Hello

Short intro:
I am a Finnish male. Wanna beat the rake in micro and small stakes PLO and maybe after that, make some money. I know it'll be hard, but I'll just do it.

Idols:
Mika Häkkinen, Kimi Räikkönen, Ziigmund aka Ilari Sahamies aka Ilari FIN. Two of these guys drink a lot, but still succeed. As one of my goals, I will try to drink less. Less drinking and hangovers should add +25% to volume, +34% to motivation, +21% to learning etc.

Blogging goals:
I will put a lot of weight to mental game. I will also put quite a lot of weight to game theory. This means I will include hands in this blog where I apply game theoretical analysis.

So far I have mostly played Stars PLO Zoom. I am in fact now studying if there are better options. I like the volume of hands you get in Zoom, and even more I LOVE the fact that you can pause Zoom at any time and take in-depth notes etc. However, I am also aware that there are better games available, and I will think about this.

I decided to start this blog today now when entering May, but this exact day 1st of May is also a holiday here, and I am not playing today.

For the record: I will never show EV results here. I strongly believe that being not result oriented is good for you. Looking at EV I believe is just doubling the result orientedness. You don't only look at your actual results, you even go ahead and compare it to how much you SHOULD have made, which is doubling the sin imo. I TRY to think, the result is how good I play each day, how aware I am, how is my mental game, but the dollars won or loss i TRY to judge as irrelevant, as luck.

Here is, though, how my April Zoom luck looked like:

Allright, just a small update to get this project going in the right direction.

First I thought I would update this blog after each days (or every other day's) sessions are done, but it will probably not work for me, since after the last hand of the day I probably just prefer do something non-poker, instead of firing up Propokertools and Excel sheets and analyse hands, which I mean to put the main weight into anyways. So I will change that, and update somewhere middle in the day, when I rather study anyways.

When I exclusively play/(played?) Zoom I liked three 2 hour sessions per day. This would equal to 6 hours and maybe 2000-2500 hands depending how many tables I play and how long notes and reviews I wanna do in between hands.. That might change also if I decide to slowly go away from Zoom to regular tables.

So today's sessions totaled: 6.33 hours, 2112 hands, -2.85 bi's. Included Zoom 25&50 and some regular tables.

GOAL for tomorrow:

Increase my confidence level to regain my aggression to its proper level, maybe get a sweat or two to help on it and/or choose tables where I feel more confident.

I have now been losing 7 out of the last 8 days of playing (some days off in between). It hasn't been much or taken any huge toll, mentally or bankroll wise, but today I have become aware that it is starting to affect my confidence somewhat. Mainly it shows that I have started to overestimate the equities of villain's ranges when I face aggression from them. For example when I cbet AA** in a 3bet pot and get checkraised, I estimate their equity a few pips higher than when playing my best game, when I am more objective regarding their whole range and more honestly also recognize the stuff they have that is better for me, such as weaker sorts of pair+ weakish draw. So today I take note that after some losses I have a natural tendency to become more pessimistic when evaluating villain's ranges and I need to fight that tendency.

This is a good point to understand: my mental leak after a few losing days might be doing a few bad folds, while I bet some other players in similar spots can have a tendency to UNDERestimate villain's equities and thus causing a couple of bad calls & shoves.

Yesterday

Allright I switched to regular tables only. Played at two sites, 4-5 tabling. I couldn't believe my eyes, it was very usual to have a situation where you have two or even more 75%+ vpip guys on EACH table. Mostly they were very passive, limping and calling pre, and calling a lot post flop. It was so different from Zoom's tighter and more aggressive games it felt like a new poker variation.

I'm gonna keep on playing these. Have to start adjusting, though, and to understand how to play multiway high SPR pots.

Yesterday 6.17 hours, 1631 hands, +0.3 bi's.

Today's goal

Keep on playing regular tables only. Find applicable grind routine to these games.
Constantly think about adjustments I should make.

I will experiment something today:
Vs the extreme fishes (80% vpip passive) I will try extreme bet sizing exploitation. Bet really small or big depending what I wanna accomplish.

Are all freerolls good or should you sometimes play them cautiously?

I wasn't quite sure how to play this one. I do expect to sometimes get it in versus bad players with my freeroll being good. Some of them probably just get it in with naked JT. That being said when the third guy flats, part of his range is better flush draw, right? So now I shove just to try to make him pay/and or stlll freeroll vs the other guy. Seems he turned a freeroll too and got there. I guess I played this totally fine? Anyways, I don't consider this an important hand, rare spot, I post it because you can (and should?) actually overlimp in these loose-passive games (?) which wasn't really happening in Zoom and simply because I wanna see if I can even post a hand here. edit: seems like I couldn't 100%, missed the replayer stuff edit2: nm, the replayer came with a delay lol

I might just call turn, you're only really getting it in against same hand particularly on this turn card where as with position theres some rivers where villian will make some mistakes (call when beat, fold when chopping) where as you get almost perfect information on his/her range but he/she is left in the dark. OOP I would try to get it in.

In saying that, getting it in is by no means a mistake, I just think it's important to think about making villians play imperfectly vs you and this is a good spot to do it.

Gl with your challenge, finnish players tend to crush this game

love the OP, gl

Allright. I have finished 2 of my 3 today's sessions now and have only one hour till I go watch a local football match live. For you football fans here, it's the national top league, but Finnish, so it'll be a ~2k attendance low quality match (in international comparison lol). Maybe in my forecasted lifetime we will get to one Euro or World Championship tourney

Anyways I use this hour for some extra rambling.

Grind routine

Plan is to keep on playing 3x2 hour sessions daily now. When I get more stamina (so that I still feel focused and solid after 2 hours), I will add an extra hour to one of the sessions. Maybe later a second one, and a third. So eventually after quite a long term I'd have 3x3 h sessions. This is NOT a short term goal. I will be honest to myself now. I would get burnt out trying to apply that too fast. When I get burnt out I used to drink beer and it means 2 days of not playing at all. It's better I won't overdo things, but play disciplined and keep it calm.

Solid tight or nitty? Spewy or solid laggy?

These are interesting terms. I have noticed that when I feel I play solid tight poker, some friends would go ahead and describe some of those decisions too nitty. So it's like a double-edged sword, on one hand it's often good to play tight solid poker, unless you use the other edge and become a nit.

Same I guess could be said about lagginess. At best it's great aggressive poker, which could slip into spewyness. I need to think deeply about these definitions some day. One option is to FORGET those classifications and simply think about each decision in terms of their mathematical value. So instead of thinking my decision was too nitty here or there, I must solve that problem and get to conclude that a check or a fold there cost 3-4 bb's to me in expected value. This way I dont start to identify myself as a nit or a spewtard. Ever.

Self-fulfilling prophecy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy
IF you think you are too nitty, you become too nitty. IF your friends say you are too nitty, you become too nitty. And it'll be hard to change that.

It's good to be breakeven now

I have enough hands (overall) to say I'm a breakeven player after rake historically (in PLO). (So the little money comes from RB and bonuses). I will try to forget history. However, this is not such a bad spot to be in. As long as I aim for constant improvement, also by strong commitment to plugging mental leaks, i should already gain a couple of bb's to the winrate.

But I must say one thing: currently it is very difficult for me to find very systematical technical leaks that could be plugged easily. Obviously I do a great amount of mistakes all the time, but it's not like are of a certain type, I feel. Sometimes a decision is too nitty and sometimes overoptimistically spewy. So maybe at the moment I will mainly just concentrate on staying focused and doing all I can to play well. When that is under control, I can more easily evaluate the technical aspects of my game and leaks that occur even under game A premises.

Local football matches are awesome.

Just a little forum etiquette: post slightly less lengthy posts and people will be more likely to read through them.

I think you'll do well. 'Scribed.

Good point, skater3598, ty! I'll try to keep that etiquette in mind and maybe only rarely do a lengthy post if I feel I have reasons for it. Addition after writing today's entry: LMK if this is still on a longer side lol.

Last 3 days summary

Sunday was decent day. I think I played well, was on an ok mood, dropped a couple of bi's. Got in the standard 6.5 hours or so.

Yesterday was a good day right from the get-go. It was nice to start a fresh week and I am rebuilding my love for poker and starting to enjoy it more often. It's an extremely important factor for me. Also confidence was very good even though I had some losses. So I played PLO50 more than half of the day. My philosophy is to play 2-3 levels and the deciding factor which stakes I play each session, is my confidence level and the quality of my decision making process. At my best I pick the highest of the levels, at average I pick the medium stakes, and when feeling not that good but still opt to grind I pick the lowest stakes and maybe experiment something and regain the love that way lol. Also won a couple of bi's and got in the usual 6.5-7 hours or so. The advantage of the system is enabling moving up dynamically because taking shots only on your A-game, and also not starting to identify myself as a fixed "stakes X grinder".

Today is not finished but I actually just ended a session because of tilt for the first time during this blog. I think it was a good decision. Part of the process now is playing more aggro and barreling more and this will lead to variance and rather than not do that, I will practice my mind to tolerate the variance and as a backup reserve the right to not play when things take too much toll suddenly..

My friend who is more aggressive than I usually am, sweated me and even though he didn't really advice me pre-decisions, my vpip/pfr/3b all got clearly higher. This is not the first time this happens.

I take a short but important note that I have a tendency to find excuses and favor a low variance routes to play a hand, when I am not playing my A-game. An example: I might just flat a raise when I could easily 3-bet, and the excuse is that I want the fish enter the pot and I have position etc. Thats sometimes just bs. Whether the fish folds or enters the pot, both are good for me and I shouldnt mind either scenario, it's not like they fold a crappy hand.

Even though I have already indirectly said it, I must put EXTRA SUPER weight to try to always play semi-loose aggressive clever poker, instead of too easily switching into more passive trapping/flatting mode. It's just an excuse, because I do feel I can play LAG when I really want to, it's just that sometimes I don't want to.

Sink yourself

Allright, will leave in a couple of hours to a spa with my gf.
Maybe I go to sink myself to spa.

Well deserved day off the tables, but I don't think I can resist not playing tomorrow when I get home, since my drive is so good now. I also haven't been a very good bf recently, so I look forward to enjoy this day.

Yesterday was a regular day, played mostly Stars 50. As a new feature I have now deposited to Ipoker as well. Even though I am kind of starting to consider $50 my main game, I prefer to play the £$€20 tables to see how it'll get going on the new site. So far it seems there are less fish than at Stars and I mainly have had to play there with a combo of 1 fish+4 regs/nits per table.

Hand

This spot that I potentially misplay was on Ipoker vs a 32/16 reg who does have a gap there as you can see, not sure what he's up to.

I'm not sure what I really wanna accomplish rationally speaking, but at that moment I just felt I wanna exercise maximum pressure/rep draw here now. Lets see the math here. I risk 1791 to win 1124 immediately. If he was disciplined enough to lay down everything but Tx plus better I estimate my eq. when the money goes in to be only 15%. These three figures, when I put them on my turn barrel/get it in excel sheet, show that the turn bet is plus EV when he folds more than 49.5%. I certainly believe that to be the case, so potting + getting it in here seems profitable even in the worst case scenario. Now he may also not release a worse draw, or maybe hero calls with Kx, so this will add to the profits.

That being said, we should compare that line to betting half pot OTT and folding (?) to a raise? But can we really fold?

Enjoy your day off About the hand, Im probably bet/folding ~7$ OTT. He calls your 3bet pretty wide and will often show up with JT9x type of hands here when shoving. Without a read or dynamic obviously.

Valuable tilt

Something happened that put me really off my routines and discipline. Saturday night I tilted, whole Sunday was total tilt, yesterday I was trying to untilt and make solid plans how to continue. The main reason for the tilt was the feeling of having big leaks somewhere but hard to know where. But now I realize I just haven't put my ass into it, guys!

This tilt will be very valuable for me in the long run; because it made me start to do some very in-depth studying of the game and critique of my style.

I have studied a bunch of in-depth vids on turn play so far, even just went to the beach listening to those and taking notes with pen and paper. Very relaxing, nice environment, and I actually realized lots of problems with my turn game. Your mind opens to new ideas when you get out or something, but still think.

Without going into too much details, I just bet flop, bet turn way too abc, and bet flop, check turn means giving up very often. Thus I have been extremely vulnerable to floating, and also by those lines I sometimes manipulate the villain to have his strongest range and profitable semi bluff shoves when I bet-fold too much. I will further study turn play for days if not weeks now and look forward to improving in this area.