Old fart at play

These stupid things happened to me in one night. I really cannot stand with that so I sympathy.

IPoker, $0.02/$0.05 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

SB: $1.98 (39.6 bb)
Hero (BB): $1.88 (37.6 bb)
UTG: $5.63 (112.6 bb)
MP: $5.72 (114.4 bb)
CO: $1.87 (37.4 bb)
BTN: $3.08 (61.6 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 4 4
2 folds, CO raises to $0.15, BTN calls $0.15, SB folds, Hero calls $0.10

Flop: ($0.47) K 4 J (3 players)
Hero checks, CO checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($0.47) 3 (3 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $0.32, BTN folds, Hero raises to $0.64, CO raises to $0.96, Hero raises to $1.28, CO raises to $1.72, Hero calls $0.44

River: ($3.91) 3 (2 players)

Results:

Hell no. Are you serious? Only one 3 can beat me and it appeared. 97.7% win at that moment. Good game ipoker.

IPoker, $0.02/$0.05 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

Hero (SB): $2.14 (42.8 bb)
BB: $7.07 (141.4 bb)
UTG: $6.33 (126.6 bb)
MP: $2.05 (41 bb)
CO: $2.84 (56.8 bb)
BTN: $11.71 (234.2 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Q Q
2 folds, CO raises to $0.10, BTN calls $0.10, Hero raises to $0.35, 2 folds, BTN calls $0.25

Flop: ($0.85) 2 3 J (2 players)
Hero bets $0.50, BTN raises to $1.64, Hero raises to $1.79 and is all-in, BTN calls $0.15

Turn: ($4.43) A (2 players, 1 is all-in)
River: ($4.43) 5 (2 players, 1 is all-in)

Results:

Good game. No more comment

I have spend some time analyzing my worst hands. It doesn´t seem to be such a bad playing from my side. Mostly I have had better chance than villain before river and run into "bad luck". But thats shouldnt be a problem since I shouldnt throw in my money if I hadnt the best hand.

I reluctantly creeped back to Pokerstars to play a few thousand hands and the gameflow is completly different for me. I constantly gather some cents here and there and if I run into a bad beat its just a bump on the curve. 13 dollars and a bb/100 of 30 over 2000 hands feels good after a month in the desert.

On iPoker I constantly looses cents here and there so I´m definitly doing something wrong. So I compared my holecards grid in HM2 and it seems like I have detoriated from my initial starthandchart for the month which was supposed to be a mix of the one from W34z3ls walkthrough and Leakbusters recommended. It appears that I have different hands I start with on Pokerstars and iPoker. On iPoker I haved done the worst possible and widened my range in EP and narrowed it on button and small blinds.

So I have tried to construct a small cheatnote that I can use to check that I dont walk away to far from the path. Compressed into one so I can have it when I play on the phone. This is the one I use for the moment. I havent made any money so far on suited gappers so I have leaved them out.

I feel a bit ignorant since I havent understand the Notecaddy possibillity to colormark my opponents. This is a huge advantage for me at the fastforward tables. Only three codes so far: red for dangerous, blue for people with normal stats and green for the exploitable.

So far I have stopped the bleeding and actually made a few dollars but I have a lot of catching up to do.

To sum the month - it was awful. The only thing that kept me over the zero line was good old Svenska Spel.

It is tempting to get back to full ring but I dont think I can improve as a poker player if I´m not able to crush the lowest stakes at 6-max.

I dont seem to be able to convert hands from iPoker so I took a bad beat from Pokerstars just to paint a picture of how my poker playing feels at the moment.

Poker Stars $2.00 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

BTN: $0.48 - VPIP: 6, PFR: 0, 3B: 0, AF: 0,0, Hands: 18
SB: $3.56 - VPIP: 17, PFR: 17, 3B: 0, AF: 0,0, Hands: 6
BB: $2.08 - VPIP: 14, PFR: 0, 3B: 0, AF: 0,0, Hands: 7
Hero (UTG): $2.12 -
MP: $1.00 - VPIP: 0, PFR: 0, 3B: 0, AF: 0,0, Hands: 1
CO: $1.00 - VPIP: 67, PFR: 67, 3B: 100, AF: 0,0, Hands: 3

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is UTG with A♦ A♥
Hero raises to $0.08, 1 fold, CO raises to $0.14, 3 folds, Hero raises to $0.48, CO calls $0.34

Flop: ($0.99) 2♣ 7♠ 8♣ (2 players)
Hero bets $0.72, CO calls $0.52 all in

Turn: ($2.03) J♦ (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($2.03) 7♣ (2 players - 1 is all in)

Still struggling to be more aggressive - for the moment I´m my Agg is 1.77 - but I just seem to lose money the more aggressive I try to be. Try to be careful when I chose spots to bluff but I have difficulties.

Last month actually went quite good. The mess with the migration from poker770 to Netbet made me take it easy on that site. That made a few euros there and the other sites as Pokerstars and Svenska Spels always makes money. So I´m back at the 50 dollars a month track again. The money as such doesnt matter - I am a recreational player and I just want to be better to do whatever I am doing.

But of course this new month starts of bad. Suddenly I´m on supertilt. But this time it is not bad beat thats tilting me but the bad poker systems.

Im and old man and I dont like changes and my computer feels the same.

The Net bet thing still doesnt work properly but at least I get my Strategy points . But I depend on HM2 to keep track over how my stacks doing. If one plays at Speed poker and have aoutrebuy I want to keep track so I have the net$won on my Hud to see how Im doing. I lost some 10€ before I realized that HM didnt track losses. That was an iPoker-glitch. But I thought it was an HM/antivirus issue so I spend an hour to figure out which files that shold be excluded from antivirusing.

My computer works much better since a removed avira and switched to Panda but every now and then - always when I have a splendid hand - the computer suddenly freezes for a minute or two when the antivirus feels its a good time to update.

I have so few hours to spend on poker and to much times goes to update and configure poorly written programs.

I know that my graphic card isnt really up to date. It was a good card when I bought it so I kept it the last time I swtitched to a new mainboard 3 years ago. And now I tried to play PKR and good lord what a graphic card killer that was! Even when Im cutting down to one screen Its barely playable.

So I tried to find a table at PKR. When I checked for the 0.02/0.04 table i wanted the list jumped and I ended up on an PLO Omaha table. Why not I thought and got 336x on the hand and the flop was 36x. Wow - full house! So I raised and raised.

And I lost against a straight. My brain just couldnt comprehend. It took a while before I understod what I just did.

Thats not even a beginners mistake.

A nice day. I have this new computer. New gaming motherboard, nice i5 processor with 4 kernels and a new Graphiccard with a lot of goodies. After mostly doing updates and configurations I had an 90 minutes window to play poker.

First fix some Strategy-points so I started PKR. Server down for update. OK. Lets try at Netbet then. Found one table at 0.01/0.02. Hard to get any points at that. After 45 minutes at last I got three tables on 0.02/0.04. Then a message from the Netbet system "all tables will close down for maintainence".

Now I tried to play again. Had a nice moment at Pokerstars, a series of trips that hold all the way to showdown. Havent seen much of those lately. But no HUD. Sigh!

Then I tried at PKR. A nice run there to but no HUD.

And so on Netbet. No HUD there either.

I hate updates.

Well now HUD works at Zoom but sadly I can´t make any strategy points there.

PKR is a terrible playing experience. Its like trying to run in water. I can activate a HUD by the table-finder but I cant place them on each table if I´m not lucky enough to be at the same position on every table. So I tried to have one table on PKR and as many cash tables I could find at netbet. One. And a couple of tables on svenska spel. But PKR just kills the computer. I cant tell how they do it, theres no big CPU-use, the graphic-card reoprts that it has a lot of resources availiable the disk are not using more than at few percents but the computer hardly works.

Okay, skip PKR then and the computer suddenly is behaving wonderful. But now Svenska Spel shuts down on a saturday night for daytime adjustment!?

Shit. Lets try Netbet again. But it is "UHOH 404 error" and some bogus latin message.

Okey, lets try 888 then. Unable to login at 888.

What is wrong with the poker community?

I have some trouble to find those fishes everybody talks about. The people I meet at the table more or less have perfect stats nowadays. So I try to find them with HM2. So I filter out the opponents with the highest VPIP.

It is not that big sample of course but it is a bit disturbing to se that some people actually can win with at VPIP of 100% over 50 hands. I have some 40 players with a VPIP over 90 and they are all at iPoker or Boss.

Ok. It has been a bit of a bad month. But now I have cleared my bonus at PKR so I dont have to play there if i dont want to. I started out at NL4 but it was so much lotto-poker that I had a real hard time there. So I switched to NL10 and it was good. They behaved like normal pokerplayers, But the last week I run into a bad period so I almost busted.

So this month my plan on PKR is to play at lowest level and try to build up a bankroll. But it is so hard for me. The controls are so numb so I have to click several times before something happens. That together with that all players win against me with trash hands that magically transforms to a great hand on the river. After a period of small winnings I faced a humiliating loss of a couple of dollars, but then comes this stupid hand where I suddenly loses all diciplin and common sense.

PKR $2.00 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

BB: $0.57 - VPIP: 32, PFR: 0, 3B: 0, AF: 1,0, Hands: 22
Hero (UTG): $1.96 - VPIP: 21, PFR: 12, 3B: 1, AF: 0,8, Hands: 5197
CO: $2.00 - VPIP: 26, PFR: 11, 3B: 0, AF: 3,0, Hands: 27
BTN: $3.72 - VPIP: 82, PFR: 55, 3B: 67, AF: 2,3, Hands: 11
SB: $0.60 - VPIP: 20, PFR: 10, 3B: 0, AF: 2,0, Hands: 10

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is UTG with 9 8
Hero raises to $0.06, CO calls $0.06, BTN raises to $0.20, 1 fold, BB calls $0.18,

Oh...should I fold or raise? Lets make a compromise and call.

Hero calls $0.14, CO calls $0.14

Flop: ($0.81) 6 T Q (4 players)

Oh, yes! One of those hard to detect straight draws! A bit worrying with the flush draw and a jack might be bad. But a seven should make me a nut! I want to play this hand!

BB checks, Hero checks, CO bets $0.60, BTN raises to $1.66, BB calls $0.37 all in,

What!? I should fold but I was so eager to play this hand so I kinda misclicked..

Hero calls $1.66, CO raises to $1.80, BTN calls $0.14, Hero calls $0.10 all in

Turn: ($6.54) K (4 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($6.54) 7 (4 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $6.54
BB shows K A
Hero shows 9 8
CO shows K Q
BTN shows T T
BTN wins $0.08
Hero wins $4.17
Hero wins $1.64
(Rake: $0.65)

Thats the way to play on PKR!

For once I am actually happy. I never joined Full Tilt, just waited for them to return to Pokerstrategy. And now it has happened. It is such a good site, good software, nice android app. It is so nice. I have found peace in my mind:

I believe I can keep my Gold status with a reasonable volume of play. And they have action 24h.

Full tilt is so nice. It is so easy to make those strategy points. I cleared my Gold status for the month and I have Platinum in my reach. Not only can I do it without loosing money I actually can win some too. This is the mornings graph.

I'm still struggling with how to create a good HUD. I kinda got stuck on the color scheme. But someone pointed out that many stats can be defined by either of two different lines. Too tight to too loose and too passive to too aggressive.

I'm not going to make it. I have tried to play over my levels to make it but it is too much.

That and trying to implement some of the things from W34z3ls red line rampage has made som negative influnces on my winrate so at this point I'm 2 dollars up from my deposit+bonus.

So Full tilt has so far been a fantastic experience. It's fast, it's good and it's generating Strategy points. But I must learn to handle the avatars. It is so hard for me to take players who want to announce their personality with what appears so be a pooping poodle seriously.

Originally posted by Svinhugg
But I must learn to handle the avatars. It is so hard for me to take players who want to announce their personality with what appears so be a pooping poodle seriously.

I thought I was the only one!!!

In a last desperate effort to gain Strategy points I try to play as much as I can. AND at the same time put in some of the things from W34z3ls red line rampage. Some of my worst stats has improved from awful to bad and has now a overall feel of seflconfidence I haven't felt since I played on full ring. And it sorts of pays off. My red line doesn't has such a bad slope as it had before but there still is much to improve. This mornings session:

That was so fun. It was a close call and I lost 20 dollars the last day in my desperate effort to gain points.

But now I have Platinum-status. It's no big deal but I wanted to reach a goal and I made it. After this I will settle for Gold for a while. Will feel like nothing after this. But now I got some videos so view

Today I'm sort of hangover. Not from booze but all these hands I played. Today I wasn't getting it together at all. I just sits passivly and misses good spots and so on. And at this point I'm moving the mouse sideways to fold my hand but instead I call cause of a little bump.

