Goal: baller status, ETA: 6 months, Method: MTTs!!

Greeting fellow UK player

Where abouts in UK?

So is your plan to go proper poker pro then?

Sadly I've never had that heater you speak of but gl to you sir and may you ship a big one in the next year ♠_cool:

Hey, I live in the north east, was at uni in Sheffield tho.

Yeah that is my plan! It's exciting and scary haha!

♠_cool: Go and ship some ♦ but keep on evaluating hands too good luck!

Will be following this

Thanks for the wishes guys!

First hand I want to post here as I am reviewing my sessions, I think I made a mistake with how I played it but want to know how people here would play this hand:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 2.5 Tournament, 25/50 Blinds (9 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.com

CO (t1,455)
Button (t1,060)
Hero (SB) (t1,590)
BB (t1,470)
UTG (t2,035)
UTG+1 (t1,410)
MP1 (t1,495)
MP2 (t1,650)
MP3 (t1,335)

Hero's M: 21.20

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, Q
UTG bets t100, 2 folds, MP2 calls t100, MP3 calls t100, 2 folds, Hero ????

Call isn't bad but we are out of position with a strong hand multi way. Raise/call? Jam?

If you jam and just pick up the pot, you're going to increase your stack by ~30%. That's never a bad trade in my view. I wouldn't raise/call though, because you'd have to raise to 500 or something, leaving you absolutely no room pre or post flop (you have to play fit or fold post flop and pretty much have to call a 4bet pre flop).

So personally I would just jam. Plenty of fish that can call with worse anyway

Yeah I did just jam... Which is the best option I think like you said, BB had KK tho so I was probs in results oriented mode when I went over this hand!

Played a 5 hour session today of 180men and MTTs with a few small cashes, was 500/1000 in the big 8.80 and jammed 20bb from BB with ATo over CO open and SB flat, SB had AK.

Gonna write some goals up on this blog v soon!

Haven't done any grinding since my last session, I have been going over hand histories to see if I am playing well 10 tabling and I don't seem to be making any glaring errors. I was also at the horse racing at Thirsk on saturday, and had a nice little 400% ROI on 20 pound stake over 6 races! Me and my friend did some pretty extensive studying on the form of the horses but we still ran v good to come away with that kind of ROI

Ok time for some goal setting!!

Weekly Goals

At least 4 sessions of at least 4 hours
Read/post in hand evaluation forums every day (this is a given)
Exercise at least 4 times
Review every marked hand in database
Go over at least 5 180man hand histories
Go over at least 1 6max MTT hand history

I want to make sure I am not slipping up playing 6max, especially when I am mass tabling. The site I used to play on was entirely 6max MTTs so I should be absolutely fine with it, but mixing it with FR might create problems.

Plus, I have to start exercising as I am kayaking up the Caledonian canal in Scotland in about 3 weeks, and I've probably never been so unfit in my life..!

My stats and over 16k hands, using my HUD:

VPIP | PFR | 3bet
CBet | Fold2Cbet | Steal | Fold2Steal | Resteal
BBs | Hands

I can click 3bet to see Fold to 3bet, I can click VPIP and PFR to see by position, I can click CBet to see by IP or OOP.

Any input at all on these stats?? I have only had a database for these past 3 weeks or so, so I have no idea whether these stats are ok, and whether my HUD is ok.

Nice read so far.

Good luck!

HUD seems pretty good to me

Not sure you really need the BB stat though, because it should be relatively easy to figure that one out yourself, and may save you an extra line on your HUD if you put the hands on the top row.

Personally I never use it. I personally also don't use the steal stats myself and simply use the pop ups for that. Like you said, you can click VPIP/PFR to see it by position anyway, so you can easily get rid of the steal stat imo.

My own HUD is pretty simple:

Name / Hands
VPIP / PFR / 3bet
Cbet / F t Cbet

I don't really need much else. These stats give me a general idea of how people play, and I won't have enough hands on most players anyway to really make use of the more advanced stats. If I do need more advanced stats (which I haven't really found necessary so far), I can simply use the pop up.

But yeah, I think your HUD is pretty good

I'm not going to comment much on your stats themselves. Everyone has their own style of playing that can be profitable. But I'd say it looks pretty good. Perhaps 90% cbet is a bit much, but cbetting too much is probably better than not cbetting often enough

If you could get some pics of your kayak trip to Scotland, I would love to see some. It's something I'd love to do sometime myself, so it would definitely be cool if you could get some. But I'd focus on some exercise first, like you said

Also, sick ROI

Thanks for input on HUD I prefer not to click on HUD for popups unless I need to, I use hotkeys so my mouse use is kept to a minimum. I prefer it that way, so I think I'll keep the steal stats.

As soon as I had about 8k hands I realised my cbet was PROBABLY too high at 96% or something... I think I know what kind of cards to barrel on the turn vs certain opponents on certain boards, but 90% is still too high I think! I have been thinking a lot more about my cbets and I think I've already improved that aspect of my game by cbetting less vs multiple opponents, cbetting less on low boards etc. So it's now at 88% over 19k hands LOL. Probably some variance there

So I just finished a 5.5 hour session, pretty grueling as I had no big cashes in anything, and felt like I was running kinda bad.

HEM2 tells me I lost 107k chips this session, and that my chipEV is -80 chips... So I must have ran pretty damned bad???

Will do lots of reviewing tomorrow, too tired now after that session and taking my dog on a big walk (which I am NOT counting as exercise, my exercise needs to be more strenuous than that before I count it!).

Sounds good. If you prefer using hotkeys I think I agree it should be best to keep the steal stats on there. In the end it's all up to your personal preferences anyway

Running bad sucks. But especially in those 180man turbos variance is pretty high. I wouldn't worry too much though. Plenty of fish out there that are just willing to give you money

Ever considered just going for a run with your dog? A friend of mine is training for a marathon, and he often goes running with his dog, which he says he enjoys quite a lot. Perhaps something worth trying out?

What kind of exercise do you do to prepare for that anyway? How do you prepare for it? Would be great to know how someone else goes about it for when I'm going to do it myself, because I definitely do plan on doing that sometime! Sure seems like it would be a lot of fun

My dog is a simple beast. He scares easily and is already very jumpy/erratic, running with him would turn us into a death trap. He'd get confused.

I've never trained for anything like this before. I'm going to do circuit training and running. Something like 6 exercises (press ups, burpees, high knees, jumping squats, squats, mountain climbers), 15 seconds of intense exercise, then 15 seconds rest, then on to the next exercise. Then wait a minute and do it all again. Even 2 lots of that will have you worn out, it's very intense!

Some thoughts about poker:

I've noticed something while grinding the 180mans: Nearly all of the regs I've come across who are 10-20tabling are running something between 10/8 and 18/15, with 3bets ranging from 2-10%. Seems too tight to me! I've seen very few decent regs that are stealing wide at high blinds with small raises and the like.

I think I've got an edge over most of the field then

Running with your dog sounds like a terrible idea then

Sounds like you do have to do some pretty intense training. Best of luck!

As for the regs in the 180 mans, I have to agree. There's quite a few regs that play this tight. However, I also find that these regs are actually pushing very wide when they get short. I guess because they're mass tabling they're simply playing very tight in the early stages, because they won't be able to keep up if they play a bit looser there.

It does happen very often that I see those regs kind of blinding down throughout the first few blind levels. Granted, sometimes you're just card dead and there's nothing you can do, but I do agree that they're probably way too tight early on.

But I'm not complaining. Tight players are the easiest to steal from

Weekly Goals UPDATE!

At least 4 sessions of at least 4 hours (1/4)
Read/post in hand evaluation forums every day (this is a given)
Exercise at least 4 times (2/4)
Review every marked hand in database Complete!
Go over at least 5 180man hand histories (1/5)
Go over at least 1 6max MTT hand history Complete!

HEM2 keeps crashing when I am flicking through hands in the replayer so I will have to review tourney HH by looking at each hand and whether I lost/gained chips. Slightly more time consuming but has to be done.

Exercised for the first time yesterday and it was tough! Feels good to be exercising tho, any exercise makes you feel better. Then on the evening I had this...:

Going to try and grind today but might not have time for a big session as we are playing a home game tonight! But I need to get grinding as not much of the week left...

Weekly Goals UPDATE!

At least 4 sessions of at least 4 hours Complete!
Read/post in hand evaluation forums every day (this is a given)
Exercise at least 4 times (3/4)
Review every marked hand in database Complete!
Go over at least 5 180man hand histories (1/5)
Go over at least 1 6max MTT hand history Complete!

Managed to fit all my sessions in. Played about 22 hours this week, and managed to do quite a bit of studying as I have been watching quite a few vids and reading quite a lot of poker stuff in between times. My HEM2 trial has run out so I didn't manage to review as many games as I wanted to, but I do think I am playing quite well!

Just finished a long session now, grinded 10 tables for around 5 hours then concentrated on the tourneys I was deep in, no big cashes tho.

So far all of my profit has come from the 180mans, which is to be expected as mass field tourneys are so variance heavy.

Will write up some new goals tomorrow, try and get a bit more volume in...

nice blog

Do you play Live anything anywhere?
Is that true that there is 3:1 women-man ratio in Sheffield due to a big amount of female students?

Start blog'in again, and you can count +1 sub, bro ♠_cool: