Summer poker diary

[Richard~]

I have A LOT of thoughts in my head regarding this little summer poker project of mine. This little first week of me playing has shown that I really need some place to jolt down my thoughts and proccess, so I'll make a thread for it. Maybe I can share something about mindset and goals or maybe I can learn something. I'll update with some content when I have time, just wanted to start by creating some framework, if you want to read what i share that's great and if you don't, that's fine to =P

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First of all, what am I doing?

I am currently living the pretty simple life of trying to wake up in the morning, hit the gym, come back home and play poker. I'm planning to do this for the summer and as of now the plan is to withdraw my entire bankroll once my studies start again


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How am I doing it?

Being a poor student I actually struck a deal with my rent money, there is full transparency and regardless I'm paying the around 580$ as delayed rent in the beginning of september. This means what I'm doing is not optimal and definitely taking a shot, think of that how you will but for me it helps with that little extra bit of motivation and be serious about this now feeling.

There's obviously always a possibility that I bust since i've decided this is taking a shot meaning I'm not gonna stop playing 5 dollar freezeouts even if my bankroll eventually suffers. Should worst come to worst I have 2 teaching jobs (substitute and online coach) waiting for me once school starts again so I guess I'll have to work extra for a month in that case, again everyone involved has accepted these conditions and is very supportive

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Why am I doing this?

I havn't played poker in a while, I used to be kinda decent at it. Also I'm a dancer, that means I take a number of dance classes, these cost a lot of money and if I don't make money over summer it's very doubtful I'd be able to pay up 600 dollars for dance classes come autumn. Also I'm kinda bored =P

I'll say this again so people don't think I'm too crazy, this is a deal for me with full transparency, where the only things I stand to lose is time and free time come autumn because I have to work. Optimally I would have been accepted for some kind of summer job but this is arguably more fun albeit less profitable.

[Richard~]

Streaming controversy

I've been streaming and I've had this guy approach me asking for stars $ in return for paypal. Started out pretty normal and he gave me a couple of good deals on 15 dollar transactions to his stars account. Now I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do because he seems rather pushy about it, claims he can't deposit to stars from his credit card, can't withdraw money from paypal since he can't confirm his card and "accidently" double deposited to my account using his phone.

The individual in question is an 18 year old Australian streamer, I've seen his stream, it's decent, probably slightly more views than me. As I've understood it Australia and poker is pretty controversial atm, 888 is banned and pokerstars will possibly end up banned quite soon. There are a couple unpleasant scenarios here, either he is attempting to use me for some kind of money laundering, or he's just pretty incompetant when it comes to money, seems...not too unlikely when it comes to an 18 year old hobby poker player, either way I'm not a fan because I don't want to be held responsable for whatever he's up to or not up to, lets see if I can save this relationship since connections with streamers is a good tool for me starting out...we'll see.

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Money money money

currently we're at the following numbers

Party ~ ca 160 dollars
Titan ~ ca 100 euros
Stars ~ ca 740 dollars
Paypal ~ ca 140 dollars

Added up we're just north of 1000 dollars, not bad not bad. I seem to have been binking on stars a lot even tho I consider that site tougher than the other two, this leads to especially my titan bankroll sorta bleeding down. not the end of the world, just gotta find a way to get some of that juicy juicy titan money

Current goals are:

1: 1000 dollar bankroll
2. 1500 dollar bankroll

I completed the first one so I set the second one, that's what I'm shooting for right now. An unspoken goal is also to not drop back below 1000

[Richard~]

6 max Plo8/Nlo8 and me

Arguably my most profitable game, I've had several 1000.000+ stacks, two final tables at the same time, 4 final tables I think in total over 9 sessions, so what's the deal here?

Either I'm quite good at the game, or everyone else is quite bad, most likely a bit of a combination, lets quickly talk about how I approach these. I'm gonna bring up 3 bullet points that I think are characteristic for my game, maybe more bullet points later on. I do not claim to be a PLO8 beast, I don't charge anything for this info, this is merely my thoughts, as good or bad as I am.

- Check your ego at the door, your stack is fragile as fuck. No stack is safe, don't try to control the madness, you will bust and it will hurt, deal with it. Playing the final two tables absolutely suck but if you don't dare to push hard at this point in the tournament it is going to suck so much more. There is nothing more fun than playing a big stack vs scared short stacks late in these tournaments.

