I don't really know if I'd call it a BR challenge lol. It's just to add some structure to the moving up/moving down process, so that you've got some plan or course of action to reach a certain level. I didn't even realize you were playing FR; for some reason I thought you were playing 6max.

Good luck mate, very good thread to follow. Learn a lot from you

Thank you. By not doing the same mistakes I did esp regarding mental game issues, and working on your game regularly, beating the nanostakes can´t be that difficult. So use the first pages of this thread mostly as an example of what you shouldn´t be doing in order to succeed . Which stakes do you play atm? GL!

Yeah, but I think it´s nice to have a system like that. Yours is a little too aggressive for my tastes lol, but still it´s valid. The system I developed (copied actually) is a little better than the previous one of endlessly grinding to see my real wr, but still safe so I won´t be stressed.

Nitring endboss here but will work on improving that trait. Still folding QQ utg readless vs squeeze tho

GL!

Bad, bad, bad!!!

Yeah, endlessly grinding to see your "real" winrate is both impracticable, and a bad use of time. I can see grinding to see if you're winning at a stake before you move up. But knowing your winrate at a stake that you don't plan on playing again much (if at all) in the future seems kind of pointless. Instead, focus your efforts on future goals.

First day of my new zoom phase over. Nice to be on the place that Blackrain9 called the circus (the playing field as a whole is, let´s say, wild, almost like I remember from the past), and train my mental stamina. Btw, from what I´ve seen so far, the recs play the same way of the 10nl ones beat me up lol. The only difference is that we are 5 times lower here. Regs obv are worse (on average ofc, I´m talking about the typical ones).



Results are meh, turned a profit but still running bad losing nut flush vs str8 flush and things like that. It´s the nature of the game, and not a big deal in the medium-longer term obv (if I thought it was, I wouldn´t be playing online poker).

Anyway, a few things about the change in format:

Good:
1) New game, I´m feeling the rush again. Change sometimes is good to avoid burnout and loss of motivation.
2) The pace is faster (I´m 3-tabling) and I get the same volume I used to get when 12-tabling FR, but it feels easier, since the speed in zoom can be more or less controlled by us depending on the speed we fast fold. If we have a difficult decision on 1 table, we can simply reduce our speed and think.
3) Cheaper place to remember how to play vs big recs. One oddity of online poker is that 5nl is a limit more or less ignored by a lot of fun players. They play 2nl or 10nl (maybe 10nl is the new 2nl, inflation?? lol), so the 5nl pool overall is way more nitty, lower wr lower variance thing. Not saying there aren´t recs there, but the number of recs there compared to 10nl is way lower. Not mentioning 2nl obv.

Bad:
Only one: Have to find an ergonomically solution to avoid the constant movement of my wrist while playing. I´m using the keyboard to fast fold, but still have to keep the mouse moving from side to side. The last thing I want is an overuse injury there.

Cheers!

Desperately need more stats on villains to understand zoom differences, so volume minichallenge: 20k hands until sunday.

Won´t update this thread or look at my results (lol?) before the end.

Vaaaaaamoooooo

That's a good start. About the mouse thing, how much are you moving your mouse? Because my movements are pretty small.. Can you increase your mouse sensitivity (so the cursor moves farther for the same movement)?

I did, and the movements are very small. I think the main difference is the speed. When I was 6-tabling normal I would tile them, reach all and do the stuff, and everythink was fine, probably because the action was slower. In zoom, since we are usually folding a big portion of the hands dealt to us, the movements end up being faster. But today, I think I managed to improve things a little bit, trying not to do the action as fast as possible, and also doing more intervals between them. Booked a 5k hand day btw

Im glad you started playing 6max, i would not choose Zoom (less time playing vs bad opponents, lower wrate, less time playing againt bad regs, lower wrate) etc. I would still advise you to try 1 month my strategy.

Play on more sites, play regular tables, table select more, play more when pools are better, you will see its different from site to site, and when pools are bad, use time to learn and post hands.

