Started a €150 to €10k Holdem challenge

iPoker - €0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (SB): 140 BB
BB: 124.6 BB (VPIP: 23.85, PFR: 18.46, 3Bet Preflop: 7.29, Hands: 267)
UTG: 111.1 BB (VPIP: 23.22, PFR: 18.56, 3Bet Preflop: 9.64, Hands: 1,218)
CO: 147.1 BB (VPIP: 37.12, PFR: 20.57, 3Bet Preflop: 6.21, Hands: 444)
BTN: 422.6 BB (VPIP: 23.94, PFR: 18.25, 3Bet Preflop: 7.69, Hands: 9,056)

Hero posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has A♦ K♠

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 3 BB, BB raises to 10 BB, Hero raises to 26 BB, BB calls 16 BB

Flop: (52 BB, 2 players) Q♥ Q♦ 5♦
Hero bets 13 BB, BB calls 13 BB

Turn: (78 BB, 2 players) 5♠
Hero bets 19.5 BB, BB raises to 39 BB, Hero calls 19.5 BB

River: (156 BB, 2 players) 5♣
Hero bets 62 BB, fold

Not sure about my turn continue or calling their min click there. I figured this guy's 3bet seems pretty low, and they probably have a significantly reduced amount of 5x combos 125 bb deep against a bit larger 4bet. If they actually do have a properly wide 3bet/call 4bet range pre, I think there's just way too many QX and 5X combos for me to continue betting. The turn click seems a bit suspicious to me regardless of theory, bc I think most people tend to let OOP just keep on blasting with their goodies. Or maybe just a habbit of mine overbarreling there with another B25, probably both. Maybe another AK, JJ or TT that didn't jam pre? Why would they raise KK not to even speak of AA there as humans? Those hands are going to get paid by bluffs bvb anyways pretty often, or just get coolered, but dunno. Maybe my turn call is just bad or very dicey at best. River range donk jam is pretty obvious imo, and I believe they are making a mistake by folding anything at that point, but could be wrong in a way that their fold with chops is good against a population where regs don't do a lot donk jamming in most spots.

Something has changed since early October. I know I'm some what of a red line junkie, but it hasn't been rocketing up this high previously, more like just randomly rising slightly with long break even or slightly losing stretches in the between. I don't think that I'm even that aggressive as a player, just consider myself a standard reg for these stakes. It is fairly obvious, that of course stealing a lot of blinds from the nits, making capped ranges fold, and betting thinner than GTO in a pool where many don't check-bomb bluff rivers much at all, will result in a rising red line. But it's still some what weird to me why this is going like this. I know players with higher than or similar green/yellow graphs as mine at these stakes, but all of them with either a losing or BE redline and lower VPIP.

Not sure why I'm even posting this, but maybe my point is to show, that at these stakes there are several different profitable approaches to the game, like mine where fighting for every single pot is in the center of the strategy, or someone else who's strat looks perhaps a bit more more nut peddly with a significantly lower VPIP than 28. I'm not sure what the best one actually is after all, and there might be a lot of reasons for me to start thinking about tightening up a little bit to make my life a little bit easier.

Even at the highest stakes different approaches work.

Just look at the red lines of the biggest winners in the world:

* Linus: +9bb/100
* DavyJones: ~0bb/100
* Barak: -5bb/100
* munez: -8bb/100

A 17bb/100 difference in red line, yet their total winrate is almost identical.

Yeah didn't realize their differences are that large. Makes me wonder what is it exactly say Linus and Barak do so differently? Both of them are very aggressive and find aggression in surprising spots. Does Linus limit his flop/turn aggression more and therefore makes people fold more OTR, or does Barak just give up more on later streets after being more aggressive earlier or what?

Fucking hell it's exhausting. Struggling with my own substance abuse problems. Graphs still going up though and almost 40% complete. [image]nxKnzjj.PNG[/im

..]

Been trying to play a bit more 20NL recently. It hasn't gone really well, and so far data suggests my winrate drops like 50% or more there compared to 10NL. It could ofc be a sample/variace issue because we know a sample of let's say 200k hands 90% confidence interval is still as high as +/- 3 bb/100. But it does bother me a little bit and regardless of my roll, I don't think it's a good idea at this point to take shots at 50 before getting better evbb results at 20. Yeah we could argue 10 evbb/100 at 20 + healthy roll is more than enough to start going for 50, but I'm not honestly confident I could beat 50NL at 4 bb+/100 at this point, which is what I would need to make more money at this game than playing 10NL. I know there are some mental things that make me play 20 and 50 worse than 10, but there are also some things about my strat that leak significantly more at stakes where some of the regs have studied basic preflop charts and more.

All in all like I said my tendency/desire to go get high/shitfaced every time I feel disappointed about myself is obviously not helpful in poker or life in general, therefore at this point it does feel like an OK choice to keep this game as unstressflul as possible and therefore just play stakes where my confidence is high. Right now it just feels like it's good therapy to have a hobby that keeps on bringing some spare change every month.

WP, clean 10B ... What did the opponent have? KTo?

Oh I didn't realize the results are hidden. Low flush.

iPoker - €0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: 412.1 BB (VPIP: 27.71, PFR: 20.01, 3Bet Preflop: 11.83, Hands: 1,531)
BB: 100 BB (VPIP: 28.97, PFR: 18.52, 3Bet Preflop: 6.28, Hands: 1,097)
UTG: 106.6 BB (VPIP: 23.24, PFR: 17.39, 3Bet Preflop: 9.89, Hands: 1,716)
CO: 105.6 BB (VPIP: 34.04, PFR: 24.47, 3Bet Preflop: 15.64, Hands: 728)
Hero (BTN): 100 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has Q♣ Q♦

UTG raises to 3 BB, fold, Hero calls 3 BB, SB raises to 11 BB, BB calls 10 BB, UTG calls 8 BB, Hero raises to 100 BB, SB raises to 189 BB, BB calls 89 BB, fold

Flop: (311 BB, 3 players) 9♣ A♦ K♦

Turn: (311 BB, 3 players) 9♠

River: (311 BB, 3 players) J♦

Not sure how OK the pre flop cold call from the BTN actually is in practice, but there seemed to be a pretty squeezey player on the SB and a weak reggish cold caller on the BB. EP opens the normal 20'ish % from HJ with a seemingly high fold to 3bet percentage and lowish 4bet. The hand ended up exactly how I wished or even better this time, but I'm still not that convinced I need to protect my BTN calls here at all. The plus side is however, that when this goes SRP post flop instead, UTG opener is going to have a pretty hard time believing a player with a double digit 3bet percentage could have an overpair in many run outs.

Anyways not a line I find very often tbh.

I have to admit today's run was pretty absurd, in a good way.

About 12 stacks from 10NL and 2 from 20NL. I think this might actually be the best single day from cash games in terms of bb's I've ever had, if BBJ's from my GG days don't count. I've had lots of 10'ish stack days but that's where I usually tend to stop because I want to avoid winner's tilt, which has happened to me before. And to be honest, I rarely play more than 2k hands per day so it's not that likely to run so well within such a small sample.

iPoker - €0.10 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 157.3 BB (VPIP: 23.95, PFR: 20.09, 3Bet Preflop: 9.35, Hands: 1, 574)
BTN: 101.5 BB (VPIP: 25.13, PFR: 18.61, 3Bet Preflop: 8.29, Hands: 7, 693)
SB: 96 BB (VPIP: 17.07, PFR: 10.57, 3Bet Preflop: 4.76, Hands: 128)
BB: 100 BB (VPIP: 29.58, PFR: 10.17, 3Bet Preflop: 2.04, Hands: 2, 045)
Hero (UTG): 108.1 BB
MP: 324.9 BB (VPIP: 29.53, PFR: 18.44, 3Bet Preflop: 5.63, Hands: 367)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has J♥ J♦

Hero raises to 2 BB, fold, fold, BTN calls 2 BB, fold, BB calls 1 BB

Flop: (6.5 BB, 3 players) 4♠ Q♣ K♠
BB checks, Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: (6.5 BB, 3 players) T♦
BB checks, Hero bets 4.8 BB, BTN calls 4.8 BB, fold

River: (16.1 BB, 2 players) 4♥
Hero checks, BTN bets 21.1 BB, Hero raises to 101.3 BB, fold

iPoker - €0.20 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 3 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BB): 171.95 BB
BTN: 160.4 BB (VPIP: 38.66, PFR: 16.81, 3Bet Preflop: 6.38, Hands: 123)
SB: 116.15 BB (VPIP: 32.12, PFR: 26.39, 3Bet Preflop: 14.58, Hands: 1,823)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has T♥ Q♥

fold, SB raises to 3 BB, Hero raises to 10 BB, SB calls 7 BB

Flop: (20 BB, 2 players) J♥ Q♦ 2♥
SB bets 5.6 BB, Hero raises to 19.7 BB, SB raises to 106.15 BB, Hero calls 86.45 BB

Turn: (232.3 BB, 2 players) 9♣

River: (232.3 BB, 2 players) K♣

Players agreed to run it twice.

