MURICA noticed how much money leaving the country through online poker probably..

Week 3: Pitiful volume

Hey everyone I at least want to stay true to weekly updates so here is a 3rd week update. Only got in about another 3k hands on the week, but hoping for 12,000 hands by end of month which is falling quite short of my 15,000-20,000 hand goal per month. Relocating soon so life has been pretty busy outside of poker, but hoping to pick volume back up once I'm settled into my new place.

Things are still going well, but I've recently felt a little disheartened about the anon pools I play with on ignition/bovada. Apart from the short term reads where a fish shows down a hand indicating they're a station or an aggro fish, etc., I have to treat fish very generally and I feel a lot of money gets left on the table. It would be great to know whether a fish is going to say XR a marginal top pair on the flop or if it's always nutted with 2pair+. Unfortunately, I feel I can only make these extended fish adjustments if I have screen names leaving me with ACR or Global Poker. I got some good advice to study the reg population a bit more so that's what I've decided to turn my attention to in the meantime for my anon pools. Overall though this is just me complaining a bit and being jealous of the wonderful looking fenced in sites, but unfortunately I'm not in one of those states.


3rd Week Results

I'm glad to know that you made it to NL50 bro, your work ethic eventually paided off. Definetely following this thread and hoping for your success.

Best of luck for you.

Thank you man, appreciate the words! And hope you find success too and I'll be following along in your thread as well.

Hope you crush next month bro good luck

Thanks you too!!

Week 4: 1 day early

1 day early, but I am going to be occupied tomorrow with a moving day tomorrow (I'm moving by myself so doing it in multiple trips), so I thought I would drop an update now. Also, it's the start of a new month so good timing. In summary, month went well results wise, but it was the worst month I've had yet as far as volume goes. I only squeezed in another 2,000 hands this week putting me at 10,000 hands for the month. Additionally, I only put in about 25% volume at 50NL with the rest at 25NL. One thing I was proud of this month is I improved my preflop game! Had a DB review on the month and I made some great adjustments in my RFI for pool, improved 3betting, but still need to work on widening 3bet range in BB. Also, discovered my c-bet freq OOP is ridiculously high, but probably getting away with it due to the nature of the anon pool. I think for these 2 items (3betting from BB + OOP c-betting), it's a great time to step into GTOw territory. Amongst the low volume, I have also been horribly procrastinating on breaching into GTO. I keep saying I should and will, but just don't get around to it.

Main goals for the month:

- 15k hands
- Improved 3bet freqs from BB
- Improved freqs OOP as PFR

4th Week/January 2024 Results



Side note:

It might have been just my timing or due to the small amount of volume, but I honestly felt I had trouble table selecting at 50NL (iggy/bovada). I would sit down at a new table and have to play an orbit or 2 before I realized there are 1-2 decent regs on my right. This coupled with me not enjoying playing hands with them caused me to steer back to comfort at 25NL. I got a great suggestion to study some more potential exploit spots for regs and so that is what I've been doing as far as MDA work goes. What this led to was trying to find optimal bluff catch spots vs. regs. As aggressor, we're going to find we have a lot rivers spots where population overfolds (to certain bet sizes) such as X-X-B, B-X-B, etc. Depending on player type, hole cards, board texture, etc. I'll decide which line I'm trying to take, but often times decent regs are going to stab vs. our checks taking us out of the intended line. Essentially, before, folding a lot in spots that were probably over bluffed, but I've been trying to bluff catch these spots more often. Here are some stats I've taken a look at to gauge my river calling:



I know DriveHUD calculates RCE a little weird, but in PT4 this translates to 1.86 which I believe is not bad. I don't have my old database right now to compare all the stats as I threw it onto an external drive to clear some space on my computer (I need a new setup soon lol), and I wanted a clean DriveHUD for 2024. I wasn't looking at call river & WSD % + RCE at the time, but I do remember my old "call river bet %" was around 18% so I think I significantly upped that value.

Ignition pool is getting full of regs (or bots?) nowadays. I remember the time where you could sit on any table and most of the players were playing with an uncomplete stack or limping everywhere, any bad reg who plays fit or fold could earn a living at that time. Now although you still find losts of fish everyday you gotta choose what table you play a bit more, but it's still a lot better than PS or GG.

Anyway, regs or bots they both overfold in a lot of situations and also don't bluff enough when they should, it's just a matter of adaptation to the current times.

Yea I don't think it's the "super soft" site it used to be, but it still is plenty soft at certain recreational hours for sure. But yea I feel I'm sitting with a lot more regs at 50NL, and table selecting becomes more of a chore. Either way plenty of people are still winners at 50NL+ so I just need to learn to be one also

Week 5: Another 10k hand month ?

Quick weekly update, been busy with moving still (will be fully moved in by end of February) + had some other external life stuff to deal with this week. Looking like another 10k hand month potentially, but we'll see about it. Playing going smoothly and I feel very confident when playing against fish. I mean, I was confident before as far as extracting max value from them with my made hands, but now I feel I am even able to push them into lines where they'll overbluff and I can confidently bluff catch a lot with my marginal hands. Nothing concrete as my sample size is so small recently, but I'm feeling like I improved overall since the new year started. My main problem is when I find the free time for a session sometimes it gets cut to around 30 minutes due to really poor tables on iggy/bovada. Too many 2.5x opens, top ups, good 3bet sizes, etc. for me to feel motivated to keep playing + closing/opening new tables to find fish. At the end of the day, I just gotta prioritize poker higher again, but for now with my ongoing move, etc. it will probably remain as is.

5th Week Results:

^PS: these weekly results are cumulative of 2024 so far up to X week



February 2024 so far:

I should join the discord! I've been battling at 25NL on ignition as well, and yeah it does feel more reg heavy recently.

tbh I'm tempted to switch over to playing solely PLO lol bc it feels easier in many ways, with higher win rates

Just hit me up in DM and I'll send you an invite link!!

PLO looks fun, but seems like a pretty complex game with so many cards in hand. Maybe easier though if the population is less studied in general

Sounds good - I just sent you a DM, for discord link.

As far as PLO goes, I'm still learning and not that great tbh, but it seems like a much more profitable game than NLH. I kinda just hopped into it with some basic looking at videos etc. It feels like a lot of low stakes like NLH games, where there are a ton of pots that are multi-way, and its a lot about playing good ranges to the nuts, being good at hand reading etc.

A couple of questions for you, how do you table select in ignition? I've never table selected online, but realized I should, vs constant battling of regs. Just look for sub 100bb stacks and some people that open limp and/or use bad size preflop?

Yea multiway pots I tend to definitely play more face up just because of the higher chance of another player connecting with the board. However, lots of multiway pots also indicates lots of fish at your table and it's really only a matter of time before you get heads up with them and can dominate in my opinion. In our group we sometimes like to filter our results from heads up pots vs. multiway pots and that gives some good reassurance we are still exerting good aggression heads up. I think we have an excuse to play a bit more passive multiway.

Generally you'd table select by opening a table and seeing if there is any fish you recognize (I do this on Global Poker/ACR), but in the case of bovada/ignition the pools are anonymous and you just open a random table. In this case I look for shortstacks that aren't topping up, open limpers, cold calling from non-BTN positions, weird sizings, etc. It usually takes an orbit or two to assess the table and figure out if I want to close and open a new one. The frustrating thing is bovada/ignition has a 4 table limit so if you are playing 4 tables and want to change one out you have the possibility of closing one table and then getting sat at that same table when you open a new one. This is what frustrates me and can get tiring when the pool is at more reg-heavy hours.

But yea, table selecting is much more profitable than battling regs. Reg battling is fun and good to improve, but you should table select because reg battles will happen inherently, just better to have fish at the table at the same time.

Also, sending the Discord link now!

Thanks! Just joined the discord.

I feel a bit dumb for not table selecting previously online, but recently winning so much against bad players at 25NL has made me realize how much more I should focus on that.

I also look for cold calling as a sign of a weaker player, but it is a little bit funny, because GTO has cold calling ranges from every position (even at NL25 rake structure)

And many of the best players in the world have cold calling ranges from non-BTN positions.

And, of course, open limping from SB is the same: on lowstakes, mostly fish open limp from the SB, but GTO open limps the SB a lot.

Yea I get what you mean, and I wasn't paying attention to cold calling from those positions before because there are GTO ranges like you said. But more so a combination of all these things. If I see a lot of cold calling I'll usually mark them as a "potential" fish and then if another indicator is shown I can confirm. Typically I let completing SB behind a limper/limpers go, but if it folds to SB and they complete I usually mark as well. It's not an exact science, but gotta take the hints where you can in an anon pool

Imo most of the players cold calling IP and from SB are recreational, the same with open limp from SB, there are some exceptions here and there, but I would guess that 80% of the time they are not regs.

Another hint to help us find out are the postflop bet sizes, if he bet on flop or turn with 1/2 or pot instead of 1/3 or 3/4 this suggests that he might be a recreational, since it's really rare to see regs doing that.

An even better hint that I noticed is if he open raise with 2.4 or 2.6bb, which proves that he is using a support software like Jurojin, since there's no such preflop bet sizes on bodog app itself (only 2.5, 3bb +).

Yep agree with it!! Good point about tips for marking regs quickly too, I use them as well

Week 6: No volume

Quick update: I've been without my main computer for the week since I had to move it earlier than expected in my relocation. Because of this no volume

Stay tuned, but hope to be putting in some volume next week once my move is done (that is if getting internet set up goes well haha)

Week 7: Settling in

Hey everyone, was totally MIA due to a relocation (moved about 200 miles away). Still unpacking and setting up the new place, but I made sure to get my computer all set up first and was able to get a few sessions in. Nothing much and I'm probably looking at a sub 10k hand month for February. Going to try to pick things back up like I've been saying, but with the recent move and stuff that comes with that priorities are constantly shifting around. Weekly updates here is good to at least keep me in check and keep poker on my mind so that I can try to fit it into the priority list at a higher position. Despite all of the lack of volume, I'm still feeling great when I do get the time to play so that's great. Definitely a halt put on the study, but being in an active group keeps the mind fresh and turning for poker so that's also good.

Halt on the goals for now until I can get a solid volume/study schedule going. Until then it'll be weekly updates with results from Jan 1 2024 up to the current week!

7th Week Results (2024 Cumulative)

Week 8: 5k hand month

Well I think it's official for me that poker is taking a back burner at the time being. I've finished my move, but new job is currently taking up a lot of time. I can still get in maybe 1-2 hours a day for poker on average, but that's probably it for the time being. I still feel great when I'm playing, but I've just been sticking to 25NL because I feel comfortable there. I'm stagnating for sure, but until I can get some more time to dedicate to study I might just keep putting in the volume at 25NL because it's a great end of the day activity. Still mixing in 50NL when I feel games are good and might try to bump up permanently if results permit, but not sure when that would be in the current state of available time. I'll still keep updating weekly to keep a log and keep myself somewhat accountable. Thanks for sticking around whoever reads still

8th Week Results (2024 YTD)

In til the end.

2 hours per day is not bad man, as long as you mark some hands for later study you can still improve a lot in 1 or 2 years. Anyway, I will keep looking this thread occasionally and hoping for your success.

Week 9: No volume

Just a check in. Unfortunately essentially no volume this week. Played a few 30 minute sessions, but my computer is starting to give out on me. Need to get a new PC soon haha. Hoping to get some good volume in this weekend