Thank you Donkwithout$, I´m taking this new challenge I made to myself as an opportunity to adapt to 6 handed poker, at the lowest stake, and even though normal should be better all the way down to 2nl, the play seems atrociously bad at all times on the zoom pool, so I really don´t think I´m leaving to much $ on the table right now. But will definitely consider this idea even as low as 10nl.

Cheers!

So, my attempt to grind zoom from the bottom lasted 3 days. While I hate to bail on those challenges ... errr no, I don´t hate. Anyway, I´m back to 5nl normal. I know how to beat the nits here. It´s easy money with relatively low variance. Still lots of fish especially at the fun times and days, and I think I´m slowly learning how to extract their money without being caught myself in their silly games.

About fish, people always tell how we should play vs them to make lots of money, how tables without fish are bad and other common sense stuff. What they don´t tell us is that it´s not the easiest thing to do, both strategically and psychologically. The ranges they play are very wide and they are tricky. Now, exploiting nits to get a few bbs here and there, that´s easy lol.

The main reason for my return is that I have a personal rule I won´t put outside money into poker related stuff, and in order to renew my RIO subscription I must earn the money playing. And earning it at 2nl is a lot of meaningless work Plus, I´m back to the original plan and also want to earn a shot taking BR for 10nl.

Last 3 days:



Cheers!

I think you're the only person I know that prefers playing nits rather than fish lol. Only teasing, hope it keeps going well!

At micros the money isn't made vs fish, but vs bad regs. Once you understand that, you can crush with high win rate and pretty much no variance.

I don't even play when the pool is filled with fish.

Money is made vs the players with the worst winrates, obviously, because by definition they are the ones who give the most money to the other players. So that is the fish. If the "bad regs" are losing at a worse rate than the fish, then they are the fish. Maybe we have different ideas on what fish means lol.

If 90% of players are regs and 10% are fish, there is still more money to be made vs regs.

If regs are losing less, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are making smaller mistakes. They just aren't getting exploited as hard.

If you're taking money from fish and are breakeven vs regs, you'll probably end up being a ~break even reg because of rake.

However, most regs at micros have some serious leaks that can be exploited hard. Once you start doing it, you can start printing vs them much more than vs fish. The variance is also much lower.

Fish are actually more balanced than regs in a lot of spots at micros imo (donking, check raising, big bet sizings at the right spots...). The easiest ones to make a variance free profit vs are usually nits not fish.

its good that your playstyle allows you to profit off of bad regs because honestly the bad regs are probably similar in tendencies throughout all stakes. they mainly make it from having fish at the table which as you move up in stakes theres less fish so these are the guys that can beat micro stake games but lose at anything higher.

for the fish comment though i struggled in some sessions against the fish and really the only way to play them is to nut peddle. if im against a fish and i have AK or AQ i miss the flop i just check fold to them i wont ever cbet unless i have a good hand ill never bluff them etc.

My main point is, that you usually have 1k+ hand samples on regs and will continue to play vs them for months/years. So if you find a way to exploit them you can make a lot vs them over time.

While fish... You usually don't get more than 200 hands on them before they disappear for ever and they all play a bit different. Some bluff way too much postflop, some never bluff... Trying to exploit a specific fish is pretty pointless.

If you want to beat the games and move up, you should probably focus on beating the regs.

ZKesic, if your point was that the reg to fish ratio is so great that it more than makes up for the fact that you make less against an individual reg than you would an individual fish, then I can see where you're coming from. But you said you'd rather play on a table filled with bad regs than a table filled with fish. This is what I don't agree with. Because, the players with the worst winrates are the players you make the most money from. If the bad regs have the worst winrates, and you're making the most profit from them, then you're just not exploiting the fish well enough. Otherwise, if the bad regs are truly worse players, then in my opinion, they are the bigger fish.

