Thanks for your thoughts on the hands.

I've bounced between 2 and 3 a lot. I do feel like there is a bit less attention with 3, but recently I feel like I've gotten better/more comfortable with 3. I also basically have to play 3 due to the exclusive poker challenge/RB stars promos as I need a lot of volume to complete it.

In recapping the year, it has been an interesting year for me in poker. I built my first desktop in March, after previously having only used a Macbook Air. The desktop has been great, as it has allowed me to jump into the solver world, and really start to understand how postflop works, something I never really was able to grasp well when I was playing on my mac.

However, despite my continued study and efforts, I am still unable to beat 5z/10z convincingly. I played 25k hands at 5z in November after coming back down from 10z, where I had lost 18BI in 40k hands. I posted a small winrate at 5z in November. Convinced I could beat the 10z ante games, which I do believe are softer, I moved back up.

Unfortunately, my december results show I am still, clearly not a winner. However, I did manage to put in 37k hands, which is my most in a single month.

December graph:



Looking at the month as a whole, I think it is clear I am not a winning player with my playstyle. I worked hard on my mental game, so I don't think tilt is a major issue, though I do still have lapses in decision making. Further, I haven't encountered much variance, and I'm confident that variance isn't the reason I am losing. I am 100% owning my results. However, these past few months of struggle at the micros have made me so aware of how incredibly high the rake is. This month, I payed $252 in rake, which eclipses my $170 losses. Evidently, I am winning before rake, but not at a rate that beats it. Despite the rake, I truly don't understand how I can (marginally) beat 5z, but lose at 10z, which I still feel is softer and fishier with the ante.

I feel like a big leak in my game is my passiveness/weaktight style, and despite trying to be more aggression these last 10 days, I continue to lose on redline.

My bankroll cannot keep taking these wallopings at 10z (could deposit, but I don't want to be a depositing losing player) so I am going to have to make some tough choices. I don't want to move down, and my exclusive poker challenge currently won't get cleared at 5z, but I don't want to keep losing at 10z.

I think I am going to seek out some paid 1on1 coaching to get some help with beating the micros. I am not sure who or what yet, but I am going to start looking for some coaching. I'm going to examine and consider everything from established, known coaches with expensive rates to players with less coaching experience, perhaps playing higher in stars zoom pools who would be willing to try out being a coach for a lower rate. Feel free to reach out or make recommendations.

However, for 2021 my main poker goal remains the same: Beat 25z on stars, first by beating 10z.

Outside of poker, I am blessed and very grateful to have a comfortable life and good paying job that allows me to play poker as a hobby with the these stakes being basically irrelevant compared to my life roll. I feel my life outside of poker is good, and I don't anticipate making any big changes outside of poker in 2021, though I did make some changes (daily meditation routine) thanks to the A Game Poker Masterclass. I will (once lockdown is over, again) continue to go to the gym 2-3 times a week, and continuing to eat healthier. I would like to lose ~10 pounds, but at 5'10"/165lb, that isn't a huge concern and is something that will happen slowly over 3-4 months.

Looks like my old red line. I was calling too many 3b oop, not 3b enough myself and just not following up enough on the turn and river with air. Have you had any coaching? It was really helpful for me. Good luck!

I'm definitely getting whacked on redline, and think that is my biggest leak. I do think I am too passive in 3b pots and have been working on that.

I have not have any paid, formal coaching, but have had sweats from good players in discord servers. I went through the Kanu7 course this year, and that has helped me understand postflop a lot, but I am still struggling.

I think you're looking at it wrong in regards to your redline. It's likely not the big pots that are doing damage, I think overfolding is good in those pooles preflop to 3bets because ranges tend to be tighter as is folding to multiple street aggression post flop because poole frequency for the most part don't multi and esp triple street bluff all that often.

I've said this in a previous post already, what's killing your red line is you're not picking up enough pots that don't go post flop. This means 3betting a lot IP ( btn vs co, bb vs sb) and stealing tonnes from co,btn and sb. On top of this you're likely completing too much preflop when it comes to calling in BB, be more aggressive 3bet more vs weak btn opens etc. Because of the rake structure hands that would be no brainer completes at higher levels are no longer profitable.

Record yourself playing and watch it back then ask yourself what are spots that you are getting yourself in post flop a lot where you seem to be continuously folding and losing money in. Initiative is the key to winning at poker.

Here's an example situation, looser reg's probably see you as a soft target in the blinds. They'll open in SB with rando hands and you'll call with your A4o and they cbet at a high frequency on T92 or w/e it might be with their garbo which you fold to so they print in that situation, over and over and over. Think about how much this adds up over time.

How you do you combat that situation, start 3betting them much lighter, start raising their stabs more IP etc. Instead of flatting your A4o or 108s 3bet it over and over and force them into the position that now you're the one who's "1uping" them. You need to identify these situations all over the table but it's going to be mainly in LP, co btn sb and bb.

If you're using a HUD add in the "attention to steal" and "fold to steal" stats. These will give you a good overall reading of how people are playing in the blinds. At these stakes you want to base your decisions on an exploititive strategy, "BB folds 90% I'll open any 2 from SB, BTN 3bets a lot I'll dump the weakest part of my range from CO" etc etc

Ask yourself the question "How do I make myself harder to play against?" Forget about running big bluffs in 3bet pots or calling down 3 streets with 3rd pair, this isn't how you're going to fix things.

Edit: I don't mean to dismiss there's a tonne of things you can do post flop too to better your red line because you can run over those pooles too barrelling the right spots but imo the thing you should focus on first is fixing obvious leaks preflop

GL in 2021 man

Hey man, just found this - looking forward to following along in 2021.

As nuxxx pointed out, the thing to remember with redline is that if you called every single bluff catcher, you'd probably have a massively winning redline - but of course your blue line will suffer. Whilst in general over folding is correct in these pools, there's also a number of boards/textures where people massively overbluff. The other thing when it comes to aggression/stealing pots postflop is that you can get away with c-betting too much (especially IP), and over stabbing vs checks which are never protected

Thank you for the thoughts and feedback everyone. I'll respond in more depth tomorrow.

Today, I am doing something a bit different for myself in poker: grinding tournaments. I have 3x blowout tickets from stars, and although I don't typically play tourneys, I might aswell use them. I'm not a fan of the length tournaments take, but the GTDs right now make these too good to not use.

Not putting an pressure or expectations on myself in a format I don't study, but just hoping to run good, get lucky and have some fun. Back to the cash grind and improvement tomorrow.

I would bet you aren't being aggro enough in the blinds with that redline.

PM sent

Can't wait to see how your game will evolve this year!
Good luck for 2021

Hey everyone!

I had a decent day yesterday with the free blowout tournaments tickets. I started by busting the $5.50 in 5 minutes due to a sick suckout. However, I think that got the worst of the variance out of the way, as I was able to cash the $11 bash and make a decent run in the $22 PKO, for a $60 in cashes on the day. Not huge, but it helps the bankroll a bit and for free tickets for a non-tournament player I'll take it.

I have a few PMs and posts in this thread I'll be responding to this afternoon. I appreciate the support from everyone!

Here are my stats from December. Only 36k hands, but a decent snapshot of how I play. I've been making more of a cognizant effort to be more aggressive lately, but even in the last few sessions of the month with more aggression, I still am losing consistently session after session on redline.





It seems my blinds play is still a problem/big losing area. My last couple months have been focused on understanding/improving my blinds play by going through the Kanu7 course and working with some solves. It is frustrating to see that I am still struggling there. I think I am missing a lot of light 3bets (but still 3bets in my ranges) because of my reluctance to light 3bet short stacks and fish (who I don't think will fold) or 3bet regs when there are fish behind who I think will cc my 3bets). While I do 3bet light a decent amount vs regs, I think my reluctance in these spots vs fish/shortstacker fish or with fish behind is a big reason why my 3b stat is so low.

Preflop I think I am still too tight. I use solved ranges with 100z stars rake. I have looked at ranges solved with my rake, and they don't differ much, so I am not worried about that being an issue. However, I am too nitty preflop, as my RFI is lower than the ranges in several positions. I have my my ranges RFI vs mine (by position) below:

EP (17.16 vs 17.15)
MP (21.16 vs 20.77)
CO (27.18 vs 24.01)
BU (40.95 vs 38.10)
SB (49.53 vs 41.50) - I don't play a limp strategy, so I combine the ranges mixed strategy.

I think my incorrect frequency of opens is a part of the reason I am so nitty preflop at 19/16.

I would appreciate any thoughts or insights based on my stats.

Ah, congrats on the run! A nice little start to the year.

I'm not really a stats person and I'm sure you know 3bet seems dangerously low. I would hone in on that and the preflop charts like you said until those figures line up. In fact, that's what I'm going to do this week because I probably have the exact same leak.

You shouldn't be listening to be at all!

Thanks! It was a nice little boost to start the year!

I am lucky, after my last post about my struggles at 10z and seeking coaching, a couple of 2p2 posters playing a bit higher than me reached out and offered to provide some free mentoring/coaching to help me out at 10z. They wish to remain anonymous, but I am very grateful for their help.

I chatted with them a bit yesterday before really getting into much, and I worked on being more cognizant of making sure I am not missing marginal BU/SB opens. I managed to get up to 22/19 in yesterdays session which is a nice improvement. Also ran really good, which was nice, and a good start to 2021. I'm hopeful with their help I can beat 10z and hopefully later 25z this year.

Good to hear that you're going to get some guidance - 2p2 is a great community for that.

With respect to expanding your preflop range, don't be too concerned about the 'lighter' 3bets getting called all the time, just keep in mind that the people in the micro pools won't defend well on the flop anyway, so those lighter 3b's become more +EV

GL, will be following!

In! gl man

Subscribed, glgl!

Thanks guys! Things are going a bit better so far this month (knock on wood)!

I'll post an update this weekend, once I clear my current exclusive poker challenge for 40% rakeback. They're pretty intense at 10nlz, so after this one I'm going sit out the next one and cut down on volume a bit. Feeling a bit burnt out.

This is stars zoom? Ur playing way too tight, 3bet more and steal more. I remember playing that pool briefly in 2020 and there were russians playing like 9/5...

Hey man, with regards to your stats I do agree with posts that say you need to widen up a bit more, but I would do so very slowly, you don't want to be in lots of spots all of a sudden with wider than usual ranges. If you do it incrementally you'll feel a lot more comfortable. Also people forget how much of a huge factor rake is in the micros, some of the biggest winners in the 25-100nl pools are nitty regs with 20/17/8 stats

I guess that at the lower micro zoom levels, 20/17/8 is prob about optimal. Maybe at 50nl where the pool is smaller you should be opening up a bit more PF on the basis of stronger reads leading to more drastic PF adjustments / + the lower rake. Can't say for certain but I'm feeling like, with antes, 20/17/8 type stats became too tight and that the more aggro regs would've benefited from that format. (if anyone at all benefited that is, potentially nobody did in any meaningful way)

Now the antes have been removed, I'd say around those numbers is what trust needs to aim for. (think he is already getting there )

Yup. I agree with both of you. One of the first things the guys who are helping me out got me to work on is opening more BU/SB. Turns out I was folding a lot of marginal, non-sexy looking hands in BU/SB/BB that are full freq opens/defends in the ranges I used.

I worked on that and 3betting more, and I'm about 22/18/9 now. I'm working on getting my aggression factor up to 2 consistently. I'm getting around 1.75 most days right now.

Knew I should've fired that river Q

I was just waiting for it. I was just there thinking "this guy rivered his AQo on me".

Thanks for the check!