Hey all, wannabe live pro here and this is my foray into online poker. And it has been soul crushing. The first 50k hands were more or less to scratch that gambling itch since my local casino closed down. Nothing serious.

Anyway, after those 50k hands I realized 2 things.

• How much I love this game
• How **** I am at this game

So I started working on my game actively. Posting HHs, watching videos, and reviewing stuff on my own. I feel like my thought processes have improved (a lot), but I don't know if that upswing in my EV graph is due to playing better or the same spew/variance that caused the first two big upswings. Being even after 100k hands has destroyed my confidence completely.

So can I get some brutally honest opinions? I want to get to a point where I can play live full time, but if I can't even beat 10NL after 100k hands what chance do I have? Lay it on me 2p2. Included graph and positional stats.

Graph is a mix of 4NL/10NL on merge.


Flop cbet 62% turn cbet 58% not pictured


For those of you that have made it past whatever wall I'm hitting I would love some feedback. I know I can't be the only one this has happened to around here

Open your range up more in the CO and BTN and you'll be doing a lot better. (esp. in button) My vpip in the button is over 40% and it is by far my most profitable position... and my next most profitable position is of course the CO where I have a vpip of around 26%. You don't need to play that loose but having a vpip of only 25% in the BTN is certainly below optimal. Try to play more hands in position

Didn't you run sickly hot during that 100k hands? You literally were up 3k bbs above AIEV at one point. I know that stat isn't everything, but am I interpreting this correctly?

I know the blinds are our least profitable positions, but it looks like you are hemorrhaging from the blinds. Like a $450 swing between best/worst?

Not a stats expert, would love to know.

- As already mentioned before, you are playing too tight from LP. Loosen up from button and cutoff!

- Im missing some stats, FTFCB/FTTCB, ATS/FTS

- Im finding your WTSD a little high, your FT3B is too low imo. With this low percentage you will lose alot of money playing with inferior hands and likely being dominated.

- Your FCB is on the low side of the spectrum and could be a little higher imo. And your TCB needs to be lower, you are DB too much.

- I've been there too, posted a similair thread about 3 weeks ago. Was down 6BI and it sucked. After I improved my game and switched sites I am now 14BI up, so just keep up the hard work, it will pay off eventually!!

- About the full-time life part. At my local casino, 2/4 is compared to 5NL online. The reason being is that there are alot of tourist just wanting to have a good time, drink some beers and play some hands, nothing too fancy. I don't know what the skill level at your casino is like, but just as a sidenote, don't worry too much about the skill level of live casino

- How many tables do you play? It helped me alot when I dropped some, maybe this could work for you?

- As a last piece of advice, play 5NL for about 5k hands. Crush it, regain some confidence and then move up to 10NL again!

Hope this will help!

You don't open enough in CO/BTN like brokenstars said. Opening up there and playing more hands IP will help your win rate.

Also it looks like you go to SD too much and also bluff too much. These are two deadly leaks at uNL because people have relatively tight ranges and 1. Don't like folding on later streets and 2. Usually have strong ranges when SD occurs.

Your FT3b seems on the low side but you are pretty tight so that might not be an issue. You should probably look at spots where you defend marginal hands vs 3bets and see how that is working out.

Not sure how you are playing as the preflop caller since you haven't included any stats regarding that part of you game but there may be some issues there also.

Open way more, especially CO and BTN, fold to 3b's more. Iso the limper fish that are abundant in Merges 4NL and 10NL player pool.

The regs there are generally very bad and aren't going to do anything about it if you're iso'ing whales constantly. Find limpers that fold to a lot of c-bets and iso them with anything playable in position. You're going to just print money. I think you could be a winner if you hammered the CO and BTN more vs limps and in general.

Also, people are kind of bad with bet-sizing at unl generally. Take a look at that part of your game. If you're a c-bet half pot regardless of texture or IP vs OOP type of person you can make your winrate skyrocket by appropriately adjusting bet-sizes and finding out who the people are that are gonna call you down with TPNK and then just potpotpot vs them and don't bluff too much.

About 30k hands ago I made a conscious effort to do this actually!. Filtered for last month and its 38%. Is this still a little low? My CO open is quite a bit higher this month as well.

Yeah. It was probably the sickest rungood I've ever experienced in my life around the 40-55k hand range.

I'll check those stats when I get off work! Thanks for the great post btw. I've actually been beating my regular 2-20 spread game for 2k/yr for about 3 years now so I know how dumb live can be. Only about 150 hours of exp at NL live though, hence the grind

This is my most concerning leak. Button clicking is so easy on the river with stuff like top pair...

Thanks for the replies guys. Poker is a lot harder than I thought it would be

How many tables do you play at a time?

