You need to be logged in to your Sky Poker account above to post discussions and comments.
You might need to refresh your page afterwards.
*** Bankroll challenge ***
LnarinOO
Member Posts: 545
in Poker Chat
hi everyone,
its a new month, new diary and a new challenge!!
I know there's a few similar diaries kicking about now but everyone seems to enjoy them so im going to throw another one into the mix..!!
the aim:
I've been debating starting a diary for some time and the main reason is to keep track but more importantly keep focused at the tables. Trying to decide whether to do a straight up profit challenge at usual cash and MTT buy ins, or a progress diary with set goals, I've opted for something a little bit different.
Starting with a small bankroll of £300, i want to see if it possible to run it up to a sizeable amount in today's games. Everyone has heard of people's rags to riches stories in the past, well lets see if we can build a roll in 2018. I choose this amount as starting from zero doesn't appeal to me grinding out freerolls etc and starting with more doesn't feel like ill achieve or gain as much as id want to, i want it to be challenging but also fun.
I'm going to be using fairly aggressive bankroll management to start with and mostly will be playing cash games, however i will be throwing in SnG's or MTT if my bankroll allows it and i think it will be more profitable based on the state of the games and rake etc. i often multi-site, but will keeping most/all of my focus on this for the foreseeable future OR if i bust whichever comes first i guess. Should i bust i will likely keep my diary on going for my usual games with regular updates and strategy etc.
At each level that i play i will openly discuss my strategies and Hand histories etc to try and improve and figure out the best way to beat each level. I will be using a 15 buyin rule for cash games at each level to start with but if at any time i drop below 10 buyins I'll move down to build it back up and as soon as I've hit 15 buyins for the next level i will take shots. I have recently been playing and testing the waters at 30nl - 100nl and the only the only thing that may be an issue is traffic at each level. often i would have to play accross multiple levels at once but we'll see how it goes.
goals:
goals are immensely important not just in poker but in all aspects of life so I fully intend to set short term goals, weather that's moving up by x date or simply doing some HH reviews and also have long term goals that id like to achieve going forward after the challenge whether I bust it or not. By doing this, my aim is to have a clearer path of documented success. I also think that setting myself goals and targets will improve me as a player in more ways then one. A lot of the time i feel like i get lost or seem to auto pilot too often so having something to achieve and work towards will be motivating for me I'm sure but hopefully its going to be a fun, insightful diary and challenge going forward.
wish me luck... lets gooo.!!
its a new month, new diary and a new challenge!!
I know there's a few similar diaries kicking about now but everyone seems to enjoy them so im going to throw another one into the mix..!!
the aim:
I've been debating starting a diary for some time and the main reason is to keep track but more importantly keep focused at the tables. Trying to decide whether to do a straight up profit challenge at usual cash and MTT buy ins, or a progress diary with set goals, I've opted for something a little bit different.
Starting with a small bankroll of £300, i want to see if it possible to run it up to a sizeable amount in today's games. Everyone has heard of people's rags to riches stories in the past, well lets see if we can build a roll in 2018. I choose this amount as starting from zero doesn't appeal to me grinding out freerolls etc and starting with more doesn't feel like ill achieve or gain as much as id want to, i want it to be challenging but also fun.
I'm going to be using fairly aggressive bankroll management to start with and mostly will be playing cash games, however i will be throwing in SnG's or MTT if my bankroll allows it and i think it will be more profitable based on the state of the games and rake etc. i often multi-site, but will keeping most/all of my focus on this for the foreseeable future OR if i bust whichever comes first i guess. Should i bust i will likely keep my diary on going for my usual games with regular updates and strategy etc.
