Fallin in (microstakes zoom blog)

NezNanec, welcome to blogs!

I tried that zoom game at nl5 and didn't like it much to be honest. I like to choose my seat, but each to their own of course.

I'm trying out micro MTTs but just for a change of scenery at the moment until the bankroll allows a more systematic approach.

Just a note, I don't think it takes long to get to 1nl.

You have fun and we'll see you moving up very soon I hope!

Mal.

hehe ye that was a mistake, my long term goal is NL100 ($0.5/$1) zoom.

I'm currently 4k hands into todays grind and doing well but need a longer break. I'll probably do some analysis and updates later this evening.

Also thanks for all the nice wishes ♠_love:

[Day1] Nitty folds and big bets

Allright, so the first day of my micro zoom grind is behind me with some very nice results. I have a 16.43/100BB ration over 4984 hands ♦. That being said today is sunday so I'll see how the rest of the week goes, and I don't really remember that many badbeats so variance might kick in soon.

Overall I find the player pool to be very fishy, and a TAG approach works well. Since I usually play like this when I don't have any stats (and in a 500 players zoom pool that'll take awhile) that suits me perfectly. That being said, I find that I might benefit from simplifying my plays abit - Nitty folds and big bets

People are willing to stack off with overpairs, top pair top kicker and in some cases even weak draws on the flop alot, so naturally set mining is a big source of income. In fact, I find that usually slowplaying sets is less profitable that just playing them as aggressively as you can, because the majority of players doesn't fold to flop 4bets anyway, so it's pretty easy to get value from made hands.

That being said, I find that I don't show 4bets on flop enough respect most of the time. Calling them down with overpairs or worse usually ends up badly, as most people only 4bet 2 pairs, sets and better hands. Every now and then someone might 4bet and then allin an overpair but not very often.
The same goes for allin bets. I find that most of the time people shove with made hands or sets, and only find an occasional allin bluff.

Which brings me back to where I started - nitty folds and big bets

anyways those are my first impressions. I'm gonna go play an evening MTT to have some fun then it's back to the grind tomorrow. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables ♠_cool:

Hey m8, good luck with your goal !. Are you playing FR or 6max ?:)

Hey ImpasX I play full ring when I play to make money, but I'll play 6max every now and then just to break my mindset when I'm stuck and/or bored with my daily routine.

Guess I'll just post that in the main post

[day 2]

Ok so today was a weird day, I started fine, got about $30 profit in 1500 hands (that's 6 buy ins), but then things got worse. I had a couple of badbeats and weird random fishy hands so I started playing bad, and instead of taking a break just pushed through to 5k hands on autopilot. Needless to say, the results are appropriate to my overall mental state -$25 (-11BB/100) throught 5k hands.

I'll probably just vent off now for today and maybe play a MTT or some 6 max later on to the evening and then return to grinding tomorrow. I think I need to work on my mental state alot, especially on keeping my expectations low and/or not letting it overly affect me when things go wrong. After all this is my comfort zone (NL5) and once I start playing higher the pressure will just be worse.

Anyways, I'll post a graph of my profits an all that in a couple of days (probably around 20k hands or so).

Thanks for reading and gl at the tables

[day4]

Hit 20k hands today, here are the stats and the graph.

Generally, I feel progress has been kinda slow but I think that's mostly to me tilting abit, deviating from my game plan and doing mistakes. That being said I've been working on my game yesterday and today, and I think that I've improved.

Hopefully I'll be able to move up to NL10 next week, bankroll has taken a hit with some MTTs and random 6max games so I still have about $100 to grind, so I'll just focusing on grinding NL5 for the next few days.

Think I'll take a break from poker tomorrow then continue grinding. If not before I'll update this blog once I hit 50k hands.

