99 Problems but BRM ain't one

loosecamel

Hi all,

So, I've started another one of these - but this time, it's a little bit different. I made a thread a couple weeks ago outlining some basic ROI targets, but after a couple weeks of poor performance, poor life management and poor results I've decided to throw that one out and start from scratch. Cliffnotes of the prior challenge: 180 games with a loss of £250. Historically, I've only really played microstakes but after a fairly successful mini-ukops, I was rolled and felt confident enough to regularly play 11s-33s. This did not go well. To be honest I do see myself having a fairly good long-term ROI in these tournaments, but the short of it is that busting a deep run in any of these with AA/KK or any other suck out hits me way too hard mentally, so for the time being I'm not letting myself touch those tournaments.

I thought it would be fun to start a BR challenge from £99.90 (I was intending to start from £100 but poor maths leaves me here..). If I want to learn anything from this challenge, it's discipline. Once I have become disciplined, things will fall into place, poker and otherwise. I'm going to set myself strict rules and if I breach any of these I will have to do a forfeit, currently thinking of sending £5/£10 to a charity of choice whenever I breach a rule or something to that effect.

Rules:
- No more than 6 tables at any one time.
- No more than 5 sessions a week.
- No poker any earlier than 6pm, no later than 1am (excluding the rare deep run..).
- Use ICMIZER or HRC for an hour at least 3 times a week.

BRM:
- <£50 : 4nl Cash, up to £2.20 tournaments, up to £1.65 satellites
- £50-£150 : 4nl Cash, up to £5.50 tournaments, up to £3.60 satellites
- £150-£250 : 4nl Cash, up to £5.50 tournaments, up to £7.20 satellites
- £250-£500 : 10nl Cash, up to £11 tournaments, up to £7.20 satellites
- £500-£1000: 10nl Cash, up to £33 tournaments, up to £12 satellites
- £1000-£1500 : 20nl Cash, up to £33 tournaments, up to £24 satellites
- £1500+: 20nl Cash, up to £55 tournaments, up to £24 satellites

I'm not going to set any type of time horizon to achieve any of these BR milestones as it's hard to judge the volume I'll be putting in considering I'm restricting myself to 6 tables, but it would be nice to be able to shot-take £11's by the end of the month.

Good luck at the tables,

LooseCamel

mumsie

GL.
Im going to copy your BRM, i've been too nitty.

Tikay10

GL Mr Camel.

SR23

like it, glgl

thedazzman

Good luck, Mr Camel.

Run Goot!

loosecamel

A decent start to the challenge after two sessions. Shipped a £2.2 BH for £55 and had a scattering of deep runs yesterday but no wins, 5th in the 18:30 £5.50 for £80 odd. Interesting exit hand with some ICM considerations;

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
Card4Life	Small blind		2500.00	2500.00	53848.82
K33TSYA1	Big blind		5000.00	7500.00	111159.36
	Your hole cards	Q A
hickmando	Raise		10000.00	17500.00	180517.03
sideshow	Fold
loosecamel	All-in		59416.24	76916.24	0.00
Card4Life	Fold
K33TSYA1	Fold
hickmando	Call		49416.24	126332.48	131100.79
hickmando	Show	K K
loosecamel	Show	Q A
Flop
		7 Q 10
Turn
		6
River
		10
hickmando	Win	Two Pairs, Kings and 10s	126332.48		257433.27

At the time I thought it was a trivial spot but thought I'd pop the scenario fully into HRC and it actually spat out some interesting results. I gave UTG a somewhat generous range of 15% and locked the scenario with a 2bb raise UTG and calculated from there. Apparently, we're supposed to flat TT-55, AQs-A9s AQ-ATo, and ship JJ+ AKs AKo KQs-KTs. This was a surprising find for a number of reasons. Firstly, I would have thought we would be in shove/fold mode given the stack sizes, yet we're calling 6.6% and shoving 3.9%. Secondly, I would have thought 77+ would be shoving here, and wouldn't have thought K10s or KJs are preferable shoves over AJ/A10s. Obviously, these kind of simulations can't be taken as gospel to transfer over to the tables, but it is definitely something I'll take a note of.

