Alright folks, just booked another session!

After a 2 1/2 hr hand review session in the afternoon with my coach where we found quite some leaks, e.g. I struggle on monochrome boards pretty much; did bet way to much there in the past. Did receive some nice little homework, where I shall find out what to bet or check back and stuff. Will do that tomorrow I guess, maybe on the weekend, I dunno, cuz I am going to visit my parents tomorrow (they're living ~150km away) who just came back from a 3 week Sweden trip with my brothers and sisters. I have 10 (!) "siblings", one of them is my corporal sister, the others are just like me foster children, except two, who are their corporal sons. My real parents died when I was 10 (mom, cancer) and 15 (dad, alcoholic and suffering from a nerve disease). Spent some time with my grandma back then, but she just got too old to care for us and then the youth welfare office took us away from her. But there are no regrets at all, my foster parents are great people who always cared to the max for us. And I just perceive my other siblings like they were the same bloodline as I am. So everything's just fine.

Anyways, have to do some financial stuff in my hometome and then spend some time with family things and so.

Todays session went very good. I felt way more confident then yesterday, played more aggro and was even more focused. After 1029 hands we are 92 bucks in the green, was up like 120 at peak, then fell off to around +20 and grinded it back up. So little bit of a rollercoaster ride, but most hands were just standard. Did mark some for next weeks review. We will see if my thoughts were right Today we reviewed 30 hands, most of them were good, only 1 or 2 were way off, but coach is satisified with my play and so am I

Random hands:

#1 Villain (28/20, 7k hands) cold calls 10% OTB and raises Turn IP 15%. Flop is standard. Turn 2nd barrel, hm, guess it's ok against his pairs and FDs, he shouldn't have much OC floats as we are 3way on the flop, which makes protection little less important. But should be strong enough for value, he has no JJ+ threre. As he raises quite a few hands on the turn, I think as we don't block no draws, we should catch. His value range is like 98s-A9s OTT and his bluffs are the FDs with no SD value. But he can call some nevertheless, as I am offering an okay-ish price. We need ~22% Equity on the Turn, which we have when he raises like any FD which is not nutted. Hm... Maybe spew nevertheless. River is the same, he has to bet his total turn raising range and we are minus the rake ~even. Guess just too close and maybe just b/f OTT?




#2 FD arrives OTR? Who cares against a fish? Guess very important not to check back there against weak passive fish. See a lot guys at 25 checking back there and missing much value. Maybe we could even jam... But see him not stacking off with random pair and he has not that many Ax as we have one.




#3 Who jams river? Did use my whole timebank in-game. Guess most villains on 25 just jam their Ax there themselves, so could be good if we plan to jam some busted draws there as well. We just need more value combos then ofc, otherwise we get way too bluff heavy. But no clue, villain is unknown but seems kinda reggish type of player. Oh yeah, and flop is a bit close, but ok. Assume he is cbetting there ~85% of his guesstimated 15% restealing range. Guess as he blocks potential busted draw bluffs with his KsKx and QsQx he is not going to call with that. Bluffcatches his worst Ax and jams boats/best Ax and some busted draws maybe? When he just yolo catches all his QQ-KK it's a jam. Otherwise not. What do you guys think?




OK, that's it for today, good night and good luck from Nuremberg

monotone

@ AJ
flop I size a bit smaller but not super important. it's just that all hands that he folds (Qx,Kx, 54 etc) don't have much equity vs your value hands and with bluffs kind of the same his random highcards fold to small size and vs his good hands you are quite dead anyway. so yea to make his folding range indifferent in a smarter way you can size like 1/2 pot. on A97f it's ok to bet a little bigger but in general 1/3-1/2 is cool on Ahigh flops.
anyway betting big vs fish can't be too bad on this flop!
turn just potsize I don't assume a fish will fold his draws OTT but if he folds with those it's still great, he will fold a lot equity. vs random pairs potsize is also good, he won't fold those because pair and vs Ax you want to build a pot of course.
river yeah interesting
I assume him having quite a lot flushes(40-50% vpip) he may raise some fullhouses/2pairs OTF or OTT and donk some flushes
but he still needs to call down more than Ax. he needs to call a lot 9x to have a valuebet here. I guess that will happen often enough. I like about halfpot sizing but defo not super easy.

