[Closed] The Dreams of a Micro-stakes Player

As promised my plans for this blog and my poker future:

For the blog:

:diamond:I intend to post graphs of my progress every 10k hands or so (maybe less in the beginning)
:diamond:Although I think I'm more or less comfortable with poker tracker 3 stats there are a few things I don't really understand and I will be very grateful if people would be willing to point out some leaks in my game
:diamond:I will post problematic hands and hopefully discuss them with you guys ( and gals ofcourse )
:diamond:I never had a blog before so hopefully I won't be too boring. I believe this will be a great place for me to learn and reflect on my decisions/progress

For my poker:

Well- joining PS, which is obviously a great site and I have to commend everyone who contributes in any way to it, getting a free starting capital and joining a new poker room (William Hill) is really a story of a new beginning for me. I'm here to work hard on my poker and to make something out of my now 50$ bankroll.anyways my goals >>

:spade:Start playing at the lowest limits (NL2, NL4) and build my BR so that I can play NL10 comfortably

:spade:Improve my game so that my graphs show a decent profit in NL10

:spade:Eventually (when my BR allows it) I want to move to NL25

:spade:Learn heads-up (haven't played it much but I se WH offers it from the lowest limits so this will be a great oportunity to learn)

:spade:Improve, improve, improve

Long term I hope I can go all the way to NL100 or even NL200 (but I'll be happy with profitably playing NL50 to the end of this year. I guess that's challange behind this blog!
Anyways, I'm nervously waiting for my capital and will update when I get the first 5k hand under the roof (hopefully with a profit)

Hola, buena suerte con tu blog. (Hablo sólo un poco español, estoy aprendiendo en colegio y quiero practicarle un poco ♦)

Hi, Rok

I wish you all the best and a good progress. I'm doing something similar, playing micro-stakes and trying to improve my game.

Anyway, don't hesitate to study a lot, review your sessions, find leaks and plug them. I'll be checking your progress ♦.

Regards

My blog: My NLH blog

Good luck or should I say "srečno"

Good luck! Srečno!

Wow! This is a positive surprise I didn't expect we Slovenians have such an active community here. I'll be sure to check your blog Samo

Also nice to see someone took my comment about Spanish seriously (I'm a little rusty but I have to brush up since I'll hopefully go there for a semester next year)

I thank everyone for the warm welcome!

Nice start to the blog Will definately follow it! ♦

Yesterday I got my starting capital, had a lot of time so I played 2000 hands at NL2 & NL4. I didn't do well at all! I was surprised at how much trouble I had at adjusting to play at these low limits... who said moving down is easy!?
I was reading through the forum the other day and chuckled a bit when I saw someone saying that at micro-limits people couldn't find the fold button if their life depended on it. after playing a few hours on WH I can tell you this is no joke but an ABSOLUTE throuth!

This is how badly it went:

By zrcalo123 at 2011-01-26

I switched to holdem manager before I started playing and had quite some trouble adjusting to it too (ended up just turning it of so it wouldn't disturb me)-- so a word of advice: when you begin 4-tabling an unknown player poll don't fuss around with your HUD and hand histories and what not it can be distracting!

I must say I'm quite disgusted with my play, I made several calls I shouldn't have (but it's hard not to pay the guy up when he's been playing every other hand) tried to bluff a few people of their ace or king high (ofcourse they wouldn't budge even if that was all they had)
In the end I realized that you really have to play complete ABC nitty poker here with out any creativity, plays, steals... and hope that your premium hands make you some profit. Which is slightly frustrating, I definately liked NL10 much more. Also I think it has something to do woth the site. I don't think PS and FTP have as much donks combined as William Hill. But anyways, it's completly my fault I haven't been able to take advantage of this- one of the best abilities of poker players is their ability to adapt to different situations, and I'm having difficulties with this.

I'll try harder and I'll post a (hopefully much nicer) graph at 5k hands.
**gives a determined look**

PS: may take me a while, I got a general linguistics exam on friday

I'd like you guys to look at the following hand I lost at the final table of a satelite today

Play hand

300$/600$ Fixed-Limit Hold'em (6 handed)

Preflop: Hero is BB with J:c, K:d.
MP2 raises, 4 folds, Hero 3-Bets, MP2 calls.

Flop: (10.5 SB) Q:d, 4:d, 2:d (2 players)
Hero raises, MP2 calls.

Turn: (21.6416666667 BB) Q:c (2 players)

River: (21.6416666667 BB) Q:h (2 players)

Final Pot: 21.6416666667 BB.

Now your first comment will likely be that I should've just folded preflop but my reasoning was that, firstly I had a tight image (I was playing 16/15), and secondly I was actually ahead of his range quite often since he was playing 35% of his hands.

On the flop I thought about checking, but the type of player he was he would've just bet 3-4k (or gone all-in considering the stack size)
I didn't like the check-fold option because I think I'd be folding to way too many bluffs
check-call just isn't an option considering the stack sizes
bet-fold(to a raise) seems ludicrous (I'd let myself with half my stack=5BB)

If I were him I probably wouldn't have called so I think this was the right play + I actually had 43% equity on the flop (and was obviously hoping for a fair amount of fold equity)

Anyways, your views on the hand?

EDIT: I see I'm doing something wrong with the hand import.. not sure what do. Preflop he raised to just 2xBB I 3-bet him 5xBB he called and I went all-in on the flop)

We'll begin with the the good things

I'm through the difficult part of the exam period in university (still have a lot to do in terms of reading and various papers I have to write but ok)

- I finally realized why I can't play NL2... it bores me and to make things worse I just can't make myself care for the few cents (I suppose this is only logical since I've played most of my hands thus far on NL10 and NL25).. but ok it's good that I have finally realized this so I can just stop trying. (with NL2 not poker ofcourse :P)

- I really started using my HUD efficiently which has been a great help againts some oponnents

- I discovered that 1.1$ 45men SnGs are a lot of fun and quite profitable! (played 7 cashed in 3 with twice being third and once 2.)

now to the bad parts:

- I busted my free bankroll on WH ♠_evil:... Which is unfortunate but has though me quite a lot. (to summarize it very quickly: NL2 doesn't work for you. You don't have the money to play NL10. Deal with it!)

- I am somewhat frustrated because I don't have the BR to play NL10 andd I know I could do it.(did it before and I'm twice the player I used to be)

Ok so my plans for February:

:spade:Reread (or better said, finish reading since I didn't the first time round) "Treat Your Poker Like a Business"(an awsome book that I'd absolutely reccomend)
:spade:Watch videos on micro-stakes cash games and SnGs
:spade:play at least 50 SnGs
:spade:Do something about my HU play because this will be quite important if I cuntinue to play Sngs
:spade:Build my BR to at least 50$
Current BR: 23.56$ (on Full-tilt)

I'm a bit angry at myself for being s little too impatient at this early stage but I simply want to start putting my knowledge to good use. Hopefully I can do that in the following weeks. Will keep you posted!