I'm already enjoying the lower stakes schedule and less tables a lot more than I have been over the last month so nothing to complain about so far.

Initial BR: £99.90

Current BR: £179.52

No. of Tournaments: 24

Time Spent: 10h

Tournament Profit: £67.56

Cash Profit: £12.06

Good luck on the tables,

Loose

Tikay10

@loosecamel

What made you choose that alias, if it's not an impertinent question?

mumsie

loosecamel said:

At the time I thought it was a trivial spot but thought I'd pop the scenario fully into HRC and it actually spat out some interesting results. I gave UTG a somewhat generous range of 15% and locked the scenario with a 2bb raise UTG and calculated from there. Apparently, we're supposed to flat TT-55, AQs-A9s AQ-ATo, and ship JJ+ AKs AKo KQs-KTs. This was a surprising find for a number of reasons. Firstly, I would have thought we would be in shove/fold mode given the stack sizes, yet we're calling 6.6% and shoving 3.9%. Secondly, I would have thought 77+ would be shoving here, and wouldn't have thought K10s or KJs are preferable shoves over AJ/A10s. Obviously, these kind of simulations can't be taken as gospel to transfer over to the tables, but it is definitely something I'll take a note of.

The 15bb spot has a bit of wriggle room , it doesn't have to be shove fold

We can limp in or min raise or get out of the way if we don't like what the board/ Action looks like and we still can have 13bb (Ish) left and we are still in the tournaments.

You can start your shove folding at 8-12bbs or whatever.

cenachav

Best of luck with this. Hope you run well.

For me the AQ hand is a shove. It looks like you have 12bb so a call is for just under 18% of your stack. From your BRM statement, I'll take it that it was a micro (£5 or under) tourney. From experience, 15% would be about right for their range, maybe even a bit on the stingy side, player dependant of course. I would be shoving here 99.9% of the time. The other 0.1% I would be having a sip of coffee then shoving

loosecamel

Tikay10 said:

@loosecamel

What made you choose that alias, if it's not an impertinent question?

Innocent origins really, when I first started playing poker I saw some name like LooseDonkey, I thought it was funny so drew inspiration from there (I didn't quite understand the significance of donkey in poker lingo back then..) and the name has just kinda stuck.

mumsie said:

The 15bb spot has a bit of wriggle room , it doesn't have to be shove fold

We can limp in or min raise or get out of the way if we don't like what the board/ Action looks like and we still can have 13bb (Ish) left and we are still in the tournaments.

You can start your shove folding at 8-12bbs or whatever.

I agree with you here mumsie, I probably should have clarified though that in that situation I did have around 12bb.

cenachav said:

Best of luck with this. Hope you run well.

For me the AQ hand is a shove. It looks like you have 12bb so a call is for just under 18% of your stack. From your BRM statement, I'll take it that it was a micro (£5 or under) tourney. From experience, 15% would be about right for their range, maybe even a bit on the stingy side, player dependant of course. I would be shoving here 99.9% of the time. The other 0.1% I would be having a sip of coffee then shoving

Haha, yes I would normally be hifiving my friends and going all-in with AQ here.

loosecamel

Decent end of the first week coming 3rd in the Mini Major for £340. I was a tad hungover Sunday so didn't play a full session. Spent probably too much on the all-in satellites trying to get myself into the Main Major, but the mini saved the day.

