Borth

WCOOP Dream Run/Greed
i haven't updated this journal in a while but today i made my first final table of a coop event which felt absolutely amazing to see how much i am improving and how im getting these big results more and more often yet i still want more i wanted the title to say ive won a WCOOP and although the cash was more than winning alot of tournaments i play daily i still felt despair when i got knocked out and i think its not a massive issue but if i had other tables on the go at the time this would of tilted me and cost me ev so i think i need to become more happy to die as long as its the right play but anyways im happy and its only the second week of the series loads more tournaments to play

July Review and Big WSOP bounceback

July was another losing month back to back although it was only slightly losing. I did feel like there was some issues with tilt this month and struggling in the first tournament id reg then that almost infecting the rest of the session but altogether i think i played okay

but what happened that was good is i got a database analysis that helped me find a lot (unfortunately) of key leaks in my game so i have been systematically working through them slowly but surely becoming more confident in the spots and the biggest sign of success so far was earning a ticket to the WSOP gladiators of poker

i actually ended up making day 2 which picks up again on Monday only with 10bb but its a cash that should be around 60 ABIs so cannot complain and all you need is a chip and a chair

i use pairrd at the moment but plan on getting gto wizard soon i dont think theres anywhere that offers free icm drills

A research idea: Skill-Adjusted Tournament Equity

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about whether we’re actually valuing tournament chips correctly. I know this isn’t a completely unexplored area. We already have concepts like ICM, Future Game Simulation (FGS), node-locking, population exploits and player modelling. What I am interested in is whether this can be formalised mathematically in a way that hasn’t really been done before.

The basic question I’m trying to answer is:

Are equal chip stacks really worth the same amount if the players holding them have vastly different abilities?
Example
Imagine a 9-man Sit & Go. Everyone starts with 1,000 chips. Standard ICM says every player owns exactly the same tournament equity because everyone owns the same percentage of the chips. But intuitively that doesn’t seem true. If one player is a proven long-term crusher and seven others are recreational players, I’d argue that the crusher’s stack has a higher future value than the recreational players’ stacks, even though they contain the same number of chips. Not because the chips themselves are different, but because the player holding them is expected to convert those chips into prize money more efficiently. That’s the part I’m trying to quantify.
A possible framework
At the moment I’m thinking about something like this:
Tournament Utility = Function(Chip Stack, Player Skill, Remaining Field, Payout Structure)
Where:
Tournament Utility = the player’s “true” tournament equity or expected value in the tournament.
Chip Stack = the player’s current stack.
Player Skill = a measure of that player’s overall ability.
Remaining Field = the skill level of every other player still in the tournament.
Payout Structure = how the prize pool is distributed.
The idea is that tournament utility shouldn’t depend only on chip counts, but also on who is holding those chips and who remains in the field.

One possible adjustment could look something like:
Adjusted Tournament Equity = ICM Value × (1 + Calibration Factor × (Player Skill − Average Field Skill))
Where:
Adjusted Tournament Equity = the model I’m trying to estimate.
ICM Value = the player’s tournament equity under standard ICM.
Calibration Factor = a value determined through simulation that measures how much skill influences tournament equity.
Player Skill = the player’s skill rating.
Average Field Skill = the average skill level of the remaining players.
I don’t think this is the final equation. It’s simply a starting point for trying to formalise the idea mathematically.

A thought on ROI
One way I’ve been thinking about this is through ROI.
Suppose we have a 9-man $10 Sit & Go with no rake, so the prize pool is $90. Everyone starts with 1,000 chips, and under standard ICM each player’s starting stack is worth $10 in tournament equity.
Now imagine one player has a proven long-term ROI of 20% in this exact field.
Their buy-in is still $10, but the expected value of entering the tournament is:
Expected Return = Buy-in × (1 + ROI)
So in this example:

Expected Return = $10 × (1 + 0.20) = $12

That extra $2 isn’t created from nowhere. In a zero-sum tournament (ignoring rake), it ultimately comes from the players with negative ROI. In other words, stronger players consistently convert the same starting stack into a larger share of the prize pool by exploiting weaker players.This is one of the main motivations behind the idea. Standard ICM assumes equal chip stacks imply equal tournament equity, but in practice the future value of a stack may also depend on who owns it and who remains in the field.I’m not suggesting the buy-in itself changes. Rather, the expected value of holding that starting stack changes because some players consistently convert chips into prize money more effectively than others.

