Day 108?

Alright mates, so heres the latest. I started getting back into poker this summer, and all was going normally and slow until i decided to play some mtts. 15$ mtt, i took 2nd, and earned 450$ profit 15$ mtt, i took 1st, and earned 700$ profit. yeah, it feels pretty good. that said, my br is currently hovering around 1k due to many tourneys where i didnt win. I think for now my plan is to split my time between cash games (10nl for now until i learn more) and mtts, so that i can learn to get better at those.

Day 107

well, I guess its been a while, but Im back now!

just finished off finals a couple hours ago, and so im offically done with the quarter. now, with about 1/4 of the year gone, its time to get cracking on that new years proposition

Day 106

Slowly regrinding back up from the bottom.

New Year's resolution/goal: put in 100k hands by the end of the year.

yeah, i know thats not a lot relatively speaking, but I figure it wont push me to spend too much time on poker, while still giving me room to expand. Let's see how this new year goes. gl all

Day 105

shit.

Day 104

Well, Ive been putting off writing this post for the same reason I always put off making these kinds of posts, that is, Ive been doing pretty badly lately.

I stopped playing poker for a while due to school and this cute chick entering my life, and when I finally got back around to trying to grind again once in a while, I found that I had become super rusty, and my game consequently suffered. my br is sitting just a bit short of 460 at the moment, due to a gradual steady downward sloping greenline. ive stopped playing 10nl for the time being, and im going to be trying to focus more on studying instead of just grinding until I can reclaim my title as a profitable poker player.

All that said, despite the pretty big drop in my br, im not actually super worried about it. overall, my life is getting better, and though it got a little offbalanced at first (though not in a bad way), things are starting to level out. Its like how the game of adjustments works in poker: you see an imbalance, and you act accordingly, and then your opponent adjusts to the imbalance you created by exploiting his imbalance, so you adjust back, and so forth until theoretically optimal play occurs. only with life, youre not playing against opponents, and youre not exploiting. or at least im not. its like a win-win situation, where im trying to find the most optimal me.

i love poker.

Day 103

Oh, tis a sad day. I only have 1$ left in bonus to clear. beyond this lies only the cold hard future of bonusless grinding. woe is me.

on the bring side of things though, my br is now just less than a dollar from 540. woot woot! gotta love 10% bumps in one night.

this was accomplished through multitabling every table of 4nl and 10nl that was open, and following a fairly tight preflop stratey. something like 10 tables in total i guess. cheers!

Day 102

So, its been a while since my last post. I went on a bit of a downswing a couple weeks ago, br fell to 435. Then I went on vacation with my family, which was a really nice break from just everything, really. I spent some of that time studying poker, and trying to generally improve my game, and I also played some HU games (for freeee) with my bro. In doing so, I realized that its really cool. heads up, that is. Rather, going into it with some semblance of analytical reasoning is very cool. So between that, and my occasional games with my roomies, Ive been focusing a little more on my HU game. my br dropped a little lower after I got back from vacation, but once I got back in the swing of things, it started growing again. like a little flower.

er...anyways, so ive been playing cash games as usual, but ive also been mixing in some HU sngs for the fun of it. Admittedly, I havent been following very precise br management in that, but I usually play anywhere between 2$ - 11$, depending on how i feel/ what games are open. 5$ seems to be a pretty sweet spot, and even at the most, the 11$ games arent totally awful with regards to br management (eg, 400$ roll = ~40 HU games) The worst I did was an 18$ hu sng, which i won thanks to a suck out.

Another thing Ive realized is that it is a wonderful feeling to be playing higher stakes. not because theres more money on the line (honestly, even with my br management, i still get a little antsy at times), but rather because if i want, there are actually lower stakes games I can play. not to mention, its generally a softer game.

Also, I really like occasionally mixing up my games. eg., ill play cash games for a while, then switch to HU SNGs, and back again, etc ad tiredum. it keeps the decision making fresh and whatnot. Ive also been playing around with HU cash games, which is a little tricky since cake doesnt offer low stakes HU tables, but theres this one dude who ive been playing HU against who has been bumping my roll even more. its great.

hmm, what else did i want to touch on....oh yeah! last thing on my list is that i also greatly appreciate the ability to cut down on tables. yeah, i know its nothing new, but theres a certain difference between playing 4-6 tables of 10nl vs 2 tables of 10nl, and 2 of 4nl hu cash. iono, it might just be me being a silly person, but it takes some of the stress out of the equation.


unrelated to poker- i just started school again for the new year, and this quarter looks like a doozy. im just hoping that ill be able to force myself to not waste too much time, so that I can stay well balanced between school, piano, social life, and poker. we'll see how that goes.


