Learning to beat the micros - A poor student's poker diary

Hi!

Time for a weekly review. Played okayish all week. Tilting cost me I'd say 5-6 bins this week. That's way too much. Still, imo I've been running pretty bad but who knows. Maybe I don't even beat the games.

Beginning of the week went really good results-wise. Got my bankroll to $200 and took a shot to NL10 Zoom. Got 5 buy-ins up there, but then dropped 8 down. That makes it -3 bins and just a failed shot. That's not bad or unusual, but I think I took the shot way too early.

Dropped down to NL 5 and kept losing. Tilting, bad run, you name it. Everything just failed.

Yesterday my bankroll hit $100 and I dropped down to NL 2. Played one session today and it went well. I hope I can make it back to higher micros. But I need to step up my mental game.

This is my graph after starting this blog. It doesn't include today's NL2.

Gotta keep grinding

Totals
Hands: 55k
Bankroll: $111
Days played: 13

Yeah, fuck NL2. Playing it is not worth my time. If I'm going down, I'm going down in NL5. If this just doesn't work out, it's cool for me. I can focus on other things Still trying though till I get busto. I felt really good playing today, although I wasn't lucky enough to win almost any pot where money went in before the river. My bankroll is pretty much dying but I still have some hope left. Had to cash in every bonus and reward I had to get myself the feeling I still have 20+ bins left for NL5.

Todays graph looks like this. Just 5 bins under EV but god did it feel more. Villains just kept hitting their 1-4 outers on the river. And as we all know, the yellow line doesn't show that. Btw, played without HUD today with my Mac. Felt good to play just ABC poker and not think too much about villains stats over a small samplesize.

So, that's it for today. Hope I still can make this work but if not, it's cool. I'll come back someday with MTT's

Totals
Hands played: 60k
Bankroll: $107
Days played: 13

PS: Didn't tilt at all today. Nice!

Stop playing for 1-2 days, let it pass.

Originally posted by remy18
Stop playing for 1-2 days, let it pass.

I considered that but I think I'm just gonna keep playing.

Have played 2 sessions today. Really happy with my playing although I spewed one bin kinda badly. I'm going to add a spewjar on my total statistics to see how much I'm doing that shit. Well, hadn't been running as bad as yesterday (still not good) before this hand. Gonna take a break now. Std 1 outer. Again.

PokerStars - $0.05 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BTN): 105.4 BB
SB: 33 BB (VPIP: 50.00, PFR: 16.67, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 7)
BB: 104 BB (VPIP: 7.46, PFR: 5.97, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 70)
UTG: 40.8 BB (VPIP: 66.67, PFR: 66.67, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 3)
MP: 103.6 BB (VPIP: 37.50, PFR: 37.50, 3Bet Preflop: 33.33, Hands: 8)
CO: 128.6 BB (VPIP: 30.56, PFR: 22.22, 3Bet Preflop: 15.00, Hands: 36)

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has 6♣ 6♦

UTG calls 1 BB, fold, CO raises to 3 BB, Hero calls 3 BB, fold, BB calls 2 BB, UTG calls 2 BB

Flop: (12.4 BB, 4 players) 5♠ 6♠ 2♦
BB checks, UTG checks, CO checks, Hero bets 7.8 BB, BB calls 7.8 BB, UTG calls 7.8 BB, fold

Turn: (35.8 BB, 3 players) Q♦
BB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets 30.4 BB, BB raises to 93.2 BB and is all-in, fold, Hero calls 62.8 BB

River: (222.2 BB, 2 players) 2♣

BB shows 2♥ 2♠ (Four of a Kind, Twos)
(Pre 19%, Flop 10%, Turn 2%)
Hero shows 6♣ 6♦ (Full House, Sixes full of Twos)
(Pre 81%, Flop 90%, Turn 98%)
BB wins 213 BB

After one unfortunate KK vs AA cooler, I managed to win some hands and got this day on the +++ side. Not much but still a winning day. Feels nice.

