NL100 or I quit poker

Hi Swish29,

With A♦: is a bad call: what does he bluff?
At NL 10 I fold also many flush here, he doesn't bluff with overshove 4x pot ... I call all flush or blocker only if oppo is a big monkey
The rest seems legit

Well yeah I think his line makes sense with a full house, but I hadn't seen that the board had paired when I played~~ I tanked for a long time in game, so I believe I would have folded, had I been able to read the board properly.

Skimmed through the first 3 chapters of "The Mental Game of Poker", I think my C-Game is very close to my A-Game because even when I'm tilted I mostly play the same, except the part that I hero call rivers in large pots, so it's still very costly ♦ The books talks about the various kinds of tilt and I suffer from most of them, so I have some work to do.

Edit: I guess I could watch 2 videos here: https://www.pokerstrategy.com/news/content/Master-the-Mental-Game-_104313/

Originally posted by Swish29
Skimmed through the first 3 chapters of "The Mental Game of Poker", I think my C-Game is very close to my A-Game because even when I'm tilted I mostly play the same, except the part that I hero call rivers in large pots, so it's still very costly ♦ The books talks about the various kinds of tilt and I suffer from most of them, so I have some work to do.

I hope you'll go back and go through the book slowly.
There are things to do along the way that make a huge difference in how much you get out of the book.
 Well they made a huge difference in how much I got out of it ♠_biggrin:

Cheers,
VS

Well I skimmed through it because I went through the book slowly already a few times - I don't need to read again about the ALM and these other things and preferred to take action directly. For now, I'll focus on "Entitlement Tilt" and "Injustice Tilt", these are the 2 main issues I have now (in this order), and then comes equal level "Hate losing Tilt" and "Running Bad Tilt".

I think "hate losing" shouldn't be a form of tilt
Now "love losing" on the other hand definitely should!

I think PokerStars is marketing a little too aggressively their cashout feature

That's the graph since I mentioned moving up last week, it's ridiculous.

No 500bb stack for me

PokerStars - $0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: $10.00
BB: $10.48
UTG: $27.65
CO: $35.00
Hero (BTN): $42.44

SB posts SB $0.05, BB posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has A♠ A♥

fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.25, SB raises to $0.80, fold, Hero raises to $2.30, SB calls $1.50

Flop: ($4.70, 2 players) J♠ Q♠ 3♥
SB checks, Hero bets $1.80, SB calls $1.80

Turn: ($8.30, 2 players) 8♥
SB checks, Hero bets $5.90, SB calls $5.90 and is all-in

River: ($20.10, 2 players) 6♠

SB shows 8♣ 8♦ (Three of a Kind, Eights)
(Pre 20%, Flop 9%, Turn 95%)
Hero shows A♠ A♥ (One Pair, Aces)
(Pre 80%, Flop 91%, Turn 5%)
SB wins $19.20
Rake paid $0.90

keep it up playing well. it will turn around as you know.

Originally posted by Swish29
I think PokerStars is marketing a little too aggressively their cashout feature

Funny, I ended up thinking that I should use this feature, as I estimated that it would be +EV: the closer I run to my EV, the faster I player higher. Obviously, it's not available in the .cz client of PokerStars ♦ what a waste of energy it was to think about it!

I really don't know what to do with my redline:

I lost over 120BI in NSD on this sample, it's huge, even when I see graphs of breakeven regs they don't lose as much in NSD. I know that the only line that matters is the green one, but this still feels very wrong. I am worried that if I work on my redline, it will break other parts of my game and I will win less. I guess there must be areas when I can improve NSD without the SD winnings taking a hit but idk which ones. I fold to flop cbets about 50% of the time (OOP/IP/in 3bet pots), which is super high and means villains can auto-profit. Folding 62% vs flop stabs as well, and pretty much every possible "fold to..." stat I have, I fold at an exploitable frequency (except preflop). Preflop I do stuff that only me/fish do at my stakes like defending 67% BB vs SB, or 48% BB vs BT. I am playing 32/23, so I could be bleeding money with the bottom part of my range (i.e. seeing flops with many weak hands and as a result losing money with these, but on the other hand, when I have a strong hand I make more money due to the fact that my range is weaker).

I am not sure if the last part is clear, so I'll give an example. Suppose your strat is to open shove AA when it's folded to you and your opponents know this, your EV when shoving will be 1.5bb when shoving outside the blinds (everyone will always fold). Now suppose you do that with AA and 32o (and your opponents still know about it), they will have to call you with anything that beats the range {AA, 32o}, and as a consequence your EV with AA will be much higher. You could not remove 32o from your range and expect to continue to have the same EV with AA.

Likewise, I cannot simply start to fold the bottom of my raise/calling range when facing a 3bet and expect to make as much money with the rest of my calling range, same for my opening ranges, I cannot discard the bottom of it and still make as much money with the rest.

Any pointers? Quite lost on this one. I'll check the redline rampage series again, but any other tips is appreciated. Thanks.

Other than this, I will absolutely forget about my monthly volume goals. Having quite a horrible month in my personal life so I want to take poker easy.

Originally posted by Swish29
I really don't know what to do with my redline:

It always looks so bad when it drops so sharply, doesn't it?
The best thing to do with your red line, is stop worrying about it.
Read this thread from one of the best NLHE coaches PokerStrategy.com has had in recent years:
https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?postid=1214424#post1214424

the tl;dr [1]
Your green line is what matters.
You can boost your red line by being more aggro, and getting people to fold, but if you would have won at showdown anyway, your red line goes up, but your blue line stays the same.
Worse, if you get far too aggro, you will get players to fold worse hands they might have called with, thus you punish your green line as well.

Cheers,
VS

[1] But read the article anyway!

Oh nice, I hadn't seen this thread. I don't raise postflop a lot, I should start doing it.

Played a fun hand today, had an easy vbet turn but had to bluff the river;

PokerStars - $0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: $14.99
BTN: $9.85
SB: $13.28
BB: $11.05
Hero (UTG): $10.25
MP: $20.40

SB posts SB $0.05, BB posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has T♣ 9♣

Hero raises to $0.25, fold, fold, fold, SB calls $0.20, BB calls $0.15

Flop: ($0.75, 3 players) 9♦ K♥ T♥
SB checks, BB bets $0.72, Hero calls $0.72, fold

Turn: ($2.19, 2 players) 3♥
BB checks, Hero bets $1.36, BB calls $1.36

River: ($4.91, 2 players) 3♦
BB checks, Hero bets $7.92 and is all-in, fold

Hero wins $4.69
Rake paid $0.22

I watched some redline video, some DB analysis of a 22/16 guy <5% 3bet, which is a nit in my book so not exactly suited to my situation but from what I have gathered, here are potential leaks:

-Very few raise flops
-Small turn cbet (41%), means I only bluff flops and very little turns (most likely)
-High folds post-fops...
-...which could be the result of playing too loose (33/23). I open 21% in EP, 24% in MP, 35% in CO, 61% in BT and 63% in SB. Means I have to raise/call a lot preflop to not have an exploitable fold to 3bet, but that means I give up too much in 3bet pots postflop. It also means that with the bottom of my opening ranges I could be losing money. PokerSnowie opens 16% (and it prob does not take into account the huge micro-stakes rake), the range given in the FTGU course is 13%, so I really need to tighten up as a default. CO/BT/SB opens are wide too, means a lot of x/f flop, or cbet flop + give up turn etc.
-Follow-up previous point: in a lot of videos about redline, I'm seeing guys defending too little their BB, but I defend 48% vs BT steal, which means I could have the opposite problem. It could be difficult to make money with the bottom of this range OOP with the high-rake. Maybe I also defend too much BB vs SB too (67%)

I think I should look at:
-How much money I make in every position when raising outside recommended ranges
-How much money I lose in BB when defending trash. If I lose over -100bb/100 then it means folding would have yielded a higher profit. However, my BB winrate is very good (-19.31bb/100 at NL10 and -24.79bb/100 overall) so there are things I must do particularly well in this position
-What is my winrate vs cold calls

Edit:

-Looks like I should fold more to 3bets CO and BT (35% and 49% atm). If I fold more BT, I will r/f too much, so I prob should be opening more carefully/a bit tighter
-I defend too much my BB vs CO/BT, I lose over 100bb/100 with bottom 75% and bottom 60% respectively. With the bottom 44% of hands BB vs SB, I lose less than 100bb/100 so I could consider defending wider (and this shows how important position is)
-Also losing over 100bb/100 BB vs EP-MP with bottom 75%

If I fold more preflop CO/BT, I should be able to bet turns more aggressively and give up less
If I fold more BB when OOP, I should be able to defend better vs cbets

To do;

-Watch videos about BB defense OOP
-Have a solid plan vs 3bets when opening CO and BT
-Watch videos about raising flops vs cbetter

Fortunately, just by folding more preflop it will mechanically make me less exploitable post-flop

Originally posted by Swish29
I watched some redline video, some DB analysis of a 22/16 guy <5% 3bet, which is a nit in my book so not exactly suited to my situation but from what I have gathered, here are potential leaks:

I have been playing NL 5 on GGPoker.
On a table with 3 or 4 +30 players, my VPIP drops to 10 or so, but when everyone else is <25 my own VPIP goes into the 30s.
I've no idea what it is long term average.

