Very nice summary Florin, thanks a lot!

I played a lot at Unibet over the last few years but I really missed the note-taking, *game-selecting, sh**-chatting, hand-sharing aspects. It's such a big, fun part of the game, so I'll likely spread my games over Ipoker, Coin and 888, and try to be a bit more rakeback-agnostic. Once I reach NL50+ it should start getting easier to hit the RB thresholds anyway.

I'm far from a bum-hunter and will play anyone HU to get a game started, but I like to know who I'm playing against if we have some history and not staying at a table of solid pros.

Challenge update: I hit 4 digits milestone today, and 8 hours ahead of my last challenge

Hours: 239
Profit: £1019.82

I defy you to tell me how I could have played this hand better! Solid read.

Hours: 241
Profit: £1063.62

Pulled a nightmare session out of the muck after being 3 buy-ins down, began to steam but kept my cool and pulled off a good session.

Love Galfond's advice of asking yourself 'is the session worth continuing for 6-8bb/100?' (paraphrasing), it's a great way to put aside your ego-fantasy of getting even that session and realising the value of continuing is only your win-rate (or lose-rate if steaming).The games were good and I calmed down so decided to grind it out.


Sick call of the night: I was going to call the river too




Aces cracked vs a very splash fish: Could I have gotten away from this against someone raising + calling 3B around 50%?

Tough spot against a pretty tight player, is my play standard here or are there ever some bet-folds here?


Villain stats:



Hand:

assuming QQ,AKo+ its about close, I'd say if V is nitreg as it looks like he's going to be more weighed towards KK+, i'd call 100-120bbs or if V sounds like he could have a 5bet bluff range

Yeah there's a few things at play here:
- Villain had so far proven to be an ABC nitreg, no creative plays as of yet
- but 17% BTN 3B stat is pretty high
- 150bb deep
- Villain could probably 5Bjam AKo
- Hero is very LAG and probably has a v high 4B stat

Given V is ABC and probably not adapting to Hero's wide range, smaller 4B and fold to jam is probably in order as he's not going to be exploiting this.

100bb I think we're priced in to call 5B.

I need to start making bigger folds against the oober-nits!

It looks like you barely have hands of this particular V? Positional 3B will certainly take thousands of hands(that will be like a few dozens of vs action spots) to converge, even "general" 3bet stat I don't look at until I have at least 1k hands of V or something and it's just to have a general sense of how nit/aggro he couldbe, don't think this 17 indicates much either way. In my experience, if under 1k hands for V the only things that kind of make sense to look at is VPIP/PFR, perhaps general 3bet and cbet % and link that with your overall feeling vs V

I play with hero stats on for the session and looking at 1k hands samples sometimes I'm a 30/25/15(3bet) and others I'm a 20/18/6 closer to be a nitty, so if any V reg draws conclusions from my play based on this he would be making a likely wild misadjustment.
I'd rather look at notes on V bottom range (shown cards), i.e if he shows up with AKo, JJ or A5s here then I'll take a note etc

Regardless of if this player qualifies as an uber nit, would a non-standard flat call of the 3bet be better against a very nitty player? Or would that be too tight of an adjustment? Seems higher EV than 4betting and then folding a lot vs high frequency 5bet jam.

But if this is indeed an ABC player that 3bets aggro, then probably 4bet is best. Not sure I like sizing down in general, because V has easy call with whole range in position. Maybe you can split your 4bet sizings and size down smth like QQ

Anyway, take everything I say with a massive grain of salt, I'm not a cash player

Nice to see that you are posting again!

Couldn't stay away too long, I miss the punishment.

Yes probably better to stay balanced and keep 4betting same size against a reg, so I usually 3x as standard sizing here oop.

GTOWizard likes calling QQ 50%, 4Bet 35bb around 35% and jam 15%. Interestingly it is always calling the 5B jam when 4Betting so I can't feel to bad about the play






Update:

Hours: 254.5
Profit: £1029.18

Is shouting into a pillow normal when running bad? Probably not, so I'm gonna take a short 1-2 week break, that's the benefit of poker not being my main income any more.

I'm at the £1000 mark so that's a nice spot to take a rest.

Hours: 257.5
Profit: £1004.18

I withdrew money from 888 and found they take 2.8% fee for the exchange rate, again buried in the T+Cs and not mentioned at all when cashing out. This after getting about 0.1% rakeback in promos and their Halloween deposit bonus requiring you to lose all the money in your account before withdrawal requirements even start counting Again buried in unlinked T+Cs.

