Hey guys, never had my own on-going thread before but here goes nothing!


About me:


My name's Simon, I'm 26 years old and live in Edinburgh, Scotland. I studied journalism at Uni until 2010 however since then have done very little with it. I'm doing this primarily just as a place where I can write. Obviously poker and hands I've played will be the main theme of this thread but I'll likely talk football (soccer) at times as well. I hope I can include some interesting things from my everyday life too! This thread will be far more interesting if others get involved though so I welcome any questions, comments, (constructive!) criticism and feedback!

I'll say right now that I'm not looking to make a career from poker. I'm just a rec player. I have an unfulfilling but stable Monday-Friday job. A great girlfriend who I'll be 4 years with next month. I help coach a 2004 kids football team two nights a week which I love. I started a little under a year ago and they've improved so massively in the last 6 months or so that even though I'm more of the assistant than head coach I find it hugely rewarding. I also run a pub poker game on Monday night's - I find it hard to play my A game given the stakes but it's basically just a home game in a bar with more or less the same crowd coming for the last few years so it's a a good laugh and we all get along well.

I tend to play short sessions when I can - if you're expecting epic 10 hour grind sessions I'm afraid you'll be disappointed!

I've been playing poker since ~2008 when I started playing in local pub leagues and deposited $50 on PKR. Through binking a couple of donkaments, PKR blackjack and playing 50-100 NL with like 4 buy ins in my account I cashed out $1800 and thought I was a total baller lol. Looking back, obviously I was just a fish on a mega heater.

I've started taking poker more seriously the last couple of years, and was grinding 100NL zoom a year or so ago, making more there than from my day job. That said it wasn't over any sort of meaningful sample and I was playing hugely underrolled. I withdrew most of that money and spent it on fun stuff before blowing the little I left on Stars through trying to play 200NL zoom with my entire roll on the table (lol, bankroll management) and having no desire to grind microstakes...

Fast forward to today and I'm hoping this thread will act as motivation for me to grind regularly, actually using bankroll management for a change and not spewing. I'm also hoping that by posting hands I'll get better at studying and reviewing which I've never been big on at the best of times but have completely ignored recently... My starting bankroll will be the $400 I had left on Stars.

Goals:

Be Honest: If I play horrifically for a session, butcher a hand or spew off with a terrible bluff then rather than pretend it never happened, post it here and hope you guys shame me into not doing it again!

Play tight and don't spew: As I mentioned I find it hard to take micro stakes seriously at times so I'll 3 and 4 bet way too much and defend way too wide then spew post so I need to cut that out and play more TAG and selectively aggressive. Goal here is to stop defending weak hands OOP so much.

Get comfortable 4 tabling: I feel like I can 3 table zoom and stay on my A game but as soon as I add a 4th I find it much harder to concentrate and follow action on previous streets etc. This is more of a long term than short term goal however.

I've never been a big volume player so I'm reluctant to set a play X hands goal initially however once I get an idea how many hands I'm playing in a day/week then I might try and set a goal to play more in a few weeks or something.

Noob Q.1: How many hands is seen as a meaningful sample at 6max zoom? 10K+, 25k+,50k+... I've had various different answers so would like to hear people's opinions on this.

Noob Q.2: I've played about 11k hands at 25NL zoom and am winning however I want a much bigger roll before moving up. If I was 3 tabling (ie. $75 in play at a time) then how much of a roll would people recommend before moving up?

I started playing on Friday and managed 1400 hands and won a little bit. Off to the gym and then seeing my family this afternoon though so I'll post the graph for that in a bit. Managed precisely 0 hands yesterday lol.

Thanks to anyone who read all this!

A meaningful sample depends on your winrate and what winrate you're trying to demonstrate. If you're trying to demonstrate that you're better than BE and you've won at 5bb/100, about 110k to have a decent confidence level.

If you're trying to demonstrate that you're a 4bb/100 winner having won at 4.2bb, we're talking upper 8 figures.