Turn #2: (232.3 BB, 2 players) 4♦

River #2: (232.3 BB, 2 players) 8♠

Weird hand. I think in this one the very aggressive villain correctly assumes they can over realize their equity on the flop against most players who under raise against leads by leading small, but I honestly kind of like how they played this one, regardless of the results. I am absolutely going to pound the **** out of these donk bets in this configuration all day every day, but that doesn't mean their line is bad. And if they do know I'm over raising their lead here, then their 3bet jam is even better on the flop.

First week of December behind, and towards the end of the week ran hot af. A couple of small/stake field MTT FT's as well so overall a bit over 500 euros this week. Been playing around with my BR optimizer more, and felt pretty good about taking some 20NL on the side and the last few days 50/50 splitting between 20 and 10. I made some kind of a BRM plan about when to drop 10 entirely (immediately) and start taking some 50 on the side with a 1-2 bi stop loss (tomorrow) if I can get a nice seat there on one or two tables.

Not setting up any strict volume goals for this upcoming week, but if I can manage 1500-2000 hands per day, with one day close to 3000 (Friday most likely), that would be great.

Wish you all a good week!!

12 hands of 50. Make it 1000 in dec

I really want to make it much more than that, but have to be realistic. I would need to beat 50 with a wr higher than 5 or 6 to make it make sense to play there. I think I could, but remains to be seen.

iPoker - €0.20 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 345.65 BB (VPIP: 54.55, PFR: 21.21, 3Bet Preflop: 3.57, Hands: 68)
SB: 91.2 BB (VPIP: 26.10, PFR: 20.76, 3Bet Preflop: 9.56, Hands: 4,813)
BB: 203.8 BB (VPIP: 29.55, PFR: 13.64, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 45)
Hero (UTG): 101.1 BB
MP: 136.05 BB (VPIP: 80.00, PFR: 40.00, 3Bet Preflop: 60.00, Hands: 10)
CO: 100 BB (VPIP: 25.01, PFR: 20.17, 3Bet Preflop: 9.42, Hands: 6,895)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has K♥ A♦

Hero raises to 2.5 BB, MP raises to 4 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 101.1 BB, MP calls 97.1 BB

Flop: (203.7 BB, 2 players) J♥ T♥ T♠

Turn: (203.7 BB, 2 players) 8♠

River: (203.7 BB, 2 players) 3♠

Players agreed to run it twice.

Flop #2: (203.7 BB, 2 players) 9♠ 2♣ J♠

Turn #2: (203.7 BB, 2 players) J♣

River #2: (203.7 BB, 2 players) A♥

Thanks mate !!

Once again for anyone wondering how graphs like this are actually made, it's not by finding really weird check-raise lines on the river for the most part. This hand is much more representative of what's happening here more often.

iPoker - €0.20 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 48.3 BB (VPIP: 72.41, PFR: 6.13, 3Bet Preflop: 3.30, Hands: 836)
SB: 64.35 BB (VPIP: 40.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 5)
Hero (BB): 112.3 BB
UTG: 143 BB (VPIP: 23.81, PFR: 18.09, 3Bet Preflop: 7.75, Hands: 10,676)
CO: 195.1 BB (VPIP: 17.84, PFR: 2.92, 3Bet Preflop: 0.81, Hands: 351)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has Q♦ Q♣

fold, fold, BTN calls 1 BB, SB calls 0.5 BB, Hero raises to 7.5 BB, fold, SB calls 6.5 BB

Flop: (16 BB, 2 players) 6♣ 2♥ 8♦
SB checks, Hero bets 8 BB, SB raises to 16 BB, Hero raises to 24 BB, SB raises to 32 BB, Hero raises to 104.8 BB, SB calls 24.85 BB

Turn: (129.7 BB, 2 players) 8♥

River: (129.7 BB, 2 players) A♠

Time to wrap up the week I think, too busy on the weekend to play, most likely.

