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Cash challenge - climbing the stakes from NL5 ZOOM

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Cash challenge - climbing the stakes from NL5 ZOOM

Hello everyone,

I'm an italian 26 years old guy who recently joined the essential membership program of RIO.

This thread is for who wants to follow my poker journey and share ideas, suggestions and anything that could help me in achieving my poker goal for 2020 / 2021: climbing the cash game stakes starting to NL5 Zoom.

Brief introduction:
I've playing poker since I was 18 with decent results (both cash and MTTs). I decided (and I'm excited about it) to focus only in cash game from some months and I easily beated the micros (Ipoker, normal table NL2 - NL5, 10bb/100 over 50k h).
Poker in Italy is not very attractive because the poker field is restricted to italian people and the only platform offering Zoom Poker with decent traffic is Pokerstars. I know that PS offer no rakeback, but I have a full time job and limited time for poker so I need to play this format to increase the hourly number of hands played.
Zoom Poker in Pokerstars.IT runs with decent traffic until NL50, so my goal is to get there as soon as possible and to beat the level (that's why I will try an aggressive bankroll approach at NL5 and NL10).

Approach to the goal*
Starting with a roll of 30 stacks at NL5 (150€), I'm committed to:
- play a range of 25 - 30k hands per month
- as soon as I get 300€, try NL10 with the five stacks rule
- as soon as I get to 1000-1250€, try out NL25
- play NL50 only when I've beated NL25 with a decent sample

Commitment rules*
During the challenge, I'm commited to:
- post here an update at least once every two week
- regularly post hands in forum
- dedicate at least 20% of poker time to study and improve my game (hands reviews, RIO videos)

I'm very interested in grous of fellow players who wants to review hands, share ideas and help each other, so in case you're looking for something similar just PM me.

Thanks in advance for anyone who will support me in this journey and see you in two weeks for the first results of the challenge!

12 Comments

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Mudkip 4 years, 6 months ago

Hi, I think you will want to post this in the journals sections instead.

Good luck on your journey, you probably want to dedicate more time to study and any hand you're unsure off you can just post here and you'll get a good amount of insightful answers.

RaSzIk 4 years, 6 months ago

Thank you Mudkip, I've posted it in the journal section (I was not aware about the section).
Surely I will dedicate tons of time to study and share hands!!

GL at the tables

DNegs98 4 years, 6 months ago

Hey man, first of all good luck. Secondly some advice that I would give you is that you should play the micros to practise not to grind a roll because the rake is extremely high to the point that the difference between a player beating 25nl and 100nl is smaller than you would imagine because there is just so much less rake but a lot of 25nl regs will take a very long time to move up because they're just grinding out hours at the table and checking their bank roll rather than focusing on improving and using their playing time to check on their implementation of concepts and to identify new spots that need work.

RaSzIk 4 years, 6 months ago

Thank you for the tips. I'm aware of the heavy rake at the micros, unfortunately this is the only way I have to climb the stakes.
I will surely dedicate most of the time to implement what I'll learn every day of my poker journey, my first goal is to become better and better at the game and the bankroll increase will be a consequence.

PS: I posted the same thread on the Journal Section, so feel free to follow this there :)

RaSzIk 4 years, 6 months ago

Hello everyone!
Overall is going pretty well, I'm keeping 8bb/100 after 7k hands.
Below you can find a screenshot with basic stats and the chart

Here's a trycky hand I played tonight.

PokerStars - €0.05 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by Holdem Manager 3 : http://www.holdemmanager.com

Hero (BTN): €17.03 (340.6 bb)
SB: €5.86 (117.2 bb)
BB: €6.87 (137.4 bb)
UTG: €11.43 (228.6 bb)
MP: €11.16 (223.2 bb)
CO: €10.82 (216.4 bb)

SB posts €0.02, BB posts €0.05

Pre Flop: (pot: €0.07) Hero has 8s 9s
2 folds, CO raises to €0.14, Hero raises to €0.45, fold, BB calls €0.40, CO calls €0.31

Flop: (€1.37, 3 players) 5s 9d 8d
BB checks, CO checks, Hero bets €0.91, fold, CO raises to €2.46, Hero raises to €16.58 and is all-in, CO calls €7.91 and is all-in

Turn: (€22.11, 2 players) As

River: (€22.11, 2 players) Th

Results: €22.11 pot (€1.21 rake)
Final Board: 5s 9d 8d As Th

CO shows 6d 7d: (Straight, Ten High)
(Pre 37%, Flop 79%, Turn 70%)

Hero shows 8s 9s: (Two Pair, Nines and Eights)
(Pre 63%, Flop 21%, Turn 30%)

Pre-flop: standard 3-bet IP vs average reg

Flop: this is the tricky point. In game it felt like obvious to jam flop after villain x/raise op. I bet large flop for protection, repping all the overpairs and 88/99.
When he x/raise he surely can have all the TdJd, QdTd, Adxd and the other combos of flushdraw to include as a semi-bluff in his range composed of those combos and all the 55, 88, 99, 67 (I block 88/99)
I feel that at these stackes when average reg does x/raise in this spot (deep stack) he always has it and never bluffs.
In game it seemed the righ choice to jam for protection, but after reviewing I feel like a flat flop should have been the right move, cause at this stakes it's more likely they are super strong when they check/raise this particular deep stack spot.

Any thoughts on the hand?

thanks in advance

Mudkip 4 years, 6 months ago

Allright, first of all it's better to post these reviews in separate threads, just choose "new hand history" when making a thread and it will much easier to read for everyone.

Yeah, you should not 3bet 89s from the btn, start at T9s, maybe with deep stacks its ok? You can call it sometimes tho, I like a btn calling range.
Flop its tricky, I do think your play is ok against people that will overbluff flushdraws and straight draws but don't think 5nl "regs" will do it. Can't really comment too much on it because I have no idea about what your 3bet range is, but purely by thinking about 5nl "regs" more common leaks, not x/r enough is one of them so he is more weighted towards value than he should be and flatting becomes encouraged.

From a more balanced perspective, think you want to check everything on that flop, your range gets destroyed on that flop.

Gino Song 4 years, 6 months ago

89s btn vs co you need to fold it. 3bet hands like Axs 54s/65s and call with KTs/QTs and remove mid suited connects entirely.

RaSzIk 4 years, 6 months ago

Why do you think that 89s is not a good 3bet candidate in position against an average tag reg in a deep stack spot?

RaSzIk 4 years, 6 months ago

Mudkip thanks for the detailed answer. My 3bet range in this spot against std reg is constructed in value hands (88-AA; AJs+; AQo+; QJs+) and bluff hands (Axs; 56s, 67s, 78s, 89s, 9Ts), adding sometimes hands like KTs, Q9s or smaller pairs when villain is more on the tighter side and/or blinds have an high squeeze stat. I don't clearly understand why from a GTO perspective I should check all my range: I mean my range as 67s, 99, 88 with a lower frequency than villain's range, so surely he has a range advantage, but that does not justify a 100% check in this spot with my range.

RaoulFlush 4 years, 6 months ago

Its simply because we try to play specific boards in relation to our range (not our specific hand). You have been lucky to hit top2 here, but most of your range (like AK/KK....) wont be too happy with this flop and dont want to put a decent amount of money in as Villain could easily have outflopped overpairs or simply AK.
So if a huge chunk of our range wants to keep the pot small, we need to balance those checks with strong hands. To find balance like this is kind of complicated and so a heuristic CAN BE to simply check everything here.

DNegs98 4 years, 6 months ago

Something that I think is worth noting is that not all flopped straight boards are created equal, on the ones like this with 2 gaps our overpairs are significantly stronger than say 987ss. There's a few reasons for this, one is less immediate nuttish combos, another is that on the 2 gap board there are no pair + open ender combos possible and less pair + gutshot combos and finally it's significantly less likely that we face a 4 straight turn so the incentive to put money in on the flop with a view towards betting the turn as well is in fact higher. Also when we consider preflop where it's a 2.8bb open and a 9bb 3B we're actually putting a lot of pressure on suited connector hands which should probably be folding here OOP given the price so with that in mind this board is actually less threatening than it might initially seem.

Also the x back range heuristic is something that I think I might have suggested before but the more I look at it the less I like this as a solution. The reason for this is what is supposed to happen when we bet at too high a freq is that our opponents should find increased aggression vs our x range with marginal equity holdings, I'm fairly certain that only the top regs at 500z and higher are managing this, below these stakes I think the notion of doing something like just going nuts with some overcards with no draw other than to top pair or they might block a flush if it completes on the river is not something that they have in their arsenal to punish your x range being insufficiently protected here so you're only really going to feel pressure from strong draws and inducing aggression from hands like 2 overs and a flushdraw isn't exactly a massive win. You do open yourself up to exploitation if you overdo the value betting on a flop like this where I agree some x back with overpairs is fine but realistically when you x here are you seeing people put in massive bets with thin value and very marginal equity holdings regularly?

I think the important takeaway when you see something like this where someone should be protecting their x range a lot more than they likely are is not "I'm going to stop value betting because pio told me to" and is rather "How do I punish people who are incapable of checking back an overpair in spots like this?" and I think you can actually shoot up in stakes by finding spots like this where the pool is just going to hand you the pot if you turn up aggression and then really pushing the boundary of what you consider to be a reasonable bluffing candidate.

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