decakun
0 points
The grind is on. I got quite lucky yesterday and won the top prize in PS Leaderboards. It's a promotion that didn't run when I was playing 2 years ago. For those who don't know: you get a score based on the value of the cards you receive. So, total random. It calculates the score after 200 hands and you can attempt it 3 per day per stake.
So, I am playing PLO2z/5z/10z and I won the first place in the last one. That's 8BI, so 800BB over 20000 hands I've played so far, resulting in 4bb/100 hands. I've decided to caluclate EV for all PLO stakes and you can see it in the image below. I've estimated that an active players scores at least 6k points - if you play 600 hands, you're bound to score at least 6200-6300, I would say, so that's a conservative estimate. On average, you're likely to get about 2BB/100 hands for playing 600 hands on given stake. That's always something, I suppose.
Jan. 20, 2023 | 12:01 p.m.
I'm back;)
I got a stable job, so I don't feel the pressure I have to be great at poker or I'm screwed.
I bought FTGU for PLO and I'm going to study it now and start playing again on the lowest of stakes, hopefully this adventure being a tad better than the last attempt.
Jan. 5, 2023 | 12:43 p.m.
50k hands update
There's not much to be said. One good thing is pokerstars is quite generous with rakeback given I'm a losing player: there's 40% from the challenge and further ~20% from the chest, which actually allows to offset most of the losses; my lossrate is fortunately smaller than the amount of money I'm paying in rake. I have started working with an experienced coach and one I can afford as well (cheaper than a therapist, woah), hopefully that'll be the breakthrough I need. Had one session so far and it felt good, I'm planning to meet him on the weekly basis.
the graph
April 11, 2021 | 7:02 p.m.
My mental might be starting to crack as poker seems like the most unrewarding endeavour I have set on in my life. I remember I was going to the gym for a short while last year and lifting weights. And even there I could see somewhat of an immediate progress. I miss it - the gyms are closed down due to the pandemic. Whereas in poker I put in hours to study to no effect. I believe I am playing a solid game for these stakes - but to no result whatsoever. And all these poker blogs I see are reporting smooth upswings - not this one. Here's this month's graph. 
March 30, 2021 | 7:31 a.m.
At the beginning of this month I've decided to give PLO a go... and honestly, it gripped me. I've played almost 25k hands of PLO2z-PLO10z, running -11evbb while paying 12.5bb/100 of rake. It didn't feel like there's much of a skill difference between those stakes; in general the games seemed pretty soft (softer than NL, that is) which might sound absurd coming from a losing player. But - I probably shouldn't be crushing those games the very first time I'm sitting at the table. So, I'm still hoping to make it work; decided to run with plo mastermind for the next month. The first impression - I believe I am at odds with the popular opinion when I say I find all the non-strategical aspects kinda overrated. Mental game, seat selection, diet, exercise - they may well be important, but for mid stakes players; those are not the reasons why I'm losing, I believe. I just need to 1) nit it up when facing heavy aggression and 2) develop solid fundamentals. One piece of good news is since pokerstars can tell I'm a losing player they wholeheartedly offered me their 40%rb promotion - it's grindable with a few bits of effort.
March 20, 2021 | 8:18 p.m.
And so, another month has passed. I've been studying hard. First of all, I've read Jonathan Little's most recent (I think) book and I think it had a great impact on my postflop play. I've got a month of the standard plan on pokercoaching for 5.50 on a huge sale; I feel the vast majority of the value is available only to the premium members though. I've also decided to join Upswing Lab for a month and consume the introductory material there. What about the results? Well, that's a lot of volume for nl2/nl5, I'd say. And it's not going great, not by any means. However, I do hope the work I'm putting in will start paying off soon. And, secondly, I can tell there's a huge improvement already from when I started out and was losing 20bb/100 on nl2. Per aspera ad astra.
Here are the pictures:
And an interesting hand from today
Feb. 28, 2021 | 9:01 p.m.
Hello, I hope this is the right place to ask. I am the lowest stakes player. Let's say I have a population read that people heavily overfold to flop check-raises. Hence, I decide to play an extremely exploitative strategy of check-raising any air that I have. My question is, at which point are people going to become aware of it? The player pool is so huge that even though I try to take a note on the player whenever I see a questionable play, it feels I would need to play a crazy number of hands to actually discover imbalances in people's strategy. After 125k hands played there is only one opponent against which I have more than 1k hands played - and I don't feel I can tell anything in particular about him other than he doesn't play very well in general, without being able to point any specific leaks. At what stakes/how many hands against me played would people discover that I'm playing extremely imbalanced?
Feb. 24, 2021 | 7:56 a.m.
It seems we're at very similar places in our poker journeys, good luck!
I've been tracking wetwist's results too, his red line really is impressive.
Feb. 16, 2021 | 1:36 p.m.
Here's the summary for January. I've finished reading The Grinder's Manual and moved up in stakes to NL5 (you can see where the graph gets much swingier). It still seems fishy, even though my bankroll took a hit as I haven't been running very well (in particular on the untracked euro app). Leaks-wise, I believe I am value betting too thinly and calling too lightly. But overall, I strongly believe my game has improved over this month. Volume-wise it's been very satisfactory, my goal is to play 20k hands/month and I've played 30k. 
Jan. 31, 2021 | 6:06 p.m.
I think I've read it on 2+2 already;) looks really impressive either way, good luck!
Jan. 13, 2021 | 10:07 p.m.
I've had some thoughts I'd like to write down.
1) NL2 reg tables are starting to seem soft. I'm not crushing it yet, far from it, but I believe I understand the game enough to be able to spot someone doing something really wrong. I believe ~20bb/100 winrate is totally achievable for any competent player - although it's a bit frustrating I can see I'm not one yet. To quote Muse, I want it now. But I'm in for the long haul.
2) I checked out one of those poker apps with clubs and whatnot. It's interesting. The minimum stake is 0.1/0.2, which I am not quite rolled for. On the other hand, I gave it a go and the players are not any better than those I face in NL2. It's on a mobile and I can only play one table at a time, so due to all of these factors I don't think I'm gonna play it much, I'd rather 4-table on my notebook (laptop) and have it in my HEM database, even if the income is lower. It's pennies either way, at the moment, after all.
3) The list of books to read (in order, but not in a rush):
+ The Grinder's Manual
+ 100 Hands
+ The Mental Game of Poker
+ Play Optimal Poker 2
4) And here are 2 hands to ilustrate point 1: https://pastebin.com/jrLm0LA7
I'm strongly considering buying core pack for Simple GTO Trainer just to practise a bit, I've tested it and quite liked it. That's it for now, I'll post the results at the end of the month.
Jan. 13, 2021 | 10:04 p.m.
Hello, everyone. I've decided to start this blog to document my progress, and hopefully exchange some thoughts with the other members of the community. I've dabbled in poker some years ago already, but it was purely recreational and so I'm starting from the very bottom. I've read a couple of books (literally two; I found Alton Hardin's Master Micro Stakes Poker to be very informative), gotten RIO's very own FTGU course, I bought Holdem Manager and since November I've been grinding out NL2. I'm breakeven on regular tables and hemorrhaging on zoom. On the other hand, I've been somewhat lucky in a couple of MTT's I've played (thank you pokerstars for the Blowout series and the free tickets, that's a huge deal for a lowest stakes player; that's where I'm playing if you'd like to bumhunt me;) ), so I'm comfortably rolled for NL5 (NL10), the only thing I'm lacking is the actual skill. I would probably like to post some hands and get feedback on them; on the one hand, I find it vital to analyse one's own game, on the other, it's incredibly difficult for me not to fall into the trap of being results oriented - if, say, I tried a bluff and got called on it, there is this nagging feeling this was an awful idea, even though it might've been actually good. My life story is that I'm finishing obtaining a rather useless degree, and so my goal is to be able to potentially support myself from poker. That's not to say I plan to become a professional poker player and grind as the full time job, but I would like to have the skill required to provide for myself. I estimate that'd be about 5$/h, living in Central Europe (meaning already in the European Union, but not rich yet), which is about 5bb winrate on NL25 4-tabling - I hope that's an attainable goal.
My plan for the following months is as follows. I have found plenty of great material on youtube, so that's the learning I'll be focusing on. Furthermore, I intend to read Peter Clarke's The Grinder's Manual, which seems to be the Bible for a microstakes poker player. I'll try my best to analyse my own play besides mindless grinding. While playing sounds like the most important part, I don't think it has the most educational value. Once I'm done with the resources mentioned above, I plan to invest into Upswing Lab, but that's still a while from now. And it would be nice to do all that while not neglecting working on my Master's degree, basically.
What I'm going to be struggling against the most is to keep myself motivated & disciplined, qualities which definitely are not my strengths. I'm hoping that by the means of this blog I'll be able to keep myself somewhat accountable. Let's see how it goes.
The January is over, here are the results.
As you can see, it is really messed up. I'm not sure I have ever seen anyone winning from SB and losing from EP. I still suck at the fundamentals, hence I decided to re-read Jnandez's famous PLO book. Thanks to some luck in the above mentioned leaderboards my bankroll is doing fine, but I'd much rather be a winning player. I've been also playing some PLO MTTs on the side and I would be very interesting in improving at those, but this is such a rare genre that it's difficult to obtain materials on it - I would welcome any suggestions.
Feb. 5, 2023 | 11:20 a.m.