Secret HQ Poker Forums

What's it all about?
The MPM is a group (or will be a group) that consists of seven members. That's me plus six others.

Why Middle Pair Movement?
Because we're on the move. Because I like it. Because it's sexy.

But middle pairs refers to a made hand that can stand some heat but needs improvement.

Why seven members?
The reason for this number is that it's not too big and not too small. With +10 members some members might be tempted to lay back and let others do all the work. With fewer members the poker discussion won't be as rich and diverse. With only seven members the group relies on each and everyone to contribute to the group. I think it's the perfect number for this kind of group. Number seven is also a sexy number.

Who are you looking for?
I'm looking for proven winners at NL50. If you have recently moved from NL25 to NL50 and feel good about your game there, then your welcome. If you have been playing NL100 and had to move down because of down swing or bankroll, then your welcome. If you like me and can easily beat NL25 and can beat NL50 okay but have a harder time beating NL100, then you are welcome.

I'm looking for people who are ready to commit to the group and post thoughtful responses. If you are inactive I will find a new member.

Members must be able to sweat other players and make poker videos with audio commentary.

How will this group operate?
The MPM will work with two very basic, popular and effective coaching techniques: Video reviews and sweat sessions.

At the start of every other week a new member each time will submit a video. We will then discuss and criticize the video on the forums. The video can be either a ghost video with audio commentary or a hand review session. Preferable the video should be about 45 minutes long, but there is no problem if it's up to an hour long. For each member to submit one video this will take about 14 weeks. If it's successful we could do another 14 weeks.

Also during each two weeks I will pair up members for them to do sweat sessions with each other. During the two weeks you should find time to sweat each other. Meaning you will have to do it twice during each two week, sweat and be sweated. So during the three months you will be sweating with 6 different players, giving you insight into different poker thinking.

Anything else?
I think this is a great way to expand your poker friend network. During these 14 weeks you will interactive closely with six other poker players who are playing same or similar stakes and you. I plan to start this at the 2nd of March.

Great. I want to join. What do I do?
Send me a PM here on DeucesCracked or 2+2 (same name there) and fill out the information below.
DC name:
2+2 name:
MSN:
AIM:
Skype:
Time zone:
Time differential from PS/FTP clock:
Stakes you are playing or have been playing:

YO, messaged you on 2+2 zane

Hey guys, thought I would just give a little introduction to myself:

I'm a second year medical student, getting a dual degree MD/Master's in Public Health in Boston, MA. I graduated from Brown in 2007 with a degree in Public Policy. I've always loved games and competition, and as soon as I turned 18, I got an account on PokerRoom.com (back when it took US players) because it was the only site I could find that had a client that worked on a Mac. I started playing limit cash and moved into mostly SnGs and MTTs and was about breakeven playing sporadically for a year or so. When Full Tilt released their Mac client I started playing on there and by the time Pokerstars released theirs I started playing $20 and $30 SNGs with good success (ROI in the high 20s on the regular speed ones). I have

Last summer I started making the transition into cash games. I found 6max to be much deeper and the situations more interesting and felt like there was a much higher ceiling in terms of how much I could improve. I dual-booted Vista on my Mac so that I could use HEM and other software tools. I've been a CR member since April 2008 and a DC member for about a month. Because of my studies, I probably only spend about 5 hours a week playing poker, but I spend a lot more than that actively thinking about the game, whether watching videos, reading books, or talking with friends.

I've been looking for a more active way to improve my game and I felt like a study group would be an ideal way to go about this. Can't wait to work with you guys.

Hi guys,

I'm Gowardo and, as you might already know, I'm one of the members of The MPM. Here's some info about myself.

Background:

I was born in Italy and lived there until age 18, then I moved over to the UK, where I currently live in London, to study BSc Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering at the U.E.A. in Norwich (UK). I graduated in 2004 and was thinking of doing an MSc in Comp, but decided to start working instead. At the current stage, I work as a stock broker for a LSE (London Stock Exchange) market maker and I have been doing this for 2 years. I also share a house with 3 professional poker players who are being sponsored by Winamax and PS. This is helping my game a lot and hopefully it will do so even more in the near future.

