Posted 5 years ago
Just stay cool and make the right plays!
Posted 5 years ago
Its not gone very well. 1000 hands in to NL10 and I'm 3BI down. 2BI left in the shot. I'm not running well so far I don't think. My fold to 3bet is over 80% but I looked back over them and there wasn't many I could do anything else with. I'm not winning a single river spot so far. So there is some bad luck involved. In terms of bad play to work on, I'm giving up too much. A lot of my winrate in NL5 was picking up the few BB pots no-one was fighting for. I also don't know how to range flop raises. I think my ranging on Turn or River is OK, but flop I'm a bit lost.

So stuff to work on. I'm not sure if I can be bothered though just now. Maybe I'll just play NL5 as I don't have to work too hard and its a fun evening, rather than moving up. I'm not trying to make any money. I'll play out my shot and see if I can turn it around. Do some work off the table and maybe I'll get the big for that as well.

Posted 5 years ago
1000 hands is not that much... this is mostly variance. Playerpool at NL10 is not really different than NL5 so i think you should be able to beat it if you beat NL5.

When you have trouble regarding the higher amounts of money you are risking, get a programm that converts the money into big blinds. so your stack looks the same no matter if you are playing NL2 or NL2000.

gl for the next shot, I am sure you will succeed!
Posted 5 years ago
No I know its only a few hands. Poker is fun for me though, I'm not 'going to the top' or anything. So I need to get the right balance of challenge and winning. I have decent job and family and life stuff to manage already.

Anywho, I did get excited about doing some range work off the table, so I have range charts for the first time in a while. Tomorrow I'm going to do some of the classic board analysis I used to do as part of my warm up. You know the sort of thing, board is J84r, and we are PFR, how does this hit their range, vs we call OOP, vs we 3bet and get called.

I used to do 3 boards, 1 scenario, or 1 board, 3 scenarios before each session. If that keeps being fun then great, maybe I can have a stab at moving up. Its like rewatching an old series you used to like. Not sure if its fun because I don't remember it all or fun because I remember parts of it. Amazing what you forget from not playing for over a year.

In other news I got some bonus money and had a small winning session today, so I'm back to have 3BI left in my NL10 shot. So far I'm just making sure I clear the Pirate bonus thing on 888 Poker. Looks like it will be worth around $30 which on my BR is a nice little boost. Same with the freerolls. You can sometimes min cash without even playing, so I always make sure I'm registered. The rewards program at the basic level seems to be focused on making you play lots of days, rather than play lots of hands or rake a lot.

NL10 is a bit dead though. If I stick at NL10 and build a BR, I'll probably have to find a different site to play on with some actual traffic. Party most likely if I can recover the accounts I had set up. Whats the view on Party these days? I could go back to Stars but after they allowed my account to get hacked from Russia and cleared out I'm not keen.

Just in case people weren't aware, this is what happened. I realise that I should have changed my password regularly and had the multi factor sign in (and that was a big lesson for me), but they allowed an old password database that wasn't secure to modern standard to get accessed, and people who'd not changed their passwords for a long time (3 years roughly, yeah yeah I know) got wiped out. They allowed someone from Krasnodar to log on to my account, like 2 hours after I'd logged on in the UK, when I can't log on from abroad when I go on hols. And they allowed the player to play heads up SNG which I'd never played until all my funds were gone, open jamming everything bad and folding anything good.

Just be careful out there everyone. Change your password frequently, hackers are better than their security teams. Use multifactor signin anywhere it is available, if you have a big BR don't keep it in the account, transfer it into your actual bank. Poker sites are not the wild west, but bigger and better firms than them have been hacked and data/funds removed. So enjoy poker responsibly.
Posted 5 years ago
Writing that made me go an change the password on the 888 account I'm playing on now. It was a password again I'd had for multiple years, and it now wouldn't have met the criteria for a new password. Case in point. Think about your passwords at least every few months, my dudes!
Posted 5 years ago
Good point! I don't change my passwords anywhere near enough that is for sure!

3bi is a pretty standard swing and sure it will turn, if not just drop back down, rebuild and then give it another go!
Posted 5 years ago
Had my Party account hacked and cleared out not long ago, received the funds back fortunately but I now use the 2FA security thing on Party and Stars where you receive a text with a code upon trying to login for added security, nobody can get in without that code presumably.
Posted 5 years ago
Ended my NL10 shot a bit early, as I was worried about possible tilt. Learned helplessness basically is my poison, where the weight of losing stops me from making the right plays, and I fold everything. So ended up 4BI down (maybe 4.5 on the tables but made some bonus $). Back at $160 ish.

So I was digging through my stats to try and understand where I was going wrong. A lot of it was in folding to floats and probes I think. Check/giving up after i get called. In NL5 my stats were acceptable, around 50-60% at most, so my ranges were not horrible and I was making some check calls. At NL10 they were all above 80%. My fold to 3bet was also really high at 84%. If anyone was paying attention they could crush me without having any cards at all. I don't think I purposefully changed it though.

Overall at NL10 I was playing 26/21, with all my calls from BB as there was a lot of min raising and I defend wide. My 3bet was only 4.5% so could move some of those calls. Cbetting 60%, 45%, 25% Flop turn and river as well. Not good stuff, when my success rate was 50%. Basically I'm wussing out of bluffing, and telling myself they always call, then folding to the inevitable float. If I look at hands I checked turn or river, thats most of my losses.

Hopefully I can get back to some more acceptable play at NL5 and build back up to try again with some actual balls. There was 28/24, sub 70% f3bet, 50% fold to float and probe, cbetting more flop turn and river, and winning at 13bb/100 over 15k ish hands.

I also do like a weird statistical anomaly. My favourite one ever was on Stars I was a lifetime loser with KK. Even if filtered for AIPF. I just never won with it, over 100k hands. Won with AA, QQ, JJ, AK etc. But KK I always got smoked.

This little sample it is A5s. Every time I have 3 bet it so far I have been 4bet or cold 4bet. Which is odd as I've only been 4bet 23 times total. NL5 is a nit fest. I'll now notice A5s more cause of frequency bias.
Posted 5 years ago
Oh NL5, how I missed you on my brief foray up the levels.

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Just need one of these days to land in NL10, and we are set!
Posted 5 years ago
NL5 continued to treat me like gold, and I cleared a challenge driven bonus, that was worth about $30 all told. The upshot of all that is that the BR is now at over $200, and healthy enough for a Bank Holiday spin at NL10.

So far, on NL5 I'm up 34BI. NL10 should not be that much harder. Hopefully it goes better than last time.
Posted 5 years ago
Nice job! Just remember once you settle in not to be too passive, it's not like you're playing the bossman on Mighty MattVIP.

Looking forward to hearing about some rungood from here given your 5nl run! Party
Posted 5 years ago
I hope so too @Pwll, my dude. I used to beat NL10 pretty handily, so hopefully can get back to that level, trying to crack NL25 like its 2015.

I'm a lot more aggressive than I used to be at NL5, and is working. I got $70 worth of NL10 shot to play this time. If nothing else I'd like to keep it going for a while. Losing at 40bb/100 like last time is surely a low bar to clear!
Posted 5 years ago
Ooooo good luck on NL10! What always annoys me and why I don't play NLHE cash is constantly being 3 bet Laugh doesn't happen too often on Omaha so that's a plus for me

Looking forward to seeing positive results!
Posted 5 years ago
I got a bit fed up with NL10, and decided I just want to play for fun and a few $. I cashed out with a decent profit, and are left with $30 of bonus that I can't withdraw and found an old Unibet account with like $100 bucks in I'd forgot about. Standard of play on NL5 888 and NL10 Unibet is horrendous, so I'm just going to play that and withdraw any profits. I just like a little game to unwind, I've got enough pressure and stress in my actual job, as it turns into a decent career so I don't need poker being tough.

That's not to say I won't be focussing on getting better, as I like the process of it. I just won't be doing it to move up or anything.

Good luck on the tables everyone.