Hey Dude,

Welcome to the site.

Interesting graph, would say you've prob got a few leaks somewhere given you're break even after 250k hands (which is not a bad thing).

Feel free to post hands and stats going forward.

What site are you playing on and which games?

Yo welcome and nice intro!

What are the main perks of being staked do you think? How much pressure did you feel when losing?

No one in my family ever played cards...what does your dad think about how the game has progressed and the analytical angle you no doubt take with it nowadays?

Really looking forward to following this one! GL

Hey Guys,

So far had a decent start. The £600 roll was on ipoker and i entered a few tourneys with g'tees i thought wouldn't be reached. Unfortunately they were reached, but i managed a few cashes including second place in the EUR20 tourney (the largest buy in i played) for EUR 200 profit. I also won a little playing cash so ended up withdrawing £797 and depositing it on PKR. Only a few sessions and 4,500 hands in so far but up another £75 total on PKR (the software seems to drop some hand histories so HM2 is showing me up only £45). I was pleasantly surprised how well I played the first few sessions. I'd watched a tonne of 'the poker guys' vids and listened to their podcasts over xmas (25-50 hours worth) and have done some work with one of my poker buddies on some redline spots and it seemed to be paying off, alongside a decent amount of run-good. The final two sessions however i went into knowing i wasn't there 100% mentally (a little drained/tired mostly from a combo of work and marathon training) and I could see I wasn't playing well. There's clearly some room to increase my winrate through some work on mental game preparedness.

So far the Vpip/PFR/3b are 29/21.5/7 - super loose but i think more a reflection of the low standard of play (I'm facing a lot of limps pre, especially at anon tables) and more min-raising from earlier positions than i'd have expected meaning more BB defends than normal. Also there is a spot i'm running into a lot on paired boards which I can't work out what my strategy should be - maybe the subject of a future post.

a couple of hands now - This hand villain is fairly unknown. I don't think he's a solid reg, mostly due to his betsizes including a 2x pot bet vs missed Cb on K54r.

PKR hand histories don't seem to work properly - I've manually written up the river in the first one but just left the second hand as there was no action left.


Tricky-ish spot here but I think I make a small mistake calling the river. 98 is likely to check, T8 and 76 make it and villain can have some slowplayed hands from the flop. If villain has flush draws and some spew (Which I expect him to have sometimes) I think it's a call (which is why I made it) in my experience, this line is normally value-heavy. I have noticed people are bluffing more than I would expect making calling in a lot of spots better but here I think villain has it too often.

The second hand I think was a clear mistake - maybe some positive tilt creeping in. Villains are unknown.



On the flop I don't think we have enough equity/fold equity to shove so I think the call is better here. I'm not 100% sure what happened on the turn - I expected to be up against a range of mostly sets and have not much fold equity but shoved anyway. I think we either have to call or fold - I don't think there's much difference between the two when OOP but probably prefer the fold.

Good luck at the tables.

I've played a lot of sites but I'm starting this year on PKR. Turns out I have an account there (I think through PVIP) with 30% rakeback, and the rake cap is low compared to other sites so it seems like a good place to start. No fast-fold poker and a huge number of anon tables isn't as appealing to me but I like what they're doing with the site and the games seem pretty soft so far. I play pretty much exclusively 6 max NLHE cash and will be starting with 20NL.



It depends how you look at things. I found they were keen to move me up in stakes very quickly which can be seen as a good thing as I got some experience playing higher than I would have otherwise, or a bad thing because I wasn't necessarily ready for those games. In that respect it's sink or swim so if you end up sinking it's bad but if you end up swimming it's great. The main reason I did it was for 'free' training - I should have been having an hour a week with a coach, but I started work soon after moving to 50NL and the coach only did sessions during office hours so I didn't benefit from that. When losing there were some bad mental side effects of the staking - when you had a strong hand but a clear fold on the river it's a lot easier to click the call button when it's not your money and you're in make-up anyway.



