I think yours was one of the first - if not the first - threads I subbed to on here, glad to see you are still keeping it going and getting some good results too.

Do you have any ambition to play full-time in the future, or will poker always be a side income for you?

Keep up the good work!

5bb/100 at 100z is pretty decent, gl. Btw, how many zoom tables do you play at once?

Glad you enjoy it. I am not planning to play it full time. Have I discovered it earlier it would be a viable option. But being in my thirties, having invested a lot of effort/time into my education and having a well paid job doesn't make poker at this point a realistic option for me. At least not to play it professionally. Currently I see it more as a hobby where it would be nice if it could provide me a solid side income.

Sample is still small. But I am satisfied how I played this year so far. I think my foundations of the game improved tremendously this year and when I compare them with other regs I definitely consider myself nowadays as a stronger 100z reg. Imo having 3bb+ at 100z is decent and 5bb+ is in my eyes a very good winrate over reliable sample size.

I play 3 tables. I tried to 4 table a bit this year, but feel that my game gets much worse.

Hey mate, just caught up on the thread, great to see your progress, keep smashing those 100z regs

Thx man! Haven´t seen any updates from your side in a long time. Hope life and grind is treating you well

August & September 2020 Review

Hi guys,
long time no see. Hope everyone is doing fine. As mentioned in one of my previous posts I was for 4 weeks on vacation. Spent a lot of time with my family and really enjoyed it. I live abroad for a long time now and try to visit my family as often as much as I can. Also getting older makes saying goodbye to my parents after my vacation finishes more and more diffiult.

Unfortunately due to the covid situation I had to stay a lot at home. It was quite different than the years before where I spent a lot of time going out, partying, etc. Apart from dating one girl and meeting with my close family I didn´t had contact to almost anybody else which is quite weird. But what it is not weird this year.

I didn´t had any plans to play poker in august/september but since returning to work I was working basically part time since the company is trying to save some money. However, in october I will return to 100% to work.

Therefore I had a lot of spare time in september for poker.

Study & volume: I put a ton of hours into study. If I had to guess ~40 hours. Did a ton of solver work and data evaluation for SRP spots and reworked my flop & turn strategy completely. One of the main changes is that I went away from range betting on a lot of boards and started to implement a more polar and mixed strategy. Range betting had for a long time many merrits even on boards which are not supposed to range bet, but imo population already starts to defend way more correctly nowadays and you don´t put them really anymore into tough spots like few years before.

Results: Volume looks great. But this is the only positive thing. Results are awful. I think I am breakeven over the last 100k hands. I am getting hit very hard by variance. Most of the time I have few ok sessions (nothing spectacular) followed by 1-2 sessions where I absolutely get murdered at the tables. And then this cycle is repeated over and over again.

This is quite frustrating. I know that 100k hands is nothing but playing part time this is basically ~1/3 of my yearly volume. Putting a ton of work into the game and not getting rewarded is something which is hard for me to accept. I have huge respect for every pro who is doing this for several years.

I will continue in october with the usual blog updates. Let´s hope for a PGC upswing

October 2020 Goals

[] Play 40k+ hands

[] Study for 15h+

[] Check results/stats just once per week

[] Update blog once a week

October will be a busy month. Have a ton stuff to finish at work. However, I will try to put significant time into playing and studying. There are 3 months left in 2020. If I want to reach 200z an upswing would be very welcome this month. After last 100k hands my mindset isn´t in best state, but I feel on top of my game right now. Will continue to hard wok off-table. Hopefully it pays off. Let´s all run good this month

gl dude

Thx mate

Week 40 Update:

Week started out great and ended with one of these sessions which you just want to forget. I think I played by far the best poker since opening the thread. With the quality of play and volume I am more than satisfied. Mental game was also on point until the last few hundred hands where I punted two stacks off due to tilt.

Put 4h into study by mainly evaluating solver data in Excel for SRP´s. I think I have now a very solid idea of my flop/turn strategy in wide ranges spots. I need to put some time defo into UTG/MP vs BB SRP´s. It is a spot I have never really looked into it, but I assume their is much more polar betting going on due to tigher ranges. For now I am mostly using the same strategy as for BTN vs BB which is very likely not optimal on a lot of boards.

Should also learn to fold range vs aggression of russian/german regs.



GL!

Has anybody experience with the bell curve in PT4? How accurate is it? What sample size is required to have reliable data? This is mine for last 100k hands. It reflects my feeling that I rarely connect with boards. Has anybody have been with all 3 hand classes(sets/flushes/straigths) on the positive side of variance over a larger sample according to the bell curve?

Luck bell curve will adjust to sample size right? Surely that’s the point. I’m sure if you select samples (filter for hands) you’ll see a sample where all three lines were on the positive side.

If you want to evaluate your luck there’s better ways to do it.

Yes, it adjusts to sample size. I have been with all 3 lines on the positive side, but basically almost never over >20k sample.

Week 41 Update:

Solid week on & off tables. At the end maybe I could have saved 2-3 stacks. Not a bad play really, but went for protection in few 4bp´s as a x/jam and managed to see always aces.

Studied for 5.5h mainly looking into turn cbet strategies in SRP´s after using a polar bet OTF. Had a few interesting spots in game where I was unsure how to construct my range OTT. I put a ton of work over last 2 months going over how to construct my ranges in the most frequent SRP´s.

In the next few weeks I defo need to review my preflop ranges and maybe look for new one. I use the BTS preflop bible but I think the ranges are a bit outdated (seems that suited connectors went from the most loved one hands to the most hated ones ). Any suggestions? Saw that the guys from Upswing have some kind of advanced solver ranges which were simplified by Fried Mulders. Might check them out. Don´t want to spent 500+ USD on ranges from rangeconverter tbh.

Volume next week will be probably on the lower side since I have to finish a ton of stuff.

Weekly Graph


Until next week!

Week 42 Update:

A disastrous week which can be summarized as me constantly running vs the nuts. At some point it just became ridiculous. It was like people started preflop with a set vs me.

I think in the last 3k hands I played by far the worst poker in a long time. Punted 3 stacks off which I could have saved easily if I had played my A-game. But the constant high and lows in my graph within the last few months really got to me.

Maybe it is time to take a break from poker which is very unfortunate when I consider how much effort I have put into study. My theoretical understanding of the game is better than ever but at this point I am not sure if I can bring this to the tables anymore. Not sure if keeping this thread alive makes still sense. I was never a big fan of guys complaining, but currently I don´t have anything positive to share.

Take some time off. If you don't enjoy poker, just quit it. If you decide to come back, ditch 100z and find some soft games.

GL man! I believe you!

Is it just me or does stars now force customers to play with aurora? Got a notification and can´t change from back aurora. Since starshelper doesn´t work with aurora and as it seems they won´t provide an update to support aurora, does anybody now an alternative? Maybe starscaption? With this stars decision starshelper is pretty much dead.

From what I know starscaption still works. That’s the end of starshelper unfortunately as I don’t think they are going to update their software.

Yeah you are right starscaption works. I tried it yesterday on NL2 since below NL10 it is free to use.

Starshelper was a great piece of software. Based on them they will not provide an update for aurora.

In general, aurora seems awful since it requires way more computer resources than the old system.

Has anybody using starscaption experienced something like this:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=5182

Would appreciate any help. It is annoying af.

Figured it out.

I really resonate with your blog. I have a full time job and I'm not interested in turning pro either.

I'm reluctant to move up in stakes because I feel like my game is not good enough, and my opponents are going to crush me, knowing that I can only play ~1.5h a day and study a few hours per week. Do you have this feeling, or how do you compensate this "shortcoming" of being a semi-pro and battling with full time pros?

Good luck. Subbed

Good question. Not sure which stakes you play, but imo there will be a limit where it be very difficult to compete with full time pros (if you are not lucky enough to have access to some very soft games). Is it 100z on stars? Definitely not. I see everyday how a big percentage of the regs do some basic mistakes over and over again. I am talking about some really basic stuff which should not happen in the era of training sites, solvers, solved preflop ranges, etc. At least not for a pro.

Imo you can still beat reasonable stakes on the mainstream sites while playing part time. But you need a very good approach when it comes to studying and organization of grinding/work/life.

What I mean with a very good approach is:

- Find the best ressources for study. I think this is the most important one. A lot of stuff out there. Not everything is good and if you are not able to find the best fit for you, you might lose valuable time which will cost you more than a pro because your learning curve will be much slower compared to him (you have less time to waste). Spending your time wisely when it comes to studying is crucial.

- Your study approach needs to be very smart. Don´t try in the limited time you have to study 5 different spots. Take 1 spot, study them to death and after you mastered this spot move to the next one. This is something I struggled a lot. In the past I sometimes felt under pressure because I didn´t have much time for study and then I would try to "compensate" this by studying many things at once. Outcome was that I never really became good at the things I have studied and after few weeks/months I had very little clue about them.

- You have to be very organized and create some kind of structure which works for you best when it comes to balancing life, work and poker. This is probably from person to person different. But if don´t find the right balance, you might have much more noise sources than a pro which will affect your progress/results. Especially if you have demanding job.

At the end there will be also some disandvantages compared to a pro which are very difficult to overcome. If you play low winrate pools and even if put some good volume in for a part time player, be prepared that variance can dominate yearly graph. Grinding it out becomes difficult with a volume of a part time player. If you are not comfortable with this, you can then ofc move down in stakes, find softer games, etc.

So if we are not talking about stakes like 500z+, I still think you can beat almost every game even as a part time player. There are a lot of challenges which a pro might not have, but with a smart approach to poker you can overcome most of them imo.

GL buddy!

Thanks for advice. I think somewhere along the path I forgot why I have started playing poker.

When it comes to finding soft games and playing reasonable stakes, this will be very difficult due to upcoming regulations.

Thx mate.