Grinding HU's for my 1 in 50k shot

Been almost a week so i thought i'd update my blog.

I actually wanted to finish the 100 headsup at the end of last week. But i'm running incredibly bad. Even though i don't think EV line should be looked at. I'm running 10 BI under EV in my last 18 games.

ohwel;.. not going to whine.Overall i feel i've been playing alright. Perhaps a bit too much hero shoves/calls or my timing has just been incredibly bad. But i'm leaning more towards the first one. Will review my games after this update.

Also been playing some freerolls/$1 sattelites for the 10th anniversary tournaments on pokerstars. have gotten into the top 5-10% of the payouts several times. but no tickets/money won so far. (for example top 80 of ~2-3k and top 20 win a ticket)

But for now i'll post some hands. Not many interesting ones since the play is very bad.

He seemed very agressive/spewy. He had bet paired flops before. So i thought his turn bet was a steal. I call and hope he keeps bluffing. An 8 is both a good and a bad card. There is a possibility he has an 8 the way he played it. However i didn't consider that. And put him on Ax/Kx. He had hero called before with highcards. So i minraise to try to get a little value.

He raises 3x and i call. Not sure if i should have raised the river. But overall i like how i played it.

Stacks:
hahaownedlolz (SB) (1,415)
BB (1,585)

Blinds: 10/20

Pre-Flop: (30, 2 players) hahaownedlolz is SB 10:diamond: Q♦
hahaownedlolz raises to 40, BB calls 20

Flop: 8♠ 4♦ 4♥ (80, 2 players)
BB checks, hahaownedlolz checks

Turn: 10:spade: (80, 2 players)
BB bets 58, hahaownedlolz calls 58

River: 8♣ (196, 2 players)
BB bets 96, hahaownedlolz raises to 200, BB raises to 635, hahaownedlolz calls 435

he had cbet/donkbet potsize 3 times before on paired flush draw flops.
Overall he seemed like a tight fit or fold player. And was donkbetting 3/4 potsize with flushdraw. When valuebetting he never seemed to bet pot. so my thought process here is. either he's extremely lucky. or he's potbetting
them as a bad bluff.

Stacks:
hahaownedlolz (SB) (1,070)
BB (1,930)

Blinds: 20/40

Pre-Flop: (60, 2 players) hahaownedlolz is SB 5♥ 7♥
hahaownedlolz raises to 80, BB calls 40

Flop: 3♦ 3♠ A♦ (160, 2 players)
BB checks, hahaownedlolz checks

Turn: 4♥ (160, 2 players)
BB bets 160, hahaownedlolz goes all-in 990,

Pretty funny hand. I'm not sure why i checked back the turn in this particular pot. I'm cbetting on a dry flop simply because i cbet a lot. So to cbet on dry flops just as a bluff would be bad if you ask me. I check behind to look weak But mostly so that in the future if i check behind turn it will look strong which makes it much easier to play. He shoves and i call ofcourse.

The hand itself is not that interesting. But i think i'm going to really try to keep my opponents guessing a lot. And actually fear checks. In general people especially at this limit see checking as weakness. So the bet/check/bet line is usually very profitable as people will call you with 2nd/third pairs instead of folding to second barrel on the turn.

However if i create a dynamic where i can cbet/check and my opponent thinks it's strong. That makes it really easy to cbet a lot and see cheap showdowns.

Another thing i like to do is bet very little on the river with anything from top pair to third pair when my opponent is hero calling a lot with highcards or bottom/third pair stuff. It's so funny because people really hate to fold when your betting like 1/4 or 1/3 pot. And after a while after they realise they've been spewing so many chips with those hercalls. And then you can actually make river bluffs very cheap ♦

Stacks:
hahaownedlolz (SB) (2,015)
BB (985)

Blinds: 20/40

Pre-Flop: (60, 2 players) hahaownedlolz is SB K♠ A♣
hahaownedlolz raises to 80, BB calls 40

Flop: 5♦ K♥ 7♠ (160, 2 players)
BB checks, hahaownedlolz bets 80, BB calls 80

Turn: 3♠ (320, 2 players)
BB checks, hahaownedlolz checks

River: 10:club: (320, 2 players)
BB goes all-in 825, hahaownedlolz calls 825

That's pretty much it. Will try to play 100 till end of the week and hopefully i'll be running at atleast 10% ROI.

