Rec cash game player with full time job and a 4 yrs old son, trying to work on my game by playing and tracking my progress on UK site Sky Poker NL50/NL100. The site is pretty soft, these two levels are probably close to NL5/10 at PS, or even lower.

Been playing poker since 2016, first some home game with friends, then had a shot on PS NL5/10 as well as London local live 1/2. Apparently I don't have enough data or even close to tell where I am, but my gut feeling is I'm break-even at NL5/10 while having a pretty clear edge against at least 90% players I encountered in local casino (which isn't very tough to achieve anyway).

Study side, read most the classical books including Harrington's series and several books by Jonathan Little, most recently "Applications of No-Limit Hold ’em: A Guide to Understanding Theoretically Sound Poker" by Matthew Janda and highly recommend it. Currently reading "The Mental Game of Poker" by Jared Tendler, which is the main reason I want to start this thread.

Long term goals of playing poker:
1) Improve my skills, both on and off the table, and ideally applying these learning to other aspects in life and work. Many poker skills are quite transferable to leadership in my opinion.

2) Establish poker as a possible alternative and reliable source of income. I enjoy and have great passion on my current job, but in the longer term (5+ years later), I may decide to quit from corporate world and devote my time to charity/education work, while playing poker 50~100 hours a month to generate about 50% of my current income will be a good way to achieve the balance of time and financial pressure. It's too early to assess the details yet, but that's something I always had in mind.

Mid term goals:
1) Become a winning player of NL50 and NL100 at Sky Poker. I think I’m a winning player of NL50 already, but NL100 is sometimes tough when there are 2 or more good regs on the table. Not sure if I will ever have enough data to support it, but I will try to assess my ability objectively (if it’s possible at all…)

2) Become a winning player of the 1/3 and 2/5 game in London casinos. Again, I may be a winning players at some table, but by analyzing how some good regs played some hands, I can see certainly rooms for me to improve quite clearly.

Short term goals:
1) Apply the process model introduced in the Mental Game book: Prepare -> Perform -> result -> Evaluate -> analyze. I want to apply this model both in every session and in every hand I am involved.

2) Fix my leaks in preflop 3 bet. I believe I 3 bet a bit too wide OOP, especially when V is clearly not folding enough to justify my bluff/value ratio. Meanwhile, I think when IP some of my calling range could be promoted to 3 bet, and size down a bit both value and bluff bets when IP. This is mainly inspired by a video I recently watched by Jonathan Little, who made good argument on why sizing down is now more and more popular in higher level stake games. Basically if I have edge over villain, I should be more willing to see post flop more often when I’m IP.

Enough talking! Regarding the Sky Poker game itself, my current balance is at £384.85, but my poker bank roll (for both live and online) is £3000+ and the money transfer in&out the account is instant and free so I don’t really see that balance as a mental bank roll in any way.

Plan to play at least 1 hour a day in average on a weekly basis. Ie I may play 2 sessions of 3 hours and 4 hours in weekend, or maybe multiple 1-2 hours sessions over weekday nights after kid went to sleep. Ofc will try to play more than that, but I also play live in some weekends when wife and son have other appointments, so don’t want to set the goal too high.

Will start recording a few hands played yesterday in next post.

Also to clarify, all tables at Sky Poker is 6 handed and max buy in 100BB, no matter how deep other players are at the table. There’s a setting to auto-top up whenever you are below maximum, so effective stacks are usually 100BB+. There are other shallower tables but I don’t plan to play them yet.

Yesterday I played NL50 about 1 hour against a maniac LAG clsn sitting at my left. A few hands worth sharing:

Hand 1
All fold to H (100BB) at SB with K2s, V at BB covers. H opens to 3BB, BB calls.

Flop (5.7BB) J22r
H check, BB check

Turn (5.7BB) 5s, now board has 2 spades and H has no s.
H check again (taking the risk to induce bluff here), V bet 6BB, H call.

River (~17BB) Qs
H check, V bet 17BB, H calls and lost to V’s TXss flush.

Hand 2
Same V and same SB vs BB battle. This time H opened to 3BB with J7s and V calls

Flop (5.7BB): JT8r, H has backdoor FD
H bet 3.5BB given the wet flop, V calls

Turn (~12.5BB): 5, no FD
H check, V bet 12.5BB, H call

River (~36BB): A
H check, V bet 36BB, H call and lost to V’s Q9o

1st hand will be a tough fold, if I ever fold it; 2nd hand I think turn&river pot bet screams strength and I probably overcalled. Even a maniac should not pot bet bluff that often at river, especially the board is easy for me to have hands like 2 pairs and won’t fold to a bet.

Also, it’s probably the best to just play tight, though the V is actually very passive preflop - seen him flt AK and JJ, and never raised any hand at all.

Running hot in the first month (cashed out £200):



I think I only played ~30 hours in past 30 days, a mix of NL50 and NL100 as planned, so definitely on a super upswing.

Things I’ve worked on and believe made some progress:

3 bet tighter when OOP:
- If PFR is from EP or tight, better to fold hands like 64s from BB/SB than 3bet.
- If villain is not observing (like many multi-table reg/pro), there’s nothing wrong to 3 bet with a linear instead of polarized range, until v adjusts by folding too often.

Thin value at river:
- when H is IP: If villain always bet with better hands at river, H should bet for value when checked to. Classic example is when V check at river when flush draw or other obvious draw completes and H holds TPTK+ but not flush/str8.
- OOP: If an aggressive Villain always bets for thin value with a decent hand (eg 2 pairs on 1 card str8 board) and H will call it when V bets, H should bet for value, instead of check call, getting value from non-decent part of V’s range.

Check flop as PFR with marginal TP
- Example: KsTs on KhQc8h. If H bet, v will call with strong range/better hand, fold any worse, ie playing perfectly.
- Checking some marginal hand is also necessary to protect check range, especially against aggressive villains.

Action items for next month:
- continue work on above 3 aspects. Pre flop 3 bet range seems to become unconsciously competency area but other 2 still need more practice to internalize.
- try to play 1/3 and 2/5 live, buy in 800 for either game and will leave once it drops down to less than 300 (1/3) or 400 (2/5).
- whenever there are tables running, play NL200 at Sky Poker.

Oct summary:


Played only ~30 hours, most NL100 and occasionally NL50. Pretty comfortable battling with the regs on the site. A few are solid indeed but most have consistent leaks that they either don’t know or not bothered to fix, assuming it’s because the aggregated population on the site did not exploit their leaks enough. Also noted that most regs will play 4+ tables, which definitely impacted their competency, as Sky Poker do not offer time bank and player have to act within 15 seconds for every street.

So far very happy with my progress towards the mental goals:
1) Folding much more often from SB, instead of 3 betting too wide. Most regs at the stakes I play actually call 3 bet too often IMO, which means we should exploit them by 3 betting a linear range instead of a polarised one, and that linear range should be very tight when OOP.

2) When IP, I have significantly downsized my 3 bets from 3x to 2.5x, and after the initial stage I’m now very comfortable manoeuvring post flop in such pots. However, some good aggressive villains will 4 bet me often once picked up my tendency, and I still need to work on a balanced 4 bet calling / 5 bet range PF.

Looking forward, I’d like to work on below new areas:
1) Make some exploitable folds with unbalanced Vs. It happened several times where V clearly had the nuts, but I prioritised balance over my gut feeling on the table dynamics, and IIRC all of such scenario I ended up making wrong call down.

2) Slow down in 3 bet / 4 bet pots.
- V’s range is much narrower in such pots
- Much easier to GII, less important to play balanced

Hand history in Oct:

Hand 1, 10/25
H open 3BB HJ w AA; V1 3bt to 10BB from CO, V2 (fish) call, fold back to H who 4bt to 30BB and only V1 calls (eff 100BB)

Flop (~72BB): 842dd
H bet 20BB, V1 call

Turn (112BB): 4, still dd
H bet 70BB (Remaining stack 70BB) and V1 fold

Thoughts: turn bet too big? V1 most likely has folded TT/JJ/QQ. Should have bet 20-25BB @ T and put V1 AI at any river.

Hand 2, 10/26
V open 3BB from LJ, H flt w A2ss at Btn, effective 100BB

Flop (7BB): AcJh2c
V bet 4BB, H rs to 12BB, V reraise to 34BB, H calls

Turn (75BB): brick
V bet 63BB and is AI, H calls

River (200BB): J
V wins with AJs

Thoughts: fold on flop? Needed call 22BB more to win a pot of 75BB, needs 29% EV. A2s against AA/AK/AJ/A2/JJ/22 H has 35% EV@F, but V will push AI@T with this entire range, which makes it a fold at Flop.

Is there any RB on Sky? And are HUD's allowed?

Ty and gl

no huds, high rake and low rakeback

HUD doesn’t exist as far as I know. I don’t know any comparable rakeback to PS or similar sites. However, the site doesn’t allow players outside UK and a few affiliate countries, so the player pool is much softer than PS.