ValueBetRiver

I like a call. Getting the jam through two people is obviously a lot tougher than one. And you know calling the button's bet is profitable. Yes if the cutoff check raises big you're going to lose those chips, but that's way better than jamming and then finding out he or the button has a huge hand. Call, keep your stack utility, and see a turn!

It can be really helpful to hire a coach for a 1 off session where you go through your database together. You can see how he runs the different filters while also getting some expert analysis.

You can also go to the PT4 site and download premade database filters you like. Personally my bread and butter is to tag hands while I play (hands I botch or don't know exactly what to do, hands I play well, and really just anything I want to look at later) then review. I still use Flopzilla for heads up pots and also Power Equilab to run multiway postflop spots. Also just going through your VPIP hands and common spots like LP v blinds can help you up your game too.

I like a min open, cbet small on a ton of flops. You want to keep your stack utility while also giving yourself a chance to pick up some chips. Did you have a read or stats of how villain will play postlop? If he or the BB are sticky then you should just muck because you don't want to be double barreling off of that stack especially in an ICM spot.

If you have a 2x SPR on the turn, as here, bet 1/3 pot. If the bet gets called you'll have a pot sized bet left on the river. If you want to get really good at this you can just workout situations on a spreadsheet and review repeatedly

Enter the ranges into Flopzilla. Review.

Bubbled the 15,000 PHP tournament yesterday. Played down from 278 to 36 players with 32 getting paid. I shoved 16BB on the button with AQcc into 2 big stacks. Small blind calls with AJdd, and flopped a jack. Live poker can be so frustrating. Misplayed a few hands earlier in the day. UTG+1 I didn't set mine pocket fours earlier in the day playing 50bb effective. The game didn't have a lot of 3 bets at that point so I should have. Would have flopped a set too. Also I made a full house in position on the turn on a 7373 board in another pot when the villain had 2x pot behind. He checked to me and I min bet. I had a really tight image at the time. Should've checked back to try to get him to attack my perceived A high on the river as well as catch up when his overcards hit, giving me a chance to get a river value bet in. Thought the min bet would look weak and that he would continue with 100% of his range. Instead he hero folded. I was aware of my image at the time too. Honestly I think 3 coffees played a role too, interfering in my decision making process. Also missed some value with KK on the turn in a 3bet pot by betting to large (villain was new to the table and didn't know my image). Anyway I made several plays later to capitalize on my tight image, including a triple barrel bluff for stacks that got through. Haven't done one of those in a while.

Considering not continuing with this poker journal any longer. On the one hand it is a good way to log everything and hold myself accountable. On the other hand, I'm not sure if anyone is even reading. Part of the reason to do this is the community aspect which isn't really materializing. I could start an old school blog instead, or perhaps make a thread in another forum. I'll also look to make some additional forum posts in other threads here. We'll see what happens.

Is anyone reading?

Just busted the 10,000 PHP tournament. Don't want any plays back. Ran well early, flopping a set and getting paid, then getting a loose player to stack off when I had AA. So I was at 2x starting stack pretty early. Got some good value bets in later as well as picking off a check raise bluff on the river. Also found some good bluff spots. Bustout hand: 8 levels in, right after late reg is closed I open 2.5x with AQhh playing 50bb effective from EP. Louse player on the button calls as does the big blind. Flop is 832hh. I cbet 1/3 pot with my 2 overs and a flush draw. Loose player raises, and the blind folds. I jam. I think I hear him say call, I clarified and thought the dealer said call. So I tabled my hand. Then he says he said "count". I cover my cards quickly but I think he saw them. The dude had an accent, and the dealer was weak. Likely was an angle. He ended up calling with 10c8h and I didn't catch up. Overall I felt like I brought my A game today.

Tomorrow is a new day. There's a 15,000 PHP ($300) freezeout at the same time. Tonight I plan to eat a really healthy dinner, watch a sports type movie like Rocky or something, and get a good night's sleep. I may also do some light poker study, maybe an Elliot Roe cool down MP3 or something. I plan to have a strong morning as well. Sleep in/wake up naturally. Eat a light breakfast, use the massage roller, and do an at home yoga workout. Head to Starbucks to do some light poker study, mainly reviewing some notes and also looking at some ranges. Then back to the Airbnb for a healthy lunch and I may watch hand review videos or PokerGo. Tournament starts at 1 o'clock. I will bring my A game again.

Quick Review on Study and Grinding Challenge:

Study
Exceeded the 60 hour goal with 65.5 hours of study. Doing calculations and drills with software, reading notes and outlines I've made from study, and watching Poker Go and hand review training videos are all very useful. So is the other stuff. Just putting quality time really helps not only from a technical standpoint but also mindset wise. Next thing I want to spend time on is watching more advanced videos covering GTO strategies.

Play
Exceeded the 85 hour goal with 92 hours of play. Ran pretty well, making deep runs, several final tables, a few top 3 finishes, and a win. Would've played more but got sick with a virus towards the end and also my account got suspended temporarily due to a security check. Overall played well. There are a lot of nuances left to improve on as well as upping my final table and final table bubble play. So much money is won and lost there. Honestly I don't have trouble finding ev spots in the games I'm playing right now from the early stages through the first few pay jumps. Yes I have room for improvement in those areas, however, the greatest return on my study time will come from upping my late stage game so that's what I'll work on going forward.

Personal Goal Workout 4 times a week
I underperformed on this due to getting 2 stomach bugs. I take probiotics and eat healthy/mindfully, however, living in Southeast Asia this comes with the territory. That said I recently flew to the Philippines where things seem better. That said, I did get some good workouts in including yoga, group fitness classes, beach walks, and light pre-game workouts.

This week I'm playing in a couple APPT events and grinded online yesterday. Already bricked 2 bullets in their re-entry tournament. Kept losing all my key pots even when I got my money in good. Playing a 10,000 PHP ($200) side event today. Also will likely try to satellite into their main event later this week.

Later I'll do a new post for my gameplan moving forward. Right now things are a little touch and go while I'm travelling but I have the capstone goal of making a run at a WSOPE bracelet pulling me forward. Grateful for the challenge.

Jam looks fine to me. Any smaller bet that gets called preflop leads to awkward, low SPR scenarios postflop. A jam also squeezes out the button's equity 22 through 99, Broadway hands without aces and kings that have 40% equity, A-x hands with 30% equity v AK, etc. Many of these hands the original raiser will fold as well. All of this fold equity allows you to pocket a good chunk of equity uncontested. Next, when you do get called you're in good shape. Original raiser can call with AQ, AJs, KQs, pairs below kings, etc. Absent special circumstances, rip!

Thank you for your comments judging my strategic shot taking. Partly based on what you said I only played as high as $66 today, and I was fortunate enough to bink. Have a nice day!

Villain can have A4s, some amount of flush draws, 33 55 66 77 88 some random wtf hands. 99 TT JJ QQ A2s.

Agree with this range except I'd heavily discount 55-88. If he's a raise for protection type player, then he'd likely have raised 4x + preflop for protection as he had been sizing that much before. So that leaves most of his range at strong value hands and good draws with plenty of equity against our marginal pair. That said, if he's an emotional type player that's not thinking logically/consistently between different hands and streets it's a different story. In game I'd try to get a good read and likely fold unless his hand felt weak.

But given the action I would just limp in from sb and see the flop. You're too deep that you're going to have to play turns postflop. There are not a ton of great flops for your hand that you feel good about getting your stack in. And live tournaments this early players dont like to fold so you're going to get called very often by 1 or two players and be oop the whole hand. I think TT is the first pair I would raise here.

Great points.

Stats and notes from this week All-in adjusted bb/100 is down but still above b/e. I ran into the tops of villains' ranges a few times, both when I'm happy with the jams and when I think the jams were too ambitious. I adjusted after that bad day and got third place in a $109 for $2k. Bustout hand: 40-30-20 chip distribution with me in second place I opened the button w/ AK, chip leader 3bets from the small blind, big blind folds and I rip it in. He had AA. Think it's just a cooler, but I'm posting the hand in the forum and also sent it to my poker coach to review. Had a couple cashes yesterday in a $109 and $66 tournament, butsted one in 10th place and the other in 16th I think. I think I made a bad 3bet bluff on the bubble in the $109 mtt. Villain had been opening 2.5x a ton. I had 20bb, the button, and A9o facing his expecteedcutoff open. In game I decided to raise to 9 bigs to get him to just fold a ton and jam the top of his range. He jammed. I folded. I was left with 11 bigs to play 2 from the money, albeit with a few other short stacks. Ended up having to shove a few times on the bubble but nothing got called. Played from 28 players down to 10. Bustout hand I ran 44 into AA all in pf when it was the correct ICM shove. Had I not made that risky money bubble bluff things would've been different. I don't like the bluff.f I'm right I go from a 20bb stack to a 25bb stack which is nice. However, when I run into the hand I go down to 11 bigs which sucks. I should have just kept my chips because 20 bigs still gives me good stack utility. I can open/cbet at least once and still have a decent 3bet/jam stack as well as call shorter stack shoves and still have chips when they win the hand. Anyway, the roll is up to $4,100 from $2,100 last week.

Study Tracking

Studied 15 hours. This includes hand review, sending a few hand histories and my analysis/questions to my coach, watching DNegs' vlog, a little WSOP coverage, ICMizer analysis and sit-n-go coach, running some hand equities on Flopzilla, outlining notes I had from a bunch of Apestyles, Rob Tinion, and Assasinato videos I watched a while back, some Poker Cruncher quizzes , and one poker training video. Want to start watching some RIO videos, however, I'm a little hesitant to do that now since I have a live series coming up in Manila and I don't want to be trying to implement new learning for that. Will likely watch a ton of RIO videos in August.

Total on the study challenge: 65.5 Met the 65 hour goal a week and a half early. However, I'm going to increase the study hours this week and next. Have coaching sessions scheduled. Need to finish a live poker training video series I'm halfway through. Kind of goes against my no new information policy close to a live series, but I'm really familiar with the coach's content so no biggie.

Play

Played 33 hours this week - Sunday, Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. I like having a day off in between grinding days where I can workout, eat really healthy, go to the beach or whatever, and study. Then I come back refreshed and ready to play my A game. The Saturday session this week I felt like I had really had my A game (minus the ambitious 3bet bluff line discussed above!).

88 hour total on the challenge, exceeding the 85 I set . I did have 100 hours written down somewhere else but reduced it to 85 after I got sick the first week I started tracking. This week I'm going to play Monday and Thursday for sure and maybe also Saturday, so I'll hit that 100 hour mark.

Good week overall. Broke even Sunday but just played okay. Won like $50 on Monday but punted a few times. Made a couple cashes, but overall played bad by jamming too many bigs preflop a few times. Tuesday I did admin stuff and a little work on my business. No poker stuff at all. Wednesday I reviewed hands, especially all the all in spots and sent some hand histories and my thoughts to a coach I bought a block of hours from. Thursday I was bound and determined to play really well. I reduced the number of tables and upped the average buy in, playing a $109, $88, and $20 to $30 MTTS. Found a third place in the $109 for my 2nd biggest online cash ever:

Back at it tomorrow. Studied 5.5 hours today. Will do another update with goal tracking in a couple days.

ICMizer as an option to take future game simulations into account. Not sure if HRC has one of those or not. Post the hand details and I'd be happy to run the spot. Right now I'm trying to get really competent with the software. I use their sit & go coach a fair amount and use it to analyze all my all in spots in ICM scenarios.

Thanks, I'll keep this in mind. Yeah the smallest thing can make the biggest difference sometimes.

Which hands are you expecting him to 5bet punt it off with against a cold 4bet?

And why do you say that we're pot committed with out entire range here? If we 4bet with AK are you jamming 100% of the time when checked to? I guess you could answer that you would not 4 bet that big, but even going to 1,000 the SPR will still be really low. This is a $20 MTT so I'd rather get max value than try to make an optimal sizing pre. I could be missing something though...

Doesn't seem like a silly question to me. I'd post something about the fold but Sexton pretty much has it covered.

Did you run the spot on ICMizer? They give you 3 free calcs a day in case you didn't know. In game if the spot feels close and I anticipate a lot of better spots coming up I tend to shy away from jamming or calling all in. I'm playing MTTs under $50 lately though so it's okay for me to pass on spots sometimes because a good bit of the time players will be making big mistakes which I can capitalize on later.

Stats from this week. I'm missing about 1,000 hands that didn't import. Was fortunate enough to stack people early in a few MTTs and also make several cashes and deep runs which contribute a bunch to the bb/100 stat. The roll for this challenge started at $665 and is now at about $2,100.

Goal Tracking

Played 27.5 hours this week. Sunday and Monday I played 11 and 10 hour sessions. Then on the 4th I played 6.5 hours. Going to a 4th of July party that evening prevented me from playing the next day due to too many drinks. But no biggie because Happy Birthday America!

This week I'm looking to play Sunday, Monday, Thursday and Friday. My Sunday morning is USA's Saturday evening and my Monday is their Sunday.

58 hours in total on the challenge.

Studied 10 hours this week. Ran some ICMizer sit-n-go drills and also used their nitro tool to analyze ICM spots in MTTs I cashed in. Listened to more of the Jonathan Little audio book. Reviewed some hands on PT4 - have some tagged hands saved that I need to analyze on Flopzilla and Equilab. Watched Poker Go and Daniel Negraneau's vlog. Did some poker cruncher quizzes and played around with some common scenarios in that calculator. Did about 40 Snap Fold app drills. Also reached out to a poker coach who will be reviewing a some of my hand histories on PIO and Poker Monker and maybe run some ICM spots, in addition to other services.

This week I'll keep up a similar routine - study for about 30 minutes before each session, listen to the audiobook on my beach walks, and do a full day of study on Wednesday (a lot of software drills and analyze my hands with various equity calculators). Will also watch some Main Event coverage on poker go and keep watching DNegs' vlog.

Total Study on the challenge is at 50.5 hours

Another runner up in a $33 MTT.

I got outplayed heads up, though villain did start with a decent chiplead. I was playing hungover and tired due to drinks with a friend the night before. Obviously not an ideal scenario to play, but I wanted to get my volume in and just 3 tabled all session. Played a solid B game strategy, safely stacking chips. Once this one got in the money I quit buying into others to stayed focused. The final table had a dynamic where there was a clear chip leader with all the other players being 18-23 big blind stacks including me. He was opening a ton and so I found some good 3bet jam spots to increase my stack by about 10 big blinds. Got dealt QQ in the big blind 4 handed when the small blind jammed into me with 44. He busted the next hand. Then when 3 handed I found a 3bet jam with 99 against a similar sized stack who had been opening a ton. Think he must've noticed be playing back at the chip leader before because he called off over 20 bigs with 33.

2nd Place in this $33 MTT yesterday. 531 runners:

Was in a 3 way tie for chip lead for over the first half of the final table. The other 2 big stacks were on my direct left which left me handcuffed, but I found a few plays and made a few hands. Once the big stacks lost some hands I was able to exert a lot of ICM pressure. Entered heads up with a slight chip lead, but less than 30bb. Villain won all the key pots. He'd win a big pot and I'd grind my way back to a small lead. Repeat. Bustout hand with 22 bigs effective I got KcQh all in on a 10c 8c 5c board. He called with Ac2s and I didn't get there. I'll take the bankroll boost, though!

Made a couple small stakes final tables yesterday and Sunday too, but only managed to get one screenshot.

Reviewing the $1,600 score today and also running that and my other recent cashes in ICMizer Nitro today. Also doing miscellaneous workout, life admin and business stuff today. Wednesday is a full study day, spending a lot of time doing software drills. Back on the grind Thursday and Friday.

Nice score sir. Nice when that work pays off!

Tracking
I'm at 30.5 hours of play and 40.5 hours of study. Some of these hours were completed before I made started this thread.

I'm ahead of schedule on the studying. Running behind on the playing. This week I'm looking to play 30 hours plus.

Study
This week I did 120 IZMizer Sit&Go quiz questions. I did better in all in call spots than I expected to. Also analyzed a bunch of hands on Flopzilla and Power Equilab. Did faster hand review on PT4 just going through a bunch of my VPIP hands. I downloaded Simple GTO trainer and played a little with one of the sample packs. Watched some PokerGo WSOP final table coverage. It helps to hear the pro player commentators say things I already knew because it is a good reinforcement. And sometimes they'll describe a concept differently than I've thought/heard of before or say something about the game I didn't know, all of which are obviously +EV. Also watched Daniel Negraneau's vlog almost everyday and listened to Bernard Lee's podcast interviews of Scott Clements and Michael Mizrachi after their recent bracelet wins.

After overplaying JJ in an all in preflop pot I realized that I needed to get really sharp again with my preflop equities in hand v. common get it in ranges in non short stack situations. So I did a bunch of Poker Cruncher quizzes. Next I used to be pretty sharp in spots facing two all in players in front of me but realized the numbers were getting hazy, so I ran some of those spots on the advanced poker cruncher app. It is really hard to be a favorite against 2 villains all in preflop.

Play
As mentioned above, I'm behind on playing. I played 18 hours this week, only 1731 hands. I repeatedly had HUD issues which ate into my volume in a few ways. First, PT4 would freeze in game which led me to reduce tables because restarting didn't always work. Second, I spent time tuning my hardrive, vacuuming the database, etc. in order to fix the issues. One day I did a bunch of stuff and the next session had the same issues. So I started using Drive HUD. That presented it's own set of issues as I had to program the HUD how I liked it and learn some of the software nuances. A few times the stats interfered with my ability to see the action on the table in front of me which made me misplay certain hands. I had to resolve some of these issues on the fly during my session which, like the PT4 issues, kept my volume down.

Weekly Stats:

Looks like I'm running under ev in all in spots. Honestly, I'm not sure how much that tells us given that you can keep running into the bottom or top of villains' ranges in situations where you made the right play. Also, need to get my PFR % up. When I was fixing the HUDs during sessions I tightened up my opening ranges so I could have more time to do get the HUDs right. Card distribution and sample size also played a role.

Made a final table in a $22 tournament finishing in an underwhelming 5th place. The cleaner at my coliving knocked on the door at like 20 players left and I let him in to clean. That affected my focus as did the HUD display being too big. I missed a clear 3bet jam spot with TT. I thought we had a MP open jam for 18 bigs and a rejam by the aggressive chipleader on the button. But really it was a min raise then 3bet. I folded since the MP player had no incentive to open jam light and TT loses most of the time against 2 tight all in ranges. The truth is that the chipleader was most likely just trying to put ICM pressure on the middling stack making a routine open. This week will be different because I'm not letting him in to clean if I'm near or in the money and since I've resolved the HUD issues I think

Haven't played anything above $33 yet because I want the HUDs running smoothly and I want to work the rust off of my game

Dealing with bs like that before a session isn't good for me either. Sometimes it doesn't affect me but mostly it does take a toll. Contributes to decision fatigue for sure. What I'm working on now is recognizing when I don't have my A game so instead just playing my best B game.

Why are you cbetting small here?

In game I just jammed. My thinking was I was rarely folding anyway, and the jam would look bluffy. So he'd presume I didn't have many Ax hands and thus would call with all of his worse pairs. Per Equilab, assuming he will call with all of his pocket pair hands, this play clears when he's playing 99+ and premium aces only (57%). When we include 88 we improve to over 60%, and so on. Even so, many players are not calling with 88, TT, and sometimes not even JJ and QQ. If he thinks about it, as a default I never have non-ace broadway hands there so he should only call with the top of his pair range and his trip aces hands obviously..

Absent a very specific dynamic where I have a crazy image I think this is a bad jam. Like, it is hard to find a fold later in the hand, but we can control how the money goes into the pot. So we can check back 2x and potentially go for river value, making this a 1 street value hand. Or if he fires turn and/or river we can call and beat all of the hands he value owns himself with.

Grinded yesterday but probably should have taken the whole day off due to being sick with a stomach bug. Still I wanted to get some reps in so I just played low stakes. Nothing notable happened results wise. I did misplay a few hands but that's to be expected just getting back to the online grind which is part of the reason I just played low. Also had PT4 and ACR software issues which slowed me down for the first 2 hours in the am.

Today was a new day. Still feeling under the weather but with more energy I decided to play. I just focused on playing the best version of my B game I could. Waited for good spots and didn't make many feel plays or take many creative lines. Just played solid poker for the most part, though I did overplay JJ in one all in pf pot.

I'm mostly playing only 4 tables due to just coming back and the illness. I'm playing online to prepare for the live events so I want to really get quality reps in where I can think through the spots and make good decisions. Once I get back into the swing of things I'll increase to about 6 tables.

Stats from last 2 (half) days of grinding. My pfr is usually higher but lower here due to card distribution and it seemed like I kept seeing heavy action in front of me

Cashed one little tournament yesterday. Today I cashed for $75 in a $30 mtt in around 30th place I think when $4k was up top - got 20bb in with JJ and villain had QQ. Pretty early on in the session I realized I didn't have my A game so I reduced my buy ins. Finished 2nd in a 40ish runner on demand $5. Nothing to brag about but it's my thread so here's the screenshot:

Study
I made some forum posts Friday and Saturday, watched PokerGo footage, listened to part of an audiobook by Jonathan Little, reviewed/analyzed tagged hands on Equilab and Flopzilla, watched Daniel Negraneau's blog, and watched a couple Doug Polk YouTube videos. I'm doing 1 - 2 dedicated study days this week going forward.

Tracking towards 80 hours playing and 60 hour studying goal
I'm keeping track on my bathroom mirror. Off pace a little due to being sick the last couple days. Will post updates by next Saturday.

I lead since the field isn’t value betting thinly enough here. Also you can easily size 10bb+ which if you win that bet alone is worth more than your pf expectation with AA.

Fold pre. Stacks aren’t deep enough to set mine, and since we’re giving him a tight opening range we know 88 plays poorly against that. Also 3bets aren’t good as shown by Sextonhardcastle above.