tonic1223

How do we feel about a chk/raise here vs him? Has he been passive or more aggro post flop? Seems like a good spot to get him to bluff or stack off with a worse draw vs a chk/raise?

Seems like a perfect spot to chk/call down vs the aggro player with such high aggression. Plenty of turn cards we LOVE, but also many we aren't happy with and facing a flop raise like we do here puts us in a very awkward spot.

Whats your play if the turn comes a 6,9,T,J,Q or diamond?

He lives.....

So I'm still here, still grinding when I have time. Life has taken some serious changes over the last several months,which had led to a huge decrease in time spent playing poker. I got engaged, got a house, dealt with some mental things, and am now at a point I can play "seriously" again.

I have set some new life goals for myself, to better coincide with my poker goals.

I have a large amount of debt right now, credit card, student loads, car. And I have come up with a plan to tackle this debt and get it more under control before trying to play poker full time again. It's going to take me about a year to pay off my credit card, and I'll only be using money from my job to pay for it. This is step 1.

While working and earning as much as I can to deal with debts, I'll be grinding up my bankroll. I've always tried to rush myself to grind up the stakes and get back to 50nl, blah blah. This always leads to poor Brm by me, playing as scared money and the opposite of my A game. So since I have a year minimum to pay off my credit card, I have no rush to move up without the proper bankroll. Right now I'm playing 10nl, and have about 22 buyins. I won't be moving to 25nl until I have 50 buyins for it. And I don't care how long it takes me...

Discipline is something I also struggle with; keeping a schedule, grinding enough hours, studying, following Brm, etc....
I've been reading books on various topics and have learned a great deal about my own mental issues and done some serious self reflecting.

Before this gets too long where most won't read I'll end with some simple goals for now....

-10nl until bankroll hits $1250
-play 4 days a week
-evaluate mental game each session and post progress

Stay tuned for more .....

Yeah I think I'm with 6seven8 here and can get behind a check on the flop. We are OOP and half the deck on the turn sucks for us with our hand and our range for the most part too. We check some fds on the flop so even clubs on turns after we check aren't the worst for our range now if we check this hand also imo.

@6seven8 thanks man! I appreciate that!

@Justin Rehm thank you man! It means a lot to me to know i've inspired someone! It makes me want to succeed that much more!

Since several people have started following my blog, I'll try and do better about updating more often and posting some hands and thoughts on strategy(to some extent ;P)

Thanks for all of the support from everyone so far!

So I have come to realize that my mental game starts to deteriorate at a rapid pace whenever I'm playing 25nl with $400 or less. Even though I have more money offline for poker, and have a fulltime job; I still find myself affected far too much to the session to session results. If I play for 2 hours and grind up a small profit of 75-100bb, but then lose it all to a cooler at the end of my session I feel terrible. Even if I played great, I still feel like I lost and my mental game rides the ups and downs of my wins and losses.
However, When im playing 10nl I never feel that way. I can lose a buyin on a coinflip and not care. I can lose to a 2 outer and not care. And its because my bankroll is big enough to support those minor swings and doesnt get affected as much when I have losing sessions, in terms of total % of my bankroll. If i take a shot at 25nl with a $400 bankroll, losing 2 buyin's means I lost ~15% of my total bankroll. But If i play 10nl with a $400 bankroll, losing 2 buyin's means I lost 5% of my bankroll. (I think my math is correct there lol).
I am also running hugely under EV at 25nl compared to 10nl, which doesnt help my mental game when I have losing sessions, but I believe the impact on my overall bankroll and mental game when playing 25nl compared to 10nl is large enough for me to make an effort to deal with this mental issue. (Over 24k hands at 10nl im winning at 22bb/100-or-18bb/100[EV adjusted], but over 28k hands at 25nl im losing -1.68bb/100-or- +4.8bb/100[EV adjusted]) So as you can see I'm running under EV at 25nl and over at 10nl. To be honest this makes me question my game and brings down my confidence more than it should.
Which brings us to a mini challenge I have setup for myself for the month of April. (or the rest of the month in reality). Starting on April 4th and ending on April 30th, I will play ONLY 10nl. I will play a MINIMUM of 5 days/week for 1.5-2 hours/day. I WILL NOT Check my results until the end of the month.
[ ] Play only 10nl
[ ] Play 5 days/week
[ ] Play 1.5-2 hours/day
[ ] No checking results

I'm doing this for several reasons:
1. I want to get better at practicing good BRM. Constantly trying to take shots at 25nl when im under rolled is not a recipe for success.
2. I want to get in more volume. This is a big leak of mine, and I'm good at finding reasons not to play when I'm running bad, so by only playing 10nl I know I wont go broke if I have a bad run since I wont be checking my results.
3. To regain confidence in my game and prove to myself I'm a long term winner and stop focusing on short term results so much.

I'll be playing regular tables most of the time, as 10nl Zone rarely runs on Bovada. However if I see the game running I'll probably play 2 tables of Zone and 2 regular tables to increase volume when I can.
I will try to post any interesting hands along the way, but since I cant DL hands til the following day and most of my time is going to be spent grinding I will have very little time to analyze hands or do any reviewing. I plan on digging into my game after this mini challenge to work on leaks I may still have.
Stay tuned folks! Will update the goals as I go along.

Well certainly there is, care to elaborate though?
Either way 2x or 2.5x, I still dont see how widening our range so much because "pot odds" is a good idea if we take postflop scenario's into account, and how much times we'll have reverse implied odds.

Ive seen and heard in a lot of vid's and on the forums a strategy of calling small open raises from the blinds, especially when we are in the BB. For example, folds to BTN who minraises, or 2.5x and we have Q6o. A lot of coaches and players are advocating a call in this spot because of the odds we are getting. Ok, I understand that, and in a vacuum that makes sense. But is it really the best thing to be doing? We are purposely playing weaker hands out of position all in the name of pot odds....or because some simulator said it was good.
To me this is absolutely ridiculous and flat out stupid. Position is THE most important thing in any form of poker, and trying to widen/weaken our ranges from the blinds just to play more hands for pot odds sake seems like a losing strategy long term. Its hard enough playing a strong range out of position, let alone a much wider and weaker range.
How can this be a good idea? I would love to hear someone's thoughts on this and explanation how a minuscule equity sacrifice by folding weak hands like Q6o is a worse strategy than calling those hands so "we arent being exploited" by people who are NOT exploiting us; which puts us in a bad position post flop, out of position with a weak range=losing lots of money fast....
Again, random thought of the day as I watch the latest Paul Atwal video. (disclaimer:I am in no way trying to say Atwal is bad, stupid, whatever....in case anyone wants to read my post as such)

Actually I typically 3x if facing unopened pot to me, and pot it if any limpers. I'll 2x on the btn, unless bad players in blinds, in which case I'll 3-4x it.

Recently I've been doing a lot of mental game work, and was listening to an episode of EPTPE again(listened to this series many times now) when the topic of reciprocality came up.
Reciprocality is basically not doing what everyone else does in a certain situation, which is where all of our profit in poker comes from.
Here's an example using a hand, if we have AA and villain has QQ and the hand plays out where we win 100bbs, but then say we switch the hands where we have QQ and villain has AA and villain wins 100bbs, we have gained nothing and have lost nothing in that particular spot. But let's say when we switch hands and villain only wins 80bbs because we play our QQ differently than him, now we've gained 20bbs more than villain in this spot.
All of our decisions and profits in poker relate to this concept.
This got me thinking, about how videos and coaches and regs in forums often advise the same plan of action in lots of spots. Simple example is open raising to 2.5x versus 3x. If we all attempt to learn the same game plans and "moves" we will not make any money from poker. The reason we make money from weaker players is because we lose less than they do when we lose and we value bet better and win more when we win.
If a person ever wants to break away from the micros and move to a newer level of poker understanding, they must first realize everything they know can and should be changed in order to continue progressing past a certain level of stagnation and non-growth.
I've grown to learn that the moment we begin to assume we have this game figured out, or that we have a "winning" strategy that we no longer need to improve upon is the moment we become innevitably losing players after a set amount of time.
This game is constantly evolving, and I believe shifts continue to take place within the game itself. The best way I can describe this is by relating it to the various levels of poker thinking, like level 1-level 2-level 3-level 4-level 5, etc.
As a whole, the general population of poker players fluctuate and move along these various levels of thought and approaches to the game, which means if we want to stay on top, we must always be aware of what level players are on to make sure we stay just one level above them...because relating back to what I said earlier, if we play the same way they do, we don't lose or gain, and if they play the way we do the same thing happens.
Random thoughts of the day...

Preflop call is fine.
Flop call is questionable though. I think I like calling on a rainbow board a lot more, because if we hit the A or Q of spades we arent happy calling down anymore.

And here's a graph of my first 10k hands played on bovada this year:
Mix of NL and PLO, though the PLO is maybe 2k hands and was at the start of the graph, been playing nothing but NL 6max, 90% 10nl and 10% 25nl. My shots at 25nl have not been successful yet, as variance hasnt been my friend during those times. I also have improved since attempting to shot take 25nl, so I plan on taking another shot at 25nl this weekend. I decided to put some $$ into a savings account that I'm going to use as my bankroll holder for poker basically. So my online roll+this savings account with be my overall poker bankroll, both for live and online play.
When my online bankroll hits $400 I will take a shot at 25nl again, and drop back down if i hit $300. As of right now its sitting at $370.75. I know in an earlier post I said I wouldnt take a shot again until my bankroll was at $500, but since im putting money aside in this savings account that I can reload online if need be; im going to be more aggressive with trying to get to 100nl.
Stay tuned gents, show me some love with lots of <3's

Mini update:
Still havent hit 10k hands yet, after my last post I spent most of my free time searching for vehicles and test driving several different cars, all to discover that I'll be keeping my Jeep for a while lol. Or wait until I find a good deal maybe during the summer. Dealerships are stingy right now for some reason. Needless to say, I havent played much poker at all since my last update, but did get a session in last night and will get more in today(hopefully).
Right now my job is the biggest source of my unhappiness and anger. I get taken advantage of, overworked, under compensated, and told what I want to hear to keep my happy for a few more months. I'm constantly tired(I wake up at 3:10am every day....) and the time I get with the wife keep slowly decreasing as my need for sleep catches up for me and I fall asleep on the couch watching TV with her at 6pm...before I start ranting too much I'll end things here. Cliffs:Job sucks, always tired.
As you can imagine, this leads to playing poker when I'm exhausted or not refreshed and my emotions are all over the place. I think I've done quite a good job on controlling my anger and emotions for the most part, but I still have plenty of sessions where I insta quit after a fish sucks out on me, or I make a bad play I know I shouldnt make but cant force myself to do the right thing with no brain power left to operate on a higher level of thinking.
The positives on this though are that its allowed me to identify areas of my mental game that need work, and given me extra drive to work harder and bust out of the micros for good.

All of that leads me to my main topic of discussion today: Mental game and success in poker.

Ive been reading a lot of blogs, forum pots, etc about full time grinders and their habits and comparing/contrasting them all. There are some common themes amongst the true professionals who have been playing for a living for years and will continue to do so no matter what happens with the poker world.
1. Outwork everyone else
-be willing to do what others wont, so you can achieve what others dont. You HAVE to put in the work off the tables in order to get better at poker. You HAVE to do HH reviews and study your own game. You cant just read what others do and try to copy it without a deeper understanding of the game.
2. Be patient
-I've seen many well versed grinders dump winnings due to boredom at the table. Poker is a game of patience and seizing opportunities when they present themselves, and minimizing the inevitable losses that ARE going to happen. The successful pros know how to maximize value and minimize losses. They win and lose just as much as the next person in terms of EV, but know how to make their wins monsters and their losses seem like a few BB lost. I myself need to get better at knowing when to fold. Folding in the right spots is arguably a more important skill than valuebetting proper amounts.
3. Control of their emotions
-having control over tilt and your emotions when you're running bad is what will separate you from the rest of the pack. Its common to lose control, lose our temper, blame the dealer, blame our bad luck, blame the birds outside, whatever....but how you handle that temporary loss of emotion is what shows your true character. How quickly do you regain your composer after a bad beat? No one is a robot, we all experience these emotions, but the good pros can swallow those negative emotions in an instant and never let in truly phase them. They use those spots to learn, and learn only. Nothing else matters. Emotions and anger and cursing your bad luck wont make you better at poker, but analyzing a hand and asking other players for their opinions will. Or crunching numbers and doing some math.

Hope that all makes sense and can possibly help anyone who reads it. Stay tuned for a graph update and some HH very soon. (I know I keep saying this, i promise its going to happen).

I think the best way to explain the concept here is using an example.
Say you have AA in the BB and the BTN opens, and you're sitting 200bb deep. If you raise to pot only, and bet all 3 streets, itll be hard to get all the money in. BTN open to 2bb, we 3bet pot to 7bb and he calls. 15bb in pot. We pot the flop and he calls, 45bb in pot. we pot the turn he calls, 135bb in pot. We still have about a pot size shove left on the river here which is going to make it tough for villain to call with a wider range of hands that we can get value from.
But lets change just one minor thing of 3betting to 10bb instead of 7bb since you're deeper. Now on the flop there's 21bb in pot, so you cbet 16bb and get called. 54bb in pot now. Bet 46bb on turn. 146bb in pot on river, and now you can shove your remaining 120bb or so and not have such huge bets on each street. I know thats a rough example with made up numbers, but hopefully it helps.

Hitting the pot button is fine is many spots, especially if all players in the hand are sitting around 75-100bb. But when you start having deeper stacks, say 130bb and higher, you want to make bigger raises and the pot button won't be large enough at that point.

I think cbetting here is fine with our gutter and no real SDV.
I think this isnt the best turn card to barrel. Villain never folds Qx, most 8x, and all FD's. which very well could contain the As. Could call us again with 99 or TT that didnt 3bet.
As played, I think this is going to be perhaps one of the best cards to barrel off on in trying to fold out his Qx/99-TT/8x, and his K high FD's that have us beat. I dont expect it work very often though as his range contains plenty of Ax hands, or strong Qx that wont fold anyway. But it also has enough draws that missed where a 3barrel bluff can be profitable.

Not all softwares calculate pot correctly, not sure why, but thats the case. So it depends on the site you play. Plus, its always nice to know how many BB your raising instead of relying on the computer incase you ever want to venture over to the casino and play live. There's no "pot" button at the poker table :)

Hey Nick,

Really enjoy your blog man, lots of deep things that make my brain churn. Just wanted to add my 2 cents on top of this, because I agree with you very much.
I feel like the GTO phenomenon has by far taken over most peoples strategies or attempts in learning the game. Hand reading seems to be a lost art, and in fact I know many new players that have no idea how to hand read, but can spout off ranges and what not.
So many players under value the "language of poker" and the art of hand reading these days. If there's one thing I'd say is vastly important in learning this game, in any form you play, is knowing how to hand read BEFORE learning what your ranges look like in a given scenario(that most likely will not occur again for 100k hands if ever). But I digress, keep up the great posts Nick, we all enjoy them.

Dont worry man, we all have days like that. As long as you use it as learning experience and realize how to better control tilt in the future, its worth the investment of losing a few BI's.
It's good you have identified the leak you have when you're tilted (calling too much), now just need to work on slowly eliminating that from your game when you arent playing your A-game. Try some injecting logic, tell yourself something like "I will fold if I get raised" BEFORE you make a bet, so when a raise does happen, you arent tempted to herocall in spots you know you shouldnt, because you've already told yourself you're gonna fold :) helped me a ton!

You're crushing it man keep it up! I'm currently grinding up the micros myself. Good to see others putting in the work

I much prefer donking over chk/raise here. We can easily call a raise or reship if we wanted to have a donk/shove range. Easier to balance with our over pairs like 55-TT and small sets.
Or if we don't want a donk range then chk call seems best since we have tons of hands that chk call and hate hearts on the turn so having the nut flush in our range is nice.

I understand the GTO argument, but we cant just ignore the "language" being spoken by the 2 villains in this hand. We are not ahead here with top 2. Hand reading is still very much useful and more reliable in many spots versus a GTO strategy.

Yeah I think I like squeeze preflop also, but calling is also fine. AQs is a squeeze for sure.
Not so sure if chk/raise is the best play here. We have the board crushed and there are no draws out. I think calling and keeping villians ranges as wide as possible is better. What are we hoping to get called by if we chk/raise? A5?, KT/JT? Seems hopeful at best.
Turn would be a chk/call again for me on the K, but as played and based on the action I think you can fold the turn after button bets. Both of them clearly have a hand they want to put money in with.

Hey everyone, update time!
So the trip to the casino was lots of fun, despite the run bad and breakeven over 2 days, but hey better than losing right?! On the plus side, the wifey won almost a full buyin at 1/2 even though it was her first time playing at a casino. She has only ever played in home games with friends, so she was super nervous, but she crushed it :)
Free room for 2 nights, lots of free meal comps, and plenty of entertainment/mini getaway=successful casino trip for me! The wife wants to go back soon actually! I may have converted her to the dark side ;P
As far as online poker goes, I have been doing lots of off the table work, watching vids, discussing hands with my study groups, and getting mentored by an excellent player(shoutout to dddog). He has been more than helpful and encouraging and motivating to say the least, and I cant wait til we take over the Bovada games together. I feel like my game has improved a ton already over the past few days, and cant wait to keep learning new things and watching as many vids as I can here from RIO. I decided that I'm going to outwork everyone in order to get to the top, and I dont care how hard it is. You all WILL know who I am by the end of this year. I WILL be a force to be reckoned with at the 200nl+ games on Bovada. I WILL become a full time pro again.

I'm almost at the 10k hands checkpoint since starting this blog, and after todays session and tomorrows I should hit it easily. So be on the lookout for a graph update next time! As well as some interesting hands to discuss!

You know I'm in!