Alex's Blog - MTTs $1-$3

So today was the first session, just over an hour. Played two SNGs, a $1.10 and a $0.60, there was very little traffic on sngs, which worried or disappointed me. As fishy as I imagined, 5th and 7th place though. But I feel I played well for such a long layoff. I don't think I've played a real poker session for almost an year.

Also played a mix of 0.01/0.02 and 0.02/0.04 cash tables, again because of the little traffic. Played around 5 tables at a time. Found a mix of fish and tight players, I had to rapidly recur to HEM, because I was noticing so much rotation in the tables, indeed the fish were getting swept out in no time, and the tables would immediately fill with 10/5 regulars, so I was constantly changing tables which was also annoying. But luckily there were some deepstacked megafish, and I was able to make my first double up of this comeback vs. a flush chasing fish with a $5 bigstack on a 0.01/0.02 table. Flopped a nut flush with AKs vs. a flush chasing fish with the dumb end of the flush, he has 34s for a lower flush.

So overall, despite the slow traffic and crappy software I'm liking William Hill, there is definitely money to be made there. I saw though that it's really hard to clear the free $50, I might have to deposit something.

OK, today was horrible, disconnections all the time. No idea if it's my connection or Ipoker. My connection is very stable so it would be strange. The tables were freezing up all the time. I played a round of SNGs for slight profit (1 1st and 1 2nd place out of 5 played). Then tried an MTT, totally fishy, but I didn't have time to be at the table the whole time. 47/324, 40 paid. Pretty soft MTT, but I doubt I'll play another one for now. I see I don't have the time right now to sit 4 hours at a table nonstop.

Then played some cash tables and one SNG, here the connection problems began. The tables were constantly freezing or resetting, totally unplayable. Had to close William Hill with my SNG running, and worse of all, I was on a table with two big stacked 90 VPIP fish and had to leave that one too when I closed the software .. gawd I was already drooling at the prospect of cuadrupling my stack at least. Next time I guess.

hey alex gl

Up slightly in a round of 6 sngs (3 2nd places). Finally beginning to "see" things on the table in this comeback. First two days I was a bit lost, and wasn't really seeing much except who's tight and who's a fish from VPIP/PFR. Still need a lot of fine tuning to do. SNG's are definitely profitable at William Hill. Just need to be a little more careful in some weird table setups and I'll be doing a pretty good ROI.

Then played some cash tables, mostly 0.01/0.02 today. 0.02/0.04 was totally dry. All tables like at 10-15%. Up like 50 cents. Still not really "seeing" things on the cash tables. And also not getting the right cards at the right time so far, haven't really been able to exploit the high VPIP megafish yet.

So far it seems like William Hill points are the easiest points to get in any poker room I've played. Already got 200 in 3 days playing not that many tables in micros. The 1500 to clear the $50 pokerstrategy gave me should be a piece of cake. Should be clear in a week more or so. But I see to clear cash bonuses and stuff like that you need a ton more points then in other places.

Originally posted by dylboi011
hey alex gl

Thanks, I'll need it.

Hehehe, is that the right mindset?

I've always thought I've been shortchanged in luck in poker. Making a huge effort this time around to not even think about luck or lack of, I hope this is what my game was always lacking. I'm sure theoretically I'm not missing that much, certainly I'm not missing anything required to beat micros, with all I studied in the past.

Another average session. Slow traffic, barely 3 SNGs and some cash, with the addition of making the mistake of going to a PLO table. Got burned for like $10 in 30 hands. Definitely not making another venture into PLO for now. In SNG 1 1st place. Cash breakeven or very slight loss. Really not much to comment on.

Feeling quite more settled down on the tables. But the slow traffic is really a problem I see. When I clear the points for the U$S 50 I'll be switching site. If there is so little traffic in the micros, of which a ton is rockish players, I don't want to know what's coming in the next levels. Probably 9 rocks and me on a table lol.

Great, short session today. Didn't play at all this week till today, just didn't feel like it. Today I came in with the right foot evidently because I made money on every table, got the fish to pay up.

But made like $15 on 5 or 6 cash tables, mostly NL2. Chose some nice empty tables with a fish or two and ate up all the fishes $ with some patience and solid play. Back in the green now, above the $50 starting capital. Made back all the PLO losses from the other day. Almost 1/3 of the way to getting the required points.

Also passed 100 points here in pokerstrategy in just 4 sessions .. silver again .. not that I need it since I'm not planning on reading any articles or watching any videos for the moment.

Also played three $1 SNG's, just 1 2nd place, not that lucky there. Loved the one I got 2nd place in though, just owned that table from the bubble onwards .. but as usual in the headsup, my opponent saves his ass from elimination twice and ends up turning it around .. yeah the usual. But it still felt really good, felt like I played real solid.

Up $2 on the cash tables. Feeling pretty good. Had some tough spots today, folded every time though. Just seemed like trappy/weird situations.

On SNG breakeven, 2 2nd 1 3rd out of 7 SNG. Pretty unlucky yet again on the two 2nd's, seems to be a recurring theme from my earlier SNG career, seems like I'm always getting the short end of the stick in HU flip situations. Gonna try not to get worked up about it. I do feel like I'm playing super solid late SNG ball though, I'm owning tight tables and exploiting players according to their player type.

I like playing these short 1 hour or so sessions. So far so good I guess. I'm in the green, so that's a lot to say. Gonna do my best at keeping this up. I do feel pretty smart/veteranish in the tables .. kinda like "already saw that 1000 times before" when people try to bluff/trap, etc. Hopefully I'll start ramping up the results to back up my talk. Won't matter how much of a veteran I am if I don't produce the goods.

Good session. Played around an hour. Now making a solid profit in NL2 and NL4 on William Hill. I'm table selecting solidly and playing very well. I feel confident, I'm seeing all the stuff I should be seeing and my experience clearly is way superior to my opponents. I should keep crushing this level in this fishy site.

The big weakness is that I'm playing so little. This is the first session of the week. Poker is really like number 5 in my list of priorities right now. I guess I'm having fun most of all and in the process hopefully making a little money.

Had a really neat play today, vs. a fish, 36s bu, I raise fish calls OOP. I hit a 3 on super dry board, the bluffy fish fires away out of position I call. Turn brings two pair and FD for me, fish fires away I call. Best situation possible river completes my flush draw, but there are also four consecutive cards on the board, the fish bets, I instashove to get some momentum into the action and hope he instacalls with nut or dumb straight. HE DOES!! Haha. Can't take a stack any easier from someone then that. Fish is clearly on tilt now and remains on the table .. unfortunately he leaves after about 10 hands and I can't take another stack from him. ♠_frown:

Weird session today. Made $5. Haha, $7 of them in my last play of the session (was down $2 at that point). Got 22 utg in my last play on the last table I had open (with autopost ticked off to leave the table). Limped in instead of my usual raise with any pocket pair, on this table there were 3 huge fish including a semi-maniac one, so limp calling was a better option utg. I was pretty dissappointed to be leaving this table with no profit. Of course a 2-2-9 flop, for flopped quads , and in position vs. two fish, changes a lot! Too bad the maniac fish (in bb) only had $2 left (he had lost $13 like three plays before with a bluff), sb had 1010 and I was able to extract only $5 from him.

Anyway, wasn't an ideal session, except for the ending. I only played NL2 and NL10 tables, no SNGs this time, I'm dropping SNGs on this site. It was just one of those days where you just can't focus well and have that constant feeling that you're not seeing everything that's going on in the table and have a tough time deciding on the hard/tricky hands, instead of having that "feeling" before the time of the decision comes of what your opponent has.

This was the only session this week. I'm really playing too little. Oh well. But I'm enjoying it, it's nice to play with no pressure, and when you want to.

Played a couple of sessions this week, I think three sessions if I remember right. Overall down $7. Down $12 the first two, up $5 today. I've been playing well, but sometimes the fish hit. I feel good with my play the losing hands were all when preying on high vpip fish, who hit the usual bogus hands like unlikely two pairs. Even then, at least I limited my losses when I saw something weird was going on, I didn't lose a single full stack despite the suckouts, so that's a positive. I'm really being able to smell things well lately, so I guess this is all good long term.

