Limitless road

And so it’s September 21 now, I’m well on my way to reach my 1k hands/day average. Have played around 26k hands so far, and I’m very happy with the numbers I put up so far.

Also I had to cash out some of the winnings as I already needed the money. My actual goal is to get my winnings over $1000 in October, and make the transition to NL50. Since I have played 100NL/200NL in the past I think this goal is attainable, but variance and luck ofcourse have to be on my side.

Also, I’ve been watching a lot of videos, and I think it’s time to put more time in the forums and to take on a coach. I’ve worked with coaches in the past and some actually were quite helpfull. I think I’ll be looking for somebody that’s playing like 1/2 or 2/4.

If anybody has any tips on coaches they’d like to share, I’m listening… :)

A little reflection on what went good/wrong:

Money won: $655
Hands played: 16400

Well I’m really happy with the results so far but I gotta protect myself from thinking that it will continue this way. I have lost my focus a lot in the past, and I gotta focus on the big picture:

1) Poker is going to be my main income soon, I will not have enough time for a job
2) I need to get to higher stakes to have a higher hourly rate —> GET BETTER
3) Stay focus on grinding, get those hands in, and after… get some more hands in.

What went well?

1) Did make a good effort after not playing the first week of september to get at a 1k hands/day average again
2) Did choose a lot of good times to play during the day/week. I was rested and focussed when I played mostly putting myself in a good situation of analyzing other facets of poker/myself
3) Didn’t tilt as much as I used, I can contribute this to #2 mostly
4) Kept on watching videos, did review hands and thought about how to do it differently, and during the play I also thought about nice deviations from my standard stuff.
5) Last point is contributing to #2, I’m starting to eat a lot better. One of my main rules now is that eat before sessions, I find that it relaxes me more and I’m not as ‘tense’ as when I’m not eating. I tilt less because of this, and therefore wins me money.

What went wrong / things I can improve

1) More focus on poker!
Ok this point is a bit odd perhaps, but lemme try to explain. I wanted to get that 1k/day average, and have now accomplished that (for the time being). But the downside was that it did consume a lot of extra time during the days. I had to trade that time with other important stuff. Also I take time off between sessions, a lot of time. It’s either to do some reviews, watch a video, or basic stuff like cleaning the house etc… But still, it costs a lot of time. Now I’m good with it being like it is now, but for october I want to spend a bit less time watching vids (I’ve learned a lot this month, but gonna need less to maintain or improve) and trade that for doing other important tasks, especially those which I can do for hours in a row. Poker is really hard to keep doing after 1.5 hours for me (up to this point), and so I’m going to try to plan sessions not in succession but around other activities. Ofcourse I have no idea if this is beneficial, and it might even hurt poker (losing focus), but the other tasks are pretty significant and they got to be done.
2) Don’t give up when I reach my goals, set a new one!
3) Spent a bit too much time goofing off in the beginning of the month, should happen a lot less. Stay away from too much partying, drugs, alcohol… Just work hard, and IF it pays off, I can afford to take the time/money to actually to do some bigger stuff. Work work work…

Well that’s about it, I might come up with some more stuff but I’ll see if that’s valuable to even think of adding…

I played 1804 hands where all of a sudden my normal stats (about 22/18) dropped down to 17/13. A session where I didn’t felt I had stuff under control, had only about 50% cbets also. A session that I’m certainly gonna review a bit more, maybe bit of a wrong mindset. About 18 PFR on the button as well, ridiculously low :S

For me those 1800 hands is a big long session of over 2 hours, and the first hour already I was playing with no aggresion, 17/14 stats, but with a little bit higher cbet percentage…
I wasn’t tilted or anything, though I was 12-tabling and that might have caused me being not sharp enough on all tables. Still, too early to say, I’ll try the same again tomorrow, see how it turns out then. Might have to reduce the number of tables, but I hope not :(

God I’m so bad with spelling, so forgive me if the title of this blogpost is not spelled correctly…

Anyways, yes I’ve been playing for a bit again, AND I moved up! I now play a variety of games between 20 and 50NL, depends on how much tables I’m playing.
The goal is to win money, so higher levels to win more money, and still lower ones when I want to get used to 12-tabling at the different levels as I move up. As you can understand I made 20NL my grind level cause I’m pretty much dependant on the money I win. Gotta have a solid base to pay the rent eh?

Anyhows, I’m gonna do some more little sesh reviews as I did in August, so some more hands/results in the coming days!

Pumped out another 3k hands, about $30 profit…

Strange situations, a lot of new stuff, lot of stuff I could learn from. One error a lot of pokerplayers probably make is assign a certain type/image to a player, based on a couple of situations, but then react to that image in a spot where they haven’t gained any info or whatever.

Just need to start paying more attention to for instance aggression IN position and OUT of position.

Yes I’ve been playing again, 7703 hands , $59.05 profit

6 sessions over 4 days, almost 8k hands… I did made mistakes, and I must say I wasn’t playing TOO well. Mostly I was cruising along playing a standard game, not getting angry with losses, not tilting. I’m very glad with the fact that I can play without tilting nowadays, and so my ability of grinding out huge sessions has improved.
Must say haven’t reviewed those hands, but I recognize that I have to do that. But perhaps not at this time, I still want to get more hands in, and maybe do a big review on the 20th or so. Still time to get another 10/15k hands in I’d say…

Goal for this month is to get close to about a 1k hands/day average, and to get that huge review done…

Yeah it’s official, I’m taking a couple days from poker.
Not that I play that much, but I just have urgent stuff I need to deal with in real life. Three days or so, and then I’ll be back, just making sure that in the mean time I also I have plenty of time to internalize some of the corrections for bad play I thought of during the last sessions…

Another day of playing, another day of winning. $51.06 to be added to my collection of moneyz, that with only 826 hands :)

No big hands actually, I was just better at flopping sets, turning gutshots and just calldown everybody that didn’t have a hand. I just won a 64% of my hands at showdown (34% of my hands went to it) and since there were no coolers or anything, big win.
I was contemplating playing another session right now, but I’m not going to, better to prepare for tomorrow and get some rest in. Busy day today, and it doesn’t look like tomorrow will be any different.

After I cam home last night I played a small session, 416 hands NL 10: $10.37 profit
Very bad hand with q9o, Q83 rainbow, I cbet, get minraised… now I expected to get raised a lot by him cause he done it a lot. So calling down with that q9 would be best imo to keep his bluffs in. He turned trips on the turn with his k3 though :S I bet, he shoves 4x my bet, dunno, probably should have folded turn. Maybe even check behind to try and get value from an 8, or any PP. But when I bet, I need to fold to the shove imo :(

Also lost AA on 6JK monotone flop, I hold the A of spades. He donkbets, I shove, and he calls with K7o, no spades. He turns his 7 and I loose another huge pot…

For the rest that session was standard, couple nice sized pots put me back on the winning side.

For today, just played 958 hands of NL10 again: $31.56 profit
It was good, with only one big pot that I lost. I raise QJs UTG, and get reraised by UTG+1, I plan on folding but when the aggro noob behind my who overplays everything postflop calls, I decided to also call.
Flop is KJ9 with 2 of my suit, nice nice… Noob donks out, and I debate whether I should call and see what the 3better does, or just push in to try to get him out. I opt for the last, I shove… 3better quickly folds, and the noob calls with AJo. He spikes an ace to crush me even more :(

Lots of nice sized pots in this session, so I’m pretty happy atm. Just focussing on just getting hands in atm, can’t watch too much videos since I got a lot of stuff to do IRL. I’m planning on watching for an hour or so later on tonight…

733 hands of NL10: 58.04d loss

Pretty sick session. Let’s get some hands…
Biggest loser was AKs vs 43s AI preflop, he managed to make a straight and I lose 113bb’s…

Then a JJ aipf vs KK, I 3bet, he 4bets, I ship, he calls. Stats were loose at the time, I need to stop working off those stats, basically I never do, but why did I do it now? It was the beginning of the session, no tilt or anything…

QQ on QKA AI on flop vs AT, turn is a J, for another BI…

And I ship KJ on QTx flop vs same retard that I lost my AK hand too, this time he calls with AK, meeeh… It was a 3bet pot, I call his 3bet because he was 3betting like a maniac, and yeah this was a nice flop for me, but mkay…

Another flush over flush for another 70bb pot, which happens, but maybe I’ll take a bigger review over some more hands to see if these are spots I should be getting into. I think I should cause their range is much wider then flushes, so I’m just getting value from the other part of their range, and them showing up with bigger flush is just one of the downsides of getting more value overall I guess…

Rest of the pots were all small, I didn’t win any big ones. I did stop the session early since I was noticing a tilty attitude coming up. So I called it quits, did this small review, and am back for battle tomorrow.
Then again, one more learning point, need to make a bigger stand 2nd pairs on the turn, check/call lines is something I should be doing more instead of folding them all the time.