Anita Buyin

I've now completed the "Getting Started & Preflop" section of the course, moving on to the "Flop Play" part. Enjoyed the opening selective/unselective c-betting video so I'm looking forward to exploring the rest.

Playing

I put "disciplined" climb in the title of this thread because I'm aware how tilt, which is a spectrum, not binary, can derail progress. My mental game could have been better over the past few days. There were definitely moments were I would loosen up when down or up a couple BIs.

A leak that probably cost me 6-7 BIs over the past few days is playing heads-up as people leave the table. I don't have much of a practiced strategy for playing with wide ranges and therefore I should avoid these situations, even if I feel I have an edge.

I finally managed to play some NL10. It did not go too well. I was at an excellent table, but out of position against a whale who wanted to play for stacks every hand. I was down 3 BIs from calling him down with TPTK in situations where his TPWK became a hard-to-detect two pair by the river.

Villain was crazy enough to justify this, I believe. He was barreling with any 2 and rebuying frequently. I got 1 BI back getting it in pre-flop 77 > K3, but ultimately this NL10 action reversed the progress made so far, which is fine. It seems obvious now that my results at NL10 will determine my progress towards NL10, given that every BI won/lost is worth 2.5x more than at NL4.

I'll have to adjust my schedule to better fit NL10. I'll also likely need a little luck as there was only 1 table of NL10 running during a fairly EU-friendly timezone.

No hands to post this time. I have 7 saved to .txt files I'm about to go through in Flopzilla. Wanted to post an update here before I delayed too long.

Results
Starting Bankroll: €490
Current Bankroll: €488.44 (-1.56 overall) [-8.18 from last update]

Even rough guidelines would be helpful. What I took from the BB defense video is that if our hand is remotely playable (some connectibility or any high card) we should defend.

Assuming that's correct, we're probably removing some hands from the bottom of our change against a 3x, assuming BU is of equivalent skill, but maybe it's not a huge deal?

Just completed the fifth module of the "From the Ground Up" Course. I've been enjoying looking at the game from a perspective of realizing/denying equity.

I had gone though The Grinder's Manual once before, but the course has been a good refresher so far. Looking forward to some of the later concepts I'm less familiar with.

I've played ~400 hands since my original post. I'll have more time to play this weekend, but my schedule typically favors nights, which is when RIO is much less active.

Playing

My first session was a losing one, where I called down a whale with top pair (he had AA) and lost to a set with TPTK on a double flush draw board.

My mental game stayed strong and we recovered over the last 2 sessions. I've playing 90% NL4 since NL10 is mostly still dead at RIO.

I did play a little bit of NL10 today, where this hand took place:
https://pokeit.co/public/1s2t34l/r

We bet the flop small for value; this is the same sizing we'll use for air (which is a lot of our range).

The turn could be a check to pot control/induce or a bet. We choose bet here for a mix of value/protection, though for this to be +EV we probably need Villain to be floating flop and turn with high cards. This might be optimistic.

Our turn bet gets raised, but this line doesn't make too much sense to me. Villain's range is capped, so the only plausible overpair is 88/99, both facing Hero's uncapped range. I don't see Villain flatting a HJ open with any 7x, though maybe 78s is possible. 33 is possible, though ideally it raises flop. We call, hoping Villain has T9s/A8s/98s/air.

98s gets there on the river and 33 improves. Villain is likely checking back 88/99 on this river, so we could rule out those hands. T9s and A8s are the only bluffs that make sense, but people do often stack off (myself included) in these spots with air when facing aggression from EP on boards like these.

If we give Villain a range of 33, 87s, 98s, T9s, and A8s, Flopzilla tells us our hand has 43.75% equity. Villain bets ~38% pot, meaning we need less than 25% equity to call.

Thoughts on this analysis? Happy to be told I'm way wrong. Still refining my review process to maximize learning!

Results

Starting Bankroll: €490
Current Bankroll: €496.62 (+6.92)

hnsmht - I played exclusively on Stars prior to RIO. I don't have my HUD data anymore so I can't give you any win rates.