Why I’m interested

One thing that has always interested me is that tournament poker isn’t just about maximising chip EV. It’s about maximising long-term tournament utility. Suppose two very strong regs are playing against one another. Even if one of them has a small positive chip EV decision, is taking that spot always optimal if it risks doubling one of the few players capable of exploiting the rest of the field? Likewise, if I’m playing against a recreational player who has significant postflop leaks, shouldn’t that increase the future value of preserving a stack that can continue playing pots against them? My intuition is that the answer is yes. The difficult part is turning that intuition into mathematics.

Measuring “skill”

I’m still unsure exactly how skill should be represented. My initial thought was to use ROI because it’s an observable measure of long-term performance. However, ROI itself is influenced by factors like field strength, rake and variance, so it may not be sufficient on its own. It’s possible that “skill” should instead be a weighted combination of things like:
Long-run ROI
Postflop performance
ICM accuracy
Exploitative ability
Overall decision quality
Exactly how those should be weighted is something I haven’t figured out yet.

The biggest challenge

The plan I’m considering is building a Monte Carlo tournament simulator in Python. The idea would be to simulate hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of tournaments using players with different skill ratings and then calibrate the model from the results rather than inventing constants arbitrarily. Unfortunately, that’s also my biggest roadblock. I’m comfortable thinking about the poker theory and the mathematics, but I’m not a programmer. So part of this project is probably going to involve learning enough Python to build the simulations or working with someone who can help implement them.

Final thoughts

This is very much a work in progress, and I’m sure there are holes in it that I haven’t spotted yet. I’m posting it because I’d genuinely like feedback from people who have thought about these ideas before. In particular, I’m interested in whether anyone knows of research that attempts to mathematically adjust tournament equity based on player skill rather than just stack sizes and payouts.

If nothing else, I think it’s an interesting problem:

How much is a tournament chip actually worth once you account for who owns it?

Biggest Losing Month + Bounce Back
June was my biggest losing month since starting to take poker more serious it was a big blow to my confidence felt like i was never going to cash again at points but i understand variance and that these spells can happen i made sure to try focus more on studying and closing any big leaks i had that could of been affecting this spell but it was rough felt unconfident and was running horrendous and tilt punting maybe a little

But we did have a bit of a bounce back win erasing this whole loss plus profit for a nice score of $770 in a unibet major most of the score came from bounties first was $321 and we got $466 in bounties

New to solver work
Recently got GTO plus and have been working with going through hands that ive played making notes and looking for heuristics and node locking to make things more like the stakes i play at i recently done a database of flops using 163 subset to look at flops BBvsBU 3bet pot 60bb im gonna write some of the heuristics i found and was wondering if someone can give me some constructive criticism to see if i did it correct.

1) we cbet small alot on boards we have a large range advantage and when BU has lots of hands that underealise equity
2)we check more on boards that hit BUs offsuit regoin more than ours
3) Qhigh Jhigh and high middling boards are the worst for BB as BU has lots more Jx in their range
4)Low paired boards are strong for bb due to having lots of over pairs
6) on low wet dynamic board BU Likes to raise jam for protection alot
7) Broadway connected boards print EV for BU when BB checks to us
8)Dynamic Boards require protection bet larger

First Final Table Since Seminar

first final table since the seminar managed to manoeuvre very well making more well informed decisions there was one hand in particular where i used a lot of the information i learnt to make a hard lay down but i managed to win the final table and take down 20 buy ins
so very glad i attended the bootcamp

is there a reason why we want to add more offsuit gappers into our range when the sb flatcalls vs another position?

Start of June

Start of june has been rough only had a few cashes every day ive played has been a losing day but ive only played 3 sessions so far but still not great feel good when practing and revising but when i play ill make one mistake and it all goes downhill so might be a tilt thing which ill look into

have take advantage of $7 elite week and will hopefully be attending the final table bootcamp so looking forward to that

END OF MAY

I think may was a bit of a continence from the high that april was felt like it was another good month with lots of progress i feel like the amount of time im putting into studying and reviewing my hands is really paying off and it can be seen in the results

but this month has started with two sessions played and only two cashes out of like 30 tournaments which is a really bad start so this does have me questioning if the last two months have maybe been a bit of run good but have been reviewing hands all of today and tomorrow will be more of the same

Satty Pays Off
have had more succes in sattalites than any other tournament over the last week and one of the tournaments i won a ticket to was the $109 main event on pokerstars which i managed to turn into a nice score of 60 buy ins maybe wouldnt be as nice of a score if i was a 109 reg but for me ill take it.

Sunday Shitshow

Played a session sunday quite a big session exclusivley on stars with 0 cashes (won one ticket in a satty) was playing and running very bad but one of the big things i noticed was after making a few mistakes i continued to play in this reckless LAG style just spewing chips which isnt like me but although i knew i was doing it couldnt stop it this led me to having my first big losing session in over 2 months which is okay you exclusively have winning sessions in MTT poker but the way i was playing was so bad so i decided today id double down on studying and do twice the usual amount to overcorrect my mistakes and maybe play 1 or two single table tournaments over the next few days with full focus on making correct decisions before playing a big multitable session again.

Day 2 Mini Thursday Thrill
have managed to make day 2 of the mini thursday thrill sat with 52/69 itm with the pay jumps meaning a lot now so will be looking into 20-30bb icm spots will maybe look at my PT4 stats for the players at my table and see how they can be exploited already cashed for $250 including bounties so not to bad but want more so will keep a cool head and try my best to spin it up

TWO FINAL TABLES ONE DAY
a few days ago i managed to get to two final tables in one day which was quite impressive as iv never done this playing tournaments with more than 100 runners i actually managed to come second in them both one score for $140 and one for $270 not the biggest scores but still good and today i managed to make my third final table this week but only managed 9th for $140 can feel myself becoming more confident and more consistent although i do think variance is working in my favour right now long may it last.

April results for the month

MINI KICKOFF WIN
not updated this in a while been grinding a lot putting hours daily into studying but with not much pay off but today i got my second biggest score yet i managed to win the daily mini kick off on poker stars this was my last decent score as well when i came 8th feel like all the work im putting in is starting to pay off

GENERAL UPDATE
Over the last few weeks ive been keeping up to date with my study studying most days now I've got GTO+ I've been able to run my own solves for the first time and i've really enjoyed although my laptop doesn't have the most ram or threads i can still do some decent sized solves I've been keeping up with my course and drills I've started reading modern poker theory

yesterday whilst playing i came third in a $25 turbo over on UNIBET for $312 other than that nice cash play has been quite slow but picked a few small cashes along the way to keep myself afloat

Thursday session
Played my first proper full session on Thursday of the week i played 7 tournaments with only one cash but that cash was a very deep run in the mini daily kick off where I played the best poker ive played probably ever only managed to come 8th though

I have been doing lots of study daily keeping up with my daily drills and course videos and reviewing my hands looking into getting GTO+ to review my own hands rather than using gto wizards free daily hand

Sunday Session
decided to play this Sunday after taking a few days off noticed a lot of the regs on stars were missing so made the fields a little easier on stars i played 4 tournaments and cashed 2 and got some bounties in the other finished the day about even due to the cashes being min cashes played 2 tournaments on 888 didn't cash either played well though just had some beats and finally played 2 on iPoker Network and cashed 1 but was a stupid mystery 75% so barley scrapped my buy in back being top 5% of runner plus 2 bounties

Multiway Final Full Days
Over the last few days ive been putting a lot of time into multiway pots i have done deep street by street range analysis on around 5 hands. Ive also been keeping up with my daily drills but also adding multiway drills exploring the nodes street by street into the mix i recently bought a poker maths workbook I've done a few pages of this and have read around 1/4 of poker therapy

MULTIWAY CONTINUED

Again I've been looking onto more multiway situations again studying two videos on practical hand examples of multiway spots I also drilled specific multiway scenarios analysing each node of the game tree looking into the responses and outcomes. I also analysed one hand from my own database without solvers I just built my own range on each street.

I went back and watched an older video from my course on preflop practical hand examples to consolidate the knowledge i read along with my notes whilst watching it, i then went and did my daily ChipEV and ICM drills.

I finished my study block by reading some pages of poker therapy and looking into sites with weaker fields to play on.

LAST TWO DAYS
Over the last two days of study ive mainly been looking into multi way pots now having watched 3 or 4 videos from the course im doing on multiway pots ive also been drilling these multi way pots and will continue doing this

A new thing i tried with multiway pots was breaking down my range manually going into each street what action id take with which hands have done this Heads Up but never for multi way it looked like this
I've been reading more of poker therapy to help with my mental game and watching older videos from the course to consolidate previously learned knowledge

FIRST STUDY DAY
Today I started by looking into to videos from the course I'm doing on multiway pots I watched two videos one on the typical mistakes players make in multiway pots and the differences between HU and Multiway pots and considerations we need to have.

I then did drills on ChipEV spots and ICM spots and then went over drills of the leaks i found in these spots and looked at the ranges for the spots.

I then went onto icmizer and pulled PT4 and looked at some spots i though i needed to look at after the last few days of plays and then went into GTO wizard and looked into one full spot from the 109 I ticketed into it was a 13bb spot noticed i was defending my bb to wide and playing to agro on the flop despite the SPR.

I then watched over an old video in the course whilst reading my notes from it and finished by reading a few pages of Poker Therapy on Lawyers Tilt i found that interesting and how i justify plays in my game that are coming from emotion. Ive done a lot of work on DBT and controlling my emotions of the table so maybe worth putting that onto the felt.

POKER MTT JOURNAL

Instead of ending my journal here i have decided i am going to keep it going. BY posting my training each day and playing days trying to keep myself to a strict routine and improve overtime becoming a winning high stakes reg in 5 years i think would be a good goal but to also keep document of all the challenges and days to easily see the progress

I will try and update it each day or every few days and document everything im doing to improve

SCOOP DAY 23
decided to make today my last day of scoop took a lot of bad beats and made a lot of stupid plays I was playing with my emotions rather than my knowledge I think i will keep this journal going for my study and tournaments i will play each week to try notice my improvements think i will try and dial back the $22 tournaments im playing and focus on a range more of $5-$16 ABI= $11

Here is my final scoop results

*SCOOP DAY 21 AND 22 *
i started the saturday with some light study but had a busy day in my personal life but played some tournaments later on some turbos and managed to get a decent scire over on gg

the next day was a sunday but had family plans so had to take the day off which is okay but will grind the last 3 days of scoop and try get a late reg ticket for the main event

SCOOP DAY 20
today was a study day as there is no good tournaments on to play so started by watching a video on down betting and continuing on turns with practical hand examples and made notes.
I then ran a deep analysis on a spot from the $109 i played yesterday
I then done some range drills and daily icm and chip ev drills.
I read over my notes and read some pages of poker therapy.

SCOOP DAY 19
played the most I've played in one day and took my shot at the $109 i only cashed one tournament which was the $22 deepstacks which as definitely been my best tournament but the $109 didn't go to plan i made a reasonable run and got close to the money and played well id say players at them stakes aren't much better than $22 just less punting still feeling confident and think im playing well actually very busy over next few days which is annoying missing the last sunday of the series but will hopefully finish it string in the monday, tuesday, wedensday.

SCOOP DAY 18
started the day with some study a bit more intensive than usual full hand anlaysis and some solver work then i did some drills
then i played i few tournaments no cashes still up for the series which is good managed to get $55 ticket from the lucky dip so running quite hot with that which ill take