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Moving up in stakes (MTT)
Ironpump1
Member Posts: 177
in Poker Chat
Good Morning,
Firstly allow me to introduce myself. My Name is Dean i'm 32 and work as a spin instructor and personal trainer part time. I go by Ironpump1 at the tables not because I am a bodybuilder, far from it actually... Just a huge Arnie fan and I love the movie Pumping Iron.
Anyway to the point of the discussion, I have been playing on sky for about two years now much more regular and seriously since the beginning of 2018 I reset my stats on sharkscope 1st January and decided to start with a roll of £50 and see what I could do.
now here are a couple of graphs of my progress so far:
Overall Graph: (I have filtered out sats because I'm a sucker for those pesky roulette ones and skew my actual stats)
Built a 2k roll since January biggest downswing is £445 biggest win £750
Stakes £0 - £6 My Bread and Butter...
As you can see I do pretty well here, consistent results, decent ROI and a nice profit.
now for the £6 and above....
Bit of a different story! big win or two, three wins consecutively then a chunky downswing. no real consistency at these stakes Maybe its because of the small sample at the higher stakes (I'd like that to be the case) but I feel my my game needs to improve if i'm to continue to play higher buy ins with tougher fields.
My favorite games are reg fests, I love when I reg a £22 and my table is 5 regs, sounds mad but I relish the opportunity to put what I have been studying into practice.
I guess what I am asking for is advice on how to take my game up a notch, best way to study and review spots etc...
I am open to brutal honesty if any of you out there have played me and seen me do frequently stupid things
I don't intend this to be a full blown diary of sorts but I will try and update it as when I feel I have something to report if any one is actually interested.
Thanks,
Dean
Firstly allow me to introduce myself. My Name is Dean i'm 32 and work as a spin instructor and personal trainer part time. I go by Ironpump1 at the tables not because I am a bodybuilder, far from it actually... Just a huge Arnie fan and I love the movie Pumping Iron.
Anyway to the point of the discussion, I have been playing on sky for about two years now much more regular and seriously since the beginning of 2018 I reset my stats on sharkscope 1st January and decided to start with a roll of £50 and see what I could do.
now here are a couple of graphs of my progress so far:
Overall Graph: (I have filtered out sats because I'm a sucker for those pesky roulette ones and skew my actual stats)
Built a 2k roll since January biggest downswing is £445 biggest win £750
Stakes £0 - £6 My Bread and Butter...
As you can see I do pretty well here, consistent results, decent ROI and a nice profit.
now for the £6 and above....
Bit of a different story! big win or two, three wins consecutively then a chunky downswing. no real consistency at these stakes Maybe its because of the small sample at the higher stakes (I'd like that to be the case) but I feel my my game needs to improve if i'm to continue to play higher buy ins with tougher fields.
My favorite games are reg fests, I love when I reg a £22 and my table is 5 regs, sounds mad but I relish the opportunity to put what I have been studying into practice.
I guess what I am asking for is advice on how to take my game up a notch, best way to study and review spots etc...
I am open to brutal honesty if any of you out there have played me and seen me do frequently stupid things
I don't intend this to be a full blown diary of sorts but I will try and update it as when I feel I have something to report if any one is actually interested.
Thanks,
Dean
Comments
Love that post - good to see someone with manners & social skills. "Good morning" and a little potted bio. Excellent.
"Good Morning,
Firstly allow me to introduce myself. My Name is Dean i'm 32 and work as a spin instructor and personal trainer part time. I go by Ironpump1 at the tables not because I am a bodybuilder, far from it actually... Just a huge Arnie fan and I love the movie Pumping Iron."
I'm not really the best person to answer your questions, best to leave that to the MTT guys.
Good luck.
"Hello", the online version of a handshake or a peck on the cheek, makes a huge difference to our perceptions of the author. Life is just that bit easier if we go through the social prelims. Not sure about all those exclamation marks, mind.
I am an excitable guy sometimes Tikay, I'll tone it down a little
The reason your results are less consistent in the higher stakes games is your edge is lower. With a lower edge you see increased variance. If player A has a 50% edge and player B has a 20% edge, it takes a lot more runbad for player A to have a losing session. The samples are also pretty small, especially the higher stakes one.
There are tonnes of ways to improve your game.
-Free videos on YouTube/twitch (Doug Polk, tonkaaa, raiseyouredge, lex veldhuis arey favourites).
-Paid courses by upswing poker or raiseyouredge are good
-paid video sites like runitonce
-programs that will help you caculate the best plays like icmizer, piosolver, flopzilla.
-artificial intelligence based training like pokersnowie.
-pay someone to coach you.
-build a group of people who's opinion you respect to discuss hands with. This forum is probably a good place to start.
If you really want to be good, you should spend as much time on all of the above as possible. Some of the top players say you should spend around 1/3 of your "poker" time studying. In reality few players spend any time at all so even if you manage a few minutes a day on average you will be doing more than 90%+, including probably half of the people that call poker their job!
Good luck!
Hi ChicknMelt,
Thank you so much for taking the time to respond, I really appreciate it. your advice is brilliant.
I am very aware that my edge is lower at tough tables and I am also aware that the other better players know this.
Here is an example from last night.
Just calling pre makes it look like what it is, a mid to low pair looking to hit a set which becomes apparent after the hand in the chat box.
reasoning for the flat was partly set mining but I also considered that I had been 3beting a lot prior to this against the same players, and Froozle had opened UTG
Flop do I ever lead here?
Turn I lead for 3/4 pot Froozle calls SB Folds
River comes and bet 1/4 pot. my thought process here was do I look stronger with smaller sizing, like I am trying to induce a shove? well clearly not as I get shoved on and looking back I made that easy for froozle to do so. Had I made it just over half pot he probably couldn't have shoved as I would have been committed to making the call due to the pot odds.
He showed his straight with no heart and said that he rep'd the higher heart which of course he did, had I 3 bet pre though would I have, possibly?
Interested to hear you thoughts.
As for your advice on how to get better I am currently taking full advantage of twitch and youtube, when i'm not playing i'm watching others.
I have considered investing in coaching and paid courses, its something I will certainly pursue fairly soon, I decided to start this discussion first to get some feedback and advice as its free and the community is active, friendly and very helpful. I'll check out the AI stuff too sounds interesting.
Over the last few months I have been spending more time away from the tables looking at hand history's and watching twitch, reading some free content (other players hand advice threads) upswings free stuff etc.... and I really have felt much more confident in certain situations.
Thanks again for your feedback.
Dean.
Also Upswing is good but some of the advice is not good for sky as they only take into account Ante in Mtts - the calculations are different for Sky and as such the reg's ranges are less bluff heavy than they would be on stars.
If you want to talk hands through let me know
Danny
Flop: in theory, you should basically never lead flop when you peel from the BB. It messes up all your ranges because you already have by FAR the weakest range on most boards (you have 0 premiums Vs the opener can have them all etc). By putting some strong hands in your leading range, you are going to make it almost impossible to get to showdown when you take a check call line because everything is so weak. (Hope I explained that ok?!). That's the balanced approach, and how you should be thinking against players who are good, especially if they are better than you. You can deviate from a balanced approach when you are trying to take advantage of a mistake someone makes.
Turn: I do quite like a turn lead on a lot of boards, where we expect him to check back bluffs. Say the board paired the 4 or 3 for example. Villain is likely to shutdown a lot of bluffs and our hand is still vulnerable to a lot of over cards. This is not one of those turns though. You now have a hand with showdown only, as any 6 makes a straight. When you bet you are turning your hand into a bluff - its rare anything worse will call. When something worse does call it will be a hand with a high heart in, so they have an easy call when they hit and a good bluff hand for when they miss. Leading here would be lighting money on fire imo. I would lean towards check calling over check folding turn, since any heart gives you a flush and a 6 gives you a better straight + there are still bluffs.
River: As played you have the betting lead, so I would be betting on the larger side with any bluffs (do we even have any at this point?) and big hearts, and check calling the rest. if you try blocker betting small/ medium hearts, you are always folding when you check?
Preflop: interesting shoving didn't really cross my mind at the time, looking at it now though it seems ok.
Flop: Yeah i though as much about the donk lead, I have been seeing regs donk more and more often, its not something I generally consider in these spots I was just curious to hear your thoughts on this.
Turn: Looking back on the turn bet I'm not exactly sure what I hoped to achieve by leading here. the check call makes much more sense
River: Am I calling on river if if i had checked? possibly, say it went check check check on turn turn pot is only 2400 utg bets pot when checked to I would probably call if the sb had folded. I don't think I would have been shoved on if i had sized up the river bet more though.
