VladimirN: April Reviewed & May Goals

Pozdrav zemljače, nek varijacija bude uz tebe!

I'll be following
Don' forget to use hand evaluation forums https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/board.php?boardid=1429

Hvala zemljace

Last 7-8 days were quite hectic so I couldn't really post much in here or play poker as much as I wanted. Had some exams and haven't even played for 3-4 days.

Around the start of my mission I had 2 internet failures in 2 days while 8 tabling 3.5$ ones. I got 2 internet connections (cable and wi-fi) and they both went out at the same time. I'm wondering if there was something wrong with my computer and not the connection itself.
Anyway, I started badly: 2 cuts and a lot of coolers left me hanging around break even.

To be honest I had enough of 3.5's, there are a lot of fish but I can't really improve my game there. Actually, for me it is harder to play against fish with 70% VPIP and 20% Fold to CBet then against decent players. Of coarse it is easy when you hit something / have a big pair (which is not that often), but when you don't, you're done. As well it's impossible to read them when they hit 2 pair on 237 board against your KK

With 550$ + another 80$ I deposited (few days before Stars 22$ ticket promo, dang it ♦) I decided to go for 7's. 90 Buy-Ins should be enough.
To be honest I feel much more comfortable there. They respect your table image a bit more and are generally a bit tighter, so I can steal a blind or two with trash for a change. Even some of the fish are bad in a tight way as opposed to being raisy-crazy.
It was quite bit more difficult to select a table with less then 2 winning players, so I had to mix in some lower BI games to keep the number of tables to 7-8.

Haven't played much, but here is the graph for January and some stats for 3.5's and 7's individually:

So I'm pretty much running terrible in 3.5's and hot in 7's. Can't complain ♦
As of my goals, everything is going along as planned except the volume which I'll try to pick up. Currently I have only like 3 hours of poker playing per day, but I'll have more soon.

Also I might try to find some interesting hands for evaluation

good luck, i'll be folling

Thanks.

After skipping Friday the 13th completely due to being superstitious ♠_confused: had a pretty bad day today with -80$. The number of coolers was sick, hope tomorrow will be better.

Current BR: 695 $.

Here are some hands that might be interesting:

PokerStars - $6.48+$0.52|10/20 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

BB: 1,970.00
UTG: 1,460.00
Hero (MP): 1,430.00
CO: 1,200.00
BTN: 1,430.00
SB: 1,510.00

SB posts SB 10.00, BB posts BB 20.00

Pre Flop: (30.00) Hero has A♦ A♥

fold, Hero raises to 75.00, CO raises to 140.00, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 290.00, CO calls 150.00

Flop: (610.00, 2 players) 4♥ 7♠ 8♥
Hero bets 435.00, CO calls 435.00

Turn: (1480.00, 2 players) Q♠
Hero bets 705.00 and is all-in, CO calls 475.00 and is all-in

River: (2430.00, 2 players) 7♥

PokerStars - $6.48+$0.52|25/50 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

SB: 1,830.00
Hero (BB): 2,000.00
UTG: 1,345.00
MP: 1,570.00
CO: 1,540.00
BTN: 715.00

SB posts SB 25.00, Hero posts BB 50.00

Pre Flop: (75.00) Hero has 4♥ 9♥

fold, fold, fold, BTN calls 50.00, SB calls 25.00, Hero checks

Flop: (150.00, 3 players) J♥ 6♠ 5♥
SB bets 50.00, Hero calls 50.00, BTN calls 50.00

Turn: (300.00, 3 players) 4♠
SB bets 100.00, Hero calls 100.00, BTN calls 100.00

River: (600.00, 3 players) T♥
SB bets 400.00, Hero raises to 1,150.00, fold, SB raises to 1,630.00 and is all-in, Hero calls 480.00

PokerStars - $6.48+$0.52|75/150 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 3 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

Hero (SB): 3,130.00
BB: 3,986.00
BTN: 1,884.00

Hero posts SB 75.00, BB posts BB 150.00

Pre Flop: (225.00) Hero has A♠ J♦

fold, Hero raises to 375.00, BB calls 225.00

Flop: (750.00, 2 players) T♠ J♣ T♣
Hero checks, BB checks

Turn: (750.00, 2 players) 4♠
Hero bets 525.00, BB calls 525.00

River: (1800.00, 2 players) 6♦
Hero checks, BB bets 600.00, Hero calls 600.00

PokerStars - $6.48+$0.52|15/30 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

BB: 1,963.00
UTG: 2,270.00
CO: 1,687.00
Hero (BTN): 1,720.00
SB: 1,360.00

SB posts SB 15.00, BB posts BB 30.00

Pre Flop: (45.00) Hero has 8♥ 8♠

fold, fold, Hero raises to 90.00, fold, BB calls 60.00

Flop: (195.00, 2 players) 3♥ Q♣ 2♣
BB bets 180.00, Hero calls 180.00

Turn: (555.00, 2 players) 8♣
BB bets 540.00, Hero raises to 1,450.00 and is all-in, BB calls 910.00

River: (3455.00, 2 players) 2♠

PokerStars - $6.48+$0.52|100/200 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 2 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

BB: 3,570.00
Hero (SB): 5,430.00

Hero posts SB 100.00, BB posts BB 200.00

Pre Flop: (300.00) Hero has K♣ K♥

Hero raises to 500.00, BB calls 300.00

Flop: (1000.00, 2 players) 2♠ J♦ 5♠
BB checks, Hero bets 550.00, BB raises to 1,100.00, Hero raises to 4,930.00 and is all-in, BB calls 1,970.00 and is all-in

Turn: (7140.00, 2 players) 5♣

River: (7140.00, 2 players) 4♣

PokerStars - $6.48+$0.52|15/30 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

MP: 875.00
CO: 1,925.00
BTN: 1,655.00
Hero (SB): 1,370.00
BB: 1,935.00
UTG: 1,240.00

Hero posts SB 15.00, BB posts BB 30.00

Pre Flop: (45.00) Hero has A♠ A♣

UTG calls 30.00, fold, CO calls 30.00, BTN calls 30.00, Hero raises to 142.00, fold, fold, CO calls 112.00, fold

Flop: (374.00, 2 players) T♦ 4♠ T♥
Hero checks, CO checks

Turn: (374.00, 2 players) 2♠
Hero bets 195.00, CO calls 195.00

River: (764.00, 2 players) 9♣
Hero bets 292.00, CO raises to 630.00, Hero raises to 1,033.00 and is all-in, CO calls 403.00

In last 2 days I managed to get back what I lost (and some change), earning around 95$.
I started playing 7's exclusively because I noticed that when I play mixed BIs, I kind of focus more on the bigger ones and do worse on 3.5's. So this way, every game gets the same treatment.

As my lucky number is 7 I found this interesting

Might be a sign or something.
Having won a 11$ ticket to some tourney, my Current BR is 789 $.

And here are some stats:

I think I played well with some luck of going with pairs vs lower pairs more often then the other way around. Although I had KK vs AA 5 times in past 70 SnG's.
I just noticed I won just 1 out of my 12 last qualifiers which pay 6 out of 20 entrants :f_biggrin:, so not really running hot in those it seems.

Pretty frustrating day. Played around 100 SnG's and ran 50.000 chips under EV according to PT3 (wish I could make $ one), and lost 59$.

I keep getting it in good and they keep sucking out. And to make it worse it all happened HU or on the bubble.
I'm not sure how that translates into $ but I'd guess it'd be around 80$ under EV at least.

There were quite a few interesting hands, but it's late now so will post tomorrow.
Current BR: 730$

So to summarize last several days, starting from 18. January.
It was pretty frustrating, tanking as low as 110.000 chips under EV, most of it HU or on the bubble. But afterwards I recovered a bit to end it 50.000 chips under EV. So the placements were:

356 Games:
1st: 52 times - 14.6 %
2nd: 89 times - 25 %
3rd: 86 times - 24.2 %
4th: 74 times - 20.8 %
5th: 36 times - 10.1 %
6th: 19 times - 5.3 %

What HEM2 EV graph is telling me (even though I think it's inaccurate) is that I was 150$ under EV. But regardless you can imagine what the placements would have been if those 110.000 chips swung my way on the bubble or HU.
Most frustrating ones were when I get them to like 300-500 chips HU and they then proceed to win 6 all-ins in a row...had at least 10+ of those.

At one point I lost like 200$. But regardless, kept at it and ended these several days with a profit of around 170$ since my last post.
Current BR: 897$

Some Sharkscope stats for January:

I clearly won't be able to reach my goal of 2.000 SnGs this month though, but as long as I play good that's not so important.
Tomorrow I will post some interesting hands.

Just played a SnG with 2 Germans colluding. We were at the bubble when I noticed. Here are some of the hands that tipped them off.

PokerStars - $6.48+$0.52|100/200 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 3 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

sudistar (BB): 660.00
skolez (BTN): 4,190.00
VladimirN (SB): 4,150.00

sudistar posts ante 25.00, skolez posts ante 25.00, VladimirN posts ante 25.00, VladimirN posts SB 100.00, sudistar posts BB 200.00

Pre Flop: (375.00) VladimirN has Q♠ 8♣

skolez raises to 400.00, fold, sudistar raises to 635.00 and is all-in, fold

sudistar wins 975.00

and

PokerStars - $6.48+$0.52|100/200 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 3 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

sudistar (SB): 435.00
skolez (BB): 4,840.00
VladimirN (BTN): 3,725.00

sudistar posts ante 25.00, skolez posts ante 25.00, VladimirN posts ante 25.00, sudistar posts SB 100.00, skolez posts BB 200.00

Pre Flop: (375.00) VladimirN has 4♦ 6♣

fold, sudistar raises to 410.00 and is all-in, fold

sudistar wins 475.00

There were some more of those and they never went against each other. I mean, I'm not usually paying attention but that's really too much.

Anyway, won the SnG regardless. Feels good man.

Hi VladimirN,

You should report them for sure. Seems like definite collusion by these players.

Nice blog! ♠_cool:

All the best,
Gary

Hi! Thank you for your kind words.

Ran good today, got my 50k chips back and ended the day with 174$ profit.
I currently got 8% ROI from around 600 games I played in 7s.

Current BR: 1.071$

Here are some interesting hands:

PokerStars - $6.48+$0.52|15/30 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

BTN: 2,210.00
Hero (SB): 1,485.00
BB: 1,380.00
UTG: 1,315.00
CO: 2,610.00

Hero posts SB 15.00, BB posts BB 30.00

Pre Flop: (45.00) Hero has 5♠ 4♠

fold, CO calls 30.00, BTN calls 30.00, Hero calls 15.00, BB checks

Flop: (120.00, 4 players) 7♠ 8♠ 6♠
Hero checks, BB checks, CO checks, BTN checks

Turn: (120.00, 4 players) 4♥
Hero bets 75.00, BB calls 75.00, fold, fold

River: (270.00, 2 players) 9♦
Hero bets 142.00, BB raises to 284.00, Hero raises to 1,380.00 and is all-in, BB calls 991.00 and is all-in

PokerStars - $6.48+$0.52|10/20 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

Hero (SB): 1,480.00
BB: 1,020.00
UTG: 1,440.00
MP: 2,200.00
CO: 1,470.00
BTN: 1,390.00

Hero posts SB 10.00, BB posts BB 20.00

Pre Flop: (30.00) Hero has A♣ A♦

UTG calls 20.00, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 90.00, BB calls 70.00, UTG calls 70.00

Flop: (270.00, 3 players) 6♦ 6♠ 5♣
Hero checks, BB checks, UTG checks

Turn: (270.00, 3 players) 6♣
Hero bets 180.00, BB calls 180.00, UTG calls 180.00

River: (810.00, 3 players) 2♥
Hero bets 460.00, fold, UTG raises to 1,170.00 and is all-in, Hero calls 710.00

PokerStars - $6.48+$0.52|100/200 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 2 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

SB: 4,220.00
Hero (BB): 4,780.00

SB posts SB 100.00, Hero posts BB 200.00

Pre Flop: (300.00) Hero has J♦ 7♥

SB calls 100.00, Hero checks

Flop: (400.00, 2 players) J♥ T♦ T♠
Hero checks, SB checks

Turn: (400.00, 2 players) T♥
Hero bets 400.00, SB calls 400.00

River: (1200.00, 2 players) 8♥
Hero bets 600.00, SB raises to 1,200.00, Hero raises to 4,180.00 and is all-in, SB calls 2,420.00 and is all-in

I would certainly send those two hands along with hand numbers.

Taken from http://www.pokerstars.co.uk/faq/security/ :

' Q: I have spotted two players colluding or chip dumping, to whom should I report them?
A: Please send an email to support@pokerstars.com with the subject title ‘Collusion report’ and an investigation will be conducted on the reported accounts. '

Nice blog by the way, I'm also playing sit n go's on stars(but the smallest ones since I've a tiny BR) - will be following

This past 10-ish days were quite bad. Running around 50 BI under EV and having a lot of coolers. They just keep calling with crap against my QQ+ and flopping worlds like:

There were like 50 of those situations, which was really frustrating, but I guess it's my faulth for playing against those kind of people.
In some cases I can't really blame them for calling pre flop...

...but flopping that? It's just cruel.

I mean I can fold a good hand when I feel I'm beat...

...even though I'm playing against complete fish.

Some folds might be bad but I called too many times to get a feel for when I'm beat...

...and some just plain terrible (?)...

...although in my defense I felt like I had a chance to do good with the rest of my stack being 16-17 BBs. I'd call this in like 98% of the cases, but against this particular person, I felt beaten. Then it looked like a weak Kx, although now when I see it, it looks like a missed straight draw.

Current BR: 780 $
So I'm down around 300$. Hopefully my luck will be a bit better in February.

Will post some interesting hand later, there are like 100s of those.

Dobar blog!!!
Do you participate in Fifty50 Strategy league?

@kolacar

Hvala.
No, I don't play Fifty50s.

In order to get my hands reviewed, and bronze is not enough, I decided to buy silver.

It's worth it, costing only 19$ for 3 months and I get some videos as well.

Hopefully I'll need gold for reviews after this one expires

Hey guys, haven't updated for some time because at these lower games there are not much interesting hands (if any).

My BR fell to around 600$ when things got a little stagnant and I got a little tired of SnGs. Around 15th of February I decided to come back to play DoNs so I moved my BR to Merge, where I started playing 10$ DoNs.
Even though there are tons or regs there (too many of them with 4%+ ROI), and I can't table select because of too few tables going, things went pretty good so far, and in the last 12-ish days I got my BR to 1151$. So I almost doubled it.
Didn't really have optimal BRM at start but I felt pretty confident and I would have downgraded to 5s if I fell under 500$, so it worked out pretty well in the end.

Now, I plan to move my BR to William Hill, after I found out about great deal PS/WH offer. As I understood, with the 200% up to 2000$ first deposit bonus I get the equivalent of around 100% rakeback lol, thats sweet. And even without the bonus, with my volume and playing 20s I can get around 70-80% rakeback equivalent.
As well I can finally play on tracked account, since I had Stars account before I joined PS.
I planned to move at the start of March but since I'm running hot on Merge I'll be staying until I have a losing day (including rakeback).

First half of March was pretty much a waste of time.
Had to wait 7 days for Merge withdrawal to be processed after which I went to Poker770. Plan was to clear 2k bonus and then switch to William Hill to stay for good.

Then I realized that Poker770's bonus is 12% lower in terms of rakeback then WH's so I was missing a lot of value. As well playing on P770 I don't get gemstones.
So after 4 days and 150$ profit I decided to switch to WH right now...so I had to wait another 4 days.

I've been playing on WH since 15th of March and it's been good so far.
My initial plan was to play large volume and be at least break even, and get a lot of dough from deposit bonus, VIP program, rakerace and gems.

Results:

Month: March
Days: 5
Games: 594
Average BI: 11$

EV Profit From Games: 156$ (2.3% ROI)
Actual Profit From Games: -370$ (-5.7% ROI)
Deposit Bonus Cleared: 255$
WH Points: 17.820 = 232$
-----------------------------------------
Expected Profit: 643$
Actual Profit: 117$

Current BR: 1490$

So far I'm running 526$ under EV or 47 BIs. Pretty standard and I'm very happy that I managed not to tilt and play my A-game at all times.
Hopefully my luck will turn around.

Unlike Merge, here I get some interesting hands from time to time, some of which I will post tomorrow.

Hi from russian community!
GL!

Hi Vladimir ,
Have you tried out 888 for DONs? I'm planning on moving to WH or Lock poker
(Merge) to play DONs. Prolly Lock poker (I hate the blind structure in WH). What do u think about WH blinds structure??
Also How is merge? What % RB can I expect if I generate~1000$+ rake/month?
I'll start from 10$ DONs then move up.

Any suggestions are welcome and thanks in advance.

Hey there.

Their blind structure seems pretty similar except for antes.

iPoker: 20, 40, 60, 100, 150, 200 (25), 300 (25), 400 (50), 600 (100)
Merge: 20, 50, 100 (5), 150 (10), 200 (10), 300 (15), 400 (15), 500 (20), 600 (20)

I'll try to sum up my experiences on those 2 networks:

Merge:
1) There are a bunch of regulars. You usually get at least 3 of them per table (not rarely 5 or more) . And most of them have 4%+ ROI.
2) Blinds are 7 minutes, which I guess helps your ROI, but you can't get to put in much volume. There are turbo ones with 5 min blinds but those doesn't fill up.
3) Only 10-handed. They used to have 6-handed which I played exclusively, but they for some reason exterminated them.
4) To me at least, games seem easier because of 1). They know they have to be tight against your pushes.
Here I had around 4-5% ROI over 7.000 games, with average BI of like 4$.

iPoker:
1) I can't say I've seen many DoN players with positive ROI here, maybe 1-2.
2) Blinds are 4 minutes, which is almost twice as fast.
3) Only 6-handed. I think there are 10-handed as well but those rarely fill up. So with that in mind you get to play even more of them.
4) This site is chock full of very bad players. They play DoNs like normal SnGs, and I'm not talking of fish, I'm talking of regulars. What here is a regular, that's a heavily losing player of Merge. This makes playing DoNs profitably, very hard indeed.
Here I have -4% ROI over 500 games (and running like 2% under EV).

I gave you some info and it's up to you to choose. Merge is easier to achieve positive ROI, but WH got better cashback in form of VIP system, first deposit bonus (and gemstones + 80k rakerace if you can register over PS)

Best Wishes.