Alright I couldn't resist. Apparently I needed another reminder to NOT play drunk poker

oh well, gotta give my lovably loyal customers some rakeback ya know

I kinda lurk this thread (and lots of PGC's tbh) but just wanna give the biggest +1 to prioritising your mental health. I think there's so many different aspects that you can work on that all feed into being as good a place possible mentally but so often people massively neglect a lot of them.

GL with the switch back to NL

birthday gift for me

slightly bigger gift

lol Aesahhhhhh

It kinda tilts me how quickly you change your mind about poker as soon as you run bad, like stick to something for a while please. idk what to even advise you because obv I'm not here to take my biased perspectives and throw it at you over and over.

Poker is grossly underrated by those who can actually do well in them (and grossly overrated by those who can't).

Good check on the turn btw.

DUDE I KNOW but it tilts me way more than it tilts you, trust me

I'm still concerned about the future of online poker in the face of technology. I think if it's somehow enforceable that people aren't running real time solvers, online poker will ALWAYS be soft. Just go read strategy threads on 2+2, like these guys are some of the more serious poker players and I would say 90% of OPs in the strategy and theory forums demonstrate MASSIVE misunderstandings about the game's fundamentals

But that's a big if. Very interested to see what the future holds, how will technology change our beloved game? Will we have to add new rules every week to make it unsolvable? Will old, rich retired fish who hate everything that involves change such as having to get things through e-mail instead of postal mail still want to play then? (ehhh who cares. If ANYONE is playing, then the good players will profit, period)

Hey Aesah, fan of yours from the LATB days. Not sure how we can set it up but if you'd like to play a $200 freezeout playing HU PLO at 1/2 it could be fun content fro your thread.

Lmk and best of luck with your goals moving forward!

i play HU PLO freezeouts vs people who have about that much money in their Global account pretty much every day I typically never reg battle but if you wanted to play for fun and we can share both perspectives for interesting hands, it should be extremely easy to find each other on Ignition HU tables

For life update, definitely feeling like I'm moving towards a better direction in life. Adding in flag football, bouldering, and martial arts this week in addition to all the activities listed from post 6458, just in general increasing my rate of socializing/exercising back to the levels I was at before being hammered by depression, so probably over 10x what I did in 2018. Yes, I literally left my house less than once a week not counting stuff like buying groceries/eating out by myself/etc. TBH I think it's an acceptable lifestyle choice as I have plenty of gamer friends who seem like they've found their life calling as such, but now that I've experienced that I can say with certainty that it's not sustainable for me.

For poker update, volume right now is maybe like 60/40 NLHE/PLO. Having decent motivation to play, could be a bit better but generally doing at least a few hours every day which is fantastic for me, I gotta just accept that as improvement instead of thinking everything can just be magically be perfect in an instant. Honestly the most important mindset shift for me is to just to truly internalize the fact that more hours = more money, which I lose track of easily when my brain is on depressed-doomsday-reallydumb mode

Sent a PM.

I have experience but for sure not a reg/pro. I guess they call it a serous hobbyist now or something.

I'll have to practice uploading/saving hands. Don't have experience with that but it's def be fun.

Also cool update, wish I were more active lol. Mainly just drink.

Spoiler--he and ignition crushed..

GG man!

^ was super fun- thanks for reaching out. will post hands when they're available

villain technically got it in good here right

Wanted to go into more detail about playing auralex14 but unfortunately was busy and now my memory about it is foggy =/ anyway we played for 1 hour, 97 hands, was raked a little over $40. We were talking while playing and one thing I do remember is that I felt auralex14 overvalued blockers in a few spots, hands below (in chronological order)

Hand 1: Not 100% sure what solver would say but I would guess my hand is way too strong to fold here. However this was the second hand of the match, I figured he wouldn't bluff off for stacks as he was looking forward to playing this as we were talking/scheduling throughout the day. I also leaned towards folding because *I* was looking forward to this too, and wanted to keep playing without looking salty since we agreed on 100bb freezeout. At any rate, villain's hand is a good bluff candidate here, think he played this one better than me

