[Closed] Termi8r's PokerStar(s) road

Hi Termi8r,

I'm really looking forward to reading updates on this. Nice read so far.

Good Luck sir!
Stiev

Well structured blog keep it up.
Will make sure I re-visit the thread in the future as you sound very organised and determined.

Best of luck to you, sir! Go go go

Great start to the blog. Good luck on your adventure.

I will check in regularly to catch up on your journey.

Regards,

Steve

Hi,

very first question.. 50 buy in rule?? I just know the 20 buy rule... they have another??

best of lucky to you

regards

Hi phullhand,

The buy-in rule only refers to the limit that you can comfortably play with your given bankroll. Some people are confident with their game and can play at a limit where they only have 20x that amount as a bankroll. I found with the way I play SSS (Full of mistakes and tilt) that swings in the order of 10 buy-ins is quite comon. So if I have a losing session of 10 buy-ins then I only lose about 20% of my bankroll as oppose to half of my bankroll.

It is a personal matter and if you feel confident with your game and want to aggresively climb the limits then by all means go for it.

Nice blog. I like the conservative game plan and well planned learning approach you take. Good luck!

Go go go. Nice initiative, I dropped this idea myself once I believe. It will be interesting to see how far you will get.
Anyway, my personal opinion is that if your goal is to move up in stakes as fast as possible, a 50 buyin-rule might hamper your progress. For micro- and lowstakes full ring 25 buyins suffises if you have the discipline to move down when needed and know how to play decent ABC poker. If on the other hand, you're not entirely sure whether you're a good winning player, a conservative BRM is never wrong to test the waters first.

A 50 Buy-in rule for the next limit or the limit where you are on atm?
So for example on NL10, if you have $100 then (=50Buyins==$2x50) , do you move up.

Or is it you need 50 Buy-Ins for NL25 so $5x50=$250?

If its the first one, then I defintily agree because it shows you can beat the limit.

I wish you good luck and keep us posted

- Gerv

Hi Gerv,

I play SSS with quite a few mistakes still, so that is why I'm so conservative with my BRM. I will move up to the next limit when I have between 40-50 stacks at that higher limit. For example: I moved to NL50 with $450 and then down to NL25 again when I hit $300.

Cheers
Termi8r

This week has been the best week concerning my poker education but the worst ever concerning my bankroll. I moved up to NL50 SSS and ran terrible there. Then I went down to NL25 and the trend continued. Overall I lost $150 of my bankroll this week playing 4.6k hands. The weird thing is that I can’t remember being overly on tilt and tried my best to stick to the strategy. It was really difficult for me to write this article at first. I want to be successful at poker and after only one week my bankroll is knocked by 37%! I was looking for ways to justify the “downswing” in this update. Then I read the article about professional attitude and the downswing excuse. These articles gets neglected I feel because they don’t give you’re a strategy on how to play poker, but they are as important as the strategy articles.

I learned that beginners lose money due to bad play rather than bad luck. The first thing I did was to stop playing and analyze my game. I looked over all the hands I lost and grouped them into bad luck and mistakes for the two limits I played. I posted 20 questionable hands in the forum that did not include the coolers and bad beats I suffered.

Here is a summary of my play on the two limits:

NL50 SSS:
Mistakes: 11 out of 1856 hands costing me a total of $58 (6bb/100)
Bad luck: -$219
Winnings: $106
Nett profit: -$171 which should have been -$113

NL25 SSS:
Mistakes: 8 out of 2837 costing me a total of $23 (3bb/100)
Bad luck: -$112
Winnings: $155
Nett profit: $20 which should have been $43

I made 19 mistakes over the 4600 hands or so I played and it cost me $80. This means that I made a mistake every 240 hands or so and considering that I play four tables at a time it works out to only one mistake every hour! Some of the most common mistakes I made were calling re-raises with TT and AJ preflop, second barrel continuation bets with AK and calling re-raises with pocket pairs and over cards on the board after making a continuation bet. At the end of this week my bankroll is down by $150 and $80 is due to mistakes that I should not have made. I have made these mistakes since I started playing and it has cost me a lot of money. This bad run motivated me to look at the mistakes and correct them.

