StunZ

Hello! My first post in this thread was over 6 months ago now. I have had an interesting first start to the year, and things are going very well for me, but I thought I'd come back to this thread and update with what has happened so far this year. I plan on updating this blog more regularly since I am in a routine of playing and studying and I feel comfortable with where I am and the progression I am and will make.

I started the year with a clear plan. I was going to step away from poker, focus on finishing out my degree, then get a part-time job and play poker until poker is making more than the job. This started as planned. I started focusing on my studies. This wasn't easy for me since I was still very much more interested in poker than I was in mathematics, and often there was nothing I wanted to do less than sit down and look at proofs. However, knowing that poker was never a guarantee, I made sure to push through as much as I could and finish it. I did just that. I didn't get a good grade and barely scraped a pass but I got my degree as planned and could now focus on playing poker.

Similarly to my motivation when it came to my degree, I struggled to find the motivation to get a job. All I wanted to do was think about and play poker. I gave myself a couple of months to either run good enough for poker to stick or I would find a job. I started playing a mix of nl25 on stars and 1/2 live. I was fortunate enough to run very well and gave myself some room to really focus solely on poker for at least a couple of months. I quickly moved up and started playing NL50 and I continued to run well there.

That is where I am now. I am playing NL50 and I am on the verge of shot-taking NL100. I haven't had much of a sample at 50 and have run above my win rate for sure. I do however feel quite comfortable taking shots and being ok if they don't stick right away. I feel fine bouncing between stakes until it sticks. I am quite early into my poker career and I am very grateful for how I have run, but I am also putting a lot of effort into making sure I improve. I am studying daily, and getting better at studying. I am trying to not get ahead of myself in terms of skill level, I know I am likely not beating NL50 at my observed 13bb/100 but I do think I am better than a lot of the regs and I am driven by competitiveness to move up and battle against presumably better players. Even though the money I have been making is nice, and I am making more than I likely would have working a job, I care more about improving and playing to the highest level I can, over farming money. I don't have much interest in playing on sites that are super soft or table-selecting to make my life easier. I just want to be forced to improve so that once I get to a very high level, I can battle other very good players.

I didn't quit chess, I still play for fun. I was just realistic about the prospects. I know I could be good at chess, but it was simply unrealistic to think I would be world-class since everyone who is great has been committing to the game since they were born. I never wanted to be a chess GM, it was just an example of my mindset regarding it. I agree poker is different, in the fact that at any age you can commit and become great. I think this is special in this sense though since poker is changing very quickly and it's a completely different game than it was even 10 years ago, so everyone is as clueless as each other. Good luck to you man! Hope we make it.

13/12/22

The theme of today's post is folding. I haven't got much volume this week due to being at a wedding and other activities outside of poker. I have however noticed that I've been making some very premature and nitty folds, on purpose, knowing nodes are underbluffed. Making these folds benefit wr since people aren't bluffing, so folding sooner rather than later makes the most sense.

This one I am most suspicious of. He shouldn't have ATo in theory and in practice I think people at this stake with 3b even less than they're supposed to, not more. He can have ATs which is what makes me suspicious of this hand, especially since intuition tells me doesn't go this size with AA, so I am fine admitting this is probably too far. I don't think he is bluffing this size though.

This one I was happy with. My initial reaction was "ah I have to call with the Qc" which is the thought process I think a lot of players have when I hear them speak. However, as I thought a bit longer it felt like I was literally drawing to getting coolered. I think this is a pretty good fold since I don't think he bets like this with AA KK without a club, or already a flush. Getting out of the mindset of thinking you have to call something is a really good step. Most people aren't going to be 1) paying enough attention to you to find ways of exploiting you directly, especially in a large zoom pool, and 2) aren't going to be balanced enough in their sizings, so you can make really exploitative folds and not think twice about it.

On this hand, he tripled 33%, pot and then overbet. I think this is honestly quite an easy fold to make if you're tuned in to the pool. First thing is, he is never bluffing. I don't think once in micros I have seen an overbet bluff. He has no worse two pairs so you just run into 33 44 every single time. I'm okay being called a nit for this because I am so sure of it.

