After 20+ years of having fun playing poker it's time for a change. No, I'm not quiting. But just about breaking even is making it a bit less fun these days. So, the plan is to do some serious studying and to start making some money.

I've been pretty good at buying books on poker. Have 50+ of them. But the ones I really read are the biographies. Theory books? Not so much. Usually got bored shortly after the introduction. Same for videos. Watched some, but never really put my mind to it.

This time though... Oooh... This time will be different. Really. Promised myself. Yes I did. And good for me. Shame I did it a couple of times before. And broke that promise to myself.

Damn. Now I feel bad.

We'll see. The idea is to focus (yikes, another thing I botched a couple of times before) on 6max cash for a while. Starting at 5NL with a $500 bankroll. First goal: still have $500 after 25k hands.

Good luck with your goal of.. breaking even after 25k hands? Well, hopefully you'll do better than that hahaha. And don't be scared of studying theory. It can actually be quite fun to figure out ways to improve your game, and then seeing the results when you actually play. Just don't skim through all your books and expect to have learnt anything. The key is to work on specific aspects of your game in-depth, and not all at once. Good luck, and hope to see you at more than $500 once you play the first 25k hands!

Thx. Still a bit unsure what my goals should be. Probably should focus those goals on study/improvement I guess.

Exactly that has been my problem. Skimming stuff without focus. So yes, that is a big one. Hence the choice to go for 6max Cash Games. First topic is hand selection and a basic post-flop strategy.

Thx!

It's a cold rainy Sunday morning here in Amsterdam. The perfect morning to write down my initial goals:
(1) Create opening, calling and 3-betting ranges for each position.
(2) Create a basic post-flop strategy.
(3) Play hands on a single table to get comfortable with both the ranges and strategy.
(4) Review hands to find spots that I have no clear idea for and improve the ranges and strategy.

I'll use various sites and videos to create the ranges and won't worry to much at understanding exactly why they work or don't work just yet. There'll be plenty of time for that after I'm comfortable with my playbook.

First results. I played two short sessions of about 50 hands each to see how comfortable I can be with my playbook. Pre-flop is okay for now. Some work to be done for Post-flop. I marked 11 hands for review. May be posting some later. And yes, I know that a hundred hands doesn't mean anything. At least it helps motivationally to start with a little plus, building a bit of a buffer for the inevitable first downswing.



Background noise: The Who - Behind Blue Eyes.

Honeymoons never last. Played close to 1k hands today. The bad news is I'm down a buy-in. The good news is that after review there I found a couple of obvious mistakes that I can correct. For example overplaying a pair of Kings here:


Unfortunately there were more of these. Need to work on avoiding those, Here the results so far:



Background noise: Bruce Springsteen & Eddie Vedder - No Surrender

With another 1k hands played I went back to reviewing hands...



I wasn't too proud of myself. Why? Because I'm losing money by not playing by my own rules. In my last session I lost $15,25. Just looking at the top 10 most costly hands, I could have saved $12,80 if I had stuck to the rules that I drew up in my playbook. Yikes.

So what am I doing wrong? Well at least two things:
(1) Getting insecure when I don't know what to do in a spot.
(2) Getting frustrated after making a mistake and than making more.

And what needs to happen to fix this?
(1) Keep marking spots where I'm not sure and study them.
(2) Improve my playbook notes so that I can reference them more quickly.
(3) Put reminders of the most common mistakes at my desk.
(4) Find a way not to get frustrated... Still thinking about that one.

Here's the results so far:


Background noise:

Excerpt from my session notes:

Started out positive and motivated. Lost $0.79 in third hand of session with TT vs. AK. Could have been much worse, but unfortunately I was focussed on starting with a loss again. As a result I took a hit in my confidence.

Just a few minutes later I lost another $1.82 with AQo vs 44 after hitting Q's on both turn and river. My opponent was always ahead after flopping a set of 4's. His min-raise on the flop was not enough to get me to lay down my overcards and after the two Q's hit it could have been worse again (effective stacks were $4.02), But also again, I just felt frustration in stead of being glad to have save $2.20.

Just seven more minutes later, I lost $5.00 KTs vs A5s. I played as outline in my playbook. I flopped a flush draw a on 5c5d3s flop and on the Td turn rivered top pair. All of that was no good against my opponents flopped set. Maybe I should have given up on the river, but not sure of that.