It's great making a deep run in a slow tournament as it gives you a nice long hand history to look over. Obviously ran pretty well to get to the FT and had a pretty fortunate position at the final table bubble, but it's still a little frustrating not closing it all the way.
I made possibly the tightest fold i've ever made on a FT:

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
NIXY2011	Small blind		8000.00	8000.00	72776.50
loosecamel	Big blind		16000.00	24000.00	236784.00
	Your hole cards	10 10
2981machg	Fold
Super_Oli	Fold
KAELAN	Raise		64000.00	88000.00	775357.20
NIXY2011	Fold
loosecamel	Fold
KAELAN	Muck
KAELAN	Win		40000.00		815357.20
KAELAN	Return		48000.00	0.00	863357.20

Villain was playing fairly aggro and loose so a shove would probably be +cEV, but this was the first time I'd seen him 4x pre and from experience this just screams AQ/AK and I'm sure we have 0 fold equity if we ship so we'd have to be happy with a flip. Tried plugging this into HRC but the results depend way too much on what villains range is (obviously) and it's a hard one really to do, if he is only doing this with KK+/AQ+ then 1010 is a fold, but if we throw in a few A10-AJ/KQs/99 in there it becomes a shove. I'm not sure to be honest, but with a much shorter stack at the table still, I decided there was going to be better opportunities to come.

Initial BR:£99.90

Current BR:£473.18

No. of Tournaments: 55

Time Spent: 26h

Tournament Profit: £333.26

Cash Profit: £40.02

I did break one of my rules as the Mini major should have been outside my BRM, but I couldn't resist - so once I've chosen a charity i'll send them a fiver as to reconcile my sins.

Good luck at the tables,

Loose

loosecamel

OK. So it's been a while and I feel an update is due. It's been exactly a month since my last update and quite a bit has changed. The couple weeks after coming 3rd in the mini major were pretty terrible in tournaments and I started to really hate playing poker, constantly getting fed up of the occasional BS that props up in low stakes tournaments on sky. So I started to dedicate far more time on cash games in the last couple weeks and have been focusing a lot more of my studying time on cash game scenarios. Things have been feeling to have clicked a bit more and I'm getting into a real nice flow state in a lot of my sessions (or I'm just a fish on a heater ).

And who doesn't like a good graph:





There's still a library of leaks I need to fix, but identifying them is the first step. Mentally I've been making good progress and I think keeping a level head throughout a session is the number one thing a poker player can do to make money. Listening to various poker podcasts have helped with this, I'd recommend bencb and Charlie Carrel's podcasts if anyone hasn't seen them before!

I've been dancing with the 20nl pool recently, which was outside my initial BRM plan, but, I feel fairly confident at this stake so will continue to play at this level mixing with 10nl. I have flirted with 30nl a bit in the last couple days, but as of now I will keep that until I have a £1k+ bankroll. Some other adjustments to my initial rules will be:
-Max of 8 tables, 6 when one of the tables is a tournament
-No time restrictions of when to play, but when it's before 6pm, a time cap of a 2h session (and only cash)

..and some fun hands from the last week or so..

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
ISack	Small blind		£0.10	£0.10	£25.69
Tootie	Big blind		£0.20	£0.30	£13.49
	Your hole cards	A Q
liamboi11	Fold
SEATO	Raise		£0.60	£0.90	£48.70
XXX	Call		£0.60	£1.50	£35.59
loosecamel	Raise		£3.00	£4.50	£21.65
ISack	Fold
Tootie	Fold
SEATO	Fold
XXX	Call		£2.40	£6.90	£33.19
Flop
		9 4 8
XXX	Check
loosecamel	Check
Turn
		3
XXX	Bet		£3.45	£10.35	£29.74
loosecamel	Call		£3.45	£13.80	£18.20
River
		9
XXX	Bet		£13.80	£27.60	£15.94
loosecamel	Call		£13.80	£41.40	£4.40
XXX	Show	3 A
loosecamel	Muck	A Q
XXX	Win	Two Pairs, 9s and 3s	£39.60		£55.54

Villain was doing a lot of random sh*t and I was a non believer..at first I thought he was bluffing, just with the best hand, but after thought and a bit of chat on the table, painfully, I think he was value-betting. Yeah, got owned on that one. More hands in the following post..


