Hey forum, this is my first post so I apologize if it's a bit rough around the edges.

I have been playing poker for a while now and I have been quite aimless in my pursuit of getting better and I have finally decided to change that and put more effort into studying.
I have blown multiple rolls in the past and always just thought I'd play more, put in more volume and magically I would get better and my leaks would disappear. Now we all know that this isn't true.
So I invested in some resources and started a new small roll on partypoker where I will exclusively focus on grinding cash games and getting better at that game mode only for now instead of mixing and matching cash games, MTTs and SnGs.

The resources I bought are: RYE Elementary Cash Game Series, The Grinder's Manual by Peter Clarke, The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler and Poker Tracker 4.

I decided to play on PartyPoker because:
1) You get okay rakeback
2) HUDs are allowed
3) There is decent game selection and also the option of playing ZOOM/fastforward if desired
4) Competitive player pool(There are fish as well as NL5 regs; I believe it's not very smart to only play against uber fish on soft sites as you won't really get better unless you play against other people who take the game seriously. Even If you win all the monies against fish on NL5, once you move up to NL10 and NL25 and have to play against better players you will be lost. Better to battle against other semi-decent players now then later)

Things that I don't love about PartyPoker:
1) The software is just overall not as good as PokerStars
2) The HUD stats reset every session
I will give partypoker a try for now and then decide if I stay there or move somewhere else. I'm very receptive to hearing your suggestions as well!


My game mode of choice will be 6max NL5, mainly regular tables but I might play some ZOOM here and then.

The BRM will be 30BI + beating the previous stake for a decent sample before moving up

Bankroll wise I deposited an initial 150€/170$.

My goals: My main goal is to develop a healthy play/study balance. I am aiming to put in at least 1k hands a day.
During play I will tag hands that I am unsure about to later review them after the session.
Studying will be done with RYE, TGM as well as reading The Mental Game of Poker to develop a healthy mindset and always be able to play my A game and not tilt.
Interesting hands or spots will be shared both here and in various discord channels / with friends who also seek to improve.

GL sir!

Thank you!

We played our first session of the challenge today.
Results after 1132 hands:
Currency won: $5.29
BB/100: 9.35

I have reviewed the tagged hands from today's session. Overall I think we played okay.
Unfortunately we lost a few big pots and made a few mistakes. The largest pot we lost will be included below, that's the only one where I felt we could have done something differently. The other ones were just cooler situations, running our set into a better set, trips into a boat etc.

Here is the hand: weaktight


Preflop:
I think we can make a case for squeezing pre but I felt like squeezing against UTG and UTG+1 was a bit ambitious plus our hand has a lot of playability and we are in position.
Flop: UTG' s shove caught me a bit off guard, I tanked for a while and ended up calling. Unfortunately we didn't get there.

After the session I calculated our Required Equity to call in this spot, which is 38% and which is also exactly our Equity against his exact hand and also against AA(which we block), so it would be a breakeven call against AQ and AA. Against KK it is a profitable call and against 55 and 88 it's not a profitable call. So yeah, I think the call is debatable but not horrible. What do you guys think?

I'm not a math guy (shame on me) but I think what I would have done depends on any reads or stats I would have on this guy. I also think it would depend if I wanted to gamble at this point in time as well. Him shoving should tell us he is ahead of us but we do have a ton of outs. I'm sure you will get people who say call and some who will say fold. Hope that helps. LOL Good start... keep it going. Sub'd.

Just played another NL5 session, this time on stars. Honestly, I think I will stick to Pokerstars from now on. Yes there is less rakeback but:
1) the player pool seems softer
2) the software is so much better
3) I can play more tables
4) It feels like I get more hands in because on Stars the cards get dealt faster and I can set up right click fold(Hands per hour 6 tabling on stars: 715 Hands per Hour 4 tabling on party: 380)
5) There is more game selection because there are more players and more tables


Results after 660 hands:
Currency won: $6.06
BB/100: 18.36

I have cashed out on PartyPoker and will play on Pokerstars instead.
The new starting bankroll is now $181.82 and after the first day of the challenge sits at $193.17

Sorry for the dilly-dallying

So just for summarization, a quick end of day post. Day 1 of our Micro Stakes challenge is now done.

