Introduction to the blog
Hi PokerStrategy, and welcome to my blog on micro cash games. I've been playing Poker on and off for quite some time now, bouncing from game to game and generally never really sticking to one area for long. That being said, I've managed to succeed across many of them, earning decent profits at NL4 SH, NL5 FR, $2.25 Turbo SNG's, and 50c-$1 45-90 man MTSNG's. That being said, it's time to go back to cash games, the most stable, variance-free, schedule-kind poker I know.
How I got into Poker
Now, on to a much more interesting story, which is how I actually got into Poker to start with. I figure a blog should share a bit of personality, so if you'd rather not hear about that stuff, just skip the next few paragraphs. I basically got into Poker as a result of my uncle dying. Yeah, this may seem weird, but there is method to my madness.
My uncle was always such a mathematical person, such a logical person. He was a lot like me actually, everyone tells me I'm just like him. At some point or another, he got into the NPL, a series of live MTT's run at various pubs and clubs across Australia, where I live. He actually won one, receiving a winner's chip to let him attend Nationals. Sadly, he died before he could attend, and his best friend, also a Poker player, got the chip.
So as part of his stuff (he died young, no real will) we got 2 NPL caps, and me and my Dad got to talking about Poker. He told me I should get into it, but I was never interested in it. I occasionally thought about it, but for the most part, I didn't care.
Enter PokerStrategy.com
I got into Starcraft 2 instead, a real-time strategy game. It's a game of incomplete information that requires a lot of skill and quick decision making. (Sound like any games you know?)
I got into a strategy site called Team Liquid, was never very good, but soaked up the wisdom of the masters anyway, and then one day, a big Starcraft 2 tournament came up, and it was sponsored by PokerStrategy.com. I suddenly remembered what my Dad had always wanted, and what I had thought. "If I ever knew the strategy of Poker in depth I'd probably be way more interested in playing it." So I clicked the link.
I was skeptical. Why would anyone give me 50 bucks for nothing. Oh, I have to pass a quiz. Even so. For this, I must offer INCREDIBLE kudos to PokerStrategy here. They laid their entire business model out, easily accessible. I went through it, thought it was awesome, completed my quiz, and got my 50 bucks. And I've been channeling my competitive urges into it ever since.
Poker History
To go over my Poker history briefly: I started some time ago, I can't remember when, by finding PokerStrategy.com. (More on that next section.) I donked around for a bit with different games, before eventually going through several phases of FR cash and SNG's on Full Tilt. I was going pretty well at the SNG's at Full Tilt when...yeah, you know where this is going.
So I quit for a while after losing my roll, but eventually put some money on PartyPoker and started playing NL4 SH. I did pretty well, earning about 80 bucks over a while before I stopped again. I've since withdrawn that money. Then a few weeks ago, I got the urge to play Poker. I only had about 40 bucks on PokerStars, so I decided to fuck around: I didn't care if I lost it all. Using aggro BRM, I lost half of it on SNG's, then started playing MTSNG's. The players were REALLY bad, and I went on a big heater, and built it up to around 55 bucks. Then I decided to play NL2 SH.
After about 3,000 hands at that, I got a decent windfall of money IRL. I was at 75 bucks at this point, and thought: "Okay, I'm 6-tabling, playing around 500 hands an hour. At 10bb/100, that's about 50bb per hour, or $1 per hour. If I deposit 50 bucks and can win at NL5 SH, I'll skip 50 hours, which is a full month at the rate I play. Seems a reasonable gamble, given that I've beaten NL4 SH on PartyPoker and NL5 FR on Full Tilt.
That was 3 days ago. Since then, I've been on a pretty big heater, and have run my 125 bucks up to 164. However, the NL5 players still do stupid things, and it doesn't seem too different to NL2. I don't think I'm being results-oriented when I say I can beat the limit.
Where to from here?
