Interesting how you think you're always right and anyone who disagrees with you must be wrong.

I'm not always right, but I am right in this particular scenario.

No you weren't. He had ace high.

Very important preflop notes:

1. Set mine less When MP opens to $25 and you're in the SB with 22, it doesn't matter if you're $1k deep; it's not profitable to play this hand. Stop dreaming about flopping your set of 2s and then getting stacks in because it happens far less often than you think. Most half decent players can get away from a 1pr hand once the pot gets huge, except on really specific runouts like JT265 where the flush draw busted.

2. Stop calling with suited connectors and suited Aces. These hands play much better as 3bets than flats, in my experience. Again, when you flop your 8 high flush in a 4way pot, do you really expect to win stacks? And how many streets are you going to pay off when the flop comes AT5 and you wrongly assume that your A6 might be ahead of their KQ/KJ/QJ?

3. Fold AJo and KQo UTG. As pretty as these hands might look, it's actually very losing to open them UTG. Even AQo is borderline. It's not wrong to fold AQ UTG if you're trying to reduce variance.

Proceeds to show a hand history of him getting owned.

Look I don't know how this guy plays but preflop is fine. Getting in a heads up pot in position with KJs is going to be a good scenario. On the flop the 1/3 bet doesn't fold out literally any better hands nor gets called by much worse but it folds out some equity so it's ok. On the turn I have literally no clue what you're trying to achieve as the board has not changed one bit and if he called flop he is going to call turn and all the 89s hands were folded out on the flop so you really are value owning yourself here.

On the river you arrive with an unknown range to me that has KJs included so I don't know what other hands you're getting there with but now you finally make some sort of a hand. Since your range is all over the place here I suggest just calling hands that you need to in order not to be exploited, because boy did you get exploited here. It's fine to go with reads, but it's clear that you were "not right in this particular scenario" here, and tried to make some hero fold. Which is exactly what I am saying, you have fancy play syndrome and that's holding you back.

I'm not saying you are a losing 1/3 player because well, villain played it like an idiot so plenty of money to take, but these 2/5 shots are just doomed to fail.

I think you just need to profile opponents to know who will stack off wide when considering playing speculative hands live PP, Axs, SC. Hopefully you have position on at least 1 or 2 of these players.

AJ and KQ are certainly strong enough to open in EP at a loose passive table but if it's a tight table or a lot of 3bing then I agree you should play less hands in EP.

Yeah I mean, if you're playing against whales then sure, but against the majority of players at 1/3 and 2/5, and against unknowns, it's generally just not profitable to play these hands.

And it's super results-oriented to say that I made a bad fold there because I'm probably good like 10% of the time and losing 90%.

And the purpose of the turn bet is to fold out flush draws and random floats like Ace high. I block out 25% of KQ/QJ combos, which should constitute a large portion of his preflop limp-calling range that contains a Q, so I thought it's a decent hand to barrel with.

op is getting slaughtered. i have the same flaws in my thread but not getting the same treatment.

Now compare that to OP, who is 24 and wants to go pro regardless of what people around him and on the forum tell him and won't listen to people telling him his flaws and pretty much assumes he is always right. You might get why that is.

OP, I want you to succeed but you are your own obstacle in this. You're not all that horrible at understanding the game but you keep employing 8 BI bankroll management, making fancy plays and then proclaim you're right.

Wasting my bankroll on non-poker things

So I have a girlfriend who I've been with for 1.5 years now. We live together, we share finances and we go out to restaurants together. When I've been in a degenerate state, busted and broke, she's always helped me to pick up the pieces. She'll bring me food and give me small amounts of money to pay for groceries. But now that I'm doing well and winning thousands, I feel obliged to return the favour.

We go out to restaurants together about 3 times per week and the average bill is around $80, which I always pay. In addition to that, I eat out by myself at cheap restaurants and spend about $20 per day on my own. So in total, that's $400 each week going just towards food and maybe a few drinks.

My girlfriend is supportive of me, although she doesn't understand poker very well and sees it as the same thing as blackjack or roulette. She always insists that I put money in our shared account after a big win, where we need both of our signatures to take that money out. She worries that if I have too much accessible cash, I'll just punt it off in a night.

Whilst she has good intentions, this makes it really difficult for me to build up a roll. I'm currently $4100 up at poker this year, yet I have only $3500 that can be accessed. There's less than $1000 in our shared account too, so a large chunk of money has been wasted.

It kind of sucks to play so disciplined and tight on the poker table, only to punt it off on unnecessary things like overpriced bars and restaurants. I always feel guilty when I go out and spend money with my girlfriend because I see how I'm still underrolled for $1/$3 and I need to be careful with that money in case I need to absorb a downswing. But from her perspective, I'm just winning or losing $1k every night, so there's no real harm in me spending $100 taking us out to a nice restaurant and bar. After all, if I can give back $1k to the casino the next day like it's nothing, then spending $100 having fun pales in comparison.

You need to have a big enough roll mate, things will gone wrong otherwise. Also you should keep your roll separate from life, maybe i missed something in the thread but can you not play 1-2 stakes? Build up your roll a bit, just a thought!

The long-term plan is to have a separate bankroll and liferoll, but that's just not feasible until I have $10k+.

I can't play $1/$2 because the structure at my casino is so bad that it's virtually unbeatable. The buyin is $50-$100 (so 50bb max) and the rake is 10% capped at $20. It's ridiculous.

Compare that to $1/$3 where the buyin is $100-$300 (100bb max, like it should be) and the rake is only 10% capped at $15, which is not only lower rake in absolute numbers, but also lower because the game plays bigger and the rake cap is overtaken way more often.

Complete agree, what’s funny is every note can be summarized as just: “fold pre”. The more I play, the more I ****ing love folding pre.

Do you mainly play the same casino? If so keep 3 buy-ins cash and the rest of your roll in casino chips. Bring the chips home with you.

You have to teach her and yourself not to look at the chips as money, but as a tool used at work to earn money. A carpenter cannot earn if he trades his hammer for beer.

If you're playing as your main source of income or as a major source of supplimental income then you have to treat it as a business. Blowing company profits on personal crap like dinners is embezzlement. If you have to spend on her to keep your relationship balanced, then you need to establish an entertainment budget and account and fund it and stick to it.

Try putting 25% of your profit each session back into your bankroll. Peel her off some walk around money. Your roll will grow.

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A draining poker session:

I had what I refer to as a "draining poker session" today. It wasn't a session where I got coolered or lost huge pots. It wasn't a session where I spewed away money carelessly. Rather, it was a passive $1/$3 table on a Monday afternoon where nothing huge happened, except I got to watch my stack slowly drain away, medium pot after small pot after medium pot.

The hands I raised, all of which were in either late position or mid position, were: 99, T9s, 87s, 98s, T9s, 99, A4s. On every occassion, I raised to 5x + x per limper. On two occassions, everyone folded and on the other 5 occassions, we went either 4ways or 5ways to the flop. I'd basically always get the kind of flop where I question to myself "should I cbet here or just give up"? For example, I'd be 4ways on a T54 board with 99 in position, not being sure whether to fire a bet to deny equity and hope no one has a Ten, or just check back and basically give up the hand. I'd also have T9cc and the flop would come 8c 5d 3d. I'd Cbet the flop and get 1 caller. Turn would be the As so I'd bet 85% pot on it, thinking this is a great card to bluff, only for my opponent to have AQdd on this occassion (he was calling raises with A2o and QTo against other players). The whole session I was thinking "why can't I get AJ or something and stack these fish with TPTK?"

I almost wish I got coolered or bluffed or something, just so I'd have an interesting hand to talk about. But the only decisions I ever had were "do I cbet this hand 4ways or not?"

So I left $600 down, having lost every single hand (except for the ones where I took it down pre after a few limpers) and having nothing exciting to really talk about. Welcome to $1/$3 live.

I usually don't like talking strategy on forums, but with the type of game you're in, the metagame requires you to make extreme preflop adjustments. On this super whaley table, every time you open, you should be sizing larger and larger until you find the point where the pot will go roughly 3ways/HU.

Then just tighten your range accordingly. I usually just end up opening {JJ+, AQs, AK} for super large in these formations. Idiots will donate you a $35+ open and a bet or two post-flop despite the fact that you haven't opened for the last three hours. It comes down to a degenerate mentality where they want to gamble and "crack" your big hand. Or they literally pay no attention.

It's okay to split your range and limp hands like 99. No one will exploit you. They are literal droolers.

Yeah I think in hindsight, it would've been okay to limp behind a lot of these hands.

Sizing is hard though because sometimes it's literally impossible to go HU, due to the fact that one caller attracts more callers. If you size to $20 then you'll go 5ways and if you size to $25 then you'll take down a $10 pot pre.

So you're raising into the whole field, get called in 4 spots again and again and yet you keep playing fancy, trying to get everyone to fold over and over. Which, of course, won't happen.

STOP, PLAYING, FANCY

I play 50$ zoom online on regular bases and can 100% tell you that you aren´t winning (at least on stars) if you misplay hands as bad as you did the KJ one...I understand that live plays different but that shows you have very basic and obvious leaks.

I would take a step back, be happy about the money you won this year and grind out 50 BI on 10NL Online. Grind out another 50BI on 25 NL and than move back to live and you will see how great you will do. Learn basic concepts, learn to deal with real swings (I talk about +/- 15 BI per day, because you will face those online...) , learn to adjust a decent !! BRM !!

This might sound weird but do you guys think that 1-2 bottles of beer might actually help you play better? I find that I'm more relaxed and less shaky when I've had a small amount of beer. I also feel more confident in my plays and even tilt less.

Lol I wouldn't fold that hand at 50nl on Stars. I said it was an exploitative fold, not a standard fold.

Really not sure about this hand. BTN is a solid reg. I'm $300 deep at $1/$3.

1 limper $3
BTN opens $15
Fish calls $15 SB
Hero 3bets $75 BB with AJdd
BTN calls, fish folds

Flop ($153) is QQ8r

Hero bets $40
Reg calls $40

Turn ($233) makes it QQ88

Hero checks
Reg bets $90
Hero folds

Nice call sir

Villain is mid 20s WG with $800 stack in HJ. A bit loose and capable of bluffing but doesn't seem crazy.
4 limpers
Hero limps SB with T9cc
BB checks

Flop ($17, 6ways) is Qh Jc 4c

Hero bets $20
Villain calls $20

Turn ($53, HU) is As

Hero bets $65
Villain calls $65

River ($173, HU) is 7s

Hero bets $200
Villain calls $200

Villain shows Jh 9d

Wow...

I do believe the KJ is a call

Seems pretty standard. If he's a "solid reg", his 3bet calling range is probably something like 99-QQ, AK/AQ. A range which has your particular hand dominated. You're chopping at best on the turn, so i dont mind a check/fold.