Aaaaaaand for the grand finale, my br just broke 500! w00t w00t! in d4 h0uz.

Day 101

Had a kinda meh day of poker. I finally got moved into my new place, so I had a longer break than I would have preferred. I wasnt paying enough attention, even though I was only 2-tabling, but I still managed to come out with a little profit. Would have been more, but my qq ran up against a set of twos on an underboard, and I ended up paying the guy off. I could have gotten away from the hand, but oh well. live and learn.

br is about 475, though i transferred 10 to a friend, and perhaps the only reader of this blog. Yes, Im going to break the fourth wall, right here, Chris. gl mate.

Day 100

Wow, the big 100 already, huh?

its weird how time flies by. I still remember starting this blog back when I focued on sngs, to little avail.

I just finished a pretty good grinding session. I was kinda wondering if i could hit some milestones in honor of this hundredth post (not actually, since some days had multiple parts, but oh well.) Instead, im just a bit short of all of the milestones, but to be honest I kinda like it this way. Its like in honor of Day 100, my goals are in sight, but just out of reach, so Im keeping the forward momentum, instead of sitting atop my peak, with nowhere to go but down.

Anyways, heres the breakdown.

raw poker profit is once again just short of 100$$, and within 1 bi. Im less than 2000 hands away from 50k, and my total br is just shy of 400$ (also within 1 bi).


with regards to the session, I was doing moderately well, made a questionable play that lost me a bi(still with good profit overall though) and then i decided to stop playing after 3 more rotations at each table, since i was getting kinda tired. and then i just started flopping nuts after nuts. well not really, but there were like 2 or 3 really good spots, the most noteable one being when I held 67s, and the flop came 345 rainbow, and I got into a 3 way all in between full stackers. one had 33 for a set, the other guy spazzed out with like k5. the straight held up, and i took down a 30$$ pot. it was slick. Beyond that, there were only like two times during the entire session where i honestly just sucked out, the rest was pretty solid.

In 10nl now, its surprising how quickly my br can grow (or plummet). I know its just logical, but its one thing to say it, and another thing to see it.


i think ill wrap up this post by just saying that if youre reading this (hah, nobody reads this), just know that hard work and studying really do pay off in the long run. it may take longer than you expected, and there will be days when you may feel like quitting, but if you persevere, you can attain great results.


anyways, now that Ive finished writing like Im some sort of baller poker pro, Im probably lined up for another 10-15bi downswing.


cheers mates, and gl at the tables!

Day 99

Well, three smirnoff ices into the day, I decided I had taken a long enough break from poker (I havent been playing for the past few days), so I decided to give 10nl another shot. To compensate for the booze and bad play in recent past, I decided to cut down my usual 6-tabling to only 2. The results?

well...when 6-tabling, I found myself hitting some pretty chaotic swings, and overall losing money at a slow (or sometimes faster) rate. 2-tabling last night, I made 4bi +10$$ bonus for a whopping total of +50$$, with almost no swings whatsoever. The big question here, I guess is why, and I have a bit of an answer to that. It might seem really obvious (and it probably is), but there is a whole shitload of little bits and pieces of information that I lose out on when I multitable. Also, when multitabling, I tend to fall into a pattern, and can suffer from a lack of thinking in my decision making, just relying on a set strategy. Which I guess wouldn't be so bad if I actually had a kickass strategy, but seeing as I am not that level of poker god, it tends not to work out quite so fortunately. Instead, I end up finding myself in spots where I dont really have any reads on my opponents, and so Im left with some % chance that I should call, and in those spots, I tend to overestimate that %, thus leading to Old Faithful-esque spew.

I also suspect a little that people on Cake play worse at night than during the day, but thats just a bit of an aside.

Anyways, my new strategy is going to be to pay REALLY FREAKING CLOSE attention to the tables Im involved with. For now, Im going to stick with 2-tabling (tonight's results are quite reminiscent of my initial stab into 10nl, when I also made 5bi in a single session, 2-tabling), with the possibility of increasing the number of tables up to maybe 4, not dependent on my br, but rather dependent on the limits of my attention. Thus, my new task in improving as a poker player will be practicing attention discipline. That is, if I'm paying attention well at 2 tables and feel like opening a third (or 3-> 4) fine, but when I find that Im not paying as close attention to table action as I should be, I gotta close 1(or more) tables, and just work with that.


gl at the tables, mates.