06/12/22

Again, I am feeling good about my play. Redline is continuing to strive etc etc. Finding new ways to exploit the pool and my study for this is coming along well. I'm finding plenty of nodes that are clearly overfolded, especially in the pool I play. I find a spot that I suspect is overfolded and then using solves come to the conclusion that it either is or isn't and find which hands I am supposed to be bluffing. Once I find the hands that bluff at any frequency, I turn that frequency up to 100 and in some cases make sure I have even more bluffs than that, in order to make it very easy to over-bluff. My main downfall right now is 'taking too many bites of the apple'. Say I know a spot is overfolded on the turn, I often find it hard to give up river once called, despite their range now is much stronger than it should be and hence an overcorrection happens and they end up overcalling the node. Sometimes I do this for good reason, such as timing tells, but often it's a mental barrier of not being able to give up the bluff, and I think this is a new step for me to work on.

I haven't put as much volume as I would have liked in the past week due to traveling and other stuff I've been doing in my life, but I am still enjoying playing and at this stake where it feels like the money is less important I can have a much more relaxed attitude towards how I play because it feels like I'm winning regardless, though, of course, you would always like to have as high a win rate as possible from playing as optimal as you can.

This hand I feel is pretty theoretically sound. I don't necessarily think this would be an overfolded node, but I still think this is a good node to have bluffs in and JJ seems near perfect as an option, maybe JTs would also be ideal. There's not much interesting going on but I do think that it's a big upside to being willing to put in a stack like this.

The float on the flop comes from my personal confidence that this line will be overfolded in the future. This is an example of getting more bluffs in an overfolded node. People often play this spot with a middling A and bet twice and hope the river goes x x. This is why it feels very good to specifically raise turn on these types of boards. On the turn, he practically tells me he has thin value from his sizing and I can raise my entire range and then jam river and I'm convinced he rarely calls. This play makes an insane amount of big blinds and it feels really good to be able to call flop knowing how the rest of the hand is likely to go, and for the plan to work to near perfection.

People love calling these boards. Despite A high being behind a lot of my range because of his sizing on the turn, I am convinced he almost always snap calls A high on the double paired board. I think my biggest downfall this hand is honestly the size. I'm sure I can go pot or even overbet and I still get called by A high. I think this is another example of just understanding human tendencies and pattern recognition in order to extract max value on boards, which increases the win rate significantly.

this will always be an option for me, poker is a dream I'm chasing. The idea of excellence in a field is what's driving me right now. I understand it is difficult but I am willing to put the work in.

28/11/22

I'm happy with how I've been playing so far. I have a very prevalent redline in 5z, since the whole pool feels very nitty and obvious in which hands they have (very clear sizing tells). I have done some small study but I would like to crank this up more and more, it's just a little tough to get into at the moment.

My current goal is to play 1k hands a day (I know this isn't a lot, but I'm not currently on a grinding schedule and instead focusing on fewer tables to improve and get reads on pool tendencies). I am not worried about getting a full sample at 5z as I believe I'm very much beating it. I am instead just focusing on improving and building a roll to move up to 10 and so on.

I think this hand illustrates how I'm currently approaching the game quite well. I think there is a valid reason to fold as early as the flop. However, once he goes 50% on the turn I believe he doesn't have a set or anything too strong, and I instead think his range is very equity driven. I believe people in general go greedy with their nuts and go smaller with equity in order to 'realise' or see the river for cheap. I chose this size to raise because I think all these hands I am ahead of will still continue, and I don't think he will jam with equity. If he jams I can just fold this hand and not care too much about it. I also believe he will not donk river enough, even if his draw completes, meaning I realise very well with ATo here. There is some merit to raising larger on the turn, to make it very hard for him to continue with draws. I think this could force him to jam more often with combo draws and I can decide on call or fold, but I don't think this is the hand you want to invite aggression with.

Ignore me getting out of line pre haha. This hand can go many different ways I feel. I think it's certainly +EV to x the flop or the turn in order to pot control. However, from both timing tells and pool tendencies I decided to bluff with this hand. I think he has a lot of middling pairs which call twice and I believe the river will be overfolded. Of course, this looks best when the river is so perfect for it, but I think I was jamming almost any river and I think it will still end up overfolded, however, I am not completely convinced of this right now. I have been trying a lot of different things in order to get a feel of the pool and how to exploit it better.

My goal for the next week is to continue to try new things and push my redline to the best it can be, without hurting my blueline. I think there's not much to tweak right now other than more study in my own time away from poker, since this is where I have been lacking recently. I want to find more and more nodes which I believe will be overfolded to exploit the pool as much as possible.