The rest of the session nothing much happened. Lost a few minor pots and didn't get action on my premium hands. I did make several minor mistakes because I was not really concentrated after the initial lost hands. The big mistake obviously is letting those losses get to me.

2015.11.29 12:00 - Pokerstars - NL5
Hands: 194 - Net Result: $4,76

Short session at noon. Limited myself to two tables as I’m still working on getting comfortable with the playbook. My goal was to try and minimize mistakes. I did okay with that. After review I found five mistakes. Four of those were borderline calls that I really should have folded. The other one was a complete mess unfortunately. Surprisingly, but not deservedly, these mistakes made me $0.29.

The largest part of my profit ($3.98) came from a single hand where my KK held up preflop against A8o. It felt good to finally get some value from a premium hand. I actually fist-pumped behind my screen…

Now let’s keep this up!

Background noise:

2015.11.29 09:50 (0:30) - Pokerstars - NL5
Hands: 109 - Net Result: $1.69
The first of three short sessions planned during the day. I was getting hit with good hands, getting KK four times, as well QQ and a couple of AKs hands. With those hand I quickly got up to a profit of over $8. Unfortunately I experienced a bit of positive tilt after winning a big pot with KK vs AQo in a pre-flop all-in. My concentration lapsed and I made several silly mistakes. Had I played by the rulebook, I would have ended the session with a profit of about $6. Shame.
Marked six hands for further review at the end of the day.

2015.11.29 14:45 (0:45) - Pokerstars - NL5
Hands: 182 - Net Result: $4,94
A fast paced second session. Despite the profit I did not play well. I was thinking about some issues I have to take care of outside poker. I really shouldn’t play if I can’t put those issues out of my mind while playing.
The profit was made in a hand where I got it in pre-flop with 99 against AQo. Yes it turned out alright, but my actions pre-flop were way to loose. Happened a couple more times but managed to limit the damage post-flop.

2015.11.29 22:30 (0:40) - Pokerstars - NL5
Hands: 125 - Net Result: $5,60
A relaxed session to finish off a good day. This session was rather uneventful. Couple of good flops and a short stack bluffing into my aces did the trick. Two more hands marked for review later tonight.
I’m limited to three hours of poker per day at present and I want to divide that time between playing and studying. Still I would like to increase my volume a bit, so tomorrow I’ll add a third table to see if that still feels comfortable.

Graph for today (bit of self motivation here):


Background Noise:

2015.12.01 08:55 (0:25) - Pokerstars - NL5
Hands: 80 - Net Result: $0.58
Quick little session to start the day, and the month, while having breakfast above the highway between Amsterdam and Rotterdam. A bit of profit. Now it’s off to my first client of the day.

2015.12.01 15:00 (0:58) - Pokerstars - NL5
Hands: 305 - Net Result: -$16.59
A bad second session of the day. I’m not at all happy with how I played. Will review hands later, but right now I estimate that at least $12.50 was lost due to bad mistakes. The only thing that I am happy with is that I was able to put my frustration aside, get back to my basics and play okay in the last twenty minutes.
Part of the problem was this being my first 3-table session. Experienced online grinders will probably laugh at that, but for me it added 50% to the workload. And it does take some getting used to. The last part of the session I started feeling more comfortable, so I’ll stick with 3-tabling for now.

2015.12.02 11:30 (0:34) - Pokerstars - NL5
Hands: 155 - Net Result: $3.82
Squeezed in a session between two appointments. Made too many mistakes, but got lucky at the end of the session. First I got it in, correctly according to my playbook, with Top 2 against a Flush Draw (63% vs 37%) and have my hand hold up. A couple of hands later the same opponent 3Bet all-in while I was holding Q’s, which held up against his T8s. So I ended with a decent profit despite mediocre play at best.
Another bright spot is that I did feel pretty comfortable playing three tables. That at least is some progress. And again I marked several hand for review. Been saying this a couple of times now, but I really have to get to the reviewing. No more playing before I review.

Results since start


Goals
I decided on the following goals in poker for this month:
(1) Play 8000 hands
(2) Study 25 hours
No financial goals, just play to the best of my ability.

Background Noise

Posted a hand from this morning's session here.

Posted a hand from this morning's session here.