Not been much in the way of blogging so far in 2012 for JambeWright. Think we’re having a bit of a rough month as a stable in January and we’ll be quite glad to see the end of it!! Two of the group have moved on and id like to wish them both the best of luck with life/poker in the future!! (I make it sound like im never gonna speak to them again, which is far from the truth considerring i actually live with one of them, unfortunatly).

My January hasnt actually been too bad so far and i am currently in the coming toward the end of my first profitable month since september i think!! Volume has been pretty decent for me to be honest after not starting to play again till the 10th. Think iv played around 90-100 MTT’s, in which iv made a few hundred $$ profit. Managed to come 4th in a turbo for 800 bucks, which was a very fun tourney after being left with 300 chips when the blinds were 1250/2500/250a with 200 players left. 10 minutes later i was chip leader!! Iv also been grinding a few 18 man turbo sit and goes where iv been on a bit of a heater the last couple of sessions and made a pretty decent profit playing them. So i am finally out of make up for the first time in 3 months, and im looking forward to pressing on and winning some money.

On the none poker related note, many of you will know i share a flat with Dave Mount, Aryan Virabi and Milo Mckenzie (very ethinically diverse bunch) and we are currently living in the shithole that is Byker. The flat itself is nice enough for what we need, but its not nice when you walk out of the door and right infront of you is somebody who has more limbs than teeth down on his knee proposing to his Sister. So a bit of searching online, and we’ve found a pretty decent 4 bedroom gaff in South Gosforth. If your not from Newcastle then South Gosforth is a pretty nice area, posh houses, well spoken, well educated, quite middle class – fuck knows how im gonna fit in there. Also, the flat is accross the road to a school, so there’s a fair chance one of us will end up on the register within the next 12 months.

People seem to end their blog posts with a link to a track theyre currently listening too. Well i am quite well known for my love of power ballads/love songs and iv been listening to a lot of Tina Turner the last couple of days and have been running pretty well, so maybe you should try it!

Good evening one and all.
This Sunday saw The JambeWright stable and myself part company and i just want to go on record by saying good luck to all still involved and a thank you to the coaches.
When i joined the stable i said to Jerry that i would try and grind as much as i could, never set an amount as ive never been a ‘grinder’ before and hopefully learn from him. Ive never been one to multi table huge amounts and like i said previous, put in a huge grind day after day, but i thought i’d give it ago.
I started slow and hardly played after the initial 2 weeks of grinding. Had a chat to Jerry to apologize and promised i would play more. The next day after 6 weeks off i win an mtt, one of the 4 i played for a lil over $1.1k and i truly thought this would be the start for me and i would go from strength to strength. Around this time things changed in my personal life, things that i wouldn’t change and again i stopped playing poker, i just didn’t have any time.
Some may see that i have wasted a brilliant opportunity, and they could be right. I should have made more of the chance i was given but as i have stated i would change anything, seriously.
I have enjoyed my time in the stable and its been great watching players go forward very quickly. The amount of money made is great and its proving to be such a success. Everyone in the stable is a great player, a player who at any time can crush a tourney and i seriously wish all the horses and coaches the very best in the future.
Finally i would like to thank Jerry and Wrighty for the chance to play and learn. They are both fantastic guys who are epic players and will get this stable to big heights. I am truly grateful for the chance and hey, $175 profit each for you from my play over 4 months…..WOW mbn to be you guys hahaha.

Best of luck for 2012 and beyond to everyone

Much Love to you all

X

Hey there everyone,

Firstly i’d like to apologize for our lack of blog updates over the holiday period. We didn’t play too much poker over the holidays and therefore weren’t online as much etcetc.

For those of you that don’t know, I am playing full time now and this is my plan for the foreseeable future. I’ve been playing professionally for about 6 months now. I have enjoyed some early success in my MTT career but believe me, I am not naive. I’m aware that without continued volume and study I will fall behind. This is why I treat poker as a job. A job that requires continuous study and a lot of commitment. But that’s what I’ve signed up for so wish me luck

I would ideally like to play for the next few years whilst investing some of my profits in various business ventures outside of poker, ventures that unsurprisingly require a lot less time and effort than poker

However the new year has begun and its basically like Christmas for a poker player…a fresh start with everything. A clear mind helps enormously when i am grinding so this was a particular boost when starting the grind. Alongside having a fresh start with all our online stats its the best time to have some year long goals ahead before you start your year. You’ll be sick of reading goals soon but here we go..

• $100,000 profit
• 3600 scheduled mtts across various sites
• Win 5 figures in one tournament
• Continue to improve my game through being coached and coaching others
• Spend some time in Thailand and within that some time at a Muay-Thai and MMA camp
• Pass my driving test
• Help JambeWright become one of the most successful stables in online poker

I believe these are some extremely achievable goals and I intend on giving 100% commitment to achieving them all. Failure is not an option.

At JambeWright, our coaches aim to stay several steps ahead of the regulars and in-turn many steps ahead of the fish. This makes things a lot easier for both them and their wolves at the tables. It has had an extremely positive impact on my game to date and I hope with us all continuing to study relentlessly that this stays the same. I believe that everyone in JambeWright has the potential to be extremely successful in poker. But I also believe ‘you get out what you put in.’ So hopefully everyone knuckles down this year and we fulfill our potential.

I’ve had some success over the past week or two despite my lowered volume. The main scores are:

• 2nd place for $2689 in the Daily €50 6-max on stars.fr
• 3rd place for $1269 in the Big Ten €10+r 6-max on stars.fr
• 1st place for $1478 in the $54 Russian Daily on bwin
• 1st place for $2120 in the $44 6-max on pokerstars.com

This has got the ball rolling for 2012 and hopefully the momentum continues throughout this month and further.

Outside of poker:

I passed my driving theory test today woohoo! I’m such a tard for only getting around to learning how to drive at 23 :/ Better late than never though! Im going to an Ice hockey game this Friday for the first time, so that should be awesome(Gooooo Belfast Giants!!!). I’m playing the CGK in Newcastle on the 28th of January. A perfect opportunity to visit my friends too . Oh and I went on a date on Monday which went well but its early days, so heres to hoping she up doesn’t stand me up on date #2 (Y)!

I’ll end this here as it’s far too long already and I don’t get paid for this shit.

Song of the day: You’ll never love Nandos as much as me

Peace and Love

Andy

x

Short Review of 2011

2011 was a poor year poker wise for me, I had a deep run in UKIPT Edinburgh but that was my only success live. I took the worst bad beat of my life in the £500 Monte Carlo sidey and that took me a long time to recover.

I also decided to give up MTTs and pursue a cash game career. That did not go well either, I got coached and staked by one of the best cash players in the UK, sadly cash just wasn’t for me and I soon gave it up just before I went to Vegas.

In Vegas I played a few tourneys including a WSOP event, sadly the poker in Vegas did not go well at all and it was a losing trip. Despite it being one of the best holidays of my life.

If I were to go to Vegas again it would either be for purely poker or for a holiday. I tried to do both and it really just didn’t work.

After Vegas we met Jambeyang and later Thawright. This occurred when Jambeyang posted on the NPF asking if anyone wanted to get together and grind, Andy “mfkn” Carlin being his curious self PM’d Jambeyang and got to know him, he was then later introduced to everyone else. We were all amazed by Jambeyang’s results and poker ability we just had to extend our involvement, this opportunity arose when Jambeyang offered to start a stable where he would coach and stake us, needless to say this offer was snapped up.

Thawright was later announced as the 2nd coach of the stable and so far their partnership has proven to be very successful as backers.

From July onwards I played MTT’s, I got off to a great start but then the downswing soon hit and I was back struggling, nevertheless I battled on and have shown a steady profit, my most profitable month being December, finishing 2011 with a $7k month.

So this brings me to my aims for this year:

• I would like to play around 3000 MTTs total
• Either a further 5500 SNGs or stick to cash games as a lower variance option (this is all dependent on the which area I think I can improve the most, I will have chosen which games to play by February)
• If I am on course for Supernova I will put in that extra volume to achieve it. Supernova will earn me $5200 over the year which I’d like to use for Sunday Million tickets
• I would like to finish the year with $50k profit

As mentioned in previous posts volume and hours may be an issue up until June this year because of Uni studies and assignments.

So why have I chosen to pursue these aims with Jambewright?

Well why wouldn’t I?

I have been backed by both organisations and individual backers, and I am confident to say that nothing has come close to the standard of coaching and procedures that this stable has to offer.

Alot of stables have a “you get out what you put in” attitude towards them, and this is no exception.

So what is different about Jambewright?

Both coaches are available almost all day everyday, they are very keen to get involved with our game and encourage us to send tournament HH’s for them to review entire tournaments that you have played in order to identify where you can improve, or possible leaks in your game.

The coaches are very forgiving if it goes wrong too, because that is how we improve, we try new things and unfortunately sometimes they fail. But so long as we learn from our mistakes we can only improve.

There are regular incentives for us to play more and to try to improve our game to maximize profit. The last one being a free seat in to the big Sunday Million, which bomber managed to convert in to $23k.

This result has taken the stable into huge profit overall.

Of course downswings will occur too but hopefully our standard of play will help us ride it out.

The horses are also given alot of freedom in regards to the sites they play on and the tournaments they play.

I get the impression, the coaches almost ‘guide’ us rather than instruct us, if someone is maybe playing too many tournaments at one time or maybe too many turbos in a session, they are there just to steer us back towards our most profitable ways.

We have been introduced to new techniques and styles of play that had never even been contemplated,  Jambeyang and Thawright have created their own unique style of play which is inevitably going to be successful. It is up to us as horses to learn their techniques then interpret and incorporate these in to our own game.

The Jambewright coaches are exactly what you want in a poker mentor, they don’t only beat the games, they crush them, they don’t look to compete with the other MTT regs, they look to destroy them. Together we are always discussing new ways to give MTT regs as difficult time as possible, that is our aim and that is what makes us Werewolves.

What makes us Werewolf worthy?

In my opinion we have formed a good group of horses because we all share similar characteristics;

• Very creative in the way we play
• Willing to listen and take onboard advice
• Very critical about our game and seek advice
• Play every session with the mentality to crush every tournament we play
• Have good initiatives and experience
• Great people and personalities
• Do a damn good blog

2012 is going to be a good year, we’ve all started strong and we all know where we are aiming and what we have to do to achieve it.

We are improving and profiting at a rapid rate and we can only get stronger.

I will leave you with a Wolf themed choon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPQSBDiEgEs

Good Luck All

Alex

Iv had a pretty decent year pokerwise considerring the massive lack of volume iv put in compared to previous years. As iv actually started working, moved out, and have a pretty decent social life these days!! Poker took a big step back for me and im more than happy with that. The year started for me pretty well as in January I won the $8 $12k GTD on pokerstars for around $3k. Had a couple of little 1k and 500+ scores, and managed to make a total profit for myself of $2675 (i have been staked for the majority of my online play this year).

Live poker i think i have only played 3 live MTT’s this year. The highlight of that being the NPF Forum Team Game which i managed to beat 200 players and take it down which was very satisfying . And i think i have played around 6 or 7 sessions of live cash games from 50nl – 200nl. I have made myself a total profit of £1208 from live play.

The money iv earned from poker in 2011 has been pretty nice considerring the tiny volume iv played, and im pretty sure iv earned more than minimum wage per hour so im actually pretty chuffed.

2012 i hope will be quite similair. I have a great deal with JambeWright but as always im being too lasy to take advantage, i think iv played around 10 MTT’s in the last 6 weeks. A lot of this is down to working a few extra hours and Christmas etc etc Id like to think id be able to put in a decent MTT session atleast twice per week this year and get making some decent $$ like the rest of the stable is!!

Im also looking to play a few decent live tournies this year, DTD deepstacks and hopefully a couple of UKIPT’s. Starting with the £500 DTD deepstack tomorow which i am feeling pretty damn excited about. There’s just something about playing live tournies with lots of chips and ante’s which excite me. Also, theres a nando’s about 200 yards from DTD, which im more than happy to drive accross to twice per day

Thanks for reading.

Buzzzzz

Sorry fans for the lack of updates from the team recently. We have all taken our foot off the grinding gas since my Sunday Million run as we were all pretty devastated at what could have been.

Also, with Christmas and New Year we have been eating and drinking far too much. But it’s 2012 now and the hard work has started already and I haven’t missed one day of grinding yet this year but it has been brutal so far. Before I talk about 2012, let’s have a quick look back on 2011 in poker and in life.

Review of 2011

The first half of the year was pretty bad for me as I eventually broke up with my girlfriend after months of struggling and this came the week after the family’s closest friend died which just destroyed my parents and it was very difficult to deal with. I had a poor social life because of the time I spent on my Dissertation and because of the lack of time I spent on the rest of my uni work, I didn’t get the grade I wanted in my degree. In terms of poker, I had been make a solid income grinding the Rush on Demand Tournaments on Full Tilt so when Full Tilt closed down I had no source of income as I was down Leeds as a unemployed student.
However, 6 weeks after that horrible week I talked about, I had begun to come to terms with both things and I was lucky enough to win basically my first ever tournament on Stars for $9k just before jetting off on a road trip across America for 3 weeks. This trip was highlight of my year for sure and was my first trip to Vegas and it certainly wont be my last.

During, this trip I decided that I was going to try and go back to uni and do a Masters as I didn’t feel my degree was good enough to get me to where I want to be. I got on the course and I am now doing an Occupational Psychology Masters at Northumbria University. As I am paying for it myself and because I had a maxed out overdraft from my previous degree, I found myself in October in a huge amount of debt and it got me quite down. However, I got signed to Team JambeWright and an amazing last two months of the year saw me net $30k profit and I now start 2012 completely debt free.

Look ahead to 2012

2012 is a pretty big year for me and I think the main goal here is to become more independent and enter the adult world rather than the student world I am in now. This means graduate, get a proper full-time career, get a car and begin saving towards a deposit for a house. I really miss the independence and freedom of living away from my parents and as I am now debt free, any money I make from poker can be saved towards a car first and then a deposit on a house. Unfortunately this means I am unlikely to go on any extravagant trips to Vegas or anywhere else and I may just have to settle for a week in my parent’s apartment in Spain.

Poker
Well I know some of my friends have aspirations of reaching Supernova or Supernova elite on Stars but with my current lifestyle they are just never options and I don’t think they ever will be. I will therefore continue to grind MTTs on Pokerstars and as in 2011 I made $50k profit across Stars and Full Tilt, I guess that I will aim for that amount of profit again this year. Contract talks are currently ongoing as to whether I move up stakes or whether I just stay at the $55s and under for now. Up until May my volume isn’t going to be anything phenomenal so just got to hope I run good but also try and find the time to do as much studying with the other lads as possible.

People to look out for in 2012…

1. Andy Carlin “irishandy101” – Andy through a lot of hard work has improved his MTT game at a frightening rate. With him basically being pro now, his volume, dedication and skill will see him do great things this year.

2. Alex Joblin “J10BLN” – For years I have admired Alex’s game and his work rate. If he can sort out a way of balancing his busy life then he is definitely due a good run of results.

3. Milo McKenzie “Snort4Eva”- After promising SNE last year and failing to deliver, Milo seems highly motivated this year to succeed. Watching him play is the most insane thing ever as this sicko crushes 16-24 tabling PLO cash games.

4. Will Poulsen “DapperDan098”- Very much like Andy, Will is always involved in the studying side of the stable and has the dedication to putting in volume that will guarentee results.

5. Our Coaches- Jerry and Wrighty are phenomenal players and they have mentioned that they have even improved since beginning to coach us. They run a very professional stable and they deserve success.

Thanks for reading,

Only one thing to talk about this week I guess, The $10million Sunday Million and what a sick tournament it was. I joined the 62,000 other entrants after winning a seat for $11 regardless of the fact Jerry and Wrighty were putting myself, Andy, Dapper and Avkid in as a reward for last months TLB race.

I take my poker very seriously and as this was the biggest online poker tournament ever, I prepared for it in a very professional manner by going out drinking two nights in a row. I woke up on Sunday (not in my bed though yaknaawhatamean) feeling pretty ill and run down. A shower, two naps and several thousand calories later and I am ready to go. I was grinding at my sister’s boyfriend’s house, Rubes who was also playing the big one.  I played maybe 5 other tournaments aswell but bust them all pretty quickly. So from about midnight I was one tabling the SM, where I would be for the next 8 hours. The rest of JambeWright had busted it, so with them all having a % (2 coaches and 4 horses) they were all on the rail and it was all down to me. No pressure then.

I don’t think I have ever one tabled for so long and so this was good practise for the future but I was playing well and maintained deep focus throughout. I had 1 coffee to keep me going but it was all I needed as adrenaline kept me fully awake. As we got into the money, the realization of how sick this tournament was became very apparent.  I jumped from a guaranteed payout of $1k, to $2k to $5k and then $11k meaning I got my first ever 5 figure score. BOOM! Ok talked about poker for too long now, so here is a Christmas picture:

Selena Gomez, girlfriend of Justin Bieber. Think she chose the wrong JB to be with. (yknaawhatamean)

Ok back to poker. Two key hands will be mentioned in PokerPlayer Magazine in an article about the 10^th anniversary SM and the first one is this: http://www.pokerhand.org/?6279871

Still unsure on whether or not this is a shove. At the time I remember thinking that I had been blinding away for a while as I was card dead and that AQ with my stack was too good to give up and I just had to hope I was racing. However, when I got it in and UTG +1 calls and flips over AK and I though that was it. Obviously I get super lucky and make a full house and now I have a playable stack. It was at this point that I first began to think I could win the $2million. I had a huge rail of followers and they all began to get excited after this hand and it really spurred me on to focus. However, this then happened: http://www.pokerhand.org/?6279872

If I hold I am upto 38m and with a stack like that I can be very dangerous. However, I am crippled to 8m and within 6 hands I shove AQ on the button and the same villain from this hand calls me from SB with A3 and the window card is a 3 and I am out in 22nd place from 62,000 entrants.

I can’t really complain about losing these final two hands because as Hand 1 shows I ran very well for 14+ hours and $22k is a brilliant return for the $11 I used to win a seat from a satellite. I am still finding it hard to enjoy the win as I still see it as a huge missed opportunity of winning a life changing amount of money. I was devastated for Team JambeWright (my 2 coaches and fellow students) who had %’s of me as I was so close to huge sums of money for all of them as well. However, I really would like to thank them for their support throughout the tournament and after it. The support on Twitter, Facebook and the Newcastle Poker Forum has been overwhelming as well and this is why we play this game.

Hopefully blog again next week to talk about 2011 and plans for 2012. Merry Christmas everyone.

Hello everyone,

Some brilliant updates below from the team and i hope everyone is enjoying our story so far.

Recently I ordered a 27″ monitor. Below is my updated setup. Still waiting on my USB VGA Adapter to arrive from amazon. Need this to get my other monitor up n running. See pics below.

Last night was JambeWright Christmas night out but unfortunately I couldn’t make it because I only got my cast off on Thursday! fml. From their reviews today it seems like theyve had a good night, ending up in the strippers until the early hours of today haha. Alex Jobling infact came on msn at 6am this morning and talked non stop about the girls he’d seen that night.

However before this i received a text message from Az which read ‘Chinese was epic, loads of food, not much left. on to 3rd bar now, drinks are flowing.’ (What a bastard)Little did he know I was 2/27 in the Big 22 and also on the final of the 22r 16k gtd on Ongame. Talk about adding coal to the fire….i was extremely determined to win to get a jealously 1up text.

Unfortunately I ran pretty shit in the 22r. Being chip leader with 8 left to being out in 7th. The shortys kept doubling and I lost 4 allins where i was ahead boo. I got about 700 for 7th when it was 4.1k ftw.

Keen to make amends I was soon on the final of the Big 22. Another rough final table and 2 hands in I went from 1.3m in chips to 700k by bluffing 3 streets into the only decent player at the table who happened to flop a house on 2J2 with JJ. Anyway this kinda knocked the wind outa my sails and I had to chill on a 25bb stack for like 30 mins just looking for spots to pick up 2b pots. A couple of people got KO’d and i had a really crucial hand with AQcc vs AA on A83cc board…cooler me more? anyway I obviously binked because I run hotter than a russian. After this I hand my 2nd favourite hand to date in my mtt career.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?6277585 Villain was a nit. Figured on the turn hes value betting AK/AQ/AJ so turned my hand into a bluff. Also had the shorty still at the table which he thinks discourages me from bluffing here. He folded showing an Ace. Wooop.

(http://www.pokerhand.org/?6242589 this being my fav hand so far. I called the river here and he showed his air and I took down the pot. )

Anyway after this hand I had a decent stack and eventually discussed a deal 4 handed. One guy had 15bb and was by far the short stack. He was gtd 3k and was being offered 4k in the chop. Being a bell he wanted another $500 which we all refused to give him so we played on and unfortunately for the chomp he got ko’d first hand after the restart by none other than myself. Done a deal 3 handed for 6.2k and eventually came 2nd by running JJ into QQ booooooo. Was glad to take this down and clear my makeup and get some extra beer money for Christmas! Also a big thanks to SamJ for the rail+support last night(hes an absolute sicko who’s mtt game has now been well rounded and he is extremely dangerous when he builds a stack :] )

Congrats to Alex Jobling for his fantasic result on stars.fr winning 2.7k euros. Wp sir…keep the volume up and these results will without a doubt keep flowing. Your mtt game is really impressive and I learn a lot from your structured thought process.

Congrats also to Will Poulsen for quitting smoking. WTG!

Moving on. All my Christmas shopping has been completed mainly thanks to Mr.Amazon. Thank you sir. My brothers arrive home this week and I am looking forward to seeing them! Not really sure if i will get much poker played over the Christmas period…we’ll see.

GOT MY CAST OFF(already mentioned above but heyho). Weeeeeee. Unfortunately I can’t bend my leg and I have to go to physio to get this sorted out. Its gonna be a long and painful road ahead but I will be back playing footy soon.

Spot the essentials in the photos….Perinaise and Yankee Candles?

This post is too long so I’m done here.

Good Luck tomorrow everybody.

Song of the day: Click here if you love JambeWright

A few days ago a group of us got together and went over some HH’s and exchanged thoughts, was really useful and once we had finished all of the tournaments to review everyone logged in and watched me play my final 4 tournaments.

I received alot of input from Jerry and others, we discovered alot of small leaks in my game and sometimes we all put our heads together and made some plays which can only be described as mesmerizing. Sadly I got no results.

However yesterday, just a day after the sweat, I managed to come 2nd in a 5r for €2700 on Poker Stars France. Not a bad result.

This sees me in good stead to move up to the $55 games which I hope will prove to be a very profitable venture.

Poker Stars France is where I have been putting in most of my volume, I really like the tourneys there and the players are even better

So alot has been accomplished in a few days, I have finished uni for Christmas and should be putting in alot of volume now that I have 1 or 2 weeks free.

I also got to bet $1m to correspond with my screename

With this money I intend to spend it over Christmas, I have just ordered the new iPhone 4S, this will be my first iPhone.

I need to get my car fixed as it’s developed a rattle, I would also like to get a hands-free fitted with ipod connection.

I will be buying my mother a toaster for Christmas, not just any toaster though, it’s one made by Bugatti, I bought her a Bugatti kettle when I won DTD in 2009 so decided to get the toaster to match.

And for my Dad I’ll be getting all of our old family tapes copied on to DVD so we can watch them and hopefully they will last a lifetime

Have a nice Christmas and

Joyeux Noel!!

Song of the Day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_426RiwST8

JB fans,

Welcome to the first blog post in my “On the Couch” series. Decided to do a few blog posts that are a little bit different to your usual standard “updates”. I have a few titles for future posts in the series but if anyone has any suggestions about what they would like me to discuss then please let me know. This post is a pretty broad introduction to the series by talking about learning and performance.

 Since the start of last month I have been in hot pursuit of elevating my performance to that next level. I have known I needed to reach that ‘next level’ ever since joining the stable as I only had to look at our coaches to see how far away from them I was.

When I was writing this I left “definition of next level performance” in highlighted which would remind me to go back and think of one. However, I can’t really describe it as it’s not like I can definitvely say I am a Level 5 and this guy is a level 8 poker player or whatever. I guess a good technique to assess this wold be reflective practise where you are consistently reflecting back to yourself how that session went, how that week’s play was compared to last week’s. Efficient reflective practise would include feedback from my coaches and also just as importantly peer review from the other horses and my friends.