As I have bypassed my initial rules a couple times, I've donated £20 to Mind, a charity I'm passionate about.

Initial BR:£99.90

Current BR:£738.90

No. of Tournaments:189

Tournament Profit:£149.02

Cash Profit:£489.98

GL at the tables,

Loose

loosecamel

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
Barney61	Small blind		£0.10	£0.10	£24.35
Meeman014	Big blind		£0.20	£0.30	£22.75
	Your hole cards	K J
loosecamel	Raise		£0.60	£0.90	£38.76
XXX	Raise		£1.80	£2.70	£28.91
Barney61	Fold
Meeman014	Fold
loosecamel	Call		£1.20	£3.90	£37.56
Flop
		7 Q 5
loosecamel	Check
XXX	Bet		£2.20	£6.10	£26.71
loosecamel	Call		£2.20	£8.30	£35.36
Turn
		10
loosecamel	Check
XXX	Bet		£4.80	£13.10	£21.91
loosecamel	All-in		£35.36	£48.46	£0.00
XXX	All-in		£21.91	£70.37	£0.00
loosecamel	Unmatched bet		£8.65	£61.72	£8.65
loosecamel	Show	K J
XXX	Show	A A
River
		10
XXX	Win	Two Pairs, Aces and 10s	£59.92		£59.92

Meh, I have 77/1010 here too and I can see folds with overpairs against regs..sometimes..

loosecamel

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
neely0y0	Small blind		£0.10	£0.10	£31.43
loosecamel	Big blind		£0.20	£0.30	£20.06
	Your hole cards	4 3
good reg	Raise		£0.60	£0.90	£35.59
Zed87	Fold
CandyJam	Fold
ISack	Fold
neely0y0	Fold
loosecamel	Call		£0.40	£1.30	£19.66
Flop
		7 5 Q
loosecamel	Check
good reg	Bet		£0.80	£2.10	£34.79
loosecamel	Raise		£2.40	£4.50	£17.26
good reg	Call		£1.60	£6.10	£33.19
Turn
		8
loosecamel	Bet		£5.20	£11.30	£12.06
good reg	Call		£5.20	£16.50	£27.99
River
		6
loosecamel	All-in		£12.06	£28.56	£0.00
good reg	Call		£12.06	£40.62	£15.93
loosecamel	Show	4 3
good reg	Show	A 9
good reg	Win	Straight to the 9	£38.82		£54.75

Don't think we can do anything other than shoving river, it's unfortunate villain came up with one of the few combos with a 9 in it.

loosecamel

I, of course, get lucky sometimes

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
davon121	Small blind		£0.10	£0.10	£11.54
loosecamel	Big blind		£0.20	£0.30	£39.80
	Your hole cards	A J
dre136	Fold
reg	Call		£0.20	£0.50	£45.37
cait2002	Raise		£0.40	£0.90	£35.49
davon121	Fold
loosecamel	Raise		£1.40	£2.30	£38.40
reg	Call		£1.40	£3.70	£43.97
cait2002	Call		£1.20	£4.90	£34.29
Flop
		A 8 2
loosecamel	Check
reg	Check
cait2002	Bet		£0.80	£5.70	£33.49
loosecamel	Call		£0.80	£6.50	£37.60
reg	Raise		£3.80	£10.30	£40.17
cait2002	Call		£3.00	£13.30	£30.49
loosecamel	Call		£3.00	£16.30	£34.60
Turn
		6
loosecamel	Check
reg	Bet		£12.00	£28.30	£28.17
cait2002	Call		£12.00	£40.30	£18.49
loosecamel	Call		£12.00	£52.30	£22.60
River
		5
loosecamel	All-in		£22.60	£74.90	£0.00
reg	All-in		£28.17	£103.07	£0.00
cait2002	Fold
reg	Unmatched bet		£5.57	£97.50	£5.57
loosecamel	Show	A J
reg	Show	2 2
loosecamel	Win	Flush to the Ace	£95.70		£95.70

Biggest pot of the challenge so far. Does anyone know how to post multiple hands on the same post without the formatting going ape?

