**Have moved blog from another forum, apologies for multiple posts**

Don't really know where to start this blog as I don't really know where I'm going with it. I used to play poker a fair bit back in 2009 / 2010 but havn't really played since then. Recently I've started lurking around a few forums again and it is safe to say that my poker fingers are itching.

I never really felt like I was that decent a player, mainly because of my work ethic at the time, but managed to make my way up as high as 100nl - 200nl FR.

Back "in the day" my life generally consisted of playing poker, working part time in a bar and getting hammered 4 - 5 times per week. Hardly the healthiest routine for mind, body or spirit (excuse the pun). I was living with my parents in Lincolnshire, UK and didn't really have / wasn't interested in any sort of long term plan for my life. I consistently suffered from spaz bouts of tilt / spew which eventually lead to me losing interest in poker as I found myself frustrated for days after poor sessions. I was about as results oriented as it is possibe to be.

I'll save you the 2 year long story between then and now, but at present I live in Leeds with my girlfriend of 11 months, Hannah, and I work as a gym instructor in a Marriott Hotel and am currently going through my Level 3 Personal Training course.

Safe to say I am in a far better place now than I was then. Which brings me back to poker. I think my current situation lends itself more to a healthier poker mindset, which is why I am interested in starting up again.

I have no delusions as to my current ability - I'll start up again at 2nl with a $40 bankroll and work my way up through the levels (hopefully). I'm looking forward to going right back to basics and getting to grips with the FUNdamentals as early as possible.

Thanks if you've bothered to read this far.

Dave

In the past I have almost exclusively played full ring for a number of reasons:

- Less variance

- Requires less work / study (imho)

- Regs are worse (imho)

- I can get away with autopiloting

- I like saying that I play 24 tables

Only one of those is a genuine reason to stick to playing full ring and I don't think that reason on its own is good enough. This time round I have decided to try my hand at 6max, as it should force me to put far more time and effort into studying the game.

So its 2NL 6max for me, and in the last two days I have logged 10k hands - which brings me to the first thing on my mind. How many tables should I play? I assume the general consensus will be to start off low and add tables as I get more comfortable, but having tested out playing between 6 and 18 tables over the last two days I think I'm going to stick with 12 tables. Even playing 12 tables of 6max I feel like I have enough time to think hands through, take notes and play without feeling rushed. I'm not playing any fast tables and that definitely helps.

This volume isn't going to be standard for me, it just happens that I've had 2 days off whilst Hannah has been working. So my flat has seen a poker / xbox marathon.

The other main thing I've taken from my first 10k hands is working out how I'm going to go about learning / improving. In the past, I'd maybe look through HEM at my losing hands, think to myself "you should have done this" and just left it at that. If I posted a hand on a forum all I'd look for in a response was "you should have done x,y,z". This time, I'm going to be far more proactive in how I look to improve my understanding.

Instead of looking at hands and thinking "what should I have done in this spot", I'm going to focus on the "why should I have done x,y,z". In this blog, every hand that I post will serve the purpose of highlighting a specific topic that I feel I need to work on. I'll post the HH alongside links / extracts from posts that I feel are relevant. This way, I'll be forcing myself to read up on almost every topic. That has to help, right?

I'll start the updates / hh's tomorrow. That's enough for now I'm sure.

Dave

During my sessions I'm noting down any interesting hands with a pen and paper (there is probably a way to do this with HEM but the pen works fine for me) and going back over those hands at the end of the session. As it turns out, unsurprisingly, the same topics are coming up in these hands. After playing 10k at 2NL 6max the hands I have noted cover:

- Extracting value postflop

- Weak overpairs vs aggression

- Cbetting in multiway pots

- Betting the turn for value

- Playing low pp's from the blinds

- Iso range vs limps when I'm in the blinds

- Double barreling turn scare cards

Of these, the topic that seems to crop up the most at the minute is definitely value betting the turn. In the past, I have been far too passive postflop. I'd cbet and then just shutdown and look to check hands down if I wasn't looking to build a big pot - all this does is give villain the chance to catch something that beats me, or bet (whether this be a bluff or a perceived value bet) and scare me into folding.

Par example:

NL Holdem $0.02

SB ($3)
BB ($1.85)
UTG ($2.21)
UTG+1 ($2.41)
CO ($3.87)
Hero ($2)

Dealt to Hero K K
fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.06, fold, BB calls $0.04

FLOP ($0.13) 7 9 A
BB checks, Hero bets $0.10, BB calls $0.10

TURN ($0.33) 7 9 A 2
BB checks, Hero bets $0.23

Despite villain being a whale, in the past I feel like I'd have checked behind here, convinced that the ace on the board means I'm not getting called by worse than KK - looking at it now though that doesn't seem at all right. Villain can still call a turn bet with 9x, straight draws (68, 10J, 56), 1010, JJ and any sort of flush draw he may have picked up.

Obviously it helps that villain is terribad here and I'm in position, but I still think this hand demonstrates the point I'm trying to make.

I need to pay more attention to spots where I can value bet the turn with hands other than the nuts.

However, I also need to be aware that in doing so, I run the risk of being overly aggressive and spewing in very marginal spots and value towning myself. Something to work on.

I guess this is what I was trying to get at. Although it is important to note that in the discussion of the quoted thread, there are a number of posters advocating checking these weaker hands on the turn to value bet the river instead as Villain is likely to call a river bet lighter with weak made hands, knowing that is the final bet they will face. The only thing I'm questioning about this is that obviously we miss value from draws.

So I think the conclusion I have come to is that if, by the turn, we have a marginal hand and villain has a number of draws in their range, we should value bet. If villain is unlikely to have a draw, we should consider checking the turn to bet the river to get the most value from weaker "made hands" in villains range.

This may be painfully simple, but I feel like I've learnt something just writing this out. If thats the only purpose this blog serves, it can't hurt, right?


tl;dr - villains range and board texture on turn define whether we should value bet weaker hands on turn or look to check through and value bet on river. who'd have thought.

Dave

So after writing my post on value betting the turn last night (and then thrashing Hannah at monopoly) I played a session on stars hoping to put what I'd read through into practice. The tables were so soft, with at least 2 players of the 60/4 type on the majority of the tables. Obviously this gave me the perfect opportunity to put my "value betting the turn with marginal hands" into practice.

I think I managed to do this is most spots. Having been through the session in HEM I have found one example of where I opted to check the turn rather than bet:

$0.01/$0.02 No Limit Holdem
5 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com

Stacks:
UTG ($2) 100bb
CO ($2.60) 130bb
BTN ($3.25) 163bb
sil693 (SB) ($2) 100bb
BB ($3.73) 187bb

Pre-Flop: ($0.03, 5 players) sil693 is SB 10 J
3 folds, sil693 raises to $0.08, BB calls $0.06

Flop: J 4 4 ($0.16, 2 players)
sil693 bets $0.10, BB calls $0.10

Turn: 2 ($0.36, 2 players)
sil693 checks ...

Villains range here is pretty much ATC - he was something like 74/20. At the time I thought I'd hope for the turn to check through so I could value bet the river and be called down light. Seems pretty terrible. Against this player I can quite comfortably go for 3 streets of value with TP. Also, being OOP really doesn't lend itself to checking the turn imo.

During the session I felt like I was maybe playing a little carelessly as I seemed to be losing a fair number of mid sized pots - although having been through HEM I'm fine with how I played the majority. What I am noticing though is that so far (only 11k hands) I do seem to lose more pots than I win. I realise poker isn't about the amount of pots we win - but I am wondering if this is something I need to address?

In unrelated news - I enjoyed supporting England this evening. That doesn't often happen.

Dave

Gl mate have been following, similar situation as you, SN on PS?

SN can be seen in above post - although I was hoping to be able to edit it to remove it. meh. like it matters anyway.

I am more than comfortable with the concepts of BRM and moving up / down as and when required so am going to be using fairly aggressive BRM to start with. I'll move up with 15 BIs up until 25nl (and back down with 10-12 if necessary).

After 15k hands at 2nl 6max I was able to move up to 5NL 6max late yesterday evening. I 9 tabled for only about 500 hands or so just to see if anything struck me as significantly different to 2nl. It didn't. Of course. Although there did seem to be a few more players with stats around the 17/10 and 26/16 sort of range.

I basically nitted my way through 2NL (15/12.5/2(3bet)) - is that optimal? Probably not. Did it help focus my mind on some of the basics after 2 years away? Si senor. I don't intend to keep my stats around this range at all.

Since starting up again a topic I've been talking / thinking about a fair bit is 3betting - mainly because when I was playing before I always regarded 3bet pots to be one of my biggest weaknesses, and it has to be better to get that **** sorted at the micros. Having read / discussed a bunch on another forum, I opened up my game at 5NL earlier on this evening (btw, not convinced opening up and changing things goes hand in hand with aggressive BRM) and looked to put into practise some of the reading I've been doing.

Running like the baby jesus obviously helped, but I crushed the tables over 2k hands running at 19/17/6.8(3bet). I found myself in a number of the situations I have been looking into - really quite satisfying. Kind of like being asked the questions you hope to be asked in an exam. Early days - very aware of that. Plenty more work to be done on 3betting. Will be interesting to see how it feels when they don't auto fold to cbets / spazz adjust.

In unrelated news - managed to get out on the championship golf course at the hotel after work today (free, ldo. gotta love the marriott benefits) with a couple of guys I work with. Good times all round. Really, really want to improve on the golf course - but damn that **** is time consuming. To anybody who may be reading and wondering, my handicap is the clubs, the swing, the ball, and trying to get it near the ****ing hole.

tl;dr - aggro BRM, 5NL 6max, open up, 3bet more, read/work more, golf.

Dave

It feels dirty - like I'm spewing preflop and attempting to make up for it with further, more costly spew postflop. Need to pay far more attention to villain before auto 3betting because I have XX vs LP PFR.

Should managr to get a decent amount of hands in this evening - gd working 5-late, I finish work at 2pm this afternoon.

In -EV news, reception computer at work has had the content filter applied. FU!!!

Subbed, good luck
It sounds like you've made a great start, however I would highly discourage auto 3betting villains at 5nl. Even at that stake a 3betcall/4bet by most regulars will be very strong OOP. I would tone it down a little, I believe my 3bet stat was around 5%, although it still seems low, it still sets me up to make a profit against most regulars 3bet calling ranges

microwaves in monkeys ur ion jal nek minnit

Yeah I definitely need to town down 3b a bit from that session.

Just played ~2.5k hands of 5nl 6max, pretty much BE in the end. Down a few BI, up a few BI etc etc. Nothing too interesting springs to mind at the minute - I'll have a check through HEM at some point later this evening. Played a couple of MTTs too - busted in both First was std shortstack shove from btn w Ax, ran into some sort of pair iirc. Second I got all in on Kxx flop w AK vs K4, turn 4 ldo. That sucked, around 800th, 400ish cashed but I'd have had a good sized stack. Oh well.

Gonna grab some food now, watch a bit of the Euro's and then fit another session in later this evening.

Dave

Hand that's got me thinking:

38 hands on villain - no notes (I have been taking quite a few notes recently so I havn't had anything to do with him up to now) FWIW he was 16/8 over 38 hands and was yet to 3bet.

His stats suggest he's not bat**** insane so I assume his range is pretty strong here as he 3b my utg pfr - so I think flatting pre > 4betting. Going through in my head whether folding > calling, as I'm OOP postflop, but that feels filthy and too nitty.

I guess the only draw he has here is AKdd, and other than that his range is AA/KK/QQ possibly JJ. Again this makes me question preflop?

Standard fold now?

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.05(BB) Replayer
SB ($5.33)
BB ($5.03)
Hero ($5)
CO ($5.52)
BTN ($4.95)

Dealt to Hero Q Q

Hero raises to $0.20, fold, BTN raises to $0.60, fold, fold, Hero calls $0.40

FLOP ($1.27) 9 2 8

Hero checks, BTN bets $0.90, Hero calls $0.90

TURN ($3.07) 9 2 8 9

Hero checks, BTN bets $3.45 (AI), Hero?

Why can he not have 10s there?

I just typed a massive rant out about losing 6BI in 2k hands this morning, not due to variance or coolers, just low down and dirty spew, but decided to delete it. It wasn't productive.

Sure, I ran AK in AA twice, and lost a flip vs JJ - but that's standard, what bothers me is the hands I needlessly shipped off BI's in. What bothers me more is that after each atrociously played hand I managed to convince myself that I was going to stop the spew and get back to my game. I never did.

I've gotta head off to work now (Sunday late shift, eurgh) but will post a few hands either tonight or tomorrow.

Its days like today that are going to get in the way of where I want to be. I guess, thankfully, I have nobody and nothing to blame other than myself.