- I've heard people say omaha8 is a game of making the nuts and getting paid for them, I disagree. For me it's partly a game of making nut type or low nut type hands and aiming to get more than my share of the equity for that pot (often by taking lines to push opponents away from chopped pots) and partly by freerolling the spewy players or making the straight up nuts. More often tho it's a game of overrepping my hand...constantly...over and over...if I read a non nutted range from my opponent, if a villain is EVER comfortable playing me post flop I've fucked up, opponents are OFTEN readable postflop so I aim to follow their lines and ranges closely

- Hand selection is hard, I don't know enough about hand selection, I know there was a spot where villains A1087 had an edge preflop against my A24Q or whatever I had which surprised me, sitting at tables with supernovas reshipping 40 bigs with hands I probably wouldn't even call with preflop makes me thing I need to learn more about half and half hands. Generelly tho look for the strength of your hand for the low and for the high often seperately. 789T double suited is garbage that people overplay, you're not gonna make any good flushes and even if you hit the end of the straight that isn't the bad end of the straight that often means you're chopping vs a low. Always look to identify is villain taking a line that smells like a high hand or a low hand and pressure accordingly, similarly try not to be obvious regarding when hand you're going for


This got really messy and it's just rough thoughts. I'll clean it up later a bit so it makes more sense, there is a lot when to cover when it comes to omaha8. for me what I believe is important is to be absolutely fearless and pounce on weakness (although don't randomly spew ofc, just go for that little extra bit of equity that isn't yours by right). Your stack isnt' holy, it's a tournament, your tournament life means nothing, statistically you're gonna lose it a large %age of the time, don't fight this, accept it and make the most of it O__O

[westside8]

Good luck Richard...will be following closely and wish you the best this summer

[Richard~]

Skill in poker and an enjoyable session

I do not believe I'm a great poker player in any sense. I don't mean this in an attention whore type of way where I'm fishing for compliments I truly don't believe I'm that good. Let me list some weaknesses I believe I have and used to have:

- Poor bankroll management, not terrible but not great, this is part of the reason I'm down again to about 900 dollars after being above 1000 dollars at one point. I try to control this by limiting myself to 100 dollars of total buyins for the day, and aim to never play anything more expensive than 11 dollars (rarely even that) and stay away from 5 dollar rebuys.

- I'm too all or nothing and I constantly spew off a bit too much post flop and preflop justifying it by that if I were in villains shoes my line doesn't make sense for a value hand or a hand that can stand pressure. I have no problem check shoving A high turns with essentially no outs if I believe I'm repping a stronger range up until that point. Similarily I have a tendency to shove a decent number of BBs from the button or co with 79s with the justification that it's rough to get raised off the equity by Ax Kx type hands, it sucks to get too short in a tournament after all.

- There's also more like ICM skills, stamina since I'm working out before every poker session, tilt management to a certain extent and betsizing definitely needs more work.

Ofc skill in poker is a tricky thing, it's not something you have or do not have. There are so many aspect to it. I'm gonna try to list a few skills that different poker players handle differently well. So skills that in my opinion are important to have

- Ability to act and tell a story, represent, hide your hand, take lines that aren't face up and manipulate what your opponent believes your hand to be, even to the point (against non super regs) of taking the intuitively correct number of seconds before dropping that bet to sell doubt, weakness or strength, be uncomfortable to play against

- Conversely read your opponents and table, for me this means tagging everyone by profit history. Keep constant track of your opponents ranges wherever possible, since the tools are easily avaible I don't think there's any excuse in modern times to use a HUD to help with this.

- Mental game mental game mental game. You are not the greatest poker player ever and everyone else are not complete idiots who keep getting lucky. You'll get into spots you're not sure how to play and you will make the wrong decisions, this is ok, you are as good as you are, roll with it and play the next hand. Spend some time in between sessions getting better if possible. Don't get emotionally invested unless you're playing for fun and not for money, if you're playing a session of several tables for money then your job is done after you click the call button, it doesn't matter if villain 7 Bet shoves K3o and hit a 333 flop, you don't need to insult villain and you don't need to curse your bad luck, you got the hand right, good for you , move on.

- Understand math betsizing, icm, hand percentages and all things poker math. Bankroll management and playing for amounts you can afford to lose falls somewhere in between here and mental game.

- Don't be weak. Simple as that, don't be exploitable just because you want to mincash or barely barely final table, respect icm but alwys be fearless, poker punishes scared players.

Don't be that middle aged guy at the casino who by some miracle makes it to top 3 in the tournament, blinds down to 4 BBs, shoved button with A8 and stands up and literally screams at me when I call 75o, don't be that guy, that guy fails all the points above

[Richard~]

The enjoyable session

Today I had as the title suggests a pleasant poker session. I still have a 26k stack in the big 7,5 but apart from that I've lost a bunch of money, probably 90ish dollars today...but, today I came home from the gym, did my chores, sat down and started tagging people, it was fun, my ranges automatically adjusted, I became more relaxed. I was 4 tabling and trying to tag as many players as i could, pokerstars is heaven to tag on since you can ctrl+c usernames, I also watched some pokerstrategy videos and got up to a 160k stack in the 4 dollar omania.

I think big improvements of my game are in store for me, I will continue tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it

[Richard~]

I am tilted.

I am...pretty tilted, my head is on fire, last table starts again in 60 seconds. I've spent today taking notes and taking notes and making decisions, many of them have not worked out. I've been trying to rep a bunch of spots on the river, that hasn't worked out. I've been running into the top of ranges a bunch of times and that hasn't worked out either.

Bankroll is...hanging in there, with the final tournament still running it's probably hovering a bit north of 750 dollars which isn't terrible. But my head is burning, I want those chips and I want them now. I'm sitting with a 7x BI stack in a turbo so I'd prefer not to blow it...6x now, I just called off a 15 BB reshove from the BB and lost a flip. Hang in there head, we can pull through this

[Richard~]

Next week I'm considering this: https://www.partypoker.com/whats-goi...derboards.html

If I understand this correctly I run the low powerseries after the gym all day every day and I have a nice shot at winning a 10k package or a good ticket towards a 10k package. Now I've already been honest about me not being the greatest player to ever live but I am in training, and I'm considering selling action without markup for that week, we'll see. If I do the idea is to sell off 50% of all tournaments I play towards that leaderboard, no markup I'd get to keep the package but a staker would recieve 10% of the live tournament...maybe...we'll see, sounds fun...but we'll see

[Richard~]

I....think this is standard by me. K10s bvb so I think either limping or making it 2.75x pre is fine. No real reads on villain. Flop is good for us, one over and a fd on a bord that missed quite a bit of villains range, we also dominate a bunch of weaker flushdraws and several (Ax)ss combos might be out of villains range since he didn't 3bet pre.

The goal here was to hope for a spewy flop raise and 3 bet it, when the 3bet don't take it down I'm not sure but I'm not super sad getting it in, is there a reason that getting it in here is not standard? fwiw villain somehow showed up with J9 one spade no pair no draw lol, but still

partypoker - 500/1000 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 51.31 BB (VPIP: 15.12, PFR: 2.38, 3Bet Preflop: 2.78, Hands: 86)
BTN: 67.5 BB (VPIP: 33.33, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 3)
Hero (SB): 103.86 BB
BB: 42.78 BB (VPIP: 23.33, PFR: 7.14, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 30)
UTG: 30.12 BB (VPIP: 19.54, PFR: 13.47, 3Bet Preflop: 5.03, Hands: 395)

5 players post ante of 0.1 BB, Hero posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2 BB) Hero has

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 2.75 BB, BB calls 1.75 BB

Flop: (6 BB, 2 players)
Hero bets 2.95 BB,
BB raises to 6.5 BB,
Hero raises to 18 BB,
BB raises to 29.5 BB,
Hero raises to 101.01 BB and is all-in,
BB calls 10.43 BB and is all-in

Turn: (85.87 BB, 2 players) 5:diamond:

River: (85.87 BB, 2 players) 2:spade:

BB shows 9:spade: J:diamond: (One Pair, Fives)
(Pre 35%, Flop 15%, Turn 11%)
Hero shows K:spade: T:spade: (Flush, King High)
(Pre 65%, Flop 85%, Turn 89%)
Hero wins 61.08 BB
Hero wins 85.87 BB

[Richard~]

Bottom ranked and crushing mtt's

This is me right now. If you look me up on opr I have some of the lowest rankings for 2017 on the site. However I'm currently sitting with 4 tables.

One is a 22 dollar sattelite towards a 109 dollar sattelite towards a live event. I got to that one by crushing a free 2 dollar sat I was gifted.

The next one is a 5 dollar mtt freezeout where I'm sitting nicely slightly above average with 120k chips.

The one after that is the usual 6 max plo8 where I'm sitting first out of 9 with 1.8 million chips

finally we have the daily big 10 dollar FO where I'm sitting with 90k. And I have relatively good control over all these tables. But I'm ranked towards the bottom and I'm still not profiting on party for this year. Something has got to give. Sooner or later I have to put up results or shut up

Edit: I should be happy...I really should be, I'm crushing omaha8 but I finished 4th again, that's the good news,,,the bad news...is that I finished 4th again. KeEp On GriNdINg And wE GoT this soon.

also we won the sattelite, 2 of them today which means we now get to go for the hattrick in 5 minutes. One time!!!!

[Richard~]

Pokerstars sunday

I feel kinda comfortable playnig NL by now. For one day only we're adding in 11 dollar tournaments into my schedule, see you on the other side my bankroll

Update 1: down a bunch of buyins but again sitting 1/5 on small 6 max omaha8 final table. I want to take this down and put myself in the black for the day then freeroll everything.

Update 2: Did not take it down finished 3rd again and took some shots, ended the day down about 90 dollars. Tomorrow will probably be better due to the clear party schedule, I'm fine with the shots I took even tho i might have played too long a session

[Richard~]

Leaderboard and ultimatum

The partypoker leaderboard week is a go. I just need to play a bunch of games and see where it goes, the formula looks like

Leaderboard Points = 10 * [√n/√rank] * [1+log (buy-in+0.25)] for ITM finishes (0 out of the money)

I interpret this as constantly mincashing is the way to go and flipping out on the bubble is even more disastrous than normal. I feel like my pokerweek has purpouse and direction, lets bring some positivity back into this little poker project

However I want to limit myself at this point, should I towards the end of the week probably in about 100+ tournaments not have profited 100 dollars or more I will likely call the little poker project right there. I want at least +15% roi for the week. That's the goal, now lets go play some less stressful poker with no shot taking, just kind of let our ranges make us money with little to no random button clicking

[Richard~]

MY ranges are steadily improving and I feel more and more control over my game. It dawned on me that if I was after only cash I should play titan since party low stakes is full of this accounts with few games played, or in other words regs coming over for the leaderboard. but I like that challenge, I think it's good practice and I'm having fun

Update: My cashiing %age is very low I feel. but I finished 4th in a 5 dollar mtt today and am freerolling the tables I have left because of it

[Richard~]

I don't like losing.

It makes me feel ashamed, it makes me wonder if I'm good enough, it makes me doubt my ability. I'm supposed to be good, i'm not supposed to be losing, and so on and so on, it makes me want to hide away on losing days. I pulled most my stars money to distribute it between party and titan, I want to try to build a roll under controlled circumstances.

In the beginning of the week I gave myself a bit of an ultimatum, I stand by that and need to win about 200 dollars at this point to clear it. Should this not happen I'm not giving up 100%, I'll take a few days off, watch a bunch of videos instead of playing, work through some of my tournament hand histories and reevaluate my mental game and actual game.

This is again not the happiest post but poker is pretty tricky mentally, regardless of what happens at the end of the week (I believe I will hit my goal, I really do) I will reevaluate my routines and daily mood. Maybe it's me starting to play again after a long time away but 5+ hour poker sessions drain me mentally, makes me feel empty, sad, lonely and I'm kinda worried it's gonna kill something inside of me. then again that's probably overdramatic, I'm lonelly since my girlfriend and most of my friends are out of town and I'm stuck at home poor over summer, and I probably get drained because it's a bit of an emotional roller coaster that I'm just sorta turning off while playing, but still, gotta keep an myself, that's important.

On a positive final note I don't like losing, it makes me feel ashamed since I'm supposed to be winning and not let everyone else down but I do believe I will win, I believe I have a very good mind for this type of game and if nothing else I will learn, and come autumn I have my teaching job on the side of my studies which means I can play 1 or two weekend sessions for like 150 dollars which I'm looking forward to, that's a couple of 20 dollar tourneys or 10 dollar rebuys. I'm looking forward to having money and not worrying about money while playing, that's probably the healthier way to do it

Update1: Coming in 1/6 in a 1r on titan (306 entries), yet another chance to take a tournament down, lets do it

Update2: I did it, I discovered the secret of winning final tables. All you have to do is pick up JJ v KK BvB with 20BB, get it in pre and bink a jack, who knew poker could be so easy.

First place was 180 euros so all I need is another winning session to hit my goal now

[Richard~]

Buttons were clicked, a story by villain:

iPoker - 250/500 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

[

6 players post ante of 0.1 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.1 BB) Hero has

fold, fold, Hero raises to 2 BB, fold, fold,
BB raises to 3 BB,
Hero raises to 7 BB,
BB calls 4 BB

Flop: (15.1 BB, 2 players)
BB bets 15.1 BB,
Hero raises to 27.61 BB,
BB calls 12.51 BB

Turn: (70.31 BB, 2 players)

River: (70.31 BB, 2 players)

Hero mucks A:spade: K:diamond: (One Pair, Kings)
(Pre 62%, Flop 92%, Turn 76%)
BB shows (Straight, Eight High)
(Pre 38%, Flop 8%, Turn 24%)
BB wins 70.31 BB