Thanks for reading and GL at the tables ♠_cool:

[day7]

Hey guys, hit 20k hands yesterday so I've decided to post an update. I've worked on my preflop range a bit (been rereading pokerstratagy lessons), and also on some specific situations I didn't have a clear line of betting in (such as KK, QQ, AK vs 3bets and 4bets preflop) and now I feel much more comfortable grinding. I don't really know if my overall game has improved so far, but at least my confidence at the tables has ♠_cool:

anyway I feel frustrated since I wanted to move up to NL10 this weekend but will probably be falling short of my goal. Ah well, shouldn't have played MTTs I guess. That being said I'll probably be able to hit 25 buy ins for NL10 next week.

so here are my stats for 40k hands

as always, thanks for reading and good luck at the tables

20k hands a day! Geez

How many zoom tables are you playing?

it's not 20k a day, mostly I try to keep it around 5k, sometimes if I feel like playing I push it up to around 7k...

Like you can see day 4 was 20k and then day 7 is 40k

I play 4 full ring 5NL tables at once, which usually amounts to a little more than 1k hands per hour

[day8]

so I decided to switch my game to 6max 5NL today. There are two main reasons for this, the first one being that I got bored with the full ring 5NL grind after 50k hands with 2,5/100BB profit, and the second one being I got a 200% first deposit bonus at a poker page, so even if I just break even (which I hopefully will) means I tripled my money.

So I've allready played 3k hands of 6max today and I'm stuck $30.

I'm having abit of trouble adapting to the agressive playstile in terms of post-flop play in terms of betting too much and it hurt me abit, plus some variance losses and just some plain badbeats. That being said I'm not worried too much as I still have about $90 left so I should be able to bounce back eventually.

I've read some 6max beginners articles and watched some instructional videos (weasels), and also watched some mindset training videos from snitzelfish. Both were awesome and I'll sure continue watching their series tomorrow.

I've also installed sidekick to be able to make hand posting on these forums easier.

Anyways I'll post a graph of my progress once I hit 10k hands, and try to do a more in depth analysis then.

As always, thanks for reading and good luck at the tables ♠_cool:

[day 16]

hey guys, it's been a while since I last posted and here's why - my foray into 6max NL5 went really bad

I played about 20k hands and don't really want to post the graph, think I went down about 150€ (100€ adjusted all-in EV). To sum it up I started overconfident and went on a very bad run (lost about 12 BIs in 1k hands), and then kept on playing very poorly. I noticed I was on tilt about 2 days in and stopped playing for 2 days to calm down, and then mostly spent the rest of the week trying to grind my bankroll back up.

Overall I feel I'm stuck and just went back to grinding 9max NL5 zoom at stars because I'm used to the swings there and mostly keep a slow, but healthy profit.

I'm mostly annoyed because I think the big losses (well not all of them) could be prevented by just not playing on bad days, or tilty days at least. The pattern goes that I run bad, loose a BI or two and then spend the rest of the day grinding trying to get it back. I put in too much volume, making snap decisions, playing too many tables at once, not really paying enough attention and getting annoyed at minor things I can do nothing about.

I've decided to focus on getting better with that, especially after watching a couple of W34s3l's 6-max videos where he basically talks about the same thing.

But most of all I think I needed a break from the pressure of trying to get back the money I lost and putting in too much volume (I played about 5k hands a day for 12 days in a row and that certainly took its toll).

Anyways I'm back to grinding 9max NL5, done about 2k hands this evening and I'll probably stop here and return to the grind tomorrow.

I'll try to write more about focusing on specific mindset problems and how I'm trying to solve them in the following days (more or less to keep myself to actually work on that instead of just grinding all day ♠_mad:)

anyways as always, thanks for reading and good luck at the tables

I can totally relate to it, I haven't slept a whole night cuz of work, then in the evening played 4tables of nl2, I've lost 7$ in a blink of an eye ! I didn't even know what I am doing ! ♦

kinda funny looking at your pictures where you marked out your name but if you look at the graph down to the right where all the numbers are you will see your name appear again NezNanec89 ;P

Hey guys, it's been a while since I posted here, mainly because I took a vacation from poker and only came back to the grind last week. Things were looking bad, and after loosing about €100 I just decided to wait a while and let that one sink in. As a student, that amount of money I lost was big enough to influence my mood, and it showed when I played poker.

So I moved down a limit and I'm playing NL2 now with a 50€ bankroll. I think that a too small bankroll was my biggest problem, I played NL5 with a 100€ bankroll, lost 4 or 5 BI and started worrying overmuch, which affected my play.

