Hello all,

I have done a couple of these in the past, but I wanted to start a new one for 2015. The goal of this thread is just to discuss all the ways that I want to improve playing poker over this next year.

I am strictly a rec player. But I still strive to take poker as seriously as possible. I enjoy studying and playing. It is my only hobby for the most part.

In 2014, I mostly played live. I transitioned from $1/3 to $2/5 and some $5/10. I had good results, but felt like they could have been better.

For this year, I am planning on play more online. I think this is the best way to improve. The reasons are pretty obvious. I also don't have the opportunity to play live every day.

I will still be playing around 25-30 hours of live poker a week. But I won't mention any live play hands or results. This will strictly be for online. But as my overall game improves, I do expect my live play to get a boost as well.

My biggest leaks at the moment are:
-Playing solid but then dumping a bunch of money into the pot without much of a hand.
-Chasing mistakes with further mistakes. In other words, I will make one mistake and then try to win the pot in anyway possible.

I am sure I will post others as I recognize them. I think most of these are mental. I am going to begin addressing those shortly.

Here is what I am planning on doing to improve:
-HH analysis every day. I will post some of my hands here, most likely the ones where feel like I made a mistake.
-Watch videos on DeucesCracked, RIO, and maybe Ivey League.
-Hire a coach for online play eventually. I will probably do this once I transition to 50NL.
-Continue to do some periodic sessions with my live coach (but again I won't discuss any live play).

Goals for 2015:
-Go from 25NL to at least 400NL. This will require tons of improvement, but that is why I am here. It helps that I never really have to withdrawal from my bankroll for life expenses.
-Play around 15-20 hrs of online and 25-30 hours of live a week.
-Spend at least 30 hrs a week studying (I can study during the downtime at my job).
-Make significant improvement in my mental game.
-Just get better overall at poker. This includes learning some concepts like GTO that aren't really needed or useful at live poker.

I have played about 1500 hands at Bovada 25NL and things haven't gone well so far. I will post some of the embarrassing spew hands later.

I may also use this thread to post some of my fitness goals as well.

As promised, here are some of the spew hands. I am almost embarrassed to post these, but if I don't own them then I can't improve.



This hand perfectly exhibits my button-clicking habits. The issue is I didn't think through his range on the turn. It started with the mistake of squeezing too light pre-flop. I think checking back the flop is correct, but raising a psb on the turn is awful.

In my post-hand analysis, I think his range is all sets, two pair, and made flushes. We probably only have around 25% equity against that range. He is not going to fold when he made a psb on the turn, so my raise is just lighting money on fire.

This hand shows many of my leaks: not putting opponents on ranges real-time, chasing mistakes on previous streets, and over-valuing/being optimistic with draws.



I think calling the 3-bet OOP here is marginal, but fine since the pot is going to be multi-way and we are closing the action. But I didn't really have a plan for post-flop. Calling the flop shove is also marginal with the preflop raiser to act. When he shoves behind us, calling it off is awful.

This exhibts my leak of just not wanting to fold when I have any piece of the board. It is mental where I just don't want to lose the hand. I am working very hard to correct this in my live game as well.



I don't know about this hand, I think pre-flop and flop are played fine. Check/calling the turn is probably okay because he could still have worse Ax hands and diamond draws that he is playing aggressively. But I think check/calling the river is kind of bad.



My preflop sizing on this hand is way too small - I think $1.50 would be better. Check/calling two pot size bets here is pretty bad.

This session obviously went very poorly. I may have titled a bit, but a lot of these mistakes are just not thinking through hands.

One thing that I love about online play is being able to copy and paste these hands quickly. Posting hands from live play is much more tedious, which of course makes it more difficult to learn from.

These hands are played from 12/26, which was a Friday night that I decided to stay at home and play instead of going down to the casino. This session went better than the last and I felt like I spewed less.



When he donks a psb, I am not sure what his range is. I would expect most live players to slowplay a board that is somewhat dry but I am not sure about online players. Maybe I should raise his bet? When he bets pot again on the turn, his hand looks like a set but we did pick up a OESD. It still may be a fold though. This is relates to what I mentioned in the previous post about over-valuing draws.



My sizing here with JJ is probably too small (this was a leak in my live game that I recently fixed somewhat). I think betting the flop is okay, but I am not 100% sure on turn. We can still get value from flush draws but second pair hands are just going to give up if I fire the turn again. I kept my sizing somewhat small to try to keep those hands in.



I think this hand is played fine. I think folding against button open here would be way too tight. But maybe I should be giving up straigh draws when the flush comes in? It does cut our implied odds down quite a bit.

I haven't played since this session. I went played live on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I took last night off for NYE. I am heading down to MS gulf coast for a tournament this weekend, so I probably won't have any more online HHs to post until next week.