Managed just over 2000 hands this weekend, I know that's literally just a few hours play for some of you but like I mentioned I've never been big on volume so relatively happy with that. Very early days of course but pleased with how things have gone so far seeing as the graph is going in the right direction!

Biggest Loss:

So remember where I said I'd post hands I butchered... Well... here's one

Obviously standard is to raise pre but I'm a big fan of Jason Somerville's streams and I've been experimenting with his limping blind on blind to keep pots smaller OOP strategy with reasonable success.

I think flop and turn are relatively standard but my river call is a donation. My logic at the time was that AT and any set except maybe 22 raises pre and I beat all the busted draws like Q9/J9/67 etc plus I'm at the top of my range and he can have worse 2 pair. This is probably a bit optimistic though cause I expect him to just call with a lot of worse 2Pair and from what I've seen big river all in's at this level are always the nuts...

Tbh, while I don't expect to get floated with 34 off on flop I'm still ashamed to admit I didn't even notice there was a straight out there...




Biggest Win:

Obv I can 4bet pre but button is running 40/40/33 over a LOL 10 hand sample so assume he's on the aggro side. I flat pre to keep all his bluffs and spaz in then seems standard post




No super interesting spots thus far tbh, I've just been playing relatively straightforward and fit or fold post which is probably what's needed at this level.

Using a SB limping strat requires a lot of theoretical work, and also misses a ton of value at 10NL (and, indeed, against most players up to about 200NL). Sample isn't big enough to make deviations against BTN in QQ hand but flatting there is std anyway.

Thanks for your comments so far

Yeah I think you're right. I admit I haven't looked into any theory or maths behind it but I think a limping blind v blind strategy is better applied to tournaments when there's some value to avoiding more marginal spots and preserving your stack as opposed to in cash where you can just reload if you bust.

You're definitely right about missing value too so just going to be raising my good hands from here.

Ageed on your second point. I was just meaning that I don't think 4betting would be that bad but flatting QQ would usually be my standard in the second hand

Played 950 hands after work... and lost 4 buy in's. Basically dumped back everything I won at the weekend to now be +$3 after 3k hands lol... balling.

Don't want this to turn into a BBV post but definitely ran awful (lost AK to AQ all in pre, AK to AT when I 4bet pre and got set over set with 99 on a 9T3r flop then boat over boat blah blah) Annoyed with myself though because I was noticeably tilting and made a couple of awful river calls near the end out of pure frustration. Would rate my play here as my C game at best.


Couple of big losing hands below:



Is river jam too thin here? Was pretty sure in game that it's fine as I don't expect him to fold big flushes and he has lots of AhX and KhX combos. Obviously lose to JJ and QQ but that's only 4 combos. Maybe gets closer if we think he ever plays QJ like this but not sure if I'm just being results orientated.

Hand 2




Lost a buy in here but totally standard I think. Feel like all the options are avaliable pre but decide to flat and play the hand in position. Raise the flop to get value from all his flush draws and overpairs and stubborn floats. He shoves for a lot but happy to snap call and sadly we lose the flip, meh.

Feel like this post might come off as a bit moany so will end it with the biggest winning hand of my last session (where I got lucky)

I don't think a good player will call with anything except Axhh, and even that's a huge IF - he has the nut-blocker, and, considering your line, you have a very good hand and there aren't really a lot of possibilities except exactly what you had. Obviously, all better hands will call and you're screwed. I think a call there would be fine.

Mostly folding 75s in h2 pre but guess we could 3b sometimes. Raise bigger otf like ~2-2.20.

h3 we should fold pre again I think, possibly fold flop and just x back turn as it isn't really a card that should generate many folds, and we have only 2 outs to realistically win the hand.

GL, subbed!

Very nice introduction and background. Good luck with your goals, subbed.

Thanks for the feedback.

My thoughts at the time were that I expected a random at this limit to just station off A and K flushes cause "I haz a flush that's a good hand" but as I said, I haven't played these stakes in a long time so maybe that's just optimistic and not giving enough credit to people! Especially thinking they call with just the King. My line does look pretty nutted and never bluffing though, so having looked at it again I agree with you that calling is better.

