gotta start somewhere

right now I'm losing but tiny sample size anyway

by the way what's the correct forum for prop bets?

Since I'm not having much luck getting an intuition for GTO principles right away, I'm starting with a much more basic strategy based on concepts from the grinder's manual (though still looking at the solver as I go through it) so I can start playing a bunch of hands every day in addition to studying, and start building a sample.

net won: about -$40

GL man. Trying to learn GTO concepts is great, but I'd be wary of trying to implement many of those at 2NL. People play so poorly there's almost always a higher EV exploitative strategy.

I will try to not become another paisting, but can't promise anything

post some hands if you like, would be happy to take a look since I'm playing in similar games

First of all, to be as clear as possible - I don't think this is bad luck, and it's not even a small sample size. I'm just really that terrible right now. Nothing more complicated than that.

Of course I also do believe that if you're stubborn enough, and you can afford the stakes you play, you can improve as much as you want. I don't subscribe to the theory of talent except for a very small number of subjects (I doubt you can just become a second Terry Tao by studying a lot of math).

I am honestly still mostly playing... almost randomly. I'm not sure of the value of posting hands since they will probably just not make sense.

I'm actually mostly posting a couple of hands so that I can look back on them in a few months (hopefully).

PS: if you know if it's possible to make the spoilers not take a lot of space, it'd be much appreciated.

H1 bc river

H2 fold pre

glgl

Yeah, I have to say that while not understanding postflop play is understandable, not having drilled the correct preflop ranges in my brain is inexcusable, that's one kind of mistake I should never make.

Thanks for the help!

Don't be so hard on yourself. I still make preflop mistakes constantly. But I make sure to tag a hand where I'm not 100% certain of what to do, even if its just a simple preflop decision, and review it later and this helps to hardwire into my brain. Its all part of the process my friend.

I would 3-bet larger against a 3x open in position, generally to around 9bb.

H1 I would lean towards folding river even to the initial raise at 2z. It may be a call in theory against an opponent who is turning hands like KJs, TJs into a bluff at a frequency, but at 2z the average villain raising river is too heavily weighted towards value IMO.

I should also add the cost of coaching, PT4, a video course to this graph, but heh...

I'm only temporarily blacking out my name to avoid people emigrating to my country to bumhunt me at NL2 lmao

I'm hopeful I've made some progress today away from the table, though, especially with my coach. We'll see if it shows up in the graph!

I almost had a breakeven session yesterday... and today I lost 500bb in 500 hands. This is so bad that I have no idea how I'm even managing to do it.

I'm not going to sit on another table until I memorize with 100% accuracy every single 6max GTO opening, call vs open, and a few 3b ranges.

As usual, redline is fine, blue line is so terrible it's mind-blowing. I win 40% of hands at showdown. How's that even a thing????

I have been reading Play Optimal Poker and I might have found a pretty huge leak already!

There's a plot of optimal bluffing frequency on the river for polarized ranges by bet size. It explains why it's never profitable to bluff >=50% of hands.

I've been betting small a ton, like 33% size, and definitely bluffing _way_ too much relative to the sizing! I might even be approaching 50%. I'll have to review my database to see whether this is the case. The first rough attempt at a fix would be to bluff less often (I mean, I guess that's pretty obvious if I always lose at showdown?) and bet bigger (which I find is much less obvious). They should both help plug my overbluffing. Hopefully.

Don't want to be that guy but why wouldn't you start with simple old way of poker before you burry urself with gto concepts which most of the time are used incorrect? Think about ranges, what is your range what is villains range,if you are betting IP why youre betting, what do you want to do with ur bet sizing, if youre OOP what do you want to do with ur hand,is your villain capable of thinking even that far? If not don't try fancy stuff and stick to basics, big hand bet big, play tigther since rake is huge and tighter ur range easier your game will be cuz u will be ahead most of the time anyway, gl!

Any advice is appreciated! Don't worry about it, wouldn't make the thread if I couldn't accept criticism.

I am also learning the basics. I got upswing's lab too. But often introductory material focuses on the what but not as much on the why, and I really need to understand the why to get comfortable with a subject. I think that's a personal thing, I just don't retain well things that don't have intuition behind them.

I had spend 2 years at 2nl Pokerstars. I even have some random bizzare cringe videos but i remember some people would find me at the tables and they would say "thanks to them now i can easily win".

1) Transition to GGpoker, Pokerstars does not respect you, at GG you will have better rakeback better offers
2) Do not worry about GTO ranges that much for now, they are barely related for why you lose , as i see from the one graph you are doing the opposite of what you must do at this limit, having positive redline at 2nl might even be a negative thing, at micro stakes you win by value betting hard and gettin called, not by making others fold too much.
3) I do not have more information to help you more but i am sure you are calling rivers extremely light when the others never bluff and just have the nuts all the time, like the QQ hand when the villain shoves there it is 95%+ a full house.
4) There are people who go by GTO and stuff at the forums, and they lose, and there are people who just accept that other people are bad and see them for what they are and play them for what they are, when you learn to fold and accept that yes he had it anyway and you dont even have to question it that much you will be a boss in the micro stakes. It is not that simple because it might not apply to every player and every spot but its a good blueprint to start with and go for higher accuracy from there.
5) Look the mirror, say ten times they always have it, then say, i do not bluffcatch i just value bet hard my own good hands and thats it, you will win 10bb/100 at 2nl if not more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgFkxciKVrU&t=3s this is old but i dont think anything changes ever so much,

I took a look at the QQ hand on GTO wizard. The river is actually a check-back against GTO. I think b/f or possibly b/c are fine at 2NL depending on whether you are playing the kind of opponents who will raise like A3o on that board which I've definitely seen fish do.

If you are "bluffing" 50% of your hands on the river I seriously doubt your range looks anything like a perfectly polarized range.

This is good advice, and thanks for posting the video, will def. watch it later. I think there is some merit to playing GTO in the sense of protecting a checking range, since people do bet when checked to very often at this limit. However, the general principle of not bluffcatching is probably a good way to think about it. Personally, I stick to bluffcatching only in really good spots where opponent is repping extremely thin for value while his overall range is very wide. For example:

Hi I'm doing a similar challange doing 80 bucks to 8k

Hi all doing a bankroll challange 80 to 8k in a year look forward to chatting with you all

Thanks for the advice, all.

I've been trying this today. Probably playing too tight and too passive, but it's certainly working better than what I've been doing (though that's a low bar!)

Now, to be clear, I don't need help losing money, I can do that fine myself. But would this count as bad luck? EV is -40bi, PnL is -55bi. clearly small number of hands, but that still kind of seems like a lot?

https://i.imgur.com/RlyZ1LQ.png

Yes it is quite a lot of buyins under EV, but the all-in EV calculation isn't always accurate and there are much more important things to focus on. Are you by any chance getting it in very light preflop at times? That could potentially explain the EV discrepancy.

Ah, absolutely, it's not that I'm trying to figure it out, just an excuse to complain about something :P

I don't think I am extremely loose with all-ins preflop but I could definitely be wrong. I'm starting work on memorizing all preflop ranges today, so that shouldn't be a problem anymore... considering I understand so little about postflop, I should at least nail preflop

If you'd like, feel free to post your stats and/or some hand histories. I'd be glad to take a look.