The difference between using K2s or K8s as a 4bet bluff is probably pretty marginal at best. When I was thinking about it it seems K8s should do better post flop anytime the 4bet bluff is flatted.

However, I was also thinking on the Btn when a hands winrate goes negative I want to remove that hand from my steal range as it no longer shows a profit. One of the big downfalls to opening trashy hands is having to fold them to a 3bet.

I was thinking that by using the likes of K2s and K3s as the 4bet bluffs that it could boost the winrate of the bottom end of my steal range because they are no longer folding to 3bets. I suppose it would have the same effect on K8s though. I dunno which is optimal and it probably doesnt make a huge difference either way.

Sometimes I wonder if I over compensate for trying to allow fish into the pot.

Hero opens AA UTG, and +1 Calls who is a suspected fish at this point (I busted him a few hands later and he was 81 VPIP after about 30 hands)

SB (reg with good winrate) squeezes.

At this point I want to keep the fish/whale in the pot, but I am not really comfortable just flatting the squeeze and want to inflate things a bit more but try not to scare the fish off if he has anything playable.

Hero min-raises the squeeze. I felt this would still allow a slack call from the fish and at the same time keeps the door open in case the Reg wants to get into a raising war.

Fish folds and me and reg go to the flop which comes down with 2 Kings and scares the sh*t out of me as I am thinking his range is something like AK, KK, QQ, AQ, KQ, Ax

Combinatoric wise there are only 4 combos of AK left, but had that bad feeling so checked behind on the flop.

Turn he leads into me. And again on river.

At the time, I felt he had it. But due to the me having AA and 2 K's on the flop I felt compelled to call it down.




Bottom set

Every time I have bottom set I get this impounding feeling of doom that something bad is about to happen, such as losing a stack.

vs Rec

When the turn gets raised I always look to see what has changed on the board. Didnt see any straights here, and while I always fear bigger sets I felt the A on the board and fish tendencies to raise with 2 pair that I could get it in here and be ahead enough times to be +EV.




Bottom set.. bottom set...

Ok this time, we get to the flop. Fish bets out and then reg raises him on the flop and I am left with a set of 3s.

I contemplated calling to see the Turn action, but decided to just get away cheaply on the flop fearing I was already facing a overset. Doubt he is raising with a FD or an overpair.




Russian battle.

vs a good Reg who has a good winrate, like 8bb over the decent sample size I have on him.

After the hand he proceeds to berate me in the chat box and typed in some smileys with him laughing at my play.

Tbh I was XF the river up until the K hits and I thought he may put me on a missed FD and call down with TT JJ and QQ.

Never said nothing back in the chat, but thought I would keep an eye out for him.

Looking back the flat pre with AKo looks a little timid. Think I had designed my ranges so that I am not 3bet/5bet with AKo vs EP as from what I have seen EP mainly stacks off with AA and KK. However, might have to review this and consider 3bet/flat the 4bet with AK.




After that hand he seemed to be on a lot of my tables. I seemed to wind up in a few pots with him, think maybe he was trying to play back at me a lot at this point to tilt me. I just played pretty straightforward and didnt pull off any moves. Wasent in the mood for tilting off stacks.


Next hand arrives vs the same Russian dude from above.

On the flop he actually has a high XF after he checks. But I felt given the previous recent history he could get sticky with me, try some moves on me or he may even think that I am now rage tilting if I get aggressive after his chat verbal.

Could feel the tension on the flop between us by this point, was like a showdown gunfight was about to kick off. Given how high his winrate is and he seems like a good player I was already preparing myself for some more chat abuse if he has a better set.





Dont worry I never give him any chat abuse, I just sent a loveheart his way and he shut up after that

Standard nitring. You want their stack and yet when villain seems keen to get it in the middle you struggle to think of many hands you're actually beating.

In saying that though, you must've been frustrated as hell after folding that set of 3's. I find something like that tilts me far far more than any bad beat.

As much as I feel like an idiot after folding a set and having the best hand I would have felt a whole lot worse if I put my stack in the middle on the flop after seeing a bet and a raise in front of me. If the board had more of a "2pair" or "flush and straight draw" look about it then I might have hung around for a bit.