Full Tilt Poker $2.00 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 2651574
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

MP: $1.42 - VPIP: 20, PFR: 10, 3B: 0, AF: 0,0, Hands: 10
CO: $0.79 - VPIP: 26, PFR: 9, 3B: 0, AF: 0,0, Hands: 35
BTN: $2.03 - VPIP: 12, PFR: 11, 3B: 5, AF: 1,0, Hands: 66
SB: $1.81 - VPIP: 100, PFR: 0, 3B: 0, AF: 0,0, Hands: 1
Hero (BB): $2.00 - VPIP: 21, PFR: 15, 3B: 5, AF: 1,5, Hands: 30087
UTG: $1.02 - VPIP: 6, PFR: 4, 3B: 8, AF: 0,0, Hands: 50

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is BB with 7♣ Q♥
UTG calls $0.02, 3 folds, SB calls $0.01, Hero checks

Flop: ($0.06) K♦ 2♠ Q♠ (3 players)
SB bets $0.02, Hero calls $0.02, UTG calls $0.02

Turn: ($0.12) A♥ (3 players)
SB bets $1.77, Hero calls $1.77, UTG folds

River: ($3.66) 5♥ (2 players)

Final Pot: $3.66
SB shows 3♠ 7♠
Hero shows 7♣ Q♥
Hero wins $3.48
(Rake: $0.18)

Strange things happen.

It's hard to admit but my biggest leak seems to be my own brain. I'm reading about HU and it something about "multiway". Okey, I think, 'm interested in multiway pots but not so much in Heads Up. Several hours later I think about it again and... "hey, multiway pots in Heads Up?". I look it up and it reads someting like "Multiway streets in HU".

Reminds me of when I first tried to figure out this with opening ranges in unopended pots. I couldn't figure out why the didnt have an ranges for the Big Blind. Took me weeks.

Else I enjoy my new life as a Platinum. The last time I had Platinum status i didn't understand much of the strategy articles but now I understand the topics much better even if I can't master them. Next month I will be back in Gold but I will not have any problem to keep that up with Full Tilt. It is so nice.

But I sometime have problems with making a HUD. It is hard to find wich stats I really want and what values I would need. "You need Cold Call" the say. But wich cold call? Theres a lot of Cold Call stats but which one do I need? "Cold call vs raised flipflop blipblop" or "Cold call vs reraised Mongols with big nostrils"? And what about values? Whats high and whats low?

Degraded!

Just yesterday I started to think that it was a bit weird that I got more points playing on NL2 on Full Tilt than playing NL5 at netbet. I tried to read about Platinum status if it where some sort of points booster that comes with the status. But it was some fault in the system so I have got 3 strategy points for every FTP instead of 1 SP for every 3 FTP. In january I didn't really notice since most points came from Gold Rush. (I don't really get that since I have got 2136 points last month instead of the 2600 I had before). Well, well, if things seems to be to good to be true ...

I was in my early twenties when the Rubiks cube came. My father couldn't solve it. He was a teacher in math and couldn't understand how kids in school could solve it. I learned him a few tricks how to swap pieces from here to there but he got lost on the way. Now I feel the problem. The mind gets a bit "stiff" when you get old. I still can learn but I seem to forget what I learn faster than I can learn new.

So I have to get in a lot of more studying and effort to learn than you young ones. But It is okey cause I'm to old for ordinary computer games. Warcraft 2 and Quake 2 was the last ones that gave me some fun. Nowadays no game seems to catch my interest. So poker is going to be my game from now on.

My long term goal is to be able to play at any site, at any hour of the day, without any HUD and have a positive win rate at at least NL10.

It is now ten months since I switched to shorthanded and it has been a painful experience. But I have made some progress lately with W34z3l's RedLine Rampage. It adresses exactly those leaks that I can spot but don't seem to be able to fix. I have understood that I have to be more aggressive, 3bet more, and 4bet more. But doing those things if you can't pick the right spots to do so on doesn't really help.

When I got Leak-buster I was doing allright as a nit on full-ring. But as soon I tried 6max or tried to be less nitty my winrate dropped. The two major leaks that was pointed out to me was a low PFR and low steal rate. I tried to fix the PFR first but I got nowhere. Any attempts just went wrong. Playing at Svenska Spel wasnt really the place to try to steal. Sitting in late position you will face at least 5 players in the pot and two raises. But the I started to try to steal at Pokerstars. It really made wonder to my winrate and it fixed my low PFR at the same time. It was then I learned not to stare at one single stat.

It's frustrating that the more I learn the less I seem to win but it is much more rewarding to be an active player than just sit on full ring and wait for a good hand.

I have made some minor adjustements to may gameplay inspired by W34z3l's Red Line Rampage. At first it just messed up my game and I took a few days of cash games and played some MTT's. I ended up ITM in 3 tournaments of 4 and made about 100 dollars. It was at Svenska Spel so it is hard to tell if I was good or the villains was drunk. But I made 18 dollars on one of those 888 spin-and-win-a-freroll-ticket-frerolls.

But now I played a CG-session. This is how I want my graps to look like.

I hope that this is the start of the new me.