His stats are saying he knows what hes doing.

Hes bet every street like he thinks hes in front, and your opinion that he could have AA, AK looks to me like you might be correct. I dont think he has a set.

As you again say the odds are tempting but hes convinced me he has you beat, so I'm folding.

But it was confused that he's just insta-bets the river and seems not to be afraid of me having a set. Which is either a bluff from him (but which then..?) or a set himself... But that was just my ingame thoughts.
Thanks for the input!! :-)

These spots are tricky because there's a lot of conflicting information to parse through.

Reasons to call: You're likely near the top of your range if not the very top, and have a K blocker.

Reasons to fold: You don't beat any value and this board doesn't contain many natural bluffs.

Generally on a dry board I lean towards folding even if GTO says to call. I'm not even sure this is a GTO call, but I suspect it is. The population tends to under-bluff these boards. Insta-bets tend to be a bit more polarizing, but that's not that helpful on a dry board where AA/AK shouldn't hesitate to fire a 3rd barrel.

This week is also going very good for me, like the whole month basically.

Today I did a 5km run instead of my usual wednesday kettlebell/bodyweight-workout, but due to pain in my knee I could not attack my personal record at all.
Anyway, had my beloved green shake after the run, followed by a cold shower, session prep and another good-going session!



Since I now reach my goal to have the bankroll to play NL25 only, I will start mixing pokerstars tables in again due to low traffic on TigerGaming during my main playing times.

New goal for the rest of march is to get used to the stars NL25 reg tables as well and being able to confidently play NL25 ONLY on chico and stars from april 1st!

So far, things are going really well. So I try to keep working on my game hard (prio these days is 3-Bet-Pots OOP as PFR). Having my next coaching with the great fallout86 on tuesday as well.

Lets go!!!


-----

We have an Charity-Poker event on upcoming sunday in our Homegameclub in pokerstars. We play 5 tourneys with buy-ins between 5 and 22€ and half of each prizepool goes to charity. We also stream that event on twitch. If you are somehow interested and want further details, just let me know! Every participation makes the charity-pot growing!

Alright, time to wrap up another intensive poker-week!

Some numbers:
Played 7776 hands (reached 1500 hands daily goal)
Made 77,23$ profit this week
Started to play NL25 only on Thursday (tigerGaming and stars mixed)

My overall stakes week on Tiger:



My NL25 week (only the last 2 days) on Stars:



Next steps:

I have an evening off today, recharging batteries a bit.

Tomorrow 150 Burpees and we have our Charity-Poker event on pokerstars (if you should be interested just message me).
You can follow the action also on www.twitch.tv/charity_online

Hook me up in the twitch chat if you should tune in!

During the last 3 days of March the plan is to keep on playing NL25 only, mainly on Tiger and if low traffic also on stars, and getting used to it, then start crushing from april 1st!

Wanna end this amazing poker-month strong! Already reached my goal of 24k hands this month. For april and the months after 30k hands is the goal.

Gonna post my monthly graph on march 31 then!

Can someone recommend a good course / video / article about playing 3-bet-pots OOP as the PFR?

Hi. Gtowizard has free trial today. You can play against the solution for this specific spot.

GL on your journey your consistency is inspiring.

I have GTO+ where I can also play vs. the solution, I guess it's pretty much the same isnt it? I'm just not 100% certain if I put in everything correctly, so that solving a whole subset of flops ina specific flops is really reliable to study with in the end
I had this problem this week with studying 3-Bet-Pots OOPas PFR (SB vs. BTN). I solved a subset of 111 flops, tried to put 2 sizings (30/70 flop, 40/80 turn etc.) in, solve it even down to dEV 0.25, and I was pretty satisfied with the outcome. But then I watched the videos from Kanus course and his strategy in 3-bet-pots OOP didn't fit at all with the database I solved... so I stuck there somehow right now.

Thanks for your kind words. I try to make the best out of the limited time I have and might catch up a bit through consistency.
I think thats the only way to reach the ambitious goals I have.

Good luck with climbing the stakes!

But you really, really ought to reconsider.

At your pace, to make $100k in a year, you have to average about $67/hr, assuming 30 hours/week with 2 weeks off. Given your goal of 1500 hands per day, about 250 hands per hour, you'd have to beat 400NL at 8bb/100, or 500NL at 6bb/100. That's a phenomenally high win rate for those stakes.

You also have responsibilities. With a kid and a wife, how happy will she be if you go 2-3 years without contributing monetarily to the family? How will you handle the potential friction it may cause?

How will you handle going on a $5k downswing? How will your wife handle it? Will you be able to adjust your schedule when you start jumping stakes? Yeah, you can crush 10nl at 930am, but even the best players will struggle beating 200nl/500nl at the same time.

Like I said, good luck, hopefully you prove my doubts wrong, as a 30 year old with a wife and a kid who has tried the pro path before.

Thanks ohsnapzbrah, honest words are something I really appreciate and I think are much more important than just hearing positive pushes!

And well yeah, u might be right, first I'm going to create an income which is pretty even to my old job. Something where I can say that I hardly worked my way up there. And who knows, with coaches and great networking and the right environment, where the journey might go. I'm trying to enjoy the ride, the journey itself as a process, knowing that its a privilege to do it and I wanna do justice to this privilege.
But for sure some bigger goals are important to push, lead the way and see what's possible.

If I haven't reached the stakes I need to reach in 3 years, then maybe in 5 or 10. But enjoying the growth is what I'm looking for

And as I said in the post before, consistency and sacrifices might be a key to catch up with the guys that have more time.

Alright, here comes my recap of March:

Hands played: 33,775 (Goal was 24,000)
$: +655.92
BB/100: 9.8 evBB/100 (Goal was 2 evBB/100)

So a really, really sucessful month for me.

Some graphs:

March on Chico ( 30k hands TigerGaming):



March on PokerStars (3.8k hands NL25 only):




As also FallOut86 in my coaching yesterday pointed out, red line is the biggest leak to fix these days for me (to know when to bluff and when to bluffcatch, using blockers, handreading and all that stuff better).
So this is gonna be my main focus in April I guess.

My new goals:


Tomorrow I will play again as the first day of april, but then taking 4 days completely off for Easter, to come back stronger, recharged and ready to crush!

I'm grateful for every single one following this thread and, as I always say, appreciate every input and help!

May u all have a peaceful and relaxing easter, stay safe and healthy!

impressive, well done

Hello, GL for your challenge!

In this spot I think we still have a call regarding the pot odds.
You said that you blocks KK and AK but do you really think he will go 2/3 flop, 2/3 turn THEN 1/2 pot on the river with such hands?
I mean, on the river he bets 4.89$ in a pot of 9.41$ when he has got 7.05$ left, this is really strange, he would always JAM AK KK.

I think we still have to call, this is not impossible he plays KJ like this.
we also don't block backdoor hearts which may bluff river

Thanks Rickroll!

Yes sometimes he can have KJs for sure. But other then that it's hard to find any other bluffs since TT and KTs got there OTR.

I think he just has too less bluffs there to make that a good call. It's quite an interesting hand, and I've heard so many different opinions on it. So today I think the fold was fine due to playerpool totally underbluffing this spot. But I might be wrong!

Sucky spot but hard to see you getting to the river with enough better hands to fold this. You have to be calling quite frequently ~60%) due to villain sizing and your range is super capped.

I'm counting 15ish combos of value that gets to the river. A good bluff candidate for him would be AQ, AJ, A5, A3. 98 could also be possible, as well as JT, QJ.

I can't fault a fold here, but against a aggressive ish looking reg, we may have to find a call. We probably don't get here with all of our AK, so KQ becomes the next likely bluff catcher, and we have one of the best ones.

