Hi Guys,

So, like many others I've been lurking for a bit and hardly ever posting.
Well, I've gotten allot more serious about my playing lately and
decided that having a PG&C thread will help me be accountable and hopefully generate interest and advice from better players than myself.

I come from a FR background and never took the game very as seriously as I should.
Basically, I was a small winning fish for a long time playing up to 25nl.
In march of this year I switched to 6max and decided I would would start from 5nl in the Zoom format.
I quickly moved up to 10nl and am mostly still there despite having a >50BI BR. Occasionally I will play 16nlz or 25nl rush.

I am a BR nit and want to pay for my mistakes cheaper.

So..., I don't just want to track my "MOVING UP" progress, but rather set myself small goals like patching specific leaks and posting hands
related to it and hopefully get some good advice.

Once I feel I've successfully patched the leak I will set new goal/s.

First goal is improving my play in 3B pots (as 3bettor and OR).
I'm still a bit of a nit in these spots and lately I have been forcing myself to 3bet and defend more aggressively.
Additionally, to figuring out reasonable ranges and frequencies, I also need to improve my postflop skill in these spots.

So, I will be posting a few hands per day as aggressor and defender.

Additionally, I will try to study concepts two hours per day + review HH and can only grind after this is done, I will track it all here.

*** For those of you interested to know a bit more about me.***

I'm 34 years old, married & living in Mexico. 6 months out of the year I'm out at sea doing industrial fishing. The other half of the year
I get to chill a bit and live off of savings.
I'm lucky enough to have a wife that appreciates and respects my passion for poker and is open to me someday doing it for a living.
We've done the math and we could live comfortably if I improved enough to beat 50nl for a decent WR.
I think this is pretty doable and hopefully I can get enough help from you guys to speed me there.

What part of Mexico?

GL

Hi Acbarone, I live in Mazatlan but considering relocating to Mexico City within the next year. Are you in Mexico as well?



SB is 23/15 (55), and has 3bet 1/22

I call because we are deep'ish. Thoughts on whether this is deep enough vs an unknown.

OTF I float because this flop misses a good part of his range and if so he will probably give up next street
OTT don't think we are ahead of much at all... fold





BU is 27/21 (150), 3b% 9 (6/69)

Perhaps a 4B is better than a call here but nitted up since we are deep

OTF he checks back on a board that hits my range well, so Im inclined to believe he missed the flop.
OTT, I don't think he would check TPTK or better or with flush draws OTF so I think he has an underpair, AJ or AK and I think I can take him of his hand.
OTR, I can rep flush and FH and I can't see that in his range since he has been so passive.
Is my reasoning wrong here? What about my bet sizings?






UTG is 19/16 (600), Fto3B 72%.
When he calls he probably has AK, AQ, AJs, TT+.
OTF hand isn't vulnerable so I think we should be checking back.
OTT he probably bets most of his range so I think we have an easy call
OTR I can't imagine we are ahead of much especially since V has less than 2 AF postflop.

Mexico City? Yeesh, I've heard some bad things. Currently living in Vancouver but have lived in Rosarito and more recently (i.e. last month) Playa del Carmen. How do you like Matzatlan?

Actually Mexico city is just like any other big city...
It's kinda like the New York of Latin America. So for sure there are places you don't want to go to but there is also plenty of great places to live and things to do.

As for Mazatlan,... it's nothing special. Beaches and warm weather isn't my thing. I'd rather cool weather with tons of cultural activities to do, festivals, concerts, ...... you name it (Mexico City).

Watched "3bet seminar" By Baluga Whale and notated it pretty much verbatim to help me memorize concepts.
Took me close to two hours (1 hour video). Found 95% to be great info but I felt a couple things he said were kinda dated.

HH reviewed 20 hands (1 hour) and posted a couple above.

Played 1800 hands divided in a couple session 2 tabling Zoom



Not many big pots today, I think I only went all in once and the pot was chopped.
Didn't check my graph or results until after session so I was pretty pleasantly surprised by the redline.
Allot has to do with actively playing more 3bet pots.

I'm happy with how I played today, with the exception of a couple small'ish mistake calldowns.