He hasn't played for a while - I think he stopped before black friday so although he knows that the games have moved on and the games play a lot different and are much tougher now I don't think he fully understands it. Thinking back on things he was always pretty nitty playing mostly full ring cash and some MTTs. He made it to 3/6 at one point playing super tight and ABC which just shows how soft games used to be!!

1st hand I'd be getting out the way when they raise your turn bet by around x4, really don't see that being a bluff and we're near the bottom of our range on that board.

2nd hand looked a little tilt-shovy too.

Does PKR still have the animations or is it more like a normal online poker site now? I played on there 5 years ago and it was annoying AF

This is a very interesting thread. You're very honest about your poker experience so far and that's very refreshing because we all have the tendency to color the reality a little bit. In any case, given how your journey went so far I'd put a bit more emphasis on poker education than playing itself. Make sure to post some of your hands in the Line Check section of the forum since that's one of the most efficient ways of figuring out your leaks. Good luck sir! I'm looking forward to future updates.

The download comes with 2 poker clients - one has the 3D stuff, but you also get PKR Lite which is far more normal - ofc I use the Lite version.

Thanks Matt. I actually think I have developed pretty good thought processes for microstakes, it's just that I've only really developed these recently - many of the hands in the above sample are played in a very robotic style with very little thought exercised - and also that I have had problems with mental game, both not playing my A game (ie falling back in to the old habits and not thinking enough mostly because of low energy) and tilt (even relatively mild frustration has caused me to act very quickly and end up back playing how I used to). I'll definitely check out that part of the forum though!

So I went to Germany over the weekend and my laptop packed up when I got back so I've only played one session since the last post (a +£62 session). I've dug out my old laptop now so will be playing again but it looks like my database will be starting again from scratch.

Hey Guys,

Had a bit of a mare with my laptop breaking while taking a long weekend in Germany, luckily they managed to fix it under warranty without wiping any of my data =)

Unfortunately I had a bit of a losing streak on the old laptop losing 5BI in 2K hands - a mix of coolers, failed bluffs and suckouts. On review I don't seem to have played badly which is good - I was definitely playing my B game but my B game now feels better than my A game over my breakeven stretch used to be. It's a good feeling to finally feel like you're playing winning poker so I'm hoping to soon be able to post a large enough winning sample to prove it to myself.

A couple of interesting hands - one a bit of a heroey call and the other the nittiest fold you'll see for a while.

Here I have V few hands on villain. A few hands ago in the BB vs me OTB he called flop half pot with JsTc on Kc6c2c then raised a 70% pot turn Cb on 6h and gave up on 6s on the river.




Hard to see him ever having anything here. I think the large betsize makes the river more of a call but I was pretty much snap-calling any size especially vs a villain I expect to be aggressive.

The next hand is super weird vs a fairly unknown villain. 180 hands, 25/17/9 but no notes so far. Preflop I think I prefer a flat - given the 3b sizing any 5b shove is likely to offer worse pot odds than usual and calling 5bets tends with these hands tends seems to me to be far lower EV than when you're making the 5b yourself. I prefer the call to keep bluffs in, because I don't expect villain to call a cold 4b wide and because getting 5b is such a low EV call.

Flop I expect villains range to be V strong to bet this flop and OOP with potential action killers to come OTT, even though a raise looks super strong I prefer just to raise (given the SPR I leave i'm not sure the sizing is great). OTT I make the mistake of betting - preoccupied on the KK/AA part of villains range here and not thinking that he can actually have a fair amount of Ahxh that we want value from. OTR I think I still look super strong so i go for a small bet realising he does actually have some Ax in his range.

When we get shoved on it's a pretty crappy spot. AA is 3 combos and although AQ is 3 that we beat, we have to discount this a little as it's not an auto-3b for a lot of people pre. I don't expect any worse sets to have 3b pre and 7h8h is only 1 combo that we can discount given flop/turn action giving villain a super tight range. we need 30% to call so as long as villain has like 1.4 combos we beat we should call. When I started writing this up I thought it was a fairly big mistake to call but now it does feel a lot more breakeven than I had thought. I still think the presence of AQ in villains range makes this a call but maybe the fold isn't tooo too bad (I'm not expecting villain to ever bluff here, at least not at 20NL).




