Update: I've had a pretty busy couple of weeks putting in OT at work so I haven't had the chance to put in a ton of volume like I wanted. The hands I have played, I have been pretty happy with the way I played them, but, still only ~ break even for the month. I haven't looked at my graphs this week at all to see where I'm at, but I estimate I will have to throw down about 1k hands a day and 4k on the weekends to hit the 75k in March/April and move up.
I've been pondering moving up in May regardless of whether I hit or fall short of my 10BB/100 winrate goal in 75k hands. I still can get there, and will certainly strive to do so before the end of April, but, I feel like 5NL is calling my name provided I remain disciplined and play my A game over the next 9 days. The last few sessions have been borderline tilting and swingy, but, I managed to maintain a clear focus despite the deck not cooperating. I don't know why, but I feel as if running badly at 2NL can be more aggravating than running bad at higher stakes because it's literally for pennies. I guess I will find out eventually, but, for now the journey continues.
Here's to crushing and running good down the home stretch in April!! 10+BB/100, let's get it done!
Gogogogogo just wait for the hands and/or spots crush it bro and learn way more, I suggest you to visit the memorable threats at micro stakes forum.
Nice journey for you .
Doing my best man, thanks and I'll do that. I was having a really good day. 2k hands and up almost 5 buy ins and hit a bit of run bad followed by a tilting stretch. Gave a lot of it back in 700 hands. I quit up only $1.20 on the day so I didn't lose all the profits. This game takes an insurmountable amount of patience sometimes.
Tilt puts you away from being on your ''A-game'', and being distracted drives you tilt, so try as much as possible to be without any kind of distraction, just poker when poker, this really helped my WR very much and also I found more passion at playing when doing this, now I just want to get home every single dar after work for playing poker
Go ahead and take a look into this video, incredible: http://success.knowledgeformen.com/grounded-man
fold, UTG+1 calls 1 BB, MP calls 1 BB, CO raises to 3 BB, fold, Hero raises to 12 BB, fold, fold, fold, CO raises to 21 BB, Hero raises to 146.5 BB and is all-in, CO calls 79 BB and is all-in
Flop:(203 BB, 2 players) Q 6 5
Turn:(203 BB, 2 players) 8
River:(203 BB, 2 players) 5
Spoiler:
CO shows 4 Q (Two Pair, Queens and Fives)
(Pre 28%, Flop 87%, Turn 95%) Hero shows J J (Two Pair, Jacks and Fives)
(Pre 72%, Flop 13%, Turn 5%) CO wins 193 BB
3 BB was deducted from the pot for the jackpot.
He then proceeded to call me a derogatory name in the chat immediately the hand that HE won. Poker was once a gentleman's game. What happened to it?
Anyway, I finished up the session this evening after a couple more beats down $3.83. Not really tilted too badly. I ran horrible at times, good other times. On a positive note, over 3300k hands, my red line is even. Over all ran 4 buy ins below EV. Looking forward to the next session probably tomorrow!
I think this hand plays better as a x/c otf. Granted it's possible you might have decent fold equity otf depending on how wide villain is cbetting, but we have decent sdv in a lot of instances with this hand, and I feel that we'll get to showdown fairly often when villain doesn't have Ax or better. 2nl regs tend to do a lot of "one and done" cbetting. I'd much prefer a x/r with JcTc/QcTc. fwiw I'd like this line more at higher limits since regs are actually capable of folding top pair with a decent kicker.
Thanks whitemares, appreciate it! Although it would seem I have been playing well based on the hands posted, there were times of spew caused by tilt. I am getting better at identifying it(tilt) and learning to just get up from the computer instead of forcing it and trying to play through it. I.e. the hand below was my second hand at the table. Now the guy turned out to be a whale, however, in hindsight, had I just taken a break immediately after this hand, I would have finished up 4 buyins yesterday instead of down 2. There were multiple hand similar to this that happened in rapid succession and I tried to dig in and play through it.
mchares hit it though, tilt takes you off your A game to the point it is better just to take a break and come back later. I read some of those old strat threads in the micros section yesterday and they really hit home. Knowing is one thing, applying is totally different. Let's see what today's session brings .
This is the only hand I even remotely have an issue with:
I think this hand plays better as a x/c otf. Granted it's possible you might have decent fold equity otf depending on how wide villain is cbetting, but we have decent sdv in a lot of instances with this hand, and I feel that we'll get to showdown fairly often when villain doesn't have Ax or better. 2nl regs tend to do a lot of "one and done" cbetting. I'd much prefer a x/r with JcTc/QcTc. fwiw I'd like this line more at higher limits since regs are actually capable of folding top pair with a decent kicker.
That hand felt like a long time ago lol. You would think V's aren't capable of folding TPGK, but it does happen occasionally. He made a good call and tbh, when he flatted my flop xr, he is pretty capped at one pair, maybe JTs or 67s. Most of those hands I can make fold with a xr flop, bet turn and shove river, or xc flop and xr turn. Come to think of it, the xc flop and xr turn might have worked better.
I see what you're getting at though regarding SDV and xc being standard. Normally I would just XC vs most V's, but I deviated a little bit from standard because I felt like this V was capable of folding a decent A to pressure otherwise I'd have picked a better board to do this with, i.e. 9s8c6c or similar without an over card to my 9. Apparently I was wrong .
Turn:(48 BB, 2 players) Q Hero bets 126.5 BB and is all-in, BTN calls 49 BB and is all-in
River:(146 BB, 2 players) A
Spoiler:
BTN shows A T (Two Pair, Aces and Tens)
(Pre 67%, Flop 14%, Turn 16%) Hero shows J T (Two Pair, Jacks and Tens)
(Pre 33%, Flop 86%, Turn 84%) BTN wins 139 BB
2 BB was deducted from the pot for the jackpot.
Flop bet here was for value vs his 40% limp/call range. Donking turn was suspicious, but the river was not a bluff and I was about to click fold before I timed out.
959 hands, - $2.45 tonight. I will summarize the spew in four hands.
I ran into a LAG's QQ V JJ BvB AIPF, I tried turning KK into a bluff on an A high 3 heart flush board when I held the Kh (bad idea when he has the nuts), then got semi-coolered vs the same player from the previous hand straight vs his bottom boat, then had an unsuccessful bluff vs a loose rec BvB in a 4BP for another stack(weird but probably avoidable spot).
So let's get rid of all the hands that are obvious spew, like the hands I described above, from the last 230k hands I have played and I'm probably playing 25NL by now lol. It's all good, I enjoy learning this difficult game if not sometimes the hard way.
On a positive note, my red line is in the black for the session and I stopped myself from tilting by just sitting out for a couple minutes and regrouping. It's safe to say I've grown from tonight's experience.
I may have won more from him had he stayed, but he sat out after the TT hand above. He was stacked up on every table, too. Wish I could play more this morning cause I'm feeling good, but that work thing getting in the way.
I didnt say that, I said that Id raise for value, only if I've saw Villian lead/3Bing with TPGK before, Id consider to shove his 3B there, however, what usually happens is that our V calls the raise OTF, if he 3Bs we can give him credit without any read.
The thing is that I wont miss the chance of value raise this player who is capable of making the mistake of calling down with several worse combos.
Well, I've been working hard on developing lines that make sense so that I don't get smacked when I move up. I'm not raising any of those flops because I want to protect the few floats IP I have when V's donk into me(happens quite frequently) and also, V's wide range smacks those boards in both instances so it's pretty gross if I get 3b. I wanted to prevent that by giving the V the rope by which he seemed content to hang himself.
Having said that, raising this particular V in those spots can't be a huge mistake considering his range, but, my issue would be I'm not doing it to fold to a 3b.
Bad passive player and bad aggresive player (both are the ones we consider as fish), Id give credit to the passive ones but against the others we can play a bit different, I believe that raising flop or turn for value is fine, board texture dependent.
We can note that V used to DB once he hits, so we can use this argument for raising for value.
Decent session. 346 hands, +$3.67. Felt like I played like a nit as I was kind of card dead most of the time. This hand was the only semi-spewy bluff that I tried where V's line just didn't make sense to me.
One hand out of 346 where if I just folded river it would be another $1.20 for the sesh. I don't mind this one as much since I held the Qs, but, multiply that times I don't know how many other hands I've spewed and I am probably destroying this limit at a disgusting rate. My guess is at least 1 or 2 hands per session where it cost me a stack. Frustrating and hopeful at the same time. Perfection is unrealistic, but, these mistakes can be easily avoided by stopping and thinking another second. Cause hey, if it feels like it will be spewy, it probably is, right?
Pretty sure I am value owning myself if I bet the last one a majority of the time vs this player type. There aren't many worse flushes that he can have.
UTG raises to 2 BB, fold, Hero raises to 8 BB, fold, SB calls 7.5 BB, BB raises to 20 BB, UTG calls 18 BB, Hero calls 12 BB, SB raises to 116.5 BB and is all-in, BB raises to 153 BB and is all-in, UTG calls 97 BB and is all-in, fold
Flop:(370.5 BB, 3 players) 8 J 8
Turn:(370.5 BB, 3 players) J
River:(370.5 BB, 3 players) 4
Spoiler:
SB shows T T (Two Pair, Jacks and Tens)
Main Pot [369.5 BB]: (Pre 17%, Flop 12%, Turn 0%)
BB shows A A (Two Pair, Aces and Jacks)
Main Pot [369.5 BB]: (Pre 67%, Flop 79%, Turn 5%)
Side Pot#1 [1 BB]: (Pre 81%, Flop 90%, Turn 5%)
UTG shows J 7 (Full House, Jacks full of Eights)
Main Pot [369.5 BB]: (Pre 16%, Flop 10%, Turn 95%)
Side Pot#1 [1 BB]: (Pre 19%, Flop 10%, Turn 95%)
Here is an interesting hand. Obviously not a GTO move vs this loose station. I have played about 600 hands with this guy. He floats with overs all the time, in or out of position, including with A2 on a K64 rainbow board OOP when I 3b him otb a few days ago.
Anyway, onto the hand. In this spot I was running 14/14 over about 50 hands or 60 hands. V was actually running closer to 23/19 when this hand came up.
Turn:(51 BB, 2 players) T SB bets 24 BB, Hero raises to 120 BB and is all-in
He never has a hand on this turn, maybe the naked Ad or Kd at best. I felt like if he had AA or KK or top set he's betting more. With that read along with 6 high being the worst possible hand I can have here and the likelihood I have so much equity, I just went with it. If he does happen to call, I have outs.
Ah crap, how dare he call with the best hand, lol. . Seriously though, he snap called. I left the table right after that hand, quit playing a few minutes later and went to the gym. About to put in a few more hands and finish up 2NL.