Yeah, I'd fold the 57s sometimes and 3bet sometimes. I don't think flatting the button is too bad although like I mentioned I was running pretty awful and basically looking for an excuse to play hands at this point (which I know is terrible haha)

You'd fold 66 pre 100bb's deep and in position? I'd literally never even consider folding here, is that bad?

Postflop I agree tbh: I could certainly fold flop with a player behind me but as I mentioned I was looking to play pots and opener can be barreling hands he'll give up on the turn... and we have backdoor straight flush draw

Turn I think is a pretty bad bet for the reasons you mention, I was considering bluffing river on spades although it's maybe too likely that one of them has a flush draw to make that a good plan. Then obviously we get lucky on river which is nice!

Anyway thanks for the GL I've just seen your thread as well so I'll definitely check that out, I've only read the first post so far but the panda gif's make it a great start! (Off topic but I love pandas... hence the avatar haha) GL to you too!

Thanks for the kind words man, much appreciated


I'm at work now and doing this on my phone but will try and get another short update later. No hands played yesterday though unfortunately!

Like I mentioned above I didn't manage a single hand on Tuesday so gonna be a fairly short update poker wise for now. Although just remembered that I meant to post this hand from the other day:

Think call turn is standard? He's obv never folding a set and I beat all his combo draws. If he has KQ then I still have decent equity. Don't think he's ever nutted when he checks river so should I be bluffing river??





Bubbled the money on my live Monday night game, shoved the button with Q5dd, both the blinds call and somehow I was in a good spot to triple up (v AQ and 44) when I flopped a 5 but sadly ace on the turn meant that was that.

Was at work and then coaching the kids football yesterday which went well until they decided to start flying in to tackles dangerously in the match at the end of our session... Was disappointing cause they're usually pretty good but we ended up having to wrap things up about 5 minutes early before someone got injured! Girlfriend got back from a hen do in Madrid late Monday night while I was out so just relaxed with her last night.

Got football training (as in I'm training, not coaching) for the 11 aside team I play for tonight so might grind a bit when I get home but depends how tired I am lol. I messed my left knee up last summer when I got my studs caught in the grass and twisted it and was out for about a year. It's more or less OK now but will occasionally just go so bit nervous about getting back into playing but figure I need to give it a go again sometime!

Just had a very quick and break even 357 hand session: Ended down $0.04 lol.

Only interesting hand of the session here: He snap shoved - I tanked quite a while and then decided he has enough A2s and 55 to make it a sigh fold but really wasn't sure... Just feel like I always used to call here then got shown 55 and feel like an idiot...

It's one week since I set myself the challenge of playing 10NL seriously and not spewing so time to see how things are going so far...

Figure I'll post a graph each week and since the first one was on Sunday and I'll likely play a bit this weekend I'll stick it up then.

Mixed news since the last update:

The good news is that I came through my football training without getting injured and felt like I did pretty well considering it had been a while. We have a friendly on Sunday but having been out for so long I'm miles away from match fitness and not gonna play. The disappointing thing was that even from slacking off on cardio for a couple of weeks in the gym my fitness has taken a battering and I was really struggling at the end of the warm up and shuttles at the start!

Going to try and get back into a routine and go to the gym this evening and then hopefully do ParkRun with the GF tomorrow morning. I only started going maybe 3-4 months ago and it's been a few weeks since I last went but I really enjoy it (http://www.parkrun.org.uk/) We do the Edinburgh one which is 5k along the beach front path and cause it's early in the morning it's a healthy start to the day but still gives you the rest of the day to do whatever you want which is nice! PB is 27.18 and while I'd like to better that tomorrow, given that it's been a while and I've been really lazy fitness wise recently I reckon it's extremely unlikely. Longer term goal is to do < 25 mins but that's a fair while off for now.

