This time ... it didn´t work out!

Oh a fellow Czech Grinder!
Welcome sir!

Hope to see you on tuesdays in twitch chat
maybe some of the current Pokerstrategy micro grinders can inspire you

Hi Lemon, thank you for the welcome. I most certainly will be there

The end of March is here and I would like to summarize my feelings so far and make myself a plan on how I will play and improve.

I have played 4 sessions, 3,2k hands in total. My feelings are kinda mixed. At the beginning I thought that I was playing well enough to beat NL2 and I felt comfortable. But the last session today was quite a "turn off" ♦. I lost 5 BI. Nothing went well. My strong hands were not paid, I got KK vs AA setup, my bluffs were unsuccessful bla bla bla, I guess you know the story. The result does not actually matter. What matters is that I realized that I am not sure if I played well or not. I guess it will take some time to be able to evaluate my own game. Here is what I plan on doing and what I know I have been doing badly which I can fix right away.

Need to change immediately:

Number of tables I play. Today I played 6 at some point and I feel it was too much. It should be no more than 4.
The length of sessions. All of them were longer than 2 hours which is too much now.
Set a stop loss limit. 3 BIs per session and 5BIs per day.
Tighten up a bit. I have been playing 25/20/9 and I guess it is too loose for a beginner. I end up in many marginal situations which are difficult for me to solve properly.
Bluff less. I have tried a lot of 4bet or check/raise bluffs. Guess what, it does not work on NL2. Or maybe I cant use it properly but the outcome is the same. It can wait.

How I plan to improve:

Study a lot. I dont think this is a problem. I like watching videos, reading articles, posting hands and taking notes. I have a special OneNote sheet for poker which is already filling up.
Play enough.
Prepare myself for the fact that it will be a long run.
Apply all of the points above.

I am not going to post any screens of my stats or graphs or anything. It is too early for that. My current result is -2BI which does not mean anything. It can be just variance, it can be me entirely incompetent, whatever. Will see at the end of April. That might be more relevant. My main goal for the next month is not to bust.

Current bankroll:

Deposit: 28$
Deposit bonus: 40$
Profit/loss: -4$

Bankroll: 64$

It doesn't seem productive to play 4+ tables until you can achieve a solid winrate at 2.

I never play more than 3-4tables personally, and haven't for about a year and a half
I feel like there's never a reason to play more unless you are happy where you are and/or need to simply withdraw the money frequently and what you make isn't enough.

Same goes for session lenght, Up to 2 hours without a break is normal, you can find your personal limit by monitoring how you play
i find if you feel good, have good tables, are winning then you go for them 4+hr sessions

Tight, less bluffs yeah that's the way to go at NL2

Oh and OneNote you can use much further, I think you're the first one who mentioned also using it
I literally don't know anyone else in the poker world haha
I have it set up like this

And definitely post hands in the hand forum
One of our up and coming coaches recently made a guide on how to do it
https://www.pokerstrategy.com/video/44669/

glgl

Yeah.. 6?? You're missing all the reads and other subtle stuff that's going on. If I'm running bad I go to 3, else 4 (sometimes I play 6 but that's just for the fun of it, not for the winrate).

25/20/9 is by itself a little bit 'non saying'. Most of it *should* come from CO or BTN.. when not 'there is your problem'.

Understand stats and understand how players with those stats play.
For instance: A 40/2/1 player lives from sucking. Totally possible for him to have 57 off in a 4A8K6 board (while you have AK)
A 23/17/5 player will never (...) have a 57 off in the same spot.

For 2NL: If players start stuffing the pot, they have the (almost) nuts 9 out of 10 times.

Good luck!

Thank you all.

@Lemon. So you are from the Czech Republic (Czech expressions in your OneNote) :f_biggrin:. I wasnt sure as you said "a fellow Czech grinder" if you meant you are Czech too or not. Anyway your OneNote is great, I have just a few pages so far. Thank you for all of the good advice. I am already active in the hand evaluation forum and will keep posting and commenting.

@RubbyDubby. Yeah you are right I felt it, too. From now on I will play 4 tables tops. As for position analysis, I ran it in HM2 (3,7k hands so far) and my most problematic seems to be SB now (-5,5 BIs). I know blinds are not the positions where one should make most of his profit, but this is too much. On the other hand, at least 3 BIs of these losses are variance such as KK vs AA, QQ vs 89o vs maniac and QQ vs 79s (OESD OTF all-in which he hit OTT of course). But other than that I feel that I call too much from SB which falls into the category where I should tighten up.

What bothers me more is 1BI loss from the BU which should be the most profitable position. But again it is just 700 hands now, it could be variance. On the button there is a KK vs AA as well. These are my positions stats now.

All in all when look at the big pots, it seems that I have been running somewhat bad. I have had the KK vs AA setup twice. I got just one preflop AI with AA and guess what, he had AA too And stuff like that.

Hi Dandiiik

3,7K hands is nothing.. Here my first ~3,7K hands (and a peep into my winnings at 2NL ;))

I still have no clue what one could call a 'big enough' sample size. I think 25K should give you a good idea.
When the line overall still goes down after 25K you probably have to adjust.

Again,

Good luck!

♦ thats great.

Passing by to wish you good luck with your challenge !

@Agapie: thank you and good luck to you too

I "little problem" has appeared. Probably I will not be able to collect strategy points which is what I was afraid of from the beginning. I have been playing for 4 days now and I have not received any points yet. I created my PS account a year ago after Pokerstars finally got their license for the Czech market. But I dont remember whether I created it through PSGY or not anymore. I guess not because I cant find the "Information sharing" section in my PS client.

Never mind. I have enough basic and bronze PSGY materials to study anyway. If I improve over time I can just buy higher status I guess

A little tip if you don't have status:
If you go to live coachings you can see them regardless of status
just follow https://www.twitch.tv/pokerstrategydotcom to know when they are live
I tune in to other coaches' streams all the time myself

Originally posted by LemOn36
A little tip if you don't have status:
If you go to live coachings you can see them regardless of status
just follow https://www.twitch.tv/pokerstrategydotcom to know when they are live
I tune in to other coaches' streams all the time myself

I've noticed this in the past. Doesn't this decrease the value of said paid memberships?

A week is gone and its time for a little recap. I am still not busto, which is great I have been trying to fulfill the bullet points I listed above. I play a little tighter and less fancy preflop. I have set myself preflop ranges by Weazel which I follow against regs. I play only 3 tables which is optimal. Its enough action but I still manage to focus. 4 are too much yet and 2 are too few. When I play on 2 tables I get bored start doing fancy stuff.

I have noticed and learned a few things in the last week:

There are still many fish in the pond.
It is difficult to play against maniacs especially when they are on your left. That is something I have to avoid because it is high variance play.
It is forbidden to play on pokerstars with open Equilab. Which is shame because I had put my ranges in it before I found out I can gather psgy points even without PS account being connected by being active in the hand evaluation forum. That is a nice promotion which will enable me to be silver in May. And basic-silver materials will be enough for me up to NL25 at least.
I enjoy analyzing hands. Both in the forum and in my HM2.
I need to be able to stop playing when I am tired or not focused anymore. If I dont stop, my redline usually starts to go to hell.

All in all I try to play solid TAG style poker. In the last few days it has even brought some tangible results. I am 6BIs up since the last update. But that is really not important. The most important thing for me is to focus on improving myself.

I have seen couple of videos but one of the best so far was Allen86 Hand History Review by W34z3l. Besides many valuable insights and pieces of information (which I all wrote down) he said one very important thing:

Most of the mistakes in poker arise in situations in which we shouldnt even be in the first place!

I am trying to think of this anytime I am playing. It helps me focus and be solid preflop which prevents me from getting into too many difficult situations postflop. Also No limit beginners course series by fellow Czech grinder Confidant91 are great. Pretty basic stuff but that is exactly what I need right now. (my OneNote is filling up).

