Taking shots at 10NL on Bovada!by lhr0909, September 08
So I have been very close to have 20 BIs on Bovada for 10NL for months (hovering around $150 since July) and I finally got pretty close ($185) yesterday. Played a session in the morning and I had a massive dip in the mornging to put me back to $174. In the afternoon, I got nothing going on, and it is Sunday, so I decided to do a Zone Poker (Bovada Anonymous Zoom Tables) session. Then this happened:
Really not too shabby! I think I am still very bad though, so I post my VOD here and I am ready to get torn apart on my fishiness. At the same time I am ready to learn if anyone can give me some constructive criticism
P.S. shameless plug for my stream lol. I usually do hearthstone on stream and some other games. Poker is really an off-and-on thing because I stress myself out when I stream (yeah while no one is watching) http://www.twitch.tv/lhr0909
My last blog I talked about the ugly square brick I purchased which did its job in relieving my tech anxiety. So now it's round 2 with a more refined level of watches available, the Moto 360 vs the LG G watch R. Which would you buy?
The 1st up is the Moto 360. This watch's main feature is a very thin bezel and "elegant" design. Due to technical limitations they had to cut off a sliver at the bottom of the screen to house the display hardware, which drives some people nuts. I myself am undecided. It's one of those "cannot be unseen" details. So far reviews say you get used to it and the super thin sexy bezel overall makes up for it.
The other option is the LG G Watch R. Rather than going for an edge to edge screen they simply let the bezel remain fat, and camouflaged it with chrono markings to make it blend in. As a result the screen is slightly smaller than the Moto 360, however because it is smaller the pixel density is higher, thus making the images theoretically seem sharper. Some people feel the markings around the bezel are chintzy and remind them of a cheaper department store watch. Others like the sporty feel of it.
Lets face it guys, I'm a bit of a tilt monkey. What I mean rather... is not that I spazz around like a monkey on my tables when things don't go well, but instead that I simply let myself get way too emotionally affected by the results of this swingy game. My worst habit is the seemingly addictive sequence of checking my cashier page on a regular basis. As if registering my overall bankroll is somehow a useful or practical thing to do when I should be focusing on the hands being played at that moment. It's a habit I've had for seven years, and it's time to force myself to break it.
My greatest emotional demon seems to be that I let my results affect me. A very wise and talented player recently told me it takes years to get over this. Most people just pretend they don't get emotionally involved with their results. To truly master these emotions takes a lot of practice and a lot of learning about where the focus needs to be. I'm playing PLO25, so I'm not a superhero, and neither are my opponents. Even the regulars are bad regulars. Rake churns most of the money back to our inevitable host.
My focus needs to be on execution rather than my results. Therefore what I must do is check my cashier page only on the first of every month. I want to have no clue "where I'm at" for the month. It isn't productive. It isn't helpful. Desire clouds judgment, and fear halts our step.
I seem to play my worst after 2-3 good days in a row where I've been focused on executing my hands well and getting positive results. I start to think about all the money I could make if I was able to crush this game, or get one step higher. And then that desire leads to frustration when I run into a tough session filled with beats. My focus shifts, and so does my play. Maybe not in big donkey balls ways where I'm throwing money away into the fire, but in subtle ways where I'm not c-betting as much as I should be. Calling far too light in many small pots and then berating myself for being an idiot.
Emotional control is my demon, and I will defeat it. I will find a way to get myself focused on execution. My first attempt at this will be to not look at my results as I've already said. I feel like this might in the end be the first and best way to do it. It's not overly possible to not have some sense of where you are on a daily basis just because when you play you sort of know if you're doing well or not - but once the days blur into multiples I should have no clue what my roll actually is. Playing with a big enough bankroll allows me to not need to check. That way I can just focus on playing. I guess we'll see.
Hey, this is my Paypal ($60) for your PS ($50) so $10 vig for you. Previously I have traded with napoleono, the cleaner, k4ir0s. So PM me with any interest. thanks~
Need to write one before I slack off. This month was not good for me. I played only half of the volume compared to July, and "variance"/"downswing" are ruining my motivation to play.
I started to play on two separate websites, SealsWithClubs (bitcoin poker waddup) and Bovada. I have around 500 chips (0.5 BTC, which is around $250), and I am playing 10NL/20NL there (which is in USD around 5NL/10NL), and still building up the bankroll on Bovada at 5NL. Multi-tabling-wise, I started off doing 3 tables of Bovada and 3 tables of Seals and I found myself not able to keep up with the actions. So I dialed down to around 4-5 tables, depending on traffic. Session length is about the same from last month (~2 to 4 hour sessions every day, split between a morning session and an evening session).
I think all these little changes made my game unstable last month.
1. I am playing half anonymous tables, half normal tables
2. I am mixing stakes
3. I am playing more tables than before
So I ended up playing around 5k hands for the month, which is LOL. I was a bit busy with work, and just finished moving to a new place. Was quite a hectic month :O
Bovada - Break Even (although it does say netting up $9, I think I missed some HHs from last week because I took down my desktop and didn't download the HH on time) http://i.imgur.com/EDtwqGa.png
Seals - Started off pretty well with +50 chips, then went all the way down hill. At the last couple of days I won some back but dropped off again http://i.imgur.com/oqLpW9G.png
I think my problem is still calling too much I kept having this thought where people are always raising/betting with weaker hands, and I just want to figure out and call them down with TPTK/TP/one pair hands trying to bluff-catch.
