IMABIGBOY

Hey Guys,

sorry for the silence - but we are back! :)

Short recap of last month:
I remember not feeling very motivated to play NL200 and I wasnt rolled for NL500 so I decided to take 2 or 3 days off. On the following friday evening I fired (for fun) some tourneys. Somehow I shippped the Friday Night 6-max 150$ for 22k$. It probably was the purest mtt run of my life, lucky me!

Basically the next day I had my flight back to Europe where I planned to travel through Italy, Switzerland and France for the next weeks. We got very lucky with the weather, saw a lot of nice places and had an amazing trip.
Now I am back at home, ready and excited to grind and hopefully reach the original goal of this threat sooner than expected: Reaching NL1k.

I cashed out some $$$, we got exactly 30'000$ in the GG account atm.

Plan:
- Try to play and study as much as possible even tho its very sunny and warm outside. (Thats gonna be a toughie....)
- Having good routines as edge gets smaller now and swings bigger, I need to rely on a good mental game. Meditate and do a little workout right after waking up.
- Keep this threat updated.
- No MTTs exept Sundays.

Tomorrow we start again with NL500. Let's gooo!

actually i dont. If there would be more traffic I d play on stars i think...
- i prefer the software
- less rake
- less fish, tougher villains --> makes you improve much faster than on GG.

it's just: z500 basically never running, z200 also mostly dead and if running mostly not possible to 4 table. And as I plan to play NL500+ from now on, there is just very little traffic, even at reg tables.

i think its rather easy. just defend wide and play IP vs a very wide range with a huge SRP - only good things happening.

we played too little vs each other at rnc200 for me to list you there :)

I see. I didnt consider this at all. I also prefer to have bigger 3bet sizings when 100bb deep in order to make my life easier OOP (with asmaller stack to pot ratio).
Good regs: (i dont wanna offend anybody if not listed here)
- Tschutschuwa
- I am fatty
- Old Tree
are 3 that just crossed my mind now and that i find tough to play against.

I dont understand your question. What are the benefits of avoiding 30bb pots? Why should i be doing this? Thank you for explaining :)

Hey guys. Short update as I just feel to share some pain: I just played 400 hands at NL500, run like an idiot and lost 1.2k. Really painful.

I want to share 2 hands:

Not much to do then shoving flop or x shoving flop IMO. Kinda tilting running into the nuts as usual so far at NL500 and not seeing the bet / fold by AQs, KQs, 78s type of hands. Further, i think he should consider checking flop or sizing down as I think his range doesnt want to use 33% too much - but thats maybe just me being tilted and moaning a bit :)

Punt or no punt?
Solver doesnt like it and only uses KJ and QJo with J of diamond which in hindsight I completely agree with as we really want to block that Royal flush. I regret my shove. Obv. blocking KK and QQ is not relevant at all, but I thought in game he is 100% capped to anything but quads and AJdd Royal flush. Thats 2 combos. And he is still v betting all his nutflushes (A3-A9s) + might have some bluffs. I have every combo of TT, some KK and QQ that slowplayed flop which i def. do at frequency as you can see I slowplayed QK too. Its nice to have some delayed xR ott on blank turns when he starts overbetting. Still, i dont like my bluff i hindsight as its also very easy to just rip every combo of QT, KTs, there. But again, I like to put pressure on capped ranges. I might have been tilted a bit of loosing my 1.3k flop AKs vs QQ before and running into JJ with my KTs in the 4bet pot. And of course, we run into nothing else but a sweat royal flush here, too.

NL500 hasnt been nice to me at all so far. Now my BR is back at 14300$ and we gotta move down to NL200 again. How boring!

Side note, first time I feel kinda tilted since playing again. Good that I immediately quit after loosing my 3rd stack. We ll be back soon. They say come back stronger, right? Thats what I am going to do.

Cheers

Recap of last week:

Rush n Cash NL200 Results:

Hands: 35'000
Hours played: 49 (7/day)
Winnings: 5700$
Adj. Winnings: 7400$
Adj. BB/ 100: 10.42 (after rake).