I will post a graph again next weekend. Im going to try to avoid looking at cashier or results until the end of the week.

Feel free to comment on the hands above. I'll be posting a few more tomorrow.

20/17 (3K), 3b 7% Co v MP, 4 to 4b 53%
Looking back 4betting here is really thin but as a bluff I'm risking $1.4 to win $3.45. So I only need to win 40.5%
When he calls I discount KK+ and his range is most likely something like AK, AQs, TT-QQ. I check flop since hand is now pretty static.
OTT I X/R thinking I don't want to fold and I am going to have a hard time calling a river shove. This should look very strong to him.

In hindsight this seems bad because I just Iso myself against stronger hands.

How would you play this hand?





BB is 20/16 (65), so far 3bet 4/27.
OTF I call because I have some decent backdoor draws & I'm IP, + allot of players would cbet their intire range here and shutdown turn inimproved.
OTT he checks, since he has no history on me there is no reason for him to ever check a flush, so when he checks I'm pretty sure he doesn't have it and I can certainly rep it.
In this case it worked.
But say he calls, I don't think most players 3B preflop w 77-99 so he either has AK, 10+ (KK is unlikely but not entirely impossible) or AdX.
So on a non diamond low card we should be shoving the river right?

Similar goals. Can I ask what maths you did to work out how high you need to be playing to sustain a stable income?

Hey Meale,

Nothing complex at all. Basically $50 is 2-3 times above the average daily salary in Mexico.
I mean people are somehow supporting a household of 4 or sometimes more with considerably less.

I don't think it's unreasonable to beat $50NLz at 5BB/100 (playing 2K+ hands per day).
And regular 50nl should be softer (although regular format kinda puts me to sleep so I don't play it much).

So although 50nl won't have my wife and I living in the big time, we could live well (especially since she has her own income).

Do you have a PG&C I can follow? It seems I seems like you are pretty active in this forum.

Yesterdays summary:

Finished the Q&A part of Baluga's seminar 1 Hour

Reviewed 12 hands 1 Hour

Played 1.4K hands but started feeling pretty tired and my attention was decreasing towards the end so I decided to call it quits for the day.

Overall, I was pretty happy with my play, I ended the day with 9% 3bet which is pretty good compared to my usual 4% and my 3bet success was good since I was looking for good spots.
Still not defending nearly enough vs 3bets especially LP v Blinds. Got to work on adding calls and some light 4bets to my range.

Still didn't have many opportunities to go all-in.
I've been spewing a bit in deep pots. I need to remember to evaluate the strength of my hand in deep pots further before acting.

This is definitely unreasonable. ~3bb/100 is reasonable and still not easy to attain. You'd be better off grinding a higher volume and getting some good stabler rakeback cash.

I don't currently have an active PGC because I transferred it to my blog: http://harveymeale.com

Will be following closely. How are you planning on identifying and fixing your leaks?

Even so, 3bb/100 is still good enough to get me started. I'm not entirely convinced that 5bb/100 is pie in the sky but you may have more knowledge about it than I do.

For what it's worth I only two table and on my A game I play slowly to try to spend time on my decisions.

Also, I'm reluctant to become a breakeven rakeback player, so adding tables when I can't really have much of a positive WR isn't in my immediate plans.

On the flip side, I would be interested in knowing more about why you think this goal is too optimistic. I've been known to be wrong more than once.

As of now, I think I have some pretty big and easy to spot leaks which I will be focusing on the most. Ie: my 3bet game and a few others that are common to many players at these stakes.
Once I think I've patched my big leaks, I was thinking of getting a HH review by a reputable coach to help spot what I need ot work on next.

Im also open to suggestions.... and feel free to comment on my hands

Ask any of the 50z guys playing in Malta, 5bb/100 at any limit on Zoom is simply not sustainable anymore. Maybe at 10NLz but I'd be surprised if anyone had a 200k+ hand sample at 25+ with 5bb/100.

3bb/100 is crushing and you should be happy with that for sure. Also anyone seriously grinding Zoom for a living plays 4+ tables per hour so maintaining your A game on more tables is something to shoot for. Once 2 seems slow, add a third.

