Hi guys! I've had a couple of these threads over the years and they seemed to get some interest and be a bit of a motivator for me, so gonna fire up another PG+C and see how it goes. Plus, almost nobody in the husng streets has an active pg+c, so maybe I can share some stuff from our little slice of the online poker world.

Who is this guy?

I'm Duncelanas, a midstakes ($30s, on/off battling $60s) hyper husng grinder playing primarily on PS. I've been around the poker community for years, but was a bit out of touch for a while doing the uni grind after Black Friday. In mid 2016 I started taking poker seriously again, and after being introduced to solvers and actually learning a bit about how to play I worked my way through $7s and $15s to my current spot in the $30s div. I'm now a full-time pro as both a player and the third coach for the WinningFlips husng/spin stable -- shout-outs to KGBKing and LotteLenya for carrying me from 2012 to 2018 in about a year and a half, and for giving me a route to make my living for the past while doing poker-related things.

As an American, I can't grind on PS while living at home, so for the past year and change I've mostly been country hopping while grinding. I've spent substantial time in Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, about a month in a few other countries, and am currently spending month 2 in Bali, Indonesia. It's been pretty alright, but don't expect a bunch of exotic pics etc in this thread -- may drop one here and there, but it's not a travel blog. It's just my life!

So what's the point of this blog?

I'm pretty dissatisfied in some ways with how my 2018 has been going so far, and hope for some motivation and accountability to help turn things around. Pokerwise, while coaching (both for WF and for private students) has been going great, with multiple students moving up stakes and entering the husng div systems, my own play and results have been relatively disappointing. And on a personal level, there are some lifestyle and other goals that I'm just not executing on to the level I want. So I'll give a few of those here.

Why not spins?

**** that...hu battling is just too much fun.

Poker

1. [ ] Bring Fish Game ROI ($30s) to 4.5% on the year
2. [ ] Grind at least 80 hrs/month
3. [ ] Stream more and build my twitch channel
4. [ ] Successfully join the $60 division on PS

Life

1. [ ] Complete C25K and successfully run a 5k by the end of the year
2. [ ] Out of bed by noon everyday (lul)
3. [ ] Continue studying Japanese, culminating in taking the N4 test at year end
4. [ ] Meditate daily

Pretty standard stuff really, definitely achievable with some work put in but far from free given past performance! I'm aware that 80 hrs/mo is chump change to the people really in the streets, but overall with my additional time spent coaching plus attending coaching + solo study myself, I do wind up putting somewhere between 120-140 hours/mo into poker. Definitely nothing extreme, but that's about where I want the game to be in my life. Twitch stuff is a bit of a stretch goal -- streaming is a lot of fun, but unfortunately it's been a real struggle to get consistent stream-quality internet out in Southeast Asia. My streams with the fewest dropped frames are literally tethering my phone and using 4g data...so it's a bit tough to have any sort of consistency. But feel free to drop a follow (www.twitch.tv/gloves222) if you do want to see some occasional live content.

I'll post some yearly results so far, and probably end this intro post with that. No threadsavers. Really.

So here's a graph of 15s and 30s for the year, largely "fish games." There are maybe a couple hundred reg games total in there (from div triers and such), but it's 90-95% fish for sure.



Not too happy with my overall evroi, though at least happy that I'm profitable in the games and running good here. Elite rois in hypers vs. fish run in the 6-7% range (though slightly higher is possible), but I would be happy in the 4.5-5% range at least for now.

And then there are my higher stakes games for the year:



About 80% of these games are vs the 60s div (mostly solid regs) -- I'm basically b/e in cev (up a very small number of chips) vs them on the year, but running pretty poorly in actual. It's a bit unfortunate to run bad in my toughest, highest stakes games...but realistically, that's what you sign up for when you try to battle into a division, and I've definitely made some inexcusably bad mistakes in those games as well. The other 20% are fish games, and while my cev there is decent, sometimes the flips just don't go your way.

I'll talk more about the div system and how all that works in the future, think this post is long and boring enough as is! Will probably post a few hands here and there for discussion and sharing thoughts, husng news, life and goal updates, and whatever...so thanks for reading and hope any of you stick around for future posts! And now for the best part...the threadsavers:

What do you like the most about being a professional poker player living in exotic places ?
Do you have a schedule for the streams ?

