Were you bullied in school or something?

Those "very high variance lines" are almost certainly -EV lines. Have you done some studying yourself to confirm they are +EV, or are you just guessing?

I would stay away from online completely and just play live. I told you several months ago that you vastly underestimate how difficult online is, but you obviously didn't listen. Even if you are a winner at 25nl (which I very much doubt, but let's assume you are), you're making $10/hour at a very generous estimate. Your backer takes 50% of your profits, so that's $5/hour. Good luck living off $5/hour.

Hoping to be a winner at 200z by Christmas seems incredibly naive, especially if you're splitting your time between live and online.

You have access to very good live games and a very small life roll, grinding online seems like a pretty bad decision.

That being said gl with it, it's good to see things appear to be looking up.

Sent from my CPH1805 using Tapatalk

It's funny how you're sugarcoating a bunch of awful decisions by calling them "high variance lines" or "risky plays", as if it's not simply bad poker.

TBH, your coach sounds more frustrated with you than anything else. A good coach would ask for your database to look at where you're losing money and go over it with you. I've got a different theory as to why you're spewing, but that's neither here nor there. Instead of watching a bunch of videos you'll ignore, you can try these two small things.

1. Completely stop bluffing at 25nl beyond cbets on the flop with one villain in the hand.

2. Unless you have a monster, fold every time you are raised post flop.

Pretend that your coach/backer is watching every hand and you had to justify every move to him. I think you'd be surprised how successful you'd be. Save the sick moves for when you're playing 200nl.

You need to be really careful with the "print money" concept. You are running good now and it feels that way but you can also "unprint money" very easily. The idea you can just print money whenever you feel like it can lead to serious entitlement tilt when it isn't going that way.

But congrats on your recent wins.

This is truth!

Recipe for a downswing...

1) Start winning at an above avg clip
2) Feel like you're bullet proof
3) Continue winning at will
4) Go card dead and flop dead over a few days and start getting ticked off that you arent "printing money"
5) Spew 6-10 buy ins over the next few days, when you shouldve lost 2 buy ins, because you "expect" to win even though the cards just arent coming your way at the moment.

Ive seen it many times and Ive felt it myself a few times. Controlling it is one of the many skills needed to crush poker beyond knowing how to play poker hands.

2 tables of 25z typically.

"Bluffing like a boss" but it's cost you 14bi? Showing us one that gets through doesn't make you a better player, poker isn't a popularity competition.

This is very good advice... 25z is beatable for a small to average win rate playing this low variance, straight forward style.

Excellent advice from Mike. +1, seen it countless times-especially from young kids who think they are bullet proof to negative variance when they run miles above expectation over a pretty big sample.

stop playing online just play live

You're beating a dead horse. 6BM is convinced he has to play online (and that he's a winner online) though pretty much everyone has told him he's going to make much less money than playing live, if he manages to win at all.

Downswing online but still hopeful

So of the 14 buyins I lost, I think that about half of them were preventable and half weren't. I did genuinely run really bad over that sample. Had so many ridiculous hands like running AK into A9 on an A9x board in a 4bet pot. For the first 8 buyins, I was showing dozens of hand histories to my coach and he was agreeing that I was playing quite well and just running really badly. It was only towards the end of the downswing that I started spewing.

I'm still not ready to give up on online poker though. The fact that I'm breakeven after dropping 14 buyins makes me think that I'm still a winning player, or at least very close to becoming one. I know that everyone tries to tell me that online is tougher than live, and I acknowledge that it is tougher, but I still think that I have what it takes. Maybe reaching 200nl by the end of the year might be an unrealistic goal, but I'd still like to reach at least 50nl or 100nl and show large winning samples at those stakes by the end of the year.

On another random note, I went to a pub poker event last night to cool off. I wanted to play some non-serious poker for a day. Managed to come 3rd out of about 40 players and cashed for $200 there, which was nice. It was a cheap way to just get out of the house and do something relaxing, so I'm happy I went.

You are still setting some unrealistic goals (which will only contribute to unmatched expectations/tilting issues) : try to envision online as a playground where you can put in more volume/work on your game. Being a winner on a decent sample size at 25NL should be the priority (200k+ hands) and moving to 50NL sometime by the end of 2019. And I do hope you are studying at least 2-5h a week, if not giving up on online is a better idea. GL

Margins are razor thin online if you're not heavily table selecting. To put it into perspective, a few buy ins of spew will completely destroy your win rate online. Those same few buy ins of spew live should still mean you're a winning player - only a modest winner rather than a crusher.

Post all the hands where you think you ran bad/spewed. Every single one of them. We can analyze them for you to determine where you went wrong.

What a huge shock that you still have a delusional ego regarding your own skills.

Some spewy hands

Since Spin asked, I'm going to show you some hands that I played recently at 25nlz on Ignition when I was tilted and spewy. They take a long time to write up, so I'll just show the 3 most spewiest hands in my opinion. These hands contributed to the 14 buyin downswing:

Hand 1: Playing back against an overbet

$25 effective
UTG raises $0.75
Hero calls $0.75 BB with KJo (no diamond)

Against an early position raise, I felt that we should be flatting this hand instead of 3betting.

Flop ($1.60) is Qh Td 7h

Hero checks
UTG bets $0.45
Hero calls $0.45

I felt that my opponent had a range advantage on this board, since he has all the TPTK, overpairs and sets in his range, so it made more sense to simply call instead of semibluff raise.

