Hi all,

I have been playing and studying poker on and off for several years now. I love studying and poker is just such a great game.
As I have been mostly focused on understanding the game rather than playing it, I have never put in much volume. Also, there have been months and years that I haven't even thought about poker. Still, I always get back to it, and everytime I'm amazed with all the new tools and theory that has been developed.

I'm creating this blog to create some sort of external accountability for me, to play some more hands, to structure my studying roadmap and hopefully get some feedback.

I just reached 5000 played hands (of which 1500 this month), so I thought this would be a great idea to start sharing. The idea is to share my stats and graphs after every 5000 hands I play, and to share what I think I should study and how I will approach it. I'm only 1-tabling and I have a life outside of poker so this can take a while... I'm doing this for myself, but I'm doing it on the forum because I hope that some of you geniuses will be able to nudge me towards making better decisions.

Currently, I'm playing 2NL Stars and 4NL Unibet. The pool on Unibet literally throws money at you, but since it is impossible to track your hands, I don't play there often. I mainly want to improve my understanding of poker. Making money is not really a goal. All my stats will therefore be from stars.

2NL Graph - 5000 hands



2NL Stats - 5000 hands



2NL Results - Number of Tables

As you can see, even 2-tabling is a little difficult for me. Tips to get better at dividing attention are always welcome. It would be nice to increase volume while only losing a little bit of winrate.


I'm looking forward to the adventure, and see you soon!

Teski

Good luck on your journey! As far as struggling with 2 tables I would just start your sessions with your 1 table and move to 2 when the action is a bit slow for you. You can just stay dynamic and close one table whenever the pace of action gets too quick. You can also just let yourself time out on your second table occasionally when a big decision is at the other table. There is also no pressure to play more than 1 table as you've said your focus is on improvement and not $. You'll naturally be able to play more tables as you continue to gain reps.

Gl!

27/06/23
What to study? I’ve had some difficulties with facing aggression from aggrodonks. It can be difficult to assess whether my hand is good enough to call their wide aggro-range, which is sometimes strong but also has a lot of trash and SDV. I think that the main solution is to fix my preflop ranges vs. this type of opponent. Tough decisions against aggrodonks arise when my hand has some SDV and is not a clear fold, but is not strong enough to be a clear call. Tighten up to have easier decisions postflop, with a preference for frequent strength and nut potential (strong draws). This will polarize my range postflop, making decisions easier.

In general, I should get better at hand reading and assessing the composition of an opponent’s range on a particular board. What can I call with when I know that Villain bets any pair better than middle pair, all of his draws, and some trash? What is the likelihood of Villain having any of these categories when he shows aggression?

How am I going to study this? Decide on a type of flop (the most frequent?) and see how an aggrodonk’s range connects to this board.

Topic to tackle:
Aggrodonk’s range vs. different flops. 5 categories: ‘monster’-’top pair’-’weak pair’-’draws’-’trash’. %’s but also # combo’s (roughly)

29/06/23
I am reviewing a session I played recently, and I notice that I actually have no up to date theoretical foundation regarding bet sizings. I use some heuristics that I got from the grinder’s manual like “dry flops don’t need big sizings because we have more fold equity”, but I’d like to expand on it, like on how bet sizing is related to our own ranges. In general, I should be to be more aware of my own ranges in particular spots (when are we polarized, when are we capped, …).

Topics to tackle:
Check concept of pot geometry
C-bet sizings: effects of board texture, our range, V’s range, V’s tendencies, SPR, Turn possibilities
Turn bet sizings: double-barrel and after the flop goes x-x
River bet sizings: when do we bet small? When do we bet big?
=> I'm gonna simplify this by deciding on 3 possible sizings per street and seeing which factors influence the choice between these options. On the river maybe only 2.

Working on BBvsUTG & BBvsBU: how do ranges hit the flop and how does this affect our strategy?
Using Flopzilla as main tool and figuring out how to make my study efficient and effective.

Main concepts are therefore: equity buckets, range advantage, and nut advantage

Practice: counting combo's of hand groups (e.g. >2p) of a particular range (e.g. flat_BBvsUTG) on different flops and checking equity distributions.

Realization I made: I get a much better grasp on preflop ranges when using this applied method.
You don't practice preflop ranges by staring at charts. Counting combo's on specific flops repetitively will give you an immediately applicable knowledge
Checking range vs range equity (e.g. BB flatting range vs. UTG open) sideways is a good way of getting a quick grasp on the ranges as well. You don't have to focus on it too much. Repetition is key.

Also, You don't NEED it all in your documentation, you need it in your head. Practice is practice, and study is study. Practice enough.

Finally had the time to put in some volume!
I've been focussing on really practicing the basics of the basics, iso thinking about complex ranges etc, and it works like a charm at the micro's.
I even managed to 3-table all these sessions. 4 is too much, but 3 feels so natural. Every decision point is just what it is; a decision that has to be +EV. When 1-tabling, sometimes I can get caught up in overanalyzing tendencies, table images etc. Also, it reduces the variance of my sessions a bit.

Main takeaways:
Underbluff (only bluff the most obvious ones), overfold (especially otR), overbet for value, valuebet wide, c-bet light (paired boards are sooo scary for micro-players), 3bet the sh*t out of all the nit-regs, and print BB's!


When my Stars bankroll reaches $75, I take a 3 BI shot at 5NL.

Graph of this month so far:

Pretty nice run. Keep it up!

## Hand Review: Cbet
PokerStars, Hold'em No Limit - $0.01/$0.02 - 6 players
Replay this hand on Upswing Poker

UTG: $2.00 (100 bb)
MP (Hero): $2.03 (102 bb)
CO: $1.53 (77 bb)
BU: $2.00 (100 bb)
SB: $1.65 (83 bb)
BB: $3.46 (173 bb)

Pre-Flop: ($0.03) Hero is MP with Q♥ T♠
1 fold, Hero raises to $0.05, 3 players fold, BB calls $0.03

Flop: ($0.11) 4♥ 9♦ 7♥ (2 players)
BB checks, Hero ?

Preflop:
QTo = 50% PFR. 4 Fish at the table, 1 reg in the BB. Conclusion: Raise

We get called by the reg. He should be calling pretty wide here, especially with suited hands (Axs, Kxs, some Qxs, connectors and gappers). +- 20% or 275 combo's

Flop: MML 2T 12
1. Range Advantage
Slight range advantage for Hero. BB shouldn't have a donkrange here.
Top5% is pretty equal: we both have all sets (3x3). BB has some 2p as well (2x 97s, +-2x 74s)
10-30% is dominated by Hero because of he has more overpairs (6x AA-QQ + 6x JJ-TT). Villain might 3b JJ sometimes, which makes this part of our range even stronger.
Hero has more A9 and K9 than Villain because they are seldom a call preflop.

2. Fold Equity
Because of the wet board we should probably cbet 67%pot. Disregarding our equity, this would translate to a RFE of 40%. Does Villain fold 40%? That's 0.6x275 or 165 combo's he should continue with. Estimated combos:
9 sets;
4 2p;
8 oP;
20 tP;
4 88;
15mP,
20-ish FDs;
8 OESD;
20-ish GS's;
25-ish High BDFD's
=> 133
Slightly under our RFE.

3. Equity
If we have some live equity, we don't need 40% RFE. We have quite some turn prospects:
2 OC's + Decent BDFD + BDOESD + BDGS
The turns we like: Q, T, h, J, 8 => 24 cards or 50% of all turn cards.

4. HU + Position


CONCLUSION:
HERO bets 3.5bb



## Hand review: Raise w/ draw

PokerStars, Hold'em No Limit - $0.01/$0.02 - 6 players
Replay this hand on Upswing Poker

UTG: $3.43 (172 bb)
MP: $2.00 (100 bb)
CO (Hero): $2.09 (105 bb)
BU: $1.48 (74 bb)
SB: $2.00 (100 bb)
BB: $2.07 (104 bb)

Pre-Flop: ($0.03) Hero is CO with 3♠ A♠
1 fold, MP raises to $0.05, Hero calls $0.05, 3 players fold

Flop: ($0.13) 2♠ K♣ 8♠ (2 players)
MP bets $0.04, Hero ?

Preflop:
Normally, A3s should be 3bet almost 100%. However, with all resting players being fish, we opt to flat. Even if we can handle a small squeeze, it is unlikely that passive fish will squeeze. We want them to call and prey on implied odds.

Flop: BML 2T 35
Villain Cbets 1/3p. His Flop Cbet = 29 on 87 hands. Value-heavy Cbet range (tP, AA, KK, some K8s but his PFR is only 14 so chances are that he didn't open K8s)

1. Equity and RE
Any A and spade is good for us. => 12 combo's or 3:1 or 25%.
On an A there are some reversed implied odds though... So we should be more conservative than this. Still, the largest portion of V's range is tP, and sometimes this player type even cbets another weak pair. Also, we can turn a GS as well.

Villain's 1/3bet gives us 4:1 or 20%.

We don't need to look for a raise. This is a call.

If the Turn is a brick and Villain checks to us, we can look to stab at the pot.
Villain is probably a type that is afraid of putting money in the pot so if he checks the turn, our FE likely to be very high. A 50-67% bet otT will do.

CONCLUSION:
Hero calls 2bb.

Reached 5000 hands this month.

Gll, mate I also started a brm chall! Lets run it up!

This month's graph:





Took a 3BI shot at 5NL but my mental game was not ready for it. Spewed off 3BI's in 300 hands. Gonna continue at 2NL until I'm confident against the regs there.

Continuing my study: focussing on Preflop game and Cbetting
Also practicing hand reading by going through hands and being very specific about V's range.