Learning to beat the micros - A poor student's poker diary

Wadap!

Quick update because the first full week of the bankroll challenge is ending and I'm here to post the results. The games have been going pretty well results-wise. I re-configured my HUD today and the first few sessions might be pretty awkward until I get used to it. On top of that I'm trying to focus super hard on certain areas of my game every session to improve them. I've also made the decision to take a shot to NL5 when/if I reach $100. Dropping down to NL2 at $80.

Might as well set some goals for the next week while I'm at it:

1. Study math 3-4 hours a day
2. Remember the MRI on friday
3. Play 5-10k hands.

Week 2
Starting bankroll: $50
Current bankroll: $76,66
Hands: 9922
Profit this week: +$16,45

Well done, keep up the hard work and you will do awesome!

Originally posted by vonki
Well done, keep up the hard work and you will do awesome!

Thank you! I'll try.

I'm actually really tired after today. Didn't get much sleep last night but that was the plan. Just trying to fix my sleeping schedule after the weekend. Still, I managed to study 3+ hours and played 3 sessions of poker. 4 tables felt too boring after the first session so I decided to try 6-tabling. Normal tables are pretty slow paced, so it didn't feel like a problem trying to focus specific situations despite adding 2 more tables.

For the first time in these 2 weeks I noticed some tilting in myself. That happened in the last session. There's a few reasons why it happened:

1. The first and the biggest reason is that I was tired. I know I shouldn't play when feeling tired and that was a mistake.
2. To be exact, this is not a reason. This is the trigger or whatever you want to call it. In the first 100 hands of the session I was just being ran over. Whenever I 3-betted a guy with 90% fold to 3-bet, he 4-betted. All of my c-bets were called when I didn't hit etc. etc. There's no reason to be mad about this stuff, but when you're tired, even the tiniest things can trigger you to tilt. I noticed this, and after I made the first mistake (which cost me like 9bb only) I took a break. After the break I was fine again.

As it seems I like to make lists so I'll do another one. What did I learn today?

1. Don't play when tired.
2. Even though it may not feel like it, I still have some small tilt issues.
3. Don't play when tired.
4. Don't. Play. When. Tired.

Even though I've got some issues with poker, things are going extremely good in NL2. I feel like I'm playing the most efficient and balanced game I've ever had. I wouldn't call beating NL2 as an achievement but it feels good to play well. After today I've played around 4k hands so 1k to go before the graph. This graph/5k hands feels stupid because it makes me wanna play more hands so I can show you guys that I'm winning. And winning after 5k hands doesn't necesserily even mean anything. It's retarded and I'm not sure if it's healthy lol.

Cya!

Played 3 sessions today, mainly 4-tabling. Felt like I missed a couple of spots while 6-tabling so I decided to take a step back for today. Wasn't planning on playing much today as we were supposed to spend a good portion of the day with our friends but my car decided otherwise. It's been like -25 degrees in here for the last week so the car decided not to start. I only studied like 1,5 hours today but it's okay. Gonna step up tomorrow.

About the graph, the games have been going really good. The biggest leak we discussed with vonki was my non-showdown winnings. Atm my non-sd line is on the positive side. Not going to expect it to stay there because it's the low micros, but it's certainly going a lot better now. And I'm running over EV over these 5k hands which feels nice. Still a lot under EV in the last 10k hands.

My bankroll is at $87 at the moment. So I'm expecting to be able to take a shot in the NL5 in the next 2 weeks. Anything can happen though, and I'm not putting any pressure on myself. It happens when it happens.

Well, here's the graph and good night!

Had the MRI today, waiting until Monday to get the results. The next 6 months of my life depend on what the doctor thinks should be done. Haven't been studying today or yesterday but I'll catch up tomorrow.

I've played around 6k hands this week and things havent gone so smoothly. Been running pretty bad (not EV-wise though). I've been table selecting well and when you have fishes who fold to c-bet on every street less than 10%, it's easy to make money - if you connect with the board some day This has resulted in some minor tilting. That kind of tilt when you know you've ahead on the turn but not on the river but you call anyways 'cause fuck it. Every time I've done this I've been done with the session. It's unfortunate and it should be fixed.

I'm probably done for the day, gonna update the weekly results here on sunday night.

Edit: On second thought, maybe it's better to be done for the week. With running bad & mind set issues, I think it's better to take a few days off. So, I guess I can post the weekly results now.

