For real this time! - Tino's CG blog [Back to NL25 zoom]

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Played another session tonight... And it went even more horrible than the first one today! And it's not even that I'm playing poorly. Sure, I don't play perfectly, but most of my losses here comes purely from variance. Which really, really sucks. Basically, almost every time the money went in pre flop and I had a big pocket pair and my opponent had Ax (with the x being lower than my pair), they hit the A. A lot of the time I had my opponent dominated, they hit their pair. Often when I was short and shoved with a weak hand from BU/CO, one of the blinds had me dominated or whatever.

Still, I can live with it. If there's one thing that's pretty strong on my behalf, it's probably my mental game. I don't tilt so easily. Of course it's disappointing when I lose yet another 70/30 where I'm the favorite, but I just move on. Nothing you can do. I'm just looking forward to the days where I'm winning every hand as a 70/30 dog

Needless to say, I'm running pretty badly below EV. But again, I can live with it.

Today I played a little over 70 tournaments with a grand total of 8 minimal cashes. I suppose an ITM of 10+% isn't even terrible... But over $100 went down the drain today. That's over 30 max BIs for me, so that's quite a lot. Let's just hope tomorrow's going to be a better day!

Now, after all the complaining about bad luck, I also definitely do my research into my own game. And one of the problems I'm seeing is that I tend to call a little too light on the river, mostly with hands like weak top pairs and middle pairs. So that's something I'm going to be working on. Sometimes it's justified to call, sometimes it's not. So now it's up to me to find out when it is and when it isn't.

Current BR: $537.81
Profit: -$66.79

Nice blog!

As you know your luck will come around, and when you are running sick and invincible in one tourney it makes all the run bad feel better!

Thanks!

So true. But the downswing unfortunately still continues. Still wasn't able to win my all-ins in this morning's session. Always sucks to have to start like this...

Just to put it into perspective a bit, the last 20 times I got it in with KK preflop against 1 opponent, I had ~73% equity on average and won exactly 50% of the time. Of course a very small sample, but since the same holds true for most hands I get it in good with... It just sucks

But like you said, things will turn around eventually! I feel a big tournament ship coming very soon

My luck seems to be a little better, but I'm still losing tons of flips and whatnot. Still, managed to get a couple of small cashes today, a few of which at the end of my evening session, so at least it feels a bit better. But when I then look at my April graph...

Yeah, that doesn't make one feel great. Down another $60+ for the day

I'll be pretty busy the coming few days with other things in life, so I probably won't be able to play too much until sunday. Let's hope that, when I hit the tables again, things will turn around and that green line will start rising again!

Still feeling the big ship coming. Maybe I'll try satelliting into a sunday storm or something and ship that

On a side note, I feel like PT is missing some tournaments, or is calculating my profit incorrectly? I should be at a profit of about $70 over this month, but it says I only have about $40. Does anyone have any idea why this is?

Current BR: $470.38
Profit: -$67.43

Missed this until now

MTTs are a funny game and it only takes one good run to turn it all around

Good luck Tino!

Thanks! Apparently I'll need it

Wait until you go through 1k game BE stretch, then every 100-200 game DS will be easy ♦

May you win many flips, GL.

Thanks!

Yeah, I suppose you're right. ♦

So yet another losing session today, but at least I wasn't getting sucked out on as much as a few days ago!

Down about $13 for the day, but I still feel pretty good about it. I'm still running way below EV, so I don't worry too much.

I got a couple small cashes in some tournaments, including two 6max tournaments. One of these was a standard speed tournament, the other was a turbo. I have played a few 6max tournaments now, and I have to say I really like the format of 6max MTTs. It's really a shame there's not a whole lot of 6max MT SNGs, aside of a few 12 and 18 man ones.

I also managed to get a few cashes in the 180 mans. In fact, I managed to turn a 1bb stack (QQ < 53 ) into a 6th place finish, so that felt pretty good. Unfortunately busted in 6th JJ < KJ. Still, I can't complain, because I was lucky enough to even get itm at all

As far as my play is concerned, I'm really happy. Especially in the regular speed tournaments, I think I played very well. I was aggressive both pre and post flop, allowing me to pick up tons of small pots, so I ended up having a very nice stack eventually. Unfortunately QQ < AK got me down to ~6bb and I busted in 60th or something. I certainly think my post flop play has improved massively from a few months ago, and even when I started again 2 weeks ago. I used to overplay pairs pretty often, and often also called down way too light. But I'm definitely improving in that area.

