Two car-crash hands made yesterday a bad day... was a bit surprised I was over 35 quid down in total, didn't feel as though the auto top-up had sucked that much outta me but so it was
The first I got it in with a pair of aces on a fairly dry flop and got done by two pair, then 60 seconds later let myself get tied to pocket aces when I could have gotten away with losing like £2-odd and accepted I was beaten... as it was I made sure someone got full value for a set that quickly made quads and didn't even leave me a couple of outs to try and sweat!
So another frustrating week taking a few steps forward, only to send myself back to where I started. Sigh.
I don't know if I maybe need to just give more credit to big c/r or donk bets at this level, I mean, there are obvious maniacs you can tag and know that calling down with nothing more than a decent pair will win over the long run, but for the vast majority of players it feels like you should have a good two pair as a minimum to be sticking around against such big bets (ie the AJ vs AQ and the straight vs FH hands)?
On a similar note, I appreciate that some of yesterdays losses were vs a loose player that I continue to donate too much cash to. I get that I should just nit up and wait for hands vs those sort of players, but when you never hit a flop in a session against them it feels like there must be some sort of plan B that can be invoked, as opposed to weakly raising them in position with a strong range and then c/f when you have no pair / no strong draw on the flop...
Got to be better for the Championship to get the money bags back up to the Prem + ensure we get a chance to avenge this year's calamity against Derby in a couple of game next season
Bankroll £757.33 Two car-crash hands made yesterday a bad day... was a bit surprised I was over 35 quid down in total, didn't feel as though the auto top-up had sucked that much outta me but so it was The first I got it in with a pair of aces on a fairly dry flop and got done by two pair, then 60 seconds later let myself get tied to pocket aces when I could have gotten away with losing like £2-odd and accepted I was beaten... as it was I made sure someone got full value for a set that quickly made quads and didn't even leave me a couple of outs to try and sweat! So another frustrating week taking a few steps forward, only to send myself back to where I started. Sigh. Posted by shakinaces
I know this feeling. I rarely keep track of how I'm doing, you know roughly (or think you do) but it's only at the end of the session where you know for sure. Sometimes it's like "WHAT! Didn't realise it was that bad!!!" haha
Late evening session saw a non-event of a £2BH where I stuck around for an age but barely ever even got above my starting stack, with cash dribbling away another £10+
I was going to stay away after that, but after a couple of glasses of wine during the champs league I figured I'd revisit the tables for a bit and had quite a swingy session that got lucky in a few spots - but ended nearly +£40. Not as good as some though, a few of the regs must have timed their play beautifully... I joined one table where two of them were sat with like 700+BB... the second hand I sat at the table one of the big stacks shoved pre and got called for 80BB to run out QQ vs 62o... guessing some people had drunk a lot more than half a bottle of wine during the footy!!
And well done to the Rs... entirely undeserved after an underperforming season and being utterly outplayed on the day, but them and their bags of money being back in the Prem has to be good for the Championship... there was no way they could have been as bad next season.
Obviously, I'm not a good enough player to have a decent winning session without being a massive luckbox... sure, the AQ maybe could have got away, but this is a cold spot for the two oppos.
Although my poor play cost me three stacks at NL8 last night with QQ... I always have been terrible with the ladies!
I should have just folded pre... no-one limp 3 bets without a great hand. And I ALWAYS fall for the flop overshove... at a push AA may be good in these spots, but less than that and you are never ahead*... yet in game it looks such a weird bet for someone to do with a strong holding that I continue to mug myself into calling. BR will be much healthier when I learn to just sigh fold and say goodbye to my preflop pot contribution.
