Giving poker a try... [HU SNG inside]

All right boys and girls, my first week on this project is now over and just wanted to share some stats, thoughts and goals for you before moving forward.

:club:Real Life

I really enjoyed the past week and everybody that I saw noticed that straight away as I'm usually a pretty grumpy person. My gf actually told me that she'd never seen me that happy and that is actually quite true. I fell in love with London in 2009 when I was first here so the happier I have been in the last couple of years was this May when I found out that I got a job here and I could move in UK and start another chapter in my life.

Poker

I started playing last Monday not knowing exactly what to expect, you could see from my Husng graph since the beginning of the month that I wasn't doing that well until that point so I had really wanted to have a positive start so I could gain confidence in me really quick. It worked out for the best, I wasn't expecting to run that good right from the start and I do feel that my game improved a lot but I'm still making some mistakes at times that I just can't believe and they are more or less done against the weakest players.

First week stats

HU SNGs: 310
ROI%: 11.9%
ITM: 58.4%
Winnings: $259.02
Time Played: 40.2 hours
$/hr: $6.45

First week graph

:club:Short term plans and goals

First of all I would like to put in more volume in playing and studying poker. I still consider myself to be young, I'm 27 btw, and although I'm not 18 anymore I think that I should be able to sleep less that I'm currently doing. I would like to be able to start my day at earliest as possible everyday and since my gf is leaving the "house" at 8:30 in the morning I would like to start focusing on poker at 9am the latest. Today for example I put the alarm on at 8:30 considering that 6hours of sleep should be enough but couldn't get out of bed until 10am. I need to change that.

I now have 310 games played since the start of this project and I would really like to get at least 1000 under my belt before considering moving up the next level (the 15s). If things are going as planned I should be able to start on those around December 15th.

On another note I have a problem as my account at Stars is not tracked with pokerstrategy.com. Because I was playing on play money with my roommates at Uni I tried to create a new account now and contacted Stars before that as I needed to change the country anyway. They allowed me to do that and moved my history over to the new account and so I did manage to re-track it for a few days but after further investigation they removed my tracking. Unfortunately my Party account is not tracked as well so until Full Tilt gets back up I might have consider playing a bit at Mansion ps points and access to gold videos/articles, maybe developing my poker game on a different format on mansion as I don't think it would be realistic to play HUsng there, traffic seems way to low. Anyway, searched the ps videos for HUsng on the gold level and the 3 of them available are videos that I've already seen so I'm not in a hurry to deposit anything on Mansion just yet.

I didn't manage to write everything that I wanted to do here but I feel that the post is too long already so I will continue at another time.

Take are and good luck ♠_biggrin:
Stefan

"Add Thread to Favorites"

i will be watching you.... ♠_cool:

gl with your try.

@meyerlein25: thank you, I hope to keep this interesting.

Yesterday was not that good profit-wise; I think the most I've been up the whole day was something like 1 buy-in and finished the day around -6 buy-ins which doesn't make me that happy but anyway not that disappointed about my game overall and also very happy about my volume.

Stats from Monday

Tourneys: 62
ROI%: -10.3%
ITM: 46.8%
Winnings: -$44.82
Time Played: 6.8 hours
$/hr: -$6.58

I have to get back to playing now, I have made plans for some drinks with a few of my old colleagues from work so got to get the volume in by evening.

Cheers,
Stefan

Hello boys and girls,

This week started of very poorly for me and yesterday I have managed to "achieve"two personal records for me, as far as I know. Unfortunately non of them was a positive thing

:spade:I have lost 13 HU SNG games in a row, something that I'm pretty sure never happened before, so I will remember this

:spade:I have lost 11 HU SNG games in a row versus the same player which I know for sure it will a record hard to beat.

About the second one, I was playing this guy, who I didn't had any info about and who seemed to be such a weak player. I usually stop after a few games lost if the player clearly had an edge on me or if he has a certain style that tilts me a lot and cannot adjust to. But this player didn't fall in any of those categories, he seemed a bad-average player. None the less, he always seemed to catch one of his 5 outs when we got in on the flop, when every flip, every 70:30, 60:40, 40:60 and so on preflop. I won't post here hands cause I don't really want to moan to much, it's just poker and it was something that I needed to deal with. Of course I was expecting that the second I will win one game against him he will quit playing with me, wasn't quite true, I manage two get two wins at the end before he finally decided to leave.

I have to post the graph for yesterday cause I want to remember this in the future, in case I break any more personal records

If you look at the graph, my 13 games battle against one opponent basically decided my day, if I were to remove those games it would came to an average day, but anyway, enough about that.

Stats from Tuesday

Tourneys: 49
ROI%: -10.0%
ITM: 46.9%
Winnings: -$34.34
Time Played: 4.9 hours
$/hr: -$6.98

I'm still feeling in a good mood about this and I am convinced things will turn around today/tomorrow but I plan to focus more on studying the game vs playing it these couple of days - might not get 50 a day but will aim for as many as possible anyway.

Take care,
Stefan

Hi guys,

Things didn't completely turned around yesterday but I am at least back on the winning side, so that's good enough for me at the moment. Btw, I was about 10 buy-ins under EV on yesterday which should be a good thing but in the same time I'm not sure how relevant is the EV line for SNGs... basically you can get EV of over the the maximum you can win on a particular game and that's sounds a bit weird for me. Or maybe I'm not thinking this through, who knows..

So, due to change of circumstances, mainly because my gf decided to go shopping after work and I had my last opponent who kept playing me, I managed to get in the decent volume for yesterday as well, although I was more focused on studying.

Stats from Wednesday

Tourneys: 55
ROI%: 4.6%
ITM: 54.5%
Winnings: $17.60
Time Played: 8.3 hours
$/hr: $2.11

It's now the end of the month and I have 476 games in 10 days under my belt since the start of this project with a ROI of 5.9% and ITM rate of 55.3%.

I just want to ask here, in case more experienced HU SNG players read this, what is a decent ROI/ITM rate that a player can expect playing 1 table, turbo, husng at these low limits. I think an ITM rate of 60% should be decent. Is that too high or too low? I'm assuming it should be higher if you play the regular (non turbo ones) and lower if you multitable. But for my conditions above, is 60% decent (achievable)?

Please let me know what you think of this before I go ahead and spam TwiceT's and Collin's blogs with these sort of questions.

Thanks and good luck to everybody,
Stefan

London is great

Imo don't update your scores daily. Weekly or even monthly is enough. There is no significance in such small sample sizes.

Also, start posting hands and thoughts regularly, I am sure that way you will get way more discussions going with other HU Sng Players on your stakes. You and your blog followers don't learn anything from daily $ updates, but from posted hands and strategy discussions.

GL and HF with grinding HU-SNG!

Originally posted by fanegreu
I have lost 13 HU SNG games in a row, something that I'm pretty sure never happened before, so I will remember this

That is what happens when you run superhot for longer time

Hi guys,

@TwiceT, your probably right, no point in daily stats - sample is too low and I will try to take your advice about posting hands and writing down my thoughts.

London is great, and even though the thought of moving back to Romania and start my poker journey over there has crossed my mind as the cost of life is so much cheaper I don't think I am able to leave this city so soon.

@daun666, you can say it's variance, you can say it's tilt, but still, if I play 13 games in a row now and start shoving every hand I still don't believe I can lose them all :). But yeah, it happens. All you need to do is work, work, work

Cheers,
Stefan

Hey guys,

You know those players that are kinda loose-passive and pretty exploitable post flop, when you can get value from your best hands and when they will let you know exactly when they've hit something big..

Well, a situation occurred a few days ago, that got stuck on my mind. I was playing one of these players and at some point during the first levels of the match, this hand happened.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 7 Tournament, 15/30 Blinds (2 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) (t1750)
BB (t1250)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Q, Q
Hero bets t90, BB raises to t150, Hero raises to t1750 (All-In), BB calls t1100 (All-In)

Flop: (t2500) 6, 10, 9 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: (t2500) A (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t2500) 4 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t2500

Now, when he min 3bet me there, I actually paused for a bit thinking what should I do, my initial reaction being of course to shove as he will call very often there in my opinion from what I've seen from him. The reason for which I pause was that he was such a bad player, and even though I knew that most probably I am ahead here I didn't really wanted to get it all in pf where she actually has some chance.. I mean, I put him on any pocket pair and basically any ace with AK-AT being most likely but didn't exclude the possibility of him having some A5 hand which still has 30% equity.

So what I'm trying to ask here is, do you ever consider playing smaller pots preflop against players that you consider weaker when you're holding something like AT+, TT-QQ and things like that? Do you ever feel that if you are shoving AKs,QQ you are loosing some of your edge? I mean these are turbo games and you don't really have the time to wait for a lot better spots so I'm not sure I could ever do it...

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

P.S.: I'm still new at this posting hands thing so if anyone could let me know exactly how do you take a hand from HEM1 and what converter/options should I use it will be greatly appreciated.

Originally posted by fanegreu
So what I'm trying to ask here is, do you ever consider playing smaller pots preflop against players that you consider weaker when you're holding something like AT+, TT-QQ and things like that? Do you ever feel that if you are shoving AKs,QQ you are loosing some of your edge? I mean these are turbo games and you don't really have the time to wait for a lot better spots so I'm not sure I could ever do it...

I just 4bet shove, AA-QQ I pretty offten just call 3bet and play post or if 3bet is small I 4bet like 2,5x.

Hello boys and girls,

The second week of this project is over now and it's time to make some plans and set some goals for the end of the year. But first let's take a look and see how this week went

Stats from Week 2

Tourneys: 341
ROI%: 4.6%
ITM: 54.5%
Winnings: $109.12
Time Played: 45.3 hours
$/hr: $2.41

Obviously, it wasn't so good at my first week and I am specifically not so thrilled about my ITM rate for this week. I know that the sample is not huge but still I think I've lost my concentration on many games this week and made a lot of mistakes again..

So, my graph after 651 games since the beginning of this project looks like this

I wouldn't say is too bad but I am a bit disappointed with myself and I know I could have done better. My bankroll currently stands at around $600, which gives me the option of moving to the 15s but how can I do that when I'm not happy with how I play at the moment? I don't want to go and play at the 15s just I could have the 'opportunity' to move back down afterwards. I definitely don't want to play the 7s further than this week but don't feel like I'm ready to start today yet, maybe I i will take some shots one of these days just to get a feel for the opponents, although I am 90% sure they are pretty much the same.

On another note, I was looking at the PokerStars VIP Stellar Rewards program and I want to get 5000 VPP by end of this year so I can take down $100 bonus in total. I have around 1800 at the moment so I need to get at least 3200 by end of the year which will give me goldstar status as well. I can't achieve that playing the 7s but should be doable if I move to the 15s soon.

:club:Short term plans and goals

1. I need to focus more on my game and leave aside all those exterior distractions like emails, sport sites, pokerstrategy, facebook and who knows why. I usually close evertything down when I start playing but somehow I end up opening at least one of them at some point during my session. I need to STOP doing that. It's not good for my bankroll -> not good for my health

2. Switch to 15s once I'm happy with point 1.

3. Reach at least 5000 VPP by end of year --> get gold star status --> more FPPs

4. Start marking questionable hands during play and posting them here for discussion/analyzing

:club:Miscellaneous
Played the 50K lottery yesterday as well as probably most of you did. I was out on ~101k place. Only played a couple of hands, got it in as favorite each time so I'm happy about that. But anyway, it was kind of a long shot and still too cheap not to take a shot. Before I went to sleep I opened the tourney again when there were 30 players still in and I watched it till the end as Kaitz20, one of the coaches here was still in finished on the second place. Congrats to him again.

All right, that's it for now, time to start the 3rd week of my poker life

Good luck to you all ♠_thumbsup:
Stefan

Hello boys and girls,

Things couldn't go any worse for me at the moment or at least I hope they won't get any worse anytime soon. I had some personal issues on Monday which tilted me a lot and played like the most poorest poker I am capable of -> Monday was my day to forget, lost more than 10 buy-ins which is really bad especially at this limit. I thought that I will be over it starting Tuesday, the personal issues were fixed in the meantime, but no, I kept playing bad and bad and bad. The several times I tried to concentrate and making the best decision I could make I kept getting outdrawn and then the tilt started again . To sum everything up, my graph playing the 7s this week looks like this

The volume is so poor as well but I didn't play that much yesterday as I had a few meetings across the day plus dinner/drinks with a few friends in the evening so not that much time for poker.

I also gave some shots at the 15s but just a few games, around 10 probably, doesn't seem to be any difference and even though I'm not playing my best at the moment I still plan to switch to 15s at the beginning of next week.

Yeah... so, since poker is all that I have at the moment I will continue to try and give all my best on the table, to re-watch some of the old videos, try some new ones and re-read some of the books. I have to succeed one way or the other and I know that it's all up to me.

For now, I want to hear your opinion about a couple of hands

1. PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 7 Tournament, 15/30 Blinds (2 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) (t1385)
BB (t1615)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 5, K
Hero calls t15, BB bets t105, Hero calls t75

Flop: (t210) 4, K, 6 (2 players)
BB bets t150, Hero calls t150

Turn: (t510) K (2 players)
BB bets t60, Hero calls t60

River: (t630) Q (2 players)
BB bets t480, Hero calls t480

Total pot: t1590

It was the first time I played this guy and pretty much early in the game. My main question is about the river call. Should I have raised there? Where there any hands worse that could have called me except for a Q obv? Now looking back at the hand I pretty much think that a raise would have been better as the only thing that could had me beat as played was a better K or QQ, I don't think he could ever had played 44 or 66 in that way.

Obviously, if you think I've made big mistakes on flop/turn please let me know.

2. PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 7 Tournament, 10/20 Blinds (2 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) (t1540)
BB (t1460)

Preflop: Hero is SB with J, 6
Hero bets t50, BB calls t30

Flop: (t100) J, 6, 8 (2 players)
BB bets t60, Hero raises to t240, BB raises to t520, Hero raises to t1490 (All-In), BB calls t890 (All-In)

Turn: (t2920) 10 (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t2920) A (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t2920

No reads, the 3rd hand in the game, would you ever fold vs unknown there?

First hand.
Kx suited is strong enougt to open raise pre.
His line seems weird here and if you think he is betting Q than raise as there are more Qx in his range than Kx.

Second hand.
No I am not folding there, I play the same as you.

First hand:
I would have raised on the turn.
Because the small bet (60 in a pot of 510) I would think he might WANT you to raise people sometimes do this when they have a monster.

If you raise the turn and he pushes I'd fold. If he just calls I'd think you're pretty strong here. But by just calling the turn you get no info at all. And you have to call the riverbet too...

Thanks guys for your replies. It's always nice to see what somebody else will do in certain spots.

@Joshua13, I agree that sometimes people bet small to induce a bluff/raise but I can't really put him on a monster there. I mean the probability that he has the case K is so small and not sure if he would have raise 44 or 66 pf oop. I think most of the time he's betting small to get a cheap river as he is afraid I will be bigger if he checks. I guess I could have put in a small raise though, something that he will call with AQ-AT there.

On the river, as daun666 said there are more Qx in his range so shoving would have probably been better.

what did he have?

Originally posted by Joshua13
what did he have?

He did had a Q, QJ

Hey guys,

Two more hands for the day

1. PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 7 Tournament, 20/40 Blinds (2 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t1770)
Hero (BB) (t1230)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 10, K
SB bets t120, Hero calls t80

Flop: (t240) 5, 2, 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks

Turn: (t240) 10 (2 players)
Hero bets t180, SB calls t180

River: (t600) 8 (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks

Total pot: t600
Main pot: t600 between SB and Hero, won by Hero

Results:
SB mucked Q, A (high card, Ace).
Hero had 10, K (one pair, tens).
Outcome: Hero won t600

Villain is pretty passive and I'm not sure he would have called worse hands here. Should I bet the river, small or halfpot?

And the hand that made me feel good about myself ♠_cool:

2. PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 7 Tournament, 10/20 Blinds (2 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) (t1780)
SB (t1220)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 8, 7
SB bets t40, Hero calls t20

Flop: (t80) Q, 2, 7 (2 players)
Hero checks, SB bets t40, Hero calls t40

Turn: (t160) 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, SB bets t140, Hero calls t140

River: (t440) A (2 players)
Hero checks, SB bets t1000 (All-In), Hero calls t1000

Total pot: t2440
Main pot: t2440 between Hero and SB, won by Hero

Results:
SB had J, 8 (high card, Ace).
Hero had 8, 7 (one pair, sevens).
Outcome: Hero won t2440

I had absolutely no reads on Villain except the fact I new he was a winning player on a large sample size. I think he has seen just one hand that I played where I cbet my middle pair on the flop and fired on the turn again. So basically I could assume he knew I was not a total fish. Preflop I think my call of the minraise is standard vs most players. On the flop I check call the bet as I don't want to lead and face a raise or cr and face a 4bet or something liket that vs an unknown. On the turn I kinda felt that he felt weakness on my flop call and that's why he bet larger on the turn to try and get me to fold then.

On the river the A came and I certainly knew for sure that a) the A is for sure in his range b) he can use that as a scare card. But then, we shoves, I don't think he thinks he can get value from me by shoving an A there as I will probably call only better. So yeah, after I thought about it for 15 sec I decided that I might be wrong but if I am I still need to see if he is capable of doing that play

Moral of the story: I would have never made that call if I hadn't been paying attention to the hand, if I was watching a video on youtube or reading a some forum posts in the same time.

Hi guys,

Another week has passed and although it was a loosing week as you can imagine, one - it was not that bad after all and two, it taught me a lot of things in a small period of time. I'm still not completely happy with my overall game but I do feel I am fore focused during the games and that I'm constantly watching my opponents reactions and try to adjust to them. One thing that I didn't considered before in heads up were the cards, I always thought that you can run good or run bad depending on how often do you win the flips the 60:40s, the 70:30s, the 40:60s and so on but I never took into consideration the fact the sometimes you actually are card dead. I mean, a turbo HU SNG s very quickly and if you don't get a hand at all is pretty hard to fight against decent opponents or even against maniacs. But the most important thing I've learned is that you have to always believe in yourself because in HU, confidence > all.

So, to sum everything up, this is my graph for the past week

Stats from Week 3

Tourneys: 270
ROI%: -4.4%
ITM: 48.1%
Winnings: -$97.40
Time Played: 31.2 hours
$/hr: -$3.12

Yes, it was a horrible week volume wise, this was mainly due to the fact that I had a lot of extra activities on Thursday basically that day was "lost" for poker. This graph is for all HUSNG I played this week so it includes the 15s as well. Basically where that matters the most is at the end of the week (see the yellow dot), where I played around 30 games only on the 15 level to end the week. I did that because one, I wanted to cut my loses for the week and two, I was confident enough that I could do that as I was slightly regaining confidence in myself.

So, even though I'm not fully satisfied with my game and did not reach the 1000 games target on the 7s before moving up I will still move to 15s starting today. I do have the necessary bankroll for those and I still need to deposit £190 to take full advantage of the first deposit bonus in case I bust my bankroll but I'd like to think that it won't happen at the 15s

I might still play at the 7s from time to time but at the moment my instincts tell me not to get back so I'd like to post here a graph of the 879 games I played at the 7s level in the past 3 weeks

Stats for the 7's

Tourneys: 879
ROI%: 2.9%
ITM: 53.7%
Winnings: $181.24
Time Played: 112.3 hours
$/hr: $1.61

Not to happy about these numbers, but nothing I can do, I don't want to keep playing here just to make the numbers look pretty. I'm pretty confident I could get a bigger ITM rate if I will keep playing at this level but I'd rather use my time on the 15s from now on.

As a side note, I noticed that there are 5+5+0.5 HU tournaments every hour at pokerstars where you get $5 every time you eliminate some one and 8 places are paid. I did played 2 of them this last week, eliminate two opponents in the first one and busted vs a fish in the second one. They did look interesting enough but not very good for me volume wise as there's a lot of waiting around and I'm not actually capable of playing something else in the same time.

All right guys, that's it for now, three more weeks left from this year, hopefully I can get at least 500 games going at the new level by 2012. 15's here I come ♠_cool:

Good luck to everybody!
Stefan

Hello Stefan!
I've read with interest your adventure in poker's world and i like that you have confidence and try to make a living from poker game.
I am also thinking to make a small deposit, but enough to respect bankroll management, and start playing NL Holdem Heads-Up games based on 2players.
Dont know much about Heaven Poker, but i've decided to go there and search for fish.
On a side note, i'm also from Romania and will happily watch your road in poker. Good luck on achieving your goals!