So I'm shotting 100z on stars right now so why not post some interesting hands I've had.

I play PS on a virtual box so will have to screenshot HH details for now.

H1. Vs reg



H2 vs fish, actually planned to snap check call down for the main reason that fish don't triple wide enough for value and sometimes overbluff.



H3 vs reg thing, I do this with AA and KK and AQ etc a lot and I guess his call is ok idk



H4 vs fish, probs too thin on river ngl

why do you play on a virtual box?
h1: wp postflop, isolate pre
h3: wp, you could check too and raise some turns
h4: its a good valuebet, good sizing. Got to make the maximum vs fish, if he is a nitfish you can bet $5 otr lol

Originally used it whilst I was playing cash on apps earlier this year, I guess I keep using it to seperate where I play poker, find myself less distracted and less likely to surf and look at other things when I'm playing on the VB, although idk if there's that much benefit to it.

Thanks for the feedback on hands, granted my live volume has effectively dropped to 5% of what it was I'm thinking about starting a new thread for my plans over the next twelve months since it will be a lot more zoom and live balance orientated.

Do you think you’re at the point yet where your online hourly is higher than your live hourly?

Nowhere near, live my hourly is somewhere around £25-£30/hr where as online I'm two tabling 100z and very much doubt I'm winning at more than 3bb/100 atm, which is like 15bbs an hour so like £11/hr.

So initially a signifcant hit to the hourly however I'm able to balance and find time for online in 1/2 hour pockets during uni which I couldn't do playing live. Also the future hourly gained from (hopefully) getting to 200z within the next 12 months will make me a lot more in bigger live games (2019 onwards) than I'd make from just sitting in 1/2 and 1/3s in London for the coming months.

For both my final year of university and future career as a pro I think this time I'm dedicating towards online is just the max ev line for everything in my life.

Hey nice to see you have a thread! Best of luck on the tables!

Cya in the pool.

Some tips on beating 50z/100z
Whenever you find yourself in a situation you think villains are never valuebetting worse, just fold, they are not bluffing enough(even if you have a flush/set/FH).
Dont overvalue TT/JJ/QQ/AK when facing tight ranges
valuebet super thin
bluff a lot
defend a lot of bbs
dont cold call IP, play mostly 3-bet or fold
overfold to 3-bets, speciallu OOP
4-bet bluff a lot
turn a lot of hands into bluffs otr

in, gl to you

Appreciate the advice and gls guys, tyvm.

gl

Thanks, 100z still going well, plan to put in a lot of work in the lab and on the tables before uni starts in mid sept. May do some big zoom update with graphs and w/e before uni starts etc.

Guess I'll leave you all with an interesting hand. I think a lot of villains 98 still barrels turn since villain is reg and on river I think vill is capped, we can have 98 and we can have AK which he can never have etc. Puts him in a really tough spot since I don't think pop at this stake works in enough 3 bet river bluffs.

First time at 100z where I think a reg has gone for razor thin value in a 3bet pot vs me. Uttered "pretty sick" outloud and tapped the table.

Why are you calling river? His jam is bad imo, but if you are calling all your Ax its a very good exploit by him. Otr its a spot where you should be considering folding AQ vs population.

I actually disagree, my view of the pop is people v rarely go for thin value enough in three bet pots and actually overbluff quite considerably (ofc not the case for SRP) the amount of times I’ve seen both regs and fish overbluff in three bet and four bet pots is madness. Like I’ve had good results at 50z and 100z just by being a station and having a good idea of where the pop can have bluffs. A8 is a pretty good call down imo as we block 98 on river.

If we don’t think he bets AT on river I’d say A8 is a much better call down than AQ.

You block 1 straight combo with A8ss, he is still valuebetting AQ, with AQ you get some chops.
I think your read is quite wrong, in some boards, sure, like low boards where people are still bluffing AK, but what are you expecting villain to bluff with in there? If he bluffs with all KQo, KTs, QTs its 24 combos, he has 16 combos of AK/AQ+3 of straights + 14 of 2p-sets= 33. If he bluffs with all those combos, youre winning 42% when you need somewhere around 35% to be good, now if you take his nore obvious give ups(hands blocking spades), he will be bluffing -10 combos, so only 14. So you are winning only 29% vs that. And all this is considering he always 3bets all KQo preflop an always barrels turn with those.

