August schedule and Coaching

Hello!

So, we're halfway through August already! July went by very fast and I didn't pressure myself at all when it came to FPPs and points and all that. As a result, I'm currently only Silverstar but I don't care much about that. As you probably know, I've been trying to work on my game.

After struggling by myself through the whole month of July, André finally decided to take the situation in his hands and make the following schedule for me:

10.00: Wake up

11.00: Working time

13.00: Lunch

15.00: Working time

20.00: Coaching

22.00: Dinner

Ok, you may think it's nothing exciting, and it's not like I cannot make my own schedule anyway. What's cool about this schedule in particular is that it's compatible with André's schedule and I get two hours of coaching with him. EVERY. DAY.

Do you remember a couple of months back where I almost had to beg him to coach me? I mean, yeah he was always there to guide me and give me some advice here and there, but actually sit with me at the computer and review hands? That was pretty rare. So you can imagine how excited I am that he is going to spend two hours with me on a daily basis. He said he is going to keep doing it at least until the end of the month.

What we do during those two hours? Well, earlier in the day I record my sessions. Then I take the recording to André and we review it together. I've already had some coaching sessions with him and I'm totally loving it. The first day though, we only managed to review around 30 minutes of my session in those two hours. Just by that you can see we had a lot to talk about. I don't know if André suddenly got better at coaching or if I am in a better position now to hear/understand what he has to say, but it's the first time since I started messing with the hyper-turbos that I feel I'm learning so much.

The rest of my "working time" consists of 2 hours of playing and 4 hours of studying by myself. These days, since I've only been playing for two hours per day, I play the $7.49s. Here is my graph since the beginning of the month:

Towards the end of the graph you can see that I had a bit of a downswing. On the worst day of August so far, I lost around 21 buy-ins. It's not a big deal anyway, but what's interesting is that when I took the recording of that particular day back to André, it was when he found the less mistakes than ever before. Bad variance will come sooner or later no matter how well you play, so I was happy that I was playing fine. That is the only thing I can control anyway. 

I really enjoy the coaching so far and I often find myself looking forward to that part of the day. I also think 2 hours of coaching with André makes me improve as a player much more than the 4 hours I spend studying by myself. Not to mention it's far more interesting.

Of course there are those times during the coaching sessions that we disagree about a play. I think the play is fine while André thinks it's not. Then we put the hand in an ICM calculator to find out who is right. There are two possible outcomes: either André is right or André is right. How does that happen? It's quite simple, here's an example:

Outcome #1: The ICM calculator says that my play was bad, giving away -0.05% equity. Since I lost equity, André is obviously right. Doesn't matter that my play was just slightly bad.

Outcome #2: The ICM calculator says that my play was good cause it earned me +0.10% equity. BUT André has some extra arguments there like "ICM calculators do not take into consideration what happens in the next hand", "I know it says it's good but I would still fold there because of this and that and blah blah blah" (this last one is evoking his super-powers as a pro) and so bottom line, Andre is right again.

Even though our conversations do get heated up sometimes, I have to admit that I've also been able to witness to the full extend how good he is at the hypers. When there is an ambiguous situation, he puts all the variables in the calculator and then before hitting the "calculate" button he asks me what I think the ranges will be. Most of the times I just raise my shoulders and say "I don't know" or I say what I think the range is more or less, but I never know what to say when it comes to those borderline hands. Then, he tells me his opinion. Imagine my surprise when we see the results and he gets everything almost completely right. There was one occasion where he got it 100% correct and I was staring at him like he was an alien or something. I asked him how he did that and he said "Tons of practice". Hm. I guess I have a long way to go...

I obviously have lots of things to learn, but since we starting the intensive coaching I feel that the way I play just keeps getting better and my perception of the game becomes clearer. I still have to be careful with what André calls "the fancy play syndrome", I'm learning a lot of new things in a short period of time and sometimes I tend to overdo it when I'm playing but oh well! I'm really enjoying this new approach overall!

If there's anything more you want to know about my coaching, please leave it in the comments below.

Until next time... See you at the tables!