good luck with the blog..

How is the RIO subscription working out ? Would you recommend it ?

For a new player probably not. There is plenty of free stuff out there that'll get you into a half decent winning player. For £20 though there is tonnes of very useful content.

I have also been lazy with it and not watched enough content, something I intend on fixing before the end of the month.

point me to the plenty of decent free stuff, pls

You are better off searching through BQ or asking in there. I haven't really been around the past 3-4 years so don't know.

https://www.pokerstarsschool.com/lib...5694421&page=6

I think this will probably be quite good as the person is a good teacher, clued up and afaik still a reasonably good poker player. Funnily enough he's a coach on RIO too.

First of all happy new year to everyone.

Results since I started this thread. Mostly winning really comfortably at 2nlz and lost a few BI at 5nlz.



44k hands for the month, played very little towards the end which is poor.

2019 Goals
Get better at poker.

January Goals
[] No alcohol
[] Settle into my new job
[] No takeaways during the week
[] 30k hands

When both players snapped and flipped over QJ I **** myself and thought I'd misread the board.

PokerStars - $0.02 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 131.5 BB (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 20.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 5)
SB: 103 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)
BB: 103.5 BB (VPIP: 25.00, PFR: 25.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 4)
UTG: 100 BB (VPIP: 15.56, PFR: 6.67, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 46)
Hero (MP): 112 BB
CO: 157 BB (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 20.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 5)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

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

fold, Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, SB calls 2.5 BB, BB calls 2 BB

Flop: (9 BB, 3 players) T K 8
SB bets 4 BB, BB calls 4 BB, Hero raises to 25 BB, SB calls 21 BB, BB calls 21 BB

Turn: (84 BB, 3 players) 2
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets 84 BB and is all-in, SB calls 75 BB and is all-in, BB calls 75.5 BB and is all-in

River: (310 BB, 3 players) 2

BB shows J Q (One Pair, Twos)

SB shows Q J (One Pair, Twos)

Had a nice start to the year, up about 8BI in < 6k hands, will take a 5BI shot at 5nlz.

Are the games usually softer at this time of year?

Oh, I only just found this thread, so I'll subscribe in a minute.

Games are always soft over the Christmas holidays. I think a lot of students go home and raid their mum's cocktail cabinets, and start thinking that QJo + Bailey's = profit.

Thanks but I'll keep it a secret how much baileys I drank this Christmas...

Poker is going alright, running a bit crappy but also winning like every 60/40 so happy days really. Played just over 10k hands so far.

Start my first day at work tomorrow, should be good. I am absolutely bricking it though, driving there and the few times I've been driving the past couple of days I just don't feel comfortable with my car at all. It's been ten months since I passed my test and I haven't driven once in that time though (before like 2 days ago) so understandable I suppose. Will be more fun doing it in the dark tomorrow!

Signed up to a gym, hoping my work schedule doesn't mess with me too much. The idea is the gym is near where I work and I can basically use the time I've skipped sitting in traffic doing a workout. Getting up at 6/6:30 every morning really shouldn't be hard.

GL mate hope all goes well tomorrow

Good luck !

Not died driving which is nice. Had some horrible weather this week too, rain, fog, ice. Just missing snow. Still don't feel comfortable in the car, probably stalled it 5 or so times which is literally more than I ever did in my first car and gear changes aren't anywhere near as smooth as I was. Hoping it just gets better with time.

Failed my goals already. Had a drink yesterday, not very much but it all counts and had two takeaways last week although only one was bought by me. Not played any poker this week either, planning lessons just takes up so much time it's a proper drag. Teaching is great but getting home after work only to have to do more work sucks. Maybe I just need to stay in school until it's done because when I get home I never feel like doing it.

Got snow the other day too, funfunfun!

Played about a thousand hands of 10nlz, trying to get back into my poker a little bit more now I'm more used to work. Have been running really hot too.

I think calling this river is a pretty sizeable mistake? I say think as this is probably a big leak of mine too.

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

BTN: 100 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 6)
SB: 114.6 BB (VPIP: 14.41, PFR: 9.32, 3Bet Preflop: 3.03, Hands: 247)
BB: 168 BB (VPIP: 16.67, PFR: 8.33, 3Bet Preflop: 16.67, Hands: 27)
UTG: 61 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)
Hero (MP): 133.2 BB
CO: 181.9 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

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

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

Flop: (9.5 BB, 3 players) 9 T K
BB checks, Hero bets 7 BB, BTN calls 7 BB, BB calls 7 BB

Turn: (30.5 BB, 3 players) 5
BB checks, Hero bets 25 BB, BTN calls 25 BB, fold

River: (80.5 BB, 2 players) 8
Hero bets 65 BB, BTN calls 65 BB and is all-in



Think this is ok?

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

BTN: 95 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 2)
SB: 101.5 BB (VPIP: 23.44, PFR: 15.63, 3Bet Preflop: 4.55, Hands: 69)
BB: 50.2 BB
UTG: 108.5 BB
MP: 226.1 BB (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 20.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 5)
Hero (CO): 198.5 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

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

UTG raises to 2.3 BB, fold, Hero raises to 9 BB, fold, fold, fold, UTG calls 6.7 BB

Flop: (19.5 BB, 2 players) 4 9 7
UTG checks, Hero checks

Turn: (19.5 BB, 2 players) 9
UTG bets 10.4 BB, Hero calls 10.4 BB

River: (40.3 BB, 2 players) A
UTG bets 16.2 BB, Hero raises to 94 BB, UTG calls 72.9 BB and is all-in



Interesting line by villain...

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

BTN: 120.9 BB (VPIP: 100.00, PFR: 100.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)
SB: 114 BB (VPIP: 11.54, PFR: 11.54, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 28)
Hero (BB): 103.7 BB
UTG: 149.1 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)
MP: 117.7 BB (VPIP: 15.38, PFR: 13.46, 3Bet Preflop: 10.00, Hands: 52)
CO: 443.8 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 3)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 2 A

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

Flop: (18.5 BB, 2 players) 4 5 3
Hero checks, BTN bets 7 BB, Hero raises to 40 BB, BTN calls 33 BB

Turn: (98.5 BB, 2 players) 4
Hero bets 54.7 BB and is all-in, BTN calls 54.7 BB

River: (207.9 BB, 2 players) 8



The rake is funny. Basically $1 being taken from the pot every time you GII just slaughters win rate. 10-25nl just seems like absolute cancer in terms of rake. It's obviously beatable (plenty beat it) but it's such a trap.

I'm surprised you have the time (or the desire) to play poker now you're teaching and doing lesson plans.
Yeah, villain's call down with KQ is bad.
The AA can also bet the flop (get some value from QQ-TT before the board gets ugly for those hands), but checking back with a heart is also fine.

Well I've been doing it three weeks and I've played poker a tiny bit on like 3 of those days (all recently) and done no studying. Seems more productive that coming home and just killing time watching ****ty tv which is what I was doing.

I'm pretty bad at coming home and doing work so I try to do as much in school as possible. I'm there an hour and a half before school and at least 45mins after. I'd stay longer but then traffic makes it not worth it.

When you have ideas it isn't that bad planning lessons (probs 30mins per lesson) but sometimes you just draw a blank. I was doing some stuff on symmetry recently and just drew an absolute blank on lesson ideas and all the stuff I found online seemed pretty meh. Doing it before the internet must have been a nightmare.

My timetable is also pretty chilled currently, doing 22.5/25 hours a week is quite a bit more than the 20 or so I do. More lessons to plan and less time in school although arguably I do have other stuff I need to do in those extra slots of time.

I emailed pokerstars a while ago about an issue with the font not resizing in the bet size bar when I changed the size of table (which at times made it unplayable as you couldn't see more than 1/4 of a character. It seemed to base the font size off the size of the original table opened though so i found a work around.

They said they were working on it, fair enough. About two months later I got an email saying still working on it sorry it's taking so long. I had kind of forgotten about it and just hoped it'd fix itself in a patch or something.

Recently they emailed me saying, our developers have fixed the issue so it's sorted. I had been using my trick and not resizing tables so hadn't really thought about it much. Looked to see if it was fixed, nope.

I like the pokerstars client and I trust them to look after my money but I'm really struggling to see why I should carry on playing on their site.

Lol'd when I saw this. Can you tell by my bet sizing I hated SB 4betting?

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

BTN: 129.9 BB (VPIP: 66.67, PFR: 33.33, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 3)
SB: 345 BB (VPIP: 9.09, PFR: 9.09, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 11)
BB: 304.6 BB (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 20.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 5)
Hero (UTG): 161.6 BB
MP: 100 BB (VPIP: 22.22, PFR: 11.11, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 9)
CO: 111 BB (VPIP: 30.77, PFR: 23.08, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 13)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

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

Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, CO raises to 10.5 BB, BTN calls 10.5 BB, SB raises to 28.5 BB, fold, Hero raises to 81 BB, fold, BTN raises to 129.9 BB and is all-in, fold, Hero calls 48.9 BB

Flop: (299.8 BB, 2 players) 4 J 8

Turn: (299.8 BB, 2 players) T

River: (299.8 BB, 2 players) 4
Players agreed to run it twice.

Flop #2: (299.8 BB, 2 players) A 2 A

Turn #2: (299.8 BB, 2 players) 9

River #2: (299.8 BB, 2 players) 5





5nlz confirmed unbeatable (some tilt and spew over my sample there). Running really hot in all-in EV and in distribution so meaningless.

Anyone got any thoughts on sizings? I'm a little lost by the river as I'm not sure what part of villains range plays like this. Does two pair ever play like this? AJ maybe. Does weakish Ax call the river bet? Flushes and KQ are surely betting the flop a good % of the time.

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

Hero (BTN): 135.7 BB
SB: 151.3 BB (VPIP: 14.29, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 7)
BB: 171.9 BB (VPIP: 21.28, PFR: 19.15, 3Bet Preflop: 10.00, Hands: 48)
UTG: 212.5 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 1)
MP: 157.9 BB (VPIP: 50.00, PFR: 50.00, 3Bet Preflop: 100.00, Hands: 3)
CO: 116.8 BB (VPIP: 60.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 5)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

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

UTG raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, Hero calls 3 BB, fold, fold

Flop: (7.5 BB, 2 players) 4 T A
UTG checks, Hero bets 4 BB, UTG calls 4 BB

Turn: (15.5 BB, 2 players) J
UTG checks, Hero bets 10 BB, UTG calls 10 BB

River: (35.5 BB, 2 players) 3
UTG checks, Hero bets 20 BB, UTG calls 20 BB

I'd probably go smaller on the river with the TT. In fact, sometimes my spider-senses tingle so much (due to some sort of timing tell) that I make the nitty check back. You can never be too careful.

FWIW, I think 5NLz should be avoided wherever possible. In my meagre sample since August last year, I haven't managed to get a positive EV vs the worst nits in the world, whilst 10NLz always feels much splashier.

I'm kind of under the impression and this may be lol sample and all that. That 5nlz requires adjustments which are much more about exploiting nits than the fish in the pool whilst 10nlz whilst much stronger on average has more generic fish who are just there to play around with a BI or two in the evening and the regs are still very face-up and meh (myself included in that no doubt).

Basically 5nlz steal a lot, 3b quite aggro and use your fold button when you face aggression of any kind in any spot.

14k hands so far up quite a lot. Not sure if I should just make 10nlz my main game for the next month and see how it goes or try to sort my sample at 5nlz out. When the run good stops I'll probably realise I'm losing and move back down I suppose.

On track to fail all of my goals for the month apart from settling into my job which seems to be going well. I'm enjoying it whilst I'm there but having to come home and do work really sucks.

Was debating whether or not to put in some more volume today but decided against it. Going to catch up on sleep and get everything ready for a decent weekend grind. Also have a week off next month so should get a bit more volume in overall as this month was quite poor in terms of volume.

Apart from that I ran really hot in just about every way possible this month. I find when I'm running good I just think meh it's not real so doesn't matter and when I run bad I only really get frustrated when it ****s up shot taking another limit.

