Trying to reach new heights on and off the table

My goal for the last few days of may and june is to get comfortable playing 1,5$ 9-man hypers and try out 1,5$ 18-man turbos on 2 tables again with focus on increasing my ROI through bubble- and short-handed-play.

Currently i have just under 100BI, but my plan is to get used to playing regular sessions and increasing to 4 tables before i move up a limit.

So here are my main goals for the next 2 weeks (they shouldn't be too hard to achieve since i need to work on a lot of stuff off the tables currently):

- play 350 1,5$ 9-man hypers until mid of june
- picking some smaller MTTs with good structure on pokerstars and play them
- work through some basic topics for SnGs to get into the habit of learning
- watch 4 videos from schnitzelfisch and implement the topics
- check the blog every day and post interesting insights
- do a detailed breakdown of my poker stats on the 13th of June

Hey yYPianhaYy,

Welcome to the blogs.

Awesome. I used to play the 18 man turbos (unsuccessfully), so maybe I'll learn something from following your blog.

Good Luck

Laz

Alright, so the last 2days went well overall in my point of view:

I played 6 sessions with about 8hours in total now, which makes me feel good since i am on pace with my volume set. Unfortunately i didn't run too well and had to take some beats on the bubble and ITM often.

Main issue was that i tried to make to many post-flop-plays during the early stages, which is really not necessary on those limits (2-barreling my stack away on paired board etc.). I was playing the sessions between about 2-4pm and another one between 10-11pm, i recognized some regular players which i was clashing against multiple times on both days.

My bankroll is at 112$ and i plan to stick with the 1,5$ 9-man hypers for now and see how it looks over a bigger sample (currently played 73SnGs), since i really don't like the bigger SnGs (90/180) with higher variance cause of my low volume.
Right now my focus is on improving my push/fold ranges and get used to all the bubble-scenarios (i was throwing it away with medium stack for the 4/5th place too often).

I was 2-tabling during all my sessions and tried playing with and without music (still not sure). My other mistakes were 3-betting too wide during early stage, calling too wide with short stack, picking bad open-shoving spots on the bubble and making too many unnecessary c-bets with small stack.

Also i was working on some SnG basics like opening-ranges (specifically early stage in hyper) and too a tackle at schnitzelfischs' method for clearing your head to get my tasks better structured.

Updated goals are:

- only check bankroll at the end of the day to not get distracted inbetween session
- play 2,5hours+ in 2 sessions every day (25games per day)
- work on basics for ICM
- finish brainstorming and start implementing additional daily habits
- review every session with influencing key-factors and spot biggest mistakes
- mark important hands and post 5hands every 2days

Time for a new update:

So far i played 127 hypers over the curse of the last 4 days and i'm at 106$ right now. This month i will get ChromeStar status for sure and might even reach SilverStar status, it would require me to play 820 1,5$ 9-man hypers. If i can increase my tables on the second half of the month it would be really good, and also collect some FPPs to sign up for some satellite-MTTs. I hope i can run a bit better the following days in the hypers and stay calm throughout my sessions to start building my bankroll.

Besides that here is my BRM-Plan:
50$-150$ (50-150BIs):
1$ 180-man hypers

75$-225$ (50-150BIs):
1,5$ 9-man hypers

180$-300$(120-200BIs):
1,5$ 18-man turbos

225$-450$ (90-180BIs):
1,5$+3,5$ 9-man hypers mixed

325$-450$ (130-180BIs):
2,5$ 180-man turbos

420$-875$ (120-250BIs):
3,5$ 9-man hypers

700$-1400$ (200-400BIs):
3,5$ 18-man turbos

675$-900$ (150-200BIs):
4,5$ 180-man regulars

Only played 1 longer session with short break in-between cause of lack of time, so 2hours and 19 9-man hypers need to be enough for today.
It started pretty good with 3 cashes in a row, but after that just more like average...
I ended up pretty much breakeven with just some cents in the plus, but i felt a lot calmer throughout the session and did spew around less in early stages.
Soon i might even add an additional table to see how i feel then.
Monthly VPPs are at only 25,6VPPs, but it doesn't bother me too much since i only want to keep the habit of playing daily going (building up VPPs comes with bigger limits).
Also i cleared the 40SnGs to get ranked in the low orbit, which places me at rank 307 right now:

SnG Rankings Merkur

Sharkscope- Graph and stuff is coming on the 13th of june, as i already mentioned, to have a better picture on how my journey is going.