Red line leaks start with entering too many pots, and being forced to fold flops -- at least that seemed to be true for me

PokerStars - $0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: $11.97
Hero (BB): $11.03
UTG: $10.00
MP: $11.29
CO: $8.30
BTN: $6.46

SB posts SB $0.05, Hero posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has 3♠ A♦

fold, fold, fold, BTN raises to $0.30, fold, Hero calls $0.20

Flop: ($0.65, 2 players) A♠ 3♥ 9♣
Hero checks, BTN bets $0.31, Hero raises to $2.15, BTN raises to $6.16 and is all-in, Hero calls $4.01

Turn: ($12.97, 2 players) K♥

River: ($12.97, 2 players) T♠

BTN cashed out $1.02 for a fee of $0.01

Hero shows 3♠ A♦ (Two Pair, Aces and Threes)
(Pre 29%, Flop 92%, Turn 5%)
BTN shows K♠ K♦ (Three of a Kind, Kings)
(Pre 71%, Flop 8%, Turn 95%)

Cool stuff, the rec that cashes out to keep his 10bb + the bad beat, means the money is just gone, very inconvenient

I have not yet played a game where cashout was possible.
Does a player know how much he will receive from the cashout before accepting it?

If you're looking at losing 85% of your stack anyway, you might as well try the two-outer

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I have not yet played a game where cashout was possible.
Does a player know how much he will receive from the cashout before accepting it?

If you're looking at losing 85% of your stack anyway, you might as well try the two-outer

Yeah you do know, you see some "Cash-out x$ for a fee of y$"

I would never cashout when I have little equity, it's EV- to cashout and I don't care if I lose 15 times in a row a 10/90, but if I lose one time a 90/10 it annoys me ♦

PokerStars - $0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: $9.63
BTN: $10.00
Hero (SB): $14.43
BB: $12.46
UTG: $17.49

Hero posts SB $0.05, BB posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has 9♦ Q♦

UTG raises to $0.30, CO calls $0.30, BTN calls $0.30, Hero calls $0.25, fold

Flop: ($1.30, 4 players) 2♦ 8♥ 7♦
Hero checks, UTG checks, CO checks, BTN bets $0.68, Hero calls $0.68, fold, CO raises to $1.36, BTN calls $0.68, Hero calls $0.68

Turn: ($5.38, 3 players) 6♣
Hero checks, CO bets $5.14, fold, Hero calls $5.14

River: ($15.66, 2 players) 2♣
Hero checks, CO bets $2.83 and is all-in, fold

CO wins $14.96
Rake paid $0.70

I think I have no FE river, even on the 5♦: that being said the spot is a bit closer than I thought

Me: OK, a bit optimistic, but think I get it. He likely assumes that this river sucks for my Ax, so he may pot Ax himself to not split the pot, maybe he even has the A♦: himself. Even if he has the nut flush, there's no one that goes all-in without a full here at these stakes so vs. the field he has a fold with a flush, if we suppose that he does this as well with a flush for value.

Him: Weeeeeee I have a full house!! I will bet pot and he will call with his top pair lol

PokerStars - $0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

UTG: $4.56
CO: $13.26
Hero (BTN): $12.56
SB: $10.56
BB: $13.06

SB posts SB $0.05, BB posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has A♠ T♠

fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.20, fold, BB calls $0.10

Flop: ($0.45, 2 players) A♣ 5♠ 5♦
BB checks, Hero bets $0.14, BB calls $0.14

Turn: ($0.73, 2 players) 2♦
BB checks, Hero bets $0.53, BB calls $0.53

River: ($1.79, 2 players) K♦
BB bets $1.70, Hero raises to $11.69 and is all-in, BB calls $9.99

Hero shows A♠ T♠ (Two Pair, Aces and Fives)
(Pre 63%, Flop 13%, Turn 5%)
BB shows K♥ 5♥ (Full House, Fives full of Kings)
(Pre 37%, Flop 87%, Turn 95%)
BB wins $24.04
Rake paid $1.13

Me: OK, so he bets 50% on every street, quite a modest bet so he's likely value betting AK-AJ or a small flush. I have the A♥: so I block some fulls and nut flushes, it's likely a good hand to bluff so yeah, I'll go all-in, also because I didn't learn from yesterday's stack lost.