Poker:

I have started playing poker a few years before I graduated from uni; I started sort of "on and off" with some small stakes SNGs on PS and moved up fairly quickly after I moved to cash 6max on other sites. At the moment, I have just moved up to $100NL on Betfair and I'm on around 10bb/hr. I think MPM will be, regardless of skill level from me or you guys, a great way to get some info on how other players perceive the game in general, and my game in particular, and also to improve in terms of bb/hr in the long term.

I am looking forward to starting off this week.

Take it easy,

G

Thanks for this guys, I think it's a cool idea to post some info on our poker background.

I'm 22 year old kid from Iceland. I started playing regularly with friends on New Years Day 2007. We played like 4-5 times a week for two months. I was a losing player and knew nothing about the game. I sought out help and bought two books, Harrington on Hold'em and Phil Gordon's Little Green Book. After that I crushed my home gome and profited about $1000 at the end of the summer which was a lot to me since we were only playing $10 re-buy tourneys. In september I started out in law school and stopped playing poker almost entirely. I made it though the first semester. At the start of the year 2008 I started grinding SNG on PokerStars with a $500 bankroll. I made a decent profit. Spring 2008 I started to learn more about cash games. I read the entire Strategy Postson 2+2, lurked the forums and watched free videos on Pokertrikz.com. I dropped out of law school after one year, mainly because I didn't like law school that much. I didn't drop out because of poker. Anyways I quickly made the transition from NL25 to NL50 and have been playing NL50 since with some shots at NL100. Due to bankroll issues I've never really managed to move up to NL100. I play poker semi-professionally, deriving some of my income from it.

Hey guys,

My name's Mat and im from Sydney, Australia. I started playing poker with a few buddies that I attended a residential college with when I was at university. We used to play quite often, but it was definitely amateur hour...
We were introduced to the game by some Americans that were staying with us for a semester, and we played a whole variety of different forms of poker with various wildcards, crazy rules, etc... It wasn't til towards the end of our time at uni that we got into NL holdem (and by the end, thats what we played almost exclusively; mainly due to Rounders).
Once I left the residential college (when I was about 21), I went travelling and lived and worked in Canada in Whistler... Awesome place, but I didnt play any poker while I was gone (except for a employee housing tournament that I managed to luckbox and win for a $50 sushi restaurant voucher... sweet).
But yeah, I was pretty much a complete noob (read: terrible player) and had no grasp of any real concepts about the game during my uni days. All I knew was it was a fun way to lose/win $50 over the course of the night with some good buddies.

Anyway, once I returned from overseas I ended up signing up on pokerroom.com (mac friendly) for something to do while I waited for my last semester to start. I deposited $30 and lost it in 1 night playing on the $25NL tables for $15 buyins (pretty sound BR management imo)... Anyway, the next night I deposited a further $50 and kept doing what I was doing ($15 buyins), and somehow managed to start winning. Within a couple of months 1 tabling and playing for a couple of hours a day, I turned the $50 I had into about $900.
I never really stepped up because as I was playing I started to read loads of strategy from about a gazillion sources (not 2+2 fwiw), and quickly learnt that BR management was pretty important.

Once I hit $900 i had my first real taste of a sustained downswing and didnt really progress my BR for a good 6 months (hardly playing because of uni)... ANd then I discovered SNGs.
Again, I was hardly playing (espeially since pokerroom didnt have many players online during australian daytime hours; id have to wait til quite late in the evening)
Anyway over the course of a year grinding $11, then $22, then $33, I built my BR to about $7k (I only 3/4 tabled and probably only played about 1000 games during this time).
At this point I took the step up to $54 SnG's and was already getting most of my strategy advice from 2+2.
Upon stepping up to the $54s I hit a pretty bad run and for some reason got demoralised with SnGs in general.

They're the form of poker that can build you BR quite quickly, but the ability to make good money at them is kind of limited... I was slowly discovering that all the really good SnGs who posted on 2+2 had long since converted to cash... It was only the top top echelon of players that were not crossing over (i.e. spacegravy, afghan, etc).
I kind of felt that it would be better to make the switch sooner rather than later.

So yeah, I switched to 25NL and went about the process of learning how to play all over again... But at the same time I got a financial job in the city and had almost no time to play (this was in June last year).