Yeah, made it kind of explo in the past vs fish, just bet my good hands big and bluffs like 1/3 or so. But understand the theory behind! Turn Pot fo' sho sho! Dunno why I clicked 2/3, maybe difficult hand on other table.
See him donk his value hands (flush+) OTR like every single time. Think anything between 1/2 and 2/3 PS is good OTR.

I am back from my trip, stayed 2 days longer, had to help my dad. He is building a new terrace. 5 hrs of work and earned a hundo. Not bad! Gonna go for ze pokers nao. gl us!

#sundaygrind is over and I played 3k Hands. Was up ~100 bucks in the middle of the session but then nothing went my way anymore and I was down 20 bucks couple hundred of hands later. Got some day savers at the end which leads to a plus of 40 bucks. Could have played better, got a little unconcentrated after 2k hands or so, but that is because I am not used to play so "much" anymore. Gonna have a little break in the future every 1k hands. Just stand up and walk around a little. That helped quite good in the past.
Tomorrow I am going to look after a new job again. Hope to find something by the middle of the month as the bills won't pay themself

Random Hands:

#1
Villain is 54/1 Fish. Pre I would always raise this hand against him. Flop and Turn are standard imo, we could size a bit bigger as he won't fold any Top or 2nd Pair and no draw. River the only draw that gets there is KQ and we block that. At first sight I wanted to jam this myself, but: Villain had River AF of 9. Yes, River stats need an absurd amount of hands but for fish, this stat is kinda nuts and pretty accurate after just a couple of hands. This is because there are two kind of fish: The ones that just check behind their 8 hi there, and the ones that always bluff their busted draws. Empirically. they don't mix it up. Fish tend to get to the river very often. So you will have a lot of river situations from fish after just some hands. Just do a little extra observation, when they play against others and add one and one together, et voila So as he has very little value hands there but a lot of draws that all bust, I checked and then snapped.




#2
Villain: Open MP 18%, cB F/T/R 56/69/48, cB/f F/T 42/33. I just don't have a lot of bluffs when I raise and couldn't find any hands that he b/c on T/R that we beat, besides KQ and 55. So I went for the nitty calldown/bluff catch. Too tight?

de.pokerstrategy.com
Board: 5hQsJsKd2h
Equity Win Tie
MP2 49.99% 49.99% 0.00% { KK-QQ, 55, KQs, T9s, AhTh, AsTs, KQo }
MP3 50.01% 50.01% 0.00% { JdJc }

Am I missing something?




#3

How do you guys play the river here??? Does donk shoving make any sense? I don't want him to check behind with his overpairs. But what does that to our range? Do we even want to have a leading range here? Villain was unknown btw.



That's it for today, good night and good luck all

How much better do you find Sunday's than other days for action?

Well, basically sundays sucks for cash players and I am totally serious! Might sound ridiculous, but: All of the grinders I know, some of them are midtskes pros, have their worst day/only losing day on sunday That is a confirmed fact over large samplesizes. So how is this possible, when sunday should be your best day, with all those fun players playing? Well on sunday, there are all of the "buy in for little and win life changing money" type of MTTs. Fish or fun players (call 'em what you want) love that. So if I had to guess, I would say approx. 95% of them don't play cashgame then. Plus, there are a lot more semi regs. Most of them, are the ones that read some kind of poker book or so back in the days or watched some video, read in forums etc. They still play their "2005 style" which isn't a winning style in 2016 no more, but with a good deal they get around even by the end of the day. So you are not winning much from them. Another fact is, that the semi pros and pros, are weary to the bones, as they already worked their way through 5 or 6 days of intensive grinding. Concentration is then going down mostly, which is an absolutely normal thing and by no means a leak. Human beings need time to rest. No one can work for 7 days straight with no breaks. And as Fridays and Saturdays are MUST GRIND days for any serious poker player, you should contemplate taking a day off on Sunday.

