Hello everyone!

To start (TL/DR): I am a US based lifetime winning live low stakes poker player who has never invested significant energy (or any resembling studying, etc.) into online poker. Like I don't know ****. I'm interested in changing that, for no reasons but understanding modern poker theory and for funsies. So my arbitrary immediately tangible money goal is running approximately $500 into $5000, but my broader goal is to improve my my skill set and increase my EV overall. My biggest goal is to provide y'all opportunities to help an old(er) man grow while providing an entertaining narrative.

My story (read at your leisure, maybe while taking a seriously time-committed poop):

I'm not a pro. I've never been a pro. I never want to be a pro. I have been (until about 5/6 years ago, when I quit the game entirely) a slightly winning rec player (mostly live) dating back to pre-Moneymaker times who cleared a solid win rate lifetime, especially a period 2013-2015 where I might have arguably been a mediocre semi-pro (given the hours I was putting in) although I always called myself an amateur. I was essentially a Harrington TAGNit with some specific Miller influences who engaged in some serious live sunrunning (a term that wasn't even broadly used when I stopped playing) and ended up walking away from the game around 2016 pretty burned out but with a lot of good stories, many many LLSNL and LVL posts, and a decent (5 figure), if overall unimpressive, amount of profit.

(My ongoing trip report on LVL was at least mildly entertaining to my fellow degens at the time. Feel free to look it up. I killed it when the rungood died because nobody likes an LVL trip report that's all downswings and comped food at PH's Earl of Sandwich.)

One of the serious factors of walking away was realizing one day how much I, even as a TAGNit, loved the theory of the game, loved discussing it on 2+2, but was ultimately bored with grinding hours watching beginning-level misplays at low stakes games waiting for something that actually stimulated my brain to happen, whether I was in the pot or not. Think FPS, but almost entirely in my head.

At no point have I attempted to crack online poker in a serious way. Sure, back in the pre-Black Friday day when I was the absolute nut low at poker I had accounts at FTP and UB and maybe PS and Lock and maybe Party and some other shithole sites. But honestly, I never used online poker for anything but MTT shots and practice. I'm guessing I'm a real money lifetime loser at online poker back then because I didn't know anything. Never got a HUD. Never thought of it as a significant impact on the game. Missed the boat on the profound theoretical and strategic advancements that came with online poker. Assumed early on it required a personality/temperament different than live. Once I luckbox knocked someone claiming to be Phil Hellmuth out of a UB freeroll, which meant nothing because I assumed at the time that good old Phil had interns bumping his name in freerolls on the site that sponsored him. I think I was once at a table with Potripper, though!

Post BF, as a US player with few options, I eventually threw a bit of money at Bovada, which begat Ignition, but always for incredibly low-stakes and mostly just SNG and MTT strategy practice. Learning ICM, etc. Nit-grinding $3-$25 tripleups for shats and giggles. Making money was never the goal in online. I did get better over time.

I walked away from the game, live and online, in 2016 and have even upgraded computers twice without even downloading Ignition or remembering my 2+2 password.

Flash forward to modern times:

I'm a full-time grad student. I have two kids and a wife. (Two kids and a wife were around when I was full degen playing 40 hours a week too, but they like me a hell of a lot better now.)

About 5 weeks ago I was reviewing some old finances and realized that I had roughly $400 and change abandoned in my Ignition account. (It had been so long that I actually had to call customer service to get them to restore it to my account.)

So I decided to play. I dabbled in SNGs but found my old nit-grind of tripleups agonizingly dull. I played a couple super-low stakes MTTs, binking one and final tabling the other before punting because I was kind of tired and kind of bored. I mostly played 10NL because that, at least in Ignition/Bovadaland, was always the spot that I found comparable to a soft 2/5 or reasonably interesting 1/2-1/3 live game back in the day. And over the past several weeks, I've run well and I'm up about $150.

Read all that? I appreciate it if you did. Hope you thought it was engaging and/or amusing. I like writing and hope I can be entertaining.

