Yeah with the tags i'll be pretty quick to judge, it'll be mainly based on how often they 'fight' for pots, and whether they check back spots where they should look to be bluffing, it's just a rough indication. And in the small fields that i play, i can usually talk to other people to see if they have a similar feeling.
As for mixed games, this is how i'd summarise it

Gotta keep the discipline though

Thanks mate!

22/04/21 Session SCOOP day 11
Gonna be a short one again since i sadly got clapped again today.
Played my final 530 too where i bricked again. And i certainly wont be playing the 1k on sunday since its been a pretty disastrous series for me.
Very frustrating that things have gone the way they have so far. I've also had my worst run on ipoker simultaneously, so it hasn't exactly covered me as my 'lower variance site'.
Although the grinds have been going really badly, and running like **** has been really annoying. I've actually really enjoyed turning up every day and grinding. So i think after the series i will keep up the 5x grind per week again.
Hopefully my fortune will turn around soon! As overall i am a massive sunrunner so i can't run bad for too long.

24/04/21 Session SCOOP day 12

Finally some good news as i binked this bad boy

Also made a day 2 to sweat tomorrow! Unfortunately it forces me to start my grind 2.5h earlier, but then i can play more scoop events
Unfortunately i still lost a little bit on the day, but at least i didn't get crushed, and i came out the session feeling pretty good.
Tomorrow will be a big big day, and due to the earlier start i think i'll be playing a couple GG events too, hopefully it goes well!
Need to make sure i get some good sleep tonight as i need to wake up earlier so i can prep for my session/day 2 a bit earlier.

25/04/21 Sunday Session SCOOP day 13

another bink!

and another day 2! So i guess i'll be grinding tomorrow

After that good result i managed to make a massive £20 on the day!
Although thats just the reality of how high stakes im playing now, and unfortunately i'm bricking most of my 100+ tourneys, which adds up really quick.
So although i get the moral victory i don't get the financial one. I think after the series it'll be nice to go back to just lower variance schedule, and hopefully get some consistent results going again.

It'll be easier to keep your mortgage at a lower variance, lower ABI schedule.

Yeah maybe i should've kept myself banned

26/04/21 Session SCOOP day 14

Sadly this was my best score, lost a huge 80bb+ flip, if i won i think i'd have had a decent shot at making day 3, but it is what it is.

Q high heroes
This was my hero vs a reg

Obviously if he whips over Q8 then i look kind of stupid
Seriously though this flop size is such ****ing nonsense. Overpairs/strong 9x i don't expect to go small sizing, so i think i can attack this sizing somewhat. Gutshot+BDFD seems like a fine candidate to choose.
Turn i wasn't too sure what i should do, like obviously if my exploit is that i think he's weak and will fold a lot on the flop, once he continues I cant just fire everything as i'm just headbutting into stronger range, so i should be more selective. Also 5 i think is a bit better for him, as this may be some of his small cbets that get sticky, whilst my raises are mainly 9x based. But maybe this hand is better than i think it is, because T8/J8 still calls, but we fold out Q8,K6,A6.
Then river i'm initially just giving up, but this bet from him i think is really nonsense again. Firstly the sizing is just weird, if he actually had a K i think he'd want to go at least 2/3 pot. Then how much Kx does he actually have? K6, K8, maybe K7, maybe AK that got sticky after cbetting small. Then bluffs i was thinking T8/J8, he can also have J6/JT, maybe even 64, but was mainly thinking first 2 since i unblock+beat them. Upon reflection this is probably a bit too weak, as i could lose to some bluffs. And i probably have some 9x that i can hero instead. But it looked cool, and he got dunked on so yeah get ****ed.

