Secret HQ Poker Forums

Missed that Post, fish, thanks for dirrecting my attention to it. I'm pre-ordered and ready to go!

I'll take a little time here to introduce myself and what I want to get out of this poker book, and poker in general. Anyone else who would like to can follow suit.

I'm Alex, a 22 year old full time student (read:jobless) who has a big passion for poker, but with motivation and confidence problems. Most of my playing time has been spent at NL10 and NL25, but I just can not get myself to grind out hands at those stakes because nobody likes to play well and still just make .90 an hour. I play two tables of NL10 at a time now, so I can focus on the tables and make reads. I'd like to play 20k hands at NL10 over this month and book a solid win rate, like 4bb/100+, before I move up to NL25 and don't fear that the only reason I'm winning is run-hot-magic.

If I play more than 20k I will be estatic, and there really is no excuse for how little I play. I was recently injured and the lawsuit has allowed me the luxury of putting all of my energy into studying when I am in school, but in the summer when I want to play poker I'm already at home, sitting where I like to PLAY, and with a new dog fighting for my attention. My only responsibilities this summer are walking my dog, my Muay Thai classes, and eating enough to live.

Part of why I wanted to join a group is to help me put work in via peer pressure. Everyone else is making 6 bucks an hour playing a fun game and learning enough to put them into a position to make 30-50$ an hour playing a game from home! I can too!

Would anyone be interested in going over REM or PSR from Professional No-Limit Holdem to prepare ourselves for when it comes out. From what I gathered from the official SSNLHE forums, REM and PSR will be present, but will only be covered superficially.

Matt -- I already preordered, but I would still like to compete in the contest. If I win, could I transfer one of my copies(the preordered or the contest one) to a friend and get him to join in the discussion here?

Off-topic post:

No problem, Elco. Nice intro, by the way. I applaud your honesty.

I'll give it a try myself. I'm super paranoid about putting information about my personal life online, so I'll just keep mine related to poker.

I'm a winning full-ring 25NL player over a sample that is way smaller than I would like it to be. If I had to guess, I would say that I've played less than 40k hands total thus far. Some might even say that a sample that small isn't enough to determine that you are a winning player, and I wouldn't be inclined to disagree, but I would add that there is more to consider than sample size. Sometimes it's not terribly difficult to compare your play to that of your opponent's and figure that you have an edge. I can also beat 25PLO, full ring.

My problem is that I just haven't put in the effort necessary to get better at the game. I could give you a variety of excuses for this, but that's unnecessary, and in the end they are still just excuses.

I also like novelty, which has resulted in me jumping from game to game without taking the time to actually play a decent amount of hands in any of them. That was fun, but not all that useful in becoming a better player.

Last, but not least in the list of what I've been doing wrong, I've been too passive in my learning experiences. I've read a lot of books about poker, but I haven't studied any of them. I've watched a lot of videos, but I haven't spent time reviewing my notes and comparing them to my play, or thinking about tough situations. I think all of these things are required to make real progress in improving one's game. I've just done the fun parts. Read a book, play a few hands, them jump to another game or book because it seemed more fun than studying.

Well, that was cathartic.

I'm ready to jump in and do the work now. I'm ready to take an active approach instead of a passive one. It just so happened that this book was about to be released when I realized all of this, and I believe that I learn a lot better from books than I do videos, and the book looks to be extremely relevant to my needs, so that's why I opted for this path instead of using the resources already available to me.

I love poker, and I'm looking forward to crushing my way up the stakes.

On-topic post:

Okay, so we're less than a week away from release, and we have a small and growing group. Fantastic.

I was thinking about how we might go about things, and I have a few things I want to bring up.

It looks like the people on the book's official forums will be creating study groups and doing something like a chapter a week. If they do, I think we should participate in those threads instead of creating our own study schedule and threads. By doing this, we have the opportunity to interact with all three authors instead of just harrasing Matt with a ton of questions. Otherwise, we'd probably end up asking a bunch of questions that he or the other authors have already answered on the other forums. We also get the benefit of reading questions that others outside of DC have asked that maybe we wouldn't have thought of. I'm willing to take the responsibility of linking their threads in our team thread and keeping everyone up to date on the schedule if people think this is a good idea.

On the DC side of things, we can use our thread for extra projects that aren't included in the book's offical study group. Things like videos, sweat sessions, posting hands, and whatever we come up with. One idea I have is that each time we reach a new section in the study group, we can each try and find a few hands related to whatever concept we are studying and post them in the thread to discuss them and get feedback. So if we're on a section relating to when to employ pot control, we could each post a few hands from a recent session where we tried to do so and generate some discussion on how we did.

I'd like to start a new thread around release time so that we can have a new thread title and a description of what we plan to do. This well help new potential members quickly decide if they would like to particpate in our group. I'll link the threads to avoid confusion.

I'd like feedback from everyone about using the book's official forums for the study group. Now would also be a great time for people to throw out their ideas of what else we can do besides just standard study group stuff so that I can include it in the original post of the new thread.

Thoughts?

Hey guys
I never knew of the book until now but for the price it seems like a steal so id love to join the group , how many have we got already ?

Personaly i think having our own study group would be great and we can go along with the official site forum group , im guessing that group may grow to be very large where as here we can get a feel for how others are doing and get to know there taught process , i think we should study along by chapter here to , it should help us get an even better understanding of each chapter and if we have questions maybe Matt might offer to help us out or we can ask our own/other DC coachs to join in with spots we may like to hear another view on.

