Really enjoyed that hand analysis thanks for sharing , gl at the tables!

Thanks mate, and just for the record, my name's not actually Ben, it's Nick 😄

Thanks and no problem!

Cheers lad, was quite an interesting spot!

Playing live
Just thought id give a quick update to say that I'm currently at GUKPT Leeds playing the circuit there. And I sadly just busted early on in day 2 of a £400, but considering I came into day 2 as shortest stack of the entire tourney it's not too much of a surprise

I've never really played much live, so if anyone has any good advice I'll happily take it. Since right now I'm definitely quite jittery and nervous when playing, but I'm relatively balanced in that I expect a lot of this to clear up with more experience though.
Hopefully I can cash on of the next tourneys I play, although I'm not really expecting to at this point, even though the level of play isn't very good. There's just a lot of variance.

Live Venture
Now its safe to say that my GUKPT leeds live venture is over i can reflect on some stuff and whatnot.
I think i punted off about 2k in buyins. 2x 750 main event (although i sold some), 1x 400 30/30, 2x 250 mini main. Sadly i bricked everything, including losing a pretty big one day 2 of the main AAvsJJ, i finished about 68th with 44 paid. Whilst i'm a bit gutted to lose, it's not really about the money, it's more the fact that i really wanted to cash my first live event and get a hendon mob page

Overall though it was super cool meeting a bunch of people who i'd known or played with online a lot, and definitely made it a lot more fun. There were a lot of dodgy looking characters in the casino, but everyone ended up just being super friendly, so it was certainly a lesson in being judgemental.
I actually very much enjoyed the live experience, i don't really mind the single table grind, even if my table is more quiet. Although i did run into some issues that i will need to sort for next time i play a live stop. Firstly my health over the past couple months has been a bit **** to put it bluntly, and that certainly got exposed, playing long days and not eating for long periods of time made me really unwell on one of the nights, so i had to take a couple days off after that, i'll likely be taking some time off soon to work on my health. Secondly i was staying with a friend, but it was 45 min (if he was driving) from the venue we were playing at, which is actually quite far away (and if he couldn't drive me then it was more awkward to travel), so next time i'd ideally want to be a bit closer if i am playing events daily, just makes it easier to go back and forth.
Its highly unlikely that i'll do another live stop at least for this year, maybe i'll do one next year, honestly i just want to work on my game, keep grinding online, and keep increasing my bankroll. Although live is fun, its all very expensive (travel, accommodation, buyins with mad variance), so i just tend to treat it as an expensive holiday. If i was to do another live stop, i'd like it to just be lots of smaller buyin events just so i can settle into playing live more, so not some single big field event like the goliath, but more where there is a new small buyin event running every day. I'd likely go to Canada or America if i was to do this.

Live hands
With my day 2 today, i actually had 2 quite interesting/fun hands which i played back to back, against the same opponent, and i want to study them when i get home, but i'll try my best to write them up somewhat neatly. Feel free to leave any comments you have on the hands.
Hand 1
Hero has: QT
Villain looks like a reg, been opening quite wide.
bb2k, Villain(~150k stack) opens UTG 4.5k, 5 folds, Hero(20k stack) call SB, BB folds.
Flop (13k): KT5
Hero check, Villain bet 5.5k, Hero jam 15.5k, Villain calls.

Obviously this is quite an unconventional hand given i flat SB off 10bbs. But given that BB was quite deep, i didn't think he'd 3bet much, so from what i've learned in more recent times i think this is fine, although i need to double check. It could just be a terrible flat.
Then on flop with almost a 1:1 SPR i imagine i stack off any pair HU, although i was pondering if there's any benefit to just calling.
Villain ended up having KJ and i binked a T on the river.

Hand 2
This happened literally the next hand
Hero has: AT
Villain is the same as hand prior
bb2k, 5 folds, Hero(48k stack) opens BTN 4k, 1 fold, Villain calls BB.
Flop (11k): J75
Villain check, Hero check.
Turn (11k): 9
Villain check, Hero bet 4k, Villain call.
River (19k): 6
Villain lead 8k, Hero jam 40k, Villain fold.

My initial feeling is that this is one of the best hands to jam river with as a bluff, and i think villains sizing looks quite weak. Although bluffing a guy who i just sucked out on might not be the best idea.
With both hands the numbers won't be perfect, or even the boards, but the important info is all there i think.

Playing live compared to online
Earlier i spoke more about the general feeling of live, this part is more about gameplay related things.
Overall the level of play is a lot softer live, as is already known. 1 thing i felt like though, which was certainly the case with regs, is in massive pots, on the river people seem to call down a lot more/lighter compared to online. I felt like playing live it was very common to see people calling down in massive pots to try to acquire a big stack, even after the reentry period was over. Whilst online people realise that there usually aren't enough bluffs in here and are more capable of making big laydowns, and just taking the L.