Conclusion: 50% downswing and 50% bad luck

Goals for this week:
Play 7000 hands
Make ZERO mistakes
Organize my poker literature

Cheers and good luck!
Termi8r

If you would like to see my advice on the news page where exact the same text of you is there. Right side, the comments section

It might help you, I hope it will

Hey guys,

Here my life time SSS graph. I lost quite a few hands when changing my computer an when I tried to make Manion run faster by switching off the stats:

C:\Documents and Settings\Grant\Desktop\SSSBR.png

the last bit is REALLY frustrating as I play much better now but not making progress. I make far less mistakes than at the beginning but it seems sometimes like I can't win a hand. At least I'm building up experience by playing when things aren't going so well. I'll just stick to what I know best and play every hand to my best ability.

I tried to include the analysis of my play from Elephant but it makes it into a pdf and it doesn't seem to post here.

NL10 VPIP 11.7 PFR 6.6 23k hands $126
NL25 VPIP 7.3 PFR 6.7 20k hands $136
NL50 VPIP 7.2 PFR 6.5 4.5k hands -$124

I limped a lot in the small blind at the beginning on the NL10 limit. That would explain the high VPIP on NL10. Comments?

Cheers
Termi8r

Why don't you post some graph? I'm really interested what it look like

Originally posted by Termi8r
Hey guys,

Here my life time SSS graph. I lost quite a few hands when changing my computer an when I tried to make Manion run faster by switching off the stats:

C:\Documents and Settings\Grant\Desktop\SSSBR.png

the last bit is REALLY frustrating as I play much better now but not making progress. I make far less mistakes than at the beginning but it seems sometimes like I can't win a hand. At least I'm building up experience by playing when things aren't going so well. I'll just stick to what I know best and play every hand to my best ability.

I tried to include the analysis of my play from Elephant but it makes it into a pdf and it doesn't seem to post here.

NL10 VPIP 11.7 PFR 6.6 23k hands $126
NL25 VPIP 7.3 PFR 6.7 20k hands $136
NL50 VPIP 7.2 PFR 6.5 4.5k hands -$124

I limped a lot in the small blind at the beginning on the NL10 limit. That would explain the high VPIP on NL10. Comments?

Cheers
Termi8r

your VPIP for NL10 is wayyyy too high for SSS. you seem to be limping almost half your hands here, which is definitely not SSS(unless you are getting small pockets on most of your small blinds)
NL25 looks great, as does NL50.

NL50 i have found takes a long time to get used to.

if i may suggest something which i have found very useful in order to beat NL50(i am quite confident i can beat it now as i average 5-10BB/100 hands at the moment on it)

blindsteal with A7s+ ATo+ from button/SB(NOT cutoff)
blindsteal with 55+ from button/SB

this has increased my profitability on NL50 by quite a lot.

also, take note of who is limping, if you are in late with 2 UTG limpers, i always fold AJ. i have found UTG limpers are almost always AQ+ 77+

raising with 77-99 is easily the most unprofitable option(regardless of what the SHC says).
more than 80% of flops will bring 1 overcard, more than 50% will bring 2. according to SHC you can only raise 77-88 from late/blinds, regardless of who limps. you will probably get a call from a limper in early/mid position with 9T+ and that puts you in a coinflip situation. any more than 1 caller and your odds decrease dramatically.

edit: 77-99 is of course, a raise if it is folded to you. exactly the same as a blindsteal.

Hi Semesa,

Thanks for the comments. The VPIP for NL10 is high because I didn't know better at the start, limped the sb a lot. Ironically I ran pretty good the start when I knew much much less about poker.

Cheers
Termi8r

You play on Party NL25? We might exchange databases and names since my SpadeEye Trial is expired.

I think I saw you as one of the decent Shortie's there but Im not sure so Whats your Nickname there on Pahty?

I play on Poker Stars. The hand histories is from a PS.de thread. Don't have the link anymore but sure you could search "NL25" and "PokerStars" and "hand histories" to find it.

My bad but I was pretty sure I saw Party somewhere, or it has to be Party as in people having fun