Played hands: 8600
Current bankroll: 76$

Time for a little update. I have played a little over 10k hands now and I thought it might be good point to sit down and do some basic analysis in order to find obvious leaks in my game which I should remove immediately if I want to increase my winrate. Here I would like to ask anybody for help. What should I actually look for? I mean I play NL2, I am basically a beginner so I should not try to find whether I am balanced enough in check/raising river or if I 4bet bluff enough and stuff like that. So far I have looked at my biggest losses, 15 hands where I lost a half a stack to full stack and I found out that I might actually overplay some medium strength hands. Because you know:

Big pots are for big hands, small pots are for small hands!

Just see a few examples where I think I overplayed my hand or played badly in general and lost a full stack:

Good news is that I have learned from this. I have tightened up a bit so I dont get into too many difficult decision post flop and I play for big pots only with strong hands. Sometimes there are situations where I can afford to play for a stack even with a weaker hand, but thats usually against a maniac. I think it might be working for me. I dont want to jinx it, I am just describing my current feelings. Since I started to play a little tighter, this is how my graph has looked like.

It may just be variance on my side, I know. But at least I am happy with my redline here which is not falling down straight to hell.

So besides large pots, do you have any tips on what I should review? Here is what I was thinking:

Positions in general. Try to find out where I am most profitable and if its ok or not.
Cbets. Do I cbet enough? Are my cbets successful enough?
Review premium hands to find out whether I play them well? In the end what else should I be profitable with on NL2 than premium hands.
Stealing blinds. Do I steal enough and are my steals successful?
Unraised pots. There is a lot of limping on NL2. Maybe I am not aggressive enough in these spots.
Biggest losses and wins. Was it just variance or me being stupid or lucky?

Do you agree, disagree, would you review anything else?

Hi Dandiiik,

I have also almost finished my first 10k hands. Very inspiring to see how you are approaching this. Seems very thought-out and methodical with this big general review now. I might just follow your footsteps with this. Poker analysis weekend!

Nice winnings with these last 2800 hands btw!

Hi Ben,

nice to see that I can be inspiring to someone After 10k hands it is not about finding the most detailed leaks but really just some basic stuff which could boost our winrate on micros. Do you have any blog of your own? You could post results of your analysis there and discuss the findings.

Btw. the winnings are just variance, and I guess I jinxed it :f_biggrin::

So I took a look at my hands and found a few things:

Problem: sometimes I use bad leverage against a fish. In a spot where I should be able to extract a lot of value, I use bad sizing and either end up in a bad spot OTR where I have to overbetshove if I want the fish to go allin or I give him a good price for his draws which he gives up if missed and I lose value.
Learning: before every bet (especially for value), try to quickly calculate how the pot is gonna grow and what the relative stack sizes gonna be.

Problem: my SB winnings are too bad. I am 8BIs down on SB after 2,3k hands. The problem is not when I try to steal BB, I am +3BI there. So I probably choose good spots to steal BB and play it solid. The problem is when someone raises before me and I get involved (-7BIs)! I play out of position and awfully many times have to just give up the pot. It kills my winrate. Other positions are ok. CO and BU are my most winning positions which fine.
Learning: set a solid SB range for cold calls and 3bets and follow it. SB is the worst position at the table and if I add a passive play to it, it gets even worse.

Problem: 4bet bluffs dont work for me. 4bet bluff is not a tool I would use too often but sometimes I try it and mostly it doesnt work for me. I have found that I pick wrong spots like 4bet bluffing after my open raise on UTG or MP, so villains 3bet range is strong. Also my hands are sometimes not suitable for this and even villains are too tight for this.
Learning: pick better spots for 4bet bluffing.

I am happy especially with the SB leak. It is something I can work on right now.

Hi!

Nice list!
I made a similiar one for my blog now.

I think I also could subscribe to your first and last point. I found it quite difficult to calculate the development of SPR for future streets on the fly. Do you know some quick way to do it?
Weirdly enough my by far worst position seems to be the BTN when we leave out the blinds. Some coach here told me that a detailed positional analysis isn't very significant before 60k (i.e. 10k/position) hands. So I decided to delay my trouble with it. Probably you also didn't play that bad but just got unlucky with your SB till now.

This is my list:

Good luck with the leak-fixing!
:f_thumbsup::f_drink::f_thumbsup: