Drawing a line under January

First up, my Sweden trip was wicked fun. Just wished I could have stayed there longer... the city was fantastic and girls were gorgeous. Had a great time. Some pics on flickr here.




$6k hit yeaaa!
January is all done for me. I'm happy to say that my bankroll has reached the $6k required to move up to 200nl! Woo! I'm taking the last few days of the month off to try to clear up some of my tasks at work so that I don't have to work as much overtime next month. Gonna struggle to play 20k volume if i'm working 12 hour shifts all the time!

January Stats
Here's this months stats. Up and down until a few big sessions near the end of the month where I ran well. Finishing the month on 11.6 BB/h 6-tabling. A small sample, my hourly rate for the month was around $80/hour.


Gap between my VPIP and PFR below 4 just like I wanted, chuffed with that. :)
Crushing from the button. Positional stats look good.
The road to 200nl
Here's my overall stats since I started grinding 100nl a few months back. I know they're pretty small samples but the first 10k hands my BB/100 was 5.0, the next 10k it was 9.5, and this month the final 6.5k hands I ran at 11.6. An improvement every month, showing the improvements I'm making in my game each month.


To come in February
It's going to be my biggest month yet for poker, I've got a ton of stuff going on. I'm going to be receiving coaching from Messiah every week and going over all of my tough hands with him personally. I'm gonna be playing a large volume of hands 6-tabling 200nl. To top that off at the end of the month I'll be playing in $1,800 worth of live MTTs including a UK televised event.

I did say I was going to ramp it up :) more to come...

Coaching - 1st impressions

Tonight was my first 1-on-1 coaching session with Messiah from DeucesCracked. As much as I'd like to I'm not going to go into any of the strategy discussed as that's between me and the coach. However I do feel happy to give my overview of my first impressions of coaching...

$$$ Cash monies
I've always been dubious about whether coaching is worth the money. I mean my CR subscription costs $50 per month, and DC costs $25 per month... however my monthly 1-on-1 coaching bill will come to $600. This is currently 10% of my bankroll! Quite a big outlay! Financially bankrollwise next month will be very interesting, as I'm going to be taking a lot of shots at education, cash, and tourneys... I'll post on that later, back on topic...

Railing
The coaching session went a lot better than I expected it to go. It was really really beneficial. Messiah seems like a fantastic coach, and there's a lot more included in the coaching package than I expected. To start off I 4-tabled and commentated on my own play, and Dave made comments. Here's how I ran.


I didn't expect to have any real "light bulb" moments, more just to have what I already knew re-enforced, but I was way wrong. In just this session alone Dave fixed a few massive leaks in my game, and got some what I think was pretty incredible advice on plays I would never have thought of making. In one spot I said "I'd never re-raise here, just call.", and Dave was like "For starters I'd rather fold than call, but I'd re-raise here every time, in fact I'd re-raise any 2 cards". There was literally no way I'd have made the play there, but now I think about the situation in a completely different way, and realise I was leaking so much money. Amazing.

PT Analysis
Some of the other stuff I was impressed with was the PT analysis. I'm now used to being able to look at 25nl or 50nl players PT stats and tell them how to improve their game pretty easily. In the same way, Dave was able to look at my 100nl stats - stats that I hadn't even used before - and point out big flaws in my game. This I thought was hugely beneficial. But here's the main reason I think coaching is so beneficial to me...

Changing the learning model
Reading books and watching videos are great, however I can't gain instant access to exact information I want in order to fix my game. I have to watch the whole video and the chances are that video won't cover the exact problems I'm having in my game. So I could try asking the questions on the CR forum or on my blog, however the responces I get are likely be mixed, not from great players and I won't have confidence to apply them. So fixing my game up is pretty tough, I'm often shooting around in the dark trying to make adjustments and I'm honestly not sure if they're right or not.

Coaching changes this purely because I can ask any question I want, and instantly get back a correct answer. This to me is why coaching is so valuable. It cuts out all of the uncertainty and just gets you straight up correct answers. And get this... In addition to receiving correct answers to my questions, my coach will answer valuable questions that I didn't even know to ask. He'll look at the way I'm playing, and fix things that I'd have no way of knowing needed fixed.

So the whole learning model has been changed, and I have to say it is awesome. I have complete faith that my coach is telling me the right things, so I suck up all of his information and apply it without hesitation.

In addition to this after playing sessions through the week, I can ship 4 or 5 of my toughest hands to Messiah and ask questions on them. No need to forum post or blog post, etc and just get the odd solid answer. I get straight up answers of how to play the hand right then.


I can think of a ton more benefits of coaching, but I've already pimped it too much ;) Anyways, next month I'm going to take coaching every week for the full month while beasting 200nl for 20k hands and I'm sure I'm gonna see a big improvement in my game. I'm really looking forward to it!


Off to Stockholm, Sweden tomorrow morning with a bunch of mates. It's 3am now and I still have to pack lol.


Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh femalesuperrace/10


Oh aye I almost forgot... Had quite a lot of emails about the iPoker deal, I'll get back to those when I'm back in Edinburgh. I'm not ignoring u guys!

Another strong session

Coaching lesson got put off 'til tomorrow night so I decided to do some grinding across 6 tables. I'd rewatched Verneer's 6 tabling 100nl video through the day today, so was in a good mindset to get a bit more TAG. I feel like a caught a good run of cards tonight and played really well. It was one of those sessions that just clicked and most things went right. It's amazing what new goals and focus does for my play.

As you can see I've tightened up my stats a lot, I think this is about my optimum multi-tabling grinding game. Maybe a little tighter. Played 21.5/18, basically playing TAG but isolating a lot from the CO, and loosening up a lot from the BTN. One thing to note is that my aggression factors were pretty insane, I think this shows that I was value betting hands a lot, probably because I caught a lot of cards.

