Playing a game of skill, luck, and heart! An MTT + NL SH blog!

Hello Tino, wow you weren't kidding about the wall of text ♦ but you write very well so I think it should be comfy for everyone to read through

I used to play volleyball in school, I'm a tiny size of girl but pretty fast ♦

Sorry to hear about your injury, hope it gets better soon and lets you get back to the field.

Those kids are quite difficult to handle from time to time, but it's a lot of fun! That's actually one of the things I'm the most proud of in my life so far, because it's absolutely great to see those children grow because of your own hard work and effort.

Good luck and welcome to blogging!

Ingrid

Thanks!

Sorry to hear about your injury, hope it gets better soon and lets you get back to the field.

Yeah, it really sucks. It's just terrible to be side-lined when there's absolutely nothing you can do about it

In the end, it looks like Poker770 may not be the right room for me. The standard 6max tables have hardly any traffic for some reason. The Speed poker tables have decent traffic I suppose, but I'm not looking to play purely Speed poker. I want to put in at least some volume, and it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to do that on 770.

Maybe I'll just keep playing on Stars, because at least there's a good amount of traffic there. Unfortunately that would mean I won't be able to play tracked though... I'm not too worried about there being more regs either, because most of them still aren't that great anyway, from what I've experienced.

I'll do some research and see where I'll end up.

Edit: Brain fart on my behalf. Turns out I simply had some table filters configured incorrectly.

Alright, first 1k hands have been played! So far I'm doing pretty well. Not ony when it comes to making a profit, but I'm also playing fairly well, which is very important to me. I'm currently playing 1-1.5 hour sessions playing 4 tables. This allows me to remain focused for the entire session.

Laughable sample size of course, but at least I'm off to a good start, which gives a great feeling of satisfaction!

So, BR update. Note that this is purely my cash game BR. My MTT bankroll is significantly larger (but not as important for the blog).

Previous BR: $271.44
Current BR: $290.13
Profit: +$18.69

I'd say that's not too bad, being up almost 2BI over just 1k hands! Of course, I am running about $10 above EV, but you won't hear me complaining about that!

Not too many really interesting hands. There was this one though, where I had an obvious value bet on the river that I missed, which is actually pretty facepalm worthy...

I also put this hand up for review.

iPoker - $0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

MP: $16.69
CO: $7.07
Hero (BTN): $12.56
SB: $5.47
BB: $9.65
UTG: $10.88

SB posts SB $0.05, BB posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has Q:heart: K:heart:

UTG raises to $0.30, fold, fold, Hero calls $0.30, fold, fold

Flop: ($0.75, 2 players) T:diamond: K:diamond: 8:club:
UTG bets $0.55, Hero calls $0.55

Turn: ($1.85, 2 players) Q:spade:
UTG checks, Hero bets $1.40, UTG raises to $3.95, Hero calls $2.55

River: ($9.75, 2 players) 3:club:
UTG checks, Hero checks

And my biggest win was with this hand.

iPoker - $0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: $13.64
SB: $2.17
Hero (BB): $11.73
UTG: $3.21
CO: $14.77

SB posts SB $0.05, Hero posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has K:club: K:diamond:

fold, fold, BTN raises to $0.30, SB calls $0.25, Hero raises to $1.40, BTN calls $1.10, fold

Flop: ($3.10, 2 players) 3:spade: T:club: 4:spade:
Hero bets $1.90, BTN calls $1.90

Turn: ($6.90, 2 players) 5:heart:
Hero bets $3.70, BTN raises to $10.34, Hero calls $4.73

River: ($23.76, 2 players) Q:diamond:

Called pre to let him hit something, rather than forcing out his hands that I crush. Either way, the plan was to get all money in the middle (unless an A would come on the river, but I was willing to take that risk against a bad player who is unable to fold top pair type hands).

So pretty nice pot for me

Aside of that, my grand plans last sunday failed miserably, as I busted both tournaments pretty early. I busted the Main Event in 20,000th place or so. I was pretty card dead the entire time. Pretty much nothing worked in my favor. Of course that's part of the game, but it sucks that it had to happen in such a unique, big event. But what can you do... Blame Pokerstars I guess, for being rigged

I'll probably be playing an MTT or two tonight again. Hopefully I'll be able to cash pretty nicely. We'll see.