Obviously the next step is to move up. To do that, I'm going to need 135 bucks, or 27 BI, to reach 30 BI for NL10. I have no idea what my true win-rate is, and according to a comprehensive statistics-heavy blog post I read on NL 6-max variance, it's basically impossible for anyone who isn't a super-hardcore mass-multitabler to find out: It'll take half a year for even a pro to get enough hands to be 95% sure within 2 bb of error. I'm no pro, and I'm also changing my game rapidly, so there's no way for me to ever find out. With that said, I'm making a conservative estimate of 8bb/100.
So, let's reverse-engineer that. 8bb/100 is equal to 1 buy-in every 1,250 hands. I need 27 BI, so assuming average variance, I need to play 33,750 hands of NL5 to move up. I play about 460 hands an hour according to HEM. So I need to play 70-75 hours of Poker. That's a bit much for one month for me, so here's what I'll do. Today is July 20. My goal will be to get 33,750 hands in by the end of August, which is 41 days. Whether I move up or not doesn't matter. The point is to get the hands in and play as best I can.
If I play at that rate, namely about 5.5k hands per week, I should make Gold status at PS.com and SilverStar at PokerStars as well, so those will be nice bonuses. Mostly symbolic admittedly, since Gold material is likely above my level and SilverStar doesn't grant much extra rakeback, but it'll be nice to have anyway.
How I play.
I'm not sure how you'd classify my playstyle: a sLAG, maybe? I don't think I'm quite laggy: I play at about 28/26. My play so far seems to get close to an even redline: It's even over 4500 hands, but I had a slightly-descending redline at PartyPoker and I have been on a heater basically since I started playing cash again. I achieve a redline like this with a lot of aggression. Through reading higher limit blogs, I've found that whenever you move up, the most common reaction is "Wow, this limit is more aggressive." So, good players are more aggressive. Why not get ahead of the curve, and start piling on the aggression right now? By being an annoying 3-better (see below), c-betting a fair bit, and blind stealing liberally, as well as just generally keeping an eye out for ways to attack pots, I'm able to come close to even in non-showdown winnings. To break up the monotony of the text, here's my current graph:
The first 3k hands are NL2, the remainder are NL5. I've...been getting kinda lucky.
I'm using the ranges from Verneer's "Moving Up Through uNL in 2010", a series of forum posts about a small-stakes player journeying through the micros. It's a bit outdated, but much less so than most other material out there on the micros. This means I 3-bet a fair bit against CO and BU openers, but it seems to work pretty well, even though I almost had a spit-take when I first saw the ranges from my own notes months ago:
3-bet vs. opens from:
EP: JJ+, AK
MP: TT+, AQ+
CO: 44+, A5s+, KTs+, QJs, A8o+, KJo+
BU: 22+, A2s+, K9s+, QTs+, A3o+, KTo+
SB: Same as CO.
Surprisingly, it works really well though. Especially since people are really scared in 3-bet pots. Often, when people call a 3-bet pot, they don't have a big overpair like QQ+, which they'd 4-bet with. Instead they have AJ-AK, maybe KQ. Often, a c-bet on the flop can take that down, especially since a decent c-bet into a 3-bet pot is starting to look like a LOT of money. As Verneer points out: Annoying 3-betters are one of the hardest things to fight at uNL, so naturally, you want to be one of those annoying 3-betters yourself. The only real ways to fight against them are:
1) Start 4-bet bluffing. At the micros, this is just stupid. There are way worse players out there.
2) Call 3-bets more. This can get dangerous, especially against a liberal c-better like me.
3) Fold.
4) Leave.
Verneer personally recommends just leaving the table if someone like that is to your left, and frankly I agree with him. But at NL5, people often don't do that, so I get a fair bit of money. (Even if they did, or do at NL10, I'd make a fair bit of money: The good players would leave when I 3-bet them a few times when I'm to their left, giving more opportunities to a fish to sit down to my right. It's win-win!)
Don't expect verbose posts like this all the time, by the way. A huge leak in my last blog was spending way too much time on it. It's 1 am now, so I'm too tired to play my A-game, but I can certainly write. I'll probably write most of my blog posts around this time, to avoid cutting into Poker time. (Especially since I'll have to be playing around 12 hours a week for the next 6 weeks to make my volume goal.)
To anyone who read the entire thing, thanks! I hope to entertain you all. Thanks for reading!
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