Hey everyone!

Welcome to my poker blog. This thread will mostly be a way for myself to track my progress, and a way to keep focused on my goals for this year. I just moved to a new city where I'll be working 40/45 hours a week for the coming 5 months. During the past year or so, I've really picked up a liking for poker and I decided I'd like to use a part of my free time during the coming 5 months to see how far I can get online!

I'm currently living and working in Madrid, where online poker is restricted to gamble websites which have a permit. Therefor I'll mostly be playing against spanish players the coming 5 months. Which is totally fine by me, since the American players seem to be way more skilled haha

The format of my choice seems to be full ring NL. Right now I'll be starting at the very bottom; the place where we all started I hope to move up as soon as possible. I'm a huge bankroll nit, as I'm a finance guy, so I will be mostly taking shots at higher levels when I reach at least 25-30 buyins.

As my skill level improves, I might also give 1/2NL live a try, as a great casino with a good rake is pretty close to my house ( about 1 street from where I live, so I can basically walk there ). However, since I'm not that experienced yet, and have no clue on how the playing field is here in Spain I'll mostly be playing online for now.

If anybody has any questions about my time in Spain, or about poker, or about myself or has any advice please feel free to leave a reply and I'll try to respond as quickly as possible.

I guess i'll have to add a 'goal' to this thread. But I'll be doing that as I get home from work!

Have a good one!

Guess I'll start off right away with my first post! Played roughly 1300 hands so far on NL2 on the Spanish server. My first impression is that there seem to be a LOT less players online during work hours. Which isn't to bad, since I have to work from 9 to 6 anyways.



There it is. Off to a good start, lets hope we continue like this!

Oh and if anybody reads this: I might need some advice. So far I've read Blackrains book, which seems a good basis for the micro's. However, I'd like to read some more informative books. Does anybody have any good book-tips?

Holy miracle! Talking about running good! Started playing yesterday. Unfortunately there were only a few tables available on the Spanish server. So I decided to take on a 2/5 cents table, just to be able to keep my volume up a tiny bit without getting too bored haha. Also, Most of the people sitting at the table were complete fish. I guess I made the right choice #runninglikegod



Never got such good cards in a row before. One table got me AA-JJ as the first 4 hands haha.

Finally found myself an apartment today in Madrid so I won't be living with my girlfriend anymore. That's great. It's a really nice house near the Grand Via of Madrid, which is kind of like the main street. Looking forward to meeting my new roommates today.

Have a good one everybody!

Gl man! What do you do for a living? If you don't mind me asking.

Thanks for the reply man! Appreciate it. And I'm actually still in college. The coming 5 months I'll be writing a final thesis report for a company here in Madrid. After that I'll be done and either start working as a junior marketeer at a technical consultancy company, or continue to study and get a masters degree in finance.

I'm kinda leaning towards the second option though, since the life as a Dutch student isn't that bad

Also I'd have a lot more free time to improve my poker skills, so that'd be a big pro.

Can't wait to get off work today, the online tables are calling me! haha

Okay thought I'd post an update as to how I'm doing. The past few days were really busy with life and work. I've met a new group of friends in Madrid. Since I'm new to the city I value the fact that I've got some cool people to hang out with. Was too tired from partying ( on a monday haha ) to really play any poker yesterday. Did a little bit on the days before that ( few hours ). Progress can be see here:



Also, I thought it would be a good idea to get some actual goals going in this thread, since hey that's the purpose of this thread right?

So here goes: my goals until 1 juli 2016 ( the date I'll be moving back to holland; my place of origin ).

[ Play 3000/50.000 hands ]
[ Move up from NL2 to NL10/NL25 ] ( kind of ambitious, but the field in Spain is very soft, so I feel that moving up quickly should be possible. a lot more possible then on the regular pokerstars / other clients )
[ Play my first 1/2 NL200 live session ]
[ Join a study group ]

My life-goals:
[ Finish my education ]
[ Learn spanish ]
[ Meet many cool people here in Spain ]
[ Apply for a masters degree in finance / international business development / entrepreneurship ]
[ Be at gran casino Madrid for the ESPT's, held from 7 till 13 March ]

That's all I can think for haha. Have a good one guys

Alright, did something I'm not proud of: Ignored BRM for a moment and decided to play some higher stakes. I decided to take 15€ to the test and see how far I could run it up. Did some heads-up on a near empty table, grinded my way up to 25€. Then went to the NL25 table and did heads-up till I won 50€. Then moved to a NL50HU table. When I got up to 75€ I moved to a NL100HU table. Unfortunately my PT4 only tracks till NL25 or NL50? So this is all I got graph wise:



However, When I reached NL100HU I did play by far the biggest hand of my life, which ended me up with 165€. After this hand I was up 150€ so I decided to quit while I was ahead. ( run good much ) this is the screenshot I made of the hand:



I would update the actual hand details, but I can't seem to find them as my PT4 didn't track them

I'm very glad I'm up 150€ and I love the rush I felt by playing this high ( compares to the usual NL2/NL5 FR. However, I realise I shouldn't be doing this to often, as it's not good poker. I got quite lucky.

Have a good day everybody!

Good luck! I'm enjoying your thread. Seems like you're playing well and running well. As you mentioned before, it's not wise to play HU cash with a huge part of your roll, but at least you won. You wanted to take a shot. We've all been there, man. Just make sure you learn from the experience. That said, there's nothing wrong with being aggressive with your bankroll, as long as you can easily replace it. You said you're working 40-45 hours, so why not be aggressive with a small BR? Stay within reason, of course, but don't be afraid to take some shots. Once you build a substantial roll, then you should be more vigilant about protecting it.

Hey everybody! I guess the shot-taking yesterday kinda made me want more . I decided to once again take €25 out of my roll, grind it up to €50 and see what happens after that. I promised myself that I'd quit after losing that one buy-in. I didn't break that promise, good for me.

I had a fantastic run, winning 2 BI's basically immediate. I told myself if I'd win another BI I'd move to €.50/€1. I won the extra BI and moved. However, unfortunately I lost 1,5 BI's pretty quickly ( I don't have the license to use my HUD above €.25/€.50 which kinda screwed me over ) I kept playing with my last BI and ended up with a very nice win-rate! I'm up €400



Below is a pretty crazy hand. I'll be updating with some more hands shortly. Any feedback is very much appreciated!

PokerStars - €0.50 NL (2 max) - Holdem - 2 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: 126.06 BB (VPIP: 65.73, PFR: 51.05, 3Bet Preflop: 22.00, Hands: 187)
Hero (BB): 264.08 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 8 8

SB raises to 3 BB, Hero raises to 8 BB, SB calls 5 BB

Flop: (16 BB, 2 players) J 7 4
Hero bets 9.1 BB, SB calls 9.1 BB

Turn: (34.2 BB, 2 players) 8
Hero bets 26.56 BB, SB calls 26.56 BB

River: (87.32 BB, 2 players) Q
Hero bets 69.04 BB, SB raises to 82.4 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 13.36 BB

SB shows 7 7 (Three of a Kind, Sevens)
(Pre 18%, Flop 88%, Turn 2%)
Hero shows 8 8 (Three of a Kind, Eights)
(Pre 82%, Flop 12%, Turn 98%)
Hero wins 251.12 BB

Alright decided to take it slow today. After obtaining over 400$ in winning, which for me is great since I don't consider myself a good player yet, I took some time to evaluate the different games out there on the Spanish server. By the looks of it, even on the weekend days there are usually only 3-10 tables running ( mostly NL2, some NL10's and 1 NL25 if you're lucky ) However, there are always 100/150 6max tables running. A switch would be logic, so I decided to focus on 6max for a while, just to get a feel for it. I'm also exploring some the opportunity of maybe trying SNG's for a while. But this might happen after I reach a positive win-rate over a decent sample on NL10 or so first.

After comparing the VPIP's on the different levels, NL10 seemed extremely high. Since my bankroll can now easily take it, I started playing. Here's the result for day 1 at NL1 6 max:



I realise the blog is a bit boring right now, so tomorrow I'll be posting some more hands and other stuff

Also, I'm attending a 60$ buy-in tournament, and playing my first live game in a big casino in Madrid tomorrow!

Can't wait! Have a good one everybody

Alright It's been a few days. The past few days I was quite busy. I've played a bit of 10NL, I made about 2 BI's in the end, and I played a bit of NL50HU in which I initially won about €100. At a certain point however I was down like €350. I then realised it was time to quit the stupid BRM poor play. Below you'll find the graph of my sick session, at which ( at 50nl ) i incredibly enough ended up only -€11 for the session. Note that I did lose a buy-in at NL100.

From now on you won't hear my talk about NL50/NL100 again. I'll be playing solely 6max 10NL for now, trying to improve my skills in that format.

The session:


Have a good one!

Nice comeback last session! Best of luck your next sesh!

Morning everybody! Been a while since I've posted. Last week I've spent time playing a bit ( did about 4500 hands ) And ran at roughly 18BB/100. My goal is to play at least 15000 more hands in March. I've noticed that Zoom is just as soft in Spain, so most of my sessions will be a mix of bumhunting 6max tables, while playing some zoom to keep the volume up. I still can't wrap my head around how people play 18 tables though. Do they still bumhunt the terrible fish which are still so present at these stakes? or do they just join 18 tables and hope not to end up with a table full of reg's?

In addition to studying I bought Blackrain79's second book. I really learned a lot from his first book CTM. I hope this book grants me with the same amount of insights. I'll be really studying this book, making notes while reading, and studying those afterwards. Lets hope this is the right approach. Furthermore I really want to improve my hand reading skills.

Here's the graph for last week. I might add some hands later on, but now I gotta get to work! Time for the life grind haha

Stop playing outside your roll immediately.

Fully agree, since last week I've stopped playing NL50HU. Which was crazy to begin with. Since then I've fully switched to NL10 6 max ( zoom sometimes ) and 4500 hands in I'm doing fine. Right now my roll consists of €415, so I'm decently rolled for NL10. I hope to grind my way up to €750 within a week or 2/3 so I can do some responsible shot-taking at NL25

Alright well yesterday I proved to myself I'm not half the player I want to be yet haha. Had very swingy day. Started off 2,5 BI's straight away, grinded my way up to about 2,5BI's profit and had a small break. When I came back the tabled where absolutely filled with fish. I got 2 coolers and kinda lost my temper. Totally played off two stacks purely by stupid spewy play. Very dumb and something I need to control next time. ( normally I do.. I don't really get it tbh ) It's such a waste since it literally banged my bb/100 from 23 to 16. It sucks

Does anybody have any good books on tilt and such? I'd like to get a little deeper into the matter.

Oh and I ended up losing 2,5BI's for the day. Pretty much my first real losing session so far since I started this level in stakes. Here's the graph for the session:



I'm not sure if I'll be playing this afternoon. I might just spend my time studying the new book I got by Blackrain to learn more about hand reading and 3-bet ranges and such. I guess time will tell. Have a good one folks.

Alright had a swingy session yesterday. Started out bad, but got better as the day evolved. Ended up winning back most of my yesterdays losses. here's the graph:



I learned how to properly review my hands today. In response Ill be posting more in the NL strategy threads. I'll also add the hands I have trouble with here just in case anybody is interested. Here's a few interesting hands:

The following hand I believe just to be a suckout. He was a loose 30/30 which I believed could have played a flush draw / any Q here. He ended up with the top of his range: the nut Q7 haha.

PokerStars - €0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: 99 BB (VPIP: 36.82, PFR: 23.38, 3Bet Preflop: 16.67, Hands: 203)
BB: 50 BB (VPIP: 33.82, PFR: 22.06, 3Bet Preflop: 3.70, Hands: 68)
UTG: 56.8 BB (VPIP: 25.40, PFR: 20.63, 3Bet Preflop: 11.11, Hands: 63)
Hero (MP): 100 BB
CO: 68.4 BB (VPIP: 21.15, PFR: 15.38, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 52)
BTN: 90.2 BB (VPIP: 57.78, PFR: 25.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 45)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 7 6

fold, Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, BTN calls 3 BB, fold, BB calls 2 BB

Flop: (9.5 BB, 3 players) Q 7 7
BB checks, Hero bets 6.7 BB, fold, BB calls 6.7 BB

Turn: (22.9 BB, 2 players) T
BB checks, Hero bets 16.2 BB, BB raises to 40.3 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 24.1 BB

River: (103.5 BB, 2 players) 8

BB shows Q 7 (Full House, Sevens full of Queens)
(Pre 65%, Flop 99%, Turn 100%)
Hero mucks 7 6 (Three of a Kind, Sevens)
(Pre 35%, Flop 1%, Turn 0%)
BB wins 98.2 BB




In this hand I thought he was playing a lower PP / maybe a flush draw. Didn't expect him to float the flop.