Player
Action
Cards
Amount
Pot
Balance
shakinaces
Small blind
£0.04
£0.04
£7.96
Chris_Mc
Big blind
£0.08
£0.12
£8.66
Your hole cards
Q
Q
xxx
Call
£0.08
£0.20
£6.24
johnfrum
Fold
bendavis19
Call
£0.08
£0.28
£4.82
MAGPIETYKE
Fold
shakinaces
Raise
£0.44
£0.72
£7.52
Chris_Mc
Fold
xxx
Raise
£0.88
£1.60
£5.36
bendavis19
Call
£0.88
£2.48
£3.94
shakinaces
Call
£0.48
£2.96
£7.04
Flop
5
6
8
shakinaces
Check
xxx
All-in
£5.36
£8.32
£0.00
bendavis19
Fold
shakinaces
Call
£5.36
£13.68
£1.68
shakinaces
Show
Q
Q
xxx
Show
K
K
Turn
6
River
3
xxx
Win
Two Pairs, Kings and 6s
£12.65
£12.65
* I appreciate there may be some weird levelling games, much more likely at higher levels, where the flop shove may be a bluff / draw, but at micro cash I'm sure anything other than a recognised maniac (who will likely have shoved pre anyway) will be making this play?
This one I think was harder to spot... if I get beat by quad aces then gg wp, but the way it played out I figured that other reasonable pairs from 8s up could easily be making the same play here... if you're reading this and think I'm wrong then please tell me, but have no issues with my own play going broke at this one.
Always fun when you write a message and it disappears when you post...
Back-to-front day yesterday, amazing start when I more than trebled up with a flopped full house that had three others get all in with me on the turn #luckyme
Then poker once again proved to be a cruel mistress as some rotten hands sucked all that money back plus a little more. A couple of them were through calling people overshoving the flop... I don't understand the play myself but it evidently works to get max value when you have AA or two pair and a mug like me is in the hand and can call off with QQ thinking an overpair to the board will still be good in that spot.
The one time I did make the 'right' call in this spot I was KQ v KJ on a K high board... inevitably the J popped up on the turn to teach me that I shouldn't have called in the first place as it was much more likely I was behind and just got lucky this time (on the flop at least).
At the point I was all in on another flop with T2P and lost to runner-runner it was time to go do some chores around the house and try to get the lounge one step closer to being ready for workmen.
Maybe there is something in the mental side of things that means I'll pick up when I'm not sat in a worksite, surrounded by bare concrete/plaster combo... just a shame it is going to destroy my non-poker roll to get it sorted!
Play pre-dinner and drop a buy-in, play post-dinner win a buy in.
On the basis of one day of evidence, I'm now going to eat a meal before every session and play better as a result. So what if I get bigger as a result, I've heard loads of single women mention that it's nonsense that size doesn't matter and that the bigger the better... it'll be win-win, more money, more women.
In all seriousness though, for the past two months my later sessions do seem to chuck up better results than late afternoon / early evening - this is probably due to when other people play as opposed to anything I do, but perhaps I'm not flexible enough with my style vs the sort of players you sit with at 6pm vs those you sit with at 9pm or later... either that or stop logging on until 8pm + and do more DIY in the first few hours after I get back from work!
I think I probably got off lucky in quite a few spots yesterday, not least when holding KK vs AA and barely losing a quid due to the complete passiveness of the hand... will post imminently for subsequent forum beating! That was the most memorable example, but throughout the session I kept thinking 'wow, how did I lose so little?' - albeit I'm unsure how much of that was my own success vs suboptimal play by others.
lol turns out I didn't even lose a quid... what a nit!
FWIW the oppo had been playing super tight, folding most of my button raises and giving up to a cbet every time I could remember a hand getting that far, which is why I was 1/2 potting every flop - so the call set off my spidey senses on a paired board where a J would feature strongly in hands he might occasionaly defend with... arguably I could have even found a fold on the river given that logic, escaping for an even smaller loss... but it was so cheap!
Should my preflop be tighter when faced with limp/callers - let's be honest, irrespective of how the hand played out, I was behind pre-flop if we assume that Ax and pairs form a good chunk of a limp / callers starting hands - or broadway cards which mean I could just as easily hit a K and be dominated in the hand?
