I've decided to opt in on Sharkscope, so that information is now available for all to see. I was reticent to do this for a long time because I was embarrassed about people seeing how bad I am and felt like it gave me a slight edge for people not be able to look up this sort of detail about me. Anyone who looks now will see a winner for the last 1,000 or so games, so that's less embarrassing.
It's quite satisfying to see a long breakeven stretch at the beginning while I figured stuff out followed by a consistent trend upwards. There's a nice £500 downswing bang in the middle, which I remember fondly. That was right after I started back at university and hadn't figured my schedule out yet, so I was playing tired a lot and often on autopilot or trying to stay awake. Got a grip on that recovered the entire loss in a very short, lucky period of time due to FT's in the Mini Major and Mini Marksman. I'm pretty happy with how things have gone since then and pleased to be reminded that I do know how to do well in these tournaments. Very few significant results since then though.
It seems like most of the in-depth functionality here requires a subscription, though, which is unfortunate. What can I use this for without subscribing? How worthwhile is a subscription?
Last Year I went through a phase of using my 9 searches everytime I sat at a MTT, and would use the notes feature .
Been doing something similar for a while, I like to make a note of people who appear to be winning players and their ABI. Always annoying when I've pegged someone as a fish and they turn out to be a big winner.
Of the paid stuff, Favourite Games is the most useful for me because you can see how you (and other players) are doing in certain games.
Don't think you have to pay to see final table finishing positions? It's in the graphs tab. Well worth a look though Then compare it with the finish positions of the Bates or Lool or whoever. You can probably guess the result though!
Actually, I'm not sure you can filter by game type in the free version so the results won't be as clear as they actually are as it includes satellites.
Spoiler: Bates and Lool come 1st in MTTs more than any other FT position
Don't think you have to pay to see final table finishing positions? It's in the graphs tab. Well worth a look though Then compare it with the finish positions of the Bates or Lool or whoever. You can probably guess the result though!
Yeah, found that one. Not surprised to see I'm usually 3rd or 4th, but it's more even than I expected. Can't do anything else right now as I'm out of searches. It seems every page refresh uses up a search which is **** daft. Very tight-fisted to still give so few searches for the paid tier as well.
Another trick I used to do, was use my phone's 4G - would get another 5 searches that way as it wasn't connected to the Wifi or something. Not sure if it still works
Another trick I used to do, was use my phone's 4G - would get another 5 searches that way as it wasn't connected to the Wifi or something. Not sure if it still works
Yeah, took advantage of this earlier. It seems to be checking based on your IP rather than cookies or anything like that, so using a private browser, switching computers etc didn't make a difference, but you can use 4G which is a totally different connection and IP address. Sharkscope isn't exactly optimized for mobile though, unfortunately.
Torched a qualification to a Hitman Semi satellite because the wife insisted on dragging me out to get some bits. Harder than you think to play poker in the checkout line at Tesco. Don't recommend it.
This is a hand from the £300 RB. It's not directly relevant to this thread's goals but it often ends up being effectively a £9 or £12 tournament, so it might as well be. Curious how we think I played it.
The 4.5x 3bet on the flop is curious but I don't mind calling and folding turn unimproved when there are so many draws out there. The only viable set is 66 since JJ should 3bet pre and everything else is a pair or a draw. I don't know much about villain but I see him often near the top of higher buy-in MTTs so I assume he's not doing anything too OOL. Still not sure if I should have just folded at this point though.
When he leads turn I can't see him having anything other than a draw, one possible full house, or maybe a worse 9 and decide to just get it in since I'm ahead of most of that. I don't want to just flat and have to fold a lot of scary rivers and if he has a full house then gg. Even in the worst case, that he has a flush and OESD--which he clearly did--he's only 30% and I'm giving him slightly worse with my shove. As long as I'm such a big favourite I feel like it's fine to just GII.
Busto in the Mini with 3 bounties and no cash. Jammed TT from MP with 14bb, CO snap-rejams 26bb with ATo, and he flops an ace. I think the rejam is pretty light but I did have a healthy bounty. Happy with how I played overall but I got pretty unlucky in a few spots, including losing with AA once again.
I have to say, this thread has been a kiss of death for my results so far. Haven't got so much as a min-cash since I started, except for a win I pulled out in a £1 RB last night, but it was a miserable prizepool.
Feeling pretty fed up at the moment so I'm probably going to take a day or two off now to reset and focus on school work I've been neglecting. Also going to do something I haven't done for a while--not least because it's a pain on Sky--and review my HH from tonight's Mini and see what I could have done differently.
This is a hand from the £300 RB. It's not directly relevant to this thread's goals but it often ends up being effectively a £9 or £12 tournament, so it might as well be. Curious how we think I played it.
The 4.5x 3bet on the flop is curious but I don't mind calling and folding turn unimproved when there are so many draws out there. The only viable set is 66 since JJ should 3bet pre and everything else is a pair or a draw. I don't know much about villain but I see him often near the top of higher buy-in MTTs so I assume he's not doing anything too OOL. Still not sure if I should have just folded at this point though.
When he leads turn I can't see him having anything other than a draw, one possible full house, or maybe a worse 9 and decide to just get it in since I'm ahead of most of that. I don't want to just flat and have to fold a lot of scary rivers and if he has a full house then gg. Even in the worst case, that he has a flush and OESD--which he clearly did--he's only 30% and I'm giving him slightly worse with my shove. As long as I'm such a big favourite I feel like it's fine to just GII.
Player
Action
Cards
Amount
Pot
Balance
NoEa5yCa5h
Small blind
30.00
30.00
5372.50
steveysee
Big blind
60.00
90.00
4377.50
Your hole cards
A
9
waller02
Fold
Baldeag1e
Fold
NOSTRI
Raise
180.00
270.00
5945.00
NoEa5yCa5h
Fold
steveysee
Call
120.00
390.00
4257.50
Flop
6
9
J
steveysee
Check
NOSTRI
Bet
120.00
510.00
5825.00
steveysee
Raise
540.00
1050.00
3717.50
NOSTRI
Call
420.00
1470.00
5405.00
Turn
9
steveysee
Bet
840.00
2310.00
2877.50
NOSTRI
All-in
5405.00
7715.00
0.00
steveysee
All-in
2877.50
10592.50
0.00
NOSTRI
Unmatched bet
1687.50
8905.00
1687.50
steveysee
Show
Q
10
NOSTRI
Show
A
9
River
K
steveysee
Win
Straight to the King
8905.00
8905.00
My notes on Steve is he’s as wide and aggressive with his bets and calls as I am! Personally if it was me the reraise on the flop is a I also would make( I love an open ender as much as love a flush draw even though the odds aren’t as good)
I’d also make the bigger continuation bet on the turn to rep ironically the hand you had - trips- where I’m as surprised as you is the call to your shove....even I would probably t that’s point let it go- he got lucky......or did he ? I wonder what the maths tells us...
Decided to play a few this morning before I knuckle down to some work. Feeling a little better after final tabling a Unibet freezeout last night that turned a losing week into a break-even week.
Was doing very well in a £300 BH until this hand, which is going straight into the "Sky is rigged" folder.
Flop is Tc8s4s, we have 44. Check-raised a bet and a call, got one call. Turn comes Td, we check-raise again and get called. River is another T. I check, he bets 1/3.
I wish I could say I folded. It's an easy fold. I beat nothing. An idiot could find a fold here.
I did not fold. He had quads.
Good reminder, not that I needed it, that you can ruin a good tournament run with just one bad decision. I had 2x the average stack before this and could have folded my way to the FT. I could have folded river and still had a healthy stack. Instead I was left with <20bb after the hand and busted out of the money after jamming AK into 55.
Pulled out an 8th in the Mini Major last night. No particularly notable hands, with my biggest ones largely playing themselves, but some interesting situational spots.
I spent most of the mid-stages with a player who wins a lot on my direct left with a big stack; eventually realised he was actually very nitty and started profitably taking some liberties blind vs blind. I think I picked up a sizing tell on someone else that was hoovering up chips on that table, who I noticed was clicking the 1/2 or 3/4 pot button when he was bluffing and choosing a deliberate number of blinds when he had value. It became really obvious when the pot was an awkward size and this guy was betting something silly like 10874.37 and then just betting 3bb in the next hand. These two observations alone probably contributed to a third or more of my stack at its peak. I don't tend to multi-table too hard for this reason; there's a lot of information being given away if you're paying enough attention, particularly in regard to timing and bet sizing.
Got a bit nitty as I played out the bubble after being stuck on a table full of solid players and big stacks and went fairly card dead. Finally got moved to table with 3 short stacks and the tournament chip leader with 9 left and thought I'd be able to get some work done here but almost immediately shoved 99 into the chip leader's K9 and that was all she wrote when the K came on the flop. I'm pretty sure the shove was fine but with a few shorter stacks on the table and significant pay jumps there might have been some ICM considerations here; have made a note to check that out this evening if I have time. ICM is certainly one of my weak points right now, so it can't hurt to spend some time studying that.
Reasonably happy with how I played overall. Managed to avoid making any completely brain dead mistakes and feel quite unlucky not to have FT'd it.
Also evidently took 2nd in last week's FTT for £10 in tokens.
This is a hand from the £300 RB. It's not directly relevant to this thread's goals but it often ends up being effectively a £9 or £12 tournament, so it might as well be. Curious how we think I played it.
The 4.5x 3bet on the flop is curious but I don't mind calling and folding turn unimproved when there are so many draws out there. The only viable set is 66 since JJ should 3bet pre and everything else is a pair or a draw. I don't know much about villain but I see him often near the top of higher buy-in MTTs so I assume he's not doing anything too OOL. Still not sure if I should have just folded at this point though.
When he leads turn I can't see him having anything other than a draw, one possible full house, or maybe a worse 9 and decide to just get it in since I'm ahead of most of that. I don't want to just flat and have to fold a lot of scary rivers and if he has a full house then gg. Even in the worst case, that he has a flush and OESD--which he clearly did--he's only 30% and I'm giving him slightly worse with my shove. As long as I'm such a big favourite I feel like it's fine to just GII.
Player
Action
Cards
Amount
Pot
Balance
NoEa5yCa5h
Small blind
30.00
30.00
5372.50
steveysee
Big blind
60.00
90.00
4377.50
Your hole cards
A
9
waller02
Fold
Baldeag1e
Fold
NOSTRI
Raise
180.00
270.00
5945.00
NoEa5yCa5h
Fold
steveysee
Call
120.00
390.00
4257.50
Flop
6
9
J
steveysee
Check
NOSTRI
Bet
120.00
510.00
5825.00
steveysee
Raise
540.00
1050.00
3717.50
NOSTRI
Call
420.00
1470.00
5405.00
Turn
9
steveysee
Bet
840.00
2310.00
2877.50
NOSTRI
All-in
5405.00
7715.00
0.00
steveysee
All-in
2877.50
10592.50
0.00
NOSTRI
Unmatched bet
1687.50
8905.00
1687.50
steveysee
Show
Q
10
NOSTRI
Show
A
9
River
K
steveysee
Win
Straight to the King
8905.00
8905.00
Out of interest, what range of hands would you be checking back on this flop versus BB?
Actually, I'm not sure you can filter by game type in the free version so the results won't be as clear as they actually are as it includes satellites.
Spoiler: Bates and Lool come 1st in MTTs more than any other FT position
Out of interest, what range of hands would you be checking back on this flop versus BB?
I don't mind admitting that this is probably one of the weakest parts of my game and an area I've been spending some time studying (using that term loosely since I have very little time for proper, focused study at the moment). I used to have a mindset of "I raised pre so I should cbet," which eventually got replaced by "I have a piece of this board or a draw so I should cbet." I'm a little more savvy about it now and know I should be thinking in ranges but for the most part that has introduced a lot of confusion into my decision-making.
I do think cbetting my A9 here is a mistake. I would imagine my thought process at the time was that the BB can be calling here with a massive range that misses this board a ton of the time and I can take the pot down now before things get dicey (though my sizing is clearly too small to do that). In retrospect, I think the BB has a fairly significant range advantage here and a ton of draws they can call or raise with, and there are very few turn cards that don't make my hand significantly worse. So I should probably be check-folding my misses and check-calling most of my value and re-evaluating on the turn.
Any input on my thinking here would be welcome. God knows I need it.
Out of interest, what range of hands would you be checking back on this flop versus BB?
I don't mind admitting that this is probably one of the weakest parts of my game and an area I've been spending some time studying (using that term loosely since I have very little time for proper, focused study at the moment). I used to have a mindset of "I raised pre so I should cbet," which eventually got replaced by "I have a piece of this board or a draw so I should cbet." I'm a little more savvy about it now and know I should be thinking in ranges but for the most part that has introduced a lot of confusion into my decision-making.
I do think cbetting my A9 here is a mistake. I would imagine my thought process at the time was that the BB can be calling here with a massive range that misses this board a ton of the time and I can take the pot down now before things get dicey (though my sizing is clearly too small to do that). In retrospect, I think the BB has a fairly significant range advantage here and a ton of draws they can call or raise with, and there are very few turn cards that don't make my hand significantly worse. So I should probably be check-folding my misses and check-calling most of my value and re-evaluating on the turn.
Any input on my thinking here would be welcome. God knows I need it.
It's a pretty big topic and there's a lot of far better quality info out there than any waffle I'm going to give you
One thing to think about though:
You're playing against a player you've played against a few times and have some notes on. Let's call him 'NESTRI' (any likeness to real players is coincidental...)
You've seen enough showdowns with NESTRI to piece together that when he checks back as PFA (preflop aggressor) his range is often really weak. When NESTRI checks back you can bet any turn card that doesn't smack his range and generate a tonne of folds. If you're NESTRI, how you could you protect your check back range to stop this happening?
You've also seen that NESTRI has too many weak/middling hands in his cbet range, so you're able to increase your check/raise frequencies on a lot of boards and put a big chunk of his range in dicey spots. If you're NESTRI, how could you stop this happening?
Obviously a huuuuuuuge topic and there's a tonne of other stuff to consider like villain's tendencies, positions, flop texture, range advantage (as you say), whether or not ICM is a factor, etc, etc. Lots of good stuff out there though and people who will explain things much better than me - glgl!
Comments
It's quite satisfying to see a long breakeven stretch at the beginning while I figured stuff out followed by a consistent trend upwards. There's a nice £500 downswing bang in the middle, which I remember fondly. That was right after I started back at university and hadn't figured my schedule out yet, so I was playing tired a lot and often on autopilot or trying to stay awake. Got a grip on that recovered the entire loss in a very short, lucky period of time due to FT's in the Mini Major and Mini Marksman. I'm pretty happy with how things have gone since then and pleased to be reminded that I do know how to do well in these tournaments. Very few significant results since then though.
It seems like most of the in-depth functionality here requires a subscription, though, which is unfortunate. What can I use this for without subscribing? How worthwhile is a subscription?
Last Year I went through a phase of using my 9 searches everytime I sat at a MTT, and would use the notes feature .
Something like.
S/S 2k winner over 4,000 , S/S down 5k etc.
With The sky player pool being small it doesn't take long to build up notes.
Of the paid stuff, Favourite Games is the most useful for me because you can see how you (and other players) are doing in certain games.
Don't think you have to pay to see final table finishing positions? It's in the graphs tab. Well worth a look though
Spoiler: Bates and Lool come 1st in MTTs more than any other FT position
The 4.5x 3bet on the flop is curious but I don't mind calling and folding turn unimproved when there are so many draws out there. The only viable set is 66 since JJ should 3bet pre and everything else is a pair or a draw. I don't know much about villain but I see him often near the top of higher buy-in MTTs so I assume he's not doing anything too OOL. Still not sure if I should have just folded at this point though.
When he leads turn I can't see him having anything other than a draw, one possible full house, or maybe a worse 9 and decide to just get it in since I'm ahead of most of that. I don't want to just flat and have to fold a lot of scary rivers and if he has a full house then gg. Even in the worst case, that he has a flush and OESD--which he clearly did--he's only 30% and I'm giving him slightly worse with my shove. As long as I'm such a big favourite I feel like it's fine to just GII.
I have to say, this thread has been a kiss of death for my results so far. Haven't got so much as a min-cash since I started, except for a win I pulled out in a £1 RB last night, but it was a miserable prizepool.
Feeling pretty fed up at the moment so I'm probably going to take a day or two off now to reset and focus on school work I've been neglecting. Also going to do something I haven't done for a while--not least because it's a pain on Sky--and review my HH from tonight's Mini and see what I could have done differently.
I’d also make the bigger continuation bet on the turn to rep ironically the hand you had - trips- where I’m as surprised as you is the call to your shove....even I would probably t that’s point let it go- he got lucky......or did he ? I wonder what the maths tells us...
Was doing very well in a £300 BH until this hand, which is going straight into the "Sky is rigged" folder.
Flop is Tc8s4s, we have 44. Check-raised a bet and a call, got one call. Turn comes Td, we check-raise again and get called. River is another T. I check, he bets 1/3.
I wish I could say I folded. It's an easy fold. I beat nothing. An idiot could find a fold here.
I did not fold. He had quads.
Good reminder, not that I needed it, that you can ruin a good tournament run with just one bad decision. I had 2x the average stack before this and could have folded my way to the FT. I could have folded river and still had a healthy stack. Instead I was left with <20bb after the hand and busted out of the money after jamming AK into 55.
Must do better.
I spent most of the mid-stages with a player who wins a lot on my direct left with a big stack; eventually realised he was actually very nitty and started profitably taking some liberties blind vs blind. I think I picked up a sizing tell on someone else that was hoovering up chips on that table, who I noticed was clicking the 1/2 or 3/4 pot button when he was bluffing and choosing a deliberate number of blinds when he had value. It became really obvious when the pot was an awkward size and this guy was betting something silly like 10874.37 and then just betting 3bb in the next hand. These two observations alone probably contributed to a third or more of my stack at its peak. I don't tend to multi-table too hard for this reason; there's a lot of information being given away if you're paying enough attention, particularly in regard to timing and bet sizing.
Got a bit nitty as I played out the bubble after being stuck on a table full of solid players and big stacks and went fairly card dead. Finally got moved to table with 3 short stacks and the tournament chip leader with 9 left and thought I'd be able to get some work done here but almost immediately shoved 99 into the chip leader's K9 and that was all she wrote when the K came on the flop. I'm pretty sure the shove was fine but with a few shorter stacks on the table and significant pay jumps there might have been some ICM considerations here; have made a note to check that out this evening if I have time. ICM is certainly one of my weak points right now, so it can't hurt to spend some time studying that.
Reasonably happy with how I played overall. Managed to avoid making any completely brain dead mistakes and feel quite unlucky not to have FT'd it.
Also evidently took 2nd in last week's FTT for £10 in tokens.
Positive end to a losing week.
GL with the diary @NOSTRI
I do think cbetting my A9 here is a mistake. I would imagine my thought process at the time was that the BB can be calling here with a massive range that misses this board a ton of the time and I can take the pot down now before things get dicey (though my sizing is clearly too small to do that). In retrospect, I think the BB has a fairly significant range advantage here and a ton of draws they can call or raise with, and there are very few turn cards that don't make my hand significantly worse. So I should probably be check-folding my misses and check-calling most of my value and re-evaluating on the turn.
Any input on my thinking here would be welcome. God knows I need it.
One thing to think about though:
You're playing against a player you've played against a few times and have some notes on. Let's call him 'NESTRI' (any likeness to real players is coincidental...)
You've seen enough showdowns with NESTRI to piece together that when he checks back as PFA (preflop aggressor) his range is often really weak. When NESTRI checks back you can bet any turn card that doesn't smack his range and generate a tonne of folds. If you're NESTRI, how you could you protect your check back range to stop this happening?
You've also seen that NESTRI has too many weak/middling hands in his cbet range, so you're able to increase your check/raise frequencies on a lot of boards and put a big chunk of his range in dicey spots. If you're NESTRI, how could you stop this happening?
Obviously a huuuuuuuge topic and there's a tonne of other stuff to consider like villain's tendencies, positions, flop texture, range advantage (as you say), whether or not ICM is a factor, etc, etc. Lots of good stuff out there though and people who will explain things much better than me - glgl!