I don't mind playing deeper at 50z. I did rathole before though.

I have a note on this player he's capable of running unnatural/bigger bluffs, so even ultra deep I think he's more balanced than the average 50z player. I much rather call AxAc than any other AA combo OTR.

Random painful losing hand (or several, it doesn’t matter imho) aside, I was going to say the opposite.

You’re going to win those deep hands too.

Would consider playing deep really often ship. Also in this context deep seems to be 150/200bb so even more so.

Way way more profitable than 100bb IMO and the best way to get better and more comfortable with it would be to play more of it I’d imagine... but idk

glgl brother

You guys got any tips for playing deeper at zoom?

I had been ratholing at 125bb. But a buddy who crushes playing aggro plays deeper, and i'm trying to be more aggro this month, so I'm playing upto 150bb before I reset.

I just don't like it as I'm not as comfortable 4betting or 5bet jamming with hands like QQ/AK in some spots. I'm more hesitant to stack off in some spots.

Super disgusting spot to be on the wrong side of the cooler here. If you think opponent is capable of bluffing here the call down is reasonable.

I do think you can put yourself in some sticky spots when playing deep stacked if haven't given lots of thought to your preflop range construction. Most regs haven't so you can gain a big edge playing closer to equilibrium 200bb+, especially against volume grinders who are autopiloting and playing same regardless of stack depth.

Disclaimer this is by no means correct, and I'm probably a far weaker reg than yourself but I think I have a couple of things you could think about.

1) Consider how 3! & 4! sizing changes IP and OOP

When playing deeper OOP is incentivised to use larger sizes with a tighter range as they do not want to play for lots of chips with a big positional disadvantage. Higher SPR = Greater positional advantage.

IP, however, is very happy to see a flop and be able to capitalise on their position. IP should have a slightly wider range than 100bb deep and use the same size, forcing OOP to play a lot of flops. In this hand you have used a pretty huge 4bet here, I would argue OOP is given very easy decisions against this size.

2) Board coverage is very important.

On this board it may not have been super relevant - but you need to be able to have nutted hands on all boards. Overpairs this deep are no longer happy to play for stacks so it is important to mix more suited connectors (low & broadway) into your 4bet range. Suited Ax become better bluffs this deep also, because you have the ability to hit the nut flush and sometimes get a big cooler go your way.

You will be put in some very disgusting spots if you range is only AQo, AKs, AA, KK (as I would suggest is often the case when people 4bet IP to 31BB).

Unlucky. I think this deep you need to bet flop much bigger.

Disgusting.

But we also size up our 4bets when deeper. At least 4x here.

I think I have a bit of an edge deep vs most guys. But I don't study deep poker a lot if at all, so idk. Thank brother

It's fine to not have a 5b range at all in some stack depths IMO. Hands that can make nutty hands go up in value and offsuit broadways go down in value generally. TP never really likes to play big pots deep. So you will adjust to this when considering what hands to 3bet or continue pre.

Good post man. I generally don't adjust my sizings too much when deeper, but 300bb deep I thought it's fine to add a couple bb's, and don't see why we can't include those suited connector/Axs type hands in the same range, and exclude some of those offsuit broadway 4bets. I haven't looked at 200bb+ or 300bb+ preflop solves for a long time, but Axs, some pairs and connected cards in general go up in value for sure. DDP mentioned we should go as high as 4x sizing IP here, and I guess that's coming from a solver? I'd like to hear more about the logic behind making such massive raises and how it affects our 4b range and the OOP defend range.

You mean his donk sizing? If he gets to donk that seems like an ok sizing, idk.

Mind telling me where this is from and how it affects both ranges?

Lol I misread another hand did not realize v lead out. In that case I think you played it well.

Yeah I would be interested too, because my impression was basically the reverse. i.e in position we don't want to go larger.

I 4bet 2.3x-2.5 deep when IP, and 2.8-3x OOP, but I have not seen solved ranges so I could well be butchering preflop lol

I use similar sizings.

https://upswingpoker.com/deep-stack-strategy-tips/

This article agrees with your earlier post. And upswing has usually been pretty spot on (though in a simplified manner but anyway). There could be something happening at 300bb+ compared to 200bb that stands out.

I played a hand super deep about 4-5 months ago and Ionu ran some preflop sims for me and told me at 200bbs - we need to start 4x our 4bets to cut down on the implied odds that Villain is getting.

I don't know if it goes to 6x or so at 300bb but we definitely need to be going big.

Week 11: Another week, another grind. I feel like I'm improving all the time but it's very hard to reward yourself for it when you don't see results. Like I said during my previous bad stretch last year, if I feel like I'm doing things right and studying well, there is not much else I can do.



But those were the non-surprising bad news for the week. Good news for the week is that I got a really good job offer I'm going to accept! The employer seems nice, the pay is good, the role seems interesting. Pretty excited about it. And to add a bit of context; I've not been excited about anything day-job related for a long time. Let's see how much this affects my poker routine going forward. Likely I'm gonna have to make some minor changes but it's whatever.

GL out there!

I see you had a 600bb drop in a really short space of time - have you had that set of hands reviewed by someone to rule out tilt as a factor?

Hey! I review hands with my study group. I rarely tilt but I obviously make mistakes, because poker is hard. During that drop there was nothing unusual IMO.

Hope the new job, if indeed you take it works out well for you Ship, from what you say it sounds like a goer. You cant beat a regular income if you dont dislike the work.

As far as poker online is concerned, theres no doubt that its become more and more difficult to be a consistant winning player with all the information out there.
Its become doubtful nowadays that its worth the effort you have to put in to be a substatial winning player.
On the positive side its exciting playing, learning, testing yourself against the crowd, its definitely character building also, theres more to it than winning money.

GL.

Yeah, it's just normal variance. Nothing unusual. You'll crush it very soon!

How was march ship?

all that gto solver work all that hours put in into beating 50nl and still have loosing weeks and months.
poker is a result oriented game, if you loose you are bad and should quit before loosing more and more.

Awful take.

MMA had a close to break even YEAR. Variance is a real thing.

It's winrate + amount of hands. Getting better/studying just reduces variance since it increases your winrate - but there will always be variance in poker.

Thanks man. You are right. The reality of poker is that if you can't handle longer bad stretches, you should in fact just do something else with your time. If you are strictly bumhunting and always have a whale at your table, you can expect a bit less variance and a higher winrate. Playing zoom that just isn't the case. You just have to make a decision about what style suits you better, right now I'm ok playing Zoom and not bumhunting, but that will likely change.

Hehe, thanks buddy.

Graph at end of post.

This x1000 ;-)

He wasn't serious But I agree with you.


March:


I'll make a longer post in a couple days :-)

Time for a little poker and life update :-)

Poker:
I've been hitting my volume goals every month which is the minimum of 30k hands every month. Been aiming for 40k anyway but I don't want to put too much pressure on myself while having a full-time job and whatnot. Sustainable is better than too enthusiastic IMO and that is what I try to live by. Like I've said earlier in my posts I feel like I'm playing well and I've been able to avoid tilt in a more disciplined manner than I would've thought. I am confident in claiming that I've been playing close to A-game over 90% of sessions. The question is how good my A-game is, and I'm sure it's nowhere close to perfection, but I think it's good. I like my thought process, I like the way I execute based on my thought process, but I'm not pleased with the results. It gets me thinking about my strategy overall. Is it good enough? Do I need to exploit even more? Do I lose EV in spots where I don't feel I need to mark hands?

Looking at my entire graph while zooming out, it looks like I'm breaking even mostly and making money during sunruns. It's a bit results oriented thinking, but you have to take a step back and try to stay objective about your play whenever you can. I've played over 300k hands now and I'm winning at ~2evbb/100. Obviously I'm happy with winning, but I'm still very open to the idea that I'm missing a ton of value in a lot of spots and making mistakes that I shouldn't make. The 50z pool is weak, and I always like the looks of it considering it's a zoom pool. One would think that my winrate should be way higher over a sample like this considering the pool, but the results just don't reflect that. I'm also open to the idea that it might be a bad sample, but the probabilities of that gets more and more slim and my ideal winrate of ~5bb/100 in these games might just not be close to my real winrate. I just don't know. It's tough to be in a spot where you put in a ton of work and thinking you are doing the right things, but you never get a clear confirmation of progress in the results. I can only be happy with learning new things and noticing a more solid though process and execution. All things considered, I might not be as good as I think. And this is something I have to try find answers to.

