[Closed] Screw The Reccession Let's Have A Poker Session !

Hi Darius,

You share your name with a famous poker player Welcome to the blog section of the forum, I hope you keep up with it this time

Good luck with your goals, I think its best for now you play 2-4 tables if you are more comfortable with it, and sticking to the 9 or 18 mans is probably best now while you are building up your bankroll. You should have around 100 buyins for the 27/45 mans.

Regards,
Sarah

Thanks Sarah

I do know a lot of poker players, because I watch a lot of poker...but never come across of another "Darius"...who's he ?

And ok, I shall stick to the 9-18 seaters, thank you !

Hi Darius,
i would definately advise sticking to one variant of poker, either sng or cash not both as they are poles apart and playing both can weaken your game.
If you are multi tabling I would suggest 4 x 18 seater sngs and with your bankroll, start on $1 for a couple of days first then step it up once you have doubled BR.

Thats looks like a big goal for 10 weeks of play.

If you need help with spanish just post your question here.

Thanks TheBrood, much appreciated

And yeah, but I don't work or anything, so I can fit a lot of hours of poker during the day

Hello TimoDee,

Sounds like quite a challenge what you planned so far. I can only say best of luck with your endeavour and remember to keep us informed. In the summer I want you to write in the forums somewhere along the lines of "I'm writing from Ibiza at the moment"

Best regards,
vhallee

Haha, If I'm not too drunk I promise to write something Otherwise it'll just turn out as a lot of mumbo jumbo.

Originally posted by TimoDee
Haha, If I'm not too drunk I promise to write something Otherwise it'll just turn out as a lot of mumbo jumbo.

Nobody said you should have a perfectly elaborate post about philosophical aspects of poker, but I bet it would be nice to see a fellow PokerStrategist partying at Ibiza thanks to the strategy material we provide ♠_biggrin:

You got it, boss

Hi,

very interesting project! I play SNGs myself so I know that it's possible to do this but it's gonna be extremely tough because you have to start with the 2$ SNGs and "waste" some time building your BR for the 5$s.. Still I think you can make it if you won't even tilt once and won't catch a downswing anywhere on you your way..
I would also suggest you stick with one game type only while you're learning. It's just way more efficient this way.
I think it's necessary for you to fit some ICM trainer time to your schedule, too.

Good luck,
Lubor

Thanks LuborC, very helpful post Yep like I said I'm jobless so can literally fit about 10 hours of poker a day (with greatest pleasure) so will have to design a chart in the near future, and divide my time.

After some thought, I have decided to stick to SnG till at least after my holiday, and just grind them out.

My daily progress update to follow in about 2 hours (been an OK day so far)

Ok guys,soo.......it has been a day with mixed emotions for me. I have managed to play 24 tourneys (I don't know if it's a lot or not) - will try and increase the number, have been doing other things today as well, and started playing lately than I would have hoped to.

Anyway, the main thing...after playing 24 $1.25 18 people SnGs I am down to: $45.71...Not quite the result I was hoping for, but there are some positives, which I will talk about in a little bit.

First of all I would like to post my stats for today, to see if anyone can maybe show me something I could change in my game to make it better

Those of you wiser than me, might be able to pick something up from that and point things I'm doing wrong.

It's hard to pick up positives when you're down quite a bit. But I think one of the positives is the fact that I have been getting to final tables without a problem (I know it's not hard in a 18 man SnG) but I used to be able to donk my chips off within 10 minutes. So that's one thing that I've improved. Secondly, I have been less affected by tilt. I have had a couple of pretty poor badbeats, but due to the fact that for the first time in my life I'm sticking to BRM, it felt okey, knowing the fact that I've played the hand well but just got unlucky. I'm not the type of person to blame everything on bad luck, but some of the money I lost today was definetely down to it.

I think the major negative today was my inability to play decent ICM, which I will be improving over the next couple of days. I have bubbled 5 times, which is 1/5 of today's SnGs so that's one thing I will deffo be trying to improve. Secondly I will have to improve my inability to fold pockets with one overcard on the board. I know it's hard for people to do that anyway, but I don't think I've managed to fold them once. Also I've played 4 tournaments when I wasn't really up for it as much, so I'm going to have to teach myself when to stop and how to have a clear mind when playing.

Ok I've got Elephant installed but for some reason I can't get my SnG hand history to work with it. I have managed to import it, and it even said the right number of hands imported but it's not displaying them...any help here guys ?

Improve my ICM game, and try to get the top 3 finish more often.
Play 36 Tournaments
Manage to post my hands on here

I can't think of anymore, maybe you guys could suggest some ?

1. I have imported all my tournaments to PokerTracker, but 3 of them seem to have been imported badly. Eg I have come in 0 place, and the tournament type is different to the others, even though I have entered all the same tourneys, what's the reason for that ? Any fixing ?

2. I have downloaded ICM Trainer Light, but I've also noticed there's an ICM Trainer, what's the difference and which one should I be focusing more on ?

3. I've also got 3 poker books, should I be touching them at all, or just stick to the PokerStrategy articles for now ? (One of them is autographed by David Sklansky - woohoo!!)

Thanks for reading my blog and I'm looking forward to feedback from you guys

Hi Darius,

Its hard to tell from those stats, I prefer the stats from where it also shows the blind level from the general tab on tournaments. But from what I can tell it looks like you are limping way too much, and not betting on the flop enough, so playing too loosely/passively. Although it is a small sample, I reccomend you have another look at the starting hand chart and follow it more strictly. After raising you should be betting most of the time when you're up against one opponent, I think you should really work on improving your game before continuing with ur grind.

Wish you the best of luck

Regards,
Sarah

Hey Darius...

Just to answer a couple of questions..

The Elephant doesn't have SnG or Tourney support yet (unless it has changed in the last month) so PT3 is probably your best bet.

The ICM Trainer Light is an introduction to ICM play and steps you through the hand ranges you should be shoving and under what circumstances. The ICM Trainer is just a hard core grind machine of push or fold situations without the nice tutorial nature of the Light version.

Best of luck getting to Ibiza!!!

Hey Darius,

Looking at your stats there are a few things that are quite clearly.

Vpip: 34.2, Pfr: 12.24, Fvfcb: 71.86, St:17.67

So what do these numbers mean? Start off you are playing way too loose in consideration of all your other stats. A vpip of 34.2%, and only 12.24% pfr suggests that you cold calling/limping preflop too much and have very low agression factor, meaning passiveness and probably quite easy to play against, as shown by your 'fold to flop bet' of 71.86%. Therefore you only carry on if you hit on the flop, hence any good 'thinking' opponents with hud will likely pick up on this and probably bet the flop with 100% of their range and take it down, as to them you are playing your cards face up, so if you do call they know you have hit and then will play their hand accordingly.

A steal percentage of only 17.67% tells me that you are not playing with positional awareness, so you are not stealing enough in late position and not taking full advantage of late position play post-flop. If you look at your PT3 stats of vpip and pfr stats in accordance to position, it should increase as you go from early to late position. My guess here is that you are playing the cards a lot more than playing the opponents.

Out of the 146 hands you raised preflop, only around 38% made it to the flop, and you have around a 66% c-bet range which is ok if all your other stats are 'normal'. But as 62% of your preflop raises are not called it shows that people are not calling you light because they know that you are passive preflop, so are very aware when you raise, and only carry on with their top range, making your life more difficult and probably results in bigger variance. So if your opponents are putting you on a real hand everytime you raise preflop you should be leading on the flop more as you have the preflop raise initiative. As to what flops you should or shouldn't c-bet, that's something you need to learn. But as a point of reference, always ask yourself, if I make this bet here does it have value, is a worse hand than mine going to call, or am I only going to get called by better?

Hmmmm I started writing this because I was bored, but it looks like I've said too much. I hope you don't get offended if this sounds too critical, but good luck and hope this helps with you ventures.

Peace

Thanks for your input guys Essien, I appreciate you taking your time and nope I'm not offended in any way, this is what I'm here for...to improve myself as a player

And thank you Sarah, I shall do that and see what my session today goes like

Ok, I've read the Advanced Post Flop article in the Bronze section, and made some notes on the most important things I've picked up from it. I've also printed out a copy of the starting hand charts, which I will follow very strictly. And finally I have completed another lesson in ICM Trainer Light. Do you think it would be a good idea to maybe print out a push-fold chart because it's kinda hard to remember what hands you can push with in what situation

Darius

Hey guys, it's been a while since I posted here, but I've been busy practicing for Ibiza the last couple of days and was in no state to play poker

Sincy my last update I have played 17 tournaments, and I have been quite happy with my progress I have managed to get myself out of the minus and get rid of that stinking red colour on PokerTracker, that nobody wants to see and now it's a nice green colour

I have also taken to heart what everyone on this thread so far have said and it has improved my game greatly, so I wish to say thank you to those of you who helped so far

I've had a quick session earlier and played a couple of tournaments yesterday, and thought I would update this before starting my main session later on.

So these are my stats so far:

I have managed to get my VPIP down which I think is the main step forward for me Any more comments are more than welcome

I think the main positives for the main session is the number of times I finishes in the money, I have managed this by improving my late stage play by studying articles and working through the example on ICM trainer

I think the main negative is the number of tournaments I played is far from how many I would have liked to play, due to my alcohol addiction But that's something I will work hard to improve. Secondly I think my heads-up play is something I would need to work for in the near future and stay focused throughout the whole tourney.

I will post more including my goals after the afternoon and evening session

Peace