Monthly graph


Monthly split


Database graph in bb


Final graph looks worse than it really is, ran awful at 2nl and 5nl and hot over 10nl so I'm only about $10 under EV in currency.

The worst thing about being sick isn't so much being sick. It's other people around you not letting you deal with being sick.

Got enough stars coins to get $10 rakeback, lol'd when I saw absolutely no benefit in the reward based on spending more coins.

Red chest goes from 220 points to 550. I know I'm late to the party but it seems a very odd system. I can't put in consistent volume so I end up on blue when I play and then back to red as I don't play for a couple of days which it then uses as an excuse to make the rewards worse for me because it thinks I'm trying to game a system that gives so little back it would be pointless to do.

The fact it's so little rakeback should essentially mean it doesn't matter to me at all especially when my volume is so low but it's just another negative that's making me want to find a new site.

Been playing a little 16nl recently but always quite late so the pool is pretty dead. Will probably start mixing this in with 10nl a bit more when I've won a few more BI.

Can anyone who plays 25-100nl zoom tell me whether it's worth trying to be really aggro with BRM to get to 100nl as fast as possible or is the skill gap that large that the rake effects are really minor? I'm not under the impression I'm beating any of those stakes fwiw would require lots of work on my game.

I am now off work until next Monday and I three goals.

10 hours of study.
10 hours of play.
4 gym sessions.

Poker wise recently I've just been doing stupid challenges like the round the world spins and zombie zoom thing at the lowest possible stakes. Will get back into cash game zoom as everything else is stupid to spend time on getting better imo.

First half-term in my new job seems to have gone quite well. Settled in, got to know everyone and started building those relationships which I always feel is the most important thing. Next half-term I've got some things to work on to progress and it's just a slow process of building up all the things I need to make everything go a bit smoother and trying new things out as I feel it's very easy to fall into a routine and go through the motions.

If anyone has any advice on starting up at the gym please post in here or drop me a message. I'm currently going through that anxiety period of not wanting to look like a complete idiot as I've no idea what I'm doing. So far I've just been bike/treadmill and using the leg machines after I feel like I've recovered from the last session so about twice a week. I'm thinking a 3am or something stupid session is in order just so I can go round and figure out how everything works?

Think this is like my 5th or 6th royal flush. Slightly cheating though as about half of those were whilst playing hypers and the like where I was all-in before the flop. What a pointless thing to be running insanely hot in.

Was going to go for the "want to see a royal flush" line but realised chat was turned off lol.

PokerStars - $0.02 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 100 BB (VPIP: 37.50, PFR: 25.00, 3Bet Preflop: 33.33, Hands: 8)
SB: 130 BB (VPIP: 36.36, PFR: 27.27, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 11)
BB: 206 BB (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 18.89, 3Bet Preflop: 16.00, Hands: 91)
Hero (UTG): 100 BB
MP: 203.5 BB
CO: 99 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

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

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

Flop: (6.5 BB, 2 players) 2 3 A
BB checks, Hero bets 3 BB, BB calls 3 BB

Turn: (12.5 BB, 2 players) J
BB checks, Hero checks

River: (12.5 BB, 2 players) T
BB checks, Hero bets 94 BB and is all-in, fold



In other news I went to the gym last night and got to grips with some machines whilst the place was less busy. Some of them I still have no idea but **** it I just won't use them. Really need to start shedding some pounds. Aim is to get down to about 14 stone / 89kg and going off some ****ty home scales I'm currently around 16 stone / 102kg which seems very off as about a week ago I was like 5lb less than that? Regardless I think around 200lb or so is a healthy weight for someone my size so that's the aim. Will start being a little more specific with goals in the Summer when I'm more used to things.

Deposited a little money on runitonce poker but the traffic was awful (it was like 2-4am uk time) and I don't really know what the standard is like. A little weary of playing 20nl if most of the pool is much better than me I literally have no idea but can't imagine many recs are there currently. Traffic isn't a whole let better currently either 45 at 4nl and 26 at 20nl everything else dead.