Obviously this particular occasion was just unfortunate, but the amount of limp/callers at this level hurts my head and I'm sure ends up costing me more than I win from them due to the amount of pots I raise with less than premium hands - more so when there are 2 or more limpers and I feel a duty to punish them!
Bankroll £780.47 - pts now well past the 1k mark for 2nd month running
Managed to drop a few quid on virtually the first hand of the night AK < A5 vs a maniac that could easily have had worse on the A-high board... then nearly got my head above water but made a few poor plays and got deseveredly punished for raising rags again (Js6s on button vs 2 limpers, GII on flop of QJ6 rainbow and virtually dead vs Q6 - cold flop, but yet again no reason to have any money in that pot preflop).
One confusing spot was vs a shortie that had recently taken a beat and was going to be shoving all sorts, certainly worse than KQ (albeit, in this case, he actually was ahead pre)... but at cash should I be folding this, given there are others left to act?
Once I have called pre, is there any sense in betting the flop or should I be happy to check down a mid strength hand like I have?
Pretty high variance session last night, which I eventually came out on top of.
I'll be honest, there were some (maybe lots) sarcastic 'lol nh' type comments through the early session, where I kept seeing 40-80% of my stack sucked out on through an endless barrage of rotten river cards... had to watch running cards drop twice, once for a backdoor flush and once with top set vs bottom two (to split with a straight on board).
A few cases of staring at the ceiling then when a known maniac sat at my table and I started hitting everything, only for him/her to have seemingly completely changed their game from the last 20+ times I've played against them and folding flop for pretty small c-bets.
But luckily variance came in the right spots for once and I had a couple of just-over-a-BI pots later in the session where I was the one getting lucky - flopping a set KK /> AA and hitting my flush draw getting it in AA vs low set on the turn are two that immediately spring to mind.
I think overall my game was definitely helped by having re-visited 6-max 3-bet strategy, via a couple of articles online (2+2 and some other forum I now forget the name of). I think that overall this was making my game more aggressive in the right spots and will continue to try and work with this over the weekend to see if I can continue to keep getting into good spots.
Cheers for the post Chris. I definitely think I've made big steps improving on the basics of the past couple of months of more regular play... guess that the thing I need to work on most as I start to dip toes in NL20 (and maybe higher) is better reading / note taking of players and more appreciation of the range of hands I'm playing against...
I'm not that great at identifying spots, but am aware I'm still bluff c-betting too often vs players that will call all sorts and not v-betting light enough against, well, I guess the same players!
Looking forward to chatting through a bunch of hands with Lambert in the next week, which may help spot a couple of bigger / easier to fix leaks that can keep things moving forward.
Bankroll now £871.24 pts 1185
So there shouldn't really have been any play yesterday. It was the end of season blow out with my football club, converting the season's fines into drinks... at the age of 34 I should really know better, but nothing changes and it all still gets daft way too quickly.
After a stop at a place where one of the lads used to work a bouncer / got god knows how much free vodka redbull lined up for us all, the night eventually petered out but I found myself at home completely unable to sleep.
So, feeling like I may have sobered up a little after a couple of hours since the drinking ended, I fired up the laptop just after 5am and played 45 mins or so.
Not going to lie, getting AA and KK (and being paid off) in such a short session is a lot of run good, but there was some very... 'creative' play going on at that time of night which meant any reduction in the standard of my own play wasn't anywhere near enough to make me the table fish.
Don't get me wrong, I entirely know it was a poor decision to play and that will become a BIG leak if I don't cut it out, but on sober nights where insomnia hits I definitely need to consider popping online for an hour or so... fun tables all round!
I'm sure there will be one last session of the month to come, but the Froch v Groves fight will limit how much.
Bankroll to end May £853.09 - not sure on final pts as I ended up playing through midnight... guess I may have just hit 1,200?
Not exactly a flourish to end the month, but after spending most of May running a roll lower than my end to April it's rewarding to post a higher number again... must be running with variance in my favour!
No poker on 1st June, was back doing DIY then cooking up a meal for a bunch of friends.
