If you are strictly going to play poker, then Borgata is my number one recommendation. The rake is time ($5/30 mins) for 2/5 and the player pool is as soft as your average Aria 1/3 game. Seeing a 3bet pot go multiway is a common sight. The chairs are comfortable and there are 90+tables during weekends. Downside is that AC is a ****hole and the food/shows are terrible.

So yeah, depending on your priority for the trip it may/may not be a good choice. I'd suggest you download bravo to get a sense of promos and game selection.

Tyty, you too!

Thanks for the info man! I'd be going there almost strictly to play poker, yeah. So the fact there isn't much to see/do in AC wouldn't be overly important. Just gotta look over the tax situation before I book anything since that's the only thing holding me back right now.

I'll be sure to download bravo.

--

Feeling a bit lazy this month and haven't put in a ton of volume. I'm up ~$830 online and haven't played any live poker so far. I'm considering going to the casino tonight, but yeah, it's a massive struggle atm lol. Really really should go since I don't have any plans for tonight, so we'll see if I end up doing the right thing or not.

--

Started watching a new show this week, and for the first time in quite a while I'm a bit hooked (Billions; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4270492/). Very very good so far. Giamatti and DL are both amazing.

--

Ended up doing the 'right thing' and going. -$311. Played super well throughout and only really made one mistake (albeit a relatively big one). At the end of the session we were down to 5 players, and I was literally the only one who wasn't a massive whale, but I still couldn't make anything happen. Had zero fold equity both preflop and postflop, so I basically just tried to 3b wide for value and never bet postflop unless it was for strict value (or w/ extremely equity-driven bluffs once or twice). Just couldn't hit a single flop/pick up any hands tonight sadly. Live poker etc.

Hand of the night:

2. Fish 1 goes 2x on the BTN, Fish 2 in BB min-raises, BTN clicks it back, BB flats. Flop comes 567ssx, BB checks, BTN bets ~5x pot (lol), BB goes into the tank and ends up shoving for a total of 450ish bbs, BTN snaps. BB has TT, BTN has AKo. Lol overload.

Running like absolute **** online vs the most disgusting regs imaginable. Currently down ~$800 for the month, which isn't a huge deal, but it's so demoralizing to constantly get absolutely crushed vs the same regs in spots where you have a massive equity advantage on flops and turns. I honestly don't get how a group of 3-4 regulars can just constantly run hotter than the sun 24/7.

Prob just gonna take it easy for the rest of the night since I feel like throwing up all over my monitor right now, but we'll see. Only NL100 online for a while.

I've recovered fully online and I'm up ~$300, but I'm still down ~$130 live. I've only put in a shortish live session since my last post though.

Won't be playing tonight, but tomorrow I'll be back at it. I'm also gonna start posting online hands in this thread to spice it up a bit. I'm pretty confident in my game but there are some spots where I'm quite uncertain (although I doubt I'm making any massive mistakes).

I'll also be taking 2-3 weeks off work in the very near future to grind online and live 24/7. Will be posting tons in this thread during that time obviously.

GL man!

Tyty!

--

Alright so, been a while since my last post. Basically I've been planning for April, which is gonna be a huge huge poker month for me in terms of volume. I'll be taking 75% of April off from work, so I won't be doing much else other than grinding online and live. I guess I'll put in the occasional gym session too so my body doesn't decide to give up on me.

Anyway, as for March, I'm currently up ~$2100, and all of it is online $ (over ~50 hours, not sure how many hands exactly since my HEM's been acting up). Sadly I'm ~b/e live for the month over <10 hours. I'll be going to the casino tonight and putting in a casual 9 hour sesh though, so hopefully I'll be able to make something happen in the live department.

While my actual poker volume hasn't been too great this month, I've easily spent 20+ hours studying the game - which feels great. I don't think I've ever felt more confident in my poker ability/overall strategy.

On a side note, last week I ordered a custom-built PC which will be arriving on Monday or Tuesday. It's something I've never done before, so it was a bit of a challenge figuring out which components work together etc., but it was kind of fun. I ended up paying around $2700 for it (w/ two 25" monitors, so the actual PC was 'only' $2000 or so). Will almost definitely put in a few twitch streams here and there in the future.

--

Twitch stream yay! Also I hope you got a SSD on the new computer, it makes HEM run 10-20x faster than a traditional hard drive.

