Greeting everyone! I'm starting a new PG&C thread.

My background:

I'm a 28 year old guy from Australia, who has been playing poker for god knows how long. I'm a law school drop out and have been a self proclaimed "professional" for many years, and whilst I was winning money at the poker table, I ultimately spent as much as I made wasting money degening of uninformed leverage trades, piling on sh*tcoins, random investments into collector items like Pokemon Cards, Warhammer figurines and a variety of unjustified restaurants, alcohol and movie expenses. I never worked a day in my life and played a lot of chess in my spare time.

But now, I gotta spin it up before the next crypto bullrun. I'm ready to finally ascend and be a poker god. So I'm starting with a bankroll of roughly $5000 and playing whatever games I feel like until I run it up. If I dust the roll, I will be forced to dip into my savings or sell my various cherished item or scab off of my rich friends or find more backers to place their trust into a button clicking degen.

My living situation:

I crash at random friends and strangers' couches or live at my mum's basement, depending on my mood. I also scab my way to a VIP tier card at the casino, so sometimes I use their free hotel nights or get unlimited free booze from the VIP room and sit at the balcony with a great view, watching the sun come up.

My weekly routine:

I basically have no weekly routines, I just follow my dopamines and make impulsive decisions. However, the one constant in my life is I get probably around 2-3 hours of exercise a day which is probably the only healthy thing I do. I've been on a decent sleep cycle atm, sleeping at normal times (ish) around midnight now instead of sleeping at like midday, which I've done alot in the past.

My poker background:

I've played many different stakes online and live. I've played up to 25/50 HU staked and various degen PLO homegames. I've also played a decent chunk of microstakes and midstakes. I have been a long time poster on 2p2 but wanted to start fresh here. My biggest poker leak has always been my 90:10 ratio of study and play which leads to a complete lack of volume that minimise opportunities and EV in my life. I'm a believer that poker should be a healthy balanced of solver understanding and disrespectful exploits and one cannot be complete unless they try to find edge in every aspect of the game. I think viewers of the blog will enjoy my unique takes and perspectives to poker.



This was mainly for my volume during the covid lockdown from 2020 and 2021. I didn't play many hours and the sample is live poker.

Short, medium and long term goals:

Short term: I'm going to aim to put in 200 hours of poker before thinking of anything else. When I set myself volume goals over a long period, I tend to get lazy and falter. I will be playing stakes up to 100nl and maybe 200nl on iggy if I get more and playing live tournies and low stakes cash.
Medium term: Be rich and famous
Long term: World Domination

Seems like you are a kindred spirit of 6betme. Should be a fun thread

Looks like you've actually got some potential to make a good living out of this. You study a lot more than your average player and hourly rate looks good over a large enough sample. Looks like you're just a bad poker professional, not actually a bad poker player. If you can sort yourself out and get in the habit of putting in the playing hours, you might actually redeem yourself.

Might lurk. Best of luck!

Not muched happened this week...

Played a $250 freezeout with like a 20-30k prizepool, busted after squeezing K7s LP on open and call (not charts approved but exploit so whateves) and stacking off on KQx at low SPR.

Then spend a bunch of $$ on $60+ meals (yea dumb ik), but did hit a 8-1 on Nadal for the AO finals, so thats nice...

Gonna try to find some good games this week and deposit on iggy so I can practice on spins.

Played a cashie, was stuck around near 1.5 BIs at one point but was pretty close to even by the end.

The table was relatively tryhard compared to ur typical passive sh*tters in live cash. I guess the venue was at a comparatively affluent area so ur more likely to get ur typical uni students with sizeable egos backed by their maccas salary and rudimentary understanding of "range" and "strategy" rather then ur average two digit average IQ tradie bogan limp fests.

Saw a bunch of 4bet sh*t flinging with unsuited junk like the durrr and gus specials and did some OOL squeezes myself with slightly less junky unsuited sh*t. Had one blast spot where we 2x river jam on 843KA vs some capped tellbox, after betting the turn into four people with QT in a single raised pot as the PFR. Was pretty blasty and mainly only rep AK, but they don't know that. Other than that, not many particularly interesting hands except maybe one interesting hand against a known V.

The blinds was 2/4 that hand, its roughly 100-120bb eff I dont remember, we 4x EP with AKo 7 handed cuz y not, and V to my left flatted which surprised me because I always know the guy to play 3b/f preflop in that spot so maybe he's trying to peel some speculative stuff and potentially some degenerate combos to bumhunt some whales on our table. It folds all around.

Flop comes QJ5, we have no spade in our hand, we cbet 1/4 pot OOP, I would play pretty simple vs this V and not split too much. He peels us off.

Turn comes T, we check and face around a 1/2 bet IP and call.

River comes a J, we check and face an 80% pot bet. We fold.

Now an interesting question here is whether having A or K could be better or worse for us. But its entirely dependant on their range construction in live poker here, if I range them on suited speculative hands and pocket pairs often. Their bluff range should be almost entirely composed of low pockets with a spade blocker, and thats if they ever bluff here, so maybe we prefer to block the suited aces and kings so we rather have a spade in our hand to call. I don't expect many offsuit Ax and Kx to be in their flatting range and the higher ones often just hit the board and have showdown anyway and wouldn't need to blast. V ended up showing us the K and mucked the other card.

Was planning to play a bunch of live mtts in succession if I bust, but ended up being stuck in the first live MTT because I had a deep run. Prizepool got near 20k, and it was abit of a donk fest, ran up over 3x SS in an hour after late regoing. Ended up blowing 8 hours of my time for a min cash...

We got unlucky for a while with JJ<KQ, AQ<AJ in big spots, maybe could've capitalised if I held. Also did a bunch of spew hands but couldn't remember too much. One hand that stands out to me was QQ cold calling my 3bet like 22bb eff then calling down on AT9J6 against my A9. Other stuff I witness are ppl folding down to literally one big blind and folding stuff like A3 with 2bb left BvB. Pretty much summarising how drawing dead the field is and how much free money there is to take in live MTTs til the end of time.

Not much going on this week in terms of live MTTs. Will prob just play a cashie on Friday night. Will spend the week playing spins on iggy and cleaning the house/fixing my knee pains among other necessary life things that I have to get done.

Some interesting takes there, something I wouldn't think about to be honest.
From what I've read about live poker people just underbluff a ton and even though the table was a bit tougher I can't imagine it being full of GTO wizkids that would find the right bluffing frequency there. Wp.

How are spins on Iggy, and what the hell is Iggy? Is this just slang for Ignition or something, or is it an actual site I've never heard of? Probably not EU approved then.

Iggy is Ignition

Played a live session last week, won a buy in, no particularly memorable HH to write about. A whale got angry over some card muck rule. The table was playing if the card goes into the muck, but you can say the hand and retrieve it, then the hand isn't dead. This rule ends up letting a nit reg keep a won pot over the whale and the whale got really mad and wanted it to be chopped. The whale already almost got into a fight with some other autistic sh*t reg so he was already in a bad mood. Anyway, the table wasn't helpful to him and he leaves the game. The whale was 100% VPIP and torching multiple BIs every hour and the table was too dumb to be lenient with the rules to keep him in the game.

What is the point of such a rule?

In for a fellow Aussie.

You already got the heart and the commitment for the game.

What kind of Pokemon is your collection spanning? WOTC?

Mainly zards and gen 1 starters from different sets.

Gonna have a seperate roll for sport betting, will mainly be targeting player markets for NBA, expected ROIs from the model range from 5%-20%, depending on the line. Looking to do $50-100 unit bets but will see what happens, might do monthly updates if I do this regularly.

Nothing that interesting happened this week. Fired some tournies in live poker and GGpoker and bricked a bunch.

Only funny thing was me tanking 4 minutes with 72o in a sattie to a 1.5k near the bubble to get the blind levels to go up and hit the short stack whose big blind is next hand. The whole table spend the next 20 minutes discussing which pocket pair I folded. I won the ticket.

Binked a $750 buy in for $34k. Pretty tired right now, but will write a report on that later...

✓✓✓

Had a 2k cash today for a $100 buy in, not much to say about that, the tournament was extremely soft, but average stack on FT got to around around 6 big blinds, and there were no antes.

There will be many tournament series coming up in March. The schedule is gonna be packed...

unlimited free booze from the VIP room and sit at the balcony with a great view, watching the sun come up.

The Above sounds awesome!!

Best of luck with your goals buddy, keep crushing!

