Operation Doing it Right

[dev]

I wrote this for my first 10k checkup:

I play poker almost every day, just not so much online. I've been struggling with my online results for a couple of years now. Recently, I decided to try to get serious about playing cash games online, so I started with the ~ $80 I had in PS and I'm planning going 10k hands per level and moving up as the roll allows.

At the time I was using the 20 buy-in rule for lack of any better guideline. Recent results have enlightened me.

My 10k checkups:
http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...up-t67996.html
http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...-1-t68230.html
http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...nl-t68459.html

I started off 25nl running really bad. PokerEV had my expectation and total winnings over $100 apart after 1500 hands. It didn't actually turn up with any consistency until much later. It's not all because of luck, I made some big mistakes. This is going to happen again. I don't plan on quitting poker any time soon.

That said, running bad did wonders for my confidence. One of my biggest problems at 25nl has been dealing with shorties. They stack off so light I can't c-bet as much as I used to. If I was running well, I might not have spent so much time considering the situation, and I might still be c-betting into them too much or not pushing them AI a high % of the time (which is working wonders, btw).

After reading these
http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...59.html#649041
http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...gement%20balls
and a few other threads, I came to the conclusion that I'm too lax in my BR requirements.

So here's my plan:
To move up to [limit], I need to be beating the previous limit over a minimum of 10k hands for at least [winrate] and have at least [BIs] max for that limit.

 limit    winrate       BIs  $
 25nl   - 5ptbb/100   - 20 - $500
 50nl   - 4ptbb/100   - 30 - $1500
 100nl  - 3ptbb/100   - 40 - $4g
 200nl  - 2.5ptbb/100 - 50 - $10g
 400nl  - 2ptbb/100   - 60 - $24g
 600nl  - 2ptbb/100   - 70 - $42g
 1000nl - 2ptbb/100   - 80 - $80g

Over the first 10k I spent almost all of my poker time playing, over the second 10k I spent about 2/3 of the time playing and 1/3 of the time reading, studying, posting, etc.. Over the last 10k I spent more time reading, studying, posting, etc.. I plan to flatten out the trend there for a mix of 60% studying/40% playing. I'll be journaling the experience here.

[dev]

ok, yeah, so breaking even sucks.
Either I've just run really bad for all but a small portion of my 11.5k hands @ 25nl or I'm just not playing right.

I'm going to 4-table for a while, see if I can see anything I'm missing by multi-tabling. If I don't come up with spots where I'm spewing or losing value, I'll go back to 8-tabling fast tables instead of 12-tabling normal ones, just to see if anything is any different.

Edit: It looks like the fast tables are looser... I'm on it

[dev]

To hell with fast tables, I like taking my time. I've had a couple of decent sessions today (11ptbbs/100 over ~1k hands)

I play a session, then FTR for a while, then a session, then FTR. I think it's good for my game this way.

I'm setting aside a lot of hands each session to go over afterwards. I've been posting quite a few of them and getting some decent responses. I'm going to keep that up and keep following robb's and isf's stuff.

I bought a grinderschool account out of my roll. I'm going to try for 2 videos a day, the first while I'm doing cardio, the second before bed.

I'm running into an issue dealing with variance. I'm at 5.5bb/100 over my last 10k at 25nl. I play sessions around an hour long at about 500 hands/session. This puts me at an earn of about 13.75 per session. Each session I have about 10 hands where I win or lose that amount or more, so my sessions are hinging on one or two pots. I'm going over the histories of those hands, and I think I can improve my play there a bit, but it's still an issue. I'm going to play slightly longer sessions, and I'm going to avoid looking at my overall win or loss or bb/100 during a session until after it's all over.

edit: op manager seems broken, I'll try it agian later.
BR: $708

[dev]

On scripts: I am using stars planner, it's pretty cool. I couldn't get a betpot script working, it may have to do with my OS, still looking into it.

I played 6-max for a little while. Minus a couple of pretty rough coolers, it would have been a pretty good session. I played between 5-8 tables, settling on 6 for most of the session. I got almost 500 hands /hr, so that's about the same as FR for me. I'll experiment with different ways of playing one or the other or both at the same time.

I've been playing a bit with table/seat selection today. Since I play on stars I can't datamine. I sat at 10 cascaded tables, then after 10+ hands I would take one table aside and see how good my seat was. If the table dynamic was good, I would move it to the upper right of my screen. If it sucked I would uncheck auto-post and move it to the bottom right, to be replaced when the blinds came. I don't really know if it's making a major difference in my earn, especially since I've only done it for one session < 500 hands. I do know that it's getting me to focus more on who's sitting next to me, and that's good.

BR:766.20

[XTR1000]

GL on ur OP dude, from what u´ve posted I´m sure you´ll jump into 50NL pretty soon.

With no offense, it seems like you´re getting a bit too fancy preflop now and then, overestimating your oppositions level of thinking/outleveling yourself. I´m in the same boat ready to join anonymous FPSoholics, would be great to discuss some non-standards here.

[dev]

GL on ur OP dude, from what u´ve posted I´m sure you´ll jump into 50NL pretty soon.

With no offense, it seems like you´re getting a bit too fancy preflop now and then, overestimating your oppositions level of thinking/outleveling yourself. I´m in the same boat ready to join anonymous FPSoholics, would be great to discuss some non-standards here.

Thanks!

I might discuss some non-standard hands in the regular forums and link them here, that way they get a bit more exposure. If you start an FPS Anonymous group, let me know (check out the flopped str8 thread in FR).

[dev]

I checked my last 10k in pokergrapher... 1.5bb/100, It feels like I'm running REALLY bad, but over this many hands? I lost almost all my profit from my~2k hands today at the end of my session by taking 3 beats at the same time 10-tabling. My graph looks like a goddamn sine wave.


I'm posting a lot, I'm watching grinderschool videos, I'm spending time looking over my hands and my stats after each session... I'm running out of ideas on how to stop running bad.

I kinda want to play fewer tables, but I get a little ansy, and if I'm right that this is just sick variance, then fewer tables isn't really the answer. I'll compromise and go with 6-8 tables and work on my table selection.

I loaned a friend $20 out of the roll, don't know whether it's coming back on stars on in that weird green paper form, so

BR=740.93

On one positive note, I'm gaining fpps and vpps pretty quick since I've been playing like 10k hands a week. Almost to gold... yippee.

[dev]

Still struggling, but things are looking up ever-so-slightly:

It seems whenever I'm having a really good session I take a couple beats at the end... Hope sucks, so I'm going to try to keep logic-ing my way thru it.

I'm mixing PL and NL tables a lot. I used to get annoyed when I accidentally joined a PL table, but the play is considerably looser, so now I play a mix. The only adjustments I make is that I sometimes just fold smaller pairs in EP instead of raising (when I have enough PL hands in PT I'm going to check on this), I don't 3-bet quite as light, and I tend to c-bet pot on the flop and turn rather than my usual 9/10 and 3/4 bets.

XTR's idea of posting unconventional hands has already helped, even tho I haven't gotten any responses from them. I pull HHs while playing anyway, but the suggestion made me pull all the non-standard plays I made. I went over them to post them and realize I was completely out of my mind a fair amount of the time. When and where is the next FPSer's anonymous meeting?

Here's the two threads where I'm about to get drawn and quartered:
http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...ds-t68733.html
http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...-2-t68734.html

Roll: $838.10 after loaning a buddy $20 that ill get back in cash (oh well)
Also, I'm roughly 4200 hands from gold star.

[dev]

Last night's thoughts:
http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...ts-t68729.html
after reading this post I got the idea that my winrate may have gone down so much from 10nl to 25nl because my postflop play is suffering from playing so many tables... Gonna go down to 6 for a while I think....

Today's results:
Played some 6-max today, ran hideously bad at the beginning, dropped almost 5 buy-ins within 200 hands. I played a total of 660 hands and lost a total of $37. So it wasn't the catastrophic session it looked like at the beginning, but it still sucked. I'm going to go work out then it's back to FR for the night.

BR = 851.75

[dev]

So I played FR for a little while, only like 300 hands or so. It didn't go well. Today I tried 6-max again. I played 5-6 fast 6max tables, and I ran horribly. I went -$85 net run according to pokerEV. I had a guy AI on a K82r board where I had AA and he had JTo, and the board ran out 9 7 for an almost 3 buyin pot. It was terrible, but I actually made money. I played three sessions, and I decided the game was good. Despite the results, and the laggy style I've been playing in it, the game was too damn good to pass up. So today I ran 22/19 and beat the game for over 7ptbb/100 over 1700 hands despite the beats. I think I've found a new home at 6-max.

pros to playing 6 fast 6-max tables as opposed to 8-12 FR normal speed tables:
ability to make easy decisions while considering hard ones (tiled rather than cascaded tables)
more hands! I'm actually getting 500+ hands in per hours 6-tabling fast 6max tables, as opposed to slightly less than 500 at 10-12 FR normal speed tables.
It's more fun, because I get to be a complete laggtard compared to FR, and I'm only opening up my ranges slightly in LP.

cons:
I think I might burn out quicker. 2k hands might be a bit much on days when I work or go out.
Faster tables mean faster decisions and might mean some bad mistakes, time will tell whether this outweighs the pros

BR=$904

[dev]

I hadn't posted hands in a while, so I spent about half an hour last night formatting and posting some more. I'll probably do that again tonight since I don't have many 6-max hands posted.

up to 5500 hands a@ 6-max, and running hot. I'm running at almost 10ptbb/100 22/19/8. I'm a laggtard.

I broke the 1g mark today, goldstar VIP as well.

BR=1081.35

[XTR1000]

congrats on hitting 1k!

The next ones will be much easier

[dev]

played 1700 hands today, broke 50k overall thru 5nl (10k), 10nl (10k), 25nl FR(21k), 25nl 6m (9k).


I'm sitting here in the middle of a really rough session, watching opponents make mistake after mistake. I realize how much value they're losing against me. This session could be so much worse if only they knew how to bet their hands. So just like that I went from "If I see one more donkey slow-play QQ preflop and check down on a ragged out board, I'm going to puke" to, "boy am I glad these people have shit where their brains should be!"

BR=1276

[dev]

long day... I was up 7 buyins, now more like 1.5. I played 4k hands, which is just too much. I burned out then kept playing since I was so close to the 1500 mark... amateur fucking move.

BR=1305

[BankItDrew]

keep up the great work man, good luck.

[dev]

My graph for wednesday, if I made one, would look like a bell curve. I played far too long, well past my threshhold. I was just so close to the 1500 mark and I wanted to move up on the next day. Yesterday sucked, too.

So in order to stay focused on the poker, rather than the results, I've banned myself from looking at how well I'm doing while I play. It was actually really hard at first to not look at how I was doing on the session. I found myself keeping track in my head and having to steel my will against it. It was as automatic as counting the pot. So now I find myself having to focus on not keeping track of my results. How in the world did this happen?

BR=1172

[XTR1000]

So in order to stay focused on the poker, rather than the results, I've banned myself from looking at how well I'm doing while I play.

Thats something I don´t do enough. Thanks for the reminder

[dev]

Someone tell me this is normal.
my first 15k at 6max 25nl:

That's a 13BI downswing over the last 3k hands.

[grnydrowave2]

I had a similar experience when moving up to 50nl. But then, I wasn't playing very well at the time. Violent swings can be more common than you think, but it's still worth examining how you were playing the last 3k hands. Have a session review. Post some hands. Otherwise, nobody can tell if you it's normal or not.

If you can't identify a major leak, then I suppose you can just blame the variance and fight through it.

[XTR1000]

Someone tell me this is normal.

{insert random long term phrase}

take it like man, ugly things happen.

[dev]

I haven't posted in like a week, I've been running bad and took a bit of a break.

I played a bunch of tourneys today to change things up. It was like banging my head up against a wall for 4 hours busting out before the bubble in EVERY tourney right up until the end. In the last three I played, turbo sngs, I made back all the buyins and then still ended up with a $100+ profit. Good ending to a rough day. I can't believe I thought tourneys would de-stress me a bit, wtf was I thinking?

Tourneys are about being able to pour your heart into something totally and fully and being ok with falure. I don't know if I can do that day-in and day-out.

Tomorrow it's back to $25 FR.

BR= ~1150

[dev]

Today went pretty well. I am trying not to focus on a specific # of hands because I was worried about multitabling getting in the way of profits. I started my sessions today by getting on the waiting lists of ~15 of the loosest 25nl FR tables on stars. When the prompt comes up for me to hop on a table, if I feel I can take another table, I take it. I actually played more hands/hour than I have since i switched back to FR, and because I decided to tighten up just a little bit, I was fine. I may have pissed off a player or two by making them wait a bit because there were a couple decisions I took my time on (making a bunch of other tables wait).

I ran 16/12/3 over 1600 hands
I ended up 3 buyins, despite running -2 buyins on all-ins.

BR=1224.70

[dev]

Op = over

I pulled most of my roll out because I'm going to vegas in a couple weeks. When I come back I'll decide whether to redeposit or rebuild it. It's likely that I'll just rebuild it since I stumbled so much over the past couple weeks. Maybe I'll start a discussion on it...