Totals
Hands: 65k
Bankroll: $110
Days played: 14
Spewbox: $5

Have played 2k hands today. Results -2bin, EV breakeven. It's cool, I'm playing good still. Although I spewed one hand again, and two others yesterday after posting here. Spewbox -$15. Gotta keep working on that one. Like I said on the opening, I'm pretty shaky about my riverplays. Here's one hand: https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?postid=2053745#post2053745.

Gonna continue playing now, editing this post after I'm done for the day

Yeah, now I'm probably done for the day. Got myself to +1bin, EV +2,5bin. Could've played some spots better but I think I generally played pretty well.

I know this has been a fucking sad blog and I'm constantly just whining about running bad etc. And I apologize you (probably 1-2 people) have to read it. But I think it's really good for me to get this shit out here, rather than complaining about these things to my girlfriend. She understands pretty much nothing about poker so I think It'd just make things worse.

Anyways, this is my graph of today's games:

Gotta work the whole weekend so my volume for the next 3-4 days is gonna be lower but I'll probably still have the time to play some. That's it, have a great night!

Totals
Hands: 82k
Bankroll: $134
Days played: 14
Spewbox: $15

Edit: Played one quick session. 700 hands, +3bi. Feels good. Totals updated. Going to bed, see ya!

1,6k hands, -3bi. Played pretty well until the point when I got back up to -1bi from almost -4bi. Then spewed a couple of spots, I guess I was a little bit tilted, dunno. Realized that and got my mindset back to normal. At the end of the session I started to feel pretty tilty so decided to stop.

Gotta get to work. probably playing one session after I get back.

Totals:
Totals
Hands: 82,5k
Bankroll: $118
Days played: 15
Spewbox: $20

Hi,

took a couple of days off from poker. I decided to stop playing cash mainly because it's not fun. Second reason is that I'm still not sure if I'm even a winning player in cashgames. Third reason is my mental issues. Tilting makes me play really bad and that's not all. In cashgames, winning and losing affects my head too much. Winning feels really good, but I can't think about anything else. Losing makes me wanna commit a suicide. Sooo, that's probably not a good thing.

I have never had these issues in tournaments. Ofcourse I sometimes got really fucking angry when starting 25 tournaments, finishing 24 in an hour and 1-tabling 8 hours just to lose AA vs 72o in the FT bubble. But it never affected my decision making.

Like I said in the opening, I have no time to play tournaments. Well, gonna play them anyways. Not much, but like once or twice a week when I have the time. So, my volume will be very low. That's fine by me.

Played 3 tournaments in the morning. Finished 2nd in a Zoom tournaments. Ran like a fucking god the whole tournament. Won like 2 flips and one AQ vs QQ. Shipped $150.

I guess I'm gonna need new totals:

Tournaments: 3
Bankroll: $295

Played 4 tourneys more, 1 went pretty deep but not deep enough unfortunately. Nice day though. See ya!

Tournaments: 7
Bankroll: $336

congrats for the nice result, any picture with it to share?

Originally posted by teddypoker
congrats for the nice result, any picture with it to share?

Not yet. Playing on my Macbook and my PT4 trial ended. Probably gonna buy it when I reach $500 or so. Ofcourse I'm gonna post screenshots of the tournaments I win, but with this volume that day might be in a year lol.

Atm 1-tabling my last tourney of the day while watching a movie. Cashed enough from 5$-hyper MTT to make the day breakeven even if this one fails. Got like 100 ppl left in this last one. Gonna edit the results here

I forgot to edit the results yesterday so here we go. Okay, I ended up being the 17th. After that I figured I could play one Micro Millions -event so I registered. Then I figured I should prob play some other tournament at the same time. So I regged to a $8.80 tournament, which is way too big for me but I thought that it's okay 'cause I'm just twotabling. The funny thing is, I didn't have my tournament filters on in the client. And the tournament was definitely not a Hold'em one. It was Courchevel H/L ♦. Well, I googled the game which I had never heard and found out it was just a weird 5-card Omaha H/L. Actually went pretty deep in the tournament considering I have never played the game before. But yeah, that was kinda fun.

Btw, here's the only pictures I have of the bigger cashes

Yesterday was a good day normal life- wise. We tried Geocatching with my girlfriend. If you don't know what Geocatching is, here's a quick Wikipedia-refill.

"Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world.

A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook (with a pen or pencil). The geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name. After signing the log, the cache must be placed back exactly where the person found it. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (Tupperware or similar) or ammunition boxes can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little financial value, although sometimes they are sentimental. Geocaching shares many aspects with benchmarking, trigpointing, orienteering, treasure-hunting, letterboxing, and waymarking."

I was pretty sceptical but it was actually really fun. We we're walking around the city for like three hours and we stopped by like 12 locations and searched for the catches. Turns out, some them are actually pretty hard to find, so we only found 7 of them. But it was really cool.

That's it. Have a good one!

Tournaments: 11
Bankroll: $350

Hey!

Played 4 tournaments today, cashed nothing but it's okay! I know I should be playing like 15-20 tourneys every time I start but I'm doing this mainly for the fun of it. I like being able to watch movies, videos and play Hearthstone at the same time. Not optimal but that's not the point. Gonna take a real session tomorrow or the day after (maybe).

Tomorrow is gonna be another Geocaching day if the weather allows it. Gonna be fun!

That's it guys, nothing much to talk about. Good night!

Tournaments: 15
Bankroll: $329

Wrong buttons are wrong!

,

A little update on what's going on. I cashed out my whole roll from PokerStars. The reason is, I still want to play poker right now, and I still want to try cashgames. Just not speedpoker, cause apparently I'm not beating it, at least by a huge margin. I decided to find a new poker room and took a few days to explore my options until finally setting on NetBet. I know I should've deposited more to get a good first depo bonus, but I'm just so careful with my money when it comes to new poker rooms. So, I only deposited 20€, and got 10€ right away and 40€ depo bonus, and 10€ of some kind of a bonus. Also I'm getting like $10 or something from PokerStrategy for free as long as the linking goes through.

The games feel really soft compared to PokerStars, and the amount of fishes is really high. So that's good. I feel like I can finally just play standard make easy profit. Compared to Zoom, this is so much better for my mindset. The other thing is, I need to improve. I need to study. That's why PokerStars wasn't an ideal option because my account isn't linked to PokerStrategy. Now I can get PS-points and can watch better videos.

So, I have to do some math to count my bankroll. The reason I want to do this is because I want to keep doing the bankroll challenge and I want to keep track of my whole project.

I cashed out $270 from PokerStars.
I deposited 20€ (~$22) to NetBet.
NetBet bankroll is now 42,25€ ($46)
So $270+($46-$22)=$294

So, I will keep playing NL2 now. Posting graphs and stuff sometime later. Playing on my HM1, so that's interesting. Quoting Noxious from Hearthstone for this one: "May the fun, and the luck, be with you".

Really good day today. Insane actually. I've been 4- and 6 tabling NL2. Sometimes it gets boring compared to Zoom, but I'm usually listening music or watching something on the other computer/screen/TV. I still think I can focus on the tables enough at the same time to understand what's happening on the table, mainly the hands I'm not involved in. Trying really hard to spot and analyze the biggest fishes and get value from them. Been working pretty well. There's a lot of aggressive fishes who play 50-70% of hands and bet pot every street. It's pretty frustrating not to hit the flops/be card dead against these players, but I just have to remind myself that when I'm patient and hit something, I'll get huge value.

So the results were really amazing. +14 bi is just sick for me. Running well over EV so that's always nice.

That's today's games. Yesterday I still played on the PT4-trial so don't have the graphs.

Still waiting for getting my status upgrade from the bankroll challenge. Don't know when it's coming. Really need it though, not many interesting videos on Bronze-level. I have three days off from work now, so probably going to get a decent number of hands in. Number one priority is to do something else with my gf though. That's all, have a good one.

Bankroll:
Cashed out: $248
NetBet: 72€ = $79
Total: $327

Not a good day poker-wise. Played a little bit of NL4 and mostly NL2. My playing wasn't optimal. Don't know why but I played pretty poorly. Especially in those NL4 -games my non-showdown winnings were really bad. Mostly because I constantly ran into situations where I'm isolating a fish who folds to c-bets like 10% of the time and really doesn't give a fuck and then hit none of the flops. But I could've easily played better.

Oh and I got $10 from PokerStars' megabonusthingy, got $20 from PokerStrategy and got 2€ cleared from my bonus. So a profitable day after all lol.

Bankroll:
Cashed out: $223
NetBet: 91€ = $101
PokerStars: $35
Total: $359

Not much to talk about, played a few hours, watched 3-4 of w34z3l's videos (those are awesome btw), and chilled. Not the most productive day. Not entirely happy with my game today, kinda the same shit as yesterday. Just need to focus 100% of the time and stop over-thinking and spewing. Now that I have money on PokerStars, I played some hands on there too. Didn't play Zoom and stayed in NL2, which is good.

Bankroll:
Cashed out: $223
NetBet: 96€ = $107
PokerStars: ~$35
Total: $366

Indeed the european sites have softer field, but be aware that playing on multiple sites could be a bit confusing for you now because players tendencies tend to vary between one site to another. Also the rakeback rewards are diminishing if you split the volume on 2-3 sites. One huge +EV thing for you now could be to benefit from a deposit bonus as high as possible, it's the easiest way to boost your bankroll and reach higher limit as soon as possible. Why is so important? Because at this stakes rake tend to be huge compared with what you will pay at higher limits and this deposit bonus will balance a bit the situation.

Btw, very nice thing geocaching, hope I'll be able to try it myself with my girlfriend, tx for sharing it with us

Why not just play regular tables on stars?
You want to pay more attention, yet you watch videos and play music?

What kind of strategy is this 'standard'?

Originally posted by teddypoker
Indeed the european sites have softer field, but be aware that playing on multiple sites could be a bit confusing for you now because players tendencies tend to vary between one site to another. Also the rakeback rewards are diminishing if you split the volume on 2-3 sites.

Btw, very nice thing geocaching, hope I'll be able to try it myself with my girlfriend, tx for sharing it with us
Yeah that's true. With a small sample size it feels like PS's and NetBet's player pools differ a lot even in NL2. You're welcome man, Geocaching is fun

Originally posted by Psderrr
Why not just play regular tables on stars?
You want to pay more attention, yet you watch videos and play music?

Like I said before, I am playing regular NL2 in PS atm. Listening music is quite normal when grinding. I agree that watching videos isn't good, but I rarely do that anymore. When I'm watching PokerStrategy's videos, I'm not playing at the same time. I'm trying to learn shit.

What kind of strategy is this 'standard'?

Now you lost me.

I've been watching a lot of strategy videos and w34z3l's videos have really inspired me. The biggest issue in my Zoom games was that I was too passive. We can't just open 15% of our hands, and check-fold when we don't hit the flop. All of my Zoom-graphs show that my red-line is going steadily in the wrong direction. I'm not saying that my goal is to have amazing non-sd winnings. I'm saying it should be at least going slower down or BE.

Playing more aggressive and finding those spots to squeeze little bit of EV is pretty hard for me as I'm used to playing pretty passive. I decided to try playing more aggressive, not in normal NL2-games, but in NL5 Zoom. I started yesterday and as you can see, it was pretty horrible. I tried (on purpose) to be overly aggressive, for studying purposes. And it shows on the graph. Spewed quite a lot, but learned a lot.

Today I decided to balance it out. Playing smart but pick my spots. Two-barreling more, taking stabs at pots nobody seems to want, defending blinds wider etc. without going over the top. Playing more today, but this is how today looks.

It's nice to run over EV etc. But my main focus is getting the red line to stay ~BE without compromising my blue line.

Btw got really lucky in the middle of grinding. Had a 150bb stack at the table so I sat out and opened a new one as I always do. This time I accidentally opened a NL10 table. Instant Sit Out Next BB. Well, got KK and got action. OP NL10 graph:

Going to be updating when I'm done for the day. Have to get to work soon also.