great blog, will be following.

In, gl!!!!

Cheers both, GL GL



Bankroll update: 321.21 / $4153.88

Quick update:

Still +0.41bb/100 at 10z!!! (in terms of AIEV)

it's obvious the spots I've been studying aren't where my biggest leaks are coming from. I need to do more studying on how i react to raises, and what hands I can be raise/folding.

- i appreciate board coverage more so i can have some high equity bluffs and hidden hands on more boards.

- I stop trying to make "my style" more profitable vs villains it won't be that good against. If I see aggro 3bettors I open less hands.

- I dont always have to call with the top of my range, sometimes I can fold the top of my range 50% and call 50%.

- I've cut some hands from 3bet ranges so that I'm not so bluff heavy, and still have good board coverage.

- I make less snap decisions.


1 quick hand, third time I've had near nuts and got jammed on OTR in a pot that went check-check two streets. I called again ofc. No reads


I feel the crushing coming soon let's GOOO

Bankroll update: $314.46 / $4153.88

There's no runbad here, just atrocious play.



Surprising leaks:
- my strat when villain limps and i raise, and see a flop, is not winning as much money as it should so there are leaks.
- i'm unbalanced to bluffs when I'm OOP and cbetting for several streets. This is costing me lots.

More of my profit has come from rakeback than actual hands at this point, so I'm officially a rakeback warrior.


Gonna look to make some tight folds, respect raises, and just value bet my hands (usually).


H1: pretty sure I bleed money here.



H2: biggest pot i won since the beginning of last week, vs unknown.




H3: Bluff is fine but i need to VALUE BET MORE HERE FFS

H3 is really bad river bluff, qto just got there and this guy is probably fish if he is minraising from sb, never folding Kx, has way more random Kx than Jx pre. Pre is once again bad bc v is a fish, lol he is never folding anything for 40c more after he already put 20c in, and you are just putting in money with a massive equity disadvantage and crappy hand. Just call pre.

Quick update and reminder:

If my bluffs aren’t getting through the answer isn’t to value bet more, it’s to bluff less. Sounds like common sense but I’m still trying to cram a balanced style vs opponents. This is **** because A: Im not balanced that well and I’m pretty confident I’m overbluffing some spots, and B: explo is where dat money is.


H3 I thought QT was better for our range than his but tbh he can visibly call QT OTT. I have better bluffs as well like AQ and AT, so yeah in hindsight not a good bluff

T6s suited seems like a reasonable bluff candidate, just that spot isnt good for bluffing va weaker players in general. Kx rarerly folds here, he might fold some Jx. ut you never know + i see many players just calling QT there twice trying to get there.
It is an easy fold vs your turn sizing but villain may not care. I kinda likethe turn barrel, you deny some equity and he might even fold some 88-TT hands.
Gl dude hope you turn this around

Yeah it seems like the fishy pop don’t like to let go OTR after putting in money twice. So there’s room for some exploits with nutted hands. But ive been donating with bluffs instead for some reason.

It reminds me of when I played the card game bull****, specifically the Verish ne Verish version. I’d enjoy lying on two or three rounds in a row and never bothered to “protect” by actually telling the truth sometimes. So some players who loved to call cheat (but not too often) would crush me and I’d just be frustrated and entitled. The right play was just to lie and tell the truth in a more “balanced” way. When I did this the players that used to crush me started calling a lot less and I began to beat them since they weren’t taking the game as seriously as I did lol. History repeats itself. Hopefully I can catch some hands this weekend to turn it around. Birthday weekend though so I’m not feeling confident on volume. I’m itching to get back into the tables though.

Thanks for the luck brudda

Bankroll update: $373.07 / $4153.88

I dont normally show red line on graphs because it's always been downward sloping and it just makes the swings of the green and yellow line harder to see. But after getting punished a ton as in the previous posts, I made a switch in style and I can definitely see the good side kicking in.

Graph from last two days:


Sample size is low but I think for the whole of this challenge I've never had a redline above 0 over a 4k hand sample.

The biggest takeaways are:

- don't be afraid to make huge deviations from theory if you have the stats and feel to back it up. It's better to deviate from theory and know how if something works or doesn't,than to never deviate and forever wonder why you're sucking ass. If I thought someone was a nit before, I'd aim to fold 5% or 10% more, trying to stay close to theory, because "you never know!". **** that noise. If my spidey senses are tingling I'll fold top pair to one flop bet.

I trust my instincts though. Other poker players have **** instincts; I've spoken to one other player in the past and asked them to guesstimate how much they get folds in x and y spot preflop where they were bluffing. They guessed that they take it down preflop approximately 60% of the time. Because this is preflop it was very easy to go in their database and see that their success rate was actually 40%.

- if someone can never be profitably bluffed for the ANY price, they will pay off your value hands for any price.



