Beginner to Pro? Attempting a cautious comeback

Makes complete sense to me Silver, i play and run like a god in the live arena, yet play like a muppet and run worse than Mike Matusow and Matt Affleck combined online. I put this down to a few things, a little bit of luck live compared to close to nill online, multi-tabling online allows players to be more nitty abc poker theory based players and only find good spots for their chips.

The main difference i put it down to is the standard of overall play. At the casinos $1/$2 are the lowest limits where you can find any type of poker player from beg to pro and throw in the degens and drunken weekend gamblers. You dont need any luck, because you can get your chips in as 70%+ fav many times in a session, you just need to avoid bad luck. Yet $1/$2 is 6 stakes from the lowest games played online, of course you still find the occasional fish happy to stick their chips in on 20-35% draws but they are very few and far between compared to the casinos.

9 live tourneys and 3 cash places is pretty good. I just want to ask how many players per tourney ? And shortstack or deepstack ?

If You live in Latvia, then come to Estonia on 17.06.2011 and play with 999 other players LIVE simultaneously. There are still many open seats. If You can get to the final table on that tourney, then there is definitely some skill involved (besides luck).

My point: Try some bigger tourneys and see if it's luck or skill

EDIT: Webpage of the event. PS! Check out the massive table layout on main floor

http://www.triobetopen.com/en

to setka8:

Normally there are about 60-70 players. Yesterday there were 59. I try to play only deepstack, because I feel more comfortable. One tourney I play is freezout with 7000 chips and 10/20 starting blinds, other is 1 rebuy (I always rebuy almost straight away) which gives me 6000 chips and 10/20. Mind you that structure is very aggressive and blinds go up pretty fast.

Tallinn sounds fine to me, but I am not really concentrating on live tournament play for now. I am doing live tourneys justs for experience and because I have a sponsor (is he called stakee or I am stakee? ). I would not risk my own money in tourneys now. I really need money right now, because I am unemployed (OK, you can call me pro poker player if you like that better) and cash games gives me more stability. Then again, if my sponsor will cover the costs, I will be happy to try it out.

Oh just run itno this blog nice to see Latvians here and blogging ♦ I play alot but Live very rearly. Gona follow your blog. Turies!

OK, now this is officially not normal...

I won my first LIVE tournament!!!

This time no deals, I won fair and square including destroying my last opponent in HU. Tbh, winning hand was just lucky, but I felt I deserved it after the day before yesterday:

I was on BU with 23o, made my usual 3BB raise and flop came J22. He called my cbet on flop. K came on turn, I bet he raised, I reraised AI, he called. He showed 28o. It looked like a split pot, but 3 came on river and I made full house He was very, very pissed off, didn't even shake hands...

This time I was just lucky the whole tournament. I won two big pots with 73o from blinds, when (yes, two times!) turn was 7 and river 3 and in both cases there was A on flop and villains were checking with pair of aces. It was hilarious Second time I actually told him that I have 73 again, but he did not believe me and called my river bet!

I also won 3 all-ins with total underdogs. One of them was K9o against AKs - I got K-high flush!

So far in 10 tournaments I have cashed 4 times and never lower than 3rd place I have invested 515 in entry fees and got back 2050 It seems like a fantastic result and I should be at the top of 2nd quarters ratings now

Btw, how do you calculate ROI? And what is considered a good ROI?:f_cool:

Hello Silversag,
your profit is 3 times your investment so your ROI is 300% and if you can maintain that I am moving to Latvia lol.
Usually your profit is smaller than your investment and then you would divide your investment by your profit giving you X, then divide 100 by X to give you your ROI percentage.
Good luck Gordy

Originally posted by gordy1957
Hello Silversag,
your profit is 3 times your investment so your ROI is 300% and if you can maintain that I am moving to Latvia lol.
Usually your profit is smaller than your investment and then you would divide your investment by your profit giving you X, then divide 100 by X to give you your ROI percentage.
Good luck Gordy

Thanks, mate! I will certainly try maintaining it, even though I suspect it is not possible in a long run I will keep posting my results here

Here comes another eventful month. Lets start with the graph. This month it actually shows a sum of 3 limits - mostly NL20 in the first part, then mostly NL25 at the end with a bit of NL10 on Triobet thrown in for good measure. I am happy with the overall result, but I am a bit worried about the red line - it has started to move down a bit too steep for my liking. I guess I was beeing too conservative with 3bets in second part of the month... and my PT3 icon has changed from moneybag to eagle which means that I have lost my aggression (still in the TAG limits though)

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I did not play my planned 30 000 hands, but I have excuse - I was playing live tournaments 2 days a week and was finishing at 7:00 AM, so even my next day was basically destroyed, because I was sleepy and exausted. Need to figure out what to do with my schedule...