Not sure what to think of this week. I spent more time studying than I had anticipated, spent hours trying to build better preflop heuristics for spots I hadn't really paid that much attention to before. I was pretty comfortable with these spots before, but the game here at 20NL has gotten a bit more aggressive than it used to be, and I often found myself in preflop situations where I honestly wasn't sure if I can call/4b this squeeze, or what is the worst hand I can cold 4bet here and how much they have to be over 3betting to make my theoretically indifferent cold 4's +EV. Could be that in this small pool, the regs I have encountered during the times I've played this week have just happened to be more aggressive than the standard ones I've been used to. So that means I need to study, so that next week I'll have less just guessing to do when I play with these guys again 😃

Pretty happy with my heuristics now, some of them I learned from other poker blogs and fact checked them on GTOW pre solutions, some of them I think I kind of just discovered or it just clicked in a little bit better now.

I also made a decision to limit each session to just one hour, I realized the vast majority of my EV suicides happen towards the end of the longer sessions, which probably isn't a surprise to anyone. So maybe just trying to calm down a bit and try to think of thinks more analytically then in game for a moment will reduce the amount I spazz.

Week went good but volume suffered due to more studying than I had planned to do, but I don't regret it. Graphs of this month or this week are obviously just sun run running, but it's cool this time it's happening at 20NL in addition to just 10NL.

Week:

December:

Since start in July:

Have a good wknd guys!

iPoker - €0.20 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (SB): 104.35 BB
BB: 107.6 BB (VPIP: 21.14, PFR: 16.73, 3Bet Preflop: 7.25, Hands: 24, 099)
UTG: 100 BB (VPIP: 20.25, PFR: 15.82, 3Bet Preflop: 5.72, Hands: 2, 248)
CO: 115.85 BB (VPIP: 20.83, PFR: 15.16, 3Bet Preflop: 8.44, Hands: 884)
BTN: 140.75 BB (VPIP: 45.45, PFR: 9.09, 3Bet Preflop: 25.00, Hands: 13)

Hero posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has K♠ A♣

fold, CO raises to 2.5 BB, BTN calls 2.5 BB, Hero raises to 12 BB, fold, CO calls 9.5 BB, BTN calls 9.5 BB

Flop: (37 BB, 3 players) 7♥ 3♠ 7♦
Hero checks, CO bets 12 BB, fold, Hero calls 12 BB

Turn: (61 BB, 2 players) Q♦
Hero bets 12.2 BB, CO calls 12.2 BB

River: (85.4 BB, 2 players) A♥
Hero bets 17.05 BB, CO calls 17.05 BB

And then one hand from the week I've thought about more than others later on. Preflop SQz is a bit too small due to the 2.5x open, but what about post flop? Do we call OTF? Does our lead OTT make any sense with our range compared to IP stabbers's range against a small SQz given the flop was 3-way? What about the river block? Was planning on shoving any river that is not an ace or a king.

iPoker - €0.20 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 452.5 BB (VPIP: 28.64, PFR: 23.94, 3Bet Preflop: 11.43, Hands: 219)
SB: 100 BB (VPIP: 22.54, PFR: 13.13, 3Bet Preflop: 4.08, Hands: 7, 602)
BB: 100 BB (VPIP: 29.17, PFR: 19.44, 3Bet Preflop: 8.33, Hands: 220)
UTG: 122.55 BB (VPIP: 21.09, PFR: 16.40, 3Bet Preflop: 6.88, Hands: 3, 455)
Hero (MP): 287.6 BB
CO: 95 BB (VPIP: 23.94, PFR: 19.72, 3Bet Preflop: 8.70, Hands: 71)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has K♣ Q♠

fold, Hero raises to 2.15 BB, fold, fold, fold, BB calls 1.15 BB

Flop: (4.8 BB, 2 players) T♠ 6♦ 9♠
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: (4.8 BB, 2 players) J♣
BB bets 3.15 BB, Hero raises to 17.8 BB, BB calls 14.65 BB

River: (40.4 BB, 2 players) T♥
BB checks, Hero bets 30.3 BB, BB raises to 80.05 BB, Hero pukes

OK so maybe a bit greedy thin river by me, but I think we can get away with it in a pool where people don't check bomb bluff the river nearly as often as theory.

