Fighting tilt

I suppose I should tell you guys a little about myself to perhaps make this blog more interesting.

I'm from NZ been playing poker for around 2 years while I've been studying at University. Just come off a degree in Psychology at the University of Otago and completed half of an extra major in Politics. I used to work at a casino dealing cards. Have worked for Pokerstrategy.com as a volunteer moderator for around 6 months now.

A few of my goals include:

-Growing my beard to a reputable length
-Make my way up the ladder to the mid-stake No limit cash games
-Travel the casinos of NZ
-Hit the gym and get to 80kg and if that goes well try to get to 90kg
-Practise speaking Te Reo Maori and Mandarin
-Work for Pokerstrategy.com to a greater degree (provided my efficiency and suitability improve) hopefully as a coach but that's quite a while away yet

Currently playing nl25 zoom grinding for those VIP rewards and tryna move up

Hey Luke,

Pretty sure I've talked to you before on here.
I also graduated from Otago end of last year also, played poker only in my last year of uni, hit up Dunedin Casino a few times for the tourney.
I am also playing NL25 SH but non-zoom, I had a very small sample but it felt like I was always getting coolered so I haven't touched zoom in a while.

Dunedin Casino cash games are good but nothing on SkyCity, the softness there is through the roof. Its $2/$4 that plays softer than $0.01/0.02.

Good luck with poker and this blog.

Hey metza

yeah we have talked about this before. How are the tables going for you? Zoom is very tilt inducing haha i need to take some decent breaks because I get quite worked up. I played at skycity one time, I shouldn't have though because I didn't have the roll for it and got coolered by this guy who was being unsavoury (a complete tool*). I'm working on building up my live bankroll so I can take another stab. Cheers for the kind words

Pretty bad. I've been breaking even the last week, feel like I'm running bad but also think my HUD not working properly has a bit to do with it. It's just loading a couple of hands and then either stopping or disappearing. Really need to get a new computer but I wanna save up to get a real nice one.

How are you finding the NZ job market after graduating? With a BA in Film as I've got, its not the greatest place, a good time to look at playing poker seriously haha.

Any reason you choose zoom over normal? I noticed the avg pot is quite high on NL25 zoom usually higher than the regular tables with one good fish, so there must be a good amount of fish or at least a few total whales.

Yeah i know how you feel dude I've been break even for a bit. Getting a new rig would be sweet.

haven't looked for a job yet I'm just gonna do some volunteer community work for a bit so there are no gaping holes in my cv. Definitely give poker a good go man! I am trying to.

I like the fact that you can get so much volume in zoom allowing me to get rakeback a lot quicker. The avg pot size seems pretty normal to me so far but there have been quite a bit of fish on there, I've definitely found a home there for the time being .

Oh dude i've added you in the comm tool I'll get your skype details off you so that we don't hijack this blog haha. reply on skype yeah?

hey luke i'll be reading your blog ♦

i would say +1 to the nl25 but i'm currently stuck between nl10 and nl25 (that doesn't mean nl16 ♦). how long have you been at nl25 for? anywhere near moving to nl50 yet?

Hey Lewis

are you just alternating between nl10 and nl25 then? I've been playing at nl25 for around about a month now i think. It's going ok. I'm trying to decide whether i want to play an aggressive BRM and take 20 BIs but i'm a little apprehensive about this. I don't wanna jinx it so i'm gonna stick at nl25 for a while and re-evaluate every so often and maybe take some stabs at nl50 every so often.

The thing that gets me are the swings. I shy away from 4bet bluffs n stuff on a new limit because comparative to lower limits it's such a huge amount of money. So I think it's good to ease into new limits because it takes a while for the swings to feel normal. Here's hoping i'm at nl50 sooner rather than later

UPDATE

I'm using some of the formatting from DrDunne's blog after reading his (cheers Lewis)

I had a crazy dream last night about some curse of immortality with this ring and some other trippy witch thing haha but at any rate I was up at 3am and it got me thinking about poker and I realised a huge leak in my game.

Thanks to this website I have all the access to not only borrow some strategies but have also learned the concepts needed to engineer my own personal strategy. I realised after my dream (don't ask how lol) that I am not critical of my own thought processes enough. At nl25 i'm doing ok so far but i'm not sure if it is just an upswing because I think the style that i've been playing could just be a high variance style. I bluff 3bet and bluff 4bet a bit and I cbet on a lot of unsuitable boards and so far it seems to work. I think it's because a lot of guys call 3bets with speculative hands and just play fit or fold on the flop so while at the moment I think I continue too often on different board textures, because of the tendencies of weak players it might be ok for now. I'll be sure to keep an eye on it though. Just the concept of crafting a strategy to defeat a collective opponent is vexing, because of the player pool I hardly see the same opponents too often so i'm forced to play against unknowns, perhaps just because I only have a sample size of like 30k or so

