Well im going through the worst runbad that i've ever personally experienced, and I'm just not sure what to do. I really enjoy playing this game, and studying it, but its just not paying off with the amount of time i put into the game compared to how much I am making. I'm so tired of being at the micro's. I've been stuck here for 4 years. Here's a picture of how my past month has gone, mix of PLO and NL, nothing above 10nl or 10PLO
I currently have a BR of $435, and the only reason why I'm above breakeven/losing is from bonus's and rakeback. Are the games seriously just unbeatable at the micros today? Before black friday, I was a 9bb/100 winner at 50nl on stars. Now I cant even build a bankroll to get back to 50nl. Should i just really try and break down my game and study more than i play to really figure out how to beat these games? Or should I just continue grinding and try to push through the less fortunate side of variance? What is the best game to learn/play to even build a bankroll? Is limit holdem faster than nl? Should i go back to PLO even though the rake is killer? Should i just be playing 10 tables of fullring trying to grind out hands at a 2-4bb/100 winrate?
Anyone who wants to have a serious study partner add me on skype, Tonic1223. I really dont want to give up on my dream of playing poker, but im reaching a point in my life where I cant just keep living like a degen. Please, any advice would be greatly appreciated. (I have a pretty good
control on my emotions, and am already rereading The poker mindset, for
those who may suggest taking a break)
Allright DC, I've officially played 25k hands of PLO, and the variance really is rediculous... and I'm sure I havent even begun to experience what it can really be like. I'm really glad im using strict BRM this time around, and not taking a shot at the next level til I hit 50 BI's for it. Right now I have over 100 BI's for PLO4 and its probably good that I do. Here's a pic of my graph so far:
I'm sure I am still making plenty of mistakes, so the plans for now are the continue watching PLO by numbers and also MonoPLOly. I recorded a session of myself a few days ago and felt like I played really well when I was talking out my thought processes so I will probably do that again and then upload the video here to DC to have someone analyze it for me hopefully. I think tomorrow is going to be a heavy study/HH review day instead of grinding so much. So expect a blog post with lots of PLO knowledge tomorrow!!
Well "full-time" poker is going pretty well. I've gotten back into the habbit of grinding a ton and I'm loving it. During my first week playing PLO, I watched 3 videos of PLO by numbers, read Tri's E-book, and several articles relating to PLO from various pro's including my favorite PLO player, KasinoKrime.
Total PLO hands played last week=12,837 (my goals at the start of this were 5-7k hands per week. I think I crushed it) I will see if I can make it to 15,000 hands this week, and if I do I will have played over 25k hands of PLO which means GRAPH incoming!!!
My stats are looking like this right now, any comments would be appreciated: VPIP-21/PFR-13/3bet-4.4%/f3b-44%/WTSD-23%/W$SD-48.6%/W$WSF-39.4%/Agg-4.86/Agg%-35.6/Cbet-77%/Turn cbet-57.5%/steal-35.5% Those are some basic stats. I'm not to sure what to be aiming for at the micro's, so any ideas or video suggestions on this would be helpful.
My goals for this week are going to be: 15k hands 2 videos of PLO by numbers /w notes Run 3x Post in forums at least once a day on a HH Post 1 HH per day from my sessions that gave me trouble Record a video of myself playing for analysis
Won my biggest PLO pot so far last night, with good old AAxx trash lol Both villains in this hand were fish I had played with before. To my right was the loose-passive who called down to much and the loose-sometimes crazy guy to my left (he was 89/16/12% 3b)
Pre Flop: ($0.06) Hero is CO with 9 A 4 A UTG calls $0.04, Hero calls $0.04, BTN raises to $0.22, 2 folds, UTG calls $0.18, Hero raises to $0.94, BTN calls $0.72, UTG calls $0.72
Hey there DC, I have a few hands that I'd like to post my thoughts on and give yall a little update to how things went today.
Only played 3 sessions today for a total of ~4.5 hours and 1732 hands. I've played over 4400 hands in the past 2 days, which is awesome and way above the target amount I set for myself so far. I made a goal to play 5k-7k hands a week. At this rate I may double that! And Merge is starting new promotions for the month of May on top of the Last man Standing competition, so I have even more incentive to continue grinding like a mad man.