SR23

loosecamel said:

I, of course, get lucky sometimes

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
davon121	Small blind		£0.10	£0.10	£11.54
loosecamel	Big blind		£0.20	£0.30	£39.80
	Your hole cards	A J
dre136	Fold
reg	Call		£0.20	£0.50	£45.37
cait2002	Raise		£0.40	£0.90	£35.49
davon121	Fold
loosecamel	Raise		£1.40	£2.30	£38.40
reg	Call		£1.40	£3.70	£43.97
cait2002	Call		£1.20	£4.90	£34.29
Flop
		A 8 2
loosecamel	Check
reg	Check
cait2002	Bet		£0.80	£5.70	£33.49
loosecamel	Call		£0.80	£6.50	£37.60
reg	Raise		£3.80	£10.30	£40.17
cait2002	Call		£3.00	£13.30	£30.49
loosecamel	Call		£3.00	£16.30	£34.60
Turn
		6
loosecamel	Check
reg	Bet		£12.00	£28.30	£28.17
cait2002	Call		£12.00	£40.30	£18.49
loosecamel	Call		£12.00	£52.30	£22.60
River
		5
loosecamel	All-in		£22.60	£74.90	£0.00
reg	All-in		£28.17	£103.07	£0.00
cait2002	Fold
reg	Unmatched bet		£5.57	£97.50	£5.57
loosecamel	Show	A J
reg	Show	2 2
loosecamel	Win	Flush to the Ace	£95.70		£95.70

Biggest pot of the challenge so far. Does anyone know how to post multiple hands on the same post without the formatting going ape?

Nice. And some interesting hands above, too. More of this sort of stuff when you can, please.

I don't know how to post multiple hands w/out formatting going awry and it bugs the heck out of me.

loosecamel

Another week, another update. Another good week, continuing to play majority of my volume on cash games now and mostly 20nl and threw in a few tournies, mostly to supplement the main and the mega stack bh. Brag of the week: I final tabled 4/5 mega stacks I've played this week. Beat: I only came 3rd, 3rd, 4th and 6th. Not that great results considering in 2 of them I came into the final table as significant chip leader, but after running very well throughout the tournament, it died out by the end. Oh well, it happens. It does mean I have a very fun ROI in that tournament under this challenge though.

Graphs to date:






Tournaments now leading the way on building the bankroll, after cash games had been leading the way, mind all rakeback bonuses get slotted into my cash profit (as i record my initial and final BR and all tournament results and my spreadsheet makes the difference between the two the cash profit) so my cash results are a little skewed. Does anyone know how to retrospectively see what bonuses were given from weeks ago? It would be nice to be able to get my results as accurate as possible.

Haven't used ICMIZER nor much hand reviews this week, which i'm looking to fix this week. I have, however, been working significantly on my mental game and it's proving well. After having a crazy cash day yesterday of being down 8 buy ins, back all the way up to b/e and then losing another 6 buy ins in the space of 15 minutes, I only tilted a little bit. Thankfully only berated myself. (Apologies to anyone that has been previously on the receiving end of my outbursts, I'm actively trying to make it a thing of the past..hopefully).

After a small session later today, I will be taking the rest of the week off. Going to switch off completely off poker for at least 5 days to hopefully reset the mind a bit. As requested by @SR23, some hands will follow this post...


Initial BR: £99.90

Current BR: £961.33

No. of Tournaments: 237

Tournament Profit: £477.99

Cash Profit: £383.44


GL at the tables

loosecamel

Honestly thought I was good here...