Ignition - $2 PL Hi (2 max) - Omaha Hi - 2 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BB): 101 BB
SB: 99 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 4 8 T A

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) SB has J 2 Q 7

SB raises to 3 BB, Hero raises to 9 BB, SB calls 6 BB

Flop: (18 BB, 2 players) J 7 9
Hero checks, SB checks

Turn: (18 BB, 2 players) 9
Hero bets 10.75 BB, SB raises to 32.5 BB, Hero calls 21.75 BB

River: (83 BB, 2 players) 5
Hero checks, SB bets 57.5 BB and is all-in, fold

Hand 2: Villain's blockers don't really matter much at all here as I would be calling all flushes, thus having a 4 and a 2 is pretty irrelevant to my entire calling range. From my perspective I don't think I've bluffed for stacks until this hand pretty late into the match, about 50 minutes in, so also think I can get some credit there. Again dunno about solver, I imagine some flushes are too strong to fold from villain's perspective but in practice I think many players could be bet/folding flushes here. It's pretty hard for him to have aces full and relatively very easy for me to have it.

Ignition - $2 PL Hi (2 max) - Omaha Hi - 2 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BB): 70.9 BB
SB: 111.94 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has A K 8 5

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) SB has 8 2 4 9

SB raises to 3 BB, Hero raises to 9 BB, SB calls 6 BB

Flop: (18 BB, 2 players) 2 A 4
Hero bets 5.45 BB, SB calls 5.45 BB

Turn: (28.9 BB, 2 players) Q
Hero checks, SB checks

River: (28.9 BB, 2 players) A
Hero checks, SB bets 21 BB, Hero raises to 56.45 BB and is all-in, fold

Hand 3: Here I really don't like villain's river play, seems he was trying to use KK blockers on the river but the betsize doesn't match at all. I'm unlikely to have 2 pair+ on the turn given previous action, so he wins at showdown anyway UNLESS I made exactly aces up, in which case I'm calling vs. this sizing. If you want to mix in blocker bluff I'd imagine it has to be very low frequency, I'd want to use combos with no clubs and probably would want to go full pot.

Ignition - $2 PL Hi (2 max) - Omaha Hi - 2 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (SB): 68.83 BB
BB: 111.11 BB

Hero posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 5 A 3 K

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) BB has K K 5 8

Hero raises to 3 BB, BB raises to 9 BB, Hero calls 6 BB

Flop: (18 BB, 2 players) T 2 Q
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: (18 BB, 2 players) 3
BB bets 9.5 BB, Hero calls 9.5 BB

River: (37 BB, 2 players) A
BB bets 21.5 BB, Hero calls 21.5 BB

(Also not 100% sure but I think both hand 2 and hand 1 are a fold to 3bet, hand 2 probably not an open). Anyway I eventually busted him with flopped bottom set vs top 2 in a dry rainbow 3 bet pot, outplayed

more nlh hands please, i learn from this blog.

Ignition's update has been getting in the way of NLHE unfortunately, don't have any super interesting ones but here's a few I played in the past couple days

Ignition - $2 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: 100.7 BB
Hero (BB): 100 BB
UTG: 98 BB
CO: 30 BB
BTN: 99 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB, UTG posts penalty blind 1 BB, CO posts penalty blind 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 3.5 BB) Hero has J K

UTG checks, CO checks, fold, fold, Hero raises to 5 BB, UTG calls 4 BB, CO calls 4 BB

Flop: (15.5 BB, 3 players) 6 K 8
Hero bets 8 BB, UTG raises to 16 BB, fold, Hero calls 8 BB

