My poker journey through the micro stakes
Posted by Caterina
Posted by
Caterina
posted in
Poker Journals
My poker journey through the micro stakes
Hello and welcome everyone, I'm so glad you are here.
My background
I am a german mathematician, currently in incapacity pension, because I suffer from a severe psychological disorder (DESNOS).
About 3 years ago an online friend of mine introduced me into the world of Poker and I started playing very casually, because I wanted to understand what he was talking about. (Turns out, he was mostly telling bad beat stories ^^). Back then I was your typical aggro-fish/maniac, playing 2NL.
Losing too many BI turned me into your typical weak/tight Nit and while I managed to get my intial losses back it was also way too boring for me to keep doing.
After a rather long break, I got interested in the different O8 games (mostly PLO8 and NLO8) and while still being a Nit, I improved quite a bit and had some nice success playing MTTs and cash. (The 2+2 forums for O8 area great, Amok is basically giving free high quality coaching).
I then busted my 500$ roll (up from 50$ intial investment) in 4 hours of Stud8 headsup against somebody who was probably a regular.
Left with less than 2$ I played desperately some Spin & Gos until I somehow manages to rebuild to 200$ with 2PLO8 and 2PLO cashgames..
Since my pension is so low income, I'm really desperate for additional money. Even though the complexity and math aspect of poker was what originally interested me, I'm now really looking for additional money, too. So these are the two main things that motivate me to take my poker game more seriously.
i made a schedule, planned for breaks, got the essential suscription, reloaded on "PLO from scratch" and put in some volume (120k hands) of PLO. The first 100k hands everything was great and I went shottaking at 5PLOz with 250$, ran it up to 400$, then started losing and losing. Dropped down again and even lost there. Only after taking 2 days off and playing NLHE was I able to have a winning session again. It completly destroyed any confidence I had in my game (I think the red line demonstrates this quite nicely).
I mean, sure, poker is a hard game, but certainly it can't be THAT hard to beat 1c/2c games? It feels like I'm only able to beat the really superspewy 90%VPIP funplayers and lose against everyone else, even though for the longest time, I was actually up money against almost all of the 5PLOz regulars. All the whining doesn't help anyone though, so I want to give it another shot. I play on stars, this has to do with other sites either not supporting players from germany or not supporting my possible ways of deposition. I also do have a little bit on partypoker, but hated how there are so few players.
It's not a smart decision to play zoom, as I can evidence
gametype | hands | result | equity adjusted result | bb/100 | adjusted bb/100 | rake
Goals
- play at least 3 hours of PLO or NL-HE every day
- study at least 3 hours everday. The focus is on a) expanding fundamentals, b) improving known leaks and c) mental game issues
- try to get as far as possible with a 100+10 BI Bankroll management system.
Not all about my losing streak is bad though. If anything it really showed me, what my C-game is like, so I can now make a list of...
known issues
- Too much bluffing, especially multiway and especially without thinking what hands I want to get folds from
- Too many multistreet bluffs against station type players
- Spite calling and revenge tilt, very often triggered, when players 3bet me way too light and I don't get a hand to fight back with.
- Fancy play syndrome. This happens a lot, when I deem a hand sooooo goood for doing x, ignoring everything else.
- Ignoring preflop actions and calling too many 3bets. Not giving Villains enough credit for actually having a good hand from time to time
- calling raises and especially check/raises too much. Sometimes even thinking "that's most likely a set, I have x outs, if the turn is y, I'll do z" and then simply ignoring my own (good) thoughts and mindlessly paying off (WTF?) - Yupp, he had exactly the hand, I thought he had. My read was correct and I only had to pay 80BB to verify it!
- Fighting too much for pots. Especially in Blind on Blind battles. I don't care what you have, I'm in position, this is my blind and I will do whatever move necessary to win this pot... yeah...
- not widening my ranges enough, when I'm in position on funplayers.
- increasing amount of tables and clicking stuff on autopilot, when chasing losses.
Alright, this got rather long. I hope to update it daily and I hope you can enjoy and help me on my pokerjourney. I'm very often very lonely and really would like to be part of something.
Caterina "Prinha" Schneider
Loading 8 Comments...
Is there a reason you don't just specialize in one thing?
I think if I was starting out again I would go for PLO and specialize in that.
Hey, thanks for your interest! Yes, albeit not a good one.
I have trouble deciding for a particular game and am torn between several factors.
I think, I haven't done enough theory to really know my absolute and relative handstrength in PLO in many situations and therefore am probably calling too much/light in certain situations, where I just believe to have the right equity, whereas folding or not betting in others, where I fail to realize that I'm ahead.
But your goal is likely to move up to higher stakes eventually. Where you'll need a decent understanding off the game. To get there you'll need to study, which RIO offers for sure.
Wouldn't it be best to spend your study time to a single gametype? Our of your post it seems you prefer PLO. So you can play PLO and NLH for now but just study PLO only. And then once you move play PLO only.
I watched Peter Clarke play PLO50 and the pool there seemed softer than the pool at NL50. There's much more free study content out there for NL so even the fish understand some basic ideas. But it's less in PLO.
You make a very compelling case. Thanks!
So, played my 3 hours, this is the result (2 hours PLO, 1 hour NL-HE):
All in all I'm very displeased with the 2PLO results, Reviewing the session always makes me question the significance of all-in ev. For example in this hand:
V (64/18/24 over 321 hands). is somewhat shortstacked. I think KK is well ahead of his 24% 3bet range (and nobody ever folds to 4bets), so that I don't think, I made a mistake preflop. On the flop, I'm not so sure, as I didn't flop well and V. should have As he's never folding. Really, kinda lost, don't wanna give free cards and check/calling or check/folding seem ridiculous, too.
More important, I think, is the following hand. It's a prime example of stuff that I do wrong on a regular basis. I don't really have many stats on V. (only 42 hands) seems to be a little bit loose and judging from his showdowns, he likes to play pocketpairs - no matter the sidecards, inlcuding dealt trips.
Getting check/raised full pot at this limit is ~ 90% sets, 2% Two Pair,6% Big Draw and 2% random spazz. Knowing this, I have things going through my head, like:
I don't have odds to call with just my flushdraw and setouts, but simply folding otf is so weak, I'll go see a turn. If I hit, V. is NEVER folding a set or a draw, so at least I do have good implied odds. If I don't hit, I can fold to a PSB OTT (actually, maybe I should still call, unless turn pairs, because of IP, because V. has a hard time folding a set or flush). Anyways, instead of folding turn now, I call again, which is possibly not as terrible as I thought it was, due to implied odds and due to V. only betting 3/4 pot.I should have 10+ outs. Let's see the river.
And you know what, just off the 2+2= 4% off chance, that V. has a counterfit two pair or random spazz, I call, thinking something like "I should not be calling, I'm not good often enough, but ... how weak do I look, if I just fold my AA here?"
Who cares, how I look. I spend way too much time with my self esteem and ego issues. Besides nobody even knows my cards (I hope ^^)
sigh Maybe showing this here will help me overcome it.
My current shortterm goals:
a) Work on a "default" preflop range, both for NL, aswell as PLO. I use the free RFI preflop chart from upswing for PLO and the suggested ranges from the Grinder's Manual for NL. Adjusting to the circumstances as necessary. It's a little bit emberassing that I judged this from a case to case basis up until now, instead of having well defined ranges. But then again, comparing to the suggested charts, I'm not that far off. In general I think, preflop is my stronger suit. However, it's virtually impossible to analyse my own range in any gven spot, if I don't know which hands I'm actually playing.
b) Simply do less of the known issues.
The two NL sessions were quite easy, as in there were gigantic whales at the table and I got lucky in finding a hand, before they had lost all their money (eg. One player open shove 100BB with A5s).
The only thing, I'm sort of proud of is: In the first session I had a very active 3better behind me, it was super annoying and I realized the tilt coming up. Even though it hurt my ego a ton, I simply looked for a better table, since there wasn't even funplayers there.
Cheers :)
Best of luck with this
Day 2
Dear Diary, today I went on Monkey Tilt so overly tilting that even tilted Tiltmonkeys would tilt.
This is my result for the day
and even though it has been a weird up and down ride, I'm somewhat happy. All hands were played at 2PLOz.
Since my focus is on preflop, I had the idea of quickly assessing every hand before playing. Something like KKT8r is a KKxx rainbow hand, it is a GTO 1$/2$ RFI from UTG, so it's a snapopen on the BTN, where I'm currently or
A(QJ)7: his is an ABBXss type of hand and a GTO 1$/2$ RFI from UTG. The worst open from this type would be A(JT)7. However, I will fold it pre being UTG, because I have way too many loose players behind me and also more rake to pay.
I kept this up for the full 45 minutes and was happy with the results. (Made only 4 "mistakes" in 286 hands).
Second session quickly went downhill. First I made a couple of bad calls, completly in line with my already mentioned leak. Calling, even though I know I'm most of the time beat and don't have enough equity vs their range. I always get angry about my own mistakes instead of looking forward.
Whilst already being somewhat fragile, I encountered a new player in the pool, who was either a very good LAG that didn't belong there or a maniac on a heater, I don't know. I just know he tilted me off the records. It's something about this guy betting pot in every situation on every flop and me not hitting anything for the life of it. It's so hard to make a hand, that can call down 3 PSBs. It makes me feel helpless and run over.
Being on tilt didn't improve my play at all, I converted quickly into the Maniac version of myself and spewed off 5 BIs to random people, before taking a shower.
The good thing is: While showering I calmed myself and I managed to get back into playing somewhat decent.
I have watched Flop Strategy 1 and Flop Strategy 2 and try to implement the mentioned ideas into my game. I like these type of videos much better than all the "solver does this, solver does that" type of strategies. The video was about cbetting, but I took the liberty to use it for check/raising aswell. Well only in situations, where I strongly suspect, that V. is overcbetting. So far this has worked 4/4 times.
Hand Review
Calling too much:
V. is superloose super passive (75/0.8/0) over 245 hands. Aside from that, J(J4)3 should not be opened UTG. Pretty sure, against a player this passive, I should simply fold river, even if every draw possible missed. I'm probably also supposed to check my straight for pot control, but I think that's just missing out on value.
Fancy play syndrome:
Honestly, I don't even know what was going though my head other than "this guy is weak". First I'm floating with little to no equity and then raising (with a cute sizing to boot) with little to no equity. facepalm...
V. is Laggy (33/22/17) over 98 hands with a 100%cbet stat (13 out of 13 times), that might have been it...
And many more obvious bad plays.
But also some hands, where I'm not so sure, for example this one:
Both UTG and BTN are extremly passive players, so I think my hand plays best as a bet/fold. On the river I intended to fold, but then decided that V. might sometimes be valuebetting worse. Maybe that's too optimistic.
And also a hand that I think, I played well. Don't want to be all negative here all the time. :)
V. has (36/19/12) over 127 hands.
I like my flopcheck (intention to call at this depth). Not sure about my turn bet, maybe I should check this too and I love my river check, expecting him to bet really often.
By deepening the thought about the correctness of the rally, you will miss the opportunity to work on your peace of your mind. It makes you feel uncertainty, afterwards tilt happens
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