On to poker and on the plus side my last two sessions I've played 4 tables and felt more or less OK. There were a few hands I couldn't remember if I'd raised/called or 3bet pre so wasn't sure whether to c-bet etc lol... Obviously this means it is hurting my play a bit however given the stakes I'm prepared to sacrifice some actual $ and win rate for long term practice of 4 tabling and getting more hands in.

The bad news... I'm still running pretty bad and now actually losing and -$22 after 5000 hands. I'll try and not bore anyone with me moaning about bad beats because I'm playing for cheeseburgers and obviously these things happen but it's still frustrating to lose what feels like every flip for days.

My 3 biggest recent losing hands were all with AQ so sensing a theme here...

Hand 1:



I actually think flop is at least semi interesting on this hand. Most of the time I would prob just call flop but it's a wet board and I feel like I'm ahead of the SB's donking range and BB's flatting range so decide to raise for pure value although on reflection def think I should go bigger.

Obv not thrilled when SB shoves but I thought it's unlikely he donks and then over shoves with a set so expect to be up against a flush draw a lot of the time, especially given we don't have the Ac. Unfortunately he has the combo draw and turns me dead.

Hand 2:

I don't think it's horrific but this may have been spew...?




BB has an 18% 3bet stat although only over 32 hands so pretty meh. Figure BB can just think I'm trying to iso the limper though and then when he limps and just calls the 3bet I doubt he's ever super strong or he'd just shove given his stack size. Anyway I'm obviously happy to get it in v the short stack and I figure the squeezer will fold more than enough to make shoving profitable and get me heads up but maybe just calling and playing the smaller pot in position with a sweet, suited hand is better? Nice one outer for the AA on the turn anyway lol

Hand 3: OK Ok, this is more just for lolz but sums up how I've been running recently! (Opener was 33/27/10 so thought he could be light fairly often)



Noob Q3: Ashamed to say that I'm not even 100% sure on this but this means that given my equity, if my hands had held up when all in then I "should" be + $11 right?




The most disappointing thing is that I'm definitely still not playing my A game and don't think I have even for a single session this week. I've always been more on the LAG than tighter side naturally but as you can see from my 32/22/9 stats I feel like I'm playing too loose pre. I'm actually winning in every position except the blinds but there I'm getting absolutely destroyed.

Looking at my stats I'm almost certain that I'm 3betting and inflating pots way too much OOP from the SB and then calling with a weak range then folding post from the BB but I need to stop defending hands like 64o cause “lol pot odds”. I may be getting the right price to defend weak hands but unless I'm seeing the river then I'm not realising my full equity with these hands and too often I'm folding flop or turn having called with bottom or middle pair and backdoors. Considering this was literally my second goal in the original post then I'm pretty annoyed at myself but now I've addressed the problem the solution is actually sticking to it this time!

Goals for the next week:

STOP PLAYING SO MANY HANDS OOP AND TIGHTEN MY DEFENDING RANGE

Stop tilting: I've played higher stakes online before and I've played some big guarantee live tournaments where I had a great shot to go deep then got unlucky plenty of times and never let it affect me so tilting when I run bad at 10NL is ridiculous. I know it's only cause there's so many more hands so the beats come more often and closer together but it's still ridiculous!

Managed 4916 hands in a week without particularly pushing myself so aim is to hit 10,000 by next weekend although I've definitely been letting tilt affect me so if I feel like I'm starting to get tilted, tired or play worse then I'd rather miss this goal than play when I'm not feeling it.



Gonna try and start including pictures in this blog as well to make things more interesting although obviously difficult when my play is online. Will see what I can do though. Any suggestions for this welcome too

It's my birthday on Sunday and this is the first time in years I haven't really planned anything for it but will hopefully still make it a good weekend anyway!


Anyway, disappointed to be losing so far but still a tiny sample so not worried and will hopefully run better over the net week! Long update I know but that's it for now!