In terms of individual gameplay, since i only played 5 MTTs total, i didn't feel like i was really able to utilise my skill that much. First in the sense of just being able to take some more unconventional lines like i sometimes do online, since the spots just didn't show up for me. But more importantly being able to go for thin value, watching live, people just seem to miss to much thin value, and i feel like i'm able to go for thin value where others miss it, but i didn't feel like i got the opportunity to go for thin value. So i ended up just having a lot of bluff spots, and just not really having the value spots to go along with it.
First 2 events (400 and 250) i felt like i ran super card dead, so i tried to use the nit image to my advantage. But i started getting more hands for the main event.

I might put in 1 more online grind tomorrow, but after that i will be taking time off. I head back home on monday, then 1 day later i'm going up to Bristol for a couple days to see friends, then will be going over to Spain for a week to see my mum. So i'll be back on the grind about 2 weeks from now (If i don't grind tomorrow).

15/10/21 Session




Been playing again for the past couple of days, this one was a pretty sick session! Very happy overall, feel like i've been really crushing. Making some sick hero calls and whatnot.

Streaming
I've been considering starting to stream. Would likely only do it once a week, just for fun, not really expecting to get many viewers. And i guess my stream would be slightly different in the sense that i play pretty much the highest stakes on euro sites (if not close to it), and i think i'd be the highest stakes euro sites MTT streamer.
I would pick the same day every week, i'm thinking Tuesday, there's a couple good higher buyins on this day, and i wouldn't want to stream on a weekend, since i want to max focus on gameplay. This also just forces me into a healthy habit of grinding consistently. If there's any interest in me doing this just let me know, as i'd obviously want to feel like i'm providing some kind of value to the people were watching, but want to know if there's any particular interest.

Never posted before in your thread but always enjoy reading it and about the life of a MTTr from the UK. Thanks for the updates and UL at the live tournaments. Get em next time.

The 888 lobby is looking pretty slick, have they done some updates or something? Not opened it up for ages.

Good luck man.

In for tuesday night streams for sure

Thanks for the kind words mate <3 Yeah i'm not too worried about the live tournaments, sample size of 5 so very typical to brick the lot.
888 got an update maybe a year or so ago, its ok, might need some custom table skins to make it nicer but overall i don't mind it. Although software usually doesn't bother me personally too much.

Awesome, i'll keep it in mind!

16/10/21 Session




I'm actually such a disgusting sunrunner its unreal. These past 2 days have been pretty sick. Excited for the Sunday grind tomorrow!

Stream
I plan to stream tomorrow (19/10/21), starting at about 8pm(BST)/3pm(ET).

https://www.twitch.tv/swann97

The set up will be a bit basic at first, but if i enjoy it then hopefully i can try to stream every Tuesday. Definitely consider this one somewhat of a pilot. But i'll be grateful for any support!

I'll post another reminder tomorrow around when the stream is starting.

Hey man! Really nice blog, I appreciate the purpose you mentioned for your blogging and I think this is the best way to do it. Know a lot of guys from BitB as weel, we might even have met at the tables . Really think that this blogging habit can take us further on our career and thats why I'm starting to journal as well, and will try to make this a habit. If you don't mind, come take a look! Cheers!

Sure, i'll try to check it out when i get time!

Stream
https://www.twitch.tv/swann97

Stream should be kicking off any second. Hopefully we be on most of the night so come hop in!

19/10/21 Stream Session


Had this nice little score on stream!

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who tuned in, was good fun, even if i was a little salty towards the end

Might look to stream again next Tuesday

Nice one NICK, I hope the stream goes well.
You come across as a good guy, all the best for the future.

Thanks mate, i appreciate the kind words <3

Stream
Just to let you people know i'll be streaming again tomorrow.
So i will post the stream link right before i start.

Hand

So i played this hand the other day vs a decent reg in the 200.
I must say part of this hand really grinded my gears, and i'll try to explain my thoughts why, because maybe i'm wrong, as i can certainly be stuck in my ways when it comes to certain things.
On my end i'm aware flop should be 1/2 pot cbet, but i'm an MTT reg so i just cbet 1/3 always.

Incase it's not obvious i really dislike villains turn lead. And there's 2 reasons that it bothers me, firstly i think it just shows a lack of understanding of how ranges work, and secondly i feel like sometimes people see a sim, or learn about a certain spot, then they'll completely misapply the concept to a spot where it could be similar but at the same time it completely isn't because they don't understand WHY the concept works.