And that should do it for now! Signing out!

~ Tino

hah, gl sir!
i also play NL10 SH on iPoker, although mostly Speed. The competition is awful ♦

Thanks!

Yes, I am indeed amazed by how bad players are. But I'm not complaining

But it's not just the cash games that are incredibly soft, the tournaments are incredible value as well. Most of them are just super loose passive fish pre flop and very weak post flop as well (in the lower buy-in tournaments, anyway). And the somewhat more aggressive players are generally pretty bad as well.

I think this is a pretty good example ♦

iPoker - $1.00+$0.10|<> NL - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BB): 7,766.00
UTG: 7,123.00
UTG+1: 38,710.00
UTG+2: 5,500.00
MP: 13,863.00
MP+1: 37,492.00
CO: 24,884.00
BTN: 7,861.00
SB: 23,048.00

SB posts ante 50.00, Hero posts ante 50.00, UTG posts ante 50.00, UTG+1 posts ante 50.00, UTG+2 posts ante 50.00, MP posts ante 50.00, MP+1 posts ante 50.00, CO posts ante 50.00, BTN posts ante 50.00, SB posts SB 250.00, Hero posts BB 500.00

Pre Flop: (pot: 1200.00) Hero has K:club: K:diamond:

UTG raises to 7,073.00, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 6,573.00

Flop: (14846.00, 2 players) A:club: 5:club: Q:club:

Turn: (14846.00, 2 players) J:spade:

River: (14846.00, 2 players) 5:heart:

Hero mucks K:club: K:diamond: (Two Pair, Kings and Fives) (Pre 80%, Flop 27%, Turn 14%)
UTG shows 4:club: 3:club: (Flush, Ace High) (Pre 20%, Flop 73%, Turn 86%)
UTG wins 14,846.00

2 of clubs would have been a hilarious river

Of course I lost, but I'll definitely be playing some more MTTs here on 770 as well, because they are much, much softer and have less variance than the Stars tournaments.

Like you said, the competition is just awful.

Nice start. Good luck with your poker and life goals

I'm gonna add you in the community tool and when i have my xbox live back up and running you can crush me at fifa if you like?

Thanks!

Sure, I'm always up for a game of fifa, just let me know!

Managed to squeeze in about 600 hands today, which cost me somemoney unfortunately. But I suppose that happens. Nothing you can do about it unless you play the hands poorly, and that definitely wasn't the case for the hands I lost big in. Since my last update I also squeezed in 4 $1.10 MTTs on 770, in which I unfortunately didn't cash, so those cost me some of my BR as well. Oh well.

Previous BR: $290.13
Current BR: $280.42
Profit: -$9.71

I've played around 2500 hands now in 5 days or so. That's definitely not that much, but at least it means that my goal of playing 10k hands a month should be achievable. We'll see about that next month though, and maybe I'll just increase that a touch if I am able to reach it.

As far as the studying goes, I've managed to watch a video a day/read an article a day at least. They've been very useful to me so far. I'll be working on putting all that theory to practice a bit more though.

I've also started reading the first part of Jonathan Little's MTT series. I have to say it's pretty interesting, and it looks like it discusses just about everything there is to know about MTTs. It seems to be geared slightly towards live poker, but is largely applicable to online poker. It's a great read, and so far I can definitely recommend it to any aspiring MTT player. Don't forget to get the other 2 parts as well though

On top of that, my leg injury seems to be recovering faster than expected. It does require me to put a lot of time and effort into exercising it every day (probably about 45-60 minutes a day), as well as regular visits to my physiotherapist, but that's time I definitely want to invest. I just want to get it recover as soon as possible, because I want to start playing volleyball again! I just hate being side-lined

I'll end this update here with a couple interesting hands from my previous session.

iPoker - $0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: $22.55
Hero (SB): $10.00
BB: $6.13
UTG: $1.44
MP: $7.54
CO: $11.96