This past year I basically skipped winter, so that was pretty sick. I think I was in Tokyo until November or so, right when it started to get cold...then hopped over to Hanoi where it's basically never below 15 or 20C. Hometown often gets into the -10 zone on colder days so that was a nice change! Going to a bunch of interesting and new places plus living for quite cheap a lot of the time (relative to the US, anyway) are some nice perks as well.

Not for now, but I really am hoping to figure things out with a consistent stream setup eventually.

Hey Dunce I have some questions.
Do you wanna open up on how these divisions/cartels operate in PS??
In your stakes do you play a lot of fishes everyday or you are reg battling for the most part???
Do you think that you could make a significant profit when playing against regs like 70% of the time??
Is there enough room for exploitative strategies vs regs in your division??
Sorry for the many questions but I was really curious.
P.S Good luck with you endeavour.

Sure, no problem. I'm sure you some of this given you've been around the community for a while, but I'll start from the beginning for people who might not know about husngs. While a lot of people hear "cartel" or "division" and think of some sketchy, collusive group of regs, I actually think the real story is pretty reasonable and the current div system isn't really a bad thing for the games (besides maybe some bad PR). Strap in, cause this post may be a bit long.

Back in the beginning, there were basically infinite regs around, and PS (along with some other sites) only have 1-2 lobbies spawn per stake. So whenever a game popped, guys had to play the fastest finger game to get the next lobby. Sure, you could sit the reg already in the lobby yourself, but there was still a good chance for someone else (especially someone with a fast connection to PS) to reg the next lobby before you. This meant that you would be stuck playing a reg game and some other reg would get the next lobby a lot of the time. Further, when a new lobby spawned, players would often sit at the same time, leading to reg vs reg games that neither player wanted to play. Of course you could flip or chop in those situations, but that just leads to paying rake for no reason. Basically, this whole situation sucked.

Then, a guy came out with a program called Sharkystrator. Sharky has a fair number of features re session management, game selection, and such, but by far the most important one for husngs is the wait list feature. Basically, instead of playing the fastest finger game and getting a lot of simulsits when new lobs spawned (in addition to guys with good PS conn having an automatic advantage), sharky let regs start waiting in line for new lobs. When you're first in line, the program automatically registers you for the next game and moves everyone else up a slot in the line. This was a substantial improvement over the old system for most regs (particularly, anyone without a sick connection to the PS servers), and even now basically 100% of PS regs from $15s and above use the sharky line.

However, this introduced a surprising new problem. Before, if you second sat a reg to clear a lobby, you had a good chance at regging the new lobby that would spawn. Regs were all watching lobbies, but you knew exactly when the game popped so you could expect the new spawn and reg more quickly than average. But under the sharky system, sitting another reg just moved everyone up 1 slot in the line. So if the line was, say, 15 people in line, and you were 13th...you could play 3 reg games and just move up to 10th...and still have to wait forever to get your lobby. So the introduction of the sharky line actually made it less worthwhile to sit another reg second -- even if you battled the other reg enough to make him end session...well then the line would just be 14 people, and everything is basically the same for you...except for the fact that you just played a bunch of tougher than average games and maybe lost rake (or even started some **** if you picked on the wrong guy).

So the problem was, under the sharky line system there was no incentive for one individual reg to play other regs. The line would move marginally faster, but that was about it. This is where the division systems came in. Basically, you get a group of regs together and agree to sit anyone outside of the group. If the line was 15 people and you got 10 of them together, you could actually kick out the other 5 and make a substantial dent in the length of the line, improving the situation for all regs inside. Plus, if one or two guys in the group weren't pulling their weight (were dodging games, not playing, etc etc) you could just kick them out of the group and then collectively hunt them out of the line as well. So now, all the regs inside the group had incentive to battle -- unlike in the raw "sharky line only" system, regs had to play or worry about getting kicked out of the group. In the beginning, many freeloading regs actually did get kicked out of the early cartels if they didn't play a good share of games vs players outside.

So the reasoning for this system forming is quite clear. However, there were a bunch of flaws with it -- politicking and "who you know" was extremely influential in group formation and initial entry, there were clear incentives for things like collusion and readsharing, and if you were on the outside you were kind of **** out of luck. But all that is more from the early days (still a number of years ago at this point). In the past few years, cartels have rolled out a bunch of clear rules and requirements for both members and non-members trying to enter (triers).

For example, if a trier sits a member at $30s, the $30s member has to battle on at least 2 tables for at least half an hour (roughly 10 games). If the member declines, the member loses the right to opensit for half an hour...and then when they do sit again, the trier can sit again and force the member to play more games. Politics have largely been taken out of the process -- at least from $15s to $100s (hyper divs), there are now clear chip ev and sample entry points. If you hit them, you get in -- who you know, your "style," and so on don't really matter. Chip ev over sample gets you immediate entry into the group and, thus, the right to join the sharky line at that stake. At 60s and 100s, triers can even request games vs. members and force them to play (at 60s, you can request sessions of 50 games at a time, forcing members to play hundreds of games vs you a month). You can even play your whole sample (ex. 2000 or 2800 games) vs a single player and get in! There are rules against in-cartel readsharing, hh discussion, and so on, and people have been infracted and kicked for this sort of behavior in the past.

The current div system still has some flaws for sure, but it's largely pretty fair. Div members have earned the right to opensit at whatever stake, and in exchange they have to defend that stake vs. non-members and triers. Triers can force the members to play games, and earn entry through hitting clearly defined targets that are generally reasonable (standard entry points involve winning about 6 chips per game, which equates to roughly losing 1% vs the div while the div loses 3% vs the player). The system stops the sharky line from being infinitely long, and sharky itself was a solution to the even older fastest finger/best PS connection/lots of simulsitting problems that were an initial part of husngs.

There's a lot of bad press around the whole concept, but it's really a situation of players using collective action to solve structural problems with the games, and then the whole system trending more and more towards fairness after an initial (somewhat sketchy) rollout. Fwiw I felt the div system was pretty fair when I was a non-member battling my way into 30s a year and change ago, and I still feel it's pretty fair as a 30s member battling 60s now. There are still some changes that I'm pushing for (both within 30s and to 60s) that would make things a little bit better for triers, but overall the complaints I have are minor relative to the whole scheme.

I think husngs would look very very different if sharky or PS had ever implemented a "sit game and sit next lobby" button (that automatically gave you the new lobby after sitting 2nd), but that's another topic. Tbh I kind of wish that had happened instead, but I think the div system is a good solution in absence of such a feature.

Sorry for the long post, but it's the sort of thing I want to only type out once so may as well get the whole story in.

I'm a 30s member -- at 30s my sample is probably 90-95% fish and at 15s it's basically 100% fish. Some guys do get more trier action, but unless many triers are targeting you at once I would think you usually get at least 70-80% fish games as a member. I think some triers have seen me battling 60s and so assume I'm good. Hope my graphs in the first post don't change that perception too much

I think it would be pretty hard to turn a solid profit playing more than ~50% reg games, assuming the regs are 30s level (or even solid 15s level) PS. If we're talking lower stakes and weak regs, you could probably still do fine.

Yes, although the stronger regs in each division are reasonably good. But it's not like everyone 30s+ is a gto machine. My impression is that changes the higher you go, but people are still moving up into highstakes even today so at least on PS it's not 100% locked down. Off PS might get kinda gto-botty, though.

No worries, happy to answer. I also doubt anything in this post will change in the next 6 months or a year, so it'll be nice to just link it to people instead of typing it out again

Thanks, so far we're making it work somehow! Kinda frustrating year but at least sticking with it til the end of 2018.

Wow,what a thorough answer.
Cheers for that Dunce.
So about your goals, how many games do yout hink your will average per day??
Plus what will you do to improve your game??
You are gonna see quick filters of your PT4 Database or you will mix some Pio also??

Don't have daily goals, but I aim to play roughly 1500g/mo on top of the coaching and stable stuff I do right now. Good chance I try to bump that to 2k for July/August tho but we'll see when we get there.

I'm a pretty theory-heavy guy (actually, WF lets me run their dedicated theory session every week) and for now my main focus is continuing to improve for when I get back to pushing 60s harder, so mainly doing solver-type stuff. Fish game is something I'll (hopefully) get to after joining 60s! But it's still uphill for me to get there.

UGTO ?

Nice to see husng blog.GL with your goals.Btw what methods are u using for withdrawals in asia? Skrill and neteller became very expensive.

Mainly trade with other people to dodge some fees. It's a bit of a pain too bc my current bank accts are American as well.
-----

Don't know exactly how often I'm going to update thread, but felt like making one now and it's been a few days so ******. A few days ago I actually made a visa run (Bali to Kuala Lumpur and back, same day) which threw off some of my goals a bit (missed a run) but will allow me to stay here in Bali another few weeks. Perfect weather, cheap rent, good food...definitely won't mind being here til early July.

Also had a missed grinding day, but have played some decent volume on other days to make up for it -- since the last post I've played 194 games and am on a bit of an upswing. Not exactly sure how to go about graphs itt (input appreciated), I'm thinking maybe some updated low info regular graphs and then some more detailed stuff once or twice a month.



Still decently below ev on the month, but lines are going up and fish game is looking good, so hopefully we can have a strong finish to June.

Probably touristing around for the next few days so may not get many games in, but could be a chance to get some nice Bali photos up in thread. From the 20th or so I'm gonna buckle down and focus on poker til I leave Bali, so that'll be an important ~3 week stretch for me.

I guess I'll post a hand I tagged that I wasn't sure about, if anyone wants to chime in feel free. Villain is a relatively taggish rec over low sample -- has c/red, isod, 3b before but generally tightish and prob overfolding...HH converter not working for some reason, enjoy the raw format lol.

Table '2332781814 1' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: mada_rooner (490 in chips)
Seat 2: Duncelanas (510 in chips)
Duncelanas: posts small blind 10
mada_rooner: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Duncelanas [8c 9d]
Duncelanas: raises 20 to 40
mada_rooner: raises 80 to 120
Duncelanas: calls 80
*** FLOP *** [6c 8d 9h]
mada_rooner: checks
Duncelanas: bets 80
mada_rooner: calls 80
*** TURN *** [6c 8d 9h] [2d]
mada_rooner: checks
Duncelanas: ???

3b peel is a bit close/questionable, was 4 tabling and kinda autopilot called. Seems...ok but maybe you could argue for a fold here? Main question though is about line post. What kind of flop cb size do you guys use and what are we doing ott? I have some thoughts about this myself but would be happy for any discussion. Will share my own thoughts if/when some others chime in!

As for the other goals...I did miss a run on my visa day, but I've hit 2 other runs and will finish week 2 of c25k tomorrow. Daily meditation is so far so good. I did put in about an hour of kanji study as well a day or two ago, but I'm still way behind on my Japanese study. And I haven't quite been up by noon (may not be tomorrow, either...), but have been getting up a bit earlier the past few days so that one's a fail, but with notable improvement. Anyway, that's all for now, GL at the tables and have a good one!

Nice to see you updating the thread,very interested on what you up to and how is your journey going.
I've been in Bali and it's an awesome place,tho it's really humid and when it gets hot,it's sometimes unbearable.

Now about the hand,in general I'd never peel the 89o there cause regs do not seem to be 3-bet bluffing a lot,even at 25bb deep.
On the flop I am always calling,and on the turn it's a little tricky,because I think you mainly get folds in this spot.
I wouldn't think that he checks overpairs in this spot,nor anything strong in general.
I don't think that your 9d plays a key role as a blocker.
I think that I'm jamming here in general,pot is 400 and I have 300 behind.
My range is cosnisted of value hands as well as some semibluffs like Fd's,7xs etc.
I'm jamming also becuase there are a lot of cards on the river that can absolutely kill action,so I prefer a jam in here since If I go for a smaller bet sizing stacks will be very odd on the river.
What do you think??

I think you may have misread the hh. He checked flop to us and we bet 80. I agree that this is prob a pre fold esp to t120. I actually did jam turn for 300 into 400 which felt ok, but I agree that we get a ton of folds and not much value there. Realistically nobody is checking overpairs otf so his traps actually beat us and it's hard to see a jam getting called by worse too often.

I was actually thinking I wouldn't mind a slightly bigger flop size (maybe 100 or 110 on this kind of board) would be good, that way we get more value from floats and it's also a bit easier for him to talk himself into a bad call ott (calling 270 into 440 might happen a bit more than 290 into 400?) but happy to hear some more thoughts about this too. Not too pressed about 9d here, think ranges aren't that constrained yet.

Had similar thoughts about bad rivers which is why I jammed as played.

Upswing since my post yesterday, but gonna keep the full updates to a couple times a week at most.

Yep,you are right my mistake indeed.
I would never bet 80 on this structure though.
Many of his Tx hands like ATo,KTs,and other random Tx,or Jx hands have more incentive to call on this board for that cheap of a price.
Yeah and I like your logic for making a bad call on the turn from his part.
He might think that he is getting better odds for a stack of,with the logic that he doesn't need to be winning a ton to be right here.

Plus,because you talked about his traps I don't think he has none on this particular board.You block 99,88 and I think that he would 3-bet jam 66(Well some times I mix jamming and 6.5bb 3-bet depending on the villain's VPIP and MR on the BTN.).Plus I'm not a very big fan of 3-betting hands like T7,57.They have good playability post so I'd never 3-bet them.
But I think that since a lot of rivers stop the action and profibit us from extracting more value I think I would jam here more often than not.

I know you said that you are gonna update afther the20th of June where you
are gonna focus more on poker,but any feedback on the trip to Bali??

Have youdecided when you are going to start streaming??

Gl my friend!

GL!

Thanks for your advice on Sharky settings for 3.50s and 7s... is the Sharky usage strategy different for 1.50s? (My cash reserves have been depleted by months of self-loathing and the failure of the self-preservation instinct resulting in a catastrophic lack of volume.)

Basically, I'm afraid of semi-regs automatically sitting unknowns (there are a few such folks at 3.50s around ET midnight), and the choice is between 1) never opensitting but sitting all unknowns and known recs and tagging anyone who plays suspiciously reggishly as fast as possible, 2) opensitting and also sitting known recs.

Obv, I'm never gonna play HU above 7s, as I'm vulnerable to perceived bullying, and spinmax is still good imo, just there's an underwhelming number of mass mutlitablers at 1s-3s there, I mean, way too many for those cheeseburger stakes.

Thanks fam we'll see how it goes. GL to you too!

Will type up a full update in the next day or two with a few Bali pics and stuff. I'm actually staying in Bali for a few more weeks but just moved out of my villa to an airbnb apt where I'm gonna be grinding. Will miss the pool right outside my door and villa life but hopefully can put in some work over the next 2.5 weeks or so. Bali is pretty cheap (at least vs. US/Japan where I've lived the longest), pretty sick, beautiful weather just about everyday. Do recommend.

Streaming is more of a mid-term project, net does seem more promising here at my new place though so may fire off some streams in the next couple weeks. No full schedule announcement or anything though.

If you're low-rolled, I actually think the situations at 7s is slightly different now that the 15s div is more established and has pushed a few guys down. Granted, basically everyone at 7s inc regs will be beatable decently past rake, but playing games where you may be 2% isn't necessarily smart if you're underrolled anyway.

Pretty sure at $1.5/$3.5 though I still wouldn't think much at all about game selection.

I like 2) here, but if you find yourself getting repeatedly sat by some regs you don't want to play you can always make a temporary switch to 1). I just think that with the speed of action there sometimes it can be tough to even sit selected guys second, and you lose g/hr (and mental processing power for other running tables) when you're more manually running session registration.

You may also find (hint: usually true) that if a reg at those levels starts targeting you, sitting him on 3 tables and rematching can prove a much faster (and more lasting) deterrent than continuously declining and re-sitting.

There are divisions to deal with even at $15s now, but realistically as a member anywhere you're getting at minimum 80 or 90% fish games. "Bullying" is much less of a thing in the lowstakes div environment. 7s hu still a super free spot to print in cheap countries, 15s still very soft to battle into as well.

That's what I suspected as well (I was too optimistic when I wrote I was gonna play 7s ever), thanks for the info.

I'll look again into table selection opportunities at 6-man hyper 7s (that are synergic with spinmax too in terms of the required skillset); I'm not holding my breath, though, as I remember it how hard it was to set up Sharky to get enough decent games 3 months ago (that required a study of the field with reg tagging before each of the first few sessions).

$1-5 super-KOs are allegedly softer than $1.5-3.5 vanilla 6m hypers, but I'd really like to avoid climbing a separate learning curve for their sake.

As usual, I think you're being overly pessimistic about dealing with literally any% regs in field. You can probably get 75% fish games osing 7s hu right now, with most of the regs around giving up after a handful of games tops. There's literally no reason to be afraid when the upside is a ~doubled hourly.

Hi Duncelanas, can u post link with more information about 15s cartel ? i cant find information about cartel on 15s.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...WUY/edit#gid=0

Seems it's not 100% updated but it's all I've got, sorry.

Cash games are where the money is at. That's why they call it cash. A 5k is easy you should be running a 5k everyday or at least walking or hiking that amount. Good luck.

Thanks for the link, that's a lot of info for my notes file!

You underestimate a normal person's ability to be a bum.

The past few days I have walked >5k though. Hu cash is sick but too hard for me. Any game where you can't just bet/bet/jam top pair 75% of the time should be banned imo.

...except Power Up