Hello Guys,

I’ve been lurking PG&C threads for a while now and finally decided to start one myself. Mainly to keep track of my progress.

Background

I first started playing poker in 2010 on PKR, but I never had any success so decided to quit in 2016/2017. Looking back now on those 6 years I “lost”, I’m so mad at myself on how I decided to approach this game. I used to spend countless of hours watching high-stakes games (and didn’t learn anything..) instead on focusing on improving my game.

2020-2021 (so far)

Moving forward to 2020, as I found myself stuck at home, I decided to try and play a few MTTs and some zoom cash games on pokerstars. And of course, I got hooked on this game again.
Since May last year I’ve played around 130K hands and slowly moved from zNL2 to zNL25 (not a full time 25NL reg yet, as my bankroll is still too small, IMO).

This year I’ve been playing only on 888, as I must clear the welcome bonus. After that I think I’ll play 50/50 stars and 888. Unfortunately, Nl25z on 888 is not running all day, so I must play some NL20 reg tables or move back down to NL10z, but it feels so awkward for me to play regular tables.
Results wise, it has been pretty good so far. I never faced a huge downswing yet, but I know it is going to happen sooner or later, especially if continue to move up, so hopefully I’ll be ready for anything the variance is going to throw at me.

Plan
My goal is, firstly to become a good reg at NL25, and maybe later this year to move to NL50. I doubt I’ll go higher than zNL50, because as a part time poker player, I feel I don’t stand a chance against full time poker players. I don’t have time to study as much as them. After a full working day, I often play tired (so it’s hard to play my A game)
Volume play roughly 20K hands, ideally more. But I would rather play less and close to my A game, than more and worse.

Study – I try to work with GTO+ as much as possible and subscribed to RIO.

Graphs:

And some fun hands:

H1:



H2: vs recreational.



H3: vs reg.136bb deep vs reg. I doubt he is slow playing a set, or top two OTF, considering this wet texture board. So I feel I have the nuts here. Should I take any other line than 3bet shove OTT?

Good luck to you. I used to play the rush tables back on full tilt and I enjoyed the format. It allowed for high volume and your attention didn't get pulled to several tables at once when the stars aligned. Although I understand it's gotten a lot tougher in the last decade to the point some in the microstakes forum are saying 50NL zoom is all but unbeatable for anything but the tiniest of winrates. If you just enjoy the grind, I suppose that's fine, but if you really want to make more money you may need to game select more.

As for the hands, your play is maybe a bit questionable.

H1: As played your call-off is questionable. He's repping an overpair, which they will have a lot here. I guess run the equity calcs but it looks like a fold to me. I'd probably just x/c this flop and see if he slows down on the turn, and maybe make a play later if we don't get there. You got lucky here that he spazzed out and bluffed his stack off, but even then you were still behind.

H2: You can consider jamming the turn here given your massive draw. He will have a hard time calling off with 1-pair. OTR I probably fold to the shove. You got lucky to be up against a spazz, but there are few natural bluffs on this runout, and he's repping way better than AT.

H3: Turn I probably just size up the bet. The 3-bet is approaching game theory disaster territory. Most real draws you need to protect against will fire the flop. So when he raises the turn he's repping a slowplayed set or a low equity airball. I'm calling down with AK.

Good luck working on your game. Study up and focus on sound fundamental play.

Thank you for your feedback.

H1: I was thinking the same, until I checked the solver. It looks like I should have some FD to check/raise in my range, to balance off my sets.

H2: I agree with you, shove OTT. OTR I remember I RNG and decided to fold 50% and cal 50l% because he had some aggressive stats. Otherwise pure fold

H3: I thought he would never slow-play the flop on this board, even in a 4bet pot.

H1: x/r the flush draw for balance is fine as a GTO play. This might be a spot where we should deviate from solver/GTO play if we think our opponent is under-bluffing, or over-bluffing with a hand we may not be able to profitably call off against even if he shows us the bluff. It turns out he was bluffing, but you still had to call off a pot sized bet with a flush draw in this spot, which wasn't great.

H2: Fair enough. A read-based call here is fine against a bluff heavy player.

H3: So if he's not slowplaying, what value does he have when he raises? Does he raise a bluff here that he doesn't also bet on the flop? If he has pure air there is little value in shoving. Call and let him take another ill-advised shot on the river.

H3: I will run this hand later. I have mixed feelings about my play

Spoiler alert: we both butchered this hand..

So I ran this hand (H3) and villain should've pure bet this flop (mixing between 25% and 33%)

If he would have chose the GTO line and bet 1/4 flop and turn, I should have mainly call with my combo. It shoves 12%, but the shoving range is built around sets and two pairs, it's mixing some FDs.



As played, check/check OTF, my play is fine, except the size OTT, I should've bet half pot or larger.

[IMG]

I might be way off, because this is not a common spot (for my at least) and the ranges I chose for villain pre flop might be completely wrong..

Blunder of the day. I wonder what should I bluff here with?

For a couple of months now I have changed my preflop strategy, based on some charts I found. But it's so hard to mimic the charts while playing and as a result my 3bet dropped from 10.5 to 8

I can't find the right frequencies to 3bet or flat, especially BVB, BB vs BTN or BB vs CO

The upside is that now I have a stronger, more balanced flatting range as before. But 3-betting 8% overall seems a bit weak.

I'm in. GL, mate.

IMO Trying to play too much of a robotic "solver perfect" style of poker usually isn't the way to go at the games that 99.9% of all poker players play in. Unless you're playing super high roller tournaments or nosebleed cash games against other high level pros, you could be doing more harm than good to your winrate.

Focus on a style of play that is comfortable for you and winning, and learn how and when to deviate from it when the situations call for it. Having a more balanced 3-betting preflop range is pointless if you aren't also making the correct postflop adjustments to account for it, or your opponents play better against it. If you are more comfortable 3-betting 10.5% and are winning, and feel like you know what you're doing, go for it.

I tend to flat preflop a bit more than most would probably recommend. Mostly because I feel that in my games people make more mistakes postflop, and I like to have good board coverage. 3-bet pots tend to narrow ranges to the point that there are fewer postflop mistakes made. But if you feel comfortable taking initiative in the hand with more 3-bets, and that works with you, stick with it! Unless you have thousands of hands with the same players they probably aren't going to have a good feel for your 3-bet ranges anyways. And against regs who you do have thousands of hands against, you can revert to your tighter 3-bet range, which they may make mistakes against because their hud is showing 11%.

@balanced - thanks
@Koss - Thanks again for your feedback. I do agree, the highest winrate at micros you'd get by trying and exploit your opponents as much as possible. But I like to lie to myself that the "theory play" would help me to improve as a player and could potentially help me in the future, if I move up.

You're not wrong. The theory can help you. But it helps to know why the theory is what it is. Not just knowing what the solver says to do, but to understand how it gets there so you know how to think like it does so to speak, and then deviate appropriately.

Exploiting your opponents mistakes is always the highest winrate. It's just that spotting those mistakes and executing the adjustments is 10000X easier at the micros than in bigger games, where people have very few leaks and it may take a significant sample size to find them. You need a fundamental baseline strategy that is at least going to breakeven until you spot the leaks. That's where the solver stuff can be very helpful.

But as long as you are playing in games with large enough player pools, the chances that you will spend enough time playing against the same players, or that other high volume players will find it a good use of their time to try and analyze your play is pretty small.

You should have 0 bluffs here.

Solver here is playing a linear strategy continuing with just flush draws, sets and straights, and in solver world villain will have more bluffs than the average person in the micros will so you should continue even tighter.

It's not even a good idea to have a raising range here as it accomplishes nothing.

If you can beat zoom 25NL, you can also beat 50NL. Don't underestimate yourself (or overestimate the others).

I simed this hand, and first of all, villain should check the turn 100%. And I remember, while playing this hand, I expected a high frequency check from him OTT. And probably I could've turned my hand into a bluff if he checked the turn.

But I agree with you @Darragh, as played fold the turn. Maybe calling, considering pot odds

Thank you, sir. I haven't played that many hands at 25NL yet. Hopefully in the next couple of months I'll play 50K hands at NL25 so I can have a solid grasp of this stake and also building my roll so I can play more comfortable and don't be afraid of the inevitable downswings that are to come.

Not really sure about this play. I do think I should have some check raise OTF, built around my pocket threes. But I don't know how I should have approached the turn and river?

Flop: nice!

Turn: in my sim, this is a mixed stratey between betting large (around 3/4pot) and a x/r. You shouldn't bet small here OTT.

River: as played OTT, this is a blocking bet/fold OTR.

Your decision OTT is a blunder. Be careful with blunders, because they hurt our winrate a lot!

Best regards, mate.

Thank you sir - I almost timed out OTT. I just couldn't figure out what to do in this spot. Was the A a better for my range or for his ( now I definitely think it's a better card for his range. Besides A3, and maybe some low frequency AJ, I don't have many aces here)

As @Koss said in a previous post I do tend to get into "theory disaster territory" quite often.

I'll be posting the monthly results soon.

I probably get stacked in that spot lol.

The A is a better card for his range because he has AQ/AA and you don't. But it's also another scare card for the non-A hands in his range, and it's going to get KQ/QJ/JJ/TT to fold more even though the situation shouldn't have changed much for them, and I suspect that's why you went with a small bet.

I'd agree the river is a b/f as played but folding full houses has never been a strong suit of mine. Probably one of my bigger weaknesses is handling spots where narrow and polarized ranges collide. I often overestimate how wide my opponent can be, and maybe some of that is learned behavior. I've definitely seen people show up with AT/AJ/AK in spots like this where the flop x/r should have knocked them out but they get sticky.

Don't worry about the "theory disaster territory" thing. You're trying your best to learn the game. You're doing well. Let's go!

About the A on the turn: the A is a lot better for his range indeed. Because of that, you should check almost your entire range on this turn after x/ring this flop (my sim checks 90% on this turn!). The only combo you can bet for value is exacly the 33. That's why you can play it as a x/r OTT as well.

But if you do bet, you should bet larger. In order to balance, my sim suggests to bet 54s and some JT/KT as bluffs.

Best regards.

March update

If I would have to rate my game for this month, I would say 2, or 3 out of 5. Results were good (I'm probably on a heater), but my game was terrible, mainly because I had to grind and clear the "welcome bonus", and I played way to many sessions I should have not even played. I was either too tired and couldn't focus, or I was watching a TV show while playing.

All 3k hands I played at NL5 this month were total spew and sub optimal play.

Anyway, this would be over in a couple of days, so hopefully in April I will play as close to "optimal" as possible.

And besides this, I didn't study as much as I used to. Probably because I haven't faced a huge downswing yet and I feel better than my opponents. But I know this is just an illusion and the variance will slap me in the face.

On a positive note, I played 21K hands, which is OK for me. My monthly target is 20K+

Graph

gl sir

TY, sir!