Chip Up & Ship It (GGPoker, Spins recreational regular diary)

October summary

# Key performance indicators
Number of games: 1866
Profit: $4707
Rake: $5473
Rakeback: $3225 (62%)
Hours played: 69.15
Hourly: $68

Profit and Bonuses graph

Chips EV and Won graph:

# Overview
This month was grind-heavy, I skipped only 5 days out of 31 calendar days. 68 hours of play now looks very much like as second job for me... Though chip graph doesn't show it, but I think I'm on a solid up-streak - won a bit more than 2K in offline tournaments and in online have a very solid run in big multipliers. First half of the month I played 5, 10, and 20 stakes, and in the second half I went higher on 50s and 100s where I managed to bring overall results of the month in a green zone.

The biggest insight came when I was analyzing regs on 100s limit and noticed that my HUD set-up is wrong and HU stats were not filtered for HU properly, including stats for 3max game. That blew my mind - how could I reference wrong numbers playing HU for so long and nothing rang the bell?

From the downside - I'm very tired after such a long streak of almost everyday play... I'm looking forward to my trip to Rozvadov that we have planned with my cousin for this weekend, where we'll play "WSOPE Event #5: NLH Colossus". €550 Side event with €1.5 mil guarantee - it will a real test of skill, luck, and a theory of my ongoing up-streak :f_drink::f_drink::f_drink:

Another nice thing that I did this month was to track all my spending like I do in poker. Found a number of leaks in form of subscriptions and contracts that I'm either not using or overpaying for. Cleaned it up, canceled contracts and subscriptions, wrote a few requests for reimbursement, and got back some money. In Germany, it is a common thing to sign someone with a discounted starting period of contract and then convert to a full-paying customer, by switching contracts for gas, electricity, internet, mobile and so on one could get more than €1K in savings.

I feel like I need to adjust my play to opponents to exploit their leaks, but have a very hard time stepping away from charts and GTO play. Will resume work with the coach this month and hope he'll give me some tips and tricks on adjustments that should be made to each of my nemesis on 100s limit.

Nice summary, always enjoy reading your posts. 👌

Originally posted by Fredjen
Nice summary, always enjoy reading your posts. 👌

Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it.

Sometimes I ask myself if it makes sense to share all this data, but then recall how I couldn't find anything meaningful when I started playing Spins, and was wondering if they are actually beatable in Germany. In my mind, this sole fact justifies blogging further. Such comments as yours - another big reason.

I am also very thankful for your Blog! I really enjoy it and it s also a big Input for me

Originally posted by CaptainRofl
I am also very thankful for your Blog! I really enjoy it and it s also a big Input for me
You made with this comment and our chat in Discord - blogging totally worth it... You guys fuel me :f_drink::f_drink::f_drink:

Hey man! Im really enjoying reading your blog! Nice work btw, I cant believe u manage to have such results and keep another job at the same time. Thats impressive, no matter how balanced u keep your life, it just an awesome demonstration of attitude and discipline and those things are always wonderful to see! Keep up with the good work!

PD: I read you upload all the hh's you play in a session to gto wizard, is that correct? or is it just the one u put a tag to review on?

Thank you in advance for your answer!

Cheers!

Originally posted by BIRJAAN
Hey man! Im really enjoying reading your blog! Nice work btw, I cant believe u manage to have such results and keep another job at the same time. Thats impressive, no matter how balanced u keep your life, it just an awesome demonstration of attitude and discipline and those things are always wonderful to see! Keep up with the good work!

Thanks for your kind words and supportive feedback. I think it works well for me because poker balances my job and job balances poker. I'm working in big organization as a manager, projects take time, and I'm not contributing to the result myself mostly, leading a team, that does all the heavy lifting. Also in big-scale organizations outcomes of any managerial decisions are delayed for months (like to hire a person or change a process).
In poker it is the other way around:
- I'm not reporting to anyone (except readers of the blog);
- I'm directly contributing to the outcomes and the result is instant;
- Poker challenges me cognitively, whereas my job challenges my accountability and responsibility. Concepts in poker are much more complex than managerial job, where mostly you do Excel sheets, write emails, do meetings, planning, and follow-ups.