888 are just the f***ing worst haha! I'll likely give Betfair/iPoker a shot after my break.

Hours: 263
Profit: £1057.18

Well I managed 5 days off before getting the poker itch, back on iPoker where there seems to be enough traffic to play a few tables of NL20 any time of day and I'm raking enough to hit the 35% RB every 4 days so that works for me.

888 has some of the spewiest players around and I was hoping to stay there but given the:
- bonus scam they somehow get away with
- exorbitant rake
- sneaky 2.8% exchange withdrawal fee
- support that hang up on you after 5 minutes and just don't GAF

...I just don't feel my money is safe there and don't want to support such a company.

Hours: 283
Profit: £1046.03

I'm running so bad I cant even win with the nuts on the river at the moment.

How often does everyone else fold the nuts? Is it just me that mis-clicks these every bloody month??!

I think this happens to everyone, but not often.
I can snap fold AA with EP when the session gets long and my brain goes into autopilot

Hours: 288
Profit: £1026.03

The run-bad has been brutal last 3-4 months. Games have been quite good games which has kept me breaking even but it's just thoroughly unenjoyable when the BS lasts this long so gonna take a few more weeks off and find something productive to do rather than yelling at my laptop

Hours: 298
Profit: £986.03

No let up, the game is just unplayable atm.

Here's a hand which perfectly captures why I've been breaking even for most of the last 150 hours:

...un-f***ing-playable, managed a 5 minute session before quitting today:

Hours: 302
Profit: £1057.09

Finally broke my bad-streak with a profitable (but very swingy) session today.

Lost a few big hands, could I have gotten away from these?...

Hand 1: Vs loose-agg opponent



Hand 2: Opponent very loose pre-flop (tight but fishy), has c/f to a lot of CBets

First hand I guess it's quite hard to get away against this profile, for the second one though, esp. given your C/F read it's a very easy turn fold

Hand 1 I'm wondering if only the spewiest of spewtards run a bluff here. Mb even Qc sometimes checks this back? I'm starting to hate this call given:
- I block 3rd + 5th nuts
- I called 2 streets in 3B pot on monotone flop (Ive got flushdraws all day inc. Ace)
- Its near a pot size river bet

...really I'm just praying for a pure moment of madness from my opponent here.


Hand 2 actually likely highlights a thinking flaw of mine which is 'well I can't keep folding to you', here is the hand vs the same opponent that preceded hand 2 by about 5 mins, shows why I made the bad call...

Bad fold?....let call this hand 3:

Against a fish, I would consider a click raise on the flop to get the river cheaper.
And just fold if the fish 3bet the flop or continues to be aggressive on the turn.

I agree that hand one is justifiable to fold (exploitatively, because most people aren't good or spewy enough to find bluffs).

Hand 2 agree it's a fold.

Hand 3:

Villain rarely flops hands that have you beat. There's maybe like 10-15 combos of flushes (worse than normal since they are "very loose"), QT and maybe smth like AK if they are weird preflop.

Given that, and your fullhouse outs, and the fact that I could totally see villain leading something like AxTd, I think it's a bit too tight to fold. Maybe ok with a strong read, but a bit tight in general IMO

And I like Slylesses idea!

Thanks for the input guys, one area I seriously need to brush up on is 'playing deep', is there a good video series anyone can recommend on this?

Also how spewy is this hand? I've started playing these nut-draws a lot more aggressively (especially with nut-advantage boards) but in this case villain will have smashed this flop too and I put myself in a bit of a shite position by the river.
Would like to know your thought processes for how this hand played out:




UPDATE: I'm still a breakeven warrior...

Hours: 308
Profit: £1084.45

I think it's a fold on the Turn. A lot of value in the fish's range (AK, 98, K9, QQ-TT, QJ, QT, JT, AQ), and our odds are not very good for calling.

I don’t remember video courses on deep stacks.
Nowadays, players study solver heuristics more often.
GTO Wizard provides solutions for 150-200bb stacks and allows you to study one flop per day with unlimited turns and rivers for free.
I think if you work one flop a day for a month, you can improve your skills in these spots well.

Hours: 313
Profit: £1140.45

Had a little uptick at NL20 this week

Sounds like a plan, might jot down a number of tough spots and work through them and invest in another month of RIO. It's been a while since I've done any extensive studying so I think January could be the month to do it, plus all the other sites might have patched the GG equity exploit by then too

So you prefer 2/3 pot bet-fold on the turn over a check-call? (in my experience opponents tend to bomb this turn vs a check here)