Hi guys,

I've been reading the forum for nearly a decade now, but never really participated in any discussion, so hello! . Name's Thomas (not Dwan! #savetom) and I'm 31.

I'm a winning live 200NL cash game player currently living in Essex, UK. I've won just over £60,000 net (about $85,000) to date playing every other weekend as a hobby. For the sake of the majority, I will stick to the American currency ;P.

My online results to date were mixed but that's probably due to the preference of playing live rather than clicking buttons and never really studied the online aspect of the game. I've played a few online cash games here and there as well as some tournaments (maybe about 150k hands from the top of my head) over the course of 3 years but overall I'm down about $500.

I've got the money and could start playing 50NL online now, but I'm here to learn from scratch that's why I'm gonna kick off with 2NL and build the BR naturally.

I deposited $20 on Stars last week and grinded it to $111.00 with 16k hands so far. I'm gonna use starcoins to purchase online tournament tickets and hopefully boost the BR this way.

The challenge

I want to build my BR from $20 so I can play 200NL. I'm gonna need about $5k to do so.

The results so far

Current BR: $111.84
Cash games: $98.37
Freeroll Giveaway Ticket Tourney: $13.47
bb/100: 17.2
Hands: 16k





Next small goal: 10NL once BR is $200-250 with $150 SL
Current stop loss: $75 and move back to 2NL to rebuild to $100

My approach towards BR management was quite aggressive at the lowest stakes and I switched to 5NL when +$30 up to have a shot and never went back. I found that 5NL is much softer than 2NL for some reason, and that's probably because of too many short stacks at 6-max tables where I'd be winning all 60-80 cents with the nuts and there wasn't too much fold equity to bluff in good spots there.

I will be posting updates and interesting hands regularly so feel free to join the discussion and hopefully give me tips and advice which will be appreciated.

Thanks!

Good luck

GL man! will be following! (tried to do something similar in the past and maybe will try again when i find the time.. and inspiration again )

Thanks guys, appreciate it.

So I've played about 2k hands yesterday and 2k hands today so far and took a small hit. Basically, the run bad shenanigans have hit me as I was bricking the flops, running my KK into AA (twice!), my AA were cracked 3 times by JJ, KK and QQ (in this order) preflop and I've managed to lose $14 stack to set over set.

I grinded it hard last night to minimize the loss to $13 and today I'm $13 in profit so basically broke even over 4k hands course at 5NL.

The good bit is that I was putting the money in good spots and were a bit unlucky so don't really care about the results (the EV graph says I should be about $33 up).



I've noticed that HM2 confused a session with 2NL and 5NL. The session from the 4th of April is 5NL rather than 2NL, any advice? Thanks guys.

I had a shot at 10NL and lost $10 with my AA vs KK and closed the table so I wasn't tempted to burn more. I don't really tilt or get upset about the lost cash, so that wasn't hard to do.

Current BR: $102.85
Difference: $8.99
bb/100: 14.2
Hands: 19k

No tourneys played. Overall, I'm quite happy that I've managed to grind it back up to only $9 loss. I definitely wasn't playing my A game though.

Day 8

So, I've played another 3,5k hands this evening and I found that multi-tabling isn't for me. To be frank, maybe that's the reason why every one says that live poker is much softer because you only have to focus on one table so it seems softer. I don't know, I need to move up the stakes quick so I can experience the difference for myself!

Overall, I was playing my B+ today but I'm happy with the spots I was picking apart from 2 or 3 where I had no reads at all post flop. I guess it is a bit different and you can't ask questions can you .

I hit quads 3 times today with 2x pocket pairs and quads runner runner when all in on the flop, but 1 pair would have done it anyways. Too bad I couldn't win much with those as the guy who's gone all in was short stacked and the other two folded on the river.