So now i'm going to try to outline a reasons why he may lead here, and why he may choose the big sizing:

1. Middle card pairing on turn is generally better for caller than bettor
2. Big sizing because he is repping polar (Tx)

To address the first point, it feels like a common sentiment to lead turn when middle card pairs, however this doesn't give any consideration to ranges or why we lead. So when i bet 1/3 (from 'optimal' 1/2) it wouldn't be bad to assume that i am widening my range (cbetting range), or my range is weaker, which in both scenarios would mean that i have a lot of Tx in my range, so a T turn is not significantly better for the caller. If i were to use a bigger cbet sizing then i'd may be more polar, betting more top pair+ and checking more middle pairs.
So we generally want to lead on turns that pair middle/low cards because they give OOP a significant nut advantage, which means IP should check back the turn a lot when checked to, so the EV of leading goes up to max that value with trips. However as i've pointed out, i still have all the nuts here as IP, so leading makes no sense.

Also the sizing is what annoys me in game more. It might actually be a sick exploit, because i hate facing these big leads, and usually i'm shitting myself when i do get hit with them. Now i think there are spots where leading big (and i mean really big) can actually be very effective, but most of the time when people lead big, it just comes off as a bit greedy and not really understanding what they are trying to target/achieve. So what part of my range can you put in the bin for 2/3, that doesn't get put in the bin for 1/3? Like most of my 9x has a gutshot, besides maybe A9/98, and my Kx won't fold to 2/3 on the turn. Low Axs and lower pps will fold to 1/3, maybe AJ/AQ gets put in a tough spot. So you don't really get many more folds from the big sizing.
So i think for value it's not a great sizing, because if you have JT, why would you want to fold out AQ/A9/AJ type hands? these hands are basically dead vs you, and can definitely put in a lot more money on later streets if they improve.
Then when we're bluffing, people just have an obsession of just betting big on every street with a bluff, but then you're just kind of facepalming into really strong range. I don't want to get into this concept too much, but you can just smallbet turn, with the intention of firing off a big river bet as a bluff. In villains shoes here with J7o, whats the problem with keeping in AQo/AJo on the turn, have them put more money in, then brick, then bluff them out of the river? Also if villain downbets, there's a good chance i raise some of my Tx and straights, so now my river range is even weaker and better to bluff off into.

Obviously i ran some sims to back up all this text. First one just highlighting that i should cbet 1/2 pot with almost my range on flop:

Now i actually ran a sim where IP only bets 30%, and it goes for a rangebet. And villains flop response looks as such.

Now if we look at the T turn:

Very little leading, there's a bit more on 9x, but overall very little.

Lets look into range explorer to see why

Left is OOP, right is IP. So you can see OOP does have significantly more trips as a proportion of his range, however significantly less straights and boats (moreso in game as i expect population to raise flop more with 2p+).
OOP: 15.4%+4.0%+2.2%=21.6%
IP: 8.6%+6.2%+5.4%+0.4%=20.6%
So when we talk about how often each player has the nuts (trips+), its actually very similar.

Was quite funny that in the sim with range 1/2 cbet. There is more leading on the Ts turn. But i think part of that is to do with OOPs range being a bit tighter, so now it has a bit more nuts as a proportion of his range compared to before. There's also more x/r happening in the sim with bigger cbet, esp with top pairs, so it's all a bit weird.

Maybe this is all just a bit ramble, but ultimately as i said at the start i think this is a spot where villain was visualising ranges pretty poorly. So the next time you think about leading that board pairing turn, just think about these few things:

1. What does villains preflop range look like, can he have a lot of trips here?(in this hand, i open JTo-KTo pre, which i think makes a significant difference).
2. Whats villains flop cbet strategy? If he goes small then he could be cbetting range, if he goes bigger it could be a more polarised strategy with more top pairs and less middle/bottom pairs.
3. What block of his range am i attempting to fold out, and what sizing achieves that?

And finally just remember, you can bluff small on turn, with the intention of getting some extra value from villain before bluffing them off with a big bet on river.

I love swann pio analysis, it's always well thought out.

Looking forward to the stream tomorrow/tonight, lets gooooo

Great post as always nick, thanks for the content!
Gonna jump in for the stream tonight, can't wait for it

subbd & followd ..... gotta spy on all villians possible :P (only play stars, party, gg for now though)
glgl

Stream
Will be firing up the stream very soon.
Will be on from 8pm UK time, so hop in!

twitch.tv/swann97

Good breakdown of that hand, biggest takeaway is that even regs you consider good try to copy/paste PIO outputs/concepts and blunder. Tbh this is probably something we all know and probably do from time to time (at least myself :P ) but is nice to confirm it.

