Its about time i update the blog.
After a really good first grind of the year it seems like we lost steam pretty quickly, was a really brutal weekend too which always sucks when you can see how easy the games are.
After the Sunday session i was thinking to myself how i could run so bad, feeling sorry for myself after having a pretty bad past few months. But then i started reviewing some hands and realising that i'm still making a lot of mistakes and not exactly playing very optimally.
H1
After discussing this hand with a cashreg friend there's a mistake more so with my process than anything. $11PKO early stages. Villain is tightish rec/micro reg.
Flop we can just cbet 2/3. This is one of our strongest Tx and we just want to start getting money in. This deep villain will call all pairs, and has a lot of gutshots that will peel at least 1.
Then on turn we can just go pot or overbet, villain can defo x/r ATo on flop vs 1/3, so KTo here is really strong and can push a lot of equity, and we are going to have to check back on a lot of rivers. Also villain wont fold Tx yet, and has plenty of other hands that pick up flushdraws/gutshots that will peel another street.
Then river i think is good. I expect fish/lower stakes regs to lead a 6 a tonne, so when it gets checked i think we can go thin for value, they might have a tough time folding QT/JT.
I'm pretty useless at 100bbs+ so discussing deepstacked spots is always fun.
H2
In this hand i just think my range visualisation is pretty poor. Villain was really tight (possibly just afk
) over last 150 hands so when he flats MPvsEP i imagine his range is really tight.
Something like this:
Could be even tighter. So i like checking a lot here, then just going for a x/r with my overpairs/strong Jx and some 9x/Tx/flushdraw bluffs. I can maybe size a bit bigger.
Turn without a club i think jamming with 1.5 SPR is decent, but this sizing i think is also fine.
River is where it gets really interesting. If we break down his range, he doesn't have that many flush combos (4-5), but can still have like 6-7 Jx combos. T9 and 77 i don't worry about too much, as i think on such a wet board IP will just jam these either on flop or turn.
I don't think x/c is an option on river, but i think I prefer just piling and expecting Jx to sigh it off at such low SPR (0.3), and if he has a flush then good for him.
Both these hands however outline much bigger issues, first one being that i'm not maximising my value where i can, and it shows i'm autopiloting to a simplified 1/3 cbet strategy, and not pushing enough equity on turn.
Then 2nd hand shows that my range visualisation is quite poor. I think both these issues can be assigned to the high volume and high table count that i have, but i think its also just a lack of focus (and creativity somewhat) and i end up just playing very static.
As i climb up the stakes again i definitely plan on reducing my tablecount during sessions, but i think when i'm playing such low stakes i need to play very high volume, as i would obviously prefer to have 40% ROI whilst 12+ tabling, than 50% whilst 8-9 tabling (lets hope that math adds up
).
Goals/Changes to next week- Ditching 888, increasing volume on GGpoker/ACR: 888 is just a pain in the ass for depositing/withdrawing, and even though its a very soft site and generally good for roll building, i think i might be cursed or something on it I'll just see how this goes for now, i will probably come back to it in the future.
- Work on preflop play: I believe the base of any solid postflop strategy is solid preflop ranges. Also when playing high volume i think its a bit easier to apply newly learned preflop knowledge, as a lot of the mistakes i make are more to do with me not knowing/forgetting than not applying. The main preflop spots i want to work on are:
- Opening from HJ/CO - I think i'm a little too tight here, and especially when players at lower stakes under 3bet especially vs LP opens, i think going wider from LP can be a really good exploit. Also i want to understand how our opening ranges change dependent on stack size.
- Defending BB multiway - I think my BB defence has become too static in multiway. E.g 50bbs, If UTG opens, UTG+1 flats, then our defending range is significantly tighter compared to HJ open, SB flat, where we can be a lot lot wider. Obviously i won't get it perfect but picking up on patterns will be a good start.
- 3betting as the BB - Very underbluffed spot in MTTs, but can be very effective especially vs LP opens where lower stakes players will overfold vs 3bets. I just never know what combos to use in game etc, and think having solid frequencies here will lead to a nice gain in EV.
I think just leave it at this for now. I will use mainly monker to study these spots and maybe produce some documents as these usually help me remember things.
I don't want to work on too much at once, as i'll still be regularly running PKO/ICM sims, so considering i'm grinding quite sick volume i don't want to give myself an unrealistic loadwork for studying. After this i definitely plan on moving on to some postflop work, specifically BBvsX, working on defending+x/r frequencies, as well as OOP as PFR, as i find myself just autopilot checking way too frequently.
Anyway hopefully i get some better results, as i feel like the more results i get, the more frequently i will post in here, i like looking back on results. Anyways onwards and upwards