Yeah, got a 500 GB SSD. These are the exact specs:

-AMD Ryzen 7 1700 - 8C/16T, 3,0/3,7GHz, 4MB L2, 16MB L3 cache, 65W

-ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce GTX 1080 8GB GAMING (STRIX-GTX1080-A8G-GAMING)

-ASUS Prime B350M-A - ATX / B350

-Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) LPX / DDR4 / 2400MHz / CL14 (CMK16GX4M2A2400C14)

-Fractal Design Define Mini C - Black

-Samsung SSD 850 EVO SSD 500GB (MZ-75E500B/EU)

-be quiet! PowerSupply (PSU) Pure Power 9 CM 600W 80+ Silver

This will obviously look like a foreign language to anyone who doesn't have at least a little experience with these things (aka me two weeks ago ). Didn't take me long to realize that going with one of the big/traditional brands for desktop PCs would be incredibly dumb, so I simply had no choice but to learn the basics.

Keep on crushing crushy mccrushington.

So, I guess March is in the books.

Online: +$3132. Probably played around 30k hands or so (~80% of my volume was on my main site), but it's hard to say for sure since I haven't been able to import my hands properly.

Live: -$673 over 18 hours/~540 hands, a total of 4 sessions. Couldn't make much happen last Saturday and ended up booking a ~$500 loss.

Total results: +$2559

Anyway, today was my last day at work for a few weeks, so now it's all about April and endless amounts of poker. I'm still not sure how I'm going to divide my time between live and online. I'll either go full online/live from week to week, or do a daily rotation. I'm thinking the latter might make the live grind more bearable.

I guess I'll post a hand for a change too. From tonight's session (amounts in €, not $):



--

Also got my new PC and monitors earlier this week, and here's the final result:



--

And now my incredibly weak mental game is showing its ugly face again. Jesus christ. I don't think I'll ever improve this part of my game. I'm totally aware of everything that is going on, and yet I cannot control myself.

I've only been playing online so far this month, and I'm down ~$300, so I mean, it's literally nothing. Yet I almost felt like smashing my entire setup to pieces just now (and I'm down <$200 tonight, lol). It's pathetic.

I never tilt live since it's simply too slow of an environment, but online when playing 6-9 tables things happen so quickly. It's certainly not a matter of actual $ amounts since I've booked multiple $1k losses without caring too much, but it's just the manner in which I've been losing over these past 3 high-volume days. You go through so much raw variance when playing many tables online for long hours, so when going through a ridiculous stretch the game can get really really dark.

Yeah, don't know what to do about this. I basically feel like total **** right now for letting this get to me.

Gonna put in a live session tomorrow, will be good to get away from the online grind for at least a day.

Lower number of tables until you break out of downswing. I've found that to be most helpful in these situations. To help with the boredom, have HM2 "Opponent" tab open and just browse through HH and ranges of regs you are playing against. It will pay dividents later when you increase volume again.

Yeah, this is really good advice. It's something I always consider when going through these stretches, but never really do. Mainly because I feel it's ridiculous/weak (which it obviously isn't) to allow variance to have such power over you when you're a clear winner in the games. But yeah, in order to deal with a 'mental' downswing (which is what this is, calling it anything else would be pretty ridiculous considering my stakes and results) it's definitely the way to go.

--

So, today I was reminded that live poker really should be my primary focus, no matter how much I love the online grind (just look my last post, that's what love looks like). I booked a $1600 win over 6 hours of play. And there were barely any interesting hands, just me isolating weak players, vbetting in fairly obvious spots and getting called by worse 24/7. I'm also playing around with the 1/3 cbet sizing live which is pretty fun since people tend to misinterpret it and make massive mistakes.

I'll share one of the few hands where I wasn't just vbetting a strong hand and getting snapped off tomorrow, a bit too tired to write it down right now.

--



--

Tomorrow will be an online day since I need to get up early on Thursday and be sharp. I'll be playing a ton of live poker for the remainder of the week though, aiming for a minimum of 36 live hours between Thursday and Sunday.

Good luck sir!

As planned I put in an online session last night and managed to book a $411 win. Back in the black online for the month.