Thanks lad!
Glad to hear, thanks for the support mate!
Hehe thanks mate
For sure i can be guilty of doing the same. Range visualisation is really tricky but definitely the best skill to learn. €urop€an was an absolute god at this, and just listening to him breaking down ranges was amazing.

Stream
Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who tuned into the stream yesterday. And sorry if i came off a bit moody and frustrated, wasn't running too great as you could see but also i hadn't slept much. And streaming+grinding even separately really does take it out of me energy wise, so after a couple hours it can get quite tiring. But i still do enjoy it, and like trying to speak my mind in realtime. I'll try to improve the stream set up over the next few weeks and try to make it more interactive.

As for subscriptions it'll take a few weeks before i can take subscriptions as i need to do 7 different streams and i'm only at 3. But i'll be back again next Tuesday and mainly focusing on the sky's UKOPS series. So i look forward to streaming then!

Downswing
Rail posts have been a bit quiet over the past week or 2, and honestly the reason for that is i've just been getting pretty destroyed. I haven't been running very good, but also i just haven't been playing very well either. I'm basically just breakeven on the month after that big upswing after my break. And whilst this downswing isn't very big in terms of time (only 2 weeks) or in terms of buyins (~100 buyins), in terms of $/£ it is one of the bigger ones, as i've only recently started playing bigger games. But also on the small field+soft sites i play going on downswings are not as common as if i played a GG/Stars oriented schedule.
That being said, i find that downswings can have a lot of upside. When i'm running good and winning every session its very easy to think i'm doing everything right, when i'm certainly just getting carried a lot by variance. However when i start losing, this is when my in game weaknesses and mental weakness get exposed a lot more, and then i can start to work on these issues, and try to turn things around. Also when i was bitb i remember one of the first things i was told was that going on downswings is a good thing, and very healthy for your poker career to have them, as they provide good and necessary experience if you can overcome them (basically good character building). And then finally when i'm downswinging for me personally this is when i invest the most time into the game, as i just hate losing, and i'll do everything i can to learn more and turn it around. And as i've addressed before i can certainly suffer from success, so i always view downswings as like a 'karma' for being lazy.

The rule
When i find myself going through a stretch of not playing very well, or just feeling like my head and thinking is all over the place, there is 1 simple rule that i always revert back to, and this is somewhat the premise of everything i do and how i try to approach the game.
Now i'm going to be an ass, and i'm not going to say what the rule is. And theres 2 reasons for this:
Firstly, if i'm taught something from a CnC session, or from a video on a training site/course, or through a private coaching, i feel very uncomfortable passing on that information through my blog because 1, Its not really my information to give out, it's the coach who found out/taught me it. And 2, If i've paid for that information, i shouldn't really give it out for free. If i've discovered something myself, in my own time, then i have no problem sharing that information.
Secondly, whilst i debate myself personally on this a lot, and think a lot of people do it in poker when they shouldn't (e.g when people are paying them for their knowledge), i think this rule is too valuable to share publicly. This rule (and everything around it) is a big reason for my success in the past year, and it's really helped me to unlock my knowledge of the game and utilise it well. I just think a lot of people who play this game focus on the wrong things, so giving more people access to what i think is so valuable or free just doesn't make any sense, since that will just hurt me at the end of the day, as i think just this rule gives me a big edge.

Hand example
So i was having a big think about the way i play last night when i was in bed. And i won't give too much away yet, but i'm going to walk you through this example.
HJvsBB 60bbs SRP. T98, we'll mainly focus on IP, i ran the sim a while ago so preflop ranges aren't perfect, but it doesn't matter.
IP flop strategy:

Preferring the 1/2 pot sizing over bigger, could just default to b50+x in game. Interesting feature that AA without a spade prefers to check and become a bluffcatcher, since it won't be able to bet 3 streets on most runouts, so going as a 2 street bluffcatcher unblocking bluffs can be higher EV. Also getting x/r would be a nightmare for AA since if it ever stacks off it can just be dead, and its not really strong enough to get stack in, but is far from a weak hand too.
OOP flop response vs 1/2:

You can see the 1/2 pot size starts to make some 8x/9x indifferent aswell as some weaker 7x hands.
Then if we look at a blank turn like 2 :

Now IP goes for b70 mainly on the turn. And the reason is if it goes b150 with a hand like KK, it runs the risk of facepalming into mainly stronger hands from OOPs range.

So maybe a rule we could implement here would be like, on middling connected boards (e.g T98, 987), on blank turns we want to barrel using a 2/3 sizing as IP, since if we overbet we will be overvaluing our hand and running into too many better hands.

Now that sounds nice, but take a minute to think, and look back through the sim and try to figure out what the problem with my conclusion could be.

If you're still having trouble after a minute, to give a clue, think about how people play in the games we play in.
I'll leave some space, then scroll down after you've had a think.
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So i think the biggest problem with my conclusion, is that the sim for OOP is highly unrealistic compared to how the average player plays. I do not believe that the average player in BB shoes ever calls QJ/76 99/88 facing a bet, i think they always raise these hands, alongside a lot of 2pairs. This means on blank turns, when IP has an overpair, you basically never have to worry about drawing dead or close to it, and you very often have the best hand, and given there will be a lot of bad rivers, and it will be tough to get 3 streets of value from a lot of hands, using an overbet strategy on the turn to max our EV makes so much more sense.
OOP nodelock facing 1/2 pot bet:

Still quite a lot of bluffs but now raising most of the straights/sets and more 2ps (so still having a few 'traps')
IP flop strategy:

I simplified tree to only 1 bet size, but its starting to check a lot more, and mixing hands like AA a bit more.
IP flop vs x/r:

Even with all of OOPs bluffs, can just respond very passively and expect to be in a lot of trouble vs the raise.
However things get much better (where IP gets its EV) on the turn.
2 blank turn, after x/b/c flop:

Now IP can start absolutely smashing off turns since OOP is somewhat capped, but also hands like overpairs are just very safe to bet, even a hand like AT/KT i wouldn't mind betting, even though they do block a lot of the calling range for OOP.

Now you can see OOP is put in a very uncomfortable position where it has to start calling hands like AT/KT which is wasn't before because it just lacks good hands to call. Also you see hands like J9s making an epic megamaster, folding out A9/K9/KT mix, but getting called by J8s. I actually think this response is relatively close to how population would play.

So what i think could make a better conclusion, is on boards with flopped straights, on blank turns overbetting high EV hands (overpairs, strong top pairs) can be a very good option given how population plays, and will raise too many flopped straights/2ps on flop and be very weak on turns, with mainly 1p holdings.

I actually ran some sims like 975r COvsBB 50bbs, and overbetting turn was the case anyway on this same premise. And it made me realise that the way i thought about overbetting turns was very much flawed. And i need to think a lot more about how players respond to certain things and how to exploit appropriately.

Anyways GL sunday grinders! Also i need to use less commas but im too lazy to reread and edit the whole thing now

i love your p&g because it makes my head hurt seeing how much study and analysis has expanded since my heyday

Really learned a lot from those last two pio studies you presented. Very well articulated, thanks for sharing!



And nothing wrong with the commas. That's how people wrote 150 years ago when people were still educated.

hehe thanks mate! Just keep in mind at the end of day, a lot of stuff in game is just 'big hand big bet, small hand small bet' xD

Thanks mate, yeah i do like commas, just don't want too many otherwise it almost becomes difficult to read with all the breaks But i just type them so naturally i never realise until i read back haha

October summary

Only played half the month, but after such a strong start it somewhat fizzled out towards the end with a nice £5k downswing. But that's okay since its enabled me to feel very motivated, so hopefully November can be a big month!

Stream
Will be streaming again today boys! Starting about 20:00GMT

https://www.twitch.tv/swann97

Will be focusing mainly on sky since the UKOPS series is on and i'm grinding leaderboard+some sidebets. Music will also be different from usual, so come on by! Also i'd love to see more clips being taken from the stream

Any chance you can save the streams so they can be watched later? Big fan of the blog, played a good bit with you on Ipoker in the 100s and 200s and I definitely think you are one of the better regs there so I am sure you will turn the downswing around in no time. GLGL!

Hey mate, i did indeed save this weeks vod, so it should be up for a bit, sadly a lot of the audio is muted since copyright stuff. Awesome lad thanks for the kind words! You mind if i ask what your screen name is on ipoker? I might recognise it

02/11/21 Stream session

Binked the £220 pko on sky for £4k!
What a sick stream, was super fun on FT with most of the people on FT tuned into the stream and in chat. Ran super pure to win it, but that's MTT life
Thanks again to everyone who tuned into the stream! Especially the ones that put up with the audio issues at the start

You can actually watch the moment i binked it here:
https://clips.twitch.tv/BelovedPlacidChimpanzeeTinyFace-cbymRXrDaoSjP4Md

No time to rest though, i have to be back on the grind tomorrow to continue the leaderboard/sidebets ukops grind, we go again