One of my main goals this year was to work on my motivation. I have to right tools for it, and I think it's been much better this year. But I had to take a week off poker (last week) to reflect on stuff regarding poker during this stretch, but also because stress outside poker which I'll touch on briefly in the life section of this post. I will still hit volume goals and it was a well needed break.

Life:
In an update months ago I mentioned I have a new partner. We are still together and it's wonderful. We learn new things about each other constantly and it just brings us closer together. I can just summarize it into things being beautiful right now even if there are some challenges going forward with her working in another city for quite a long time. Both are quite independent and don't really need confirmation from the other person all the time to feel secure. Another exciting thing right now is that I'll start my new job next week. Really looking forward to that even if it's a bit scary to take on a new thing that will be taking up a huge chunk of your time every day. I really hope I will enjoy my new employer and the role.

I've always thought that I'm different than other people in terms of handling daily things and conversations. I have a really hard time paying attention even when people talk directly to me, even if I try to concentrate as best as I can. I hate participating in things that require me to stay focused on something, because I feel stupid in those settings. It seems so effortless for people to focus on daily tasks and conversations, while I'm always at the edge of going into daydreaming mode and losing the context or topic of what was said/done a minute or two ago. Sometimes at work when I'm in a meeting, especially when it seems important, I take notes in real time while in a conversation, not to lose the conversation completely and look like an idiot. It's incredibly hard to be self-confident. I took some ADHD test and it gave strong signs of ADD, which wasn't surprising to me, even if I never thought of it being a possibility. Obviously I haven't gotten a legit diagnosis, and I'm not sure I need one. I just think it's very soothing to know that I don't have to stress about improving in this regard, and just try to use the tools I have to cope with this stuff like I've done before. I've done relatively well in life but it's been very difficult when even the most basic stuff require huge amounts of effort. If some of you guys recognize this stuff, feel free to PM me. I'd love to know how you cope with it.

There are some health stuff going on with a family member I won't touch more on here. But it's been pretty hard to deal with waiting for answers and what's gonna happen next. But hoping for the best and trying to not think too much about it before people who know better give some more updates on the situation.

All hands since first thread for context:

Nice update, this is a great thread. I can understand your thought process regarding your results, but I guess 300k hands also really isn’t that much at the same time. What does your red line look like ship?

I recognise the attention deficit stuff 100% but for me I'm convinced it's to do with my diet. If you eat good ignore me, but I'm transitioning to a keto/paleo diet and while it's really difficult because I've eaten crap my whole life, it's become the only option for me now because my body just can't take junk food and buckets of carbs anymore. And I do feel like my attention and confidence are swinging back at last.

& regarding results: jealous of your winrate tbh, as I'm sure many are. You don't need me to tell you ~2bb @ 50nlz is still a good player trying to master proper gto strategies, esp as edges grow increasingly narrower. Not to mention that, as you say, these graphs are misleading af when you factor in all the -EV you inevitably get from taking learning risks.

GL with the new stuff.

Hello.

You already know everything I'm going to say, but I'll say these things anyway because I think maybe they can help. Of course, these are just my humble opinions:

- I understand how frustating it is to put a lot of solid work and not seeing the results we want to, especially when we're a low volume player. On LLinusLLove's thread (for example), he was playing like 150k+ hands/month, and even then the swings he got over a year were brutal. That's hard, but that's how the game works. Your sample sizing doesn't mean too much, as you already know. Therefore, do not try to analyze your poker's skill based on your results, because this can trick you into making changes that (maybe) will do more harm to your game than improve it.

- In my humble opinion, a good way to monitor our skill and maintain sanity while we're playing this game is doing what you already do: marking hands and analyzing if we are making mistakes based on good solvers' solutions. You can create a system to account the amount of small and big errors you are making, etc. This is a better anchor to understand how good are we playing.

- One last thing: your winrate is very solid already. Don't worry about it.

I think you're a very good player and I do think you're doing things right. I'd suggest to just keep your consistency and your plan, and you'll be playing nl500z in no time.