I know that i'm too automated in my play style also and I don't think during the hand enough, even when I read articles and review hands I kind of just coast. These two realisations have prompted me to set some goals for myself to help my thought process and help me develop better habits

Goals for the week
Post at least two hands per day and try generate some discussion
Vocalise my play at least one out of every two hours of play
Develop counter strategies to my own play style to remain weary of possible adaptations
Read gold article on playing overpairs once per day of play

The following are non-poker related things so i'm gonna hide it in the spoiler feature

Here's this week's graph. Relatively uneventful. The interesting thing is that in the previous week the red line was up and the blue line was down. Probably because of my move from Ipoker back to stars so my play changed up a bit

Update

Had a few days off poker because internet was out which interfered with my rake goals. I managed to read that article and vocalise my play. Although i didn't post my hands like I wanted to so will amend this goal in the future.

There was a good thing that came out of having no internet and that was that i utilized equilab's equity trainer and scenario analyzer and in doing so, became aware of a couple of misconceptions that i had about certain boards. Hopefully I incorporate these features into my poker routine at some stage. Nl25 zoom cashies continue to go ok. I am breakeven there but I feel that i'm beating the limit and it's just a matter of time before getting to nl50. I recognize a lot of leaks in my game especially in my range construction but I feel that it's ok at this limit because I don't foresee myself getting exploited at a critical level.

This weeks goal
incorporate scenario analyzer and equity trainer into my routine
post one hand per day and try generate some discussion
read article on floating every day of play
try get $500 of rake this week (may be a tad ambitious but we'll see)

Was a pretty terrible start to the week and i managed to pick myself up after a couple thousand hands. Thanks to that Kings boom promotion I ended up about break even for the week maybe. That promo was sick for me because it mean't that I got free money basically without having to do much different

Had a pretty terrible week last week so have needed to change my tact a lot. Have sinced moved down to nl10 zoom and am just going to toil away at some of my more obvious leaks. I think that my thought processes are the most problematic and automation still kills me so I might have to revert back to playing A game sessions to protect my bankroll rather than just striving to get volum in. Am getting some coaching from w34z3l so hopefully he can help me with some of my huge leaks

Been a while since i've updated this blog. Am still playing nl10 zoom. Private coaching is going well. I have a lot to work on but that's a good thing because I can plug a few leaks and make huge improvements with small adjustments.

Not sure how I feel about this blog anymore. Any one out there have any suggestions for how I can make this blog a bit more interesting? Maybe I should post some hands where I'm a complete spewtard so you guys can shame me into not tilting so bad? Some feedback would be good

Have been mixing up my play a bit. Playing on the MPN since those two blaze promos and playing at stars in happy hours but nothing interesting really happening. Still working on my game but noticing heaps and heaps of things to work on so trying to navigate through the laundry list of leaks to plug. Still chugging along. Still be keen on some feedback at some stage

Enjoying getting back into poker a bit more recently. Playing blaze on MPN means that I can't use HUD which is quite a setback but think it decreases my chances of running into decent regs so am going to stay around for a while and see how it goes.

Trying to find a happy medium between theory and application and am starting to feel a bit better about my general game. Improving my bet sizings I think since I was struggling with that a bit.

Gym is going mean. Still trying to hit that elusive 80kg but will probably hit that by the end of the year so might bump my goal up to 85kg but yeah we'll see. Getting back into the bench and to lat raises is good. Gym increases the endorphins so am naturally feeling better about everything else.

Hey, I'm a Zoom player too, however I play fullring. Currently on NL10 but I was playing on NL25 for about 3 months in this year( kinda breakeven ). Gonna follow your blog, it's always to see how Zoom players crush. And saw you also like anime I guess? Did you watch Gintama? It's the funniest thing ever, I don't know if it's available in mandarin though. Anyway, GL at the tables! ♠_biggrin:

Hey JJWic3

Thanks for stopping by. I've had some mixed results at nl25 tbh. lost quite a bit 2 months ago then started playing on 24h poker when they had the house of cards promotion. It was good playing with less money :). Back to nl25 now and the last 6k hands has been pretty phenomenal (for me)

Yeah i'm a huge anime fan. Mainly the mainstream ones like Bleach, Naruto shippuden. Have just started watching Onepiece , have heard it's pretty good and also got my sights set on full metal alchemist but all in time. It takes so long to get through the episodes, there are hundreds.

cheers man might see you on the zoom tables

One Piece is just too looooong. It feels like it will never end. I wanted to start to watch it myself too, but I just knew I won't be able to finish it. I finished Bleach, now reading the manga, and stopped watching Naruto because I was curious what is going to happen and started to read the manga and never watched a single episode since then( I just couldn't stop myself to see who Tobi is..). However I can recommend the Fullmetal Alchemist(both series, I liked the 1st one better though), it is really one of the best of all time.

How did you feel about the Microgaming's Blaze poker? Is it fishy enough to grind there? Without a HUD I can't see how could I play that though, guess I will wait until Pokertracker will enable the HUD for that. ♠_grin: