After 17th session: 1021 minutes played
9780 hands EV -3.36bb/100
Running at -3.64bb/100
Crazy session, 2 tilt triggers activated and mental game not holding up. Probably worse session since beginning of the challenge. 1 tilt trigger was losing AKo vs AQo, opponent called of my 5 bet shove and got Q in very non standard stacking off positions! After that I felt that every spot post flop was very unprofitable due to board run out and opponent hitting top of the range by river (2 pairs+). In 1 3 bet pot I lost stack on river after not hitting GS+FD and opponent under bet to induce me with AK on 8682K (busted hearts) where I shoved and he snapped of course (well done to him). Then there were bad beats. 75s combo draw btn vs sb where opponent got it with just nut fd + 1 over , I already had pair + FD so blocked his outs for FD and turn and river not 1 but runner runner hearts I 4 bet fish KK pre, flop AJx fish pots and KK in the muck BTN vs CO 3 bet pot, opponent donks 3 streets on QJ345 busted FD and some combos of SD completed (76 and A2), of course I have TPSK and call down, he turns 33. Did not expect 33 there CO vs BTN but they keep surprising me in those spots when I time down narrow the range brake down sets busted flushes and straights and make mathematically correct call to find out that dude has 33 pre flop, just LOL stuff.
So yeah, this was results wise probably worse session with 4 stacks or so lost. There were bad beats and also tilt triggers that took me a lot off from my game. Through the whole day I think I lost 5 stacks in 3 bet pots when I shoved turn vs double barrel and opponent was each time on top of the range!!! Will check out all the hands after I finish the 4th session for the day.
After 18th session: 1079 minutes played
10308 hands EV -3.92bb/100
Running at -3.97bb/100
Unlike previous sessions, this one started good. Believe 1-2 buy ins up. Then through out the session some bluff catchers worked, some did not which of course cost a lot of buy ins in the end.
Overall I am happy that today's grind is finished. I will take a break and then get to HH review, go over all bad plays that I made and take notes.
Last night analyzed with my friend and study partner Max (elpsycho) all the biggest lost hands + other spots(filters) that could have caused spew and bad play. What was great to see is that most of the buy ins lost were setups and bad beats. From top of my head from 8 stacks lost yesterday only 1 of them was my fault when I shoved vs river under bet my busted GS+SD and T high! Opponents sizing didn't make sense for value but he was in fact bet/calling with AK on 8h6s8h2cKs. Of course in this spot theoretically it makes sense to have bluff shoving range and hand that I had was perfect candidate for it. In relation to that I would shove the same way value hands there (88, 66, 86s, K8s, AK).
Look forward to 4 sessions today. Things will turn around in next 20k+ hands for sure. I will keep doing what I am doing, my bluff catches will turn huge profit and my value range will get payed off more as card distribution favors me in the future more.
Overall very happy that I did review last night and that those were the things spotted. Will look into another client for easier table selection and to maintain 600 hands per hour average!
I added 3rd client and it is Unibet. Unfortunately, HM2 doesn't track hands for this site so now my whole challenge for hands played becomes meaningless. I will instead count number of hours in a following way: 600 hands per hour, target is 100k hands so 166.66 or 167 hours. In minutes (since I am using HM2 info for minutes played) this becomes 10020 minutes! So challenge will be to grind 10020 minutes which should with 7-8 tabling easily get me to 100k hands! I will also track my Unibet carefully daily and update it once per month both pre and post RB.
Expect in updates from now on hours only and graphs will be with hands with 2 clients that I was mixing until today! So the ending graph will have missing hands for sure cause of Unibet but I definitely plan to do 10020 minutes of grinding regardless.
Unibet seems OK for grinding but their poker client just crashed in the middle of my grind... Not a great start there also but I will update Unibet once a month when I get RB for it (FDB + VIP) and then the actual profit. If somebody has any idea how to track number of hands played there, shoot me a message so that I can get that going as well.
Overall played already 2 hours or more today, a bit of brutal and tilting day to say the least. Need to pull myself together, I can do way better then this!
