Deconstructing .... jbravado

Ste05

jbravado is next up according to this thread.

Same Rules:

There can be NO flaming, this isn't a chance for people to have a shot at who ever goes in. Entrants to the Deconstructing series will have their thick skins on but forum rule breaches will be dealt swiftly and harshly with by a 1 week ban, so you have all been warned.

Just to spell it out: NO PERSONAL ATTACKS, criticise and critique his game and NOTHING else!

Keep it constructive and good luck jbravado.

Requiem4adream

Played with you twice, both times you were drunk or on the way, and both times had a mountain of chips and an ultra aggressive strategy! Tough to deconstruct it, hmmmm, Maybe play drunk more!! Just to add you struck me as a nice guy! Getting this off on a positive note, gl!

Lazare

More or less echo what R4aD said. You're one of the funniest people I've ever met, that time railing you at JP's IO sat, with your cut off hoody, was some of the best fun I've ever had. You and halfbaked were slap bang in the middle of 36 hour wild degeneracy (you chopped that Sat sh1t faced! v impressive).

I've only played with you once (tourney @ Lukes), you had a few on board that night too, and weren't taking it seriously enough for critique.

Loving your little snapshot trip reports in the BB thread, please post more, and enjoy the rest of your travels.

Conor.

BigCityBanker

lol, no hope.

bops

we only played once afaik - you were very nice, very good, and very ****faced - hmmmm me thinks there is a pattern emerging here??

Macspower

Sam your onw of the most difficult players to play against in cash when you have chips.... I really dont want a sober or drunk Jbravado on my left with chips....

talent by the bucket.... degeneracy by the tonne

love ya.....btw

Flushdraw

You could lose a €100 pot and go tilt off €1500 then do the same again on roulette!

Once you control that you'll be laughin! I wouldnt even try to deconstruct your game..Sam is Sam and i dont think you could ever take away or change what you have in your game...You wouldn't feel right playing TAG or anything even close...stick to the way you play and just pray you run hot!

Also a tough opponent and a disaster when drunk but a nice guy to have at the table. Also enjoying your tales of the darkside in the BB thread!

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

AKQJ10

Simply the best

smoothcall

your degeneracy is somethin to aspire to, hope the travels are goin well

58o

Terrible video poker player.

bottom feeder

Sam you have a great understanding of the game and are a very good player BUT.... i think if you cut out the drinking while playing and maybe control your tilt a weeee bit, "says the biggest tilt monkey going lol" you'd be a consistent winning player.

Thats it mate good luck on your travels !

jbravado

58o wrote: »

Terrible video poker player.

LOL.

Just saw this now as in airport enroute to Nz. I think I have played with almost everyone who posts here at some point or another and would love to hear some genuine critiques from those I have played LITERALLY thousands of hands with- Buchan, Bcb, MIck Ste, MIck The lip, the certifiable ones etc etc.
Please be as harsh as you want Im not easily offended and while I appreciate all the nice comments I hope at some stage to graduate from degen spin monkey to decent player in its own right.

AKQJ10

You obv need to cut out playing when on the booze if you wanna take it seriously. I've never seen anyone tilt as bad as you tilted one night in the jackpot. You were tipping the dealer 20quid a hand whether u won or lost. Whilst your speechplay is sometimes great, sometimes it gives away your hand completely, id say in the balance you should probably cut out the speechplay.

Your a very good reader of players and when you are taking it seriously one of the worst players i can imagine to have on my left. Good luck on the travels.

ianmc38

I hope you havnt legged it with the wardrobes you sly dog.

El Stuntman

same as the other folks; you play good but tilt bad

dunno where you will exercise (or should that be exorcise?) the poker demons in NZ, maybe that's a good thing - enjoy!

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

Idoubtit

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Ultimately, the grimness isn't worth it.

Fairly sums it up

I was lucky enough to be there when it all began. You wouldn't be half the poker player you are now if it wasn't for me!

Haven't played proper poker with you in ages tho so, as much as I'd love to, I cant criticise. When you come back I'll head into the jackpot and school you like the old days. I'll see if I can't keep you away from that spinny thing too.

Oh yeh and you scratch your nose when you get a big hand...

Let us know how NZ is going

TommyGunne

Have played with you very little but you are a legend of a man. Read situations very well and very aggro but well timed.

The Al Lad

bops wrote: »

we only played once afaik - you were very nice, very good, and very ****faced - hmmmm me thinks there is a pattern emerging here??

.

Lazare wrote: »

that time railing you at JP's IO sat, with your cut off hoody, was some of the best fun I've ever had. You and halfbaked were slap bang in the middle of 36 hour wild degeneracy (you chopped that Sat sh1t faced! v impressive).

Conor.

I was to your immediate right in this tournament and when I got moved to your table at first you fcuking wrecked my head, 15 minutes later I was pi$$ing myself laughing at you and your antics, dogging people and then muttering "yeah gg, no good, I win, good luck, next hand please..." in one sentence, all in half a jumper aswell:D

funny stuff

bottom feeder

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

On a serious note, your "spin and win" tendencies are not a good thing. At all.

Doesn't matter how well you can play for a session; or part of a session; or for a few hands in a session. You are respected by everyone who plays with you I should think because:

- you are a genuinely nice fella;
- you are a tough customer when you are focused and not on tilt;

But respect and flashes of brilliance still equal bustoville if you are playing:

- underolled;
- unfocused;
- tired / drunk;
- too much;

You aren't the only good young live player who plays underfunded (I've done it myself sure) but it really isn't clever. I'm sure it would be scary if you added up the amount of money you lost through:

- entry fees for tournaments where you had no desire to be playing them;
- roulette; props; coin tossing; flipping; other gambling;
- badly played cash hands where you are in tilt / tired mode;

Obviously, your willingness to gamble does help your game and is part of what makes your flashes of brilliance quite brilliant. But as an overall, massive leaks like that will have to be curbed if you want to make some solid long - term money out of the game.

Part of the problem is that you like have fun and enjoy the game and I can understand that. However, you need to balance that with the times you've needed to take a lend off the likes of Victor for a taxi home; the times you have done hundreds and hundreds of euro to rubbish players. Ultimately, the grimness isn't worth it.

If I needed to turn €500 into 10k in a week you would be my first choice to do it for me if you were willing. But that might not be a goiod thing if you take a step back and consider things objectively.

---

Anyway, all of the above is stuff you are probably well aware of. Hope you are having a blast travelling. Stay safe.

HARSH but true !

BuChan

I personally think the wheel is your biggest enemy. the booze and the wheel. the occasional spew poker session would be mush easier to absorb minus that stinking wheel. i really don't have many criticisms of your game and i don't think they are eating into your profits much anyway. it's more a personal crusade against degeneracy that you need! you can occasionally be guilty of the strong when weak, weak when strong scenario. your shortstack cash game is a bit spewy. and like lloyd said i think you should stop buying into tournaments you have no intention of taking seriously (i don't think you should quit tournaments though, just play only decent ones and focus.)

"hey you there, mr. kettle! get it together you black bastard!"

Trippie

BuChan wrote: »

"hey you there, mr. kettle! get it together you black bastard!"

lol

Total RJD...

smoothcall

Well sam as people have pointed out your problem isnt really th game itself its the wheel. ive said this to ya many a time.
Id like to pick things in your game but as most of the hands ive played wit you i was also drunk so cant help ya too much.

AKQJ10 wrote: »

Whilst your speechplay is sometimes great, sometimes it gives away your hand completely, id say in the balance you should probably cut out the speechplay.
.

ye this could be a problem i remeber u talked your way into a call when i had two outs, and me sayin " your speachplay cost you" as you were slowrolling me.

CaptainNemo

Hi Sam,

I've only played with your twice. Once was a long, pretty funny session in the Jackpot and the other time was in the SE.

In the jackpot session you sat down with a monster stack (about 2000) which someone said you had recently spun up. You played fairly loose but intelligent, definitely not crazy, and I think you might have been playing a lot tighter than usual or just been card dead because I never saw you put any significant portion of your stack at risk. It was a very aggro session where everyone thought everyone else was at it all the time, which they were, and you seemed to be having a good time and not too eager to risk losing your stack despit talking a good fight ;-P

The time in the SE was a bit ugly. You were on my right and got busted with aces. You raised preflop and were called in a couple of places, then this guy leads out at the pot before it gets back to you. I don't know if you knew the guy but he was on a major hot streak and had turned over the nuts or near-nuts every time he had been called. He was the easiest player in the world to read. When he didn't have a hand, he check-folded, when he had a top pair type of hand he check-called, and when he had a monster he said "pot", always in the same tone of voice. You and he were both playing close to a grand.

The board was 24J and you called his bet, fair enough. What wasn't so good was you calling another "pot" on the turn when the 4 paired, then giving him your entire stack on the river when he shoved on a board of 2244J. You had AA and he had 24s. You literally were beating no plausible hand at that point and it was the easiest fold ever against this player.

The point of this isn't "hey you're bad" because I know that you're very good. You must have been on some kind of tilt, or some kind of mood where you didn't give a **** about money. Your tone of voice and attitude when you got up also indicated that you knew you were beaten but called anyway. If you have some issues that make you do this kind of thing then they are way more important than any poker-related fine-tunings you could make.

I suffer from tilt myself (in fact halfbaked told me once that he's never seen anyone tilt so badly) so I'm not making comments from any place of superiority! I have tilted thousands online and felt afterwards as if another person had literally taken over my head for a while. I haven't found any solution except to get up and leave and go home. Unfortunately when you're playing online there's nowhere to go...

jbravado

Thanks very much for the detailed response Nemo-v much appreciated.

I remember that hand very clearly as I do the jackpot session (where u played a much debated hand with Pedronis which was the catalyst for the famous HJ line " your not a thinking player if you never get your stack in with A10o" or something similiar.

The hand with the AA was as you described -at the time I tricked myself into thinking I had counterfitted his hand on the turn and thus had too much loot in on the end to fold but in reality it was another episode of arriving on tilt/playing badly and tbh it was just a matter of time before a hand like that happenned. It was the first time I had played with that guy and I was actually tilted by the fact he was on such a heater despite playing SO badly.

There are times when I sit down and am so irritated by the fact Im at a card table instead of wherever else something clicks inside me. External life issues affect me to such an extent that I now realise I simply cant play if I am not a 100% happy or at least close to it . I am aware of all this but to some extent this thread had hammered home how bad I actually am when not playing well.

BigCityBanker

I should add to my earlier comment to say. You know your weaknesses and how youy need to combat them.

As a compliment I can tell you that you are the only player ever in the history of me playing poker that I have left the table because they had immediate position on me. This happened one night in the SE when you were playing at your very best, and when you are playing at your very best then you are easily the best live player in Ireland, your not the biggest winning player, or the steadiset regular but when focussed and cleansed of your demons you are the best there is.

CaptainNemo

jbravado wrote: »

Thanks very much for the detailed response Nemo-v much appreciated.

No worries!

jbravado wrote: »

It was the first time I had played with that guy and I was actually tilted by the fact he was on such a heater despite playing SO badly.

I've always seen him play bad/predictable, and I've never seen him lose. People hand him their money, either through trying to make him fold any top pair or through calling him when he says "pot". That night he was running like God though.

jbravado wrote: »

There are times when I sit down and am so irritated by the fact Im at a card table instead of wherever else something clicks inside me. External life issues affect me to such an extent that I now realise I simply cant play if I am not a 100% happy or at least close to it .

This is why poker is a cruel game and psychologically very difficult. To be good all the time you have to become to some extent inhuman, i.e. unaffected by normal emotional responses. If you're not willing to do this, then you have to have some kind of discipline in place that you will only play when you're happy I guess.