Then i got reversed on:

Whilst he was tanking i was just hoping he folds AK and doesnt get sticky because its good preflop holding (i think population gets overly sticky with strong preflop hands postflop, so they may call rivers with AA in a spot where it's never good, just because its AA), so seeing this was obviously kind of whack. I just said that i think he watched a hero calls compilation on youtube before starting his session but maybe i can't criticise too much given the last hand i posted.
In all seriousness though i think my line is fine, and i rep a lot of value, i can have 9x, strong 8x, 76, all of these coming in offsuit forms too. Then my bluffs are like T7/T6/JT/J7 where i more often only have suited variants. In terms of his herocalls. AKcc and possibly AQcc i think would be fine heros, even just normal AK. QJo, Q is fine, J i think is a pretty bad card to hero with, you block half the bluffs (more in # of combos), i genuinely think A7/A6 would make a better hero because you unblock JTo, which will be quite a large chunk of my bluffs.
Looking back i can also have some 64/74s bluffs too.
But hey ho, at least he can suck himself off posting his Q high hero call in his blog somewhere.

Q6s hand
Going to take some deeper delves into the Q6s hand because i have some assumptions of mistakes that i think population makes, and some things i'm curious about.
Both assumptions are about IP flop strategy:
1. I think J9/Q9 hands are going to do a good amount of checking back as IP, as well as maybe even AA/KK. Since OOP can basically have all offsuit 2p, getting x/r and playing a big pot with these hands is really unpleasant, so just pot controlling can actually be fine.
2. I think T8/J8 will play as checks for IP, then cbet more hands like A8/K6/JT for similar reasons. J8/T8 can't really run it on flop, and really doesn't want to get raised. Plus the second category of hands are just sick megamasters, that fold out hands that dominate it, but get called (or even raised) by hands it dominates.

What i'm curious about:
1. OOP flop x/r range. Does it prefer using 6x or 8x, and which ones in particular?
2. IPs betting range with 7x/5x.
3. Turn strategy after x/r for OOP

I've ran the sim so IP can only bet 1/2 pot, as i get the feeling this is the preferred size anyway. And splitting between b30/b70 just made my tree annoying big as i assume it will just be a massive split of sizings (meaning somewhere in the middle is best)

IP flop:

So my assumptions where hit and miss, but mainly in the right ballpark.
T9-Q9 mixing quite a lot of check, but AA/KK dont. I assume thats because at this SPR the stackoff threshold is low enough that it doesn't mind getting all overpairs, maybe at 100bbs AA/KK would start to play a lot slower. Then with T8/J8 at first it looks like i'm completely off, but its interesting to note that T8o/J8o do mix a lot of checks, and with T8s/J8s its spades that goes for more checks. So its happy to b/c when there is bdfd available. Also these hands can call a turn bet after x/r flop, so it will always realise equity. I think at 30bbs these hands will check a lot more often as they're less likely to realise equity if they get x/r that shallow.
JTo/K6o are very happy to cbet flop though.
Interesting to note the difference between how 7x and 5x play. Quite a lot of 7x bets, especially when it has gutshot or A/K, but this isn't really the case with 5x, im not totally sure why (esp with 85/65).
Final thing to point out is the loose Ax with no bdfd (Axo and Axss) just go for a stab.

OOP flop response:

Pretty low raise freq, i think that makes sense given IP isn't exactly cbetting range and is a bit more polar. You can see that low freq Q6s But you can see main bluffs are JT/J8, just trying to big brain the other open enders. Then hands like 98/88 are the holy grail. 98/96 seems like its just the nuts here.

5d turn OOP:

There are some really fun mechanics on turn.
Firstly the b30 size preference i think is really cool, esp on the card pairing turn, your value doesn't really want to go massive, straight+boats are pretty locked, i see stronger 9x can go 2/3, but weaker ones, if you bet too big, you'll just run into better hands.
Also the fact that Q9 checks and J9 bets i think is great, because J9 still gets called by J8/JT which it dominates.
As for Q6hh, my suit checks but clubs bets, i have no idea why this is the case.

Then another spicy thing i wanted to show is IP once checked to.

Specifically T6dd wants to go for a jam, which i think is pretty genius, it folds out JT/J8/T8, which is great, and in game i imagine villain would be super confused even with 9x.
But even vs block, these T6dd/J6dd want to jam for the same reasons (its also a combo draw, so T8dd/J8dd jam too).
Also worth saying though that T8 wants to check a lot, but most combo draws (T8dd/J8ss) want to size large so then its forced to call a jam with odds.

