Decent start of the challenge. Played 2 days with OK-ish volume. 4 tabling 10NLz right now so not that many hours. I'm trying to do short 30 minute sessions, take a small break and do another 30 to keep my mind fresh and not tilt. Mental game is definitely my weak point. Especially when I start to 5bet jam A3o 150bb deep. Like in the hand below. Really need to stop doing that



Hand 1: TILT vs 46/35 aggro fish



#2: Lucky river


#3: opponent said, "need to blufffffff" his words before his river bet


#4: tilt voice whispers 'lets gamble' #imsobad


#5: the hand that set me off



#6: "I call because **** YOU" wait, I won the hand??



I must be sunrunning to be up after playing so terrible

Mixture of spew, tilt and runbad got me where I am now. Tried to play some 16NLz too but got stacked in the first 10 hands. Really need to change my mindset That's the challenge for upcoming days I guess

Results since start

Got $190 left so 5NLz is getting closer

#1: How not to play aces



#2: Is this ever a bluff, or AQ.. mehh


#3: Trying to make someone fold gone wrong


#4: FU river



#5: How bad is this?


#6: river makes me unhappy


#7: goddamnit


Happy grinding!

I am in!

The A3 and Qjs hands were spew. AA, that sometimes happens. For example, used to win very well at 5nl (I play on Ignition, Zone). Been doing 25nl, Zone. Am doing warm ups (new strat) at 5nl, can't win for the life of me anymore. People think its just $5, so jam it in. I have become quite proficient at 25nl and occasionally 50nl.

Tighten up a bit when the player pool is calling 30%+ of flops. With AA, make the raise pot size if in position. You can drop a few blinds to keep suspect in hand. don't keep trying to play the board. Now, If I flop trips, I check (AA or KK). I let villain bet, then jam. With AA or KK, its a jam on flop, if not all in pre flop. Reason being, don't give them the odds to call.

Now, on flop with xKK, I will make small continuation bet (or flops with QQ, large broadway cards paired). My next turn action will be based on Villains reaction. Bigger bet on turn, and check river. Have won several pots that way, found that villain had another pocket pair. KK, never jamming with A on flop, just call, unless 4 to straight, and fold to all in after board starts with A on flop.

Since hud does not work in Zone (useless, anon site with player names changing each fold), I base this on experience.

GL, just my thoughts. I have worked on tilt issues myself, and am more at peace with losing. Because, the next day is winning.

That’s some pretty bad run bad in the second set of hands. I didn’t read the first set of hands.

Hand 1 : The set of 6s played his hand pretty good. Looked like a semi bluff raise on the flop then the flat. Based on the size of the pot on the turn it made sense to jam to get called by flush draws.

Hands 2 and 5: are Baluga theorem. When players raise the turn or river it’s rarely a bluff. You always want to consider you may be beat before making a decision. I generally fold to raises on the turn and river without information. If I know that a specific player is capable of bluffing I’ll make a call sometimes but if it’s an unknown or a player that isn’t aggressive then I’ll make some big hero folds. I’d rather lose a small pot getting bluffed and be wrong than lose a stack and be wrong. Players just aren’t bluffing enough there in the micros.

Hand 3: what are you repping? You rather not have clubs there to make that bluff. 77 with no clubs is a better bluff then Ac7c. Also in the micros people love calling. You don’t need to balance your ranges as much. If you are going to bluff there then bet a little over half pot. It doesn’t have to work as often. I didn’t do the math but that has to work a lot. In the micros players aren’t folding enough. They aren’t considering your range there. That just shows when you have the boat or the 5 for some reason you’ll get paid off. Save the jams for value. They’ll fold the 60% pot bet the same amount they’ll fold the jam because they are only considering their hand strength. Again that’s Microstakes specific.

Hands 4 and 7 is just bad luck along with hand 6. If you can get the chips in with that much equity you played correctly. That’s all that matters.

The first set of hands

Hand one. Lol. You already know. Don’t play down to an aggro fish’s level. Play back at them when you have it.

Hand 2. Perfect example of the earlier comments. The player has a flush, not even the nut flush and he’s not going anywhere. Good job getting value.

Hand 3. Good call there. His story didn’t make sense. What 9 does he have there other than 99. Also why would he jam if he had the 9 knowing you will probably fold? Donkey bluff.

Hand 4. You were getting horrible odds. Even though fish seem to get lucky there 150% of the time that’s a punt.

