[Closed] Lets hope this is worth reading... From NL2 to NL50

Hey there!

Great to see you have started a blog Since you are an active poster on the hand evaluation boards - I know that you have great thoughts about the game and good potential to become a regular 'hasenbraten' in the future

I look forward to the development of this blog. Perhaps you can also keep us up to date with any good video games appearing on the market ♦

All the best,
SoyCD

Originally posted by SoyCD
Hey there!

Great to see you have started a blog Since you are an active poster on the hand evaluation boards - I know that you have great thoughts about the game and good potential to become a regular 'hasenbraten' in the future

I look forward to the development of this blog. Perhaps you can also keep us up to date with any good video games appearing on the market ♦

All the best,
SoyCD

Im glad to recieve a reply so fast.

If you ever need to see what new good videogames are out then simply go to Amazon.com, Videogames section, click Bestselling and you will see the list of the most sold games. After that just check the consumer reviews and decide if you want to purchase or not. gl

Im playing NL10 BSS on 3 tables and from 19/Oct/2008 - 3/Nov/2008 I only had one losing day(only -$5), my BR went from $164.01 to $346.34 in that period. I think this happened immediately after I started playing 3 tables instead of 2.

My upswing seems to have ended, in part because yesterday for some reason I was "eager for action"/impatient (I got used to winning in the past days)and kind of unfocused, probably because my back is bothering me. It does that from time to time since I have a hernia-like problem going on there.

One of the reasons for losing yesterday(-$21.59) was that I tried to slowplay KK from the blinds against a very loose aggresive guy in LP who was very deep:

Known players:
[tg]Position_Stack:hands/vp$ip/RaisePreflop/AF/WTS/ORL/BBvsSteal/W$SD;SB$1.90:45/9 /4 /1.0/50 /25 /-/67 ;Hero$10.00:///////;MP1$5.05:25/16 /12 /1.3/60 /50 /-/33 ;MP2$4.89:1,000/16 /7 /2.6/30 /14 /89 /46 ;MP3$9.12:106/15 /8 /5.5/16 /20 /0 /33 ;CO$1.00:15/27 /7 /-/33 /0 /-/0 ;BU$40.30:66/32 /17 /10.5/28 /50 /50 /80 ;[/tg]
0.05/0.1 No-Limit Hold'em (8 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: PokerStrategy Elephant 0.61 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is BB with K♦, K♠
5 folds, BU raises to $0.50, SB folds, Hero calls $0.40.

Flop: ($1.05) 3♥, 6♦, 5♣ (2 players)
Hero checks, BU bets $0.70, Hero calls $0.70.

Turn: ($2.45) 2♦ (2 players)
Hero checks, BU bets $2.20, Hero raises to $4.40, BU raises to $10.00, Hero raises to $8.80 (All-In).

River: ($21.25) 2♠ (1 players)

Final Pot: $21.25

Results follow (highlight to see):
Hero shows two pairs, kings and deuces (Kd Ks)
BU shows a straight, six high (Ac 4c)

BU wins with a straight, six high (Ac 4c)

I knew he prob had a weak hand but I couldnt believe his luck there. This is my 4th biggest loss ever. After winning the hand, Villain kindly gave me some pointers on how to play KK. I didn't know wether to laugh or cry.

I will need to stay focused if I want to continue winning, and hopefully I wont get bored in the process =/

After my recent loss I decided to stop and analyze what was happening. I read a few PS articles on Psychology and I think I identified the problem.

At first I was playing 3 tables for 3 hrs at a time. I did this up to 3 times a day which equals 9 hrs of poker on most days. And I was basically losing my winnings in the last hour. So I cut it down to 2 hrs at a time, 3 times a day. During this period I had my upswing and was doing pretty well at the tables. But not so good with my family.

The problem is that I got very irritated whenever a family member walked into the room during those 2 hrs. Moreso if they started talking to me or making noise of some sort. I don't want to sacrifice my family for a game as I've done multiple times in the past, so I've decided to cut my time at the poker tables to 1 hr at a time. I can repeat this 2-4 times a day with a solid break of at least an hour between playing.

This allows me to play my A-game and still have a healthy relationship with my family. Plus I don't get too bored during this hour of play. The downside is that it will take double the time to get to the next limit but its ok, I'm in no rush. You can't rush poker anyway IMO.

Im at around $340 atm and waiting to acumulate $600 before I try NL20 BSS cash tables and hopefully get gold status on the forums.

lol the name of this blog just looked so appealing... I just had to open it and read
lmao

nice blog... and at Soy... You gotta check Fallout 3 out... One of the best games I've played in few years...

Originally posted by Hlynkinn
lol the name of this blog just looked so appealing... I just had to open it and read
lmao

nice blog... and at Soy... You gotta check Fallout 3 out... One of the best games I've played in few years...

