I'm an 18 year old student living in Holland. I'm currently studying game programming. I started playing poker about 2,5 years ago. Have been playing about 16 months with real cash. I've never deposited to any poker site so far with my own money because i like to keep poker and real money seperated. I basically started with playing sng's. after almost thousand sng's i still had not managed to win any money. i had won over $250 in freerolls however. I've played about any type of sitngo there is. Multitable (18,27,45,90,180), singletable, DoN, Headsup, Knockout. But i did not find any succes anywhere. You can read my sng journey mostly in my old blog which is actualy seperated in two parts.My first blog (sng)
My second blog (cash) was a very short one. And i never really finished it. Basicaly my goal was to just exploit players with sick agression and completely outplaying them. I think i succeeded in that fairly good and i still believe it's a very profitable style. Even though very high variance and you need a very good knowledge about the game to make it work. I was onetabling and always playing A game. It ended with an epic NL25 session and a 2308 BB pot. For the people interested in how my experimental cash game blog ended i will put it in these spoiler tags below including graph.
Spoiler
I already wrote a post about the epic session so i will just quote that here below. It's even sicker if you consider my bankroll was just $250 at the beginning of that session.
Originally posted by Hahaownedlolz
I don't like to complain about bad beats and when i do i usualy post them in a blog and don't bother people with it ♦ But the session i just played was sick beyond words. At the table there was 1 very loose agressive and very spewy guy who would suddenly shove preflop as much as 6 hands in a row every once in a while. Usualy for no apparant reason and his hand range seemed to be "I'm feeling lucky with this hand". For example shoving 600BB preflop with J6 offsuit with no action before that. I will call him "Mark".
Some pics of that session below. And some info about the session below that.
The graph. 1tabling NL25 SH. a bit more then 2 hours played.
I was running quite badly from the start. and was already down 84 BB at hand 25 running 204 BB under EV. I tried to play as many hands as i could with Mark and called his all ins very lightly.
in hands 25-50 i started running into alot of coolers and setups. i had lost 746 BB over 7 Buyins. Running almost 3BI under ev And i have to admit i was steaming worse then Phil Helmuth in the wsop 2009 main event at this point.
hand 50 I just snapcalled on tilt with Q3 after Mark went all in and a LAG player called. To be fair Q3 doesn't do that bad against Mark's range. Somehow i won the hand up against AJ and J8 (Mark). Losing all in after all in when crushing the other player and then being rewarded for the worst play i made this year was pretty funny to me. I called Mark's preflop all ins another 3 times in the next 7 hands winning every one of them(I did have good hands however). The biggest pot i won was 1030 BB
During hand 92 is really where it was getting quite rediculous. I made the screenshot above a few hands before that.
I was actualy pretty scared to play with Mark because he doubled up a few times from $60 to $300 in the last 20 hands or so. Sitting with a 12BI stacked however i don't really want to call any all in without QQ+ preflop against him. Preflop was a bit dissapointing.. he checks i cbet a bit weak. If i see it now i should have cbet more especially cause of very draw heavy board. I just don't know what to do at this point. His range is pretty much anything he could have Jx, Qx, 2 pair, trips and a ton of draws. Yet i didn't snapcall, i didn't want to make the call cause it was so much money. But i knew i simply couldn't fold since the chance i was beat here was very small.$577 pot = 2308 big blinds = 23 Buyins
$0.10/$0.25 Ante $0.05 No Limit Holdem
PokerStars
6 Players
Stacks:
Mark ($289.44)
UTG+1 ($74.93)
CO ($64.10)
Hero ($339.31)
SB ($172.81)
BB ($173.13)Pre-Flop: ($0.65, 6 players) Hero is BTN A♥ A♦
Mark raises to $2.75, 2 folds, Hero raises to $7.75, 2 folds, Mark calls $5Flop: J♦ Q♥ 4♥ ($16.15, 2 players)
Mark checks, Hero bets $9, Mark goes all-in $281.64, Hero calls $272.64Turn: 9♣ ($579.43, 2 players, 1 all-in)
River: 9♦ ($579.43, 2 players, 1 all-in)
Final Pot: $579.43
Hero shows two pair, Aces and Nines
A♥ A♦
Mark shows three of a kind, Nines
9♠ 10:diamond:Mark wins $577.43 (net +$287.99)
Hero lost $289.44
Summary:
127 hands of NL25 singletabling.
Biggest pot won: 515 BB
Biggest pot lost: 2308 BB
profit: -$191 = -764 BB = more then 7 Buyins lost
bb/100: -601
expected value profit: $123 = almost 5 Buyins
12 buyins under EV = running 10BB under EV every hand that session.
Biggest swings: 1200 BB
Pots played over 100BB: 25
Pots played over 200BB: 13
Pots played over 500BB: 7So the next time your down 10 Buyins in thousands of hands. Visit this thread and think "It could be worse, I could be this guy ♦". with a big smile on your face.
My total cash game graph over a total of 5 months.
To make it clear The highest red line is my nonshowdown winnings. the one just below that is my expected value. I feel like it's rather unimportant considering my playing style. As you can see.. there's alot more value to be gained before showdown as one may think. With a bit more knowledge and a bit more balance i feel i could absolutely crush NL25. Especially considering i did tilt during a session which ended up costing me about 2 buyins as i spewed it all away.
To give you a general idea of how sick my agression was i will post one of my favourite bluffs below.
I did not play the cards but the player in this hand (and in general thats how i played ofcourse). One would think you should do this vs a loose agressive player. But that isn't actualy true. He was a TAG that could laydown hands and tilting. He was starting to adjust to my agression and getting frustrated and i picked up on that. Quite simply put there isn't a hand in his range he would reraise preflop with that would hit this board and he either had and overpair or air. Considering how loose agressive i was there isn't a board that isn't realistcally in my range. He was aware of that.. hence the "clown hit"(clown hit the board again/gets lucky again). Beside that i know he simply can not call an all in with anything less then top pair here.
$0.10/$0.25 No Limit Holdem
PokerStars
3 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
Stacks:
Hero ($34.25)
SB ($29.28)
BB ($26.87)
Pre-Flop: ($0.35, 3 players) Hero is BTN 4♥ 2♥
Hero raises to $0.75, SB raises to $2.50, BB folds, Hero calls $1.75
Flop: 8♣ 3♠ 7♥ ($5.25, 2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $3, SB raises to $8.10, Hero goes all-in $31.75, SB folds, SB says "Clown hit"
Final Pot: $45.10
Hero shows high card Eight
4♥ 2♥
Hero wins $44.10 (net +$9.85)
SB lost $10.60
As you could read i started poker with heads up sng's. However it wasn't until almost a year later i actualy gave them a good try. I was struggling to make a profit.. in fact i was running at -10% ROI at the $5-$6 sng's the first 60 i played. I thought i could beat them easy. but i had no confidence and it was extremely demotivating to not see a profit. Since i had never had a solid winrate over a decent sample in anything but $0,25 sngs did not help reassure me i could beat them. I continued with playing sng's. And about a year ago now a good friend of mine Ionut who's also a member of this forum said he was beating hu sng's and i gave it another try. in 2010 i played around 200 headsup sng total my roi was still negative and i simply couldn't find the motivation or confidence to play alot because i kept losing. During that time i also made my cash game blog. overall 2010 was a year of very little poker.
Over the last few months i wanted to play poker seriously again. Put in more volume then i ever have and take the game alot more serious then before. I got alot of advice from Ionut and several members of a husng group. But more importantly i started thinking deeper about the game myself and asking alot more Why i bet/fold/check etc when i played. While i was unsuccesful in cash games i learned an incredible amount in those 1k hands because i was playing very focused and paying attention to every detail in how my opponents played. After the epic cash game session i decided i was going back to hu sng's. I decided to not make a blog till i had shown a profit over about a 100 of them.
I decided to just start at $10 headsup sng's with about $80 in my pokerstars account. I simply did not want to play anything lower then that. I started out with my very agressive style i had learned in cash games. I ran hot for the first few sng's and thought i was crushing my opposition extremely bad. I started to run pretty bad. And i was facing alot more players who had callingstation tendencies. My agressive style vs those types of players is almost like donating chips. It was very hard for me to play these types of players cause it forced me to play the complete opposite as how i wanted to play.
The last 40 or so i started playing the "no blind increase" hu sng to exploit the players even more. I really like them so far and i think it's the best type of sng for my playing style. Ironically these types of sng seem to attract the tight/passive callingstation type players but that didn't stop me from playing them
The result of my first 100 headsup sng's below. Personally i felt i ran extremely bad in the regular heads up sng. And i feel like the EV line really isn't important at all especially in sng's. You can run very bad and it won't show in the ev line and vice versa. But i decided to include it anyway.
Why HEM all in ev line is flawed
Spoiler
I played a hand today that shows exactly why the HEM EV line is very flawed.
preflop: i have 86% to win and 14% to lose
flop: i have 85% to win.
turn: 23% chance to win.
Now cause i put the money in behind almost 4 to 1 i'm $14 above EV in that hand ($11 buyin). Which obviously does not make sense. I'm crushing him preflop. i hit a good flop and get extremly unlucky on the turn. i usually reraise more then only to 630 but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. i would absolutely never fold this turn vs this player and he made a terrible call on the flop. i mean even if he hits his 6 or 7 it's very likely he's beat. Replay a hand like this a 100 times i expect to be ahead probably 99 times. Players would do this with Ax hands, two pair and lower sets at these stakes. So in reality i should only be about $2-3 over EV. but instead it shows im above EV more then a whole buying while i didn't get lucky at all.
No Limit Holdem Tournament
PokerStars
2 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
$10.50+$0.50
Stacks:
Hero (1,305)
BB (1,695)
Blinds: 15/30
Pre-Flop: (45, 2 players) Hero is SB 8♠ 8♥
Hero raises to 60, BB calls 30
Flop: A♣ 4♥ 8♦ (120, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 75, BB calls 75
Turn: 5♠ (270, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 165, BB raises to 330, Hero raises to 630, BB goes all-in 1,560, Hero goes all-in 540
River: A♥ (3,000, 2 players, 2 all-in)
Final Pot: 3,000
Hero shows a full house, Eights full of Aces
8♠ 8♥
BB shows a straight, Four to Eight
6♥ 7♦
Hero wins 2,610 (net +1,305)
BB collects 390 (net -1,305)
I however feel like this graph does not truly represent my winrate. I ran extremely bad in the regular headsup running at -0.1% roi. And while i often multitabled the NBI i'm currently running at 27% ROI. what's even more funny is the more tables i played simultaniously the higher my ROI has been. I do not really plan to go back to regular hu sng unless i get very little action at the NBI. I've also improved alot during this period and my style has also changed alot so all in all it's not that accurate. (I learned to shift gears alot better and adjust to weak/tight callingstation type players).
Lifetime SNG graph
the parts where it goes up are mostly 12 tabling $0,25 45man tournies with about 100% roi. the rest is pretty much trying out different types of sng's and failing horribly at them. And the last few hundred are heads up sng.
I make sick hero call next sng. I wont really mention why i knew he was bluffing there. But yeah i realised i'm ahead very often in this spot against this guy cause he'd very often shove all in on flops 10x the potsize and bluffed alot.
) and possibly also get tracked by pokerstrategy now. So actualy it's extremely good for me 
So just a small update. Hopefully i will be able to do some grinding this week. 
Luckily i made 2nd pair top kicker so i actualy wasn't too worried i was beat.. shoving like this just looks so incredibly weak to me i didn't have to think long to make the call. (people just don't do this with top pair or better hands). I realise this looks pretty spewy but w/e