The study group is now up and running with 5 members so far, and we're splitting each week into different nodes. I suggested the below schedule for May, which everyone seemed happy with as a starting point.

Weekly Study Plan

I'm going to aim for 10 hours of study per week, and it'll be broken down into the following areas:

• PIO - running sims, creating and revising heuristics
• GTO Trainer - drill games & results analysis
• Video Study - videos on the topic for the week
• HH Analysis - marking & reviewing hands focused on the weekly node

I'm going to keep this reasonably fluid in terms of how the weekly hours are broken down per section because I don't want anything too rigid.

That's it for this update, onto studying!

I think 10 hours on the cbet node, creating heuristics, drill games, and HH's is fine. The two are interlinked, but it's not enough time to look at 2 nodes at once, and I would rather focus on one node at a time. We're using very similar ranges (100nl zoom solved ranges), so heuristics from board textures should be consistent.

In terms of 3bet or fold strategy, we're keeping it fluid and haven't got to those spots, yet so we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but think ranges and preflop we're all reasonably aligned as we play in similar games. If someone wants to look at one spot in a different way, then it'd be interesting to see what they find. We're looking at the spots individually then discussing our findings, not necessarily all doing the same thing.

I've watched a tonne of videos over the last month or so and felt that study wasn't beneficial. I also think focusing on specific areas of the game to improve my GTO base is more productive than sweats and recordings from other players.

A good week, I was studying the BTN vs. BB cbet node. I had a group call on Thursday with the study group, we went through the spot on GTO+ Trainer drill training, and chatted about each spot before deciding on our play. We'll be looking to do that twice this week.

One thing I thought I'd post about which I found quite interesting was winrates by position. I had a dig around and found these are what they should roughly be:

Winrates by position
SB: -18-20bb/100
BB: -30-40bb/100
EP: 8bb/100
MP: 12bb/100
CO: 20bb/100
BTN: 26bb/100

Mine are
SB: -20bb/100
BB: -33bb/100
EP: 10bb/100
MP: 23bb/100
CO: 10bb/100
BTN: 43bb/100

I then started digging into my CO winrate and found a leak:

Calling 3bets
CO: -878.19bb/100 - Fold to cbet - F:38.8%, T:46.4%, R:60%, Flop Raise - 15.3%, WWSF - 26.6%
BTN: -598.29bb/100 - Fold to cbet - F:26.6% T:42.1% R:33.3%, Flop Raise -12.5%, WWSF - 36.2%
SB: 26.27bb/100 - Fold to cbet - F:40.6% T:63.6% R:0%, Flop Raise - 12.5%, WWSF - 39.2%

This doesn't come as a surprise to me, but it is something I need to work on. I often feel lost postflop in 3bet pots, especially at times when I've been playing 100nl. There were a couple of spots yesterday in 4bet pots where I didn't know what the best line was.

I know you shouldn't try and study two spots at once, so I might try and bring in a 3bet pots spot into this month's study. This week we're looking at the opposite of last week, vs. Cbet node BB vs. BTN.

Thanks for reading, and good luck at the tables!

Last week I focused on the reverse of the previous week, the BB vs. BTN cbet node. I also had a failed shot at 100NL :(

I messed up my sims the first time around, so I didn't get to study them until the latter half of the week. When I did begin to study, I found them very time consuming as I have to look through each flop individually.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any ideas on how to speed up creating heuristics when there are a lot more outcomes to go through, turns, and vs.. cbets spring to mind.

One thing which I did find very useful was just to put in more hours playing GTO Trainer drill games and try to create heuristics, or note down common mistakes that I'm making EV wise. It's also a lot more fun.

We've had two calls in the study group this way, and I've found them very useful. I'm focusing on this node for studying this week as well, I didn't feel satisfied with my findings last week so I don't want to move on without feeling comfortable.

Thanks for reading, and good luck at the tables!

I'm definitely following this. Really nice that you share the study plans, thanks!
Regarding the sims, you give them standard ranges and then use a few random flops a let it run overnight?