Things I am going to work on:
1. fold more
2. call less
3. play more hands
4. play fixed amount of tables (4) and fixed stakes (5NL on Bovada until I can take shots, 10NL on Seals for the whole month)
Going to start selling the plugin I wrote for Seals that enables them to use HEM/PT (currently only tech-savvy people like me and someone else can do this lol, going to see if I can capitalize it and make some money for playing poker haha)
Nothing like a misleading title to get attention
Guys I need a favour. I wanna purchase an album in itunes store but for some reason I cant do it myself.
I'll pay $50 + 10.99 (thats the price of the album) on PokerStars to anyone who purchases it, zips it and sends it to me on Skype.
PM me if you're interested in helping.
coolers suckouts and slowrolls all the time
the slowrolls really piss me the fuck off to where i want to beat the shit out of them or fuck with their car or something
Haven't played serious poker in ~1.5 years. Since then I've been living off only ~$1300 /month, my roll's been getting smaller and smaller - especially since I recently moved to Montreal. I'm beginning to get worried! No college education, zero job experience! lawl.
Goals for this month;
Poker goals:
Start at nl50 FR
70k hands minimum
Also, does anyone want to do a small prop bet every month, to keep eachother motivated. If we don't achieve a certain amount of hands every month, we pay the other guy $200, something small.. Because I have been finding it very difficult to sit down and play poker, I don't dislike the game.. I just become overwhelmed with anxiety when I try to play, maybe I'm afraid I'll fail.
Well folks, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. This month was a real struggle for me mentally, but having climbed the mountain I feel much better now that the calendar is passing into September and I can put August behind me. Even if the results were not what I would have wanted, I did experience a tremendous amount of growth in my game. At the beginning of the month I came in feeling like a million bucks. I'd figured out PLO25 and I was going to crush it. Unfortunately, as over-confidence so often does I started allowing leaks into my game and playing much too loosely in particularly hazardous spots. As a result, I more or less took a dive bomb with my BR in the first week. At some point I crashed from 2250 all the way down to 1100 or so. It was all I could do to stop the bleeding.
The truth of it, this game is hard, very hard. It takes a lot of mental fortitude to will yourself into playing every day and even more to actually play with the focus that is required to win. A week of lost focus can set you back for months, and that's what happened to me this month. However, at the end of it all I'm feeling better than ever about my game. Sure I ran a bit bad, a subject I love to complain about in hand history postings but people should know the anger is much less than the words actually posted. It's just a way for me to exhume the frustration from my nervous system. In terms of running bad I think I finished something like 12 buy-ins under EV in the 45k hands which is better than the 20+ that it was earlier in the month. Truthfully though, until someone takes the time to truly build a proper luck calculator for this game we'll never really know that much. Flops in 3-bet/4-bet pots are critical. As are the pots where 75%+ of your stack is in by the turn and the last little bit goes in on the river after either you or your opponent hits. Still so much work to be done there to build one that gives any real indication of how you run. So I've settled to just ignore EV as much as I can.
In terms of goals I missed my chance to build for a shot at PLO50, but I did rebuild the bankroll back to $1850 by the time the month was over, maintained Platinum Star, and now have 52k FPP's stored up. It will be nice when I get to 100k, maybe stars will let me buy the bonus without being Supernova, it's happened before for others on here. We'll see.
My goals for this month are as follows... DRUM ROLL PLEASE...
1. Stop Posting Negative Hand Histories - Instead, post interesting hand histories or hands you feel you butchered and allow everyone else to carve them up so I can think more creatively about the lines I'm taking and why.
2. Do some math homework, I simply need to understand more about the intricate complexities of the math in PLO.
3. Continue to talk to players that are better than me.
4. Play 60k hands, I managed 45k hands last month and that's not bad when working 30 hours a week and doing a Master's Thesis at the same time, but I can do more.
5. Continue to exercise regularly, it gives me more energy and I sleep better.
6. Build the mental fortitude to not care about bad luck. I've heard from some very intelligent players that this simply takes years to do and I can't expect it to happen overnight. I think they're right about that, especially for me personally, but I'll keep working at it.
Haven't really posted in a long time... Started a new job in Texas ~1 year ago. Pretty decent compared to my past jobs - salary wise, benefits, etc. Living cheap and saving monies, so I've been playing poker a decent amount.
When I first moved here, I found a good selection of live 1/3 games with massive spewtards... Like guys losing 4k in a night at 1/3 and shit... Lol. The games were a bit swingy for my bankroll, so I 4 tabled on Bovada playing NL50 and NL100. Made a decent amount there but it really gets boring not knowing your opponents, and I didn't feel I was getting any better at the game.
I started playing Merge again so I can review hands and... improve and whatnot. I've been playing NL50, and for the first time can really say I am over rolled - a feeling I never could say I honestly felt much in my time playing poker. God it makes the game so much easier when you stop caring about losing... This was August and my first month back to playing on a nightly basis. It felt good to crush this hard! (tiny sample, i know, i know)
My brain hurts after looking at this trying to find the GTO, max value play for Player A
River
Player A always bet Pot size
Player B always calls or folds
Player A range
77+,6d6h,6d6s,6h6s,6d6c,6h6c,AQs+,A9s-A8s,QJs,JTs,T9s,98s,87s,76s,AKo
Player B range
QQ-99,AKs,AdKh,AhKc,AsKd
Board
9h9s8c Kd 6d
What is the range Player A maxes out value in this spot?
Does:
Player A cbet 75% of the time, 2:1 value:bluff ratio and check lose 25% air
Player B call 50% of the time, with 50% equity and fold 50% of the time
OR
Player A cbet 93% of the time 72/77 combos, with 50% equity, checking 7% pure air
Player B call 100% with 50% equity
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