So I decided to unretire. Back to watching videos online. Back to thinking about poker. (Not so much to mess with grad school or family life.) Just part time. Sort of a thought experiment: Can a guy who has loved the game longer than some online crushers have been alive learn the stuff he never learned, unlearn the **** that doesn't work, and be a winning micro (semi-)grinder? Can that guy hit an arbitrary goal like running $500 up to $5K?

So, here's some basic parameters:

1) What I have is what I have. It's currently at $577.46. It's on Ignition and it stays on Ignition. If I busto, I busto. No deposits.

2) I have always been super conservative and I don't love playing shortrolled at ~57 buyins for 10NL, but like I said, it's the closest to the live game I remember. So most of this challenge initially will be played at 10NL (or 5NL, if I get much shorter). Not moving up to 25NL until I have 100 buyins, unless wiser heads have a cogent argument for otherwise.

3) As I said before, I was solid at live, but a nitty TAG with occasional exploitative tendencies at best. My game is nowhere near GTO. My game is nowhere near much of anything these days. So I appreciate comments and advice on different decisions to make. I am not locked into my perspective other than by habits. That said, I learn by understanding, so while I appreciate "fold pre" and "this hand was a dumpster fire" I appreciate understanding why more. In turn I guarantee you a 95% chance of the same self-effacing good humor I have already shown here.

Because of grad school and life balance, I can't promise that I am gonna play every day, but my plan is a few multi-hour sessions a week, usually 2 tabling. Having never used a HUD, and being an old POS, I find 2 tabling to be my current sweet spot.

To prepare for this amazing adventure into low-stakes BS, I have already begun study of newer thinkers in the game. For bankroll management and higher risk/higher profit playstyle, I've been studying the work of a well-known Australian grinder named 6Bet Me. For mental game, I've been reading a lot of stuff from this renowned Finnish theorist named Paisting.*

(I've also heard some good stuff about these guys Clarke and Hardin, so I'm checking out their books online, but obviously 6Bet and Paisting are MY DUDES.)

So, first question: what HUD/tracker should I get?

I've never used one before. Ever. Remember, I'm on Ignition, so OPTIONS ARE LIMITED, KIDS. I got the PT4 trial download a couple days ago but it took another day to get the code for the Ignition handgrabber Beta so I haven't set it up yet and get at least a week+ or trying it out. Candidate #2 is DriveHUD because it claims to be Ignition compatible out of the box. Those seem to be the only two that are reasonably in the offering for Ignition without a ton of add-ons and onerous system burden. Without using either, right now I'm thinking that DriveHUD ($29 for small stakes) is a much more reasonable option for this amateur experiment, especially since PT ($69 for small stakes) can't even say how much they're going to charge for the new Ignition hand grabber once it's out of beta.

So, chime in! I can't qualify the differences between the two when every single Google hit about them is just sunshine positive shill reviews, although I fully understand that PT is the gold standard. Just not sure it's the best choice for my purposes.

Actual game play tomorrow probably once I get HUD set up after grad school is done.

*Friends, I'm spectrumy as hell and don't always get social cues, but obviously I'm kidding about this part. Hopefully my sense of humor ITT will not create problems for people with different primary languages or other barriers.

Oh, once other thing: considering my live experience, I'm going to start with full ring and 6max, may incorporate Zone later. Need some study/advice to understand that gameplay.

Good luck OP. I am fairly re-tarded when it comes to poker software myself. I've been playing online poker since 2004 but only started using a HUD for the first time this year. I play on Ignition 200nl and all the big MTTs and I use driveHUD and while it's not perfect I like it a lot. Especially if you're sticking to cash games it's great. It's super simple to use, just open it before you open your tables and it will load all the numbers on the table for you. You don't have to really do anything. And you get a free 30day trial I believe.

I'm curious, you said you've been playing pre-Moneymaker, when exactly did you start playing? Technically I'm also pre-Moneymaker as I started playing in the spring of 2003 after I saw the WPT on the Travel Channel.

Hey Rick:

Thanks for the recommendation. You're on ignition/bovada, right? Was DriveHUD pretty much good to go when you set it up?

Like I said before, I know PokerTracker4 is the go-to gold standard, but given how smallball I am on this project and that I have no way of knowing what my total cost for PT will be since they aren't putting a price on the Handgrabber for Ignition, I'm leaning towards DriveHUD.

Oh, and while I grew up playing 5 card draw and 5 card draw-based games around the family table (one day I'll write the definitive Tripoley strat book for 2+2), I started getting more interested and playing a bit around 98/99, had a friend who grew up learning the game from his dad so he knew Stud and even introduced me to hold 'em. Think I caught Rounders on TV one day randomly some time after that and was hooked, but couldn't find anyone to play with.

Used to work at a bar that had this crazy vintage book of card games--think it was a Hoyle book--and my co-workers and a few regulars would play silly out of date variation **** like Woolworth from the book for pennies on slow nights. Woolworth, for those who don't know (and why the **** should you, it's older than everything), is stud but if you're dealt a 5 face up you have to fold or pay 5 for it as a wild card, and 10 for a face up 10 (also wild).

About the time the 04 WSOP was airing I'd relocated/moved back home after a few years away and a couple groups of friends had regular SNGs going.

True NL was then, and is now, illegal in my state so when I started occasionally playing in actual card rooms I got decent at limit starting with $3/6. Started playing in card rooms a fair amount more once they introduced 2-100 Spread Limit, although that game was often agonizing.

This has been my post referring to old people games. $1 SklanskyBuck to anyone who can rattle off the rules of Tripoley without googling. Honor code.

Like I said, I don't have software set up yet so I'm manually sifting through hand histories. Here's one I'm honestly not sure about.

Seat 1: UTG+4 ($10 in chips)
Seat 2: Dealer ($18.07 in chips)
Seat 3: Small Blind ($12.33 in chips)
Seat 5: Big Blind ($6.62 in chips)
Seat 6: UTG ($7.89 in chips)
Seat 7: UTG+1 ($6.09 in chips)
Seat 8: UTG+2 ($14.61 in chips)
Seat 9: UTG+3 [ME] ($12.64 in chips)
UTG+3 [ME] : Card dealt to a spot [9c 9s]

UTG : Calls $0.10
UTG+1 : Calls $0.10
UTG+2 : Calls $0.10
UTG+3 [ME] : Raises $0.50 to $0.50
UTG+4 : Folds
Dealer : Calls $0.50
Small Blind : Folds
Big Blind : Calls $0.40
UTG : Calls $0.40
UTG+1 : Folds
UTG+2 : Calls $0.40
*** FLOP *** [Ah 7d 8c]
Big Blind : Checks
UTG : Checks
UTG+2 : Checks
UTG+3 [ME] : Bets $1.26
Dealer : Folds
Big Blind : Calls $1.26
UTG : Folds
UTG+2 : Folds
*** TURN *** [Ah 7d 8c] [3h]
Big Blind : Checks
UTG+3 [ME] : Bets $2.46
Big Blind : All-in(raise) $4.86 to $4.86
UTG+3 [ME] : Calls $2.40
*** RIVER *** [Ah 7d 8c 3h] [Js]

Thoughts?

Yeah I played Baseball (the poker game) and Follow the Queen back in the day, never heard of Tripoley. I would recommend DriveHUD it's really easy to use you just download and open it up and it's good to go. And you get a free 30day trial so if you don't like it for some reason and it doesn't work you can try something else. I play on Ignition and it works fine for me.

For the hand I like to open to 3x+dead money so I'd make it $0.60 pre. And on a 5 way ace high flop I just check give up with 99 there on the flop. As played I don't think villain is going to show up with worse than 99 so fold to the turn raise.

Good luck!

