Not a very pretty graph. Hypers tilt me like nothing else. At least managed to reach volume goal today. Will push for 100 hypers tomorrow.

Hit my stoploss today. Definitely played better than yesterday though, but just ran bad in so many different spots.

Last few weeks I have been playing hypers and I have never been so tilted in my life. The standard of play is a lot higher than the equivalent BI in spins. It was a valuable experience because I was able to see just how much I have to still learn about HU. I won't be posting a hypers graph unless anyone particularly wants to see it because it doesn't make for pretty viewing as I ran pretty badly. Fortunately my coach thinks I can move on from hypers for now and start playing some spins and just work on my heads up play through spins - which I am really happy about.

I played a few spins today (2 tabling) and lost my first 25x at the $3s. Looked like I was going to end the day with a loss but as I was about to call it a day I decided to fire up another 2 games at the end of my sessions and won a 4x and 6x to put me at a profit for the day.

Sub'd

I want to try to run up a roll from 100$ up to 1k playing spins, can you recommend me some good stuff (vids, readings, etc.) for study spins?

I wish you all the best and will be following your thread with interest!

Glgl

Sorry for the delay in responding have been visiting family over the weekend.

Ill try and give you the best advice I can but It'll be difficult to give you specific advice without knowing your exact poker background and skill level first. But anyway, before I got coaching the kind of things I was studying were twitch streamers who played spins (Courtiebee and long before that PrimordialAA), I was reading Will Tiptons first book on heads up also, I also payed for Sentins video pack on spins of which the first video gives a decent set of ranges to use when 3-handed. Oh and there are some free videos on HUSNG.com which will be useful if you've not played much HU before. Other than that there doesn't seem to a lot of resources for spins at the moment so any information you do get will put you well ahead of the $1, $3 spin population.

I was also somewhat used to playing with wide ranges 3 handed from my 6 max cash games (BTN vs Blinds) so seemed to fair quite well 3 handed, my problems started when I moved up and realized I didn't have a large edge vs population when playing HU. This is why I paid for a coach, to improve my HU. If your coming from 6max or tournaments I would recommend focusing most of your study on Heads Up to start with.

And thanks for gl wishes. Gl to you too.

Completed first 300 or so games after coaching. Binked my first 25x =D. Had a large breakeven chipev stretch which really hurt my chip ev overall and I started to think games have definitely got harder at the $3 level since they added the $0.50 and $5 spins. Seemed to bump into semi competent players more often. I had hoped my chip ev would have actually increased after coaching, but lots of reasons why that could be, running hot before coaching, games have got tougher, running bad card distribution-wise after coaching, playing at less peak times, overconfidence leading to spew. In truth think it is a mixture of all these things, but I made a conscious effort today to not get it in so light and my chip ev has increased significantly (could still be variance).

Last 300 games


Todays graph so far


Just hope the run good continues.

Hi, I played & chatted with you the other day... I was the one who was lucky enough to wake up with QQ in HU

Your Graph looks really solid, keep it up like that.

I don't know if you have an adequate bankroll for it, but have you thought about playing the $5s? I neither have a big enough sample size at $3 nor at $5 since the promo began, but imo the $5 is a bit softer right now.

Hey, yeah I remember.

I have played a few of the $5 ones but I got the feeling maybe they were slightly tougher than the $3 spins because the semi-regs were moving down from the $7 and $15 spins, but that could be wrong and I was just running bad. But tbh, my bankroll isn't really rolled for the $5s atm, after I payed for my coaching so might have to build up a bit before I give them another shot. Thanks for the tip though.

GL with the grind though.

Don't stop believing!

Thanks man!

Looking SOLID ! Work hard to improve bro !

@danufc Will do!


Haven't updated recently so sorry to everyone following for that. My excuse is there have been some changes in my life as I was offered a decent job (after a long search) so I no longer can devote half my waking hours to playing and studying poker anymore. I intend to still update this blog and continue playing but my time I devote to poker will be considerably less. I have decided though that I will play a minimum of 10 hours a week and potentially considerably more if I feel like it.

On topic, poker has been eventful recently. I went on a 40 bi downswing in 120 games (including a losing streak of 20 games in a row), which wiped out a decent chunk of my bankroll. This may not sound like a lot to if you play tournaments or play SNGs with a small roi but this came as a shock to me after playing mostly cash games where swings weren't as dramatic. I was worried for a little while that 150bis wouldnt be a large enough bankroll but I made some adjustments and ran hot and won it all back over the next 140 games.

I have done hardly any study the past two weeks but have decided I know roughly what I should be doing with each hand in each spot well enough now that I don't have to have any documents open with ranges written down. The advantage is I am now able to play 4 tables instead of 2. I am hoping this doesn't half my WR, or affect my enjoyment of the game, or the amount of time I able to concentrate for.

Will post my graph at the end of the month. GL to everyone at the tables.

Quick update, I've decided to set myself the goal of playing enough spins to complete another $50 VIP stellar reward on Pokerstars. This will take 3216 spins between now and January and should also unlock me another $75 in VIP reward bonuses. Playing 4 tables at once I think I average 25 spins an hour, so it should take me a little under 130 hours to complete my goal. Including today there are 48 days I can play poker on before the deadline so I just need to average about 20 hours per week to achieve my goal. This is double the minimum amount I had just set myself yesterday, but I think it is still achievable. I will aim to play most of the games over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. To keep myself accountable I will post a graph every week after my session on Sunday or before my session on Monday. Wish me luck!

I know exactly what you mean. The more Spin & Go I play the more i realize how ridiculous the swings are. Not only the $-winnings seem totally independent from the chip-winnings, even my chipEV graph has crazy swings: After 3000 games with a chipEV of 55 i just had 400 games with a chipEV of -2. I just felt to helpless but couldn't find any major differences in my play.
Isn't that a bit low? I play 5 tables and on average i make a bit more than 40 Spin & Gos per hour.

Good luck for your goals & see you at the tables next month again (when the $5 Spins stop running. Hopefully my bankroll stays healthy so I don't have to start playing the $3s earlier )

Yeah the variance is sick. My next graph is going to look horrible for profit and ev unless I turn it around in the next few days.

I could be a bit off with my estimates with games per hour.

Are they definitely going to stop running the 5 and 0.5 spins? I think player pool tendencies have actually shifted since they introduced the additional spins. Players are a lot less interested in folding. I use to be able to auto profit with ATC in certain spots but that isn't the case anymore. I think the games will get softer again once all the players move up from the $0.50s and $1s if they do stop though.

Quick update:

I think pokerstars has got rid of stellar rewards and replaced them with starcoins and I dont know how many I need to grind to get what amount of rakeback now. This sucks. And I am calling off my mass grind until I can think of another goal to work towards. I was ahead of schedule on the volume but my poker has got really crappy. My spin ev roi is not even 2%, I think it should be atleast 5% over a decent sample to move up.

At some points during the grind I was playing REALLY badly. Its not that I was tilting. Just actually playing bad poker. For a few sessions I was getting leveled every-time by weird lines and massive bets. For a few sessions I was playing like an absolute nit and folding every close spot. Fortunately I now think I know where I have been making most of my mistakes and have a good idea how to fix them. I should be crushing these games.

Graph since Nov 1st:

What do you mean with "pokerstars has got rid of stellar rewards and replaced them with starcoins"? These changes will happend next year (2016), and shouldn't really affect your goals of this year. And when I can believe them: for low stakes players like me and you, who are propably GoldStar everything will be almost the same.

And anyway, may I ask you spent your FPPs in "$75 in VIP reward bonuses"? I think its a very bad exchange rate as GoldStar. I use to buy gift token (for Amazon) with my FPPs, much better rate. (I hope they don't ruin it next year )

It might be because I am a UK player and have had changes rolled out earlier than usual.

Yeah I usually convert into cash, but if amazon vouchers are a lot better value will look into doing that instead. Definetly not a fan of converting to tournament tickets as I don't think they are worth the time investment.

Hit and won a 240x just now for $600. Was about to stop my session with a -$90 loss in 90 games but I was playing and running well after experimenting with some new lines for my first 50 games which didn't go so well. So decided to fire up a final 4 tables to play. In the first hand one of the players knocks down the other opponent to 100 chips. So it looks like it is going to go heads up with me as an underdog, and after a few more hands that what happens. I was getting outplayed to start with as opponent was playing very aggro raising and donking post flop everyhand. So I take a stand and bluff raise all in his donk with complete air when I was down to 300 chips. I wouldn't normally do this vs average opponent but I sensed he was likely doing it with ATC. I think opponent was kinda tilted at this point because he called my AQ 3bet with T6s and I held to take the chip lead. After a few more hands I pick up KK and finish him off.

Really happy to win this. It came at the exact right time as after much experimenting and messing around I finally think I have figured out how to beat these stakes for a decent ROI and it was going to be a long grind to get the required bankroll to move up.

Today's graph

Great acomplishment man ! New PR day , right ?


GL GL GL

The heater continues...

Nice results mate, keep it up.
Wise choice to fully focus on juicy Spins, you moved up to 7$s yet?

Thanks, will do my best.

Not moved up to 7$ spins yet. Thinking I'd wait until I have 200 BIs, so I can get a better idea of what my winrate is at the 5s. Not sure how soft the 7$ spins are compared to 5$ either - thinking its possible my $ per hour might be higher at the 5s because there are a lot more fish? I've never played a 7 spin tho so I wouldn't know how soft they are.

And the downswing begins...



I have heard that swings get pretty sick in spins once you play with lower rois but at least I am still profitable. Been messing about with a variance simulator and I think there is about a 10% chance I will lose another $400 over the next 10,00 games and need to move down. Need to work on my game some more to get my winrate higher so I have to worry less about variance. Have got a couple of idea for areas that I could improve upon that might add an extra half percent or more to my ev roi. Time to do some studying.