Road from NL10 to NL50

Pretty brutal results today:

Apart from the run bads (image 1 and 2), I could definitely fade away from losing more buyins (3). Also WWSF is only 46%. Not sure if variance or not aggressive enough.

(1)

(2)

(3)

Pretty unhappy about the third hand. I knew that turn shoving is extremely strong, literally no bluff. I called because I've seen people weirdly playing their AK in this way. However, villian simply has no AK, as all AK would've shoved preflop. Definitely could've dodged this one.

Sad day 1, but hopefully we'll recover.

BR: 562

Played a little bit more in the night, where I just ran pretty well.

WWSF is still horrible. Not aggressive enough.

BR: 572

i have 51 WWSF on pokerstars zoom 10 and 25.
there's no need go out of your way to force aggression. pay attention to spots where their ranges are likely to be weak, and focus your aggression on those.

Thanks, makes perfect sense

Um we are sun running with.. GG's New Year Resolution Flipout. Coming 408th out of 14k free rollers.

And that brought an additional +$194 in our BR.

We'll take it with joy 😀)

BR: 764

Day 2:

Played a bit in the morning and in the night.

The two biggest pots lost today are actually both against fish.

Hand 1:

Villian cold calls at SB and donks bet twice b75 and check the river. I called the two bets with my straight draw, and overbetted it as a bluff after villian checks. Honestly, I am not sure what I was doing. I thought he was full of **** and by betting big I can scare him away. I guess if I think he's complete air, then a small bet would work. I shouldn't be trying to get villian off of a T as well. I don't think fish folds their T even against my big sizing. If I play the hand again I would probably b40 OTR. So yea, highkey got outplayed by villian. Nice trap OTR.

Hand 2:

All standard play by me OTF and OTT. At least I think so. OTR I clearly needed to go for value. B40 and faced a raise.

Again, I knew villian's line is extremely underbluffed. Couple reasons made me called the hand

1. I simply don't see any 2 in his range. It's hard to imagine how someone would b33 turn with a 2 especially when the A drops. Interestingly, solver does bet many 2x, and his combo mostly bets. Good job for finding the bluff, I guess. But only for overbets. For same reason I don't think his sets play in this way.

2. I saw an Ice cube next to his profile pic, thinking he might be tilted.

But yea maybe I should just always fold to river raise idk.

Dodged a pretty big pot. It was UTG vs LJ, and I really was feeling terrible after he 4bets. He is a 22vpip playing with like 6-7 3bet. I really thought he could only have AA. Was really to tilt fold if he goes triple barrell all ins. If I had shoved pre (solver mixes shoving and calling 50% 50%), I might have just taken the pot down. I dont know what to think.

Barely did anything today in terms of BR. But felt pretty good playing especially during the night. WWSF was about 53% today, which is decent.

BR: 770

Day 3:

Hella tough day again 😀

Had a few hands where I over-valued my hand, few hands where I could make the folds if I think twice, few hands where I certainly overbluffed at spots where villian would not underfold. Glad that I fought through the tilt though, at most losing 5 BIs and recovering quite a bit by the end.

Over this sample where I've played 32k hands and lose 2.5bb/100 post rake, my BB is a stunning -62 bb/100.

But I think I've spotted my leak and will adjust my play from now on. Not super annoyed by my pathetic record recently, but feel pretty excited

BR: 753

Day 4:

Didn't play a lot today, but felt quite happy with what I did overall. Up the 3 bet a little bit, being more aggressive overall, and being able to not get tilt after losing 1.5 BI and finally be up 1.5 BI at the end of the session. I have found that starting this thread that literally is just me helps with my mental game, somehow.

There are spots where I should definitely bluff my combo (solver approved and almost must do explotatively), but held back cause the pots are getting big. Yeah just bad mental game, afraid of failure, afraid of losing big pots, i dont know. I rationalize by saying that people my stakes underfold in big pots but, that's just not true, statistically proven, though I might feel like it.

Yea anyways, not a bad day

BR: 780 (post taking some rakeback)

Day 5:

Whap.

I mean yea run bad, bluff never seems to get through (solver dissaproves this combo to bluff, but as played OTR i think i must shove this, blocking AQ,JQ, unblocking flush draw, ran into the stone nuts that didn't 4bet preflop)

Unexplainable coolers, AA decides to flat. I literally thought opponent's line have no bluff but gotta be AT.

Preflop coolers:

But I dont think I can just be unlucky and lose 25 BI in a row.

Yea overcall sometimes:

(villian snap bxb b75, thought AK at least needs to consider a bit before using this size)

Overbluff:

(tbh i dont think this is too bad of a bluff. First its good to overbluff at my stakes, and using 4x to bluff is not a horrible idea heuristically speaking. Solver doesn't bluff 4x on this board, but would do it on A74T. On a flush draw board would only use 4x of flush draw, but on rainbow board would use all suits. So I guess yes overbluff indeed but idk)

Exploit 4b (thought timing tell) and thin value bet into set (thought villian never checks back a flush OTF and OTT).

But yea despite trying to exploit and trying to overbluff and trying to overcall my redline is still bad and only win 49% of the pot when seen flop. Like there gotta be something wrong with my game but I feel like im trying to do the right things but it just never works out. Feel like the theoretical knowledge is there and ive learned some exploitative concepts, but man im just ass. Not angry or anything just, im kinda ass bro.

very ass actually

BR: 713

Im like still pretty calm I would say and while playing I think through my decisions while down a lot, and didnt feel like punting at all. just the **** am i losing all the time homie NL10 literally shouldnt be hard.

The most frustating part is not knowing whether im just running bad or playing bad. I am leaning towards playing bad, i think statistically speaking i can't be unlucky and lose, what, 25 BI in a row.

but I simply cannot locate where im playing bad. Like two days ago i was pumped by figuring out my BB was losing that much and my BB sucks. but now im even losing more. GG blessed me with the new year resolution +180 on my BR but they cant bless me with a good brain that knows how to play the game 😀

yes, you ran bad. you're also spewing.

on the matter of bad runs, i once had a 20 BI downswing as a 10 BB/100 winner, and a 100k breakeven sample as a 6 BB/100 winner.
it's especially difficult to filter out the noise while you don't consider yourself established.

Hey thanks for the reponse.

I do feel like all the plays i shared are not way out of the line. Like even after second hand thought. Maybe that's exactly why im losing though, hahah

you're making very extreme adjustments based on weak data points.

he doesn't need to think for AK vs 65, what do you have checking behind the turn? flush? Tx? set that is scared of the flush? probably not.
Q6o is very close to a fold pre, but it's generally effective to open wider from SB. but then... you take a hand that's not even bottom of your range, and you 4b it just because the opponent took a little too long? you need a strong read to do that.
AJ and 43 i don't know, but i don't bluff the 43. when you take that line OTT, he has a strong range and can find many reasons to station the river. i'm not saying that it's "terrible", but i don't see it being clearly profitable, either.

besides the technical reasons, you're also opening yourself to frustration and tilt. that's really bad when you're still trying to find your footing.

Yea, I agree with most things that you said.

Q6o is like just very out of the line. I think I can exploitatively 4b more, combined with timing tells. But at least I need some sort of playability with suited hands/removal effect.

43 hand yea, overfolding must occur more OTT than OTR. I am not sure if he folds, say KJ, at certain frequency. If he does fold lots of Kx (which I think people do), then it could be profitable.

AJ pure overbluff OTF, at least need flush draw blocker to barrell.

65 hand I still think it's not horrible of a call. But if I want to respect and study solver output then 65 is a pure probe OTT for merged reasons I guess, and would not get into this spot. So this hand is at the minimum still played with a mistake. About the call, I unblock all the bluff combos with A,Q, J, and solver does call hands like 98, pure, over A8 and QQ for the same reason. I also just tend to give bxb line less credit and I think it's overbluffed. Ive heard its overbluffed overall, but I am not sure if thats the same case in 3BP. And for the insta bet (like literally within 0.5second), yea most players wouldn't check back flush/sets OTT being IP, so I guess villain doesn't think about those. But I mean if I were in the spot I at least need to think about Tx before betting big, so I thought it was sus. And b75 quite literally puts him only on AK, while having so much air in his range. But maybe just 3bp big sizing is just so underbluffed overall at my stakes that calling is just losing long term.

Tilt issue, yea. You totally right to point it out. I think there are variety versions of tilt, and my tilt doesnt come in the form of getting crazy and doing random plays, but in a general loss of confidence and increase of frustration which is definitely bad. Thanks for pointing it out. I will try to focus on each specific hand over the general result.

And 43 hand even if turn play is fine, river play is a bit too out of line. I think I still need to respect solver's result and use that as a guideline. Suppose I already exploitative barrell these mixing hands OTT as bluff, then OTR I will have so much good Jx combo to bluff. Yea don't need to be that extreme with my approach.

(Turn barrell)

(River barrell)

How is my redline still this bad though I dont really understand.

I happened to read your thread as well - I really like the way you analyze your hands and deal with coolers. I really appreciate your comments as well.

Hi there, since we’re playing at the same stakes, I think it’s interesting that you’re using GTO Wizard to review your hands.
Do you also do manual work, like using Flopzilla or Equilab for ranging during hand reviews?

Yea I am reviewing my hand by GTOW to see if it is solver approved. I have a terrible grasp of GTO, and I also dont think GTO is the right way to play nl10, but it's always good to learn, and I am content when I learn. But I mean I am a losing NL10 player, so there has to be some mistake with the way I study though, haha.

I dont know about these other things, would you recommend it?

Tilt recovery day

Day 7:

Today I just decided to be a punter. Was up 4BI due to sun run, and decided, nope, we gonna spread some love and give some free money away!

To begin with, today I decided to play 4 rnc table. WTF. Just out of nowhere decided to do that.

Let me put some of my spews up here.

Preflop got raised 11bb to 28bb, thought: how this guy raising this big? Screw you! Yea, guess what?

Preflop got raised 11bb to 20.5bb, thought: how this guy raising this small (and some non-existent timing tells. Maybe work in higher stakes, but if no one is trying to find 4b bluffs at my stake, tanking is just strong)? Screw you! Yea, guess what?

Making like elementary level mistakes. What am I trying to achieve by raising here? Literally saying: screw this, i know im behind, lets see god's will.

Clear turn overcall:

Is there a stronger line than b50 flop b75 turn on such a dry board?

And that summarizes my week 1: when running good, i can manage to waste it. when running bad, i can't manage to save it.

Goals for week 1

[x] 10k in volume: 22k/10k. Not a good thing actually, because im just tilt playing

[] Study 8 hours: 5.5h/8h. Got tilted and didn't want to study.

Goals for week 2:

[] 10k in volume, but need to stick to 2+2 (2 rnc and 2 reg). Cant just feel tilted and go 4 tables. Not goingt o help

[] Study 4 hours, mainly exploit stuff and mda stuff

[] Read The Mental Game of Poker 4 hours, because clearly that's where I am lacking the most.

BR: 718 post rakeback

The book, The Mental Game of Poker, is indeed a really good book.
Good luck.