Hand 5. Just a cooler. 200bbs deep you have to consider you may be beat there but 130bbs I think most players are getting stacked there unless you have a read that villain is a mega nit.

Hand 6. Could be played a couple of ways. If you plan on folding if you miss the river then calling the turn is ok. If you knew you were calling off on the river then I’d take over the initiative on the turn. You aren’t going to get more equity than you are there. Get it in now other wise you should be folding the river when you miss. I don’t know if you had a reason to call there or just pushed the button and got lucky. Not a fan of that river call but NH.

Thanks for the replies Lozgod and FutureInsights. Looking at the hands, they are indeed horrible and can be contributed to my bad mental game, and playing too many tables..

Around Christmas I've decided to change my approach. Instead of mindlessly 4 tabling zoom at 1000hands/hour I've decided to not focus on volume but on getting the highest winrate possible and learning as much as I can.

The last week I've been 4-tabling regular tables, sometimes adding 1 table of zoom. The winrates on regular tables are just higher, especially with the 4-table cap on stars and downswings should be smaller when having a higher winrate. Also I've been table selecting a bunch and studying with the GTO+ solver. Currently I'm trying to figure out when to cbet OOP in HU pots and what sizings to use. It's difficult stuff but I feel like I'm learning something everyday.

Mental game wise it's been a good week but to be honest I've been running pretty well. Obviously the problems with my mental game are not gone, just lurking in the background. I'm looking into meditation, exercising and reading the mental game of poker (only read a few chapters a year ago). Reminding myself that is a marathon and not a sprint so I need to pace myself too.



Results




1: This was a weird hand. I was extremely worried that BB had a set (altho he'd probably raise the turn(?). MP was a huge fish who would shove any river when checked to, so decided to check and see what BB would do. Turned out well for me



2: vs big fish. we actually split the hand because it was run twice



3: vs same villain as above



4: table selecting paying off



5: Not sure about this one. The board really favors us since we have all the AA/JJ/TT/KQ and he almost never has. And my hand seemed like a good bluffing hand (ingame). Turns out the solver actually prefer KK/QQ or K-high flushes as bluffs which makes sense.


6: mistake on my part. I sometimes underestimate fish and the hands they can have


Will update next week again, have great 2020!

Flat the Q4, don't have to stack off in these spots at 10nl.

In position range bet 1/3 for the most part, don't need to bet bigger. I know it's cliche but pile money with the goods when you got them, rest of the time spend trying to get the goods for as cheap as possible while maintaining pressure/initiative with smaller flop range bets even in single raised pots. Avoid the marginal spots by calling more.

GL on the tables

Thanks nuxxx, I agree. Maybe overdoing it a bit for 10NL

This week I took a failed shot at 16NL, didn't work out. Lost some buyins too at 10NL the same day so most of the week was recovering from that day. Didn't even play that bad but just running bad. The rest of the week I played pretty well, and running better (see EV). Most proud of the fact that I've not been tilting, just played 4 regular tables and almost no zoom.

Stakes


Graph


Tomorrow it's time to take another shot at 16NL. Hopefully this time will be better.

Some hands

1: Biggest win of the last 4 days


2: Biggest loss.. action flop


3: Liked this one vs whale


4: Not sure about turn on this one



5: never go broke in a limped pot



6: vs nitreg.. he can\t have a 9 right? yes he can!



7: whoops


GL @ the tables!

The 16NL shot is going well, results wise. Not extremely happy with how I played in some sessions. Need to stop making herocalls when its obvious that I'm beat. Did that in 2-3 hands the last days. Overall I should be able to beat the games since their not much different from 10NL.

Results last 4 days


Graph since start


Running over EV is always nice. Will keep playing 16NL next week and see how it goes.

Hands

1: bad calldown vs aggro reg



2: Whale chooses interesting river size


3: Hoping he was doing it with Ac, turned out he did


4: Got "trapped" by fish


5: Not sure what I did there


6: Can't be a hero if you're not calling


7: this hero calls ofcourse


8: no fold button


9: Villain shows mercy on the river



Will update again next sunday. Will try to play 10k hands this week at 16NL. GL @ the tables bitchess

Funniest hand I’ve seen in a while. How he calls flop with SB still to act is also beautiful. All 3 streets are insanity

Yeah was a funny hand. Got another interesting hand where I hero-called a whale and got owned



Whooops


The last few days I've been mixing 16NL/25NL. Mainly because there aren't as many tables on 16NL and less fish. It's a bit of a weird limit. I've been playing (and running) pretty well so that's good



The regs at 25NL are getting a tiny bit better but there's also a decent amount of fish so if I can maintain my mental game and current play I hope to make this my new limit. Bankroll is at $750 so might have to move down if bad variance hits. Also did some studying this week. Main focus was SBvsBB srp and feel a bit more confident now

LFG

amazing topic !

let's GO!

Weekly recap

So the weekly goal was to do 10k hands. In the end I've only played 7.3k hands this week which is fine because I'm still focusing on quality of play instead of volume. I played some 25NL which went good until I lost 4 buyins ($100) in one session and decided to drop back to 16NL to lower the swings.

Stakes last week


Graph last week


Overall I'm happy with my play, there's still some spew/hero-calls in my game but it's getting less, mental game feels stronger but obviously still paying attention to that.

Hands

1: Hand that made me go back to 16NL


2: Thin value vs whale



3: vs fishreg


4: Interesting river raise by weak reg


5: tight reg gone wild (almost folded)


6: In hindsight I should've folded the river vs this guy


7: bad river call


Goals next week:
- 8 hands
- less spew/hero-calls

Wish me luck

Weekly recap

Haven't played much, did some overwork on my regular job and was feeling tired all week. Played 5.5k hands, was aiming for 8k. Results-wise the week started off good but then a bit of variance hit. Can't complain though, was running above EV since the start. Plan is to play 25NL this week, if things don't go well, I'll move down to 16NL.

Graph this week


Graph since start


Some hands

#1: Weird hand, didn't know what to do. UTG was a whale so I guess shove is fine?



#2: gift


#3: gift (never folding vs this spazzwhale


#4: the 5 river is an OK-ish card to bluff at?


#5: hero calling


#6: again


#7: On the river I was like, I'm not folding so I guess I shove? Not sure

January (+5 days of december) recap

So the first week of the challenge I played 4 tables of zoom and was playing bad and tilting a decent amount. Not a good start and it inspired me to change my approach to poker.

My new approach was to focus more on quality of play instead of volume and try to overcome my mental game issues. Started playing 4 regular tables, going from 950 hands per hour to around 325 hands per hour on average. I think that helped me a lot. Both in improving my game (taking more time for decisions) and with working on my mental game. I think my tilt issues are connected to the rush that zoom gives and the 'overload' of the decisions you have to make in a small amount of time. Regular tables seem more relaxed and you can make better reads which calms me down and I actually take time for decisions instead of just clicking buttons. Anyway I'm just rambling a bit. Here are the results of january + couple of days of december.

Stakes


Graph


Pretty happy that I reached $1k in EV this month while playing 10NL/16NL/25NL. Obviously I'm running hot but I'm the most proud that there's very few tilt in that sample, especially if I compare that to my zoom hands. Hoping to continue that
Right now I have a decent bankroll for 25NL and will continue to play there in the upcoming month. No real volume goal but I hope to reach about the same amount of hands as this month. Most important is to continue playing well.

GG January

Crushing glgl

Thank you sir

Just had a sick session where a fish was shoving almost every hand and reloading about 15 times

Won a lot in EV but not in $, some hands

1:



2:



3:



4:



5:


Afterwards he told us we were cheating lol

Anyway here's the start of the month


Feeling a bit sick so probably not many volume upcoming days
GL at the tables guys

Gl (tighten up against fishy, just my thought)

Thanks. Yes I am very loose vs fish but thats a bit of my game plan (balanced vs regs, max exploit vs fish) but maybe a bit too loose

Not a great start of the month. Running bad the last 10k hands, a lot of setups and some run bad. Also started to get frustrated yesterday so today I'm not gonna play and will be do some studying. Feel that the frustration is building up so need to refresh my mind. Still running 15 evbb/100 this year so I shouldn't be complaining but deep inside it's all I wanna do

This month


Challenge for the next upcoming days is to not be such a whiney ***** and just continue to make good decisions, not focus on results etc. Results will come.. eventually

AMAZING THREAD !!

SUB!!!!

After my speech yesterday to get my **** together I lost 8 buyins mostly by monkeytilting. So ****ing disappointed in myself. Making ridiculous bluffs and calling with stupid hands vs nitregs that never bluff. I know I can beat this ****ing game but I keep destroying myself with stupid ****

Overall


Not sure what to do. I love playing poker but I also hate that I have such a weak mental game. Every time a little runbad happens I lose my ****

Will be taking some time off, either quit playing or make a solid plan to work on my mental game. Tips are appreciated