I watched PLO by numbers Ep.2 today and took 2.5 pages of notes. Learning the math behind PLO im finding is way more useful than NLHE. I cant wait til im done with the series and am full of PLO math knowledge! Today's episode really helped me understand how to play better in 3bet and 4bet pots, which I'll admit I was a little confused in several situations each session ive played.
I went over some HH's using propokertools today, and I'll post 2 that I thought during the hand, I had way more equity than I really did, so lesson learned here thanks to some analysis.
At this point Im putting SB on AA** or KK** more than anything else, the BB's range is pretty wide still and I have a gutter to the nuts with redraws to bigger nuts when I do hit. Calling is the best option here imo.
So the SB sticks the rest of his stack in, and the BB now pot raise shoves AI basically as I hit 2pair with an OESD. At the time of the hand, I was pretty happy stacking off here, so I shoved in my stack. After looking at propokertools today, I realized just how poorly I put in over 200 bb's....I was getting pot odds of around 35% to call his shove, and I clearly did not have enough equity to be doing so despite having top 2 and an OESD. 600,000 trials (Randomized) board: 7:spade:3:club:9:spade:T:diamond: AA**, AKK* [b]6.47%[/b] (36,012 wins, 5,632 ties) J8**,68**, TJQK [b]69.24%[/b] (409,442 wins, 12,030 ties) Qd9cTcJh [b]24.29%[/b] (141,511 wins, 8,444 ties)
FWIW, the BB had 688* for the straight and blockers to my OESD which killed my equity even more.
Here's another hand I played just recently actually, and felt really good about how I played it.
Hero (BB): $5.00 UTG: $7.43 CO: $12.27 BTN: $5.20 (22/17/5.6% 3b/48% agg) SB: $4.05 (32/10/5.2% 3b/17% agg) -this guy is a fish who cant fold dominated hands
Pre Flop: ($0.06) Hero is BB with 6 J 6 J 2 folds, BTN raises to $0.14, SB calls $0.12, Hero raises to $0.56, BTN calls $0.42, SB calls $0.42
I like 3bet squeezing in this spot since im double paired and will flop a set 1/3 of the time so I want a smaller SPR being OOP in the hand when I do hit. Plus by 3betting, I can rep AA when i dont hit my sets quite often Flop: ($1.68) 7 8 8(3 players) SB checks, Hero bets $0.84, BTN calls $0.84, SB folds
So here I cbet 1/2 pot like I would with my entire range basically, including AA because Im going to get tons of folds on this paired board. However the button calls me, so im led to believe he has an 8, 77, or a wrap of some kind.
This was the perfect gin card other than a 6 or J for me to bluff at since I can rep AA perfectly, so i decided to shove AI expecting villain to fold even his 8*** type hands since he'd be drawing dead, and villain folded almost instantly. Well played me?
Propokertools is awesome for going over my hands. Ive made some pretty bad stackoffs in spots where I over estimated my equity by a long shot so Im really enjoying doing HH reviews. I'll try to post some more tomorrow. For now, Since its past midnight, im going to start my Monday grinding and get a jump on earning my extra bonus money from merge.
Well I figured I would do just a little update since its sort of late and ive been grinding all day, ill post again tomorrow with some HH's and my thoughts since I'll be doing some HH reviews and playing with propokertools after watching Episode 2 of PLO by numbers.
Today went really well for me, I just moved into a new place yesterday actually, got all unpacked and setup in one day which is awesome! So this is what I did today:4/29 -went to store -listed stuff on ebay -played 90 min session -1 mile run +1 mile walk -reviewed all PLO notes -watched PLO by numbers ep.1, 2 pages of notes -played 120 min session -played 80 min session -played 80 min session
The session lengths are rounded off. In total I played ~6.5 hours of poker today, which got me to 2191 hands played, 4-6 tables at a time. Total PLO hands played to date 4041. I think I'll post up a graph of my results around 25k hands or so, should be in a week or so. Tomorrows plans are watch episode 2 of PLO by numbers and take more notes. Review notes from today, analyze 10 HH's of 30bb+, and GRIND!! Merge is doing this last man standing promotion starting May 1st, and I plan on taking part in it. You can read about it here http://www.parttimepoker.com/last-man-standing-promotion-at-carbon-poker
Follow my blog for daily updates starting tomorrow to track my PLO progress, and feel free to comment
Alright DC, its time for me to take my chance at poker and grind seriously while i finish out school. I plan on learning PLO, from the ground up. I have tried switching to PLO in the past, with much failure. I play a few hands, get into a spot I dont understand, and just get frustrated and confused, so I stop trying to learn the game, and tell myself not to waste the time since I already know how to play NL so well. Not this time though, its PLO pro or nothing from this point forward. So far, here is my current plan of action on getting to soul crushing PLO status. I am starting at PLO5 with 70 BI's because I got a reload bonus on a site up to $350, so i figured that was a good place to start, and I plan on using a very conservative BRM during this process of becoming a 100-200 PLO reg online, and possibly even playing the 2/5 PLO games at my local casino. Ive read enough about PLO swings to understand that having a minimum of 50 BI's for a level will keep me in my comfort zone, at least for now.