Good luck man!

Originally posted by Hahaownedlolz
Been about a month since my last post. I've actualy not played any poker during this time. I've achieved many long-term goals i had this year in poker. like silverstar on pokerstars and proving to myself i indeed was a longterm profitable player at "decent" stakes. I've also showed i can grind it out.

But the cost was simply too high. I completely lost my balance in life. And i was constantly thinking about poker and only poker. When i was in bed at night i'd think about why people play certain spots in a certain way and figure out the most profitable way to play in such spots. This mindset led to a lot of stress and frustration when things were going downhill.

I'm quite happy with my life as it is now. I don't have the perfect balance i want yet. And till i accomplish that i won't return to playing poker. It really made me realise how important it is to have balance in life. Poker should be an addition to your life not become what your whole life revolves around.
I've considered quitting poker permanently since it's never been worth the time i've invested in it so far. Yet during this last month i've realised. I really love the game.. Nothing else in life challenges me like poker does. It makes me want to constantly improve my game.

Will i return to poker atleast as a casual player? very likely
Will i return to poker with intentions of becomming a pro? probably not
Will i return to these forums? probably not either.

In reality i could however never become a true casual player. As the game itself makes me constantly want to get better at it and win. But more casual in the sense of just doing it for fun and putting quality over quantity in terms of playing amount.

So this is sort of a goodbye to these forums. I'm sure plenty are happy to see me gone. To those i say: Fuck you too

Lol nice, you're from holland right? me 2.
Will follow this, I play $7 @ stars atm.

So it didn't exactly go as planned.

Really busy in real life. Poker has just been really frustrating. I just can't seem to make a profit at any heads up sng's below $10. From all hu's i've played at $1-7 i'm -6,4% roi and all the hu's i've played $8-15 i'm 6,7%.

Which is really strange considering both sample sizes are pretty decent. Both include 2-4 tabling. And considering i was breakeven at $15's it makes it even stranger.

I should be crushing these but for some reason i am not. And when you lose money pretty much everytime you play it's hard to tell yourself to keep playing. Even if the money is meaningless.
Either way, i've not been studying and been really lazy so i just have to put in a lot more effort and figure out why i'm losing so badly.

Plan:
- Stop 2 tabling and 1 table and actually think. (Haven't played my A game at all)
- Analyze my game and fix leaks.
- i'd buy husng subscription but december is expensive month ♦
- Possibly play a few $1 45-180 man's and learn them. since i want to have another game next to headsup sng.
- going to try to sat my way into the SM with the 1500 FPP i have. which is about $20-25 i believe. If i get lucky i'll play if not then ohwell ♦

On a completely different note. I watched this show recently. something like brain training on NGC. And it was about how people can't multitask well at all. And when you do multitask your just switching your attention back and forth constantly instead of actually being able to focus on 2 things at once. I notice this when i play headsup poker. When i 2 table i always think/focus on 1 table and pretty much play automatically on the other one. Which simply can't be profitable unless your ABC/auto game is really solid or the players are very bad. So i don't think i'm really gaining anything from 2 tabling.
(With multitasking they meant doing 2 things at the same time almost as good as if you were doing them separately)

Just thought i'd update real quick before i go to bed. Just finished a 2 hour session 1 tabling the $1,50s. and analysed all husng pots larger then 10bb i played this month (only 84 hands).

I'm pretty shocked at how badly i played. It's not that i'd play badly in general. Most hands i played pretty decently. But then i would completely spazz out and just shove all in in random spots. And when you do things like that, you can never be a winning player.

I made a whole list of adjustments, thoughts and ramblings on those hands. If anyone wants to read it i'll post it. But else i'll keep it to myself ♦

This last session. i only played 7 husng but that took me 2 hours to play so it's not that as little as it sounds. I played really good if i say so myself. I haven't played my A game in 6+ months so this was a nice confidence boost. Made some mistakes and did run pretty well. But mostly i just talked out loud about everything happening. No music or anything just full focus. Whenever i'd get a bad beat i just grind it back up every single time untill i won.

Very happy, will grind some more tomorrow and post some hands here.. It was hard for me to play $1,50 husng seriously. But i just played my best every game. Might ask for a stake in a few weeks if i keep this up. But will have to show some good recent results first.

Obviously running quite a bit above EV. Regardless of that my EV-adjusted ROI is 27,3%. Don't think that's maintainable even with how badly i crushed them tonight. but i'll be very happy with anywhere from 8-15% ROI.

Double post

I'm soul crushing these fish so i'm moving up to $10 hu sng's ♦

Just kidding They seem way softer then before. Everyone is just so incredibly bad it's not even funny. I believe i can achieve a pretty sick ROI at this level since everytime i get down i can just grind back up over and over again.

I have about 40 hands in a notepad. I'll just show you an example game i just played. So you guys can see how bad the play there really is

Plan:
- Post hands every day on 2p2.
- Analyse all pots played larger then 10bb once a week.
- read some husng articles on 2p2.
- try to play 10-15 husng every day. (2-3,5 hours)
- move up to $3,50'S once i have 50 buyins for them.

I might post some interesting hands later today. I'll also post some hands of how badly i was playing before that will even make your pet facepalm

Was planning to update earlier but haven't been running too well. Probably among the worst times i've run since i've started playing poker. Just really frustrated by that and stressed due to real life. Down about 10 buyins since my peak but if i have to run really bad then i'm happy it's at the $1,50 level. t it's still very frustrating that i'm supposedly running 12 buyins above ev when i'm getting a ridiculous amount of coolers and setups.

I make folds pretty much no one can at this limit.. But after a while it's just too much. I just start thinking how can they run so good? This can't be possible. Just to see they hit their 2-4 outer again on the turn/river. But to be honest i've not been playing to the best of my ability and have tilted a few times.

Atm i just think it's best not to play and just clear my mind so when i play again i can fully focus on poker.

As for trying to sat my way into the SM again. i spent about 500 FPP trying to go to round 2 of the SM mega path. Which was a 215FPP ticket. I won my round 3 ticket today worth 2150 FPP. So now i have about a 1 in 6.5 chance to sat my way into the sunday million. Will probably use my remaining 1k FPP to just play 2 500 FPP sats and see if i get lucky.

Honestly played terribly in round 2 and didn't deserve to win a ticket at all. If i do sat my way in i might not even play. If i'm just going to spew off chips like a monkey in the SM then i might aswell just cash it out.

Hi there,

The way things are looking I would be surprised if that Round 3 game finished before the SM starts so if you are lucky enough to win you'll be registered straight into it. I've been trying to contact Stars about this but still awaiting a reply on it.

Best of luck in the satellite though I will be playing it also and the $11 super satellite. I have already qualified and am registered for the SM but hoping to scoop a nice FPP and T$ boost

Best wishes,
Gary

nice blog , gl. following

Originally posted by HollyMichelle
Hi there,

The way things are looking I would be surprised if that Round 3 game finished before the SM starts so if you are lucky enough to win you'll be registered straight into it. I've been trying to contact Stars about this but still awaiting a reply on it.

Best of luck in the satellite though I will be playing it also and the $11 super satellite. I have already qualified and am registered for the SM but hoping to scoop a nice FPP and T$ boost

Best wishes,
Gary

Thanks. I just won 2 tickets to the sunday million a few minutes ago And i did notice i got automatically registered.

Should probably change thread titel to "luckboxing sats for my 1 in 50k shot"

Really happy atm. $215T is a nice increase of my bankroll. Any winnings will likely be cashed out though. Will keep playing $1,50s till i'm showing good stats.