PokerStars - €0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 4 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 115.5 BB (VPIP: 45.63, PFR: 23.30, 3Bet Preflop: 6.90, Hands: 105)
SB: 100 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 2)
BB: 51.5 BB (VPIP: 32.84, PFR: 22.39, 3Bet Preflop: 3.85, Hands: 67)
Hero (CO): 100 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

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

Hero raises to 3 BB, BTN calls 3 BB, fold, BB calls 2 BB

Flop: (9.5 BB, 3 players) 4 4 8
BB checks, Hero bets 6.7 BB, fold, BB calls 6.7 BB

Turn: (22.9 BB, 2 players) A
BB checks, Hero bets 11.7 BB, BB calls 11.7 BB

River: (46.3 BB, 2 players) 2
BB checks, Hero bets 78.6 BB and is all-in, BB calls 30.1 BB and is all-in

Hero shows Q Q (Two Pair, Queens and Fours)
(Pre 71%, Flop 88%, Turn 5%)
BB shows A J (Two Pair, Aces and Fours)
(Pre 29%, Flop 12%, Turn 95%)
BB wins 101 BB

So far the hands. Got a few more, but am at work and got a deadline due so I'll be working on that for now haha.

QQ river is spewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

I spew way to much on the river. For some reason in some scenario's when I know I should be pot controlling. Because he could for example have the A in this scenario. I still bet & get it in. Mainly because if I check and he bets, I know he probably has it, or he might be bluffing. But then I'll have to fold and I'll never know.

Very twisted logical and a terrible way to think. It might be an ego thing? I'm not sure. I do know it needs work.. fast if I want to level up to NL25 anytime soon haha.

Alright last week hasn't been great, been swinging up and down by €50/60 every day. I usually end up down 2 BI's, then up 8BI's and then down again to basically where I started from that day haha. I've been playing pretty bad, despite the giant amount of fish available at my tables. It has to do with the 2 upcoming exams I've got I think. Ah well no worries. Ill be studying a lot this weekend, won't be going out like I usually do. I'll post a graph of my progress along with some other stuff once I'm off work. Bye!

Okay had my first cash-game session today. Went home to Holland for a week so decided it would be smart to have my first session there instead of in Holland. I’ll write a small report on my observations here.

So yesterday was finally the day I would have my first live session. Together with 5 friends I went to Holland Casino, the only place which allows for cash-games to be hosted in Holland. Three friends of mine don’t really play poker, so they got some drinks and went to chill and play some blackjack. I went to the cashier and withdrew €300, which is 2 buy-in’s worth. I’m not really rolled to play live, but I decided It would be worth the experience, and punting off €300 for that seemed okay.

My two friends, M and S aren’t great poker players. M has a bit more live experience, but certainly doesn’t know the game all that well. S is a rec player which simply plays nitty, and has been on the positive side of variance for a long time so to speak, as he won nearly every home-game we’ve held for the past year or so without knowing what he was doing haha .

Anyways, so we got on the list and luckily there were enough players to fire up a new table. Unlike my expectation the table was mostly filed with 30-60 year old players which didn’t seem like the average poker player but more like retired folks gambling away their pension funds haha. The field seemed to be very soft, as limping happened constantly, and people called their way into 4-bet pots with 3 contesters with J8o like hands. Couldn’t really believe it at first to be honest. There were clearly a ton of mostly asian guys which were just gambling a lot really.

I took most of the advice given in this thread to heart, and I wasn’t nearly as nervous as I expected to be due to the fact I was so well informed. Have you guys to thank for that, so thanks haha .

So the first two orbits I just folded every hand, didn’t really get much anyways. I passed up on the opportunity to steal some blinds once because I wanted to get a feel for the play first. With all the limped 3-way pots I suppose stealing blinds isn’t really a thing here anyways.

Anyways, I eventually picked up TT in MP2 and I raised into 1 limper to €12, which was a normal size at the table. I got called by an active player in the CO. The flop came Td9h4h, which was jenga for me. The UTG guy checked, and I raised to €20. The CO snap called and the UTG folded. At this point I was thinking the CO was playing a flush draw or an overpair or two overcards, as I had seen him do this before. The turn came a 7s. I bet €30, which was a bit to small when I look back at it. He tanked and eventually called. The river was 9s, which was pretty great. I instantly announced all-in. The guy stared me down for like 30 seconds and called. I turned over FH and he mucked saying NH.

After this I went completely dry for like 30 hands, and ended up leaving because my 3 other friends lost their entire budget playing BJ haha. I ended up with about €150 in profit, only having played 2 hands in the night. Even though I didn’t get a lot of action, I can honestly say It was a very very enjoyable experience for me. I had a great time and I was surprised how soft the fields were really. I’ll definitely be playing more live as soon as my roll hits the required amount. I really can’t wait haha.

Thanks for all the good tips provided by you guys in other topics. It helped me a lot!

QQ KK AA all suck lol

That seemed to be the attitude at the table haha

Binked an entry into the sunday 10th anniversary million. Wish me luck folks!