Back to running well again, not sure how well I'm playing really tbh. Doesn't feel like I'm making a lot of huge mistakes or anything. Pool is pretty soft generally from what I can tell. Lots of fish, maybe I'm one of them.

Up plenty of $ from random rakeback and leaderboard **** so roll is at $348

Here's a few hands I found difficult

H1:


Pretty weird to be wanting to fold trips in a 3B pot on this very dry texture? Maybe I should be though, not sure. He doesn't really have 77 here, so losing to 99, JJ, AJ, A7. If he is 3B any AXs from SB vs CO then I beat slightly fewer combos than I lose to I think. Don't think he has any bluffs here any significant amount of the time.

H2:


One of those gross super deep 4B pot spots. I think my play is all standard
here, just wanted to get a second opinion.

H3:


This hand really ****ed my brain. I don't often go for this type of huge triple barrel, and I don't really think villain is generally folding river often when they call the large turn bet in a 3B pot at this stake. This particular villain seemed like a reg, and he tanked the turn for honestly like 1.5min before calling, which really influenced my decision to go for the bluff here. I figured my line looked very legit and I block AK so I went for it. I swear he snapped the river in under 2 seconds.


H4:


This feels like it should be a super easy fold generally right? Just considering pot odds + villains very strong line etc. Seems like something I should be 100% sure about but just wanted to check.

Cheers to everyone who's been following along and helping me out so far. GL to all

Hand 1 - yep, gross. we could maybe randomise calls to feel better?

Hand 2 - I think we should consider folding to flop raise as an exploit. Every time I look up deep spots in Pio it plays cagey af, so until I know why/how and plus villain's general low bluff % leads me to overfold and save my mental game/stack, esp OOP. We'll have AK, club draws, AQ with Ac or Qd etc that are all better calls so i don't think it's overfolding too much.

Hand 3 - this is basically my main leak, firing off in 3bet pots. I don't hate the barrel and I get why you went for it with a timing tell, maybe villain also thought they'd opened themselves up to weakness and... so... actually nah, they just a crazy fish. UL

Hand 4 - good turn for villain's range, probably fine to abort in micros.

Tight spots one and all. Doing well man.

River he needs to be doing bluffing with QTs/KTs, if he bluffs with KQo we have a massive +EV call or i wanna say he will have bluffs here with like a QTs so thats 3 combos, u need to find bluffs with in opp. shoes with that sizing OTR so either bluff KTs or some KQo i think vs. a nitty stat player i fold.

QJs is interesting OTT i think i call especially because we can make the nuts + he will have stuff liek AsKh that will be betting stuff like that, think we can overbet jam for 1.5x-2x pot on a lot of rivers when he checks
^just need to run the equities OTT vs. his range

H3: The river AQo call by a reg is fine as he has decent blockers. You were overbluffing in the hand, so he was actually exploiting you. I wouldn't be surprised if he intentionally tanked the turn to make you overbluff the river. I do that a lot vs regs.

Yeah dude he had AQo im sure he was trying to induce a blluff with a meh hand lmao

I think opp. made a good call, if OP is overbluffing with 12-16 combos of AT thats too much AQ has a higher EV call here then TT but in hindsight i think it's a bad call from opp. vs. population lol ppl will give up a lot OTR here imo maybe u run into 67s or AQ/AJs

You're definitely a much better player than me, but I'm not sure I agree that his call is +EV in this pool. Not saying my bluff is good or that I'm not overbluffing, but I'd say at 10z this spot is hugely underbluffed and calling here against most regs at this stake is very losing?

I think the Ahigh call down definitely losing in that pool, but the 9h isn't the best card to be barreling turn on, and I think ATo should usually be flat in BB rather than 3b, especially given 3b rake.

H4, don't think I'd ever be folding that turn, especially since it's a board better for your range, villains will x/f the river a pretty high frequency unimproved

I think it's unjustifiable. Unless they had some crazy read you'd go nutso. And even then.

If somone called down this loose against me I'd mark them a massive station and start barreling TPMK+

I'm very happy to see your thread,I also play in GG zoom.I now struggle in nl5.Do you think in GG poker there are more coolers than other website? GL, man! I WILL learn from you!

Yeah agree about ATo being a flat, I usually play it that way tbh. Fair enough re hand 4, I was completely lost there.

Thanks man. I don't think gg poker is rigged if that's what you're suggesting lol. GL

AQ call seems fine to me

Fair enough. Both you and the other guy who shared this view clearly have a much deeper understanding of the game, so I can't really argue here!

Bit of a delayed update... Here's the graph since the return to 10z. Weird month, was down quite a bit and staying afloat at the stake solely due to rakeback for a little while. Hit a massive 26 buy in heater the last 13k hands (think I've played a little better there also tbh).

Heater started at the exact same time that I moved from playing 4 tables to only 3. I think that's contributed somewhat also. Nice to end the month as a winner.

Only winning at 2bb/100 so far but hopefully the heat continues for a little while. I think my redline is only losing at 5bb/100 (calculated quickly not sure if correct), which I think is fairly acceptable?

With rakeback and the rungood combined the bankroll is now at about $580

Here's a few hands that were hard for me or interesting for other reasons.

H1:

I don't think this is terrible (maybe it is), but it's probably better to call IP here right? Cold 4B and then a flat from UTG is just way too strong for me to be ahead enough of the time here?

H2:

Is this too thin when we're 200bb effective? Should river be bet/fold at a smaller size?

H3:

Not sure if folding here is too nitty. Paired and flushed board has me worried here, if it's one or the other I am calling 100% for this size obviously. He can raise with trips here if he has straight/flush blockers right? But that's less likely when I'm blocking some of those blockers... I feel this should mostly just be a call for him if he does have a T, which is all that I beat bar bluffs. Really lost about this one.

H4:

I think this call is fine? Didn't want to get pushed off chops here but wasn't sure if that's a good enough reason to call. Villain had KJ obviously lol.

H5:

Not sure if I should jam river here this deep. I technically missed out on value but I couldn't convince myself that worse hands were going to call a 200bb river shove.. really wanted the call so badly here. Is my turn play ok here?

H6 *bonus hand*:

This one's just for fun. Neither villain had what I expected them to show up with here lol. Plenty of fish in the sea.

Cheers to all for following and helping so far. Hopefully February goes well and we move up to 25z soon.

H1; I think you're rarely getting it in good here - best outcome is a fold from BB tbh. Call seems okay, but could also get away with folding (I think some regs at this stake will just cold call the 3b w/ QQ).

H2; possibly a little thin, but I'm also a bit lost in these pools 200bb+ eff

H3; I'd probably call, but I'm also a station/reads on villain might sway me either way. That being said, villains are going to overfold vs big turn barrels, so his range is already pretty tight on the river

H4; call fine, villain will have enough random Jx to justify

H5; I think after villain calls the turn x/r, he's basically never folding, just rip it. People don't like folding sets... I think raise on turn is pretty mandatory given how much strength both villains have shown

Solid volume for the month, I definitely play better with less tables running, plus the leaderboards aren't really worth grinding anymore, so quickest way to move up is to maintain a high WR

Thanks dsailor. Saw you on the tables the other day actually.
H1 I agree with your logic completely.
H2 yeah not sure how good my sizing is but yea villain called and somehow showed up with 76s haha.
H3 maybe I can mix in calls when I have a heart in my hand? Still not sure here.
H5 yeah he called w 99 here and I instantly felt I maybe should have jammed.

Looks like you had a decent January in your thread, hopefully see you at 25z soon

Feb was going alright until I hit a 28 BI downswing. Been really lazy with updating the thread and also with reviewing hands and attempting to study. Disappointing and pretty lame.

Just went through all losing pots over 40bb during this swing and deduced that about 8 BI of those were definitely caused by suboptimal play in the form of mostly bad river calls or spewy bluffs. Clearly running really bad but it sucks to contribute so significantly with my own errors.

Some mental game leaks definitely exist in these situations and frustration likely to blame for a lot of the misplays.

Main issues include:

Doubling down on pursuing volume when running bad
Playing too quickly
Letting frustration influence decisions

Going to try to slow down on volume and increase time in between decisions.

I really want to learn how to study poker properly. There's a million decent free and paid resources out there and I've bounced around between a bunch including theory analysis, play and explains etc etc. Kind of need someone to tell me exactly what I should be doing each day when it comes to study.

Hope anyone following the thread is currently running and playing better than I am.

Cheers

I think there's another aspect to poker that isn't properly quantified yet, you won't find any courses talking about it, and is generally just swept up as variance or mental game. And that's 'complicated decisions'.

You get a few of those in a row, esp at the end of an already tortuous session, and you've worn your brain out almost without realising how. It's like a tank that runs out of fuel. I think of it like cpu power draining away. Some sessions barely move the dial, while others are eminently taxing but we don't even notice it because we're running good.

I think most successful pros have internalized this logic, this energy expenditure by brute force and experience, but if you don't know 100% whether you're making the right calls or not it's harder to manage and can weigh down your mental game to the point of collapse.

Keep going Darcy, I still think you're doing well if you zoom out. And kudos for your honesty, that's the sign of a good player in my book.

Hey thanks heaps man. Appreciate the kind words and encouragement. Totally agree that things like running bad, getting into tough spots and becoming frustrated are amplified massively when on top of any of those you also don't really know what the correct response should have been in the moment. I've learned more about poker recently than I ever have, and it's made me feel so much more confident in a lot of spots. I hope that feeling just continues to increase as time goes on. Really need to figure out some sort of solid structure to my learning at some stage though.

Cheers again and GL to you

Good luck man - I feel like I'm in a similar place but have been setting things up over the last couple months to take a proper shot from this week onwards. I've sorted out a caoch as you saw in my thread, have got a RIO subscription and I think the next step is finding a group of people to really deep dive into this stuff with. I reckon having a solid group of people around you is the most important.

Quick update - taking some time do a lot a more work off the tables. Have always used to the excuse that I don’t really know how to study properly to never really do any real theory work so going to try and change that. Updates will prob be super delayed for a bit as I reduce table count and spend more time learning and less time playing. Hopefully that all pays off and the challenge continues!

Interesting stuff here! I'll take a look more in depth a the hands posted. the AQ one with the big posters giving there agreement? Good stuff. I'll follow your journey.

Hey mate, saw your thread 2 days ago and subbed to it already, looks promising. Yeah that AQ hand was a real eye opener, got so much to learn about this game it's insane. Love it tbh. GL

Small update for March so far. Have reduced table count and made what feel like some very positive adjustments after receiving some good advice. Running terribly but at least I'm winning so far this month. Hoping to dig myself out of February's hole soon and be able to shot 25z again without too much trouble.

Rakeback has been a blessing for this challenge so far, bankroll still at $570 somehow

Keep it up man! Don't worry about the EV, just keep making the right decisions and the profit will come.

Thanks man, just trying to stay afloat in this stupidly difficult game