Grinding my way to freedom

Good luck grinder

Thank you!

Today I started the day with listening to the "Smart Poker Study"-Podcast by Sky Matshuashi. It´s a podcast I do recommend, not because of any new theoretical concepts or exceptionell depth in discussions, but because it motivates to always keep working on the game. Another thing that is good with the podcast is that it focus most of what matters most - in other words, the most common spots like preflop-game and C-betting.

It´s good to remember that it´s most important to have a great understanding of the most common spots before you try to develop for example a 5-bet bluff-range or a river raising range. You can never be to good at C-betting.

The last 2 days I have tried Spin ang Go´s "serious" for the first time. I thought before that this was an over-raked game that was hard to beat but the games are very soft at the 3$ limit and after playing 168 games I have won 40% which Im very satisfied with. I think I will keep grinding spin and goes for a while and re-evaluate how I like them after playing maybe 1000 games.

Current bankroll: 270 $

I downloaded the Trial of ICMIZER 2 today to try it out. It seems powerful and quite fun to use, but, in my opinon, it´s unfortunatly expensive. I never liked those "pay per month"-softwares. I also know that I have bought a few softwares before that I ended up barely using.. But If I keep playing spin and goes I will atleast considering buying ICMIZER 2, because I think it is one of the best ways to improve the push/fold game, which is a big part of these SNGs!

I have not been able to put much volume in during the week because I have a newborn son at home (2,5 weeks old!)

Anyhow I try to play some Spin and go´s every day. Playing just 30 minutes every day still helps me to keep a strong game (atleast strong enought for the 3$ buy ins).

After 343 Spin and gos I have a ROI of 10%, hopefully I can keep it like that on the 3$ buy in.

Bankroll: 280$

Short update.

I keep on grinding and doing my best but the results have not been my friend the last week. I do well in chip EV and Im ITM 39,5% of the time witch im satisfied with, but I have taken a few shots on the 7$ and the variance have been against me most of the time. I´ve also realised that it will take time to get a decent sample for me, while working a 9-5 job full time, but I will keep grinding.

Games played: 620
Bankroll 257$

Are you grinding just spin & go? I've never made the calcs, but it is a little be frustrating to pay $3.50 as an entry fee and compete for a $7 (winner-takes-all) when you can play 9 men SnG with the 1st price around $14 and you have a chance to get the 2nd or 3rd place.
Anyway, I wish a great success applying all your knowledge at tables.
Arnalsan

Originally posted by Arnalsan
Are you grinding just spin & go? I've never made the calcs, but it is a little be frustrating to pay $3.50 as an entry fee and compete for a $7 (winner-takes-all) when you can play 9 men SnG with the 1st price around $14 and you have a chance to get the 2nd or 3rd place.
Anyway, I wish a great success applying all your knowledge at tables.
Arnalsan

Hi!

Since a few weeks back, I only play spin and go. I have played many other variations of poker before (mostly NL Cash game).

When playing spin and go´s it´s important to be aware of the price distribution. If the winner always only won 2 times the buy in, with 3 players playing, it would not be beatable.

This is how the jackpot is distributed:

70,5% of the time, the jackpot is 2x the buy in,
21,7% of the time, the jackpot is 4x the buy in,
7,5% of the time, the jackpot is 6x the buy in,
0,5 % of the time, the jackpot is 10x the buy in.
0,116% of the time, the jackpot is higher.

as you see, the 4x and 6x buy in jack pot appears frequently aswell, witch makes the games beatable.
To break even, after rake, you need to win 36% of the time. After what I have read, players who crush the game wins about 40% of the time. According to this, Im actually crushing the low buy in games, but my winnings in dollars are lagging behind because of variance

The results keeps pissing me in the face. I tried to mix up the spin and goes with some HU SNGS, i think it´s a combo easy to play, but the results was not my friend.

Staying motivated is a bit tricky when the results don´t follow, but I try to put in some study time aswell so I dont grind when Im pissed.

Bankroll: 235$

todays grind started of really well, i played heads up and ended up 15 BI. Unfortunately i kept grinding even though i got tiered and distracted (hungry), which made me loose 10 of the BI´s I made initially. atleast up for the daY

bankroll 244$

Hi Janusrichmond,

Nice blog and welcome back to the forums
Congrats on being up today and know that overgrind fatigue issue too well! Time just seems to pass to quickly

Thank you metal monkey!

Today was a good day for me pokerwise. I had alot of time for poker and could play without stress for about 5-6 hours (split up during the day). I managed to do great in the heads up Hypers and ended up a bit over 100$ for the day, a good boost for my bankroll and motivation. I also took a few shots on the 7$ buy in, but I will mainly stick to the 3,5$ until my bankroll is 400$. I play with a quite aggressive bankroll management but Im okey with moving down in stakes again if needed.