Sample size is small, but I have some stats :

NL10 13.7/4.4 -17.9bb/100 overall down $6.50 370 hands
NL4 13.7/7.8 +48.97bb/100 overall up $9.07 460 hands
NL2 24.7/9.2 +24.7bb/100 overall up $9.12 1850 hands

I guess one can clearly conclude I'm playing scared money on NL4 and NL10, mainly because of my small br, and I know this. I'm so much looser on NL2. There I'm constantly looking to exploit high vpip fish and limping behind with a lot of connected suited and suited one gappers, etc. The low PFR in NL10 is weird, my PFR range is very solidly defined, I always raise the same things, so given the small sample size I could possibly be on some "bad luck" there, I've gotten few playable hands, or maybe increased aggressiveness of players has made me play less hands, but I haven't really noticed that. I guess we'll need a bigger sample to make a solid conclusion about why I'm losing money so far in NL10.

Oh, I was forgetting, I finished today's session at 1900 William Hill points, so I've cleared the 1500 required for the free $50 and I can now keep them. Willliam Hill points are ridiculously easy to get. I'll be VIP level 3 with the next session I play (2000 points), and I'm playing like once or twice a week on average and in microstakes (multitabling 6 tables at a time on average), so I can't imagine how many points low or mid stakes players rake in.

I've kept playing 2 or 3 sessions a week as of late. Can't remember how many sessions ago my last post was, I guess 3 sessions ago.

I keep having this consistent feeling like I'm doing something right, which I didn't do before. The results weren't really there the last week, but I kept feeling good. I thought I was consistently getting into profitable situations, and was even escaping traps or profitable situations gone bad with minimum loss. I don't think I've lost a single stack to stupidity/bad play/tilt so far. Actually I think I haven't lost a full stack at all since I've been back to playing. I'm reading unfrofitable situation very well and only focusing on the situations and opponentes I see as most profitable. Below is the graph so far.

As I've been saying, the volume is minimal. In a little more then a month playing, I've barely amassed 3K hands. Haha, I think I had days with more then 3K hands when I was playing a regular table/rush combo. As can be observed in the graph, really closed the session with a bang today. Right after I unticked "autopost" to start leaving the tables, I stacked fish for full stacks on an NL10 and NL4 table simultaneously. I was really on a downer luckwise, but I haven't been complaining as I used to, and I really like that. I think it's a very positive change. I only focus on accomplishments/good play and don't get worked up at all anymore about bad beats or bad streaks.

My big wonder is if I can replicate the calm and serenity with which I'm currently playing if I were grinding. The stress that comes with grinding and expecting poker revenue were definitely factors which screwed up my play in the past .. but I never did play as calmly as I'm playing right now.

Below are my stats numerically. As can be seen, the weird, apparent tightness I mentioned before in NL10 compared to NL5 NL4 and NL2. I initially atributed it to playing scared money because my bankroll was so small, but I been paying attention and now I'm leaning towards thinking it's bad variance. I'm just not getting the cards which are in my "normal" range, which is clearer in NL2, the biggest sample. For example in todays session I was paying attention, and indeed I was playing like 10/10 or 6/6 on most NL10 tables and much looser on the NL2 tables, statwise, but yes, I play the exact same ranges in both tables. I'm just not getting the cards in NL10 tables. Hell I'm even slipping in some looser steal situations because William Hill NL10 is so tightish regular plagued.

Any comments or leaks anyone spots relating to the graph or stats would be appreciated.

Short pleasant session, maybe like 30 or 45 minutes. Made some pocket change, stacked a couple short stacked fish. New all time BR high on William Hill after two weeks' slump.

Two things are for sure, playing on William Hill is mildly irritating, although profitable for sure. There are so many tight regulars one has to be scanning for new tables and changing tables constantly in the micros - I mean it's sickening how much one has to change tables in particular in low traffic hours which are in which I play the most - although for example today, which is an exception, I played in peak European hour, and although there were plenty of juicy looking tables there were horrible waiting lists on all of them. In fact any table with a spike in average $ or players per hand would instantly get a 5 player waiting list ♠_mad: and empty tables seemed to be very slow to fill up with fish. Also on this site most fish, like 90% of them don't reload and leave the table once losing their stack. There is also a horrible amount of short stacks, many times 8/10 players on a table. Anyway these are the cons of William Hill poker, but I am nevertheless happy with the site so far and enjoying play. The play level is very exploitable, just a ton of calling stationish fish, I mean I'm now even open limping out of position in some cases (small pocket pairs, suited connectors) when I know one of these fish will call .. it will then be easy to go to showdown without investing more or if I hit they almost always call a couple of streets.

Finally seems like I'm getting the poker bug again. Played 5 out of the 7 last days, around 3K hands this week. I think I'll be playing most days for the forseeable future and ramping up the volume. Might also begin to look for a sweat partner for NL10 on William Hill.

Couple of up and down days the last week, admitedly, including my first bad plays in this comeback. In one session I had a streak of like 3 very bad plays/decisions in a row. Can't remember the details, but they were clear folds if I had thought "what am I beating?" stuff like midpairs on boards with the a flush hitting on the river and the fish betting big on the river. Aside from that, the fish on this site are so predictable, 90% of the time they bet on turn and 99% of the time they bet on the river they've got the nuts or or close to the nuts. So there really is no reason to make bad decisions.

At least closed off the week with a good day, so I've been able to overcome my spell of bad play pretty quickly. Even stacked a regular today - KK vs. AA, I called his 3 bet, and flopped a nice K.

Nice short session .. left all the .. few .. tables I played with profit. Traffic really is a problem on William Hill. I did find out something today, there is HU NL holdem from NL2 onwards. Really weird. I think this is like the only site with HU tables under NL50, so I hadn't even thought about looking. So now I'm really pondering the possibility of heading down that path. I had really wanted to focus only on full ring NLH, but I always liked seeing HU videos so much, TwiceT's blog, etc. So the low traffic on full ring is really giving me a reason to dip a toe.

Anyway, below is my current graph. New alltime high on William Hill. I'm pretty proud of overcoming two downswings already - albeit so few buyins down I guess couldn't be really labeled a full blown downswing. But such small downswings in the past I think were the trigger of my huge extended downswings, so every mini-downswing I break by keeping my head in there I take as an accomplishment.

Current stats, the NL10 stats keep on looking worrying, but the sample size evidently is too small. I still think it's bad variance. The NL2 and NL4 stats, I think show an accurate picture of what I'm playing, like 18/10. That I have 7 PFR and NOT A SINGLE 3 bet in 1K hands really underlines how bad cards I must have been getting. If when I have 18/10 on NL10 I'm still losing money then I'd be worried, that would clearly indicate I'm playing bad or getting outplayed.

Played my first NL2 HU. Really pleasant experience. Came out with a few cents profit. Then went to Pokertableratings, and found out I played an uberregular with 220K hands HU and $600 profit on NL2 HU. I had the feeling from the start, it didn't take long for me to know he was good or one of the better regulars. But at no moment was I outmatched. I was however surprised at the odd playing style this guy had, and that he has made such a bold profit playing like that. The guy seemed to be raising random hands, limping or calling with tons of suited/connectors, and limping with monsters or other strong hands. He was capable of betting for thin value and calling for thin value up to the river. We both each won very interesting pots with high card and trash like that, caught failed draws with low pair, etc. Really was a pleasure to play against this guy, though, obviously, since the goal here is making money this was -EV. In the future I'll be checking pokertableratings before joining tables. I did a quick scan of the other players on other tables. There was little traffic, like 5 or 6 tables only, but apart from this veteran the rest of the players were fish with like 1 or 2K hands and big losses, so this was just bad luck I landed on the table with the veteran sitting on it waiting for the fish . So there is profitable material out there, but I will have to table select better in the future though. Nevertheless, this was very instructive and a nice confidence boost .. playing ala TwiceT really rules. Hahaha I was playing 60/55. Villain was playing 75/25.