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
ronnieg197	Small blind		£0.15	£0.15	£33.76
67912092	Big blind		£0.30	£0.45	£25.05
sinbadd	Sit out
	Your hole cards	7 7
very fun player	Call		£0.30	£0.75	£16.32
loosecamel	Raise		£1.50	£2.25	£28.50
Sunday8pm	Fold
ronnieg197	Fold
67912092	Fold
very fun player	Call		£1.20	£3.45	£15.12
Flop
		K K 5
very fun player	Check
loosecamel	Check
Turn
		8
very fun player	Check
loosecamel	Bet		£1.73	£5.18	£26.77
very fun player	Raise		£8.64	£13.82	£6.48
loosecamel	All-in		£26.77	£40.59	£0.00
very fun player	All-in		£6.48	£47.07	£0.00
loosecamel	Unmatched bet		£13.38	£33.69	£13.38
very fun player	Show	J K
loosecamel	Show	7 7
River
		8
very fun player	Win	Full House, Kings and 8s	£32.00		£32.00

loosecamel

Call me a nit but I don't see this ever being anything other than QQ or AA.

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
Rpea27	Small blind		£0.10	£0.10	£14.70
Kevwinsome	Big blind		£0.20	£0.30	£69.13
	Your hole cards	K K
Poppyed123	Fold
SR23	Raise		£0.60	£0.90	£42.79
loosecamel	Raise		£3.00	£3.90	£65.37
ACGeordie	Raise		£7.20	£11.10	£74.43
Rpea27	Fold
Kevwinsome	Fold
SR23	Fold
loosecamel	Call		£4.20	£15.30	£61.17
Flop
		Q 10 10
loosecamel	Check
ACGeordie	Bet		£7.65	£22.95	£66.78
loosecamel	Fold
ACGeordie	Muck
ACGeordie	Win		£14.53		£81.31
ACGeordie	Return		£7.65	£0.77	£88.96

loosecamel

Love these kind of bluffs Villain told me he folded QJ, I now wish I simply told him good fold

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
BigBeats24	Small blind		£0.10	£0.10	£12.65
loosecamel	Big blind		£0.20	£0.30	£56.25
	Your hole cards	10 Q
Dexy1	Call		£0.20	£0.50	£8.65
good reg	Raise		£1.20	£1.70	£45.16
BigBeats24	Fold
loosecamel	Call		£1.00	£2.70	£55.25
Dexy1	Call		£1.00	£3.70	£7.65
Flop
		Q 4 2
loosecamel	Check
Dexy1	Check
good reg	Bet		£1.80	£5.50	£43.36
loosecamel	Call		£1.80	£7.30	£53.45
Dexy1	Fold
Turn
		J
loosecamel	Check
good reg	Bet		£4.00	£11.30	£39.36
loosecamel	Raise		£11.20	£22.50	£42.25
good reg	Fold
loosecamel	Muck
loosecamel	Win		£14.53		£56.78
loosecamel	Return		£7.20	£0.77	£63.98

loosecamel

Against same opponent above, he told me afterwards he bluffshoved with AK, I told him he was a sicko and sat out.

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
loosecamel	Small blind		£0.10	£0.10	£74.84
good reg	Big blind		£0.20	£0.30	£45.31
	Your hole cards	K A
dutto2015	Call		£0.20	£0.50	£45.60
loosecamel	Raise		£1.30	£1.80	£73.54
good reg	Raise		£3.60	£5.40	£41.71
dutto2015	Fold
loosecamel	Call		£2.40	£7.80	£71.14
Flop
		A 2 J
loosecamel	Check
good reg	Bet		£3.20	£11.00	£38.51
loosecamel	Call		£3.20	£14.20	£67.94
Turn
		4
loosecamel	Check
good reg	Bet		£8.00	£22.20	£30.51
loosecamel	Call		£8.00	£30.20	£59.94
River
		6
loosecamel	Check
good reg	All-in		£30.51	£60.71	£0.00
loosecamel	Fold
good reg	Muck
good reg	Win		£28.69		£28.69
good reg	Return		£30.51	£1.51	£59.20