Anyway, i've slowly started to figure out this game, and at the moment ive been able to put in some ok volume because the job contract I had ended in January and im still looking for another job atm (financial crisis... awesome ).

tbh, im pretty ambitious with poker at the moment. I still want to find a day job, but i'd like to think that poker can be a substantial side income for me... and ultimately if I can build my skills enough and not have my soul crushed by huge downswings at the SS and even MS limits, that I can play professionally.
i.e. Somehow get as good as the regs that crush the Mid stakes and higher.

I realise that this will require a huge amount of work... sometimes I think its almost definitely not possible... but I still hold that glimmer of hope that I can crush games near the top (im willing to work super hard at it... we'll see though?)

Anyway, thats my poker story in a nutshell (actualy its kind of long isnt it )

My other big passion is Snowboarding... Do it whenever I get the chance (was recently in Japan).

But yeah, looking forward to this study group. See all of you around.

Mat

Im Aquadougs from 2p2.

Personal:
Im Kristian Schiøtt, 25 years, live in Trondheim, Norway. Studying Music Technology at NTNU. I've also studied Psychology at UiO, Oslo. My carrer goal is to become a psychologist specialized in clinical therapy.

Poker history:
Started playing autumn 2005, FR and SNG. Switched to 6max NL summer 2006. Then i took almost a year break from poker. Summer 2007 i started playing seriously at NL100 party, and won. Autumn 2007 i struggeled, and got my first coach fionnmac, a respected 2p2 HSNL player. I immediately crushed NL50-NL100 party for half a year. Summer 2008 i had worked with poker 10hrs a day for almost a year. Then i took 4month break and started again autumn 2008 at FTP NL25, struggeled. Now im playing NL100 at ******* and am crushing the games again. Feel I have a great understanding of the game, like I never have had before. Please try to break it down under the sweat sessions.
Have totally 250-300k hands at 6max NL, with average MT ratio 3,2.

Competence:
Seen 250+ DC/CR/Stox videos
Posted 2300 posts at 2p2
Read 10+ books (the most famous and relevant ones, IMO)
Huge amount of pedagocical, diaries, theoretical, notes and self made books, quizzies etc.
Session reviewed 80% of my sessions.
Read a lot of stickies at 2p2.

Style:
Im playing 25/21, 12% 3bet, 45% ATS. 3tabling. I think 5+ tabling is spew if you arent allready crushing the games.

Focus:
Game flow, especially 3betting gameflow.
Get as big winrate as possible

Strenghts:
-Gameflow: Knowing when to adjust and readjust.
-General adjustment: Made tons of notes on stereotypes, sorted by limit and site. Thought a lot about a good general adjustment against most types.
-Mathematical: Made tons of advanced spreadsheets with EV and EV0 (breakeven calculations).
-Theoretical and communicational: Have a lot of posts at 2p2 and consistently trying to think outside of the box, without overthinking.
-Pedagogical: Constantly thinking about how to learn my game to others by verbalizing my reasoning, and to avoid playing bad when at downswings.
-Psychological: Much experiences with developing of anti-tilt methods. Developed a method i think is a good way of getting closer to your A-game.


Weaknesses:
-Struggeled with gameflow a long time, until now
-Struggeled with overthink for a long time
-Multitabling: Feel uncomfortable at playing 5+ tables
-Work ethic: Afraid of not playing my A-game, which makes me not play that much.
-Everyday discipline: Tend to be struggle with everyday routines

Aim:
Work as much as possible with poker in many years.
Avoid bad usage of pokertime.

Wow, nice work ethic man. I wish I had half of that work ethic.

Hi guys,

Sl8a from 2+2.
Im Jon Slater, from England, 20 years old. Currently studying law at Herts Uni, hoping to qualify and get a job involving nothing to do with law.

I've been playing poker seriously for around 1 year now, been playing for around 3 just with friends and small deposits. Started off playing 10/25 on Pacific poker and just carried on up to 50NL. Moved around different sites but found myself coming back to Pacific for the soft games and rakeback etc. Have only played 6 max and HU and a little bit of omaha.

I play a lot of poker as i have loads of free time because of uni. Usually play 50k hands a month 4 tabling. I find i spew if i play anymore. Anyway i hope this roup will really help me to progress and become a better player and think more about the game, and a little bit outside the box aswell.