But with it being 10nl, a fold seems ok. Players, as you said, won't bluff enough, so some bluff hands could turn into a river check.

It's def. interesting to read further thoughts from people to that hand!

I had a good session today with 3.5 stacks up, had a great workout and a green shake after, now working on my redline and in the evening doing my session review from today.

Then I take my imo well deserved easter-break

All the best brother!
I am from India and have recently started my poker journey, i'm playing micro stakes rite now and will move to bigger tables as i get better at this.
I wish to make it big someday and wish the same for you.

Thanks for the good wishes!
The same goes back to you, grind it up over there in india!

Alright, this month started off rough, I'm 5,5 stacks down in April after 6750 hands.

Still fightin to get a-rollin on this NL25 only, here are my Tiger- and Stars graph for NL25 in the year of 2021:

Stars 7.5k hands:



Tiger 10k hands:



I will attack again on monday. I'm working hard on my red-line these days, trying to find the spots where I lacked bluffing in the past, esp. OTR, but to implement such a new concept into my game I have to pay some dues, so that's alright. I'm reviewing, working with others on the main leaks constantly, trying to get the green numbers on that NL25 as far as possible and reach that monthly goal of 3 BB/100 or more. Still 3 full weeks left to turn it around!!

Recharching on the weekend, eating clean and working out on sunday (burpees), than starting the new week on sunday evening with my study group.

If there should be anybody out there reading this who plays NL50 or higher and would be ok with checking my game, feel free to contact me!

Thanks for everyone who follows this thread! Stay safe and healthy!

While working on my red line and finding the right spots to bluff OTR that i missed before my coaching, I realized that it takes too much focus ingame to implement such a new concept into my gameplan. So after punting some stacks on NL25 I moved two stakes down and played my hands on NL5 zoom today, just to learn my new ranges (new RYE-course), trying out ingame what I learned away from the tables and this way it's not getting too expensive when I make some misstakes.

Might still play NL5 zoom for some days until I feel ready to go back up to NL25. Think that makes sense when I learned quite some stuff.

PokerStars - $0.05 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: $5.16
Hero (SB): $9.83
BB: $8.36
UTG: $13.77
MP: $5.00
CO: $5.79

Hero posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.07) Hero has A J

fold, fold, CO raises to $0.15, fold, Hero raises to $0.60, fold, CO calls $0.45

Flop: ($1.25, 2 players) 5 Q 8
Hero bets $0.62, CO calls $0.62

Turn: ($2.49, 2 players) 9
Hero bets $1.59, CO calls $1.59

River: ($5.67, 2 players) Q
[b]Hero ???

This is exactly the stuff I've been working on lately. I know we should almost never use busted FDs as bluffs OTR because we want to unblock them for villain, but in this scenario I think it makes sense does it? We block AA, JJ, block top pair twice and it gets even more unlikely OTR, he would have played sets more aggressevily... What do u think? Bluff-shoving river here an option?

You're absolutely correct to approach selecting river bluffs by thinking about blockers. With AJ we block all of the "snap" folding region of Villain's range i.e AT, A5 type holdings.

When you think about what value we block you also have to think about how relevant that is. While I agree with do block AA,JJ I wouldn't expect many of those combinations to take this line (both are mostly 4betting preflop). Similarly we may block JT but this is one combination, and I would expect this would likely shove on the turn, so is far less relevant here on the river.

Also we should consider what we do not block, namely we do not block any suited Qx (note. AQo is usually a 4bet preflop but this may be less common in your games). Qx is the main calling region for villian so I would select my bluffs around hands that block Qx and unblock diamonds. Something like KJ or AJ. obviously this depends how aggressively you are bluffing the turn with lower equity draws. But overall I think this combo is a mandatory check back and I wouldn't worry about redline, instead worry about finding the "correct" bluffs, not just bluffing for the sake of it.

