Hey

A pretty good week. A bit light on hand numbers but I moved up to $200nl and, despite dropping 6bi on the first day, feel pretty comfortable now I have gotten used to the bet sizing. A hell of a lot more 3 betting with quite a bit more 4 betting seems to be key in terms of getting people off my back pre-flop and thereby pushing them to play post-flop where I usually have position and I have a few useful plays I can make.

The $25plo omaha hasn't been that great and I'm still losing. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going wrong but I'll review a few more videos and my hands when I get the chance. As an aside, while opening up some extra £25plo tables last session, I accidentally opened up a $2,000plo table and was posting my $20 big blind before I realised. Now obviously, once you've posted you may as well see the orbit because it's free so I did. £955 profit in 6 hands with a little bit of run good getting AA98 ss in pre against a $650 short stack who had KK77 ss. Nice.

I played live once for £440. It was looking like a dull night until a few people who play very rarely came along drunk. Then there was a whole lot of me converting people's cash into chips and then winning the chips back. In one hand a guy pushed all-in on me and turned his hand face up before I'd decided whether to call. I mean, talk about an easy decision. I hope they had a good night and I tried to be sympathetic to their claims that online is rigged, etc but it did get a little dull after a while.

Graph:




This week I've got a coaching session booked and hopefully lots more successful $200nl play.

L8trs

A bit of a struggle this week with people catching hands and the like. Lost £223 playing live. In fact, last Friday was nearly a loss as well with me busting someone to get £40 in profit as the final hand of the night. Slightly bugging me as I don't want something to knock my confidence when I'm considering playing in the £2/£5 game on Thursdays. Thing is though that I've been quite open with quite a lot of things over the past month, almost teaching them how to beat me so I'm going to spend the next few weeks undoing that by rarely showing hands, always agreeing with their faulty logic on how to play hands, that sort of thing. The fact that they trust my poker knowledge so much should help me unpick anything they're doing which is correct!

Graph for online:



A reasonable number of hands at least. Shame about the red line. I've nearly cleared a couple of bonuses and with a bit more play will have the bankroll for the $200 buy in games.

I've played quite a bit of Omaha as well recently but at much much lower stakes. $25 buy-ins are neither here nor there for my bankroll so I can learn without cash worries. The differences between Hold 'em and Omaha boil down to 2 extra cards for each player in Omaha, a restriction that you must use 2 of your cards to make your hand and the fact that it's pot-limit rather than no-limit for the betting. The extra cards mean there is an awful lot more gambling because you can make so many more draws. Bluffs require more finesse to determine when an opponent is weak and seemingly rubbish hands require careful analysis and often a raise because so many future cards will help the hand. The results are mixed in above, I'm doing ok equity wise but am not in actual profit yet but I am starting to read hands much better and nearly always know what my own hand is which is an improvement. I think I'll go play some now actually.

The plan is to get a ton of hands in this week and then move up a level. Fingers crossed....

L8trs

Going well apart from the motivation to play. Well, I've had a few conversations with people about it and am currently pretty inspired except the Party client is failing to open claiming connection problems at my end yet I'm happily surfing and writing blogs. Stupid thing.

Anyway, my winrate is fantastic at present and I netted £50 playing live. Few hands online may well be meaning greater focus, I dunno. Saturday was fun at Dusk till Dawn in Nottingham partly because one guy was getting really wound up but mainly because he turned his frustration into poor play and lost £800 in 3 hands to me and the guy winding him up. One guy even threatened me with a shotgun although really he was just trying to intimidate me into calling his bet as if I would be thinking "He's trying really hard to scare me out of the hand. This means he's weak so I'm calling because I can see what he's doing". I wasn't thinking that though because it's too overtly obvious what he's doing and therefore he does actually have a hand so I happily folded the worst hand.



Hmmmm, upward red line.

In other news I was 8th (I think, somewhere around there anyway) in the listings of highest earners at my level on my site for last month. I had the third highest winrate although several people just put in many more hands. Yet no-one appears to be complaining about me. I'm almost disappointed. Surely if I'm taking this much out of the game people should notice and wonder what it is I'm doing or at least comment in forums that I'm good and should be avoided. I'm certainly noticing certain players leaving tables as soon as I sit. I will have to work harder at my notoriety!

Ooo, Party is back. Let's hope the thing is a bit more stable so I can get some work done. Lunch first though I think.

Laters.

Hey

Well, that's me done for the month. +$3,129.34 online and +£2,220 live. At $1.62:£1, that's a total of £4,151.69. I've certainly played very well for most of the month. I need to work harder during sessions in terms of concentrating on what's going on and taking advantage. That conflicts with my desire to play more hands because long/more sessions decrease focus so it will be tricky figuring out a balance during next month. Graph:




Red line is crap. I am being made to fold my hand in too many spots and I'm not making others fold their hands often enough. The problem is too many instances of getting someone to showdown only to find they've hit whatever card they need to win. It puts you off challenging people because you lose confidence that it's the right thing to do. Something to work on with my coach for sure.

I had a long chat with the owners of OnTheRiver club last night after I finished playing. I'm a little bit worried that the player pool is too small to continue to support playing against me. Players owe the club thousands in loans but strangely everyone seems happy with the situation. It seems that because I always take a lot down for them to try and win and stay long enough for everyone to play that no minds. The only ones who grumble are those who used to win but now run into me and come off worst where in the past they could break even. Think of it like an over-fishing problem. I can't really limit my catch size when I play so perhaps I'll have to limit the frequency of my expeditions.

I might have to find other games, certainly there's one on Thursdays at Stanford-Le-Hope but it's a step up in blind size at £2/£5 blinds and I'm cautious. I'm not really much of a gambler, perhaps this is a bad thing?? Maybe I'll take a £1k stab at the game during September if I make £500 or so in the other games first.

Next month I want to hit 50k hands and maintain a >$0 red line and move up to $200 buy-in games. Clearly I won't be too worried about the red line or hand numbers if I move up and stay up. Party poker are running a promotion where they give you $1 for each party point you accumulate on the 10th highest day during September. So that means 10 days of a 9 or 10 hour working day to try and maximise my freebie while trying to maintain enough focus to not lose $. Should be interesting and worth $350 or so, maybe more if I move up in limits.

Laters.

Hi

Best week ever but it might surprise you to learn I wasn't happy with some of my play. Distinctly lacking in pre-flop aggression at the beginning of the week and made a dumb play live on Friday night in a big pot. I know I can do better and I know I can play more hands so I bloody well should. I doubt next week will see more hands though as I'm away Thursday through Sunday. Graph for week:




Still this week included my first $1k day (Friday) once I got a grip on my play a little and I also made £540 playing live. A little shy of $3k for the month online and £1.5k live I think. I'll chart it all for the month in the next blog.

Howdy

Well the week started with me being pretty annoyed with the game. Then I had my coaching lesson and that smoothed out a few of my concerns over what was happening and then:




Which is pretty good. What isn't so good is the volume of hands I put in although I did go out Weds, Thurs, Fri and Sat and a couple of those were really late nights. I also played some live poker for +£780. So all in all a good week and one I want to keep repeating and beating!

Till next week...

Hi

Well, this is fun isn't it!!! What with the stag do at the very start of the month (it was awesome by the way), and the 2 day exam thingy that happened immediately I got back (it was good fingers crossed), my coaching lesson happened on the first day I got to play for the month. He immediately spotted something in my playing stats that he wanted me to change so I played while he watched and talked at me and I got comfortable with this slight change of style.

It's been going well. I am back playing $100nl and am in a position to crush the games. Unfortunately, the variance has had another stab at me. Here's a quick graph of $100nl for the year to date, that is, including last month's attempt to move up. Remember, the light green line is expected earnings and dark green is actual earnings:




Due to the buffer of my bankroll and the extra money the site has been giving me, I'm ok to stay at $100nl for a while more but my bankroll won't take too much more of this and I might have to move down again.

Variance is interesting, especially our natural reactions to it. We expect the light green and dark green lines to converge, this would show luck being neutral and evening out. This is not an unreasonable expectation but there really is no cause for getting upset if it doesn't happen. A sign that someone has only semi-accepted variance is when they expect a big upswing to compensate them for the lack of equity success, something like me going on a hot streak and those two lines close up to the tune of $600 or so. This is also reasonable sounding but unrealistic.

However, the key point is that each individual event of a hand where I or my opponent(s) is all-in is independent of all other events. There is no history, no power and no fate that looks at the past run of successes and decides what to do with the current event. That being said one thing that you can rely on is that over time the degree of separation between light and dark green lines becomes statistically harder to maintain. You might be the outlier on the curve who gets screwed over in this way for your entire life. I know perhaps 50 people who would each claim to be that massively unlucky individual. They're all just crap at poker though.

Suffice it to say that I'm largely unaffected by the variance. It's starting to occupy my thoughts a bit more, see above, but otherwise it's just a part of the past couple months and it can go fuck itself. The frustration with it has disrupted my game flow slightly and I've made a few rushed decisions. However, I've noticed this now and know how to address it.

Graph for month so far:




Plenty of potential there and still plenty of things to work on. My second coaching lesson is later today.

In other poker news I went down to the OnTheRiver Club on Friday. They imposed a minimum buy-in of £200 for a pot-limit £1/£2 game. Pot-limit just means raise sizes are limited during a hand. Online I play no-limit where raises sizes are not limited (except by how much money you have on the table). The minimum buy-in was great forcing players who normally just gamble with £50 to actually play poker and I walked out +£480. From a player group of only 7 that's a pretty huge score.

Oh, I also had my biggest ever online pot the other day. I mean, clearly, this record will keep increasing (hopefully!) but I figure I'd show it. The guy was a fish who went on a hot streak before I carved $500 out of him in two pots, this is the biggest:

$0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
Hand Converted at CardRunners.com

BTN: $302.15 (302.2 bb)
CO: $143.68 (143.7 bb)
Hero (SB): $327.76 (327.8 bb)
BB: $101.38 (101.4 bb)
UTG: $79.16 (79.2 bb)
MP: $100 (100 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is SB with K K
3 folds, BTN raises to $5, Hero raises to $20, BB folds, BTN calls $15

Flop: ($41) 4 Q J (2 players)
Hero bets $30, BTN calls $30

Turn: ($101) J (2 players)
Hero bets $80, BTN calls $80

River: ($261) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets $180, BTN calls $172.15 and is all-in

Results: $605.30 pot ($3 rake)
BTN mucked T T (two pairs, Jacks and Tens) and lost (-$302.15 net)
Hero showed K K (two pairs, Kings and Jacks) and won $602.30 ($300.15 net)

Ok, stopping now. Long post!

Hi

Back from the stag do and it was awesome fun. The end of July saw me running poorly equity wise, that is to say on average I would expect to have won a hell of a lot more than I actually did, but I did return to good form playing at the $50nl level. See the graph:




The red line takes a dive at the end because I was pushing harder in pots to get folds from people but now and then someone has a hand that they're going to raise me back with. It did help create me a crazy image which in turn meant people were more willing to showdown their hand against me. This causes a rise in the blue line which, as you can see, more than compensates for the falling red line. If you can always pick the exact correct style of play at this game, you'll crush it.

Month as a whole:




That's a hell of a lot of hands especially as I took well over a week off. In all I managed just over 110 hours which is just over a 35 hour working week given the week off, etc. That's not so bad although with this game you don't get the time to socialise with work colleagues while you're at it and it's total focus required 100% of the time. I'm loving the lifestyle side of it though.

I have contacted a coach and we've provisionally agreed a number of lessons subject to a successful first lesson tomorrow. Apparently there's a bunch of actuarial jobs going in Birmingham and one in Bristol. I'm not really up for moving seeing as I've been here a few years and feel settled with friends and stuff nearby. If needs must then I can do the move later in the year.

This month is going well so far and my bankroll is back up to playing $100nl again. I put in a short session at that level this evening and played well losing a 55/45 (that is, I was a 55% favourite to win the hand) for a full stack. However, that hand did get the guy off my back for a while and I was able to continue playing well and made it all back plus some more.

Cya

P.S. I'm coaching someone at the lower levels at the moment. It's all for free and we'll see if I have the capability to teach this game. If so, then maybe I could look into that at some point in the future.

Hi

Clearly I didn't do week 2 of this month because I went home to my parents place for a week at the end of that week and didn't have access to my databases, etc. Week 2 was not pretty. I moved up a level as expected and hit a bad patch. I initially responded well to it but a few mistakes later and I decided to move back down to regain some confidence and re-build my bankroll back up. Unfortunately the bad stretch of cards continued and this made is quite difficult to play. I think I'm doing ok but I have contacted a coach so I can have a huge winner at the game ($260,000 in the last 12 months) analyse my game and help me get better.

Month to date:




You can see the red line takes a distinct turn downwards at 23k hands or so which more or less corresponds to when I moved up a level. This isn't a problem as it will take some time to learn the players and make adjustments when running bluffs and the like. However, that redline has continued it's trend since moving back down at 30k hands which is reflecting the troubles I've been having since. Here is the graph of specifically the time spent at the higher level:




Swingy ins't it? That last little section where it dives was a cue for me to move back down a level. I was getting impatient and that's not good. My general play there bodes well though. It won't take me too long to re-build.

A simple statistical analysis of my play at my current level over my entire history at it says there is a 93% chance I am a winner at that level. This, of course, includes a lot of play when I wasn't as good as I am now and I still have a lot more to improve on. Hopefully that is a little re-assuring. I may well do a more in depth analysis at some point as there was a video posted showing how to do it on here recently.

Post questions to comments.

Ben

Hi

Okay. It's been a busy week although this entry covers the last 12 days in terms of poker results. Here they are:



As you can just about make out, that's $935.98 profit in 27,813 hands. This is a lot of hands, more than I would do in a month when I had a job. I should comment on the last five thousand hands or so. I have moved up in stakes and these results are shown are hand 21,000 or so. I'm still learning the adjustments required for these opponents and some are good enough to put me in awkward situations and I have made a number of mistakes.

However, I've now played over 6,000 hands at this level and I'm happy with some of the strategy changes I've made. I won't go into the details of these but I can do if you like.

This week will be more of the same. I expect to be playing a lot of hands and continuing to make money. There are certain things which I need to keep in mind as I go. I'd rather not repeat some of today's mistakes for example.

Leave any questions in the comments section or email me.