Moving down to 50nl only.....

Against all my will I have had to remove most of my poker bankroll to fund renovations on my house. It was either that or sell the tvr. Ive waited to have that car far too long to just flip it out after 3 months.

I have left enough to work with in my accounts to hopefully rebuild and make the steady climb to the midstakes. This obviously kills my goals for year end.

I am leaving a balance of approx $1500 for poker. This will by solely for $50nl until I reach $2500 then move up to $100nl.

Graphs / Charts and analysis to start again soon. Off to Lake Como in Italy this weekend so no pokering for me.

I will be writing a post soon on the main aspects of beating 50nl.. I have to beat it first again though otherwise you wont believe me..

Ryverrat.

Marginal Situations Tweak

Another conclusion I have arrived at is that playing marginal ev situations at 50nl and probably 100nl is not worth it. I was looking through my database of winning players at this level and found that hardly any of them are playing marginal situations as regular as me. This situations are rarely profitable at these levels whereas good solid poker wins.

Cutting down on cbets when missed, bluffing less and playing less marginal hands out of position is a good strategy when you are playing with monkeys who cannot lay down an underpair or mid pair hands.

The downside of this is that you will sometimes lose value when pushed off of hands where you were ahead but this is made up for more than enough for when you have a hand and gain their flop bet, turn bet and sometimes river bet / stack. The profit will come from extracting maximum value from strong hands. Occasionally, read dependent it may be ok to make a marginal play but overall I think it is not optimum at the small stakes.

I will start showing numbers and graphs again soon. Im still maintaining my bankroll goal of $10k by the end of the year. Current online roll around $5300

A Devil in the River.

I have been fighting with myself for the past 2 months trying to figure out where the hell my skill at poker has gone. I am not losing, I am not winning. I am breakeven. The only profit I am making is via bonuses and rakeback and this is not right.

From Feb to Jun I was a winning player, I turned $500 into $5000 just playing my game now I just treading water. What is missing ?

Location - My winning run stopped when I moved from Australia back to the UK. Australia evening would be midnight to early hours US time. This is like having position on players on a global poker table. You have to be at an advantage over the long term by playing the witching hour when you are fresh and sober. In the UK I play in the evening against other UK players and midday US players who are generally better players than the evening shift.

Forums - The Internet nazis at my work have cut off access to two plus two forums. I cannot read about poker at work, I cannot comment and strategize about different hand histories and this lets you step out of your 'A' game thinking. I have to fix this one somehow.

I believe these two factors have led me to make just a few mistakes but dramatically affected my win rate. Making big mistakes 1 in a 1000 times sounds too small to make a difference but that it what is happening. It only takes 1 wrong call on the river where the bets are much larger to knock all your profit making from the past 999 hands. I am picking up lots of small pots and losing a big one on a bad river call. I am picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.

That is my conclusion after looking at my main losing hands over the past few months. If I could take away those large river calls where looking back it was very marginal then I would be making a decent return. I have to play my 'A' game every time I sit down. Nothing less.

For anyone else breaking even, take a look at your pokertracker numbers. Take your top few hand losses per 1000 hands and see if they were lost calling large river bets. Is it just me or is this a common leak from most players ?

Inside the mind of a poker maniac

$0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem
5 players
Converted at weaktight.com


Stacks:

UTG		($38.15)
CO		($41.80)
BTN		($47.30)
SB		($200.55)
Hero		($89.75)

Pre-flop: ($1.50, 5 players) Hero is BB

2 folds, BTN raises to $2, 1 fold, Hero calls $1

Flop: ($4.50, 2 players)
Hero bets $3, BTN calls $3

Turn: ($10.50, 2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

River: ($10.50, 2 players)
Hero goes all-in $84.75, BTN goes all-in $42.30

Final Pot: $137.55
BTN shows:
Hero shows:

Hero wins $134.05 ( won +$44.30 )
BTN lost -$47.30

Can anyone explain this hand ? Apparantly yes. I showed this hand to a guy at work who has played poker before and listens to me ramble on about my poker wins and losses. I was taking him through each stage of the hand. Villain's flop call was 'obviously 67' he said to my amazement. I was impressed. He seemingly picked the villains cards out of the blue with no history or read. When I showed him the call on the river he smiled and said yeah, thats easy he called because he was bluffing.

OMFG! what?

Another Breakeven month !!

A quite frustrating month to be honest. I could have played around 15k hands this month but with house renovations, a trip abroad and a passing away in the family I could only manage the above. The fact still remains though that I am break even.. again! I cleared a $150 bonus = about $150 in rakeback so im up for the month but im not happy about it. To be honest I dont think there is much wrong with my game. I have analysed a few areas I need to work on and will strive to do this for October.

The bulk of my hands this month have been at nl($0.50) and I have played a 22/13 style. This could be closer. I feel like a 19/15 style would work so will aim to bring this more into line.

A number I want to look at is Won $ WSF % (Without seeing flop) = 38% Is this anywhere near where it should be. I generally raise 3x BB in early position and 4x BB in later positions. I need to work out if the 4x BB in later positions is building good pots to win or discouraging players to call. Obviously this is table/villain dependant but with a large enough sample size there could be a leak.

My button play is 28/18 which I am happy with and the $128 loss is due to a few large stupid calls I made. Bad play me.

So my call to you readers, can you see any glaring holes in my numbers here. Am I missing something ?