Mixing up the c-bets
One of the things I think I did best tonight was mixing up my betting when players figured out I was playing so aggressively postflop. As soon as they started adjusting to my constant c-bet pounding I'd start check-raising them on the flop, or letting them float me and check raising them on the turn occasionally in good spots to mix it up. I also put a good amount of delayed c-bets in. I think it's really important to mix things up against good players when they start adjusting to your position raising and cbetting game.


Some hands
Cheers for everyone submitting votes in weaktight on what to do on some of the hands in my last post. Feedback is always appreciated.

Rivered trips, bad spot for thin value
This is the hand of the night for sure.

Standard button open with JTo, called by a tight SB (12/10). Obv bet, same as I would a cbet, and he calls. At this point I'd give his range J9+, a mid PP or like maybe 56, or a set. Any other hands I'd only give about 10% of his range to here as I really don't think he's floating me OOP here.

Turn is a K and I check behind for pot control, again pretty standard.

River makes me trips, and he bets $17 into a $20 pot. Without any hand-reading I'd be raising here, but taking into account his range based on previous streets and his PT stats I think this is almost certainly a fold. I really don't beat much, I don't think it's that likely he had nothing on the flop, or that he caught the K. I think I beat only like 25% of his river range here (J9/56/middle pair/bluff). I think he has it about 75% of the time, either with a better J or a set. Does anyone else lay this down on the river?

Anyway, I ran my time bank down trying to talk myself into flat calling. But ended up trying to get some thin value and raising up about 2.3x his bet. He just called with 33.


Overpair fold in 3-bet pot
Pretty easy fold, no way calling here is +EV in my opinion. Despite Verneers recent advice on always felting overpairs in 3bet pots I think this is definately somewhere I can get away.


Another biggish fold - AQ on A-high flop
If we have full stacks I re-raise the flop for value/info. But in this spot I think a flop re-raise will commit me, so just flat call. 6 on the river and he over-bet ships it. Eugh, this is close I think. This is the first time he's cold called so I doubt he can have a straight. I was figuring him for 2pr or a set. I'm beating A9/AT/AJ which match his line, hmm. I guess he could have like 99-QQ or something here too, but these don't match his line as well. Meh, I think this is tight. Could prob call or fold here. Will pokerstove this tomorrow.


Most of the hands where I won big pots tonight I played pretty well, pretty standard. Here are a few of the more interesting winners...

Getting value with a turned set
Got nice value here from a loose player who calls too much.

Shipping AK ** (TM) DodgyKen
God knows what this fish is doing. :)

Post-oaking a reg
This guy likes to make hero calls on the river. So I make the river bet look like I'm trying to steal the pot on the river.

C/Ring an aggressive players float
My cbetting image was out of line at this table at this point. I liked C/Ring the turn here and letting him float me.

And another float C/R here
Looks like that flop would have missed me and I was cbetting. But no! That's right fish, hammertime!

Snapping off a river bluff
Loose player, pretty easy river bluff call, most likely middle pair of missed draw.


Running hot
So I've been running pretty hot since I've moved to the new iPoker skin. I've got a special reverse luckswitch activated account, which is nice. Give me a shout if you'd like a luckbox account and I'll hook you up. :)

A solid session

First up, cheers to everyone that left comments on my previous post. I'm pumped to get started the hard work. I'm gonna try to blog even more too, if I'm gonna blog more I need to blog faster, so more bad english and typos coming up!

Railing
Did some railing sessions with Graham over the past couple of nights, cheers for that mate. He railed me last night in a completely insane 300 hand session with some HUGE hands. I've sent these to Messiah to help analyse. Anyway it was cool having someone railing while I was playing, kept me thinking about the hands more, but it was difficult to play more than 3 tables while trying to talk and commentate on my thoughts too. So when railing using mikogo/skype from now on I'll try to just play 3 tables and concentrate on improving my reads/play rather than grinding for high volume.

Then I railed Graham for about an hour tonight while he played some $50nl on iPoker. Was good to sit back and watch and chat about some of the tougher hands. At the end of the session we went over some of biggest losing hands in PT which I think was pretty useful also. Graham played real well and crushed the session for like 20bb/100 which was pretty sweet too :)

Hands
Got 500 in tonight 4-6 tabling before spending the rest of the evening railing/studying. Over the past couple of weeks I'd basically loosened my game up to about 23/20, and I've been finding it really tough to play postflop with my loose image and in some of the marginal spots I've been in. So tonight I decided to pull it back a bit and grind. I played 19.5/16.5, TAG with tricks and ground out a $60 profit, 11BB/100 (not PTBB anymore). My buddy Jamie (who plays much higher stakes) railed me on MSN for some of it which was fun too, got some great advice from him, cheers man.

Here are some hands from tonight as always, thoughts welcome.

AA with lots of action
lol, sitting with AA and watching everyone dump money in the pot pre was pretty sweet. Flop is, err, dangerous. But there's $66 in the pot and we've got effective stacks of $80 (but MP only has $60). I can't check with what's likely the best hand, and any bet commits me, so I raise the anchor and ship the chips. :>

They've only really flopped a flush with AQ, maybe QJ/JT at a push. I'm screwed if they've flopped a set but I because of the pot size we just felt AA every time here. I think I get called by a good amount of hands I have beat like pocket pairs with a club, or AcX, and I'm gonna take the pot down a lot.


LOL you = my profit
:)

This hand was sick
Villain is 50/12 over 30 hands. His minraise preflop doesn't mean strength, he's done it twice before with weak aces/low PPs. Easy value raise in pos with AK.

On the flop his bet is weak, I put him on A6/A3 , some FD, 45, a mid pair, or something like J9/JT/JQ. Because he's such a fish I have to give him quite a wide range here.

Turn card completes the FD and 55, he checks it to me. I love having position here on the turn. He could have made that flush, so I can check and see what he does on the river. If he has the flush, he's going to bet.

On the river he checks, which seems really strange to me. So I feel that I can rule out a flush and middle set now, or else he's betting that river. So a lot of his range is made up with marginal hands... the weak Js, and small pairs with a A or maybe K kicker. There's $60 in the pot and he has like $43 behind. Can I make him fold 40%+ of the time here is the question. It's not a play I like making at $100nl against these sorts of fish, as I wouldn't be surprised if he calls with his A6. But I think I can fold him enough to make profit by shoving the river here.

He runs down his entire time balance and times out. I breathe out.


3-bet AQ on baby board
Villain is a 22/16, seems like a decent player. He opens UTG which makes me a bit wary, but I think I get value here 3-betting and take control in position.

Flop comes paired all small cards. Ugh. I fucking hate these spots. Am I meant to check behind here? Am I meant to c-bet? I cbet $21 and he insta-ships. Obv he has an overpair, easy fold. I just really hate playing AK/AQ in a 3-bet pot when it's likely villain has an overpair. Maybe I make enough profit from cbetting decent boards and making hands to make 3-betting here profitable, but I hate these hands. Something I'm going to work on with Messiah.


Double-barrell OOP with NFD
Villain is 22/6 here. I think I make a mistake by double-barrelling here. I think he's floating me on the flop maybe like 20% of the time. I don't think I'm folding out much on the turn he's called me with on the river. Probably best checking the turn I guess. He raises my turn bet big and I'm gone.


lol I love this hand
Villain is a MASSIVE donk. Over the past 30mins he's just jizzed his chips all over the table. When he calls the flop I'm not too happy, but obv I'm getting it in every time. :)


Can I call here in pos to draw?
Obv I'm mucking it without the cold caller. But can I call in position now with the bigger pot and implied odds? Or is this still a fold?



First coaching session tomorrow
I've got my first session with Messiah tomorrow night, really looking forward to that one... seeing as people are pretty interested in the coaching thing I'll try to blog a bit about it too. Upon his request I've supplied my last 15k stats from PT, including positional stats, and a bunch of hands with reads and analysis that I think I'm having the most problems with. It's clear that postflop - mainly in raised pots, handreading, and LAG play are the areas I really want to improve in... and it seems like he's happy to tailor the sessions around this. I won't be done the session 'til 2am tomorrow night, but I'll try to get a short report in the following day.

Upping the Ante

I can feel a lot of changes coming on, I just know now is the time...

Over the Christmas break and this month I've realised that there are fantastic opportunities available to me within the poker world and if I put the work in I'll get a HUGE amount out it. Aside from that I love this game, and it's something I really want to conquer. I've become really motivated to take my game to higher levels, and beat poker for a much higher winrate. I feel that this is the right time to step things up and dedicate a much bigger portion of my life to poker. Playing a lot more, studying a lot more, and analysing a lot more. I'm incredibly determined to get to the higher levels, and fast. I'm not after a quick fix or an easy way to get there, I'll be using proper bankroll management and crushing everything, playing high volumes of hands.

People talk about the games getting harder, but the fact is that there's so much fantastic material out there now that if you put the time in you'll become a top player. I'm fully ready commit to studying and playing the game HARD for the next 6 months. I've decided to give myself much higher goals. I want to put double the hands in each month, and spend a lot more time on strategy and study. I'll need to reschedule things a bit, but I'm going to make it happen.


More hands
There's no way to get better without putting in a lot of hands. This is pretty evident from reading top players blogs, like CTS's. I'm going to up the number of hands played each month to at least 20,000.

Smarter Study
I think I should use my studying time a lot more effectively. I also believe that it's worthwhile to invest a lot more money into study, as it'll pay off. Videos are a much faster way to get better than books, so I'll be focussing a lot less on books now. Although CardRunners is fantastic and offers a wide range of material not all of it is useful to me, probably only 1 or 2 of the videos per week are ideal study material. I'm really impressed with the DeucesCracked coaching site, I'm going to signup there in addition to CR, which will increase the amount of videos I've got access to.

Feedback and coaching
At the moment I definately don't use the most effective ways to get feedback on my game. I usually post on forums, or discuss things with players at the same level as me. I can often receive more poor advice than good advice, and it can be difficult to seperate the two. Verneer made me realise that paying for coaching is the way forward. Having a great coach eliminates poor advice, gives me the benefit of his experience, and confidence in my play.

I recently applied for a few different coaches, and came to the decision to start working with Messiah from DC. I'll be having my first session with him this week, and will do weekly or fortnightly 1.5hour sessions. In addition to this he'll be available through the week on IM or email to talk through hands or concerns. The cost isn't cheap at $150 per session, but I strongly believe it'll be worth it in the long run. He seems like a great guy, and the service he provides looks fantastic. What better way to learn than directly from someone who's crushed the levels I'm playing at.

Coaching is very flexible too, so in the future when my game moves up to 2/4 I can hire a new coach to guide me up to the higher stakes. The idea of being mentored by a top player like Brian Rue or Vanessa Selbst is pretty awesome.

Support and Motivation
I still feel it's really important to be part of a group of poker players, and have a lot of friends within the game. I think a group gives me the drive and motivation to push towards my goals, mainly because there are other players doing the same thing. A group can also provide a great amount of support, especially through tough times like downswings. Aside from that I think that online poker is a pretty lonely game, you need people to chat with or discuss hands with during long sessions, and players to connect with who understand the situations you're in on - and off of - the table.

Life balance
I won't succeed in making these new goals in poker without having balance in the rest of my life. I will be reprioritising things within my life to make more time for poker and balancing poker with the other things that are important to me... my job, spending time with friends/family, and my wellbeing (eating well, fitness, personal development). I'm confident I can make this work, and that having a fit, healthy, balanced life will make me a better poker player.



On to my updated goals, on where I want to be by the summer...

Cash Games
My play will primarily be at cash games, here are the cash game goals:

• Be beating 2/4 by the summer, achieving the $100/hour winrate
• Play >20k hands per month
• Specialise in 6-max, but branch out to Full-ring, Heads-up, and Omaha.
  

Tournaments
I'd like to play some of the softer touraments available this year. I really enjoy live tourneys, and they're a good break from playing cash and a nice opportunity to travel. Here's what I'd like to play this year:

• All events at GBPT Edinburgh next month. (£100 & £200 prelims, and the £500 ME)
• Travel to a couple of live events before the summer, maybe Ireland, Holland, Scandinavia, not had a look at the full schedule yet.
  
• Play in the WSOP this summer, one or more $1.5k prelim, a couple of Venitian events, and lots of live cash.

I think that's about it for now... lots more to come.

iPoker $$$ loyalty deal

As you guys know I'm pretty picky about where I play online. I never play on a site unless the tables are soft and I'm getting a high amount of $$$ back each month. I've recently shipped all of my bankroll across from my old iPoker skin to a new one and have been playing there all month. The service is fantastic and the loyalty deal is the best I've seen on the net for iPoker.

I've set up an affiliate account with the owner of the skin, and I can now offer you guys exactly the same loyalties that I'm receiving. Here's some reasons why I play at the site...

Why do I play on iPoker?

• It's soft. Clearly the most important thing to consider when playing at any site, there are loads of fishies.
  
• Great traffic. I think it's the 3rd biggest poker site around, at current time of posting there are 30,000 players on the the site.
  
• Miniview tables rock. They're great for playing on a laptop and I can fit 9 on my desktop screen with no overlay!
• Software is easily customisable. I use custom betpot/auto-reload scripts which I'd happily share with whoever wants them, and I use table customisation software that lets you change the card graphics, table background, etc. You can setup the tables to look exactly the way you want them.
  

Why play through my affiliate?

• I'll have your account instantly upgaded (and locked in) to the top 6-star "titanium" VIP level. This is very $$$ profitable. For a breakdown on exactly how profitable it is just fire me an email.
  
• We're UK based, and offer a VIP points system that allows you to use points to buy in to live events in the UK, and soon bigger EPT events.
  
• We offer top online customer service. Also, if you have any problems/suggestions you can email me and I'll bring it up directly with the owner of the skin.
  
• We offer superfast cashouts, if you need to get some money out in a hurry with no messing around.
  

So if you already play at iPoker (BlueSq, Titan, Betfred, Kiwi Poker, VCPoker, etc) I'm certain I'll be able to offer you a better loyalty deal than you're currently receiving. It was easily worth me switching from my old skin to receive the extra benefits. If you don't play at iPoker then i'd definately consider it. The fishy tarbles and great loyalty deal I'm offering will save you shopping around.

If you're interested in signing up for an account to give it a go, or would like more info or a more in detail breakdown of the loyalty deal, just drop me an email.

Blogs to read in 2008

In no particular order...

Amatay goes pro
One of my fav blogs, Amatay has just gone professional poker fish. Looking forward to reading about his rise to the top, with added SNGays. He's even posting hands now, wtf. Stop browsing the internet and get your ass at the tarbles Jones!

Dodgyken is sick at poker
This blog was real inspiration to me and others in the study group when Ken bagged a huge $$ month in December. Working his way up from the low stakes (now playing $1000nl) and using study groups and loads of analysis Ken's blog is always a great read for motivation. Check out some of his free videos, they're great. Loads of awesome hand analysis too, will need to post more replies to hands.

F-Badger goes to the EPT (again)
Professional SNG/Omaha/NL/MTT/horseys player from Edinburgh, qualified for EPT Dortmund, GL sir! Loads of MTT trip reports, omaha/nl hands, and interesting sports betting action.

Ryan Daut mspaints goot
Probably the funniest poker blog around, Daut's humor rocks. Loads of MSPaints, big MTT trip reports, and now doing NL videos for Cardrunners. Currently 20-tabling :o $200nl.

Verneer goes pro
Probably the best poker blog around. Verneer (of CR) puts an incredible amount analysis and thinking into poker. Loads of legendary posts giving different angles to the game. Prediction: Utter crushing of mid-stakes this year, crushing of high stakes next year. Verneer has also done some fantastic free videos, the $100nl 4 and 6-tabling ones in particular are better than most of the low limit videos on CR.

CTS's old archived blog
This is the blog CTS started when he was building his roll in $100nl. It's pretty amazing to read his rise from small stakes to nosebleed stakes. His hand and opponent range analysis is pretty amazing, one of the best blogs I've ever read for sure and it's currently changing the way I think about ranges/hands.

Sneaky update

Been pretty busy so not had any big updates, lots of stuff I've got planned to post though.

Coming up...

• Posts on Motivation, C-bet sizing, and blogs to watch in 2008.
• Offering a sweet new loyalty deal I've been working on for the past couple of weeks, at my new poker site of choice.
• Introducing the new group members, and some thoughts on sweat sessions.
• The hunt for coach continues.
• Maybe I'll post some fk'in hands?

Anyways, on to some news...