Only poker was swimming with some simple learning last night, a short vid on post-flop strat vs 'fish'
As with almost all vids, the lack of pokertracker stats makes it harder to truly implement, but some interesting spots with the AQo and small pair hands... I've thought (and I think mentioned on here) that I should be folding small pairs from blinds.
It's a fair point that many oppos won't let you win stacks when out of position, and I'm sure if I was able to track my own hands I'd see that I'm an overall loser with small pairs?
Dare I say that I also play way too many 'creative' hands in position vs weaker players, which maybe I need to avoid doing and stick to a more patient game plan... saving the dodgier hands for playing the regs at this level?
Rotten first session last night, exaccerbated by losing probably £20 or so with just plain bad calls... it's still a big weakness that I end up calling lots of times when there are 20-30BB left on the river into a pot well in excess of 100BB - I know I'm going to be beat and oppo has got there on the river, but unless it's the most blatant of boards (ie 4 or 5 to a flush that in a suit I'm not holding) I still pay off that rivered set/2 pr and kid myself that 'enough of the time it'll be a bluff and I'm getting odds in the long run'.
I'm not. It's micro stakes. It's never a bluff. I'm just wasting my money when I should sigh-fold.
The second session started with a bang, when I went through a spot of AA, AA, QQ in consecutive hands at NL8 and the player to my right kindly donated the majority / all of their stack to me each time.
I was on the verge of posting a win for the day, when later in that session I got it in pre for 100BB AA v QQ... alas the Q hit and what could have been an escape with around a fiver profit, ended the day with £11 loss.
Can't really grumble though - if I'd played even a couple of hands better in the first session I'd have saved that amount and broken even, so no-one to blame but myself.
So, I ran OK two days ago and made it north of £860 again with a +2 BI day... then came offline for an hour or so coaching with Lambert180... then applying that learning (or trying!) saw me drop around 2xBI each session yesterday lol
In truth though the coaching session was really useful - despite my efforts and having gotten the occasional (normally half drunk) SNG going among some of my friends and family, no-one I know is really into poker and it's therefore not a topic I ever get to discuss with others. So even aside from everything else it was a huge help just to be able to talk things through with someone else that also loves the game and evidently can happily chat poker for a good length of time!
Lambert has the bonus of having spent such a decent time, still relatively recently, at the levels that many of us on here (including me) are trying not just to consistently beat but also to gain an increasing enjoyment for through learning and improving our game.
That experience obviously adds that much more credence to the advice on offer and provides useful logic to apply when back at the tables.... I'm having phone connection issues at the moment (would never happen if I still had an iPhone!) but if I could I'd be adding the picture to show the 'bet' / 'fold' reminder stickers that were added to the side of my laptop yesterday.
From a technical aspect, the method of reviewing hands on Sky / join me screen made it a bit challenging to card read at times. A lot of middling-cards were blurred such that it was hard to distinguise 2/5/6/9 - plus obviously it's not as sophisticated as the tools available on other sites where you can replay the hand one action at a time... I don't know that there is a way around that though, short of having recorded the hand live and somehow then being able to use that clip... perhaps I need to have a play with that myself one day!
And from a personal point of view, I hadn't realised how many hands I'd (foolishly) put up that had the legendary BAGGPUSS at my table... as much as Lambert's coaching was useful to improve my overall game, the dynamics of being at those tables invariably made for incorrect 'standard' micro cash play... at least that's my excuse for (rightly in the context of the coaching) having my mistakes flagged in those hands
So thank you very much to Lambert for donating his time to help steer me back on to the right course - I hope from your side you also saw it as a useful way to spend some of his time, be it from a coaching point of view (which I'm sure from my experience you will do a great job at, potentially building a well-earned supplement to the poker income) and / or from a self-learning point of view... I know from experience at work that sometimes my own skills are sharpened just by getting to coach others in a subject, so hopefully you get the same benefit from your first formal experience of coaching a (hopefully improving) poker novice!