Spidey senses tingling brag below. BTN was nit reg, CO was 31/4 over 26 hands.



I'm still $60 under EV since the beginning of this challenge, so in my eyes my real "ranking" is $430 of a bankroll. Will start shot taking 16z at $400 actual money.

Nice hand lol, your spidey senses were spot on.

Nice to see you start getting back up there, and hopefully you get to those NL16z shots soon! I haven't even really considered playing NL16z. I don't know why lol. If a lot of people think like me, NL16z probably has a lot less regs in it.

Bankroll update: $354.19 / $4153.88


I took a shot at 16z today and lost $44.73.

Gonna do a self-imposed self-exile from playing 16z until i've gone through my 16z hands. Pretty sure all I need to do to win is just to not bluff the unknowns but it looks like that's too hard. Probably lost 2 BI worth on bluffing people i knew weren't going to fold. The another 0.5BI was lost making calls that should've been easy folds. The other 0.5BI I don't know how i'm losing.

The ****ed up thing about the upswing in my 10z graph is that i started snap-making my decisions at that period. And changed my strat of course. The other big money losing hands at 16z are too horrendous to put up.

10z graph Jan


16z graph Jan

Seems like your level of thought is much higher than most regs at 10z/16z.

Gl for Feb!

Good luck in February op

Getting a bit antsy about not updating but there’s not much to update on. My birthday came up recently so I’ve been binging some of the new games I got. I have a cheap £5 home game tonight with about 11 entrants so won’t be making progress online either.

Thanks for the support both!! I like to think that most regs at 10z 16z aren’t thinking how I am but it doesn’t matter if I can’t execute correctly.

BR is around 320, not sure.

Played a bit over the weekend and had an epiphany but I feel like an idiot thinking about it now.

My redline started sloping downwards after a few days of playing the style I switched to (see above a graph with 4K hands that shows red line going up). I didn’t know what happened since I was playing the same style. I got in a few hundred hands this weekend and it my red line results were much like when they started. Slightly up swinging red line.

Then I ****ing realised - it’s because it’s the ****ing weekend!! It’s the most obvious thing in the world but I have done 0 work on having different gameplans on weekdays vs weekends. I have always aggregated pop stats by total, but maybe there are exploits only possible on certain days of the week.

My default game is also the same no matter the day. Gonna do some digging into this.

Note to self = BTN stats could use work. I follow Rapidesh’s thread too and he got a winrate review. I have comparable winrates but am lacking a little in the BTN, SB, and BB department.

Kinda curious what changes you made to your strategy if you care to share. I also never considered having different gameplans for different days. Interested to see if you find anything when you look into it.

I'm a lot more aggressive in some spots, and just shut down completely in others. Don't really want to go too specific into it but essentially keep playing around and see what works.

BR update: $317.15

I'm still up in AIEV on 10z. I've been **** with keeping up with my goals though - I wanted to record a few hands per session and review my thought process which i did a few times, but it didn't go on for longer than two weeks.

- I like playing poker, studying is a bit yawn. But this is where I've peaked and i'll need to study for real to get further. the problem is i'm a bit lost on how to study. I can run a solver in a spot i'm not sure of and try to understand what it's doing, and play close to it when i'm not sure what to do. But it doesn't seem to be effective, or maybe i haven't done enough work on it.

- Most of my big pot profit comes from stupid fish moves doing thigns with hands they shouldn't be doing it with.

- a lot of my losses come from bluffs / "coolers" (theory folds that are 80% losing vs the pop).

- I have to admit mental game is an issue, I'll set a stop loss of 3BI per session or day (see how it works out) and when i hit that limit i'll move to 2z or 5z or something and review some hands.

I haven't even tagged any hands for review! I think I should play a few hands per day at 5z to stay in touch but I need to break this 5% study habit. More hands to come next week /sesh!


EDIT: to add to the above, solvers suck WRT seeing how to exploit someone’s play OTF, when we have knowledge on river tendencies. That is, if I know someone will call 100% of rivers of course I should adjust my flop strat but a solver can’t say how. So it’s hard to know which is the most profitable line to tak without doing a bit of work.

BR update: $324.14

This challenge has been very humbling.

Tilt, **** studying, and ego have got me to where I am.

Since yesterday I've dropped down to two tables of ZOOM and made sure to tag hands for review. The hands I have tagged I go through and make sure I have an answer, and then think of a way to implement the "fix" into my game. I'd rather have 60k hands at 10z of 2bb/100 than 120k hands of breakeven rakeback reg.

Will be doing work on weekend strat vs weekday strat.

I thnk it's a good idea too to find the regs that are better than me and see how the play. Look at all the hands they've shown down and analyse it. Look at all the bet-fold lines they are capable of taking. This is inspired by seeing my results on Mondays - Fridays, where I am a rakeback / losing reg.

Weekday only results since beginning of challenge


Weekend only results since beginning of challenge


It's very humbling, I think I legit believed I was one of the top 10z regs at one point and that I just have tilt problems / run bad / just need to do one quick fix. It's bull**** of course, the top 10z regs don't 10z, they play higher. I need to find the better regs, assimilate, then beat them.


H1; Overpair vs flop raise in single raised pot



H2; middle pair in 3! pot as caller.
Sucks OTR where we're beat a lot ...think we can bluff weaker hands though.




H3: AA in 3bet pot as PFR on sketchy board

Alright bud how you doing if you ever wanna do sweats again HMU

Hey I dropped you a message on Skype, just let me know!


BR update: $333.09

The past week has been two tables, doing reg research, crunching more spots in the solver, and switching up my style.

I've made a lot of notes on regs earlier this week that have come in handy a a handful of pots already this week. I've also borrowed some things that I look good.

I still punt stacks needlessly, and I start to tilt now. I can throw something around after a bad beat, so I probably should start stop when I feel my blood start to rise. I don't think I've ever done this before. It's hard not to tilt when I'm 20BI under EV at 10z. I did run hot above EV at 16z though, so all in all I'm only $130 under EV.
I punt less though, and I'm happy with my big bluffs that have blockers in and are well balanced.

I've been putting in my 10z volume on the weekend and my 5z volume on the weekday for now, since I established that I've been lacking there. But mostly I'll be reviewing hands on the weekdays.

I'm feeling good about my play though. There's a few leaks (like going raising when I should be calling) that have opened up because I've been switching style.

H1



H2



H3 - My first full house fold that doesn't have trips or a FH on the board.






H4 - Open is a bit loose but I had 69 and we all know what that means



H5 - I've seen some good regs on stream and in HH flat hands like these in these spots. Is this fine? Or do you need reads?

Subbed, glglgl, im also in 10z atm, we gonna crush them all

Interesting stuff.
H1 I wouldn't consider doing this, not sure how good it is, I see you use solver so that seems like a good tool for analysing there vs a face up range, what does it say?

H2 bit thin but got to stack those shorties
H3 I expect a much bigger flop bet with a good made hand so I'm gonna go ahead and rule out 99,79,T9, 77,TT, which leaves J9 only as a better hand. Looks a bit fishy so might have a straight or trips so I'd call. Fold is OK though with so many better combos out there and facing 2 big bets

H4 this seems quite standard if we chose to open the 69s from the CO which we should unless btn /blinds give us reason not to. River size should be enough to get standard regs off a Kx, he has some flushes ofc.
Dunno about h5, pot odds thing but then 3 way, want to play with mp but not with 45o.

Haven't run it in the solver but if we don't bluff with a hand with a club in then what do we bluff with? Maybe we could exploit fold this hand vs the population, but I haven't looked into this.

Yeah with those sizings and action I'm thinking there's no way I'm beat.

Qc is better to bluff with of course, but blocking sets is fine too. I think bluffing with Qc is better with pot sizing, but bluffing with a 6 is better with an all in sizing.

H1 is a fold ott, even from gto standpoint its barely a call at best probably, not to mention sizing tendencies and nittiness of pool compared to gto. Otr you are betting into a range mostly of ak/aa sets 2p and flushes, you are breakeven even if he folds kj. Dont try to justify bad plays by saying its gto bc u have good blockers. Not only is this a waste of precious time to think about blockers, but also this thought process will not yield good poker. This hand is a good example; you say you want to bluff bc club blocker, yet you having an ace far outweighs jc since you cut v ak/aa by 6 combos.

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My thought process is "I do this for value sometimes, and when I have before I don't always get paid. So the safe option is to have some good blocker bluffs here. We have JcXc when we raise river so Jc is good to bluff with."

I have just checked my DB all time on all stakes when I x/c -- x/c -- x/r OOP in a single raised pot, and the jury is still out on just how much the pop can fold IMO, no clear winner. Seeing hands at showdown is decieving since nits can fold some KJ, and some stations will pay with AA.

Interesting that you say 62% pot size bet rings alarm bells, this looks STD to me. True though that the pool is nitty in some spots, I think the GTO-ness of the turn call with AJ can depend on the sizings used on flop + turn. In this case it looks like a GTO call, but pool tendencies could push this to a fold.

actually nvm, I'm used to fishy pool, if your pool barrels gs a lot then its easy call ott. Recognizing the spot as one where you don't get paid sometimes I think is a great thought, but still would be better to think more about chance of success than blockers. I think you will get a lot of nittiness (for good reason) in this spot but like I said, you are losing even before villian decides to fold or not because he will have an unfoldable range with a lot of combos and his folding range is basically 2 hands. In fact Jc is made at least somewhat irrelevant by the fact that your opponent will check made jcxc ott a lot, so you actually have a bad hand to bluff with bc it has an ace.