Originally posted by gxtwo
nice blog mate.What sample size do you have at 25nl? That's a healthy bankroll you have, when do you plan on moving to 50?
What do you use for you %bar? I've got a google sheet set up that i use
Thank you!
The last NL25 has 80k hands and the winrate is a bit more than 3 bb/100. All-time I have 170k hands and am break-even in that sample (1 bb/100 winner by EV).
%bar is made in Microsoft Excel. I hope to make it to 100% at some point. 
Originally posted by gxtwo
when do you plan on moving to 50?
Sorry! Missed that! Well, I'm planning to move to NL50 when reach bankroll of $3.200 (will take 4 buy-ins shot).
The things are still not going the best latelly. I'm not losing much, though. Lost just 4 stacks in that "downswing", but it's quite annoying. This week I'm more satisfied with how I played. I tried and succeded to stay calm and concentrated so I'm pretty sure I didn't spew anything, but seems that I always run into top of ranges which are often hit on the river, so I had to fold alot of spots where I invested alot on previous streets considering it as value. Anyway, those are the numbers for the latest challenge:
Progress:
Volume: 7.314 hands (goal: 20000)
Winrate: -3,09 bb/100 (goal: 5)
Today I decided to try this new Croatian poker room and deposited a bit of my (private) money there. The software is awful for now, at least for someone who is used to PokerStarts. You can set bet sliders, but seems it doesn't apply to tables. Sick. 
You can't set auto top - up and sometimes software even doesn't allow you to do it manually, so often you have to play with strange stack sizes. There are only regular tables (no fast variant of poker) and offered limits are quite strange: 0,15/0,30, 0,25/0,50, 0,5/1, 0,75/1,50, 1/2, 1,5/3, 2/4, 2,5/5, 3/6, 7,5/15, 10/20, 50/100. Not sure why didn't they take just "standard" limits, especially because there is really low traffic. Right now you can find like 10 6-max tables running on lowest limits and just 1-5 on on 0,75/1,5 and higher. You can't use any traking software. The currency is Croatian Kuna - HRK (1 USD = ~7 HRK). I played 0,25/0,50 and 0,5/1 (0,5/1 is somewhere around NL16 in USD). It's full of fish. I lost a couple of coin-flips, but still managed to increase the bankroll by more than 50% (deposited 500 HRK and earned 277). I think that the same types of players you can only see on facebook. Everybody limps, calls with 3rd pairs by the river, doesn't pay attention to sizes etc. I felt like they were throwing money to me, seriously. There were just a few players that knew which open sizes they should use. ♦ Now I even seriously started to think of switching there. I'm pretty sure that if I would play there as much as I play on Stars, I could easily earn 500-1000 USD monthly. Ok, maybe it was just the impression, but the opponents are so much worse than the ones I used to. It's definitelly something to consider.
How I'm running in February summed into 1 hand. 
Hero (SB): $36.45 (145.8 bb)
BB: $25 (100 bb)
UTG: $29.66 (118.6 bb)
MP: $12.64 (50.6 bb)
CO: $46.99 (188 bb)
BTN: $31.43 (125.7 bb)
Preflop: Hero is SB with A♠: A♣:
UTG folds, MP raises to $0.75, 2 folds, Hero raises to $2.30, BB folds, MP raises to $12.64 and is all-in, Hero calls $10.34
Hero showed A♠: A♣:
MP showed 6♦: 5♦:
Flop: ($25.53) 4♥: 3♠: 2♣: (2 players, 1 is all-in)
Haven't play much at PokerStars because was experimenting with this new Croatian poker room (but PokerStars is a scam anyway, as you could see above ♦ ). I'm seriously thinking of migrating a part of my bankroll to that room because it seems like an ATM atm (you saw that - atm-atm 
). I watched a bit of NL200 (equivalent to NL25 in USD) and NL400 (equivalent to NL50 in USD) and seems that players are as bad as at NL50 and NL100. Playing NL50 and NL100 I lost 3 coin-flips and 150 bb's KK vs TT all in preflop, but still managed to earn 300 HRK in 2 days, which is ~40 USD. I feel like I could earn like 600-1000 USD monthly there if investing the same amount of time as invested on PokerStars. I could be wrong, though, but from what I've seen so far, maybe 5-10% of players there enter the pot with raising. Everybody just limps so you can just wait for the hand and play aggressivelly when you hit. I'm nut sure all of them even know the rules. 
It's probably like on Party after the poker boom happened. The downsides are poor trafic, impossibiity of using tracking software and poor poker software overall. But if you can earn as much as I suspect, it's probably worthed to try.
That is really awesome man ♦ I might switch as well in your case then. What is also fun is going to a casino and play 1-2 or 2-2 cash games. You may have to buy in for 200 euros but the players are really the same as NL2/NL5 players at the most. Easy money as they attract recreational players. Same as those new pokerrooms. See it as owning a product. You don't just switch from one product to another if you are already quite committed to 1.
Anyway, good luck at the tables dude
@Hesticus: Thank you! Yeah, I will definitelly switch to that poker room for some time and split my bankroll into two parts; will keep the part of bankroll on PokerStars to play there when there will be no traffic on other room, to play vs better players (to improve my poker skills) and to have some stats of my play in HM2.
Unfortunatelly, I'm not able to have HM2 picture anymore because no all hands can be tracked by HM2, but The Blog Job challenge continues! I also can't play only NL25 because this new poker room's currency is HRK (1 USD ~ 7 HRK) so I play NL50 and NL100 there (will play NL200 when manage to migrate the part of bankroll there.
Progress:
Volume: 11665 hands (goal: 20000)
Winrate: 7,37 bb/100 (goal: 5)
hi alleen 86!
today i found your blog and i really like it how dedicated you are . i can really relate to you very well to the posts i ve read so far. i play poker parttime for a few years now and recently worked a lot on my mental game.
thx for sharing your downloads.
and keep crushing :-)
Originally posted by retic
hi alleen 86!
today i found your blog and i really like it how dedicated you are . i can really relate to you very well to the posts i ve read so far. i play poker parttime for a few years now and recently worked a lot on my mental game.
thx for sharing your downloads.
and keep crushing :-)
Thank you! I'm glad you like the files and hope they will help you in your progress!
Here is the report for Get Rich or Die Tryin' - The Bankroll Challenge:
Starting bankroll: 1.061,04 USD
Targeting bankroll: 5.305,20 USD
Last week bankroll: 2.566,49 USD
-------------------------------------------------------------
Week 109
Hands: 9.154
Profit: -37,71 USD
MTTs: 1
Profit: -7,87 USD
Purchase of Skrill prepaid card: -10,60 USD
Rakeback: 10,00 USD
Week 109 profit: -46,18 USD
Week 109 progress: -1,80%
Current bankroll: 2.520,31 USD
-------------------------------------------------------------
Overall profit: 1.459,27 USD
Overall progress: 34,38%
Since I decided to try the new poker room, had to invest a bit of bankroll into Skrill prepaid card to be able to migrate a part of the bankroll. Will have some more expenses due to this in the future (fees), but I have to do this since I don't want to invest any of my "private" money into poker. Until the end of March will play alot more on this new room than on Stars and see what will happen. The room is full of fishes, but you can't use HUD nor any tracking software so I feel a bit blind while playing there and can't review any data of how I've played. That sucks a bit, but maybe it will be worthed. I'm also not sure which strategy should I use there (preflop and postflop) because opponents are totally different than on Stars NL25. For now I'm trying to be a bit tighter preflop with open raises because everyone calls and I'm making raises bigger. I'm not bluffing alot postflop because they don't fold anything. When I have TP or better, I play it as I have the nuts because people call with K-high in some cases. At the beginning I had alot of success, but last two days lost a couple of stacks. Three stacks I've lost when hit top set OTF against rivered flush. Then I run KK into AA, QQ into KK and AK into AA. I had two situations where people called QTXX turn with more than half a stack. The river was K. In one hand I had KK and in other I had KQ. In both hands they had AJ so they invest almost entire stack with a gutshot by the turn and hit the river. I was also all in with AK on AKX flop vs a guy who had K3. Turn was 3 and river was, what a surprise, another 3. All that made me start to suspect into randomness of dealing cards, I started to think that maybe the room doesn't want someone to earn alot of money and make all fishes run away. But maybe I'm just paranoic?! 
However, I will give it a try and see what will happen. I also entered a tournament with 120 players where the quaranteed prize pool was 200 buy-ins, so I figured out it would be worthed. Players were really terrible, but I was kind of card dead and busted in 60th place (or something like that) with AK vs JJ on KJX flop. They were betting/raising 2nd pairs, gutters, A-highs all the time so TP was the nuts. I will probably try some more of those because I think I can maybe spike some nice cash there even with the limited tournament skills I have. Fingers crossed!
The Blog Job challenge so far:
Progress:
Volume: 15707 hands (goal: 20000)
Winrate: 1,58 bb/100 (goal: 5)
And had this set vs flushdraw flop all in situation (where I lost) again later tonight, probably 4th or 5th time in ~8k hands I've played there so far. ♦
So the guy open limped on the SB, I raised to 5 bb's, he called. Flop was bet/3bet/shove from my side. The rest is history. 
Funny thing is that I stil have a winrate of 17,39 bb/100 at that limit and 5,93 bb/100 all limits combined. Crazy... 
Lol ♦
I think that total randomness is hard to comply with for a poker room. I also wouldn't be that optimistic of how that poker room deals with randomness of cards. Of course they would need to have some kind of guidelines and regulations and all that stuff. However, just see it a few more weeks and decide what to do indeed.
About that hand... 
hey!
as i said i #ve playing part time for the last couple of year . mostly nl20 and 50 which meant mass grinding 120k on average month. one thing which really hold me back from moving up was that i had no clue about how brain works in certain situations. luckily i#ve discovered the field of personal development parallel to poker which helped me a lot. Be very carefull about making any assumption about the new site without having really proof ( sample ) . one of the biggest things the brain can do is to filter out information. you receive a few thousond information about your invironment through your 5 senses / sec. your brain can only proceed 5-8 consiously. the rest is basically filtered out. those filters are things for survival and things you believe strong enough. if you believe sth like on the new sites people dont fold to bluffs ( maybejust because you saw it a few times in a row) your brain will set that filter as important. and make you aware of every situation were someone calls you too wide. like "see we are right, people dont fold" , but everytime people do fold it will be literally completely ignored by you. this is also known as the RAS!
quite simple short explanation . so be very carfull what you choose to believe . wrong believes in poker cost you a lot of money. believe me i´ve paid it. :-)
good luck
Originally posted by retic
hey!
as i said i #ve playing part time for the last couple of year . mostly nl20 and 50 which meant mass grinding 120k on average month. one thing which really hold me back from moving up was that i had no clue about how brain works in certain situations. luckily i#ve discovered the field of personal development parallel to poker which helped me a lot. Be very carefull about making any assumption about the new site without having really proof ( sample ) . one of the biggest things the brain can do is to filter out information. you receive a few thousond information about your invironment through your 5 senses / sec. your brain can only proceed 5-8 consiously. the rest is basically filtered out. those filters are things for survival and things you believe strong enough. if you believe sth like on the new sites people dont fold to bluffs ( maybejust because you saw it a few times in a row) your brain will set that filter as important. and make you aware of every situation were someone calls you too wide. like "see we are right, people dont fold" , but everytime people do fold it will be literally completely ignored by you. this is also known as the RAS!quite simple short explanation . so be very carfull what you choose to believe . wrong believes in poker cost you a lot of money. believe me i´ve paid it.
good luck
Great post, thank you!
Yeah, I know. Something similar was being said in "The Mental Game of Poker". Rationally, I'm pretty sure no poker room will have interest in "setting up" outcomes of hands, but you never know with 100% certainty. As I remember, some poker rooms in the past didn't pass the independent Random Number Generator test so was proven that the randomness of dealing cards in those rooms was not apsolute. That certainly leaves some space of being suspicious, especially in smaller rooms and especially in rooms that operate in low-regulated markets. But even if RNG isn't perfect, the question is would they really set hands to make someone lose or win more or they just don't have a perfect RNG for no reason.
As the poker room where I play is concerned, I believe for now there is still no real reason to worry.
i agree . one thing i forget to mention is also that you underestimate the amount of hands you play. if you think about howmany hands you play in a live game 20-30 ? not sure exactly. but if so you would play quite a bit to get 8k hands in :-)
I wouldn't know, have never played live poker. ::f_frown:
I agree with the point, though. If I would look some of my 20k or 30k stretches at Stars, I could probably also found reasons for being suspicious in their "honesty". So I will definitelly need to collect more hands to make conclusions. Since I noticed that when there is a flushdraw on the table (on this new poker room) and I have something strong, the third card for a flush comes unexpectably often, but when I have a flushdraw, the third card for a flush comes very rarely, yesterday I decided to make screen shots of all river situations where I had a flushdraw or flushdraw was on board OTF or OTT and I didn't have it. Hopefully at the end of March I will have enough evidence that something could be wrong. As the yesterday's results are concerned, I had flushdraw 7 times OTF and hit it 0 times by the river. When I didn't have a flushdraw, but TP or better, but flushdraw was on board, from 8 situations it came 6 times (two times 4 cards of the same suit hit by the turn (three same suit card were delt on the flop) or by the river). ♦
I know it wouldn't be a problem for programmers to modify software to spot which players started to win alot and then assign them some attribute like (winning player) and for those players make slight manipulations with boards (I guess "playing" with suits would be the easiest to implement and the most secure to conduct because fish will always chase a flushdraw no matter what). But as I said, for now I could just be a bit paranoic. ♦ Will see what will be happening in next weeks.
The Blog Job challenge so far:
Progress:
Volume: 18250 hands (goal: 20000)
Winrate: 1,51 bb/100 (goal: 5)
I will definitelly reach the volume goal, but the winrate one will probably be a bit harder to reach. I'm playing a bit more volume these days because experimenting with the new room and have to admit that is somehow exciting to play with the currency you are using everyday. So, when I have 100 HRK at the table, I'm more aware of what I can buy with this money. ♦
you are really worried about this right? im not a math expert but i think it would be usefull to find out how many instances you need in order to can be quite sure that the result is accurate in most cases. and my guess is 20k hands is not enough by far. i looked through my hands from this month because i got nosey :-) . i played 94k hands so far. 7675 twotone boards were dealt and in 1972 cases flush copleted on turn and river. ( 1073 times from flop to turn and 899 from turn to river ==> around 200 in difference ) , i had 477 fldr (2cards ) on flop and got there 90 times by turn or river . so in roughly 26% of cases flush completed and it should in around 36% of cases. and only 19% when i had the two card draw . so rigged :-P !!!! . so im still not cocerned and think its variance . but i will look over bigger samle when i have time. still curious :-) hope i didnt make mistake with sth.
Yeah, i do worry a bit, but it takes too much effort to track it, since hands can't be tracked by HM2 or PT4 (tracking software is not allowed). I started to make screen shots, but I think I will give up on this and just focus on playing my best. It could be just a variance + I can always stop playing there if it wont be +EV for whatever reason.
Its very simple. If you want to believe, you will find patterns to prove its rigged. If you don't , you will not believe it besides some evidence.
The fact is, Poker Stars is one of the very rare rooms where there is integrity when it comes to RNG. The rest of the rooms and networks are somewhat shady. This is especially true for IPoker for example. I don't even want to mention those small rooms. Who gave them license, how are they operating, who is the back end team that does integrity work?
I trust Poker Stars and then my trust for other rooms is much lesser. Hence I play on Stars, have my money on Stars and not on other rooms. While other rooms may and are more juice for EV, I prefer to play long run and safe vs loosing all my money or playing on rigged room (bots, fixed RNG etc).
Originally posted by IvicaIliev77
Its very simple. If you want to believe, you will find patterns to prove its rigged. If you don't , you will not believe it besides some evidence.
The fact is, Poker Stars is one of the very rare rooms where there is integrity when it comes to RNG. The rest of the rooms and networks are somewhat shady. This is especially true for IPoker for example. I don't even want to mention those small rooms. Who gave them license, how are they operating, who is the back end team that does integrity work?
I trust Poker Stars and then my trust for other rooms is much lesser. Hence I play on Stars, have my money on Stars and not on other rooms. While other rooms may and are more juice for EV, I prefer to play long run and safe vs loosing all my money or playing on rigged room (bots, fixed RNG etc).
I agree with this, but one fact is also that here in Croatia (don't know how the things are standing in Serbia) playing poker on foreign sites is a grey area. The law says that on-line poker operators should pay an annual licence fee of ~400.000 EUR (only that new room is doing it currently) and players can't participate in games on foreign sites if they made a deposit on the theritory of Croatia (the law wants to enable tourists to play if they made deposits in their countries). So it's very possible that at some point we will have only one option - that new poker room.
You never have only 1 option.
There is option of moving to country where you can play. Its such a normal thing to do and that is something that I will do. I am not crazy to play poker on some Serbian poker room without traffic, capped hourly winnings and questionable integrity. Move to Thailand or wherever Poker Stars works and allows you to make a living as professional poker player.
That is my plan and my option.
2nd option is shady and I don't advise it but you can still live in Croatia and use VPN to play. However, that may work for other networks but Stars is pretty strict on this and I wouldn't risk it. GL
