GL man!

Thanks Orange. Can't believe you're still a mod after all these years!

Ha, yeah, still backing and working in the poker industry. Cool to see you back on the tables. Hope it goes well

Hand 23: Check calling here twice feels too weak even though I know I still beat some hands he might bluff with. Any better options?



Hand 24: Butchered. Villain was 6/4 for 49 hands and the BB was a weak player. I was a little worried about Aces to be honest, but I think that was just monsters under the bed syndrome. Hate the check raise if I am going to fold to a re-raise. Maybe I dodged bullets? :/



Hand 25: Here I want to bluff. I think my hand doesn't win at showdown enough. What do you think? If you were to bluff what size?

[converted_hand][hand_history]Poker Stars, $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite. View Hand #36510221

BTN: $98 (196 bb)
SB: $64.23 (128.5 bb)
Hero (BB): $96.42 (192.8 bb)
UTG: $51.43 (102.9 bb)
MP: $50.25 (100.5 bb)
CO: $50 (100 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Q 8
4 folds, SB raises to $1.50, Hero calls $1

Flop: ($3) 6 T 8 (2 players)
SB bets $2.28, Hero calls $2.28

Turn: ($7.56) 5 (2 players)
SB bets $4.50, Hero calls $4.50

River: ($16.56) 9 (2 players)
SB checks,

Thanks

Now for some hands were I liked my play, but does that mean that they are played well?

Hand 26: Villain 19/13 22% CO open. 80 hands. Fold to 3b was a 100%. To be honest, current default is to 3bet anyone I see with a 100% fold to 3b. I just noticed it was one hand though. Maybe I should alter my hud to show at least 3 hands or something.



Hand 27: Versus a rec player 50/25 8 hands.



Hand 28: Seems like a standard triple given my blocker and I'm utg and an ambitious shove by villain to a polarizing river bet.



Hand 29: Have villain marked as an aggro poor reg. Have no idea of his overbetting tendencies. Can a case ever be made for folding these hands?



Hand 30: Standard?



Hand 31: Not entirely happy about this one. Only had 13 hands on villain; possibly a weak player.



Thanks

Hand 23: I think I would c/r this turn given this board texture. K high doesn't have as good of showdown value and there are still plenty of value hands you can have. Furthermore, c/c-ing twice on the flop and turn makes it very hard to extract value on the river (if you hit your flush or K/T).

Hand 24: I agree that I don't like folding after c/r-ing and you flatting PF. Given his smaller stack, I'd probably just go with it. That being said, he looks fishy, so I think it's a really standard 3-bet.

Hand 25: I think you can probably bet just a largeish amount given this board texture and it's a standard bluff spot. I don't know if I like overbetting as much since you probably wouldn't do so with 2 pairs/sets/etc. I could be wrong here though.

Worst day of the month. Tilting hard. Played awful. Makes me question whether there's any point coming back to poker. The whole month has been so frustrating. I can't get anything going.

*Posting this so hopefully I can look back later and get something from it.

Hand 26: Flop we need to think about our range, we don't have tons of bluffs we'd like to cbet on a dry board, we have KK QQ JJ and total air that would like to check, we have some bluffs and stronger aces and 2pairs that can make up our betting range.

So A8 has to drop into the checking range on the flop. Just thinking about all the different ranges and what hands go where will help you a lot, just keeps all your ranges not-too-exploitable and helps you mentally when, for example, you cc QQ on this board and face a turn bet- you know you have A8 here so don't mind folding it. The small bet seems to complicate things a lot, suddenly you have to be thinking about a check fold range, a check call range, a bet normal size call range, a bet normal size fold range, and then another swathe of bet small/ how do we react, etc. Just check imo, I don't see how you're going to balance this bet or what it communicates to our opponent to make him play worse.

As played, his 100% fold to 3bet (not saying 1 hand matters tho) should in your head map to postflop and make his range stronger. There's no bluffs or worse value in his range at all (no draws on the flop, turned very few, people don't follow through a lot anyway), I'd fold fairly easily.

Fingers crossed results prove me wrong :-)

Hand 27: Smaller bet is probably good VS a rec player, don't mind this hand really. The 8 really isn't good for us though, he'd need to be legit very wide PF or very wide on the flop to call the river, but yeah I'd probably call if he was deffo a fish.

Hand 28: yeah only thing to bear in mind really is that when people call 3flush turns they're also calling river a lot. You also need a 50 guy to fold 99-JJ, maybe they will maybe they won't. Instinctively on the river I wanna check to be honest, just because I think the turn call looks strong and I don't necessarily trust 99-JJ to fold.

Hand 29: Yeah the case to be made is that he knows you have trips a ton but overbet anyway. Any bluff here I'd file under 'advanced-ish top 10 500nl player' bluff. Below that level, when people bet big into ranges that contain a lot of trips, 2 pairs, or top pairs- you could probably fold 100% and print money.

Call isn't horrible though, just because he's an unknown quantity. If he were like a winning player though, I think it's a fold.

Hand 30: yeah somewhat standard, only prob is lack of flushdraws mean you can't rep them on future streets, so I'd learn towards calling flop.

Hand 31: Think it's all fine, make sure when you have KJdd here that you consider those sets and make the same the betsize on the river- technically, and mentally, very important.

Is grog ur coach or friend?

Friend. Doubling as both atm :-).

Would welcome other inputs though, cheers Orange for the above!

we used to battle a lot back in the day (DAMAGEDMINDZ) on AP.

Thanks Orange. Hand 24: Somehow I think I missed he had a shorter stack. Extremely weak play by me.

Hand 25: Good to know that it's considered stndard. I chickened out this time and regretted it.

Hand 26: Normally a standard check, but I got all Saucey. I think I definitely play the hand better as a check.
My biggest concern come the river was that my small bet made him float wide and then he felt he would have to bluff twice to my perceived KK/QQ.

Hand 28: Good point.

Thanks

I trained Taekwondo for 2.5 hours last night which ended with me sparring with a huge guy at the end and taking a decent punch to the head. I think I am fully reset mentally now.

Some things to address:

1) Always do my warm up. If I just start playing my brain struggles to answer poker problems - for want of a better expression - badly.
2) Frustration tilt. Accumulative throughout the month as things have not been going as I wanted.
3) Fear. I noticed in quite a lot of session I have an underlying feeling of anxiety.
4) Unreasonable expectations. I now know that winning (at my peak) around 3.7k in less than 100k hands isn't the norm at 50 zoom. I thought that if I showed improvement and played another 100k hands the money would flow to me. A tad naive at my age.
5) Information overload. In the first 100k hands I was unconciously incompetent. I played freely without fear and ignored/ stayed out of the way on some obvious blind spots which worked well. All the new theory I've added can make me play restricted and I can feel overwhelmed in a hand.

What also helped was that I analysed my database to see what I did differently in my first 100k hands and now my second 67k hands. I've made some subtle changes in some areas. I've improved a lot in some areas, but lost some juice in some other ways. So I think I am mentally set to play well again. Let's see!

Thanks for reading.

So yesterday I played as best as I could to my current abilities including mistakes that are habits or I am unaware how bad they are yet. There was only one bad mental game period at the end of the day when I was tired and got frustrated. I quit and went to bed.

However, one big re-occurring them was that I can't bluff properly. I am sure there are mistakes on earlier streets that could be rectified before I get to the bluffing stage.

Hand 32: Villain 29/14 25 hands. No reads. I assigned villain a somewhat standard 3bet range v utg. I could check raise the flop, maybe the turn. His weak bets made me believe that a bluff would work fairly often v population.



Hand 33: Villain 20/18/13 3b 292 hands. With villain's wide 3bet stat I thought he would check back a lot of high cards or I could prevent him betting and seeing extra cards. The other player is 24/18 reg and really I should give more thought to him and just check as he likely has a bunch of mid - high pocket pairs.

On the turn I felt like this was the street I would be most believed if I lead again fairly large and I picked up outs. + the 5 could be viewed somewhat as an ''event'' with 87 getting there - perhaps wishful thinking. By the river I didn't think I could get the guy to fold after he called twice.



Hand 34: I think I may have misread villain here pf. I normally only limp v rec players who 3b or call too wide and I want to play small pots with them.

This villain is 22/17 bvb 3b 12. Fold to raise 48% 1400 hands. I don't know what to say about this one.



Hand 35: Villain 34/213b 10 over 64 hands. Fld BB % 50 no 3bets as of yet. WTSD of 14% and I felt that I could get him off AK/AQ type hands. Perhaps this is a river sizing issue?



Hand 36: Villain 19/14/2 over 134 hands. Fold BB 50%. Just trying to be exploitive versus a nitty type and bluff with the bottome of my range by the river.



Hand 37: I flat pre v a rec player. I should lead turn here all day and raise much, much bigger if I am ever to get any folds on the river.



Hand 38: I think this is standard. Am I wrong?



Hand 39: Villain seemed rec. BB was a reg. Villain had raise first in off 33% utg and 29% mp after 67 hands. I 3b small to isolate. Planned to check fold then he bet small. River seemed mandatory.



Hand 40: No hands on villain. Peeled small 3b and small flop bet. River seemed like I should bluff. Thoughts?



Hand 41: I think I might have a problem playing flush draws. Villain 26/20/9 850 hand reg. Lead 3/30. Lead top pr or better twice. I think this hand is more how to play my draw. Also, the river bet is just bad, I can see him looking me up with the bare Axhh a decent %.



Thanks

H32: A9s
I don;t really like your play with As9s because you take away so many of his potential fd and you don't have a blocker.I would do that move with some 6/7x cause then you'll block some of his set and concentrate more on folding some overpair

H33:88
It's a good plan but you dind't pull the trigger on the perfect river.I mean you should have here or pp including TT-JJ or maybe even QQ, some busted facecards in spades and some 87s some of the time.You are also deep in the hand and apply max pressure on villan especially on that river.

H34 48s
limp/fold would be bether cause you played big pot with marginal hand.

H35 KJo
Seems std

H36 42o
std

H37 76s
This is simply a spew cause he will never fold a K so you either x/f all the way or bluff catch with 4th pair, you also don't rep that much with your line esp in the eyes of a rec player.

H38 Ako
std

H39 Aqo
std

H40 ATo
I think you should decide on the turn what do you want to rep here cause if you x back here wih pp you don't really re-open on the river expectiv value from what? so if you check pp turn you only rep flush&88 and maybe you do bet some of the fd on the turn cause you want some fold equity and bluff him off some pairs some of the time

H41 KQs
this is kind of bad, i would bet bigger if i really want to rep the J or just give up cause as you said your hand is inclinde to some fd and you won't get credit on the riv.

How many h per month do you grind on 50z and whats your wr on a large sample? asking cause i'm a 50z grinder too but struggle to find that fold button and that has a huge impact on my wr.Whats your wtsd w$sd?

I quit my job one month ago. So this month i have been grinding full time and plan to play 100k hands. Next month though with some travel and I'll be working some hours as an English teacher I might get 50k hands in. July onwards I should be working at least part-time hours teaching English, maybe full-time i'll see how the poker goes.

I don't feel I can give you a good answer on my win rate. I felt like my first 100k hands I crushed in my unconscious incompetence state. This month's 100k hands I began to learn more and more and lost confidence as I overloaded myself with information in my now conscious incompetence state. I am hoping that my next 100k hands will show more my capabilities as I move towards conscious competence.

My WTSD is around 27/28 ish. W$SD 56/57 ish. WWSF 48/49 ish.

Thanks for replying. Hope to see you in the thread more often.

Oh ya I remember lol, you were one of the few true decent lags around at the time. Glad to see you're still around and doing ok.

32:- yeah it's a bit 'might work'-ey. The board pairing is really not good for us as we can no longer rep 2pairs or that particular set. We also have to pretend that we wouldn't have raised sets this deep before the river (I think we would, and if we wouldn't, we'd be perceived to). Overall maybe you just didn't consider your range enough prior to making the move. The stage you want to get to is having your range and his in your mind at every stage of the hand these two factors make up 90% of our decision making.

Having said that, as you say, it might work. Very surprised at his sizing, people are weird. I like the heart too!

33- yeah don't mind the lead if BB is a weak player, not into a reg though. I like your plan on the turn though, and would jam lots of rivers, the bottom card pair is bad for us though, similar to the hand above. Sometimes you win VS a6ss and 76ss too!