I took a look into my WWSF this week after feeling like I wasn't being aggressive enough in some spots in my study. It was kind of on the lower side of good, I read that 43-50 is usually where most good regs have.

I then dug into my own by position to see if I could undercover anything further:

I definitely feel like there's spots where I need to improve my aggression in the BB. Some which spring to mine are defense vs BTN and blind vs blind.

I have also been watching a few of ElusiveMark's videos this week and he's more aggressive in spots where I tend to play passively/give up too much. Some notes I made from his most recent videos:

• Betting small pairs 22-55 on mid paired boards - T99. The reason being we can't call later streets comfortably.
• C/R flush draw on paired boards 3 way 655hh, C/R Q2hh. I would tend to flat here, a reg cbet and a rec called, by raising it put the reg in a very tricky spot where he has to play straight forward.
• C/R some backdoors and boards that we check often, A7hh on 656r. I would bet this here, probably get floated and find it difficult to play turns or I'm check/giving up with a lot of my range so a c/r gives a nice balance.

Just digging into this further, SRP with one raiser:

vs BTN RFI in BB - 38.8 WWSF, 18.8% Check Raise
vs CO RFI in BB - 40.9 WWSF, 21.2% Check Raise

It's only a small sample of hands (~1500) for each position but it's something to think about.

Things have been going very well over the last week. I felt like I'm getting confused in a lot fewer spots, which is excellent. I only put in 8.4k hands but I beat the games at 11.38bb/10 EV adjusted.

A couple of things have really just started to click and some tweaks I've made:
- Over folding when facing aggression from unknowns/recs with marginal hands
- Focusing on spots where I can take an aggressive action betting or raising rather than calling
- Increasing button raise size to 3.5x. I used to 3x from the BTN and 2.2-2.5x from every position but have always felt recs and regs don't adjust to bigger BTN raises well. I then saw one of the best 500z regs doing it and decided to look into it a bit further and adopt it into my game.

May Mini Grind Challenge

I originally planned to get in 56k hands in May but slightly behind pace so I've started a 13-day mini grind challenge so I end up hitting my hand volume target. My plan will be as follows:

Day 1: 1750
Day 2: 1750
Day 3: 2100
Day 4: 2800
Day 5: 2275
Day 6: 3000
Day 7: 1750
Day 8: 1750
Day 9: 1750
Day 10: 2100
Day 11: 2800
Day 12: 3000
Day 13: 3000

I've already completed days one and two so fingers crossed we can keep up with the pace.

I'll drop an update in each day here with how I'm getting on and some hands of interest.

I fell short on the mini grind challenge but crushed the games and decided to enjoy some sunshine instead of grinding the last weekend of the month. Gained some life EV.

May Results

May went well on the whole, apart from the 100nl shot (again).

I put it a lot of hours and battle through a tough start to the month. Played some 100 towards the end but I just don't know what it is about that limit that I can't seem to crack. It's just short term variance and 3 BI shots aren't really big enough to handle it.

I'm going to aim for 35k hands at normal tables this month and 10k of zoom. I'm going to focus on 3bet pots for my study so I'm more prepared for 100nl.

Are you still at NL50 or advance to 100?

I'm back!

I started playing again during the lockdown and had some good success but naturally didn't want to be sat in front of a computer post-lockdown so stopped playing for a while.

I started grinding again last week to primarily fund my man cave. I'll be moving house soon and I thought it'd be good to try and fund the project from poker winnings. I also want to play WSOP either this year or next, so made sense to get back on the grind.

I fell short of my hand goal last week so I thought it would make sense to fire up this journal again to try and keep me on track. The aim is to update once a week noting how I fared on my goals for the week and what I want to achieve in the week upcoming.

This week's goals
- 4x gym sessions
- 10k hands
- 1 golf practice
- Only bet on the Premier League

I'm toying with the idea of buying Uri Peleg's cash game course too but I may see how this week goes before firing.