Lockerl71 - way to my (10th?) 5 digit Bankroll - and finally not go broke again? MTTs - Status: 5k

Originally posted by Kalinimal
Hello Lockerl71,

I am playing small mtt's on PS. I need BR management too. I see you feel fine to play those tournaments, but this is not like to work on you BR management. Try to hold your self and play smaller buy in. This will boost your BR and soon you will play whatever you like. It is not that I am doing it, I just say. About hand #4 up there. I don't like the shove on turn. I think you have some more value to extract

Good luck

My first non-Mod post - juhu ♦

Guess you are right, but its hard for me to keep the focus in low buy in MTTs, and I feel between 11.- and 55.- the games are even softer for me, more spewee ....
Also my style is quite aggressive, with big bluffs on the river, this does not work in the micros and the midstake Regs. I can exploit with this style easily ♦

Anyway 22+ buy ins I enter through (mostly hyper) satellites (very successfully with my load of shortstack ecperience).....

Add hand 4:
U are right in normal circumstances, but the villain was from Scandinavia, they are extremely sticky and bottom 2 are extremely vulnerable in a 5 way pot on a str8ty board - as aggressive I play pre- and on final tables, with so many chips in the pot even I like to cut the variance a bit
Also I would shove my semibluffs, so I have to shove my (not extremely nutty) valuehands for range - balancing.
Plus: There are so many run outs on this board where I do not get value on the river, or I even have to fold if he shoves......

Cheers

holy fuck, the 6max hyper sitngo mtts Thursdays on ps (nlh 15-60) are fishy ♦

=> up to 2.150.- (from 1.750.-) without running hot in any way

Hi Locker!

Originally posted by Lockerl71
Guess you are right, but its hard for me to keep the focus in low buy in MTTs, and I feel between 11.- and 55.- the games are even softer for me, more spewee ....
Also my style is quite aggressive, with big bluffs on the river, this does not work in the micros and the midstake Regs. I can exploit with this style easily ♦

So, as the saying goes, you've moved up to where they respect your raises

As soon as I read that it was hard for you to keep focus, my first thought was that MTTs are too long and you'd be more focused in shorter games...

And then I read that you're trying hyper SNGs out - surprise, surprise!

Well, I feel in a similar way about Spin & Go Max Holdem (which is one of the most complex SNG formats nowadays, mind you, and also has huge variance, 150 buy-in downswings being typical) - that regs are more predictable than random opponents and, at this early stage of the history of this SNG type, everyone is making mistakes that can be made use of.

However, the art of playing poker consists in adjusting properly to every type of opponents. And that includes random recreational players as well.

So microstake play isn't a waste of time - it's a necessary step to overall poker success as it's a cheap way to learn from experience how to exploit weak opponents. And this step shouldn't be skipped, no matter how much money you have initially.

I lost ~$6K net at the start of my poker 'career' (at PLO20-50) when poker was way easier to beat (in 2012), so trust me: it's usually not a good idea to start from the midstakes right away.

Many of today's pros once started out at poker as losing players and the reason why they survived was that, due to buying in low, they didn't lose much money while they were learning the ropes.

Hi Tony!

Thanks for your advice, but I am not sure if you read my initial post?

I am no newbie at all, I have mtt winnings of almost 500.000.-, had bankrolls over 20-30k many times, only managed to blast them off, mostly at PLO cash games, playing too long and having tilt issues....

As the playing too long problem does not go away with my age (I am 45), big small stakes fields are no good for me - hard to not make mistakes after 10+ hours, when the payouts are still peanuts for me......
mtts are for sure my best game, I am very experienced in them and feel very comfortable playing very good players, so midstakes mtts - with very good game selection by choosing soft fields (pkos, deepstack games, main events, weekends....) - is the thing to go for me....
- adding some hyper sngos and sattelites are fun and fit for short sessions, as my shortstack game is very good.
- spin & gos and similar formats I tried, I do not like them at all...
- cash games are poison for me, even when I tried them at micros, I am honestly (to myself) no good in them and they tilt me...

Cheers

ahh btw, I binked 2nd place in a 11.- rebuy PLO8 hyper mtt on ps (extremely fishy) and am now up to 2.5k

Good times

I'm aware that you have a lot of knowledge, but let me explain why I think practice at lower stakes is beneficial for you.

1. You mentioned that your style is quite aggressive and doesn't work well in the micros. My point is that modern expert poker pros don't have a permanent style at all. The way they play depends on who the opponents are, and they can play nearly optimally against any lineup at the table.

Especially because you're selecting the softest MTTs available (which is the right thing), you should also make sure that you alter your style against loose amateur opponents who would call big river bets too often. Those are actually the players from whom the most money is made, that requires bluffing less and betting rather for value, though there are still situations where a bluff is profitable.

2. You've confessed that you have tilt issues. Thus you need to train yourself to become more disciplined, which is also a necessary component of being a strong player. It's more important to reduce the frequency of moments when emotions are preventing one from executing one's knowledge at any moment of a long session (alas MTT sessions can be notoriously long) even if one plays mediocre winning poker all the time than to be able to play brilliantly for a short time. In particular, you should learn to double-check your every decision near the end of a long session, to prevent emotions from harming your quality of play.

The idea behind training the discipline at low stakes is that there's no money pressure, so you can actually gain the psychological immunity from bad beats by putting yourself into a toy situation where the pressure is not as overwhelming as at your normal stakes, and there are fewer strong regs capable of putting you into complex situations. This is much like vaccination that injects a weakened version of the virus of tilt first and then gradually increases the difficulty. To clarify, the training is necessary to strengthen your 'mental game' (equanimity) and not necessarily your understanding of the game strategy that's already good.

The biggest reason why I play hypers now instead of slower poker formats is that it allows me to end the session within 5-10 minutes after I start feeling that I'm no longer able to think clearly.

One of the biggest reasons why the best players make money at MTTs even at high stakes is that they're long, the blinds are much bigger at the final table than at the start, and therefore, many hours of early-level brilliant play can be negated by just one poorly thought out move at the late stage.

An efficient way to maintain good quality of decisions at the late stages is to have a rigid large checklist of things that you should consider when you're involved in a big pot, so that your brain is busy for all the seconds that you have to act, and has no time for negative emotions. In particular, the bigger the pot, the more HUD stats of the opponents you need to check, even by opening a popup.

If this is not your problem, then please tell us in more detail what, in your opinion, has caused you to bust several bankrolls. Perhaps you didn't move down stakes when you had to, but I suspect the main reason for your failure was indeed that you didn't have the discipline to leave the table or at least start double-checking your decisions when your decision quality was lower than usual.

will reply to your points later....

a quick update:

I made 6th place for 316.- in the big 16.5 on ps

very frustrating though, as I steamrolled the whole tournament (a long time with crappy cards), came on the ft 3rd with like 40 bigs, was crazy carddead without getting any spots (the only pot I won was limping on the button 10-9s and bluffing delayed on the turn on A553 no suit for me).

Squeezed AQ off with a bit under 20bb (button open, sb call), got called from the the opener with 88 and he hit the set

still up to 2,7k now

You're doing a nice job

I actually don't object to your BRM - it's fine as long as you diligently move down every time when you have less than the minimum number of BIs that you've previously determined (40 in your case) and as long as you always play the games where you're dominant, instead of playing too much volume at too high stakes in the games where you're possibly an underdog (cash games).

What I'm worried about is that you're wasting too much mental energy on ruminations about things that you couldn't have changed anyway - about your runs below EV. It's better to spend this energy on something that you can change.

In particular, it's useful to enable the 'Hide the board if Hero is all-in' option in a hotkey tool like StarsCaption (which may be called 'Hide community cards if all-in' or similarly in other tools), to avoid wasting focus on the useless info about what cards the RNG has dealt after the hole cards were flipped over.

Originally posted by tonypmm
Good times

1. You mentioned that your style is quite aggressive and doesn't work well in the micros. My point is that modern expert poker pros don't have a permanent style at all. The way they play depends on who the opponents are, and they can play nearly optimally against any lineup at the table.

2. You've confessed that you have tilt issues. Thus you need to train yourself to become more disciplined, which is also a necessary component of being a strong player. It's more important to reduce the frequency of moments when emotions are preventing one from executing one's knowledge at any moment of a long session (alas MTT sessions can be notoriously long) even if one plays mediocre winning poker all the time than to be able to play brilliantly for a short time. In particular, you should learn to double-check your every decision near the end of a long session, to prevent emotions from harming your quality of play.

thx bro

ad 1: I am experienced enough to judge players by their stats & buy ins (and very important - by the country they are from), but I can only play my a - game if I am focused, and honestly over a long session I cant keep the focus, if the payouts are not exciting for me, thats why I better stay at selected mid - buy - ins

ad 2: Actually in mtts I do not have tilt issues - the swings are so natural to me meanwhile - even if I cry sometimes here about unfortunate outcomes of big deep runs

playing the 109.- saturday ko right now (sattied in for 14.- in my first shot) - already got a 50.- bounty and sit on a 30k stack (10k starting)

one interesting hand, to show how comfortly I take spots meanwhile - dont try this vs non regs or players from greece / brazil / ireland !!!

=> I am sure that villain has me beat, many players would check back river, praying their queen is good (imo never), I turned it into a bluff as everything exept my very hand got there....

PokerStars Hand #176896293753: Tournament #2061079340, $50+$50+$9 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level IX (150/300) - 2017/10/14 13:04:25 CET [2017/10/14 7:04:25 ET]
Table '2061079340 16' 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: tgc88070202 (27778 in chips)
Seat 2: Lockerl71 (18281 in chips)
Seat 3: laodayu (17326 in chips)
Seat 4: llacunera (14137 in chips)
Seat 5: onetwo366 (16397 in chips)
Seat 6: Br1ngCabbage (10660 in chips)
Seat 8: PEHA GR (18912 in chips)
Seat 9: FelixZhang14 (2789 in chips)

HOLE CARDS
Dealt to Lockerl71 [Jc Qc]
Br1ngCabbage: raises 360 to 660
PEHA GR: folds
FelixZhang14: folds
tgc88070202: folds
Lockerl71: calls 660
laodayu: folds
llacunera: folds
onetwo366: folds
FLOP [Ks Ts 4c]
Br1ngCabbage: bets 1025
Lockerl71: calls 1025
TURN [Ks Ts 4c] [5c]
Br1ngCabbage: bets 2168
Lockerl71: calls 2168
RIVER [Ks Ts 4c 5c] [Qs]
Br1ngCabbage: checks
Lockerl71: bets 6900
Br1ngCabbage: folds
Uncalled bet (6900) returned to Lockerl71
Lockerl71 collected 8396 from pot
Lockerl71: doesn't show hand
SUMMARY
Total pot 8396 | Rake 0
Board [Ks Ts 4c 5c Qs]
Seat 1: tgc88070202 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: Lockerl71 collected (8396)
Seat 3: laodayu (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: llacunera (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: onetwo366 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 6: Br1ngCabbage folded on the River
Seat 8: PEHA GR folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: FelixZhang14 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

waaaa what a ridiculous bad beat - out :(((((
lost a 65bb pot plus his 50.- bounty to a 8% hit on the river vs a complete weekend donk!!

PokerStars Hand #176897314747: Tournament #2061079340, $50+$50+$9 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XII (300/600) - 2017/10/14 13:44:14 CET [2017/10/14 7:44:14 ET]
Table '2061079340 16' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: THe_FuTuRe_P (8990 in chips)
Seat 2: Lockerl71 (31174 in chips)
Seat 3: moekass (27442 in chips)
Seat 4: llacunera (17710 in chips)
Seat 5: mrnappa (7912 in chips)
Seat 6: odessit1982 (38815 in chips)
Seat 7: Spree Chan (29196 in chips)
Seat 8: PEHA GR (16305 in chips)
Seat 9: FelixZhang14 (29296 in chips)

Lockerl71: posts small blind 300
moekass: posts big blind 600
HOLE CARDS
Dealt to Lockerl71 [Ad Ac]
llacunera: folds
mrnappa: folds
odessit1982: folds
Spree Chan: raises 1200 to 1800
PEHA GR: folds
FelixZhang14: folds
THe_FuTuRe_P: folds
Lockerl71: raises 3900 to 5700
moekass: folds
Spree Chan: calls 3900
FLOP [Jd 9d 5d]
Lockerl71: bets 4138
Spree Chan: calls 4138
TURN [Jd 9d 5d] [3s]
Lockerl71: bets 21276 and is all-in
Spree Chan: calls 19298 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (1978) returned to Lockerl71
RIVER [Jd 9d 5d 3s] [5s]
SHOW DOWN
Lockerl71: shows [Ad Ac] (two pair, Aces and Fives)
Spree Chan: shows [5h 8h] (three of a kind, Fives)
Spree Chan collected 59412 from pot

=> however, -14.- for the sat. +50.- for one bounty = 36.- profit

Hi Everybody!

The mtts did not go well the last days :/
Sunday started great with winning 2 of 3 Sunday Milli sats - one entry and 215.- TDollars, but then nothing went well:
- Busted the Million early with 2pair (bigblind) < 2pair (button) and the rest I softbubbled or busted right after the bubble..., monday the same...

BUT, inspite of saying not to play cashgames anymore, I played a PLO Zoom 50 session ......... due to soft monday fields (guys like to spew their weekend winnings....) and .................... UP 12 BUY-INS / 600.- ♦

=> BR back up to 2.4k ♦

Cheers:f_drink:

a quick update....

good and bad news.....

Bad: I caught a bad virus - fever, head & body-ache, bad cough ...... hard to keep concentration through mtts, plus running bad and for sure not playing my best by far due to the circumstances..... => down a lot last week....

Good: Crushing PLO50/25 (mostly zoom) - finally running well over ev for days => made up for all the mtt losses (and thats a lot)

=> br at 2.5k

an extremely funny hand from todays plo100 zoom (I know its still too high for my br, but saturdays extremely soft - taking a shot.....)

..... somtimes the hut stats fool you, luckely this time not, I squeeze the whale and called him down extremely light

PokerStars Zoom Hand #177192449197: Omaha Pot Limit ($0.50/$1.00) - 2017/10/21 16:36:24 CET
Table 'Gotha' 6-max

HOLE CARDS
Dealt to Lockerl71 [Ad 3c Qd Qc]
dachshundd: folds
beeelzebub: raises $2.50 to $3.50
DmitriyL: folds
_mikasa_88: calls $3.50
Lockerl71: raises $11.50 to $15
Sebber10: folds
beeelzebub: calls $11.50
_mikasa_88: calls $11.50

FLOP [Kc 2h 4c]
Lockerl71: checks
beeelzebub: bets $38
_mikasa_88: folds
Lockerl71: calls $38

TURN [Kc 2h 4c] [Kd]
Lockerl71: checks
beeelzebub: bets $60
Lockerl71: calls $60

RIVER [Kc 2h 4c Kd] [Ks]
Lockerl71: checks
beeelzebub: checks

SHOW DOWN
Lockerl71: shows [Ad 3c Qd Qc] (a full house, Kings full of Queens)
beeelzebub: mucks hand

Lockerl71 collected $239.50 from pot

Lockerl71 (small blind) showed [Ad 3c Qd Qc] and won ($239.50) with a full house, Kings full of Queens

beeelzebub mucked [9c 4d 8c 2d]

odd situation....... cant remember running so bad in mtts (but not playing my best as well I guess), but still crushing plo

I have been watching a lot JNandez and some PurplePils99 streams, obviously that has helped me a lot...... much better hand selection (23% vpip (only for me ) and 3 betting all premium and great rundowns relentlessly, postflop in position only calling, when being deep => being able to let villain bluff or take town river with a bluff (with good blockers)
check - call / check raising a lot oop......

br at 2,6k (would be much higher if not playing mtts last week :/ )

holy shit - again a horrible mtt sunday.................. BUT ......... HOLY FUCK IM RUNNING HOT IN PLO

1.5k up last 2 days in plo50/100 zoom

.... but I have to admit that I am running quite over ev, still the ev line shows upwards steadily

=> br at 3,2k

I AM BACK

So........ I busted my roll again playing too high plo (and drunk I guess) - what a surprise ..... :/

THE GOOD NEWS:
After a longer break I spun up a roll of 5k on 888 - FROM ZERO!
How?
Played the freerolls you get tickets fors regularly, won like 2 bucks, played 10c, then 50c and so on ....... within 2 months I am at 5k (99% mtts)
What changed?
For the first time in my life I diskuss my br management with somebody daily - my 15 years old son. So I really stick to a 100 buy in policy - and it works great, I had 2 downswings and I worked them out.
I had some nice scores in 55.- mtts I entered through 5.- sats

What really helps are the smaller fields on 888 (less variance) and the softer mid-stake fields, although the software quite sucks (I hate the popping up tables for no reason - missclicks are a horror).

P.S.: If somebody (with a good reputation) would like to trade some of my 888 funds with PS funds - that would be great!

Cheers

played the 88.- great 8 yesterday, I am superpissed as I fucked a monsterstack with a stupid 15bb all inn over a kk limptrap in the sb and called off 25bb from a squeeze from the bb over a utg open with 66<1010
=> two mistakes I have not made for a long time...... in the biggest buy - in I played :/