But Poker alone, wouldn't be enough. I've done it professionally for 1,5 years 12 years ago and I found myself in a very lonely place, asocial with mental health alarms that made me tilting as hell. The world of online poker is very draining and offline poker is quite weird, with constant pursuit to find "sweet" games with weak players and deep pockets.

Originally posted by BIRJAAN
PD: I read you upload all the hh's you play in a session to gto wizard, is that correct? or is it just the one u put a tag to review on?

Yes, this is correct. I'm dumping all hands after a session in GTOWizard and going over the spots with the biggest EV loss. Overall stat of "Correct plays" in GTOWizard was a key indicator for me, now I'm a bit skeptical about it as more and more incorrect plays are coming from GTO reading wrong stack sizes.

That is my usual routine before I start the next session. Before I start, I warm-up in practice mode (Trainer), playing usually 50 hands for 3max and 50 hands for HU play. Every time I'm doing a suboptimal step I'm going deeper in the ranges, trying to understand the solver output and EV of the decision.

I've just come back from the Rozvadov WSOPE 2023 series and want to capture fresh memories and experiences here.

This is my first time taking part in such a big poker event. My previous experience was Dublin Poker Festival in February this year, but it was way smaller than WSOPE. We went there for 5 days with my cousin who plays poker occasionally for fun. The ultimate goal and plan was to take a shot in the 550 Colossus event, where we took 4 bullets each and didn't reach in the ITM. I registered as well in 1.1K Colossus Masters tournament with no luck - was busted way before ITM. Our time on the tournament tables was quite short and we spent the most playing cash.

A few things that I've noticed after 4 days of intensive live cash play on the series:
- I haven't studied this format at all and compared to Spin'n'Gos where I know ranges by heart I played this format very bed. So I had to work and develop a cash game strategy on the go. GTOWizard helped quite a lot in giving a reference open rages for 9max;
- Rake is insane in live games, 5% with 20 Euro cap was for NL500 games (lowest limit) and 30Cap for NL1000+. So playing lots of pots as I used to do (calling wide in position) is not an option. Much better strategy is to play tight, win pots before the flop with solid 3bet / 4bet strategy, utilizing "No flop, no drop" rule.
- During the series all limits are higher, usually in Rozvadov lowest games are NL300, whereas during the series NL500. Regulars on lower limits have quite funny strategies:
- often change the tables to find where is more weak players,
- put extra chips that they earned on the table in the pocket when switching the table
- paying not much attention to what is happening on the table, reading some articles, playing PLO5 online or watching videos (I guess they learn in parallel in this way)
- Their ranges are not balanced, they just wait for the good cards and someone to pay them off - not bluffing enough or at all and very passive.

Once I moved to NL1000 and NL2500, the level of the players went up, and the game dynamic changed a lot: often 3bets, squeezes, 3bet-folds, barely someone saw a flop, but when that happened, the pot is already big enough for everyone in the hand to sweat and take time on every decision. Swings are bigger, ranges are broader, bluffs are regular and bluff-catching becomes a big thing, whereas on lower limits size of the pot is proportional to hand strengths on higher limits biggest pots are won by calling a pot-size bet on the river with 3d pair. There is a lot of money to win and lots of sweating to sweat )).

After this series, I want to invest more into cash-game full-ring and 6-max formats study. To beat at least NL25. I've already purchased GTOWizard for the next month and hope to get some hands to analyze there.

My stats for WSOPE 2023:
- Tournaments entries -3300 EUR (ITM 0%)
- Cash games (NL500 - NL2,5K): +427 EUR
- Hours played: 63 in 5 days
- Sessions: 3 Tournament, 15 Cash

The best thing (besides spending a lot of time with my cousin) was that we met lots of interesting and motivating players who are the face of poker, ranging from professionals to random amateurs who decided to pay a visit and try their luck. I'm now feeling a significant uplift in poker motivation when it comes to expanding my knowledge from Spins to live cash games.

Big WTF moment during today's training drill in GTOWizard:

Can someone help me to understand this spot? In what reality it is a call with 9-high, when we block draws with our 4?

With the 4 table cap in germany you might have a problem to generate volume in normal fullring cashgames.

6max and Rush / Zoom etc. seems better. But this is harder to beat.

Originally posted by CaptainRofl
With the 4 table cap in germany you might have a problem to generate volume in normal fullring cashgames.
6max and Rush / Zoom etc. seems better. But this is harder to beat.

