[Closed] finally taking it seriously.

Titan?

I play $0.10/0.20 at IPoker (Mansion). I believe IPoker shares players, so I'm playing players that play at Titan, Mansion, etc.. so maybe we meet at the tables when you move up again

I'm starting to use stats too, and it reaaally improved my game. You can easily see who limps a lot, who is really tight preflop etc, and adjust to that.

For example, if I'm heads up against somebody with those 76/47/2.5 stats, and I have a hand as weak as ATo I try to get as much money in preflop, where I can be pretty sure to have the best hand. But against some tight dude with 11/5/2 that raises from the cutoff I'm laying down AQo on the button.

I'm learning too how to control myself better I take more breaks now, especially after a few bad beats or if I'm playing bad. Take a drink, maybe read an article, whatever ...

Hi lennert9.
It is good to read another micro/low limit FL player.

"When I play top pair good kicker on the flop with a drawheavy board, everything works the way it should, when the turncard is one which could complete a draw, I bet, but when I'm raised I cal again, and end up check calling the river. I seem to be losing these pots quite often to people who indeed, completed there draws. So at 0.02-0.04 I'm going to stop thinking about people trying to bluff me out of there, and simply fold to there turnraise or at least check fold on the river. I just hope that this will turn out okay"

when I look at my graph it is pretty much a steady slope, but there are down-spikes and it it pretty much always because i have made a play like that.
Then I learn and manage to stay disciplined for a while but I always seem to get back to that bad habit.
Good skills on the tables, I hope you continue to improve your game and keep posting in the forums, something I should do more of.
D.

thx deadly, kaos... great to know that there are people who read this thing!

Two days ago I posted that I had reached the br requirements I had put forward in post 1 for me to move to 0.05-0.10

Since that post, I've been beating 0.05-0.10 for 21bb/100 hands (!!) over a sample size of 1483 hands

I realise that this is just an upswing
(but when I look through my previous posts I'seem to have been on an upswing since began, maybe I'm just reaaaaly good ;))

Anyway, this hot streak left me with 60$ or in other words, a high enough br to assault 0.1-0.2

however, in my first post I stated that if I hadn't played 10000 hands at 0.05-0.1 I would continue to play at that limit till I reached 65$ or 10000 hands whatever came first.

So I'll be grinding the 0.05-0.1 tables a little longer, but I'm having a good feeling about moving up pretty soon

And there it is. I've reached 65$ br

my stats for 0.05-0.1 are:

1861 hands
VPIP17,0%
PFR 9,3%
AF 1,4
W$@SD 65%
bb/100 hands: 21.2

0.1-0.2 here I come

I will set a a low limit of 45$, if I go under that, I will return to the 0.05-0.1 tables

P.S. my total br is now at 65,38$

Niiiice!!

Man, your winrate is crazy.

I don't know if you have holdem manager (or pokertracker), but if you do you should post some graphs and more stats in here. I always like to look at those things.
If you don't have holdem manager, you should really get it whenever you have money for it. You can do so much with this program.

Hopefully I won't be too long at $0.10/0.20, cause you're gonna take all my money

Keep on going up!

Well, I must say, I just played you, and I didn't really succeed in getting you broke

The level of play at 0.1-0.2 is a LOT higher then 0.05-0.1 imo, I managed to run break even, but the fishes don't bite as good.

I'm going to watch a few vids, and read some articles (soon I'll be silver which should give me more articles), and then try to go at it again.

Hehe ... I was getting absolutely no hand on that table lol.

I don't know about the lower limits, but here it really differs per table. Sometimes there are lots of maniacs, but sometimes the table is full of regular, somewhat decent players. You'll get to know who they are

I don't think there will be a big difference tbh.
But just take it easy .. play $0.1/0.2 whenever you feel comfortable. You need to play some more to draw conclusions.

gl

I"ll post two grafs here, the second one is just my graf of yesterday, the first is my carreer so far

(the reason the winrates in the carreer graf don't match the ones I've posted is because I've only started posting since I've been "taking it seriously" this point lies at about 4200 hands, were the graf suddenly reverses it's slope ♦)

@ Kaos
your probably right about not having enough experience at this level, but the people I've played against at 0.05-01 was really appaling, that's partially why I've manage to get such high winrates there, I'd flop the nut straight and they'd keep on betting and raising every street till river, sometimes threeway pots, only to show second pair low kicker ♦

I just finished signing up for four live tournaments (the entire Leuven Poker Tour)

These are all freerolls, three of them have 220 seats, 1 has 140 seats.

The bad thing is that it's winner takes all, if you win the tournament, you get a 1100$ package to an EPEC tournament somewhere in May, (perhaps the runner up gets a deck of cards or so)

Anyway, these tournaments are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday next week, and also, Tuesday and Thursday in two weeks.

