2017 MTT Grinding!

Good luck and the best wishes for 2017
That 2017 will be even better than this year.

Cheers,
SDK1987

05/01/2017 - 2:50am WE MADE 1.46$/H TODAY!!!

Team...

The year could have started worse, don't get me wrong. We played 79 games this year so far and we managed to make a final table and even reach HU in it. It was the 5.5$ PSKO which had around 1.1k up top. We finished second though after a very disapointing heads up run (we had him dominated 5:1 at one point) for around 650-ish including bounties. Not a bad score to start of the year. That was yesterday. Up until that point we had a boatload of mincashes but nothing special, so we were up like 500$ after our HU.

Today was a new day and with the newfound confidence of the deeprun we started our grind today. It started off great by running deep in the first two tournaments we started. The Mini Battle Royale (the 11$) and the 16.5 Bubble Rush. We finished 19th and 18th in those. What a time to be alive, right? Ah well, shit happens right. We took a small break and at 9pm, we restarted our computer for the evening grind.

Plan was to play the Mini BR (22$), take a little shot at the 33$ BB and some smaller majors on the side. That plan went straight to hell when the Jab decided to bomb me a chipleader after 2 hours of play. I kept on regging turbo's which basically put me down 100$ for the day. In other words, we had work to do but we were confident to win 1.5k in the Jab. UNTIL we lost an enourmous pot with KK, which I couldn't have played worse I think. I held on, doubled once but in the end busted in 16th place.

So, 19th, 18th, 16th, going uphill right? Good news, as we were 7/150 in the Hot 7.5. Two flips and a A9 < J9 to close it off though, sealed my faith at another devastating 33th place. So we were up like 22$ for the day after 15 hours of play. I said it before, what a friggin time to be alive!

Funny sidenote about my second place finish yesterday, look how close I was at busting at one point. This was final 15:

Anyway, we can conclude the year started okay, close to hitting the 9k bankroll again so we keep on grinding. Tomorrow, I'll probably play my last big session of the week, with the early edition of the Mini Thursday Thrill etc. Usually, after a boatload of deepruns, you get a win so PokerStars, a cheecky little victory in the Thrill would be much appreciated.

To end the day, I'm going to post a Youtube link of the music I usually listen too while streaming! For today, Samni out!

subbed! in before Sunday Million ship...

Cheers Sven!

Another couple of days have passed and not really exciting stuff going on pokerwise. Running pretty terrible and my bankroll is shrinking to the 8k$ mark at this point. Nothing really to worry about but I am planning to scratch some games from the daily schedule (like the 33$BB). Swings are very high on these limits and I really believe people underestimate variance, especially when you can only play on PokerStars (like me in Belgium). Bigger fields mean bigger variance so you really need to keep that into mind. At this point, I'm using around 700 ABI as my BRM but in the near future, I might be inclined to increase that number to around 1000.

Interesting hand: folding trips, are you INSANE?

No Limit Holdem Tournament
PokerStars6 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by WeakTight Poker Hand History Converter
Stacks:
UTG Player6 (3,582) 45bb
UTG+1 Player1 (6,571) 82bb
CO Player2 (3,483) 44bb
BTN Player3 (2,356) 29bb
SB Player4 (2,720) 34bb
BB Hero (12,075) 151bbBlinds: 40/80 Ante 10
Pre-Flop: (180, 6 players) Hero is BB 8♥: J♦:

Player6 raises to 160, 3 folds, Player4 calls 120, Hero calls 80

Flop: A♣: 8♣: 8♦: (540, 3 players)
Player4 checks, Hero checks, Player6 checks
Turn: 3♦: (540, 3)
Player4 checks, Hero bets 275, Player6 calls 275, Player4 folds
River: K♠: (1,090, 2)
Hero bets 575, Player6 raises to 1,440, Hero folds
Final Pot: 3,105
Player6 wins 3,970 (net +2,085)
Player4 lost 170
Hero lost 1,020

Preflop easy defend with the J8o, it plays okay postflop and it's pretty easy on the flop to decide whether you want to continue with the hand or not. We flop pretty good, with trips on an A-high board threeway. It's very likely someone has flopped an ace. Checking to the agressor seems pretty standard but he checks back which is kind off odd. His range is very pocket pair heavy. I don't see him checking back an ace on this flop unless he has two of them.
Turn brings a meaningless 3♦: At this point I want to build a pot because I'm pretty confident I'm good here. UTG calls, what do we learn from this? I see him having alot of AA, KK, QQ, JJ (maybe TT). We need to take into account that he might have an ace but thats pretty unlikely.
River brings a K♠: which isn't the best card as now there are less hands that we beat. I still decide I need to valuebet though. QQ and JJ might want to hero me cause my line isn't the strongest. When he raises river, it's when it becomes tricky. I eventually decided to fold as I felt like I was not beating ANY of his valueshoves (KK, AA, A8s, 33 (although thats not very likely). Only real hand I see us beating at this point is QJ of clubs that turns his hand into a bluff. I don't see him raising KQ of clubs as he might be good on this river.

Nice and interesting blog.... defently will follow this

Very nice! Will be following closely. Good luck!

Cheers Guthans and Pannekoekk, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

I've got a package online for next Friday, if you are interested, be sure to check out this link.

This post will not only be for advertising-value but here we go: WE HAVE 15% OF OUR MTT PACKAGE LEFT THAT STARTS IN 12 HOURS!!! GO CHECK THAT SHIT OUT!!!

On-topic. Had alot of deep runs lately but none of them ended in a final. Thats obviously quite disturbing as the deepruns make you money IF you manage to finish them. There's alot of possible reasons for me not being able to finish these deepruns, just to say a few:
1 - Playing long sessions make me feel tired?
2 - I don't adapt to playing deeper in a tournament?
3 - Usually less tables when going deep and might get too spewy?
4 - I don't beat the peeps that go deep with me?

These all sounds reasonable AND possible in my case. To find out if I'm just getting pwned in stead of unlucky to win flips deep, I'm going to review every single one of those final 2 to final 5 table runs to see what's what and I'll post my findings here.

At this point, I tend to believe it's a combination between being unlucky and becoming a little tiny bit spewier when running deep, trying to outplay and outsmart ppl by doing weird things. I'm definately curious what will come out of this little experiment.

Tournaments in the pipeline of getting a review:
- 7.5$ Deep Payouts - 17/743
- 16.5$ Bubble Rush - 18/382
- 11$ Mini Battle Royale - 19/3364
- Hot 7.5$ - 31/3804
- Big 11$ - 23/1205
- Big 16.50$ - 23/1216
- 16.50 Deep PSKO - 24/2093

All tournaments from last week which could've made me thousands of dollies but instead I'm down money. We'll see we'll see.

Once again: 15% LEFT IN THE PACKAGE GUYS!

Bad package run today. Lost loads of money, couldn't get nothing to work. Most of the bustouts were pretty sick suckouts and bad beats. Not much we could've done today. On to the studygrind then.

Interesting hand:

What do we do here with ATs?

No Limit Holdem Tournament
PokerStars6 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by WeakTight Poker Hand History Converter
$15.00+$1.50
Stacks:
UTG One_Time184 (580k) 73bb
UTG+1 mister_blk (155k) 19bb
CO frost3ggg (323k) 40bb
BTN Hero (190k) 24bb
SB Mariantw6 (150k) 19bb
BB NDHTXK (178k) 22bbBlinds: 4k/8k Ante 800
Pre-Flop: (17k, 6 players) Hero is BTN A♦: T♦:

2 folds, frost3ggg raises to 16k, Hero???

So basically what are we looking at? It's a CO-raise from a player with heaps of chips raising. What do we need to take into account?
Openraiser: 40bb raising into 3 players. What should he have here? He should be doing this pretty wide right? Why? Look at the three stacks behind, I have 24bb, sb has 19bb and bb has 22bb. They won't be going frisky too easily. Most of their decisions will be made preflop as their stacks are reshovestacks. Imo, the openraiser has a boatload of raisefolds in his range, especially if you know that all three players behind him are on the tighter side lately.
Simplenash gives this range to CO: 33+, A2s+, K7s+, Q7s+, J7s+, T9s, A2o+, K7o+, Q7o+, J7o+, T9o
I tend to believe this range is a bit too loose but let's say it's correct, then we have to push: 22+, A4s+, K9s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s, 98s, ATo+, KQo which I tend to believe is way too loose aswell with 24bb and 2 players behind us left to act. In a vacuum though, these ranges are correct and ATs is way up there ofcourse.

Lets edit the ranges to a more realistical range.
The openraiser: 22+, A8s+, A5s-A2s, K9s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s, A9o+, K9o+, QTo+, JTo
This range basically means I took out the lower end of the Kx and Qx, removed most of the offsuit Jx and some other random hands that he probably isn't raising here.
If we recalculate our range then: 44+, A9s+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, AJo+
I can basicaly live with this range, I might even go a little bit tighter if it is a regular tourney with a decent structure or if I see the openraiser not being capable of playing the range I put above.

To conclude, how much tighter do the blinds need to call:
SB: 88+, AJs+, AQo+
BB: 88+, AJs+, AQo+

QotD: What range do we push in this spot?

No Limit Holdem Tournament
PokerStars7 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by WeakTight Poker Hand History Converter
Stacks:
UTG Player4 (183k) 31bb
UTG+1 Player5 (53k) 9bb
MP Player6 (198k) 33bb
CO Player7 (44k) 7bb
BTN Hero (96k) 16bb
SB Player2 (112k) 19bb
BB Player3 (62k) 10bbBlinds: 3k/6k Ante 600
Pre-Flop: (13k, 7 players) Hero is BTN J♦: Q♣:

i am not a competent MTT player, but as midstack (if this is a FT), i want the shorties to bust and avoid the biggies.
I am not in danger of blinding out, so my guesstimate would be:
55+,Axs,A6o+,KT,KJ,KQ,QJs.
I'd also be happy to split my range into push and MR/c with nuts (if i need to balance, i add A2-A5o as MR/f but feel bad because of odds)

Reason I'm not updating too much is pretty simple, there isn't much to say atm.. Also got some private stuff going so just haven't got the time to be super active on the forums...

That and I run worse like... like... like something that runs really really bad...

No Limit Holdem Tournament
PokerStars9 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by WeakTight Poker Hand History Converter
$10+$1
Stacks:
UTG Senterpied (591k) 59bb
UTG+1 stefler.tawi (292k) 29bb
MP1 hebehobehibe (112k) 11bb
MP2 shadowixa1 (200k) 20bb
MP3 Kepacheco (550k) 55bb
CO Hero (235k) 24bb
BTN CSWAMI (173k) 17bb
SB o0Acemaker0o (137k) 14bb
BB gfxed (695k) 70bbBlinds: 5k/10k Ante 1.3k
Pre-Flop: (26k, 9 players) Hero is CO A♣: K♥:

5 folds, Hero raises to 22k, 1 fold, o0Acemaker0o goes all-in 136k, 1 fold, Hero calls 114k

Flop: 9♥: J♦: Q♥: (293k, 2 players), 1 all-in
Turn: 9♦: (293k, 2), 1 all-in

River: 4♣: (293k, 2), 1 all-in
Final Pot: 293k
Hero shows a pair of Nines
A♣: K♥:
o0Acemaker0o shows a straight, Nine to King
K♣: T♣:
o0Acemaker0o wins 293k (net +156k)
Hero lost 137k

Team!!! We are 8/27 in the friggin' Hot 1.1!!! Can we get our second final table of the year FINALLY? Need around 5th to break even on the day!

Second final of the year, let's top the previous one by winning this one shall we!

3rd. Had a pretty unlucky final table run cause of the biggest stack being to my left, caging me a bit. If he was somewhere else at the table, I probably could've done more. Lost a flip halfway through after some ppl busted and then final 3 got in KJo vs 33 and he instantly flopped a set to beat my toppair. At least we're up for the day right

Can't beleive I had missed your new thread Samni!

Best of luck in 2017, and I am sure there are a lot more final tables in your future

Thanks Catonthemat! I'm pretty sure more will follow. Downswing took long enough now. Also restarted working my ass off to improve my game so hopefully it pays of pretty short term from now!

FT Hot 5.50$ 2.7k up top onetime plz!

Railing.... you can do it