The following night however, is quite the best time to grind When the MTTs brick, a lot of fun players are donking their winnings straight away at the cash tables. Yes, there are some who do the old "go big or go home" thing, and they buy in with one stack at the midstakes. But several other fish just open like 2-3 NL25 tables and play some more hours.

Overall, I would say this is how tables are arranged according to lucrativeness:

1. Sunday late night / Monday early morning (2am-6am CET)
2. Friday and Saturday evening/night (8pm-4am)
3. On Weekdays early morning (1am-6am)
4. On Weekdays evening (6pm-1am)
5. All the other times I forgot to mention (midays to afternoon all week)
6. Sunday afternoon and early evening

Sunday afternoon looks like it just has to be a better time to grind than on weekdays from 12 pm to 6 pm, but it's not. Yes, there are some soft games going, but when you compare games they look like this:

Sunday afternoon: 4 regs, hero and a somewhat semi reg/fish type of player. Lots of those tables.
Weekdays afternoon: 4 pretty solid grinders/regs (lot of them from eastern europe), hero and one whale.

Generally speaking, whales tend to loose more bbs/100 then semi fish. Whales play the good old 94/1 style, where semi fish tned to play something like 30/10.

You obv have to table select way more on weekdays then on sunday. But overall, your winrate should be better. Dunno what it looks like, when it comes to hourly, as you have to spend more time with table selection, and not playing a lot, but I guess there is no huge difference.

Conclusion: For a serious MTT player sunday obv is a must play day and should be their best day dollar-wise as well. For cash grinders, Friday and Saturday are way better imo.
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I am not into nowadays pop music at all (love the 90s, the music was so ridiculous but I am into it A LOT! ), but that song is so catchy! Goooosh

@ QJ
you can go bigger OTF
size turn bigger on doublefd for sure he has so many hands that he puts in more money OTT and just folds OTR so at least pot for value. with medium TP ~pot is good.
river A is not perfect he got 6 AJ, 9AK, 6 AQ, 9 KQ, some 2 pairs and some sets he didn't raise before and some Ax with flushdraw. if he is super aggro he shoves that. he needs quite a bit of bluffs to make up for that and will maybe shove random hands like QQ/5x but overall it's okcall if he is aggro.
as far as stats go, river stats as you said need huge sample. don't build your strategy on that one river stat that sticks out. rather confirm your read by clustering stats that show aggressiveness. he still has a range that hits more or less on some cards, think of that first.

@ JJ on QJ5f
pre 3b or call, both is fine.
flop it's just a value raise. you are super strong on this flop he can't bet there MPvCO without huge equity.
I solved this hand so see what solver would bluff. since I thought you have to bluff pockets but you get overset a lot if you hit and it goes in. so yea super hard to bluff here. so in GTO call seems fine. but raise should be much better ingame since people play badly otf
turn not so nice anymore I think call is best
river can't shove, call is good.

@ JJ on T42f
tough one ^^
OTR he doesn't have too many flushes maybe 3-5 combos so he needs to defend some overpairs that he might check back OTR. I guess you find >5 weaker combos that call. overall this card pushes your equity a lot otr good donkbet spot

wow, this taylor dude seems to know what's going on

QJ: yes, in game I was like: hm, not that good of a river card, he improved there quite a bit, and he coud have some slowplays as well. but on the other hand, as I said, he was just super aggro tard-ish and already saw him bluff shoving in a spot like that. so with his infinite preflop range and all his busted draws that I assume him to jam there almost always, I thought it is an ok catch.
When it comes to the river stat I am totally with you. Range is first. Then consider taking a look at his stats.

JJ: That was what I was thinking. I literally have no bluffs, or just couldn't imagine what a good bluff could be. So I went for the call. But as you said, he has to have a strong hand if he is cbetting there so maybe you could just forget about your range an go for the raise Dunno... And I also dunno if he is good enough to recognize that he can't just bet KQ there. Agree T/R thoughts.

JJ #2: Did donkshove indeed. Thoughts: He will check behind his pairs, but has to catch some with Flush Blockers to not overfold and he does not have too many nuted combos. My range equity should improve a lot OTR so just went for it. He folded.

€: Oh and Taylor... u should consider coaching, seems like u have a clue

Had kind of a weird session, every eastern european reg tried to tilt me to the fullest, but they had no chance. Like, I open, fish calls, reg squeezes or I open and reg 3b everytime I had a marginal holding but then folded when I had the nuts. Adjusted my game then with smaller opening sizes and lower RFI frequencies. Guess this is the right adaption, in the past I tried to battle fire with fire, which didn't work out too good After 1k hands I got a bit frustrated and quit. Guess just not my day. There is always a game going, so why chase it?

Daily random hands:

#1
Villain is a fish. I re-iso fun players here with any BW+ and some pairs, good connectors and all suited Ax. Sizing is kinda low, but it folds out the regs mostly, and we play HU IP vs the spot. This was the third time I did this to him, cB all 3 times and he tank/folded, so I guess he just got desperated. See him raise there some TP, Draws, random hand from time to time and ofc he has some hands that beat me too. Turn is a good card, as i don't see him raising a lonely 8 OTF and it kills his set kombos. In-game I just didn't wanna see a diamond or Q/7 OTR, so I went for the shove. In the aftermath this is way to close. In a good case scenario we are not even flipping. I may fold out some equity from time to time, but overall call is way better. Thank god I am a blessed fish and hit OTR.




#2
Villain 22/16/7, 20k hands, cc COvsMP 11%, fold/call/raise cB IP 36/54/10, WTSD 28. Flop is good with fish in the hand. Turn is a clear check. He only has the suited Tx combos, 89s, all Sets and some Pair+draw, aainst this range we are ~50/50 so we can't really value bet. River is a super clear x/f. Dunno why I pressed bet. Spew. Was like the last table and last orbit. Guess my mind already drifted away and I randomly clicked. That happend to me sometimes in the past. Should pay more attention in the future for sure.




#3
Is there any possible raise size OTF that makes more sense than jam? I used like 20s of my bank thinking which size is optimal here, but couldn't think of one that is better than jam. What do you think? Villain is unknown but at first sight he seemed to be a bit spew-ish.




Ok, gonna finally watch Interstellar now. Hope its as good as everybody says. Cheers!

@ KTo good iso 3b, regs are bad, you will get a way with it a ton. KTo very borderline in MP tho. there are still 4 hands alive behind. But I don't hate it.
postflop really depends how bad he is. he can have all overpairs for sure. so if he is passive he is almost exclusively raising overpair+. some fish just raise any TP or pocketpair or random stuff but they have to be somewhat retarded in some way. If he is some sort of top pair minraiser I like shoving. your hand is somehwere in the middle and you get in quite some shitty spots later. so vs some random fish pushing gets some thin value from random pairs and protectoin. IP calling is no mistake tho.
you said he folded 3 times vs cbet before. now that is no sign of desperateness or anything, he just plays straightforward. fish don't just go on random tilt if they are somewhat straightforward without loosing a big pot. anyway with this read he is probably in category 1 minraising overpairs+. still a call OTF. you get some random checks and can realise your equity or you actually improve and stack him super often. OTT half pot phew ... you need to win 25% 5 outs are about 10-12% equity OTT on which you get it in most of the time. K not perfect outs, he sometimes has AA or KK. diamond K also not perfect vs random flushdraw. so I think you can actually fold OTT.

@ ATo
with fish in that hand, it's ok to bet flop although CO has you crushed but ok to bet. if fish is not terrible, you cancheck flop. default betting with fish is fine tho.
Turn easy check yes.
River random ok lol

@ 99
yea flop minraise is already 30bb. so you are kinda committed. shove is fine.

sry guys, too bizzy with playing/coaching, nxt update saturday or sunday.

gl all!

doublepost

Sup guys!

