[nickname]

after i had to cash out almost my entire bankroll due to unforeseen circumstances (some people broke into my house and stole about everything that needs a wall-plug, and i didn't have any insurance...stupid stupid stupid) Anyway, i needed 12k or so to replace all off it. since that was almost everything I've earned with poker so far i wasn't too happy.

Long story short, I cashed out about a month ago and haven't played a normal length session since. i'm starting over again tomorrow evening/Saturday morning with a bankroll of +- 200$ (cashed everything out, except for 100, so i'm up 100 now)

Goals:

by the end of march: play at least 100k hands at 0.05-0.1 NL Holdem and 0.05-0.1 PL Omaha + get my roll up to 1000$. side goal: improve other games

by the end of april: play at least 100k hands on 0.1-0.25 NL holdem and 0.1-0.25 PL Omaha + get roll up to 2k-2,5k side goal: improve other games

May: busy with study, no goals set, just play when i have the time

after may: don't know, see how this works out first.

I will start at .05-.01 playing 16 tables. as opponents tend to be fishy and call happy just play simple poker, valuebet good hands, dont bluff much except for c-bets. so multitabling should be doable.
same goes for 0.1-0.25, but then i will be playing 9 tables at first, see how it goes.

I will try to post a weekly update on my progress.

[G_Money77]

Lofty goals. Good luck getting there. And sorry about the break-in. I wish you could catch the guy and teach him a lesson.

Let us know how the goals go.
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G_Money77

[nickname]

yeah the goals arent easy, especially the volume, but if i don't set goals for myself i'm lazy, and i never get back to 2-4 and 3-6 NL.

Ah well, luckily it was just stuff and nobody got hurt. I want to catch him too, but not a chance i will find him, so i just have to get over it.

[nickname]

Just played my first session for the before-end-of-march goals. Didnt went too bad, played 5k hands (NL Holdem), up 90$.

Played simple poker, haven't had difficult spots unfortunately so there isn't much stuff to post. Maybe tomorrow, planning on playing 12 hours, or at least 10k hands.

Oh there is one thing, since i haven't played 0,05-0,1 in a while, whats the deal about stacking with AK preflop? will make a topic about it.

[ADAMtheEXPERT]

Sorry to hear about your bad luck.


Seems like realistic goals, and coming here to this site, can only serve to help your game.


I wish you the best in your comeback.



Renter's insurance can be a good thing, I guess.

PS. if you have player points on stars, you can make money.


ONce, I was busted, but had 1500 points.


Ended the day with sixteen hundred dollars, after paying a guy back 300 that I had owed.


other than that, grind grind grind.



The fact that you are thinking in proper terms, and NOT in terms of "gotta get my money back NOW" is a good thing.


Well, keep posting. Nice to have you here



Adam
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Adam

[nickname]

ah well, these things happen, it was just stupid for me to not have insurance... it's an expensive, but very good lesson.

Thanks, i will make it back! hm at the moment i don't have a lot of player points, i always spend them on tournament tickets.

Well, you can't think like "i want to get my money back now" in poker. If you do so, you'll be affected by every buyin you lose, even if the money went in when you were a favorite, so you played the hand the right way.

In my opinion there are 4 forms of losing:
1. Variance is really really high during a session. You shouldn't be bothered when you're 10 buyins down, playing good poker, because these swings just happen.
2. You should be bothered when you not play your best poker and are 2 buyins down. If you can't focus yourself on playing the best you can, please stop, it will only cause you to lose.
3. making fancy plays when not needed. this applies mostly to players who saw Phil Ivey on tv calling PF with aces and reraising a k62 rainbow flop. they want to try it too and check-raise on a 567 monotone board with 5 players in the hand. use fancy plays when needed, if opponents get better and you have to take some weird lines to get value and put them in a "that doens't make sense, he can't have anything here"- decision for all of their chips. don't do it at the low/microstakes, players wont even notice you take a weird line.
4. you're not good enough. You'll notice when this is the case, read articles etc and try changing your playing style, see how that works out.

my microstakes analysis from the hands I've played until now:
There is no metagame at 10nl, there is no multiple level thinking at 10nl, it just O i have aces, i should be all-in on the river, no matter what board. They raise somewhere during the hand when they have a good hand, they call when they have a mediocre hand and they fold when they have a bad hand.
so in general: fold to raises, bet against callers with top pair plus and draws with 8 or more outs and don't continuation bet a missed flop into 3 or 4 people, it's burning money. (there are exceptions, FE if someone is too aggressive, but don't assume he is that until he proves it a few times)
Don't try fancy plays, just bet-bet-bet will do if you have a good hand. except when it near to impossible for him to have a hand that will call and there is almost a 0% chance he'll draw out on you, example: you AA board AA5. Don't do this with JJ on a JhTh5x board, they will draw out on you, so just bet when you are in front.



Quest update: didn't play as much as planned yesterday, just 4k hands, had to watch the icehockey final result: Up 35$, roll now 325 or so after 9k hands.

[G_Money77]

Good work so far, keep it up. I have to agree with your microstakes analysis for the most part as well. That is mostly what I play because i only get in about 1,000 hands a week at most and it is tought to build a bankroll that way. Like you said, at that level, no fancy plays, just bet them when you got them.
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G_Money77

[nickname]

Yeah, it's going pretty well, just played another short session (1k hands)result: up 40$, giving me a total of 365. this means i'm ahead of my schedule. If i get the 1000$ and the 100k hands on 0,05-0,1 earlier than planned, i still will finish the month on 0,05-0,1.

quest so far: 10167 hands played up 165$. around 16bigblinds/100. My feeling is that this could be better, so are there parts of my strategy you don't agree with? do you have something to add or other strategies that also work well? feel free to leave them, i don't know what the perfect strategy is, but i'm trying to get my winrate a bit higher

Side goal for the last week of the challenge: get a winrate higher than 20bigblinds/100.

1000 hands a week isn't enough to build a bankroll quickly but i'm sure you'll get there!

Quick bankroll build tip in general for everyone who reads this:

If you want to build a roll quickly without playing much i think SNG's are the best option. the single table 9 player 3,40's for example. if you can get a ROI of 20% (what isn't abnormally high at this level with tight play in the early stages and some basic knowledge of ICM in the later stages) u should be able to make 52$/100 SNG's. 100 SNG's isnt that much, about 10hours of playing 10 SNG's at the time.

Disadvantage of SNG playing is that you have to play like a robot. sounds easy, but it isn't, especially at the lower stakes you get bad beats and bad calls, which are only good for you, but getting knocked out like this 6-10 times in a row is pretty common. knowing that this is very frustrating, you still have to be able to make the same robotic decisions and not go on tilt. (especially important when multitabling, getting knocked out by bad beats 7 times isn't something to worry about, getting knocked after that in the 11 other tourneys you're playing because you're on tilt is)

advantage of the robotic play is that you can play more SNG's than cashtables at once (there are players who play up to 50 or so)
if you're new to multitabling don't open 20 tables at once, just start with 6 or 9 and slightly increase every session untill you feel like you've reached your maximum. oh and when playing 12+ tables don't try to look at your allins, it will distract you from making correct decisions at other tables. if you can't do this, don't play that much tables. (or buy a very big monitor so you can tile 20 tables without overlapping)

that was longer than i'd planned, hope its useful to someone.

Jeffrey

[G_Money77]

Good post Jeffrey. I think your SnG advice was solid and spot on. They can get boring, but you are right, you do have to play somewhat roboticly.
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G_Money77

[nickname]

another quick update: Just played another 1k hands, up 55$ making my roll about 420.

I've been playing short sessions lately. (about 45 min) since i can't focus optimally very much longer playing 16 - 18 tables at once.
(for comparison: i used to play between 4 and 6 tables on 2-4 and 3-6)
Since i don't have much to for 8 days, starting tomorrow evening i will try to play about 6 hours a day, hoping to average 8k hands a day. bringing my total hands for march on 75k at the 11th.

Still haven't found much difficult situations to post here, but i will go over my hands in a few minutes to see if there is something interesting to see.

and does anyone have an idea of the typical preflop stacking range of an average 0,05-0,1 player?

(see http://adamtheexpert.com/viewtopic.php?t=2215)
[/url]

[nickname]

Update: played about 7k hands today, back at 276 after a very frustrating session. losing every hand i played, nuts became second nuts at the river, losing AA preflop allin from (in chronological order): KK, QQ, KK, TT, 46??(what the ..), TJ and 22. my KK wasn't working as planned either, ended up losing 40$ on all my KK hands. As you can imagine, this is not funny when you're not drunk (which i wasn't) so i really had a bad day. but i usually don't get frustrated and still keep playing good poker when i play such a session, knowing that in almost all occasions i threw the money when i was in front, so it's just though luck.

but this time during such a bad session i immediately closed pokerstars after the following hand:

i'm on the button (300 big blinds deep) holding 78s, raise to 40ct. Button fold, small blind (220 big blinds deep) reraises me to 1,2$. He was the i only reraise aa/kk and will never lay them down kind a guy. a shorty calls for 1$ in the big blind. I decide to call because i knew that when i hit i would stack him and stacks were deep enough.

The flop comes down perfectly for me, 456. flopped the nuts, yeah! i check, he bets out 2$ i reraise to 8, he goes all-in, i call.

Cards are turned over: he indeed had AA, the shorty had AQ and i hold the nuts with 78

Turncard 6, still holding the best hand, feeling very comfortable since he has only one out.

you all can guess what's coming next, since i already said it was frustrating, but here it is anyway...
River: THAT LAST FREAKIN ACE!

He had on the flop about 2,3% chance to get me, but apparently it was enough today

it was just too much i could handle for one day. I felt i lost my selfcontrol and figured i would play very badly after that, so closed pokerstars for today. Playing again tomorrow, new day new chances, see if i have lady luck on my side. have a 50$ bonus coming up after 400 player points, a good boost for my bankroll after today.

[G_Money77]

You did the right thing quitting when you did. We have all had days like that and it will drive you insane. Those were some sick beats that you took. When getting frustrated like that, you just have to quit.

Better luck tomorrow.
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G_Money77

[nickname]

well the update for today is that there's no news, i haven't played for a few days, was busy with other things. will be playing again later today or tomorrow.

[nickname]

another update: internet broke down this week, played only 5k hands, for a total of 25k hands or so. planning to play an 48 hour session later this week and that should be good for 50k hands. roll now 300, won a little bit back after that terrible day. see how it works out this week.

[G_Money77]

Sometimes I hate the Internet when it doesn't work right. There is little that is more frustrating. I think I miss my computer more when it is down than my TV.

Good luck this week. You'll be up to 500 or 600 in no time.
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G_Money77

[nickname]

quick update: have been playing very much the last few days (about 50k hands) and my roll has now reached the 1k. since march isn't over yet, and i have a full week of nothing but poker coming up i decided to buy myself a new computer with 700$ of the earnings and go play with the 300 left in my account and build it back to whatever i am at the end of the month. if i am above the 550 (which i expect) i will be moving up at the start of april.

[G_Money77]

Great run, keep it up. Good luck on the move up. Hopefully you'll get there, it sounds like you will.
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G_Money77