Thanks for talking the time to give me your thoughts I really do appreciate it.
Dean.
Bit of a delayed update on my progress as I have been busy climbing, hiking, surfing, diving around Spain most of September.
The break has been good and very much needed, I'm feeling great about getting back to my poker schedule.
Anyway here are my August results split by stake, due to work commitments prior to my trip I wasn't able to play many evenings hence the very low mid to high stakes games played.
£0 - £12 games
pretty happy with this, about £800 of this came from daytime £5.50's
£12 and above
Hmmm..... pretty rough took a couple of shots in the Sunday Major (rare that I get a free Sunday evening unless planned) I did run exceptionally bad in these games, cooler galore. i'm not saying that's why my results are bad here but it didn't help.
Overall not a great month profit wise, I am happy with my game this month still a LOT of room for improvement. I will post hands once I sort out my shambles of a filing system.
Cheers.
Dean.
Good work Dean.
I'd not worry too much about the £12 & above MTT results due to sample size. You may of course be rubbish at them - or brilliant - but 27 games is a meaningless sample.
Keep it up, you seem to be doing just fine.
Are you keeping a roll of sorts/BRM or just playing whatever games you're comfortable with?
My issue is my free time in the evening the only game I frequently get to play is the 3pm £22 bh
on a side note is there any chance of the £11 noon turbo coming back? as it stands there is nothing until 2pm above £5.50 apart from the timed games.
Yeah my roll sits around the 2k mark, I play the daytime games regularly those are where I make the majority of my money I never play more than 4 tables at time (laptop)
on a good day I'll play around 20 games, around £220 worth of buy ins
I'll play anything comfortably really except the £110's I occasionally hop into the sheriff if i'm feeling good and happy with game on the day, as I've said before I enjoy playing the top regs.
I have actually been considering skipping the main/mini all together for a bit and playing a daily £55 instead I find that if i'm in the main and mini I never have space for them timing wise as I usually have other table running.
Oh I miss the 7 at 7.....
its cursed.
Dean.
As it turns out I'm rubbish at this diary malarkey but here is an update on my progress regardless
Since October I have been in the position to play poker full time as I'm laid up with severe back problems and may need surgery, fantastic stuff...
Anyway onto the poker. My initial endeavor when I started the year was to see what I could do with a small roll of £50 I ran this up to 2k playing only MTT's morning and early afternoons.
At that point I started this diary with the aim to move up in stakes with my healthier bank roll of 2k. I didn't really update and with health problems kind of fell away from it and I continued to play the same games.
Since I cannot work as a personal trainer for the next few months I have made the change to my schedule and I am now playing far fewer low games and much more £10+ I usually start around 2pm and hopefully last until around 2am (depending on main/sheriff results
here is my total progress from 1st Jan
And my results £10+ since changing schedule and committing to playing higher games from 1st October.
I am not naive enough to assume that I am now a winning player at these stakes I will continue to play this schedule and work on improving my game. I am playing a max of 4 tables at the minute as I am having to play on a laptop so the volume is not so high I play around 15 games per session, mostly £11's some £22's a few £5's the main and sheriff.
I recently have had my first 1k score for 2nd place in the Avenger a couple of weeks back. I will post the pivotal hand shortly as I wasn't 100% sure with it, needless to say it worked out.
Dean.
Sorry to hear you have some health issues, but great news on the poker where you seem to be making very rapid progress. Very impressive numbers those, all things considered.
Hope you can get your back sorted out soon. I'm guessing by your alias you do a fair bit of gym work, & if so, I suppose back problems are a sort of occupational hazard.
Dean.
It was a very tough table and I had the shortest stack four handed I look down at A10 suited. I'm first to act I open. SB 3 bets I opt to flat call in position.
SB leads on Flop, I elect to call with my second pair top kicker. I didn't see any merit in raising here.
Turn brings a second spade giving me the nut flush draw, SB leads again leaving me a pot sized bet behind. If I call I'm more than likely facing a river shove and if I miss my flush draw I have a rough decision to make so I jam, I figure I have good equity with my second pair and flush draw.
I'm curious as to how others would have played this hand? 4 bet jam pre, call the turn?
as I'm typing looking back I feel quite happy with how I played the hand. as mentioned for me it was a pivotal hand giving me chip lead and momentum on the toughest final table I've been on.