I'm not saying you shouldn't focus on beating the regs, because you should. Just saying I'd rather play against the players who spew the most money. Whether that be fish or bad regs (which I would then consider fish anyway). I do see your point on gathering enough of a data sample on the fish, but you can usually group fish into few categories and play accordingly. Many fish play similaraly.

to me fish are the maniac calling stations. they usually go broke really fast i dont keep notes on them because they are usually never seen twice. they'll call anything down but play really trappy with their big hands. usually people pay them off very light on their big hands because of their table image someone will have like K6 on a K79Q2 board or w/e and get all in 100bb vs the fish and the fish will show up with TJ or something. their table image makes people think any top pair is good against them (which it is most the time) but they can be very trappy.

i think against these maniac calling stations (cuz its never just one particular one this type of player shows up a lot at micros) waiting for good hands is the most optimal strategy. i used to lose a lot trying to force situations to get 100bb stacks against these players cuz i wanted to get their money before someone else but i realized that is causing a lot of variance and just to be patient about it if someone gets their money before me its alright because as mentioned above these type of players show up frequent are almost always one buy in and done players. so if i dont get one of their stacks in one session i know ill stack one in future.

Well, a lot of the time I actually feel that I'm making more vs some regs than vs fish. It's also much more fun to play vs them.

You're probably right though. Most fish are losing ~30bb/100 over my samples, so playing vs them is definitely important and likely more profitable than playing vs a reg, even if you're exploiting him.

Though, you seem to be implying that most regs are making money at micros, which definitely isn't the case. I've seen researches that show that only top 10% of players make money under 50nl. Meaning that 3/4+ of regs are losing, which means they can in a way be considered fish. And if they're losing at ~10bb/100, you can see how with some exploiting it would be possible to make more vs them than vs fish, right?

This debate isn't really a very productive one (meaning it's not really accomplishing anything) lol, but I'll just comment on this bit. If you work on exploiting the bad reg, maybe you can cause them to lose more than the fish. But if you worked on exploiting the fish with the same effort, then you could probably cause the fish to lose far more. But as I said, this debate is kind of pointless.

Against many fish, AK/AQ is a good hand. And you can value cbet it, even if you miss the flop. Many fish will call with enough worse hands, and even against many better hands they call with, your overcards are often good outs.

i dont know if entirely agree cbetting with A high is nice when their is fold equity but against a player who is going to call 90% of the time it just puts me in a bad spot on turn ot either double barrel against a station or have to check call and give a station more money on bricked rivers.

i dont mind floating ip with AK (against non calling stations) when i miss a flop because i have fold equity potentially on turn if htey check to me.

Problems with playing too much against fish are, imo:

1) Extremely high variance, which usually means tilting as **** if you´re not a human robot. And tilt at the micros is probably one of the biggest reasons for mediocre winrates I think.
2) Their styles demand specific attention and adaptation, which you can´t use against other players. Basically doing unconventional or even "bad" plays sometimes. Overdoing this and allowing this to become unconscious competence may be bad for your future.
3) They are not so easy to play against at all, as ZKesic put above, they can be quite balanced in some spots, more than most or even the entire reg pool.

If you ever look at the regs playing lower stakes, like 5NL and 10NL, you´ll find a lot of them multitabling for hours straight, very long hours indeed. I´m pretty sure they are playing for a living, as no normal person would do this with a normal regular job. And to earn a living playing 5NL, no mather where you live, you need to play a lot of tables for lots and lots of hours almost every day, esp since the avg wr of winning regs in my db is very small, smaller than mine lol.

How are they improving? How can they play like that and find time to study?

So, I keep what I (and others) was saying. Playing and winning vs bad regs/nits is not big money, but it is the easiest and most reliable way to win.

But I´m playing today at the donkfest anyway lol. Hopefully results will be good.

Fish have different stats. If a fish has 80 vpip and fold vs cbet almost always, you can cbet almost atc I think. If they don´t fold, you need to be more careful with your ranges.