Week 3
Starting bankroll: $50
Current bankroll: $89,89
Hands: 6558
Profit: +$13,13

First things first. My doctor called and said he thinks that the surgery is not necessary. :f_drink::f_cool::f_drink::f_cool:

Moving on to less important stuff; poker. I'm close to breakeven in the last 5k hands but that's awesome. I've been playing better and been more calm in the tables today. The 2-day break certainly paid off. I just have to keep working on the mental side of things and stop the sessions when I'm feeling tilted. I've been doing that pretty well though.

Reached 10k hands so there we go:

I'll just leave you with my celebration song. "I'm dangerous, like a fire in a nursing home".

Good news first. I reached $100 today, and I got the chance to take a shot to NL5. The first session was breakeven. Bad news is that the second session only lasted 100 hands and I was down a little over 2 bi. AK vs AA CO vs BTN and in the second big hand I valuetowned myself AQs vs AK on a A22xss board.

The plan was to take a 4bi shot to NL5 but I'm not sure now. Might grind more NL2 before I try again. Not sure yet, if I'm feeling good about it I might try to complete the shot.

Been playing NL2 after the last post. I realized that losing over 10% of my BR hurts way too much so the next NL5 shot can wait. Probably doing it around $125-$150. No rush

I've been discussing about a coaching deal today but it unfortunately fell apart. Maybe later I think I'll be able to beat NL5 without any help but in NL10 I definitely need to get some help. But that's waaay down the road so no need to worry about it now.

I've had a really good day today and I finally got some papers from the doctor so I can get my financial side in order.

And because I'm feeling so good, here's my NL2 normal table -graph.

Believe it or not, I'm still running a bit under EV when adding the Zoom-hands in the mix.

I've played 2 really successful sessions today. I've already filled the hole I digged in that NL5-shot. Today I wanna show you some epic hands from the wonderful NL2-land. I've selected 3 hands, all of them are beautiful in their own way. 2 of them are max-value lines from me and the third one is a bonus hand in which I was not involved. Had to mark it because it's just too random.

1st one:

This is from the session I just played. Villain is a really tight reg (12/8/0). I just lost a ~80bb pot with trips against 44 on a TT4xx board. The reg opens from MP and I decide to act tilted from the last pot. Probably not the most +EV move but in the moment it felt like a good (and hilarious) plan. Considering he's a pretty tight guy, I don't hate this play. #faketiltshove

2nd one:

This is from yesterday. Villain is 83/0 and the opener is also shortstacked so I'm squeezing for value here. Villain has folded 0/3 times to c-bet so that might be why I didn't c-bet here. Looking at this hand afterwards I think not c-betting is a mistake here. In the river we're going full ham, apparently going for max value. And he decides to call. I wasn't surprised by the call, but I was pretty surprised by his hand

3rd one:

I said I'm not involved in the hand but apparently I was. I've decided to isolate a huge fish with K8o. Not my brightest moment imo. But what's really interesting about this hand is what happens after I'm done with it. Like... WTF? Can somebody pls explain to me what the actual fuck is going on over here? #justnl2things

Anyways, have a good one. Hope you enjoyed the little glimpse of the NL2-world. It's wild guys, be careful out there. Ciao!

Monthly review

The first month of my glorious comeback is coming to an end. I've decided to take tomorrow off from poker. Gonna spend time with my gf and study. I actually need to start studying a lot more that I have been in the last two weeks. My plan is quit the school that I'm in (haven't actually been there in about 4 months now but I'm haven't quit yet), and to apply to the university to study math. That's what the studying is about

Although I didn't play the whole month as I started playing on 9th or 10th of January, I think this first month has been really succesful. I've taken my first-ever-coaching and I've been playing well as well as enjoyed playing. It's not a surprise that my tilt issues have been coming back but I think I've been handling it really well. If I have the motivation to play AND study the game in the future, I'm going to order The Mental Game of Poker. This is what we discussed with vonki and I remember to have read it a while back but I remembered wrong. The other day I went looking for it in the library but they told me they don't have it. They also searched all of the nearest libraries but they didn't find it.

Before going in to the monthly statistics, I'll set some goals for the next month.

1. Study

In the next month, I HAVE to have been through half of the courses necessary. There's 10 courses I have to go study and I'm at 2/10 atm. At the end of February, I have to be at least at 5/10.

2. Do the majority of chores at home

Although I play poker and study, I'm still home 98% of the time. My gf is in school so she's not. That should mean that I have more time to do shit here. It shouldn't be her job to do everything around here considering I'm always here.

3. Poker

No result goals. No study goals. No volume goals. I just have to keep myself motivated. Keep the game fun and play well when you play. Don't play tired. Don't play while angry. Don't play just because you have nothing else to do (because you do). Play when you feel like playing and when you do, do it well.

So, first thing about the statistics is the weekly results:

Week 4
Starting bankroll: $50
Current bankroll: $105,87
Hands: 6611
Profit: +$15,98

Moving on to monthly results:

January
Hands: 28,689
bb/100: 10.16
Profit: $55,87
Bankroll: $105,87

Hi!

Watched my first live coaching today. Inspired by it and due to all the changes I've made in my game I played one Zoom-session. Ran pretty hot and ended up winning 5,5bi. Funny how you make some changes to your game and everything seems totally different. The first ~13k hands I played before the coaching with vonki I was playing 17/12/2 in Zoom. The session I just finished I was playing 28/25/10. So pretty much the same stats I've had in the normal tables.

I also tried playing on Full Tilt today. Played around 15 hands of Rush before I had to quit. Not my thing lol. The reasoning behind it was that there's a lot less people playing so you could maybe get a decent sample on people in Rush. But I seriously can't play with that software ♦

Gotta get some sleep now, but let me show you how not to play 200bb+ deep. What are you doing man?

Nice hand, sir!
Also, Live coachings bring Karma - go on!

CU,SvenBe

Originally posted by SvenBe
Nice hand, sir!
Also, Live coachings bring Karma - go on!

CU,SvenBe

Haha, thank you!

Played 2 Zoom sessions today. I know normal tables are probably a lot more +EV but I'm feeling good playing Zoom so I'll re-evaluate the situation later. And I'm running pretty good so that doesn't hurt my willingness to play Zoom.

I think I'm on the right path with my preflop ranges (RFI, 3b/4b) but I need to check my calling/3b-ranges IP. That was actually the topic of the coaching yesterday and it reminded me that I was thinking about this earlier. The problem is that Equilab doesn't run on Macs so I gotta try to see if my old PC wakes up. If that's the case, good. If not, I gotta do it some other way.

The last thing is that the time for my NL5-shot is once again coming. I'm already at $125 but I'll probably wait until I get my 1000 SC (903/1000) for the $10 rakeback. Probably won't cash it in immediately but it's good to have it. If my bankroll is over $125 without the rakeback when I reach the StarsCoins, it's go-time!

Gotta shut the computer so I can focus on studying. Ciao!

Things have been going smoothly in NL2 and I reached 1000SC earlier today. So it was time to take a shot to NL5. As I've been playing Zoom for the last 2 days, I played last session in NL5 Zoom.

The session itself felt kind of weird. Seemed like I was always forced to awkward spots. I'm pretty sure I played my A-game at least 97% of the time but the session still left me wondering. Might be variance, might be that I just have to get used to NL5 again. But if things in NL5 Zoom seem to be going in the wrong direction, I'll just make the transition to normal tables. Not a huge problem for me.

Anyways, gonna go play some Hearthstone & watch TV. Later!

Edit: Ended up playing 2 sessions more. What a rough night. The positive thing (and at the same time the negative, depends how you look at it) is that after 4 sessions of NL5-Zoom I'm breakeven. Probably gonna try some normal tables tomorrow. Gotta get some sleep, I'm exhausted. Ciao!

Haven't been studying yet today because I have been trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with my game in NL5 Zoom. Of course I have really small samplesizes from NL2 and NL5 Zoom for the past few days, but the graphs are so different. And I don't mean just results, the biggest thing is non-sd -winnings.

In NL2 Zoom they were pretty much breakeven.

But in NL5 it's looking terrible.

I've been looking at the stats and the hands and I seriously think I'm not doing anything differently. That might be the problem though. I think I'm being reasonably aggressive and 3-betting enough. I just can't understand where am I leaking this much money. It might be just variance but it looks too ugly to be just a coincidence.

Well, time to switch to normal tables. That doesn't fix the problem but they are softer and I can tableselect. But for my own mental health I have to find out (not necessarily today or tomorrow) what's the problem. But now it's time to focus on studying.

Bye!

Originally posted by inceptioner
Well, time to switch to normal tables.