I think the turn is also interesting, I wouldn't be surprised if this combination should be checked back fairly often, because it sucks to face a check jam. But maybe our draw is so strong that we can bet call the turn and will always realise our equity.. Just an extra element of the hand that is worth some thought

With that bluff, you need to jam or fold.

Did a successful bluff at 25nl yesterday with no blockers. Don't have hand history yet to post.

In my case, I called a BB range out of the small blind, with the intention of bluffing, so OOP (of course, dependent on flop). I check raised the flop big (need to bloat pot to make it worth it), Bet 3/4 pot on turn (we have 6262 right now on board). River is T, I shove. Villain folds (don't know what yet).

IF you intend to use this as bluff, or build pot for nut flush, then bet bigger on flop and turn, then shove. HOWEVER, 5nl is more passive in my experience, bluffing a bit harder to do when stacks are smaller.

Just my opinion.

Thank you guys for your thoughts about the hand I posted!

April is not going good for me so far, lost a couple of stacks on NL25 only. Now I first need to think about how to get my money from tiger gaming.They don't offer any type of external rabekack anymore and removed all withdraw options besides the crypto-ones...

So I might go back to 2 stars zoom table and make my mind up about the next steps...

Alright guys, sorry for being absent for so long, but this was an really intense month.
I learned a lot of stuff together with my study group (esp. red line related things like c-betting more, second barrel more often using blocker-effects wisely, and also betting the river as a bluff more often) and had coaching hours myself with FallOut86 in the beginning of April.

I also had a lot of stuff going on off of the tables, like the covid-situation concerning my daughter going to kindergarden or not, myself fighting a cold for quite a while and other stuff that kept me busy. Like I had to cash out my roll on TigerGaming for some reasons which ain't done yet because it's only possible through crypots but whatever, I'm after it.

But nevertheless I showed up every single day and reached my goal of playing 30k hands in April. Not all of them were NL25, because I realized that while implementing and understanding new learnings and concepts its better to move down in stakes for a while, which I did.

I started playing NL25 only from mid-april or so. Especially during the last week of April I felt very confident, like the learnings now all make sense and the sessions went well and I even started to come closer towards my monthly bankroll goal.
Today, before I started my last session of this month, I was 3 stacks away from my $-goal for April, I was confident and foccused, and then lost 9 stacks within less then 1500 hands.

I know those things happen and I know how important it is to learn from those sessions and simply come back stronger, which I certainly will after the weekend. I'm gonna review this session with brutal honesty over the next days, also trying to find the point where I should have done a 10-min break or so.

I still feel comfortable though playing NL25 only on Pokerstars (I play 3 Reg tables and 1 zoom table) and I hope that I can crush it in May!

Some data now here:

My April on Pokerstars:



My April on TigerGaming:



As you can see in the Stars-Graph I was able to improve my red-line-spots a lot after working on it. I recognize a lot more spots ingame that I play differently now.

To wrap it up:

April:

Hands: 31,555 (goal was 30,000)
Profit: - $ 222.62 (goal was + $225.00) to get the wanted winrate of 3 BB/100)
(The april-$-result is basically what I lost in todays session )

My goals for May:

Hands: 30,000
Profit: 4 BB/100 on NL25 only on Pokerstars (playing 3 Reg Tables and 1 Zoom Table)

Bankroll today: $ 1,289.61
Bankroll goal end of May: $ 1,600.00
This should roughly be a 4bb-winrate after 30k hands.

So, important to me is to maximize and optimize my overall performance and mindset, to play my A-Game as often as possible. Getting high quality sleep, working out and eating clean. Having great times off of the tables with my family.

I'm gonna work through the Elliot-Roe-A-Game-Masterclass over the next months as well.

I will try to update the blog more often, at least every friday to wrap up a week. If there is anything you guys think I could blog about feel free to say.

As always, thanks for following this blog!

Have a great weekend,
Daniel

You crushed my winrate this month. Go get em next month!