I had a pretty bad run yesterday. Up and down all the time but it's fun and I eventually managed to make some profit so yeah, life is good My stats are now 16/11 - I modified a bit my approach but it's still going good, attacking the blinds like maddog and tilting people to the point they start shoving vs my raises.
Had a fun blind battle, 63o vs 74o - guy won me with 7 high, well he was just a donk, we fought in like 5 SB vs BB hands and he outflopped me every time with worse hands so yeah, I didn't mind - he's got a lil' note on his forehead now so when I see him in future he is going down.
While I started NL5 with a shy 8-9 tables, yesterday I played 15-19, as much as my bankroll allowed. I'm using only notes on opponents, I doubt I'll use stats until NL25++. It can be a little annoying trying to write notes when other tables are popping up, but oh well
Hmm yea, my trademark has become folding pocket pairs preflop - like for no good reason, aka in spots where I would usually either limp in or raise. It isnt due to high number of tables, I accidentally fold them even with less tables active - so I should work on maybe slowing down my reaction time by a second or two, to give me time to think more about the hand I have and not fold it - I also make sometimes marginal calls because I don't look at the table too much.
I thought playing as if it was a reflex was bad, but I saw jonathan little's video where he sais decisions should become like that to you, only for tough spots you should actually stop and think, whereas everything else should come "naturally and swiftly".
Here is my overall graph for NL5 so far (my non-sd winnings have decreased, I'm not sure if I should look at that as a bad thing or not, it's "probably" a leak in my post-flop play):
just checked my overall graph, 70k hands played for last 4weeks or so, in total +$288 for nl2+nl5.
as for today, i earned $23 on NL5 in 1h 40min, so not bad - considering I lost 3-4entire deep stacks along with some failed bluffs and what not. Had lots of interesting hands and some fun calls, I still don't have time/will to do session reviews, once I start with those I'll throw in here some hand.
P.S. Quite funny how this blog is turning out, guess it's just my typical chaotic planning and my original A-1 plan turns into Z-31c version of something completely different. Nevertheless, I'm finally making some major progress - well 1st progress was playing poker and not losing money in long-term
I've cut through NL5 in 3days - ofc prior to this success I first had 3 failed attempts so it's more like 1-2weeks in total of "attacking NL5". Next week I'll go for NL10 and we'll see how it goes
Great, so as I probably mentioned earlier - two of my friends and I are learning poker+hoping we make lots of money in it and have fun. One friend is doing NL BSS, other is acting dumb and sticking to SSS - eventually he'll go broke and come to the pro bss side
So anyway, the SSS einstein friend remembered I wanted to make a bet with him 2months ago that 3 of us could make $1,000 until new year. We are now in the last month and while we never talked about the bet seriously, we did tonight.
I'm currently up on $316, my bss friend is on $112 ($50 of that being mine). Basically I'm playing NL5 and at this rate I could grind my way to 1k alone if I played "Isildur1 mode", sleep is for the weak, my bss friend is also doing well so yeah, it's very much possible we do it.
-ofc the bet is not for something important, we always like to make ridiculous bets and we bet in a sandwich or something equally ridiculous - it's not about the prize, it's about proving who is right and who can do what ♦
OK so here is the dilemma: Should I stick to NL5, my friend stick to NL2 so that we safely go for the $1k goal, OR, I attack NL10 and he attacks NL5...problem is I'm expecting him to have problems on NL5 and my semi-coach friend told me NL10 might be hard for me, so that info was kinda discouraging as well
Anyway, I'll see next week how NL10 goes, maybe do a test run because I could earn there twice more than on NL5 - by some logical logic ♦
Originally posted by Dendra
Either way, the "short" intro is over, I'm not really sure how but I always fail to write short things - a line here, paragraph there and poof, a monster size text comes up.
Are from some sc/bw website? I remember you... don´t know if is from gg.net, tl.net, mym, tot, pg or all of them. You always made cooments of lot of post/news.
I think you and your friend could test some games in higher limit. Why not? Looks both have enogh bankroll to make some shots. Think is important to play sometimes out of your confort zone. Could be not smart thing to do but you can learn new things in adverse condition.
as for taking shots - well yeah, it's about aiming for higher limits - aka I have to "waste" money now to crack a limit, and then in long run it pays off cuz my $/h increases a lot. Only issue here is now that I might go for that $1k goal before new year and if I push it with NL10 too much we wont reach it.