My plans for today were cancelled, so I've basically just been preparing for tonight's live adventure. A quick gym session (which is just the most demoralizing activity in the world considering how weak I am atm , there's probably not a single 16-year-old there who isn't stronger than I am), and I've had time to go over a little bit of theory as well. Going to the casino in 40ish minutes or so.

--

On a side note, this morning my boss called me (woke me up, 10.30 am, was a bit of a challenge to even pronounce my own name), and he basically offered me a $60k/yr position (which is pretty decent by European standards) as a manager. This puts me in a really really difficult spot, since this position is in a different city. It's 90 minutes away from the city I live in now, where the casino is, which means I'd only really be able to play live poker on weekends.

Financially, overall, accepting this offer would definitely be a suboptimal move, but for my CV/career I'd be an idiot not to say yes.

I really don't know what to do, so for now I'm just gonna ignore the real world and get on the grind. I've still got ~2 weeks of nothing but poker ahead of me, so nothing to worry about just yet.

--



--

Ty man, you too!

Absolutely huge session today. ~+$2300 over 9 hours. My biggest winning day ever, I think.

Time for a quick update. Things haven't really gone according to plan so far. Yesterday the casino was closed, so instead I put in a small online session and booked a $160 win. Today, however, the casino was open again. The plan was to play for 8-9 hours, but after a few hours my mind started playing tricks on me. Again, the mental aspect of the game. Basically, I ended up leaving after 5 hours, booking a $1750 win - and I obviously only felt like leaving because I was up a decent amount. Really really weak, but yeah, a win's a win and I'll be back there tomorrow.

I know this is something a lot of players struggle with, both online and live, but this is strictly a live issue for me. I've never had any problems with this when playing online, so I'm guessing it's just because I'm still fairly new to the live scene, the $ amounts kind of get to me (being up ~20 online buyins after a couple of hours live is a pretty strange feeling, especially when combining online and live poker on an almost daily basis like I'm doing atm). I'll be sure to work on this part of my game though, I'm not in this for short-term profits when I have such a massive and almost bizarre winrate.

I'm currently up ~$5600 for the month (95% of it from live poker).

--

Also, I impulsively booked a 4-day trip to Prague earlier. I'll be leaving on Monday, and I'll be back here early on Friday. I basically just wanted something different for a few days, and I'll be playing a ton of online poker. I'll make these 4 days my final 'online days' this month, so on Friday I'll start focusing on live poker again and won't play much online at all for the rest of the month. I've never really travelled solo before, so it should be interesting.

--

There were two hands tonight that I wasn't totally sure about, so I figured I'd post them. My live games play ultra deep (which I'm sure is standard for most live games), so these situations are pretty odd since they occur quite rarely in an online setting. Would appreciate some thoughts on how I played the hands.

$ amounts may be a little off since I'm not playing in a USD game, but w/e, it's close enough.

H1

~$2/3, $6 straddle

UTG +1 limps (~$1k stack), UTG +2 calls limps behind (~$1500 stack),
Hero raises to ~$30 w/ AJ (covers both villains), it's folded back to the limpers and they both call

Flop ($101): J63 UTG +1 checks, UTG +2 bets $40, Hero calls, UTG +1 calls

Turn ($221): A UTG +1 checks, UTG +2 bets $80, Hero calls, UTG +1 calls

River (~$461): K UTG +1 checks, UTG +2 bets $200, Hero calls, UTG +1 folds

UTG +2 shows A3, Hero wins the ~$861 pot

H2

~$2/3

it's folded to CO who makes it $15, BTN folds,
SB 3bets to $40 (this guy was UTG +2 in H1, ~$1100 stack), Hero (BB) c4bets to $110 w/ KK (still covers everyone), CO folds and SB flats.

Flop ($235): 963 SB checks, Hero bets $85, SB calls

Turn ($405): 10 SB checks, Hero checks

River ($405): 10 SB bets $200, Hero calls

SB mucks his hand and goes: "you win, I've got nothing", Hero wins the $805 pot

--

H1 thoughts

I guess this is the most non-standard hand since I never raised at any point. While I was in the hand I just couldn't think of any hands that would continue vs my exact hand since I block everything; any sort of continuing range that these two villains are gonna have vs a turn raise will contain hands that have me beat a big % of the time. It felt a bit meh since UTG +2 ended up having A3 that he chose to lead the flop with for some reason, but I'd assume that my play is at least ok.

Raising river doesn't really seem like a super attractive option either because of ^, but yeah, to elaborate a little bit: 1. we're still 3-way here, and there's also a pretty big chance that they'd end up shoving hands that I'd want them to just call my raise with (their wide ranges may contain some worse two-pair hands, and in their eyes those hands would be the super nuts and they'd prob happily shove over a small raise for a billion bbs).

But yeah, a bit tl;dr, I guess you could just say 'lol you're playing vs huge whales, stop over-analyzing and just raise/try to get as much money in as possible OTT'. I'm very theory-oriented in these spots and I keep thinking quite a lot about which hands are reasonable to have in my get-in-438974283478374 bbs range - even vs whales.

H2 thoughts

Looking back at the hand I'm pretty happy with how I played it. Sure, there are ways to squeeze more $ out of villain's range (not vs his exact hand though since he had absolutely nothing), but playing this deep I'd rather not put myself in a terrible spot vs a x/r OTT this deep on this board texture. Vs a more passive villain I'd take a different line at a higher frequency, but this villain had been x/raising quite a bit with weird merged hands throughout the night.

h1 raise for value if not on the river on the turn. H2 cbet flop like 120

I really really struggle with the logic behind taking this line in H1 though. Which hands would we be targetting that we expect them to continue with? Single Jx hands fold to a raise, single-pair hands fold to a raise except some weirdly played Ax (which we block, plus neither of them can have any strong Ax combo), any sort of straight draw folds, worse two-pair hands don't/shouldn't make up a big portion of their ranges. In spots where a villain's value range is this narrow it is generally gonna be better to just flat and keep ranges wide/allow them to keep bluffing. You disagree with this when it comes to deep live play vs weaker players?

H2 - yeah, I agree that it's slightly better. Multiple sizings are fine on this flop, but again, vs a whale IP it's prob better to size up right away. It's not a huge deal though since the plan is obviously to go much bigger on certain turns and rivers. An obvious upside to betting small here is that it widens the whale's continuing range on the flop since he doesn't get what's going on, so all of the random unpaired Ax/Kx/Qx/Jx hands get to the turn, which is good for us since we give villain a chance to make more mistakes - just like in the actual hand. If we go >50% OTF in this spot, in a 4bet pot, villain's just gonna fold most of these hands.

Been obsessing over H1 all day basically. I really can't take it when I feel like I can't figure something out/when I feel I may have taken a suboptimal line. I've gotten a few more comments now though (and most are better than "raise turn obv lol!" which is the worst type of strat comment, sorry meale ) - and it's pretty clear to me now that I made a mistake. I should be raising turn here at a high frequency, and in-game the problem was that I failed to construct their ranges quickly/accurately enough - and I ended up missing a crucial detail; they can both obviously have a middle-pair type hand/a random semi-connected middling hand with a BDFD that picked up equity OTT, and those are perfect hands to target in this spot since they'll definitely continue vs a raise. If I'd thought of this in-game it would've made it a super easy turn raise. So yeah, not a great play on my part.

H2 I'm perfectly fine with however. Vs this particular villain's ridiculously wide range I'm fine with multiple sizings on the flop, and I'm fine with checking back this turn a pretty decent % of the time since he'll bluff all of his air OTR (and he'd just fold all of his one-pair hands without the FD OTT vs a bet aside from JJ/QQ (he'd folded relatively strong hands to me earlier in the night vs two barrels), but vs other player types firing turn would make more sense/be better).

Now I can move on with my life.

Arrived in Prague yesterday. Yday wasn't too eventful though, I was super exhausted since I had to get up early for my flight (early being 10.30 am, the life of a soldier), so I crashed around 9.30 pm and woke up 13 hours later. Very reasonable.

Other than going outside to get some street kebab and Mexican food, I just played online poker and studied today. Booked a nice ~$530 win over ~4 hours of play or so. Feeling good and playing well. The month's at ~+$6100 now.

Apparently there are some pretty massive games running in Prague, about 3x my usual live stakes. The idea is to try and get into one of these games tomorrow, so things could get pretty interesting. I think I'd be comfortable losing around €3k, but more than that might hurt.

Just bought Pio. About time.

Off to the casino in a couple of hours, let's hope I don't get stabbed and robbed on my way back to the apartment.

Heard beer in Prague is cheaper than water, is that true?