Anyway... The losses yesterday were down to a different leak, perhaps pushing a bit too hard on the river and taking the 'bet for value' mantra too far. Will post a couple of examples of this on the next post to seek opinion to confirm / recommend alternative strategy etc.
Comments
I should have just folded pre... no-one limp 3 bets without a great hand. And I ALWAYS fall for the flop overshove... at a push AA may be good in these spots, but less than that and you are never ahead*... yet in game it looks such a weird bet for someone to do with a strong holding that I continue to mug myself into calling. BR will be much healthier when I learn to just sigh fold and say goodbye to my preflop pot contribution.
Play pre-dinner and drop a buy-in, play post-dinner win a buy in.
On the basis of one day of evidence, I'm now going to eat a meal before every session and play better as a result. So what if I get bigger as a result, I've heard loads of single women mention that it's nonsense that size doesn't matter and that the bigger the better... it'll be win-win, more money, more women.
In all seriousness though, for the past two months my later sessions do seem to chuck up better results than late afternoon / early evening - this is probably due to when other people play as opposed to anything I do, but perhaps I'm not flexible enough with my style vs the sort of players you sit with at 6pm vs those you sit with at 9pm or later... either that or stop logging on until 8pm + and do more DIY in the first few hours after I get back from work!
I think I probably got off lucky in quite a few spots yesterday, not least when holding KK vs AA and barely losing a quid due to the complete passiveness of the hand... will post imminently for subsequent forum beating! That was the most memorable example, but throughout the session I kept thinking 'wow, how did I lose so little?' - albeit I'm unsure how much of that was my own success vs suboptimal play by others.
FWIW the oppo had been playing super tight, folding most of my button raises and giving up to a cbet every time I could remember a hand getting that far, which is why I was 1/2 potting every flop - so the call set off my spidey senses on a paired board where a J would feature strongly in hands he might occasionaly defend with... arguably I could have even found a fold on the river given that logic, escaping for an even smaller loss... but it was so cheap!
Should my preflop be tighter when faced with limp/callers - let's be honest, irrespective of how the hand played out, I was behind pre-flop if we assume that Ax and pairs form a good chunk of a limp / callers starting hands - or broadway cards which mean I could just as easily hit a K and be dominated in the hand?
Obviously this particular occasion was just unfortunate, but the amount of limp/callers at this level hurts my head and I'm sure ends up costing me more than I win from them due to the amount of pots I raise with less than premium hands - more so when there are 2 or more limpers and I feel a duty to punish them!
Managed to drop a few quid on virtually the first hand of the night AK < A5 vs a maniac that could easily have had worse on the A-high board... then nearly got my head above water but made a few poor plays and got deseveredly punished for raising rags again (Js6s on button vs 2 limpers, GII on flop of QJ6 rainbow and virtually dead vs Q6 - cold flop, but yet again no reason to have any money in that pot preflop).
One confusing spot was vs a shortie that had recently taken a beat and was going to be shoving all sorts, certainly worse than KQ (albeit, in this case, he actually was ahead pre)... but at cash should I be folding this, given there are others left to act?
Once I have called pre, is there any sense in betting the flop or should I be happy to check down a mid strength hand like I have?
Pretty high variance session last night, which I eventually came out on top of.
I'll be honest, there were some (maybe lots) sarcastic 'lol nh' type comments through the early session, where I kept seeing 40-80% of my stack sucked out on through an endless barrage of rotten river cards... had to watch running cards drop twice, once for a backdoor flush and once with top set vs bottom two (to split with a straight on board).
A few cases of staring at the ceiling then when a known maniac sat at my table and I started hitting everything, only for him/her to have seemingly completely changed their game from the last 20+ times I've played against them and folding flop for pretty small c-bets.
But luckily variance came in the right spots for once and I had a couple of just-over-a-BI pots later in the session where I was the one getting lucky - flopping a set KK /> AA and hitting my flush draw getting it in AA vs low set on the turn are two that immediately spring to mind.
