Hey guys !

I have always been rather a quiet reader than an active member of this community, but I think the time has come to start a blog in this forum.


My name is Christian, I am 20 years old and living in Australia at the moment, doing a gap year of working holiday between high school and university.

Originally I am from Frankfurt, Germany and I will probably move to Kiel at the northern shore of Germany, to study teaching Maths and Arts next year.

I started playing poker in the beginning of 2012 and grinded up from NL2 to NL25 twice since then. Due to stupid cash outs I was never able to play higher.

As I am already in Australia for about three months now and travelled up the east coast from Sydney to Cairns, I was not really able to play poker on a regular basis and just made some short sessions in between. Because of this I did not really play very concentrated and so my last ~50k hands went breakeven, although I beat those limits before.

For quite a while I played a real LAG style of 40/32/11 because I got a heater for the first 20k hands, but now I realize that I cannot play max EV this way and I try to get back to a "healthier" style (goal is something around 27/22). Overally I think my biggest problem is that I fight for too many small pots and like to spew when I see a line that does not make any sense.

I will try to do as much theory as possible besides working and travelling, but poker is supposed to be in second place as long as I am staying here in Down Under.

When I will be back in Germany around May 2014, I will fully concentrate on poker and hopefully find a mentor that can guide me up to NL100 until the winter semester starts.


I think that´s it so far, I attached a screenshot of my graph and stats and some pictures from my traveling so far.

The Australian landscape is really beautiful, if some of you are interested in me also blogging about the traveling, I will gladly do so !

Cheers

Graph:


Stats: (only NL10/16, but the most recent I have. A bit ashamed of them though.. )



Threadsaver: (The spoiler took too much space, so I just link them here, sorry for that )

Link:

I had a look at my stats today and of course the first thing I realized is that my W$SD is much too low.
I do not think that I go to loose to showdown, as 25% WTSD is fine for such a loose style I think, but still my W$SD is so low, while my W$WSF is about 6% over avg with its 50%..

It would be great if any of you could recommend me a filter or anything that could help me spotting the exact leak..


Besides that I am still trying to tighten up my ranges although it is still quite hard for me to throw away suited hands as J4s (as crappy as they are) when there is a limper in front of me..

I also got two hands of today's sessions:

BU played 100/14 on the first 7 hands.
That´s an example for one of my biggest leaks. My hand is not really strong, I am OOP and I do not have enough reads to tell if the BU is folding enough to cbets, but there is a nit to the left of me and I feel like loosing money not isolating the limper..

Anyways, as played does anyone of you see an exit there ?
I thought about folding to his 4bet as I think he would probably 4betshove his sets / 2pairs, but I felt committed to the pot and had AK discounted..




This one was also a bit weird..
I do not see much value in 3betting preflop as UTG is an unknown and I do not want to turn my hand that dominates a huge part of his range into a bluff.
The SB is a 11/9 nit, BB plays 23/21 on a big sample and squeezes 12%.
I actually see me ahead of his squeezing range, because I think he is doing this with TT+,ATs+,AJ+, maybe sometimes KQ and a large portion of bluffcombos, e.g. Axs, Kxs..
The nit will actually never play cc/4bet and if he flats he has often a middle PP and give up quickly on the flop, so I did not worry that much about the SB.

OTF I hit TPTK on a very dry flop. After his check I thought the BB had given up the pot, so I bet about half pot to get some value out of the PPs of SB.
On the turn I do not see much value in 2nd barreling so I decided to xbehind, giving him the possibility of making mistakes on the river.

Ingame my thoughts about the river card were something like: "Yeah, 5 is one of the best cards of the deck for me cause it is reduces the few (set) combos that beat me, so I´ve got an easy call there."
Now he is basically potting and it is really a strong move. In my opinion he is only representing 22 and one 55 combo, so basically nothing but is he ever bluffing there ?

Well for a LAG player the W$SD stat is not so important. When you raise 89o out of position, for sure your W$SD will be less than 50%, so don't worry too much about that stat.

I don't know what filter to recommend but there is a forum here on 2+2 where you can post your stats and people can answer your questions precisely.

For your style, just make sure you win many non-showdown pots and keep the red line above 0, you seem to do that well already.

I didn't see the results for hand #2 but is he ever bluffing? Does he turn TT into a bluff? Anyway I would fold that river 100% of the time against a set-miner like that.

good luck buddy

Thanks Vitti !

@Bill: Thanks a lot for your tipps, it is really reassuring to know that a low W$SD does not have to be a leak!
Now looking at hand #2 it´s also an easy fold to me, but ingame I somewhat felt like bluffcatching.. :/


Unfortunately I was not able to put in much volume the last few days as I went out partying a lot with some other backpackers in Cairns.
Yesterday I took a flight to Perth though, where I am going to stay for another 10 days, before I will start working on a farm, to get in some money..

Anyway, the few hands I was playing, I played on Rush and I have to say that (at least on 10NL) it´s much softer than Zoom is.
Barely any 3Bets, people fold a ton to CBets and overally there are much more 40/0 fish than on Stars, despite the smaller player pool.

I will definitely try to get in some sample there, but I may also try Speed poker, as I got a really nice RB deal on iPoker recently..

I have to admit that I run really well though, hope it will stay like this for some more time..




One strange hand from today:
BB played 57/0 on 7 hands. I actually gave him only PPs in his donking Range (like 77+), but I was really suprised with which hand he turned up at SD..

What do you guys think of my 4Betsizing ? Should have been a bit bigger I think...

Hey there !
Unfortunately I had to move down in order to not get broke..
I had a very aggressive 10 stacks BRM, as I have beaten NL10 with >7bb/100 before, but as it seems variance was against me.

At least I refreshed my DC account and fixed a lot of big leaks, the Search and Destroy series is really awesome for a Microgrinder like me, I can just recommend it to everybody else who is playing <NL50 and who does not want to spend too much money for a coach to look over his/her stats !

Anyway, I dropped down to 10 NL5 stacks but decided not to move down to NL2, that would have been a bit too awkward, so I started playing NL5 Zoom in order to move up as quickly as possible.
Yeah, what to say, here is my doomswitch graph since then.. ^^



It´s incredibly how villains spew their money into you, I did not remember the difference between the two limits was this big.

Well, yesterday I made my way from Perth to Carnarvon (about 1000km north) and I will start working on the farm on Monday.
That said, yet I do not know if I will be able to play much besides working, so I will decide next week if I will redeposit my BR on iPoker to start with NL20 right away, or if I just continue grinding up on Stars..

Hmm I guess that´s it for now, thanks for reading, cya

Try some live games during your holiday.