I also didn't post any hands for evaluation and deserve a proper spanking for that. Did quite a lot of quizzes, but did not finish at 100% any of them. Need to work on that too.

I gradually moved from NL20 to NL25 and was doing OK, so I will stay there. My bankroll has finally exceeded 1000€ mark and is 1035€, with a little help from rakeback.

I am still not quite sure how to manage my live tournament winnings. In just one month playing live tourneys I have doubled my lifetime winnings! I have won a total of 1580$ live and 1600$ online

I made some payments, returned some debts, had a great night out and bought a pair of sexy shoes formy GF... The rest is now on hold. I have opened a special bank account, where I plan to keep my poker money, so I don't have my whole bankroll in just one poker room, but I still need to figure out how to manage it? Should I keep both bankrolls together? Or should I keep live and online moneys separate?

Game plan for May:
.
Main task - keep playing NL25 and stay in that limit
Play at least 30 000 hands (it will still be my target)
Post at least 10 hands for evaluation (no excuses this month)
Finish at least 5 quizzes at 100% score
Spend a minimum of 1 hour every day just learning (quizzes, videos, hand analysis)

I decided to risk it and try out NL100 on PokerStars after my friend convinced his sponsor to stake me too. I don't know what they are thinking, but after comparing all the pros and cons I decided - what the hell, lets give it a shot!

On my first day I played only 275 hands, adjusting HUD, geting used to new poker room and interface. Won one and lost one all-in with AK, didn't complete any of the draws and ended up minus 118$. All in all I did not have a feeling that I am being outplayed... at least not for now But then again - 275 hands is not really a sample, is it?

And yes, ofc I registered a record pot 218$ and record win from that pot - 115$. That felt good...

Originally posted by SilverSag
OK, now this is officially not normal...

I won my first LIVE tournament!!!

This time no deals, I won fair and square including destroying my last opponent in HU. Tbh, winning hand was just lucky, but I felt I deserved it after the day before yesterday:

I was on BU with 23o, made my usual 3BB raise and flop came J22. He called my cbet on flop. K came on turn, I bet he raised, I reraised AI, he called. He showed 28o. It looked like a split pot, but 3 came on river and I made full house He was very, very pissed off, didn't even shake hands...

This time I was just lucky the whole tournament. I won two big pots with 73o from blinds, when (yes, two times!) turn was 7 and river 3 and in both cases there was A on flop and villains were checking with pair of aces. It was hilarious Second time I actually told him that I have 73 again, but he did not believe me and called my river bet!

I also won 3 all-ins with total underdogs. One of them was K9o against AKs - I got K-high flush!

So far in 10 tournaments I have cashed 4 times and never lower than 3rd place I have invested 515 in entry fees and got back 2050 It seems like a fantastic result and I should be at the top of 2nd quarters ratings now

Btw, how do you calculate ROI? And what is considered a good ROI?:f_cool:

Some very professional player HU against you. Were they all so pro? 28o preflop call is so EV+ ♦

Originally posted by Zhusy
Some very professional player HU against you. Were they all so pro? 28o preflop call is so EV+ ♦

Well... I am quite new to my country's poker scene, so I don't know much about anyone, but from what I heard afterwards, he is making a living from poker and also runs a (how do you call them properly?) poker affiliate website, so he was definitely not a beginner.

Then again... all my HU knowledge comes from 3 pages in Andrew Seldmans book and few times when I was opening new tables on NL25 and had to play HU for a couple of rounds until table fills up Given that and fact that I was clearly outplaying him, he definitely was not very good at HU play And I also heard some of the guys laughing at him about that call with 28o and saying that he deserved to lose with plays like that.

As an update:

I have been unable to finish in the money in last 3 tournaments in a row. That's my longest losing streak so far However... all three times I lost by preflop all-in against pocket AA, so at least part of it is bad luck

Wanted to post this for long time, but remembered only now. It is a saying between russian poker players and sounds much better in Russian, but even translated it still is, in my opinion, a perfect description of poker's true nature:

POKER IS A GAME OF PATIENCE AGAINST CURIOSITY

.

Hey,

I just read through your blog. It was inspiring to see your commitment to improvement and your organization.

Good luck at the tables,

J

First, thanks tp Jg0r8 for nice words It is always good to see someone appreciating your efforts Now to business:

It has been a busy month for me and it is time to round it up. The full review will come in a couple of days, of course, but before that I would like to tell another story (Sorry about the wall-of-text, I tried to keep it short, but still left many things out)

As some of you may have noticed from another thread, I have found a sponsor (or rather he has found me), who was willing to stake me. Sounds good, you might say. Not really, as it appears. The problem is that he wanted me to play in NL100 on PokerStars. Being an average winner in NL25 on Boss Media, I figured that would be out of my league, but for some reason he figured it will not be a problem. So, after giving it some thought, and consulting with you guys here in forums, I decided to try it out. Well... it's not really my money, is it? As we all know too well, even totally dumb fish get lucky sometimes, so aspiring poker pro, with some knowledge and some brains should have much better chance of surviving, right? The following graph shows what happened:

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Before you jump to early conclusions, I would like to add one thing - I was so unlucky in this run that even after analysing my plays, I am not entirely sure how much of this is bad luck and how much - my lack of skill. PokerStars did not give me a chance to try NL100. They crushed me before I even realised wtf I am doing there... ♠_evil:

Just to give you an idea, here are some facts about this short stint - 32 out of 34 times I had AK and got to see the flop I did not hit it! One time I flopped A, but there was also J and villain had JJ, other time I flopped K, but villain was slowplaying AA. Guess what happened... ♠_evil:

Overall impressions:

- now I know why they call it NitRing instead of FullRing - "seen flop"percentage is 3x times lower than on NL25 in Boss Media.

- They say "they respect your raises there"... TOTALLY FALSE! They see raises only as a reason to reraise and bluff you out of pot! I remember catching only one bluff in these 10K hands (my redline is flat, because they did not pay off my good hands)

- the amount of suckouts seems to be totally unproportionate. It seems that everyone who calls down a flop c-bet with A on board with some kind of pocket pair, hits a set until river ♠_evil:

- It seemed that I am getting unproportionally large amount of very good starting hands, just so I can lose more money post flop.

- nobody seems to care about pot odds and opponent catching flush or straight - they just keep slowplaying sets and twopairs ♠_evil:

All in all I failed miserably... I don't think I learned anything and I think this experiment only lowered my self confidence, because now I am not even sure if I am playing right my NL25 games. Maybe I am just running hot...

In the end I told my sponsor that I am quitting (he was willing to give me more money, because it is only 10K hands and I could have only bad luck) and that I think this is not only bad luck, but also that I am being outplayed. I hope he will appreciate my attitude and will be willing to stake me later on... if need arises. However, I have to say that I did not like the feeling... It feels like I am working for someone and I don't like that. I want to play poker for myself...

P.S. I don't think I will be returning to cash games on PokerStars any time soon... I will be scared... ♠_evil: I will actually erase these hand histories from my database, so I forget them asap software is absolutely great, though

The beach season has started in Latvia and it becomes very difficult to be disciplined and stick to your normal habits, that is why I am posting this with some delay, but hey, nobody is perfect, right?

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As you can see, this has not been a perfect month... It was very chaotic, I did not manage to fulfill my game plan, etc. The reason for this has been mentioned in previous post - I was playing NL100 as well and was really struggling with time and mood swings. Big losses in NL100 influenced my play in my "normal" limit as well...

So what happened in May?
- I have managed to stay in NL25 and I have increased my table count from 4 to 6. I will stick to 6, because this is maximum amount of tables I can play and still follow my opponents
- In total I played more than 30 000 hands, so I guess that part is fullfilled too, even though part of it was not my regular limit
- I did do some quizzes, but I can't finish on 100% a single one, even the beginner ones... ♠_evil:
- I did not post any hands for evaluation. I think I have some problem with people pointing to my mistakes... need to work on that ♠_evil:
- My bankroll has reached new record - €1330 and I will start to withdraw some of it to my new bank account, which I opened specially for poker. It will help me to organise my money, I wont have all eggs in one basket in case something happens with poker room and I will have funds readily accessible (no need to wait days for withdrawals)

Game plan for June:
.
Main task - keep playing NL25 and improve the winrate
Play at least 30 000 hands or 120 hours
Post at least 10 hands for evaluation
Finish at least 5 quizzes at 100% score
Spend a minimum of 1 hour every day just learning (quizzes, videos, hand analysis)

My live tournament play has returned to more expected results - I have not won a single tournament in May and I played 8 of them. I guess beginners luck is over and now all what's left is skill... I am still in profit, though

I have also made a small deposit of $30 to my PokerStars account and I will be starting to practice MTT's. In the beginning the lowest limits possible (up to $1 buy-in) and no rebuys, just to get the feel of it.

So far PokerStars continues to treat me like shit I have played 12 tournaments and lost them all hopelesly - I have lost every single all-in Actually, I am very close to writing my first "online poker is rigged" thread :f_biggrin:, because my experience with PokerStars has been very far from normal so far... ♠_evil:

lol sick roll busto.rly spew money.ha u might say they arent urs but they kinda were.i mean whats the point to jump from early came on nl 20 to nl 100??i think it would've been much better investment if u'd played nl 50 for example.anyways gl with ur way to the top and ur live poker

Originally posted by StabiBossa
lol sick roll busto.rly spew money.ha u might say they arent urs but they kinda were.i mean whats the point to jump from early came on nl 20 to nl 100??i think it would've been much better investment if u'd played nl 50 for example.anyways gl with ur way to the top and ur live poker

What's the point? The point was to make some money I guess they both thought that because I read books and learn poker then I am definitely good enough for NL100 And I could, just could, get lucky after all, right? We all see fish getting incredibly lucky every day. It could have happened to me as well. Little bit of luck, little bit adjusting, some learning and I could be just fine. They did not even want me to win, they just wanted me to break even and grind for rakeback. It just did not happen...

Month of May has been like a rollercoaster ride so far: 50up, 50up, 30up, 150down, 100up good thing I am up so far Today was a good day - I won €100 and had quads 4 times in 2000 hands! One of them actually paid off as well

Amidst all the action I registered a very nice hand, with a record pot of €74.24 and record net win of €41.19!!! I wish there were more hands like this... I think I never had 4-way all-in in a cash game before

Boss Media - €0.25 NL - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

UTG: €23.39
UTG+1: €12.20
MP: €10.21
MP+1: €3.56
Hero (LP): €33.22
CO: €30.05
BTN: €6.53
SB: €22.90
BB: €23.64

SB posts SB €0.12, BB posts BB €0.25

Pre Flop: (€0.37) Hero has A♦ A♠

fold, fold, MP calls €0.25, MP+1 calls €0.25, Hero raises to €1.37, CO calls €1.37, fold, fold, fold, MP calls €1.12, MP+1 raises to €3.56 and is all-in, Hero raises to €8.67, CO raises to €30.05 and is all-in, MP calls €8.84 and is all-in, Hero calls €21.38

Flop: (€74.24, 4 players) T♥ 6♣ T♠

Turn: (€74.24, 4 players) 7♦

River: (€74.24, 4 players) 8♦

Hero shows A♦ A♠ (Two Pair, Aces and Tens) (PreFlop 93%, Flop 98%, Turn 100%)
CO shows A♥ K♦ (One Pair, Tens) (PreFlop 7%, Flop 2%, Turn 0%)
Hero wins €71.24

You might think: "what the hell does weather has to do with poker?" Well, it might not seem so obvious at the first glance, but we are having a spell of very sunny and hot weather down here and, since it does not happen very often, I just have to go to the beach Which in turn means, that at the afternoon I am exausted from all the action and can't really concentrate on poker properly ♠_evil:

I am taking poker books with me to the beach, but having a naked and horny girlfriend next to me (beaches are so deserted that we can tan naked and have sex if we want) doesn't really help to concentrate either

So I am trying to learn poker in short pauses between swimming, tanning and making love... tough life...