Also just for fun, on rivers, given the exact line, Q6hh actually makes a fine hero call on river, full freq vs half pot, then indifferent vs jam

Takeaways

• Flop IP cbet polar range, strong value and strong draws. Don't overestimate T9/J9 type hands.
• Top pair+GS=nuts, Pair+GS=strong
• Jam draws that can fold out dominating draws. Bet smaller with draws that can keep in dominated draws. (Unless combodraw, then need to bet bigger to force odds vs jam).

Wow, really appreciate your hands analysis, thanks for this blog, I'm learning a lot from it
Wish you luck, it's time you ship something big again!

Thanks mate! Just remember that i'm not due anything, and as long as i dont expect to win a certain amount grinding becomes a lot better

27/04/21 Session SCOOP day 15
Nothing happened so lets just skip over this.

28/04/21 Session SCOOP day 16

Nice little bink

2nd place here too
Unfortunately bricked the final scoop events, but feels good to end on a positive session after perma losing for a few weeks

SCOOP Summary
Obviously it doesn't take a genius to notice that i had a really bad scoop. I downswung about £9k, which is obviously really brutal. The most annoying this is whilst getting crushed in pokerstars scoop events (expected) i simultaneously went on my biggest downswing on ipoker too (unexpected), as you can see below.

So my lower variance backup site did not exactly back me up.
So obviously there's a few thoughts when i hit a swing like this on ipoker, because honestly its quite rare to see big swings (100+BIs) on the site, the first one was that maybe stars table unintentionally took away a lot of my focus. As the only prior real downswing i had on ipoker (in terms of buyins) was when i first started playing it a year ago when i played it alongside stars. However i dont think this is true since i played winter series without any real issues. The other thought was that maybe i am being delusional about running bad and maybe i just don't have an edge in these fields, on a case by case basis though i have just been running really bad, for example these 100e 5k GTD pkos (basically sngs) that run 2 times a day.

For some reason i just can't win one (or even cash) even though its so few entrants. But the thing is you can just win 2 in 2 days and then be in profit so who knows. Also on a case by case basis i have just somewhat run insanely bad, as the fields contain a lot of fish, so i know i'll turn it around eventually.

1 thing that is nice though is that i was so overrolled that even though i've had this big downswing, its still very reasonable BRM to continue playing the games that i am currently playing on the lower variance sites, so i can still press on and turn this downswing around.

Now the series is over though i'm going to take 2 days off playing then i will get back on the grind. Got a £530 on ipoker on saturday that i plan to play, but will sell some action for. Honestly scoop has somehow really got me motivated to grind again. I think its because more than anything losing motivates me to get better, as at the end of the day i just want to win and be better than people. Will take next couple of days to sort out scoop action and investments.
I also think i'm playing better, or at least more aggressive, than i ever have. Just struggling to get those value hands to balance out some of the wild plays that i'm going for Once thats sorted, and i become sunrunner again, ipoker regs better watch their back.
Also will add unibet back into my schedule, i was pondering a couple sites to replace unibet, but ultimately unibet has appropriate games for now, since i was planning to drop 20e games, but i will keep some in there for the next few weeks, at least until i upswing again. Also will have a name switch as im sick of people knowing my name and me not knowing theirs So i will keep it secret to my next bink that i post here.

Unlucky with Scoop mate! Looking at those field sizes makes me feel sick. I only play in my spare time so take that for what it's worth (re: EV etc.) but I'm in no rush to go back to those 3-10k fields!

I know what you mean about ipoker. It always feels more frustrating to lose to the fish and rubbish regs (not you) with their insane plays and low-equity punts than just a random.

I miss unibet as it was so soft, but at present I'm focusing on ipoker as the new schedule is very good. Are they still getting reasonable runners on unibet?

Been following and lurking for a couple weeks. Just got round to reading the whole thread from start to finish. What a journey! Want to do something similar myself so have been trying to learn from others who have done it and posted about it on PG&C. Loads of lessons and inspiration here mate so thank you for that. Congrats on persevering long enough and studying hard enough to get the results that you've had. Someone else commented about how bleak those first 8 months were looking. Keen to see where you can take it from here now though.

