My name is Rik, I'm 24 years old from the UK and I've been a losing poker player since the summer of 2016 until March of this year. If you want to read my story I've typed it below, but I'm aware these things can be incredibly tedious and people just want the substance:
My goal
I'm currently saving with my girlfriend for a deposit on our first mortgage. I have £6k in the bank and doing well saving from my marketing day-job.
I am no longer under any illusion about making it big playing poker. I would be more than happy to reach 25NL and beat it for a decent clip to top up my half of the deposit (to £10k) and, in future, maybe pay for a holiday together each year. So in the next 365 days I would like to:
- Continue crushing 6max 5NLz and work my way up to the heady heights of 25NL
- Turn my $300 bankroll into $3000
- Stop being a fat ****
What to expect in my PGC
- Graphs
- Hand Histories...and not just the ones where I crush. I'll also be posting the horrific spews that I am prone to on a daily basis.
- Other various ideas and some strategy from my study.
My screen name on Stars is Rikc7, so feel free to say hi if you see me around the 5NL (and hopefully higher!) tables and I'll feel slightly more guilty about taking your stack
If you want to read my story or see my results at 2NL and 5NL so far, it's all below but I'll be posting some hands from the last couple of days to be going on with!
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My story
I'll try and keep this short because I do waffle, but I can't promise anything:
I am a world class Hearts (a.k.a. Chase the Lady, Black Lady, Black Maria, Black Widow) player and have always been quite bitter that nobody in the UK or online seems to play the game for money. Eventually, I gave up trying to change the world to want to play high stakes Hearts and tried to join them playing poker.
I started playing poker after beating some friends in an incredibly soft home game. We didn't have chips with different denominations and the only reasonable alternative seemed to be conchiglie pasta shells. After taking their pasta stacks and their £10 buy-ins I deposited the £30 into Stars the day before the Brexit referendum and began playing SNGs and Zoom cash games while watching the coverage.
All went seemingly well and I built up a roll of $80 with an exotic idea of bankroll management and the help of some incredibly outdated strategy threads on the uNL forums.
Then came the fall.
I went busto. Month after month I'd degen out and reload my self-imposed limit of £20 before losing it all playing 5NLz and 10NLz. I then signed up for new sites to play because I'd spewed away my Stars roll and already reached my deposit limit. Party, Coral, Unibet, 888. It became ridiculous. I wondered if anyone actually made money playing in the micros. After a particularly spewy weekend I was so ashamed that I self-excluded from every site except Stars. I took a month off from playing poker and focused only on studying and contributing to the Micro Stakes NL forum.
Then it all clicked.
When I returned I bought PokerTracker 4 for the first time so that I could be more honest with myself about how much I was losing. I rid myself of any dreams of making it big in poker and promised myself to be disciplined. I don't know whether it was the time off to realign my life, the study, the proper bankroll management, or just the fact that I had a HUD now; but it all fell into place. I was winning. Not winning like before when I would correctly bluff catch a river shove with A high playing 25NL on a $32 bankroll. Winning by being solid and playing good poker.
March 2017: my most recent (and hopefully my last ever) poker deposit. £8.21 for a $10 roll with which I grinded the micros to reach my current $300.22.
Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, fold, SB raises to 5 BB, BB raises to 20 BB, Hero raises to 200.4 BB and is all-in, fold, BB calls 80 BB and is all-in
Flop:(205 BB, 2 players) 6 6 K
Turn:(205 BB, 2 players) A
River:(205 BB, 2 players) 2
Spoiler:
BB shows A A (Full House, Aces full of Sixes)
(Pre 82%, Flop 9%, Turn 98%) Hero shows K K (Full House, Kings full of Sixes)
(Pre 18%, Flop 91%, Turn 2%) BB wins 196.4 BB
Probably going against the grain of all P&G fanboys here but don't make results orientated goals, especially if you're not already +EV.
It will just shift your focus to the wrong things and forever keep your mind in a small box as well as your poker game.
Just worry about improving your game, focus on the process and go after all the weak points in your thought process through constant hard work. You might surprise yourself.
@KK hand
Villain is at 12 VPIP over 160 Hands. Shoving 100BB over his 20BB seems excessive imo. Have you considered making it like 45BB and folding to a 5bet? That way we can also implement bluffs. Would like to hear your general start there
@KK hand
Villain is at 12 VPIP over 160 Hands. Shoving 100BB over his 20BB seems excessive imo. Have you considered making it like 45BB and folding to a 5bet? That way we can also implement bluffs. Would like to hear your general start there
Also, GL
5b folding kings seems like lighting money on fire for me but when V cold 4bets an IP UTG range I didn't expect to see much worse than aces. Folding KK pre just isn't in my repertoire and couldn't see any point in flatting and letting an A fall OTF to either crush me or scare off his rare QQ.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Barking_Cat
Gl man. Is there any reason ur playing on stars and not on another site?
Thanks man! I self-excluded from nearly every other site in my degen days haha I think I got tired of the process by the time I got to Party so I think I can still play there and have considered moving over when the RB changes kick in for Stars.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fluberbucket
Gl sweet graphs!
Thanks dude! Got over that downswing at the start of moving up and went on a golden run but it's plateaued a little now. How's 5NL going for you?
Probably going against the grain of all P&G fanboys here but don't make results orientated goals, especially if you're not already +EV.
It will just shift your focus to the wrong things and forever keep your mind in a small box as well as your poker game.
Just worry about improving your game, focus on the process and go after all the weak points in your thought process through constant hard work. You might surprise yourself.
gl
Tbh the $3000 dollar thing was just an arbitrary target for a title haha. I'd be happy if I'm still beating 5NL for half my current WR in 6 months even if I shot 10NL and couldn't cut it. I'm just happy to not be reloading every month lol.
Sort of expected to run bad after creating this PGC, and maybe that fatalism played a part in it. Was a bit unlucky but I definitely didn't play well either so I think the update is going to be weighted more towards spew today haha
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Should have shoved turn, should have folded river but I just couldn't muck a boat
Don't think A4o is a good iso hand as you say. I don't think you should be value-betting river either but maybe that's results oriented lol. Swings happen though, gl!
Don't think A4o is a good iso hand as you say. I don't think you should be value-betting river either but maybe that's results oriented lol. Swings happen though, gl!
Ya think the iso was bad but im still confident we have vbet on the river vs fish. Theyd normally donkshove their nut hands and x/c their Ax and V only has like 2/3 left.
Yeah I think I was being a little results oriented. I see a lot of fish donk with gutshots on these types of flops but obviously his donking range will include a lot of Ax as well
So had a lot of life stuff to do this week with my gf graduating so was spending a bit of time with her in London. Managed to squeeze in a couple of sessions in the last two days for a weekly update.
Transferred a bit of my roll over to Party to see what the pool was like there. Playing 10NL FF games and liking it quite a lot so might transfer my whole roll over.
Anyway, this week's graphs at 5NL and 10NL
5NL - Stars
10NL - Party
Anyways, onto some hands:
Biggest win - The turn min3bet was a misclick, I swear
Any reason you checked turn in that AQ hand? Seems like an easy bet to me.
Thanks bro!
I'm not too sure actually. Looking again i think turn bet might be best. I feel like i probably put a BB 3b cold calling range at hands they dont want to fold but are too scared to 4b so like AQ and JJ-88 and maybe some SCs that they overvalue. Looking at this range now we have a clear V bet OTT and it would make for easier river decisions than i was left with (was very close to folding and even after clicking felt id probably made a mistake).
Realised I did my weekly update a day early could save the good results from tonight's session to make next week's look good but there were too many hands to not share on here.
Been playing mainly on Party and almost certain to make that my main site. The only problem is that the Fast Forward tables are pretty dead at lunchtimes in the UK and I like to play while at the gym on my lunch at work, so I'll have to leave a bit of roll on Stars.
10NL - Party Poker
Green line above yellow at the moment which makes me feel a bit uneasy but I never know how much credit to give that. I don't give it any credit when I'm 'running below EV' so I shouldn't give it credit now, right?
Onto some hands
River is a bet/fold - right?
A leak in my game for sure. I chose my sizing for a bet/fold but couldn't follow through. Got lucky this time but I'm sure this isn't the correct play.