Setzy's 2008: Supernova Elite Bound

9 tabling six max isn't even comparable to 12 tabling full ring.

don't forget that your vpip will be about 1/3 higher in six max.

*Last edited by Setzy on Tue, 11 Sep 2007, 12:52am; edited 1 time in total*

Best of luck Setzy... I'm always a fan of your blog because I feel like your changing decisions about what stakes you are playing are very similar to my own.

I constantly feel like I need to change things up but I never seem to get anywhere and I end up back at FR. I guess it's due to the fact that I've played so much multi-table FR, that the swings and such are expected and therefore don't really bother me. Playing FR I KNOW that I won't have winning sessions all the time... 3-4 losing sessions in a row might be a touch frustrating, but nothing to send me packing.

I think it's great that you've added a hand count to your goal this time. Stick with it! No matter what happens. Maybe change the stakes or number of tables, but stick with it. I have to imagine that is the only way to get unstuck from the depths of FR monotony.

Another hangup for me is that somewhere in the back of my head I think that by switching games I'll find this pocket of free money because all of the other players are donks... which is not really the case. For example, I constantly read that 6-max is the bomb and that FR is the suck. So, I decide... "Ya know FR is getting a little stale.. maybe i'll give 6max a shot"... however i think somewhere in the back of my head I'm thinking... "I'm gonna pwn 'des fools for like eleventy billion ptBB... mwwahahaha..." and when I have a losing session or breakeven session I tend to feel like I played like shit and I don't know what I'm doing and run back to the safe recesses of the FR. Do you detect anything like this in your attempts to change up your game??

Best of luck.

Kingnat, yeah. You and I are born of the same mold or something.

I used to look for that "donk money" in every corner, as soon as I went on a downswing or got bored. In my experience so far, FR is the easiest game to just sit and rack up tons and tons and tons of hands. 6-max plays quickly, but seems to be a bit more draining as far as having to put people on hands and pay attention to the goings-on that happens in each hand.

You read "Better players make more money at 6-max" a lot...but I go and play 6-max and the majority of the time I don't see myself winning tons more when I'm on a rush than I do playing FR. When you lose you just want to make it go away, to do something to win...anything!

I remember one time when I went to play 6-max after getting tired of FR. I played for a couple days, heavily multi-tabling...can't even remember how many it was, like 9 or 10 or something. Anyhow things go well for a while, then I notice a guy that's playing back at me on a this one table in particular, I see how aggressive he is and I'm like "Okay, he's raising with all kinds of junk, can't wait till I get something great and get paid off!"

A while later I pick up JJ and get reraised for the millionth time, get it all in preflop and the guy has me dominated with QQ. Ran straight back to the warm, fuzzy bosom of FR DIRECTLY after that hand. I made a mistake, but instead of trying to learn from it I just went back to what felt safe and easy.

This project I'm seriously trying to learn. I do believe I have good hand selection, decent table selection (improved in the past few months), good understanding of hand ranges based on betting patterns, and I'm learning more about NL postflop play shorthanded, which is something I did not have much experience with. It's just putting all the pieces together that seems to be my problem.

I went on a heater and my PokerTracker broke because it was so amazed to see me winning, so now I can't upload and post stats! I have to look into this, but right now I've been too busy playing and working on my next Bonus!

Looking forward majorly to the HU tourney, I think it's going to be a good structure and I hope I win the damn thing Smile

I think I've learned something important about 100NL 6-max, and that is that the majority of players are good at preflop and flop playing, but the majority of them don't understand what to do if you don't continuation bet (if you mix up your play on them). I've now tried to take the best part of Sauce's guide and supplant it with my own ideas about how to play optimally at 6-max, and I've run much better since trying to completely run everybody over with over-aggression.

The latest Bonus has prompted me to play a lot of hands, but I'm still very far behind the monthly goal. Now with PT messing up on me, I can't even be sure how many hands I've even played! The number is just a number though, and if I make myself into a winning player it's more important than just playing X amount of hands.

PT's still acting up, and I haven't made an active effort to try and diagnose the problem. Every time I load any HH I get an error screen and it lists the HH with some other junk on it and says to check my error log and send it along with the HH to someplace...whatever.

Finished a Bonus today. I haven't played as much as I wanted because I was helping my family with some things, but the times I've played I feel productive and efficient. Reading hands well, making some good calls, a few not so good calls, and playing pretty solid overall.

It's nice to see that I'm well on track to doing what I planned for my annual goals. I have a couple long-term money goals that I'm about to set, but that may not be until the end of the year...have to stay focused.

So yeah, I got nowhere near my 100k. But that's really all bad I have to say.

I started a new database after I read the PT files, send out an email and found out my DB was full or whatever....loaded my September hands and it showed I have a positive winrate after 60k hands played this month!

