Rebooting my poker hobby

Online poker:
So far nothing of interest to report.

Real Life Poker:
Strangely enough I had good results in the local pub game for the past 2 weeks.
($22 BI with between 40-50 players.)
I have cashed on the final table both times, 4th both times.
I am enjoying these games quite a bit so far and wish I would make my online as enjoyable and successful.

Hello Corey,

Welcome back to poker!
Glad you are giving poker another go and wish you all the best in reaching your goals.
I am also going back over the basics as I have migrated from FR to 6-Max and have found many leaks in my game this month.
Back in November there was a great article you may be interested in reading called 5-point plan: From break-even grinder to winning player
Another good place to visit is perfect intro to multi tabling.
I look forward to reading future posts.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.
Good luck at the tables.

Regards

Matt

Matt,

Thanks for the reply and the links.

Good luck with your reboot! I forward to hearing about it

So inspired by this article (thanks Matt) http://www.pokerstrategy.com/strategy/psychology/2319/1/

I decided to set some goals. This is very much WIP as I am not sure what is feasible at this point.

Currently I play NLHE2.

Top Level Goal:
Specific: Profitably playing NLHE20
Measurable: Profitable would mean a recordable, sustained profit for at least 1 month
Attractive: Seems so to me
Realistic: This part I have no real idea (yet)
Timed: This should occur prior to Dec 2016

Sub Goal #1:
Specific: Profitably playing NLHE2
Measurable: Earning enough so that my bankroll increases to NLHE5
Attractive: Seems so to me
Realistic: I believe with solid basics such as following the Starting Hands Chart; Equity based decisions post flop and enough hands this should be doable
Timed: This should happen by April 2016

Sub Goal #2:
Specific: Profitably playing NLHE5
Measurable: Earning enough so that my bankroll increases to NLHE10
Attractive: Yup!
Realistic: With through study of all the Bronze content for NLHE, Psych and Poker Basics and enough hands this should be enough.
Timed: This should happen by Jul 2016

Sub Goal #3:
Specific: Profitably playing NLHE10
Measurable: Earning enough so that my bankroll increases to NLHE20
Attractive: Damn straight
Realistic: I don't know what I will need to know at this point but I expect the silver content will play a part
Timed: This should happen by Oct 2016

It looks like you are going about this reboot in just the right way. Good luck with achieving your goals!

Quick update:

Shortly before Christmas. Another small live $22 BI / 30-40 people event and another final table.
No cash this time.

I am beginning to get worried that I will get cocky but I also believe that any success so far has been due to very tight play.

I still need to work on being more aggressive and think more about fundamentals like "villian ranges" and "bet lines"

Tight play is the way to go at the lower limits, don't underestimate what an effect rake has on NL2!

I wish you all the best with your challenge, I will keep an eye on this blog!

Thanks. What effect does take have? I feel like I don't know this well.

I noticed something the past few days, I thought my post flop play was weak (still think so) but during my search for more knowledge to fix the problem I watched a video here that takes about 'playing exploitively'.

In this video they talked about exploiting the fact that opponents were nitty by opening the steal range really wide from BTN and CO.

While I want sure I had the skills to pull it off I decided to give it a try. I have to say the results have been great.
On NL2 rush, I've been able to open raise any 2 from BTN and CO and then fold to 3B.
The result is a lot of stolen BB and a slow but steady profit.

Few words of warning if you want to try this:

Villians will 100B are likely good targets as they are likely tight (consider how many hands you would fold from the SHC)

Be aware of the opponents that often resist and avoid them.

Know that your flop holding is likely weak and play accordingly.

This is the video I was referring to. Enjoy

http://www.pokerstrategy.com/video/34641/

Ok, finally back to the blog.

Updates:
* I've been playing live weekly tournaments ($22) and continue to do well $2120 in cashes ($801 profit)
* Only been finding a small amount of time to play online and often only a single table on my phone
* Moved myself from NL2 to NL5 (6 max) and despite being up and down, I feel I am doing better but I still ended up down 42BB over 1788 hands (-2.38BB/100)

So.. Plan for this month is to set some short term goals and work on sticking to them.

Goals for August:
* Achieve Chromestar on Stars
* Finish the month with a +ve BB/100
* Blog here weekly updates
* Perform more hand reviews
* Work very hard on my blue line (it's killing me)

My terrible blue line

My Stats:

My Month (yes low volume)

My Balance (working on making this improve this month :p)

Weekly update:

Better blue line

+ Better Stats

= Profit

Happy with my week generally (despite still be stuck in the -ve end of variables in my live poker).
Managed to get more online hands in and I am managed to do more "active watching" of videos and coaching sessions.
While this eats up a lot of my potential playing time, it really does seem worth it.

Fingers crossed for another good week

So I missed last week's update (was out of town).

It's been an update and down couple of weeks.

I am trying to spend more time on fundamentals and have identified what I think is a weakness in my post flop play.

As always, more to work on

Here is the updates chart for this month

good luck

Time for some 2017 Goals:
1. Move up to NL10 (currently NL5)
2. Semi Bluff more (working on Jonathan Little's Bluffs book)
3. Play 1k hands online per week (has really been a challenge)
4. Move up to NL20

BR Challenge Update (posting early cause I will be AFK on holday):
- number of played hands / tournaments: 281 Hands
- weekly bankroll movements in USD: +$7.54 (53.48 BB/100)
- Current bankroll: $150.85
- How many weeks he has participated in the promotion: 1 week

Howdy, welcome to your own BR challenge 2017! GL at the tables and have fun and lots of upswings reaching them...
SvenBe

BR Challenge Update:
- number of played hands / tournaments: 1229 Hands
- weekly bankroll movements in USD: +$12.81
- Current bankroll: $164.26
- How many weeks he has participated in the promotion: 2 weeks

Reading and enjoying Jonathan Little's "Bluffs" http://amzn.to/2br9W4E quite a lot.
Not only to expect it will help quite a bit with my live low stakes play but its definitely helping with NL5 on PS.

I've started to notice something else weird; when I believe players have very little (middle/bottom pair or less); I am better to check call the river out of position instead of value bet. No matter how strong my line previously was they seem to want to bluff me at any sign of weakness.

Similarly I feel like I am value betting the river (in position) more often and getting called more.
However I do feel like I am leaving some value on the table by betting the turn (and the opponent folds) when I have a medium made hand and I believe my opponent has nothing. Hopefully I can figure out when to use a "turn check behind; river call" line profitably.

Also, "note to self ... i really need to find some hands to post in the forum to help expand/validate my thinking

Achievements for the week:
* Finally managed to both post and review some hands in the forum
* Went to the local casino for the second time. While I got no where with a 100+30 satellite into the Aussie Millions (refused to rebuy); I hit the $1/$2 NL cash games and booked at $155 profit for a couple of hours "work".

I am still finding that Jonathan Little's Bluff's book is helping me immensely. The main spots it outlines for sem-bluffs and LAG type lines have been rather useful and pointed out to that I was way too tight and my very occasion live bluff were just plain stupid.

Anyway, online stats for the week:
* Hands: 264
* BR change +$2.93
* Current BR: $167.19
* Weeks in challenge: 3
* Total Hands: 1774
* Total BR change: +23.28
* % Target: 16.72%

slow but steady profit - if you every week increase by a few percent, it will not be taking too long to reach the goal! (and subsequently become millionaire by keep doing that for a couple of weeks)