Escaping the Micros

So it’s been a while since I have updated my blog. It’s a shame actually because I promised myself that I would update my blog weekly.

The reason I have not been able to update this blog weekly is a pretty easy one.. a huge lack of time.

I have been very busy with my exams the past few weeks and after that I went on a great holiday.

My initial plan was to grind my ass of once I got back but b/c of several tasks that came up which needed a lot of time and attention I had to put serious grinding aside for a few weeks.
All this got me thinking that I will not have the time in the next few months to continue my path towards becoming a mid stakes no limit 6 max grinder.

Transitioning in to hu no limit

Because of the fact that I realized that I can not devote enough time to poker in the next few months I decided to focus the time that I do have on studying the game as opposed to mindless grinding.

This led me to transitioning into hu no-limit because of two reasons.
First of all, because of the fact that I have little time to devote to actually playing hands, I am convinced that I will enjoy playing mano a mano more because I will always be right where the action is.

A second reason is that when I do have some more time, my 6max game will very likely have improved after getting in some though HU situations.

Studying the game and mount robusto

As I said before I am going to keep focusing on improving my theoretical knowledge so I am going to keep discussing hands and sweating some of the nice people I got to know here on DC.

Futhermore I’ve been appointed Mt Robusto sergeant so that will keep me going through DC vids I guess..

Hi everybody I missed my weekly update but I have been spending almost every hour studying so hadn’t had time to play and study the pokerz..

I will summarize the weeks I’ve missed in a post when my exams are done.

I play 4 tables of 100 nl and I think there are some quite interesting spots and I would love to get some discussion started about the vid.

Sorry for the Zshare link, but the DC member vids section has never worked for me, I tried every computer in my house Frown

The vid should play fine in VLC mediaplayer.
HUD:

VPIP / PFR /3BET /SQUEEZE/ FB /aggression freq
FCB / F2B / CB /2B /Donkbet %/ steal %

Link to download
Link to the thread

Not a lot to talk about this week but I still decided to make a post because I want to keep posting at least once a week to keep a clear overview of my progress.

I am preparing for my exams and after studying all day I am usually to tired and unfocused to put my mind on the grind. I’ve only played 3 sessions this week and ended up about BE.

I will probably not be able to put in a lot of hands in the next 2 weeks and I don’t see a reason to force myself to put in hands since this would only result in a – EV mindset.

Been studying quite well though so I hope I can keep that up..

Good luck at the tables everyone!

The Grind

A friend (IwantSmirnoff at the forums) suggested to me that I had enough of a bankroll + skillset + mindset to get my ass back at the 100nl tables.
As you can see from the graph it worked out pretty well and although I have much to learn I feel pretty confident about my game. Not too much hands though since I spent some time with my gf and family during the holidays

One thing I’m going to try to focus on is keep working on leaks in non showdown pots. I am well aware that a positive red line in the micro/small stakes games is not really something I should try to achieve at all cost but there is a lot of work to be done.

One way I am going to try to do this is playing some HU poker each weak to improve my hand reading and OOP play.

I really appreciate the amount of feedback I have been getting from you guys at the forums while posting hands. Hand discussion in this community really is top notch imo.

Video

Posted a member vid of some play at nl100. While I was talking a lot and trying to explain my reasoning, after the session was done I soon realized that no audio was recorded so that felt a little bit silly :)

Here’s the link if you are interested

The Study
Watch 2 episodes of Jk3a’s new series and I really like the format. Furthermore I watched WOT and Whiteheatsyd’s series’ episode 4 and there’s really some great stuff in there. If you are running bad or want to be prepared for when you do, this is really gold.

Deucescracked
Some threads that I remember of the top of my head

Some people’s 2010 goals and how to achieve them
Interesting hand that I played imo

Life
Spent some nice time with my family / gf for christmas and looking forward to meeting up with some friends tomorrow for a new year’s eve party.

As I am starting my exams on january 13th I also started to study but it’s going at a slow pace since I am not feeling the pressure yet…

Here are my 2010 goals btw out of the 2010 goals thread:

Poker

• Take shots at 400nl by the end of 2010
• Learn to play hu up to 100nl
• Get some basic
• Play no longer than 60 min sessions for the entire year
• Keep working on being detached
• Watch 2 vids a week
• Start coaching some players upto 50nl (pbb not for money)
• 15-20K hands a month
• Keep updating my blog

Life

• Get my masters degree
• Sleep more consistent
• Eat more healthy
• Drink a little less
• Quit occasional smoking while drunk
• Be friendly and helpful to all people as much as I can

That’s it for this week,

Hi Guys,

Sad story with this vid.

Acombfosho asked me to record audio with my next vid so I did , but little did I know that I was talking against a wall since the software did not record anything I said.

I was talking about almost every hand , wishing you guys a merry Christmas and thanking you for all the support that I got at DC so far..

The first thing I did after I noticed that the vid did not have any audio is making sure that it won’t happen again, so I promise that the next vid will have audio.

Nevertheless there are some interesting spots in this video so I hope you guys would like to discuss it.
Stats in the HUD are :

VPIP / PFR /3BET /SQUEEZE/ FB /aggression freq
FCB / F2B / CB /2B /Donkbet %/ steal %

Link to the video

I’m sorry that this is still on sendspace but I have tried various OS , browsers and computers and I still cannot seem to make the DC member vids upload work…

So I just went out, although I’m preparing for my exams , to celebrate one of my best friends’ birthday.

Had a few drinks and a few laughs only to realize that when I wanted to leave my jacket (200$) with 70$ earphones inside was stolen in a bar where I come every week.

So what did I do?

Did I start to tilt?
Did I place blame?
Did I curse someone?
Did I go and look for a fight?

No…

I just sat down and took a deep breath, one after the other..

Thank you Tommy and Wayne, the EPTPE has improved my life drastically…

A little late with the update this week but I have been very busy and had to postpone writing down my rantings

The Grind
I played about 6000 hands last week and it was a really though ride. A you can see from the graph every session looked like a swing in the opposite direction of the previous session. I ended up the week about BE if I account for rb.
I was very satisfied however that I have not played a single session longer than 55 minutes, whether I was up a ton or down a ton, I never played more or less then 50-50 minutes. This is something I would like to keep up for the rest of my poker career actually.

Nice hand imo:

IPoker Network $50.00 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players – View hand 437207
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (SB): $50.75
BB: $10.00
UTG: $34.45
MP: $89.23
CO: $15.58
BTN: $78.81

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is SB with K Q
1 fold, MP raises to $1.75, 2 folds, Hero calls $1.50, 1 fold

Flop: ($4.00) T 3 J (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $4.00, Hero raises to $12, MP raises to $87.48, Hero calls $37 all in

Turn: ($102.00) A (2 players – 1 is all in)

River: ($102.00) 9 (2 players – 1 is all in)

Video
I have not recorded a video yet but I will record one this week, with audio this time as requested.

The Study
Have not found the time to check out one DC vid, I know it’s outrageous ! However, my exams are coming up and I have a pretty nice shedule so I should fine some time to view at least 3 vids a week in the next few weeks.

Deucescracked

Some very interesting threads on DC this week.

I have something in my mind that I have been wanting to write down for a few days but I still haven’t found the time to do so.. I hope to post it somewhere tomorrow.

This thread by Malefiicus is just the stone cold nuts imo, go read it now!
Participate in the anual DC awards
Interesting hand where I squeeze fold AKo to get value from a fish

Life

It has been snowing like crazy the last few days in Belgium, really fun to watch :)

Christmas Is coming up and since it is a tradition in my family to have dinner while unpacking presents for one another whole night long, I again spent a chunk out of my life bankroll to get everybody something nice, especially the children in the family.

My internet connection finaly got arranged, seems that the telephone wires were connected wronly at the street corner.