Turn ($2.50) is Qh Td 7h 4d

Hero checks
UTG bets $3.50
Hero raises to $10.25
UTG jams $24
Hero calls $24

So this is where the spew started. I felt that UTG was probably a competent reg, due to his flop and turn bet sizes, and I felt that a competent reg would overbet a lot of bluffs and thin value hands on the turn when he has the range advantage. And I thought that by x/raising the turn, I could get him to fold basically anything below 2pr. Once he jammed, I convinced myself that he could be semibluffing some diamond draws and I could still be in okay shape.



Hand 2: Failed river bluff against station

$21.60 effective (villain is short stacked)
Hero raises $0.60 UTG with J9hh
Villain 3bets $1.45 CO
Hero calls $1.45

I thought I was getting way too good of a price to fold. My initial thoughts are that villain is fishy, since he has less than a full stack and picked a horrible 3bet sizing.

Flop ($3.25) is Qc Td 9c

Hero checks
Villain bets $1.75
Hero calls $1.75

I thought I've got better hands to x/r here, like KJ, sets and JXcc, so I went with a x/c instead. Not sure which is better tbh.

Turn ($6.75) is Qc Td 9c Qd

Hero checks
Villain checks

At this point, I thought that it was unlikely villain had trips, since he likely would've value bet that on such a super wet board.

River ($6.75) is Qc Td 9c Qd Jc

Hero checks
Villain bets $4.50
Hero jams $14 effective
Villain calls $14 all-in

My logic was that I've got boat blockers and I can get villain off a flush or straight. I believe my bluff was bad for two reasons: 1) Villain appears to be a fish and will probably station me off light, and 2) People don't value bet rivers thinly enough at 25nl, so when you pull river x/r bluffs, it's hard to get too many folds, since you're betting into such a strong range.



Hand 3: Forced aggression

$29 effective with MP and $15 effective with BTN
UTG raises $0.75
MP calls $0.75
CO calls $0.75
BTN calls $0.75
SB folds
Hero 3bets $5.25 BB with K6hh
MP and BTN call $5.25

Just a completely unnecessary squeeze. I don't have any Ax blockers. I'm forcing aggression in a spot where the situation doesn't warrant it.

Flop ($17.35, 3ways) is Kc Jd 9d

Hero bets $5.67
MP calls $5.67
BTN folds

I'm not even convinced that this is a great board to Cbet. It's hard to imagine getting paid by too many worse hands when the pot is already this bloated and we're 3-handed. Plus, even hands which I'm ahead of often have a lot of equity against me, such as QJs. I'd almost prefer a x/fold on the flop, as nitty as it sounds.

Turn ($28.69, HU) is Kc Jd 9d 7c

Hero jams $18

Well I've got myself into this mess and it's a fairly decent turn card, so I guess there's nothing left for me to do at this point but jam. Pretty horrible spot though, as I'm only really jamming to deny equity from pair+gutshot hands, as well as FDs. I'm going to get stacked so often here.

KJ raise was stupid. J9s is not an open utg, your paying huge rake here. The bluff was suicidal. Squeeze was ******ed. Ye you will go broke in a week playing like that on zone. You don't needs to write out the hands just screen shot the hand history if you are not converting them to poker tracker.

I usually open T9s and J9s UTG in 6max, but not T8s or 98s.

In full ring, I fold them all UTG.

Absolutely false.

Regarding hands:

h1 - you just need to accept that your range is screwed on this turn since not only did you call on the flop, you called vs a small bet which means you don't have any strong hands at all on the turn. Villain's bet size on the turn is very good and even if he's bluffing a decent amount (dubious read at 25z) you're still forced to fold your oesd and fd's that don't have some additional form of equity to go with it (such as a pair or oesd + fd). You say that you could level a competent reg into folding 2p+, but I could make the argument that a competent reg could also work out that you represent no value and call you down light so you can't really make any confident deduction on how villain will play just because you think he's a competent reg. Checkraise on the flop is not bad btw, and you should also fold turn to the 3bet.

h2 - extremely marginal open, I would only open if I knew for a fact that there was a fish in the blinds. Call 3bet is ok. You could actually consider leading turn since the Q is good for you and J9 is not a bad hand to turn into a bluff. River bluff is meh, the problem is that you don't have enough stack behind to put in a big raise so you can't turn many 2p combos into bluffs since villain gets a good price to call. Also I'd be cautious about how many boats you really have in your range since you might raise all your sets/2p on the flop.

h3 - squeeze isn't as bad as you think, obviously use better hand selection. Betting flop is good, sizing could be even smaller but it's fine. Never checkfold flop. Turn jam is also probably good even if you rarely get called by worse because you still deny tonnes of equity. Also you'll occasionally get called by something like T9cc.

Ty for your advice. I know that you're one of the top regs in the 200nl zone pool, so I do value your feedback.

In 6 max UTG is equivalent to the LJ so I think opening J9s is okay but probably not that profitable. If you have trouble with the borderline hands you are better off tightening up and folding them. I would suggest this regardless of your opinion of your post flop skills, at least until you have a large sample showing a significantly positive winrate.

Other two hands are easy folds.

And why do you have to write them up like this? Can't you just copy paste the hand histories? There may even be a hand history converter to make it more readable (I don't know where, but probably not hard to find), but I think most of us can parse the text hand histories just fine.

J9s should be a fold utg even in 6-max. Opening T9s utg is ok.

I just looked up an opening range chart for online 6max by Upswing Poker and it says:

UTG: open 15% of hands
55+
All suited Aces
All suited Broadways
T9s
ATo, AJo, AQo, AKo, KQo

It says not to open J9s. So I think you're right. I should've folded preflop.