Howdy jmackenzie,
How is the bankroll challenge going these days or still grinding the live casinos?
Do you think it is wise to concentrate on HU games when the poker rooms are not really pushing it?
CU,SvenBe
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Week 11/12/13 review
My plan of moving to Nova Gorica to play live has taken a slight detour recently, as I found out the rake was not at the level I was told. I had initially thought the rake for 1/2 and 1/3 was 5% capped at 10 euros which for me is the absolute maximum that I would be willing to play under. This turned out to be inaccurate as the games will be capped at atleast 15 euros possibly more.
So with this in mind I will be going to Slovenia with the intention of playing online once again. Once settled (hopefully by mid May,) I will be looking at other routes.
Hi jmackenzie,
quite an awesome blog you have here, love the redemption stories! How much are you planning to pay for rent in Slovenia? And why did you decide on Slovenia?
Best of luck with everything, hope it all works out for u!
Originally posted by stripofbacon
Hi jmackenzie,quite an awesome blog you have here, love the redemption stories! How much are you planning to pay for rent in Slovenia? And why did you decide on Slovenia?
Best of luck with everything, hope it all works out for u!
Hey! I'm still looking for a place to call home just now per person you can get a place as cheap as 120 per month but as i'm looking for a place with just me and my gf it'll be somewhere between 400-600 euros a month in the center of the capital. Not bad I think.
My bankroll has been pretty much a non mover since last post but will go down significantly once i find a place in order to pay some months rent in advance.
I've been playing some headsup zoom on my laptop to keep myself refreshed but with the super high rake and the fact of small to no meta game i don't think i can really win all that much there but it serves as a good refresher.
My goal for now is to find a place to stay longer term and in spare time keeping myself up to par with some zoom hands
Finally moved into my new place. Pictures to follow shortly.
Took well over a month to find the right place but overall definitely worth the wait. It is a nice big open space which is something I really like.
In a few days i should have my p.c. up and running and can get back to the proper grind. Until then I plan on playing small stakes tournaments on my laptop in the evening, as pokerstars has removed itself from the market, meaning I cant play zoom on there anymore. Not that i'm really all that fussed about it, (I wasn't even making any money there anyway 
)
I hope by next week to be really pushing hard again to get my bankroll up to 50k asap, as I finally have stable foundations upon which to put in the hours.
Current BR: $4000 (But I do have some other investments of which any money created will be added to this bankroll.)
Weeks goals:
Get p.c. set up for the grind.
Play small stakes tournaments until p.c. is setup
Quick 5 second vid of apartment
Looks like I will have my p.c. set up on Monday / Tuesday.
till then I'll play a small set of small stakes tournaments each day. I'll post the sharkscope results once I got my setup back.
Run good!
Anyway, finally got my setup back. *Yay!*
The question is, what now?
My plan is to have today off and for Wednesday-Sunday play eight hours a day in two four hour slots.
These will be rigidly set to help get in some form of routine. Something I have been so desperately lacking.
For this Wednesday-Sunday I will stick to Headsup Bumhunting only. I will defend tables that need to be protected but won't be looking at taking tables just yet. I will look at volume produced and how the action is overall, then make decisions based off this information.
Weeks goals:
Play 8 hours a day Wednesday-Sunday of headsup
2-6pm and 8-midnight
Play 1 table max defending vs regs. (Give table up for now if I get a rec elsewhere) and 2 tables max vs recs.
If i lose ~$1k. Talk to friends to formulate a plan of action, as by then I would be close to under rolled for 100nl.
Watch this space ♠_cool:
the fridge looks huge, but the bed ....well it is a studio,isnt it?
@SvenBe what's wrong with my princess bed 
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So my first week back on the grind went as so..
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I played some more hands off the tracking software but they were near breakeven.
A wins a win but nothing to be too pleased about. I don't think I ran too badly overall and I think I made a number of errors, although looking through hands I cant see anything glaringly obvious. Still, the most important thing was getting into a grinding mindset and this was accomplished so I am happy.
Bankroll soley for poker is at approx. $4600. So my main priority is getting that up asap, without having a risk of ruin at all if possible.
I'm going to play anyone at 50nl for tables and recs at 100nl, whilst spending time focusing on the weakest areas of my game. I'm not completely sure what these are though, so I will be collaborating with Eatyourpeas here on pokerstrategy to look for flat spots.
Weeks Goals:
Create 1 video each day of 30 mins
Play 1k hands each day
Mark any questionable hands to review
Review previous days videos and hands.
Again if I lose 1k during the week I will talk to friends as to what to do. Given how tiny the bankroll would be.
Welcome back to the challenge!
Nice mountain... good ascent, but also the descent 
GL with eatyourpeas!
Looks almost the same as last *facepalm* But hey! Ev is still up so that counts for something.
Managed to infect my eye somehow (I won't bore you with a picture because its gross.. but not super gross.)
That made it hard to get volume in as my vision is kinda blurry and I had to see doctors and whatnot. Anyway, it should hopefully be getting better now that I have eye drops and things.
I managed to make 1 video this week but it was very irregular game almost every hand created a unique spot. So I should probably create another few videos to look over and get other people involved. I think i'll make a public video.
In other news Microsoft beat me.
They switched me to windows 10. And now i've lost all my HEM notes on players 
Weeks goals:
Record a video for public consumption. (I guess I'll play a reg.)
Play 5k hands
Create a profile of my mental game
Current BR $4.8k
Originally posted by jmackenzie
Weeks goals:
Record a video for public consumption. (I guess I'll play a reg.)
So, we will see it here? Can't wait!
Including untracked sites where I had another $100 win it was a pretty good week. A lot of it was spent off the table hitting the weaker parts of my game.
I still have trouble with my eye. The infection hasn't gone down even with medication so looks like I'll have to go back and try n get it sorted. Having blurry vision is no fun whilst trying to concentrate.
Originally posted by SvenBe
Originally posted by jmackenzie
Weeks goals:
Record a video for public consumption. (I guess I'll play a reg.)So, we will see it here? Can't wait!
Yes. So I made a youtube video of some play.
Sorry about the quality I hope it's still watchable...
I'm not advertising the site I played on. It's got the worst customer support and they are making it really hard to get the money off. But what it does have is lots of regs so it made it easy to find a game.
If any of you watch it please ask me any questions or tell me if you think you spotted leak or whatever. All feedback is appreciated whilst I get back into grinding again.
This next week I think I will try to up the volume and I need to look to order a hard drive to save all these damn videos on. It's wasting my ssd.
weeks goals:
play 6k hands
continue to work on mental side of things and introduce a warm up routine for sessions
buy a hard drive
find some1 to review their headsup play. And to talk over the play.
Edit current BR: $5100
I think i will play regs at 100nl until I either reach $10k for 200nl or $4k and go back to 50nl again
This week things did not go smoothly.
to start of my eye problem got increasingly worse so i had to be reffered to a specialist, they said not to worry and that with some basic treatment it will sort itself out. This is reassuring but its very annoying to play poker with 1 eye blurry.
Other than that, about 2 days into the grind, my computer got some really aggressive virus, (which I later discovered most likely got into my system through java), completely rendered my pc in-operable, so i had to boot in safe mode transfer wanted data to usb stick and re boot the whole pc. This combined with reformatting everything poker sites etc. is the main reason volume was only half for the week but I think now it's all sorted. 
all other goals i didn't even attempt as i felt getting some kind of volume is the most important thing.
On the poker front i played a lot of 100nl against regs and i think i played ok but i'm pretty sure i was a losing player before rake in some match ups which isn't what we want 
Mainly I think this is still due to a form of rustiness so i will stick at it and if not i have a clear area to work on.
This week i will have another crack at most of last weeks goals although i feel it's more of a priority to find another headsup player asap.
Weeks goals:
find some1 to review their headsup play. And to talk over the play.
play 6k hands
continue to work on mental side of things and introduce a warm up routine for sessions
buy a hard drive
Bankroll $5600
Had an interesting week, spent a lot of time looking for players to share a sweat with, and came up short, till the last day where I had lots of friend requests. I managed to do 1 session, but this was of me playing, so I will look next time to get someone to show off their skills instead of me.