Turn: (47.5 BB, 2 players) 6
Hero checks, UTG bets 20 BB, Hero calls 20 BB

River: (87.5 BB, 2 players) T
Hero checks, UTG bets 25 BB, Hero calls 25 BB



Ignition - $2 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BB: 50.51 BB
UTG: 65 BB
CO: 99.49 BB
BTN: 49.81 BB
Hero (SB): 154.32 BB

Hero posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB, UTG posts penalty blind 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.5 BB) Hero has A A

UTG checks, fold, BTN raises to 3 BB, Hero raises to 9 BB, fold, UTG calls 8 BB, BTN calls 6 BB

Flop: (28 BB, 3 players) 5 2 A
Hero checks, UTG bets 7.27 BB, BTN calls 7.27 BB, Hero calls 7.27 BB

Turn: (49.81 BB, 3 players) 3
Hero checks, UTG bets 19.5 BB, fold, Hero raises to 138.05 BB and is all-in, UTG calls 29.24 BB and is all-in

River: (147.27 BB, 2 players) 4



Ignition - $2 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 229.94 BB
BTN: 173.96 BB
SB: 121.45 BB
BB: 49.9 BB
Hero (UTG): 100 BB
MP: 137.18 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has J J

Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, fold, SB raises to 10 BB, fold, Hero calls 7 BB

Flop: (21 BB, 2 players) 5 8 5
SB bets 7.98 BB, Hero calls 7.98 BB

Turn: (36.95 BB, 2 players) 2
SB bets 22.56 BB, Hero calls 22.56 BB

River: (82.06 BB, 2 players) 9
SB bets 80.92 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 59.47 BB and is all-in

JdJs: is the Jd reason for riv call or all JJ call? how about TdTx compare to JJ with no diamond?

39o is absurd.

I'm behind on NLHE studying, kinda been slacking ever since I switched to Global TBH because like

On Ignition my routine was grind -> study -> grind -> study

On Global my routine is check if the games are good -> yes = grind, no = study, but it's like almost always a yes

That being said, I'd be very surprised if solver would fold JJ here. I do think population probably underbluffs this spot though too, so gotta factor that in as well.

utg vs sb are tight ranges. All TT are folded. JJ no diamond are always folded. JJ w/ diamond is called about half the time. Sb needs to be finding bluffs with AK/AQ with a diamond which they probably aren't often enough (my opinion) so I like a fold.

agreed

appreciate the comments, ty everyone. Seems like a clear mistake then

another thing that makes it a significantly worse call is not only do people underbluff, they over value bet. solver checks a decent amount of flushes on the river which few players are doing as well

Hey Aesah,

Thanks for posting the hands. It was a fun match. I agree with your analysis on each hand. I'm thinking this is incorrect, but I almost never fold to 3 bets from the button when I'm headsup. I think I play too aggressively, but playing against better players (like you) helps me get better.

Best of luck, and maybe we can do it again sometime.

I believe I saw in JNandez's training material (which comes from Monkersolver) that BTN fold vs. 3bet is ~10% at 100bb and ~20% at 50bb so some of the weakest hands are folds

Hand with some INTeresting chat from villain
Villain: lol nice runner runner pah
Villain: phag
Villain: another ****** drawing dead
Villain: in 3bet pot
Villain: backs into it
Villain: backs into 3 queens
Villain: makes no money

pictures from last week with 2+2's zachvac and SABR42 (and myself in the middle)

Things are going well, taking a break from poker at the moment to focus on studying programming/data science. Just getting my feet wet and don't want to make any conclusions yet about where this will go.

What resources are you using?

Right now I'm 100% self-taught, using like ~15 Google searches per hour. I expect at some point I'll enlist in a certification course/bootcamp of some sort (so I spend less hours going "ohhhhhh indentations in your code matter in Python..."). In poker I preferred to learn through watching others play on twitch, so right now I'm employing a similar strategy by studying other projects as a baseline and attempting to replicate them.

Here's a look at the (extremely incomplete) project I've been working on for the past few days, analyzing metacritic video game data

but yeah, me right now: