you teach Tae Kwon Do! I took Tae Kwon Do for 10 years and earned my 2nd degree black belt.. how long have you been teaching?

GiantBuddha said:

No problem, and thanks. Also, don't get mad at yourself for tilting, thus causing you to tilt more. You can create a bad feedback cycle this way. Accept that you're going to tilt from time to time, and work on reducing it until it eventually approaches zero.



I curious which coach single tables LHE. It really depends on what you mean by "reasonable" money. You can make $100+/hr playing $5/10 and $10/20. You can make $20 to $30/hr at small stakes, which sounds reasonable to me. That's $50k/yr off a pretty small bankroll.

Midstakes LHE games are fine, although I wouldn't describe them as perpetually awesome. If you game select well, you can find good games. If you don't, you're likely to be stuck with some tables full of regulars, which isn't great with the high rake. In LHE, a higher percentage of our earn tends to be from rakeback. I don't see any legitimate reason to separate those earnings from table winnings, though. It all spends the same.

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continuing this point, I was reading the limit over at 2+2 + the general feel is that 2/4 and 3/6 is full of regs on stars + really tough? I then looked at the lobby + PTR some dudes + there seemed to be some pretty decent games going on and some regs are losing regs, RB pros I would have thought.
What do you think of the 2/4 + 3/6 games is it the same as the 5/10 + 10/20 in that game selection is very important, I would have thought if you 4/6 table then you can game select 2/4 + 3/6 and get some pretty good tables but im very new to lhe, just joined DTB too

Mortis said:

Just read your bio.. pretty sweet that you teach Tae Kwon Do! I took Tae Kwon Do for 10 years and earned my 2nd degree black belt.. how long have you been teaching?

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I started teaching in 2001, just before I got my 1st degree. I ran a school from 2004 to 2006. Now I just teach class most of the time I go to train, since as a 4th degree, I'm often the senior belt.

Jurn8 said:

continuing this point, I was reading the limit over at 2+2 + the general feel is that 2/4 and 3/6 is full of regs on stars + really tough? I then looked at the lobby + PTR some dudes + there seemed to be some pretty decent games going on and some regs are losing regs, RB pros I would have thought.
What do you think of the 2/4 + 3/6 games is it the same as the 5/10 + 10/20 in that game selection is very important, I would have thought if you 4/6 table then you can game select 2/4 + 3/6 and get some pretty good tables but im very new to lhe, just joined DTB too

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Game selection is always important. Even if you're playing $.50/1, would you rather sit at a table worth 1 BB/100, or one worth 3 BB/100? The small stakes games are certainly tougher than they used to be, but I wouldn't call them "really tough." It all depends on your perspective, though. I don't want to say 2/4 and 3/6 are a cakewalk, but it doesn't take much work to find a few soft tables. If you're very new to LHE, I'd recommend starting a bit lower, at least until you get a little experience.

GiantBuddha said:

I started teaching in 2001, just before I got my 1st degree. I ran a school from 2004 to 2006. Now I just teach class most of the time I go to train, since as a 4th degree, I'm often the senior belt.

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Awesome!