Scoop is now water under the bridge Going back to lower variance schedule is nice.
Unibet it okay, big problem is it just really lacks volume, only about 4-5 decent tourneys per day, and most of those are on the lower end of my buyins. So its okay for now whilst im playing a bit lower post scoop, but if i make another push to increase my ABI, those games will likely be getting axed first.

Hey, thanks for the kind words! Yeah looking back on those first 8 months they were tough, but simultaneously i was doing a lot of things wrong. I think if it wasn't for covid there would be a high chance that i might be doing something else with my life right now, as i definitely thought about it at times during those bleaker times, but now its pretty good.

01/05/21 Session

Biggg bink. Feelsgoodman.

Also got 2nd in this 100. Was much earlier on in the session and was honestly gutted that i didn't get the title. HU i was against a passive fish 100bbs deep, who basically didn't bluff, overfolded vs cbets, then raised big sizings pre with strong hands, so it was sooo free but had a disgusting colddeck. I also recently spoke about how i've done really badly in these 100's, so would've been so nice to bink one, it would've cleared my downswing in them, as the difference between first and 2nd was massive (2k).
Also finished 6th, 7th, and 8th in other tourneys, so overall it was a really solid day, even if i bricked the £530 on ipoker. Good way to start the month.

Challenges/Incentives
Been thinking a little bit about what challenges, and general things i want to do or achieve over the next few months, so i will write them out here.
No social media
Was thinking about doing a social media cleanse for a week or so. Would mainly be facebook, instagram, twitter. I'd still use youtube/discord because i need it for poker related things. But i want to see what its like to feel 'disconnected' from whatever my friends or whoever are up to. I might also do a 1 week nofap simultaneously as it just breaks the habits that lead up to it so it will be much easier to do. I was thinking about doing this next week, but i might do it the week after. Just would prefer to do it before i take time off to go back to Bristol for a couple weeks (late may)
iPoker rake challenge
I'm thinking in June to grind as much MTT volume as i can on ipoker to achieve to try to achieve diamond rakeback. This means i might play exclusively ipoker and do most 10e+ tourneys, as well as play 5-6 days a week.
I was thinking as an added incentive also to donate 10% of my profits from this month to charity. I was thinking specifically a mental health charity. The reason for this being about a month ago I had a family friend take his own life, and it got me thinking a lot about how common it is for people to take their own life, and often no one has any idea how much they're struggling. Like my family friend seemed like he had a very successful life but he was clearly suffering very deeply, and it feels like there needs to be more resources to help people who are struggling mentally, as mental health is pretty notoriously underfunded even though it seems like an epidemic, with suicide rates being higher than ever.
Cash games
In July I was thinking to dedicate a month to learning cash games and to try and get competent at them. Whilst this will somewhat help my MTT game predominantly in the early stages, the main reason is because if I ever do live stops I'll likely want to play some cash games on the side, so I want to make sure I'm at a level where I feel confident and have some idea what I'm doing. So I think just a month will get me up to scratch, you don't need to be that good to play live games.
Charity
I touched on this a little bit earlier, but i also decided that whenever i see someone i know (or even know of) doing something for charity, that i will always donate. I just think its good to support people who are doing positive things, and now i'm in a pretty good financial position i think its just an overall positive. Also in poker its very solo, and just being able to give something back, even if its only a little bit, seems like its worth it. Idk maybe i'm just doing it for my own conscience, but i think doing good things, even if its not for the best reasons is usually still a net positive.

I also have started investing some of my money which has been exciting. I realised that my bankroll realistically doesn't need to be bigger than X for the games i play, so sitting on a big pile of money seems kind of pointless. So for that reason any money i have more than X i'm just going to invest and use as reserve bankroll essentially, although i don't think i should ever need to dip into it, or simultaneously need to drop takes (significantly anyway). I'm not going to go into what my investments are specifically here, but what i like to do because im lazy is ask people who i trust, but also know much more about a certain topic to teach me what they know and give me advice, because i always trust what they have to say, and its a better way to learn rather than me thinking i can do everything on my own.