One reflection I made when comparing Heads up Hypers with Spin and GOs is that the player pool is much much smaller in the heads up Hypers, and more peoples seems to be "regulars". In the spin and gos it´s rare to play against the same players more then once (at the 3$) and taking notes almost becomes useless. But in the Heads up Hypers, Notes quickly can become helpfull and should therefor be used.

It´s also worth mentioning that even when there is many "regulars" playing the Hypers, there is no need to worry about them. The regulars at the lower limits are not good, and they sure have tilt-problems too. I try to beat them up badly and then hunt them around in the lobby, just as I treat the fishes. Some regulars also like to multi-table Heads up and this creates a good oportunity to get an edge against them . I try to catch them while they are buisy playing someone else. So I one-table them when they have to split focus between different tables. If I manage to tilt them I can sometimes play 2 tables against them aswell, but I try to avoid playing 2 tables against different opponents because then Its easy to loose the game-dynamics.

bankroll 348$

WOHO! Today I had the luck to play my first 25x multiplier (3$ buy in and 75$ jackpot) and I won it

Feels fun and now Im rolled enough to feel comfortable playing the 7$ buy ins more frequently (have taken shots earlier)

I also had some starscoins that I traded for money, so now my bankroll is 425$

Wish you the best of luck today, swedens national day!

Short update. Today was a swingy day, started with the big winning I mentioned in the last post, but ended up loosing the win and more to that.

Bankroll 302$

Short reflection. Loosing 25% of the bankroll in a day is not great, but I do not feel very bad about it either, I think I played good and never felt tilted, but the cards did not turn out my way (and the move up to the 7$ buy in made a big impact on the swing down ofcourse), Atleast this is what I think, but I also know that "running bad" can sometimes be a clue that something in the game need to be fixed, if this is the case I will do my best to find out.

I have been keeping grinding, about 1 hour/day. I think Im ahead of most opponents at the 7$ buy in. The spin and go opponents are soft and the Hyper heads ups are soft except for some decent regs against which I think I may be loosing after rakeback.

Hands I think are tricky to play when playing Heads up Hypers are Ax hands against a minraise 20-25bb deep. I tend to 3bet shove pretty much all of my Ax hands (A2 aswell as AKs) but sometimes I mix it up with flatting aswell. I sort of feel that Im loosing value by shoving the better Ax hands (like A9+) because normally the result of a shove is only winning the minraise. I guess the shove with strong Aces are okey against players that call shoves alot but worse against players that fold more often. I will dig deeper into this and write something down when I have figured something out.
Would love to hear comments of how you guys play Ax when facing a race heads up out of position.

Bankroll 436$

It has been a month and a half since my last blogpost. I have had some holiday away from the tables (for about 2 weeks) but the main reason that I have not done any updates here is because the progress is very slow. My bankroll have been moving sideways mostly (abit down last days). The results are worse then I hoped for but I still feel my game has become stronger and that I normally have skill-edge against pretty much all recreational players, and that I am more or less break even against most regs. I think that is I manage to stay focused and playing my A-game or atleast B-game, the results will follow.

A problem I know I have is playing tiered (sometimes drinking a beer aswell), and sometimes wasting money on tourneys that Im not well prepared for. I will do my best to avoid these spots.

I have invested in 2 softwares since last time.
1. starshelper. helps calculating pot odds, and showing stack in BB instead of chips. pretty handy.
2. Icomizer 2. A program used for calculating push/fold spots. I will mainly focus on a push or fold-quiz thats included in the program, and try to answer some questions every day as a new study-routine. My plan is to also do some push/fold calculations based on spots I counter in the game. Have been lazy with this so far though.

Bankroll 374$

1000 heads up Hypers played, here is the graph

https://imgur.com/a/YNpntyf (failed to show it in post, klick link to view...)

Atleast something pointing in the right direction, this is where I should put my focus.

How is the ChipEV looking? Is 30 Chips per game enough to beat the rake? IIRC for Spins you need a chipEV around 40-45. Are HUs similar in that way, in that you can derive you potential winnings from your ChipEV?

Good luck with your goals!

Thank you for visiting my blog, helping me with posting the graph, and asking me a question!

My EV-adjusted results is only 15 Chips EV per game, so my graph was misleading, even though I think that the EV-graph is misleading aswell because it only shows the EV in spots that ends the game, not other spots during the games where variance can be high aswell. Anyway, next time I will post graph including EV-adjusted, I see this has a value.

I thought that Rake was factored in when showing results in pokertracker, if that isnt the case, Im barely beating the rake, but Im pretty sure the graph takes rake into account, or?

thank you for the luck-wishing