Just call the 3b pre w AQs in h2, it's a great hand to go multiway with, with jamming u are 90% just folding out worse

And yeah, EV adjusted means u should be up $11 if variance wasn't so cruel It's calculated this way that if u let's say get it in w overpair pre (like AA v JJ) and it's a $20 pot u "earn" the equity $ in the hand, which will be about $16 of the $20 pot since we are winning ~80% of the time.

Goals sound good, just remember to keep up with them! GLGL

Been a really good last 24 hours! Went to the gym last night and ran 5k in 23.40 which is my first ever <24 minute time and it'd been a while since I did much cardio.

Followed that up with a 26.38 time at ParkRun this morning for new PB there too so feeling good health wise so far this weekend!

Watched the first two episodes of a new series "Hunted" with the GF after the gym last night and it seems really interesting - basically 14 everyday people go on the run from a special forces type team in the UK. They have to try and avoid getting caught for 28 days. I reckon it'd be really fun to go on and found it interesting seeing people's different strategies - A couple of super tilting moments when people do stupid **** though lol

Out for a few birthday drinks tonight and then going to a couple of special meals tomorrow so looking forward to that The football team I support (Hearts) have a big top of the league game against Aberdeen tomorrow too so hoping they can win that one for me!

Very brief poker update: I just squeezed in a 10 minute session and in the space of about 3 minutes these happened...


Hand 1:




Hand 2:








Hand 3:








LOL. It's an easy game sometimes!!

H1 and H2 are std. Cbet bigger with JT and just jam turn.

Yeh they weren't particularly interesting hands tbh, just thought it was amusing that I was running so hot for a few minutes and that his massive overshove with QQ in H1 was pretty lolz. I didn't want him to fold a draw if i just jammed turn in JT hand. Thought it was more likely he'd spaz if I bet really small although given how wet the board is jamming is probs better anyway

Yeah, agree that flatting and seeing a flop is better!

Haha I thought so but as I said wasn't 100% on that. Thanks for the explanation anyway and makes sense to me now with the example

Thanks man, GL to you too!

Not had time to play too much or do a big update since Saturday. I'm heading to work in 20 mins but I said I'd do a graph a week so here's the one for the last week. Still below where I want to be but 6092 hands managed and back in the black at least!

[IMG][/IMG]

Will try and get a bigger update up today or tomorrow

Hey, nice thread man and gl

Subbed and gl. Play in the same pool as you.

Cheers man, appreciate it GLGL!

Awesome Thanks and gl to you too... Just not against me

Been a busy but really good last few days. Think my last big update was on Saturday so I'll try and get the last few days up to speed now.

Ended up playing a little over 1k hands and running pretty well on Saturday (pretty sure the last 3 hands I posted were all from that session). Then at night seeing some friends, getting a curry and having a few drinks which was nice. A quiet but fun start to the weekend and then Sunday was my birthday like I mentioned.

Had a really good birthday overall. Played zero poker and had a lazy morning at home with the girlfriend, then went and visited my Gran for a bit before the Hearts game at Tynecastle.

Unfortunately Hearts decided to defend embarrassingly badly, to the extent that I would genuinely be disappointed if the kids team I coach had been so poor... Ended up losing 3-1 to Aberdeen who stay top of the league having won 8/8. Frustrating because while Aberdeen defended and counter attacked well, they really didn't look anything special and we pretty much gifted them all 3 goals.

Sunday night I was out for dinner at an Italian restaurant with the GF and then when we got home for birthday cake, she surprised me with a trip to Berlin at the end of next month so really looking forward to that!!

Monday was back to work and normality unfortunately. Didn't have much time but squeezed in 160 hands and made a buy in. The pub poker game at night I'd had a few drinks and was just in one of those moods where you want to play every hand and don't really care at all. Made the final table then opened AQ got flatted and a short stack who was itching to get it in shoved. It's a good squeeze spot and I figure I'm well ahead of his range - I reshove and the guy who flatted snaps without asking for a count – oops. He has AA, other guy has 86 and obviously wins lol, AA takes the side pot and I'm out in 7th or something.

Had a really good coaching session last night. The kids won 4-3 at the weekend but a couple of the kids were injured and a couple were away so only had 7 there from a squad of 12. There's really nowhere to hide when it's quiet like that but they all worked really hard and did well with the drills which was good to see. Ended up having a 20minute or so game at the end where me and the head coach Gary joined in on opposite teams so that was good fun and the kids seemed to all enjoy themselves too.

Played about ~1k hands again yesterday with decent results.

Biggest recent win:




Pretty standard I think but always nice to wake up with an awesome hand when it just looks like a squeeze


Biggest Loss:





Hard to be too unhappy when you get it all in with the nuts but sadly the turn didn't cooperate this time lol.


This post is getting pretty long so I'll leave it here for now and put some of the more interesting hands up in a minute

I forgot to say in the last post but every session I've played since Friday I've been 4 tabling and I must admit I've been pleasantly surprised by how comfortable I've found it

I'm sure it is hurting my win rate a bit but even in 3 or 4 days I've already got a lot more confident with it so plan to stick to 4 tables for now and hopefully it will just continue getting easier and feeling more natural the more I play.

Regarding my play I definitely feel like I've been playing better than I had in the past week or so and I'm pleased to say I've been more or less sticking to meeting my goals. I'm not playing brilliantly by any means but I haven't really tilted at all, I've been relatively solid and have tightened up a fair bit. Not only with defending from the blinds but in regards to calling 3bets with weak hands just because I'm getting a good price so pretty happy in that respect.

That said there's certainly been hands I've messed up or not been sure about so I'll include a few of them here.



Hand 1




I'll admit I was annoyed at myself after this one. I think pre is ok to call a min raise but given he's short stacked and UTG then maybe I should just make a disciplined fold?

Postflop: It seems nitty but on reflection maybe I can even just fold flop when it goes check raise and call? My logic at the time was he can have draws and I can turn a Q/T/J/spade but not all my outs will be clean and UTG can still just have QQ/KK/AA and BB has 55 and 99 in his range

Turn I think is standard? River though, he bombs on a brick and given my play I can certainly just have Qx which I doubt he thinks is ever folding. I tanked but was pretty convinced I was beat and to fold... then convinced myself he can have JT or hearts but suspect that's optimistic given the blank run out and the fact he reps super strong post flop. I was really annoyed with myself when I stationed him saw he had a set given my gut was to fold and that I "knew" I was beat when I started thinking.


Hand 2:



I messed this one up by trying to be smart pre. Obviously I can/should just 4bet for pure value but he had a huge 3bet% so I flatted to keep his bluffs in and to make sure I was just flatting 3bets with some stronger hands too although not sure if there's even any value in trying to be balanced at these stakes??

Think postflop is pretty standard given pre, wasn't 100% sure what I was doing if he bet river too - probably sigh calling - but trying to be smart pre certainly made this hand harder than it should have been.

Hand 3:




Really wasn't sure at all on this one.

I can bet flop but felt like it was a way ahead/way behind spot and if I check then 99/TT/JJ might value own themselves and I can pot control when he has Kx.

Was pretty sure I was good when turn checked through then he over bet jams river... As I say I wasn't sure then and still am not even looking at it now. I tanked for ages and then folded. What would you guys do?

It's definitely possible he bluffed me but I feel like big river shoves are value heavy like 95% of the time at this level so decided to just give it up. On reflection, I think I should b/f river and hope he calls with his pairs?


Waiting on an email to see if football is on tonight, hope it is because was good to get back playing last week but if not then I'll try and get some hands in tonight!

Current results: +$27.25 in 7628 hands for 3.75bb/100 but obviously still a tiny sample.

Feel like I'm playing decently and mainly just value betting my big pairs and big hands for steady profits but can certainly play better. Goal for the next few days is just to keep 4 tabling, no fancy plays and to try to play my A game at least for the majority of sessions!

Cheers

Good luck.