Hello everyone,

I have been playing poker for a couple of years now and decided to start my own thread. My favourite threads have been from 'Poker Goals and Challenges' and really enjoy reading and watching people progress through their challenges. I also think this will be a good opportunity for people to help me assess certain situations.

For those who were familiar with "Grinding Microstakes as a College Student", I want to follow a similar format. This will include graph of the day's session, a few big hands that were interesting and the overall progress to date.

The Challenge

So the challenge will be to make 5000 big blinds at 10nl on 888poker in 1 month. I will be playing 3 tables of Snap (Restricts to only 3 tables) and then either ONE or THREE extra tables of regular 10nl depending on how I am feeling or how the games are looking.

Please feel free to comment and analyse certain hands I post, thanks in advance.

0/5000

Day 1

Not a great start to the challenge being down 700bb in the first hour or so. Took a long break then played towards the afternoon and managed to get back to even.





Good:

Hand 1 - Used my AK as a check on this flop to induce exactly this



Review Hands

Hand 2 - Should I be calling river despite blocking main bluffing combos via the flush draw?




Hand 3 - Is this bluff good or bad? I block top set with the A, I block most of the spades that could get to the river i.e. Ks10s KsQs KsJs and I block the straight component K10. I decide to turn my hand into a bluff because I feel villain has QJ, AQ and AJ here too often. This deep I can also pressure a set of 44 and perhaps JJ and QQ to fold. I think this may be too ambitious?

Hand 4 - Another Ambitious Bluff? I think I gave a timing tell on the river because of how long I thought about turning my hand into a bluff but essentially I thought that the bet turn and check river was always a pocket pair more weighted towards QQ and AA so I thought turning JJ into bluff. The reason I do this is because I know my range has a lot of kings because I know I am peeling almost all suited Kings I use as a 3 bet vs the small 4 bet sizing




Hand 5 - Too thin Value? I discounted AK from villains range for two reasons. The preflop sizing was awfully small which I know the fish tend to do this with either AA or KK or some suited connector hand that looks pretty. I also thought AK would fold turn due to the sizing of the bet except for the one combo of AcKc. As a result I feel villain's range has lots of QJs or one pair hands. I decide the riving sizing because I want to protect my missed club draw bluffs that I over jam with when the 4 card straight comes in




Would love feedback on these hands. Thanks in advance.

1/5000 bb - Day 1

Good luck skuzlad, it's sad that fuzzingIrish no longer is continuing his thread, but will try to follow yours.

Hand 1: I prefer just betting the flop. Betting AK for value means you can also bet other hands as bluffs here as well. Check-call with other hands like QQ-JJ for bluff-catching (assuming you 3-bet them).

Hand 2: It's a good call. He's making half pot bets; it's a 3-bet pot BTN vs blind (ranges are wide), and you have a solid top pair hand. Don't worry about blockers here. If you want to go down that road, you're also blocking value combos he could have.

Hand 3: Horrible bluff. If they have QJ, they're probably raising the flop. If they have AQ/AJ (or better), I highly doubt they're folding. Sets are almost definitely not folding, and the way they played this hand (calling flop, donking turn), I think AJ is unlikely. And maybe AQ also. And the obvious flush draw missed, so it makes it even harder to get away with a bluff because they might be thinking you had that draw and are deciding to bluff.

I'm gonna dig a bit deeper on this one though. Do you have any calling range here preflop? If you do, AK would do much better as a call preflop. Don't turn a strong-ish hand into a bluff when you can call with it and use a weaker hand to bluff-squeeze. If you never call here and just 3-bet or fold, then using AK as a bluff is fine.

Hand 4: I don't like your bluff here either. But let's start with your reasoning. If you play your Kx here the exact same way (preflop to river), then you're going to have some bluff hands here as well. But choosing JJ to use as a bluff is not good. If you're flatting a 4bet with JJ preflop, I assume you're doing so to bluff-catch the rest of the way as long as the board is somewhat safe for your hand (and it is in this case).

If you think you're up against AA/AK all the time, then you should just fold to his 4bet preflop. But just bluff-catch. Your hand is too strong to turn into a bluff. Plus, what better hand do you think is going to fold here? My guess is not a single one.

Hand 5: First of all, bet bigger on the flop. That way, you won't be in a position where you need to overbet the river to get stacks in. Secondly, I don't like your reasoning. You don't say why he wouldn't 3bet small with AK. He seems like a fish, so I don't see why he couldn't do that with AK.

Second mistake, you assume he's going to fold the turn with AK. Why? Fish are notorious for calling too much. He has AK! A straight draw where he can hit an A or K as well to win! Why would he fold?!?!?

Day 2 - 445/5000bb

Frustrating session, I felt like didn't play too well and spewed away in a few spots with QQ vs AA or KK.



Hand 1 - Villain had a tendency to bluff in 3b pots so I let him work his magic here




Hand 2 - I nearly threw up in this hand because I could see heaps of combos getting to the river that had flush components [Kh10h, KhJh, KhQh, AhKh, QhJh, AhQh]. I probably made a bad call especially when villain leads pot on river when flush makes it. I just thought to myself I'm at the top of my range and folding this kinda sucks#entitlementcalls






Hand 3 - I got kinda tilty after this hand because I thought this was a really good bluff. I felt villain's range was capped here after villain bet flop and turn and checked the river when everything makes it. When the 10 dropped on the turn, in my mind I knew I was bluffing almost every river because I have way more 10s here than villain. The king of spades was even a better river card because I would be jamming all my flushes here for value as well. I could also have slow played KK in the same fashion. I think its really hard for villain to call river without a flush, Kings full or Quad 10s. I feel like hero calling range should be AK with ace of spades, Aces with A of spades and probably all 10x. Realistically I think my range of bluffs comprises of [66-99, 98s] vs my value range [77s,22s,10s, J10s, Q10s,K10s,A10s, KK, and all spade combos]






Hand 4 - I for some reason did not pull the trigger on the river despite the line I took. Did I mention hindsight sucks?

Day 3 -231/5000bb

Pretty awful day, got extremely unlucky in many spots and didn't help my standard bluffs were vs top of range most of the time. Only 3 hands worth looking at today.



Hand 1 - Unsure what my bluffing range should look like on these kinds of boards. I'm not sure if it should only include all combinations of AK or just the suited variants that have the backdoor flush equity otherwise I feel like I have too few/too many bluffs here. My value range is obviously AA,KK,AQ, 87s and 98s and 88 that have this exact line so I need to find a good balance for bluffing range





Hand 2 - Posting this hand so people can berate me on how poorly i played this. I thought this was a really bad bluff. The only hands in my range that would play like this are exactly AA and 88.I had put SB lead on a weak ace and CO on a wheel draw. Knowing that SB had a player behind him to act I thought it was impossible for SB to ever call with any ace here for the sizing and if CO called with a slow played monster, I would just sit and cry. Unfortunately my hand looks too much like a missed flush draw that I guess a pot size bet may do better to save me money.





Hand 3 - Do I just pile in on flop or do I call to keep the bluffs alive? I am aware that I could have been up against AA or KK but this guy seemed donk enough to raise flop with an over pair weaker than QQ (from what I saw from the session)

Good luck sir !

Slight Delay on posting, been a bit busy over Easter with family. Did not play on day 5 (27/3/2016)

Day 4 -199/5000 26/3/2016

Day 5 -199/5000 27/3/2016





Hand 1 - Interesting Hand, the way villain played the turn, I discounted a lot of nut flush hands. There wasn't enough combo draws that included the nut flush for villain. The combos really would be Ad7d and Ad10d (I think this is more likely as it blocks me from having 10 8). I also think villain played the hand ok because I think I'm folding most of my non flush range




Hand 2 - Is this a fold or a call? I thought villain could pot lead with some draw. In hindsight I think there are more hands that beat me so perhaps next time I fold.

Day 6 37/5000bb 28/3/2016 (Posting this the day after it happened)

Not a bad day, didn't log as many hands but did manage to end the day up just over 2 buyins.



Hand 1 - Totally gross, I was on skype with a friend when this hand played out and he can vouch that I actually called villain's exact holding because I knew villain was a capable player and he knew that my range only consisted of the nut flush so for him to lead jam river meant he had to have the straight flush. I obviously called but then proceeded to ask myself (and you guys) in what spots are we folding the nut flush here? My answer is never but interested to here another perspective.




Hand 2 - The lazy "Lets GII with two overs and a flush draw" hand. I thought villain's range was a lot wider than sets. Villain is a 47/16 (which i consider a weak player) so I thought raising range on this kind of flop could also include pocket pairs from 88-JJ. I also thought sometimes villain raises with A7o and A7s.

This is nl10, there is absolutely no reason to have a bluff range at all. Specially for anything over 25bbs. Our bluff range should consist of a cbet on a dry flop with no pair basically.

^ I know what you are saying but for my own learning and improvement I want to start thinking about these sort of concepts for when I move up stakes. Besides, there are a few good 10nl players in the snap pool who are capable of exploiting ABC strategies.

Day 7 - 342/5000bb

Not much to say, didn't play that many hands either today and ran above EV.



Hand 1 - Free money. Not sure whether to just pile it in or do what I did and overcall

Practicing bluffs vs idiots is hugely -ev. Practice this stuff nl25 against semi thinking players.

Decent results so far OP, keep it up.

I'm going to do a double post for the last 2 days because I didn't play many hands/a bit lazy.

Day 8 618/5000 BB

Day 9 1002/5000BB



Last few days have been going. Well on track to my goal. No real interesting hands

Day 10 1578/5000bb

Another great day, picking up some great momentum.



Probably won't bother uploading hands for a while, not much feedback.

hey man, I grind 888 snap too, I recognise your name. PM me your skype if you want to chat, we can help each other out we have similar goals

I think you had an aussie flag avatar, I'm from Australia too

Delay on the posting, had a pretty awful weekend on the tables. Played pretty poorly to be honest. Here are the results for the last few days.

Day 11: -944bb (2/4/2016)
Day 12: -663bb (3/4/2016)
Day 13: -120bb (4/4/2016)

Which puts me on -149/5000bb.

The results definitely had an effect on my motivation so I took a day off and will continue again in the next day or two.

Here is my graph:

wow sick man. You should probably re evaluate your play. 17 BI's is a huge loss in 3 days. Post some hands and we can probably help you

Hey man, thanks for the feedback!

So last 2 days i've had problems with my PostgreSQL and so my data base has not been working. In fact I had to completely reupdate my data base so I lost all my stats which sucks because I really wanted to post my stats from each position etc at the end of the challenge. (Would be helpful if someone could help me with this)

So from my notes I will have to update the progress.

Day 14 -120bb (5/4/2016) - No play on this day
Day 15 137bb (6/4/2016) - A decent recovery session (No graph because of database failure)

Day 16 (7/4/2016)- Tried to resolve the database issue after work. Decided I would have to update my PostgreSQL to the most up to date one. Now my PT4 is working again but lost all stats from previous database. No play on this day.

Now that my database is back up and running I am going to put a ton of volume in over the weekend.

Review of the first half of the challenge:


I think overall the first half of the month has been slightly disappointing. From memory, I have run 500bb under EV which has definitely not helped with my motivation.

Once again (from memory), I was quite happy with my play from the blinds (over 30k sample size). I think I was about -0.3bb/100 from BB and SB. My MP was generating the best bb/100. CO was generating a pretty good bb/100 as well. My main issue was my btn play which was only generating 0.08bb/100. Looking into the second half, will look to improve my BTN play.

My VPIP was roughly 22 and my PFR was 18. I think this is pretty solid, maybe even increase to 24/20?

Going into the second half I want to clean up my 4bet play, construct better ranges for 4 bet vs different positions and bet sizes. I feel like this was a major leak in my game because my post flop play in 4b pots was weak.

Another leak I think was maximising my river value. Sometimes I felt my bet sizes were too small, particularly vs the many fish that overcall in certain spots. Will be looking to bet larger on rivers in certain spots.

Anyway, happy to here everyone's responses on what they think of my stats so far and my general approach. I understand its difficult to make proper adjustments/comments without specific statistics that I had in my previous database.

Day 17 691/5000bb - 8/4/2016

Pretty good start to the weekend. Coolering went both ways.

Day 18 820/5000bb (9/4/2016)

Not too much volume today. Here is the graph

subbed dude, gl!

currently play 10NL zoom and have similar goals.

Thanks man!

Day 19 911/5000bb (11/4/2016)



Really need to hit the tables the next two weeks to catch up for my challenge.