My plans right now are to watch PLO by numbers while taking extensive notes, followed by watching Return of the G and reading Tri Nguyen's PLO book. I plan on having at LEAST 2 pages of notes per episode. Also part of my grind plan is to actually grind! Ive always had trouble putting in volume for the most part, no matter what game im playing. So my goal for the month of May is to play 5days/week, at least 5k hands a week. Thats a minimum of 20k hands for the month of may, which is easily reachable and a nice goal for myself to reach to begin the grinding routine and getting into the habit of just playing lots of hands. Also, I WILL analyze at LEAST 10 hands I personally have played using propokertools.com every day i grind.
As of right now, I have 2 big goals im trying to work on, the first I already mentioned, which was grinding hands. The second, is making sure I follow good BRM and dont look at my results during a session. The only time I can check my results is at the end of the day/start of the next day when im doing hand history reviews. Ive always had issues with checking my results often during a session and letting it affect my mindset and how I play/feel because of how much im up or down. So no more of that either! Since Im going to try really hard to stay on track and focused on reaching my goals, I would like to update this blog every day, with a few interesting hands or particular theory im studying or working on, so please feel free to follow my blog this time, because its my last chance im giving myself not to fail. Any and all encouragement is appreciated!
Hands played today : 1850
Total hands played lifetime PLO on new site : 1850
Hey all, things are going well poker wise. I just watched Episode one of So fresh and so clean, and im definately excited to watch the rest of the series. I think its going to help me find my passion and love for poker again. I filled out the fresh start excel spread sheet with some goals and things to work on, and im anxious to see how much it helps me stick with a plan and reach my goals. I'll share some of the goals I set for myself for the first 8 weeks(I will re-evaluate my goals on a weekly basis to see if im ahead of schedule, and if so, I shall make new goals that are slightly harder than the previous). For right now, after 8 weeks, I would like to play a total of 80 poker sessions, each a minimum of an hour, and reach 25k hands. I'm also going to follow the BRM sthief advocates, if you don't know what it is, watch episode one of So fresh and so clean. I'm starting out at 20nl Euro, which is $25nl. Right now my current bankroll is sitting at $380. I have also unlocked 4/10 parts of my bonus, and I have 14 more days to get the rest. I think I can do it if i rollow my plan to play as much as I am aiming for. I think I'm going to go through all of my hands that i have marked that ive played so far on this site, and do some poker training drills as part of my homework also, so I'll be sure to post any hands I think are particularly interesting.
Well its been a month since I updated my blog here, which is a longer time span than I wanted to go by before I updated but I guess better late than never. December wasnt as fulfilling as I had hoped. Still been dealing with the break up of me and my ex, just found out the bitch is already engaged to someone else after only 3 months....lol yeah I know......buuuuuttt anyways, I have been hanging out with friends a lot lately, and been going out (probably to much). After spending time with my best friend(he's like a brother to me) yesterday and the day before, we helped each other realize that we need to focus on the things that matter to us. Which is where I introduce our new personal theme song which I will listen to every day when I wake up.
After waking up and pissing excellence, I am going to start spending each day pursuing my goals instead of getting distracted by stupid girls all the time like i have been...
As far as poker goes, my BR is current sitting at $239 from a start of $100. I have had to make some personal changes to my BRM because of how slow the traffic can get at times on my site. Im pretty comfortable playing 10nl and 20nl with my current BR as long as I pick my tables carefully and play with fish on my right. Ive played almost 10k hands on this new site now, and im about to unlock the 2nd portion of my deposit bonus which is nice. Im going to grinding WAYYY more now than in the past, because Ive reached a point in my life where im ready to move away from my home town and be on my own. Me and my bestfriend have discussed moving to Colorado, so i need to really focus and make sure I am financially stable when summer time gets here in the next 5-6 months. I have set some short term goals for myself. One of which is clear my deposit bonus before it expires. I have 26 days left to do so. Ive started watching DC vids again since I got a sub for xmas, so i have lots of new material to watch and learn from. I watched coaching kristy 2 and ive already gotten back into analyzing my game more and focusing on playing better poker in general instead of mind numbingly grinding the minimal amount that I was. I am currently watching Finally canadian, and plan on watching search and destroy after I have played more hands so i can figure out my leaks and work on fixing them by the time I reach 50nl. I am also in the process of saving up a seperate $2k bankroll so I can start playing live 1/2nl. Im supplying that BR from my personal training and selling things on ebay. Right now that BR is sitting at $220 I really am going to try my hardest to start posting interesting hands on this blog at least once a week. Here's a few to get it started from my sessions today:
Btn is a thinking reg, playing pretty aggro 25/18/15% 3b, 36% agg over 164 hands. Only read I had was that he flatted a 4bet OOP with JJ vs another reg.
I decided to chk/call instead of bet because I figured he would bet all of his better hands obviously but also worse hands like KQ,KJ,QJ,78s, etc that might fold if I cbet. He had been playing really aggro like I said so i wanted to allow him to bluff.
So I spike my gin card on the turn, and he decides to bet super big now after half potting the flop. Not sure what his range is at this point, probably the same as the flop range for betting, he can obv have hands like A3s, 99, J9s,KQ, KJ, QJ,AJ,KT so I decide to chk/call again because im either way ahead/way behind at this point, and there's not really any rivers other than a T,Q,K that scare me.
So now he overbet shoves a relative blank unless he had a hand like T8ss, which polarizes his range to nuts/nothing and since his flop bet+turn bet+overbet dont really tell a good story from a thinking player, I decided to bluffcatch. I may have gotten lucky here, but at the time his bet sizes just didnt make a whole lot of sense to me. I mean, what does he put me on for chk/calling 2x as the pfr on this board? He very well could be trying to get me to fold a mid PP by overbetting or a hand like QJ, KJ which sorta makes sense. I would like to hear opinions on this hand.
Final Pot: $41.90 BTN shows K Q Hero shows J A Hero wins $39.39 (Rake: $2.51)
On to the 2nd hand: The villain in this hand is a Laggy reg playing 34/25/5% 3b, folding to cbet 50%(8 samples) on flop, 0%(2 samples)on turn over 346 hands. I had the following reads on him: -opens wide from co, chk back A97s with J9o. call turn and riv bets -call 3b in pos with 99. flat cbet 3x 459rJ7 -3b A6s. cbet 256s/call shove
He is def a thinking player, and loves to float/steal pots.
His range is going to super wide for calling this flop because he loves floating and taking pots away Turn: ($2.80) 2(2 players) Hero checks, BB bets $1.80, Hero raises to $5.60, BB calls $3.80
I thought this was a good card to go for a chk/raise on because he bets a lot when checked to. I could 2 barrel in this spot but i think it would fold out all of his air part of his range that floated me on the flop. Obviously if he has a hand with equity he will call another bet, but i think he will also bet those hands if checked to. hands like 45s,56s,T9s,Axs for example.
This is where things get kind of interesting. The backdoor flush doesnt really scare me to much unless he had 4h5h, 6h7h ,8xhh which is very few combos. I obviously have 2 options here. I can either bet or chk. If i bet, the only hands that can call me are Axdd, or another 8x hands hopefully weaker than mine. However if i check, it gives him the chance to bluff with all of his missed diamond draws and straight draws. If he has a better hand than me, im getting stacked regardless, but by checking it allows him to bluff off his stack with missed draws. So i decide to check/call.
Hey there DC, been about a month since i posted on my blog. Ive been experiencing the uglier side of variance for the past 15k-20k hands, so its been hard to put in volume or be motivated to blog/play. Also during the recent past 4-6 weeks, my GF of 4 years and I broke up, which has fucked with my mentality quite a bit which didnt help with the poker playing. HOWEVER, I have done a lot of self reflection lately and organized my life to start achieving some of my goals I only half assed in the past because i was always so tied up in my relationship.
I have began reading "The Poker Mindset" for the 5th time now. Every time i go through a 'downswing' i read this book, and it always helps me out mentally. I also setup a list of goals for myself, personal and poker. I will be using this blog to keep track of two of my goals, one life goal and one poker goal. My life goal is to get "ripped" come summer time. I am a certified personal trainer, and its about time i put my knowledge to use on myself. I currently weigh 165 lbs, with ~10% bodyfat, im 5'10" tall. My goal at the end of May is going to be to look as close to Brad Pitt from lock,stock, and two smoking barrels as i can make myself. A pretty reasonable goal for myself. I have been working out for ~6 weeks now to get my body back into the pattern of lifting, so tomorrow I start the heavy training.
My poker goal is to turn the $100 deposit I just made into at least $3500 in the next several months. I have always had trouble grinding and putting in volume which is has been my biggest issue holding me back from being a midstakes reg. Ive had plenty of highstakes players tell me im good enough to play 200nl easily, but i just never grind enough to build a bankroll to play those stakes. So, im going to force myself to grind as much as i possibly can without going insane and still having somewhat of a social life. My goal is to play at least 25k hands by the end of the year, to get myself used to grinding again, and then my goal starting Jan 1st will be to grind at least 45k hands/month. I plan on playing 4-6 tables depending on if im playing HU or not. I know this sounds like a difficult goal(turning $100-->$3500 in a few months), and it certainly is, but its about time i truly challenged myself. I have proven myself a 9bb/100 winner over large samples (100k hands) at 50nl in the past pre black friday, so its not entirely out of the question to achieve this. I also have an excellent rakeback deal (35-40%), and also have rakeraces and personal rakechases i can earn extra money with as well, on top of clearing my deposit bonus(albeit its only $100 but every little bit counts).
So here is my BRM I plan on following: Current BR is sitting at $125.71(im currently playing 2nl dollar, 2nl euro 6max and HU) Take a 5bi shot at 4nl dollar when BR hits $140 (35 bi's) Add 4nl euro tables when BR hits $200 (~35 bi's) Take a 5bi shot at 10nl dollar when BR hits $350 (35 bi's) Add 10nl euro tables when BR hits $480 (~35 bi's) Take a shot at 20nl dollar when BR hits $700 (35 bi's) Add 20nl euro tables when BR hits $1000 (~35 bi's) Take a shot at 50nl dollar when BR hits $1750 (35 bi's) Add 50nl euro tables when BR hits $2400 (~35 bi's) Take a shot at 100nl when BR hits $3500 (35 bi's) <----Goal achieved
I will mix FR,6m,and HU depending on where the fish are sitting, however I WILL NOT sit a HU table unless I have 40 BI's for the limit. I think this is fairly conservative enough to allow me to ignore short term variance and at the same time aggressive enough to reach my goal as long as I put in volume. I WILL update this blog every few days with my progress. There will be no excuses this time DC, i promise this to myself, and anyone who wants to follow me on this journey. To end the first blog of many to come, here is my current graph since depositing my $100 on this site: (winning despite running under EV which is nice)
Well since my last blog, im managed to lose another $55 or so, when my EV says i should have won $19, so def running badly. Today my biggest losing pots were as follows:
JJ<TT All in preflop vs laggy reg
AK<QQ All in preflop, standard coinflip loss
QQ<KK All in preflop, cooler situation vs a 40/20/22% 3bet player
AQs<AJo in 3b pot on Jxxs with his TPTK vs my NFD+Over
JJ<AQo in 3b pot vs passive fish who spiked a Q
Soooo yeah, def not getting any love from the poker gods lately. My W$SD today was 23%!!! thats insane lol.....The only thing keeping me calm is knowing I have a job interview on monday for a real career and i can get away from this stupid poker crap of experiencing the sucky side of variance at this point in my life.
However, I have tightened up my game a bit, and im picking my spots more carefully for isolating and barreling. And the past few sessions my redline has been going steadily up, which is awesome for me! I am still not being aggro enough on the river, but slow progress is better than none. Now If i can just keep playing this way, and have some card love, I should pull out of this sucky downswing, which is ~15 BI's so far over 1885 hands....
Hopefully I'll have better news to report next time, and maybe a graph update if it turns around for me.
A
4
Q