Nope. Couldn't give up. Played one more session and tried to add some aggression and it seemed to be working out at least a little bit. Obviously can't say for sure after one session. I've played almost 4 hours today and watched 2 red-line videos and I'm exhausted. Only studied math for an hour. That's not good. Can't prioritize when I'm obsessed with something. That's why it's time to put my gorgeous Macbook to sleep and relax for the rest of the day. That means self-made burgers and Netflix.

Finally switched to normal tables and started winning. I guess it's just an ego-issue. Can't handle the fact that I can't beat NL5 Zoom. That's pretty dumb. I sent an email to PS-support and they restricted me from playing Zoom for the next month. I guess I should've asked for a longer period because I'm too stubborn about it.

Woke up this morning and saw that my account has been upgraded to gold. Don't know how, don't know why, but PLEASE do not take this away from me. I've watched pretty much every w34z3l's video there is on silver level and under. Now I get the chance to see a HUGE amount of videos I have never seen. And not just from w34z3l, but I'm still watching all of his first.

This week has been super successful results-wise. And if shit doesn't hit the fan, I've been successfully moved up to NL5. That's great. Before posting the weekly results (planning on taking the weekend off again) I'd like to go over the goals for this month and see how I've been doing for the first week.

Studying

This is what I've been neglecting. Again. Fortunately I've been doing some studying so I'm at 3/10 courses atm. So two to go for the remaining month. Definitely need to step up here.

Chores

I've been doing okayish on this one. Could do more but I've been doing enough to not to be considered lazy. 8/10.

Poker

Well, I've been playing a lot. More than I was planning. That's why I'm taking the weekend off again. Playing much isn't a problem per se, but the fact that it's effecting my studying is a bit worrying. I've not played when tired or tilted. I've enjoyed playing and I've been studying the game quite a lot. The only negative thing was my obsession with Zoom. If you can't beat it, don't play it

Now I'm gonna go relax and try not to think about poker. I'm probably gonna watch some w34z3l's videos on the weekend but that's pretty much it. I just need to rest my mind from time to time. I've not been able to go to the gym/go running or do anything because of my shoulder. And I'm pretty much 24/7 just playing poker and doing math. That's pretty consuming for my brain. But yeah, here's the results for the week.

Week 5
Starting bankroll: $50
Current bankroll: $169,30
Hands: 10844
Profit: +$63,43 (including $10 RB)

Hi!

The week has been going pretty brutally. Results-wise I'm close to breakeven with the help of a $10 cash rebate. The brutal part is that I can't win a single showdown. Somehow both regs and recs keep getting the nuts versus my 2nd nuts and flopping sets on 3b/4b-pots against my overpairs. I mean, that's normal and that's also not a problem. This happens. But the reason why it's brutal is that my mental game is not in a good place atm.

I've watched multiple mindset-videos and I'm doing a mindset-review after the sessions. You know, on a scale of 0-10, how good was my mental game this session etc. Why do I tilt & what should I do about it. It certainly helps. It relieves the tilt a lot faster than before.

I think I've played like 95% A-game and 5% of my C-game. I'm actually pretty sure that I'm playing better than last week. But my mental game has been like 4/10. I don't like monkey-tilt but I have been angry at my villains a few times. Angry enough to defend against 3bets pretty wide etc. One time I flatted a 3-bet on the button and called 3-streets with KTs on a Kxxxx board. Like... wtf. I instantly quit the client and took the rest of the day off.

That's pretty much it. Just wanted to share the situation so this blog is not all about brag-graphs, rainbows and flowers. See ya!

Hi!

I've been studying way too little this week so I'm just gonna make a rough decision and end the poker-week now. Played 2 sessions today already and I ran a little bit better but not good by any means. My mental game has been really good today.

I've already pretty much summarised my week on the earlier post so I'm just gonna post this week's results. The only way I'm playing more poker this week is if I manage to finish the course I'm studying right now. Considering I just started it it's highly unlikely but just wanted to put it out there.

Btw, the graph is not accurate for some reason but the results are.

Week 6
Starting bankroll: $50
Current bankroll: $188
Hands: 4857
Profit: +$18,70 (including $10 RB)

Haven't played much but when I have, it's been going pretty badly. Not really worried about results, my main concern is that my level of playing has been awful.

On the plus side, I've been studying like hell. That's more important than poker. Anyways, I'm leaving town tomorrow to go visit my parents. Not really sure how much poker/studying I'm gonna do there but hopefully not much.