Well that went pretty much as badly as it could have gone. I played really well but literally lost every all in and got coolered a bunch of times. Cashed 2 of 25 for a -30k day. I did however bust everything in time to catch the start of the game downstairs here in Macau so I only need to win 150bb to get out of it. Gonna spend the next 10 days putting in some big volume at the cash tables like the old days and then got a flight back to London on the 30th for a wedding before Vegas on the 6th

Ul Moss man. Still the biggest boss on here pal

Looking forward to getting after it with ya in Vegas. Let's keep the study and morale high brother and bring home the results for the lads.

Meh rolled in AA vs 44 for 350bb each and flop came 4 high

Pretty insane pot, I limp utg AA, utg1 limps, vip thinks about raising but just limps, B.B. reg makes it 15k, I’m 750k deep I just flat cos I think vip could do something here and also it just looks so absurdly strong if I back raise utg vs Bb. Just end up isolating myself against a reg who has an excellent idea of my range so figured flat is better. Utg1 calls, vip makes it 90k, Bb now calls 90. So now I just ship the 750, I think it looks fairly unbelievable, looks like could be AK/JJ type hands to me. Think reg is gonna have a really tough time folding anything he’s called 90k with and think vip has a chance to call off light/won’t fold anything strong vs this line for sure. Plus I mean there’s 210k already in there I don’t mind picking up. Prefer this to clicking to 250 or something as I think 250 implies I’m trying to say I can have some ‘bluffs’ which I don’t think is really going to happen much in this spot. Rather have my ‘bluffs’ be AK/JJ trying to pick up dead money. Anyway VIP calls off the 750 instantly with 44, which is a little strange because this vip normally just splashes a bit pre but doesn’t play many big pots, and laughs at me when I tell him I’ve got aces because he can see he’s flopped a set. I mean he’s like the funnest vip to lose to this one, a fan favorite for sure, but it didn’t really help the sting too much.

So not a great start to the Macau grind but I’ve had a decent rest now and should be on a good schedule to play some more sessions

150bb was $30k, and we played a $1.5M pot? Am I reading this correct or did I have a stroke. Or did the stakes 10x?

Insanity HH regardless.

150bb was usd this hh was in hkd

yeah so pot total was ONLY 200kUSD, pocket change imo

What can you even buy with 200k these days? Like a tesla roadster, but not even the founders edition, just the regular one.

WHat an amazing thread

Well, that’s another Macau trip in the books. It was pretty much a breakeven trip from live poker and I lost $30k playing SCOOP. I did feel like I made huge progress on my game, my tournament game came on leaps and bounds from all the work I did coupled with playing 3-4k hands per day for nearly all of SCOOP. This brings me into WSOP high on confidence and ready to fire, I’m planning to play pretty much all the Aria $25ks on top of a full schedule at WSOP. My friends are coming out after the main to go out though so I may end up skipping the $50k and other nice events at the end of the series to have fun instead.

In cash I thought I played excellently which was a breath of fresh air. I was battling with Katya, Lottenice, Limitless and a variety of good live regs with very few soft spots in sight and I felt that I held my own. I managed to win back the money I lost with the AA vs 44 and won a bit more so that got me out of the hole for the trip but I wasn’t able to notch a significant profit. I played some really interesting hands and I definitely felt that the overall study and work had influenced my game quite a lot, resulting in me finding some bets/checks/check raises that I’m not sure I would have found 3 or 4 months ago. I don’t usually like to post many live HHs because enough players in the game do read this blog and I don’t want to give away too much information. However, everybody seems to love the HS live cash game hand histories and given that I don’t plan to play in Macau until September I think I can get away with sharing a few of the more interesting ones.

Hand One

I limp K9 in SB, reg makes it 7k, I call. Flop T52, I check he bets 7k I make it 22k he calls. Turn Q check check. River 9 I check he bets 26k, I raise to 92k and he folds.