I also managed to buy an external hard drive so i think I will be making more videos. I'll do another 1 to put up onto youtube.
Volume including untracked sites, I managed to hit 6k hands (booked a $200 win on untracked sites) so that's good. I think going back to hours spent at the table is a better approach for me as some sites I only hit 100 hands an hour and others up to 250 per hour.
I felt pretty decent this week against the regs. I only really had trouble with 1 guy but after the sweat session I had a counter strategy solidified.
On the negative side my eye is still a problem although apparently its showing signs of abating. I really can't wait to have clear vision again it will make a lot of things waay easier.
weeks goals:
have 3 sessions with other players
play 30 hours
5 hours mental game work
5 hours analzing players / getting back into range constructing
record a video for the blog
Current Br: $5100
Although the graph looks quite bad I had a good week at the tables. I felt like I was playing with confidence and focus for much of my sessions something that had previously been lacking since my return.
I had a number of computer issues this week which ended in having to delete all history on my computer because of a malicious virus. I think it was likely to have entered my computer through the installiation and use of java for a game i was playing a few months ago. This took a lot of time to deal with but i still managed to put a decent amount of time at the tables so I am quite happy 
I did a lot of studying this week, mostly checking my databases of hands and looking for things that probably needed adjusting to increase winrate. I now have a large amount of things to learn for the front end of my game, so I am keeping number of tables to just 1 for regs and 2 max for recreationals.
Not all of my goals for the week were accomplished though sadly. I didn't manage to get any sessions with other players and I didn't put any extra focus on mental game aspects. I'm actually finding it quite hard to get people that are either interested or reliable but I think i will open up gradually to more people until i get a solid player base to talk to. Overall though I am happy with the amount of study and i think the outlook is good.
I made another video
This one has better quality and double the stakes so I hope i can get some feedback for this one.
For this next week I plan on making another video, this time I might try and catch a fish and go through how I look to maximally exploit their unbalanced tendencies.
week goals:
play 30 hours
5 hours mental game work
record another video
Look for a student / any hu player
Current Br: $5100
Good week for poker bad week for my bankroll.
My eye has been getting progressively worse since sometime in May, with some type of gland problem with oil around the eye. After 3 visits to the public health service where they offered no cure to something that i understand is relatively simple to resolve, i decided to go private. On the 15th September i will have an operation to get rid of the several lumps around the eye but being private it will cost some $$$.
I really cannot wait to get this problem solved, i'm sure blurry eyes are affecting my winrate and number of hours played.
This weeks video is vs a recreational player. I started the video when i was down quite a few buy-ins, with the idea to spot leaks when i am feeling under pressure.
My last goal was to find a student or hu player. I found a guy and we setup an idea of how to proceed, but he has failed to show up/ being really lazy so i guess i need to continue searching..
given the big hit to bankroll i think i will have a stop loss that if i hit I will get in touch with friends to help me logically think of a better plan.
weeks goals:
play 35 hours
add injected logic statements to my tilt profiles
memorize starting ranges vs unknowns for different sb openings
bonus:
find a headsup player or student
spend some hours learning to make more user friendly videos
create a video using what i've learnt
Current bankroll: $4250
Results are good but i did the minimum i wanted in regards to hours and learnings. off tracked sites I lost a few hundred meaning that overall the results arn't as impressive but still reasonable.
I had a bad realization this week that vs regs I cannot beat them post rake. I compiled a list of the regs i'd been playing and felt extra comfortable with and exploiting but even though they were losing at -19EVbb/100 i was also losing at -1ev/bb. I need the rake to be pretty much a quarter of what it is so will need to be playing nl200 on a 50c cap site before i should be playing regulars as an income generating system. That being said playing them to take tables may still be profitable. I just need to learn to pick battles a little more which is sucky because I like to play anyone.
So again my Focus needs to shift towards playing rather than studying so that i can get to a limit that allows me to play anyone again.
Weeks goals
play 25 hours poker
bonus: 32.5 hours poker
I have a friend coming down for about a month so volume will undoubtedly take a hit. I hope i can manage it correctly.
current br: $4750