Nothing really special, at least for now... Just a guy starting at NL2 Zoom trying to work his way up the stakes.

Short poker history:
I've first encountered Hold'em 6 years ago when the TV-coverage of WPT first appeared in my country (Croatia), but I never really played it seriously, just a bit of Zynga (I was under 18 back then) and a few games with friends.
A few weeks ago, I decided to reanimate my interest in the game. I did some preparation (books, videos, etc.) and deposited $50. I first encountered Zoom almost immediately and started to play NL2 and NL5 without a lot of preparation (NOT a good idea) – I ended up being breakeven after ~5k hands (rose to $80 then dropped back to $50). Then I went to NL10 and randomly spewed another $5. This was a reset-button time.

It's showtime
I decided to do some real preparation (microstakes/zoom specialised sources like videos and various articles) and two days ago I started to grind with a little more understanding of what I'm actually doing.

So, I'm playing 6-max NL2 Zoom, I play 4 tables at a time.

Graph for last 48 hours:


Stats for the same period:



Goals (short-term):
[ ] reach $125 and move up to NL5
[ ] crush both NL2 and NL5

Goals (long-term):
[ ] move up to at least NL25 by the end of 2015
[ ] DO NOT GOD DAMN TILT. EVER. SERIOUSLY.

I'll try to update the thread semi-regularly. Also, my top1 priority is college (next academic year is starting at the end of September) so when that starts, and especially when exams start to roll, my volume should drop drastically.

Starting BR: $45
Current BR: $87

Any advice (stats-wise, BRM wise, poker-in-general-wise) is more than welcome.

Nobody cares for NL2, I guess

Anyway...

After opening the thread, I moved up and up a bit more, and then had a crushing session this afternoon - was beaten by a better FH OTR and made a terrible call another time. Enough to be ~breakeven in last 24 hrs or so.

I cleared $10 from STARS600 though, so it basically returned all the $$$ I've lost in a bad session.

It did ground me a bit because after 6-7 1000k-hand sessions of pure net+ (both real and EV), I've had 4/5 losing sessions. Anyway, I've analyzed my mistakes and I hope I've learned something from them.

A hand where I've lost a lot of money. Did I play this right? Was shoving wrong? I don't see how he could have possibly called that...



Graph :


BR: $95.15

Cool ! Nice start What's your screen name, I started as well my thread today so we are 2 doing the same thing then !

Good luck and see you on the table !

It's the same as my nick here, yours?

Thanks and good luck to you, too!

----------

Also, regarding the hand I've posted above, if anyone will comment on that...

Basically, I deleted QQ from his range as soon as he called preflop and after the flop, I was putting him at 22-66, Ax, KQ and Qx. I was crushing his whole range and virtually the only hand that could've beaten me was A4 (which he had), but at that point, I was the favorite against that, as well, and also, I didn't see him folding at least a half of his range to any bet.

Point being - I was sure shoving was EV+... But was it really?

You played the 77-hand very good, keep it up! Learning to get value is a great thing to do at NL2. It's great that you put him on a range. Now practice including your own range as well. I.e. what hand would you play the same here that has no showdown value?

Thanks

When he made the turn bet, that's what boggled me the most - I was really sure (as much as you can be with these players) that he didn't hold QQ.

And also the wtf-minbet at the flop - who does that? Well, as I think I've realised by now - fish at NL2 when they have air.

I thought to myself (what a wonderful world) - what does he think I have? If he thought he had any decent fold equity at the turn, I understand, but basically I would've played the hand in that way with essentially any pocket pair and high broadways preflop (I was in MP so my opening range can't be very wide... but probably he didn't even think about that) and, if he was thinking at all, he thought I would cbet that board with almost anything I raised with preflop - and all of that crushed his A4 enough that a semi-bluff at the turn doesn't seem reasonable at all.

I'm pretty happy when I lose (as much as you can be) and my move is EV+ - I know my fair share of math and probability so the long-term EV stabilizing isn't of any issue (that's why I decided to wait until $125 to move up to NL5, although I'm pretty confident I could beat it right now, but we'll see).

It just makes me sad when fish on a bicycle takes away the pot and it doesn't even know why/how it did that

Ok, so, what does one say after a session like this? bb/100 gone from over 20 to under 10 in a day...



...and these last two huge losses were:

Kx vs QQ, went all-in on a Kxx board, Q on the river

aaand

AA vs QQ went all-in preflop, well, at least he beat me in style - with quad Queens.

Which also reminds me (and speaks about this session in itself), I didn't seem to be able to flop anything decent in any of the multiway pots, but in a heads-up pot with a guy with 20 bb's, I flopped quad T's. Yay me!

Welcome to zoom poker

At least I've steadied the ship a bit in the next session. I'm glad my mental game held up to standard after tough losses shown above

Another unplanned post, it's here mainly because of the hand below...

Opened the day with a bad session followed by a good-ish one, followed by this one:



BR: $101.96

AIEV was pretty much f#!ked the first session, but this time it obviously wasn't, and here's why:



I actually feel bad for this one. I didn't even see his holdings (I tend not to sweat all-ins while playing) until after I analyzed the session (during the hand I thought he had JJ-AA, people in here tend to shove overpairs quite a lot) and, oh, well. I lost OTR three times this morning so it balanced a bit, but still... Poor guy.

Was I supposed to fold the middle set to his 4bet? Against a normal player I quite probably would, but the overpairs note above is the main reason why I didn't...

Oh well, me again. If anyone reads

Graph was a beauty in OP, now it's pretty much the same net-wise... Redline went bananas.



Anyway, 77 again

Was this a good fold? After the flop, I pretty much had his range polarized on Ax and big 88-KK. I didn't see how in his right mind could he make the river raise with just a pocket pair - from his standpoint, my whole hand was either a flopped set or AK-AQ at worst.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong

Yes, disciplined fold.

In the previous hand, never fold middle set!

Another fold I'm wondering about... The main issue was that we were both deepstacked, and I didn't exactly want to risk 260 bb's to see if he had a flush (and I didn't see point in merely calling hence I was OOP, I'd know nothing more about his hand than I did before the eventual call, and I don't think I'd have any fold equity on the turn.

If we were 100-150 bb'ish, I'd almost certainly shove where I folded in this hand. (I do get the message: reload if you're uncomfortable playing deepstacked, but this was a spot that really caught me off-guard.)

Don't fold TT there. You are super deep and calling will be super profitable when you get a FH vs his Flush
There is also the possibility of him bluff raising with the Ad or something like that and he could also have a smaller set.

After going really well (as seen on the graph in OP), somewhere around 12k hands my red line started to go downwards which, in effect, made me go breakeven for ~20k hands, as seen on the graph:



I found a few post-flop leaks (not sure why they got there in the first place, I was literally throwing my money away in some places) with the main goal of balancing the redline and the result was the best session so far:



Of course, 1k hand-sample is nothing so I have to continue improving.

The session was good EV-wise, and that's what matters the most. The EV/what-really-happened difference came from a hand where there was a three-way all-in before the flop where my KK got lucky and busted QQ and AA (I flopped a set).

Also, because of some RL obligations, I'll probably grind significantly less this week.


BR: $111.80

Anybody in here?

Anyway...

BR: $127.88

Had another nice session at NL2 Zoom:




Probably could've been even better when I flopped quads in a three-way pot in one of the last hands, I was IP, action before me was raise-call and for some reason I minraised and ran one guy away from the hand. The other was very short-stacked and I probably missed an opportunity for at least 50 bb's more. Oh, well...

Complete NL2 Zoom statline (comments/constructive criticism for pure stat-numbers?):



Graph:



It would be really sexy without the middle part

NL2 donks in a nutshell (a hand from my last session; although I have to say that NL2 Zoom hasn't been remotely as fishy as people say NL2reg is - a lot of constantly reappearing regs on the tables makes things like this hand a rare, but sweet occurence; he had K9):



Next stop: NL5 Zoom, I hope it goes well! If I drop below 15 buyins, I'm back to grinding NL2. That would probably mean I ran shi77y as hell because for the next ~230 VPP's, I'm getting $30 of bonuses (Stellar/STARS600) so let's hope it all goes well.