So far I'm really pleased with how I'm playing. I'm able to think through hands in a way I never used to which has led to a lot of deviations away from my old robotic strategy. Given i'm only 9K hands in I think it's a really good start so here's hoping that the results continue to follow. I have a few live sessions coming up as well that I'm looking forward to so I'll keep you updated on how those go.

Looking forward to your thoughts on the hands. GL at the tables!

So January over and it was a decent month. I got off to a good start playing very well although I do think my play has deteriorated through the month. At the start of the month I made a few light calls on the river which worked out for me which were based on sound thought but this has led me to make a few bad calls later in the month when I've not been playing my A game and haven't had such sound reason for making those calls. Not a massive drop off in quality or anything just the level of thought hasn't been quite as sharp.

The basic stats are interesting. Over 9K hands (i lost about 4K hands on my other laptop while my main one was being repaired) Preflop VPIP/PFR/3b/F3b have been:
28/21/7/50
These are way different to what they have been in the past where I've been closer to 22/19/6/63. Part of this is being more comfortable playing postflop so being more confident calling 3bets, having some pre-built preflop ranges for all preflop spots increasing my 3b and defend vs 3b as well as beginning (but not enough yet) to 3bet more exploitatively preflop. The Vpip is so high primarily because of the standard of play - there seem to be far more limps and multi-way pots I'm entering with a call as well as defending my big blind more, especially vs < 3x opens which is something I'll makes sure i'm not doing un-profitably once I build more of a database.

postflop i'm running WTSD, W$SD, WWSF, AGG% of
25%/55%/47.5%/36%

I'm pretty happy with this. It's not too different to how I've played in the past, the main difference is my aggression is up on the turn and river (where my percentages have historically been way low) which has led to a slightly lower WTSD (used to be 28% which is I think the top end of acceptably - mostly this high because of me not stabbing at pots once it's checked through enough which I think is a big leak given people don't defend their checking ranges wide enough in general) and higher WWSF (which I've historically struggled to increase from 44%).

Obviously looking at small changes in these stats, especially after only 9K hands isn't going to yield the answer to poker or anything but it's interesting for me to see the stats bearing out how I feel my game has changed.

Ended the month with a £908 roll - pretty good since I started with £600 but given the £200 tourney score, better than it looks - I'm pretty happy with how Jan went though. Hoping to put in a little more volume in Feb and work on the B game - being more cautious in those river spots facing bets and making sure I don't miss out on good bluffing spots vs the populations' unprotected checking ranges.

Example of a bad call when not playing my A game - there are reasons to call here but vs this villain (we don't know much other than he was weak) in this spot I think we can fold.




Sometimes you can't even beat villains bluffs =(



and sometimes it's just too thin?




GL in Feb all

Feb has been a bit lax - especially last week where there was some sort of birthday celebration 6 days running so volume has been low. Had an interesting session last night though.

Villain was a whale playing 70/10 over around 80 hands.




A little redemption - very similar to a hand posted in the last update.



And finally a weird hand - Anon table, i had some reads on villain at the end of the session but at the time I think we only know that he's a bad player and not much more than that. I'm not sure how much bigger I can go on the river but I don't think it's much. I think a raise is correct though, we should be able to read into sizings here and put him on something like 2p OTT that's now 1p.

Hey guys,

so far my volume has been pretty low - too many days off including last week which was 6 days of birthday celebrations (4 different people's birthday) so have only played 23K hands this year. I've upped my volume this past week though and at the moment, for the first time since Black Friday, I really feel like I have a significant enough skill edge to post a good win rate so am really enjoying playing.

So far I'm up about £110 from cash games, £75 from rakeback and £200 from that tournament bink so the roll is up to £985 (after breaking £1K for the first time this week).

I've noticed my river Cb success is much lower on PKR than on stars. I'll keep an eye on it to see how it moves after a more reasonable sample size but might have to start Vbetting thinner and bluffing less at some point (on stars and ipoker it was running at 60%+ so you could fire the third barrel all you liked, hence this with poor blockers)



Also had the below with somebody who calls a little too light preflop and bluffs way too much. I was pretty pleased to work out he's overbluffing in this spot but not too happy with the result!!



I've also had a couple of live sessions so far this year playing 1/2 at the vic with a friend which I enjoyed a lot. It's easy to feel like you're crushing live because the standard is generally so poor but I realllllly felt like I was crushing which was great because I've always been a much better player online than live - for some reason in the past when playing live the thought processes haven't flown naturally and I've struggled to keep focus so haven't been so in tune with what's going on at the table.

So far it's looking like this could be an exciting year!

good luck all.

Where are you based buddy?

Based in London but I like taking some time off work and heading to another city/country to play live for a few days. I have a £110 seat credit from a tourney win at DTD that I need to cash at some point!

Tough month in Feb. Only managed 11.5K hands although in reality that's not too bad given i played 2K in the first half of the month.

Overall I'd probably say my game has improved from Jan to Feb, although I think I ended up playing worse in Feb than Jan (played my B game more often in Feb but my Feb B game was better than my Jan B game). The spot I'm struggling in most at the moment is river Cbets - people are folding far less often in these games than I'm used to so I'm probably not going thin enough for value and am bluffing a little too much, I just feel so passive when I pass up what looks like a decent bluff spot.

Total £2 profit in Feb pre-rakeback due to my final 6 sessions including 5 losing session, which has carried on into March with a small loss so far. Live cash has gone better with something close to +£200 profit including having to give £57 to a friend who I had half of. It's easy at 1/2 live to feel like you're the best player at the table because the standard is so poor but I can finally articulate my view of each players leaks which is a nice real life indicator that my game has improved into this year.

all about timing...

Damn that hand sucks. You could maybe try jamming the river

Yeah I thought that after the hand but I'm not sure it would have been correct at the time. I knew villain was attacking missed Cbets like mad and expected him to turn up with enough bluffs vs his value, especially after going this sizing. I hadn't realised though that he'd be bluffing as wide as TT so guessed i was ahead of all his bluffs, hence the call over the shove. I think after having seen him show up with TT here it's a clear shove next time.

Finally moved house and am set up to start playing poker again after two weeks off. First session was interrupted by either internet reliability issues or just PKR software issues, hard to work out which one but hopefully that doesn't continue, still up 1.5BI putting me at 24BI for 50NL so will have to think about taking shots soon.

Also my pro friend just qualified for the EPT Russia, so I'll be travelling over with him to play some of the small side events and hopefully some juicy cash games for a couple of weeks in May!! If everything goes well I'll be rolling over the 50NL games by that point

Also I have the marathon coming up in 3 weeks. Over the past month the training has been pretty terrible. I've reached the 50-60 km per week mark a few times, but according to the play I should be hitting this every week, but consistent failure to run on weekends has left me more around the 30km per week mark. Still I'm getting fitter, I only managed three 8km runs last week, but completed them all with ease, didn't feel tired at all even at the end of final one which was done when pretty hung over. Hopefully the adrenaline will get me through on the big day - April 9th!!

Crummy river decision here when I block the flushes but at an anon table I don't think I see this being a bluff often enough (maybe I'm wrong?)




Not sure what happened here, but the below HH came up when trying to paste the above for the first time?? Pretty nuts looking hand..


gain, not 100% sure about the river. Feels like most of the bluffs villain can have here are turning SDV into a bluff so maybe I can get away from this one. I felt blocking QQ, QJ and TJ was enough but IDK.

Nothing worse than a bad Internet connection! Had some crazy bad times over the years due to that and it really sucks.

PKR is quite an odd choice as the rewards are super low...take a look at GUTS who are offering more than everyone else is Here

I went around a few places trying to find software i got on with, PKR was the best i found. 30% flat RB plus extras worth 10-20% extra isn't too bad?

I can't see that offer, looks like it expired. What is it they offer?