fair, in game I think I just potted pre, not adjusting for stacksizes. OTR i thought i'd turn up with some 9T, Q9, TT hands and could get a Q or T to fold some of the time but you are right in that I never have a straight here - although i'm not sure villain does either too often?

Back from 10 days in Russia now - not really happy with how i played in the end. I was surprised at how tight passive the games played for Russia! with online games having got so much more aggressive over the years I didn't adjust great to the passiveness of the games and gave up maybe 2-3BI total not giving turn raises enough respect. The final day we played i bought into a tourney, the buy in being my total profit for the trip, and min-cashed for £300 equivalent, but only ended up +£120 at the tables (before expenses) after losing a BI in cash.

final hand of the trip: new guy who looks bad with about 80bbs opens 3x in CO, we 3b to 10x with AKhh OTB and he calls. flop comes 842hh and he donk shoves 3.5x pot, we call and he felts A8o and holds :'( the difference between like +£120 and +£450 right there.

I've been pretty tired since i've been back and about to go on another holiday to Georgia so i might get a couple of sessions in before I go, but not expecting to get much volume in until i'm back. Key goal now is to play 20K hands every month between July and December (maybe September is exempt because i have another holiday) and to stay at 50NL. Once I'm used to consistently putting that volume in again I should start to have some more free time to get some study in with PIO solver.

wishing you all good luck at the tables!

Annnnnd after a month off i'm back on the horse. I ended up taking pretty much all of June off but I'm ready to get back to 20K hands a month, hoping to supplement my income.

Decent start but a fairly easy session without too many difficult decisions. Luckily even with around 50% rakeback on Party, it doesn't look like the regs have flocked there! not at 50NL at least.

A few river spots i'm not sure whether i misplayed..

tough return this month but the results have picked up the past couple of sessions. Feels like bad luck though - main problem is my W$SD is down at 46% this month vs ave of 52.5%.

I'm playing pretty decent at the moment, perhaps calling down a little light (people don't seem to bluff as much on Party as they did PKR) but i can't complain about much else.


#brags

How are you finding Party..?? I've been thinking about moving there as I like the direction they are going! I did think they had gotten rid of huds tho..??

Party is a bit of a no brainer to at least try imo!

Would say a solid list of sites to check out and play on during this crazy time of poker are like

- party
- unibet
- betsafe
- guts
- tonybet

and it from the UK SKY

You can use HUD's @Jef147

Yeah I am going to give Party a go! I really like fast fold games as I don't have that much time to play so its a lot more productive playing zoom games!

Legend thanks!

There's a HUD on party but it only displays stats from that session

The way hand histories save on Party is the same as an anon table - you can use a HUD but the HUD will recognise the person in seat 1 as Player 1 and collate all hands you've played against people in seat 1 into 1 player. You can get round this by using the feature that just shows you stats for that session but I don't think this will work if one player leaves a table and gets replaced. Much easier just to not use a HUD. I'm not sure how this works in tournaments though.. This also does mean you can't review certain regulars as replayers won't be able to tell who you're playing against. There are a few regulars that I'd love to study but can't.

As for party, I like it a lot. Even with high rakeback, the standard at 50NL doesn't seem that strong. I'm more confident than ever that I'll eventually be able to move up to 100NL - I'm way overrolled for it right now but enjoying grinding out 50NL so I'm just not ready to take shots yet.

a few things about Party:

the 40% flat rakeback advertised is a bit misleading, your %age starts at 20% and goes up the more you rake, with it resetting each week. For me at 50NL this means I should achieve 30% if I play 5K hands a week. Also you unlock cash payments in incriments (eg you get $5 after raking $25) which means your % will be lower than advertised again (if you rake $24.99 one week you won't get anything as points don't carry over). Counter to this though, you can get an additional 15% added through sites plus roughly 8% from rake races meaning for me I should average 50% which is great. There's also a deposit bonus which lasts something like 3 months which adds another 20% on top of this.

The software has some small bugs that are irritating. The table tiling doesn't work that well when using 2 screens, player notes don't appear once you've made them until you double-click on somebody's avatar again which is a little annoying, there are no table waitlists so they brought in a sort of general waitlist function but when I try to use it, it freezes a small fraction of the tables I already have open which isn't great. The lobby also doesn't update that frequently making finding tables a little frustrating.

I'm also surprised at the volume of players - during the week there are 15-20 tables running on 6 max 50NLHE but the last few sundays in the eve there have only been like 5, so i've had a few sessions at 25NL instead. Not sure if this has something to do with the world series or whether this is just normal for party. It's also not *that* simple to sit out next big blind - in reality it's only a few clicks per table but when sitting out of 9 tables, Stars' method is much better where there's just a check-box that's simple to click.

They only offer Basic level of player fund protection meaning if the company goes bust, you're likely to lose money - this is big for me after what happened at PKR. Luckily we got all our money off of PKR thanks to pokerstars but it does mean I withdraw more regularly now to try to keep my bankroll on party smaller.

TL;DR - Party has good RB and soft games, software is fine, a little buggy but then who's isn't (other than stars). Volume is fine but low on Sundays??? and only Basic fund protection

Great thanks for that very helpful! I made a small deposit last night and started at 5nl FF just to get used to everything! I actually really enjoyed it and the software is much better than Ipoker where I have been playing so I might just do a BR challenge and try to spin it up! I don't rely on a hud much anyway so probably an advantage to me not having proper huds! All in all very happy!

I thought I'd take a moment to look back at how far I've come this year and re-read the original post. It's been a great year so far, I managed to crush 20NL, move up to 50NL, a stake I've failed to win at 3 or 4 times in the past and am still winning. I've got a much deeper understanding of the game than I have before and it feels awesome. Volume is a little low, only 70K hands this year but I'm stepping it up now and am really enjoying it.




The volume is still a little low like I say, before around 150K-200K hands i'm a little sceptical of that win rate. I feel like I'm crushing though, games are soft and I'm still improving so long may it continue! I'm now comfortably rolled for 100NL but am going to grind out a minimum of 150K hands before taking any shots.

At some point I want to work harder on my live game. I had a few sessions at the start of the year which I played really well (didn't win much though) but then had 10 days playing in Russia which would have been good but I made some key mistakes in big pots which I really wasn't happy about. I'm going to Barcelona for 9 days at the end of August to play so I'm hoping to play much better there. I've put some good study time into live reads and physical tells and have been able to use this in a few big pots this year to make a correct decision that I wouldn't have made previously.

Away from poker, I've started playing tennis again and even though I've had 2 years off, it feels like I've still got it. Only played a couple of times so far with a guy from work - one set each time. Lost the first set 6-2 but then played yesterday and won 6-3 so it's coming back quickly. There's a tennis league at work that I'll enter soon so will be back to playing regularly. I also gave 5 a side football a go but believe it or not I was nowhere near fit enough to play. Turns out I'm now great at running in a straight line for hours on end but sprinting round a tennis court or football pitch and I'm dead in 20 mins. I'll need to start incorporating sprints into my runs I think.

I've also completed my first marathon which was huge. I'm looking to bring my 5K and 10K PB's down before focusing on half marathons, which'll be my training for my second marathon that I'm planning on running next year. The target time will be sub 4:20 and I'll keep running marathons until either I'm forced to stop due to injury or I hit that time. There's a small chance I am capable of sub 4:00 but I don't think I'm going to be able to train hard enough (due to calf injuries) to hit that time. We'll see. My Spanish is also coming along nicely, I'm not in classes now until September due to the summer break but still practising.

It's also been a great year for holidays. Paris, Berlin, Sochi and Georgia down, Barcelona and Morocco still to come and a chance I'll be going to Scotland over new years.

Goals from August are going to be:
Hit 20K hands a month (still no great pressure to hit this one but given how well things are going, if I can maintain a win rate it'll be hugely profitable)
Start putting in some real and consistent study time in
Continue having fun with the game - as soon as that goes and I start putting a tonne of pressure on myself I'll be putting everything at risk
Run a minimum of 3 times a week (footy or tennis can sub in for a run) with 1 week per month as a rest week

Here's to a great 2018 =)

Journey is really great buddy and has inspired me to get back to the grind! Looking forward to following further!

Barcelona for the Stars Championship?

Yep, will mostly be playing cash games and maybe some side events, but will give satting into the main a go.

Mostly these are just awesome holidays where I get to go somewhere I might not have otherwise with a couple of friends, spend some time in the local area and the rest playing a game I love.

A big end to the month - finally broke the $2K online winnings mark (excluding the £200 tourney score on coral at the start of the year which would take me to $2,400 online). For me this is pretty big, as it's roughly the amount I had lost when I got booted off the staking programme when I was first trying to go pro.





I find something interesting(ish) when I look at my redline - you can see from the below that my greenline is flattest when my redline is at its best and the greenline shoots up when my redline shoots down.




I saw something from tyler forrester a while ago explaining that your redline is effectively a function of how aggressive/stationy you are compared to the population and has nothing to do with how you're playing (necessarily). At 60K hands my redline was running at about -9bb/100 with my greenline at about +6bb/100. I used to spend ages hating on my old super-consistent -10bb/100 redline, but there are much more important things to focus on when you're trying to improve.

Hey,

Been a slightly slower month than I had hoped. I had a session on Wednesday which is the first session this year i'm super unhappy about. It was a fairly frustrating session, although i was within a BI of breakeven after about 90 mins, but then a couple of things got to me that really shouldn't have - i got annoyed, recognised it but decided to play on anyway and ended up tilt-calling down in a few big spots and getting punished for it. Only -2BI in the end but i'm really frustrated with how I dealt with the session.

The day after that I got sick, so haven't for a few days, and with holidays coming up, i'm not going to hit 20K hands this month, but that's ok. I'm currently breakeven for the month, so doing pretty decent after rakeback. I did realise today however, I'm going after the big bluffs far less often now I'm at party. I'm pretty certain it's because the standard of play is so low - there are really not that many players that I want to be check-raising and barrelling off against, but I think i'm probably thinking too much about the average player and not going after the regs who know how to fold as often as I could. Something to keep an eye on.

Not sure this was the perfect hand to use, but it worked..


and a sprinkle of hero

Winding down after a gooood week in Barcelona. Been chilling on the balcony with some watermelon, some tequila ice cream and this view, a little sad I'm flying back tomorrow but I have a pretty busy week planned, then I'm straight off to Morocco to cash in on the 3 night stay for two in Richard Branson's Moroccan mountain retreat, which I won earlier this year.




Had a few days looking round Barcelona and hanging on the beach. I didn't have any hold luggage for the plane so couldn't bring a razor, seriously got my beard on at the moment too.

Poker has been decent, I've only had 4 sessions and I got off to a bad start after the first two with a net of -€935. The smallest cash games they have here are 5/5 so much bigger than I'm used to but the standard was still weak and my friend had 40% of me so I felt pretty comfortable playing and I managed to bring it back with +1010 and +400 sessions. Unfortunately all of my winnings for the trip have gone into prop-bets, flips and investment in my friend's tourney results so as of right now I'm breakeven, but still have a small %age of my friend's €10K main event. Fingers crossed he cashes in that and I'll have made some money from the trip as well as had a great time in Barca!

My live game is clearly a long way behind my online game, so something to work on in the long run. All of my focus this year has been on exploitative play and old-style narrowing down ranges and playing accordingly rather than developing a deeper understanding of GTO strategy. I think that's been a great approach for beating the games I play but I'm keen to shift the focus a little bit and start getting some value out of PIO for when I move up again and start running into tougher competition.

I'm also keen to get back into running. I've been pretty slack ever since the marathon. I want to run another one next year, so the plan is to come up with a pre-training training plan when I'm back from Morocco to prep me for a full 12-16 week marathon training plan in the months before the marathon date. I'll see how the training goes but at the back of my mind I have the feeling that if I absolutely smash it, there's a chance of a sub 4-hour marathon. We'll see.

I've been a bit AWOL for the past month or so.

I didn't really play at all after coming back from Spain, had a very busy month in and out of work and didn't really feel like playing. In September I only played 1 session, 4 tables of zoom and I played terribly and didn't really commit to it.

Before I went to Spain my confidence started to slide. I had done some work with PIO which confused me no-end and I had started to feel myself thinking less and less about hands in-game. I hadn't put in much work away from the table and only now have I started to appreciate how much listening to podcasts, watching hand reviews, thinking deeply about hands and challenging my thought process has really helped my game this year - I've really missed that recently. It's the 1 thing that has catapulted my game to the next level in 2017.

Last weekend I went to Nottingham with a few friends to play (and drink). In cash i started by getting stacked immediately with JJ all in pre but ended up +£15. Then min-cashed a tourney that i had satted into for £200 so a moderately profitable (but very enjoyable) trip.

This is the first quiet weekend I've had in a long time so I played my first casual session. I'm going to spend a lot more time reviewing hands with a focus on raising Cbets, which is something I don't do enough at the moment - something that PIO should be able to help with.

The good thing is that the old super-nit seems to be well and truly dead (when I play online at least)..