And, obviously, a new goal...

Goals (short-term):
[ ] reach $250 and move up to NL10

Good job so far, we're in the same games atm so will be following

Regarding your stats they look fine but if u wanna change something as you get more confident in your game thats opening up playing more hands especially in late positions, im playing something like 24/18/4 myself.

gl

If you are winning 10bb/100 with those stats, then take that game to nl5 and see how you get on.

This NL5 Zoom sessions have been, um... Interesting.



Let's just say I've been stacked full house vs quads 3 times today. I think I haven't seen quads happen more than 3 times in previous ~50k hands.

Also, flopped a top set once on a rainbow board, got check-raised, ended up losing my stack to a straight made OTR. FML.

Can't even say anything bad about my game, just that I always had what-seemed-to-be-nuts losing to the real nuts.

I guess I haven't lost to a royal flush, but the day isn't over...

Going back to NL2 as of now, reason - got all the way down to almost $75, down 12BI on NL5.

I don't really feel the game is any different than NL2, but constantly running well above EV on NL2 came crashing back down on me in here. Literally every time when I went to showdown/went all-in, villains had the absolute nuts/they outrivered me.

On the other hand, I feel like 99% of the time, I got no action whatsoever on premiums/flopped sets/anything good. Just insanely bad run. Whenever I had a decent hand, villains had air.

Statswise, pretty much nothing changed, except for one thing - winnings at showdown. Went from 50% to 34%.

Also, yes, I did make some bad calls with speculative hands that went all the way, but 3 or 4 times, I was better and got beaten OTR, for example, 10 minutes ago, AA < 22 with a deuce coming OTR...

Look at this beauty... Looks like graph from OP turned upside down.



Also, of one "those"...



What do I do now? Grinding back to $125 shouldn't be a big issue if/when I get out of this slump, but you never know.

Any advice for sources to improve my game?

I wonder what would have happened if I had tilted, I'd probably have gone busto

To bad it didnt work out this time, but that doesnt mean your playing bad or that it wont work out next time. Moving up can be frustrating often but its worth it when it finally works obvsly

If you havent seen it you can watch this guys "grinding it up" challenge when he goes thru all zoom levels from 2nl to 200nl starting from 80$ grinding it to 8000$

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...fK15oAbAFraYbX

gl dont quit!

Thanks, mate, I'll give it a look, I've been watching nanonoko zooming lately

I've come to a decision - I'm playing 17k more hands of NL2 at the least (it's a bit below 50% of my current total NL2z hands). Hopefully by then I will have grinded the BR back up. If not, more grinding, and if I do it, then I'm giving NL5z another shot.

I'm also rethinking my BRM - it seems like because of a seriously bad run, I didn't have enough buyins to give NL5z more than ~4k hands. Does anyone have a better zoom BRM suggestion?

I mean, this could come out as excuses, but I'm pretty sure there's no way that I was beating NL2z by 10bb/100 for almost 40k hands, and then was losing 35bb/100 at NL5z with basically the same game and that it was all because I'm not good enough.

Don't change your game because of run bad. Review the hands you lost in, and plug any leaks. It sounds like you just ran bad though.

This just doesn't seem to end. Didn't have time to play yesterday at all, today I'm down 2.5 BI at NL2z in 1.4k hands. It was funny whan EV showed +$5, and the real line showed -$5. Yay.

2/4 biggest losses (other two time ended up going AI w/ flopped set vs flopped straight, still had 30% equity, didn't catch my outs and KK < AA)...





Needless to say, I never sucked out. BR standing at measly $69.24.


Also, shifted to my laptop to try out my eyes there, then realised my HEM2 trial on PC ended and I couldn't backup the database to shift it to the trial on my laptop - I actually managed to backup the hands (via the PostgreSQL), but none of graphs/sessions are showing. Any ideas? Can HEM2 "create" the graphs from HH's?

This is getting really ridiculous... Today in an image:




Dat EV

A few more beauties...