Originally posted by IvicaIliev77 I added 3rd client and it is Unibet. Unfortunately, HM2 doesn't track hands for this site so now my whole challenge for hands played becomes meaningless.
It's not only a technical problem - the site itself prohibits all third party helping soft and even makes proactive steps to break it down. (There was an illegal HUD for Unibet, but they introduced random alteration to the dealer chat, and the HUD became useless.)
I'm not sure if you'll be able to 7-8-table with the same level of focus - as Unibet doesn't allow hotkeys, you'll be spending more time on acting at its tables anyway.
However, you can probably track your hand number by means of built-in statistics in the client. I don't know how exactly it works there, as I was able to play only a couple of sessions after Unibet went independent, before it got blocked by the ISP.
However, you can probably track your hand number by means of built-in statistics in the client. I don't know how exactly it works there, as I was able to play only a couple of sessions after Unibet went independent, before it got blocked by the ISP.
I don't use hotkeys on other clients the mouse scroll is enough for now. Later I will consider software like table ninja for all the hotkeys on different clients.
Software has Hand history tab but it won't let you extract them to note pad or anything like that. It just shows all the hands you played in a specific day. Its a mess of course because it doesn't show number of them, just hand ID and scroll. So I would have to count them manually.
Either way, I will check with support and see if there is a way to track the hands. Today I already played 2 and a half sessions, so will now do 1.5 hours+ and finish it up.
Day 6 1388 minutes played
Without Unibet 12990 hands EV -0.04bb/100
Running at 0.61bb/100
Very eventful day. Again bunch of ups and downs. Thing worth mentioning is that today I grinded well over 7 hours. 1 hour in coffee place nl25 zoom and then over 6 hours in 2 sessions total 7-8 tabling. 1st session was craziest of them all. I played really bad at one point and gave away stacks. Also, playing Unibet + 2 clients was confusing at times. Think I need couple of days to adjust to that client with other poker clients not to distract me in any way. Perhaps the things that tilted me the most is Unibet client shutting down not once or twice but over 7 times in 2 sessions. Imagine 2-4 tabling on there and then it disconnects you, you are playing other 2 poker clients and you simultaneously log in into Unibet and then it works or doesn't - and this repeats over and over!
So 1st session this tilted me the most + bad calls that I made vs regs and the session was catastrophe to say the least. I then took a brake, ate dinner, regroup my thoughts, talk to my brother and friends and went back to tables to crush. Again Unibet client was crushing so I just shut it down completely after 20ish minutes and moved to grind 2 clients that I already did before today. End result was great because from -230 euro or so for the challenge I went up to +33 euro or so. So 5 stacks or so won in that 2nd long session. Things that I noticed is that I can play longer than 1 hour session as long as I am absolutely in focus. 1st session of the day showed that without proper focus this leads to spew while 2nd session I played B game at minimum and results were evident. Bluff catches good, value betting also, leveling opponents, bluffs getting through, correct bet sizing, dominating both fish and regs. Another interesting thing about today is that I played a lot of HU and 3-4 handed tables since traffic was 6/6 a lot of times and I wanted to get the hands in not waste hourly. I noticed that I can definitely play regs on NL50 from 6 max HU. I think I even took at least a buy in HU if not more. But yeah, its nice to have this option and even table start in the future if the tables are full. Also I noticed today that on a lot of tables, at least 10 times today, 3 regs exited me after 5 or less minutes after I joined the game. It literally happened that I enter as 5th or 6th player and they empty the whole table, I end up there with 1 fish and 1 reg, so I continue playing, they observe and probably take notes or wait for me to leave?
So quite a lot of interesting things. Mental game was at great test today, failed in 1st session hard but in 2nd climbed back and proved that I can definitely walk over this limit IF MY FOCUS IS ALWAYS MINIMUM AT B- GAME!
As I mentioned in the previous update, I will not write about Unibet for at least 1 month until I get back RB. I can then evaluate and say if profit was made or not pre and post RB. For hand counting there unfortunately there is no immediate solution but I will look into it more in the future!
Here is the graph after 6 days of challenge or 20 sessions (2 really long sessions today!):
Originally posted by IvicaIliev77 Also, playing Unibet + 2 clients was confusing at times. Think I need couple of days to adjust to that client with other poker clients not to distract me in any way. Perhaps the things that tilted me the most is Unibet client shutting down not once or twice but over 7 times in 2 sessions. Imagine 2-4 tabling on there and then it disconnects you, you are playing other 2 poker clients and you simultaneously log in into Unibet and then it works or doesn't - and this repeats over and over!
Welcome to euro sites You have to embrace the charm of their bugs, they affect not only you but everyone, so you're not losing much, except that it makes recs less inclined to stay and redeposit
Originally posted by IvicaIliev77 Also I noticed today that on a lot of tables, at least 10 times today, 3 regs exited me after 5 or less minutes after I joined the game. It literally happened that I enter as 5th or 6th player and they empty the whole table, I end up there with 1 fish and 1 reg, so I continue playing, they observe and probably take notes or wait for me to leave?
I'm sorry to burst the bubble, but they might be doing this in sight of anyone whom they regard as reg, just because a table with 1 rec and 4-5 regs isn't 'fishy' enough. When selecting tables, you correctly take into account whether the regs are good or bad, but for some people like me, a reg is a reg and a table doesn't seem worth playing at unless there are 2+ recs or a rec on the immediate right. At least that was my selection criterion when I was in iPoker PLO50 - a rather tough field by the PLO standards of 2013, mind you. I don't know what the 'standards' are at NL50, probably it's so dead already that a 1-fish table is regarded as a blessing
Welcome to euro sites You have to embrace the charm of their bugs, they affect not only you but everyone, so you're not losing much, except that it makes recs less inclined to stay and redeposit
I'm sorry to burst the bubble, but they might be doing this in sight of anyone whom they regard as reg, just because a table with 1 rec and 4-5 regs isn't 'fishy' enough. When selecting tables, you correctly take into account whether the regs are good or bad, but for some people like me, a reg is a reg and a table doesn't seem worth playing at unless there are 2+ recs or a rec on the immediate right. At least that was my selection criterion when I was in iPoker PLO50 - a rather tough field by the PLO standards of 2013, mind you. I don't know what the 'standards' are at NL50, probably it's so dead already that a 1-fish table is regarded as a blessing
Actually I am loosing a lot when those disconnections and software bug happen. The site itself doesn't remember your username and password so every time those things happen I have to manually type both while 6 tabling other 2 sites for example. I understand what you are saying, it is same for everyone, but recreational player will play 1 client not 3 and will not care if he/she plays 600 hands per hour So in that sense it is killing my hands per hour.
For HU you might be right although those same regs in previous 5 days of challenge stayed and played me no problem. There was case where 1 or 2 of them would sit out when I enter the tables. Yesterday however was completely different because it happened like 10 times through the whole day. 2 of them were brave/crazy enough to stay and play me HU while others left and then recreational players came and balance was nice.
The whole point of adding Unibet was to be able to table select more. However Unibet didn't really solve that IMO. There are regs there also, I saw minimum 6 of them yesterday while 2-3 tabling. Unibet automatically seats you at some table when you want to join the limit that you play. I like the fact that NL50 had 40+ players through out the day. NL100 at 1am had 70 players there!!! So it has great potential for mixing IMO but you also need to battle out regs.
hi, something that crosses my mind and that i wanted to ask, when you playing differnt sites at same time, you think its problem to adjust to playing styles at differnt sites, i mean poker games at stars is more nitty then for example what i heard at 888,, so to adjust the game plan little bit depending at what site you play is a need, atleast i think so and doing it but this is at lower limits and maybe no need at your limits.
Originally posted by rompas
hi, something that crosses my mind and that i wanted to ask, when you playing differnt sites at same time, you think its problem to adjust to playing styles at differnt sites, i mean poker games at stars is more nitty then for example what i heard at 888,, so to adjust the game plan little bit depending at what site you play is a need, atleast i think so and doing it but this is at lower limits and maybe no need at your limits.
Definitely! It requires adjustment of different sorts. For example, on Stars people don't 3 barrel TPWK or 2nd pair that has showdown value, on the other sites where I play now they do. So what does this mean? Potentially any TPSK is good enough for 3 streets call down. This of course increases variation as you see from my graph in 13k hands. GTO wise my calls are good and vs those guys who value bet wider they will keep making money. Also pre flop, people stack off "lighter" compared to Stars. So I mentioned the other day BTN vs HJ the guy called off my 5 bet shove with AQo. That kind of stuff you don't see on Stars unless you play a recreational player. The guy who called 5 bet was a reg on the other site.
So definitely takes readjusting in both pre and post flop. I don't have tons of hands on anyone so it is a process to take notes, make reads who is super aggro and spew and who is more balanced.
On any site that you play you can and should adjust. Playing other sites is more +EV then Stars because of RB obviously and the fact that in 2015 you have so many networks and sites that you can just mix multiple platforms and get the proper table selection.
A lot of guys recommended me 888. I haven't registered there yet, there is plenty of recreational players and literally no rake back. Know guys who grind this site with brutal table selection with over 15bb/100 win rates but they never get over 40k hands per month and they spend whole day in front of computer.
I prefer to play when I want to play, have poker clients that offer good enough RB to help with the variance and then manually table select within those sites. In some perspective I will return to Stars for NL200+ Zoom, depending on what Stars does with their VIP system in future.
Just finished 1st session of the day. It finally went well according to expectations regardless of bad run outs in 3 bet pots and losing JJ vs AKo bvb. End result is over 1 buy in profit and grind time is now at 1459 minutes, so 71 minute session. Was playing 2 Unibet tables + 6 to 7 tables with other 2 clients. Volume was very solid and this time Unibet didn't disconnect so many times, only once at the very beginning.
Have a very good feeling about today overall. Very motivated to crush and after doing reflecting last night reminded myself that every change is hard in the beginning messy in the middle and beautiful in the end! So after 10 days sea side and about 2 weeks in Belgrade and Pancevo, all this time away from grinding affected me no doubt. Now however, I am so motivated that I am warming up to have days with 6 hours of grinding in near future. I also plan to return to Crossfit ASAP since there is no traffic before 1pm, and I can just finish my training before then, study and hit the tables after its all done!
Will post later a graph later when I take larger break!
Originally posted by sherriffatman
just a quick random thought - have you checked out "The Spoils Before Dying" (Fox) - I have a feeling you'd really like it!
Not yet, but will look into it based on your recommendation. Thank You!
Day 7 After 23 sessions: 1623 minutes played
Without Unibet: 15237 hands EV 0.81bb/100
Running at -0.22bb/100
3 sessions today lasting total 4 hours and some extra minutes. I am getting myself used to 1.5 hour sessions since this will be vital when tables are super soft with 2-3 recreational players that are donating money. Regarding my play today, I am much happier compared to previous days. Results wise I feel I ran under EV a lot but most important thing is that my mental game was strong and my mistakes were minimized. Lost AA vs QQ, JJ vs AKo and couple other all in spots. There were also setups AKo vs KK (after 4 bet calling off 5 bet vs aggro reg), AQo vs 99 (less then 50bb after squeezing vs aggro fish SB vs CO). 3 bet pots were interesting as always. Ran 2 or 3 times into top of the range (2 pairs +) where opponents range is severely dominated. My high equity bluff shoves on turn ran into AA on JsTh6c3s where I had KQss, it was vs reg who didn't care that in my value range there I shove vs his double barrel 2 pairs+ (JTs and sets 66 TT JJ!). His AA held up and I lost a stack there. There were other random hands where opponents bet QQ on Kxx and then check turn and river catch up set of QQ
Overall I am satisfied with how everything went today. This is probably 1st time that I am running bellow EV during the challenge. Lets see if this trend continues during next days, I do feel like results will move up in next 40k hands definitely!
My grinding rhythm already feels steady, I also manage to do review(s) and check all the spots that were tricky for correct evaluation of variance and skill. Great times ahead for sure!
Here is the graph after 23 sessions played:
Here is the picture of the day:
Day 8 After 25 sessions: 1865 minutes played
Without Unibet: 17509 hands played EV 1.75bb/100
Running at 1.72bb/100
Another interesting day! 1st session went down 3 stacks due to setups. Took a brake and watched football with my brother. Got back to tables and played 2nd session that lasted well over 2 hours. During this time I returned those 3 buy ins and won 3 more on top of that! My friend and fellow NLHE player elpsycho was sweating me in the 2nd session. We talked and laughed a lot as usual so time in that 2nd grind session passed. He witnessed 3-4 stacks lost due to bad beats like 2nd vs top set, straight vs bdfd that got there, top 2 in 3 bet pot vs x/shove from GS+2nd nut fd while I had nut fd blocker etc Overall very happy how today went and look forward to every new day of the challenge. Mindset is already getting used to daily steady grind again and body with mind is getting used to longer sessions. I will work into doing 4 hours in 3 sessions and when I have energy more in 2 sessions like today!
Tomorrow Partizan Belgrade plays a game in the evening so I will play 1 or 2 sessions before it and 1 after it!
Too late and super tired to do the update.
Finished the day with about 50 minutes short of 240 minutes for the day I believe. Towards the end had 3-4 or even 5 stacks lost with some very retarded call downs and setups. Today I also felt like I made mistakes for 2 stacks worth simply because I didn't adjust vs aggro regs who do some pretty retarded things (from what I have seen in these days).
Anyways, graph tomorrow with more in depth evaluation of variance vs skill vs mental game. Definitely felt today could have gone better!
Days 9 and 10 After 30 sessions played (5 in those 2 days):
2346 minutes played
Without Unibet: 22062 hands played EV 1.75bb/100
Running at 3.63bb/100
Very interesting 2 days. Yesterday I didn't grind 4 hours but rather 2 sessions that lasted about 3 hours and 10 minutes. During those sessions, I managed to loose due to setups and very light calls from regs 4-5 buy ins that I grinded through the day. Today I managed to rest well,had even afternoon nap to regenerate and in 3 sessions really dominated hard. Returned all the losses from yesterday thanks to a lot of setups going my way (AA vs AK and such) and also winning KK vs AA 1 all in! Finally some positive variance coming my way Also, today my bluff catches were very strong and good and regs that were 3 barreling were bluffing a lot. So GTO approach definitely payed off today while also using exploitative as much as possible especially vs recreational players.
Instead of going into specific hands I just want to share general expectations for the end of the August and observations after 20k hands:
- Very mentally challenging period for me those past 10 days!
- Body and mind finally in synch to do longer sessions and 4 hours per day feels like a habit reformed already
- During those 10 days, there were sessions which I played bad and in future my primary focus is to keep those to minimum in order not to loose much when loosing obviously.
- With current win rate I see a great potential for remaining of the challenge. Think that 4-5bb/100 pre RB will be meet for sure and like I said, I am not giving up on 7bb/100 pre RB also.
- Unibet took 2 days to get used to now it feels already like home. I will look into more clients to add into the mix for better table selection.
- Expect next 10 days to be better and increase the win rate with this current level of mental and tactical game!
Played 4 hours today as planed + coached in the morning. I haven't done coaching updates in a while, I will do one in the near future, perhaps end of the month.
Anyways, whole day was productive and somewhat profitable at tables. Regs doing some brutal aggro wars, calling 5 bet shove from BTN with 88 vs BB. They are in some different world that is for sure!
Spent 1 hour doing range vs range assignment that brutal reg friend assigned me. Past 3-4 days I've been trying to do it but I had a difficult time. Tonight I set timer for 1 hour, started getting into it and finished pretty much over 70% of the work. Remaining 30% will be done in next 30-45 minutes tops. So very proud that I accomplished that. Sent the assignment to brutal reg and he approved it which is always great - getting recognition from somebody you consider to be on top of their game.
Days 11 and 12 After 35 sessions played (5 in those 2 days)
2852 minutes played Without Unibet: 25812 hands played
EV -1.26bb/100
Running at 2.55bb/100
Another 2 days of the challenge are behind me. Results wise, it is really hard to describe what actually happened. In those 5 sessions I really had a feeling that every play I was making was a strong one. I guess I was winning flips and EV decreased or they may have been some shopping pre flop. I haven't done full review of those 5 sessions yet but I plan to do it tomorrow morning 1st thing. I will check all the lost hands and evaluate how much variance played role in it and how much was skill a factor. To me right now it feels like it was mostly setups of some sort (PF or post flop) but definitely plan to check it all tomorrow.
Unibet today lost 3 stacks and all of them were setups. 1 was vs guy who was 3 betting and squeezing literally 4/6 hands in every orbit. I got TT on BTN, SB 3 bet , aggro guy 4 bet , I 5 bet jam TT and run into AKo which he won. 2nd stack that I remember it was HJ open from my part 65s, CO guy 3 bets small (to 3.5 from 1.5) and I defend to 3 bet. Flop I hit a OESD on A87. Action goes x/c from my part, turn gets there with 9, so now I got bottom straight and I check, opponent shoves it I call it and he turns JTs. 3rd stack I don't remember precisely but I believe it was pre flop setup of a sort not winning a flip or something maybe even 3-4 3 bet pots where my TP got dominated by 2 pairs by the river or bad run out.
Overall Unibet has some traffic but I am definitely looking into adding 1 or 2 more clients for better table selecting.
As far as today's grind goes, I felt that I probably in 3 bet pots I won 25-35% of the time, the rest I was completely missing not connecting in any way or whenever I hit something by the turn/river textures killed my defend range from flop. This happens, it is nature of NLHE, especially 6 max where ranges are wide. I can just imagine if I went down the HU road how much bluff catching and stack swinging I would be doing on daily basis!!!
Other things going on regarding challenge and USA trip:
Talked to my best friend and other friends in Boston. They all very much look forward seeing me again, hanging out and spending time together whether its going out, watching or playing sports or simply having a beer somewhere nice I am very excited about it, feel very happy that I will get to go again to Boston. The fact that the challenge is right now behind the pace, that doesn't really hold me back. I have lots of plans while in USA and while there I may potentially find a way to make money from poker there. If that happens I will definitely consider staying up to 6 months there and 6 months in Serbia or somewhere else. Besides Boston, I got in touch with my ex gfs and friends all over USA. I am planing to visit NYC (as a regular thing as I used to do it before), Washington DC (ex gf there), Chicago (poker friends and friends from childhood!) and of course Las Vegas (for a full week with 1 or more of my friends). Besides these trips, I plan to visit one of my great friends I spent a lot of time while in Boston, he lives outside of Boston 45 minutes by bus so I will visit and stay at his place there. Also, my last roommate I had in Boston lives now outside of Boston and I will definitely meet up with him as well. I also got in touch with some other friends and it just makes me happy that all over the world where ever I went or am I make long lasting friendships. This is very valuable thing and I value friendship very strong in my life and seeing now how much all the people want to jump in and do all these great things for me it really makes me happy!
Finally, from initial 4 weeks planed for USA, I am going to go for 7 weeks most likely and possibly even more. I looked into ticket today from 23rd of September to 11th of November and it costs 455 euros or so. I will not purchase it yet, will wait for 10-15 days before 23rd since I want to evaluate how challenge is going by then and if I need to push the trip later or can make it happen. As I said, either way, I will be in USA and I am looking already into possibilities of playing poker there somewhere (live most likely Vegas or Foxwoods which is close to Boston) + I hear that people in USA play on Bovada, that might be worth looking into?
Anyways, this is enough for now about USA trip and plans. I will write more about it as it gets closer with more precise dates. In the meanwhile, focus is on 4 hours per day grinding as a minimum , studying and reviewing, keeping expenses to minimum (saving maximum money possible for USA trip) and giving my best in the whole process!
I 4 bet fish KK pre, flop AJx fish pots and KK in the muck 
You have to embrace the charm of their bugs, they affect not only you but everyone, so you're not losing much, except that it makes recs less inclined to stay and redeposit 