I am running pretty bad atm, it seems I just can't win a single pot postflop. When I get it in pre, I tend to win everything, but that just sums up my non SD losses. I went thru the hands that didn't go to SD today, but couldn't find that much. We are 25% thru the given sample in the staking deal, and I already had like ten hrs of coaching or so. My Coach is just a great guy, always friendly and there wasn't a single question he couldn't answer. We went thru a lot of different stuff, my biggest leak was, that I was struggeling with Squeezes and how to play mono flops. We are not done with the mono stuff, but when it comes to Squeezes I feel very confident now.
When I play, I basically bumhunt a lot. I don't play a table if there is not at least one whale or two semi fish. Maybe my lol-redline has to do with that, as you have to b/f a lot against fish. And of course just x/f when you don't hit much. There are a very few spots where you can even bluff fish, but overall just go straight for value (nothing changed there in the last 10 years I guess ).

So overall, I would lose, but I win some with flips^^ This feels very bad, but I am completely tilt free since a good while and I just don't do any fancy adjustments. I just keep on doing, what I do, and I hope at the end we are up a good junk. I really try my very best everday.

tl;dr -> Numbers!

Hands: 14k
winrate: 2.35bb/100
EV: -1.96bb/100
Redline: -9.9bb/100

Yes, lol samplesize. I know that 10k is no sample, even 100k is more of a lol sample. It becomes more and more accurate from 500k+ hands. And I have like 250k hands that I played on 2/5/10/25 reg/zoom tables with around 8bbEV. So maybe just a little downswing. Thank god there is still some rakeback to be made on stars

Enough of the whining, here are the hands:

#1
Bet is standard, x/j is explo against this dude. Poker is dead.




#2
Against whale. See him on lower flushes so often. In game I thought "hm, maybe jam, he never folds a flush there" but wanted to make his single pairs call as well. Being results orientated, I am so proud I didn't jam




#3
I guess jam turn is best, as there are a bunch of shitty river cards that will kill the action like double paired board, flush, one card str8... I don't know if jam is best range wise. Made a note on him to never bluff him in a hundred years Otherwise he is ahead of my draws that may jam... but I guess his double barrel is not so good.




I literally just freaked, 7am??? wtfffff Time flys so much when you do some poker stuff^^ Gonna go straight to bed now!

See you around, good "night"

After hitting my stop loss limit (5 stacks) the day before yesterday for the first time in ages, I somehow managed to win most of it back yesterday. I hope the "downswing" is over now and the winning sessions continue Last days felt pretty awkward, with all that "no-hit-check-fold every.single.time" BS. Yesterday finally the cards went down my way, I didn't change anything at all, so let's hope I am doing something right and that yesterdays session wasn't just pure luck

In b4 losing it all back today

Against so far solid Canadian reg. wtf.

Last 2 days




Finally we're making some profit
Sick upswing 2nite, hit like every fkn hand. Fish were also posh donaters. Misplayed a hand in a 4b Pot vs some Australien wannabe. Won and got instantly berated how I am only clicking buttons. He claimed he's one of the biggest winners @25, which obv isn't true. He told me that he can see from his HUD that I am very very passive on later streets and my 4b is higher than my 3b. Orly genius? Obv it is, but that is just a normal thing as long as you aren't some kind of nit or so. I asked him how many hands he has on me and he said "Quite enough, over 1.2k my friend!!". Oh wow. I mean this just shows how people overestimate their HUDs. 1.2k hands and he claims he can see how fkn exploitable I am. A 4b stat basically needs something around 10k hands, befor that it is not even close to accurate. Same for river stats, they need... dunno, like infinite Once I filtered my lifetime hands for some river situations, and over a seven figure sample I had way to little situations to tell if I am leaking or not. Just think of how rarely you get to the river, see a showdown and even more rarely there is a line like donk/3b or so. Just never happens. He then got it in with JTs against my AA right after the 4b situation. He cold calls JTs MPvsUTG but I am the fish ofc I trolled him a little while and then he left an orbit later or so.