Life (or excuses for not playing enough hands)
It's a pretty cruical time in the office at the moment. My highest priority is to make sure my work is polished up and looking good, this means I'm currently spending quite a lot of time in work. This should slacken up a lot in a few weeks though. Been playing a bunch of 5-a-side footy and squash, this combined with 12 hour working days usually means I'm too tired when to play in the evenings. Not really finding much time at the weekends to play either as I've been out a lot, playing a lot live though!

Friday night game
Speaking of live, played in Andy's weekly home game on Friday night. Think we got about 10 for the STT, which I bust out of pretty early. Then played some low limit NL cash while the tourney finished up, and built up a decent stack of £££s... which I promptly donated to Ed at Omaha Hi/Lo. Fairly standard!


Played a bunch of mixed games inc Razz, 7 card stud Hi, 2-7 triple draw, etc. It's fun to losing $$$ at/learning new games. After this was probably the loosest most mental NL cash game I've ever played in, with at one point the blinds being straddled/re-straddled right the way around to the button lol. Which begs the question, can you straddle from the small blind?!


Officepoker
Gonna try to play in as many OfficePoker tourneys as possible this year, they're great live practise as the play is pretty good. Got sat next to Jas on the first table which was fun, until he got 3 outered, doh! Anyways, I wondered if I've be able to play my A game after the previous higher buy-in tourney. But as Jas pointed out it's not about the buy-ins, it's about improving, and sure enough I think I played my absolute A game on Saturday. I found myself reading players exact hole cards in a few spots, and really felt like I had great reads on all of the tables I was at.

Anyways, I FT'd (55ish runners I think). Had an average stack on the FT, but because the bubble went on so long my stack was only 12BBs. MP opens for standard raise, I ship JJ from the BTN, she calls with AQ, flops an A and I bust in 10th. Weh. Great tourney as usual, people there are always really nice, much better play and atmosphere than regular casino tourneys. Cheers again Neil.

Cash update
Played an 600 hand session shortly after my downswing post, and absolutely crushed playing 25/22 and finishing up a buy-in. 2,500 hands played this month so far. Need to get a lot in, I'm sure the opportunities will come up to blitz some soon.

Traffic
My blog traffic seems to be increasing, which is cool as it means more people are interested in whatever I'm posting (or are waiting to see me go busto?) ;). Thanks to everyone reading and especially leaving comments, it's great to get advice/feedback/ideas/whatever. Cheers dudes.

Looking for a 200nl coach

I’m moving up next month and I’d like to hire a coach to speed up my development. I’m looking for someone currently playing 400nl or above. Ideally you’d have played a lot of hands at 200nl and crushed it hard.

My preflop game is there, I play about 22/18/3.5, it’s postflop I need to work on. You’d need to be available for sessions at some point during the week between 9pm and 1am GMT (4-8pm eastern or 1-5pm pacific).

If you’re interested please drop me an email (bazclef@gmail.com) with the following:
* Stats on your play at 200nl, and your current play. Large samples please.
* Previous coaching experience.
* Hourly rate.
* A bit about yourself, or a blog link.

Cheers

Poor discipline, bad session, lots to learn from

I read Verneer's thread on CR today titled "Why can't most people beat $200NL and under?". The biggest reasons discussed were bankroll management, moving up, money, and discipline. I have the first few nailed, but discipline is tough. It covers such a wide area, but I can definately say that the biggest killer to my winrate is bad sessions. Sessions where I'm playing my B, C or even Z game for whatever reason. Tonight I think I played my B/C game, anyways here's the story.

Before playing tonight I'd put in 1.5k hands for the month at a high winrate, which is standard when I start 10k bursts. Tonight I played a pretty sick 600 hands, here's what happened...

A quick commentary, I ran pretty bad for the first 400 hands think I was playing ok. Then I stacked a loose swede with a set turned quads at the hand 410 mark and started running better up to hand 500. Was pretty happy I managed to pull it back from a tough session and about to logout but decided to make it 600 hands lol...

So the interesting this is, I'm 6-7 tabling and all 3 of those big loss hands were against 1 player on 1 table! Here's how it went down...

He's only been at the table for 12 hands, I've got him as 50/15/0

Pretty big AQ laydown
Flop I don't mind seeing him call, as he'll often have some PPs/weaker aces. On the turn he minraises me, this is such a standard flopped set line at $100nl, AK is possible too but it feels like a set. There's no way he has a middle pair now, and weaker aces are really unlikely. So I think I read his pattern well here and folded to the better hand. HOWEVER, I didn't notice I had a NFD, so getting $55 to call into would would be a $225ish pot I probably have odds against his range to ship it here. But it's not a huge mistake, not too worried about that hand...

Re-shoving 99 on a 4-high board
I think this is a borderline 3-bet, but I don't hate it. I'm trying to 3-bet 99/TT more now and this seems like a good spot. By now I'm only got 20 hands on the guy and he's still running 50/15/0.5 so maybe I should just flat call here. Meh, don't hate the 3-bet, might be a small mistake, nothing huge.

UTG is a loose passive fish. I decide to lead, and fold to a raise from UTG, and see what villain does. I made my bet size a good amount to be able to comfortably get away from the hand. UTG folds as expected, and villain minraises me. Without the previous hand this is a standard fold for me every time. However I start thinking that he might be putting a play on me, and maybe he didn't have it in the last hand either. I convinced myself that I should stand up at this point based on only the previous AQ hand! I shove, he has the OP as expected, I lose a stack.

At this point I uncheck auto post on all tables, lol...

Another huge AQ hand
Preflop is standard, I get called in 3 spots because my image is really loose. At this point I love my hand, I've got TPTK and the NFD, huge hand. Villain UTG (now about 60/15/0.4) just donk-shoves the flop! LOL, here's me with the top pair and the NFD champin' to call. :) I run through his range in my head and at the time I put him on most likely a set or a pair and flush draw (AxTc/KxJc, etc). I think I was blinded by just wanting to call with the strength of my hand and my desire to stack him here, I just didn't assess the situation correctly.

