Hi guys, whats going on?
Lately I have been very busy holding my dutch blog (for the promotion) and travelling. Right now I'm in Andalusia (Granada and moving to Sevilla in 2 days). Internet is quite shitty hear so nice time to grind but its a holiday for me so :). If anyone of this region is interested to meet, just gimme a shout.
I'll probably go to Gib as well, dont know if i'll make it to PS office since I have two non-poker friends here as well 
Greets
I'm in Cadiz right now and leaving for Gibraltar tomorrow. Will defo visit the PS office.
Update:
I got second in the Dutch promotion which means I will not get the trip to Thailand. A large factor was due to the fact that I already play on a high limit so they can't improve my game a ton over there and wanted to give the opportunity to a lower stakes player. Fair enough I don't really care so much. But just wanting to say that because of this I will keep this one as my main blog again so :).
One thing I have learnt from this month is that I really need to spend more time on improving my game. So seeing more vids, analysing more hands (TLN expect some more hands from next week on 
), etc. etc.
NL400 shouldnt be a goal because my hourly is already pretty high. The goal should always be NL1k+ even if we are never going to reach that goal. Having that goal an sich is the most important.
Anyways going for some tapas now :f_biggrin:, looking forward posting here again
Pretty lame, you were obviously the "best" but the other guy could use the training of those certain persons more than you I guess? Anyways I guess it was a good thing to keep you working on your game anyway, with/without winning it? GLL
Yea I am not blaming/flaming anyone. He deserved it as well, put a lot of effort in it and can definately use the training more. It was indeed a good motivation for me to start improving again.
Off to Gibraltar now!
Gibraltar was pretty nice. Got a small rountrip through the office. Place looked pretty nice and relaxed but professional. We also went up the rock ofc and saw some funny monkeys ((photoshopped) pic will follow when I'm home ). Right now I'm staying at Marbella and tomorrow we go to Malaga where our plane leaves on Sunday.
I'm really looking forward to playing and studying again when I get back. Motivation level is really high for:
- Crushing NL400 a bit more
- Start crushing PLO games as well
- Finish my investment book: 'The Inteliggent investor' and start some stock portfolio analysis soon
- Search for a permanent living place somewhere around the globe
I am also wanting to go somewhere in December cause it will probably be to cold here in Belgium. Searching for some casino+hotel deals in Las Vegas or Macau or something. If anyone has more info about any of these (or is willing to join), I'm thankful for every info.
Reading Easy game now atm (especially part II) and I really like it. When I'm home I'm gonna read the second part again and try to analyse some situations into depth.
For now I just need to say this: 'Don’t worry about winning. Worry about learning. Worry about self-control. Then, winning is easy.'
Originally posted by Joenaes
For now I just need to say this: 'Don’t worry about winning. Worry about learning. Worry about self-control. Then, winning is easy.'
True words, i like! 
Last days I have been grinding and watching videos a ton. Because of my 2 week holiday this month I wanted to make at least some decent profit in november. Unfortunately I am running really cold and already lost over 5k now this month. Next days I will try to grind and analyse as much as possible cause I dont want this to be my first losing month ever:)!
I'm gonna post some hands now in the judge section.
I also renewed my subcribtion at DC because the new FR coach is just the nuts 
newmanmi? i went to watch the preview and PTR him. his winrate is quite nice + easy to understand british accent
Yea he is an awesome player + can make difficult concepts look very easy. His accent is Australian though, but still very nice to hear, and he has a dog that barks during videos as well. Just awesome.
Played the final qualifier of IPT San Remo today but busted in 3th place (1ticket) with AA<A9. Pretty unfortunate but what can you do.
I also played some rush and managed to get a few stacks back. My confidence level is also pretty high (despite losing a lot this month) because I think I fixed a major leak of mine this week:
I potcontrol/take passives lines too much with a medium strength hand oop on non-dry boards.
This is something really bad because you give the person IP a lot of information about your hand. Your hand is almost always of medium strength. It also pretty hard to balance this range with stronger hands because you dont want to give too many freecards+you lose value against sd hands that are willing to call more bets. So your range is very defined. This way the person IP knows which turns/rivers are good to barrel etc and they will be able to play perfect against you.
This also applies to preflop play. There arent many situations were you call preflop oop to a 3bet with a very strong hand (you can do it with AA, but with KK/QQ you will see too many overcards and with AK you wont hit enough). This leads to a very weak hand range.
The reason why I did this was because at lower limits people dont fight it too much so it might be a good play. But on 400 (and higher) you get played back at really hard (even with overbets on F or T etc). This is also another reason why I did it sometimes. I thought that I could let people spew off some money to me but because they have perfect information they know exactly when to shut down and when to push you to the edge.
An example:
$2/$4 No Limit Holdem
9 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
Stacks:
UTG Power Poker 94 ($300.60)
UTG+1 sportbeads ($620.20)
MP1 x-sebi-x ($481.50)
MP2 Hero ($641)
MP3 JaniceB ($2,011.95)
CO Sloffy ($400)
BTN jep1405 ($136.20)
SB elves377 ($732.20)
BB picantisimo ($400)
Pre-Flop: ($6, 9 players) Hero is MP2 A♣ Q♠
3 folds, Hero raises to $14, 1 fold, Sloffy calls $14, 2 folds, picantisimo calls $10
Flop: A♥ J♠ K♦ ($44, 3 players)
picantisimo checks, Hero checks, Sloffy bets $30, picantisimo folds, Hero calls $30
Turn: 5♥ ($104, 2 players)
Hero checks, Sloffy bets $76, Hero calls $76
River: 8♥ ($256, 2 players)
Hero checks, Sloffy bets $178, Hero calls $178
Final Pot: $612
Hero shows
A♣ Q♠
Sloffy shows a flush, Ace high
10:heart: J♥
Sloffy wins $609 (net +$311)
picantisimo lost $14
Hero lost $298
This hand might not be the best example cause the play isnt soo bad I think.
My reasoning:
The person IP is really aggro so I expect him to bet really wide here after I check as IR. On the turn I let him barrel further cause I also dont think he has too many strong hands here. He would 3bet AK/AA/KK 100% of the time to me (no real squeezers behind) and 75% of the time JJ. So his valuebetting range is pretty narrow: QTs (3combos), KJs (2combos), AJs(1combo), I think he prefers 3betting AJo altho lets give him 50% of AJo as well (3combos), so this are 9 combos. I call because his range is pretty narrow, I have TP and a gs to the nuts and maybe 3 outs to better hand.
River completes the bdfd which worries me a bit but not too much. I decided to call down but the problem here is: we don't really know what his exact bluffing tendencies are so we have to guess a lot. Since we don't like guessing it is probably just better to bet F & T because it makes our decisions much easier.
What does this mean for the future:
For example when we have AJs and open in MP2, aggro BU 3bets us and we are somewhat deep (150bb). Instead of calling (because we are ahead of his range), it will be better to put in a small 4bet because we want to stay aggressive+they will still call with a lot of worse hands as well.
There are 2 reasons why I really felt I was doing something wrong:
- Vids of newmanmi
- Played HU against TLN a few days ago: during this match I decided to take some potcontrol lines right from the flop and he owned me so hard by putting a lot of pressure on me. I made some stupid calldowns (half of them were right but this is results oriented thinking because some calls were really just bad and I was just lucky that he was bluffing).
Cliffs: Let's be more agressive oop
Off to bed now
PS: damn some serious strategy talk ITT
interesting. I would say you played the hand well, but was just unlucky. However, being on the passive side is always a guessing game, see that you don´t like it.
AJs in 150bb: disagree here. I rather just flat and checkraise many flops (esp against people who aren't smart enough to bet/call wide, many nit NL400 regs will just bet/fold). I definitely agree with 4betting AJo though, blockers + deep stacks makes it hard for him to 5bet jam light but perhaps he might flat 4bets a lot. I also don't mind floating OOP with stuff like overs + gutshot or backdoors if you know they won't barrel turn a lot and play honestly.
Slowplaying more OOP: yes i agree on semi-wet boards we should slowplay more at higher limits. maybe you don't do c/c F chk T c/r R enough? or c/c c/c c/r? very good trappy lines, maybe I don't mind c/c c/c donk R too
1) turn brings Ace but I think he might have weakish Ace and play for 2 bets: I will c/c c/c donk, maybe his A2o will be like wtf and get suspicious and call you
2) River brings the scare card: then obviously c/c chk c/r or c/c c/c c/r
3) turn made hands into bluffs against a high barrel frequency - so what if he spikes the top pair? when we c/r T and R we rep 2pair+ and get folds quite frequently without any crazy meta
once you are more balanced, really easy to stop mindless barreling from other regs
Slowhabit just released his PLO midstakes workbook u might want to check that out. It's quite expensive though - 300 to 400??? I'm waitng for the ebook to come out
it's just about balance imo. if you feel your opponents are pwning you too often with overbets and you have spots you want to be able to check against them, rather than try to counter by betting your full range, check and give them freecards... even on drawheavy boards. they will then readjust, and it becomes a levelling war where we vary our frequencies in each spot.
add: looks like mbml covered it
Today had a pretty big losing session again so I'll quit playing for the month and just accept that I'll have my first losing month ever.
November review
I didn't play too much in November because I have been travelling a lot. First week to London and thereafter two weeks to Andalusia. It was great nevertheless but poker didn't get a lot of attention. The times that I have been playing were really disastrious as well. Last month I was pretty confident because I played a good amount and analysed a lot to try and win the Dutch promotion. My stats also loosened up and went from something like 16/12 to 18-19/13-14. I don't really know if it is the new style that made me lose this month or just bad play in general or a bad run of cards. This is also something frustrating, yet challening in poker. If you decide to do something different than you did before, it will be very hard to analyse the relation between the change and the outcome itself. Since the change can be +EV but still your winrate might have dropped. I guess I'm going to tighten up again because this month had a huge drop in my redline so I guess I'm not used to having a slightly wider range than normal, so my balancing might be off.
Anyways, here is a graph:
This is my first losing month ever and I feel kinda bad about it but I will come back stronger. With rb and $$ on other sites its even only like -1.5k or so. The rest off the day I will spent a lot of time to watch videos and analyse my last sessions because I have sick poker plans for december.
December goals
- Play 150k hands (something like 150 playing hours)
- Post one very interesting hand in the judging forum with a very deep analysis already every day
- Watch 1 video every day
- Make some monies
Edit: 2011 plans
Quitters never win, winners never quit! 