However, I intentionally time bank bet the river to get more calls from their JX. I don't think there are a lot of trips or worse straights that call if I 2X jam. Also, villain snap called the turn raise, which indicates a river range that wasn't considering it's options OTT. They also snap checked the river, so they weren't considering donk jamming with their nutted hands... or they don't have them. Most importantly, after my tank bet they snap jammed... So do we go with pool reads and fold, or trust our game flow reads and call?

iPoker - €0.20 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 100 BB (VPIP: 32.05, PFR: 25.64, 3Bet Preflop: 13.33, Hands: 238)
SB: 106.5 BB (VPIP: 21.12, PFR: 16.79, 3Bet Preflop: 6.54, Hands: 399)
BB: 86.8 BB (VPIP: 65.03, PFR: 18.03, 3Bet Preflop: 10.00, Hands: 187)
Hero (UTG): 173.9 BB
MP: 100 BB (VPIP: 27.69, PFR: 21.15, 3Bet Preflop: 9.92, Hands: 6, 345)
CO: 100 BB (VPIP: 22.79, PFR: 18.22, 3Bet Preflop: 10.07, Hands: 1, 599)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has Q♠ A♠

Hero raises to 2.05 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, BB raises to 6.1 BB, Hero calls 4.05 BB

Flop: (12.7 BB, 2 players) 2♠ 9♠ K♠
BB bets 6.35 BB, Hero calls 6.35 BB

Turn: (25.4 BB, 2 players) 7♣
BB bets 12.7 BB, Hero calls 12.7 BB

River: (50.8 BB, 2 players) 8♥
BB checks, Hero bets 1 BB, BB raises to 61.65 BB, Hero calls 60.65 BB

iPoker - €0.20 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BB: 225.75 BB (VPIP: 31.54, PFR: 25.09, 3Bet Preflop: 13.21, Hands: 283)
UTG: 32.95 BB (VPIP: 49.35, PFR: 6.74, 3Bet Preflop: 0.39, Hands: 1, 643)
Hero (CO): 231.3 BB
BTN: 155.7 BB (VPIP: 27.71, PFR: 21.16, 3Bet Preflop: 9.96, Hands: 6, 365)
SB: 81.5 BB (VPIP: 61.57, PFR: 3.36, 3Bet Preflop: 2.82, Hands: 276)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 9♠ A♣

fold, Hero raises to 2.25 BB, fold, SB calls 1.75 BB, fold

Flop: (5.5 BB, 2 players) 8♠ 8♣ J♠
SB bets 1 BB, Hero raises to 6.6 BB, SB calls 5.6 BB

Turn: (18.7 BB, 2 players) K♠
SB checks, Hero checks

River: (18.7 BB, 2 players) 3♠
SB checks, Hero bets 1 BB, SB raises to 10.85 BB, Hero calls 9.85 BB

some times these work lol

Just found your blog man. Wtf are those results?! The pool must be softer there, but still, you must be crushing them unbelievably. Meanwhile I came back to poker after 11 years of break (I played the most on iPoker), 2 months in, NL10 took me a week and I managed to almost double my $300 deposit and started NL25, which well...isn't going particularly well, to say the least. I mean, the downswing is unreal, especially on regular tables (Rush & Cash seem to run more normal, but at regular tables if you go all-in against a fish with AJ @ J95, then they just have 95. If you have QQ on 972, turn is a 4 and they show up with 74 and that's how it goes). All-ins preflop with AK/QQ seem to either lose flips or meet KK+ most of the time (is this unlucky or people actually do not stack off AK/QQ/JJ from positions other than BTN/SB/BB?).

That being said, I thought of moving to NL50 with around 22-25 BIs, but after witnesssing what I am going through right now, something close to 30 BIs might be reasonable. Though right now I do have the first deposit bonus and some of the RB is making up for it.

Nevertheless, my redline suck too much and is below -10 bb/100, which I am trying to fix. You clearly fight for pots more. There was a wonderful article here, which I now keep reading at least 2 times a day:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/69/on...

Btw, what's your rakeback there? Back in the day, I used to have 60-62% + the rake was lower. And in the very beginning in 2009-2010 I used to run my own blog to track the progress, ah, good times 😀

Hi mate and welcome onboard 😃. It's an obviously soft fenced off site with zero RB or promos, it just uses an IPoker client/software, but it isn't in the IPoker network. No rakeback at all, the graphs are my exact net results. The rake is low though, 3.33% nfnd, so about 7-8 bb/100 for a player VPIP'ing 25-30, whereas on GG or PS they pay more than that after promos and RB, probably after LB as well.

What is nfnd?

Well, on GG it's 6.5 bb/100 at NL25 R&C and around 9 bb/100 at regular tables and this is before RB. At least that's why my tracker says. It must be a considerable amount though, cause they charge it at preflop as well. So apparently the softness of the players has to make up for no RB 😀