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| Wednesday, April 8, 2009 |
| Goals update |
Well it looks like I'm on my way to falling short of my goals for April which were:
1)150k hands - only around 18k so far
2)15k vpp - this really goes hand in hand with my volume so bleh
3)$2k profit - this part is actually somewhat promising as I'm up $421 with so little volume put in.
I need to step it up a lot if I want to achieve this, or come close to it. I'm still comtemplating take the $650 bonus when I hit 50k fpp's(currently have 48k so in the next day or so hopefully), but if I can make my goals without it, and move up to NL50 without it and take advantage of the $1500 at 100k or better yet just hold out for 250k which would be sweet especially if I can stay at nl50 and not have to drop back down to NL25.
Overall I'm happy with my play so far this month despite some pretty donktastic mistakes and unbelievable 5 outers.
My table selection has really been taken to the next level. I've been waitlisting the usual juicy 9 player tables and then joining a bunch of shorthanded tables, as well as starting a few pot limit tables. Over a pretty small sample pot limit seems to be where a good chunk of my winnings are coming from. I think that the loose passive fish flock there because of some sort of fear that the no limit players will push all-in and not allow them to draw.
The shortstack tags dont seem to bother with pot limit which is good for me because I make money off of fish. My guess is that its because they cannot push their whole stack in over a pot sized open, which means they will have to play a flop after 3betting, granted they're basically committed but the whole reason behind playing shortstacked is to minimize the amount of mistakes you make, and playing flops in 3bet pots is not really something these guys are comfortable with, at least these horrible shorties at NL25.
Not sure why more regulars don't play PL25 but its fine by me. I barely saw any regs at the PL tables today which just means more fish.
I cant wait until NL50 when I can start opening a bunch of 50bbmin tables. I really wish that stars would get these goin for all levels. |
posted by TheBowlBoy @ 3:29 PM  |
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| Friday, April 3, 2009 |
| Don't you just love Friday afternoons? |
Villain is a 90/75 Megatard. I still made 3.5 buyins despite this horrible suckout.
PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (5 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
Hero (SB) ($26.45)
BB ($9.40)
UTG ($29.40)
MP ($28.75)
Button ($4.90)
Preflop: Hero is SB with J , J
UTG bets $5, 2 folds, Hero raises to $15.10, 1 fold, UTG calls $10.10
Flop: ($30.45) K, 7, A (2 players)
Hero bets $11.35 (All-In), UTG calls $11.35
Turn: ($53.15) 3 (2 players, 1 all-in)
River: ($53.15) 2 (2 players, 1 all-in)
Total pot: $53.15 Rake: $2
Results:
Hero had J, J (one pair, Jacks).
UTG had 2, 3 (two pair, threes and twos).
Outcome: UTG won $51.15
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| posted by TheBowlBoy @ 2:20 PM |
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| Thursday, April 2, 2009 |
| Goals for April |
First off, I think I'm getting addicted to this. I'm finding it quite therapeutic. Things are getting clearer and I feel really focused while I'm playing. I've got my groove on, and April 2009 is going to be a great month. On that note, I started off April 1st not being a fool for the first time in years. I played about 4500 hands and made 6 buyins at 25NL running at 6.5ptbb/100. Not too shabby. Another thing that contributed to the good day was the pokerstars bonus in the vip stores. They had some bogus items listed in the store for April fools day for 1k fpp each. They were actually $16 cash bonuses and I was allowed to get 1 of each so 16x4 = $64. So good day in all and looks like April is starting out great.
Okay so on to the goals. These are going to be pretty high, but I figure by updating my progress regularly here, it'll motivate me to grind more and play better.
1)150k hands.
2)$3k in profit
3)15k vpps
4)Move up to $50NL near the end of the month or early May.
Skill wise, I feel I'm more than ready to hold my own at $50NL. I'm a bankroll nit though, and I really feel like I just play better with a 40+ buyin bankroll. This would probably be different if I was'nt counting on this money to live, and also if I wasnt putting half of my bankroll on 20+ tables too. When I do move up to 50NL Im going to take it slow at first. Just play like 6 tables and build my confidence back up. That way I stand a better chance at logging a couple of good sessions.
Alright now that that is out of the way I just want talk a little bit more about the adjustments I've been making to my game in the blinds. I went on and on about how my 3betting ranges are now more polarized the other day. I also talked a bit about defending blinds a little lighter by simply calling the preflop raise and trying to resteal or get some value postflop. All that has been working pretty good.
I've also been stealing from the SB with ATC. It's been working well. I do get 3bet a lot more often by decent or aggro players, and very little respect is given to my flop cbets but I'm immediately profitable just raising preflop. Against players that try to adjust I'm check folding more flops than I normally would and that is ok because again, I'm turning an immediate profit from raising preflop. Occasionally I'll also hit something or actually have a legitamate hand and am very likely to get action after the flop.
I'm doing pretty much the same thing when I'm in the BB and its folded to the SB who just completes. This is an extremely weak play by the SB and they often dont mind just letting it go preflop because they were trying to see a cheap flop getting 3:1 odds on their money. If they ever paid any attention to what I'm doing they'd realize that raising > folding > completing.
Another thing that I'm doing is looking for spots to raise from the blinds with 1-2 limpers where I would normally just complete in the SB or check from the BB. I'm generally looking for limpers with a high fold to cbet% to pull this off, which there are plenty of at 25NL. Against players with a low fold to cbet% I dont mind doing this with a lot of hands that I would have isolated them with for value, such as any 2 broadway etc. Okay I dont want to get carried away with that especially since I'll be out of position when they call me and I'm not going to be hitting the flop that often, but I'm targeting weaker players who will often not even bet if I check the flop to them so a lot of the time I'm getting free cards when I miss, and valuetowning them when I hit.
So in conclusion, the adjustments to my game to decrease losses in the blinds can be summarized:
1) 3bet premium hands and junk hands.
2) Defend with stuff in the middle that will play well against villains stealing range, and look for spots to check raise flops with air as well as get good value when I hit.
3) Steal 100% of the time from the SB vs BB. Exceptions are of course vs uber fish, especially shortacked calling stations.
4) Same goes for BB vs SB completion.
5) Steal pots away from limpers with more marginal hands than I'm used to.
I expect all these things to turn an immediate profit, but more importantly I will be getting myself into a lot more interesting spots and villains will hopefully make some huge mistakes against me when I flop trips with my 23o.
I think that is all for today. |
| posted by TheBowlBoy @ 8:19 AM |
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| Wednesday, April 1, 2009 |
| Running good |
So I feel like I've turned things around in the last few days. I just gotta remind myself that beats and suckouts are going to happen, and sometimes a weeks worth is going to happen in a 5minute span. Nothing I can do about that but keep getting my money in good whenever possible, and find the damn fold button when necessary.
Finding that fold button is'nt as hard as it seems either. A lot of the time that I make dumb plays and stack off with top pair/weak overpair its because I've had a series of beats and coolers in that session, or recent sessions and it just messes with my head. I'm not going to let it do that anymore. Its just way too destructive to my winrate. And on that note, I really think that I'm capable of sustaining a really strong winrate over a large sample at 25NL. I just need to find that calm zen state of mind. Get rid of the emotion in my game because it has no place anywhere near the felt.
So here's a chart for the last 18k hands or so of 25NL. Not too shabby imo. I just need to ramp up my volume a bit and I will be well on my way to moving up and hopefully staying at NL50 for awhile.
Aside from just running better, and playing more disciplined, I think I'm actually still learning. I've been trying to cut down my losses in the blinds. I was getting hammered in them before but I'm really improving there.
Some adjustments that I've made are:
3betting lighter - I was 3betting fairly light before against anybody with a high attempt to steal and fold to 3bet but I think I was 3betting a lot of hands that I should have just been calling with and playing poker postflop. I've been 3betting a lot of non premium broadway type hands like AJ, KQ, KJ, QJ etc. I think its +EV to do this but I've been working on polarizing my range much more. The above hands are rarely going to get me any good action postflop in a 3bet pot. I'm usually going to take it down pre, or with a cbet. It seems kinda like a waste of a good hand. I can accomplish the exact same thing with complete trash.
So what i'm trying to do now is continue 3betting my premium hands out of the blinds like QQ+ and AK, AQ. I still sometimes 3bet JJ but I think this hand falls into the category of turning it into a bluff postflop because we're never getting any action after the flop in a 3bet pot unless we hit the flop. When I dont improve I can rarely get my money in with JJ except for when villain is a complete moron. I guess I need to point out here that I'm still planning on 3betting some of these hands i've mentioned for value against the right opponents but against anybody decent at 25NL you cant 3bet AJ for value because they're folding pretty much everything that you beat.
I'm now 3betting a bunch of junk hands
J5s, 23o, and any other hand that has no other use but as a bluff. Hands where it doesnt matter what my hand is because it isnt going to showdown unless I flop hard or villain lets it me show it down cheap.
I'm definding my blinds carefully with a lot of hands I'm no longer 3betting and as they play a lot better against most villains stealing ranges.
I 4 bet bluffed 22 from the CO against a positionally aware TAG's button 3bet and took it down. Did it against another guy with 77.
I really think that lowering my opening raise size down to 3bb has helped give me a lot more room preflop. Doesnt sound like a big deal, but it has a big effect on 3bet and 4bet sizing. If I raise to 3bb, I'm usually getting 3bet to 9 or 10bb as opposed to 12-16bb. When I fold to the 3bet I give up less, and when I call its less so it gives me more room to make some moves at light 3bettors either by flatting and raising/floating the flop or just plain 4betting them. |
| posted by TheBowlBoy @ 8:45 PM |
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| I really need to move up... |
Cashing out living expenses, and not grinding enough every month is making this really difficult. I'm trying to live off of $2k a month in cashouts though I didnt have close to that for March, and ended up more less living off of my credit cards, but I just got back on track in the last week, and got my bankroll back up to $2k which is where I feel comfortable with cashing out $1k, so a cheque is on its way.
What I really need is a good combination of grinding like a mofo all April and run godly, while never tilting. Hit a nice break even stretch in March mostly due to suckouts but compounded by tilty plays and just stacking off lighter in the middle of bad sessions. After reviewing my sessions, I realized that a lot of the losing ones could have easily been winning ones of +4buyins or so.
25NL is just such an easy limit to beat and I'm capable of making a really nice hourly rate there that I should be able to get a bit of a bankroll surplus in April. I really dont want to have to cash in any FPP's to do this as I am chasing supernova this year and am hoping to hold out for a bigger score. Right now I have about 50k in fpps. Clearly, cashing in FPP's for the greatest return possible is +EV but if cashing out now and taking a $650 bonus helps facilitate a succesful move up to NL50 this month, then perhaps that is the way I should go because I'm pretty sure I can beat NL50 so long as I am able to handle the swings and the move would certainly speed up my chase for supernova.
I was beating NL50 back in January for about 2ptbb/100 but decided the variance probably caused mostly by tilt wasnt worth it because I was beating NL25 for 5ptbb/100. Might have been a bad choice. Who knows I might have been owning NL100 by now, but perhaps not.
Whatever the case, I have worked on my game a lot, and plugged some leaks by going through my DB in PT3 and running a lot of reports to find out what situations I'm losing money in. |
| posted by TheBowlBoy @ 10:47 AM |
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| Tuesday, March 31, 2009 |
| Crazy Month |
Had a great month in February and decided it was time for me to get myself a new laptop. I got a Dell for about $1100 CDN at the beginning of March and I have to say I'm pretty happy with it - NOW. When it first was shipped to me I took it outta the box and started getting things set up then I start getting bluescreens!!. WTF!!? Ok so I get a hold of tech support and all they can say is that the installation of windows seems to be corrupt. Yay. So I spend most of the day on the phone reinstalling windows and all the drivers. Fun stuff.
Ok so got that working. Then I installed PT3, which I just purchased as I was using PT2 up until then. Had some issues with that and it definitely took some time getting used to the software but that seems to be working fine now.
Finally I thought I had everything set up with Stars, Pt3 and TableNinja to start doing some serious 24table grinding but about an hour into every session my computer starts locking up, and each time it did, it seemed to have something to do with my sound card.
Needless to say I got mad, because this is a brand new computer and I shouldnt be having any performance issues. I have'nt even had the chance to start surfing any of those shady porn sites yet for crying out loud. I fought really hard with Dell tech support who couldnt figure out the problem and then I got their customer service dept. to agree to send me a new machine. That made me feel a bit better but I was actually just dreading having to set all this stuff up on a new machine yet again... sigh.
So the new machine was being built and scheduled to be shipped out to me very soon ( Dell agreed to allow me to return the first computer a few days after I received the second to give me time to switch stuff over).
Before it got here I solved the problem though!
While having these problems I kept telling myself that Pokerstars, PT3 and Tableninja are fairly cpu intensive but they shouldnt be affecting the soundcard. I would expect a video game to cause problems in this area but Stars is just beeps and stuff right?
Well I was wrong. First I started disabling the sound card altogether. Played a few sessions with no troubles what-so-ever. Ok cool, but now I have to reinstall the sound card everytime I want to do something on the computer that requires sound. Well this is way too annoying. So I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I'm not the dullest either, and I eventually thought of going into Stars' sound settings and turning off the sounds there. TaDa!!! No problems now. I really dont need the sound on for stars anyway, I'm stacking my tables and I actually like it better.
So why the hell would having the sound on in stars cause problems?
Consider all the sounds that are enabled in Stars like action requred, fold, check, bet, raise, chips moving into pot or to winner, dealing of cards... etc. All these .wav files are being processed constantly and I'm seeing somewhere between 12-1500 hands per hour... thats a lot of sounds being played simultaneously which explains the sound card problem.
So if anybody takes anything away from this it should be this. If your computer is lagging like old mule because you're running your poker client, software, and AHK scripts plus whatever other programs might be running then try turning off at least the useless sounds that you dont' need to hear and help things run a little smoother.
As a result of all of this, I really did'nt grind a whole lot. Because I didnt grinded less, I tilted more because I was like OMG I have to make up for lost time now that I got this shit working!
After some soul searching I finally turned things around and am back to owning. |
| posted by TheBowlBoy @ 12:36 PM |
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| About Me |
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Name: TheBowlBoy
Home: Ontario, Canada
About Me: Mass Tabling Micro Stakes Grinder
See my complete profile
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