He has to be very unreasonable in there for your call to be sligthly winning and I didnt even consider if the guy would ve explo underbluffing there vs you,which seems likely with how thin his valuebet was, in that case your call could be easily losing 20bbs, in some very extreme cases up to 30-40bbs.

Yeah it’s actually a fair point given the texture, combinatorially it’s hard for us to be winning enough here. I appreciate the advice. And yeah with AQ we block AQ and can chop but tbh given we can block so many bluffs I can see even AQ being a fold on river (as you suggested).

You dont beat those stakes by calling, just fold and be fine with it. Most people who play 50z-100z-200z have 0 balls. Call only vs whales, super aggro regs and very good regs. Even vs those A8ss isnt such a good call, stick to AQ without spades if you want to call. Most people in those stakes play super unbalanced and mdf is the most bull**** concept to use in there.

View this spot by this point of view:whenever you are with a bluffcatcher OTR, if you fold, youre challenging the guy to find bluffs vs you. If he cant, you win. His thin valuebets will be basically bluffs vs you, since they wont get called by worse hands. Underbluffing is a very serious leak that if exploited well, the guy will get massively owned.

By making gto calls vs someone who underuffs, he isbasically playing very close to gto vs you, since most of his bluffs should be breakeven. Pio only bluffs in order to deny the option ofvillain hero folding

I agree that being able to make explo folds in a lot of situations is a key concept. The more experience I gain playing online the more I come to terms with where the population is under and overbluffing. I've always been a bit of a station tbh but it's a work in progress.

Below is graph of 50z and 100z for year, it's a lol sample mainly due to me largely playing live and grinding uni, in addition to that I only two table mainly because I just use online as training to improve. I'd say a lot of leaks micro guys have is playing too many tables, you see a lot of consistent four tablers who are stuck at the same stakes for months on end and I think if they just dropped their table count and were able to apply concepts more accurately and with more prior thought their game would improve. Ofc it's natural to make the jump to 3/4 tables at some point but for me I'd feel more comfortable making it when I have far more certainty around my strategies alongside more confidence in my ability.

I plan to up the volume somewhat from mid august to mid sept as well as purchase some coaching.

Yeye I'm a sunrunner yeye.


Other area's of life are going well, had some family birthdays and graduations to attend alongside just getting out and doing things in London which I really enjoy. Next 2-3 weeks will be occupied by a fair amount of uni work. A big motivation for me to do well in my final year is being able to head straight to Vegas after my last exam and get on the grind.

A reg running this much above EV is like spotting a unicorn.

Its quite weird, because most regs post graphs with EV line where they are below EV.
But maybe its like that because most of the regs who run above EV wont post the EV line.

There was also that guy who ran 100k above EV lol. So sick

OP has a positive redline and sick skills in winning flips, maybe its time to turn into a mtt reg? Gotta start spewing some BI in there before making the transition ofc haha. Cant show up at mtts playing that well.

Vaaaaamooo

Haha Vaaamooo.

So tl;dr uni exams didn't go well, I'm sure over the next week or two I'll write up some long winded and somewhat cryptic post explaining my thoughts about the future etc etc.

Poker though is going very well, I've put in loads of volume and played pretty solid. There have been some great 2/5 games as of late which I'm happy to say I've ran very well in. Getting to 100z online and definitely helped my live game a lot, I feel more comfortable vs a lot of regs and feel more confident in my ability to print in games above 1/2. Granted the 2/5s I've been in have generally occured when 5/T has ran which ofc makes them v good as you won't have to battle many (if any) solid regs but I feel the point still stands.

Something else I'd look to put out there is the willingness to battle a bit in the short handed games. The amount of extra ev I've gained by sitting in a game which is about to die and trying to keep it from dying by just not racking up and instead saying "let's keep going for 20 minutes and see if anyone comes in" is loads. Fwiw in the line ups I've been in short handed I don't think I'm losing by any stretch and short handed live is a nice way to mix up the usual 8/9max situations one faces.

2/5 4 handed with myself, a semi-fish and two reg friends.

I open CO to 15 with AQ, reg friend 3 bets BTN to 50, folds to me and 2keff I make it 200, he peels.

(407) J83

I bet 125 he calls

(657) A

I check he checks

(657) 2x

I decide to check and he bets 400, AP we have quite a clear call but I did actually tank a bit, was having sad thoughts about just getting shown AK and JJ every time but this time our friend had T9

---

Another hand vs another reg friend at 1/2

MP Limper we iso BTN with 75 to 10 and our friend 3 bets to 40 in the SB 700eff, limper folds we peel.