If I had looked at it correctly I'd have seen that the only set he could have is with 55, and he probably wouldn't ship with the combo draws. Actually like 80% of his range was a little flush, so my hand was a pretty easy fold. If I'd looked at his analysed his PT stats correctly too I'd have noticed that his post-flop aggression is TINY, and the times he did put money in he most likely had it. My AQ doesn't look so good now... :S


Naturally I close all tables at this point. I feel pretty bad for a couple of mins, this is the worst cash session I've had in around a year.


Possible Mistake #1: Playing after a long tiring day.
I worked a 12 hour day at work which was pretty tough and mentally draining, then 5-a-side footyafterwards... So I didn't start the session 'til 11pm. I knew I'd be better off watching a CR video, or reading. But when I'm in a motivated mood (sport in the evening usually does that) I just feel like hitting the tables. However just because I'm motivated doesn't mean I'm going to play well, I was probably a little too tired to be at the tables. I find this really hard to judge, but I think I need to be more careful playing sessions after long days in future, and really make sure I'm going to be playing my A game.

Possible Mistake #2: Playing my B game.
I'd been running well at the start of the month and I was in a confident mood, I didn't really feel at any point in the session that I wasn't concentrating well enough... but looking over my PT positional stats I wasn't playing my A game. My UTG/MP VPIPs were at 17/18 (previously 10/13), and my CO/BTN vpips were 23/24 (previously 29/39). So despite the small sample it makes it quite clear that I was slacking back to my B game, despite it being difficult for me to see - or accept - this at the time.

Possible Mistake #3: Playing to "clock hands"
I've set myself the target of 10k hands this month, which is a tough target for me, as I work a lot, I'm out a lot and also I'm going on holiday near the end of the month. So I've been pushing myself pretty hard to get hands in over the last few days. This means I probably won't be playing my A game all of the time, and won't be making the best decisions possible.

Also, because I'm playing to clock hands I was playing 7 tables which is a little ahead of me just now. I can easily handle 4, comfortable with 5, a little stretched with 6, but I was finding 7 pretty tough. They weren't that great tables either, there were a a lot of regs about, so I really shouldn't have been playing that many. Until the end of this 10k hands I'll play 5 tables max now, then at the end I can decide whether I'll up it to 6.
Playing to clock hands, rather than make good decisions.
B game instead of A game, playing to clock hands, rather than to make amazing decisions

Possible Mistake #4: Thinking a player is out of line, over a tiny sample
I noticed myself doing this a couple of weeks back, but tonight was a great example of it. I thought villain in the last few hands was out of line LAG when in fact he hadn't shown down a bad hand. He could have just been catching a rush of cards. I decided to play back at him - ignoring his betting pattern tells - because I thought he could be making plays against me.


Only took me a couple of mins to get over the beats, then I was feeling pretty good and happy to analyse the session and my psychological state lol. I'm really psyced to improve my game at the moment, and every mistake like the ones I made tonight I will fix. I'm happy I had a session like this so that I can analyse one of the biggest leaks in my game and work on plugging it.

I've never been in such a strong position with my poker game as I am at the moment. The amount of support I have from strong players, thanks to CR and my study group, is just immense. I've never been in such an great position before. I have such a HUGE amount of motivation to CRUSH NL and despite these blips I know I'll get there.

3am with work + squash tomorrow says goodnight!

2008 Goals

I feel like I've came a long way in the last couple of months and if I continue to accelerate my poker growth throughout the year I'll get to where I want to be. So I'm going to look at ways to improve the use of my time working on poker to get me there faster.

Cash games
My main goal for the year is to improve my play as much as possible at NL cash. I'd like to attain a $100/hour winrate including rakeback, which I think should be achieveable 6-tabling $200NL at 5BB/100. I'd like to get to 5BB/100 at $200NL at quickly as possible. Hopefully by June/July. To get there I've set myself a bunch of mini goals/todos...

* Play 10,000 hands per month
* Setup pt/huds/scripts/datamining on Prima and ship $2k in from Stars
* Use iPoker/Prima simultaneously when playing sessions so I'm always playing juicy tables
* Only play when fully focussed and in the correct state of mind
* If I'm not making progress as quickly as I'd like, get a coach

Hand analysis
Going to post all post-session hands on the CR forum, rather than this blog. I've got into quite a good schedule for this now, after I complete a session I do a quick PT review and fire the hands into the WeakTight with stats for the villains. Then over the following couple of days I analyse them further using CR forums to get feedback.

Live events
The main goal of the year is to get my hourly rate up by playing cash, however I also really enjoy playing live tourneys. I'm going to try to play almost all of the OfficePoker events and really work on my people reading and other live skills. They're great events and Neil does a fantastic job of running them and the OP website.

I'd also like to play in 3-4 bigger buy-in events (£100-£500). F-Badger kindly offered to take a % of me in some of these which I think I'll take him up on, I may well sell a % of myself on this blog too. I'll definately play any big events that are on at Circus, a couple of the Scottish Poker Championship prelim events in June, and maybe a couple of prelims at other festivals. I'll see what comes up.

Study
I've got loads to get on with study wise. Hand analysis, watching videos, group participation, railing, reading, etc. My goal here is to always do what I think will be most beneficial for me. I'd also like to get a good balance, so despite the bulk of my study coming from hand analysis and watching CR videos I'll also be doing some reading.

