My Situation

I am 36 year old poker player and a father of three from Finland. After a long pause from poker, I started again this year and found myself struggling to beat the games. I took a long summer vacation spending time with my family and playing golf. When I started playing again, I decided improve my game. I accidentally stumbled to BPC in few places and thought “Why not let’s give it a chance!”



My Poker Story

I started playing around 2005. I was working as a research scientist at the time and right after I made my first deposit to poker site, I had to go to a six month work trip. I couldn’t play poker there, so I decided to buy a bunch of poker books and study the game. My first deposit was the only one I had to make until this year. At that time you only needed to know starting hands and be aggressive to beat the games. after few years of working and playing poker, I was in 25-50 NLHE 6-max games and my best month was over 100k. Two years later I had hard time beating the games and decided to try PLO. I wasn’t playing much, but I did ok for a while. After the birth of first child, I took few years of poker to build my home and do my other construction projects. Now my oldest girl is 5 years old and twin girls are 3, I can get some sleep again. So I started playing again and I can barely beat the rake. My laziness has been my problem. After my first contact to poker, I haven’t really worked on my game. Now that is about to change!



Why I Want to Join CFP?

As I said earlier, I stumbled to BPC by accident. Firstly I saw a finnish poker journal about a micro stakes player who joined. After that I saw banner in HighstakesDB. The I did some research and decided that if I want be THE BEST I need to learn from the best. So here I go!

FUNDAMENTALS



Now I am starting to concentrate my own game more closely. I am not going mind my opponents game(although it should be taken into consideration), who just sucked out on me, or is 3-betting me like crazy. I will focus on my own game. Low stakes can be crushed with a solid PREFLOP game, where you don’t put yourself in too tough situations and you often have better hand or better draw when pots get big. I am going to build my fundamentals step by step and I’ll start by concentrating next few days on my UTG and MP opening ranges. After 2 days I check all my UTG and MP opens and compare how well did they match ranges below. These are also my general ranges on the BLINDS when I defend against UTG or MP open. If there are many callers I will add some hands that flop strong hands (like KKxxos, QQxxss) .



UTG and MP OPENING RANGES



AAXX

KKxxss

QQxxds

AKQQ-QQJ8ss

AKJJ-JJT7ds/ss

AsQQx, AsJJx

QJTT-TT98ds/ss

AKQJ-T987ds/ss

AKQT-JT97ds/ss

AQJT, KJT9ds/ss

AsKQx-AsJTx

BBBxds (B = Broadway card)

medium connectors + NFD AsT98-876ds/ss

good doublepairs (bigger pair 8 or higher) ~QQ22-8877



If you guys have something to add or want to discuss, please feel free to share your thoughts.



PS. Ranges are taken from 2+2 GoGetARealJob’s post

Best of luck. You are in a similar spot compared to myself. How do you handle your time managment between family Job and poker. Have you set yourself goals?

Poker has been my job for some time. Between family and poker there is always issues, because kids wake up early and therefore I can't play all night. I gladly make those sacrifices to spend some time with my family. Its way more important than money, especially when kids are small. On the other side there is tons of good things with poker and family. Now I can manage my work schedule to fit my family's needs, which can't be done in many regular jobs.

I decided to set my goals after first week (which is going to be big losing week ) to see how it goes and what needs to be done.

Did some equity calculation with Rundowns against different 3-bet ranges:

5% 3-betting range

Single suited rundowns have 40%ish when they are under 9 (9876ss, 8765s,…). When another suit is added, there is approxmately 3% more equity. So 9876ds vs top 5% is 43/57.

Bigger rundowns start to have domination issues. F.e KQJTss and AKQJss have only 36%. KQJTds and AKQJds on the other hand have 40,3 and 40,7% equity.



15% 3-betting range

Single suited rundowns have 40%ish when they are under 9 (9876ss, 8765s,…)

Bigger the rundown, more it has equity against 15% range; KQJTss has 42%, and AKQJss has almost 49%. Double suited AKQJds has 52%, but KQJTds has only 46%. So even against 15% range, it is important to have ace in the hand if you are going to 4-bet.

Let’s continue with gappers. I changed to pokerjuice so that ranges are more representative. F.e OOP betting ranges include more playable hands, like rundowns and doublesuited hands and not so many hand with face value, but not so much playability (f.e. AAxxos). PJ has only 4% and 6% range so we will use 6%

6% range

Against tight range it does not matter much if you have gaps in rundowns or danglers: 9873ss, 9865ss, 9765ss, 9854ss all have 38-40% equity. These hand flop good in boards that does not hit 6% particularly well . Even trashy hand like T852ss has 37% equity against 5% range and it does not matter if suited cards are T-high or 5-high. If you hit same flush, you are dominated anyway.



15% range

Against 15% same priciples apply, equity is just little higher. 9873ss, 9865ss, 9765ss, 9854ss all have 38-41% equity. T852ss has 38% and it is marginally better to be suited to T than 5 (1% difference).

Gaps in high rundowns do not have big effect in equity: KQJTss and KQT9 have the same equity against 15% 46-54

With Ace in the hand equity goes up (suited to ace): AKQ9ss, AKQTss, AKT9ss and AKJTss have 49, 51, 51 and 51% equity respectively.

Checked my UTG and MP opening ranges. UTG is pretty much according to table few posts back. From MP I am opening little wider than I probably should. I start to open looser in long sessions, where concentration is not best anymore.

I was losing in both positions, but much less in UTG so maybe tightening up from MP is a good idea. Sample is very small though. I am improving, but I still should pay more attention to players behind me when I open from UTG and MP. If there is loose players or aggressive 3-bettors, range should be way tighter. When there are nits behind me in CO and BTN, I can open more hands and expect to play more in position against blinds.

Opening from CO or BTN I pay much more attention to players behind me.

good luck, what stakes are you playing?
Coach is KK?

Right now PLO50 and 100. Mostly PLO50, because games hasn't started well. We haven't had coaching sessions yet, but should be KK.

Bad running, terrible playing, just awful river calls. This is a little longer period than week. Had more set over sets than my last 2 months combined. Also a lot of ugly rivers. What is uglier, after those gutshots came through on the river, I was going for thin value and paid most of those check-raises. Lot of money lost on plain bad calls on river. Usually those calls are a result of running bad long, but I really have to get rid of them. Now I’ll start watching those Tilt Free Today -videos

Ok. First month was not that good. At first terrible run and after some time f-game. I really need to keep my concenration when running bad. I lose my focus and confidence too easy.



Had a long break during holidays, therefore did not play many hands last month. Not that is going to change also. I have already improved my preflop game and trying to pick my spots better for 3-bets. It has already showed good resuls in the last few days, but running better is also making things easier so time will tell. This week I am going to focus on 1) CBETTING -picking my spots according to villain. Being aggressive and cbetitng a lot, but also thinking about future streets and folding equity. 2) 3BETTING -3betting more IP, little less OOP and trying not to put myself in too tough spots. Thinking about opponents ranges and 3betting accordingly

1st 11 days. Continuing where I left off last year:

Plo is what i want to learn next. Gl