You can't be that bad....anything better than break even over a decent sample means you have a solid foundation to build on.

The things that I notice most are your low fold to 3 bet % and relatively high WTSD.

It gets expensive to call 56% of 3 bets and you may be playing a significant number of 3 bet pots with the worst hand, OOP or both.

Been playing 6. I don't really time out that often though, but it definitely has happened before. Should I bump it down to 4..?

Also what is an appropriate WTSD%?

I'd suggest going down to 2 and trying to develop reads/analysis, think much more before doing anything... play like 5k hands like this and then bump to 3 or 4, play like 10k hands and maybe bump to 6.

I think if you do this your winrate will be much much much better

Really, do what you think is best, but I highly recommend starting out with just a couple tables and seeing how that affects your game.

Done and done. Gonna start a fresh dataset playing lower tables and see what develops over the next 20-30k.

Agree with brokenstars, start again at 2 tables. It will avoid the button clicking, so you can just focus on your game, your hud, your opponents and your reads.

An appropriate WTSD is between 20-30 I guess.

Edit: just checked it in harringtons 6max book and he says 25-27

watching videos and posting HH's isnt going to help you as much as working on your game alone

review, constantly do range simulations, work with pokerstove, figure out how certain ranges hit certain flops, etc

do it on your own is the best advice i can give

i was struggling a year ago beating nl10 zoom, following video advice, such as "you should 3b this in this spot", "you should c this back on the flop", "you should cbet x%" etc.....

so cool, now i knew what should i do, but i pretty much had no idea why i was doing it, and as long as you dont really understand the fundamentals, your are not going to grow much as a player, just because someone said something in a video


EDIT:

this is my nl10 and nl5 since i started to work on my game alone
(i was pretty much b/e before)

nl5


nl10



this was a few months back, now im playing 2-3 levels higher

WOW vrael that NL10 graph is amazing. When you say work on your game alone what exactly do you suggest? I'm guessing mostly stuff like constructing ranges and seeing how they do on certain textures? I have equilab but I haven't put it to much use as of yet

yeah, take a few winning reg's stats that u have a decent sample size on and construct your PF ranges accordingly

postflop its pretty much about like u said, constructing ranges and seeing how they do on certain textures and how they improve on future streets on certian cards

u dont need to worry about this process too much vs fish, cause you can just always react accordingly to their stats and obv vbetting them into an oblivion

EDIT:

also reviewing your game is really really important using for example pokerstove/equalib because you just .... well how can i say this.... after doing a lot of reviews, you will just get it automatized (at least the most frequent spots) and wont have to think about ranges and equities all that often, you will just pretty much know when ur ahead/behind/should call the river/should not, etc

The most important thing, imo, is being able to think for yourself. Knowing the difference between whether or not you know what to do in a spot and WHY is super important. Come to 2+2 to post hands, review hands, read other people's posts and reasoning, but at the end of the day you need to be able to sit down and think about a particularly hand and work it out yourself. This is something you can do when you are 2-tabling.

Some questions you should ask yourself during a hand are

1. What is villains preflop hand range (just assign something standard/average if you aren't sure and don't have enough information)

2. Is villain thinking about my preflop hand range? If so, what hand range would he assign me?

3. When villain bets on a flop, is he doing this with his entire preflop hand range or does this narrow it down further, again, what is his new range?

4. Against this new range how is my hand doing equity wise? Is it better to go for value or better to try and bluff him off his hand?

As you get more information (preflop open or 3b, c-bet, bet size, tcbet, etc.) you should be continually narrowing your opponents range and considering whether or not you are currently ahead or whether or not you have the ability to bluff the villain off his hand range as he has played it.

A very very very important question to ask yourself at these stakes is what is the most I can bet that villain will call? And, what is the least amount I can bet to make the villain fold?.

I'd expand on the last point and say you shouldn't just ask yourself what is most villain will call, you should be considering the EV of all available bet sizes.

Sometimes betting big and getting called less is higher EV than betting less and getting called more and vice versa.

Yep, very true.

So here's my 2¢...

Switch to Full Ring immediately.

6max online is a completely different animal from Full Ring, especially the kind you'll find at the casino.

Opening ranges, level of aggression, speed of the game / your need for patience, etc... all vary greatly between the two games.

So, why not become proficient at the game you hope to play & then once you've got more of the fundamentals under your belt transition back to 6max if you like.

Because you don't learn anything in full ring apart from how to click the fold button pre flop?

That is both comical & insightful... Well played.

OP wants to play FR therefore, OP's going to have to learn to click the fold button.
DUCY

FR is just like 6 max with more seats

You will always be a monkey in an apes jungle till you embrace the inner KKT and crush souls