Him: GNNNNNNNNN 3 pairs SNAP call!!!

PokerStars - $0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: $10.58
Hero (BB): $10.00
UTG: $12.11
CO: $13.88
BTN: $10.00

SB posts SB $0.05, Hero posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has A♥ 5♣

fold, fold, BTN raises to $0.30, fold, Hero calls $0.20

Flop: ($0.65, 2 players) T♥ 2♥ 2♣
Hero checks, BTN bets $0.31, Hero calls $0.31

Turn: ($1.27, 2 players) A♦
Hero checks, BTN bets $0.61, Hero calls $0.61

River: ($2.49, 2 players) 9♥
Hero checks, BTN bets $1.19, Hero raises to $8.78 and is all-in, BTN calls $7.59 and is all-in

Hero shows A♥ 5♣ (Two Pair, Aces and Twos)

BTN shows T♦ 9♠ (Two Pair, Tens and Nines)

Hero wins $19.15
Rake paid $0.90

too much leveling lol

Quite an annoying month, didn't run good, didn't play a lot, my ~5 years old relationship ended, I had to look for a new flat and move in, so that kept me busy and sometimes I didn't want to play poker because I didn't feel fantastic and thought I would not be able to deal with a losing session.

Goals for November:

-Do useful poker related stuff for 100h (so mostly play / study)
-Study sub-goals:
a) Fix MP vs EP play (won money in EV this month, but only because of 1 large pot (that I lost ♦)) I play 11.82/0.64 vs EP open, seems horrible
b) Lose less in redline by folding more my BB, folding more to 3bets, doing more small bluff raises on every street, folding less to cbets (should be easier if I fold more preflop),
c) Get 1 month of Essential membership on RIO and study as many videos as possible
d) Review the "LahtiPelican" video, I still consider this studying because it's forcing me to think about the game
e) Carefully read the posts of Tomaloc ♦

I'll move up if I get to 480$ (will be tough because I will play the -50% SM of tomorrow + some of the mini-EPT series), if I have a good ev bb/100 winrate I may move up in December anyway, the roll I have is not significant vs my salary, so if I beat NL10, I could move up regardless of bankroll.

Originally posted by Swish29
I'll move up if I get to 480$ (will be tough because I will play the -50% SM of tomorrow + some of the mini-EPT series), if I have a good ev bb/100 winrate I may move up in December anyway, the roll I have is not significant vs my salary, so if I beat NL10, I could move up regardless of bankroll.

Well, I just had my best day ever, won way more than last month in 1 day, about 160$ (+100$ at the CG tables, +58.37$ in MTTs)

Still annoyed because I bust from the Sunday Million around the 2250th place for 27010 entries, I'm losing a flip vs a villain that makes a massive spew vs my range for a 1.5x average pot:

PokerStars - 1800/3600 Ante 360 NL - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: 139,157
Hero (BB): 83,442
UTG: 122,204
UTG+1: 247,590
MP: 85,742
MP+1: 265,009
MP+2: 62,606
CO: 52,097
BTN: 155,384

9 players post ante of 360, SB posts SB 1,800, Hero posts BB 3,600

Pre Flop: (pot: 8,640) Hero has K♥ A♥

fold, UTG+1 raises to 7,995, MP calls 7,995, fold, fold, CO calls 7,995, fold, fold, Hero raises to 83,082 and is all-in, fold, MP raises to 85,382 and is all-in, fold

Flop: (187,194, 2 players) K♣ Q♥ 3♣

Turn: (187,194, 2 players) 7♦

River: (187,194, 2 players) 6♣

Hero shows K♥ A♥ (One Pair, Kings)
(Pre 49%, Flop 7%, Turn 0%)
MP shows 3♦ 3♠ (Three of a Kind, Threes)
(Pre 51%, Flop 93%, Turn 100%)
MP wins 187,194

CG today, ran super good:

All NL10:

And I still never used a solver, poker is not dead guys

I may take a look at the NL16 tables soon. I think soon I will have a big problem and face many decent regs (at least compared to me), I think it's near impossible that I reach NL100 without getting significantly better, but to be honest I am already surprised it's going so well at NL10