My Old Free Poker Video

I reuploaded a video I made a few years ago that was popular at the time on 2p2. It's a 50nl sweat session devoted to loose aggressive play. Some of you may still enjoy it. Watch here.

It's been a while...

Since I last posted a lot has happened.

Black Friday came and changed everything.

I had dropped out of the SNE race well before April 15th, which I suppose is for the better, in a totally results oriented way.

I will continue to update this periodically and I will continue to play online poker wherever it is offered but I think this is the catalyst for finally moving away from playing poker for a living to something else.

I have taking several shots at making successful websites and have never gotten very far, but I have stronger motivation than ever. So, look for me blogging at Online Poker for Beginners, my new project. Let me know what you think of it and how useful it would be for a beginner. Obviously, I have a lot of content to build ahead of me, but even now I think my guide is better than 99% of poker sites aimed at beginners and losing players.

Barely Ahead of Pace

Well, this month has not gone as I had hoped, although I suppose it could be worse. The project that I had mentioned in my post from two weeks ago was that I decided that it would be a good idea to learn how to play the 20bb cap games on Stars and take a bit of a playing break, seeing as I continued to bleed money.

It seemed like a good idea to have as an option to crank out some VPP's when I'm tired or not playing my A game at 100bb for whatever reason. I have found the pace for SNE to sometimes have me playing an hour or two a day when I am not at my best and I figured that since its significantly easier to play 20bb poker that I could sub out that 20-30% of suboptimal play with 20bb since the VPP rates for cap are very similar at the same blind levels to 100bb. I started doing poker math to figure out optimal calling and shoving ranges for common spots. This was the first time in a long time I did anything like this and it was enjoyable to get some brain exercise like that, but there is a good chance all of this was for naught.

I didn't do my due diligence before I jumped into figuring out the game. I had seen winrates from top shortstackers at 1.5-2.5 PTBB at smallish stakes and figured even 1PTBB would be fine for my purposes and that I could achieve that. What I didn't factor in is that most of that play is from a time when you could buy in for 20bb at deepstack games and that the top cap players are making .5-1PTBB. I ran some simulations and discovered that this was unlikely to be a profitable venture without heavy game selection or being the very best. And even so, with the high variance and low winrates it may take 800k hands to even know if you are likely to be a long term winner. So, while I may pick up this later in the year if the cap games stay fish heavy (because I am sure that every reg is +EV with a big fish at a 6max table, even with only 20bbs) for now I decided to do something else.

The past week or so, and for the rest of the month, 100nl will be the game of choice. With all of the slow bleeding I have had this year I decided I needed to play something I can win at for sure to build up confidence and rehab my game. I've played about 40k hands of 100nl this month and am up 21 buyins, so things are looking OK for now, minus the fact that the VPP rate is abysmally low at .34. Eventually I have to get better and be able to play mostly 200nl, if not some 400nl to keep up with things.

VPP COUNT: 144250

Bad Call of the Day #5

Turn is shove or fold... Once I get there I could probably just fold the river - I don't think he is bluffing 15% of the time.

Hero (MP) ($103)
CO ($100)
Button ($84.05)
SB ($147.65)
BB ($105.65)
UTG ($105.50)

Preflop: Hero is MP with J, J
1 fold, Hero bets $2.50, 1 fold, Button calls $2.50, SB raises to $13, 1 fold, Hero calls $10.50, 1 fold

Flop: ($29.50) 10, 2, 10 (2 players)
SB bets $20, Hero calls $20

Turn: ($69.50) 6 (2 players)
SB bets $42, Hero calls $42

River: ($153.50) 9 (2 players)
SB bets $72.65 (All-In), Hero calls $28 (All-In)
Total pot: $209.50 | Rake: $3

Results:
SB had K, K (two pair, Kings and tens).
Hero had J, J (two pair, Jacks and tens).
Outcome: SB won $206.50

Change of pace

Just a quick update, after continued suckiness I haven't been playing as much and when I have, I have been playing way less tables than normal. Also, I have undertaken a new project that should help me reach SNE and deal with long bouts of grinding that I will discuss further in a later post.

Tentative Improvement

I have cranked out 32k hands so far this month and am up a bit, but we shall see if that sticks. I feel like I am playing well, but who doesn't when they are winning?

The propbet I mentioned earlier didn't go off and then I decided to place a bet on another bet that was very close to the first one. Unfortunately, that looks like it isn't going to go off either, but if you guys think its fucking hard to play 670k hands of fullring 100nl and show a profit over 31 days here's the place to get action.

VPP COUNT 119013

100k VPPs and Monthly Graph and Recap

Well, the month has come to an end and I am officially 10% done with SNE. I feel good because I am crushing pace (especially considering I took an 8 day vacation) but not so great that I have to do what I just did 9 more times.

Here is my graph for the month.

Yuck. A solidly losing month is definitely not the way to start things out. Not sure how accurate that is considering I don't know how the Euro results get factored in by HEM. I clearly was not ready for MSNL, after having been absent from those games for about 9 months. I am definitely going to cut the 600nl out until my results improve but I will continue playing 400nl as I am winning there for now.

For next month I have some adjustments I am going to try to make in my game. First, I need to stop fucking misclicking all the time. I get into a rhythm folding really fast with Tableninja and poof! there goes 88 UTG. Less of that will help the winrate. I also think I need to tighten up a bit from earlier positions because I am not as good as I used to be and therefore have more trouble postflop when out of position with marginal hands. And third, I think I need to be less focused on cranking out tons of hours when I am doing just fine in terms of pace and quit playing when I am unfocused or tired and use some of that time to watch some videos or post some hands on 2p2 or some other sort of poker study. I haven't seriously studied poker in quite some time and clearly I have been surpassed by the slightly newer generation and I have some catching up to do.

Here was one of the last 10 hands of the month. SB was a reg, the rest are megafish.

CO: $132.50

BTN: $222.90

SB: $209.35

BB: $57.60

Hero (UTG): $225.80

MP: $97.10

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is UTG with A A

Hero raises to $6, MP raises to $10, CO calls $10, BTN calls $10, SB calls $9, BB calls $8, Hero raises to $45, MP calls $35, CO calls $35, 1 fold, SB calls $35, BB calls $35

Flop: ($235.00) 2 5 6 (5 players)

SB checks, BB bets $12.60 all in, Hero raises to $180.80 all in, MP calls $52.10 all in, CO calls $87.50 all in, SB calls $164.35 all in

Turn: ($715.90) K (5 players - 5 are all in)

River: ($715.90) K (5 players - 5 are all in)

Final Pot: $715.90

CO shows 8 8 (two pair, Kings and Eights)

SB shows 6 6 (a full house, Sixes full of Kings)

BB shows 2 3 (two pair, Kings and Deuces)

Hero shows A A (two pair, Aces and Kings)

MP shows A 3 (a pair of Kings)

SB wins $153.70

SB wins $106.20

SB wins $158.00

SB wins $295.00

(Rake: $3.00)

January by the Numbers:

163994 Hands Played

101,180 VPP's

23/31 Days Played

4399 VPP's Per Day of Play

3263 VPP's Per Day Overall

16248 VPP's Ahead of Pace

-$8738 Loss