(84) 873

He bets 55 we call

(194) 4

He bets 110 and we jam for 600, he tank folds JJ no diamond.

Ofc a lot of reads and explo stuff going on which I don't really want to go into for obvious reasons. Still thought it's fun to share some live hhs.

I plan to play cash pretty consistently for the near future. I'm going to Nottingham in late Septemeber for this Party Poker Millions and will just fire the 1k and play cash, should be a nice group of us staying together so hopefully have a good time, maybe I'll do a TR of the trip if anyone is interested in that kinda thing.

Tossing And Turning

I'm normally one of those people that get's to sleep with little prompting. My mind doesn't spin, I don't think about anything, I just switch off and that's that. Tonight (more like this morning), is different though. It's definitely within my interest to sleep, I need to ensure I don't wake up too late because it's a bank holiday this coming Monday meaning Sunday night games will be far far better than usual however I had the overwhelming urge to put on the kettle and write down some of my thoughts.

Right now I'm in the biggest upswing of my "career" (if you can call it that). I've ran rediculously good at the Vic the past couple of weeks in 1/3 and 2/5 games. Judging how other people feel in these times and how I've felt in the past I should feel elated, super confident, fearless etc etc. However, I actually don't. This time it's different, I guess. I haven't punted it off and got bailed out by coolers, I haven't played when tilted or for too long etc. I think part of it is down to very much knowing I have a lot more work to do if I want to move on up the rankings. I think part of playing at the Vic has reminded me that there are many people much much better than me, ofc we're always aware there are better players than us in the poker world but I guess part of it comes down to sitting across from them at the table which gives a more constant reminder. I see people who I greatly look up to and admire and it really motivates me to improve. The largest amount of my live volume has occured at Aspers, I have very good results over 1000+ hours, feel comfortable and believe I am one of the top top regs there. However, I feel just keeping myself in this environment will lead to my game stagnating massively, that alongside my hourly being capped there has made me want to shift my volume to the Vic and test myself in tougher line ups and work on increasing my hourly. I think the other part of me not being as amped as I was in the past is just having friends who I regularly play with having a really tough time, I line check a lot with them and the main hands they are losing are largely coolers so it's just a constant reminder that we as poker players shouldn't take anything for granted and we're always liable to go on a big downswing.

I guess something which crossed my mind which rarely does is live image and composure at the tables. I know exactly why it crossed my mind, I ordered some food whilst I was in the feeder game and before it came I got a seat in the main game which I left after one hand. Me and my friend (who also ordered) decided to go and we realised after we left that we ordered food (which we didn't pay for yet), ofc it's a completely honest mistake but I couldn't help feeling that I came across as a bit of a prat and I feel bad for wasting people's time etc. In regards to personality types I don't think there's a perfect one for live, as long as one is generally light hearted and respectful I think that's all that matters. There are some regs who barely move and are incredible stoic and others like 2+2er BigAsiaICantSpellYourSN who are fairly talkative but in a way that doesn't isolate others and make them feel unwelcome. I guess for the most part I'm nearer the jokey side of things since I'm often in the same room as good friends where we generally have a lot of banter. I would say as a passing note that tables where 2-3 people are cracking jokes etc is far far better for the games then one in complete silence but yeah.

One thing I struggle with which I don't want to go into too much detail with for now is the balance of how to improve when mainly playing live. It seems to me there are some that mainly supplement with zoom, some that run sims v often, some that rarely play online etc. Some just talk hhs a lot with other regs. I feel in live it's v interesting because often reg pools are v small and play heavily lends itself to explo play so maybe just playing live and thinking heavily about how to exploit certain regs and accurately note taking is a reasonable way to study. Fwiw I do think me getting to 100z has made me a much better player even in ways I haven't realised yet (likely plugging certain spots where I def used to leak). Maybe at some point I strap myself in and really try to get to 200z but it's a lot of man hours but will likely help my longevity in live too so again it's an interesting spot.

Anyway that's it for now, I will address the university situation in an upcoming post, mixture of me shying away from it and also being quite tired and knowing it will take a lot of open thoughts thinks it's best for another time, especially since it's 11am right now and the tea is wearing off.

Cool blog, already subbed. Are you saying that games at the Vic are tougher than at other places in general, or just specifically one stake?


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