10NL and beyond!

Yo yo yo yo, Petulie is back!

Had a long hiatus - long enough to almost forget my FTR password! Was off the tables for about a half year due to being overwhelmed by starting up a PhD and I was pretty fed up of being rubbish at poker tbh. Then a few months ago I had a little dabble - some 5nl here and $3.50 SNGs there. Gradually I remembered how much I love the pokers and my passion to improve has returned.

5nl was a nice place to start again. My BR was somewhere round $200 so comfortable roll, plenty of fish and terrible regs - good times. I watched some grinder school videos which really helped get me in the right frame of mind. Since then I really feel like I've been thinking more, actually understanding why certain actions are good in some spots and as a result understanding why they aren't so good in others. One such revelation was squeezing with hands like AJo. Great from the blinds against looser ranges in late position when you'll take it down so much - not so good vs tight ranges from early position which are more likely to call/4b and dominate the hell out of you.

I've also been finding more spots for stuff I always knew I could do but never actually implemented. For instance, min opening the blinds vs nits, donking to take down wetter flops I would previously c/f, leading turns vs weaker ranges rather than letting free cards roll off...

I've also started addressing questions which are embarrassingly basic. Things like can I call a 3b pre with my small pp/Axs or do I have the odds to call bets with draws? I was shocked by how rubbish gssd's are btw - odds of hitting are like 11:1, I've defo been burning money chasing those suckers!

Proud to say I've graduated from 5nl, graph below, pretty swingy but a nice positive trend imo. Moved up to 10nl with 40BIs (gone conservative with the BR management due to my tilty tendencies) and had a lovely run good of 10BIs. Let's hope it continues!



For sure I'm still making loads of mistakes, but I'm much more motivated to learn and improve now whereas before I just played poker for fun. So I figured a fresh approach needed a fresh blog, and isn't there something about how you can't beat the micros till you've started and failed 3 ops anyway?

So this space is mainly going to be for reviews, revelations, graduations, that sort of thing. Let's see how it goes!

Welcome back. Might I ask what field you're starting a PhD in?

Originally Posted by Penneywize

Welcome back. Might I ask what field you're starting a PhD in?

Bioremediation - using biology (typically bacteria and plants) to remove pollutants from the environment. Quite exciting stuff!

Update for all (if any!) of the Apple folk out there - just discovered a great PokerStove equivalent!

Previously I was using Odds Oracle by ProPokerTools which totally does the job of calculating your equity against different ranges on different boards (and free!) but frankly it wasn't very pretty.

There's a new program out now which looks to be pretty immense - PokerCruncher. I got it on my phone ages back and chose to use it over Odds Oracle and I'm happy to find they've developed a Mac version while I've been away from the tables. It costs a pretty penny, £10.49/$14.99, but that would quickly be covered in EVs. According to reviews it's more powerful than PokerStove in that it can also evaluate how different hands/ranges hit different board textures.

Only had a brief play but I quite like it. And it's prettier.

carrots are good for seeing better in the dark
PhDs are good for decorating walls
online poker is good for missing deadlines

nice graph, if you can include it in your thesis i'll ship you some $$

welcome back petulie and all the best with your gambools. i'll be folllowing.

ohh, and

Originally Posted by daven

online poker is good for missing deadlines

QFT!

Calling with draws

Something I worked on just recently was determining my equity and whether or not I could call with draws in different spots.

So the two main questions/calculations are:

1. How often do we need to be good?

= amount to call / (bet + pot + amount to call)

(more commonly known as bet/(bet+total pot) but that confuses me sometimes)

2. How often do we hit on the next card?

Number of outs/Number of unseen cards in deck

Another useful equation is that for calculating implied odds:

Implied odds = bet / (pot + stack)

Right so onto the hands!

1. I post this one first because it surprised me the most. I knew chasing gutshots was bad, but just how bad was quite shocking.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (5 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) ($16.34)
UTG ($10.15)
MP ($9.73)
Button ($9.85)
SB ($4.15)

Preflop: Hero is BB with K, J
3 folds, SB bets $0.20, Hero calls $0.10

Flop: ($0.40) 6, A, Q (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $0.25, SB calls $0.25

Turn: ($0.90) 8 (2 players)
SB bets $0.20, Hero folds

Total pot: $0.90 | Rake: $0.04

Villain is 27/9 fish over 33 hands and has cbet 1/1 so far. Easy bet on the flop when checked to - taking it down so often, lots of good turns to pick up equity. Now when villain leads the turn, we're not doing so hot.

We need to be good here:

0.2 / 0.2 + 0.9 + 0.2 = 0.2 / 1.3 = 1 / 6.5

Odds of hitting our gs on the river (assuming K's and J's are no good) are:

4 / 45 = 1 / 11

Those are some sick odds you need to call with gssd's! I had never thought too much about it before, and while I usually fold spots like this, but I'm sure in times of tilt I've burned a stupid amount of money on 11:1 odds. Good fold.



2.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (6 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($13)
UTG ($4.70)
Hero (MP) ($10)
CO ($11)
Button ($20.32)
SB ($10.05)

Preflop: Hero is MP with 6, A
1 fold, Hero bets $0.30, 3 folds, BB calls $0.20

Flop: ($0.65) 3, 5, K (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $0.55, BB raises to $2, Hero calls $1.45

Turn: ($4.65) 4 (2 players)
BB bets $3.55, Hero raises to $7.70 (All-In)

Villain is unknown.

OTF we need to be good here:

1.45 / (2 + 0.65 + 0.55 + 1.45) = 1 / 2.75

Odds of hitting on the turn are:

9 / 47 = 1 / 5.2

With the implied odds vs a strong range and the chances of taking it down on the turn when villain shuts down, I saw this as an easy cbet/call.

OTT we'll take the implied odds into consideration since we appear to be up against a stronger range:

3.5 / (4.65 + 3.55 + 7.70) = 1 / 4.47

We've picked up equity with our oesd, so odds of hitting on river are:

15 / 46 = 1 / 3.06

Again, an easy call on the turn. At the time, I wasn't sure if I could call such a large bet, like 3/4 pot. I kind of knew I didn't have much fold equity with so little behind, but I didn't want to fold my hand and so I opted to shove. Awful. Calling would obv have been better where I'd be saving $4 the times I miss. Oops.

Something quite interesting I learned from this hand. So with the flush draw alone we can call 2/3 psb's but don't have the odds to call 3/4 psb's. The added oesd of course adds to our equity making it ok to call 3/4 psb's. This realisation will help me with bet sizing in future when I've got tp on a tt board or whatever.

I'll leave it at those two actually as those were the hands I learned the most from. The rest I went over were pretty bog standard as I just wanted to get a feel for when I could (not) call.

I am the ultimate tilt monkey. It takes a fair number of coolers before it starts getting to me and usually I'm quite good at shutting down the tables and clearing my head for a few days, but yesterday I went into total meltdown.

I've been not been running so well the past week. That's fine. I can deal with some variance. The past two days however have been redic. It's as if Stars is taking the piss - the site's rigged man! Problem was, I had a quiet Saturday eve with the place to myself and all I wanted to do was grind while the tables were at their fishiest. Started off my day with a quick session where I of course ran bad and lost a couple of BIs. I knew at that point that it was getting to me and the best thing would be to stay off the tables for a few days. But I'm stubborn. So I shut down, cleared my head for like 6 hours and then hit the tables again. That's when disaster struck.

6BIs down yesterday. Totally could've minimised that to like 2. Overall, end of the month sucked for me which is quite gutting. Kind of feel like I was shooting towards 25nl and now I'm back where I've started. Just need to remind myself that's not the case cause my game has improved like 300% the past few months.

Lesson learnt: weekend or not, if I'm tilted, I'm staying away from the tables!

June graph below.