Hi guys I am a former top dota player (slahser) who due to hand issues was forced to transition to a game requiring less clicks. I have been playing poker for more than 2 years now, starting as a complete beginner, and losing around 200$ my first year. After that I started winning, and am now up around 2k$ in tourneys and 1k$ from grinding NL2 and NL5 zoom. It was zoom I first grinded, but got stuck at NL10, and felt like it was too hard for me to beat the rake. Also the zoom cash grind wasn't really for me. So I decided to transition to tournaments.

I grind 5$ average micro MTT's mainly on pokerstars. Due to RSI I don't see myself being able to tolerate a 8 hour job, and since I dropped out of my masters last years I don't really have any tolerable job opportunities anyway. So what I have going for me now is poker, and also writing, which I might as well play the lottery if I want to make money out of that. So there is poker.

I have just released my first video going through 6 interesting MTT hands, explaining my thought process in detail, and why I think I either played well or misplayed the hand. In the first 5 mins I show my sharkscope and introduce myself.

You can check out the hand review video here:




Also if you are curious I have written two books, partly based on my own life. Both have been made into free audiobooks I have uploaded on youtube. The first is called 'Lazarus AFK', the second 'To Carthage then I came'.


I will be posting more videos here, and I will probably also post text format hands that I don't include in the videos. Would love any comments or feedback from both inexperienced and experienced players.

Goals:

Short term: Grind my way to a MTT bankroll of 5k and start also playing 13 dollar tourneys (I think thats the next step after 11 dollars?).

Longer term: Earn around 1k a month on average playing poker so I can cover my living expenses.

End goal: Earn enough money from poker to buy a house so I can get a cat.

Dreamed last night that I went to a casino to play and wanted to warm up with a 20 dollar headsup. Ended up accidently playing a 50 thousand dollar headsup without realizing it. It was against Doug Polk, I rivered a straight and he went all in as a bluff with T high, I of course call. I got the money in a weird wooden tamborine box, and the manager adviced me not to go Jamaica with it because then I might lose it. No proper goals and challenge thread without a dream innit.

AQ hand I think they usually have middling pairs or weaker Tx with that sizing and you don't have any fold equity. I'd expect a bigger sizing (jam) from pure bluffs too. I play a lot at these kind of stakes and players are pretty face up so I generally give them credit (maybe too much credit)

You said earn enough to get a house and cat. You meant to say pussy right?

I tried to do my first range analysis of a board runout, without using piosolver, since that is too much investment for my current bankroll. Feedback appreciated. And if you happen to have piosolver I would love to see how it solves this flop and board runout, so I can compare the optimal with my first attempt.

Starting range UTG 40bb+ MTT 9man.



Raise to 2.5x, BU calls. Flop:



First draft for how to play my range: Red bet, blue x/call, grey x/fold



Total combos: 152
Bet: 45 combos, 30% -
check/call: 44 combos, 29%
check/fold: 63 combos, 41%
To get a few more bet combos, and less check/fold perhaps we should add that we bet when we have AhQx and AhJx.
So bet: 51 combos, check/call 44 combos, check/fold 57 combos. Perhaps we should also bet when we have two diamonds and 2 overs to a 7 and 4?
The bet has 19 combos of bluffs, and 32 combos of value. Seems like we should also bluff with any back door diamond draw.

Should I have a check/raise range on this flop, or is it fine to play without one?

Perhaps it is a mistake to not bet KK? Problem is we block him having a K which is the most likely hand we can get 3 streets of value from, but he can have a flush draw and we can get two streets. So might be a mistake not to bet a monster like KK.

We bet and V calls. Turn is:

We now do the following:



That is, we continue to bet with any K we betted flop, continue with any flushdraw that doesn’t have a pair, continue with AA and 77. We x/call with those flushdraws that now have second pair, and we x/fold the 6 comboes of AQo and AJo that had a heart we betted with on the flop.

Combos we bet with: 40, 78%
x/fold 6 – 10%
x/call 5 – 10%

River is:


This is how we proceed:

We value bet river with AK, AA, 77 – 28 combos. We x/call with KQs no hearts 3 combos, and value bet with KQs heart, though it may be a bit thin?
We bluff with all our missed flush draws – 8 in total.

Problem at river: we have only 8 bluffs, and 28 value bets. Is the “optimal” number 14 bluffs? Another problem is that we are bluffing with bad hands – hands that block V having a flush. Seems like it would be more optimal to x/fold my fd on the river, and instead have some other bluffs on the river that doesn't block his FD.

It feels like my range kinda falls apart at the river, which means that I have done something wrong at flop/turn. We don't even have any hands we check/fold with. We could put some FDs into x/fold, but then we just have even fewer bluffs.

Gl, on your journey

Nice Analysis, my 2 cents:

Your Combos are skewed, e.g.
You dont have 28 value Combos otr. K and 7 already on board,
so you have 6x AA, 12x AK and 3x 77.

And starting at flop, on K high with two lowcards, all QJ,QT,T9 and 98 should probably be a cbet. Barrell non heart QJ and 98 on turn and river, so you can check fold missed flushdraws otr. And also, as you said, Diamond Broadways too.

What your value/bluff Ratio should be depends on your sizings and the price you give him to call your allin. e.g.: If you jam a potsizebet otr, villain gets 1:2 potodds so you need to have 1:2 bluff to value


Edit:
Looking at it again, Combos are wrong from the start, nevertheless its good study work

Ah right, I completely overlooked the fact that some of the board cards blocks some of my combos. Thanks!

Yeah that makes a lot of sense, and gives me some bluffs I am lacking.


Thanks a lot for your response and looking through it, I really appreciate the great feedback.

I posted on a runitonce video some months ago, and they contacted me if I wanted to do a video partnership with them. So I got free coaching going through an 11 dollar zoom tourney. You can find part 1 of the video series here:



I have mainly stopped playing MTTs and am now back trying to grind my way up in the zoom pool. I have beat 2nl and 5nl before over a large sample, but got beaten bloody in NL10 last year and gave up. But some days ago I gave zoom another shot. After having played 12 hours or so at Nl5 and doing well, I decided to give NL10 a try again. Going pretty well so far, but sample size is small.

Here is an rather unorthodox hand: https://www.boomplayer.com/29038498_333574FC3B

I am not entirely sure about my line. Flop is the most questionably play, it might be a bit too lose to float here, but I do have a BD fd. I know V is reg, so I believe him capable of triple barreling AJ, AK and a lot of air.

He bets really huge turn, and really polarizing himself. I think if he had something like AA, KK or QQ he would bet smaller. He really does not want a Q hero folding. If I miss I plan on jamming river as a bluff.

I get a pair river and now have a decision. I decided to call reasoning that he has enough air for this to be +ev, since the T gives him a lot of gutshots that he can triple barrel.

This is how I felt after the hand:

So far the switch back to zoom is going really well. I have played 30k hands now at NL10, so we are approaching a decent sample size. This is my results:

Nice results!
Am also in the nl10 pool cya there

how many tables at once? nice graph

Good luck! I play a little 10nl online but mainly live. I'm in the reg tables but maybe see you there. Also a big gamer in my youth but never really got into MOBAs.

Will jump in and discuss hands if you're posting cash hands here.

I play 2 tables.

Had a little zoom 10NL downswing, and got discouraged because I had paid more rake than I won. Took a month break. Got back to the grind again though, and at 45k hands I am at around 9.5bb/100. Wanted to do 50k hands but I thought what the heck and jumped into 16NL since I felt I was doing really well at 10NL.

So far 2.6k hands 16nl and up 4 buyins, very low sample but still a decent start to 16nl. Pool is a lot smaller than 10NL, but there are still plenty of fish. So far have spotted one greek guy I think is crushing 16nl, but other regs seems just standard. I think I will post some hands later.

The rake is brutal at 16nl, but still doing well at a sample at 13k hands. Maybe I should consider going to partypoker since they have rakeback though, but can't get my hud to work in fastforward.