In total we have played 1831 hands and made a profit of $13.49.
The bankroll now stands at $195.17.

Our next goal is to reach 50k hands at NL5 so we can get a more accurate representation of our winrate and start to analyze our stats and leaks.

Following, GL with your goals.

Day 2 of our challenge is done.
Results after 1019 hands:
Currency won: $5.12

I will post graphs and winrate once we have more hands.

Session Feedback: We started off really well and were quickly up one buyin. We were playing our B+ game for most of the session until we lost a 300BB pot where we got it in with top set on the flop against two players and ended up losing(see below). After that we were struggling a bit to stay in the game mentally and we lost a few medium sized pots in quick sucession and opened up our ranges a bit too much. Towards the end of the session we managed to win it back though and even ended the day in profit after being down a whole BI.


I will now post our two biggest losing hands of the day:


Hand 1:
weaktight link
We pick up QQ and promptly squeeze against the UTG raiser. He 4 bets and by this time I am fairly certain his range is heavily weighted towards AA KK. Once UTG+1 flats we get great odds to see the flop.

My plan at this stage was to see a flop and then if we hit a Q we stack off, if it's A or K high flop we just fold to a cbet and if we have an overpair on the flop we will peel once and then probably give up on the turn to a double barrel.
The flop is the absolute dream, we flop top set and the board is dry as a desert, no draws of note are possible. Once he cbets I am now 100% certain he has AA or KK, UTG+1 just flats and I am salivating in my mouth. We swiftly jam, UTG snap calls and so does UTG+1. The rest is history.
Overall I think we played the hand perfectly , our read was correct, we hit a great flop and then we end up losing $5 instead of winning $10. Unlucky.





Hand 2:
weaktight link

We pick up AA on the BTN 3 handed and open raise. He minclicks it back to us and we 4 bet. Flop is okay for us, we cbet and he snap raises. I thought about just flatting but considering his stack size and the size of the pot I decided to jam instead as we must call most turn jams anyway.

He certainly has a lot of sets in his range here when he raises the flop but he's a fish so I assumed he could also have some straight draws, flush draws and weaker overpairs than us so I called. Idk, maybe that's a spot where you can think about overfolding in micros. What do you guys think?

Here is the hand in plain text as well:




So that was it for today, we will review the tagged hands and bigger pots tomorrow and might throw in a 1 or 2h study session before the friday night grind tomorrow where we go fish hunting.
Overall it was an okay session, unfortunately we couldn't win the QQ hand. If we did, we would be looking at a +$20 instead session instead of +$5 but then again if my grandmother had testicles she would be my grandfather.

On we go.

What I want to know is how does CO call a 4-bet with 69s?

Idk but I love it

Day 3 of the challenge has started.
Really pumped to put in some volume today in the late afternoon/evening.
To warm up and get in the groove we played 1k hands of NL2 ZOOM.

I will go and take care of some chores now, make myself something to eat and maybe go for a walk in the sunshine before grinding some NL5 in the evening.

Here are some results after 1005 hands of NL2z:
Currency won: $9.52
bb/100: 47.36

We played pretty well, the competition is pretty soft though tbh. We got it in with AKs against AKo pre one hand, flopped the flush draw and ended up chopping unfortunately.

I'll be back later after we played some more hands!

Okay so we played 1k hands of NL5 now today. Honestly it's been a pretty horrible session.

We lost pretty much every 3bet pot we played and those 50c to $1.50 pots really add up if you lose every one of them, every time we had a decent hand we just got rektd by something better and if it weren't for the generous 100bb donations from two fish we would have been down a lot more by now. We picked up premiums quite a lot and didn't get any action with them whatsoever, we got a walk in the BB with AA twice. We called two shoves that were probably questionable, one time we had top pair top kicker with AK and the other time we ran top two pair into a set. I will comb through the hand histories throughout the next days and then post some hands from this session here.

Results after 1k hands NL5 regular+ZOOM:
Currency won: -$8.37

I will make some dinner now and then grind some more hands, hopefully we can get back in the green for today!

glgl going to follow ur progress

Day 3 is done. I decided to call it a day after we were running bad and there was no real end in sight.

Results after today:

NL2: 1005 hands Currency Won: $9.52
NL5 ZOOM: 491 hands Currency Won: -$1.07
NL5: 951 hands Currency won: -$19.17

Session Feedback:

It was one of those days where everything we did just went wrong. When we picked up good hands we either whiffed the flop and villain hit or we didn't get any action at all when we were top of our range. When we did see a flop and hit we got owned by better hands. We didn't hit a single set, made no flushes or nutted hands except 2 straights.

Obviously losing 4 BI isn't all down to running bad, there were definitely mistakes mixed in there but I felt like we didn't get too out of line calling down or making any spewy bluffs at all. We stuck to our game and our ranges, didn't get tilted and unfortunately just didn't make any nutted hands that we could get paid with.

I guess days like this just happen and we shouldn't get too mad but analyse the hands where we did make mistakes and learn from those.

One thing that is a little bit concerning is that my redline has taken a sharp curve downwards the last 1k hands. I don't think we bluff too much, maybe we actually underbluff and stab too little at pots when villain shows weakness. Idk, I think we really need to work on stabilizing our redline if we want to remain profitable.

Here is some graphs, obviously small sample size.

As you can see during today's session our redline is absolutely horrendous.
This means we need to fix something ASAP. Even if we run bad we can't be bleeding money like this.
This calls for a big study session and analyzing of our play tomorrow.

Maybe someone here can make me help sense of this worrying trend.
I think some of our problems regarding redline could be:
-Too passive in the blinds and not 3 bet bluffing enough against LP Opens
-Too passive on flops as the preflop caller
-Not picking up good bluff spots or stabbing the flop enough
-not having a good check raise strategy
-Not barreling turn enough or when I do not picking a good spot for it and also generally not barreling river unless nutted

I will post some stats from today's session now:

Overall VPIP: 22.2 PFR: 15.3 3Bet: 5.4 Fold to 3Bet: 71
WTSD%: 56.10 WWSF: 38.85
Cbet F: 68 Cbet T: 30 Cbet Flop Successful: 55.8 Cbet T Successful:33.33
Call F Cbet: 45.1 Call T Cbet: 56.25
Att to steal: 30.27 Fold To Steal: 76.67 Total AF: 0.97 Total AFq: 31.35

Positional Stats:

BTN: VPIP: 27 PFR: 20
CO: VPIP: 24 PFR: 21
BB: VPIP: 29.9 3Bet: 5.76




Alltime NL5:



Today's Session NL5 regular:




NL5 ZOOM:

At least we managed to crush NL2z pretty hard so our bankroll didn't take that much of a hit.

Total Hands for the day in NL2z: 1661
Currency won: $14.73




After today the bankroll stands at: $193.09

Plan for tomorrow is to review today's NL5 hands, find out how we can fix our redline and if we play at all tomorrow, we will probably put in our daily 1k hand goal on NL2z. Ah who am I kidding, ofc we will play our 1k hands tomorrow.

Maybe we should be focusing on NL2z for now anyway, there is ample money to be made there and we can focus on developing solid fundamentals and fixing our leaks before we take it to the NL5 streets.
Well I catch you guys tomorrow!

Brb gonna watch this video while doing my dishes.

Peter Clarke aka carotters on the 'redline disease' and its causes

So we played our first 1k hands for today. Again we got rekt pretty hard in NL5, maybe we need to really take a step back and reevaluate our game before we can play NL5 again.