Nice scores! Gl for a big Sunday!

Definitely try no social media. I only have YouTube and direct messaging apps like discord and WhatsApp for the last couple years. One of the best decisions I've made for my mental health and productivity. Cut down on news related sources too. Charity idea is good too.

Thanks mate, with social media i dont find that it effects my mental health that much, because i just understand that a lot of it is fake bullshit, but it will certainly be interesting to see if there are any effects.

02/05/21 Sunday Session

Another day another bink This HU was wild, the guy was just open jamming 40bbs 25-50% of the time, it was very very random. I went down to 3bb after losing a massive flip but managed to claw my way back and eventually look it down!
Also came 4th in the deep space on unibet for 250e or so.

Also just looking at the ipoker schedule for the series that starts next week. And i'm trying to figure out if these events run seperately to normal schedule, or whether their just regular schedule games with boosted GTDs. Either way theres a 500 and a 1k that runs on the final weeknd so i might look into playing that. Looks pretty exciting though and finished 1 day before i take my break to go down to Bristol.
I really wish there was some kind of leaderboard to incentivise grinding the full schedule.

Update
Its been a couple weeks since i last posted so i thought it'd be best to update generally how things are going and some general thoughts.
Poker wise nothing has really been happening, haven't had any significant scores and also haven't been studying as much because i just haven't felt like it, been spending my time studying other things. Its a bit annoying that i'm not having any results, but variance has just been really shitty especially with top of buyin range, if i was writing this last night i would rant on about how i see **** players making infinites and its mind numbingly painful when im not winning, but honestly i'm not playing my best right now, or investing enough time into the game to feel as if i can call other players out on their ability. And i, as well as people who have followed this blog know that if im playing good and running good, i'm probably one of the highest ROI players in any tourney that i play. So i jut have to get good again.

Saying that, i am currently on my way down to Bristol to take some time off and spend time with friends, so i wont be playing, or even active over the next couple of weeks. I wouldn't say im demotivated for poker, just i'm currently more interested in other things, and unfortunately there's limited time to the day, as i was still grinding 5x a week before this break, but when i get back i plan on getting back into the lab a bit more and getting back to the top of my game. By the end of the year i want to play the highest stakes possible on the sites i play (would probably be like ABI 80-100, currently 60). As with this recent ipoker series i actually ended up skipping the 500e and 1ke tourneys as i didn't feel super confident that my ROI was going to be good enough (i was going to say i wasnt super confident in my play, which whilst i don't think im playing my best, i certainly think my skill is +EV in the pool, but the feeling of also running dogshit in my top of buyin range kind of just put me off, felt like too much variance). So hopefully by the end of the year i can start playing some more of these games, then even add some live tourneys to my repertoire.

I understand this post is a bit here there and everywhere, but i just thought i'd update you with how i'm doing.

Also for any RIO members, if you look in video library Patrick Brooks released his first vid called '500 bounty builder' or something like this. I would highly recommend this video. Since whilst he's someone i've worked with a lot over the years and learned a lot from, the video is also really good, and i felt like i learned something new with every hand.

Enjoy your time off from daily grind.
You will come back stronger, than ever, for me it was always the case after such a break and doing other stuff or stuff with others.

Thanks lad, my first grind was a bit disappointing but i'm defo getting back into the swing of things

01/06/21

Got 9th, 5th, 4th, 3rd and finally this bink! So a very good session overall.

The break I had was nice, but weather was a bit **** so i had quite a few days where I ended up doing nothing. So I just got really bored and wanted to get back on the grind.
Honestly after reviewing some of my hands from before I took a break, it looks like I just wasn't playing very well overall. I mentioned for a few months that I wasn't happy with the effort I was investing, and I think from the start of scoop that started to become quite obvious, I just wasn't playing good enough and felt for the first time that a lot of the people around me are playing significantly better than me, so over the next few months I want to try and fix that and improve as much as I need to.
Honestly last couple of months its felt a bit weird when people have congratulated me on the success i've been having, mainly because i don't think in more recent times that i've put in the effort to deserve that.

Gameplay
I guess to expand on what i was talking about before. A weird issue that i run into is playing my 'A-game'. When i'm doing reviews i feel like i'm capable of going really deep into spots, however when i'm playing my head can have a tendency to go a bit blank. If you've read the mental game of poker you might understand what i mean when i say this, but often it feels like when i'm grinding i'm just utilising those skills learned to the level of unconscious competence, and because i've studied a lot over time this is still good enough to play my B-game (maybe C-game on a bad day), i think it lacks the creativity to really allow me to break into playing my A-game, as i think creativity is only really possible when you are very focused and in the zone.
The obvious answer to this is to reduce my table count. But i don't think this is the solution, i have times where even with 10-12 tables i am playing what i'd consider my A-game. And when i have few tables i'll often get bored quickly and my focus will be dragged elsewhere (e.g youtube video), so i won't be as engaged as i should be.
Also worth noting that i'm not going to spend the entire session playing at 1 level, i expect it to somewhat fluctuate hour by hour.
Usually i can tell i'm in the zone when i pick up on sizing tells, as in the games i play people turn over their hands with their sizings. Often in my head i say to myself 'If they bet X size i will call, and if they bet Y size i will fold' and usually if they bet one of those sizings i will take the appropriate action. I'll give 2 examples of weirdly similar spots where people made big sizing errors that i picked up on pretty quickly. Also sorry in advance for sky HH.

2 spots SBvsBB limped pot, where they x flop (top pair never x flop i don't think), then they try to rep top pair on the turn, then when trips comes in on the river i expect b70-pot, and they end up going small, so i just snapped off both times.
These are relatively easy spots to recognize in game, but they're example of in my head i'm saying a size that i expect them to bet, but then they do a size that doesn't make.

May Review + June prep
May results

I'm actually up a lot less than this because of unibet, i only ended up about £600 post rakeback. So overall was a pretty disappointing months.
Also April results (since i don't think i ever posted):

Then here i'm not actually down as much as it shows, partially because of action i sold, and unibet. I ended down about £5k on the month, which is the worst month i've had whilst selfrolled, but thats expected to happen. Overall last 2 months have been a little slow.

Looking forward to June, my goal is really to just get in the volume, and to continue that over the next few months. This year i have probably around 1800 games so far, which is like 350 games per month, which by my normal standards is pretty pathetic. I usually aim for 500 games per month. Now compared to the past i start playing later and probably play less games per session. So the only way to really achieve the 500 games per month is to grind 5x per week, and not miss any sessions.
Also I'm trying to get back into the lab, doing this mainly by continuing to go through pads' course. I have actually been putting quite a lot of time into chipEV preflop call/jam spots, as they're very common and i've been making quite a few mistakes.

Music

Don't really listen to much drum and bass anymore. But thought this was really cool especially as its through my home city. And he starts off pretty close to where i grew up, and an area that i spent quite a lot of time in over the last few years. So for anyone interested there you go.

I've been playing more lately, trying to capitalise on the BTB-free ipoker tables but ultimately breaking even!

I've just got back playing on Sky for the first time in many years but can't seem to play more than 3 tables without the software lagging to the point it's unplayable and I time out (browser works better than client but is still poor). I know Sky software is barely software and I have fairly basic specs, but I can run other poker sites without any problems. Have you come across the same?

Hopefully see you at the tables again this month! GL Swanny!

BTB? Also yeah sky client is whack, i also have had issues if i run more than 3 tables. Luckily my daily schedule only usually consists of 3 games from sky so its rarely an issue GLGL mate

04/06/21 Session



2nd, 2nd and 1st! The irony being that my 1st place is the smallest of the 3 results. Also got 5th in 30e pko, so a very solid day overall. Just a really good start to the month overall which is nice. Although same happened at the start of last month and i just tailed off for the remainder of the month
I feel like i'm playing really good, but it can be hard to tell the difference sometimes between playing good and running good, as running good can delude you into thinking you're playing good. But my reviews are pretty fun as i have a lot of interesting spots, and just some slightly wild ones.
Here's an example of an outrageous hero call i made the other day:

Villains a fish, and river he jams (as it doesn't show).
So my thinking was that he won't really have many 2ps/straights since i expect them to want to jam on earlier streets on such a wet board. Also don't think a fish is capable of jamming QJo (this might be the weakest jam they find). And i thought he could have some A9/K9/KQ type hands that might jam. But overall i just couldn't see villain having any value, of course i was a bit worried about villain turning a random 6 into a bluff or like 98, but sometimes you just have to ping it in and look a bit silly.
Here's an example of me looking a bit silly:

I had villain tagged as a fish but i didn't know how much of a fish. Vs a reg i think i really like this. But vs a fish i thought i could put him in the bin with Tx, but i just big brained myself and i got snapcalled on the river which was quite funny This was actually in the 50fof that i ended up coming 2nd in, and i didn't rebuy, so it was a real spin up!

Music

Nice work

BTB = BenTheBlastah!

Sky software is garbage which is a shame as even the regfish I've seen are up like 50-100k on that site. Insane!

That T7 hand is just ipoker in a nutshell!

Hope to see some more lobby posts this month, with any luck I'll make one or two of them too! GL

Thanks mate!
Loool i rate the abbreviation
In all fairness on Sky i think there's only 1 really high EV game that runs daily which is the 33 pko main. Don't have to play other stuff.

10/06/21 Session

Finally binked one of these bigger buyin tourneys! Even if its a glorified SnG. Feel like a really chip of my shoulder to finally bink a bigger buyin event (100+) after getting HU like 4 times. Only played this 200 a couple times so defo a good start.

Got this decent result on sky too! Kinda gutted not to win the HU as villain was trolling pretty hard, just open jamming 50% of the time 35-40bbs deep. Before HU was just being very very passive.
I also came 7th in 50e classic for like 4 BIs
5th in 33 sky turbo for 2 BIs
And FT bubbled 2 tourneys on 888.
Really happy with the grind overall, thought i played pretty well, and ran pure too.

Worth quickly saying that i'm likely dropping unibet from my schedule for now since the games are really garbage. Very soft but the prizepools and fun games are really lacking. So shifting more of my volume over to 888 and another site for now. Also played some ACR yesterday. Might go back to unibet if they do a schedule overhaul since it is very soft, but just lacks good games for my stakes, a lot of the games were bottom of my buyin range.

Music

This guys actually so good, his album i'd certainly recommend to listen too.
I'd be pretty surprised if this guy doesn't become a lot more popular over the next couple of years.

Quick update
Last week has been a little slow, had a couple small scores here and there but nothing much to write home about.

I've actually been having a lot of troubles with sleeping, i keep waking up midway through my sleeps, or just having like 5h of sleep. I've also been having some quite vivid dreams which i never usually have, i really don't tend to dream at all, but pretty much every night for the last week i remember having some kind of dream, which is quite strange. I've also not been feeling very well on quite a few days, could be in part due to lack of sleep.
So lack of sleep and not feeling well has very likely lead to me playing poker a lot worse, as well as not running giga pure as i had a very strong start to the month. But this week i want to change a few things to hopefully help me improve my sleep.

1. Read 10 pages of the book i'm currently reading in bed before going to sleep.
2. Go for a run 1 every 2 days.
3. Go to bed my 2am (not to sleep, just to bed) unless my poker session runs on later, then go to bed within 1h of finishing session.

I also want to take another step in cutting down on social media consumption, mainly by not checking twitter anymore, or reading youtube comments, as these are cesspools of idiocy, and i used to check them for good memes but now i think i take it a bit too seriously. The twitter one will probably be easier as i can just uninstall the app, but youtube will be harder as i still watch youtube content, and usually check the comments to see the general consensus on the video, but after watching some videos on the covid vaccine, i quickly realised that its only the loudest comments which get seen, not really the most accurate or popular.

Poker stuff
I'm a big fan of graphs, so i'll post a couple here.
So i was looking at my graph and comparing it to a friends and i'll post them both here (he said he was ok with me showing his), mine then his YTD:


So our stats are actually pretty similar, so our ABIs are quite similar right now (this month hes a little bit higher but not a huge difference), our ROIs are pretty similar.
Biggest difference however is our volume, where i've been absolutely killed. And if i were to increase my volume it would be natural to see a slight decrease in ROI, so doubly props to my friend for maintaining such a high ROI even with so much volume. And his volume is so much higher than mine because he just plays more days, but also he plays more tables and i think does slightly longer sessions. So i don't expect myself to compete with him in volume, but so far i've played probably about 2k games this year (including unibet) so far, which on average is about 333 games a month, which is ****ing embarrassing really. I should be aiming for 2500-3000 games by this point. And a big chunk of that has been missed due to a lack of consistency with grinding. So seeing stuff like this certainly gives me a lot more motivation to grind.

Also with studying i'm still struggling to really get back into it hard. I still do a lot of "soft studying" which is like hand history review, running preflop sims (push fold, or pko), just kind of like refreshing my knowledge, as oppose to "hard studying" which is like when you learn new concepts or like adding new weapons to the arsenal, usually this is done by watching informative videos or videos on specific subjects, or by running postflops sims and really delving deep into them to get a better understanding as oppose to just line checking. So my plan is to continue going through pads' course once again, as its really good, and i've been able to take away a lot so far.

Funnily enough theres actually a video series on RIO that i've just started watching because its a HH of the 50r on ipoker (which i play) and i went to check who FTd it (because creator obvs binked) and i actually came 2nd in the tourney. Personally i wouldn't really recommend for people to watch the series since its essential RIO content and not elite, but i have a personal vested interest since this is someone who i play against from time to time, so having an idea of how they play and think about the game can be good, but also just my curiosity for how he might view my game and his thoughts on it, although i assume there won't be much on this since in the first part his villain reads were very vague and generalised, he didn't have any specific reads on a certain players.

Thought i'd just drop a little update, maybe i'll post some more strategy/scores stuff soon. Just going to say that betting pot+ is legit af especially as OOP after flop x/x. But maybe i'll back that at a later point.

Very nice graph bro, keep it up!

Thanks lad!

24/06/21

FINALLY I BINKED IT!!!
After coming 2nd 5 times in these small field 100 pkos i finally got the win Usually 1st pays out about double 2nd, so it feels really important to get those binks in if you want to make profit.

Song

This is my new hype song, I play it daily when i need to increase the energy levels

Thanks for sharing that's interesting stuff ^^^. Kid's a good songwriter and singer, definitely going places.

It seems like you're in a very solid place with your game/grind. It's awesome you're very demanding of yourself when looking for spots to plug leaks, whether in game or in your overall process... that mentality is probably a big reason you're good at this game. I'm in the same spot (stupid high roi but poor volume, even worse than you). Personally, I feel there's some hesitancy to make changes because like you mentioned, with significantly higher volume the roi will take a hit and it will be a challenging and uncomfortable adjustment... but to get the hourly, and subsequent BR necessary to progress in stakes it just has to be done. We just have to kind of go for it at some point... Anyway your process seems solid keep up the good work.

P.S. And glgl with the sleep; I have the same fkn problem with that 5hr thing, it sucks, haven't figured it out... my latest hypothesis is that maybe it's something to do with being on my computer/devices too much at night. I just ordered a pair of blue light glasses I'll lyk if that makes any difference.

Oh and while I'm here I might as well ask. After all these years I'm still just a multi-tabling noob. Do you use any software to multi-table? I moved and changed setups like 8 months ago. I bought a 50' smart TV and I tile... I multi-site pretty hard, and when trying to add more than six tables and doing any kind of stacking, **** just goes haywire for me because of the incompatibility of the site settings (tables popping to front in goofy ways). I messed with table tamer a little bit but couldn't get it to work right.

So I'm thinking I need to get smaller monitors and use a two monitor setup where I can continue to tile (which kinda sucks because I have to move my head and change POV), or use the same giant monitor (which I love) and learn how to stack somehow (I've noticed on RYE this is what Bencb is doing, and I think he 20 tables... he's probably doing both). Anyway, pretty noob internet poker question but not afraid to admit that's where I'm at. Any thoughts?