Here's an update for today after playing 2 sessions for about 3:45hours:
First one was between 1:30-4:00pm with a 0,55$ MTT and between 1 and 3 tables of hypers. Some opponents really went crazy there with there deep-stack-shoving-ranges ♦, unfortunately i finished 480/1790 about 100places before money.
So after that i played about another hour just hypers on 3 tables for the first time to get more games in and another 1:00hour session this evening.
Was playing really concentrated, didn't spew during early stages and made good post-flop-plays when required. I played against some opponents regularly and took more detailed notes on them (especially bubble-play).

On top of that the variance was on my side today and i made the money in 18 out of 32 SnGs with 6 first places! So profit of today is 29$ plus another 10$ for clearing a 250VPP reload-bonus.

Now for the mistakes i made today:
- too passive in early blind-levels
- c-betting to small on wet boards (especially in multi-pot)
- too much min-raising as chip leader on spots with critical stack-distributions behind

I might start putting in some days with longer sessions to be able to take a day off for other stuff (yes, also studying) and still be on pace with the volume. I did feel fresh today even tho i was playing for 2:45hours with short break inbetween. Also i'm definately gonna keep 3-tabling for the future sessions.
I planned 2 more micro-stake MTTs for this week and maybe freerolls when i feel like it. Do you guys have any recommodations for soft satellites with up to 3$ buy-in?

Cheers, Dominik

Finished with day 7 now:

Current bankroll is at 179,55$. Todays profit is at 19,09$, with a significant number of first places (9 out of the 34SnGs i played today) and total profit for june alone is 83,72$ starting from 95,83$. Now i intend to play 2 more MTTs for this week and hope to have a deeper run, besides that 3tables of 1,5$ 9-man hypers. Also i'm already at 88VPPs after 5 days, so if i keep pace with hypers i could reach SilverStar- status.

I had some trouble respecting big 3-bets in BvB against tighter players and calling too lose against nits in deeper heads-up. For the post-flop-play, i did put out some unnecessary c-bets like 2-barreling with pocket pairs on boards with overcards again, which wouldn't get value from worse and stuff like that....
On some spots i was also calling to light in short-handed-play with medium stack and over-extending my sb-pushes with aggressive image ♠_cry:

Besides that i was learning some more about ICM- basics and trying to think about it at every spot at the tables. I watched schnitzelfischs' video about focus drills and also started working on my realistic list, if you haven't checked this video from him, its amazing: Focus Drills.

I feel that at the 1,5$ SSTs the right ranges during the push/fold- phase are the only key factor, so i'm gonna focus on that and start 4tabling. When i get more experience with that all the other smaller spots are going to get improved to be ready for 3,5$ STTs and more experience in MTTs.

Are are my current results at the SnG- Merkur- Rankings in the high orbit:
SnG Rankings Merkur Rank 24

Welcome to the blogs,

Best of luck, will be following you for the journey

Keep us updated,
Fran

Had another good day today and am already done with all my tasks!

I played 2 sessions today for 2:30hours+ in total and feel pretty good about how i played today (especially the first session).

Right now i'm also gradually changing my sleeping-schedule, cause i wanna go back to bi-phasic sleep, which i was doing last year for some time since i started working at 4:00am. In my opinion its amazing to get up early and have some calm time to work on all the important projects. At the moment i'm always getting up at 6:30, but i plan to go for 5:30 and start my day with my morning-routine.

After my sessions today i also installed Hold'em Manager 2 and gonna see how it works for the next 30days during the trial, after that i'm gonna check out PokerTracker 4 and make my decision which of the softwares i prefer and purchase a full-version.
Besides that i was cooking healthy today for lunch since almost 2weeks now, which is another mid-term-goal of mine, since i know how big of a difference the right nutrition is for a good performance overall.

But the best news of the day is undoubtfully that i reached the 200$ mark (went up 105$ over 6 days on 1,5$ 9-man hypers, i really should check that ROI out!). I took a shot at a 3,5$ 45-man turbo today and finished #4. I can't wait to start putting in some 3,5$ SnGs soon and see how i can run there.

Week 2 is done now, so time for some reviewing and goal-setting for next week:

First off, i slacked with my SnG-volume over the last 3days... It took my a good 4hours to get HM2 running cause of some problems with my hand history tracking and my pokerstars-client. Yesterday i finally got everything fixed and played my first session with working HUD on 2/3 tables.
So besides that i started playing table tennis again and also was cycling every day for the last 14days now (about 20minutes) for 115km's.