Think I havent seen all that many hands where I fold bottom set and then get to see the villain show up with something mediocre. Where as at Full Ring it feels like I get Set over Set losses every 20mins.

Tbh losing a stack with bottom set there would prob tilt me more than folding and running away, just cos I've seen bottom set lose so often at FR that I feel I should know better by now.

*****Milestone Hand Alert*****



Was hoping this was gonna be my "5 or a 9" moment..











So I was 24% Pre
37% on the flop..

Oh well I dont expect any easy money from this game. Not 100% sure how the milestone hands work. Was keeping tabs on the info box next to the chat which was displaying potential winnings for milestone hands.

It says "You will win $20 for every VPP you have earned at this table over the past 50 hands (inclusive of the milestone hand) plus an additional $20.

I had played less than 50 hands on this table and my stack was only like 115bb so I couldn't have accumulated many VPPs on this one.

It also said potential winnings would be displayed beside each player, but my HUD takes up most of the screen retail space so couldnt really see who could win what. Dude who scooped the pot got 600bbs + the milestone bonus for him gets double so he must have scooped a fair bit.

It said after it that I got $104 - but I lost $57 on the hand so nothing to get overly excited about.

I'll win the next one

Re: the books. I own like every poker book written and have read them all multiple times. I can say without a doubt, my game improved a TON more after I picked up an Elite subscription to RIO than it did after studying every book I own.

The problem with books when it comes to online poker is that the game simply evolves too quickly. By the time the book becomes popular or mainstream/recommended, it's outdated.

I don't believe I own a piece of poker literature at this point that isnt outdated.

Start with the $9.99 Essential sub to RIO, study everything you feel is helpful (not every pro/video will be super value able to your style), once you'very exhausted thr Essential content, go to elite for $99.99/month and don't think twice about it. Worth every penny for someone in your position.

I think James Hudson probably had the most helpful Vids for me from the Essential sub. Definitely worth it!

Good luck by the way. I've just recently returned to the game part time after playing for a living for a number of years (US player) and am starting out new @25NL. RIO was a life saver after I got crushed in my initial ~100k hands back.

Took me from a marginal loser to an 8evbb/100 winner.

P.S. Just read your whole thread start to finish, keep up the good work!

I would say the Matt Janda book ANLHE, and both the Will Tipton EHUNL books are not outdated.

But I get your point, a lot of the books repeat the same old thing and it gets frustrating reading about what a HUD is and how to use the VPIP stat etc.

Kool, thanks for the advice. Hadn't heard of James Hudson before. Will defo be doing a lot more video training in 2016.

Was trying to make my way through some Matt Janda videos. I always feel that if I just watch the video I dont take it in enough or lose concentration. Then when I started writing out notes on the videos it was taking absolutely ages to get through them.

I might just try watching videos once and then if I feel it was valuable I can go back over the better ones and take notes.

Wooow, 8bb is a pretty solid winrate. You playing on Bovada if you are in the US?

gl with journey

Bovada is definitely the place to be in the US at the moment. 4 table cap sucks but I won't mind it as much towards the end of 2016 when I'm hopefully grinding 200NL+. The ability to mix in MTT'S or soft tables on WPN make the cap less relevant.

Weird for me to be content with just 4 tables (still learning though). Coming back to the game as a former 6 max super turbo pro (lot of experience in live cash) so still have a ways to go. Maybe by the end of the year as a lot of spots are much more standard for me I'll feel the need to dabble more with WPN or BetOnline.

4 table cap.. awch, that must be like watching paint dry if its FR. I am playing around 11 tables right now, I could manage more but the plan is to stick with that until my winrate improves.

I keep threatening to play on other sites but I get tilted thinking about my setup being different and not having the same hotkeys and doubt StarsHelper works on other sites.

Was having a look at rakeback.com to see how rakeback works on other sites. Actually remembered I have joined and played on other sites like 6 or 7 years ago, Titan Poker, Party Poker, Betfair - so I should already have accounts there if I can remember login details. Thing is now that I have Supernova I am not sure I will get decent rakeback elsewhere, so I might be best sticking to Stars.