Day 98

played well, made profit, hit some bad beats, got distracted by a phone call, and tilted away profits and more. br is ~305

Day 97

8$$ poker profit 0$$ bonus after about 4-5 hours or so.

this is so much rougher than it was back in 4nl. the difference is striking. course it could be that im just not that great at poker, and still have loads to learn.

overall, its more of a grind. people dont pay out as much, there are more short stackers, and you cant call as much for showdown value.

till next time ->

Day 96

grinding, grinding, grinding.

i probably played for about 7 hours or so today, and i made a total of 7$$ profit through poker. with depo bonus, i ended at +17$$

it was very up and down, and im still not quite beating the game. for now though, ill take any little victories i get, and in the meantime, ill continue grinding, grinding, grinding.

Day 95

aaaaaand its back to 10nl

edit: a little on that little swing out and back into 10nl- I went into 10nl assuming that I would be needing to do something vastly different than I had been doing to moderate success at 4nl. This time, Im going to generally try to play the same sort of game, and see what comes of it.

Day 94

aaaaaand its back to 4nl for a while

Day 93

stole this from daven's sig on ftr. it helped me in the way i view poker, maybe if youre reading this, it can help you too

"
If you are a winning player, everytime you lose at the poker table is bad variance. This can be bad emotional variance, bad thought process approximation variance, bad situational variance, or any of the typical variance people talk about. It’s simple, but it’s true.
"

edit: oh, also i made my 5th bi at 10nl today, so the br is just above 350

cheers

edit 2: coincidentally, today also marks another milestone, that being the first time my online raw poker profits on cake broke 100$$ ;)

Day 92

I had my first day of 10nl today annnnnnd......it went well! \o/

For now, I'm just 2-tabling until I feel comfortable doing more. Ended up with just a bit more than 2bi of profit. good times. now i just need to not get cocky, keep studying, do session reviews, and post hands.

cheers!

Day 91 - Milestone

Thats right mates, today marks a major milestone for me. Though my profit through poker is not the most its ever been, with my deposit bonus, my bankroll just broke 300$$

I am so stoked. I may have mentioned this before, but its a pretty crazy feeling to be moving up in stakes through proper bankroll management.

I am so excited, in fact, that Im not going to start until tomorrow night probably. In the meantime, Im gonna study, prep my A game, and cool my head. Also, I'm going to have a great day.

goodbye for now, 4nl, and hello 10nl. Ill probably have to move back down to 4nl in the future, but Ill cross that bridge when I get to it.

Cheers mates!

Day 90

i went on tilt and ended up losing all the profit i made from the wonderful bot. that was two nights ago. ive been playing through the night again, and ive been realize some things.

for one, cake poker sure has a lot of bots.

--
so this one time
i was sitting around
playing poker
and thinking about just how exploitable bots are
and thinking about the ways to systematically exploit the ways they work
since the trick is just figuring out how theyre programmed
how they work
and then i realized
that people are just the same.
the trick is
just depersonalize the game
imagine all your opps are bots
and then figure out how to beat them
logically, and systematically
if you know a bots going to raise any reraise preflop with suited cards
just raise to iso, flat the rr
and then take the good flops
leave the bad ones
its delightful
people are only a little more tricky
they adjust and such
but really, what is that besides slightly more complex programming
the most difficult thing to get a grasp of is the speed at which people adjust
and its hard to keep in mind for each individual opp
but thats just one aspect
there are so many other ways to use and abuse in poker
--

also, another thing ive come to realize is that i actually have a pretty decent game, i can generally make profit at a pretty stable rate. the biggest problem i have right now thats keeping me from making the kind of profit i want is just tilt. ive pretty much gotten over card tilt, since ive been playing for a little while now, and with good bankroll management practices, when bad beats happen, its like no difference at all. now i just need to work on dealing with life tilt, which is now my far the biggest leak in my game. its kinda funny how my biggest leak has nothing to do with poker. well, sometimes it does, but not in a direct way at least.

Day 89

Just finished for the night with about +9bi.

yes, i know. this is just silly. majority of profit was due to finding a bot who called every bet. also, tonight marked the first time i won a 30$$ pot in a 4nl game; i got aa vs another deepstacker's kk, with the bot in the hand, full stacked. flop comes 233, the rest is history.

br is now just short of 290$$, and so im suddenly quite close to my benchmark for starting 10nl, which is 30bi at 10nl.

its a weird feeling to be getting ready to move up in the stakes as a result of proper bankroll management. completely different from tilt-induced "OH I NEED TO GO TO BIGGER STAKES TO GET MAH MONEY BACK FASTUR"