During the last 3days i tried my luck with 1-tabling some MTTs (1,10$ Skill League and 0,82$ 750$ GTD). Yesterday i played the 0,82$ MTT for 3hours and was running pretty good overall (except getting busted by aces against my 10BB-shove :P. Made it on the final 2tables and finished on place 17 of 2250players, which made me feel really confident since i only had like 2spots where i'm not sure if i did make the right decision. I won't post a graph of yesterday for now, since it only consists of 15tournies, which is too little to see any tendencies.
Since 28th of may i played 280hypers now, which is easily on pace for my earlier set goal of 350SnGs :). Current Bankroll is at 194,12$ right now. Next goal is going to reach 225$ and start putting in some 3,5$ 9-man hypers and start 4tabling 1,5/3,5$ mixed. More shots at some MTSnGs are also planned for next week!

Now for the challenge i set myself for this week: I want to play 600 9-man hypers during this week and at least 4MTTs (ChromeStar Freerolls and some other 0,5$-1,5$ MTTs). Challenge also includes a review in HM2 every day and posting daily results here on the blog.

IMPORTANT: I'm also looking for a micro-stakes sweat-partner (don't need to be specialized in STTs, i would also like to improve my knowledge with deeper-stacked play and post-flop obviously), so if anybody is interrested just send me a private-msg or post here!

Good luck at the tables everybody and get crushing ♠_cool:
Greets Dominik

Daily Update:
Woke up at 6:00 this morning and started my day with high motivation for this week. I started playing at 9:30 for a total amount of 7:20hours today! Between 6:00 and 9:00pm i had my first sleeping-phase and felt pretty good over the whole day (except it was hot weather today).

Mistakes i made today:
- making ICM mistakes with medium stack on the bubble with opening too aggressive
- calling 3-bet too wide during early stage
- spewing against donkbets on the flop

I have already played 97hypers and a 1,10$ MTT.
The first 10SnGs in the morning did put me down right at the start of the day, but i felt like i didn't play too horrible. Well i also missed out on going cycling right in the morning, but i did go in the evening after all (tomorrow i'm going earlier again). Then i was playing the MTT at 1:00pm and only 1table of hypers besides that.
I then took a longer break and enjoyed the sun outside.
After that i played another session around 4:30 and my last one this evening, during which i stayed more passive during the early stages and tried to just play solid ABC-poker. I'm about to go to bed now and be ready to get up at 5:30 tomorrow to get things running.

So here's the first graph of all the hypers from today:

Winnings Graph- Monday 06-10

Very interesting blog so far! I'm grinding the $1.5 hypers myself ATM, so we may have met haha.

Good luck and will definitely follow!

Update:

Today i played horrible, think i didn't ever play that bad :(!
Spend 6hours at the tables with 3tables and played the ChromeStar-Freeroll this evening. Played 77 hypers, which at least shows that i reach the volume set, but i'm down 13,94$ today.
For this week i'm also down about 5BIs after the 175 hypers i already played (25SnGs ahead of pace)! For the good news, i have 43% on the way to SilverStar-status (216/500VPPs) and am pretty sure that i'm gonna make it at the end of the month.

Weekly Stats so far:

- 175 1,5$ hypers played
- ROI: -2,13%
- money from MTTs: -1,10$
- total money: -6,62$
- VPPs: 106 with 19,03$ rakeback

Nice that you found the blog and are liking it TimoDee
whats your pokerstars-name, if i might ask you? how much are you playing the hypers there or what other formats are you playing?

Good luck at the tables!

Winnings Graph- Tuesday 06-10

My name on ther is TimoDeee (one extra "e" than my username on here) At the moment I'm only playing $1.5 Turbo SnG and nothing else. Volume isn't the greatest, but I'm slowly increasing it. Played 51 over the last 2 days.

What's your user name, I will see if I've got anything on you

As you can see i didn't update the blog over the last 2 days now, since i wasn't able cause of personal things going on. i wasn't playing that many SnGs on wednesday and none at all yesterday.
So now i finally find some time for a quick update. I won't be playing any poker until tuesday next week, so the challenge of 600SnGs this week is cancelled for now. But i will definately be playing regularly for the rest of june (maybe some longer days of playing when the weather is not that good :)), so SilverStar statur should be reachable at the end of the month.
Hopefully i can try to put in some 3,5$ 9-man hypers in about a week or so. i also checked my PartyPoker account few days ago, but it looked pretty dead on there.
i'll post graph and a few more stats for the last 2 weeks later on the blog, new goals are going to get set up on sunday, so that's it for now.

GL at the tables

Winnings Graph- Wednesday 11-06

Stats Update:

It has been 2weeks since i restarted playing online-poker more actively and here are some results so far.

After 14 days and 48hours of playing i'm up 77,12$ (current bankroll is at 209,10$) with about 530tournies!

SharkScope Winning-Chart 2014

Sharkscope Winning-Chart last 2 weeks

I didn't have a horrible downswing so far and was strong mentally the whole time. I also started a new book yesterday to further develop mentally (maybe more stuff about that in future posts ;)) or if you guys have any other suggestions about more books about that topic (doesn't have to be poker-specific) let me know.

During the sessions i played i had 1-3tables open and used my second monitor for browser/stats and stuff. Also i tried to prepare my memory before playing with some brain-exercises and always was sure i'm not in a rush.
As i already said: first priority right now is to get all the basics down like pushing ranges for short-stack with different blind-levels, numbers of opponents and ICM-bubble-scenarios.

Over all the tournies over the last 2weeks my ROI is at 7,75%, which is 0,116$ per game with average buy-in of ~1,5$. On top of that i cleared the first 10$'s of my reload bonus (only 29VPPs left for the next 10$) and earned 321VPPs all in all since may 28th, which equals 12,40$ with the FPPs considered.

Following now here is a chart from pokerrankings which takes all SnGs/MTTs with more than 45players into account:

Pokerrankings 2014

Last Chart is the Finishing-Distribution for the 9-man games from sharkscope:

Finishing-Distribution 9-man

That's it for now, i will be back at the tables on tuesday again.

Have a nice weekend everybody ♠_cool:

PS: I tried to implement the images from the graph's in the post several times, but it seemingly doesn't work for me. so if anybody knows why it might not be working please give me your suggestions (BBcode usually works for me perfectly for images)???

Hey guys, i only wanna make a quick post today.

There's not much planned for today except going for a longer walk/hike in the afternoon, reading a bit and watching some poker-videos (not going into deep analysis and stuff tho).

Here's a video i found recently...Geilich's way of getting rid of 14BBs pre-flop at the final table ♦

Have a good day

Time for a new blog update:

I played 2 1,10$ MTTs today, but didn't cash in neither of them.
With playing some more 9-man hypers beside i still ended up slightly in postitive with 2,85$.
I feel like i played alright in the tournaments: Took some good spots during early stage and played strong post-flop-poker.
Played 3sessions today for a total of 4:30hours running 2/3 tables to get back into it. I feel extremely comfortable with this amount of tables now and am going to try to play 4 tables tomorrow if i feel good ;). Using HM2 really helped me with the HUD and getting tendencies on players really quick, but i'm still making markings and notes all the time (some players are kind of creative sometimes )

I'm gonna post my winnings-review with graph at the end of the week again (saturday or sunday), but daily sample size is just too small to see any tendencies.

For tomorrow i'm just gonna grind 9-man hypers and see how many i can play of them. Also i will try out some rituals (recommendation from schnitzelfisch) for my breaks, i did meditate before and going to give it a try tomorrow.

That's it for today. Enjoy your rest of the evening, have a good day tomorrow and good luck for the PS football-shootouts

Week 3, Wednesday:

Hey guys, i played 52hypers today over 2 sessions. I did not quite achieve the amount of time i wanted to play today, since i canceled my second session.

My challenge for this week is to work on 3 poker-video per day (don't jump between topics too much). My bankroll is at 214,36$ now, including another 10$ from the reload bonus. Now i have 199VPPs left until i hit my first stellar reward. Today i tried to grind on 4 tables and it went pretty good, except that the variance killed my results.

So i ended up with 5BIs down for 7,59$, just too many coolers on the bubble...
I will play 2MTTs tomorrow and try to put in 45hypers, SilverStar status is easily in reach when i keep my pace. For the next sessions i can still improve a lot in ICM-spots (making laydowns when i have to ). Just hope the downswing doesn't continue tomorrow!

Goals for the remaining week:

- play 200hypers
- take extended shots at 3,5$ 9-man hypers
- increase ROI in 1,5$ 9-man hypers
- work detailed on 10 poker-videos
- update blog at least 2 more times this week
- 20minutes of cycling every day