Thanks, it took a good 6 minutes to think of an original name

Hmm...Fallout is tempting...but I must stay focused on poker =S Soy too lol

Yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to recieve a $10 bonus for accumulating $35 rake on Titan, and since that same day I won more than $5 playing 2 tables NL4 BSS for just over an hour, I feel motivated again.

NL10 was giving me some trouble so I tried the NL4 tables which luckily were full of fish. I didn't watch the tables too closely while playing (sometimes I play better when Im surfing the web) but relied on stats and hands they took to showdown. If they went to showdown with A2o for example then I would take a note on them. I find the combination of notes + stats very useful. When in doubt of what to do I usually fold against unknown until I can take some notes on him.

Im under $5 away from my highest BR ever and hopefully I will break my record again soon. I continue to read/post in the BSS hand analysis for bronze forum in hopes of making winning easier at the tables.

I discovered today that I'm losing with JJ, 99 and 88 so I'll pay more attention to these hands and play them less aggresively.
Cards Hands Loss BB/100
JJ....87....-$5.76......55.52 <------I wonder why BB/100 is positive here?
99...87...-$11.99...-128.91
88...89...-$11.19....-90.73

Edit: Here are my current results, I can't complain
Limit - Hands - Profit - BB/100
-----------------------------------------
NL10 - 9702 - $191.03 - 19.69
NL4 - 2790 - $17.58 - 15.75
NL2 - 6329 - $20.89 - 16.50

Thanks for reading.

wow 11M, chip it ♦ ♦

Originally posted by TheBrood

Edit: Here are my current results, I can't complain
Limit - Hands - Profit - BB/100
-----------------------------------------
NL10 - 9702 - $191.03 - 19.69
NL4 - 2790 - $17.58 - 15.75
NL2 - 6329 - $20.89 - 16.50

Those BB/100 hands are great;) I would be more than happy if i could manage sth. like that

hi thebrood
noticed that you always post alot of hands and read comments . i am realy confident that you will climb up limits in a short period of time . cool attitude
keep it real
hf

Hey.
I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this blog.
Good seeing someone who isn't a judge, posting regularly in the BSS forums.

thnx for the feedback, makes this worthwhile.

About 2 weeks ago my back started bothering me after I played some basketball and it got worse until a week ago when it got so bad I was bed-ridden, painfully going to the bathroom or to the pc from time to time. After a couple of injections in the backside I can finally move about without holding on to anything again. I am quite happy because I had never felt so bad before, getting well is always great.

While in bed I had a chance to go through my classic IPOD and watch some of the 2006 WSOP main event and the 2008 heads-up championship I had downloaded some time ago. After watching these videos I felt I really learned something about the game, so yesterday when I tried poker again(after 3 days ill) I decided to play more aggresive and even try some smack-talk at the table. On one of my 2 tables(NL10 BSS) it backfired since I was playing looser and my opponents were playing tight with full stacks, but on the other it worked like a charm against short and mid-stacks. I was still down a couple of dollars though.
So, following the strat articles I closed the tight table and went to a looser table and ended my 2 hour session(was planned to be 1 hour originally) up about $3.50 and like 16BB/100 I'm getting more and more convinced that my style does better against short-mid stacks than tight full-stacks.

Thats the good news.

Yesterday after my winning session I got into a big argument with my wife in front of our 2 kids over some stupid stuff (in part due to our house being small and everyone in the same room watching tv and making noise and I'm not into noise that much), neither of us backed down or shut up so it escalated into this big thing and now we arent talking. I hope we can work this problem out, but I'd say its 50/50 at this point. Btw, we have 4 tvs in the house...go figure. Any marriage counselors on PS?

After this argument I had the sense not to play the cash tables as planned but instead went to FTP to throw some playchips around(1000/2000 NL), got a bad beat on about 80k but shortly after someone doubled me up for 200k so it went well. I need 7M more to make the 18M necessary to go to 3000/6000 NL which should be interesting.

gl at the tables.

2 days ago I lost a BI 888 vs 999 on 89x board and it seems to have affected me more than I realized because yesterday I lost 3xBI.
I lost with AK vs AA(A on flop), then against the same guy in the next hand with AQs vs AK(A on flop).

After this I obviously wasnt playing my A-game when I got Q6o in the BB and flop is A66 rainbow. We all check flop and Turn is a 4. We start betting and I should have folded to a big shove and a call but was distracted on another table. Shove guy had 44 and caller had A6. I look at the hand now and its such an easy fold. << For some reason I put them on PP, Ax or a 6 with a lower kicker. Was my thinking entirely wrong here?

On the bright side, a friend gave me his Warhammer Online account(prob because I gave him my WoW account) and its payed until march. I am playing WAR until I get over the tilt of losing 4xBI(I'm not used to losing one BI let alone 4xBI...).
btw I consider the AQs and the Q6o hands and prob even the AK hand bad play, not a downswing.

I have a dilemma, when I play 3 tables I have a hard time playing 2 tough hands at once, but when I play 2 tables I get bored very easily. What to do? Hopefully I will get used to playing 2 hands at once with experience...

As Hasenbraten said in his interview I will try and "keep my chin up" and get over this pothole in my poker adventure. Whoever took my 4BI should be on his guard because I will be at your table soon and I will want those chips back!

Edit: Thanks to everyone who comments on my hands in the BSS forum, specially those underpaid judges XDDD j/k dont ban me.

wow what a weekend!

Yesterday I managed to beat my all time high BR acumulating $391.48. I played A-game poker from friday-saturday and it payed off. Really stuck to the charts and strats, no bs. I played with zero distractions too. 3 tables of NL10.

Today, Sunday I recieved a $10 dollar bonus from Titan putting me at $401.48.

Also today, I placed 53/1500(made a mistake and then got a bad beat) in the Titan Bronze freeroll and made $3. I'll admit I was paying more attention to the Silver freeroll...

I played the Titan Silver freeroll at the same time as the bronze and placed an incredible 5th place! This made me the most I've ever won at poker: $250 and a total BR of $654.48! I didn't expect to even make position 50 but I got some nice hands and shoved in the right spots.

I think I'll grind to $700 and then try NL20 =P

congratz on you're nice win. hope there will be more to come

very nice read, i have recently started BSS myself, (this is my fourth day) so i will be paying close attention to you're blog, nice cash's in the tourneys, silver in particular, keep on you're A game and keep us all upto date, if you want to see how i am doing check out my blog (im not advertising, honestly, lol) nah i just mean to compare our game and compare you're stats to mine and so on, hopefully we'll both be on NL25 soon enough, although you are a lot closer than me, im just under half way there

Keep up the good work

Very interesting read, though it sounds like you are quite prone to tilting.
The psychology articles here and on other sites are very useful, it sounds like you have read them already but here is some advice which I found very helpful - dont bother reading psychology articles when you are tilting or on a downswing. Most people do this, but it is much better to read psychology articles when you are playing your A-game, winning, and feeling very confident. Walking around holes in your path is much easier than trying to climb out of them.

As for the two or three table dilemna, here is an experiment for you to try. Next time you open a table and it is your turn, stuff your hands in your pockets and wait until you time out. Then look out the window and see if the world has come to an end - I bet it doesnt. Dont stress, if you need time to think on one table then ignore the other tables and take all the time you want.

Yes delete, I need to work on not acting immediately, and take my time, your post helped a lot though. As you said its not the end of the world if I time out a trash hand.

Im up to 4 tables at once now, it helps tremendously when I'm card dead and keeps me focused on good hands, folding trash. I play 1-2 hrs, twice a day, and when I feel tired I get out. fast. It only takes one badly played hand to lose the entire session's winnings.

Here is an interesting hand where Elephant(and notes) saved me from losing my stack:

Known players:
keine.

0.05/0.1 No-Limit Hold'em (10 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: PokerStrategy Elephant 0.65 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with K♦, K♠
UTG folds, UTG1 raises to $24.81 (All-In), 8 folds.

Final Pot: $24.96

Before you all start yelling at me, I must say that I had seen this guy do this a few times and he always had AA, in fact thats about the only hand he would play. I later saw that his stats were 3 V$IP and 2 PFR multitabling 11 tables...(I only have basic stats atm)
I was tempted to try this strat beause he was doing quite well on many tables. But I wouldnt learn anything that way would I?

My stats update:
Limit - Hands - Winnings - BB/100
-----------------------------------------
NL10 19,806 $286.28 14.45/100

Im nearly at my $700($696) goal then I will go to NL20 BSS. I am nervous because of this rise in limit and I should probably go make an offering to the poker gods or something...

P.S: Did I mention I'm playing Warhammer Online now?

hi,

Just wanted to tell you guys I was getting bored with NL10 and since I had over $600 I decided to try NL20 BSS. I figured theres no point in playing low limits if its going to bore me and make me play trash hands.

The new limit has motivated me to play poker again and now its not so bad when I just win the blinds with KK =). I got the "Ace Magnets" 4 times in 208 hands and won over $13 in an hour, playing 3 tables.

Im at my highest BR ever with $701.10 and am ready to see what the future has in store for me, its like advancing to a new area in a mmorpg...

I like how the points tally up way faster at NL20 too.

Edit: I have a live 8-player SnG game with a $25 buy-in today, I'll let you know how it goes. I have the home court advantage...