Swingy…….but good

Hey, this week has been a bit nuts really, i guess i’ve just been having one of those periods where every time you win a stack you seem to lose one 10 mins later! and of course if you play at 2nl like i am atm then the frustration is tenfold b/c when you lose a hand at 2nl chances are it was a bad beat of some sort!

I’ve had people hitting runner runners, miracle cards on the river to make their 2 pair of Qx a winner vs my AQ, people hitting when they’ve been drawing to a gutshot straight on a flush drawn board, people set-mining in 3bet pots with <50BB in their stack. It’s really been unbelievable at times, and the only thing thats getting me through this ordeal is the fact that i know i’m flying so far above the levels of my tablemates that i’m not just shitting on their heads as i soar up above, i’m dropping lumps of ice turd on them b/c i’m that high up it’s froze by the time it hits them lol

Of course i have been keeping a level head and, trying, not to get too cocky, after all, the winning formula at 2nl is clearly to just get the volume in and play your good hands, even at 6max tight is right this low down. I’m kinda glad that i’m going back up through the limits at the same time as reading PNL b/c it’s giving me a chance to put into practice all of the things that i’m learning, as i’m playing hands i’m constantly thinking on each street about if i want to commit my hand to that certain villain, i’m starting to think a lot more about peoples ranges and choosing better spots to get in that extra value bet on the river, this was something i rarely did before, i guess i was only playing my cards and the villains vpip stats. Something else that i’m impressing myself with is that i’m getting good at putting people on quite a small range of hands from their actions through the streets, i’m not exploiting this too much atm though, after all, even if you do have a strong feeling that someones on middle pair and you should represent the jack or w/e, at this level it just doesnt work b/c the villains really aren’t thinking about what you could have, they just see middle pair and jump around the room while calling every bet you make!

So, bankroll since the last update and a graph for my 2nl adventures so far lol,

Starting Roll: $70.66

Profit: $9.41

Current Roll: $81.30

Which means i’ve had a nice 5 BI week with $1.23 profit from PLO on the side :D

 

Next month, well i'm quite busy so not sure how much poker i'll actually be able to get in but some rough goals for me would be to:
- Get in 15k hands, not a lot but i'm busy so this would be a good number.
- Move up to 5nl, working on a system where i take 3 BI shots i need to get myself up to $115 in the roll, currently at $81.
- Finish PNL and maybe start reading it again, should be do-able.
- Learn to lay down hands where its clear i'm beat, made some good progress towards this today, making a couple of good lay downs.

Until next time people :P

2nl and a bit of PLO on the side

Hey reader, thought i’d chuck in a quick update, its not been all that long ago so nothing spectacular has happened really, played approx 2.3k hands at 2nl and i’m 3BI’s down, 2nl really is about volume so there's not a huge amount of hands that i could post on here that i’m having trouble with, the average player there is just soooo unbelievably bad you’ve just got to get the hands in against them and hope that your ‘actual’ ev line stays somewhere near your ‘expected’ line lol.

In my case, sadly, this week it hasn’t but hey, i know that 6max is a swingy game anyways and playing it this low is bound to be more volatile in terms of variance, i’ve just really gotta grind it out to get my roll up to the $115 mark when i can take shots at 5nl, hopefully i run good when i get there as well :D

Apart from playing 2nl HE i’ve been playing some $2 PLO as well, not much, but i’ve decided to start mixing it up a bit to keep me entertained, also, PLO at the $2 level is insanely easy so it’s a good way to help build the roll, i’ll be the first to admit that i don’t have a huge amount of knowledge when it comes to PLO but i do know that a good place to start is to try and make sure that all 4 of your cards are working with each other, or the odd 3 card hand with a straggler, like 9TJ5 for example, the basics is plenty to beat $2 PLO though, so it'’ll hopefully work out as a good way to take my mind off the micro HE grind, who knows… maybe one day i might play only PLO if i discover i’m better at it.

So graph since the last update then:

Like i said, nothing spectacular, just thought i’d throw in a little update, my all-in ev graph is saying i’m running at about $6 below expected so i can take a little comfort from that, what i’ve lost playing 2NLHE i’ve pretty much made back playing $2 PLO though so its not too much of a disaster i guess.

Current Bankroll: $70.66

2nl BI’s needed to move up: 22

Got a bit of time off this week so hopefully i can get in a bit more volume and the next update will see me a bit closer to the $115 mark, i really hope i run goot lol

Peace out

Back to the grind bitches

So i’ve been gone for a while and for that i apologise, i know this might have caused an adverse effect on some readers lives and i feel kinda selfish you know, everyone just must’ve been breaking down into tears when they checked my blog and found that i’d let them down again by not updating, so i’m sorry, it won’t happen again i promise.

The past month or 2 of poker for me has been a downward spiral really, i took out a chunk of my roll to pay for some wedding stuff, which i was happy doing as it was all profit from poker which made me feel good, i left enough to be still rolled for 10nl but then of course the downswong came and i ended up back at 5nl and getting my ass handed to me by the deck on a regular basis, i ended up in a really negative state of mind and my play definitely suffered as a result, a load of spewy, tilty, generally horrible play later (losing $80 at 5nl is rather horrible) and i found myself right back down at $50 in the roll, $50 down from my original deposit after 40k hands and 3 months of grinding!

I think a graph would be more effective in showing just how bad a time it was for me, notice that the huge drop starts at about 6.5k hands and $90 later finishes at 7.8k, that 1k hands was like a kick in the balls for my confidence and it took me nearly 2 weeks to pick myself up from that, inbetween i was kinda just flitting about playing any old game really, even gave SnG grinding a shot once and stacked 10 $1.25 Sng’s lol

But anyways, enough of the whinging, i’m back now, i' realised that not all of those loses were due to bad luck and suckouts, i stopped feeling sorry for myself and instead looked at my game and realised that the majority of them were from getting into bad spots with hands that never warranted being in those spots, i was breaking the “big hand big pot,small hand small pot rule” over and over and it showed in my results, i was playing too loose and too aggressive for the micro’s, not paying enough attention to position and most of all stacking off far too lightly.

I think i needed this fall back to earth, i’d grinded up $300 and felt like i had this game cracked, which is stupid b/c i was only playing 10nl, and not very successfully at that lol I think i have a character flaw of sometimes getting too confident in my own ability, which can have its good points but it can also lead to me being cocky and slacking off when there's still improvement to be done. This has reminded me that your always learning in poker and if you take your foot off the gas for one second when it comes to self-study and improvement… then your not going anywhere, and for someone who dreams of retiring early one day to do this for a living its just not good enough.

So i’ve flung myself right back into this grind, starting from 2nl and $50 i’m going to play 6max exclusively and grind back up the limits, i thought i’d have trouble playing the penny games again but one good thing thats came out of this so far is that its made me completely detached from the monetary side of poker, all i think about now is buyins, and whether that buyin is worth $2 or $25 all i’m going to be thinking now is how many buyins i need to make to get to the next limit. I heard an interview with haseeb, or internetpokers, on mediocrepoker’s podcast where he said he used a BR system of moving up when he had 23BI’s for the next limit and taking a 3BI shot, so i’m going to do the same, a 20/23 system and see how it goes, I’ve made 13BI’s at 2nl this week so far, and thats not running hot, its just me crushing it, 15 more BI’s and i’ll be back up to 5nl, from there who knows :D

Sorry again for not updating in a long time but i was in a rough spot for me, but i’m back now and more focused than i’ve ever been so keep checking back here and see how i’m doing, any advice or comments on anything i discuss are greatly appreciated as they always were.

Next update approx monday me thinks, laters.