I think overall my game was definitely helped by having re-visited 6-max 3-bet strategy, via a couple of articles online (2+2 and some other forum I now forget the name of). I think that overall this was making my game more aggressive in the right spots and will continue to try and work with this over the weekend to see if I can continue to keep getting into good spots.
My advice - Get in as much volume as possible and start playing 20nl when you hit 1k. Think you will be surprised how quickly your BR will grow. GL
I'm sure there will be one last session of the month to come, but the Froch v Groves fight will limit how much.
Rotten first session last night, exaccerbated by losing probably £20 or so with just plain bad calls... it's still a big weakness that I end up calling lots of times when there are 20-30BB left on the river into a pot well in excess of 100BB - I know I'm going to be beat and oppo has got there on the river, but unless it's the most blatant of boards (ie 4 or 5 to a flush that in a suit I'm not holding) I still pay off that rivered set/2 pr and kid myself that 'enough of the time it'll be a bluff and I'm getting odds in the long run'.
I'm not. It's micro stakes. It's never a bluff. I'm just wasting my money when I should sigh-fold.
The second session started with a bang, when I went through a spot of AA, AA, QQ in consecutive hands at NL8 and the player to my right kindly donated the majority / all of their stack to me each time.
I was on the verge of posting a win for the day, when later in that session I got it in pre for 100BB AA v QQ... alas the Q hit and what could have been an escape with around a fiver profit, ended the day with £11 loss.
Can't really grumble though - if I'd played even a couple of hands better in the first session I'd have saved that amount and broken even, so no-one to blame but myself.
So, I ran OK two days ago and made it north of £860 again with a +2 BI day... then came offline for an hour or so coaching with Lambert180... then applying that learning (or trying!) saw me drop around 2xBI each session yesterday lol
In truth though the coaching session was really useful - despite my efforts and having gotten the occasional (normally half drunk) SNG going among some of my friends and family, no-one I know is really into poker and it's therefore not a topic I ever get to discuss with others. So even aside from everything else it was a huge help just to be able to talk things through with someone else that also loves the game and evidently can happily chat poker for a good length of time!
Lambert has the bonus of having spent such a decent time, still relatively recently, at the levels that many of us on here (including me) are trying not just to consistently beat but also to gain an increasing enjoyment for through learning and improving our game.
That experience obviously adds that much more credence to the advice on offer and provides useful logic to apply when back at the tables.... I'm having phone connection issues at the moment (would never happen if I still had an iPhone!) but if I could I'd be adding the picture to show the 'bet' / 'fold' reminder stickers that were added to the side of my laptop yesterday.
From a technical aspect, the method of reviewing hands on Sky / join me screen made it a bit challenging to card read at times. A lot of middling-cards were blurred such that it was hard to distinguise 2/5/6/9 - plus obviously it's not as sophisticated as the tools available on other sites where you can replay the hand one action at a time... I don't know that there is a way around that though, short of having recorded the hand live and somehow then being able to use that clip... perhaps I need to have a play with that myself one day!
And from a personal point of view, I hadn't realised how many hands I'd (foolishly) put up that had the legendary BAGGPUSS at my table... as much as Lambert's coaching was useful to improve my overall game, the dynamics of being at those tables invariably made for incorrect 'standard' micro cash play... at least that's my excuse for (rightly in the context of the coaching) having my mistakes flagged in those hands
So thank you very much to Lambert for donating his time to help steer me back on to the right course - I hope from your side you also saw it as a useful way to spend some of his time, be it from a coaching point of view (which I'm sure from my experience you will do a great job at, potentially building a well-earned supplement to the poker income) and / or from a self-learning point of view... I know from experience at work that sometimes my own skills are sharpened just by getting to coach others in a subject, so hopefully you get the same benefit from your first formal experience of coaching a (hopefully improving) poker novice!
Anyway... The losses yesterday were down to a different leak, perhaps pushing a bit too hard on the river and taking the 'bet for value' mantra too far. Will post a couple of examples of this on the next post to seek opinion to confirm / recommend alternative strategy etc.