I tried mixing in some Freeroll MTTs before and found it a bit tilting, always bust out with the best hand then play the rest of the cash session with some built up frustration.

Let me know how you get on with your Bovada grind in 2016, gl

Cool thread man! Keep it up

Happy New Year to everyone, thanks to all subscribers for the support and feeback in 2015 and fasten your seatbelt for another year at this.

Time to review December.

Didnt get great volume in due to the Stars strike and obvs Xmas and New Year etc.

Had a look at results yday and my 50NL FR game was looking around BE.

December Goals:
[X] Concentrate on FR this month
[X] Keep an eye on main leaks and check over before playing
[X] Leak Busting: Use new open ranges, along with 4bet ranges and 5Bet call ranges, to improve winrate in unopened pots.

^I did this multiple times and tinkered with my Preflop game and will continue to do this.

I got my winrate in Unopened pots up to 12.1 EV bb/100 - which I can tell you is an improvement in my game. Will continue to work on it and try get it up to 13 or 14.



^That is obv a small sample size so winrates for each position are a bit up and down compared to my averages.

Might go off on bit of a tangent here but fk it lets do it. I am looking at the winrate for SB Unopened pots in that graphic. Here is the story of that game from the whole of last year, Warning an absolute car crash of a graph coming up..



So what the hell happened there to cause a 24 BI drop !?

From what I have looked at even the better players show a loss from SB Unopened pots. I come up with a strategy that was BE / Slightly winning and it worked a treat.. at 25NL.

When I moved up to 50NL and 100NL this strategy became a huge leak for me because the opponents were now smarter and able to absolutely destroy me. You can see from the graph when I move up to 50NL by the huge dip.

Anyway I changed my gameplan in this spot and it is now showing signs of recovery so hopefully that continues.

[/] Make sure my "Big Blind vs 1 Raiser on the Button" game stays solid and doesn't drift downward the way it has done on Deep tables And fix this leak on the Deep tables.

^Running at -57 bb/100 in December, not a disaster but not brilliant either.

[X] Fold to River Raises when we are beat

Defo getting better at this.

[X] Go over my notes on playing against fish and learn to recognise their bluffs from their value bets.

I still need to improve on folding mediocre stuff vs Fish raises. They always seem to min raise and I kinda grudge folding to that. Yday I did manage to fold my overpair KK on a low board after some fish min raised the flop and jammed the turn. Other reg called with QQ and the fish flipped over a set of 3's.

[ ]Improve winrate at 50NL FR

^nope wouldnt say it improved overall.

[/] Keep a positive mindset

Give myself half marks for this. Its kinda hard given the current situation at Stars plus everytime I hear someone talk about online poker they predict it will all end over the next few years.

[X] Check results this month if we need to and also review winrates of Leak scenarios in HEM to see how improvements are going

[x] Do not play too many tables at the same time! Find the balance of Quality and Quantity.

[X] Get thinking about goals to set for 2016

^Made some notes but will review it before posting.

On to the next one..

The biggest help I've found with regards to this is making a decision as to what you will do on the river if you are raised BEFORE you bet the river. That way you are making the decision with a more rational mind than you are after you've been raised. It leads to much better decisions imo

Good luck in 2016. A new PGC thread or updates in the same one?

Thanks and welcome.

Yeah solid advice.

The problem is when you have KK in a SB vs BB battle. After a double barrel you bink top set on the river and happily value bet. Then the MF raises you. Then you see the straight is possible so you go to click Fold. Then this evil voice appears in your head saying: "wait a minute, look at all those other cards he might have lower sets, go on call.. you know you want to.."

Call. Oh look at that he has a straight.

Thanks, think I'll just keep the adventure going in the same thread.

Right I have some updates.

Held off updating my laptop to Windows 10 last year so I could get Supernova in the bag first and finish off the year. Every time I update to a new OS my device gets bricked and it all ends in tears. Happened to my Iphone and also happened to my old laptop years ago updating windows. Since then I have just turned off automatic updates - if it aint broke dont fix it.

Decided January was a good time to show some balls and update to Windows 10. Some stuff hasent being working so smoothly on my setup for a while. The Competition window on the Stars client stopped working about 6 months ago so thought I needed some updates.

Downloads Windows 10 and installs and amazingly it worked and was up and running - well Windows 10 was, nothing else was working. The 2 monitors I use were both not functioning at all so had to go to device manager and start searching for new drivers. Gets 1 monitor working. Downloads the drivers for the second monitor. Restart you system - ok..

Restarts.. and I get the black screen of death. Absolutely nothing happening. Left it for 30 mins. Turned laptop off. Back on... black screen of death.

Had to use my Iphone now trying to browse for solutions. It says Hit F8 during windows booting up to get into safe mode was the advice. Hitting F8 only got me the following:




Took me about a full day to fix things and defo got some luck on finding the solution. Was one problem after another. Eventually got things to the Troubleshooting Screen cos the OS wont load. Exhausted all the options there and it prompted me to do a system restore and wipe the entire hard drive.

I did make a back up of my HEM2 database and poker spreadsheet before I done this but I still wasent down with wiping the hard drive.

All the help articles pointed to this option to select to get it to boot into safe mode but SONY decided to removed this feature on their laptops. Eventually found a post from some dude who had been through the same thing. He provided the solution which involved opening the command prompt and typing some line of code that boots the laptop in safe mode.

Doing that I managed to get the thing to boot into safe mode. Now I had to delete the monitor driver that fuct up the OS. Searching on my Iphone I found what looked like a post from the makers of the driver acknowledging that this driver bricks windows 10 and the solution. The page was a pdf which would not open on my iphone.

Fast forward, eventually gets another laptop to try and view this pdf for the solution. Clicks on it and the page has been removed from the web

I can see from the page title and the description that Google has saved that it looked like the solution. Then I clicked the arrow beside the URL and it opened a link to a Cached page of the result before it was removed

This give me the text from the page without the images

First solution was to use a system restore point - which I did not have. Then luckily it had an alternative:

Alternate Procedure: If the above procedure didn’t work please try the following:

1. Boot into “Safe Mode” by following the instructions in this article. http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2...dows-10-a.html

2. Open an Elevated Command Prompt by following these of the methods in this article. http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2...en-windows-10- a.html

3. Type the following followed by the return key in the elevated command prompt. sc delete ddkmd The command window should look something like this if successful:

And that last line of code deleted the driver. Rebooted it done some disk check bs then after that all seems to be working fine. But that took like a day and a half to fix, was stressful.

I am not intending on trying to get that other monitor working again anytime soon after that ordeal. Think I can get by with the laptop screen and one external monitor. The 3rd one I just used for the Stars lobby and HEM.

Actual couldnt believe it when it was back up and running, things were looking pretty bleak at one point.

Windows 10 does seem quite fast and has fixed a few of the problems I had. Also seems you cant turn off automatic updates in Win 10 so I am looking forward to some more updates and black screens of death.

Hopefully be back with a poker update next time.

urgh, i hate pc troubles. Really good post wrt to december. I think your self awareness is really great, and only good things can come of that mentality in my opinion.

Hit me up on skype if you'd like to go over any hands

gl for 2016, both with poker and your pc glgl

2016 Yearly Goals:

[] Keep a positive mindset
[] Put plenty of time into studying Poker and dont just focus on grinding out VPPs
[] Video Training
[] Continue reading through the Poker books on my list
[] Focus #1 on improving winrate in unopened pots
[] Focus #2 on improving winrate in "vs 1 Raiser" pots
[] Focus #3 on improving "vs 1 Limper" pots
[] Begin playing on other sites besides Stars

[] Achieve a 3bb/100 winrate at 50NL FR over 100k hands
[] Achieve any positive winrate at 100NL FR over 100k hands
[] Work towards being the best player in the games I am playing

[] Finish the last 46 modules on DuoLingo Spanish
[] Start DuoLingo Portuguese

[] Bench presses currently 72 KG - move to 80 KG by December

[] Buy a better chair for playing, back is getting sore

January Goals:

[] Install Windows 10
[] Work on improving winrate in Un-opened Pots
[] Buy a fan to help cool me down during some heated sessions
[] Have a winning month at 50NL FR
[] Install other poker sites and dabble
[] Have, yet another study of BB vs 1 Raiser on Btn
[] Study some vs 1 Limper material
[] Recognise when to deviate from my pre-planned preflop game
[] Focus on good table selection, quality not quantity

Will add to this if I can think of anything else but for now lets goooooo

Thank you.

Was reading your thread last night. That hand where you called the river jam with AK, while making the "Jesus forgive me for I have sinned" comment , then the villain flips over the AQ bluff

I was gonna comment except I didnt know what to say besides "Wooow wtf!!"

Skype

Not used that in ages. Just installed it there and it says your last activity was 12 months ago, you still rolling with the same skype details?

Found an email with my login details from years ago from Titan Poker.

Installs the software, logs in (after clicking through about 20 popups of "there is an error on the page continue running script?") and the highest Cash FR games running is two games of 10NL

very good.

Back has been aching lately so decided to act now rather than do any more damage. Based on good reviews, I decided to take a trip to Ikea and dropped £130 on the Markus chair.

Not gonna lie, I did get lost and walked round in circles in Ikea for a bit before making it to the til.

Chair seems pretty good so far and much better back and neck support than my old chair. Plus the mesh back keeps you cooler than leather.




Last 60 Days of Unopened Pots EV 14.2



Unopened Pots this month so far EV 16.3



Showing signs of improvement in that department. To be honest I defo made a few screw-ups as well. Sometimes I have autopiloted too much with the thought process of "AK.. I am opening this hand here and getting it in if anybody decides to fcuk with me"

Then when I 4bet AK and see the 5bet go in... then I start to look down at the villain 5bet stat and see his 5bet range is 0.78

I have also done similar against unknowns that I have no hands on, get it in with AK and these rec's are only jamming AA and KK.

Need to learn where to adjust before pulling the trigger.



I have also learned that Titan Poker and Betfair are both Ipoker Skins. The problem playing across multi sites seems to be that practically no Full Ring runs at 50NL or above. Suppose I could maybe learn a bit more 6max on other sites if the field is weaker, but not sure for now.

I have withdrawn $1K from my Stars roll to play on other sites so will continue to look about.

Started doing some studying on my play vs 1 Limper, will continue with this and then should hope to see some improvement in this department as well over time.

And lastly, as I am looking at a lot of stuff in HEM right now its kinda hard not to see how I am running for the month. I have decided I will check results whenever I need to for now. Previously only been checking at the end of the month. While that strategy has it merits I also feel it has its downfalls for someone like me who has a lot of leaks to find and should really be keeping an eye on HEM.

Also felt sometimes as well that not checking results until the months end kinda puts you in a safety bubble where you can make a huge mistake and just brush it off because you have the rest of the month to make up for it. Where as if you check more often you see the massive dent in your graph that comes from bad play.

I am up around 10 BI so far and running around EV 2.63

haha you should've commented! Glad you enjoyed it as for Skype it's something that you should sort imo as it can be really helpful to quickly run hands by in a chat group. My Skype is Ben-raven. I'm on nearly every day so you probably have the wrong name!

Also I have a Markus too, absolute boss chair!!

Gl bud

Kool, think I do have you on Skype. It's showing you as active now. It had probably just been 12 months since I had last logged in, got a few girls on there I've been trying to avoid

I'll configure Skype to run at startup so I dont forget about it for another 12 months.

Didn't know you had a Markus as well haha must mean I am going down the right track to 1K NL. I will stay tuned to your PG&C thread so I know what to do when I get there

Time for an update:

Warning Heater Alert:



$


bb


Started the year off @ 50NL FR with a casual 5.41 EV bb/100 winrate over 37k hands, went on bit of a heater recently which has helped.

Will try and keep this going for 100k hands and work on improving some more leaks.

Lets goooo

Another good day at the office.

Do not adjust your monitor.

Defo had my Jesus sandals on recently and been running in God mode. Had alot of AA v KK in my favour, turning sets. Couple whales on the Deep tables getting it in, in big 3 bet pots with TPTK on the flop vs my set etc etc

Up 30ish BI for the month.

Boooooooom

Today

Just remember chanting under my breath on the turn and river: "No spade... no spade... no spade..."

vs Whale


Stack was ~850bb when I eventually left that table.