So I've made a new plan for my goals (mainly inspired by the pokerstrategy articles), and an overall plan on how to get to NL100.

First thing first, I plan on playing 2k hands 5 days a week in august with the overall goal of grinding up 150€ and moving up to NL5. Once I get this far the next bar is 300 €.

I've been rereading lessons and watching videos again (mainly w34az3l's 6-max walktrough) and I find that there's a lot of things which I did not excacly miss, but still haven't understood firstly the first time I read them. I also played around with my HUD and think I started using it way more than before.

The overall result since being back is a very nice 15€ profit over 5k hands. Let's hope it keeps going this way.

PS: yeah, I totally missed that my pokerstars nickname is shown twice. Too bad, wanted to stay anonymous, thanks for pointing it out

nice goals, glgl!

Fran

Thanks Fran, appreciate the support

so I've been trying to play my A game most of the time when I grind (sadly it's just not possible to be at my 100% all of the time) and I've noticed that I loose focus quite easily. Typically I'll start a session focused, pay attention to HUD, my reads and the lessons and then about 400 or 500 hands in, I'll just switch onto autopilot. I won't exactly play bad, but I'll stop adjusting to specific opponents, mainly making quick decisions without taking everything into account. I think it's been costing me a lot of money, typically I'll grind for a bit then loose everything I'll make on a bad bluff.

So to combat this I've decided to split my grind into 4 500 hands long sessions. I've also worked on my overall daily schedule and I've come up with this:

9:00-10:00 wake up, breakfast, shower, read news
10:00-11:00 watch a poker videos then start playing
12:00-12:30 break
12:30-13:30 grind
13:30-18:00 whatever
18:00-18:30 grind
18:30-19:00 break
19:00-20:00 grind

hopefully this will help me focus a bit more and boost my win rate. If you guys have any suggestions or advice on how to make this better, I'd really appreciate it.

Anyways thanks for reading, and good luck at the tables

That's a good plan of attack and you may well find you can go longer as you get more experienced at it. I used to get tired after 1K hands, now I can play 3K in one stretch.

As for your screen name, you can edit the 'Show Information Box' by clicking the 'Configure' tab, you can then add or remove any items you want to. Or just untick it and it won't show any information.

Mal.

@gadget51 Yeah the main plan is to increase hands number in a session gradually, and I think the main reason why I was failing this until now is that I haven't taken long enough breaks in order to rest my brain. I'd grind like 1k hands a day for a week, take an afternoon off and then wanted to start grinding 2k hands right away. Now I just try to evaluate whether or not I'm playing well and quit when I'm obviously not on my A game to come back another day. I've also incorporated a 2 day break from grind into my schedule (which usually still includes an MTT or a STNG for fun though). It's abit early to tell if it's working (only on my second week now), but at least I'm getting comfortable with the number of hands I'm playing.

wow, wall of text again ♦

anyway, I'm taking a break from grinding today but I'll probably still watch a strategy video and read the forums for a bit. One of the main reasons why I've been a losing player so far is lack of discipline (especially in terms of when to play and when not to play) so I'm trying hard to keep up with the schedule I've created for august. I've also had a good day yesterday (won about 7 NL5 BIs), and I think it's good to let that sit for a day, instead of going overconfident.

I've also been thinking about exploiting regs a bit and have come up with this idea of pretending to be a fish in order to get regulars to pay off my hands. But after some thought I've figured out that my most profitable approach against weaker players (let's say people without 100BB who open limp in early position) is normally to iso-raise hands and then bet 3 streets for value when I hit every time, and just fold when I miss. Generally, these opponents call way too often so there isn't really any sense in trying to make a play as they'll just call down anything with pocket deuces or something. So I came to the conclusion that the only way I could turn a profit from this is to shove my value hands on the river (sets or better), and I think most regs still won't call down a bet like that. So the bottom line is, pretending to be a fish probably isn't profitable.

anyway my grind this week is going according to plan (4k hands in), I'm on the 2nd day of my break from grinding and then it's a poker week for me. I'll post a graph of my progress after 10k hands, which should be around sunday.

thanks for reading, and good luck at the tables