Roberts journey to 3/6 NL (blog)

[Irisheyes]

Rob whats your standard OOP set line in a pot that someone else raised?

[Robert]

Against a complete unknown I usually lead. Against donks I often c/r. I actually dont have any standard line, I choose a different one for every situation, but I mostly lead. I almost never slowplay a set on the flop - I think this a leak (albeit a small one), because slowplaying sets can have its merits on certain boards in certain situations.

[Irisheyes]

ok ty

[Robert]

Played 3600 hands today (record for me!) and made ~3 buyins. Pretty meh actually, I was running really bad most of the time, got no action on my good hands and way to much on my wiffed hands. And on one of my tables I played a reallly bad shortstack HU and he was so lucky I doubled him up 3 or 4 times, loosing around 1.5 buyin (I tilted a bit in the end against him). I have to stop playing HU, I always loose when I play - I have to quit when a table gets 3-handed or HU.

I think I'll write a post about some of the leaks I'm aware that I have - maybe it will help me fix them.

Good night and good cards!

[sandstorm]

dunno if you've written it already, but which BR requirement are you using / planning to use?

[Robert]

I would say at least 20 buyins for NL100 (I have about 35 now), I will use 25 buyins for NL200 (I move up when I have $5000, before that I'll maybe start taking shots by mixing in some NL200 tables). I heard that NL400 is where the game gets really aggressive and therefore has more variance, so I think you need at least 30 buyins (if not more) to be secure. I'll probably start taking shots already when I have 8k-10k (20-25 buyins) though. The same goes for NL600. I heard that the biggest leap is from NL600 to NL1000 and that the later game is really swingy, so I think you need at least 50 buyins to be comfortable at this limit.
Note that I do not have any experience playing anything above NL200, but these are my thoughts (based on reading FTR and 2+2) about BR requirements for higher limits.

[sandstorm]

thanks for your thoughts, i'm currently in the 10k area (playing 5-max NL) and have started taking some stabs at 400NL because i can find some really good tables. dunno if should really

[Robert]

If you can find some juicy tables NL400 with 10k, you should defenitly take a shot at it (unless you tilt easily when you loose a bigger part of your BR than normal). Btw, hows the action on Pokerroom skins?

[sandstorm]

kinda good sometimes, starting to dry up at these limits i guess. no 600 action at all most of the time.

[Hate]

I've been reading this everytime there are new posts, and I have to say you play very little. 10k hands in 48 days is too little. Congrats on your progress though, but at this rate, you'll be moving along at a snail's pace

[ilikeaces86]

I've been reading this everytime there are new posts, and I have to say you play very little. 10k hands in 48 days is too little. Congrats on your progress though, but at this rate, you'll be moving along at a snail's pace

Agreed. When I was first building my roll I played somewhere between 70 and 80 hours a week.

[paulwright]

Guys, I don't understand - what's the hurry? What exactly is Robert supposed to be racing toward? Where is the finish line? Unless there was something in this post I missed where he set some target, shouldn't he just play when he has time and is comfortable and can fit his poker in with the rest of his life?

[ilikeaces86]

Guys, I understand he is in a hurry to get rich. Exactly what Robert supposed is to be racing toward.

FYP

[paulwright]

LOL - ok - maybe he is but I havent picked up on that from him...

[WillburForce]

Hey,

I'm new to FTR. I'm about to start playing some serious poker. Read through your posts. Really helpful.

My BR = £200.00
Where you are looks a long way off........

Keep up the blog. As I said really helpful and interesting

[Robert]

Hate and Ilikeaces are right. I have been playing way to little. But I'm on pace to change that, been playing 6k hands the last 4 days, I hope I can keep it up. But tbh I've had a lot of life issues lately (gf trouble etc), which have taken a lot of my time and energy. Its also nice to see that someone is reading my blog, it actually motivates me to play a lot more. Thx guys!

[Robert]

Also I've been pulling way to much money out of my BR the last couple of months, which has prevented me to go up in stakes. I'll stop doing that now, and only pull out my monthly rakeback to life of

[Robert]

Played another thousand hands - and lost close to 4 buyins, ewwww. I'm on a downswing. I'm both running bad, but I also now that I'm playing bad too - I can feel it. My confidence is shattered at the moment to be honest. I think I'll drop down to 4 tables next time I play to regain my focus and gain some confidence. I also think I'm long overdue moving up, NL100 is boring me lately (although I've not made any money my last 7k hands, heh). I might be taking a shot by the end of this week using some very thorough table selection.

Wish me luck in whatever I do.

Good night and good luck!

[Robert]

Wooohaaa, got my new monitor today, and it totally kicks ass. I already played 600 hands on it, and its awesome. Poker wise its not going so nice though. I'm still running as shit and it sucks. My roll is around 3k now (I dont know the excact ammount, because some of the money are still in my bank account after I closed my first party account). I'll try to 4-table an hour or two when I get back tonight and get some confidence back and play some good poker.

[gabe]

robert make yourself play alot more !

[lolzzz_321]

robert make yourself play alot more !

[PU$$Y]

sup bro

[lolzzz_321]

I saw you sign on AIM for like 2 secs last night

[Fnord]

Great thread, first read.

A couple thoughts:

o For what it's worth my guideline on Bankroll is to play at a level where you're beating the game, but can drop 10 buy-ins and not have it really screw you up.

o Game/seat selection is under-rated. Win-rates are over-rated.

o Just moved up to 200NL short myself

[Robert]

Nice of you comming by fnord, I like your company

I agree totally with your two first points. Especially the one about game/table selection. Btw how do you table select fnord? Are you using Sixthsense?

And btw, are you saying that you are shortstacking the NL200 game? If that's the case, then why not play full stacked?

[lolzzz_321]

I think he means shorthanded.

[Fnord]

I agree totally with your two first points. Especially the one about game/table selection. Btw how do you table select fnord? Are you using Sixthsense?

o If you can't spot the sucker at the table it's you. This isn't an ego thing as there is a good chance the only big winner at the table is Dikshit
o If you have position on an action player, don't leave until you're tired, he leaves or he busts.
o Don't over-estimate your edge against an active-thinking player with position on you getting into a lot of your pots. Position can turn an ATM machine into a lukewarm prospect with much grief. Life is too short for bad table mojo grief. Leave that problem to the tourney donks.

[Robert]

Hi there, its been a while since I last updated this blog. I just played a session and thought it was time for an update both on my poker journey but also for a short update on my life.

Life first. I started on my 3rd year of lawschool at university last friday and I've been really busy since. Also I started on my new job at Denmarks biggest lawfirm two weeks ago. Since I will be working there for ~15 hours a week on top of studying it looks like I'm gonna be pretty busy the rest of the year and onward. Besides being pretty busy the last week I've also had some major problems with my girlfriend lately and I've been depressed because of it (which has resulted in me not having any motivation to play poker) . Its going better now though, and I hope that our problems will be wholly fixed before not to long.

Although things have been pretty busy thus far this month, I've been able to squeeze some poker into my schedule. Thus far I've played around 2500 hands this month (september) running at 8-9 PTBB/100. I started out with a couple of reallly bad sessions this month (lots'o bad beats mixed up with a couple of bad moves), but things are looking good now. I will be happy if I can end up playing a total 15k hands this month - I know its not much, but I cant really play more with my tight schedule. If I run well (>5PTBB/100) I'll probably be ready for NL200 by the end of september.
I've found out that the perfect number of tables for me atm is 5 (or 4 if I feel tired but still want to play). I can manage 6 tables, but the quality of my play decreases drasticly when I switch from 5 to 6 tables - I especially miss out on all those important river valuebets that are so important for your winrate at small stakes.
A thing I need to focus on in my game is how I play in small pots. I think lately, because of multitabling and the lack of focus thereof, I've been missing out on a lot value in the small pots I play. In my last thousand hands or so I've focused more on playing well in small pots and applying more aggression when people seem weak in limped pots - and it seems to work good this far, I feel I pick up a lot of +EV I've missed out on before.
I've also tightened up my standards for calling raises preflop, which always has been a big leak for me.

Time to sleep now. Good night and good cards to you!

[Robert]

Another 600 hands and 1 buyin won. A couple of bad beats and one questionable hand played by me (I was in doubt how far to go with TPGK against a donk, the hands is posted in the SH forum). So all in all a good session. I wanted to play longer, but I'm going out now to a party to have some fun. I'll play again tomorrow.

Have a good night at the tables!

[Robert]

Just tiltet away 2 buyins of my BR. Meh, I hate myself when I do this, luckily it happens very rarely nowadays.

My bankroll is ~$3600 now. I just want to be up at 4k by the end of the month so I can start taking shots at NL200 when I'm feeling good.

[Robert]

September has been pretty meager so far: 6.5k hands and up only 1.5 buyin. Pretty boring almost breaking even. I think the reason for me breaking even is a mix of variance, some tilt and some bad play. I think I'll take a break for the next couple of days, but I'll be back at the tables on sunday and continue to grind my way through this breakeven stretch.

[Pingviini]

Thinking clearly and knowing when to stop are one of the most important things a poker player has to learn.

[Robert]

I've got my own blog now over at livejournal.com and I will continue this blog over there. I'll try to make my journal more interesting from now on, updating more and writing more theory/strategy posts.
Feel free to continue commenting in this post though!

LINK: http://robertandersen.livejournal.com/