Playing Catch up

Good start to the goal. Managed to hit my bonus volume target of 10k hands. I found the whole experience of playing 2k hands+ per day a bit overwhelming (I like to play 5 days a week leaving 2 days off for other things). By the 3rd/4th day my results definitely took some sort of hit.

Current BR approx: $4500

Thanks to this last weeks experience I know that pure volume is not the best way to increase the bankroll therefore this weeks target will be a little different.

Goals for the week:
Set up desktop to better handle when people join the tables.
play 1 opponent at a time (unless fish) play 2 tables max.
Mark all unsure hands add gameflow notes at end of session.
Analyze yesterdays marked hands. Post any unsure hands to forum.
5k hands

Bonus: 7.5k hands

I wont be battling for nl100 tables until I hit $5k+ at the end of a week, so I can review how to best approach it.

gl with your goals, i am gonna follow!

Good luck with your blog

screenshot windows

upload image online

Ran pretty hot this week. I managed to get 2 2 table matches vs regs lasting 1k hands each. They went very well (I managed to win 14 bi in one of them ♠_evil: )

My desktop setup is now a lot clearer. I know where everything needs to be as well as keeping all tables relatively similar sizes. Regarding my other goals, they were a mixed bag of results. I managed to only play 1 reg at a time but often found myself with 3/4 games going and feeling unable to quit.

The main problem is when you are playing for top tables on stars or king of the hill on other sites, If you are constantly leaving whenever you get action it gives more incentive for regs to continually sit you hoping you decide to leave. That's why I decided to change my goal on the go rather than wait to evaluate the next week. I think I was lucky to have it go so well though, in the future I will try to stick to initial plans as it only lasts a week.

Analyzing hands before playing helped a lot to get into a much better mindset straight away. Before it would often take up to 100 hands to get into it. I also hit my bonus target of hands very easily, thanks in part to playing double the tables I had intended.

Current Br approx: $6300

[x]5k + 0.5/1 battling

This next week I will start taking on the 100nl tables rather than the 50nl ones. I plan to continue to play these until I hit $4k and need to move back down, or hit $10k and have a crack at 200nl. This gives me a nice 23 bi shot.

The goal for the week is to establish myself on this limit with as few hiccups as possible. This should mean volume goals go out the window to be replaced with mindset and study goals.

Goals for the week:
Find a reliable free screen recording program.
Make 1 hour video each day vs best reg I can find on stars (if anything thinks that's a bad idea given i'm Just moving up I will explain the math behind it)
Analyze each video before playing the next day.
Play a minimum of 700 hands per day (3.5k+ total)
If I go down to $4k bankroll move back down to 50nl and play 1.5k hands each day.

Bonus play 1000 hands each day (5k+ total)

I managed to log 100k hands on this pc for 50nl heres a peek of the results

Keep it up! Looking forward to seeing you crush 1k+ again!

nice giraffe! Also, looking really forward to see the next giraffe with the same BB/100 on NL100...
Do you only ever play HU? Isn't it hard to find the necessary traffic for your hand goal?

Anyways, welcome in our challenge, we are looking for your updates here and in the https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=326222&goto=firstnew

CU,SvenBe

hey mckenzie, nice to see some oldschoolers around. I'll sub!

http://postimage.org/

http://postimage.org/

Another good week overall I managed to hit my bonus 1k+ hands on each playing day as well as recording 5 1hour videos vs the best regs I could find sitting at 100nl. The good news is whilst analyzing I felt like I had even enough edge to beat them all post rake. The bad news is Pokerstars are removing the king of the hill tables and leaving only headsup zoom .

Pokerstars has been were I have gotten a solid 50% of all action and I don't think it is feasible to get the hand counts in that i want without playing there at some point in the future. That said i'm not happy with the changes and will probably only play there as a last resort to get some hands in.

I don't really like headsup zoom. The whole concept forces a different style of exploitative play which i'm not used to. However, I dont think many other regs are used to it either.

Current Br approx: $6700

The next 7 days will be about trying to take full advantage of other sites before tackling stars and zoom.
Which means I need to heavily increase bankrolls on those sites where I could take more tables than I usually do.

If a large portion of my hands still comes from zoom I will have to start spending a significant amount of time studying and figuring out zoom strategies. But i'll l leave that for next week.

Goals for the week:
Spend approximately 1 hour studying game theory concepts closely related to nlhu before playing
Take every possible table I can from nl100 down to nl50 on each site where first rake is reasonable (partypoker has a rake cap of 1 which is too high for nl50 in my view). This could mean having 12 king of the hill tables on 1 particular site.
Once achieved only then add zoom tables to the roster. (I hope and presume that wont happen).
play at least 5.5k hands for the week

Bonus 8k hands

Thankyou all for the support Confidant91 Malendes BrokesoBroke SvenBe and Vonki means a lot to know others are reading and wanting to hear how it goes.

Originally posted by SvenBe
Do you only ever play HU? Isn't it hard to find the necessary traffic for your hand goal?

Right now yes I only play headsup. I hope it will be enough to reach my current goal and still presume it will be even after stars' new changes.

My hands goals should never be too much of an impossibility because (for now at-least), I will play anyone regardless of how good they are. (This may change when someone takes 30+ bi off me during a week )

This looks like a nice blog! I'll sub as well

http://postimage.org/

http://postimage.org/

I managed to hit all the main goals for last week but ran short with my bonus hand goal mainly due to dodgy internet at certain times.

Getting action without pokerstars so far wasn't too tough. The main problem now is the quality of said action. Most of it was vs regs (around 80% of hands) whereas it's usually around 60% and even lower for 50nl.

This is worrying long term, but it is quite nice that i'm well on my way to getting out of the raketrap micros and lower end of lowstakes. I am still committed to the goal to make $50k bankroll and 5/10 battling, but if there is anymore bad news for headsup I may have to look at alternatives. The most likely are ones that I don't see going downhill anytime soon. This would be live cashgames or online mtt's. (Cashgame and non jackpot sng players seem to be taking all the hits so far.)

In mid March I won't have any internet so will be spending 1 or 2 weeks playing live cash in london probably 200nl. I will bear in mind whether I would want to play it full time or not. With mtt's I wont be looking into it until another site removes headsup or damages the action in some way or another.

Current Br approx: $8600

Goals for the week:
Spend approximately 1 hour studying game theory concepts closely related to nlhu before playing
Take every possible table I can from nl100 down to nl50 on each site where first rake is reasonable
Once achieved only then add zoom tables to the roster.
play at least 5.7k hands for the week

Bonus 7.8k hands

http://postimage.org/

http://postimage.org/

+ about 1000 hands on an untracked site with $200 profit so overall a winning week even if only just...

So I didn't quite manage to hit my bonus target of hands, but I'm not at all fussed as I got ill at some point on sunday and therefore played a lot less, otherwise i would have been on target to hit it.

It was a quite unremarkable week. The first day started with a big loss to some fishes and the rest of the week kind of making it up. I played a small amount of 6max with a good return on a new site which only has 6max tables with the intention of playing regs hu there as I don't have to pay any rake. But then fish join in and I cant help but keep playing .. lol.

My studying has hit a wall as I am looking for software that can compare equity's of a range of hands vs another range and then is able to show what the top or bottom x% hands are in those ranges. This is so that I can work on my GTO play, something I had been neglecting for a bit too long. If anyone knows of such a software please inform me!

Other than looking for said software I think studying will take a more backseat role in the week to come. I'd like to improve the volume a bit and also stick to headsup play only.

Given I now have an untracked site I'll try and track my results in terms of hours rather than number of hands. This would be relatively easy to guess if i had a play schedule.. but I don't so I guess the first thing to do would be to create one that works for me. I'll work on the morning part and add the rest slowly week by week.

Current Br approx: $8700

Goals for the week:
Take every possible table I can from nl100 down to nl50 on each site where first rake is reasonable
Once achieved only then add zoom tables to the roster.
Stop playing if match becomes 3+handed regardless of players
Wake up at 10am! Shower, Breakfast and then mind squarely on poker
Play 5k+ tracked hands

Bonus: Play 1k+ tracked hands each playing day
Be playing poker by noon! each day

Hi jmackenzie,

how is it going? I was looking for an update on how your goals are going?
5k hands a week is not too much for a Pro, but would you consider yourself one?

CU,SvenBe

http://postimage.org/

http://postimage.org/

Most of the week was a fair success given my main focus was on creating a good playing time table. I did have 1 failure in the middle of the week but I managed to be prompt for the rest so I will consider it a good job done.

The other goal of 5k+ tracked hands was not quite met. A very large portion of my action was on un-tracked sites much more so than what I anticipated. This is fine I don't care where the volume comes in as long as it does.

Directly after finishing my 6th week I found out that a few friends were travelling to the vic in london to play the unibet open held there. I joined and played cash from Wednesday through to Sunday. The action was quite good and I made good money, however, going with a group of friends made my expenses sky rocket to insane proportions and I only came back about £250 up. Although some friends also owe extra, I won't be counting that until I get said money back.

The highlight of my trip was a multiway pot 9 handed not something that a headsup player is used to

The table is 10 handed
Utg has 2 limpers
Middle position has another limper a maniac raiser to 2.5x and another caller
Co calls the raise and hero is in the button with jj.
I elect to flat as I feel the small ball approach really works well in games you have huge edges in.
sb and bb call also.

flop is AKJssx
pot checks round to the initial maniac raiser who bets 3/4 pot he gets the cutoff to call and I also flat 2 utg players also call.

Turn is Kx
again pot is checked to initial raiser who now bets half pot cut off folds and I again decide to flat 1 other player calls. At this point I am fairly sure the maniac has very little as he was often overpotting with his monsters and that the single other caller is also quite weak. I am very certain that if he had king+ he would've put in a raise by now.

River the aggressor yells for a heart. It comes in 4heart to make a flush possible.
I don't think he hit the flush however as he bets quarter pot on the river I tank for a good 1 half minutes before making a call deciding that a raise would not get much more value and I think that utg would raise if he hit the flush. Utg sighs and calls tabling Ax for top pair maniac shows poket sevens for god knows what reason and I scoop the pot with the fullhouse. The table erupts with laughter calling me a passive fish and for the rest of the week I had people joining the table because I was on it. quite a funny experience given that i got really good value from my hand ♠_drink:

This week I will be unable to use my pc to play online so I will have to be playing livegames in London playing poker on my laptop or studying poker.

Current Br Approx: $8800

Goals for the week:
Play 4 days poker in London 24 hours+ in total.
Play tournaments on Thursday after doctors appointment.
Find a live poker app that's fairly basic but useful.

Bonus 4 days poker 32 hours total or 5 days poker 30+hours total.

Originally posted by SvenBe
Hi jmackenzie,

how is it going? I was looking for an update on how your goals are going?
5k hands a week is not too much for a Pro, but would you consider yourself one?

CU,SvenBe

Including untracked hands it is about 8k a week. Fairly standard for a headsup pro.

Poker has been the means to pay all my bills since 2010. So yes I would consider myself one.

He jmackenzie - me again!
I wanted to come to ask: are you still in the BR challenge?
If so, please check out the https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?postid=1986696#post1986696

either way, CU around, SvenBe

Week 8 was the first of which I completely failed my goals. I managed to get ill just after deciding on the weeks targets and without access to my pc I didn't feel comfortable enough to play hu on a laptop, so instead I decided to play some small buy-in satellites to some bigger live events over the course of the week. These attempts didn't really go all that well, but the bankroll damage was very minimal. I felt very comfortable in the fields I was playing though so that is nice.

By week 9 I was able to once again use my pc for poker but was offered the chance to play poker and stay at a 5* hotel in Macedonia for free with all meals and drink also paid for. Needless to say I couldn't say no, and after 1 failed attempt (got stuck in London and missed flight,) I got to the town of Gevgelija. To be honest after travelling for 1 hour over bumpy Macedonian roads and seeing first hand quite a poverty stricken country, driving up to these huge imposing buildings (3 hotel casinos), it felt not quite right. Still, probably good to make the best of it and enjoy. I could quite easily have stayed inside the place all week and in fact I pretty much did just that, taking only 1 trip away from the casinos and 2 trips to the neighboring ones.

http://postimage.org/

The level of service was great. You could get free drink and food of high quality 24 hrs a day along with all the other services you would expect to have. The poker room was amazing! Easily the best table and chairs I have every played on, from the feel on a solid wooden table, to the comfy seats I was very pleased. Unfortunately the games ran very sporadically if it isn't the weekend as almost the entire customer base was Greeks coming from over the border. This made it harder to get the hours in.

I found the social interaction with the Greeks very overwhelming at first. As I was queuing up on the first night to change some money several people completely ignored me and jumped in front needless to say that doesn't sit to well with an English person but I soon forgot about it. The very next day though, as we(my friend and I) were walking over to the restaurant area I opened a velvet rope to get to the desk and kept it open for the person behind to also come through after not even acknowledging the favor he walked straight passed us and was seen to by the waiter to be placed to a table. This experience continually happened in every occasion where waiting occurred and it frustrated me greatly. I found insight from 1 poker regular from the Balkans who told me about the attitude towards Greeks to the Macedonians. They feel they are doing them a favor by being here spending there money and therefore can basically do whatever they want with complete disregard for others. This saddened me quite a bit because I had never really seen the overwhelming majority of people from another race or country treating others so badly because of their background. It was a new experience and one that I don't want to repeat in a hurry. The poker manager was informing me how they want to take the room to a place of global recognition rather than only Greeks, and whilst the rooms and prices certainly have potential, the treatment of customers towards staff and others needs to be properly addressed before it has any chance.

I ran quite bad over the week on quite soft fields although some days the players were horribly short in bb's.

Current Br: $7800

Goals for the rest of the week:
Get back into a grinding mode online headsup only for now
Just for this week only play softer games as I need to get back into it
15 hours playing time Sunday-Tuesday

bonus 20 hours Sunday-Tuesday

Originally posted by SvenBe
He jmackenzie - me again!
I wanted to come to ask: are you still in the BR challenge?
If so, please check out the https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?postid=1986696#post1986696

either way, CU around, SvenBe

Yes, most definitely! I had no access to my pc or laptop the past week, as I was silly Billy and forgot to pack an adapter with me on my travels, equaling in a fairly useless weight attachment in my luggage.

Added some week goals to the earlier post nothing all that heavy but as its only half a week it won't be too much of a waste.

I hope that by the end of this week i will figure out which direction to focus my career into as I've now had a good look at alternative options given the current climate for nlh headusp online.

Very little to report for these weeks. I have organised a trip to Slovenia with a side intention of looking at the possibility of living next to one of the countries big casinos in Nova Gorica. I plan to leave at the end of the month with no return date booked. Due to recent revelations of Stars putting up headsup rake by 200% I'm looking at getting out of the world of headsup asap.

Looking at all available options I've decided to start primarily with live poker Cashgames and in the future online satellites to bigger live events once i have found a place to call home.

My transition to live poker will take place during the first few days of my travel around the end of the month. I won't need access to funds to play during this period so it should be pretty smooth.

I've played a quite small amount of poker and given my future plans it won't change all that much until May. My main focus is on completing a robot building course I started on the internet as I wont be able to take it with me and afterwards taking a safe approach to headsup only playing in games with high Winrates as I would want atleast 6k euros with which to start playing live in Slovenia and any sizeable downswing would be very costly to this idea.

Current Br: $7500

Weeks Goals
Work on completing the robot asap. (could take all 3 remaining weeks)

Bonus Get 2 hours of poker in each day.