I played some NL5 Zoom yesterday.

It has been a while since I played.

Bluffing seems to be EV- in general ESPECIALLY big multi-street bluffs...

Hand 1 - Looked like a reg...


---

Hand 2 - Put me on 98dd?


---

I made some stupid (calling) mistakes early on but improved my focus as I got used to playing again.

Tight looks right, especially considering rake.

---

I am going to the very top.

More 5nlz yesterday.

My skills are not good enough.

Getting a database review tonight.

Hand #1 - Sizing tells


Hand #2 - Is this standard from him???


Hand #3 - They protect a lot imo?


Hand #4 - Extreme polarization?


Hand #5 - Fishing...


---

It looks like they don't 3 barrel bluff so I can call flop and turn wide and overfold river exploitatively.

It also looks like they value bet too thin/over protect so I can bluff raise and put pressure on. Trouble is this assumes they can fold and I am not too sure. Let's find out!!!

---

The battle is internal. Me v me. I will choose which one wins.

Just had my DB analysed.

I am very bad postflop player.

I have a lot of work to do.

I will do whatever it takes

That database analysis has resulted in quite a lot of changes...

- Changing my preflop ranges
- Completely changing my flop cbet strategy
- Completely changing my strategy when facing a flop cbet

Also I got some good tips on how to record and journal my poker study, play and whole journey better so am implementing those too.

Here is my first 10k hands at 5nlz...




Has been quite swingy! 10,000 hands is a very small sample but let's see over the next 50,000 hands how/if these changes in strategy start to take effect!

---

I do not cut corners in order to get there quicker - I do it right.

I played a lot of hands (by my standards) yesterday and got a good look at how variance can affect short term results very quickly.

I won 2 buy-ins but 900 hands before I finished my session I was down 2 buy-ins.

This is why it is 100% important to focus on making the best play and NOT focus on the results of the session.

New flop cbet strategy seems to be going well. It is fairly simple to implement and it is helping me to play future streets better too. My cbet stat has gone from 35% to 51%.

New strategy for facing cbets is more tricky for me. I was always a nit with a high FvCB but last 5500 hands it is down to 37%. In fact maybe I am becoming a calling station!!!

Preflop I made a lot of changes but I think it will take a while to figure these all out.

Overall things seem to go nicely when I consider all of the changes I am making. I was expecting to spew quite a lot!

---

This is not about talent. This is obsession.

Loving these quotes and everytime I read your title I hear Conor shouting it!

Yes, that man is truly an inspiration to me.

---

Again, understanding variance seems of utmost importance. I am having lots of 3+ buy-in swings (both ways) in a very small amount of hands.

Previously I would have quit after a 2 buy-in loss but I think I can be mentally stronger than that and continue.

More important is I have to be AWARE of how I am feeling emotionally and IF that is affecting my decision making.

I take regular breaks to make sure I am focused on the job and NOT in any way tilting.

Session review shows major improvements in cbetting and facing cbets but still much work to be done!

---

The man on the top of the mountain didn't fall there.

I reached 20k hands...




Only winning at 1bb/100 over this small sample so much work to do.

Flop strategy gets better and better.

Took a quick look at Piosolver today, it looks very good.

---

Comfort is the enemy of progess

Never say 'only' when it comes to winning...95% of people who play poker would love to make money from this game.

Totally appreciate what you are saying Sir but...

I settle for nothing less than excellence

---

Flop cbet strategy is good.

Flop facing cbet strategy is nowhere near good enough. I will spend more time in Piosolver today looking at how much and how I must/can continue (I fold too much).

In my next session I am going to bluff my equity way way more and get out of my comfort zone in order to LEARN

In my next few sessions I will try to continue facing bets way way more.

I expect to lose a lot due to the newer situations but I expect to hit a big IMPROVEMENT curve.

---

I will do whatever it takes...

Fair response! I love these mantras!

Thank you Sir!

---

Yesterday I played a lot looser and a bit more aggressive.




I got into a lot of spots where I had not much clue what to do. Out of my comfort zone.

This is good. I will continue to do this and start posting some hands for help.

Also I got it in preflop with JJ or QQ a couple of times and hit the top of their range. I was starting to think they only get it in with nuts then got jammed on by ATs after I squeezed!



---

Today I will play the same. I think there is a fundamental skill I am lacking in so getting into many many tough spots will help me to find it quicker.

I have a feeling I am getting too attached to good hands on later streets. Relative strength issue.

---

I will not lose by TAKING ACTION, we only lose when we DO NOT TAKE ACTION.

Woo hoo!!!!

I seriously got my butt kicked yesterday!!!

Lost 7.5 buy-ins but my God I enjoyed it!

I made a couple of dumb calls where I thought "Seriously they cannot have it AGAIN can they!?" - HUGE MENTAL LEAK - Glad I spotted this. Pat on the back for AWARENESS and at least it is something to work on.

Also there is a little bit of "Not caring about $5 tilt" in there. I have no idea what this is called. Losing $35 is peanuts to me BUT getting into spots IS really important so I don't care about losing SO LONG AS I LEARN FROM IT!!!

Over those last two days I have dropped my Fold v flop cbet by about 20% so I guess I am bound to be spewing eh!?

---

I have just rounded up some of my roll to buy some coaching.

Time to find out how the hell to play these hands when I don't fold!

---

Failure does not kill your dreams, doubt does.

NIce Journey!! Gonna have a follow



I have this problem too. I think the challenge is, is that poker is a game of information and we use the past ACTIONS of players along with other things to determine what kind of player they are or what kind of tendencies they might have. I think that bleeds over to the cards as well. Poker doesn't really care about the cards or whether we are lucky or unlucky, having a good or bad run. At the end of the day it all just comes down to our decisions and we have to make the best decision possible(+EV) in every spot. Even though we look at everything from a long term perspective, that doesn't mean that someone can't have a big hand a bunch of times in a row and I think we need to use the info we have on villain from previous hands to make the best decision, not the fact that they appear to have had a good hand a bunch of times in a row. If that is the case then we are probably going to lose some money, but we can certainly minimize that.

Now the challenge is, when we are developing, we don't always know what the best decision is. So posting hands and asking question can certainly help with that. I know what helped me the most was using an equity program like equilab and looking at flop turn and river spots from a broad perspective. Like what are all the hands that I have on this flop. What ones would be good to XC,XR, XF. So then moving forward to a turn card what hands do I now I have there and repeat the process, so I can get a general idea of the types of hands I want to continue with and ones I don't. It takes quite a lot of time and is an ongoing process. Looking at a solver actually helped me too. It is a GTOish game plan, but still nice to know what hands solver says are +EV in all those spots and using that as a baseline and adjusting play according to your villains play style and tendencies.

Keep it up and good crushing at the tables

Thank you for taking the time to give me some great advice there.

I am trying to learn how to analyse hands like you said. I am considering to get a solver sometime soon so maybe you could recommend one?

I have no idea which hands to XR and which to XC so far. I looked at a print out of a Piosolver result and when i tried to see my ranges I realised I am only check-raising the nuts and not bluffing which is obviously LOL!!! Especially as I am always upset when they fold to my XR!!!!

I was also just looking at how different flops affect ranges. Dynamic or wet flops seem to favour the in position player quite a lot.

Thanks again for great post.

P.S. Is it possible to set notifications to email me when somebody posts in my thread here???

---

I continue to get killed at the tables. I think it is a 16 buy in downswing now but really it does not matter.

As long as I am learning I am happy. I will switch my study v play ratio a bit from now and study more than play.

The problem was/is I don't really know HOW to study but now I am getting some good advice! Thank you!

---

Already from studying Piosolver print outs I have reduced my fold v cbet flop down to good numbers both IP and OOP.

The only problem is that I am clueless whether to call or raise at the moment and if I call how to continue on the turn.

I imagine again on the turn I can base my continuing range on their bet size and try to make them indifferent to bluffing.

---

Much work to do...

---

Sometimes the TEST we go through today is just TRANSPORTATION to get to an incredible DESTINATION

So I guess I will start with the solvers. I think there are 3 that will give you the same types of outputs: Simple Postflop, PioSolver, and GTO RangeBuilder. The first 2 are stand alone programs. I think GTORB is a web-based one and I don't really know much about it. I don't believe there are differences in the kind of outputs you get from them, so it just comes down to preference and pricing. All of them allow you to do turn and river solves for free, but you would have to be able to put in some decent ranges that each player would get to the turn and river with for a given board. Pio has a couple of different pricing levels and each level brings with it more options or possibilities. They are like $250, $550, then I believe there are 2 more that go up from there. Simple has one option which is $799. On both of those you would run the solves on your machine, so the main thing is you need to make sure your PC has enough RAM and enough cores to do the kind of solves that you want to do. The wider the ranges and the more bet sizing options the more power you are going to need and the longer it is going to take. So if you do something like COvMP in a 3bet pot, with only 1 bets size on flop turn and river, you won't need a ton of ram. However, if you want to do BUvBB in a SRP with 3 different bet sizes and donk bets are possible then you will need quite a lot of RAM and it will take a while. Simple has a way around this in that you can pay $70 for 100 solve points and you set the solves up and it sends the solve to thme and there server or cloud does the solve and sends it back to you. So then you don't need a strong machine to do the solves.

The solvers are nice, but I wouldn't get terribly bogged down in them. They do help you see some things you were not aware of and give you a baseline, but you have to remember, solver is making the assumption that both players are playing like it does, somewhat balanced and GTOish. I can say pretty confidently that you are not playing people who play like a solver does, not many at least, but it does give you a nice foundation or baseline and then you can make adjustments from there.

It helped me alot with the XR as well. I was only XR mainly strong hands and a little bit of strong draws, but on some boards in certain positional matchups solver will raise a ton, like over 20%, and that is against a solver like opponent, so if you have villains that over fold to raises you could, in theory, raise more. Here is an example of one. This is a JJ4r board in a BBvBU min raise spot with BU cbetting half pot on Simple. Pretty standard spot. Yellow is call, red raise and blue fold. You can see the frequencies in the bottom left and the screenshot is of the BB defense:





I think there is also merit in figuring out how to do some of this your self, using minimum defense frequencies. So that kind of addresses what you are talking about with bet sizing. Yes bet sizing will certainly change what and how you defend, as mathematically, you do not need to defend as much to larger sizes to still be unexploitable to someone just cbetting ATCs

@fawltyfelix Thank you for another great post. Your help is very much appreciated! I would like to ask around for a lot of screenshots like yours and I can just practice those spots to get better for now. Then I can purchase later as I get better.

---

I only played 2 x 30 minute sessions over the weekend but did do a lot of study!

I analysed BB v BTN on A92tt, A95r and Q82r.

I noticed how far away I am from continuing enough of my range to be unexploitable. It is massive. I fold way too much.

I know that being unexploitable is not really an issue at micros. However, I was so far off that this is proving to be a great exercise for me to see how much I can change without even becoming a calling station!

I also noticed that I must defend my BB at slightly different frequencies depending on what size the PFR opens. I don't know how to determine how much to defend just yet but hope to find this out soon!

---

I will do whatever it takes, and when I get there I will teach and inspire others that they too can become great.