I'm currently trying to get at least my preflop ranges in order, so volume is not the key factor here. 6max and 9max both would work and I'm more interested in slow play and not volume rake grinding. Striving to be as close to GTO as possible every decision right now consumes too much of my mental resources )) So I'd expect to play no more than 10K hands till the end of the month and try to maintain volume in BLASTs, at least for 100 Leaderboards

Well i guess gto has enough bluff combo's to call 9hi with blocker. Test is if player pool has those too...

As always it depends of opponent's betting range. In spots like this, where people are far away from gto sizings, your intuition can be a better advisor than a solver.
Probably, as a bb, solver prefers bigger sizing with 4x so you can call really wide with your hand.

40K Profit Challange Week 21-22 Update

Profit Start of the Week 21: $2339
Profit End of the Week 22: $9168
Profit for the week: $6829

Number of tournaments: 415
Cash hands: 2042
Hours played: 31

# Summary

This update is for 2 weeks as I skipped the last one due to WSOPE participation. Overall, I'm very happy with the overall numbers. I think this is the most profitable 2 weeks so far online, which compensated bad run offline.

# Highlights

- I started working on my cash game and purchased a subscription for GTOWizard 6max and 9max. I can already see how Spin game benefited from better post-flop play. Here is a graph:

- I'd to measure separately hourly earnings and compare, what makes more sense to play in the long run. I remember Ryan O'Donnell mentioned in his interview that Spins just generate better profit/hour of play, that needs to be verified.
- 6max and 9max study- and play- sessions bring lots of engagement and positive feelings, when I see how fishy my game was before. I was such a loose-passive player on the table, now that I look at the GTO recommendations on actions.

# Lowlights

- I see that I have problems getting a decent night's sleep, so I might take a few days-off from poker this week to properly recover and recreate.

- On the main front (BLASTs). I see that HU part was solid in 100 limit (29 ChipEV/T), but my 3Handed play looses me ton of chips (-9 ChipEV/T). I want to dedicate more attention to 3-handed play, look closer at Chips won by position, and do drills for different kinds of spots.
- All my profit comes from running exceptionally well in high multipliers/

Overall graph for those 2 weeks:

Good luck everyone no the tables! :f_drink::f_drink::f_drink:

Originally posted by Studentishe
Can someone help me to understand this spot? In what reality it is a call with 9-high, when we block draws with our 4?

It's just that SB has not that many hands left to call with. SB barrels most of its value on the turn, including 5x. And I don't think SB's 4 blocker matters much, because BB doesn't block bet 64 and 43 on the river, he shoves them. That's how I see it anyway.

Seems like it. As the fair amount of hands that bet on the river are the ones with no equity we are good to call even as low as 7-high provided pot-odds of 16%:

Intresting to see, what hands GTO decides to raise, the hand with least equity that GTO raises 92% of time is 8c4c:

If I understand correctly it's because of 0 EV and clubs, that are not present on the board - this makes it more likely that opponent had a backdoor FD on the flop when calling our Limped Pot Cbet. This trash removal topic is distant for me at the moment.

My god that’s some impressive stats you have! Well played

Thanks, try to do my best )

Today was a very nasty night.

It started with low traffic in the evening, which prevented me from grinding my usual volume and doing 50 games for Leaderboard. I ended with a count of around 29 and didn't get into prises. Currently Leaderboards close at 1 a.m., after that new LB starts. So I've decided to play right away for the next day's LB. Traffic was ok for about an hour and went dead afterward. While waiting for players to join I started to play SNAP cash games where the action is quite fast, then occasionally BLAST game would start and I'd keep playing 2 different formats in parallel. My game went from B to C, then to D. I finished the session with -400BB from cash and -16BI from BLASTS at 7 in the morning clocking the longest online session played so far with 9 hours straight.

The next day was wasted and I'm going for recovery pause from poker for 2 days. This is not cool, not enjoyable and not healthy, wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

On the bright side, though - I'm now leading Leaderboard with 205 points, where the next 2 opponents have the same score. If I finished the session in the evening, like I usually do, it would be 3rd place and not 1st place.

A few screenshots from the session:

At this point I'm not going for volume, but rather to learn the GTO cash strategy to be more confident in offline games