Why do I want to improve? The obvious answer people would expect would be “to make more money” but that’s not a reason, it’s a result, its inevitable if I reach my goal. The actual answer is that I have been stuck at the same level for too long and it’s mediocre. I do well at $22s and under but as it says in the “About Us’ section: “mediocrity is not an option”. I want to be able to beat the low-mid stakes like I have the low stakes to prove to myself and Jamie “Obafemi 9” Dale that I’m more than someone who is just better than your average fish as he called me shit this week. Still love the little cutie. In fact, he is so cute. Here is a picture of him.

Puppy -like features of Jamie Dale

 So I knew what I wanted (“next level” performance) and was ready to begin work on it but it was at this point that I realised I didn’t know how to get there. I knew my game needed work but I didn’t know what aspects of it and how to work on those aspects. This level of learning is known as Unconcious Incompetence in that I am unaware I need coaching and I just continue playing in the same way despite my deficiencies. However, from a combination of watching better players (like Jamie Dale) and doing Hand History Reviews with Jerry and Wrighty I enter a level of Conscious Incompetence in which I become aware that I am incapable in some way.  At this stage, I first watched Jamie Dale in the FCOOP Main Event and I became aware that I was 3 and 4 betting too big, I then realized from my good friend Sam James that my c-bets were slightly too big aswell. From the HH review I became aware that I wasn’t 3betting light enough when deep, I wasn’t barreling enough turns and I wasn’t donk leading enough.

The 4 Levels of Learning

At this point I was able to use my new found knowledge at the tables but only with substantial conscious thought and this is the next step of Conscious Competence. However, over time and with plenty of practice and perfect implementation, the new skills should be conducted without conscious thought. This is the highest level of the Competence stepladder known as Unconscious Competence and is the result of successful transfer from the “classroom” to the “workplace”. The sizing of my c-betting is definitely done at an Unconcious Competence level in that I just do it automatically. However, the rest all need to be continually implemented till they reach that stage.

Inchworm Concept

I recently came across a very interesting concept of learning developed by Jared Tendler in his book The Mental Game of Poker, know as The Inchworm.  The idea behind the Inchworm is that we as poker players have a range in our game and by only exclusively learning new things we are ignoring our weaknesses which widens the range in our game and it takes a lot of effort to think through all these new concepts.

When we only learn new things then our A game moves along the horizontal axis (level of performance) which flattens our "bell curve" meaning although our best is better, our worst game is still the same and the frequency (vertical axis) we play our solid game is less.

 In real life a Inchworm moves forward by bringing its front (A game) and back (C Game) ends closer together which arches its middle body (B game) higher.

Top image- Our natural range in our poker game. 2nd- Working on our C game shortens our range and we play solid more consistently. 3rd- We push forward, learn new things and our best gets better. 4th- the result is that our range has now moved along the performance scale (horizontal line). Repeat steps 2 and 3 over and over again.

The reason I love this concept is that I can really relate to it. As previously mentioned I learned a lot of new things last month and made my “A game” better than ever. However, by doing this I am flattening my range and therefore my frequency for playing my  “B game” where we spend most of time playing has decreased resulting in very inconsistent performances. I have always been like this when playing online poker, I’ll play my best and personally I feel my A game is very good, however all to often I will play my C game and it is horrendous and playing like that impacts my confidence, my focus and especially my motivation.

So my best game has got better but my worst game hasn’t improved so that is where I’m going to direct my attention this month so that I’m playing my solid game more consistently. I’m aware of the factors that bring me into my C game and they are the things I will talk about in this “On the Couch” series.

Finally, at the start of this article I talked about my struggle to define “next level performance” but I think a good way of beginning to explain it would be to read DapperDan’s last blog post.

In this post, DapperDan talks about observing a very good player when deep in the Big $109 and how his style is different to what Dapper was used to seeing at the lower stakes as he states:

“Playing low stakes for so long I believe I’ve become quite proficient at playing the late stages of big field Low BI MTT’s. Imo it requires a completely different style to the one I described above.”

The different style he is talking about is that of the very good player and this style is obviously very successful for this individual. It was a style that had DapperDan who himself is a superb MTT player confused but also in awe as Dapper looks himself to reach “next level performance” like that of the observed player. For me, the next level is where DapperDan is right now.

Thanks for reading,