It's been a while since i wrote my last blog post. I haven't been able to post allot due to exams and because i started playing again a couple of days ago too. A lot of thing have been going on though. I think I improved my game allot the last two weeks.

Reviewing my PT3 has helped me and so has coaching kristy and the thin red line. I must say that the thin red line is the most impressive series i have ever seen on DC. I just love the way Grindcore plays and i think it's the play-style that suits me the most. I'm not adapting it totally but it just showed me a new way of playing poker. My red line has been much better since then while my blue line still is pretty good, giving me a nice winrate now in 10NL. 

The thing i do allot now is raise limped pots, i isolate SOOO much and people just let me do it! It's like non of these guys is really paying any attention to the table at all. I'm playing around with the fish. My VPIP is 32/26. Still maybe a bit too much passive, ideal would be to have it like 32/28. It's something i'm gonna search out the next days. It's probably a pretty easy change in my game that will fix this.

But the most important part is probably how i changed my notetaking. I take much better notes and especially much more notes. Before my study break i didn't take much notes, only really big hands where i was involved. Now i take a TON of notes.   A month ago or so i had regulars where i had 1000hands on that sill didn't have any note, when i meet people today and have around 300/500 hands they probably have already a note or 3/4 and i'm already having a good idea how to exploit them. 

Note-taking is also very helpful to get to know standard situations. While you write down the note you always evaluate the hand. Therefor it will be much easier to recognize a likewise situation in the future. I'm now much more confident in allot of pots where before i wasn't sure what to do. Now i feel like after every session i have allot of new experience and learned a few things. 

Here's my result for the past 8 days:

 

My last post was bugged because i copy/pasted from word. Decided to repost it without c/p from word:

It took me some days to post this, was kinda lazy taking the pics and was very into watching grindcores the thin red line, my favorite series on DC by far! Really inspirational and just the kind of poker i really would like to play. Anyway, i analyzed some stats of mine and come up with the following result: 

As a guideline I’m going to use the wonderfull post of pokey on the 2+2 forums (http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=4946669&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1)

Aggression by position:

In general it seems that I’m calling too much. 23/18 proximally. This probably comes due to my loose/passive style on the SB. My other ranges the VPIP/PFR ratio seems to be pretty solid. As I will find out further the SB play is the biggest leak in my game. 

Positional awareness.

I’m way too loose and passive on the SB. Some of this comes because I have a stealing percentage on the button of 30% in BvB.  But that’s certainly not the main reason. I was wondering why i could have such a high VPIP but still have a higher FTS then on the BB. The answer is I have a serious leak that’s costing me allot of money without really knowing it. I often just complete on the SB with some nice looking hands but probably play them too passive postflop to make it profitable. I often call multiway pots too, thinking I’m getting the right price but again I’m being too passive post flop and probably often overestimating my equity. 

I run a test with flop cruncher to see what my equity with 67s is in a 4handed pot. I did this example to get a view, gave one opponent any suited connector, gave one any pocket pair and one any random ace. If this is the case I have about 19% chance to get the best hand on the flop. Now I know that I wont be up against this ranges very much but it gives me a good idea. In theory I guess my chances in multiway pots to really take it down will lay to around 10 to 15%.  As I just want to explain I think it’s a real big loophole to fancy a play with nice looking cards on the SB. I really should make it my most nitty spot and play tight and aggressive and stop the fancy play. 

UTG I’m too loose. I play too many hands, I think that my PFR is pretty good but my VPIP definitely should be a lot lower. I can’t really think of what cards/plays give me that number but I will check that out when I review my UTG hands. 

UTG+1 and MP both look fine, I think my cutoff ranges might be a bit wider. I probably need to put in some more suited Aces and even some suited Kings to widen my ranges. 

Button also seems to be fine, playing loose and very aggressive and my number one earning spot, with 24bb/100 I really seem to be crushing from that position and can continue with that kind of play. 

I’m much more confident playing in position then out of position. I already assumed this but the BB/100 rates seem to confirm that my play in position IS much better. That’s another reason why I should tighten up in the SB and UTG. It also indicates I should learn more about out of position play and review my hands I play OOP. Allot of money will also come from stealing, which is the next thing I’m going to analyse. 

 Defending the Blinds:

This gets interesting, I know my SB has a leak and I hope to find it running these filters.

It seems like PT3 has changed a little bit since pokey’s post but nothing major. I’m going to run several filters .

Filter: Action tab: Post BB, Post SB in the Blinds section, Vol. Put $ in Pot in the call section. 

The result we get to see now is how I did when I called a raise or raised myself in the blinds. The results are much better then I could have thought. I make 33,5 BB/100 overall.  Most of this comes from the BB, my win rate on the SB seems rather low, this might be because again I’m a bit too passive on the SB.

 

Filter: General tab, players section: Hands between 2 and 2 players seeing the flop and in the Misc and Situations tab chose Out of Position on flop. 

Tada! Welcome biggest leak in my game. I should be really happy that I found this. I don’t have to look any further to see where I lost most of my money. I’m losing in every position if I play a pot OOP! Ofcourse most of the money in the SB and the fact I’m losing money in MP is also because I often play OOP and bad. I’m again finding some hands that I should review and will post in the next blog probably. 

 I might have some other filters I’m going to run in the future and if there are some handy ones or if I find any new leaks I will post it here . If anyone sees some things i've missed somehow or thinks i take the wrong conclusion please tell me, i owe you a bunch then ;). Might post some other filters etc here soon.

Steven

Greetings fellow DC members. I finally decided to throw myself into blogging. I've been a member for two months and have been enjoying this site allot. I have definitely improved somewhat but I’m far from being good enough. I have three years of experience in poker. One year of that consists of online poker. I've been seeing the game a bit more serious since about 6 months or so. I read a book, read some forums but now I know I actually didn't study enough and examine my game. I have build op two decent rolls in my early career but busted the first and semi-busted my last one. It's because I was busting my last one that if decided to start learning and reviewing my game really good now. 

In one of the coaching Kristy video’s I think I heard balouga say that in order to be able to really think of your game writing it down is by far the most effective way. At first I thought to just write it down in word for myself. But why shouldn’t I share my learning progress to you guys? I’m doing the writing anyway and some people my actually learn something and we could get some interesting discussions going on.

The plan for the comming two/three weeks is not to play any poker untill i get my rakeback of the last month (which i get the 18th of june). This together with my leftover from my last roll will be my new starting BR after i examined my game.  There are lots of things that i plan to do during this time so i think i’ll be able to fill up the time easily.

Here’s what i’m planning to do study-wise:

 

• Keep track of my learning and pokerprogress on this blog
  
• Analyse my stats via PTR deeply to spot leaks and balance ranges
  
• Analyse hands that i played the last few monthsand post them here and on 2+2. I will try to find them by using various PTR filters etc, to see how i do in certain spots and to fix the leaks i also found during the stats analyse i explained in the previous point.
  
•  I will analyse the regs in my stakes to find any leaks in there game and give them some good notes.
  
• Watch various DC vids, i’m watching coaching kristy but also would like to see the thin red line,  SSNL disease and probably some MTT vids too since i like to play one from time to time but really havn’t learned much about it.
  

 

I hope i’m able to share my progress with you guys and that you are able to help me if i take the wrong conclussions and that we can get some good discussions going. First post will be the stats analysis and it will be there soon enough since i already did some.

 Anyway, this turned out to be a rather long post so i’m gonna leave you guys for now. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you soon!