So a couple of things to note today,

1. nl4 is going well enough after some brutal stuff and br is back up to 215e from 182e a couple of days ago; seriously, some people will just go with anything. Game selection ftw!

2. Took some time to read up on HU play and watched a vid series on here. It seemed like it might be fun and improve my game, especially hand reading and suchlike.
Problem is on Betvictor I could only find nl50 games, which is way above my meagre pay grade, especially given the suggestion is 40+ buyins! that's a shame because I liked the look of it, it seems like it could be my type of thing. Anyway, maybe next time, maybe next time.
For now I can use the knowledge to improve my game at 6 max, which it may be actually, as I'm beginning to play a little differently already (for the better I hope).

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Deep versus a standard 21/16/3, our friend is never bluffing after snap-shove river but good enough for me for betting like a little bitch.

Worst hand I played all session.


Bit of rakeback at the end of the month and it'll be nl10 time again as long as the rng stays in a good mood til then.


Meantime, there's always reading them like looking through the window:

Villain may have KK/AA of course but never a queen, otherwise regs don't bet so hard and either way he's all in on the turn, not checking. The fish is just doing what fish do - for SPAAARRTAAA of course!

Glad to haer things are going well! Gogogo

You are too kind sir.

Now, I've been trying to doa couple of things versus passive/weak reg types last few sessions, nothing drastic but just some things others don't do, like playing IP but when I'm OOP if ya get it. Seems I can take a lot of pots away on later streets but I gotta have my wits about me, which is another reason to try 'stuff' it keeps the brain cell(s) wet.

Anyway, sometimes you can tilt regs and they get all uppity and whatnot:

What d'ya think, call it off for the gutshot (AND a bdfd, oh yes! ) because he's tilty?




So anyway, I decided this HU stuff is a bit loosey goosey for games like anon nl4 but I'm still taking a peek here and there, ya never know, Jon or Ferg might turn up and I'll need a few totally outta line fish-tricks.

So I'm still 'winning at around 1.5bb after 33K or so but fuck me these guys can hit it when they need to, just brutal lately!

That'll be 8 2-outers this week then mal? And there I was, tiltless.



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However, tilting the regs is my new fun move lately, seems to work just fine. Pick your target carefully and click raise relentlessly! I think 'Triggered' is the youngsters word for it.



Whew, 7-1 to them then - just!

Gn and have fun.
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Beat the regs, pay the fish; beat the regs, pay the fish, beat the ...

Sort of treading water now for what feels like ages but is in fact only 20K or so but my graph is up and down more times a porn stars arse again.
Tried a few things out lately with mixed results but that's fine, it's all going ok. I hope I win some soon, our washing machine is playing the tit and mrs mal is getting all tilty over it.

Luckily through all this I'm like water; water finds a way to carry on no matter what's in the way.

Laters.

Hmm, more slinky water thinking required methinks! I ran into just about everything except quads tonight, what they didn't hit they already had.




that puts me at around a monstrous 0.45bb/100 for the last, oh, 37K. I just rock eh?

wine-o-clock fk it.

A quiet evening for me after finding out mrs mal isn't well coming home from work. Was going to keepo her company but she'll be wtching Eastenders and Celebrity bloody Big Brother, so, I pumped her full of tablets, grabbed the tempranillo and legged it upstairs for a quiet 4 tabler; sorted.

According to my page on here I paid 133e in rake is that right? not sure if it's paid, or what's coming back to me but it's probably the former at (mostly) nl4. nice little boost when it arrives either way after the drubbing I got yesterday.

Pokerista-wise I was checking my stats after 37K and I'm still not cbetting so that's my next focus. Preflop - apart from being a nit at 21/16/4 ish - my stats seem to be not far off.

Actually, I think I fix the 3B% first since that's preflop stuff, then do cbetting.

Have a good one.

P.S. Wonder what Trey Gowdy will make of this Trump guy?

That's not a nice graph. New month starts today and by the mere fact of me posting in your journey will cause you to run god and win an insta 5bi!

Feel free to post your stats too, more than happy to take a look and see if I can spot anything that needs work.

Wow, there's a Harvie in my journey, rungood mode switched to on - and thank you for the offer to, my stats could use [more than] a little tlc!

I play anon tables a lot and it's amixture of nl4/nl10 shot (which was a disaster). I've been working hard on preflop and am ok for now with being a bit nitty when 3 of the other guys are 55/30s etc.

Preflop:
So, work done has been construct ranges from scratch and then find out they're fairly ordinary. No surprise but I now understand where and why of them and can adjust a bit for dynamics better because of it.
My 3betting is poor, partly because it and squeezing gets little respect so it's value-town stuff mostly.
My general preflop seems to be ok, apart from the nitty bit obviously, but then I'm no expert at that. I'll be opening up a bit as I move up, hopefully not too long now.

Cbetting is more of a problem, in fact a huge one. If I do iso with AK and get 3 callers it's hard to cbet a 568 two-tone flop So much work to be done there for sure.
Aggression is another huge problem. As mentioned I've worked a lot on preflop so postflop I'm just getting going.

I'll get there soon enough, I have a year.








So, meeting my mother this morning who has found my Christmas present at last and wants to give it to me today (don't even ask).

Hey there Mal. Thought I would pop in and say Hi as well. God to see you got a roll and are still playing, really happy about that and working hard on your game as usual.

Yeah graph looks pretty bad at first glance, but only around 5bi, can be pretty standard at 4NL anon. Having a quick look at your stats, yeah I would say too tight. You gotta play where you are comfortable but still think you could be opening and 3 betting more. Since jumping on board with the group I am with I play closer to 25/20 sometimes higher than that. Its not crazy loose, but certainly gives me more chances to win pots against some of these maniacs. My RFI are like 16/20/28/52/39. I will open wider from CO, BU, and SB if I have anybody other than regs behind. . After having done some analysis on player pools, and seeing that, in general, guys at these stakes just don't defend their blinds enough, I like to steal a lot from BU and SB now. Your CO and BU PFRs seem super low and can defo be 3betting more.

You could try going to a more depolarized 3bet range against all these rec players. As you well know, using hands that are too weak to call, as polarized 3bet bluffs, rarely works against those super loose guys. You just don't get the folds, as some of them just never fold to 3bets, but if they are playing 55% of hands you can be 3betting a ton of stuff for pure value against them, as they are not folding enough of there range to your 3bets. Start 3betting hands that have potential to make nutted hands that you can stack them with. Also by 3betting the fish more, you can try and iso them and get away from the family pots more and start playing them heads up. I know that is great in theory cuz once one of them calls they all come along, but if you are 3betting a bunch of suited BW, SCs and 1 gappers, along with your premiums, then you don't necessarily mind if you go multi-way. There are a couple of caveats obviously. Can't have a reg at your table who is seeing what you are doing and starts to cold 4bet you alot, cuz then you are in a pretty shitty spot. Also because you are upping your 3bet percentage, you need to be willing to defend more of it to 4bets

I am on MPN as well now. I haven't been feeling well myself the last 2 weeks so I haven't been playing much. So I have been playing 4nl mostly myself as I don't feel 100% and felt it not wise to play my normal stakes at 10NL. Lesson learned from you. I am starting to grow up Just got done playing for about an hour on 4 tables and had a pretty sick session. Up over 6 bi and had my first almost 400bb pot. I'll leave you with that. I played it kind of unorthodox, but player 5 was a bit of a nut job, and mission accomplished when the hand was finished.

Take care bud, see ya around!!

Not many people in this world I want to see achieve great things in poker more than i do you buddy!

Great to see you around and @fawltyfelix

Thanks a huge bunch guys, working hard on it on my lonesome so very much appreciated indeed.

@fawltyfelix , that J9 seems sensible

And yes, I can agree with just about all of what you're saying, we've played in the trenches at anon before haven't we!

Now, as to the too tight bit I'm currently getting back into iso-the-rec mode which is helping me get more aggressive. I will also be adding a few hands to my starting ranges because I'm not adjusting my opening enough yet v different opponents. This will also help my pf 3betting/squeezing/defending v 3bets as well as I get more competent. I don't think I'm far of to be honest, just a few tweaks then it's move up time.

I'll post more about it when I do a review again this month.

Been watching a 22yr old very pleasant Dutch guy Swarleyy on and off playing a 24hr stream on twitch, 4-tabling nl50z, winning about 10BI and looking just as fresh at the end as when he started ...

... fk I feel old.

Pop in for a chat anytime you guys, always pleased to hear from you.

Ten years ago I was able to go two nights without sleep and still function. Nowadays, if I don't get 8 hours of sleep every day my quality of life dramatically decreases. All-nighters are no longer a reasonable solution to any problem and I think that's totally fine. 24-hour degen winning sessions sound really romantic, but they aren't healthy in the long-run and aren't necessary in the short run so you have nothing to feel bad about.

I was lurking in this thread for a while now so it's only fair that I make my presence known and assure you that I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you!

Aha, a lurker in my midst! Well you are welcome anytime MattVIP, I've read so many of your articles and yet to find one that was 'meh', so feel free to throw some of that wisdom my way, I could use certainly it!

Ye I agree about that all night stuff, those days are long gone for me.

The guy was doing it to celebrate getting his 1st 1k followers and picked up another few hundred during the stream. He seems to be a bit of a beast at long sessions having done 3 or 4 24hr ones so far. Has lots of those star thingies on his Stars avatar so I assume that's SNE level but I don't pay a lot of attention to that stuff so guessing a bit.

As for me, I'm winning pot after pot after pot and then getting coolered to put me at a loss for the session. Seems to be happening a fair bit, if that ev line goes any further above my green one I'll need to turn my graph to portrait view! Thank goodness for rakeback I say.

I think I'm doing fine but my carefully mapped out hand charts need to be adjusted I think for looser tables. I just need to get into more iso spots - which are always fun do do - but be a bit more confident of cbetting and stuff when OOP.

Anyway, walkies time for the poo machine.

Wasn't sure which hand deserved hand of the day so I'll post just the two:



so this was 4BI and I was wondering htf do you beat these guys anyway? ...
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... then I remembered ...



Just the 5BI Mal? Ye, just the 5. Sigh, maybe next time, maybe next time.

Now where is that fkin mutt ...

Actually, what I'm pleased about is losing 1/2 my BR isn't bothering me now I know I'm crushing them, but that Sklansky guy owes me bigtime!

beer-o-clock.

So, couple more like that today (not posting any more of those now, too easy to whinge) and I'm down about, oh, 60 billion buyins or near enough that from starting roll.

So I'm studying blinds v a raise at the moment, seems I got it not too bad, but still in the bb I get a bit confused when the earlier positions min raise and what do I flat with. At the moment I'm guessing too much, especially when there are callers and we go 3 or 4 handed; my usual in thos espots is to just make up the blind with whatever I have and fold postflop unless I smash it.

So, some more sums and ranges to do today which is cool, along with more iso-raising from OOP.

My other lesson today is, of course, how to run good. That one could take a while

Basically look at your BB cold call range vs 3x. You can look at the equities of those hands vsUT open and how they relate to the pot odds. You are obviously going to have a bunch of hands that are on the edge of being profitable calls and folds. Some of them may even be hands you use as a polarized 3bet. vs 2x you can start to call some more of those hands as you are getting better odds.

Thing is against multiple opponents, yes you are getting a really good price, but you have to remember the EQ of your hands are less. A hand that has 30% or 35% EQ heads up, will have less EQ vs 3 opponents and even less against 4. So even though the price is great, you still need to consider how much EQ the hands have vs the pot odds and more importantly how the EQ realizes post flop. So you want to have hands that have good playablility post flop, especially multi way. So obviously you want to stick to hands that are suited and connected in some way. If you are calling a bunch of off suit semi connected hands you are probably just burning money.

Ye thanks for that @fawltyfelix that's about where I'm at and a lot of these minraises are weak if I pay attention to who it is I can just iso again. I disregard fish minraising until I find out more as well. Easy game ... honest guv.

Took another bashing today for 2.5BI and only got a bit back at the end or it would have been 6+. Bankroll getting seriously depleted at -35e ish last 3 days making my br drop below 90e, so this damned dealer had better wise up and bloody quick to, init!

Ok, off to watch a film, have fun.

Went broke twice again this morning in a short session, set over set and a fish hitting a gutshot str v my set. Nice job dealer, is taking th episs your hobby or wot?

BR down to 80-something but then I did play bad sometimes to, I aint all that yet.

I'm getting the idea better now with bb flatting but didn't even get much chance to flat the bb v bu open today my holdings were so bad.

Town today taking the mrs to hospital for a checkup and rust removal, then it's home to shave her back and legs for charity wigs and walk the poo machine.

Might post something later if I'm not too tired, we'll see, the hospital is an 8 mile round trip and me carrying her rain gear.

Laters.

Damn that walk finished me yesterday! 4 miles there, a wait of about 10 minutes then 4 miles back carrying her (and my) rain gear, dog food and a bottle of wine. Rekt
She got the all clear so that made it worth it but my dogs were barking something terrible when I got home. Nil poker, just chill on the sofa with the wine, the mrs and The Day After Tomorrow. bit of a silly film imo but it's her favourite, so, whatever.

Poker this morning and I got all excited when this happened versus a reg:



I lost most of it back to the same guy later (posted the hand here , give me your thoughts if you get time ), but at least I posted a (very small) winning session for the first time in a few days! I'll take it given my graph looks like an advert for Ski Sunday.

Wont play much more today but I'll be working some sums for bb v sb. Lots of sb limpers and I tend to raise to 3x virtually any two there if they've shown they can fold. I need to find what to raise in the bb when they don't. Presently it's any two both higher than a 9, but I read that somewhere so I'm not considering it legit without the theory.

Laters