Well either way, think I dont care that much about that bet, I'll go for NL10, pay my friend a pizza if we dont reach our goal, my pride will be hurt but oh well :DDD
let's call this a small update, in a way. I just noticed that I have conveniently left out an important note about my last bigger session - the one in which I moved from $273 up to $316
So basically I started that dreadful day (let's call it dreadful 'cuz I like the word) when I was up on $273 and ready to conquer NL5 - my ego was boosted from the previous session where I got up by $23 in a relatively short time.
So yeah, I felt pretty much invincible and ready to fool around a bit and relax, because I felt like I had an edge over others which would allow me to lose money and get it back without much trouble. This foolish approach led me to a roughly -$37 swing in maybe 1hour of play. It was a mixture of some sick beats and some bad, horrible plays by me.
I decided to stop there since I knew I was playing bad and needed a break - it's a good thing because if I continue playing, I still feel like I want to get my revenge on some guy, whereas when I leave the tables and return later - I still have a note on the b'stard but emotions no longer change my play as they did when I was still semi-steaming.
After taking a mini-break from poker, I returned to the tables later and in two hours got up from $236 to $295. Did I learn anything from this? Yes, I donked at least $20 of the money for no good reason (ok, it was not folding overpair QQ and AA in a few spots where it was obvious someone hit his set - I pretty much count this as a donkament on my behalf :P)
and the best part about this is...I'll probably do it again in the future - that's just the monkey side of me I inherited from my distant relatives chimpanzees - aka I like to f** things up from time to time, just for the sake of everything not going smoothly- where's the fun in that?
I'll do some more NL5 and post my entire graph for that limit in a day or two before I move up to NL10 - and you will clearly see what I'm talking about in this post about my monkey-mode losing spree.
As for NL10, I'll use 35 BI brm, possibly even 40BI - a more conservative approach because when I go to "test waters", I don't want to be pushed down a limit after a few bad beats or something. So with this brm I should have a bit more oxygen in my tank to dive into NL10 waters, locate my underground submarine, enter it and start firing torpedoes at the surrounding fish, sharks and what not
- in translation, with this brm I'll survive long enough on NL10, hopefully, to learn the players and adapt to the limit and start winning there - opposed to my attempts on moving up to NL5 where I was forced to attack it 4 times, rather annoying
Goals, yes they're a great thing and especially important in football (the actual foot-ball game, not the american "we play football with hands" version):
- Earn $xxx and put it aside, while using the remaining bankroll for attacking higher limits
Basically I haven't decided yet how much I'll put aside - depends on how much I earn. My first "real goal" here will be to reach the level of play where I can put aside $300 each month and use the rest to move up.
For now I'll probably set my goal to $100 I'll put aside and we'll see where the rest goes
-Start doing session reviews
I have the ultimate excuse - I haven't had time to do so yet. However, I will try to focus more on my game in the future, especially because I want this blog to help others and save their time
- I mean if it took me 2months to learn something, why not write it here so that someone else doesnt need to waste his time on doing the same "research" - yes, it's in human nature, at least mine, not to trust others and find out things on our own, but either way my (painful) learning experiences will hopefully make someone's NL BSS road easier to follow:)
(You can learn everything from ps.com coaches and strategy articles, so I guess my blog is more about first-hand experiences and all the stupidities a fish could make and how to avoid such mistakes and why not to make them ♦)
Session reviews should also help me improve my game, learn new things about my opponents- especially now when I play 24tables and don't really follow hands that much. Don't get me wrong - I know exactly on what table I'm up against what opponent, if someone is trying to outplay me, if I have a blind-battle history with someone, etc., I don't miss out on such things and I always have time to read through notes and such if I find myself in a tough spot.
-Play 50 tables of NL BSS
I'll make this a long-term goal because it's not my primary target now, it would just be something I'd do for myself to see how sick in the head can I get, when I feel like it's time to give in and get psycho with me
For now I might ask pokerstars staff to give me 30 tables or something, well at least just to see if they will allow me to have it or I need to be like supernova to have it or hopefully something like silver ♦
Guess it's just about pushing the boundaries, before even 16 tables felt like too much for me. I'm not even sure if this is possible, will find out soon enough - I hope it is. I dont intend to mix up 2poker platforms at the same time to play this amount of tables, it would just be a suicidal thing to do >,<
Edit: "Unfortunately the limit of 24 ring games at once is hard-coded into the
system and there is no way to bypass it. No one can play more than 24 ring
games at once. As you correctly say, there is no limit to how many
tournaments or Sit & Gos you are playing at once.
If you feel that this limit should be removed, please email ideas@pokerstars.com with your suggestion and reasoning behind it."
Ok seems this goal wont be achieved any time soon but I'll keep it in the back of my mind, and do it one day, one day....hehe
- Earn $1,500 by the end of January
Basically I'd go for $1,000 this month but with all the vacations and stuff it will be hard to find time to play - on Tuesday I'm going to Varazdin - it's like a town near Zagreb, the town where I live at now (both are like 3-4h of car drive away from my hometown Osijek).
I'll spend 3days there at friend's apartment, to show him nl bss and such, then we're going to Zagreb 'cuz he has a concert there and after it he stays at my place over the weekend for some more poker.
His band is We Come One, they're like a heavy metal band which consists of trumpets, tuba and what not, all those blowing instruments, whatever to call them. They got 2electric guitars, drums and such as well. The "blowing-department" of the band used to play classical music and then they all teamed up to play songs of other bands with one interesting detail...
They use trumpets to replace the vocals in songs. I'll post a video from Croatian Super Talent show below - my friend is the guy with the trumpet playing in the front (you can skip the first minute or so, it's Croatian jibberish talk):
So here is my overall graph for nl5, as I said earlier - you'll see a huge U in it, which is basically looking like it doesnt belong there but yeah - that was the day when I played bad+fooled around too much and..sh** happens
Until now I was playing something more like DSS than BSS haha, deep stack ftw, I guess the actual bss will start with nl10+. Until now I only learned from 1-2sessions I had with my friend-coach from ps.com, everything else I did on my own.
Attending coaching sessions is not time-efficient for me now even though I enjoy them every time I remember to log on, but for now - there isnt much of a purpose in it because I think coaching is useful if you want to fix some small mistakes in your play, polish your skills and such - for actual hardcore learning of basics and such, it's probably not the place where stuff learned/time is in a good ratio.
Videos on ps.com are great but not that useful to me until I reach nl25 - because from what I saw, the stuff that hasenbraten does just doesnt fit in my play on nl2/5, I'll check out his style more intently when I get to nl25.
Same goes for videos for nl5 or such because I developed my own betting pattern and such with which I feel comfortable playing with
Strategy Articles - I'm too lazy to read at the moment, I think I'll switch to those as my last resort if I'm stuck and cant see what's wrong. I read the articles when I wanted to learn about chances to hit a card and such - ended up googling around for a more simple way to count it - think I even mentioned it in this blog. While article here suggests doing 10things to get that percentage, I simply multiply my outs with 2 or 4 and I get nearly identical outs as they do - so go figure what way is easier
I might be gold rank soon, so that could boost my motivation to browse around and look for something interesting, atm I just prefer sweat sessions over all of this for making first steps into poker - it's more fun. I guess it's just personal choice, some people prefer reading articles, printing charts and what not
As for my friends - 1st friend is still spinning around 115, 2nd one finally decided it was time to switch to the real deal - I showed him a bit how to play this strategy, now he'll just watch me play 2-3weeks, and in 1month I will stake him to play on his own. So hope he does well
I will also try to help out another friend to get up - until now he was playing SnG HU so I'm pretty much converting them all to nl "bss".
P.S. I got my visa electron today. I'm thinking of making my 1st deposit, to clear that bonus - I'll have to read through the details about it - basically only reason I want to deposit now is to check if all is ok and if I can withdraw my money. I read some topics about this and from what I read I'll need to send a picture of my id card or something, anyway, will find out soon enough
-I'll make the deposit once I start playing NL10 16tables minimum without much stress, so that I'm sure I'll clear that bonus, I don't wanna waste it and play nl5 or 6tables nl10 and clear only part of it - I know I got 6months to clear it or something like that but anyway...