Seat 1: UTG+3 ($9.85 in chips)
Seat 2: UTG+4 ($17.25 in chips)
Seat 3: Dealer ($12.52 in chips)
Seat 5: Small Blind ($9.80 in chips)
Seat 6: Big Blind ($7.66 in chips)
Seat 7: UTG ($6.14 in chips)
Seat 8: UTG+1 ($14.97 in chips)
Seat 9: UTG+2 [ME] ($19.72 in chips)
UTG+2 [ME] : Card dealt to a spot [Th Td]
UTG : Folds
UTG+1 : Folds
UTG+2 [ME] : Raises $0.30 to $0.30
UTG+3 : Folds
UTG+4 : Folds
Dealer : Folds
Small Blind : Folds
Big Blind : Calls $0.20
*** FLOP *** [3s Tc 8c]
Big Blind : Checks
UTG+2 [ME] : Bets $0.25
Big Blind : Calls $0.25
*** TURN *** [3s Tc 8c] [4s]
Big Blind : Checks
UTG+2 [ME] : Bets $0.55
Big Blind : Calls $0.55
*** RIVER *** [3s Tc 8c 4s] [Ac]
Big Blind : Checks
UTG+2 [ME] : Checks
*** SUMMARY ***
Total Pot($2.25)
Board [3s Tc 8c 4s Ac]

River check too nitty?

yeah bet 1/3 pot river imo

Nice writing btw, OP.

On this hand, I was going to add to what was already posted that one difference between online and live is that hand ranges are often more predictable, and that means you don't need to cbet middle pair or double barrel after going multiway to a flop. It would be considered a leak in limit or live low stakes not to keep bet/folding, but online once you get called in full ring in so many spots, it's going to be hard for someone not to outflop you unless it comes 8 high or you hit a nine. Just x fold when it comes ace high and move to the next hand, don't even think about the results. It's a lot trickier spot if it had checked all the way through.

Calling the all-in, heck even betting the turn after you get called on the flop, is lighting money on fire unless you have a very specific, HUD-confirmed read on the villain. Would not be surprised to see sets or two pairs (like suited aces) in this spot at showdown. Again, online the ranges are a lot more predictable than live play.

Do you fold if they x raise r river big?

I would bet more for value on the turn before the spade or a higher cards kill your action. I'd go. 75 or .80.

Software

I prefer PT4s look and how reports are run, but the Ignition Hand Grabber isn't very consistent. I have never had any issues with DriveHud. So for that reason, and as you mentioned the price, I would choose DriveHud.

May also want to look into a multi-table software like JuroJin. Even if only playing 2 tables, it has some nice features.


Zone Poker

Good idea to avoid playing Zone until you get used to everything.


Bankroll

I think it's smart to be on the conservative side, especially since you don't plan on redepositing. However, 100 buy-ins seems a little excessive.

Yeah I'd fold to a river check raise unless the player was a real maniac.

Hey thanks!

I know that the EV+ PGC play to maximize views here is to start disagreeing with all the advice given while demanding that everyone respect my skills as a crusher, but that's not really my style. So if I do explain my thinking in a hand, ask questions, or push back on opinions, just know it's helping me work through understanding the problem, not trying to "defend" my actions.

Yeah, I was totally button clicking here. Even without a HUD, I pay a lot of attention to other people's actions when I'm playing (check HH during play, etc) and this table was really drooly, lots of limp/call suited gappers and suited paint/low card OOP, but even when I reread this particular hand I was like "WTF? Why did I cbet second pair here here 5-way?"

Argh, I (sorta) get your point, but man, I'm gonna have to think about this more to really understand it. So let's lay out a couple hypothetical situations:

1) I have position on all but 1 player. On flop, checks to me, I check, guy behind me bets. Fold? Is there ever an argument for being sticky with a mid-PP against an A on the flop when a player bets after you've given up the lead?

2) Checks all around on flop. On turn, the V from the hand history bets. My thinking would be call because at these stakes I (so far) have seen a lot of betting any piece of the flop/turn if nobody bet the flop.

It was definitely a hero call with some notes about V. But you see more sets and suited aces here than other combos? I block some of T9 but there's plenty of 65, KQhh, random paint/low card suited hands that connected with part of the board, etc.

Ugh, sorry, I am sort of explaining my thinking be asking questions and like I say, I'm not trying to defend my actions, just trying to think through. I'm not one of those "forget everything you know and start from scratch" types so I gotta work through my thought process and understand how to change it.

Thanks for the recommendations about DriveHUD vs. PT so far everyone. Leaning towards uninstalling the PT free trial and just rolling with DriveHUD.

Got grad school stuff to do this evening and probably set up HUD and play later after the rest of the fam has gone to bed, which is sort of my prime time for cards. In the meantime, I'll sift through some more hand histories and try to find some interesting hands in the meantime.

What's a more reasonable number of buy-ins before moving up to 25NL?

This is definitely something I need to work into my game, adjusting bet sizing based on board texture rather than firing the exact same every time. Like if I'd gone bigger here while action was still live then my river check is better.

Most people might start taking shots or moving up with 15-25 buy-ins.

Since you're taking the conservative approach, 30 is probably a good number.

You can always move down if you lose 5-10 buy-ins

After the small sample of advice ITT, I decided to ditch trying out PT4 and installed the trial DriveHUD. Still figuring out all its bells and whistles. Using a HUD for the first time was a little weird and kind of threw me off my game, especially since the limited sample I was able to DL from Ignition (I barely played the last week) had my VPIP at a whopping 32% over 660 hands and I was pretty shocked by that.

In game, I was definitely adjusting to how it worked until I realized that I should just start off playing my game and learn as I went. Literally no interesting hands to report/assess. Mostly card dead, a lot of folding, misplayed a few hands, luckboxed a set of queens vs. AA, managed a whopping $2 profit. Woo! I think I'm gonna step down to 5NL while I'm figuring out the HUD because it definitely is an adjustment.

For those who use DriveHUD, I had some issues with it syncing up a couple times. It would give me a message when I started a table that a full hand needed to be played through, but then it says it can't find me at the table "no hero at table" while I'm sitting out waiting for my BB. Ideas?

Also, will DriveHUD pull all the HH data automatically when used in play or do I still need to download the hand histories the next day and upload them?

33% ROI is definitely too high in my opinion. I'm a nit and my stats are 14vpip/10pfr. You could play looser than that but 33% probably too loose in a full ring game. But 600 hands is also a small sample so maybe you just got a good distribution in that time.

I've never seen "no hero at table" message before. But it does always say one full hand needs to be played once you first sit down. Does it load after you play your big blind? If it does I wouldn't worry about it.

DriveHUD will pull all the hand histories and store them without you needing to do anything. You can check them out later.

Basically what you should use the HUD for is just to keep track of which players are loose preflop and which are tight and adjust accordingly.

It does the one full hand, then it tells me no hero at table. Then it doesn't load, so no HUD and no hands being recorded. Clicking the on/off button doesn't help.

Only time it didn't happen is if I posted right away or if I happened getting the BB right away.

Hmmm yeah I'm not sure. Sometimes it won't load for me, it will just say "one full hand needs to be played" and then never load. It's not perfect. But usually that happens when I try to load up a bunch of table or something. Sometimes closing and re-opening will fix it. That's all I got.

With DH, you might just have to correct something in the site settings.

I never have any issues getting my HUD to load

If you are still having issues I would suggest asking about in this forum as you'll get a quick response.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...tware-1620334/

I know this isn't the sexiest PGC in the world, but here's a little update:

Figured out most of the DriveHUD issues and put some time in. Was originally going to just play a couple 5NL tables while I got the hang of things but the first 4 5NL tables I got only had one other player, so I bumped up to 10NL and played a single full ring table.

As I mentioned before, I was pretty shocked at how high my VPIP was when I loaded a week's worth of hands, so before I played I went back to absolute beginner basics, reviewed my starting hand charts, etc. I started a little rough but really got the hang of things. The HUD was almost as helpful to monitor my own play as it was others at my table and realizing how over a limited sample a run of good cards really bloats VPIP. Conversely, when my cards dried up, tracking how my VPIP was going back down to a much more reasonable level kept my perspective in check. I wasn't card dead, things were just balancing out, and my VPIP reflected that.

I played some hands well, some hands like crap. (I'll post histories in a day or two.) Had a few giant hands including one where a maniac (68 VPIP) who had picked me off twice in big pots calling 3-bets preflop really loosely and getting there. As such, going into the hand we were both at about 300BB. Flopped bottom set, got max value the whole way from KK on a J93xJ board for $30.

So, over ~250 hands, I made $45/450BB, which is a single table record for me online.

Easy game.

Cash total $628.41. I might not have time to play much over the next couple days, I have a couple bigger assignments for grad school due Monday and Tuesday. However, I'm gonna figure out reporting on DriveHUD and try to pull some of the better/dumber hands I played and post them here.

Question of the session: How do I tighten up my EV line?

I am still making sense of all this stat stuff and reading the graphs, but over the now 1k hands I have loaded in DriveHUD (no access to the hands I played prior to last week, unfortunately) my EV line runs slightly above my actual. Looks like my actual bb/100 is 82.82, my EV bb/100 is 91.67. Somebody help my dumb ass understand what that means.

As Joey the mush would say "you gotta win your all-ins". EVbb/100 is how much money you should win on average. For example if you if you go all-in with AAvsKK for 100bbs and lose your actual bb/100 will go down since you lost. But your EVbb/100 will go up 60bbs since that's about how much you should win on average. It just keeps track of how much money you should be winning in your all-in hands.

Not a brag but testing out the DriveHUDhand history converter and might as well share the ridiculous hand I mentioned above. Already spoiled so I'm leaving the results in.

HAND 1

Hand History driven straight to this forum with DriveHUD Poker HUD and Database Software

NL Holdem 0.10(BB)
HJ ($33.52) [VPIP: 63.2% | PFR: 47.4% | AGG: 46.4% | Flop Agg: 58.3% | Turn Agg: 40% | River Agg: 33.3% | 3-Bet: 40% | 4-Bet: 0% | Hands: 20]
HERO ($31.04) [VPIP: 28.8% | PFR: 15.2% | AGG: 37.5% | Flop Agg: 39% | Turn Agg: 41.7% | River Agg: 29.1% | 3-Bet: 5.2% | 4-Bet: 4.3% | Cold Call: 22.1% | Hands: 1014]
BTN ($8.83) [VPIP: 23.5% | PFR: 9.8% | AGG: 19% | Hands: 51]
SB ($9.53) [VPIP: 11.3% | PFR: 9.4% | AGG: 27.3% | Hands: 53]
BB ($11.22) [VPIP: 35.8% | PFR: 5.7% | AGG: 14.8% | Hands: 53]

Dealt to Hero: 3 3

HJ Raises To $0.40, HERO Calls $0.40, BTN Folds, SB Folds, BB Folds

Hero SPR on Flop: [32.25 effective]
Flop ($0.95): 9 3 J
HJ Bets $0.80 (Rem. Stack: $32.32), HERO Raises To $1.60 (Rem. Stack: $29.04), HJ Calls $0.80 (Rem. Stack: $31.52)

Turn ($4.15): 9 3 J 5
HJ Bets $1.70 (Rem. Stack: $29.82), HERO Raises To $9.05 (Rem. Stack: $19.99), HJ Calls $7.35 (Rem. Stack: $22.47)

River ($22.25): 9 3 J 5 J
HJ Checks, HERO Bets $19.99 (allin), HJ Calls $19.99 (Rem. Stack: $2.48)