Upwards From Rock Bottom.

Nice!

That you are going to blog again, that is. Having to move down all the way to NL2 isn't so nice, but I'm glad you did it. Most people would just stay at too high limits, but luckily you're not playing above your bankroll from the looks of it. So that's a good thing!

Will be following this of course

Hi again metza and welcome to the dark side.
I can feel the frustration from here, I am currently rebuilding after getting a very short sharp crushing passage of play as well. In that hand villain would be in bb and have 25 sooooted of course ♠_love:

Keep striving and learning and if they have to 2-outer you to win, you're doing something right!

Will follow this with interest.

Mal.

Hey metza

Hopefully this downswing doesn't last too long and you'll be able to look back on this blog and know that you got yourself out of this hole. Make that paper off the nl2 donks haha.

So people say cognitive bias is quite strong. This worried me a bit, since I was concerned that I might not actually be running as bad as I think and sucking even more than I think. I decided to test one concrete occurrence I felt pretty strongly was happening:

Way more KK into AA than AA into KK all in pre.

I thought, with bias factored in it would be something like 8 to 6.

What I found was that this year I have:

Ran KK into AA:
12 times. Won 0 times. Got one set on AKx.

Ran AA into KK:
4 times. Won 2 times. (hand in first post is one of the losses.)

I would have almost rather been wrong, and luckily the other things I feel are also happening far too often are a lot harder to check, otherwise it will be even easier to feel sorry for myself.

BR is dangerously low ($15), but its not like I can drop stakes, and I just have to accept that if I keep running like this (eg. run into 5 sets in 200 hands today) that I AM gonna go busto.

At the end of the day 20BI brm is aggressive, and shit can always go wrong.

If anyone wants to see just how much poker is about long run, have a look at a variance calculator. It's rather scary.

u can make it bro I made it from 1$ to about 150 right now and another 150 in t$ and I am a huge fish (although deposited 90 than went down down as I have gone broke a few times )

Just wait for an upswing u will make 20bis in no time

I started out with 5$ which a friend gave me so that I did not have to play freerolls and that I can start with playing cash games. Because of low budget I only bought in with 80c at the tables to that I could avoid going broke in case of a lot of bad beats - when I had 20$ I bought in with 2$ and dropped down to 80c when I only had 15$ left so that it did not take so much time to grind it back up to 20$.

The feeling of having to swallow ones pride is familiar to me. I played my BR up to 180$ (NL5 back then) and hit a downswing but did not drop down to NL2 when I only had 125$. Big mistake I would say...

Nowadays I play PLO2 / PLO5 and it was some kind of the same story... Played it up to 176$ and now I am back at 126$ and have to play PLO2 again. I guess it is hard to do that when you put in so much work, but surely worth it in case I lose more on PLO5 (could not win a hand there over a large sample + bad beats = bit of tilting)

What I want to say with all that is that you should not apply a BRM that is too aggressive - just taing some shots and after losing a 2 or 3 BI just dropping down as it is a hell of a mental dillema if you constantly think that if you lose now you have to grind the lower limit even longer... I guess that it really has an effect on ones game

I like your attitude and the fact that you do not give up but that you keep grinding. Keep it up Sir and you will surely crush the fish ♠_cool:

GL with everything

Cheers for the kind words guys!

I had something of an epiphany regarding mid-hand range visualization as I was going to sleep last night. It's actually fairly obvious and I'm not sure why I didn't realize it before, but basically its that:

When the flop comes down, this sends up to 3 lines on either side of a person's range (horizontal and vertical) in accordance with which cards have come down. Any hand along these lines has paired, with hands at the intersection points being 2 pair or sets.

So, if villain opens 60% on the BTN and we call in the BB, flop comes down

K J 7

we visualize the lines down K,J and 7

It's also quite handy since the intersecting lines also somewhat compartmentalize their 1 pair hands in relation to kicker strength

Ideally I want to practice this until for every hand I can see the range in my mind's eye. Dunno how realistic that is but it'd be insanely useful.

Hi metza,

I know your pain, I'm also on the dark side as Mal said,

nice to have one more zoom player around,

following

Best of luck,
Fran

Interesting things came to light when I look at my 175k hand database of preflop hands at NL10 zoom.

I think because of the sample size its not telling me a huge amount especially with the top 20 hands I think theres quite a few anomalies.

But in the bottom 20, there is definitely a recurring theme that suggests I am misplaying mid-strong suited connectors/gappers

Wow that is quite a trend aye. What do you reckon it is?

Well, I think some of it is variance. Especially in the winning hands.

But I also think the losing SCs/SGs will be from
a) Not letting go of 1p hands easily enough
b) Playing draws aggressively vs ppl for whom fold equity is low

On a pretty nice upswing atm, all of the bullshit coolers that happened to me so often are hitting opponents all the time. But the only problem is its for 1/5 of the BI that it was when it was against me. Look, I have found a way to complain even when running good!

Am really happy with how I've been playing recently, there are so many fish at nl2 donating stacks its kinda nice to feel so breezing along picking up stacks that really shouldnt have been spewed away by villain, but at the same time I am also itching to move up because I don't belong here.

nice to see u goingup back to basics ♦ wheres the roll at?

$62 atm, moving to nl5 at $100

nice dont 3bet my btn steal at nl5 ♦ rest ok gl

Br was $76, just unlocked $50 milestone so am going to be playing nl5 tomorrow w br of $126

All nl2 graph. Pretty stoked with winrate (was going for EV 8bb/100), but obviously sample size is too small to say anything. I am however, fairly confident I would be at least 3bb/100 and hopefully quite a bit more at nl2 if I kept playing there. It is a very good limit to rebuild confidence during a downswing so if I ever run super shitty again I will maybe consider spending a day or 2 there.

To be perfectly honest, at the lowest point of the graph, when I kept losing every hand, I thought I was going bust. A few more beats and I would have, as my br was only $15. But even when things are at their worst there is still some hope, and sometimes a massive heater to follow

GL all, especially those who aren't running too good these days.

Hey metza

congratulations and good luck with NL5. I was quite suprised to see you losing -0.75bb/100 with AKs over nearly 550 hands. Are you over playing them post flop? this is something I would review along with some other hands. maybe stop playing some of these hands and only play them in certain precise situations.

wow nice we will clash a bit than e1 I hit a huge downer and Micromillions need a lot of bis Gl for nl5

Originally posted by thazar
Hey metza

congratulations and good luck with NL5. I was quite suprised to see you losing -0.75bb/100 with AKs over nearly 550 hands. Are you over playing them post flop? this is something I would review along with some other hands. maybe stop playing some of these hands and only play them in certain precise situations.

Possibly, I think the most likely things I'd be doing w AKs is bluffcatching in spots w A high when price is good but I am good 0% of the time vs weak pairs and playing it too aggro in 3b pots.

Had a very good god-mode session today, up 15BI all up, w highest point 16.5BI. Mostly at nl2 but some at nl5 also.

BR is at $160. Will shoot nl10 at $220, should be fine since instead of a new limit it is one I am familiar with and played a lot of volume at too. I think it will take me 20-40k hands at nl5 to win the 10BI I need to get to 220, so that will be about 3 weeks or so since I am quite busy these days and can't put in as much volume as I'd like.

ikkvr what's your stars name? We might have already clashed some.

Nice run on the session mine is same as here goldstar and with my pic whats urs?