I remember last Monday was very tough as I dropped from 9k BR to under 7.5k, I still felt a bit rusty as I didnt play at all for the last 2 months, but i should have been break even, EV wise - yet i was down 1.5k. I am proud that I kept on playing well, didnt tilt and had faith that I will turn it around - which apparently happened.
I really went for it and grindet A LOT last week: 49hrs in 7 days.

During my last 2 months, instead of playing I sometimes studied an hour or two. I think I learned a lot. It's weird claiming this but I feel like i am one of the very few player in the pool who actually 4x shoves river, 250% probs turns and who 3bets the big blind the way it should be (with all the suited Q5s etc and the A8o). In all those hands i played the last week i didnt see a single SD of a villain holding any of these cards. I think the best way to run over those nits (yes the pool is insane nitty) is by playing as aggro as possible.
I never expected to reach my goal of hitting 15k BR by the end of the week and to be able to shot NL500 - but hey, amazing, here we are. After sunday night with Rakeback and Leaderboard I had 16.4k on my account. So we shotted some NL500:

Hands: 1670
Winnings: -749$
Adj. Winnings: 189$

As I am used to this year, I run quite a bit under EV. But thats ok, its gonna turn around, right?
As the sample is very small there s not much to discuss. Its very important to keep on playing very aggressive and not be scared of the fact that the pot will be 1k$ instead of 400$. Because aggressive is the way to move up, I am sure about that (as we know, GTO is even more aggro than Linus and all the HS regs....).
I probably must be a touch tighter as my edge is gonna be much lower than at rnc 200, so thats something a gonna keep an eye on.

Current BR: 15'474 $¨

Goal of this week:

Poker: Play NL 500 unless we drop below NL500 (very likely)
Study: Keep on warming up before session with HH review of the day before and drill some 3bp OOP vs solver.
Life: Getting up early, meditate and have a walk in Mexico city and think about what I wanna do that day. I really enjoyed doing that the last week, and it helped me a lot preparing for the grind, too.

Chess: two weeks ago my blitz rating was around 1650, since then I had 3 coachings of Uganda Nr 1 chess player and my rating immediately skyrocket up to 1880. I feel very motivaed to reach 2000 at blitz on lichess asap. I want to keep on reviewing my games and play every day so that i can keep that form :)

In order to make this blog at bit more funny I thought every time I update it I want to share (at least) 3 hands:
- 1 Punt by me
- 1 Punt by villain (there were plenty this week haha)
- 1 Herocall by me

My Punt of the week:

My thoughts: I def. have to v bet river with K kicker. vs shove its probably an easy fold vs population and thats why I call it my punt, but: I rather call with Tx then a flush or even 33. 33 still looses to all his value hands, so I rather have a T in my hand that blocks his FH and unblocks his bluffs (A8,A3). He is rep. very little value (AT, and 8T) and has A3, A8 as bluffs so I thought if he takes to bluffs my call is probably fine - thing is, I am still waiting to see somebody bluffjaming there this deep at rnc 200:) so yeah, quite a punt to call...

This hand is actually hilarious. Punt of the week by villain:

Not much to say apart of that he should probably quit poker for good and instead donate his money to some charities ...

My Herocall of the week:

1. This guy is just way to aggro which is clearly very good in this pool. This hand is a prime example for it. I had quite a funny metagame going on with him and I knew he likes to spew.
2. His small flop size seems week. Might be AA, but other overpairs or sizing up IMO. So blokcing AA is very nice.
3. blocking hearts is very good since he is probably giving up his KJo, QJo with a heart.

I ll update again by end of the week, hopefully of some good sessions at NL500.
GL everyone.

IMO you can easily grind with 30 buyins in case you are a winning player in a rather soft pool...

yes sadly they are very off as I pay 6%- 9% rake. Its much less in reality than what you see there.

Heys and I remember your KJs call in that 4bet pot vey well haha.
Btw, I reviewed that hand. I think most people, as you did, and as i would do too, go for a high frequency c bet. GTOW ranges are not really accurate i guess but it basically range checks on JT6 as you lack massively on 66, TT, JJ and JTs so i kinda crush that board. My AKo bluff was probably bit punty but i thought i have so much value there (66, 88, TT, JJ, JTs, AA, KK) that I can also bluff a bit more. I was thinking in game i rather bluff AK than my QKs as blocking AA seems much better and blocking your QQ(that might fold, blocking all my QKs and AQ). And in practice i feel like both hand have same EV checking as they are both always loosing. Your thoughts?
Interesting hand for sure and probs for that call. wasnt easy was it? :)

Hey there

Short summary of the weekend:

ACR Bankroll start: 2500$, I played 4 mtts there yesterday as I want to use this Bankroll to grind tourneys on Sundays (not really caring for proper BRM, I am ok to loose that money as long as i played well). Structures are really cool since they are much slower than GGs. I bricked 3 of them but managed to convert a 95$ sattie into a 2.65k Venom Ticket that i gonna play next sunday. I am very excited about that one!
Current roll: 2000$ (plus Venom Ticket)

GG Bankroll start: 10'000$
I played quite some hands at RNC200. I played pretty well at begin but run very very bad and feel like i punted some stacks in the end. Not really proud of that. Exactly what i wanted to avoid! Result: Down 5 Buys ins.
Even tho I am very used to play 4 tables I think for now I gonna switch to 2 tables and highly focus on every hand, really think about the spots and pick up on timing and sizing tells by villains.
As mentioned I dont play MTTs anymore on GG besides the very big Main Events, like the mystery bounty 210$ 5M GTD - managed to bag a 24bb stack for day 2 yesterday, worth 900$.
Current Roll: Exactly 9041$ + Day Two Mystery Bounty 210$.

I am currently in Mexico city (in case somebody is here too hmu! :)) until the 10th of May. My plan for these days:
- Basically play every day
- Record every session, a little cheat to make me focus more and play better :)
- Meditate and do a little workout first thing in the morning in order to be ready for the grind
- Warm up by reviewing HH from the day before or some drill in GTOW.
- In case of feeling tilted immediately take a break.

--> I feel like following these rules I can only be winning (even if loosing, at least I can say I did everything right, prepared well and played well)

I gonna review now some hands of yesterday and start playing after that.
GLGL!

this comment made my day. thanks wtf666

It should be 50%.

The RB that I would currently get this week.

in hindsight my play was too optimistic and I just tried to justify my punt! Well done!

Hi
Happy to keep up my good routines, atomic habits was indeed very inspiring and helpful. Even if I do just 50 push ups, or 3min of meditiation, I feel much better then without and feel like I am making progress to get there I where I want to be in the future :)

After my morning routines I played 30min 2 tables and added another 2 for the reminaing 30minutes, which is not too bad of warmup routine + balance between Quality / Really thinking indepth / Improving and Volume. Results: +283$

In the afternoon I played two Day1s on the side, where I lost 310$ due to 2 rebuys and got stacked several times at the Rush n Cash. Result: -825$.
No Day 2s on Sunday I guess :( It was another lesson that I should stick to Cash Game, where I hardly never tilt while all the AI and Swings in MTTs are sometimes hard to handle imo.
Anyways, I had a quick break, short breathing exercise, some hands vs GTO wizard and went back to the grind. Again 4 tables for an hour, I managed to get break even for the day. I am pretty happy about that :)

See you tomorrow.

P.S. For those who want to see my progress and results:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D4OWs3-tg9oU_77jmPxOs-VIlY1q4WXzXEZ-Yn2ceBg/edit#gid=0

Hi there,

I stood up quite early today which is also a routine I want to implement on weekdays. After warming up with GTO Wizard and some breathing exercises I felt again very ready for the grind. I indeed played pretty well imo, won a lot of small pots until this one hand came up where I lost 230bb. I d love to hear some opinions: https://gg.gl/pyd9l

Flop: I guess I range bet this board for very small
Turn: Mainly keep betting AK, I rolled a 3 so I thought checking back once in a while won't be too bad.
River: Hands that beat me: AA (3combos), KK (1 combo), A5cc (1 combo, if he 3b and call 4b 100% of the time) and 56hh (1combo, again, just if he purely 3b&call 4b).
--> 6 value combos that always call jam:
--> 6 combos of AK (2 AKs and 4combos of AKo).
My assumption was that
- he literally has no bluffs.
- always folds AK (wrong assumption?) since he's just calling for the split and vs population mainly beat there since just rarely people gonna jam AK there like I did.

Lets calculate EV
of calling: Odds: 1:4, which I exactly get as I split 50% of the time.
of jamming: 0.5 * 393 (when jam gets through which should happen 50%ott if he indeed folds his AK) + 0.5*(-350) > 0 > then call?

Idk if he actually always folds AK, but on the other hand he probably rarely has A5cc, 56cc and sometimes 5b AA so there are relatively even more AK combos and less "nut" combos.
Anyways, would really appreciate any feedback.

Sadly I cant run any SIM as I am currently away from home this week and dont have any access to PIO.

I take a break now and def. come back to the grind later today.

Hey guys,

I am very happy with my day today:
Excercise ✔
Mediatation ✔
Warm up with RIO Videos and GTO Wizard ✔
Just 2 Tables of Rush n Cash instead of the usual 4 ✔
--> Outcome: 2 Hourse Grind, 753$ Net Win ✔ :)
Cooldown: Writing down takeaways / my mistakes of my session (which I sadly cant share here since I dont want to give away all my thoughts here ;)) ✔

I haven't felt better prepared, from a theory point of view as well as from a mindset point of view, before of a Session in a while. I will keep up this routine for sure. It helps me a lot.

See you guys tomorrow.
Good night.

Hey Guys,

Forgive me for not updating my journal. After my worst cash game session of the year, I made the bad decision to have a big MTT Grind on Sunday where I lost another 2k. I run really bad, but probably my state of mind and other conditions weren't very promising anyways, so I dont want to blame the bad luck. That was MY bad.

After that I went on holidays, Amsterdam and Croatia until yesterday. As you guys may know, nothing helps more in a downswing that just take a couple of days (weeks) off and fully let go all the bad emotions from poker.

Now here I am. Back to the Grind. And back to my Blog. Since my Challenge started really bad, I cheated on myself (played MTT and too many Cash Game Tables), didnt update blog and further, I withdrawed some money in order to invest in cryptos (Chainlink) before my Holidays, I somehow feel forced to restart fresh my Bankroll Challenge. This time I get it right!

I read a really nice book "atomic Habits" by James Clark which really inspired me to implement the following 3 Habits I really WANT to do daily (especially on working days):
Meditation, Exercise and Warming Up with theory (GTO Wizard or RIO Vids).
Further, I am breaking my bad Habit of playing too many (high buy ins) MTTs, since I never actually studied it.

See you guys tomorrow, on Monday, for a fresh new start!

Quick Update: Worst Session I've played this year I guess: Within one hour I managed to run several times with 2nd nuts vs nuts, with best bluffcombo vs nuts, stationed with top of range and was beat every single time and had a 3w AI with toptwo vs OESD + FD and obv. lost that pot too. Result: -1.2k$ within 1hour on 8 tables.
Conclusion: Take a break, walk around the house, maybe review 1,2 Hands and get back with 4 tables rush n cash. No more regular tables added to it.
1. For the sake of variance
2. Quality < Quantity, I really wanna use my RNG and think as deep as possible in every hand.
May the poker Gods change my luck :)

Cheers

I had my first session of the 100k Challenge yesterday.
Quick review:
877$ at rush n cash NL 200, 5 hours grind with 1 break.
2x Day 2 in Bounty 105$ and Omaholic 52.5$, both with very big stacks.
I did meditate before the session which I found very helpful. Really looking forward to make this a routine.
I did warmup playing vs GTO bot by gtowizard. Again, really felt the benefits of it.
Sadly, after the session I didnt find the time to cool down, to review hands and to update this blog.
But now, before my session I want to take the time to review 2 Hands:
1.
GG Poker - $2 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players

Hero (BTN): $746.85 (373.4 bb)
SB: $253.85 (126.9 bb)
BB: $200.00 (100 bb)
UTG: $208.83 (104.4 bb)
MP: $223.60 (111.8 bb)
CO: $200.00 (100 bb)

Pre Flop: (pot: $3.00) Hero has Jd Jc
3 folds, Hero raises to $5.00, SB raises to $21.20, fold, Hero calls $16.20

Flop: ($44.40, 2 players) 8s 6d 6h
SB bets $20.87, Hero calls $20.87

Turn: ($86.14, 2 players) 9s
SB bets $57.72, Hero calls $57.72

River: ($201.58, 2 players) Ad
SB bets $154.06 and is all-in, Hero folds

Results: $201.58 pot ($6.00 rake)
Final Board: 8s 6d 6h 9s Ad

Quick review:
1. Do we have a raising range otf, if yes, how much? I realised with 99-JJ we are doing a TON of 3betting otf, and if we didnt raise flop we pure jam turn. So I shouldnt ever arrive with my hand at the river.
2. Bluffing range otr of the SB and BB? I didnt expect SB to barrel to many Ax ott(just AT, mixed AJ, pure A9s and mixed A7/A8)so otr i was expecting a lot of checks. I thought about calling but blocking hard JT, QJ and KJs made me fold.
--> Surprise there, River gets checked just 20% by the SB, 36% blocking with nealry all 9x - KK and some Ax.The remaining 40% gets jammed including, surprisingly KK at high frequency. Intresting isnt it?Q highs are pure bluffs, Kx mainly checking.

GG Poker - $2 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players

Hero (BTN): $203.86 (101.9 bb)
SB: $1,024.20 (512.1 bb)
BB: $422.32 (211.2 bb)
UTG: $249.82 (124.9 bb)
MP: $449.55 (224.8 bb)
CO: $678.69 (339.3 bb)

Pre Flop: (pot: $3.00) Hero has 6h 7h
3 folds, Hero raises to $5.00, fold, BB raises to $22.00, Hero calls $17.00

Flop: ($45.00, 2 players) As 3s 5d
BB bets $14.85, Hero raises to $34.04, BB raises to $53.23, Hero calls $19.19

Turn: ($151.46, 2 players) Ts
BB checks, Hero bets $28.00, BB calls $28.00

River: ($207.46, 2 players) 3h
BB checks, Hero bets $100.63 and is all-in, BB calls $100.63

Results: $408.72 pot ($6.00 rake)
Final Board: As 3s 5d Ts 3h

Hero shows 6h 7h: (One Pair, Threes)
(Pre 40%, Flop 19%, Turn 7%)

BB shows Qs Ah: (Two Pair, Aces and Threes)
(Pre 60%, Flop 81%, Turn 93%)

BB wins $400.72

1. How does BB c bet range look like? I expect to see a lot of checks.

-->Solution: Indeed BB checks 50%. TT-KK still betting around 50%. Actually, like every Hand gets splitted so pretty hard to play that correctly.
2. How does our raising range look like. I raised 76s because of:
--> getting folds from air c bets
--> getting occ. folds from 66-Kk
--> having 4 nut outs and 2,4 and spades as nice barreling cards
--> dont mind if i get 3betted / jammed on as i have an easy fold, UNLESS he is min3betting as played. Sadly my solution doesnt have a minraise, so 76s gets pure folded so i cant solve the spot.
Solution: I am happy that indeed 76hh and 76cc does raise 20%, while spades and diamonds pure call.
Surprisingly, apart from obv. FD raises, 78hh gets raised 42%!, also QJhhcc raises 22%, K6hh/cc 35% I dont know if any player in my pool or even at NL500 would ever find those raises. Any thoughts?

1. Was it a punt to blast off when hitting this nice T of spades ott? I guess I always need to bluff this combo?
   --> Solution: BB actually just jams nearly his range (83%), in game I thought we hit so many flushes ott that OOP needs to check a lot. Apparently there's already tooo much money in the middle and we just want to deny Equity.
   --> I cant find out as solution does not include my hand etc.

   If you are interested in more detailed notes, you ll find my theory notes in the excel sheet.
   Idk yet how I gonna do that in future, If I should share all my thoughts in here or just in my excel sheet. Let me know :)

Nice, I studied now 3 spots, played some Hands vs GTO wizard, meditated and feeling reeeally ready to grind. Lets go boyyys, see you later.
Cheers