Once I beat NL25 on pokerstars, I'll probably go play on other pokerrooms and use 1st deposit bonus, nice way to earn money for free - though tough part is adjusting to the different layout and slightly different opponents but yeah, will see what future brings
I'm out for today, catching my train early in the morning. I'm currently up on $345 - my dad is not happy about it, he thinks I'll come home one day and say - I lost it all. My mom isnt happy either but she knows she cant stop me so she just smiles and stays silent on the matter - so cant say I got their support but once I buy them some vacation or a new car with poker money, guess they'll change their opinion
-as for spending money, I'm thinking of turning into robin hood - I noticed some poor people protesting against our healthcare laws and what not, so they need money, their children are sick and blabla, we've heard it all before - well I figured once I start rolling in poker, it wouldnt be a bad idea to walk by to where they're protesting in town and just giving them some $$ for their cause, money wont help me, but it will help them save their kids' lives. -I'm no saint but we gotta make some changes in this world which is totally upside down - those who take from others and keep to themselves are respected, and those who give to others are looked upon as idiots - "why did you give him $1000? you could've bought yourself ...with that" - doh, it's not all about satisfying your own desires.
or 2nd scenario "why are you giving me all that money? it must be stolen!" - how twisted have we gotten to suspect every gift we receive...
Indian culture was far superior to ours in such things - they would take away favourite items from their kids and give to other kids. So they learn to share from young age and those who share are actually the most respected members of society - total opposite of our modern world and I admire them for that.
I've moved up to nl10, played so far only 4tables with my "coach" watching me. Ended up by $15, and I played bad so yeah, gotta love the luck in poker
I'll have to analyse NL5 later and maybe give some useful tips in case anyone runs into this blog and looks for something of that sort. there were lots of semi-interesting hands but I'm just too lazy atm to browse 40-42k nl5 hands I played in last 2-3weeks or something.
I think by tonight I might play 9-16 NL10 tables, action seems pretty similar to NL5, so we'll see how it goes.
played like 9k hands or so of nl10, it has been rather annoying with lots, lots of bad beats and well, some bad plays I'm currently up on $437 or so, was up on nearly $480 so I'll keep going and post some graph or something once I reach $500.
-I'm not counting +$32 I made on partypoker on nl10 for fun, just pokerstars, and speaking of partypoker - what the hell is up with the points there?
They're going so slow it's ridiculous, if I got it right, they're giving me 0.01 point per $0.10 pot size or something and our rake is divided by players at the table who were dealt cards or whatever and blablabla - in total, I pretty much hate PartyPoker from the bottom of my Points-farming heart. The old system was much better for me imo, or at least points went up faster.
P.S. gotta admit nl10 is a lot of fun, faster action than nl2-5 and more or less same skill as on nl5
yep, pretty long well usually I write something interesting and sort it out so that it's easy to read through - here...I'm just throwing in stuff as if I was making a salad instead of writing a blog...so yeah, results are as they are
As for NL10, it's rather annoying, lots of bad beats following me. Went down to $392 or so, took a break and returned to bring it back up to $430. Also I think I'll decrease number of tables to 16 or 12 until I stabilize my winnings here because it seems I need more time to actually think about some of the hands and also action is pretty fast on NL10 - which is great!
Off topic, while ps.com has nice stuff to read/watch and learn from, I found the most valuable asset of this website to be other players, such as you JQ, those two guys from Brasil and so on - reading stories of other people's success kinda motivates you to achieve something yourself.
Ok, it has been 4days of a bumpy, rough, hack n slash, dip n dive swinging back and forth. I played 10tables today with the intention of seeing how much VPP I earn per hour and I ended up making a profit of $50 in that time...
and naturally I forgot how many VPPs I began with (had it saved on copy-paste, then during session I overwrote it with something else which I copied and blabla, yeah, sad story, what can I say).
It seems that my win rate is A LOT better when I play 10-ish tables, as you can see in the graph(s) below - my 1st 800hands were played on 10tables and now the last 1,000 or so as well.
I've concluded it's better to play 12-ish tables for now and push further steadily, as max multitabling seems to decrease my winnings too much for the moment on NL10.
My stats on NL10 are like 13.5/9.5 atm, not something I'm delighted with as I'm apparently uber tight but it's working so far...so can't complain
P.S. In today's 1h session I lost to royal flush and straight flush vs same guy, in like 3hands difference - fun fun fun. I'm currently up on $482 or so, -$20 I gave to a friend today, he wanted to play nl2 and yeah, can't be a douc*e and say no.
just a small update - I've been a victim of Mistress of Luck for 3 days in a row, last 2 days resulting in -$170 or so. I also gave a total of $120 to friends which sums up to a current bankroll of $200 or so - meaning I am back to NL5. I was on $490 or so the other day but oh well, life goes on.
Probably my 2fav losses were:
AA vs AT, he raises preflop, I 3bet, he calls, flop T high, he checks, I raise, he shoves - river T...yipi
This hand I can't recall exactly but it was AA vs Q7o, villain has top pair Q on flop, turn comes Q, river comes Q. -yes, fun
now multiply this by 150 and yeah, anyway, I'll be back, stronger than ever ofc ♦
25% of losses or so was due to my horrible play, nonetheless, I'm happy with how things are going. When I find time I'll build back up and go for "2nd" try on nl10 (technically I didn't get knocked down, since my bankroll would've survived the swing with the money I lended to friends)
P.S. SoyCD got spanked in NLHE HU, like lost $0.50 before announcing he is broke and wont play me more. We will play a re-match soon I guess, we agreed on 4tables of NLHE and 2 PLO - I just wanted to copy Isildur1 ♦
I might regret this decision because HU action is way too fast for me now, I barely played 4turbo sngs on stars, so dunno how this match vs Soy will work out
Another problem is I never played PLO (ok 1sng I entered by mistake), luckily for me PLO is luckbox festival so I'll have reasonable chances to win with any hand ♦
Yesssss, a total of -$400 in 4-5days I'd say, and I think it's getting better now. I deposited $300 on titanpoker so that I start clearing my 1st deposit bonus on some poker client.
After going -50 in 2days, I moved up +60 in recent session. Bad luck is following me still but I'm trying to play better poker and make the best of it. So atm my bankroll on titan is 310++.
I have to admit titanpoker is 10 times below pokerstars, partypoker and full tilt poker. It's just horrible to be honest, I timed out on two hands where I hit a set because I accidentally minimized table and couldn't find it again, or timed out because a window with following action didn't pop up - so I've got like 10tables waiting for my action and none popping up and I'm like wtf ♦ so yeah, it is a complete, utter disaster.
However! the bonuses are just tooo easy, it's actually the main reason why I'll put up with it and might even play there more over the following months - the money via bonuses seems very easy to earn, like I could be platinum by the end of next month, possibly more.
As for my stars account, I will naturally play there as well. Just gotta build back up since I'm quite crippled at the moment. Today I will have NL2 only - my friend who is now up on 220+ on nl5 and moi decided to have an nl2 day to help out our other friend, who just recently switched from sss to bss and currently sits on $76 or so, so he is doing well.
basically all 3 of us will play nl2 with the focus being on making it a learning experience for our youngest bss newcomer ♦ meanwhile the entire action will be obsed by my friend karlo - the guy in a band I linked a youtube video to earlier, so yeah, it'll be a fun day in overall
hmm i've got sorta used to titanpoker software, it's like poker after dark - you dont only play poker, but prop bets as well
- only on titanpoker it's more like -"you dont only play poker, but also play against the system which always finds a way to fold your perfectly fine hands and alerting you that you've been dealt such a hand only after it folds it"
so anyway, i deposited $300 on titan and now my bankroll there is $415. I've played nl2-10 mostly but now I play like 90% nl10 and a few nl4 tables if I'm missing on action (aka missing a table for 16tabling)
the game is quite soft, my stats are like 23/10 so i'm playing a lot more hands mostly because donks call u down with any pair, any card, any anything for that matter - so it's pretty much a fish festivity and you only have to keep your fingers crossed that they dont hit a lucky 2pair, trips and such stuff and suck out on you.
euro tables are...well cant say easier because both $ and € seems soft but if I had to choose, I'd say euro tables are fishier.
I'll be gold rank for next month for sure, i doubt i'll have time to make it to platinum in 10days of play there. next month i'll definitely be platinum but i'm also aiming for diamond - which seems to be the ultimate rank there
after I reach diamond, my goal to reach 320,000 points will be easier and I'll exchange that for cash - if anyone has some tips on a better bonus and reasons why - i'd appreciate it. i'm playing nl10 and wont switch to nl25 in a month or so, so i pretty much cant earn 46547538 points and go for the highest bonus which is obv. the best
so to summarize this last paragraph, which bonus would be the best to go for if ur playing 16 FR NL10 tables on titanpoker? (currently 700+++ points per day with no rank upgrade or anything)
Since one of the purposes of this blog is for me to glance at it one day and think to myself - oh what a fish I was, ok I can do that as we speak,
so errrm yeah...since I want this blog to be a record of my progress, I should probably add another important update - as I'll probably forget about it with all the massive alcohol injection incoming for the new year celebration.
So here is a summary of my play on titanpoker from where I left this blog the last time: from $500 I moved all the way up to $590...I thought about switching to NL 20 but decided I will respect the 30 BI BRM rule, purely based on a matter of principles since it was less about the question if I could beat NL 20 with less than 30 BI on my bankroll.
Anyway, after that conservative decision, I dipped low again, rather annoying luck problems as usual, accompanied by a series of ill timed bluffs and you've got yourself a $100 downswing.
Being down to $490 in 2days, I had 2more swings to 450-460 and back up to 480-490. Finally, I pulled off a decent day and reached $520 which once again could've been well over $550 if it weren't for luck!!! (phil hellmuth syndrome is getting on to me)
Flaming, cursing and such as usual helped a bit - plus someone might think I'm on tilt and will do a stupid thing so I abuse my bad luck by trying to trap some nearby passenger who thought he saw a fish in distress - when all of the sudden, boyakasha, the fish is actually an evil shark with laser beams attached to its head and zzap zzap - adios your dinero amigos, ty for your cooperation
On the topic of cursing - I have now realized why majority of the pros are illiterate - because the software censors most naughty words, they're forced to write "fck you mf rtrd dnt y kno h hard it was for me to earn all that mney n then some fckn clown tkes it all away?"
I'll have to go rail fullflush, ziggy and other pros to perhaps learn some useful flaming tricks from them, they seem to be pros at it.
On a bluffing note, which is totally irrelevant to everything I said above since it just randomly flew into my thoughts circulation:
The reason why I'm going rather slowly up on titanpoker is because I'm practicing bluffs, sorta stuff that durrrr does in live cash games, putting up a price which I know the other person wont pay with the given hand and his current stack size
-easier said than done, but it's going good if you dont count hero-donk calls and some badly timed bluffs running into ze nuts I will definitely work on this throughout my dabbling with the poker world. Eventually, I'll try to find 5-6 live cash game players willing to get stuck a bit and not just hit n run 1-2buy-ins and go home after 2-3hours of play - that will be pretty cool, not to mention fun
Finally a decent day, I'm up on $616.84 - meaning I'm switching to NL20 any moment now.
Gonna get some rest first so that I can focus entirely on playing poker the best I can at the moment. I don't expect much resistance or some impossible obstacles ahead of me, mostly because it's titanpoker - way easier than stars.
On a side note - titanpoker in general isnt easier than stars because the crappy software makes you lose so much money that it's actually a challenge to make some profit there - my rough estimation so far would be a deficit of around $50 due to timed out hands, bugs, glitches, the list goes on forever.
Yes, the software is that bad that it makes me wanna bang my head against the table sometimes but I'll survive somehow, at least until I clear 1st deposit bonus and possibly reach some nice number of points to change them for cash.
-at the moment I have 8.2k points, so I need to collect 1.8k more before January to be platinum rank or whatever.
Besides the problems with software, I'm also sad my PT3 doesnt show proper graph for my games on titanpoker, because I play euro tables, as well. So most of my progress on NL10 will now be only remembered in the form of my notes in this blog, oh well...not like my graph looks nice enough nowadays to boost my ego - with all the -50$ swings, few days ago even -$100, it's hard to look at it and think you "crushed" a limit or something - at least I made through it :/
