Had a sweat session with Keith this morning and it turned out very well.



My red line was at about $1 which is awesome. With Keith's help, I was able to loosen up and play hands in marginal spots. Worked a good percentage of the time.

After Keith left, I kept playing for about an hour and that's when the showdowns came. I sucked out AA with AK (backdoor flush) and I flopped a set in a 3-way pot where one player had AA and another had flopped the nut straight. Managed to boat up and take a big pot there.

No real big losses surprisingly so that's why I was up so high. I must thank Keith for coaching me at 2 in the morning. What a legend.

So exactly what changes to your game have you made over the last week or so?

Over the last couple of days I've started to loosen up a lot and play less like a rock. Playing marginal hands and making less robotic decisions.

awesome, subscribed

see what i mean.....just wait for the monsters to get your money in and the rest of the time just try and play small pots, isolate limpers , limp behind limpers in late position with suited connectors etc. Don't just auto fold pre, look at the situation thats facing you,can you isolate limpers,do they fold to cbets, is a cbet with air likely to work etc. If they donk flop small into your PFR , raise them with air and shut down if they call.

All excellent advice. Will definitely be implementing this once more in tonight's session. When in doubt, "what would Keith do?"

Pretty good, short session tonight. I like the improvement to my red line.

Slow start, probably because I didn't play much yesterday and haven't completely cemented this new play style into my brain yet. I was getting it in with okay equity but never really thinking I "had it". I was mostly hoping they had a worse hand than they did.

So I decided to tighten up and started to get it in good. Red line fixed itself up toward the end as well. Note I didn't get pocket aces once the entire session and only had KK once. Kind of bizarre.

With this session, I reached a new high point for my bankroll which is excellent. I know Keith will get upset with me for saying this, but I 'made back' the $21 I'd lost 24 tabling. Starting to see a real positive change which is excellent.

you're looking to isolate and then cbet. if they are still in the hand after the cbet ,check the turn with your air , maybe bet 1/2 pot with your marginal made hands. you are looking to play small pots with your weak hands.Don't try bluffing them off their bottom pair with air .The key here is winning and losing small pots. DOn't be afraid to check behind on the river or check turn and bet river. how they react will be villain dependent. But fish love to ceck call, check shove rivers , checking behind saves you folding a bigger pot to a shove plus you get the info value of seeing what they got to showdown with. If they shove and you fold you have no idea whether it was with the nuts or with air. Once you see the showdown then you can adapt how you play later rivers against them.

I'm not upset , I'm just trying to make the point that you should be aiming at making the right decisions rather than how much you are up/down. SUre tha amount you are up or down matters but if you are down 2 buyins on a session because you got it in with 90%equity and villains hit their 10% chance in the long run that with even itself out and you will be making money. If you are up 2buyins but got it in with 10% equity and sucked out, in the longterm that will even out to being a losing play. and a massive leak.

A side effect of feeling happier with the way that you are playing means that you will become more confident in your play and more likely to make the right decisions and therefore improve your winrate. Don't let it go too far though that you get overconfident and start thinking that you can bully people , shove any two etc. reality will soon hit you in the face.

Thanks Keith. Taking a look at my overall graph below, one can see that my red line's exponential downward growth has come to a grinding halt while my blue line continues to grow.



About to begin a session now. Will update with more results shortly!

Session got pretty crappy towards the end.



Found myself continuing to barrel with top two pair and being called/shoved on with sets. Against a nit, I just can't put 2 pair down. :/

Hi Meale
Poker is about variance. In the short term variance is either kind to you or kicks you in the guts. Over the long term variance is a distant relative that you ring once a year to say happy birthday to. In the end variance balances out (to a degree). The question is how you deal with that variance in the short term is how you will go in poker. Tilt and you have no bankroll. Accept it (I know easy to say hard to do) and you will be a long term winner. At the end of a hand you need to be able to say (win or lose) that you played the hand to the best of my ability and the thing is with experience and time that ability will increase.

1. Things I have noticed is you say that you are 9/7 or whatever. Assume everyone has HUD's and knows this stat. If you come into a hand you like it. If you 3bet/min-raise you have a monster. This is why people can play 23s or 56 or 8T. It costs them say 6c or 12c and you will pay them off with $2/$5 if they hit.

2. Bluff, sometimes. It is not bad to double barrel with air. If you raise, c-bet and then check, generally this means you have air but raise, cbet, bet people have to really look at their hands. If they continue STOP, no more MONIEZ.

Generals
1. Do not slow play, value bet, value bet, value bet (accept maybe all-in noddy's)
2. Checkraises - they have it, fold. "But they could not have hit that flush", No way they have 33 here". Yes they probably do. As I think Keith (WWKD) said, money not bet is money saved. At 1c/2c can they really be on a level to bluff you off a premium hand, NO.
3. Do not min-raise, it is horrible, 3x, 3.5x, 4x
4. Position, it is powerful. Your cbets get through better, your set hit can pay you off to the UTG raise. Use it.

When starting out I found Gripsed Poker Training (Gripsed in Youtube). It is free and I have learned a lot from him. He goes over sweat sessions, positions, bankroll challenge etc. He is at a higher level than 2nl but the concepts taught are really good and relevant for all levels.

Anyway I will keep reading and hope to help. Sorry for the novel.

Cheers Grant

Thanks Grant for stopping by! I have watched a fair bit of Gripsed actually, the guy's excellent. I find he only has a few videos at 2NL though.

When you were talking about tilt, I must say I've learnt very quickly not to get tilted. I think it's actually one of my strong points. So long as I know I played the hand well, I'm not too worried if i get sucked out on. My problem is knowing whether I played the 2 pair vs. set well or set vs. flush well.

I'll post some hands when I get back to my computer.

Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

SB: $2.00
BB: $1.60
UTG: $2.00
UTG+1: $1.41
MP1: $0.98
MP2: $0.66
CO: $2.60
Hero (BTN): $3.18

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is BTN with A 9
5 folds, Hero raises to $0.06, 1 fold, BB calls $0.04

Flop: ($0.13) 6 A 5 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $0.10, BB calls $0.10

Turn: ($0.33) 9 (2 players)
BB bets $0.22, Hero raises to $3.02 all in, BB calls $1.22 all in

River: ($3.21) 4 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $3.21
BB shows 5 5 (three of a kind, Fives)
Hero shows A 9 (two pair, Aces and Nines)
BB wins $3.10
(Rake: $0.11)

Below is a good example of why a fish will call you down with nothing but a nit will call your trips down with a boat.

Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

UTG+1: $5.09
UTG+2: $1.35
MP1: $1.90
MP2: $1.65
CO: $2.65
BTN: $1.41
SB: $3.06
Hero (BB): $2.00
UTG: $1.48

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is BB with J T
UTG calls $0.02, 3 folds, MP2 calls $0.02, 1 fold, BTN calls $0.02, SB calls $0.01, Hero checks

Flop: ($0.10) T 5 6 (5 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $0.08, UTG calls $0.08, MP2 calls $0.08, BTN folds, SB folds

Turn: ($0.34) T (3 players)
Hero bets $0.24, UTG calls $0.24, MP2 calls $0.24

River: ($1.06) A (3 players)
Hero bets $0.76, UTG calls $0.76, MP2 folds

Final Pot: $2.58
Hero shows J T (three of a kind, Tens)
UTG shows 5 5 (a full house, Fives full of Tens)
UTG wins $2.49
(Rake: $0.09)

Tried to bluff a nit on one of the last hands, didn't work. I still managed to get back the money lost in today's morning session and some.

looking good still, winning small pots from the marginal hands will stop your redline plunging , the strong hands will then keep the green line moving in the right direction.

Yep, it's going well. I find that I will need to focus a lot more than I am if I want to stop making mistakes in some spots. Will update tomorrow after the morning session.

Welcome back to another edition of Deep Sea Fishing where we catch, only the biggest fish. Please welcome tonight's host, Harvey Meale!



On tonight's show, we bring you a 1000BB deep maniac fish. Through some degree of godlike luck, this fish has managed to swim her way into a giant stack, 4 times the size of the maximum buy-in for this limit.

Once this fish reached these depths, she began raising every hand to 5BB in and out of position, bullying the smaller fish around her. The fish would c-bet with 5BB and continue barreling with air until she floated down the river.

Having studied the ways of this fish for a few hands, our master fisherman, Harvey Meale, looked to make his attack. Being in the seat to the right of this fish was a terrible place since he was always out of position against her.

It seemed as though this fish was in fact, a pussy cat, folding to any signs of aggression. This meant, taming the fish/pussy was a difficult task.

Okay, this story has gone on long enough. Pretty exciting table though, but fishy swam away after a couple hundred hands. Here's my graph of the session. Made just as much profit on other tables that I could be more aggressive on pre-flop.

if you get someone like that on your left , consider leaving the table, they are going to make playing that table extremely hard. Much easier to play them when you are in position than out of position and you are likely to be playing big pots not knowing what he's going to do ..or more importantly what other players acting behind him are going to do. they'll likely adjust by waiting for big pocket pairs and letting him stack off and call him down.

Also .....why is there such a massive gap between your vpip and pfr. seems like you are calling/limping an awfull lot. which is going to imply to villains that you have a weak hand and isn't going to help you cbet and take down pots in a lot of the hands you are playing.

The VPIP/PFR was only over 33 hands but it was like that because I had to adjust how I was playing because of the maniac. I was waiting patiently for a good pre-flop hand and was waiting and ready for someone to my left to leave the table so I could snag their seat.

Not an ideal table, but a good learning experience I think.

Not a good start...



3-bet with AKs and got shoved on by 22. **** happens!

i was also referring to the stats on the other table 15/3 . are you letting adjustments on 1 table bleed into your play on other tables ?

I think maybe it's because I'm limping with suited connectors OOP now as well as 22-66.

The cards definitely didn't go my way tonight. Lost with AK twice, KK once, and AA twice. Cards just didn't go my way. My red line saved my ass.

playing without initiative, card strength or position is a recipe for disaster.try and see a cheap flop with the benefit of position . hitting a pair on the flop is unlikely to win the hand with SCs. you are looking for straights,two pair and flushs with them to make them profitable.just play them from co and BTN initially