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Discovering a Poker Equity Calculator

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 Discovering a Poker Equity Calculator      Today we are going to be discussing how I discovered actually using a poker equity calculator for the first time. I had always seen the square charts with a million little boxes on them and I knew if it looked like a lot of them were colored in that meant loose, but I had never taken the time or had the faith I could learn a set of ranges.  I had even watched videos of people doing things with Flopzilla and it kind of washed over me while I waited for the part of the video where I got to watch someone play poker.        This time around I promised myself to learn how to use an efficient set of tools in order to have reinforced feedback during my study sessions without a partner.  I knew that involved getting familiar with the squares filled with boxes I had seen everywhere.  As I stated earlier the one I had heard of was Flopzilla, but when I came back to poker everyone was recommending Equilab so I snagged that one instead.      I clicked on
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Learning Journal Entry #4: Finding the roots of my poker suffering

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  Learning Journal Entry #4: Finding the roots of my poker suffering      Thanks for coming back and checking on the next edition of my poker journey from complete buffoon to partial buffoon…  I mean CRUSHER!  So far, we went through me realizing I needed to join a course because I had no idea what I was doing on my own as well as some of my experiences after deciding to sign up for the Raise Your Edge cash game course.      At this point in my poker learning adventure, I had already signed up, watched videos, and taken notes on them, and I had begun keeping a hand-drawn notebook of range charts and learnings.  That is where I get all the images I start my blog posts with.  It is not always going to be pretty, but I will do my best to show you the evolution of my thinking as I went along.      All that being said, we are joining me at a time where I really thought I was figuring things out.  I was pretty sure I was going to be a crusher of 6-max NLHE within a month of starting to learn
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Poker Journal Entry #3: Starting to Get on the Right Track

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  Poker Journal Entry #3:  Starting to Get on the Right Track      The point of this blog is to share with you how I went from decades of having no clue to the beginning stages of being on the right track as a studying poker player.   The point of this blog is NOT to expose other people’s content for free in the process.   I am going to be pretty vague about the things I learned from this particular program so that if it sounds like it would help you, you can go buy it fair and square for yourself.      The program I signed up for was the Raise Your Edge elementary cash game course.   Above is the first bullet list of information I learned from my first day watching and taking notes on the course.   The first thing I had read everywhere to begin formulating a strategy was to find ranges and learn them.   As an educator, I know that the best way to have information stay in your brain is to turn it into something new.        My first days of studying were all about trying to generali
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Poker Journal Entry #2: Misunderstanding Poker Advice from a Pro

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  Poker Journal Entry #2:  Misunderstanding Poker Advice from a Pro      This is my second entry in the learning journal that documents my return to poker.   This one came from a video on YouTube as well as me reviewing my first poker session in PT4.   I had no idea what I was looking for yet.   I still thought I was just going to watch or read the one perfect thing that would turn me into a crusher.   I knew I needed more than I had learned the day before.   That was clear because I hadn’t won the day before.   How could my strategy be any good if I lost one session?   Lol @ past me.      Anyone who knows anything about poker should read through this list and see just how far off the mark I was: -           Flops are fine to check OOP (duh!) -           Flop bluff stabs should be small and IP (I didn’t know the term range bet yet.) -           Flop value should be big IP (I am starting to teach my self some dumb things because I am working on my own.   The whole “bet big with
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Poker Journal Entry #1: When I still thought I could find the "RULES"

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       Poker Journal Entry #1:  When I still thought I could find the "RULES" This is my first entry in my learning journal that documents my poker learning journey.   I started out by hitting up the classic poker strategy site 2+2.   I went to the micro NL section and started in the pinned posts.   There was one that caught my eye about how to beat the micros.   I didn’t think it would matter too much that it was about 7 years old (duh!)   I read through it and made a bulleted list of my major learnings.      The major learnings for this day were that if I wanted to beat the micros all I had to do was start overfolding rivers.   They listed a bunch of hands and spots that proved their theory and they had a graph that made it look like it was a very successful strategy at these levels.   The list (above) included the following “rules” for beating the lowest stake games: -           Fold to massive river bets and overbets -           Fold to triple barrels on bad runou
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Poker Journal Entry #0: I had to start somewhere

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Poker Journal Entry #0:  I had to start somewhere How did I begin learning about poker?     I was never a studier in poker or in life really.   I had, of course, heard people talking about hitting the lab and I was way too cocky to admit I had no idea what that meant during my earlier poker days.   I acted like I knew what they were saying, and I pretended like I did it too.   However, pretending did nothing to build my knowledge or to develop my game.        Life humbled me pretty well over the years and when I decided I was going to come back to poker I had developed some helpful new life habits.   First, I won't lie to myself anymore.   At this point in my life, I know the first step in getting better at something is to get specific about why I am not good yet. When it came to poker, I had to admit to myself that I not only hadn’t been learning, but I didn’t even know how to start learning.         Next, I set aside a few hours each day for working on incremental growth in
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A Poker History of the VeganDemon [Part 3]

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  Welcome back to the 3 rd and final chapter in the poker history of the VeganDemon.  Last time we left off with me having moved in with some poker players and all of us discovering a website where we could play poker for BTC.  I had also recently started to take some rare, sober moments to study some videos on how to play heads-up poker.  I had been playing for a long time, but I had never really developed a strategy.  I had always just claimed to be a winner and assumed it was true. When I watched one video by Brian Hastings, I was sure that I had it all figured out.  Looking back, it reminds me of my father with a new issue of golf digest.  He was always sure he had “found the secret” in each new issue only to show up to the course and come home disappointed.  I bought my first BTC and headed out to the online streets to battle it up in the heads-up games.  I got so lucky at the beginning it is crazy to even think about it.  I had basically no strategy, just aggression, and cal
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