At each level that i play i will openly discuss my strategies and Hand histories etc to try and improve and figure out the best way to beat each level. I will be using a 15 buyin rule for cash games at each level to start with but if at any time i drop below 10 buyins I'll move down to build it back up and as soon as I've hit 15 buyins for the next level i will take shots. I have recently been playing and testing the waters at 30nl - 100nl and the only the only thing that may be an issue is traffic at each level. often i would have to play accross multiple levels at once but we'll see how it goes.
goals:
goals are immensely important not just in poker but in all aspects of life so I fully intend to set short term goals, weather that's moving up by x date or simply doing some HH reviews and also have long term goals that id like to achieve going forward after the challenge whether I bust it or not. By doing this, my aim is to have a clearer path of documented success. I also think that setting myself goals and targets will improve me as a player in more ways then one. A lot of the time i feel like i get lost or seem to auto pilot too often so having something to achieve and work towards will be motivating for me I'm sure but hopefully its going to be a fun, insightful diary and challenge going forward.
wish me luck... lets gooo.!!
Comments
Looking forward to reading about your exploits.
Looking forward to this.
Diaries are very popular among the majority here, & I know you write well. Even the @Jac35 35 Diary gets readers, so you'll be fine.
i started off last night with some 20nl and got off to a rocky start losing 4/5 buyins. i had been running bad before the challenge started and a good counter to variance is always to drop down in stakes, so for me starting at lower stakes is a good thing however its not ideal for my bankroll during this challenge. after a short session and a bad start i stopped,(got some food) then came back for another session. I loaded up some 20nl and 10nl deep stack tables and played for a good few hours. By the end of the session i made back all but one buyin and called it a night. overall my session was very reg heavy, which was fine and having played with a few of them before i had notes on some, but not all and a few of my earlier mistakes were mostly vs unknowns where i made questionable calls etc. In general i think population are more value heavy and less balanced and i could have exploited this by over folding the higher proportions of my range. going forward i think the best route would be to play value based game and try and let my opponents make the mistakes by over calling or over bluffing etc. As the games were as aggressive as the higher stakes i don't want to be worried about building balanced 4bet ranges etc as this will increase the swings on an already tight bankroll.
today i looked in the cash game lobby and and there wasn't anything running so took a look at the MTT schedule for the day. having between 50-90 buyins for the £3.30-£5.50 games which run all day i thought that these could possibly be great bankroll builders. I hopped in a late reg'd a few bounty hunters and loaded up some HUnl20 tables on the side. i wasn't long until my first customer came along who sat with 50bb and in 6 minutes i had the lot. unfortunately they didn't reload and left promptly, so i carried on with the Bounty hunters. not long later a possible reg sat down at two of my tables and we battled along side the MTT's for a good 45mins. I quickly went up two buyins and eventually down two buyins, said GG and stopped there. This game was far to swingy and could potentially be a huge unnecessary swing the the bankroll challenge. peoples egos in poker often get the better of them but i think the smart play is for me to limit any high variance games until my bankroll can handle it.
By this time ive managed to build up some decent stacks in the small MTTs i had been playing and decided that maybe these could be the best and possible the fastest way i can build on my bankroll. normally id say MTTs have the highest variance and biggest swings but with around 50 buyins or so and very soft games, i think a lot of profit can be made quite quickly here.
not long after id made my first final table and sat 4th in chips. i did however sit with a very comfortable 30bb so felt good. the first notable hand is at 300/600 and it folds to me in the SB with AJo, i 3x and BB defends who covers. flop kdAh7h, i bet 1k into 3.8k he calls. turn is the Jc and again i elect to bet, this time 3k setting up the river jam. our villain happily calls and we see a relative brick which is the 7c. at this point i was thinking about what to weight his range more towards and best way to play river. if i thought he had more FD's etc then i could go for the bluff catch but as the river paired the 7 i thought i could get hero'd by ax thinking they only lose to Ak. i jam he folds but we pick up a nice pot and move to 3rd.
after a few opens and cbets which got through i moved up to 2nd and also started building stacks in other MTTs so all looking up after losing a few buyins at cash. At four handed and sitting 2nd we got our chips in with Aq>KT BTTvs BB. we go down to 5BB on 6T93x and things look like there over in this one. we then find A9d in the sb and after the CO opens we go all in vs AJo. on j43r things appear to be dead but the Td gives us the backdoor dream and the river Qd brings us the nuts and puts us right back in the mix, lucky eh? after that we go from strength to strength and we book our first tourney win of this challenge.
we missed out on another final after running a terrible bluff vs what i thought was a capped range but after this win we have nearly recouped our initial loses. going forward i think ill stick with what evers running with both cash and MTTs and see if we can start building some headway on this challenge.
while ive been writing this i feel like im going on too much and not sure if i should include more or less hands and like wise im not sure how much to break them down etc. i dont want to bore people so will leave it at that for now and will bring another update over the next day or so.
Personally, I love the in-depth analysis so it's not at all boring as far as I'm concerned. I really like hearing your thought processes behind particular hands and also your take on wider population tendencies is really good stuff too, so more of that please! Just one thing which would be good to add would be keeping a tally of your bankroll with each update (assuming you're happy to share of course).
Keep up the good work
Great first update.
All the best with the challenge and congrats on the Tourney win.
If you ever want to talk about poker strategy, or need any HH looked at just ping me a message on skype.
Are you still doing the Carpentry work>?
MTT win - Diary is paying dividends already.
Good start, that.
yea i should have the balance updates just forgot the most important part.! were currently down to £260 ish but im sure we can start making some headway soon.
yea i still do carpentry stuff. mainly outside things but a good mixture, decking roofs etc etc. i dont advertise so all word of mouth etc so if i get a call ill either acceot or decline depending if i want to do it lol.. this works great for me as i can split my time between both and i enjoy both its a good balance which is important. sometimes i dont split my time equally im normally busier in the summer (when its hot) so sometimes its more like 80% poker 20% carpentry..
yea we can do some skype sessions again that would good. i was gonna post on here yesterday that if anyone wants to jump in some hand history reviews etc then im up for it.
Think I've played cash v you a handful of times and doubt I've won a pot. Must try harder. I play a fair amount of 10/20nl, so as you'll be hanging out down here for I'll probably see you around. Best of luck with the challenge dude.
played MTTs all day again yesterday and mixed in a lot of sats for bigger games etc. Im not sure exactly how many of the £1.60 sharpshooter sats i entered,but won a decent amount of them which feeds into £7.20 semi. unfortunately I bubbled the last late reg semi and didnt make it to the main but did however luckbox my way in to the £55 sheriff only to run KK into AA early on.
in other small MTTs i made about a few final tables but no outright wins yesterday. What i might need to start doing is keeping logs of buy ins etc because all i do know is that i had a pretty much break even day.
This morning i cracked on with some cash games and also used the browser as i wanted to get used to the not so new software. I still revert to the old style table as always found the new ones too 'busy' but i thought id give it another go and see how i got on. At first i was close to stopping and going back to the old ones again but stuck with it as i wanted to use the colour coding etc, so hopefully i can get used to it soon. for those that have forgotton.....
I had a good session this morning up 6 buyins at nl20 so finally the bankroll is heading in the right direction. Over yesterday and today ive not had any real interesting hands to go over and for the rest of today i might start with the MTT grind or may just play cash im undecided.
CURRENT BARKROLL: £367.48
as im getting ever closer to nl30 and once ive hit 15 buyins ill start adding those games in. I thought id share my short-term targets to follow..
[ ] once bankroll @ £450 add nl30 tables
[ ] win 10 buyins at nl30
[ ] once bankroll @ £750 add nl50 tables
Im hoping that in the next day or so i can get up to the next step and take on some nl30 tables. This will help volume wise also and i don't think there's going to be much difference skill level wise but i will note down any big differences between the levels but my game plan will start off the same which is to play a lower variance value based game and maybe look to table select until bankroll can take on some higher variance reg battling.
in the next update we'll got through some hands a small adjustments I'm making at nl20.
We’re picking up some pace in this challenge now and after a couple of sessions today we’ve more than doubled our initial bankroll.
I played four £5.50 MTT’s this morning alongside some nl20 cash games. I binked my second MTT of the challenge and came second in another so this boosted my roll to around £430. My first milestone was in reach and after winning another buyin on the cash tables we were there. This now means that i had 15 buyins @nl30 to start taking some shots. Sticking to my bankroll plan should I ever drop below 10 buyins for any level then I must drop back down. This will give me another 15 buyins at the lower level to try a recouped my losses before taking another shot. During this first shot session @nl30 things couldn’t have gone much better really. I said in my last post that the skill level was probably going to be the same but I was completely wrong tbh. These games were filled with regs with the occasional ‘fun’ player joining in every now and then so i was forced to reg battle for the entire time. After playing at nl20 and now taking what i thought was going to be a small jump up to nl30, I could see a clear difference with the games. This may not be the case continuing and may be the time of day etc but the ratio of regs/recs was something like 80/20.
I have a hand I like to go over vs one of the better regs at this level...
So pre flop was limped by the player in the HJ, villain in the SB and i check my option. All pretty standard so far. I could iso the limer with a fairly decent suited hand but as HJ was limp calling 100% of hands i didn’t want to play OOP with an easily dominated hand.
So going to the flop we pick up bottom pair with the BDFD. When sb leads he can basically have all 2pairs and staright draws. We call with our pair and HJ over calls and again we can give HJ same range i guess.
The turn gives us two pair and this is where the hand starts to get interesting. Villain barrels fairly large and we get to our first decision of the hand. What we know is that ranges are wide open as this was a limped pot. Villain has shown aggression into two players from OOP so very likely has a very strong hand (given the action) or has decent barrelling equity. In game i decide that If i raise an got called in two spots, back raised or 3bet then im not likely going to be the best shape here even sitting close to the top of my range. I elect to just call and play river.
On the river we see the 5c. It does bring in one of the many flopped straight darws but we see villain check his option. I defiantly want to go for value here but when villain c/raises what’s our calling range look like ?
We have basically our best bluff catcher but still have a tough decision given my sizing, plus I have played with villain a tonne recently and seems to run golden in these spots ( basically had it every time previously) but still we have to have the correct calling range to make sure we don’t get exploited etc. If we never have sets in this situation and never have 47 based on the action then do we need to call this 2pair combo? In game i was thinking about what my range looked like and maybe im over thinking in these spots but thought this hand would be good for some discussion on all streets. Whi thinks we should raise turn given how wide ranges are and who thinks we should bet fold river and only call straights when we have them? an interesting hand id like some feed back on..
anyway the bankroll is increasing nicely now and we have ticked off one of our short term goals and edging closer to the next milestone..
[x] once bankroll at £450 add nl300 tables
[ ] win 10 buy ins @ nl30
[ ] once bankroll @ £750 add nl 50 tables
current bankroll £611.17
This diary is great, (and even better 'coz I know you too
Very interesting seeing your thought processes, especially with the copy of the HH which makes it easier to see what's going on.
I know I'm not very good but my guess would be 97s or possibly KJo. I can't wait for the update to see what you did next (always good to 'leave us hanging'!!) and to see what he actually had........ or did you FOLD? .... which I'm pretty sure I would have done.
All in all, your diary is one I'm going to follow religiously, and I wish you the very best of luck mate. I know you'll 'SMASH IT', especially with the extra focus you have with doing the diary.
will update the finish of the hand soon there's still more to add but we''ll leave it there for now
Given the preceding action in the hand, plus the fact this is vs a decent reg, they're pretty much the only two hands that make sense to me (I'm not sure I've seen any 30nl regs take this kind of line on the river with a merged range frankly). Given how 97 blocks a lot of the possible draws that you may be calling flops and turns with, it would make more sense just to continue leading on the river vs a range that will be more heavily weighted to showdown value but also pretty capped. Therefore I'm hero calling the check/jam and feeling super smug when they show me their T9o