Hero posts SB $0.05, BB posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has T:spade: K:spade:

fold, MP calls $0.10, fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.50, fold, MP calls $0.40

Flop: ($1.10, 2 players) 6:diamond: Q:spade: 4:spade:
Hero bets $0.70, MP calls $0.70

Turn: ($2.50, 2 players) A:spade:
Hero bets $1.50, MP calls $1.50

River: ($5.50, 2 players) A:diamond:
Hero bets $7.30, MP calls $4.84

Hero shows T:spade: K:spade: (Flush, Ace High) (Pre 46%, Flop 52%, Turn 91%)
MP shows 6:spade: A:club: (Full House, Aces full of Sixes) (Pre 54%, Flop 48%, Turn 9%)
Hero wins $0.00
MP wins $14.17

Quite unfortunate, but there's nothing you can do here, really. The guy was a complete fish though, and he luckily donated some of the money back to me later

This hand was against the same fish, unfortunately had to give him some money again

iPoker - $0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: $23.03
Hero (SB): $13.22
BB: $10.46
UTG: $0.98
MP: $19.26
CO: $7.80

Hero posts SB $0.05, BB posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has A:heart: A:club:

fold, MP calls $0.10, fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.50, fold, MP calls $0.40

Flop: ($1.10, 2 players) K:spade: J:spade: Q:spade:
Hero bets $0.82, MP calls $0.82

Turn: ($2.74, 2 players) 9:diamond:
Hero checks, MP bets $2.05, fold

MP wins $2.56

Couldn't think of a much worse flop for my aces!

That's about it for now, really.

Time for another update!

Recovery of my leg is going very slowly, but steadily. I have to go through some pretty rigorous training, which can sometimes be pretty tough. However, it looks like I might be able to start volleyball training begin January, if the progress keeps up. I'll probably only be able to do half a training, but at least that'll be a start!

I wish it would go a lot faster though

I have seen the work schedules for the coming few weeks, and the saturday before Christmas, I have a shift from 2:00 am to 5:00 am... I can't wait

Aside of that, nothing too interesting happened.

As far as poker goes, I've played about 5k hands now, counting the hands I played in November. Unfortunately didn't have time to play every day, but such is life

Previous BR: $280.13
Current BR: $285.94
Profit: +$5.81

So a small profit, which is pretty good!

There were a couple interesting hands.

This was a bit of gamble, yes, but at least it provided me some nice profit! Figured he would either have me crushed, or I would have him completely crushed. So I made the call, despite not being overly happy about it.

I can't say too much here... Just...

No idea why I called here

I didn't really manage to squeeze in any MTTs, unfortunately. I just didn't have the time to do so. I might have some time for it tomorrow or friday though, but we'll see!

And with that, I'm signing out!

~ Tino

Originally posted by TinoLaan
iPoker - $0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

MP: $9.38
Hero (CO): $10.47
BTN: $18.85
SB: $9.45
BB: $10.15
UTG: $10.01

SB posts SB $0.05, BB posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has Q:spade: Q:heart:

fold, MP raises to $0.35, Hero raises to $1.05, fold, fold, fold, MP calls $0.70

Flop: ($2.25, 2 players) 2:spade: 5:diamond: A:club:
MP bets $8.33, Hero calls $8.33

Turn: ($18.91, 2 players) 8:heart:

River: ($18.91, 2 players) 7:heart:

MP shows 4:diamond: 4:heart: (One Pair, Fours) (Pre 19%, Flop 24%, Turn 14%)
Hero shows Q:spade: Q:heart: (One Pair, Queens) (Pre 81%, Flop 76%, Turn 86%)
Hero wins $17.65

i might be on the nittier side, but dont really like the call here....
what worse do you think he shoves? (turns out gutshots, ok), but even if he is a super aggro monkey, given the odds, im never calling.
u need to be ahead like what... 45% of the time?

even if he shoves gutshots, then

Hand 0: 37.142% 36.42% 00.72% 22715 450.50 { QhQs }
Hand 1: 62.858% 62.14% 00.72% 38754 450.50 { JJ-TT, 44-33, A8s+, AJo+ }

(gave him some random JJ,TT) and thats without sets

huge gamble imo

just muck and let hm have $1

iPoker - $0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: $6.19
BB: $15.69
Hero (UTG): $12.33
CO: $11.28
BTN: $10.00

SB posts SB $0.05, BB posts BB $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has A:diamond: A:heart:

Hero raises to $0.30, CO calls $0.30, fold, fold, fold

Flop: ($0.75, 2 players) 8:club: Q:club: 4:diamond:
Hero bets $0.60, CO calls $0.60

Turn: ($1.95, 2 players) T:spade:
Hero bets $1.50, CO calls $1.50

River: ($4.95, 2 players) 7:club:
Hero checks, CO bets $8.88, Hero calls $8.88

Hero mucks A:diamond: A:heart: (One Pair, Aces) (Pre 78%, Flop 53%, Turn 61%)
CO shows J:club: T:club: (Flush, Queen High) (Pre 22%, Flop 47%, Turn 39%)
CO wins $21.20

yeah, this is pretty calling station-ish, looks like a tilt-call to me

i think if ur tilted enough to call this river overbet u should just quit the session

u need to be ahead like what... 45% of the time?

even if he shoves gutshots, then

Hand 0: 37.142% 36.42% 00.72% 22715 450.50 { QhQs }
Hand 1: 62.858% 62.14% 00.72% 38754 450.50 { JJ-TT, 44-33, A8s+, AJo+ }

(gave him some random JJ,TT) and thats without sets

huge gamble imo

I don't think that's too realistic of a range. I think he can have many more random hands in there. The guy was playing 71/14 (albeit over just 8 hands) after all...

Though I do agree it is quite a gamble, I still think it's a good call, but it's definitely marginal. Of course it's difficult to give him a proper range, but say he calls here with some Ax hands, some random suited connectors and all pairs. If he then shoves some of the weaker Ax hands and some of his pairs, we can have up to 60% equity, dependent on the range we give him.

Of course it's very difficult to know his exact range here. But considering he's a fish, I think we'll be ahead here often enough, definitely 45% of the time.

But again, I agree, it's pretty marginal.

yeah, this is pretty calling station-ish, looks like a tilt-call to me

Definitely wasn't a tilt call.

I have to agree that this definitely was a god-awful call though

Also, I definitely quit my session if I start tilting. But I've pretty much gotten past the stage where I get made when I lose a big hand. I just move on to the next hand. I get disappointed from time to time, after losing a big pot, but I can instantly flip a switch and continue playing without my emotions affecting me. I can remain rational.

That said, I don't know why I made this random hero call. I'll just pretend it was a misclick

I'm really rather tired right now. I had to work at 5 am the past three days in a row, so I've only gotten like 10 hours of sleep in three days. Good times! Still, some cups of coffee and a couple red bulls work wonders, so I still managed to squeeze in 1k hands today, which got me a pretty nice profit!

I finally managed to pass the $300 mark, which is absolutely great! I think I've done pretty well to get this done this quickly.

Previous BR: $285.94
Current BR: $306.00
Profit: +$20.06

There was one pretty cool hand.

I love it when I don't even have to do too much to get money! Such an easy game

There's not that much more that's really worth mentioning, so this'll do for this (short) update

~ Tino

Looks like you've gotten off to a good start, I think you'll definitely make it far due to your discipline.

I could definitely learn a lot from you, having a job and weekly sporting commitments but me so lazy!

Hope you can keep up the good work and continue your way up the limits!

Yep, I definitely hope so! I'll be playing NL1k in no time

I could definitely learn a lot from you, having a job and weekly sporting commitments but me so lazy!

I can recommend doing something about this indeed!

But being lazy at times is great! I definitely have my (very) lazy moments myself. Sometimes I'm just super lazy even!

Spoiler

Mooooooooooooooooooooore

Please

I was honestly waiting for some random image or video to load in that empty space. I literally waited, staring at the screen for like half a minute until I realized there wasn't going to be an image. I feel pretty retarded now

Yep, it's been waaaaaaaaaay too long since I posted here.

On the cash game side of things, not much happened. I basically got up $0.05 over like 3k hands

I am up to 13k hands now though, so I'm starting to actually get a bit of an idea on where my leaks are, and I will definitely be trying to fix them up! One leak I'm seeing already is that I'm not value betting enough on the river, especially in position. But that's a pretty easy one to fix: just value bet more (when appropriate)! So I'll be working on doing that.

I did have a very interesting cash in an MTT on 770 though. I managed to take down a pretty nice ~$120 for finishing first in a pretty small $1 MTT. I played it pretty well, and also got some lucky hands. Like getting AA three hands in a row, and getting it in pre vs KK twice in those three hands, meaning I more than quadrupled up in just three hands

But I think I deservedly won. The players in those tournaments are just so, so, so superbad. Which isn't a bad thing, obviously. I am still debating on what I should be doing with this money. I could withdraw it all, which would be pretty nice, or I could use it to play some more MTTs or take a couple shots at NL20. In either case, I probably won't be counting it towards my standard cash game BR, which is still sitting at about the same. Like I said, I basically didn't win much the last 3k hands.

I like how I stick to my learning schedule. So far, I have managed to get in some time to study the game every day, reading articles as well as watching videos. I still haven't really had the time to attend a coaching, because they can be pretty length, but whenever the opportunity arises, I will definitely attend one.

Finally, recovery is going okay. I'd hope it would go faster though. Halfway January I can pick up the training again, but I will likely have to do a very specific, lengthy warming-up. Lengthy as in almost 20-25 minutes, and we train for 90 minutes. So yeah, that's pretty long. But I'll just have to deal with it. It still sucks though...

That'll do. Hopefully this is good enough for you!

~ Tino

Another long read ahead! ♦

Ugh, this is ugly. Due to a nasty turn of events in real life, I had to withdraw a big portion of my BR. I did not want to take this money from my savings, which I'd rather use in a few years when I start living on my own. So unfortunately I had to withdraw like ~$300, leaving me with just about $50 left.

Back to NL2 it is, because I don't plan on re-depositing with any of my savings either...

Such a sad day...

But not all is bad! I wanted to drastically change my approach the game anyway, and since I now have to start at the lowest limit again, I have decided to put this change in effect now.

Basically, the last week or so I started to auto-pilot my way through my games, playing 6 tables whenever possible. This almost put a full stop to my learning process. So I have decided to change this. Rather than playing 6 tables, I'll be playing 2-4 tables, dependent on what I am studying at that moment.

Basically, I'm going to start with trying to play 1 hour a day. I have decided to stray away from volume goals or monetary goals. When I do that I just start looking at my profit halfway through a session, which is bad. By setting time goals, I prevent myself from doing this. I can just set an alarm on one hour from the start of the session, and then I can just quit. No need to look at the time or anything. I will probably gradually try to increase my playing time per day.

I played my first session yesterday evening, playing just a little over an hour. I haven't even looked at the amount of hands I played yet, nor at the winnings/losses I had. I just realized that playing 4 tables at once is much better for me than playing 6 tables. I also tried playing 2 tables, but that's not enough. I just start doing other things on the side, because there's not enough action going on. When playing 4 tables, I can keep a close eye on what happens on all tables, while also keeping my focus on the games.

To move up the limits, which I do plan on doing eventually, obviously, I'll enforce myself a BRM of 25 BI until NL20, after which I'll probably crank it up to 30+ BI, but that's not important yet. That's still very far away. Thinking ahead so many stakes is definitely not a priority for me right now.

Additionally, I watched this video by SF on learning: http://www.pokerstrategy.com/video/26773/

This video was very enlightening to me, and is also going to drastically change my approach to studying. Since I started playing a bit robotically, I also somewhat left the studying part of the game aside, which is absolutely horrible.

So now I'm going to set myself goals for studying each and every week, starting this week. This will allow me to improve my game on a steady basis. I think doing this every week will be good for me. I'm generally a good student, so one week to learn for example 1 new concept and fix 1 leak should work for me. And if this turns out to be inefficient for me, I can always change my schedule in a few weeks.

Aside of that video, I also have started working through SF's productivity guide, and wrote myself a vision statement and mission statement. These go into my notes, together with my weekly goals and notes I will make on articles and videos. I will continuously revise these notes, and complement them with new notes every time I study something. I will also keep track of my goals, which again, are not volume- or money related.

Finally, I'm going to review every session. I'll try to mark hands during my session, but will also quickly shift through the hands I won/lost the most with, etc. With this, I'm also going to review the progress for my weekly goals every day. If at the end of the week, I did not reach a goal, I try to figure out why I didn't reach it, and try to find a solution. For example, if I'm not able to play one day, I should try to play slightly longer on the other days, so that I still reach the 7 hours per week.

So, basically, my goals in poker as they are right now:

• Play poker for 1 hour a day, playing 4 tables at once.
• Study poker extensively and actively each day before playing a session, keeping track of notes.
• Set new (studying) goals for myself each week, and keep good track of them.
• Review my sessions properly, posting hands for evaluation whenever necessary.

So as you see, no monetary goals, no volume goals, no goals for moving up the limits. My specific goals for each week will be different each week. I'll try to achieve them every week. So no frequent BR updates in here anymore!

Hopefully this different approach to the game will help me become a better poker player. I am certainly motivated to take this approach, and I am confident that it will help me grow.

Apologies for the long read! ♦

~ Tino

Unfortunately I was unable to reach last week's goals. I was planning on playing an hour a day, but unfortunately I only managed to do so four days. This is because I estimated the time I would have to study and play incorrectly. So this is something I'll have to work on, so that I can set more realistic goals in the future.

Because of this, I also did not achieve my studying goals. I was planning on going back to basics for this week and study basic post flop play a bit again, but did not study as much as I would have liked to. So I will have to continue studying this basic post flop play this week as well.

So unfortunately my first week did not go too well when it comes to achieving the goals I set myself. However, actually applying what I studied did go very well! So that's definitely a good thing.

This week I gave myself a new set of goals.

• Do a full recap of everything I studied last week.
• Finish studying basic post flop play, then start studying opponent-dependent play, which continues on the post-flop play I studied last week.
• Play one hour each day, except on the 25th and 26th, because I don't expect to be playing poker on Christmas. So I want to play 5 hours this week.

So those are my goals for the coming week. Very basic and simple, but it fits the approach I'm taking to the game now pretty well imo

Though I mentioned I wouldn't post frequent BR updates anymore, I do think that's pretty important as well. Though my focus is on improving my game, my ultimate goal of course is to move up the limits, starting with moving up to NL4 whenever I reach a $100 BR, so I think it's important to track this progress as well.

I played about 1400 hands this week. Here are the results.

Starting BR: $50
Current BR: $56.50
Profit: +$6.50

In those 1400 hands, I did not have too many really interesting hand. Had a few hands that felt pretty good though!

This hand I also felt pretty good about.

Villain here was a hyper aggressive fish. Of course the straight got there and the flush got there. But then again, I have a set of queens against an incredibly aggressive fish.

Basically, when he called my 3bet pre flop, he could still have almost anything. He would probably 4bet QQ+,AK though, because I don't really see him calling QQ pre, he'll probably just try to get it in no matter what. So he could have a ton of suited connectors, pairs and broadways.

When he called the flop he could still have a ton of hands. He was IP, so he can have Kx, pocket pairs, straight draws, and he could probably even have a ton of complete air hands he's trying to pull something off with.

6 of diamonds on the turn did complete a 78 straight draw, but nothing else, really. I checked because I did not want to get raised off my hand here, so I planned on check/calling the turn.

On the river I wasn't too scared of the flush draw coming in, unless he called with something random like T9s on the flop. If he did that, props to him, that happens. But I figured he would never really have anything here that beats me. He can have worse sets, Kx, pure air. This guy was so crazy that I simply couldn't fold here.

He went completely nuts in the chat box when I called and he lost
And I was like

And that's all I have for now!

~ Tino

Nice Blog