Let me review my goals from September:

1.) Play 100,000 hands of WINNING 6-max 100NL by 9-tabling in the month of September. Anything above 0ptbb/100 is considered a success. Failed, but I did play 60k hands of winning poker.

2.) Upload my hands from PT nightly before bed. This will ensure a complete database. Complete! I am current on my database (though I was a bit behind when it screwed up halfway through the month)

3.) Learn Sauce's guide inside and out, and implement the ideas accordingly...especially paying attention to 3-betting players based on their potential ranges. Complete! I learned this guide very well, and though I guess I was running somewhat bad during the first part of the month when I was trying to implement it word for word, I ended up putting my own spin on it which turned my game around a whole lot.

4.) Review, post, and discuss hands much more than I have been doing. This will be the loosest of the goals, but nevertheless important. Semi-Complete! I reviewed more hands than I have in the past, and I discussed a lot of hands, albeit not on FTR...I didn't post a whole lot of hands, which is where the "Semi" comes into play.

I'm going to take another 200NL shot starting at the beginning of October. I haven't set any goals yet, but I will.[/b]

My goals for October will be roughly the same as September, except playing 200NL, and the # of hands is not paramount. I would like to get in the 60k range again.

I started playing 200NL Saturday, won a few buyins the first night, and lost them all back tonight. I reviewed my hands in PT for tonight (good), and could account for pretty much the entirety of my losses (actually after a second review, more than my total losses) in coolers and beats. One hand I made a bad calldown against what I thought to be a bad, loose player but was actually a wolf in sheep's clothing. Live and learn.

I am especially proud of my mental state after losing a few buyins at my new level. I'm not scared or ready to move down. Tomorrow, I continue!

I'm pleased to report that after 13k hands I'm in the green (barely, but I am!) at 200NL/PL. After completely reviewing my 200NL/PL database I've found some interesting set over set data:

Had set over set 5 times, only 1 my way (due to a poorly played flop by a villain, where I turned the overset), and one of the other 4 (all flop oversets) I runnered cards for a flush versus his overset. So I'm quite negative in the set department, which should slightly be diminishing my winrate!

There aren't too many hands I have found myself completely lost on, there are a couple that I maybe should get some feedback on..but I have been discussing some hands at length with other people which I think really helps my game. Tomorrow I continue!

Quick 30k hand update. I'm still positive at 200NL but my winrate has dropped below 1ptbb. I've been reviewing HH's, looked at lots of hands, trying to make sure I'm not incorrectly folding some hands. There are definitely a few I would play different with new information (villain tendencies, stats, etc).

Never in my history of playing have I had KK be a loser, but in this database my KK is getting straight OWNED. I haven't won a full stack with it yet, and I've run KK into AA 5 times and won none of them. On the flip side my AA has run into KK 3 times and I've lost none of those.

One big thing about 200NL FR is that the play is very tight preflop, but at the same time very aggressive. The chances to "set mine" are slimmer when you get 3-bet after raising a pp unless you're fairly deep. It's harder, but I do enjoy the challenge...and I feel myself improving as a player.

Still floating along. Had a good day yesterday, today was pretty breakeven. Starting to really feel comfortable with everything, which is the typical sign of me getting used to the stakes. Some things I've noticed about 200NL FR:

Players are much more aggressive preflop than 100NL FR. You see a lot more reraising and raising over a raiser and a coldcaller than at 100.

It seems players at 200NL float on low paired boards quite often if they have a low pocket pair. For example, if somebody limps and I raise whatever, they call and the flop comes 44J, quite often they check-call whatever low pair they have. I'm somewhat struggling with whether to try and push these people off their moderately weak hands, IF I even can (thinking most are putting me on AK or unpaired high cards after calling with the paired board). I'm becoming quite proficient at bluffing scare cards on the turn, but I think my river play still lacks somewhat.

I do notice that players seem to read me better than at 100NL. Not sure how true this is, but on the whole the regulars are just a little more competent, and the fish just a little less plentiful.

To me it's still frustrating to see so many pots get shipped away from me when I lose with the best hand and the money going in, but I don't think it happens to the extent that my winrate is terribly untrue. I'm not a huge winner, I never have been! But I am growing as a player...because if I still played at the level I did a while back, I would be getting slaughtered.

I'm on a nice upswing at the moment, so I can't complain about much. Just trying to keep an even keel and make sure I'm playing excellent poker all-around.

Yesterday I played my first ever $11R and cashed, but didn't go deep. The later half of this month I've been playing a lot of different games...cheapo turbo SNGs, 6-max LHE, 100 and 200NL FR, a few 3k starting chip and a few rebuy tournaments....just keeping myself fresh. I've grinded quite a bit and I want to make sure I can keep doing it, plus play well in other games too.

I keep thinking I should be posting HHs where I have questions, but really I don't have questions about much. There are a few times when I've put in more money than PNL says I should in a hand and then fold, but I think they are completely obvious spots (like easy double barrels or bluffs and I get called or raised)....so I'm not really sure what to post about. I'll think more on this.

I'm no omaha expert, but I think this is a pretty bad loss, right?

PokerStars Game #12670719976: Tournament #63858977, $20+$2 Omaha Pot Limit - Level VII (150/300) - 2007/10/16 - 21:34:01 (ET)
Table '63858977 9' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: SHUASHUA (27221 in chips)
Seat 2: xxxDACxxx (13510 in chips)
Seat 3: SetzerMason (3130 in chips)
Seat 4: elvis76 (8242 in chips)
Seat 5: nsinger (9440 in chips)
Seat 6: NedaikDue (42368 in chips) is sitting out
Seat 7: ropeymove5 (16396 in chips)
Seat 8: antone45 (85492 in chips)
Seat 9: DirtyEars (6593 in chips)
xxxDACxxx: posts small blind 150
SetzerMason: posts big blind 300
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to SetzerMason [Th Jh 7d 7c]
elvis76: folds
nsinger: folds
NedaikDue: folds
ropeymove5: folds
antone45: folds
DirtyEars: folds
SHUASHUA: folds
xxxDACxxx: calls 150
SetzerMason: checks
*** FLOP *** [Ts 3h 7h]
xxxDACxxx: bets 600
SetzerMason: raises 1800 to 2400
xxxDACxxx: raises 1800 to 4200
SetzerMason: calls 430 and is all-in
*** TURN *** [Ts 3h 7h] [3s]
SetzerMason said, "i got a million cards that hit"
*** RIVER *** [Ts 3h 7h 3s] [5c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
xxxDACxxx: shows [Td Jd 3c 3d] (four of a kind, Threes)
SetzerMason: shows [Th Jh 7d 7c] (a full house, Sevens full of Threes)

pokenum -o td jd 3c 3d - th jh 7d 7c -- ts 3h 7h
Omaha Hi: 820 enumerated boards containing Ts 7h 3h
cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
3c Jd Td 3d 39 4.76 769 93.78 12 1.46 0.055
7c 7d Jh Th 769 93.78 39 4.76 12 1.46 0.945

hey havent you played on Titan??

can i datamine there?? doesnt look like it.

Never played on Titan, I got no idea!

So last night I won a 600BB pot, easily the biggest of my poker career. I'm still doing fairly well at 200NL overall, put in a very long session yesterday and finished up several buyins. There is something to be said about implied odds...at 200NL there are actually opportunities to play somewhat deepstacked, and actually call a reraise or two. Starting off with only 100BB there isn't much you can do when somebody pops you to 14bb preflop and you're holding a low pp.

I'm very happy at the moment, but not content by any means. I definitely don't want to fall into the trap of "hey I'm doing well, I must be the best player ever!" I'm still not a great player. I may be playing well and running decently, but there are always things to learn.

Still doing well, and I am very pleased with my results since September. I have 100k hands spread around various limits, and in all of them combined I'm winning just over 2ptbb/100. Man, if I'm really good enough to sustain this (or even IMPROVE), I'm very excited!

I've been mixing in some PLO games when I feel like getting away from Hold'Em for a while. PLO is a very fun game, and I see how it could get very swingy. When I play I've been playing 6-max and yesterday I tried out HU for the first time. I tend to play extremely loose and aggressive since I play far less tables than I do at Hold'Em.

Well.

I took my first shot at 400NL today and decided to give myself a 2 buyin stop loss. Won some and lost some 4-tabling until I got about an hour in and lost a 60/40 flip in my favor and decided to quit down a buyin. I guess I have a "typical" bankroll to play 400NL but I have never been one for playing without a stockpile of buyins...so I think I will stick with 200NL until New Year's or so and then perhaps take another shot.

Right now I'm very close to getting to the 300k VPP Milestone and I would like to really grind it out and get that 400k by the end of the year. That's my end of the year goal, but I will post a November goal or two in the next few days.

Well, after donking around at Limit Hold'Em tonight I've realized my game sucks there, especially shorthanded, and I'm great at blowing through tons of BB in a short amount of time...so I'm barring myself from Limit. I want to play loose, and everybody shows up with top pair every hand Smile

Enough whining, this post isn't about that, it's about November goals! But let's go back and examine how we did in September.

I played about 60k hands, so that is good...I played winning poker, and that is also good.

For November I want to get to 350k VPP so I can make a run for 400k by the end of the year. Right now I'm sitting about 5k shy of 300k. I really need to stay away from everything else except Omaha and play FR Holdem.

Have another winning month, and continue to beat up 200NL.

Keep reading and reviewing...I've slacked off some on re

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Setzy's 2008: Supernova Elite Bound