Just for your info, this is the guy:




VPIP/PFR/Sample
RFIs UTG-SB/ iso Limpers
3b/ft3b/4b/ft4b/Squ
cbF/ftcbF/cbT/ftcbT/cbR/ftcbR
SBftBTN/BBftBTN/BBftSB/WTSD/WonSD/River AF

Notice how he NEVER folds to 3b or 4b, but constantly overfolds way way waaaay too much in the blinds. He has several other leaks which I am not going to tell in detail, but yeah, he is defo one of the worst "regs".

But whatever. Was funny to troll him but it doesn't bother me at all. I know what I am doing, and I know that I have an edge on him. Plain and simple.

Ok, enough of the ego wars and cocky stuff. I have made a pop up for cold calls, 3b/4b and squeeze. Looks like this:




If u guys like it let me know and hook me up on skype, I am sharing it with pleasure!

Hand of the day:

Against Fish. Yes, we are most likely very slightly behind and have no FE, but with the dead money already in the pot I am not going to fold this in a 3bP. I can't call against his raise size, so basically we are investing 27 to win a pot of 63. So rake-less we need 42% Equity which we have, even against a tight stack off range. Give him one random combo and it is +EV. His exact hand obv the best outcome of all hands



That's it for now, see you around!

Like, the reg is ofc not good and the fact he is telling you how to improve suggests he is a msntal game fish.... But this whole rant shows that you are just as bad! To go into this detail to show how bad he is and get back at him when he won't read this and none of us know him shows it did affect you. Leave your ego at the door when you play because the majority of the time you will get beat if you get into ego wars.

Ofc, I am totally understanding this. Maybe it just sounds like it bothers me, but I found it rather amusing. It did not made me mad at all or so. I was on sit out for toilet/5min break to re-fresh and while being on sit out he started flaming. I usually don't chat because it takes away the focus. But as I was sitting out I just thought "whatever^^". I also posted this just for teh lulz. I don't want to show how "good" I am and how "bad" he or anyone is. Just found it quite funny how it is always the bad guys that berate you.
Once I had a guy at my table that I sucked out and he wanted to know why I played the hand the way it was played. I sent him my skype and we discussed for several hours, not only that hand, also others. It appeared that he was a very solid reg, way above my skill lvl and he told me some interesting things. This is how a good player handles those situations. He either does not react at all or he does it in a somewhat "friendly" way.
As I said, I don't chat, get into ego/reg wars or flame at all.
I also don't want to upgrade my image by posting his stats. I definitley know that I am just a lousy microstakes semi fish like a thousand other players, that is full of leaks (otherwise I would crush midstakes, right?).
So if you think that I wanted to show how much better I am than others, or that I am seeking affirmation I can promise that this is absolutely not the case.
I apologise if this sounded that way, but as I said, I just found it very amsuing and wanted to share it with you guys.

Furthermore, I can just repeat myself that you are completely right. One should never bring his/her egot to a poker table. Very bad mindset leak.

€: Oh and I thought, that it was also a good example for how guys tend to overestimate stats. That basically was the point I wanted to make.

nono, don't think you were trying to make yourself look better, just pointing out that this can be a HUGE leak, way bigger than strategy leaks, as you can quite easily spew off against someone when your ego gets in the way and it takes focus away from other tables (as you said) AND if you tilt then you end your session earlier.

Defo think it is a good point re HUDs, I played a guy recently who's 3b over a 500 or so sample was pretty small (5 OOP 6 IP) and I noticed that e began 3betting me a lot, like it was clear he was picking me out and going by how long he took before 3betting I am very sure he was looking up stats. I had changed my name so he probably had 50 hands on me and maybe I folded to 2 or 3 3bets in that sample :')