There's one hand I'm not particularly happy about and hopefully someone will share their insight on it:

Hold'em No Limit ($0.02/$0.05) - 2016/04/07 16:13:05 CT [2016/04/07 17:13:05 ET]
Table 'Donati' 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1 (BTN): Hero ($5.14 in chips)
Seat 2: Villain ($6.92 in chips)
Seat 3: wachholtz ($19.27 in chips)
Seat 4: B_miha_Y ($5.14 in chips)
Seat 5: Moab1969 ($5 in chips)
Seat 6: sl1000k ($5 in chips)
Villain: posts small blind $0.02
wachholtz: posts big blind $0.05
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [Kh Qd]
B_miha_Y: folds
Moab1969: folds
sl1000k: folds
Hero: raises $0.10 to $0.15
Villain: calls $0.13
wachholtz: folds
*** FLOP *** [Kc Jd Qc]
Villain: checks
Hero: bets $0.22
Villain: raises $0.54 to $0.76
Hero: raises $4.23 to $4.99 and is all-in
Villain: calls $4.23
*** TURN *** [Kc Jd Qc] [5c]
*** RIVER *** [Kc Jd Qc 5c] [3d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Villain: shows [Jc 9c] (a flush, King high)
Hero: shows [Kh Qd] (two pair, Kings and Queens)
Villain collected $9.90 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $10.33 | Rake $0.43
Board [Kc Jd Qc 5c 3d]
Seat 1: Hero (button) showed [Kh Qd] and lost with two pair, Kings and Queens
Seat 2: Villain (small blind) showed [Jc 9c] and won ($9.90) with a flush, King high

I've got just over 700 hands on the Villain and saw him semi-bluff the very same spot OOP maybe 4-5 times when he busted all. I knew he didn't have a set, AK or AT as he usually 3bets with these but didn't expect to see what he had and how much less equity I've had when all in on the flop. Looking back I would have called his check raise the see the turn and shove it then, but I thought I'd take his chips then as I was hoping to have at least about 65-70% equity on the flop rather than 52%.

Day 8 Summary

BR Difference: $44.31
22,5k hands bb/100: 17.1

Quick update:

Sorry for the lack of updates - this doesn't mean I haven't been playing though! I've had some issues with HM2 (and my girlfriend which has now become my ex), but it should be resolved within a few days so I will post a few graphs then.

I've put about 70 hours of studying since the last update which had helped my red line tremendously and boosted my confidence in tough spots.

It's quite fascinating how different online poker actually is in comparison to live, specially when you don't have the same folks at the table that you've been playing with for months and know most of their tells.

Overall, I'm at about 50k hands so far, moved up to 5NL and the BR sits at about $300 so not a massive progress, but it's going up. Think I'm gonna move to 10NL any day now, so hopefully the climb will be a bit faster.

Best of luck man! Go for it. Dont be lazy. !!!

Thanks mate

Hi guys

I've been studying more than playing for the past week, but still managed to squeeze about 10k hands.

I signed up for Upswing Poker Lab by Doug Polk & Ryan Fee and I must say that I'm amazed by the info they're selling on there. I mentioned before that my red line has improved drastically and that's probably thanks to that. I realized that I lacked some major fundamentals in online poker and feel super confident and comfortable at 6-max on stars now.

I've been mainly playing 5NL but had a successful shot at 10NL which I absolutely crushed winning about 11 buyins in a few hours sesh.

Even though the BR sits at nearly $500 now I did move down to 5NL to test out new strategies I've been learning from Doug and Ryan and I wanna take a more conservative approach to my BR management as I play quite a few MTTs so I'm trying to figure out a good balance between making cash at cash games and blowing it off in MMTs lol.

I'm trying to figure out the way of how to post hands from a converter as I've never done it before, so if any of you can help out that'd be great.

I scrapped HM2 as there was a major issue with my system where it'd crash all the time, so I went ahead and bought PT4.

I will be doing weekly full updates on Fridays with lots of graphs from the beginning and throughout, but on occasional updates like this I will be posting session graphs.

Update

Today I had a quick session maybe about 2 hours on 5NLz where I've been running quite unlucky, but that doesn't really bother me. Things will pick up and my aces won't be freakin cracked by KK, QQ and JJ preflop when allin lol!

PT4 has its own hand converter that's very clean

gl

Thanks mate, will check that out!

gl bro, have similar goals in my thread. Ill be following.

Thanks mate, will check your thread out and follow too.

Right, so there's a few departments that I need to improve on:

1. Stick to regular posting on 2+2 ffs.
2. Stop smoking while playing or quit altogether.
3. Need to start going barbers regularly for that cut!

Again, I have been mainly studying online poker for the past couple of weeks rather that putting on decent volume, but I realised that my game has a lot of leaks and I'm looking to get rid of them asap.

As I mentioned earlier, I signed up with Upswing Poker by Doug Polk which is great. Additionally, I signed up with Duecescracked and Run It Once. I've been working hard on my fundamental play, poker theory, CardRunners EV and Flopzilla.

I must of put in about 80+ hours of studying in the past 2 weeks which made me realise how much more there is to learn. I'm enjoying every minute of it and can see my game improve every session which is a good sign.

I've been also experimenting with different strats, probably not at the best of times as I hit a bit of a downswing, but that didn't really bother me too much.

Results



Current BR: $488.14
Hands: 81k
bb/100: 4.23

Here's the best bit

I opened a sunday million lobby to see who was playing, what the payouts were and I wanted to find Doug's table. I was about to close it when my laptop froze and next thing I know I'm in the fooking tournament. I must of clicked register when my cursor froze and about 3 weeks ago I turned off the confirmation dialog thingy in the options to register. Of course I busted the tournament and the BR sits at $488.

VIP Progress

I'm doing the gold star this month and I'm way more than half way through already, so should be enjoying the new status around the 20-24th of May.

Summary

Because I found out how much stuff I still need to learn, I have decided to stay at 5NL a bit longer to get the ropes of what I'm learing at Upswing, DC and RIO. I think I will continue to build a decent BR at these stakes and I'm gonna be well rolled and taught when I hit about 200k hands to play bigger. I mean, I think I will move up to 10NL quite soon, but I want to test out what I learn on players that I have a lot of reads on.

I have also cashed about 8x $10 for rakeback so that's a good addon, but man, the rake is killing the nano stakes so bad it's sad.

Last night session



So my online game has changed completely since I started studying it properly and analyzing tough spots and I seem to not get stacked as I used too. There's probably tens of leaks I still need to work on, but after putting in a decent amount of studying of the 6m format I am not in the dark anymore which gives me fuel to carry on.

Interesting spots from last session

PokerStars - $0.05 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players

Hand 1

BTN: $19.05 (VPIP: 17.82, PFR: 17.82, 3Bet Preflop: 14.29, Hands: 107)
SB: $10.30 (VPIP: 30.65, PFR: 21.14, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 129)
BB: $7.31 (VPIP: 27.42, PFR: 16.94, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 129)
UTG: $5.84 (VPIP: 17.74, PFR: 16.13, 3Bet Preflop: 10.87, Hands: 128)
MP: $5.43 (VPIP: 25.60, PFR: 17.60, 3Bet Preflop: 2.22, Hands: 130)
Hero (CO): $6.60

SB posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.07) Hero has J J

UTG raises to $0.15, fold, Hero raises to $0.50, BTN calls $0.50, fold, fold, UTG calls $0.35

Flop: ($1.57, 3 players) Q K 4
UTG checks, Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($1.57, 3 players) T
UTG checks, Hero checks, BTN checks

River: ($1.57, 3 players) 9
UTG checks, Hero bets $1.12, fold, UTG raises to $5.34 and is all-in, fold

UTG wins $3.65

Please let me know if you think folding here is too tight. It smelled like a flush from the URG player at the time, but now looking at it not so much. I'd probably have called if I had a diamond blocker, but felt like folding there was a good choice.

---

Hand 2

PokerStars - $0.05 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players

BTN: $1.40 (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 1)
SB: $5.71 (VPIP: 25.37, PFR: 19.40, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 68)
BB: $6.68 (VPIP: 41.67, PFR: 33.33, 3Bet Preflop: 16.67, Hands: 13)
UTG: $5.00 (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 15.71, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 71)
MP: $5.13 (VPIP: 24.73, PFR: 21.51, 3Bet Preflop: 5.71, Hands: 95)
Hero (CO): $15.36

SB posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.07) Hero has K Q

fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.12, BTN calls $0.12, SB calls $0.10, BB calls $0.07

Flop: ($0.48, 4 players) A T J
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $0.30, BTN calls $0.30, SB raises to $1.50, fold, Hero raises to $15.24 and is all-in, BTN calls $0.98 and is all-in, SB calls $4.09 and is all-in

Turn: ($12.94, 3 players) 3

River: ($12.94, 3 players) K

SB shows K Q (Straight, Ace High)

Main Pot [$4.32]: (Pre 28%, Flop 31%, Turn 39%)
Side Pot#1 [$8.62]: (Pre 50%, Flop 50%, Turn 50%)

Hero shows K Q (Straight, Ace High)

Main Pot [$4.32]: (Pre 27%, Flop 31%, Turn 39%)
Side Pot#1 [$8.62]: (Pre 50%, Flop 50%, Turn 50%)

BTN shows 2 3 (Flush, Ace High)

Main Pot [$4.32]: (Pre 44%, Flop 38%, Turn 21%)

BTN wins $4.14
SB wins $4.13
Hero wins $4.13

At the time I put 1 villain on a set and another one on a fd. Let me know what you think about this spot as I'm not sure if jamming there was the right play

---

Hand 3

PokerStars - $0.05 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players

BTN: $4.88 (VPIP: 24.65, PFR: 16.20, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 143)
SB: $6.86 (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 10.00, 3Bet Preflop: 25.00, Hands: 10)
BB: $5.00
UTG: $5.02 (VPIP: 35.71, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 14)
MP: $24.61 (VPIP: 19.27, PFR: 14.06, 3Bet Preflop: 2.60, Hands: 194)
Hero (CO): $33.55

SB posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.07) Hero has K A

UTG raises to $0.10, fold, Hero raises to $0.50, fold, SB raises to $1.65, fold, fold, Hero calls $1.15

Flop: ($3.45, 2 players) J 3 Q
SB bets $5.21 and is all-in, fold

SB wins $3.31

Easy fold OTF, but I wonder if maybe jamming pre would have been a better option. The logic behind my flat was that I'm IP but that didn't pan out too good

---

Thanks guys, I will be back with more.

Peace.

Hey guys,

I'm kinda confused about the line I've taken in the hand below. Some insights would be appreciated!

PokerStars - $0.05 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: $5.14 (VPIP: 20.72, PFR: 13.15, 3Bet Preflop: 2.78, Hands: 257)
SB: $6.30 (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 2)
BB: $2.55 (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)
UTG: $3.70 (VPIP: 26.32, PFR: 21.05, 3Bet Preflop: 20.00, Hands: 20)
Hero (MP): $13.01
CO: $5.70 (VPIP: 7.69, PFR: 7.69, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 14)

SB posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.07) Hero has 7 8

fold, Hero raises to $0.12, fold, BTN calls $0.12, fold, BB calls $0.07

Flop: ($0.38, 3 players) 9 3 Q
BB checks, Hero bets $0.23, BTN calls $0.23, fold

Turn: ($0.84, 2 players) Q
Hero checks, BTN bets $0.44, Hero calls $0.44

River: ($1.72, 2 players) A
Hero bets $2.45, BTN raises to $4.35 and is all-in, fold

BTN wins $6.35

Clearly he had a Q or a boat but what do you think about this line in general? Would that be a profitable play in the long run?

Keep it up man. I'm trying to get out of micro stakes also. Got my own challenge, hope we can make it happen. Be aggressive with your brm as long as you have a solid understanding of the game and aren't mass tabling.

78 hand- at these low stakes, you really shouldn't be putting yourself in thee situations. Most villains won't be thinking about what you rep and most bluffs where you know villain has the top of his range and trying to get them off of it is not the way to play. Unless of course you know they have weaktight tendencies. Against a decent regular, this bluff will work majority of the time but then again your range is polarized and if he's good he might be able to pinpoint that your story doesn't add up. Either you have a boat or air.

Thanks man, will look up your PGC too.

What BR management do you use? I ideally wanna stick to 50 buyins but that's I think a bit too conservative. And yeah, I've read a lot about mass tabling and I've been sticking to 4 tables of zoom or 6 regular tables and the WR is much higher now that I can put a bit of thinking into my game.

Regarding the hand, thanks for the advice. I don't usually pull off bluffs like that vs unknowns. I decided to do so there because I did the exact same over bet a few hands earlier vs the same opponent when I had a straight and got called, so thought it'd have been a good spot to bluff him this time .

Ideally 30 BIs and grind till I can take a 15-20 BI shot at next level for nl50+. Below nl25 I'll do 20 BIs and 10 BI for shot taking.

Just a small brag.

Got tired of 4-6 tabling on my 15" laptop, so I treated myself today to a 32" 4k Samsung monitor so I can actually see my hud.

First session on the new screen went quite well - 3k hands and 340bb+.

Will post a detailed update in a few days when I hit 20k hands and make the gold star VIP on stars.

Cheers!

PS. Don't judge my wallpaper. I moved back to my parents' due to unforeseen circumstances, and I ended up in a flowery room.

Thanks bro. Seems quite aggressive, but I guess I need to lower it to about 30BIs as I'm sitting at over $500 and grinding NL10.

It is pretty aggressive because I'm playing on soft tables and only 6 tables max. It also depends on your experience and how you play when taking a shot at a higher stakes. If you are gonna play like a nit and feel uncomfortable then it's best to wait.

I'm at 24/20/9 over 50k hands so not a nit and I feel quite confident, so will take your advice and play a bit higher with a stop loss. Thanks, I think I needed that extra push lol.

Sup guys,

I didn't play online too much this week as I have decided to use my week off of work for live poker and make the most of my RIO subscription so I only managed to squeeze 8k hands yesterday.

The results at live poker were quite good - I finished 2nd in a £45 freezeout for £520 and made a profit of nearly £1k at 2-2nl live. I usually play in the Hippodrome and Empire in London and the games are freakishly soft over there.

Anywho, the strategies I've been learning are paying off both online and live so I'm gonna be playing 25NLz next month as the online BR grew quite a bit since the last update. I'm currently at $928.00 and going strong.

Btw, the RAKE IS FOOKING MAD at the nano stakes.

Yesterday's session:

Also, lately I've been thinking quite extensively on a side challenge in this PGC. I noticed that the longer I play the better decisions I make, so I was thinking of 8-tabling zoom games for 24h straight.

I average 1.3k hands / h at 4 tables and I don't seem to have any problems with 8 tables of zoom. Well, I do time out every now and then if there's a tough spot elsewhere, but that doesn't happen too often. I know that my WR will prob go down massively, but I kinda wanna try it.

If I do let's say 2k / h with 8 tables that would produce nearly 50k hands in a session which sounds quite promising and perhaps I can shoot for Platinum star now that I've earned the gold one.

I'm not sure if I'm happy with a pee bottle, will need to think about this and perhaps implement 4-5 short breaks for toilet and some stretches. If I'm gonna do it, it will be in June on a weekend playing 4 tables of 10NLz and 4 tables of 16NLz. I'm not sure about streaming this tho as it gets quite hectic with 8 tables but who knows.

Let me know what you guys think.