Here's a rough reading list for the year:
* Elements of Poker
* Theory of Poker
* NLH: Theory and Practice
* Professional NLH
* The Poker Mindset
* Read em and Reap

Bankroll
My bankroll for the start of the year is $5196. I'll distribute this as $2.5k on iPoker and $2k on Prima both for cash, and keep $700 on Stars for online/live MTTs.

January Goals
* 10k hands at $100NL
~ focussing on opening up more from the CO pre, postflop play in general, making less moves postflop and value betting more frequently.
* Post a ton of hands on CR
* Start datamining $200NL at iPoker and Prima
* Finish reading Miller/Sklansky's NLH: Theory and Practice
* Finish reviewing all of Fabian's CR videos

Hopefully at the end of January I'll have increased my winrate at $100NL again, and have the $6,000 bankroll required to move up to $200NL. If so I'll likely move up to $200NL at the end of the month.

Not being short term results-oriented

Willie recently asked in the 2007 review post: "I have one question how di you get into your head not to be results oriented i find myself looking at my stats after every session iam good if i win and fell shitty when i lose, how did you distance yourself from it?"

There are a few things I do to help distance myself from the session to session short-term results of the game...

Being properly bankrolled, at least 30 buy-ins. So that finishing a session 2-3 buyins down doesn't cause a lot of stress to my bankroll.

Understanding that downswings do happen, to even the best players. Watching Brian Townsends first few videos caught this for me. He lost a lot on each of his first few videos for CR and didn't care in the slightest, he was totally adverse to the fact he finished down. The short term results at the end of each session really just don't matter so they're not worth getting annoyed about. So long as I'm playing within my bankroll and playing well I shouldn't have a reason to be annoyed.

By not looking at my results during play. Only focussing on the information I have at the tables. This helps stop me trying to "win back money" or playing tighter at the end of sessions to prevent losing money I've won.

At the end of each session I look at my winrate, but more importantly I look over my stats and hands. Looking over your hands and stats after each session is absolutely critical to developing, as your winrate doesn't represent how well you've played. You could have won a couple of buy-ins but played like shit, or have broke even but played the best poker of your life. I feel that it's better to be affected by how well you've played rather than the results of the session. If I've played well then I can see there's nothing to be pissed about, it's just variance. If I've played badly then I'll look over the hands I played bad, post the tough ones on CR to get feedback, and I'll use PT to figure out the adjustments I need to make in the following session. Doing all of this after a bad session makes me feel a lot better.

What I've focussed on looking at instead is making sure that I'm in the correct state of mind to play each session. This has helped my winrate a lot, as I virtually never play when tired, on tilt, etc.

Now that I realise session to session results aren't important, I look forward to completing sets of 10k hands where I can look at results that will be much more likely to represent how well I'm playing. Variance and good session/bad session swings will have evened out a lot more over 10k hands, than the 500-800 hand sessions I normally put in.


So to recap I...
... am properly bankrolled.
... don't look at results/winrates during sessions.
... focus on if I've played well, rather than if I've ran well. I use PT to do this, always analysing each session afterwards.
... understand that I will run badly at times, even the top players do.

If you do these things it'll really help minimise your emotional swings at the end of each session.

2007 Review

I spent most of 2006 chasing the juiciest bonuses, but in 2007 I really started to study the game... and from that started making money from poker rather than bonii.





Turbos
Throughout the first half of 2007 my primary play was Turbo SNGs. They're are a lot of fun and teach you a lot about endgame poker. I played a lot of 45 and 18 man $27s on Stars, maintaining an ROI of about 30%, and some $55s too ROI'ing about 17%.

6max NL
Watching training videos (I 'yarred from pokerbay) and reading blogs made me start to appreciate NL cash, and the complexities of more deepstacked poker. I started focussing on 6max, lol looking back at my PT stats I was playing like 26/8. I got rakeback account and started focussing on getting a lot of hands in.

CardRunners
In October I signed up to CardRunners and it was by far the best decision I've made in poker. What I like most about the site is that it surrounds you with really good players, and players that want to improve fast. Looking at the progress of top players gives me a huge amount of motivation to play and improve, and all of the tools needed for this are right there at the site. I could pimp CR all day, if you're serious about improving then poker training sites will improve your game much MUCH faster than just reading poker books/browsing forums. The service provided by CR hugely outweighs the monthly/signup fees.

Study Group
At the start of November I joined my current Small Stakes NL study group. Just reading the blogs of Marc, Chris, etc, I was really impressed with their level of enthusiasm for the game and it gave me a lot of motivation to study and play. I'd really recommend a study group to anyone wanting to improve their game... It's a great source of motivation, support, and help analysing hands and videos. It's great to have people around with similar goals that are available to rail or to talk over hands with. I'd like to thank all of the guys from my study group for their help in the development of my game.

Becoming less results oriented
Including this because I think this was a huge step in improving my tilt control. I had a great session followed by a horrible session in November, which made me realise that I need to be less results oriented. So from November most of my blog posts got a lot more goal/strategy based rather than $$$ won/lost rave/rants. I think this was a really important step and something I've got to always remember to do, it really helps disconnect me and my mood/happiness from my results at the poker tables and stops (most of) my tilt. ;)

Random 2007 Achievements

• Sat'ing into and playing in GBPT Edinburgh.
• Winning an OfficePoker event.
• Winning 2 article of the month competitions on ITH.
• FT'ing an 850-runner $8 rebuy on Stars.
• Being +EV (over 20k hands) 6-tabling $100NL on iPoker.
  
• Making a $100NL video.
  
• Running good at $200NL ;)

To come... 2008 direction and goals.

100nl 10k review #2

Completed the current 10k hands at $100NL tonight. Here's the stats, etc in the same structure as the last 10k review. I'll do a seperate new year, new goals, etc post over the next couple of days.

Results
So, I ran at 4.76BB/100 making $952. First up, that's a great achievement for me and a fantastic improvement on the last 10k (2.5BB/100). Although I want to be running close to 8BB/100 I'm really happy that I managed to achieve 4.7. :)

I'll receive around $200 rakeback from iPoker, which takes me to roughly $1152 profit over the 10,000 hands. It took 130 table hours to log the hands at 6-max, but this time I was 6-tabling meaning I played 22 hours total. If I divide my total profit by my hours played I make my rough hourly rate to be around $40/hr without RB, or around $50/hr with RB (6-tabling).


Stats
Now on to the stats showing how I've been playing. I've successfully managed to adapt my preflop game close to the guidelines I set out before starting the hands. Here's how I've done pre...

VPIP/PF Raise
Previously = 22/13
Now = 21/17
I've been in 21% of pots, which isn't really tight or loose, it's inbetween, a comfortable place for me to be at the moment. More importantly I'm now raising preflop 17% of the time, meaning that I'm playing more aggressively preflop and not limping into as many pots.

The gap between my VPIP and PFR is now about 4.5 which is much more solid. Although I'd like to be more aggressive preflop and see this gap drop to below 4.

Flop/Turn/River Aggression
Previously = 4.3/2.5/2.8
Now = 5.6/2.7/1.45
My flop aggression factor has actually increased quite a bit. This wasn't really meant to happen but I think I'm happy with it, I had a look at DodgyKen's flop aggression and he's just over 6. I know that I cbet more now, and I'm sure it's profitable. I use my PAHUD cbet success stats a lot more to help determine if cbets will be profitable and I think this has helped me gain more $.

Turn aggression factor is a bit high, this was meant to decrease a little to get closer to 2.1-2.3, but for some reason has increased. This correlates with my suspicions that I've been double-barrelling too much recently. I think I've tried to follow through on the turn too much without a hand, and I don't think it's been that profitable. I need to bet the turn more for value, and less as a double-barrell cbet bluff.

River aggression has went down a whole lot, to a much more sensible number, 1.45 is about right. Shweeet.

Position
The changes here are really important, I really wanted play a much more position oriented game... tightening up from UTG/MP and opening up a lot from CO/BTN. I'm going to use PT a little more this time to look at which hands I am opening from positions to try to nail my position stats even more. Here's my last previous 10k hands position stats, followed by the new ones.


UTG (3)
Previous VPIP = 17%
New VPIP = 14%
Ideal VPIP ~ 12%
Recommended range [KQs/AJ+/22+]
In PT I seem pretty solid from UTG, although I've noticed that I do have >0 VPIPs with a few hands I'm not meant to be opening with. Occassionally I've raise a little lighter if someone's posted the BB after joining the table, etc, this is ok... just need to make sure I have a reason for opening light.

Hands I have opened with that are out of the recommended range are: ATo, KJs, KQo and suited connectors. Looking at them in the small sample size in PT it doesn't look like they're playing profitably from UTG so I'll try to cut them out further and drop my UTG VPIP down a bit more.

MP (2)
Previous VPIP = 18.5%
New VPIP = 16%
Ideal VPIP ~ 14%
Recommended range [KQ/AT+/22+]
This has dropped too, which is great. But I'm still playing too loosely from MP. Suited connectors again are the main culprit, I'm opening pots with even 1 gappers from MP which is just too loose. I need to cut these out, and my VPIP should drop to around 14.

CO (1)
Previous VPIP = 24.5%
New VPIP = 23%
Ideal VPIP ~ 30%
Recommended range [2 face cards, decent suited aces, pairs, lots of suited connectors and 1 gappers]
Wtf I've actually managed to get tigher from the CO. Looking at my PT stats for CO I'm just not opening loose enough. I need to start opening up a lot more from the CO. I'm going to look at this closely after each session in future to make sure that I'm opening my range up enough.

BTN
Previous VPIP = 27%
New VPIP = 32%
Ideal VPIP ~ 34%
Recommended range [2 face cards, any suited aces, pairs, lots of suited connectors and 1 gappers]
Much better, I've loosened up a lot more from the button. But I can get looser. I'll try to open up even more from the BTN.

SB
Previous VPIP = 32%
New VPIP = 25%
Ideal VPIP ~ 25%
Boom, SB is perfect now. I'm only completing in multiway pots with hands like QTo, K9s, etc, nothing less. When folded to the SB I'm either 4x raising total or folding, never completing.

BB
Previous VPIP = 11%
New VPIP = 12%
Ideal VPIP ~ 11%
Still tight on the BB, this is fine.

So overall my play from the blinds is perfect now. UTG/MP I need to stop opening with suited connectors. CO is my focus, I need to loosen up a LOT from the CO. BTN is pretty good, just loosen this up a little more.


Conclusion
It's great to look back over my stats for the last set of hands and see that they're progressing in the right direction. Preflop hand ranges just need a bit of tweaking which I'll hopefully nail for the next 10k hands.

My primary focus for the next 10k will be on my post-flop game. I want to do a lot of hand analysis and work with my study group to improve my post-flop game. I'm going to try to put a lot of focus on value betting post flop, rather than running double-barrell bluffs, etc. As I think I'm missing a lot of value bets, and bluffing a bit too much.

My play will continue at $100NL for the next 10k hands, bankroll isn't quite at a $200NL level yet, and I'm not confident enough with my play either. I feel like there are a lot of fundementals in post-flop play I'm still missing at $100NL so I'd like to try to tighten these up before moving up.

I will however continue to take shots at $200NL, this went really well last month when I made around $500 from it.

If I can achieve these goals in the next 20k hands then I'll have a great base to develop my game from. Back to the grind for me. :)