Another thing I have improved on from a few months ago, is the fact that I'm playing just a touch looser and more aggressively pre flop. I used to be pretty tight, probably way too tight, but I'm definitely doing better there. I have found that playing pretty aggressively pre flop puts you in so many good spots post flop because you're playing against so many terrible people. I used to think "well, I'll just wait for good spots with good cards against these fools", but now I'm more or less creating good spots for myself. I guess my improved post flop skills also allow me to play a bit looser pre flop. But not only is my overall game improving imo, playing more aggressively is also a lot more fun than playing rather nitty ♦

Despite the unfortunate bust out (I think I was among the chip leaders when I lost that flip, not 100% sure) I played the tournament well, which definitely gives me a lot of confidence that I'll be able to do well. I played a solid push/fold game in the turbo tournaments I played. One thing I noticed though, is that in the 45/180 man turbos, you often just have to blind off for a while because of the fast structure. That sometimes makes it pretty tough to remain patient and wait for rough spots, but I try

Something I think I should work on now though is my bet sizing. I used to bet way too large most of the time, and am definitely not betting as big anymore. However, I feel like I'm sometimes not extracting enough value by betting just a touch too small. Sometimes I bet about 1/3 pot on the river with a marginal hand to get value, when I think something like a 2/5 pot bet would achieve the same thing.

So, BR is now sitting at $457.59. So still going down unfortunately, but at least I'm not losing every single all in anymore.

So, tomorrow is Sunday, and I think I'm going to desposit just a little bit extra so that I can play some of the big Sunday tournaments. Maybe I'll desposit something like $33 so that I can play the Storm, Bigger $11 and Hotter $11 or something. The Sunday evening for me is an evening to have a little fun as well, rather than a bankroll building time. So while I'll probably play a standard session tomorrow morning, I'm going after the big cash tomorrow evening

That should wrap it up for now. I'm still really enjoying my time. I guess as a little goal for myself, I could try to reach Silver Star status by the end of the month, which is only 90 more VPPs. But honestly, that shouldn't be much of a problem, even with the relatively little volume I'm putting in. I'm not really concerned about my VIP status atm though (I don't display it anyway), but might just be something fun to shoot for.

I really need to try and be more concise

Please tell me you shipped a major and haven't had time to update because of some massive partying???

Unfortunately no. In fact I busted out within 3 hours in both the Storm and Bigger 11 and was too embarassed to post about it

In all reality though, there really wasn't much to talk about, since aside of those tournaments I didn't play much yesterday.

I'll post another update later tonight after wrapping up the current session

Alright, played an absolutely great session tonight!

I managed to get a couple pretty deep runs. I managed to get a 50th place out of 2000 people in a $3.30 tournament, for about 4BI. I also managed to get a 40th or so out of 9000 people in the Hot $0.55 (~12BI). I feel like I could have gotten further in both, but oh well. Can't complain about those results at all

The 180 mans also went extremely well today. Managed to get two final table finishes, good for one second place and one sixth place. Both knockouts were pretty extreme coolers though.

Aside of those, I managed to get a couple other small cashes.

As far as my luck is concerned... Let's just say I got some justice today I definitely managed to get some pretty ridiculous suckouts, which feels absolutely great. I made a little compilation of the most fun hands I played this session.

Hand 1

Completely standard hand, but hitting that magic one outer obviously worked out pretty well for me

Hand 2

Villain is a solid reg here.

This actually was the 180 man tournament where I got second place. I also thought this was a pretty interesting spot. Pre flop here is pretty standard. I could 3bet for sure, but QJ plays pretty well, so I decided to just flat.

On the flop, when he overbet the pot, he really wasn't repping anything. He's definitely not doing this with his value hands, and I highly doubt he's doing this with strong draws either. He'd either take a free card in position, or make a smaller bet. So figuring he probably had air here, in went the money.

Little did I know he would call with Q high and hit the running flush In my view that was a very poor call by him, and I really don't understand his play here at all. If someone knows why he made this play, please tell me

Still, I think I played this hand very well, and figured him out perfectly. Just a cooler, but still sucks I couldn't get those extra $30

Hand 3

Always lovely when they just want to give you their chips for free

Hand 4

Same story here. I won't turn down free chips, that's for sure.

And now for perhaps one of my favorite hands I have ever played!

Hand 5

When this happened... The chat just about exploded, and I was just sitting here laughing my ass off

Basically, I was a terrible player, jokerstars, * ** ***, "you smoke too much pot", "K5 lolololol", donk, idiot... You get the point ♦

I did review this hand, and K5s is actually a pretty close one in this spot. Nash suggests shoving K6s+ in this spot, so perhaps I should have folded this.

Still though, this was absolutely hilarious.

So yeah, most of these hands were pretty standard, though the second hand was actually pretty interesting. I just got really unlucky there, that's all.

Now on to more serious business.

As far as my bankroll is concerned, it's back up to over $500 now, which is excellent. It's excellent because it means I can still play the $3 tournaments now, which have a couple tournaments that I really enjoy playing. If I would have dropped down to or below $400, I would have had to let those go and play $2 tournaments at most. The $1 and $2 tournaments don't really have any regular speed tournaments that I can play due to time restrictions, but there's a few $3 ones that start pretty early in the evening. So being able to still play those makes me pretty happy

If I would have had to move down though, I certainly would have. I told myself to follow my BRM strictly, and so I will.

I think I'll be able to play another session tomorrow, and we'll see how it goes then. I'm not sure I'll be able to though, but we'll see.

I'm also thinking about depositing some extra cash later to play a few SCOOP events. Unfortunately most of them are two day events though, from what I've seen, so it may be difficult. Obviously if I am going to play, I'm going to play the low tournaments. I don't plan on investing thousands of dollars into one tournament. One thing I will definitely try to do though, is satellite into the Main Event (low as well). I probably won't play it unless I get a really nice cash somewhere soon, or satellite into it, because $100 is quite a lot for one tournament. This is all speculation for now though. I'll see about this when the SCOOP actually starts.

But hey, we all want to get that big first prize right?

I actually played a SCOOP event last year as well. Don't ask me why, but I played an (off the top of my head) $82 Ante Up tournament in which I got pretty deep and managed to make a ~$500 profit. BRM? What BRM? In addition, it was the first ever Ante Up tournament I ever played.

I definitely won't be making mistakes like that though.

Anyway, that should wrap it up for now. I had a great session, and aside of that also actually had a lot of fun. But I guess everything's more fun when you are winning

If you read through all this, props to you

Current BR: $513.73

Ahhh, nice to see you are running good!

Hand 2, I often think people play kinda spazzy heads up in tournaments... Like they want to end it quickly. That's why he called I am guessing.

I prefer to just shove QJo for 17bbs tho. You get folds so often. What made you come to the conclusion that he is a solid reg btw?

Hand 5, if nash says K6s+ then you can shove wider profitably because people are far too tight often So I say good shove!

When is SCOOP?!

Yep, definitely nice indeed!

His OPR stats said he was a solid reg, and he also played pretty solid from what I could tell by playing against him. So yeah, that made it all the more confusing for me that he called my shove. Oh well.

I definitely agree simply shoving is good though. Just wanted to try out something else for a change.

SCOOP starts May 12th if I'm correct. I believe the first event is 6max. Don't quote me on that one though.

Ah, hopefully your roll will be nice and healthy for that!

Gl gl.

Yep, I definitely hope so as well! But that would require a couple massive ships, which I highly doubt is going to happen within two weeks or so

So I'll probably end up (hopefully) satting into a couple. Maybe I'll even deposit a little extra just to play a couple tournaments, but still not sure about that. That means I'll likely be playing underrolled for those, but I'm going to be playing those more for the fun of it, so I'll allow myself to play a few I think.

And ty ♦ Gl to you too

Played a short session today, good for a $30 loss. Had a couple small cashes, but nothing significant. But I played okay, so I'm not going to complain.

Definitely did make some marginal plays, like shoving/calling too loose, but overall I think I'm getting better at especially open shoving ranges. I think I'm just going to spend a while with the ICM trainer or something to get some more practice on this, since it's pretty important.

Unfortunately this week is pretty messy for me, so I won't be able to play too much more. Our back yard is one big mess since we're completely re-designing it, so that's going to take up a lot of time. Plus I have to watch Champions League and Europa Cup football (semi finals) this week so I also won't be able to play the coming evenings either.

I think I might be able to squeeze in a short session tomorrow morning, but aside of that I don't think I'll be able to play until Saturday evening or something. If not, I think I'm going to try and play a lot on Sunday. I do want to put in at least some volume if at all possible, and this week is going to be pretty tough to get that. But I'll try.

also just about 10 VPPs away from silver star woo

So if I considered that a goal at all, I will definitely be able to achieve that.

As far as other goal setting is conerned, I think it should be possible to at least set some volume goals for next month. So far I have played ~400 tournaments this month (which isn't the entire month), so perhaps it would be possible to set myself a goal of 500 tournaments next month. One thing I definitely won't be doing is setting myself monetary goals, or goals of which limits to move up to. I think variance is just too high for that, and I'm just not going to be able to put in enough volume to set goals like that.

So we'll see about that at the end of the month.

Current BR: $489.36

Nice blog I find football gets in the way of poker quite often too Which football team do you support?