Hi everyone,

This is the second Video I’m posting since I started my weekly vid routine, and I’m 4 tabling some 50 nl Eurotables with some loose villains

The layout of my hud is as following:

VPIP / PFR /3BET /SQUEEZE/ FB /aggression freq
FCB / F2B / CB /2B /Donkbet %/ steal %

Looking forward to your comments

Link to the vid

Link to the thread

A day late, but here is the roundup of what I have been doing in the second week since I started my blog.

The Grind
Got in 2896 hands this week at the eurotables, I am aiming for 4000 a week though, so I am going to work on that a bit more but has a lot of life stuff to do this week.

I started out with a very bad session, and I was a bit disappointed, not because I ran bad or made bad moves (which I also did ) but because of the fact that it was a session of 130 minutes. I know that my game deteriorates once I play more than 70 minutes and I know that I sometimes have trouble with quitting while I’m stuck so I should try to always be mindful of the situation and make it an object of the game to quit after around 45-60 minutes when I’m up or stuck.

Grinded pretty B/E for the rest of the week and also wasn’t able to get in a lot of hands. Luckily, after running hot in an important basketball game for my team, I continued to have a great saturday poker wise. Besides from running in to AKo with JJ and AA with AKs in the 5$ R/A everything went great in my cash games and I just wrapped op a very nice session which brings my week total in the black again (or in the green when you look at holdemmanger).

When looking over the results for the week I also realized that one can call me a rb grinder sometimes since I calculated that I make 6bb/100 on rakeback alone. This sound awesome but on the other hand this means that people without rakeback who play in the same games as myself should have a winrate >12bb to at least break even …

Video

Thanks goes to CDA for posting comments on the vid that I posted last week in the member vids section. I will try and get this week’s video online tomorrow but I still have to run it through the encoder. It will be me 4 tabling some 50nl Eurogames.

The Study
Went through the thin red line episode 2 this week and when I pressed stop during Bart-Jan’s play I often came to the conclusion that I would have played the hand in the same way. However, my red line is still going down but I think this pbb also has to do with the soft games I have found recently in which I just focus on valuebetting as much as possible instead of exploiting leaks in regs.
I am gonna go through Jk3A’s latest vid tonight tough, really love the concept of playing multiple stakes in a vid.

Deucescracked
Again (but what did you expect) some great content on DC this week

Improva Keeps posting A+ content in his thread together with other DC members who have questions or knowledge to share
A 2+2 thread which is very inspiring and has some great content by boywonder, one of the best online grinders out there
I don’t think Bluff magazine is available in my country but hey, we all want DC to win

Life

Coming up on some deadlines for papers at the university so I hope with some right planning I can get everything done in time. One thing that I came across which helps me a lot with doing little tasks like making a payment or sending an e-mail is Remember the milk this website is great B/C you can integrate it in your desktop as a widget, on your Iphone/Blackberry in your gmail and so forth… Really has boosted my effectiveness this week.

I am sorry to say that while I rejoiced last week of having unlimited internet this week, the connection still isn’t working, spent a lot of time in the basement measuring the voltages on my telephone line but still nothing.. and the company’s support isn’t that great either.

Props to my Iphone + google maps btw because I got lost in a city I didn’t know yesterday b/c the busdriver advised me to get out at the wrong stop and my phone picked up every insecure wifi network to guide me to my location :)

Hi everyone,

As stated in a previous post, I wanted to post a video every week. I had some troubles getting it on the member videos upload page which I still have not managed to resolve so until this gets sorted out I’m gonna use sendspace instead.

I think there are some interesting spots in this video and would really like to get some discussing going.

The layout of my hud is as following:

Vpip/ Pfr /3bet /Squeeze/ FB /aggression freq
Fcb / F2b / Cb /2nb /Donkbet %/ steal %

Easter eggs:

- A demonstration of compiz fusion + dual monitors + virtualbox on my ubuntu machine when I switched desktops for a moment to turn on some music
- Quads over a boat

Link to the video

Link to the thread