Started a €150 to €10k Holdem challenge

PokerStars - $0.25 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 108.6 BB (VPIP: 27.27, PFR: 23.03, 3Bet Preflop: 10.00, Hands: 169)
BTN: 121.96 BB (VPIP: 31.91, PFR: 29.26, 3Bet Preflop: 13.43, Hands: 198)
SB: 165.6 BB (VPIP: 19.43, PFR: 17.06, 3Bet Preflop: 4.60, Hands: 211)
BB: 101.4 BB (VPIP: 23.08, PFR: 23.08, 3Bet Preflop: 16.67, Hands: 15)
UTG: 117.76 BB (VPIP: 27.59, PFR: 18.39, 3Bet Preflop: 3.23, Hands: 92)
Hero (MP): 100 BB

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has A♠ A♥

fold, Hero raises to 2 BB, CO raises to 6 BB, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 19.2 BB, CO calls 13.2 BB

Flop: (39.8 BB, 2 players) 2♥ 5♦ K♠
Hero bets 9.48 BB, CO calls 9.48 BB

Turn: (58.76 BB, 2 players) T♥
Hero bets 18.52 BB, CO raises to 79.92 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 52.8 BB and is all-in

River: (201.4 BB, 2 players) A♦

So been doing a little bit of exploring on different sites lately, this time on Stars global. Not planning on staying there with significant volume for now, but it's honestly kind of refreshing to just do some sight seeing even if it probably isn't the instant highest EV choice to make as a player. Also wanted to kind of see how hard it is there to find tables that are good enough after rake not to quit compared to my normal site. Other personal reasons to have some of my BR in more than just one basket lol.

This one probably just gonna have to call on the turn anyways, but I absolutely hated the spot. Like what are their bluffs that aren't high equity fd or combo draws? What better hands of mine that they don't block are they trying to make me fold? Or why would KX jam as value against a range that's totally uncapped? Are there even that many AK in their range since in reality it mostly just jams pre? The thing is, on my normal site with a smaller player pool I have thousands of hands of HUD data on pretty much everyone of "importance", but here on Stars for now just have to go with some general idea/guessing.

So I guess this turn call by me might still be slightly +EV IRL as well, but in reality I don't think it would be crazy to start at least considering folding here with the ace of hearts.

Haven't checked it out with the solver yet. Like always, I try not to check any spots of interest before re-thinking them through a few times 😃

And since no one ever cares about hands, only graphs, here we are. Two thirds of this "challenge" now done, so far. Might get back below that soon, I don't have a good feeling for some reason 😃

[image]pNTyqBc.PNG[/im

..]

[image]grqrBzE.PNG[/im

..]

Lol, that's the 100% rakeback from Coin after 1020 hands of 25NL ante I played there earlier this week. Safe to say that this month is going to be my first and last month playing there, unless something surprising happens.

I'm not gonna go and complain about the software on this blog too much, but I do find it hilarious that CP probably paid money to the developers instead of the developers paying money to CP for launching it.

Just remembered this blog existed. Apologies for not updating. Been lazy with volume lately, also had some work to do. Like actual work and then some work on my mental well-being. Still been studying quite a bit. It's sometimes hard for me to put in some real volume. Like for an example I figure out some kind of a poker related concept or information I hadn't heard of or thought about before, and then I just get into a rabbit hole and spend hours or days trying to learn more about it by node locking, studying the data that I have, and then just putting some numbers in a spread sheet. Then after 6 hours of doing that I just remember that I was supposed to play and put in some effort to increase my BR instead of studying some spots that should not be that high up in my list of priorities.

However, here's some updates.

Since the start:

By stake:

March:

Hand:

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

UTG: 160.6 BB (VPIP: 41.54, PFR: 9.23, 3Bet Preflop: 0.99, Hands: 263)
CO: 100 BB (VPIP: 29.17, PFR: 22.32, 3Bet Preflop: 8.00, Hands: 341)
BTN: 98.65 BB (VPIP: 58.39, PFR: 21.12, 3Bet Preflop: 6.78, Hands: 163)
SB: 153.05 BB (VPIP: 22.34, PFR: 15.38, 3Bet Preflop: 7.25, Hands: 568)
Hero (BB): 132 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

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

fold, CO raises to 2.5 BB, fold, fold, Hero raises to 13 BB, CO calls 10.5 BB

Flop: (26.5 BB, 2 players) 9♠ 3♠ 6♥
Hero checks, CO checks

Turn: (26.5 BB, 2 players) 2♦
Hero bets 19.85 BB, CO raises to 45.7 BB, Hero calls 25.85 BB

River: (117.9 BB, 2 players) K♣
Hero checks, CO checks

The F are we gonna do against that turn raise? Should usually cbet like half pot OTF with TT and JJ, then more checking with QQ+, but my "pool read" was that the IP will stab way more frequently than the solver and also with a pretty weak range, since in these games people really don't like to fold their garbage to 3bets from the blinds but still 4bet their JJ+ a lot - therefore I tend to default to just trying to XR-jam my overpairs TT included here most of the time. This time my read was apparently off since they surprisingly checked back their 9X. A sim that isn't nodelocked would mostly 3bet jam the turn and mix folds and calls, but for some reason I really don't like jamming here against humans who probably don't find that kind of a raise with AsXs very easily.

Lazy volume lately. Not much to go until 10k complete. Still little 50NL, withdrew a good chunk lately due to tilt. Also some health issues. Even dropped down to 10NL for a little bit since I find it a place where I can just C-game click buttons and still print. Not planning on doing it much more in the near future bc it feels like I'm starting to find my mojo again, yesterday and today took some 50NL as well but no stories to tell about it.

There is something psychological about running at some stake extremely hot and then not wanting to play higher stakes since it feels like the run stops immediately. I know that's irrational, but here's my 10NL graph since I dropped it for the most part in early December. Pretty carzy and I know it's not just because of an 'edge' lol.

Nice results

Please keep posting hands and updates really enjoy reading your thoughts on hands!

Good luck this month

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

Hero (CO): 298.4 BB
BTN: 100 BB (VPIP: 15.55, PFR: 12.42, 3Bet Preflop: 8.19, Hands: 10, 672)
SB: 136 BB (VPIP: 21.66, PFR: 18.05, 3Bet Preflop: 12.63, Hands: 284)
BB: 99 BB (VPIP: 20.19, PFR: 14.71, 3Bet Preflop: 6.80, Hands: 4, 260)
UTG: 102.85 BB (VPIP: 18.75, PFR: 16.67, 3Bet Preflop: 8.11, Hands: 99)
MP: 100 BB (VPIP: 27.30, PFR: 18.70, 3Bet Preflop: 8.48, Hands: 1, 014)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has A♣ 2♣

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

Flop: (4.5 BB, 2 players) J♦ 2♠ K♥
BB checks, Hero bets 5.6 BB, BB raises to 15.95 BB, Hero raises to 26.3 BB, BB calls 10.35 BB

Turn: (57.1 BB, 2 players) 7♥
BB checks, Hero checks

River: (57.1 BB, 2 players) J♥
BB bets 42.8 BB, Hero calls 42.8 BB

OK so here is probably the carziest hand of the month, and yes I know it's not GTO, not even remotely, but I'll try to explain how it happened. First of all, this particular BB villain isn't very good. I have recently sized down my RFI's to just minraise from CO and BTN, and that means we generally have to overbet more flops if we wanna simplify to just one size per flop strat. 2X without backdoors probably isn't there very often as a bluff on a rainbow board like this, but in practice it most likely works well because it dust offs a lot of hands that aren't KX here. Second, this villain has seen me OB cbet some flops recently, and they always tanked against it. To me, that indicates that they were surprised to see that sizing, and therefore makes me think they don't realize it's a thing in quite a few boards especially if IP minraised preflop LP. A good reg would know there's virtually no raises to those cbets on rainbow flops against an overbet. That makes me think this villain just decided this is enough of my OB bullshit and raises against it with a lot of junk, and therefore I re-block it in order to take our ranges and the entire game tree to the jungle. I think I could just cbet the turn here to dust off some of their better than my BS hands, but I thought it's OK just to XB and call down all brick rivers and jam against all checks when their OESD does not complete. Not having a heart myself on the river is just a minor minus, but pretty minor compared to their river sizing that leaves like 20 bb behind for them, which I think is a pretty massive tell indicating they don't want to lose all of it with their bluffs when I call. But yeah, kinda crazy hand. Timings played a big role here as well, they tank raised the flop, fairly quick called the flop 3 bet, snap checked the turn, and then tank bet the river. The jack on the river is also obv excellent for us in ruling out the number of possible KJ combos in their range.

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

Hero (BTN): 125.45 BB
SB: 210.7 BB (VPIP: 55.52, PFR: 1.95, 3Bet Preflop: 0.29, Hands: 631)
BB: 482.5 BB (VPIP: 82.98, PFR: 6.38, 3Bet Preflop: 2.86, Hands: 49)
UTG: 100 BB (VPIP: 17.77, PFR: 12.34, 3Bet Preflop: 3.67, Hands: 3,107)
CO: 205.5 BB (VPIP: 37.06, PFR: 23.75, 3Bet Preflop: 7.51, Hands: 2,196)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 6♠ J♠

fold, CO calls 1 BB, Hero raises to 4 BB, fold, BB calls 3 BB, CO calls 3 BB

Flop: (12.5 BB, 3 players) J♥ 5♥ T♥
BB bets 6.25 BB, fold, Hero raises to 20.85 BB, BB calls 14.6 BB

Turn: (54.2 BB, 2 players) K♦
BB bets 27.1 BB, Hero raises to 100.6 BB, BB calls 73.5 BB

River: (255.4 BB, 2 players) 3♣

Yayyyy... If they play crazy town bingo, we play even crazier bingo. Kinda like the old school board coverage heuristic. If they play high cards, we play low cards.

Thanks for posting. It's refreshing to see some winning here.

Most popular sites are just a rake trap nowadays, I thought coin would be different, I was entertaining about playing there, but it looks like it turned into another unbeatable site.

I guess the only online sites left that looks somewhat winable are small sites, and it looks like we still need to put in the work to find such a site with okay volume, winable after rake + rakeback, and not a bot pools.

A question for u, how is poker right now in ur life? Do u consider trying to make it in poker, or just consider it as a side hustle, and a goal to complete?

Hi thanks for the comment. I'm just playing and studying right now, I consider it basically a minimum wage side hustle that I still enjoy doing. I don't really have any goals rn. At some point I had more ambition to move up in stakes quicker, but then I realized this can become pretty stressful if I'm always on the edge of having to move up or move down based on how I've been running lately. If I one day manage to move up to just 50NL or 100NL+, then happy days, but I'm not losing my sleep over thinking about that obsessively. After all I'm nowhere near as good as my graphs might suggest, they are mostly from an absurdly soft site.

Thanks for the answer. And I have the same perspective as u about poker nowadays, the online grinding poker dream is over. I think its either treating it as somewhat a casual hobby as u said, or willing to put in the ton of work required to reach high stake (MTT is the softest, and doable for a normie) but yet the return is probably not worth the work.

I think NL50-100 is still doable even as a side hustle, but aside from working on our games, the important part is finding volume on good sites, and we have to accept that the uncertainty is high.

This 10k "challenge" is now complete. Took a bit less than a year, but hey what can you do with a relatively low monthly volume and shotting only 10k hands at 50NL. EV adjusted not there yet, but EV is not a thing you can use to buy stuff with. Spring has been pretty quiet, but the volume of the last two weeks has been really good for me since I just decided I need to play more in order for the BR grow faster than I'm withdrawing. Someone might say playing 400k hands of micros is crazy, but I liked it and it's been a pretty therapeutic hobby that's brought me some needed extra money as well. About 45 stacks above EV and I'll take it, but I have been on the other side of that variance before lol.

Total in euros:

Total in bb's:

By stake:

Some basic stats by stake:

Heads up has been less than 3 percent of the total volume, but it has contributed to about 7 percent of the final result:

My heads up stats lol. You can kinda get the idea of what I've found as a good baseline strategy against those players who have been willing to give action. Most of the time I get to play it only when I open a new table or a table is about to break. Most regs don't play it all and against regs those stats would probably look tighter, depending on how well they understand the concept of "preflop equity denial". Not a heads up expert myself either, but I do study it nodelocked every once in a while both pre and post

I'm not sure I'm going to keep updating here. Maybe yes, but probably not posting any hands or graphs anymore before they are at 50NL+. I'm pretty close to rolled enough to start taking it on the side again, mostly because I've been putting a ton of volume the last week or two, which is the only way I can grow my BR clearly faster than I'm withdrawing. So next week probably, but now I'm hitting the grass for a few days at least. Everyone have nice summer! I will post a few fun hands in a bit but not rn since this post is already a wall.

100k challenge and finally move up to where they respek ur raizes