I have not been active on the forums at all for awhile. I wanted to start playing poker again semi-seriously. The main reason for this blog is so I force myself to review hands/results and make myself more accountable for my mistakes. The blog is going to be a way to track that. I expect to update the blog once a week-ish. Don't really expect anyone to view or comment on it, doing this more for myself.
Some history: I stopped playing seriously and starting working a real 9-5. Got promoted a few times and currently working a good job and making a comfortable living. FYI college grad jobs are a lot easier than poker IMHO. Oh I also got married! and been traveling to many different countries. She currently is working a well paying job as well. We do not have any kids so most of our money is expendable income which is going towards traveling.
Enough of life stuff. I think there are benefits of working and playing poker. Biggest probably being that your winnings isn't going towards any kind of expense. Anything you make from poker is just extra expendable income. This takes a burden off while playing. You do not feel "forced" to play X amount of hours. Since you have less time, you play less. But the times you do play, you end up playing at a better state of mind and close to A game as possible. This is true for me but might be different for others.
I was playing mainly 200NL 6m with some (failed) shots at 400NL before stopping several months. I withdrew most of my roll. I had about $3800 laying around on sites which I decided to start grinding up again. I started playing at 100NL but was not doing too well. I was making some bad plays and do not blame anyone but myself. I decided to drop down to 50NL for now until I feel more confident about my game. Here is a graph from when I started back up again like a week and half ago.
After about 5k hands I decided to do 50NL only for now. Once I feel confident I will move up to $100NL again. I will try to post some hand histories I am not sure about or I feel I did not play well. Starting with this one:
MP had 8, K (one pair, Kings).
Hero had A, 4 (one pair, fours).
Outcome: MP won €127.93
I think I played it fine until the river. I didn't like the river shove due to player's stack size after the block bet. Also, I did not have enough reads on villain to justify that shove. I knew the villain was a weaker player but this was the first time he showed down a hand like this. I think I like the shove more against a reg 200bb+ deep. Lesson learned..hopefully.
My goals are to at least put in 15k-20k hands of poker a month. I 4-6 table so that's about 400-500ish hands an hour. I do not play poker Fri/Sat as that's mainly time with wife/friends. I will start again Sunday and hopefully have a good focused week. Will update again next week.
Turn 3way IP i prefer a check back. OOP would fire 2barrel.
Folding river as played.
Agreed.
I did about 3.5k hands this week. My goal is 5k+ hands a week but life stuff got in the way. Before going on my break I was normally doing 6-8 tables of 6max. Now I notice that I struggle to focus when doing 6 tables and get enough reads on everyone. My main goal is to improve and try to move up. Hourly is not as important as improving right now so I will cut my tables to 4-5 for now. I seem to focus better and play better when doing 4-5 tables.
This week was a pretty good week, both my playing and running good. I can think of some hands that I did not like the way I played or questionable spots but it is far less than earlier this month. Here are my winnings by stakes this month:
Current BR is now $4892.52. Thanks to reload bonuses I am clearing.
Here is a hand I totally leveled myself. I think given the fishes limp, the reg would be raising wide here. I think the 3bet is fine but the 5b shove was bad due to villain's sizing and I did not have enough history on his tendencies to justify this play. This was early in the week and I have not made a play like this since.
Hero had J, A (flush, Queen high).
MP had K, K (flush, King high).
Outcome: MP won €98.75
This hand my hand is really under repped. Button is a fishy player that gives up a lot post flop. I checked flop hoping the turn may help either villains and I can take down a small to mediumish pot with two small bets on the turn/river. On the river, villain is a reg but I do not have any other reads on him. Once he jams over my raise, it is difficult to put him on a hand that I beat. I think all hands that I beat would've just called the raise. There is no reason for him to believe I am bluffing here and he attempts to re-bluff me.
I play most hands the same, except prob check back the A5hh 3-way on turn.
Thanks! Would you have shoved the AJo hand? :P
Originally Posted by Razvan729
why not bet flop on 89cc hand ? are you checking all 9x hands this spot?
whats your line for TT+, AK, AQ, 33?
Originally Posted by Alexos
actually yeah I half pot that flop with all my range there
If it was HU or 3 way with another reg then for sure I would be betting here. I was trying check and hoping the fish behind never puts me on a 9 and I can maybe get two streets of value on turn and river. That was my thinking at that moment.
My plans fell through for the weekend so I had free time and decided to put in some volume. I was able to put in 5k+ hands which I was happy about. This was the results:
A little less than a buyin down which result oriented is not bad. However, I played terribly and I am disappointed in myself. I was making calls and plays which I knew were to be bad but made them anyway, plays that I would rarely make few months back. I think a lot has to do with mental focus which I have to work on. Last post I said I wanted to 4-5 tables max but "chasing" my losses I saw myself doing 6-7 tables sometimes. One session I put in was 5 hours which was definitely not optimal.
I'm not gonna play today or maybe even tomorrow so I can review hand histories more and focus more on playing better. I'm going to post some hands that I lost and I was not happy with my play as a reminder to myself on how not to play. I will further review my hands after I get home from work.
Week has come to a close. I played 6k+ hands this week but disappointed in the way I played. Out of all the sessions, I think I was happy with only one of my sessions which lasted about 2.5 hours. Played close to my A game and can't think of any mistakes I made. Rest of the sessions, I played badly and pretty aware of where I am making the mistakes. I have to work harder on the mental aspects. Its not as if I'm making a mistake and not aware at that time, it's more I make the mistake knowing it's a mistake and not caring. Of course I know there are mistakes that I am unaware of, which just shows how far I have yet to go.
Results for this week:
Results so far after starting OP:
Graph after OP:
Will not be playing any poker today, just going over HH's. Will hopefully start again tomorrow. I noticed that the rake in Euro tables are absurdly high. I have paid quite a lot of rake, thus a lot of rakeback but I would prefer to just pay less rake.
Goals for next week are:
- 4 tables max
- 2 hours max each session
- Focus the entire time. Try to play close to A game as possible
- Start off with 50NL until I feel like I'm not making dumb mistakes and then try again at 100NL
Didn't get to play as many hands as I wanted to, however, I was pleased with the way I played. I can think of probably only 2 hands which I wish I played differently but the rest were very close to my A game. I lost a lot of coin flips this week so that threw my results off, especially at 100NL, but not gonna be result oriented and I am overall happy with my play this week. I ended up playing some 100NL hands due to having a session during odd hours and not getting enough good 50NL games going. I'll try to play more during peak times. I also noticed I can 6-7 table fine now. I guess I just needed a few thousand hands to get back into it.
Goals for next week:
5k+ hands 6-7 tabling 50NL. Maybe some 100NL if I feel confident and see good games.
2-3 hrs session max or until I feel like I cannot focus
Be more aware of mental state and not make "emotional" plays that are -ev
Post more hand histories in this forum and review other's hand histories
Recently I picked up Daily Fantasy Sports so I haven't put in too much volume these two weeks. I'm reading anything I can about it and still learning. My sample size is small ~500 tournies in the last two weeks but DFS seems easier than poker, atleast at the moment. The main benefit I see for DFS for me is that I can do the research and roster selection at work within about 2-3hrs..and some last minute tweeking at home before the games start. Right now I'm just doing NBA but getting into NFL as well.
Anyways, for poker here are the results for the last two weeks:
I am very happy with the way I played these two weeks and made minimal mistakes. There were many preflop hands/flips I lost so heres to hoping running better next week.
Goals are to do 5k+ hands this week while still doing DFS everyday. Maybe do more 100NL hands.
Haven't updated this in awhile but have not given up. Well not on poker atleast. I went busto on DFS (only tried with $200). I still think it is beatable and a lot of poker skills translate well to it but at the end of the day I find poker more enjoyable (plus im better at it). Trying to do both while working full time + wife + social life just leads to kind of being mediocre at both instead of trying to focus mainly on one.
Poker wise I have still been playing but probably only around ~10k hands a month. Currently I am playing mixed of 100NL/200NL 6m and FR. Here are my results so far this month:
Running pretty hot which always helps boost confidence. Goal is to put in at least another 10k hands before month is over.
Playing wise for the most part I have been happy with my play. There is one hand I can think of that I played really bad mainly due to playing around like 1:30am on a work day when I have work again in the morning.