The level of play is going to be terrible, but there will be a few good players, so I'm a bit at a loss as to what strategy I should follow.

For now here's the plan, I'm going to play a loose aggressive intimidating all or nothing style in the first tournament, maybe I can double up quickly a few times (blind structure isn't really forgiving)

The next tournaments (given that I don't take home the first one) I will play standard TAG style, hopefully, this way, the regulars will remember my lag play from the first tournament and make mistakes that way.

I'm also going to look into sage, just in case I would make it heads up.

EDIT: I found the blind structure Startstack: 1000
21u
5-10
10-20
15-30
22u
25-50
50-100
75-150
23u
BREAK
100-200
200-400
00u
300-600
500-1000
750-1500
01u
1000-2000
1500-3000
BREAK
02u
2000-4000
2500-5000
3000-6000
03u
(unlikely) 4000-8000

END EDIT

I'll post updates every evening when I come home from these tourneys, and after that, it'll be pretty much over for me, my exams aren't too far away anymore, so I'll pretty much spend the remainder of the year, and the first month of January studying my ass of, but when January is over I'm going to learn how to beat 0.10-0.20
(I tried the bronze charts today, and they are giving waaaaaaaaay better results than the standard SHC)

Nice, some live tournaments! Gl in those! Hope you end up in the money in at least one
You know the payout structure fieldsize?

Also:
- Gl with exams.
- Gl with $0.1/0.2.

Btw If you want to know something about $0.1/0.2 I could know (who the regulars are, for example), just let me know.

Originally posted by lennert9

The bad thing is that it's winner takes all, if you win the tournament, you get a 1100$ package to an EPEC tournament somewhere in May, (perhaps the runner up gets a deck of cards or so)

I'm already starting to figure out the names of the regulars (alavala seems to be a very regular player, but he seems to be beatable according to me)

thanks for the offer, btw, are you Dutch, or Belgian?

Hmm .. should read your post better:)

I'm Dutch. You're Belgium or 'French-Belgium' lol ?

Alavala is one of them. I played 310 against him, he won 160, I won 150 hehe. He took a total of $0.49 of me.
But you'll figure it out soon enough when you have time to play some more. Most of them are on a LOT of tables.

I'm Dutch-Belgium ♦

I'm having a feeling that I've already mastered 0.1-0.2, I reviewed my losing sessions, and it appears that my losses were in part, due to good old tilt.

I wasn't feeling so good laying down 10c blinds. I stopped four tabling and am now comfy playing 1 table, moving on to two soon.

This was my today session at a whopping 20+bb/100 hands, what can a man ask for?

EDIT: in the end I finished the day with 821 hands, 27.03 $ and 32,92bb/100 hands

The amount of fish seems to be endless, and apparently, they have deep pockets.

My bankroll is now at 89,03$ so if Titan would have had a 15-30 level I'd practically be moving on

Tell me your secret please!

Originally posted by Ka0s
Tell me your secret please!

I've got no idea I follow the bronze charts (sometimes I play a hand which is like one kicker o low , so if th chart states KQs, I'll play KJ's, but only sometimes whhen the feeling is right) and for the rest I stick to the postflop lines of the basic articles, besides that, I don't ever instaraise, or instacall, since this displays too much strength.

Update on the live adventure:

All in all it wasn't that bad, my loose aggressive style quickly doubled my stack, but when I was holding 99 and the shortstack (360 chips) next to me went all in, I called, he turned over AKo

The flop came three blanks, the turn a blank, the river was a K

After this hand I went carddead, and my stack was blinded down to below average (and due to the insane blindstructure, an average stack was something like 10 bb most of the tournament.)

At this point I get moved to another table, Here my first 4 hands are real good ones, (pp, AKs etc...) and since ereryone was playing push or fold, I joined them, the 4th was called, I was holding the wretched 99 again, but the other guy held 77, I won this hand, which brought me back to an average stack.

The finest moment of the night as the following, there was this real asshole at the table who thought he could play poker, and he was getting angry with my style off play, when he is UTG, he raises it to 3bb (1200 chips) and I picked up AJo so I put him all in from UTG+1 (play was sevenhanded) He totally freaks out at me, thinks a long time stares me down, and then he starts to ask me questions, are you holding AQ? I go like, yeah, or perhaps even AA,... He keeps on thinking and turns over AJ as he folds. I threw my AJ in his face and after this he was on a complete tilt, I elliminated him three hands later.

