Grinding micros and studying. 5-10NL

First full month was march.
Here is the graph

I think march was ok, volume was on the low side but that is to be expected as early on studying is higher EV than playing IMO. Basic game plan for this month was to play premium hands only, OOP I focuced on protecting my checking range and getting to showdown with my hands. IP I played a bit more aggressively but still plan was to win at showdown by letting fish bluff.
A volume goal for April is to get 50k Hands in.

Session 1.4.2026

Ok amount of hands, Redline was good, but blueline suffered a lot. I think I was stacking off too much with too weak holdings. River call efficiency was a mere 26% so definitely bluff-catching too much. A lot of work to be done there. Nice to win though.

Session 3.4.2026

Today was a nice session. Of course it's easy to feel good after sunrunning. Compared to first session of April this one was more passive, less C-betting/bluffing and more bluffcatching. In this pool this seems like a better strategy, especially in fish heavy tables. Againgst regs bluffing seems to work a lot better. Reviewing marked hands shows river aggression needs to be thought about more

iPoker - €0.05 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
BTN: 94.8 BB (VPIP: 17.34, PFR: 9.49, 3Bet Preflop: 1.98, Hands: 582)
SB: 100 BB (VPIP: 22.36, PFR: 16.85, 3Bet Preflop: 7.56, Hands: 645)
BB: 88.4 BB (VPIP: 69.44, PFR: 5.56, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 36)
Hero (UTG): 115 BB
CO: 176.8 BB (VPIP: 19.55, PFR: 16.42, 3Bet Preflop: 9.09, Hands: 547)
SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has Qd Ac
Hero raises to 2 BB, fold, BTN calls 2 BB, fold, BB calls 1 BB

Flop : (6.4 BB, 3 players) Kh Kc Tc
BB checks, Hero bets 4 BB, BTN calls 4 BB, fold

Turn : (14.4 BB, 2 players) 7d
Hero bets 10 BB, BTN calls 10 BB

River : (34.4 BB, 2 players) Qc
Hero bets 43 BB, fold

Hero mucks Qd Ac (Two Pair, Kings and Queens)
(Pre 0%, Flop 0%, Turn 0%)

Hero wins 33.4 BB

I don't really know how I feel about this river play. General idea in the hand was to pressure a 10 to fold by the river. Should be easy enough given that the opponent is a massive nit. On the river I hit my queen so the original idea of folding out a ten was no longer the plan and checking seemed like a fine idea. However the flush also got there and I had the Ace, and K/Q was on the board already so now I thought a king would also fold as I block the Ace high flush in my hand and he shoulnd't have too many other flushes with the king and queen on the board.

Here is another example of a stupid bluff.
iPoker - €0.05 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

CO: 109.2 BB (VPIP: 48.00, PFR: 10.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 50)
Hero (BTN): 100 BB
SB: 65.6 BB (VPIP: 46.00, PFR: 18.37, 3Bet Preflop: 6.67, Hands: 54)
BB: 67.8 BB (VPIP: 51.79, PFR: 5.36, 3Bet Preflop: 4.55, Hands: 61)
UTG: 130 BB (VPIP: 18.70, PFR: 16.36, 3Bet Preflop: 4.71, Hands: 603)

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has 5s As
fold, CO calls 1 BB, Hero raises to 4 BB, fold, BB calls 3 BB, fold

Flop : (9.4 BB, 2 players) 6d Qh 7s
BB checks, Hero bets 4.6 BB, BB calls 4.6 BB

Turn : (18.6 BB, 2 players) 4c
BB checks, Hero bets 13 BB, BB calls 13 BB

River : (44.6 BB, 2 players) 2s
BB checks, Hero bets 55.6 BB, BB calls 46.2 BB

Hero mucks 5s As (High Card, Ace)
(Pre 77%, Flop 19%, Turn 16%)

BB shows 5h Qd (One Pair, Queens)
(Pre 24%, Flop 81%, Turn 84%)

BB wins 132.6 BB

Honestly no thought went into this hand. I was just pushing buttons hoping the fish would fold.
Anyways today was a profitable day. Plan right now is to start shot taking once I have 20 buyins for NL10. Currently bankroll sits at 15.

As for studying goes I might try to do some database analysis to see which spots I am losing the most.

Session 4.4.2026

Kind of a bad session, happy that it ended positive though. First 1000 hands was absolutely horrible. Terrible punts constantly, even called an open shove with KQs. Shame, shame, shame. After that, took a walk and cleared my head. And things started going more my way after that. Curiously aggression frequency was a lot lower than on the 3rd. I would think this is because I wasn't really hitting the flop so I was missing almost all of my Value Cbets. Comparing this session to 1.4 in leaktracker I think they were kind of similar. Definitely 1.4 Was my best poker so far and 4.4 was the absolute worst of the worst punting.

Next post is not gonna be a session graph but instead some database review of finding leaks and figuring out how to fix them.

Was really lazy all through out april

Didn't really study or play that much. Started switching over to GGpoker to find softer games during the morning.

any winning month is a decent month.

May so far has been an utter disaster.
NL5 graph

NL10 graph

Overall i am still up from my GG deposit thanks to their new player honeymoon bonuses and a BBJ I got in 5 NL.
I think around 50% of my losses come from preflop play, this pool is way more nitty in their shoves/4 bets. It seems the regs are playing AK, KK+ 4bet range meaning KK is an absolute disaster shove since it blocks half of the AK combos so runs into AA constantly. AK at best its a split and worse its behind.

Combining NL5 and NL10 graphs also shows the effect tilt can have.

Yikes. Almost a paisting level vertical fall of 10 buyins

Another thing that is hurting my EV is lack of HUD stats. On my previous site I could just check the hud for obvious leaks on villains, here with no HUD stats it's almost impossible to keep track of some specific player's tendencies while multi tabling. Combine that with a lack of solid fundamentals/study and not much more can be expected.

That's hopefully about to change. I picked up POP2 as a paper book and hopefully next month I'll buy GTOWizard again to do some more serious studying.

I will also start tracking my BR at the end of all the posts. Right now it is sitting at 203.09$

pretty cool GL you have potential

Played today's honeymoon challenge, 50 Spin and gos. Ran like absolute shit.

I have also not studied this format at all so I resorted to a strategy of pretty much shoving when I thought I had over 50% equity so high variance was expected.

I expect to get 50 tournament dollars and the two weekender tickets from the honeymoon challenge. This would give me a small bankroll to play some micro tournaments as well, see how I do in those,
Current bankroll: 192.61$

WHINING POST.
(+stats if someone wants to give free advice)

Probably gonna have to switch back to IPoker. I just can't beat NL5 at GG. Somehow these fuckers are better than me. I sat on the left of a 95 Vpip monkey for 300 hands and LOST money?

It is not even Just the rake as with rakeback I am paying less in rake on GG than i was on Ipoker.

This is a pretty accurate depiction of the fish here. Who the fuck looks at J7o and thinks "I'll 3bet this hand".
How am I not beating these? I don't understand.

I figured playing an KK+ AK 4bet/shove range should be breakeven/optimal since over a large sample running aces into kings and kings into aces should even out and folding KK would give opponents too much fold equity on shoves. Still being negative with kings feels like I should just fold them preflop.

Anyways, this morning's session was deeply in the red. The competition is just too tough I guess. I'll grind out the next Match bonus release (3$ more rake) and then move my bankroll back to Ipoker I guess. Just can't beat GG.
17.5 morning session.

I just think I should be winning. Maybe I am just way too spewy when I don't have my HUD to keep me in check?

For comparison these are my stats on IPoker NL5 that I was beating for 10 BB/100 over a 30k sample.

Bankroll now: 151.39$

Could well be just variance. I think long term I would be better off on GG with their rakeback structure and better availability of games when moving up the stakes. (on my old poker network there was sometimes no games above 50NL)

But at the same time bankroll wise I kind of want to move to where I know I am winner, at the same time I know I can't make enough to live on there.

I have very litte trust in my edge on GG.

Edit: I shouldn't worry too much, even on the Ipoker graph there is a 10k hand long Downtrend, so my GGpoker sample is way too small to make any conclusions!

Probably just variance (or your previous winning could have been variance haha). I dont think theres major difference between big rooms in terms of skill at micros. From my experience, GG is softer if anything. 14k is not a big sample.

I dont see anything too bad in the stats. Maybe cbet flop a little more, fold a little less, but this is just nitpicking. In your ipoker sample river call efficiency seems too high to me - you win $1.69 for every $1 you put in, and anything 1.5 and above probably means you are overfolding too much - small sample again though, and as long as its not below 1 you should be fine.

Dont let the variance get to you and GL

Long time no see. I haven't played a lot recently, been caught up at work. Last week I decided to start playing MTTs with the tickets and tournament dollars I got from the honeymoon period, as well as the weekender ticket I got.

This went decently well, the weekender I cashed for around a 100$ (made a stupid punt as my last hand, still annoyed about it) and in some of the smaller MTTS I placed decently well. As far as studying goes I have made it about half way through Play optimal poker 2 and have realized I need to start analyzing/solving ranges from flop to river. I plan to go through this list one by one first on paper, then checking a solver to see how far off I was, and adjusting from there. https://www.runitonce.com/nlhe/50-shades-of-flop-texture/

I will be off work next month so plan is to play about 4-6 hours a day and do at least 2 hours a day of studying. Next I need to decide on a solver to pick up. I have heard good things about PokerSnowie but it seems to be crashing when I try to open it so I will probably end up going with GTOwizard again.
Bankroll now:281.47$

Played 2 hours of NL5 today. First hour I played well, thought through the hands while playing. The second hour went terribly. I noticed myself not thinking through the hands anymore and just playing poorly on autopilot. Shoulda stopped but wanted to play the full leaderboard happy hour thing.

Now here is the hand that really put my graph down for the day

I figured on the flop that I would check as I have seen opponent bet a lot after Preflop raiser checks, and he did so again. Turn I have no fucking clue what to do now so I just check planning to call. On the river the backdoor flush gets there and now here is the mistake, obviously jamming is bad given the flop action. Opponent would not bet QQ/JJ on the flop, I feel like those hands want to see a cheap showdown and don't really benefit from betting. So opponent has no calls on the river, and a very trivial fold with clubs/other missed draws/big cards. Also a very easy call with the flush. All around a bad punt. I feel like if I focus on getting rid of these punts I can very easily beat the micros. Just need to work harder.

The extra few bucks in bankroll came from playing those daily freebies like mystery battleroyals etc.
Bankroll now: 293.99$

20.6.2026
Today I finished up on chapter 7 of POP, and brushed up on my BB play. I am comfortable on my flop decisions, but I am missing a lot of my bluff 3bets on BB. I recall that 3betting from the big blind is supposed to be hyper polarized againgst early position players with basically AA/KK/AK as value, and then some suited Tx and Kx as bluffs along with the obvious A5s. However in game I have not been able to mix these properly and I end up with a mere 4% 3bet stat. However this seems to be working decently well.

As for todays playing session, I think I had my best session so far.

Took a shot at NL10 on IPoker. The difference between this and GG is actually insane. These must be the softest games on the planet.

The only bad thing here is there was only 5 tables running, but all the tables had at least 2 fish, some tables I was sitting with 5 50% VPIP fish. I also mixed in some NL5 games but those didn't go as well.

Bankroll now:340.42$