Results:
NL5z hands played: 224
Currency won: -$9.30

Feedback: NL5 has been a real kick in the teeth last 2 days. Not getting any value from our good hands, not getting there on draws, whiffing flops in 3 bet pots, getting coolered when we did connect with the flop etc.
We didn't lose any single pots where all the stacks went in but rather a lot of 1$ to 2$ pots unfortunately.


NL2z hands played: 786
Currency Won: $1.22

Feedback: Not bad considering we were down 3 BI earlier on after we lost 3 preflop All ins and got called on one three street bluff with top pair no kicker.


Here's two hands from NL5 today, both have to do with raising post flop which is something Im struggling a bit with right now. Im struggling to find a way to have a balance between raising bluffs, semi bluffs and value hands and as a result flat too much and let villain realize his equity too much imo.


Hand 1:

Weaktight Hand History Viewer

We defend and make two pair. Villain, who we have no reads on, makes a slightly larger cbet. I thought about check raising but seeing as though villain cbet a flop that hits our BB defend range quite well we flat and decide to see the turn. The turn is the 2d which puts two flush draws out there. Again Villain barrels on the larger side. At this point I thought about x/r again but decided not to as I had no reads on villain and whether he barrels flop and turn light on run outs like this or not. River is the 3d completing the backdoor flush. Villain bets big again and I tank for a while and then decide to call as we still beat some of Villain's range that he might bet for value on the river like AK KQ AA K2 K3.


Hand 2:
Weaktight Hand History Viewer

We have KJ and SB opens to 3.5x We flat the open and call the cbet in position. Turn is obviously quite good for us as we pick up a straight draw with 8 outs. Villain barrels again and Im not sure whether I should raise this turn, call or fold. Calling seems bad because we often dont get there on the river and have to fold our K high, not sure about raising as villain seems to be repping a pretty strong range hand and Im not sure he has many hands he plays that way that we can make him fold. We do have a lot of 8s in our range though. Maybe folding is best?

Caring about your redline is a pretty big pitfall you want to avoid. Care about winning more by fixing your mistakes starting with the bigger and more common ones. Who cares if your red line goes down if your blue line is going up by more? Would you rather have a pretty red line and less winnings? Don't try to pinpoint leaks based things like lines on a graph.

K7o is a pretty marginal defend and when rake is bad and people in the 5nlz pool don't open their button anywhere near enough I think it's a really easy fold. I don't understand why a flop hitting your defending range well is a reason to not raise? Your hand is hardly crushing the board and villain has loads in his range he isn't folding to a raise so I think it's a trivial raise. It isn't even a particularly big c-bet. Rest of the hand is fine although raising the turn is still probably better.

KJo I think the turn is a trivially easy fold and a pretty big mistake when villain are so value heavy when they bet multiple streets in this pool. I think folding the flop is probably fine too tbh, we have so many better hands to defend and the board is wet enough that getting villain off equity by bluffing later streets when shown weakness is going to be more difficult.

Thanks for your feedback. I agree with what you said.
I decided to take a week long hiatus from playing poker because upon reflexion I noticed that the past few sessions I have been playing on autopilot and playing without thinking, just clicking buttons. Probably also played too many tables at the same time.

At the same time I really neglected play/study balance and that was one of my goals when I started this challenge so I decided to take a step back from playing.

I will take 1 or 2 days off from poker completely and then come back and start a proper study schedule and start fresh again on the tables next week!

Take care guys

why shame on you and why not who said so, ur probably a math guy man

in

I'm following more or less the same path as you, but with work and everything I'm not actually able to play 1k hands per day (one day maybe, when I will become better at multi-tabling), but apart from that I can totally relate to you. GL for the challenge!

I just started playing online again (ACR). Trying to do what you are doing more or less playing .01/.02 up to .10/.25 using PT4. I have always beat live poker but was break even at best online. I am looking for someone to go over hands with in depth. Would you, or anyone else on this thread, be interested? A shared google doc or something could work for more than 2 people commenting on the same set of hands or helping to construct ranges for various situations. Inbox me if interested. and GL!

Yeah man sure, do you have discord?