I think the idea of posting hands in realation to each chapter / topic is great , along with this i think theres lots of things we can do as a group , such as each week 1 member is picked to make a video upload it on DC and other members comment / the group watchs the vid together and discuss , also each week members can be paired up to do there own sweat sessions or video swaps , i think sweat sessions can be hard to follow along so for example if i was teamed up with you fishtastic for the first week id like it if we both record a video session and we both watch over the session together and dicuss the hands as they play out allowing us to pause where needed.

Lastly a little about me , im 22 , 50nl player , been watching/taking notes/studing DC vids pretty solidly for the last 2 months , have done a group caoching course and looking to grind up the limits to make an earning from poker

Add me on skype sean.mcdermott3

I like this idea. We can gain from the greater volume that we have in the official SSNLHE thread, and then retreat back here to our secret hideaway to glean even more from the book and give/take a more focused look on our individual problems and hands.

We should create an accountability system when we start the new thread. On sunday (or monday or any agreeable day really) we make Hand Volume goals, and we update each other on our progesss throughout the week. It will be harder to ignore the fact that my last session was a week ago, and my session today was only 200 hands when I have to admit it to myself and my friends. I think motivation is a huge problem for MANY people in our shoes, and I don't know about the rest of you, but I can happily spend time in front of my computer doing non-productive stuff, so the pull to take "just a quick break" that turns into me wasting the rest of my day is pretty strong.

As far as volume goes ... gulp ... I have 3k hands since may! I probably spend 85% of my poker time studying and 15% actually playing -- not good! I am inundating myself with theory, but without practicing I forget what I learn, or confuse it. I need to solidify theory that I learn with VOLUME OF HANDS PLAYED, and then review my sessions to see more spots where I can evolve my game.

Another idea: weekly or bi-weekly video session reviews. We could pair up and get a session review sent off to our partners and then rotate pairs each week. I'd be happy to keep a spreadsheet on my desktop that can track who has been paired with who if our group gets large enough.

i think sweat sessions can be hard to follow along so for example if i was teamed up with you fishtastic for the first week id like it if we both record a video session and we both watch over the session together and dicuss the hands as they play out allowing us to pause where needed.

This may be a better idea. Have each people go through the video hand by hand via AIM or an mibbit chat room, for example, and check it out. We could also find a time for all of us to meet up live and go over one player's session as a group, and we can bring up hands that are interesting and discuss them with the entire group.

We should create an accountability system when we start the new thread. On sunday (or monday or any agreeable day really) we make Hand Volume goals, and we update each other on our progesss throughout the week. It will be harder to ignore the fact that my last session was a week ago, and my session today was only 200 hands when I have to admit it to myself and my friends.

Is the new tread going to be just for the studygroup of the book ? and this tread is for the rest ?

Hand volume goals = great idea , maybe along with being paired up , we could try and do a group session on the video thats uploaded to DC , watch and talk about it through skype

Someone should draw out some sort of a plan .. (cough) elcholodeamor (cough)

Welcome aboard, shades.

Is the new tread going to be just for the studygroup of the book ? and this tread is for the rest ?

No, we'll just have one thread for everything. This thread will be abandoned. The purpose for that would be to have an updated thread title and an original post that clearly states the activities we plan to do as a group.

So, thus far, here are the ideas we have:

Participation in the study groups on the SSNLHE forums, along with additional discussion in our own DC thread.
Making goals of finding recent hands that relate to concepts we are currently working on and posting them for review, discussion, and feedback.
Sweat sessions.
Recording videos and discussing them in whatever way is convenient (aim, skype, forum, whatever works).
Hand volume goals and updates.
Your idea here.

Still open for suggestions.

I think that it's important to state that all of these are optional. Some people here may only want to discuss the book and not participate in these extra activities, and I think that's fine. For example, I would not be up for creating a video of my own play because I would currently prefer to keep my screen name to myself, but I would gladly participate in the video reviews and discussion. I also have an awful work schedule, so I likely wouldn't be able to make skype calls and the like. It's up to each individual to decide their own level of commitment and participation. I don't want people feeling like they can't participate in the group because they don't want to make videos or whatever.

Another option for the videos would be to upload it to the member video section like most people do, and then just posting a link to your video in our thread. That way everyone from the team could go and watch your video and comment, and you could also get feedback from people who aren't on the team.

Would anyone be interested in going over REM or PSR from Professional No-Limit Holdem to prepare ourselves for when it comes out. From what I gathered from the official SSNLHE forums, REM and PSR will be present, but will only be covered superficially.

If anyone wants to tackle this, there's a great SPR review section titled "SPR - Putting It All Together" on page 257 of PNL v1.

Matt -- I already preordered, but I would still like to compete in the contest. If I win, could I transfer one of my copies(the preordered or the contest one) to a friend and get him to join in the discussion here?

Sure or we'll refund your money, whatever works better for you.

I think having our own group here would be beneficial. Smaller group = more interaction. I'd add that I'm more into discussing concepts and examples than sweating or recording videos due to time constraints.

In terms of what I bring to the table I'm a winning player over 100k hands of 100 and 200nl 6max, although my winrate at 100nl is far higher than 200nl.

I'm looking to understand where I'm going wrong, how to think more clearly about why I am doing things and how to beat the other regs at 200nl rather than just sucking up the donations of fish.

I play about 10-15k hands if it's a good month.

I think it is important to keep everything OPTIONAL so that we do not lose out on members. So, yes Identifier, it perfectly cool if you just want to use the thread to disuss concepts and examples. If we decided to go the One person make a video and the rest of the group sweat, of course you don't have to join in on the sweat.

However, you DO benefit from the sweat session that you don't take part in because we will find examples of hands that pertain to what we are currently studying in the forum and post them in the thread!

Just pre-ordered it, can't wait 'til tuesday!!!!!!!!