Gotcha.
I'll def be adding more tables as I start to feel more confident about it.

2bb/100 4-5K hands per day would work as well.

Yesterday was a pretty tough day at the office.
Had AA all in pre get cracked twice and a 16 out all in on the flop lose to a pair of sixes no kicker.
Didn't really realize how bad I started tilting after that until I reviewed hands today and saw how bad I was spewing the rest of the session.

Need to do some work on my mental game.
I won't be posting yesterdays 3B hands because I was playing exceptionally bad and I think it's pretty obvious how/where things went wrong.

Today I was a completely different day. Played well and think I handled myself well in most 3bet pots.
Had AA cracked and a set of TT outdrawn on the river but didn't let it affect me.

Played 2K hands so far but am feeling tired and I can see my A game is gone. Best to stop but might squeeze in a small session later after a nice cup of joe.

Watched "Search & Destroy" Video 2 (DC series) on 3bet range construction. Wasn't very enlightening but it was a good review.

Im also working on Matthew Janda's "Blinds v button" video series and notated half of video 4.

So, here is a hand from yesterday where i think I should have cbet instead of checked.

BU is 21/16(7k), BU RFI 50%, F to 3B from BU 71%, 4B 9%, F to CB in 3B P 53%

Ingame thoughts:
This flop doesn't do much for our ranges. I expect if I cbet I get called by all PP and floated by FD and NBDFD's
Turn doesn't improve things for us so I don't see a need to bet since we will still get called by pretty much the same range.
River he has been super passive and should be folding pretty much all air.

Post game analysis:

When he gets 3B he continues with 29% of his opening range which is around a 14% range and probably looks like : 77+,ATs+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,T9s,98s,ATo+,KJo+,QJo thats 180 combos

This flop did not help either of our ranges much. If I bet I get called by all PP+, FD, NBDFD and a couple gutshots. JJ-77, 98s, AhQh, AcQc, KhQh, KcQc, AhJh, AcJc, KhJh, QhJh, AhTh, AcTc, KhTh, QhTh, JhTh, Th9h, AhQd, AhQs, AhQc, AhJd, AhJs, AhJc which is 58 combos.

This alone makes the EV of betting much greater than checking since we fold 2/3 of his range.

and therein lays my mistake.




If anyone has any additional input... feel free...

Would prob cbet the flop, can get him to fold a lot of his range. as played, im betting turn and river because villain's almost always going to bet his overpairs on the flop and we can get him off hands with better sdv

Subbed. GL with your goals.

Yeah, totally agree we should be cbetting flop. Also agree with the as played assesment

Thx Zombiefan

Been away for the last couple days.
Moving to a different city and spent the last couple days looking for apartments.

I was able to find one and will be moving next week.

Probably won't be spending much time on poker until the beginning of next month but I will try to get in some playing and maybe post a couple hands.

Here is my graph from last Sunday until today.

It was pretty tough but I'm happy to end in the positive.

Wish I had gotten more volume but life is getting in the way at the moment.

It's only fair that I return the favour and follow yours. Best of luck!

Thx Cuvier.


Finished notating the 4th video of Janda's BLinds vs BU series.
Also finished a DC Database review video on squeeze plays.



Vs unknown.
Not sure I like my turn bet but his flop CB seemed a bit weak...

Since we are ahead of all his Ax and random bluffs and we don't know any of his tendencies I think the turn should be a check.

Thoughts?

Gl,sub

You answered your own questions in the 10-8 hand. I'd certainly be cbetting this hand in that spot just on the point you made about all the better hands you can make fold here. There are some other stronger draws that you could consider putting in your checking range that can comfortably check call but this hand it a bit too weak to check call and check folding is to weak as well.

in the AQ hand I think you should probably be shoving the river. There were two flush draws on the turn and they both bricked off in this spot. I think you should make a polarizing shove on the river and look to be hero called by his bluff catchers. I'd imagine his calling range between half pot and slightly over pot is fairly inelastic in this spot.

Good luck on your continued journey towards being a poker pro but congratulations on having a solid 6months out of the year job too