Hand 1.

Lets say you 3bet AKo on the button and villains calls. Flop comes KJ9 w two hearts. You cbet and villain shoves. It is not your style to fold top pair top kicker in a bloated pot. So you call. Villain flips over 76 of hearts. Your AK holds up. Well you are an idiot. You should not be playing poker at all. Pick a new hobby. Knitting or something.

Hand 2.

You 3bet AKo on the button and villain calls. Flop comes KJ9 w two hearts. You cbet and villain shoves. Thinking of his craising range you come to the conclusion that it is much more likely that he is craising draw than a monster hand. So you call. Villain flips over QTo. Your runners don't materialize. Well you are a good player. With little practice I think you can beat Phil Ivey.

I hate phrases like :

"You have tptk in 3bet/4bet pot,so you should call"
"There's so much money in the pot, that you should call"

In a G.W.Bush way . I played ten hands of 5/10 NL today. Winning whopping 182 euros. That makes me 182/bb/100 rate winner at NL1k right ? I was following a whale from 1/2 NL but got scared pretty quickly. Bankroll not sufficent yet to take those kinds of shots.

It's been almost a month since I declared that I was going to play 1k hands per day. I've managed to play them, except few weekends due to some excessive alcohol consumption. Crushing .50/1 NL and 1/2 NL at the moment, and the work ethic is finally here so there is only one way from here.Up. Setting up clear goals, has done wonders for my grinding motivation. If only would I have realised this before.

It's fun to exploit fish, that play way too many hands. One way is to give them room to bluff. For example on a paired board, when you have any weak showdown value at all, forget all impulses to protect your hand and ch back the flop.
This gives the fish the opportunity to make his sneaky bets when "clearly you have nothing". And when playing, you should always think what action has the best possible value. Protecting your hand is secondary.
Againts some chronic bluffer whales you can seriously ch back the flop, close your eyes, and call him down and show massive profit. Plus the great part is, like many CR videos have taught us, you don't have to be good 100% time when taking this line. Half the time is enough(edit: or 33% of the time,can't do even simple math, but you get the picture), to show a profit in the long run, when facing a pot size bluff bet on the river.

Here is my masterplan in action. These hands happened in matter of minutes. All againts the same unlucky whale.
They just don't learn.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4678813

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4678863

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4678872

One slogan I hear every now and then is " you should play in unexploitable way". It has some merit to it. Thinking if you are in a top/middle/bottom of your range in any given spot helps you comprehend your own play better. But it can lead to problems when you are value betting with the top of your range and one of these, once in a 100k hands, spots come up and there would be a place for out of the box stellar fold.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/39/small-stakes-pl-nl/i-read-hands-too-well-563313/

I got violated by the admin . I guess I was being my provocative self and reasoning the hand bit too well .

About the goal for the remaining year. I feel very confident. It really doesn't matter what midstakes I will be playing next xmas. It is simply aimed for making me play more. Most important thing is how many hands and hours I play. I try to play 1k hands per day of 6max. That would be significant improvement on my feeble work ethic.

Hi ! Brief introduction. I've played poker since fall of 2005. Last two years professionally. Still only playing small stakes.
Mainly NL50-NL200 6max NLHE. I've ventured higher and even had some success there but I cannot call myself a midstakes regular, yet.
I have set a goal for me. To be 5/10 regular by the end of the year. My biggest downfall as a poker player has been my work ethic. Or lack of it. I have just dabled small stakes earning enough just to get by. But that is about to change. By making my goal public I hope it will motivate me to improve my work ethic (doesn't matter if anyone is reading or not ).