Not been a great week right after the sun run. Lost a buy in on Monday playing 2/3/6, then bricked a small turbo on Tuesday and $330 on Wednesday. Now I made a day 2 of a $1.25k with only 20 bigs and barely any hours of sleep (starts in around 4.5 hours) and I don’t really feel like playing but will try to power through that. Will probably play a $450 rebuy in the same venue if I bust that. But probably taking a week off poker to do assignments and sort out life ****.

Hand of the Week

MTT 8 handed (?), big blind ante
Hero opens UTG+1 T9 2.25x off a 25bb stack, folds to BB who defends 15bb eff
6bb in the pot on the flop
Flop is 533r, we Cbet 29% and gets called
Turn Q, brings diamond draw (I think?) and we go check check
River Q, V overbet shoves roughly 11bb into 9.5bb

Bricked the 1.25k, we jam BTN v CO with 77 for like 16bb, and the 30bb eff BB rejams AJo and we lose the flip...

Busted the $450 quickly afterwards in the early blind levels. We squeeze A3o v limps somewhere near the MP and get a bunch of callers, then 3b jammed on Q83 for like 100bb in a bloated MW pot. Gameflow/dynamics/bet sizing was telling me he had a FD, so we are merge jammed to dominate some of his Ax calls. K6 gets it in and spikes a flush on the turn to knock us out. Probably also fine to sometimes 3bj bottom pair with A kicker anyway.

Ended up playing 2/5/T later that night and lost $100. Not much to say about that session, except coming back to live cash at the casino after a long while, the quality of regs has definitely greatly decreased and the recs are as juicy as ever. I think $150+ hourlies are possible, especially with game selection. So I had a talk with a backer, who is willing to let me get a salary per hour deal as well as let me take some % of myself of the action. Gonna play 10/20 if it runs too.

Some basic live midstake adjustments (2/3 to 5/10)


- There will come up spots where you just get a totally free squeeze on a bunch of capped limpers (once you know table doesn't really limp trap) and you can squeeze ATC to pick up something like $60-70 for free once or twice an hour (don't over abuse this in case they start to notice). The threshold size for squeezing is often around 10x (to $100 in a 5/10 game), as people are unwilling to commit a higher denomination chip (even to set mine with the right odds sometimes.) Even if you get peeled by a speculative hand (e.g. pockets), a small cbet often autoprofit as they overfold.

- Be exploitative with your bet sizings. Be willing to go extremely small in some spots as a bluff because people mostly play their hands face up and you get very efficient bluffs. Obviously the same goes for value betting, you can go extremely big if they are inelastic.

- 3-Bet way wider IP, no one is four betting like ever, they overcall OOP and you get to streamroll them post. But under 3-bet certain type of implied odds hands that have stack off potential especially when playing deep vs sh*tters, so I'm talking about some of the Axs and medium to high-ish pockets even.

- Stop playing 3bet/fold from the SB. I know these games are high rake, and normally that's what you should be looking to do. but there are plenty of hands that you can just go postflop and overrealise/outplay the weak pool.

- Limp reraise strats from EP-MP can be extremely effective, can a LRR can pick up dead money very easily and counters alot of non optimal preflop strategies.

- Abuse the bumhunting sh*tregs because they underdefend most spots anyway. They are here to stack whales, not to battle you. Just know when when to step the foot off the gas pedal.

- Be very free thinking with the lines you take. Be willing to play out of flow and donk/block bet certain combos on boards you aren't supposed to have a donking range. Regs aren't going to be able to work out and exploit you easily anyway.

- Work on live tells

- These kind of brain dead adjustments probably also apply to weaker/rec heavy higher stakes games (10/20+)

Got assignments to do this week, so I'm not playing anything decent until like saturday (for a 1.1k main). But spending the week to practice on HU reg speed and hypers on the side.

Change of plans this week, will end up playing on Tuesday and Thursday and if I don’t make day two of the 1.1k main, I will get Friday and the weekend to finish a mid sem assignment.

Busted the 1.1k main, couldn’t get much going, AK<TT, QQvAK (board runs out chop), and then jammed AJo SB v MP 24bb eff and BB wakes up with AQ...

Gotta finish my mid sem, but will prob play the 1.1k PLO HR on Monday...