The most crucial hand of the night comes now, One guy goes all in, for slightly over a third of my stack. I'm holding AQ, so I call

he turns over AT, I'm already rather happy,

flop comes two blanks Q (I'm estatic)
turn come a jack
river comes a king, he hits his runner runner straight and double's up to me

The very next hand is my last one, the same guy goes all in, I call him this time with AJ and he turns over AQ, no help came, and I was out as 17th of 124

Perhaps I shouldn't have made that last call, but since it was 1th or bust, it didn't seem so bad.

All in all I'm happy with my performance, and how far I got in the tournament, but I can't get over this beat. The guy who beat me went to the final three only to lose interest and donk his stack (50bb) away in a preflop all in with QTo

anyway, tonight is another night, and one thing is already apparant, the 4 tourneys are being hosted by four fraternities who each have a lot of their members playing in their tourney, and then, there's a hard core of 15 or so pokerplayers who intend to do all four of them, including half the final table of yesterday, so I know who I'm up against.

I'm just going to add the report of the second tourney in this post.

It simply sucked, at my table were two donks who had never in there life played poker... we had to tell them what they had to do, when they had to bet, that they had to raise with minimum the betted amount, when they where bb we had to ask them wether or not they checked etc...
We played very few hands because everthing went so damn slow (some guys had to think for half a minute just to call the blinds, which isn't funny with 20 minute chip levels). On top of that I was carddead, In the third level picked up pocket 3's, I raised and was called by one guy (a decent player who sat at my table the day before as well) the flop came 55Q he betted 1/4th the pot, I decided to bluff him off, he called, and it was game over for me.

Some might say that I should simply have waited for better cards, but sitting at that table was just a recipe to go down, I believe two tables had already been broken up to rebalance the tables, while we still had all players we started with, so even if I would have waited, I would have been so shortstacked compared to to other decent players that I wouldn't have stood a chance to make it to the final table, let alone win. If only they would have played faster and knew how poker worked it would have probably been better for me.

Thanks for looking at those hands Lennert!

17/124 isn't too bad I would say. Some confidence boost ♦

Btw, I know you're lying about your secret, but that's okay. I wouldn't tell anybody either if I was you ;).

The benefits of playing poker

After playing poker seriously for slightly over a month, I can see all sorts of benefits in my life

Before I joined PS I was drinking heavily, I was standing at the gates of alcoholism with a fierce intend to run through them (I remember drinking three quarters of a bottle of vodka, and all I could think of the next day was: next week 'll do a whole one). But in playing poker, I had to make a choice, drinking, or playing. And I chose playing (I still get stone cold drunk every now and then, but no longer everyday, and no longer before noon)

This immediately leads to benefit two: money, alcohol costs money, and after four weeks of drinking considerably less, I've saved about 100€(I'm thinking about saving this money untill I'm twenty-one, so I can go to a casino to try my hand at the tables there)

and last but not least, my self confidence has gotten a serious boost. Playing in these live tourneys forced me to think about my "table image". But I found that also in real life, being "tight agressive" is pretty usefull.

Also, In studying, I found that I can concentrate for longer periods of time without being distracted, maybe this has something to do with multitabling.

Now I just have to find a girlfriend through playing poker. ♦

lol, a friend of mine just proposed me the following prop bet:

I have to play 1000+ hands at 0.02-0.04 FL, with a VPIP of 80 or higher (In fact I have to limp or raise all unraised pots, but I'm allowed to fold some raise+ reraised pots

On the flop turn and river I'm allowed to fold as I see fit

The bet is that I cannot have a positive balance after these 1000 hands, the bet stands at 5€ I have untill midnight to decide wether or not I take it, I'm seriously thinking about doing it it would be a good lesson in judging post flop situations, and extracting maximum value out of my oponents

I'm going to think this through a bit, and in about two hours I'll post wether or not I'm going to do it.

O yeah, It has to be full ring (9 handed and such isn't a problem, but I can't play HU or SH)

Hi Lennert,

Good to hear you're cutting down on that alcohol! From your posts I can tell you are a very smart guy. But drinking too much too often can and will brainwash every smart guy. So keep that confidence and don't let the game play you instead of the other way around.
Do you think you're becoming more positive and thinking more clearly has something to do with you drinking less?

I actually hate to add this to this post, but I think I should:
If somewhere in time you are not satisfied about your game and/or results, please post it somewhere. Because if you rely on poker as a way out of something, and poker seems to let you down for a short period of time, your head can get messy. And you could probably use some positive feedback. I know I would.

About that prop bet: rofl.
I guess you should somehow try to calculate how much % of hands you'll need to win if you play 80% of your hands in order to not loose more than 5 euro.
And if you expect to loose more than 5 euro, you'll have to consider if you think it will be worth the incredible amount of fun you would have ♦.