In this hand I decided to raise the flop although I would flat a fairly large amount of the time. On the turn I decided I didn’t really want to barrel this hand for 3 streets, I'd rather have smaller spades which can fold out bigger spades or have backdoor flush draw/sd or Ax gutshots to fire 3 with no spades in their hand. I think with K high + the gutshot this can play as a check call turn and bet river if he checks back turn. On the 9 I pick up a little showdown value so I check hoping to win from the check check line occasionally but once he bets I think I clearly can’t call. I block some bluffs, I only have a bluff catcher and it’s a fairly bad one. When it comes to raising I think it’s really nice to have a 9 as I block T9, block Q9ss, and block 99 which are probably his most guaranteed bet calling hands. The King of spades is kind of neutral when it comes to raising. I block KJss that checked back, I block KK and KQss which may bet call, those are all good things but I do also block Kxss which will be auto folding to any raise. I felt that his range was capped enough for me to go for this play and that my blockers were on the whole pretty good so I thought it was a reasonable hand to pull the trigger with, I can have plenty of value hands including sets that went for turn check raise, rivered two pair and the occasional rivered straight so I definitely think I rep enough hands. He tanked for a long time and eventually folded so I felt pretty good about that one.

Hand Two

Lottenic opens BTN 5k I make it 25k from BB 450k deep with JT, he calls. Flop is 983 I check he checks back. Turn T I check again he bets 26.5k, I call. River 8 I check he bets 102k and I call.

Here I decided to go for a check raise on the flop as I thought I would want to check raise some overpairs and I’m happy to balance my checking range with some combo draws like this one that can raise to fold out a lot of better hands, can play for stacks, and can barrel off on pretty much every run out. After I whiff the check raise I think it’s pretty clear that I can’t go for two streets of value on the ten, it’s nice to have some disguised super strong hands on spade rivers and it’s also good to protect the Ace highs and small suited connector air that I will want to check on the turn so I’m pretty sure the turn check is best. On river I clearly only have a bluffcatcher, however I think it’s one of the absolute best bluff catchers I’m going to end up on this river with. Whilst my Js blocks an occasional KJss AJss, I think he’s fairly likely to bet the flop or check both streets so I don’t think it’s too bad in that respect. It blocks QJ, his most likely and best represented value hand, it blocks JJ and my T blocks TT, AT (unlikely he pots), and T9s (also unlikely to pot). So overall pretty awesome blockers and better than a hand like AA to call here I think given that I don’t anticipate AT potting river. Whilst it is a little hard to find bluffs i trust that he’s going to be able to, KQ, KJs and small suited connectors all come to mind and I think that’s plenty of hands to warrant me doing some bluff catching with a weak range on the river, JTss seems like one of the most obvious candidates. Unfortunately he showed me a somewhat unexpected QQ and I lost.

I ran this hand in PIO afterwards and I was pretty surprised to learn that despite being deep and out of position we have a strong enough range advantage to just bet flop with range for 40% pot here so I made a mistake in my flop strategy. However turn and river were played similarly by PIO and it agreed with my analysis that JT was an especially good bluff catcher here, it was calling it ahead of a number of overpairs and stronger hands by just hand strength so I was happy with my turn and river play.

Hand Three

Katya limps utg, VIP limps playing 600k, reg limps, reg makes it 12k CO, I flat BTN 97, all the limpers call and it goes 5 way to the flop. Flop is J93. Checks to me and I bet 30k into 63k. Only the VIP calls, turn is 4 and he checks, I bet 45k he calls. River 5 he checks and I bet 140k, he calls and I win.

In this hand I think the most interesting streets are flop and turn. I think this flop bet is really good and something that some people miss 5 way. My hand is often the best hand but will very rarely be after turn and river roll off with 4 different hands for me to avoid getting caught up by. So I gain a lot of protection by betting. I also have a pretty good triple barrel bluff hand if I get called by one of the regulars, I block middle set and J9s, I have a good chance of picking up additional equity on the turn, I don’t block diamonds or most straight draws so I have a pretty nice hand to fire off on the river if I end up heads up vs a reg. On top of that I gain some value from the VIP calling with worse. Once the VIP calls on the turn I go for a smallish bet to try and charge some gutshots and weak flush draws that I think will call small and have fairly low equity vs my hand. I’m also not devastated if I get called by a Jack as I am building a pot and can expect to get a fairly large river value bet paid off if I hit and he has a jack. And if he decides to bluff turn I have a fairly good hand to call one off and either stack him on a heart, or make an easy fold if he fires on the river as I don’t expect to get bluffed too much. River I think is fairly uninteresting I just tried to pick a size that would get me paid for a large amount but wouldn’t induce a Jack to fold.

Hand Four

Very good reg opens BTN, I flat AT in BB. Flop KJ5, I check call 4k into 11k. Turn Q I check he bets 13k I raise to 48k he calls. River K. I check and he moves in for 350k into the 115k. I fold.

This hand was pretty painful to play. I think apart from my turn raise possibly being too small it’s pretty standard to the river. On the river I think it’s very unlikely I have a full house as I’m fairly unlikely to check raise turn with KQ KJ, I would always raise flop with 55, and I would pretty much always 3bet JJ-KK pre flop. So I’m extremely capped. My opponent is very good and will be fully aware of this + aware that he has every full house. I expect him to find bluffs with QJ, Tx that he bet called, Ax that he bet called, Q5s, J5s and maybe some naked flush draws although I think those would be a punt on the turn. Obviously vs triple pot I only have a bluffcatcher and I think my range is pretty face up as straights and busted heart draws. I think I will have to call some straights so I don’t get completely pounded here but I think that the Ace of hearts is the absolute worst card for me to have as it blocks the largest number of his bluffs. I think AT with no heart may have to call this off and possibly also T9 no heart. But I feel pretty ok folding AT with a heart in it so I felt like this fold was my best option in this pretty horrendous spot I have put myself in. My only thought after playing the river was that I should probably be sizing up quite substantially if he’s going to be able to wreck me every time the board pairs. If i’m announcing a straight or a bluff, I should probably size it more like 55-60k in order to disincentivize hands with equity from peeling and bluffing me every time the board pairs.

Hand Five

Open black A5 from sb to 7k, Katya calls from BB. Flop K84, ch ch, turn 5 I ch he bets 7k I call. River 9 I lead 18.5k.

Here I opened SB rather than limping because a VIP was in the game so we want to play as quickly as possible so that we’re able to play more hands. Flop I have a clear check fold and turn I think check call is the only play, On the river I don’t think I have any weaker hands really here, I have a number of high card + diamond and pair + diamond that want to put a bet in and he has a load of hands that went for value that will now check back as well as some air hands that will fold vs this bet but might bluff me if I check. I think also it’s quite difficult to conjure up bluffs for me here so I like bluffing for that reason too. It worked out which was nice, I was pretty pleased to find this lead I think it’s the sort of play that you can easily miss and overlook when playing your B game.

So that’s 5 hands from the cash games. Here’s two bonus psychotic hands I played on the last couple of days of SCOOP that were a lot of fun too.

https://www.boomplayer.com/27832899_95D63E6480

https://www.boomplayer.com/27840137_701C2EA929

Now for a week of blasting around London and Portugal, featuring a friends wedding before I fire off to Vegas on the 6th and I can’t wait to get in there. Seeing some small updates out of Vegas makes me all the more excited to jump in, planning to play a tournament or two pretty much every day, will be interesting to see if I burn out as right now I'm just looking forward to it all.

Good luck everybody, my next update will be once I've settled into the WSOP grind I guess.

Wow what a post , thanks so much for sharing everything so honestly and openly,
Very much look forward to WSOP updates.

Love the 43ss boom player HH, presumably you bet 3 bet river thinking that his Ac always bets turn to have a shot at your bounty by the river ?

Great update dude and pleased to briefly catch you in Macau!! Best of luck on your WSOP grind. See you out there

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

Love the detailed analysis, looks spot on.

feels like you should be defending the AhTx at least some % of the time, although I guess it's probably break even-ish minimum defense sort of call

hand 3 don't you think you should be leading a fair bit smaller than half pot if you decide to bet flop for protection? I guess we don't have multiway solvers yet, just feels like sizing may be too big there

43ss pretty funny hand, feel ecstatic when it goes through... not so much when villain snaps us though haha

A well written post and enjoyable to read your approach to the game. Gl in Vegas!

Can you talk a little bit about limping in live cash? What are conditions/hands that are good candidates?

Tyty. Tbh I just didn’t really believe he had many Ac and I know the guy is a really explo player and I think he just felt he could get me off a chop really easily. I also thought he was never gonna think I’m capable of bluffing here but it doesn’t really matter as I doubt he’s raising especially thin for value.

Tyty all above

I disagree regarding AT. Let’s simplify my range a bit. Call it 32 combos straights, 2 combos full houses (probably I have 0), and call it maybe 12 combos missed flush draws. So I have 46 combos. Maybe you can dig deep and find more but let’s just start with this point. He’s betting 350 to win 115 so he needs it to work roughly 75% so my MdF is 25% of 46 combos which we can call 12 combos. I have 9 combos AT with no heart and 9 combos T9 with no heart so even if I never have a full house I think I still have plenty of room to fold all straights with a heart and not be exploited. I would also start by calling T9 with the 9 of hearts if I wanted to call more as this is a less bad blocker to have than the ace or ten.

H3 yeah you could size smaller. We’re really deep and I’m thinking of setting up for a triple barrel vs the regs so I think that plays into my sizing. Definitely don’t mind going smaller though.

Ty!

Yeah i do a lot of limping from EP when there are vips in the game. I think it gives you more flexibility and let’s you play a wider range from early. You avoid the scenario where you open and then it goes 6 way with you as PFR. Now you either play limped pots where you haven’t invested much, you can backsqueeze with your premiums and hands that don’t want to play 6 way but are still strong and you can make a happy peel of the raise with hands like 78s 77 that limped and take these multiway. I don’t do much limping from later positions.

you're right I underestimated how little you need to defend vs 3x pot, fine fold, don't mind me

Right, couple of london nights out, a wedding and a quick Lisbon trip are out of the way. I'm getting on a flight now to Vegas, will be getting in this evening. Managed to squeeze in a little further work, I've been studying the solved ranges for short-ultra shortstack play which is an area I've naturally been a little weak at, going to be chucking in some of those incredibly annoying limps off the 15bb stacks .

Almost surprised at how pumped I am to be getting in there and battling but I guess that's been the tone for the last month or so. Feels kinda like when I first started playing, that excitement at getting in there and that itch to play after a week off, it's been a long time since I've been this excited for some poker.

I'm planning to put up some regular updates and hand histories since I'm going to be playing so much so keep an eye out here and my twitter @mossy270 in the coming weeks!

Aaaalright, that's day one in the books and I got right in there! I'm jetlagged as **** but that didn't stop me walking into the RIO and walking up to my table at 11AM with a huge grin that I couldn't wipe off my face. I managed to last 11 minutes in my first jaunt in the WSOP so will be looking to improve on that this afternoon.

HH was as follows:

25/50, Farmer opens to 250, Farmer 2 calls BTN, I make it 1100 off 5500 with AKo. Farmer 1 folds, Farmer 2 calls. Flop A99 I bet 650, Farmer calls. Turn 2 I bet 1400 he calls. River J I'm all in for 2400 and get snap called by JJ. Could feel that one coming after the largely overexcited posts I've been spamming on here in the lead up to Vegas.

In a fashion that I intend to continue all summer, I ate a little food and then bombed over to the Venetian to play the 1100 bounty. I'm planning to just keep registering things all day if I bust WSOP events, I just wanna get in there and Venetian (and Wynn) have pretty good schedules that are definitely worth jumping in.

It felt like every hand I played I either legitimately made a mistake or I got shown that in this instance my fold/call was wrong. So it was a pretty rough day as far as the poker goes. However I did manage to get a spin together on my second bullet in the bounty and min cashed (in utterly pathetic style) for 2300.

I actually played quite a few interesting hands, it was 30 minute levels so there's a lot of short stack stuff which is what I've been working hard on lately so it was quite fun to try out some new strategies. Speaking of which, playing after doing a ton of studying (and now implementing a load of limping off 12-25bb stacks) feels like a big step back for now. It's kind of overwhelming trying to play correctly in a spot where previously you just knew your opening range. I think the way to look at it is that previously I was playing a simple and fairly bad short stack strategy, and I'm trying to now play a good but more complicated strategy. The result though is that you feel like an idiot along the way. Right now I'm finding it a little difficult to remember what stacks want to limp/open/shove and which hands and it's resulted in both playing some hands worse than I would have done previously and also the feeling of confusion that I would never previously have had when I look down at say KThh with 20bb in CO. I'm trusting in the process and I think nailing down a significantly improved short stack strategy is great but right now it feels pretty dodgy!

Onto a few hands, I'm downloading HRC at snails pace on my travel laptop now to run a couple of these actually but in the meantime here they are:

H1: Big, splashy fish limps EP I make 1000 at 300bb with JJ, SB calls, BB reg calls, fish calls. Flop T85 checks to me I bet 2100 into 4200 with 4.4k back. It's a big sizing but I think I just want to set up a 2 street game here. BB now shoves for his 9k (I have 4.4k back) and fish snap overshoves, he has like 20k. It's not an exciting spot but there's 18k in there and I have to call 4.4k off, don't think I get to fold. Both have T8s, turn T and we're onto bullet number 2.


H2: Open AT UTG to 4k at 2k BB playing 42k. MP seemed like bad reg calls, BTN calls and we go 5 way. Flop Q56 checks through. Turn 6 the blinds check and I check. It's pretty tempting to put a small bet in here to clean up some equity but I can't call a raise so I think I have to let it go. MP now bets 11.5k into 22k. Folds to me I think it's a pretty easy call, he can have some worse draws, I'm getting 3:1 plus some implied, he shouldn't have much 6x but I mean welcome to Vegas, but also you get certain player types who can just have absolutely nothing here and decide to stab after two groups of checks. River is J I check he bets 12.5k I shove for 10k more and he tank folds. Tells me he really hopes I had the Queen because he folded the Jack, lol.

H3: There's like 50 people left and 36 get paid so not too much pressure with regards to bubble. I have 70k at 3kbb. UTG opens 6.5k, UTG2 who has played very tight shoves 22k (so 7bb), next seat fairly aggressive reg now immediately shoves 60k and it folds to me on the BTN with TT. I kinda thought her range would be 99+ here AQ+ and I also thought that if she has like 88/99 she surely can't shove immediately because it's a pretty tough spot. I also thought the tournament is sick soft, I have a reasonable stack and this spot doesn't seem particularly juicy so I just folded. Everybody folded and they turned over 77 and 88 and it bricked off so that one hurt. Pretty curious to run this one in HRC and see what it says.

H4: 38 left, 36 pay, I have 68k (starting stack is 15k) and BB is 4k. UTG aggro reg opens 9.5k, UTG1 euro reg makes it 24k, they have like 120-160k each. I have AKo on BTN. I just fold. Obviously getting this in is winning chips but I think with my stack I'm going to pretty much always be able to fold into the money from here. Min cash is 2050 which is 3x buy in (it's a 700+300 bounty).

It's easy to say lol 1100 who cares all in, but I am really trying to play my best and one problem I've found is that if you go into these small events thinking 'this is too small for me, I'm just gonna do whatever and I deserve to win' you end up playing **** and you both don't learn anything from it and you also win much less than you would have done if you played properly. So I'm really trying, for now, to treat every tournament the same. Obviously that's not completely functionally possible but I think it explains why I'm stalling and making pretty pathetic folds toward the money in an 1100 lol.

So I figured that it's not winning enough chips to justify missing out on 2050 like 40-45% of the time. I'm not entirely sure on the maths I was giving it some thought. My equity if I fold is gonna be (close to) 2050 + the equity I have in the 55-60k chips I'll have after bubble bursts. I guess the chips are worth maybe another $1500 but that's pure speculation. Accounting for me sometimes still bubbling call it 3300. So 40% of the time I lose $3300. 60% of the time I'm going to double up plus the open and the blinds and antes. I'll win 68k + 9500 + 10000. so 87,500. At the start $700 is worth 15k chips, so that's worth $3600. But the additional chips you win are worth significantly less than the ones you lose, I'm also still only going to have a midstack so I won't pick up an ICM advantage. I would have thought adding these to my stack is going to be worth a lot less than the $3600, it's so difficult to say how much but it's not a stretch for me to think it's like $2400. In which case 40% of the time I lose $3600 and 60% of the time I win $2400. Which actually (and coincidentally, I really was just typing this out as a general musing) results in a breakeven $ spot. Obviously, I wasn't able to calculate all this mid-game, this is my post-mortem analysis. I don't know though, I've never really seen a great video on pure bubble situations (which this pretty much is) and there are other considerations (like a skill edge if I choose to always remain in the tournament or conversely the bounty edge that I can knock some people out for $300 if I have the bigger stack). I'm definitely interested to know some thoughts on these hands as I definitely was unsure about a few so feel free to leave some thoughts and let me know if you think those short stack hands are blunders!

Anyway that's enough for now, there's the 5k BB ante starting at 3PM which is in 2 hours time and I've been wide awake since 5AM so I might try and get a nap in before heading over to Rio.

Hi, absolutely love the thread. Best on here imo. What are you using to study short stack strategies? I need to learn limping strategies as well!

ICM spots are annoying I usually lean toward folding when it feels really close though, I think the AKo fold is fine

Hey
I came across this thread recently and loving it, appreciate all the updates about your journey. Keep it up and Good luck in Vegas !
I am that Indian looking guy who swapped HKD/£ with you in Macau (late 2016) if you can remember

Keep crushing !

Well, I ran up a big stack in the millionaire maker (450k, 60 starting stacks) but I completely ****ed it up at the end of day 2 due to tiredness and made a bad squeeze sizing which I just simply miscalculated and it lead to my demise. Jumped in Marathon today and am sitting pretty on the stone bubble with an above average stack. I’ll post an update with some hands in a short while, it’s been quite a productive few days, I’ve mostly played very well with one glaring mistake that I got max punished for but I’ve been loving it and am ready for more.

I bought pre-solved solutions for 10-50bb preflop for monker. Was fairly expensive but I’ve learnt a lot

Yeah I was happy with that one

Ah hey man, I know who you are Ty for the well wishes glad you enjoy the blog hope you’re good

Loving the updates. Hope to see you at The Wynn $1M GTD this weekend, although I'll not make it if I can crush the WSOP Seniors starting this Friday - it's nice to be 51 playing a bunch of lovely 70 year old good ole boys ;-)

PS: I got 2nd in The Wynn's $1k last weekend for $45k and credit this thread for pushing me to buy the RYE Tournament Masterclass that helped me get that result. Thank You!

When you update regularly this is the Best pgc thread on here imo also. So please keep udpading atleast somewhat regularly 😁 gl for the rest of the summer

+1 looking forward to more Vegas updates